The Big O (A Screwball Noir)

by Declan Burke

  Ferret cocked his head. ‘You’re going to be a priest?’

  ‘I thought about it,’ Rossi admitted. ‘God’s truth, I thought about it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Spend enough time in a cell, you’ll think every fucking thought was ever fucking thought. One time I thought maybe God fucked up one time and was sitting in a cell somewhere, y’know, daydreaming. Us, like.’

  Ferret didn’t spend too long mulling that one over. ‘So what’s the plan now? On the out, like. You have a hook-up?’

  ‘It’s more in the way of a vocation,’ Rossi said.

  ‘Except not as a priest.’

  ‘I’ve been reading up.’

  ‘Taking courses and shit.’ Ferret nodded appreciatively. ‘Gets you time off, right? Early parole.’

  ‘Fucked if I know. That’s all you’ll be needing, it’s all in there.’ Rossi reached a newspaper off the wooden table, tossed it onto Ferret’s bunk. It landed with a solid thump. ‘Although,’ he conceded, as Ferret hefted the broadsheet dubiously, ‘you’ll be wanting a dictionary starting off.’

  ‘That and two cranes. Just keep it short and tell it slow.’

  Rossi beckoned for the paper, opened it wide and folded it back. ‘Okay,’ he said, scanning. ‘First off, here’s an accountant, right? Mows down this six-year-old, he’s four beers over the limit. The bagman, like, not the kid. How long?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘Seven fucking months. Alright. Next up is some housing authority manager, he’s on the take. Yeah? Backhanders and shit. How long?’

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘Suspended sentence. Here’s a doctor, malpractice. We’re looking at nineteen, it says here, unauthorised mastectomies. How long?’

  ‘A medal, a pension and a gold watch.’

  ‘Disbarment,’ Rossi said, not to be denied. ‘Plus they’re looking into his tax affairs. You tell me, what’s that to do with justice?’

  ‘Who said it was about justice? You get caught or you don’t, end of story.’

  ‘Fair point. But this accountant, he’s doing open prison, conjugal rights, all this. Jammy fucking doughnuts all fucking week. Yeah? He’s out hoeing the broccoli, we’re banged up in this fucking hole. Am I right?’

  Ferret, sprawled on a bunk in D Wing, could hardly demur.

  ‘Know who ends up in here, Ferret? Losers. Fuckwits knocking off bookies and chemists. And for what, a couple of grand a throw?’ Rossi sucked hard on the doobie. ‘Know who doesn’t end up in here? The bastards wearing ties, the ones with the offshore accounts. The kind, they’re not actually stealing from people, they’re just investing the cash for them.’

  ‘Without, say, telling them first.’

  ‘Perxactly. See, I have sixty large sitting out there right now waiting for me.’

  Ferret whistled low. ‘Sweet.’

  ‘Except it’s cash. Not so sweet when you’re looking for a loan. I mean, I’m wearing the wrong suit, no tie. So there’s forms to fill in. Questions asked. Where’s the sixty large come from, who’s did it used to be, what’s the fucking serial number on every fucking bill. All this.’

  Ferret made a sympathetic clucking sound. Rossi waved it off.

  ‘They won’t stop me,’ he said. ‘The sixty grand’ll cover me for the first year. And once I’m up and running, I’ll be applying for all sorts.’

  ‘Cover you for what?’

  ‘Overheads. Rent and shit on the office.’

  ‘You’re going into business?’

  Rossi nodded solemnly. ‘An advice centre. The Francis Assisi Rehabilitation Concern. For ex-cons, like. Although, with the name, I might need permission from the pope first.’

  Ferret squinted. ‘Advising cons on what? Where’s best to fence their shit, that kind of thing?’

  ‘See,’ Rossi said, stabbing the air with the doobie for emphasis, ‘there’s the problem right there. Everyone expects when a man gets out that it’s only a matter of time before he goes back in. Am I right?’

  ‘Most of us do.’

  ‘Okay. But say you’re a booze hound, right? Hitting it hard. What do you do?’

  ‘Al-Anon.’

  ‘You’re a junkie, where do you go?’

  ‘Methadone programme.’

  ‘But if you’re an ex-con wanting to break the cycle, who can you talk to?’

