Jello Salad

by Nicholas Blincoe

  Cheb said, “Who’s going to chase you? You’ve got a gun.”

  Naz stopped, paused really. He said, “I told you. I don’t have a gun.”

  “I know what you said but you were lying.”

  Naz could have said, Who’re you calling a liar? But when Cheb had suggested he go down on the driver, his hand had flickered over to the left hand side of his belt to where the gun was nestled. Instead he said, “I also told you that the gun was for my business and this is none of my fucking business.”

  “Make it your business. You saw the trade that dealer was doing out of the back of the drinks van. You’ll probably pick up a couple of grand.”

  Naz could have taken time and thought it over. But it was one of those nights, kismet and karma running the whole show. He walked off, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves as he went.

  He wanted to take in the whole length of the road in long slow strides that would give him time to get his act straight It would make the deal more of a western, when a man treads that deserted main street The few stragglers leaning against the wall of Comecon, waiting for the bouncers to relent and let them inside, those few rejects would be the witnesses. The townsfolk who desert the main street for the saloon, or who hide behind the lace curtains of the frontier town parlour window.

  The gun was a Browning automatic. The cash-take would have to be heavy to compensate for losing it, if he was forced to lose it. Once he fired a shot, even if no one was actually hit, the gat would have to go into the nearest gutter. It might be the very last time that he touched it. Naz decided to make the most of it. He was within twenty-five yards of the van.

  In Boyz N The Hood, Ice Cube used the ring finger of his left hand to lift up the edge of his T-shirt. The gat was stuck inside his pants, the grip facing to the right. Combined with the look on Cube’s face, that was a good play it was fucking unstoppable. He didn’t even have to touch it, the expression said it all: “Yep, there’s the piece. Now it’s down to you, do you figure it’s a salient fact or not?‘ Naz would have followed the Ice Cube method if there was a hope of his Browning being seen over the van counter.

  In States of Grace, Gary Oldman held his pistol at arm’s length, the arm tilted forty-five degrees upwards but the gunhand angled downwards. As he fired, he lunged forward into a kind of sword fighter’s stance. That was about the weirdest use of a firearm in a feature film. So mishandled that it turned a corner and became effective. There was no doubt, whoever held their piece like that loved firing it, whether they hit anything or not. Another option: Naz had seen more and more films where the gals was held upside down and fired using the little finger or, alternatively, the trigger finger of the opposite hand. The Chow Yun Fat-style, although it was spreading everywhere.

  Five yards from the van, Naz decided on a standard gangsta stance, arms crossed. He pulled the Browning out of his trousers. It felt comfortable in his right hand, tucked underneath his left armpit. When he reached the van, he could stand at the counter until they opened the window. They’d go, “Yeah”, he’d turn slightly to his right and lift his left elbow. They’d see the Browning, angled towards them, his finger mapped around the trigger. He reached the van.

  The two men were sat inside, smoking together in the dark. Neither of them noticed him on the far side of the sliding counter window. If he looked deeper than his own reflection, Naz could see the Comecon security guys lounging at their doorway. Four of them were stood talking together, a fifth was standing some way off leaning against a parked car and chatting to the driver. Naz refocussed, looking through his reflection to the glowing end of the shared joint. The two men, the drug dealer and the fizzy drink dealer, never looked up. Naz tapped on the sliding window with the middle finger of his left hand, taking care to keep his gun hand out of sight One of them turned towards him, mouthing “We’re closed” through the glass. Naz tapped again, putting on a grin.

  The problem with a grin, it might charm them into opening shop but it would be impossible to reassume the flat stare. No one with a dead prison stare also had a shit-eating seductive smile. It was the one or the other. Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Naz committed, turning a full smile onto the two men. Only one of them looked up, the same one, the lab—coated drinks vendor. He said, “We’re fucking closed.” This time he was audible. His partner didn’t even look up.

