Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon

by Ted Lewis

  “What you laughing at,” I say to him.

  D’Antoni shakes his head.

  “Maybe there’s method in their madness,” he says.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask him.

  D’Antoni slips the shooter back in the shoulder holster and folds his arms.

  “The Fletchers,” he says. “Maybe they knew what they were doing.”

  “Fuck off,” I tell him. I pick up my luggage and walk towards the bedroom. The bedroom, predictably, is very big. There are a lot of carpets hanging on the walls. Nice, I think, if you wake up with a hangover. When you get out of bed you try and walk on the bleeding wall instead of the floor. In fact the amount of Spanish Wilton on the walls far outnumbers the stuff on the floor. Just a few rugs tastefully scattered on the shiny done-up stonework. In fact the whole bedroom is tastefully empty as possible. There’s a bed, sure, and it’s beautifully covered in some golden brown silk smutter, but next to it there’s just a small square bedside cupboard made out of marble, would you believe—a cupboard made out of marble. And apart from the soft metallic glow of the single wall light and the plain thick gold-coloured curtains and the fitted wardrobes running the length of one wall, that’s all there is to it. Very Gerald and Les. I slide open one of the doors to the fitted wardrobes. Nothing, but half a dozen hangers, which mercifully are neither marble nor examples of local peasant handicrafts. But even so the wardrobe has a warmth, is a fucking sight cosier than the rest of the bedroom.

  It occurs to me that I might just skin a passing mountain goat, make a sleeping bag, slide the doors behind me, and camp out in the wardrobe for the rest of the fortnight. Some fucking hope.

  I slide closed the wardrobe door. I traverse the horizontal masonry and make it to the drawn curtains that echo the colour of the stonework. I part the curtains and there’s more sliding glasswork, opened to allow the perfumed mountain air in as far as the heavy material. Beyond the glasswork there’s what appears to be a balcony, its confines stretching much farther than the usual kind of arrangement, floored with similar stonework to that in the bedroom. I walk out into the evening air and I have to admit it does me a lot of good, provides enough balm to give a brochure writer Wanker’s Cramp.

  Where the balcony ends, there’s a low, white-painted, wrought iron fence. I wander over to this retaining structure and have a look over the edge and the impression I get is that it’s like looking out of the aeroplane port-hole again; apart from a little bit of the patio-type area across which I made my approach that curves round beneath my gaze, there’s nothing but mountainside, dropping away into the blackness beneath the blueness of the dusk. I look away and back towards the sliding glass of the bedroom and work out my bearings a little bit and I realise I’m standing on top of a jutting-out part of the split-level open-plan where D’Antoni first introduced himself to me. Then I raise my eyes a little and in the gloom I work out that part of the upper storey levels off to stop against some more mountain.

  I light a cigarette and turn round to face the backdrop again and consider the solitude. But it occurs to me that the splendid silence of the surrounding mountains has nothing on the macaroni stillness that is wafting out of the windows from Wally and D’Antoni, so I smile to myself and cross the balcony and walk back into the bedroom and present myself at the marble bedside cupboard and pick up the piece of Local Cottage Industry and look at it for a moment. Then I go back out through the windows and walk back over to the wrought iron-work. I inhale some of my cigarette then I heave the objet d’art out into the abyss, gauging the arc so the piece splinters on the edge of the patio before shattering out into the canyon’s darkness. Then I inhale some more and walk back into the bedroom and listen.

  The shocked silence is still hanging in the well of the gallery. Then D’Antoni says:

  “Wally?”

  Wally weighs up the pros and cons and finally decides that his name is in fact Wally and that unfortunately D’Antoni knows that it is so he says, as non-committally as possible:

  “What?”

  D’Antoni doesn’t reply immediately. There is a crackle of leather as the holster is cleared again.

  “What do you mean, what?” D’Antoni says. “Don’t give me any of that; you heard what I heard.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” says Wally, like he was lying to his brief.

  “You cunt,” D’Antoni says. There is a short silence. Then D’Antoni calls: “Jack!”