  Ferret scratched an ear.

  ‘The Francis Assisi Rehabilitation Concern,’ Rossi said. He bounced a thumb off his chest. ‘Me.’

  Ferret thought that one over. ‘You’d be like a counsellor? Some shit like that?’

  ‘Perfuckingxactly.’

  ‘And you’ve trained for this? Done courses and shit?’

  ‘Believe it. At the university of hard fucking knocks.’

  ‘So you’re not actually, y’know, qualified.’

  ‘I’ve done the crime, Ferret, and I’ve done the time. Three fucking jolts’ worth. So you tell me, am I qualified to tell cons what’s what? Or would you rather talk to some poncy tart in a white coat waving a clipboard with a face on her like a robber’s dog?’

  ‘I hear you,’ Ferret said. ‘I’m only saying, if you don’t have the certificate framed on the wall....’

  ‘See, this is the beauty of it,’ Rossi said. ‘Know what kind of qualifications you need to start a charity?’

  ‘A charity?’

  ‘Fuck yeah, a charity. You kidding? Charities get all the tax breaks going. Then, every time you pick up a paper there’s some charity in there getting press. Or they’re on TV. And all for free, like. It’s cancer this, AIDS that, fucking Africa the other. Then there’s your basic fund-raising activities. You see what I’m saying.’

  Ferret lay back on the bunk, head pillowed on his arms. ‘Sounds to me,’ he said slowly, ‘it could be the basic blueprint for a con’s co-op. What d’you think, would a union be a step too far?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rossi admitted. ‘I mean, if you want to fleece the system all the way down to the bone, politics is the only way to go.’

  After a while, without opening his eyes, Ferret said: ‘My brother-in-law’s brother, he’s into me for two grand in snow.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. I could give you his address, get you to call around. Then you cut me in on the ground floor for two large.’

  ‘I’ll do you five points.’

  ‘That’s more than generous, Rossi.’

  ‘"A helping hand,"‘ Rossi recited loftily, ‘"not a boot in the balls."‘

  ‘The Francis Assisi Rehabilitation Concern, right?’

  ‘FARC for short.’

  ‘I like it. Neat and tidy.’

  Rossi nodded, pleased. Then a frown clouded his face. ‘All I’m hoping,’ he said, ‘is the pope doesn’t fuck me around on the name. What d’you think, will he want points?’

  Karen

  Karen had a crooked jaw from the time she repeatedly smashed her chin onto the rim of the bathroom’s porcelain sink, her father downstairs on the kitchen floor, flat on his back with a fork lodged just above his heart.

  The jaw gave her mouth an ironic twist, pushing out the lower lip, so people who didn’t know Karen thought she was all the time sneering, or laughing at some private joke. The upside with that was, when Karen took a stool at a bar she generally managed to get quietly drunk without too many interruptions. The worst she had to deal with was some skinny-assed pimple-factory telling her cleavage to cheer up, it might never happen. To which Karen’d reply: ‘I carry a knife.’

  What she liked about Ray was he didn’t crowd her. Sitting near enough so she caught a whiff of minty breath but not so close she needed to back off to breathe. He held himself well, careless but angular, and he was tall enough to carry it off. Wearing a pale blue rumpled shirt, navy denims that looked new. Had all his hair too, even if some of it was brushed up in a silly-ass quiff.

  Then there was the way he talked to her eyes. Okay, it was a pose: the only complaint men had about Karen’s cleava
ge was the lack of a mirror wedged in there too. But what Karen liked about that was his self-control, the way he kept his tigery eyes on hers.

  She touched up her lip-gloss, giving herself the once-over in the bathroom mirror. Then smiled, remembering Ray’s line, how he was a tough-guy kidnapper. At least it was original. Karen had heard all the lines so often she was starting to feel like her own understudy. If Karen stuck around until the end of the night, any night, some guy was bound to take an interest.

  Lately though, Karen hadn’t been sticking around too long. Once in a while, maybe, when she felt the need. But even that wasn’t happening so much anymore. Karen’d said to Madge, only the Friday just gone: ‘Like, when even the skinny-assed pimply guys are married, you get to thinking, how much do I really need that need?’

