Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon

by Ted Lewis

  “Only I thought I’d have a drink with you before I went to the club,” she says.

  “You thought that, did you?”

  She doesn’t answer for a while. Eventually she says:

  “All right, I’ll go. I’ll be at the club when you’re ready.”

  She opens the car door and gets out and begins to walk away. I let her get about ten yards from the Mercedes then I stick my head out of the window.

  “Hang on a minute,” I say to her.

  She turns round and hurries back to the window my head’s sticking out of, then she waits for me to say what I’ve got to say.

  “Just supposing I do get through tonight, it might help if I knew the name of the club.”

  She doesn’t quite spit at me.

  “Picador,” she says.

  “Ta very much,” I say, and smile at her. She looks at me for a long moment before she turns away.

  I wait until she’s out of sight before I get out of the Mercedes. Then I walk over to the hotel and walk up the steps. The steps divide a raised narrow frontage that supports four parasolled tables on either side. The tables are deserted all except one. And at that one sits the old dad that was a member of the Dagenham boys’ party on the flight over. He’s still wearing his Robin Hood hat and his Hammers scarf and his foam-backed overcoat and he’s staring out to sea as if he’s waiting for his dentures to wash up on the next wave. I pass by him without him being aware of the fact.

  I push inward on the plate glass and two things are immediately released into the night air; first, there’s that dreadful, female, bathed-and-powdered, after-dinner smell, all antiseptic and expressing the determination to have a good time in spite of the old man. And the other thing is the sound of a Hammond organ fitted with a rhythm attachment. The organist is playing “South of the Border” and he’s so bad and so out of time that if it wasn’t for the rhythm box you’d think he was playing free form.

  The organ is set up in a small ballroom that opens out from the other end of the bar on my left. There are two middle-aged women dancing together in the centre of the floor and there are various families dotted around in the low seats, thinly spread in the off-season emptiness.

  I decide that before I meet Audrey a nice stiff vodka will be in order so I walk into the bar and sit on one of the bar stools and the white-coated drunk of local colour drifts along the bar and raises his eyebrows by way of inviting my order. I ask for a vodka and tonic and I get it poured the way I got it in the cafe the day before; vodka four-fifths up to the rim, and only enough room for a few bubbles from the tonic bottle. Nevertheless I manage to get some of it down and dilute it a bit more with the tonic. I’m just taking a second sip when one of the Dagenham sons rounds the corner from the ballroom, carrying a tray of empties. As I’m the only one at the bar it doesn’t take him long to suss me out as having been on the plane, and as the barman is temporarily missing that’s his excuse for a bit of bonhomie.

  “They supposed to have waiter service through there,” he says, “but it’s quicker to do it your bleeding self.”

  I look at him.

  “Don’t know what work is, this lot,” he says.

  I manage not to smile.

  “You staying here, are you?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  “Smart. The cement’s not even dry. The hot water only comes on when you don’t need it, mid-day. Bleeding manager’s a wanker, and the agency girl, she’s never here; poking with a fellow what owns a place round the corner. That’s all she does all the time.”

  “So, taking everything by and large, you’re having a good time?”

  “Oh, we’re having a good time, yeah. Just the fucking place.”

  This time I do allow myself a smile.

  “Thing is about this kind of an holiday, you get to meet some right characters, know what I mean?”

  Even though I don’t, I nod, so that I don’t have to say anything.

  “I mean tonight. The missuses want to go on this barbecue up in the mountains with about forty thousand other people. Well, me and we can get burnt sausages back home, so it seems reasonable that as they want to go, and we want to stay here, they should go, and we should stay here, right? You’re joking. If we’re not going, they’re not going, and that’s that, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes fixed on the pelmets, the flaming lot. We don’t go, they don’t go. Like kids, they are. So we says to them, all right, as we’re staying here, and you’re not going, what’re you going to do? Not bleeding well staying here with you, that’s for sure, they say.”

  He hits himself on the side of his head.

  “Unbelievable, isn’t it. We won’t go up there with them, so they won’t go, they’ll martyr themselves, but on the other hand, they’ll go somewhere else, so long as it’s without us. Beyond me, that is.”

  The barman reappears.

  “Oh yeah,” the Dagenham son says. “Two rum and blacks and a vodka tonic. And I’d better have one for Dad, I’ll have a rum for him, no black. Give him any more beer and he’ll be knocking us up all night.”

  He gives me a wink. The barman dispenses the drinks with all his native warmth.

  “Anyhow,” the Dagenham son says, “in the end they go off to this club, the mum as well, and leave me and Barry to it down here, which on its own can’t be bad. But a bit later on this piece on her own, she comes down and sits at the next table. Maybe she’s getting on for forty but you’d never know it. So’s my old woman and this one makes her look like a pensioner. Mind you, she’s obviously got the bread to coat it.” And your old lady can’t, I think to myself, you being an impoverished Daghenham worker.

  “Anyway, we soon get rapping and it’s plain she’s had a few and now me and Barry are wondering what we got on our hands as the impression she’s showing out is the kind of thing you only read about in Men Only, in fact at one point Barry asks her if her name isn’t Fiona, know what I mean?”