  I stay by the curtains and don’t answer. Then I hear D’Antoni’s steps retreating down the stairs and I know precisely where the steps are going to stop. Poor old Wally. He must have been so chuffed to land this number.

  D’Antoni’s voice is now almost a whisper, but it carries quite clearly up to where I’m standing, amplified as it is by all of Gerald and Les’s poncey stonework.

  “You cunt,” D’Antoni says. “You heard it. You say not. Well, that’s fine. You heard nothing. So you won’t care whether or not you go outside and prove to me that you heard nothing because there ain’t nothing out there to hear. O.K.?”

  “Hang about,” Wally says. “I mean, I know I didn’t hear nothing, but I mean, you did, you said you did, didn’t you, and I mean, well maybe you did, didn’t you, so, I mean to say, why should I go? I mean, I didn’t hear nothing. You’re the one what’s hearing things.”

  Even D’Antoni’s breather, a mixture of the furious and the paranoid, carries upwards into my ears. There is another silence which D’Antoni breaks by saying:

  “Out.”

  “What?”

  “Out.”

  “Look, do me a favour—”

  “Take this and get out.”

  “It’s dark out there. I don’t know where the torch is gone.”

  More silent fury from D’Antoni.

  “Listen, there’s somebody out there, the last thing you need is lights. You see that, don’t you? I mean, you do understand what I’m saying?”

  The silence from Wally indicates that he does, in fact, understand.

  “So take this,” D’Antoni says, “and get out there.”

  A shorter silence from Wally this time.

  “I don’t like them,” he says finally.

  “What?”

  “Them,” Wally says, “I never have done.”

  “You don’t like these?”

  “No. Never have.”

  This time it’s the turn of D’Antoni’s silence.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus Jesus Christ.”

  “Can’t help it,” Wally says. “It’s my upbringing. My old Mum used to say I could be as bent as a West Ham forward as long as I never carried nothing. Just sort of stuck, that’s all.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  This time they share the silence between them. It’s broken by a call from D’Antoni.

  “Carter!”

  It’s time for a bit more stage management so I turn round and slide the window to as hard as I can and stand behind the curtains and wait. A moment later D’Antoni speaks, whispering even softer than before.

  “You see,” he says to Wally.

  Wally doesn’t answer, being disinclined to see anything whatsoever.

  “They’re in,” D’Antoni says. “They could be inside the villa.”

  Wally begins to say something in reply but from the sound effects I gather that D’Antoni has bustled Wally out of the hall and back into the lounge, out of range of anything that might come at them from upstairs. So I gently slide the window open again and nick out onto the balcony and feel my way along to the first open equivalent of my own bedroom window and slip inside. Although it’s dark I can gather it’s pretty much on the same lines as the one I’ve got so I walk over to the bedside cabinet and pick up the local colour and creep over to the bedroom door and very slowly and very quietly pull open the woodwork.

  Not even the sound of heavy breathing makes an impression on the silence. The only noise is the faintly obscene trickling of water from the mouth of the
stone fish.

  I move to the balustrade and look down at the fish. From where I am the fish appears to be looking up at me, the stone made fleshy by the sheen of the water, and the lips look even more like Gerald’s than they did earlier. So I weigh the local colour in my hand, take aim, and heave. It’s perfect. Pure jeux sans frontières. The porcelain hits the stonework smack in the mouth. The fish appears to scream but in fact it’s Wally wondering where his dear old Mum is, and then the scream is cut short by three, four or perhaps even five shots hauled off in the general direction of the fountain and, much as I’d like to, I don’t hang about to contemplate the damage which may have been done to the oracle; instead I leg it back across the bedroom and out onto the balcony and as far as the wrought iron work. I look down and instead of half-mountain half-patio, it’s all patio, so in fact it’s only a minor operation for me to lower myself off the upper level to the point where all the split-levels coincide. I dust myself down and straighten up and listen to the sound of the shooter racing away from mountain to mountain. When there are no more echoes I take a step towards the windows, but before my sole touches the stonework another solitary shot breaks out into the night. Now, I know I’m on my holidays; that so far it’s been the biggest fuck-up since our Man got the dates of Wake’s Week wrong; that, in a sense, I’m enjoying myself at the expense of others by way of compensation; and that, due to the manner in which I was borne to this situation, I owe nobody nothing whatsoever, the single shot making me hang about for a moment or two.

