She went inside.
The restaurant had been re-set, Vegas-style, to cocktail hour. Velvet fringes looped the edges of the ceiling and fell in cascades of flamenco colour to the floor. Warm-oil lights splayed across the walls in liquid swirls. Mirror balls fired pin-spot tracer beams across the swaying crowd. The guests, invited celebrities, journalists and the handful of recognisable London cuisine groupies, were trapped between strangers dressed up as lounge lizard swingers, sashaying to the sounds of brassy Cubana.
George was at her shoulder, staring round with his mouth open. He said, “Who the fuck are these people?”
Cheb said, “They came with the DJ, no extra charge.”
George took a beat, then broke into a smile: “Good work, Cheb. Does the DJ take requests?”
Susan was still standing, not sure what to make of it. Cheb gave her another bow saying, “Mrs Ball. Let me mix you up something in a curacao. Do you take it blue or green?”
Susan thought, keep it simple. She said, “Just gin and tonic again.” She tacked a please onto the end and gave him a smile.
She decided the bald kid had done well. Though she found the DJ’s latest selection disconcerting. She wondered when she last heard Walter Wanderley’s Hammond version of “Call Me”. She’d never listened to the whole thing with her clothes still in place.
EIGHTEEN
Naz stood between the basted carcasses of goats and mutton and the piles of saffron rice and said, “Everyone get into line. That way, you know you’re gonna get yours.”
Hogie sat on the surface where they had moulded lamb, parsley and milk into kofta patties, his feet drumming against the steel cupboards below. The boy could not keep his legs still. His laugh was as high as a whipped bitch but more repetitive: eeh eeh eeh, followed by a backwards hiccup like a record spun against its grain. Naz did not know why he felt so wired but he could do without Hogie’s agitation.
The cooking crew were forming an orderly queue. Naz said, “That’s right Everyone line up nicely and they get their reward.”
He held the palette knife two-handed, at the handle and at the very tip of the blade, chopping the cocaine down to its finest possible particles. He drew the powder into ranks of parallel lines, like ten white bathing beauties spread out on a tin roof.
Naz reasoned with himself. The stress he’d been through, he was entitled to show a few cracked edges. But he knew the only thing bugging him was Hogie. The kid had turned up an hour ago, still unable to speak, but looking unruffled in his chef whites and still capable of cutting a pile of candies into a stack of fancy shapes. It was a suave trick, especially coming from a gimp and Naz was too dog-tired to top it… go one better and grab the most respect.
Then Naz looked up at his four juniors, all of them watching his expertise with cocaine and waiting in line for their turn just as he had told them to. He thought: Fuck it, those dicks are impressed by anything. He gave the girl at the head of the queue a tightly rolled twenty, saying “Here, this is something I prepared earlier.”
Cheb had been right. He had told Naz it wasn’t enough to terrorise the baby cooks, he had to sugar the rod of discipline with the promise of free drugs. It worked, they worked their arses off. They were so excited, they’d be jumping around like kiddies if they weren’t so afraid of making fools of themselves in front of him.
Hogie flipped off the worktop and joined the end of the line. He was still giggling. Naz leant back against the warmth of the bread oven and sipped his strawberry yoghurt drink, watching the cocaine being snuffled away. He noticed, when it was Hogie’s turn, the banknote was passed over with special respect and the four baby chefs took a step backwards to give him room. They would have looked like soldiers standing to attention if they weren’t all sniffling, dabbing at their eyes or rubbing the flutes of their nostrils. It was a case of détente, dual-respect for both him and Hogie. If that’s the way it was, it was alright with Naz. He had to admit, Hogie had assembled a good little team. They cooked it up nicely. The proof stood all around them, waiting to be wheeled out and unveiled.
A banquet fit for a prophet, a maharajah, a choir of self-made colonels or a dozen legitimate presidents. A sub-continental feast of superstar dimensions. When the baby chefs had finally got round to reviewing and tasting everything, they knew they had created something special.
