The Big O (A Screwball Noir)

by Declan Burke

‘This lawyer got in touch, he has a client wants his wife snatched. His ex-wife, actually. Insurance scam.’

  ‘And Terry junior is vouching for him? The lawyer?’

  Terry nodded.

  ‘How much?’ Ray said.

  ‘Half a mill.’

  ‘What’s the split?’

  ‘Forty a piece, you and me. Except then Terry junior gets five points offa both of us, a finder’s fee. How’s it sound?’

  ‘Fucking terrible. Ex-wives can get messy. What’s the guy do?’

  ‘He’s a doctor. A surgeon.’

  ‘And he’s into kidnap scams? Christ.’ Ray shook his head. ‘They have kids?’

  ‘Twins. Girls.’

  ‘And we know where they can be found.’

  Terry nodded. Ray shrugged. ‘Have Terry junior call me,’ he said.

  ‘Will do.’ Terry waited until Ray had zipped up his windbreaker, then said: ‘You’re not going to ask?’

  ‘Ask what?’

  ‘About the cottage on the lake. You’re not going to ask how much?’

  ‘What cottage?’

  ‘The one,’ Terry said, nodding at the folder, ‘you don’t want me to think you like.’

  ‘I told you. I’m looking for an island.’

  ‘I should warn you, there’s been interest already.’

  ‘In the cottage?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘From who, Hansel and Gretel?’

  ‘It being an old Forestry Commission cottage,’ Terry said, considering, ‘they’re more in the way of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Ray said.

  Madge

  Madge turned off the main road into the forest, crossed a rickety wooden bridge and found herself on a rutted track with a steep-sided gully on one side, a high bluff on the other. The right front wheel caught a pothole straight away, causing the Crossfire to slide towards the gully, Madge braking hard. Then the car slewed in the thick mud and came around to face the high bluff.

  ‘You want me to drive on that?’ she demanded.

  ‘It gets better,’ Karen said, ‘further in.’

  Twenty bumpy minutes later Madge said: ‘So when does it start getting better?’

  ‘Any second now.’

  Five minutes after that they arrived at a barrier, a long white-washed pole slung between two cement-block bollards. Madge switched off the engine. ‘From here,’ she said, ‘I suppose we walk.’

  ‘It’s just around the corner. See the tall pine? That’s in the back garden.’

  ‘There’s a garden?’

  ‘If there was a garden, then that pine’d be in it.’

  Madge pulled on her bright green Wellington boots. ‘And you’re saying there’s no running water.’

  ‘Or electricity.’ Karen lacing up her hiking boots. ‘But the view is fantastic.’

  ‘It’s only a lake, Karen. Which is a big puddle, basically.’

  ‘And that’d make your swimming pool what, exactly?’

  Madge got out of the car and inhaled deeply, smelling wet pine. The quiet bristled. Leaves rustled, the wind a faint soughing high up in the pines. Madge experienced a pang; the sharp, pure ache of unrequited love.

  ‘So it’s what,’ she said, ‘a wood-cutter’s hut?’

  ‘A Forestry Commission cottage. Now out of commission.’ Karen got out, closed the car door. ‘No need to lock it,’ she said as Madge fumbled for her keys. ‘Who’s going to find us out here?’

  Madge shuddered. ‘Don’t even say that.’

  They skirted the barrier, the track narrowing to a muddy path that might have allowed two people to walk abreast if it weren’t for the puddles, the mini-landslides and the protruding branches that required a little improv limbo-dancing. The path curved away and down to their left, the lake a grey glimmering through the trees. Karen saying, in a hushed tone, how she wasn’t just looking for four walls and a microwave. How she wanted a place to call home, a home that called to her.

  ‘Girl,’ Madge grumbled, ‘if you heard this place calling from all the way out here, you should insure your ears.’

  And then they emerged into a fern-fringed clearing, a grassy incline that ran up to the rear of the cottage. To their right a small orchard of straggly apple trees hugged the bank of a chuckling stream; to their left the forest was dark, a ragged army of elder, poplar and pine stumbling away up the steep cliff.

  ‘Oh wow,’ Madge breathed.

  ‘Wait’ll you see the view from the porch.’

  ‘There’s a porch?’

  ‘Around the front. I see myself,’ Karen said, leading the way up the muddy incline, ‘knitting in a rocking-chair watching the sun go down.’

  ‘Or smoking a joint.’

  ‘There’s a law says you can’t do both?’

  The cottage had been built into the crown of the tiny hill. Its colours had long faded, the paint fissured by now, but the door had once been painted blue, the window-frames trimmed in green. Even the roof-tiles, Madge thought, were now a somehow shallow pink. But the clearing to the front ran all the way down to high reeds on the lake’s shore, in the middle of which was a shingle beach with a short wooden pier. Across the lake the mauve-tinted mountains were streaked with shadows as the sun edged away to the west.

  Karen stepped up onto the bare boards of the porch, scraped some mud off her boots. ‘So what you do think?’ she said.

  ‘It’s fantastic, yeah. Once you get here. Now tell me the bad news.’

  Karen jerked her chin at the padlocked door. ‘Three rooms. Bedroom, living room, kitchen.’

