A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  Chapter Four

  Teamsters are Very Nice Men

  There was just a small bar at Green’s. The night manager, Ozzie Harrison, who’d once parachuted out of a blazing Halifax over Rouen, unlocked it for me and gave me the key.

  ‘Settle up when you go, Charlie, OK?’

  ‘OK, Oz. Thanks.’

  He gave Fabian the up-and-down look, and asked me, ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just catching up with an old friend.’

  ‘Didn’t know you knew the London coppers. Just ring the bell if you need me.’

  After he left us Fabian observed, ‘They can always tell a copper, can’t they?

  ‘I think it’s the way you watch people . . . as if you’re never going to forget.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Mr Bassett. Sometimes I forget to tie my shoelaces these days. Thanks for not making a fuss, by the way.’

  ‘I do hope I don’t live to regret it. Do you want a drink?’

  We both settled for bottled beers. Ind Coope – light and yeasty. He said, ‘Cheers,’ and raised his glass.

  ‘Cheers. I thought you’d retired years ago.’

  ‘I did. I write a few articles for the papers. Murders. You’d think people had had enough of sudden deaths, wouldn’t you? I have.’

  ‘Is that what you want to see me about?’ I yawned. I wasn’t kidding – I was ready for my pit.

  ‘No. I freelance for a couple of the ministries from time to time. Delicate stuff . . . the princesses and gigolos, you know the sort of thing. Now somebody’s interested in the woman you had supper with tonight, and the man who calls himself her husband.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mr and Mrs George Frederick Handel is one thing they’re not, Mr Bassett.’

  ‘Who are they then? A couple of con artists?’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. Mind if I smoke?’ He produced a pipe not unlike my own.

  ‘No, I’ll join you.’ I asked him again, ‘Who are they then?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue. I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘I know as much as you then.’

  ‘Where did you meet them?’

  ‘Berlin. An old business contact introduced them to a current business contact, who passed them on to me.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘To invest in an airfreight company. I’m supposed to introduce them to my employer.’ I lied without even thinking about it – I’ve been doing that to coppers all my life.

  ‘Halton? Are you going to?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. Your tobacco smells good – what is it?’

  ‘Parson’s Pleasure. Do they want anything else?’

  I’d seen tins of Parson’s Pleasure before, but had always shied away from it because its name reminded me of all those bishop-and-actress jokes.

  ‘They didn’t say. Why ask me? And why are you watching them anyway?’

  He blinked before he answered. I once knew a rattlesnake. She always blinked before she struck.

  ‘The hotel had a little word. With silly names like that, and a suitcase full of dollars they needed changing into pounds, they appeared to be a little unusual. There were exchange-control implications, don’t you know . . . so we kept an eye.’

  ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘You gave it at reception when you met madam this evening. Is she as clever as she is beautiful, by the way?’

  ‘Probably more so. Way out of my class.’

  Fabian blew out a thin stream of smoke, like a Blue Riband liner getting ready to sail.

  ‘You’ll stay in touch if you learn anything?’ He pushed a card across the table to me. It had a Chelsea telephone number on it. ‘My old nick,’ he explained. ‘They always know how to get hold of me.’

  I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no. I asked, ‘What do you think’s going on then?’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue.’ It was the second time he’d used the phrase. Quite amusing, coming from a detective. ‘But the next time you dine with them I’d take a very long spoon if I was you.’

  ‘Official warning?’

  ‘If you like, son.’ At last. I had just had a brief glimpse of the steel in the man.

  After he’d left I sat and smoked over a contemplative whisky. Then Ozzie came back and joined me.

  ‘You in trouble, Charlie?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, Oz. A little reveille, that’s all.’

  ‘What d’ye mean?’

  ‘Wake-up call.’

  I lay on my back and stared at the darkened ceiling before I slept. Halfway through that interview I had started to lie through my teeth. I asked myself why, and what I murmured out loud was Fabian’s own catchphrase, ‘I haven’t a clue.’ Then I rolled over and went to sleep.

  I left Doris to stew for a day and then called her without giving my name at the switchboard. I just said, ‘It’s me,’ and trusted that she had a reasonable memory for voices.

  ‘Oh. What time is it?’

  ‘Past ten. Why?’

  ‘Still finishing my breakfast. They make the best scrambled eggs in the world.’

  ‘You mean you’re not up yet.’

  ‘Something like that—’

  I broke in before she could speak my name: I’d sensed it coming.

  ‘Meet me down on the Embankment in half an hour. I have some news.’

  ‘But it’s raining, honey.’

  ‘Then put a fucking raincoat on, honey.’ And I hung up on her – always a good way to end a conversation.

  She wore a raincoat and a man’s flat tweed cap, and stared moodily out over the Thames, which was the colour of sewage. The clothes concealed her glamour. I took five minutes to check if someone was watching her before joining up. She didn’t look round as I stood beside her; just said, ‘I told a nice man that I was being followed by a creep, and he took me out through the kitchen. I guessed something was up.’

  ‘Is George back?’

  ‘No. Saturday lunchtime. He’s on the BOAC flight from Idlewild.’ She said Boewack, as if it was a word, not an acronym.