Leaning over the coke tray, Hogie was framed by a mountain of coloured flesh and different nan breads. In the polished stainless steel of the worktop, his reflection rose to meet him at the line and kept pace, nose to nose. At the trail’s end he snapped upright, throwing back his head to make a straight connection between the nasal passages and bronchial tubes. With the hit, his head dropped forward. Starting at the tips of his fingers, he shook his dangling arms out then, slowly, began raising them up. It looked as though electricity was being pumped into him. His legs began to twitch, slightly spring at the knees. His centre of gravity focussed on his pelvis. Now Hogie’s arms were out in front of him, palms facing outwards and his fingers shivering towards the ceiling.
In a microsecond, Hogie had gone rigid, holding his position then: ba-doom, ba-doom, he shook his hips. Naz thought, Yeah, Elvis.
Hogie about—faced and dropped to his hands in the press-up position. He brought his buttocks up so his body formed a high angle to the floor, then began motoring his legs. He scooted backwards at high speed, keeping his body bent and his frictionless hands slipping smoothly across the floor. His legs were the only moving part and they ripped. Hogie managed two backward circuits of the kitchen before he slipped onto his face. He even managed to slip gracefully, springing upwards as though that was the planned end to the performance.
Naz said, “So is it good stuff?”
It was the first thing Hogie had said all day. “I think I felt something.”
Naz grinned back at him. Then he clapped his hands at his team, saying Okay. “Get the food outside.”
The baby chefs ran to the edges of the biggest platter, lifting it and beginning walking to the swing doors. As they reached them, Cheb slipped through, excusing himself and avoided crashing into the food. He pointed over to Hogie but spoke to Naz, “Is he sorted?”
“Yeah, I think he’s sorted.”
Cheb turned to Hogie, “You feel alright?”
Hogie nodded, Uh-huh.
“Sure?”
“Yes. Totally totally sorted. I mean it, I’m fine.” He stepped over to Cheb and put a hand behind his head, looking him in the eyes: “Listen, I got to say, you saved me mate. You and Naz, you saved me like Billy Graham. I’m walking in righteousness. I want you to know, I can finish this thing. I can defeat my sins and this cycle of iniquity.”
Cheb said, “Yeah? What are we talking about, exactly?”
Hogie never flickered, “I mean I’m going to atone for my sins. What I did to your mams.”
Cheb tried to match the sincerity. He put his hands on Hogie’s shoulders and brought his head forward, Whispering: ‘Listen, Hogie. No one ever tangoed solo, they must have been willing.” Then broke the moment: ‘So, forget your troubles and meet the people.”
Hogie nodded, making for the door. “Yeah, right Cheb. But remember, events are in motion and I’m going to atone. I’m going to beg for forgiveness.”
As they watched him leave the kitchen, Cheb turned to Naz and said, “Did that sound like trouble?”
“Fuck knows, he’s your friend.”
Cheb clicked, “The bastard didn’t even compliment me on the suit. How do I look?” He held out his hands, baby-ballerina style and gave a spin.
Naz said, “Sweet.”
“Hey, thanks mate. Okay, better get maitre d’ing.” He pointed over to the worktop where the kilo bag lay open and said, “Can you get one of your cooker boys to divide it up and start distributing it around the tables.”
*
The DJ called himself Juevo Billions. As the last bars of Sammy Davis Junior’s “Rhythm of Life” swing off of the decks, Juevo had his bil
lionaire-style finger primed on the fader button. As he spun the first cued notes of the next record, he nodded over to George Carmichael. George took the signal and stepped to the edge of the makeshift stage. He held his microphone between two fingers and a thumb, his little finger pointing outwards to the heavens as he rewed into full croon:
In the avenues and alley-ways, where the soul of a man is easy to buy, everybody is wheeling, everybody is dealing, all the lows are living high.
Susan was impressed. Tony Chistie had never caught the pose better. Some of the higher notes slipped out of George’s range but he covered well, slyly clipping the difficult words. Susan had heard too many karaoke singers linger masochistically over their shortcomings.