  ‘But no bathroom.’

  Karen pointed out a tall wooden outhouse off to the side. Madge grimaced. ‘What kind of money are they talking?’

  ‘Well, there’s three acres goes with the cottage.’

  Madge knew a stall when she heard one. ‘How much?’

  ‘And then there’s the cost of fixing the place up.’

  ‘With, like, electricity and stuff.’

  ‘Plus the fencing.’

  ‘In case Anna wanders off.’

  ‘I’d be more worried about someone straying in, Anna not expecting them. I mean, Madge – the girl’s lethal. You know this.’

  Madge nodded. ‘So how much,’ she said softly.

  ‘You’d be surprised how much it costs to fence in three acres to a height of twelve feet.’

  ‘And maybe I wouldn’t. How much?’

  Karen gazed out across the lake. ‘Three-fifty. All in.’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty thousand,’ Madge said slowly. ‘This is including the helicopter you’ll be needing in winter, just to get home.’

  Karen just shrugged.

  ‘What are your options?’ Madge said.

  ‘I could always blackmail Frank. Let him know I’m thinking of telling you about the time he, y’know, tried it on with me at work.’

  ‘The divorce comes through tomorrow week. Why would he care?’

  ‘So I sue for sexual harassment.’

  ‘First you’d have to prove it in court. With that space cadet Bryan telling the whole world you’re a slut.’

  ‘Who told Bryan?’

  ‘Plus you’re getting nowhere near three-fifty. Next.’

  Karen turned away and walked the length of the porch, scuffed at the rough boards. Madge ached for her. Without turning around Karen said: ‘Maybe I’ll rob a bank.’

  ‘Fun,’ Madge conceded, ‘but dangerous. And usually unprofitable. And there’s no way I’m taking Anna in if you get caught.’

  Karen turned to flash a watery smile, huddling into her jacket, hands jammed in the pockets.

  On the way back to the car, Karen still quiet, Madge said: ‘So tell me about Ray.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Start at the start. Is he cute?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Karen said, considering. ‘He has this dopey fringe he could do without, but he’ll pass.’

  ‘And he’s definitely not married, righ
t? Or divorced.’

  ‘Not everyone gets married, Madge. Or divorced.’

  ‘What about kids?’

  ‘Jesus. What are you, my mother now?’

  ‘I’m only asking.’

  ‘And working up to only asking if I think he’ll help out buying the cottage.’

  ‘Well?’

  Karen ducked under a branch. ‘If some guy I’ve only met once offered to chip in to buy a house, I’d ring the loony bin and have him dragged in.’

  ‘Or set Anna on him.’

  Karen winced at the prospect.

  Back at the car, tugging at her Wellingtons, Madge said: ‘Y’know, Karen, if I could help ….’

  ‘That’s okay. Really. I wasn’t even thinking in that direction.’

  ‘It’s just that, with the divorce going through, and Jeanie and Liz off to college, I don’t know how things are going to work out.’

  Karen reached across from the driver’s seat and squeezed Madge’s knee. ‘This is my problem, Madge. And I’ll be okay.’

  Madge tried to imagine Jeanie or Liz saying those words. ‘You could at least,’ she said, ‘allow me to feel guilty for not helping out.’

  Karen grinned. ‘How about,’ she said, reaching for the stereo, ‘I get some decent tunes going instead.’

  Madge groaned. Karen’s music, to Madge, made about as much sense as opera. German opera.

  Frank

  When the woman behind the till at the off-licence checked his change for him, handing it over with a kindly smile, Frank could have slapped her face. Except she wasn’t the only one. Lately the laundromat had started delivering free of charge to save Frank the trouble of coming down to collect. Then, just last week, this lollipop lady had held the kids back from crossing the road, waving Frank’s silver-grey Merc convertible through instead.

  Frank wouldn’t have minded so much, but the top had been down at the time.

  Trust Genevieve to point out how buying a car the same colour as his hair, even a Merc convertible, mightn’t be such a good idea. This during a row after Gen had dented the Merc’s rear fender. Frank couldn’t work out how Gen was the one who’d dinged the car but she was the one who got to do all the sneering, in the kind of voice you’d use for lip-readers.

  Now the latest was the woman detective, talking like she was on Sesame Street, telling Frank loud and slow that she’d be in touch once they’d checked back with the witness who’d seen the briefcase snatched.

  In the end Frank had admitted that, okay, he might have been carrying a bag – after all, that wasn’t an unusual thing for a doctor to do. But, he’d warned, psychological trauma can play games with the mind, and Frank was in no position to say for certain that he’d been carrying a bag, or what might have been in it had he been doing so.

  It was, given the circumstances, a minor triumph. But when Frank got out of the station, back to the Merc, and checked the insurance forms, he realised Doug – the sneaky prick – had rubber-stamped a date but hadn’t signed off.

  So Frank had stopped at the off-licence for a pick-me-up treat, a bottle of bonded bourbon, four or five belts of which got Frank back in the saddle again, stretched out on the couch in his study, Gen upstairs watching TV. His confidence ebbing back. There was precious little chance, he knew, of the briefcase ever being recovered. Even if the cops somehow managed to turn it up, the Nervocaine would be long gone. And even if by some miracle the Nervocaine was still in situ, Bryan could always plead a plant, standard lawyer procedure, Frank had seen it a million times on TV.