  ‘That’s cutting it fine – we’re on the night sleeper from Euston.’

  ‘George will be here, Charlie. I always wanted to travel on a sleeper – sounds so romantic.’

  The rain was fine and filmy; blowing along the river like smoke.

  ‘I know a pub we can hide in for a couple of hours. We have a card game to play.’

  I could see from her face that that was a metaphor too far.

  ‘What kind of card game, Charlie?’

  ‘The kind where we take the cards we’re holding too close to our chest, and lay them down one by one, honey.’ I hadn’t actually wanted to be reminded of her chest, but there you go.

  I took her to the Printer’s Devil up behind Fetter Lane. I loved the place because you could come to it via alleys and small lanes. After I had hung our coats on the pegs close to the fire I got us a couple of pints. Doris said, ‘Kinda early in the day for me, Charlie, but I’ll sip this to keep you company.’

  I let a silence hang about for a minute, and watched the fire before telling her, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, honey, but the police are on to you. They’ve been watching you ever since clever old George tried to get the hotel to change a year’s pay in small dollars. Something to do with exchange control.’

  She made a fist, and her knuckles went white. ‘Damn! I warned him about that.’ Then she said, ‘All that money is legal. We’re just funding the trip, that’s all.’

  ‘Even if it is’ – I wanted her to realize that I wouldn’t necessarily give them the benefit of the doubt – ‘if they know George is out of the country, the customs could well pick him up for questioning as soon as he touches down. Where’s the money?’

  ‘I still have it. The hotel arranged for a man from a bank to come round and change a grand for us – the rest is in a briefcase in the hotel safe.’

  ‘We’ll have to see what we can do
about that.’

  She took a deep pull at the beer, gave me the old eye bite and asked, ‘How did you know the police were interested? Who told you?’

  ‘They did, when they picked me up after our supper.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That you and George are Mr and Mrs Ordinary American looking to invest your hard-earned savings in a regular British airfreight company.’

  ‘Did they buy it?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I told her. There; I was doing it again.

  ‘I’ll have to call George.’

  ‘Yes, you do that. But not from the hotel.’

  ‘I have an old school friend at the consulate. Maybe he’d let me call from there. When will you stop talking to me like you stepped on a snake?’

  ‘When you tell me what you’re up to.’

  ‘I’ve already told you. I promised Mom I’d put some flowers on Petey’s grave.’

  ‘And George?’

  ‘George is my husband; he’ll do whatever I ask him.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘My friend in the consulate said you’d experience of these high-ground wrecks, and had been in the RAF. He thought you were the man to facilitate the operation.’

  ‘Operation?’

  ‘That’s the way to look at life’s little difficulties, Charlie – as operations, just like in the war. You won’t let me down now, will you?’ She was wearing plain black trousers – not showy – and a thick cable-knit sweater which covered the rest of her. When she covered up her body it was her hair which spoke to you, but for once I didn’t listen: I pulled my hand back, and gave my brain a shaking. I knew that she was playing me the way an angler plays a fish: it was like being hypnotized against your will.

  Later I showed her the map I’d smuggled out of the Ordnance Survey office at Chessington. The climb up to her brother’s wreck looked absolutely bloody horrible. Why weren’t Tenzing and Hillary ever around when you needed them?

  The last thing I asked her before we split was, ‘How much money is in that bloody case anyway?’

  ‘Something above ten thousand dollars.’

  ‘Strewth! . . . and it’s clean?’

  ‘Of course. My family came up with it to fund the trip, I told you.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you people? Haven’t you heard of banks?’

  ‘Nobody in my family’s trusted a bank since the Wall Street Crash, Charlie. A banker will steal you blind if you’ll let him, although no one will believe you if you tell them that.’

  ‘What does your family do? Where does the money come from?’

  ‘We own half a casino in Las Vegas. Uncle Joey runs it, and most of us work there in the summer.’

  ‘Who owns the other half?’

  ‘The Teamsters.’

  I’d heard of them. They were a trade union. Some people had said they were also gangsters; my late mate Tommo among them. Great.

  ‘What part of the line-up are you? The Grand Witch or someone as important?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Charlie. Nothing like that. The Teamsters are very nice men. Sometimes I dance for them at their convention – I used to be a cheerleader.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did.’

  ‘So what’s the problem with her?’ I’d used Flash Harry’s business card, and met him in the Castle on the Old Kent Road. It was just past noon – dinnertime in a shady pub with shady customers; now I was one of them.

  ‘I can’t believe that she’s as dumb as she seems. Whenever you ask her a serious question she just breathes in and out, and sticks her tits in your face.’

  ‘And you’re complaining? You sound tetchy, Charlie. Are you sure this money’s clean?’

  ‘Of course it isn’t clean, is it? It just walked into the country in a suitcase, and the exchange-control laws are supposed to prevent that. What gets my goat is that I helped them. But I see what you mean – apart from that, she says it comes from a family whip-round to pay for this trip to lay the ghost of little brother.’

  ‘And you buy that?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but that’s another matter. The question is, can your Mr Martenson change it for us without anyone asking questions?’