  I’m beginning to think I do.

  “What is her name, by the way?” I ask him.

  “What? Oh, turns out to be Audrey as a matter of fact.” He picks up his tray of goods. “Don’t look like an Audrey, though. A lot classier than that, know what I mean?”

  He gives me a wink and an elbow and then he goes off in the direction of outside to deliver the old dad his rum. I get off the stool and stroll down towards the ballroom part. The organist has left off for the time being so I don’t have to break step with the rhythm box. There is a step down creating a division between the bar and the ballroom. Once I’ve taken this step I turn to my right, the direction the Dagenham boy appeared from. And, as they say, my suspicions are confirmed. There, at the table closest to me, is Audrey, couched in conversation with the number two son. Of course, Audrey notices me straight away, but I can tell immediately that she’s in the kind of mood where she’s going to have as many pounds of flesh as she’d need to open a Wimpy. And in that mood, if I want to find out what happens to be in the envelope before Boxing Day, I’m going to have to play the scene the way she’s going to direct it. So I move to the table and stand there until Audrey gives up on this part of the game and deigns to recognise my presence.

  “Evening,” she says, settling back in her seat. I look at her and the number two son turns round to look up at me and it’s not an unfamiliar look, the old askance eyebrows asking the silent question.

  “Evening,” I say to Audrey.

  “Do we know you?” the Daghenham son says.

  I shift my attention from Audrey to Barry.

  “ ’Course you do,” I say, smiling. “I’m the bloke that stands by your table and says ‘Evening’.”

  “I know where I seen you before,” Barry says. “You were on Who Do You Do doing an impression of a clever bastard.”

  “Stand-out, was I?” I ask him

  “You are now,” he says. “So just push off.”

  A voice behind me says:

  “What’s this?”

  “A clever bastard,” B
arry explains.

  Benny puts the drinks tray down on the table.

  “Oh, yes,” he says. “You’re right. He’s a right clever bastard, he is. Susses out the situation through in the bar and comes round here and starts moving in. Yeah, a right clever bastard.”

  “Well, just push off,” Barry says. “Then maybe we’ll forget what a clever bastard you are.”

  “Oh, I’d hate you to do that,” I say to them, sitting down on a seat between Audrey and Barry. The sons look at each other. Then Benny leans over, his face a few inches from mine.

  “Listen, my son,” he says, “you made your point. You’re a brave cavalier. Now if I was you I’d go and try out your technique in one of those Guitar Bars. You’re less likely to get hammered in one of those.”

  I smile at him.

  “You don’t mean I’m likely to get hammered here, do you?” I ask him. “I mean, what for, and who by?”

  The sons look at each other again.

  “All right—” Benny begins, but he doesn’t finish because Audrey decides it’s gone far enough; she probably doesn’t want anything spilt down her dress what she bought new in Oxford Street the other day.

  “Leave it out,” she says, “we’re old friends. Let’s all be old friends, eh?”

  Now even though the Dagenham sons have only been acquainted with Audrey for a short time, they recognise the voice of authority when they hear it. They both look at her.

  “One of those mine?” Audrey says, indicating the drinks on the tray.

  “Oh, yeah,” Benny says. “Here you are.”

  He hands her her drink. Then he sits down and for a moment there’s a silence while the sons practise their hardest looks on me. Eventually I say to Audrey:

  “Good flight, was it?”

  “Great flight.”

  “Only I was wondering if you’d landed yet.”

  Audrey ignores that one and takes a sip of her drink.

  “Room nice, is it?” I ask her.

  “Nice. Lovely room. I’ll draw you a picture, so you’ll know what it’s like.”

  “Got somebody to carry your bags up, did you?”

  “Yes, I managed that.”

  “Didn’t drop them, did he?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “I expect that was a relief.”

  “Not for me, no.”

  “No, I could see how it wouldn’t be.”

  “Still, I gave him a tip, just the same.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  In the ensuing silence Barry says:

  “You like another drink, Audrey?”

  “What do you think?”

  Barry puts Audrey’s glass on the tray alongside his and his brother’s and lifts the tray and begins to get up but before he can straighten himself I lean across the table and plant my glass on the tray with the others.

  “Mine’s the same as Audrey’s.”

  “Oh, had the operation, then?”

  Barry comes to the conclusion that he’s not going to give me an argument over my glass so he straightens up and makes off for the bar. Benny offers Audrey a cigarette and lights both of them up. Audrey blows smoke out and says to me:

  “Things all right up the road, then?”

  “Oh yes, really smashing.”

  “I told you you’d like it once you got used to it.”

  “Yes, that’s what you told me. You know, plenty to do, sparkling company, all that kind of thing.”

  “I’m glad. I really am.”

  Just as Audrey’s saying that, some of the sparkling company from the villa enters the room, in the form of Tina. She stands in the archway for a minute, then she sees me and gives me a certain kind of smile and starts walking towards our table.

  “Oh, fuck me,” I say.

  “Oh yes,” says Audrey. “And who’s this?”