  What mattered about all that was, by the time she met Ray, Karen hadn’t been laid in over six months. How much over Karen didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. Once it went more than six months, Karen stopped counting.

  Plus, she was still buzzing from pulling the job. From experience, Karen knew she wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night anyway.

  Ray

  Ray lit a cigarette and cranked the window, humming along with the stereo. Wondering how it was Bruce always got himself hooked up on these women called Mary. Thunder Road, The River, Mary’s Place ... Christ, the man was obsessed.

  Ray, if he was Springsteen, he’d have shot through for Mexico long ago, nabbed himself a Juanita, some shit like that. Ray’d only ever met one Karen before, this Kiwi blonde in Hamburg with an oral fixation. Ray getting blowjobs on buses, trains, even one time in the linen closet of a motel on the outskirts of Saarbrucken, near the border with France. Ray on his back in a pile of dirty sheets coming up with a whole new language all his own.

  This other Karen, though: Ray couldn’t tell which way she’d flip. Sometimes you get them bolshy when they’re out, all goo-goo eyes and throwing shapes, and then they get home and they’re crawling under the bed to get away. Or they’ll front up, come good on the deal, then tell you the husband’s working nightshift, he’s due home in ten minutes. Ray figured Karen’s reaction to the Transit van, Karen expecting an Audi, would tell him as much as he needed to know for the time being.

  Then he was waiting so long he started wondering what the hold-up was, if maybe Karen wasn’t running some kind of gag, keep the dumb guy hanging around the parking lot all night. He checked the clock, decided to give her another five minutes, and then the coffee hit. By the time Karen finally appeared, backlit in the bar’s doorway, Ray was seriously considering a sneaky pee around the back of the Transit.

  She caught his headlight flash, strolled across, climbed up into the cab.

  ‘So what happened?’ she said, looking around. ‘The clock strike twelve or some shit?’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything strange men tell you in bars.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that strange.’

  ‘That might well be the tragedy of my life.’

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’re not this hotshot kidnap artist.’

  Ray, sheepish, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Karen glanced into the back of the van, where the floor was littered with empty paint pots, roller-brushes, multi-coloured splash-sheets. ‘You’re a decorator?’ she said.

  ‘I paint murals.’

  ‘Murals?’

  ‘Wall art. In kids’ bedrooms. Y’know, Winnie the Pooh, the Lion King, Lord of the Rings. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Which is why you’re a baby-sitter.’

  ‘Sure, yeah. Listen, you live far from here?’

  ‘Near enough. Why?’

  ‘That coffee’s run right through me. Mind if I scoot back inside?’

  ‘Prostrate trouble?’

  ‘Harsh,’ Ray said, opening the door. ‘Unnecessarily harsh.’

  Karen

  He was more articulate than she was used to meeting, Karen thought, watching Ray stiff-leg it across the parking lot. Not that he used big words, complicating things. More that he spoke clearly, sounding cautious, alert to the consequences of what he was saying. In Karen’s experience most people said the first thing they thought of and stuck with that. Or, like Rossi, they were foul-mouthed mumblers, so everything sounded the same.

  Karen, it was instinctive by now, compared everyone with Rossi. Favourably, as it happened.

  She shook a cigarette from the deck on the dashboard and ran through her check-list. She hadn’t been expecting any hook-ups, not on a Wednesday night, and definitely not on any night she was pulling a job. But the bra and pants were okay, nothing fancy but nothing too granny either, and she’d shaved her legs and pits after a long, luxurious bath at the weekend. The towels were probably still on the bathroom floor.

  She tried to remember what kind of mess she’d left the apartment in, if she’d even made the bed. Karen wasn’t exactly house-proud to start with, and dusting wasn’t all that high on her list of priorities when she had a job coming on.

  Then again, Ray didn’t seem the kind to object to a little clutter. The rear of the Transit was a mess and the cab was strewn with sweet-wrappers, empty cigarette boxes, used parking stubs. Karen, curious, reached down and slid the neat pile of large white cards out from under the driver’s seat. She turned them around, exhaling at the windshield, then frowned.

  The first card read, in blue crayon: ‘You have no reason to be afraid.’