  Naz thought, this is going to be a drag. He took the Browning out from the warm hollow under his arm. Holding it by the barrel, he hammered the grip through the window pane. That had them both looking. The one in white with tutti frutti stains spattered over his coat. The one in the hooded black top, the hood pulled back now, showing a hatchet face at least ten years older than Naz had imagined. The pair of them with wide what-the-fuck stares.

  Then they ducked, heading below the counter. Naz assumed they were taking cover, that they’d seen the Browning swinging through his hand as he switched his hold from barrel to grip. But as they came up, white-coat was holding a sawn-off shotgun and black-top had a semi-automatic pistol. Naz shot white-coat in the chest, hearing himself say “Name of God” out loud as he fired but not sure in what language. He remembered a pinhole wound exploding in the lab coat, matching the tutti. A one frame still, the entry wound and the raspberry drips, frozen in Naz’s eye as he dropped onto the pavement.

  Naz panted, sat on the kerbside, his back to the van. He felt the heavy jabbing of bullets hitting metal behind him. Black-top was trying to fire through the bodywork, hoping to punch through and hit him on the far side. Naz thought, this dick really hm seen too many films, that trick only worked in the movies.

  The bouncers at the door of Comecon were staring, breaking out of their stares and running. A flicker of movement made Naz look over to the fifth bouncer and the car parked by the doorway. The trunk had sprung up on its own. The driver must have released the lock from inside the car. Naz knew, without knowing where the thought came from, that the car was an armoury. The men ahead of him and the dealers in the van behind him were all a part of the same crew. It should have been obvious. He’d been stupid. He’d been dreaming like a cowboy and now he was in the middle of one one of those Alamo situations.

  Naz looked up. The square barrel of a gun was creeping over the sill of the van, leading a hand. Naz sprang off his haunches, grabbing hold of black-top’s wrist as he went. With the wrist in his left hand, he drove his right elbow round, through the remnants of glass until he hit bone. When he turned around, he saw black-top’s old sharp features buckled around a broken nose, his gun arm lodged into the glass at the edge of the window. Naz pushed his Browning into the man’s face and looked over the counter. White-coat was still alive, his pig blue eyes staring out of a round face that could have been red but was now drained. The shotgun lay across his lap.

  Naz said, “Pass me the shotgun… the other way round, dickhead.”

  White-coat turned the shotgun around, holding it at the end of an outstretched arm. Naz leant over, grabbed the stock and pulled the shotgun across the counter.

  In the time it took him to disarm them both, Naz registered two or three shots behind him. Another shot hit the side of the van, four feet to his left. He thought all these fucking gats, has no one else ever done any target practice? He stuck his Browning back into his belt as he turned. Lifting the shotgun up to his shoulder, he took aim on the bouncer standing by the open car trunk. He had no idea how accurate a sawn-off was, but used it like a standard rifle. It took him two shots, emptying both barrels, before he put the man down.

  Naz prised black-top’s automatic from out of his bleeding arm. It was a nickel—plated Beretta. A spare magazine lay on the counter. Naz took that too. Using the stock of the shotgun, he swiped at the driver’s side window of the van and reached through the broken glass to take the van keys. As he walked towards the door of Comecon, he threw the keys and the spent shotgun onto the ground.

  There were four bouncers, somewhere. Five if the driver of the car was counted. Naz could only see two, bo
th of them holding guns they had taken out of the car trunk. One was firing wildly. Even at night and twenty paces away, Naz could see the gun arm bucking and swaying, upwards and downwards. The other was taking slow aim. Naz jumped to his left and started running, swerving and keeping his head low. As he ran, he emptied the Beretta in their general direction. He didn’t think he’d hit anything, but he couldn’t see anyone either. The men must have taken cover behind the car. Naz pulled his Browning out from his belt and dived down towards the car, sliding on his stomach. When he saw a knee and a white trainer beneath the undercarriage on the far side of the car, he took aim and fired. There was a scream. Naz rolled to his left, towards the rear and the open trunk. When he popped up, the trunk lid partly shielded him. On the other side of the car, a head stuck out and looked around. Naz shot it open. That was horrible, the front of the skull flipped up and disappeared.