  First, since I vicariously put the porcelain on what I saw as Gerald’s lips, there’s been no other sound to cause D’Antoni to haul anything off at; and, on top of that, if I’m any judge of human nature, one shot would not be enough for D’Antoni; the clip in the butt of his Teddy Bear substitute holds thirteen, and since when did one atom bomb suffice when you could have the pleasure of Nagasaki as well? The remarks D’Antoni directed at Wally earlier re-enter my consciousness. Wally’s refusal to scour the grounds with D’Antoni’s other shooter could be reason enough for D’Antoni to give one single burst to his paranoid. So I put my foot down and reach the window and lie flat on my stomach and slide the window open very slightly and call through.

  “Wally?”

  There are no shots. Nobody answers. I press myself even lower.

  “Wally?”

  This time something is said, but I don’t know what, or who by.

  “You all right, Wally?” I say.

  “You all right, Jack?” Wally says.

  “Yeah, I’m all right, Wally,” I say.

  “Jesus Christ,” D’Antoni says. “Jesus Jesus Christ.”

  “You on your own, Jack?” Wally says.

  “Hang about. I’ll just check,” I tell him. I let them wait for a moment and then I say: “Well, yes. Apart from this geezer what’s out here with me. Says he’s from the phone company. Come to see about the phone what’s off, hasn’t he? Heard the lines were down because of all that rain we’ve been having, know what I mean?”

  Joint silence drifts out of the gap in the glasswork. Eventually it’s dissipated by D’Antoni.

  “You cocksucker,” he screams. “You mother. You fucking cocksucker.”

  I press myself even flatter than before, but I needn’t bother because D’Antoni relinquishes whatever place he’s been squeezing himself into and crashes through the blind darkness in the direction of the window.

  “You mother,” he screams. “I should take you out right now. Why don’t I take you out. Tell me, tell me—”

  I roll away from the window’s access and slip to my feet and lean against the part of the outside which is not glass and wait for D’Antoni’s entrance into the open air.

  There really is nothing to it. I mean, the way I feel after the day I’ve had, you’d think it might have taken a little extra effort, a slight withdrawal on hidden reserves. But no, it’s easy due to D’Antoni’s paranoia and somehow that makes the day even more depressing than I’d imagined it could be.

  All I do is to use the drunk disarming routine. Christ, the way D’Antoni’s laid himself wide open, even Wally could see to it. So when I’ve got D’Antoni’s shooter in one hand and his collar in the other and he’s pressed up against the villa wall I say to him:

  “Why the single shot?”

  D’Antoni looks at me the way a drunk looks at an empty glass.

  “What?” he says.

  “What were you shooting at that last time?”

  “I wasn’t. The one I gave Wally went off.”

  I smile to myself and let go of him and walk into the lounge.

  “See to the lights, Wally,” I say into the darkness.

  There is a slight scrambling and a minute later the soft house lights go up. Wally is like an air-brushed shadow, the gun he’s holding metallic and streamlined in relief.

  “Give it back to the nice man, Wally,” I say to him. “I think he’d rather shoot himself on purpose than have you do it by accident.”

  I walk past him and up the steps and into the hall and have a little look at the fish’s face. I’m delighted to see that D’Antoni’s bullets have taken large lumps of stone out of the fish’s fleshy stone lips. It looks even uglier than before, and therefore even more like Gerald. After I’ve inspected the fish I walk back up the stairs and into my bedroom and start to lay out my gear. Even though I’m not staying, I don’t want my mohair crushed up any more than it already has been. I’m in the process of hanging it up in the wardrobe when D’Antoni appears in the doorway. I carry on smoothing out the creases.

  “I suppose you thought that was real funny,” D’Antoni says.