Where George scored big, it was on theatricals. He brought a biblical stoicism to the song. A High Noon serious- ness to the line “Every City’s got them” that she would have sworn was impossible but he delivered with only a trace of camp. When he sang Can we ever stop them?, it was a real question. The pay-off, Some of us are going to try, rang out with the sorrow of a man who knows he is heading out alone.
She turned back to the bar and asked for a large gin and tonic. George had told her it was a free bar, she had said “It’s my money anyway.”
He said, “It was somebody’s money, but I can’t remember whose.”
Before Frankie got his hands on it, it had been part of a federal bank’s reserves. The nationalised gold of some no-hope country, stolen as it was being transferred to a merchant bank. As she remembered, this fandango republic had agreed to guarantee one of its bad debts with bullion. Susan believed that was the story, although it seemed implausible. She had always suspected their government was insuring its pension fund before the next coup. Anyway, it was a long time ago. Frankie and his boys had taken the money as it was wheeled across a warehouse floor in a secure part of Heathrow airport.
Susan took one look at her G&T and knew she couldn’t drink it. The girl behind the bar had absolutely no idea. She slopped so much tonic into the glass that the oily sheen of good gin was lost completely. She handed it back, telling the girl to pour the whole of the drink into a longer glass and stir it up with another two shots of gin.
The girl said, “It might be a free bar, but you’re just taking the piss.”
The girl was a sour-faced blonde. Susan told her sweetly, “Honey, when I want to take the piss, I’ll squeeze it out of you like a sponge. Now, slap the gin in the glass and shut it.”
George quickly finished his floor show and joined her at the bar. He’d seen the scowl across the barmaid’s face and wanted to explain before things got out of hand: “Mrs Ball is my partner, Jools.” Then, introducing her to Susan, said: ‘And this is Jools Manning, she’s a big star on the television.”
He only began gushing as he turned back to the girl, “I love Pony Trek, I couldn’t believe it when Cheb told me you’d offered to look after the bar. I wanted to thank you personally.”
Jools scowled, slamming Susan’s refreshed gin onto the bar top. “You’re his partner, yeah? Well if Hogie tries to take credit for any of the cooking tonight, you can tell him he’s a fucking liar. Naz did everything. Hogie was out of his fucking helmet.”
Susan watched as Jools clumped back to the shelves and jealously replaced the gin bottle. There was a mirror behind the shelving racks and as Jools tilted to reach out for another bottle her sulky reflection lurched in and out of the frame. As she exited, her image was replaced by another face: standing in the mid-background, deep focus. The face was familiar.
In a moment, Susan recognised the soft blonde curls and ridiculous beard. The same boy that had tracked her through Harrods and into Harvey Nichols. She held his eyes, negotiated with him via the mirror, waited for him to meet her at the bar. But he continued to stand there, shifting awkwardly around a dopey grin. Susan decided, what the hell, she could make the first move. The voice on the record sang “How’d You Like To fly In My Beautiful Balloon?” the Fifth Dimension version not the Mike Samms hit.
She said, “Do you want to dance?”
*
Cardiff knew every street in Soho, but recognised less of the store fronts. He guessed that something like eighty per cent of Soho had changed hands since his last visit. It was the little shops he felt sorry for, the old family firms, grocers and what have you. The brown-wrapper trade was still going strong, though. To kill time, he stepped inside a few and looked around. Cardiff liked to have a bit of porn to hand, for when he felt like reading but didn’t want anything with too many words. In the end, he didn’t buy anything. Time was moving on and, anyway, the gear was nothing like as strong as it used to be, back in the seventies.
He knew where the La George restaurant was from its address but didn’t know what he’d find on his walk there.
The one thing that hadn’t changed were the pubs. Cardiff checked five different ones to make absolutely sure. When he reached the door of the La George he had to admit he was feeling merry. He checked his watch, the dial said nine and the logo spelt Rolex. Assuming the hands were jerking round about ten minutes fast as usual, he was still early. He didn’t feel like walking in without Viv and Gloria so he crossed to the pub on the corner. He could get another pint, standing in the window he’d see them when they arrived.
Frankie Ball had cried off. He said he had things to do, people to see. Cardiff had asked if he should stick around and Frankie said “Nah. You go out with those two old birds.”