  There were no more shots. Looking to his right, Naz saw the passenger side door of the car was open but there was no one inside. The driver must have been one of the two men he’d shot which meant there were three others inside the club’s doorway. They were probably unarmed. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see anyone. Those few people who’d stood hopelessly in the queue had turned themselves loose as the shooting started.

  Naz checked the car to see if its keys were in place. At first he couldn’t even see if the steering wheel was in place. The car was a left-hand drive. Better that he found out now rather than later. He walked around to the trunk where a leather sports bag lay open, cradling a glint of the metal. Naz lifted it out, dropping the empty Beretta and its spare cartridge inside as he started for the club.

  As he passed the end of the car, his hearing clicked onto a high-pitched shriek. Behind the car a man lay screaming as he held his leg. Naz kept his Browning on the screamer. He could see the man had no pistol but there was a gun lying skewed across the pavement, a yard from the guy’s hand. There may have been others he couldn’t see. Naz felt a soft wad of nausea choke at his gullet but coughed it back as he shot the injured man three times in the chest. The man might have crawled to a weapon. It would have been stupid to leave him but straight thinking, simply looking ahead and reasoning things out, had never made him feel so sick before. When he walked into the club, he was stalking on automatic.

  The remaining bouncers were pushed up against the walls of the foyer and the cashier was pale inside her box. Naz said, “This is a robbery. Nobody move but the cashier.”

  A quick look through her window. Naz saw a pile of bags and coats. He said, “Empty out a bag and fill it with money.”

  She scrambled out of her chair and started looking through the pile.

  “Nothing too effeminate. The duffel’s fine.”

  The bouncers were frozen to the walls. The dumb cunts, all of them had gone into “posing relaxed” positions, which meant all of their muscles were rigid and cheesy grins had spread across their faces. They had spent so long following the body builder’s code, they didn’t know how to be inconspicuous. They were so stiff, if Naz walked up and pushed them over they’d fall one by one like dominoes. When he asked if they did much weight training, they all nodded, their heads quivering in their bull necks.

  Naz forced his voice down to a slow crawl. “What do you reckon, you have to pay extra for outsize coffins? Those three guys I just shot, they’re going to take some lifting so if you want to play pallbearer at their funerals, you’d better listen. I’ll take all the guns away, so you won’t have to explain to the cops why you were tooled-up like a fucking commando unit. When I see tomorrow’s papers, I want to read that you were hit by a gang of ten men or more, any race, colour or creed other than a Pakistani dude. Got it.”

  They nodded.

  “I fucking hope so. Because it’s going to be the easiest thing in the world to come here next week and put a bullet in each of your heads.”

  The cashier whispered that she’d finished. Naz said, “Bring the bag out here, love.”

  She let herself out of her office and handed Naz a bag that felt wildly heavy, if it was just full of paper.

  “Did you put coins in here?”

  She shook her head, only notes. A sign on the cashier window said Comecon Entry: £15. Naz had seen at least a thousand people queuing, with maybe that number again already inside by the time he and Cheb had arrived. Naz thought, “Name of God”. He shouldered the bag and left.

  He decided to take the bouncer’s car. He didn’t recognise the make but when he slapped down the trunk he saw Oldsmobile spelt out in chrome letters. Starting the car up, he wondered why there were too few pedals and realised it was an automatic. He’d only ever driven geared cars before but shoved the stick to the D and the car began pulling away.

  The first car he passed was Hogie’s Volvo, jolting around the empty drinks van and bunny-hopping along the line of coaches. As Naz overtook, Cheb smiled and waved. In another fifty yards, Naz reached white—coat and black-top, limping their way up the street. Naz slowed down to their pace and told them to hand him their bag. They passed it over without a word.

  Naz said, “If there’s less than four grand in here, I’m coming back and shooting you again. Okay.”

  Black-top pulled a plastic bag out of the muff of his sweat shirt. Naz took that too and thanked them.

  He hoped Cheb knew enough about the highway code to recognise a right-hand indicator. Naz signalled nice and early before taking a corner and parking up, waiting for Cheb to hop past. When he did, the first thing Cheb said as he squirmed over to the passenger seat was: “Was that the plan?”