  ‘He’ll do it for about ten per cent. I’ll want another one for placing the deal.’

  ‘What will happen to it?’

  ‘Go back across the Atlantic with all the other dirty little dollars that we collect in – on one of the Queens probably – and get reunited with the US economy back over there. It will cost us another two per cent, but we still get a decent return off it. Nobody loses.’

  ‘Except the governments.’

  ‘An’ they’re the biggest thieves of all, so why worry?’

  ‘As soon as she grabs for the case the hotel will phone the police.’

  ‘That’s no problem. They’re prob’ly waiting for her old man to get back anyway – so tommorer you get the lady to go down and pay her bill through ’til Sat’day or Sunday, an’ while she’s doing that you nip along to the station and change your train ticket to Friday. Come Friday you go up to their room, pack all the gear she’ll need in one suitcase an’ both go downstairs separately. You leave with her suitcase, she goes to reception and picks up the money-box. Joins you outside where I’ll be waiting for the pair o’ you. I’ll run you to the station and we’ll change your dosh on the way. OK?’

  ‘What about the police? Will they fall for it?’

  ‘You’ll be a mile away in one of our cabs before the hotel puts the phone down.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before, Harry?’

  ‘Practice makes perfect, ain’t that what they say? Want another drink?’

  I had another question, and put it to him when he came back with the glasses.

  ‘If I leave on Friday, what do I do about George? He’ll be expecting to meet up with us on Saturday.’

  ‘Let him find his own way – ’e’s a grown-up, ain’t he?’ Then he said, ‘That bird’s terrible, ain’t she. We should pay ’er to keep her clothes on.’ A weary-looking stripper was working a small stage at the back of the bar, dancing to a Julie London LP played on a Pye Black Box. He must have seen something in my face because he asked, ‘What happened? Someone walk over your grave?’

  ‘Nope, for a moment I thought I knew her. I was mistaken, that’s all.’

  She’d reminded me of someone I’d met in 1947 when she was young and fresh. I hoped life had been kinder to her than the shell of a woman we looked away from.

  The music finished, and one of the deadbeats shuffled over to set it going again. The girl didn’t seem to notice. As we walked out there was that characteristic click from the music box, and Julie London began to sing ‘Cry me a River’.

  I told Doris a couple of hours before we were due to go.

  She asked, ‘Do I get any say in this?’

  ‘Not until I get us away from here.’

  ‘What about George?’

  ‘Someone I know will explain to him. He knows where we’re going, and the money will have disappeared – they’ll have to let him go, because there won’t be any evidence of an offence.’

  ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘Neither do I, but it’s the best I could come up with at short notice.’

  She sat on her hotel bed, and gave me a rueful grin.

  ‘It’s all our own fault, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but there are worse crimes in the book. Don’t worry about it, just pack a case of your warmest clothes.’

  ‘What about the rest, and George’s things?’

  ‘He’ll pick them up on Saturday when he gets in, and either come on with them or put them into left luggage.’

  ‘If the police still want us, won’t they follow George until they find us?’

  ‘They could, but they probably won’t. My friends think that because it’s a relatively common offence, and the evidence will have disappeared anyway, they won’t pursue it any further. Besides, George will re
cognize that risk, and take care anyway.’

  ‘Do your friends know where we’re heading?’

  ‘No. Just you, me and George.’

  ‘You’ve thought of everything, honey. You’re quite good at this . . . In fact, you remind me of some of the guys in Vegas.’

  She was taking the piss, of course, but she breathed in and out and pointed her guns at me, so I didn’t mind too much.

  I had a nervy few minutes sitting in the taxi with Harry and his money man, waiting for Doris to come away from reception. When she finally appeared around the corner she had a big happy smile on her face, and was swinging a small briefcase like a schoolgirl – and as soon as she was inside with us the cab moved off and into the evening traffic. Harry checked the back window from time to time, but always looked back at me with an unworried look on his face. The money man did what money men are best at – he took the briefcase and counted the dosh. The notes riffled through his fingers like sand running through an egg timer. He had a round face and thick glasses.

  Harry said, ‘I won’t introduce you, but our friend here works in a bank in the day, and is one of our casino cashiers at night. He doesn’t make mistakes with other people’s money.’

  ‘Good. How much is there?’ I asked.

  The little man had finished, and replied in a curiously deep voice, ‘Twenty thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, in hundreds, fifties, fives, tens and twenties.’ That was twice as much as she’d bloody told me. She didn’t blush.

  ‘That’s more than I expected,’ Doris told him, and crossed her legs. He went cross-eyed as he tried to prevent his eyes from following her.

  ‘Don’t worry, madam, I brought enough to cover that.’ He fetched out an old leather messenger bag from under his seat, removed a couple of flat bundles of money from it – which he placed in Doris’s briefcase – and then handed it to her.

  Flash observed, ‘It’s better if we keep your bag, Charlie . . . You wouldn’t want to be spotted with it.’

  ‘OK. What are we worth in English money?’

  ‘’Bout three grand, I expect. Used nearly-new notes. Perfect. You gonna do all right out of this yourself ?’

  That was a thought. It was a question too many, but I told him the truth anyway.