These two girls, they’d said they were from a place called Prestwich, which was just in or outside Manchester. Cardiff reckoned if anyone had started talking Manchester to him ten years ago, he would have blanked. Nothing. Once upon a time, he could have boasted that he knew everywhere in the country, so long as it had a North London postcode. In those days, he never came across hillbilly—types but he’d found that living abroad had inflated his capacity for the foreign. There was a big fat bloke who lived on the Costa and sometimes drank in their local, he was from Rochdale. Went by the name of Tetley and was a fucking scary gent in a fight. He knew of at least one famous old villain who’d returned to England after being roughed up by Tetley. Preferring prison to another little talk with the gent.
Cardiff wished he’d asked these women if they’d ever come across Tetley. Rochdale was close to Manchester. For all he knew, they might be related: sister, mother and lover of the sheep-shagging bastard.
The girls arrived in a cab. Viv Beddoes stepped out first Cardiff could see Gloria trying to pay for the ride through the little window that separated the driver from his backseat customers. He emptied his pint glass and hurried out before she’d finished picking up her spilled change.
Viv looked over, laughing at Cardiff as he waggled over. ‘Have you been lurking?”
“That’s me. A bit of a lurker. How are you, love? And, you too love? Have you got everything?” Cardiff looked around the pavement to see if there were any other loose coins that Gloria had dropped and not found. She was busy trying to close her purse, already stuffed with small change.
Cardiff said, “Give the cabbie a tip, that’ll get rid of some coppers.”
Viv said, “I already gave him a note. I could have given it him in change but I couldn’t tell what he was saying, he talks just like you and your pal. Where is Frankie, anyway?”
Cardiff told her Frankie couldn’t come. He’d sent his regards but he’d got business, you know. Cardiff registered her dig at his accent and wondered whether his impression of a northern accent would go down well. Probably not, the only time he’d tried it he’d got some really funny looks: he found out why when he turned around, the geezer Tetley was stood right behind him.
Viv said, “Shall we go in, then?”
On the inside of the screened doors, Cardiff stopped and took stock. He had to say it, it was a nice gaff. He liked the palm tree effect they’d used for the decor. The music was tasty, too. Cardiff undid another button on his shirt. When Viv turned to look at him, he gave her a wid
e-eyed nodding grin to let her know he was in a partying mood.
There were a lot of people dancing, quite a few of them sambos but the birds were sexy. Cardiff did notice he was about the oldest person in the room.
Viv said, “That’s my son, Jason.”
She was pointing at a small kid with a shaved head, wearing a white tux. The kid looked well shocked to see his old mum. Gloria Manning was waving frantically in the direction of the bar. The blonde girl serving the drinks was waving back with a dazed expression on her face.
Cardiff thought, family reunions eh? There’s always someone who can’t stand seeing their loved ones. He continued to look around the restaurant, pausing when he noticed a bloke who looked to have some grey hair, standing at the far side of the room. That would at least make two old-timers. Cardiff didn’t want to feel self—conscious, not when the place suited him so well he could have chosen the decor and picked the tunes himself.
When the grey-haired geezer turned around, Cardiff thought, No. That’s what he called a smack in the gob, running into Bum George in a place like this. Cardiff skirted the edge of the room to get a better look at him. The way the big poof was dressed, he looked to be doing very nicely for himself. Cardiff had heard that George had gone into the laundry business. It wouldn’t surprise him, he always thought George was too bright to stick to pimping, especially when he had no interest in the merchandise. It was always a headache, working with women.
Cardiff wondered if George was handling Frankie’s finances. What was certain, somebody must be sending Frankie his regular cheques because Frankie was always fucking loaded.
Then he saw Susan Ball. Dancing with someone who looked like Callum Ball, all frocked up in a cook’s rig. It was Susan’s clothes that had him staring, though. She wore a soft cream dress, slit almost to heaven. A shapely leg unclothed and twisting up to tease her boy’s thigh, the two of them clinched in a cheek-nestling tango. Now, what was that about?
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