  Naz said, “Was what the plan?”

  “I’m not complaining, it was fucking great. Once the shooting started, none of the drivers got out of the coaches. They just hit the deck and stayed there. I figured that, with the noise of the shooting, no one was going to notice me stuffing a body into their luggage trunk.”

  “There wasn’t any plan. It was a fuck—up.”

  “There’s always a plan. It looks like an outbreak of madness, but it’s just another program. We’re wired to the future. Look at the way the world mapped out before we got here, based solidly on paranoia and warped on stability. We’re superheroes. We’ve done nothing that wasn’t stupid and dangerous and in one evening we’ve grabbed about thirty-five thousand pounds.”

  Naz said, “You already worked out how much you’re sitting on?”

  Cheb said, “It’s yours, I don’t give a fuck about money. It’s not about getting rich, only how insane you can get wasting it. And I’ve got so many credit cards, I don’t need to worry about my mental health. I’m going to burn.”

  Naz said, Good. He wasn’t thinking of giving Cheb any anyway. But he told him there was several grand’s worth of weapons in the sports bag. Cheb said, Cool, he wanted some kind of pistol. He was already spinning around in his seat, grabbing at the bag lying on the back seat. He asked Naz what kind would suit him.

  “Have you ever used one before.”

  “Yeah. Kind of. In arcades and stuff.” He had his head down, rifling through the bag. He came up with the Beretta, saying, “It’s a lot weightier than I expected.”

  *

  Towards dawn, Naz and Cheb walked into the flat. Nothing about the whole scene seemed to surprise them. Cheb took in the pitiful shapes: Hogie on the floor surrounded by toast crusts and cereals; Mannie slumped down in a chair surrounded by emptied beer bottles.

  He turned to Naz and said, “See, what’d I say? When the end of civilisation comes, it’ll be down to too much wheatie goodness.”

  PART TWO

  outofit

  FIFTEEN

  Susan asked George to drop her at Cambridge Circus. She wanted to walk past the café he’d told her about, the one where the male prostitutes sat out in the sun, wearing their mobile phones like jewellery and booking their clients into fat, desktop diaries. Earlier, she had suggested they book themselves a home visit. If she had to, she could dress up in male drag. George had as
ked, Are you that desperate? Well yes, honey, she was. What she’d seen of London so far, only the fags were worth the time.

  “Count me out. Those depilated buff poofs do nothing for me. You get to a certain age, you start looking for character.”

  Susan wondered how long it would be before she got there.

  They hadn’t spent the whole morning talking sex, only the last few hours. It was a way to take their minds off other things, like the fact that she had to get out of the apartment on New Cavendish Street. That ‘was George getting serious with her, telling her she couldn’t live in a place her son had visited. For all they knew, he’d already given Frankie the details. She’d said, “So where am I supposed to go?”

  “Somewhere discreet. Do you remember Maltese Rosa?”

  “Yeah, the nun.” Actually the woman was a tart, but she was in church often enough to be mistaken for a saint and could be persuaded to wear a Carmelite habit, for a fee.

  George had said, “She’s not on the game anymore. She retired and put her money into property. She should be able to help you out.”

  Susan hated to think what she’d end up with.

  They were coming down the one-way system on Gower Street, now. George peeled towards Shaftesbury Avenue but told her he didn’t want to get stuck in the traffic all day. Did she mind if he dropped her at the next corner, behind St Giles churchyard.

  As she got out of the car, he reminded her to take her suitcase. She wanted to know why: “Why don’t you keep it‘? Then when you’ve spoken to Rosa, you can drop it off at the new flat.”

  George shrugged. “I just think it’s more convenient if you keep it with you.”

  As she walked towards Cambridge Circus, she wondered why he’d been so iffy. And whether it had anything to do with the amount of cocaine inside the case. She had planned to take a stroll through Soho and get a feeling for the place again. She wanted to know how it would feel to own everything she could see. Hefting the suitcase, she felt more like a bag lady than an heiress.