  “Yes, Ollie,” I say.

  “What?”

  I shake my head and go back to the bed and pick up a couple of shirts and carry them over to the wardrobe.

  “We could all be lying down there with our dicks hanging out of our mouths, if they’d been outside.”

  “If who’d been outside?” I ask him. “The Eumenides? The Dagenham Girl Pipers? Snoopy and the Red Baron?”

  “You’d be in no doubt if they were out there,” D’Antoni says. “There’d be no way.”

  “Yeah,” I say, hanging the second shirt. “Well there’s fuck all out there, and after tonight the matter will be purely academic as far as I’m concerned.

  “And when you get back,” D’Antoni says, “it’ll be academic to the Fletchers?”

  “Oh no,” I say. “It’ll be much more down to earth, that will.”

  D’Antoni walks over to the bed and picks up his shooter and looks at it. “Nobody ever took that away from me before,” he says.

  “You mean nobody ever tried?” I say, walking through into the adjoining bathroom

  I turn on the taps and start to get undressed. D’Antoni now appears in the bathroom doorway and watches me. He’s beginning to give me the fucking creeps. I get into the bath and lay back and when I look up again a shadow has appeared behind D’Antoni and the shadow is Wally, peering over D’Antoni’s shoulder, far enough back to be safe. I look at them both and they both look back at me.

  They don’t say anything and neither do I. So I reach for the soap and start washing myself, looking up from time to time to see that they’re both exactly as before, standing there very interested, watching me take a bath.

  When I’ve finished I get out and dry and powder myself and put on my midnight blue dressing gown and walk out of the bathroom which entails D’Antoni and Wally having to move slightly to allow the operation to be a success. The next event for them to enjoy is me lighting a cigarette then picking up my copy of Men Only and lying down on the bed and beginning to read. Eventually the silence is broken by Wally.

  “I get you anything, Jack?” he says.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “When the fellow comes round with the hot-dogs, you can leave out the onions on mine.”

  “You feeling hungry, then?” Wally says.

  I shake my head and turn back to the magazine.

&n
bsp; “I can do you whatever you like,” Wally says. “I got just about everything.”

  I carry on reading.

  “Got some nice steak,” Wally says.

  “The butchers haven’t been affected by the rains, then?” I say, not looking up.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Tell you what you can do. You can go and put the kettle on and fetch me a nice cup of tea, all right?”

  Wally brightens up.

  “Will do,” he says. “You like one, Mr. D’Antoni?”

  “Coffee,” D’Antoni says.

  Wally hurries out of the bedroom. I carry on reading the magazine.

  D’Antoni stays standing where he is. Then after a while he goes over to the window and makes sure the curtains are pulled tight together. When he’s done that he goes out of the bedroom.

  I lay the magazine down and lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I try and make my mind a blank in preparation for sleep but my mind’s eye keeps coming up with photo-fits of Gerald and Les and with their faces in the front of my consciousness I start to boil up again about the whole fucking situation. Those eggs. Well this time the liberty taken has been too large. There’s no way there’s any obligations for me to fulfil in this instance.

  Wally reappears carrying a tray as if he’s transporting the crown jewels for me to pick a couple out of. He sets the tray down on the bedside table.

  “Here we are, Jack,” he says and starts to do the honours.

  “Where’s D’Antoni?” I ask him

  “Dunno, do I?” Wally says. “Probably sellotaping all the windows together.”

  I look at him

  “You don’t seem very worried, considering,” I say to him.

  “Well, I mean to say,” Wally says, handing me my tea, “they’re all the bleeding same these yanks, isn’t they? All mouth. One hundred per cent spill. I mean, I don’t know what he’s doing here, but whichever way you look at it, there’s no chance anybody’s going to turn up here with machine guns, is there? I mean, that’s probably why Gerald and Les let him come here, they thought, so what, what’s a fortnight’s room and board? I mean, they probably never even bothered to tell you seeing as how there’s nothing to break sweat over. I mean, they’d not risk you getting knocked off on account of a berk like this one.”