  “You know who it is,” I say to her. “It’s Wally’s offspring, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Last time I saw her was when she was sitting on Les’s knee when she was about eleven.”

  “She’d like that.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Stays with Wally for her holidays, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh yes? As opposed to a ride in?”

  I shrug. Now Tina’s reached the table.

  “So this is where you hold your business conferences, is it? Well, it’s nice and peaceful for it.”

  She sits down the other side of Audrey.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” she says. “On your holidays as well?”

  “Remember me, do you?”

  “ ’Course. Long time ago, though. These days you’re mostly out when I call round to see Dad’s benefactors.”

  “Oh, yes? Give you presents, do they?”

  Barry returns with the drinks. Benny says to him: “Things get better all the time, don’t they?”

  Tina looks at him, then says to me: “These on the firm as well, then?”

  I give her a look. She smiles sweetly back at me.

  “What firm?” Benny says.

  “Audrey,” I say to her. “Think it’s about time we were moving on, don’t you?”

  “About now, yes,” Audrey says, standing up.

  “You want to join us, Tina?” I say to her.

  “Why? You going somewhere good?”

  “Yeah. You’ll really enjoy it. Just your scene.”

  “In that case,” she says, and gets up.

  The Dagenham boys look as though Storey’s just put through his own net. I down my drink and put the glass on the tray.

  “Hope the trouble and strifes get back all right,” I say to them.

  I turn away from them and let Audrey and Tina get out from behind the table and when they’ve done that I begin to follow them in the direction of the bar. Barry says:

  “That’s what I really like. A geezer what pays his corner.”

  I turn round and walk back to the table.

  “Well, I agree with you,” I say to him. “So when I go through the bar I intend getting a grip of the barman and sending you through a couple of Snowballs, all right?”

  I turn away again and catch up with Audrey and Tina and when I’ve done that I herd the stupid cows over to the bar and sit them down; I mean, if Audrey hadn’t been trying to stir my pudding with Tweedledum and Tweedledee then Tina wouldn’t have had the opportunity to drop bollocks the way she did. And if Tina hadn’t crept back then Audrey wouldn’t have the aroma up her nostrils she now has.

  I stand between the two of them and get a grip of Tina’s upper arm.

  “Now listen,” I say to Tina, “Audrey and me’s got some business to do, and I mean business. So just bugger off to where you were going and stay away from those two fairies, all right?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I’ll tell you why; because if you don’t your old man’ll end up behind a whelk stall without a pension and there’ll be no more duty free holidays and no more art school fees and no more of the gear, but what there will be will be having Wally breathing down your neck until you meet your chartered accountant and go and live in Bromley.”

  The barman appears and I order a drink for myself.

  “Well,” Tina says. “You got a point.”

  “So clear off and let us get on with it.”

  She puts her hand on my knee and gives me her sweetest smile.

  “Seeing as you’re such a little charmer,” she says.

  She slides off the stool but her hand stays where it is.

  “Going to pick me up later, then?” she says. “After you’ve finished your business?”

  “It might take a long time,” I tell her.

  “Well, you know where it is, when you’re ready to get me.”

  The hand finally leaves the knee and Tina floats off towards the foyer. I stop watching her progress when I hear the sound of Audrey’s fingers snapping at the barman.

  “I’ll have another one
as well if you don’t mind.”

  “You don’t think we ought to go to the bedroom?” I say to her.

  “I want a drink.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t got any up there?”

  “Listen, I want one down here. Or do you want me to go into the glasses routine?”

  I order her a drink.

  “Boring up at the villa, then, is it?” she says.

  “You know Wally.”

  “Yeah, I know Wally. Now I know his daughter, don’t I?”

  “You met her before.”

  “Not when she was wearing stockings and a suspender belt.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Stockings and a suspender belt. You could see them through the cheese-cloth. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

  “No, I didn’t notice.”

  “No, you probably got first-hand knowledge.”

  I don’t answer her.

  “Well?”

  I still don’t answer.

  “You been poking her, haven’t you?”

  I shake my head, in all sincerity, secure that I’m telling the truth.

  “Pull the other one,” she says.

  I shrug.

  “I’ll rip that suspender belt off her and strangle her with it.”

  “Listen,” I tell her, “if you thought I’d had her off she’d have been hanging from the chandeliers by now, so leave it out, eh? I’m waiting to get the message it was so important for you to get over here.”

  She switches moods again.

  “Oh yes,” she says. “I was forgetting about that. Meeting new people, and all that.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my room. Where do you think it is?”

  “Well for fuck’s sake let’s get up there.”

  “You want to get up there, do you?”

  I close my eyes.

  “Are we going or aren’t we?”

  “It’s up to you. I’ve been waiting since I got off the plane.”

  “Yeah, well you’ll have to wait a bit longer,” I say to her. “I’ve got one or two things to tell you before we get down to any of that.”

  “Feel like getting down, do you?”

  There’s no talking to her so I guide her off the stool and walk her into the foyer where the lifts are and press a button.

  “You do know which floor you’re on,” I ask her.