  Karen flicked through the rest, eight in total, glancing across at the door of the bar. Then she shoved the cards back beneath the driver’s seat. Breathing fast and shallow.

  This would be a good time, she acknowledged, to just walk away. Hail a cab, get herself home, forget all about Ray.

  But Karen had never met a tough-guy kidnapper before. And she had prickles at the nape of her neck, tingles trickling up the back of her thighs.

  Plus, if things got out of hand, it was in her bag, Karen was still packing the .44.

  Doyle

  ‘Hey-up,’ Sparks said. ‘He’s back.’

  Doyle brushed her hair off her shoulder glancing around at the tall guy with the quiff crossing the bar towards the washroom. Definitely not bad, she thought. Doyle liked them tall. And no ring. Doyle, she couldn’t help herself, she liked them better when they weren’t married.

  ‘You going to, y’know, do anything?’ Sparks said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ask him for a birthday kiss.’ Sparks snorted a drunken giggle. ‘Thirty-four of ‘em.’

  ‘And then, you’re the only one came out for my party drinks, we just send you home. Is that it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t share?’

  ‘I know where you’ve been, Sparks.’

  ‘Me-fucking-ow. Hold on, here he comes again.’

  But he didn’t even look in their direction. Just crossed the bar, pushed out through the door.

  ‘Guess he scored with the tart in the leathers,’ Sparks observed gloomily.

  ‘With an ass like that in leathers? You’re surprised?’

  ‘Fucking bitch.’ Sparks brightened up. ‘Anyway, he didn’t take half long enough in the washroom. A real man, he’d need about five minutes just to unfold his dick to take a piss. Maybe you’re just saving yourself another shitty night.’

  ‘Want to know,’ Doyle said with feeling, ‘what’s disappointing? If we come in here together one more time, we’re officially a couple. Now that, to me, is disappointing.’

  Sparks winked and blew a sloppy kiss. Doyle went to the bar.

  Ray

  Ray knew from experience to keep his mouth shut once a woman has made up her mind. Ray, thinking he was negotiating his way between the sheets, had talked himself out the front door more than once.

  So the plan, as he climbed into the Transit, was to let Karen do most of the talking. This until they turned out of the parking lot and Karen said: ‘Tell me more about how you quit baby-sitting.’

  ‘I was kidd
ing. I told you, I paint murals.’

  ‘You have no reason to be afraid,’ Karen recited. ‘You are in no danger. I mean you no harm. You will be well treated.’ She paused. ‘Want me to go on?’

  Ray looked across. Karen raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Ray said.

  ‘Why you quit.’

  ‘I told you. A new guy got involved, I didn’t like him. So I quit.’

  ‘Try me on details. I like details.’

  ‘Details get people fucked, Karen. And when the people I know get fucked, everyone gets fucked. I’m making this clear, right?’

  ‘To me.’

  ‘To you, yeah. Who else?’

  ‘I mean, you’re saying it to me. Who you interrupted in the middle of a stick-up.’

  Ray considered that. ‘How much detail?’ he said.

  ‘You get going.’ Karen lit two cigarettes, handed one across. ‘If I think you’re leaving anything out, I’ll say.’

  Ray shrugged as he exhaled. ‘This new shylock,’ he said slowly, ‘I didn’t like him from the get-go. This is earlier, I’m on my way home from work. So when the guy asks if I’m carrying I think he means drugs, maybe a rod. Except the guy’s asking about mobile phones. Has this thing where he doesn’t want anyone around him with a phone turned on in case anyone takes a call that could incriminate him. I’m thinking, okay by me, the guy’s a thinker. So I turn off my phone, I tell him, “That’s genius, man.” And he goes, “Only the cautious survive.” I mean,’ Ray said, glancing across at Karen, ‘he’s saying this with a straight face.’

  ‘The shylock,’ Karen said. ‘He’s a guy who loans money, right?’

  Ray nodded. ‘He’s new in for The Fridge. To bank-roll Terry’s ops.’

  ‘What kind of ops?’

  ‘Say Terry wants to blag a pay-roll run. He’ll need hardware, transport, manpower. Maybe he needs to drop a wedge for an inside touch. All that takes money, and any decent businessman wants to spread his risk around. So the shylock fronts up and Terry cuts him in for points.’