  He poured another shot of bourbon and started thinking about his future, thrilling to the prospect of half a million in cash, tax-free. Except, just when everything was coming up Frank, the guy on the phone started talking about waiting.

  Waiting? Frank’d been waiting his entire fucking life.

  ‘What the fuck,’ he demanded, ‘is a cool-off period?’

  ‘The cool-off period,’ the guy said, ‘is the time I wait to see if you want to change your mind.’

  ‘But I don’t. I want it done already.’

  ‘Okay. But that’s right now. People change their minds. Which is why we wait five days.’

  ‘But I decided.’

  Frank heard his wheedling tone, which wasn’t how Frank had imagined things working out. Frank had presumed, when you stump up twenty grand good faith, even when it wasn’t your own twenty grand, that a little deference came with the service. At the very least, Frank expected professional courtesy. Like, what the fuck was he paying points for?

  ‘Look,’ he said, his palms sweating, one silvery vein trickling down across his wrist. He hurried some bourbon down. ‘What would it cost to bring it forward? What do you charge for an early, er, hit?’

  ‘Nothing. There’s no such thing. This is the way it happens or else it doesn’t happen.’

  ‘Hey, I’m the one paying for this. So I should be the one to decide ––’

  ‘How about I keep the fifty grand and snatch you instead?’

  Frank’s stomach flipped over. ‘That’d be bad, right?’

  ‘Believe it. But if you keep talking, that’s what’ll happen. Are we clear?’

  Frank had two false starts at whimpering a yes.

  ‘Okay. So what happens is, I call back five days from now. I say, “Yes or no?” If it’s yes, we do the job. If it’s no, okay, but you never contact us again. This is because you have two daughters and the only thing sadder than dead twins is one of them in a wheelchair still able to tell the story. Do I need to repeat anything?’

  ‘No,’ Frank croaked.

  The phone clicked dead. Frank emptied his glass, then bolted out of the study along the hall to the downstairs bedroom. He hung over the toilet bowl, not actually puking, just feeling his guts churn. When he realised the tears were due to the ammonia tang, the bowl smelling a lot like Margaret sounded when she was drinking gin, Frank cleaned up his dribbling and went back to the study and the bottle of bourbon.

  Thinking, five days, okay. That was what, Tuesday?

  Frank could wait five days.

  Rossi

  Rossi couldn’t believe his luck. Only wanting the phone, he’d swiped the briefcase instinctively, without thinking, just because it was there.

  Except afterwards, about to throw it away, not expecting to find anything worth keeping, he’d found it was packing a whole bottle of blue-speckled pills.

  Times like that Rossi believed he had a gift. Rossi believed everyone had a gift, like Mother Teresa or 50 Cent. Rossi, the pills were proof, his gift was thieving.

  He tried out the pills, got a mellow buzz. Swapped some pills for a phone-charger, copped a bag of good grass and then headed for Shirley’s place, Shirley half-simple, always smiling, even late at night down on the canal freezing her ass off on the game.

  Shirley let him in and cooked up some eggs and bacon, asking where he’d been, she hadn’t seen him in, oh, it must be weeks now.

  Rossi had a soft spot for Shirley, they’d been in the home together for years, no one wanting to adopt Shirley the half-wit or Rossi the skanger. So he told her he’d been away on holidays, the Florida Keys, holed up during a hurricane with Bogie and Eddie G.

  He locked himself into her bedroom, the other room occupied by, it looked to Rossi, a half-naked orang-utan, Rossi hadn’t seen so much red hair since Little Orphan Annie. He rolled a fat one while he powered up the phone; then, when he was good and mellow, he rang Karen.

  What Rossi kept telling people, and what people didn’t want to hear, which was where the problems started, was Rossi was by instinct meaner than a piss-soaked snake. In order to function, be sociable, Rossi needed to be more or less permanently stoned, preferably on grass.

  Which was where a whole raft of other problems kicked in. Like, being good and mellow, Rossi was ringing Karen’s number for two hours before he realised the strange tone meant the line had been disconnected. Rossi wouldn’t have minded so much, but he’d been expecting that.

&n
bsp; He rang directory enquiries, eventually, after finding the number – go away for five years, he thought bitterly, they change everything around, just to fuck you up when you get out again.

  The woman on the line told him the only Karen King she had registered was ex-directory.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Rossi said. ‘I only need the address.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t divulge that information.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to, sir.’

  ‘You could if you wanted to.’

  ‘I couldn’t, sir. I’d lose my job.’

  Rossi thought fast. ‘This is an emergency.’

  ‘In that case, sir, I can put you through to your nearest police station.’

  ‘What if it was the cops I needed to warn her about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. But if you have no further ––’

  ‘Hold up. Not so fast.’ Rossi slowed the thinking down, sucked hard on the doobie. ‘Okay – give me the number for Kingswood Kennels. Same code.’

  ‘Please hold.’

  There was a clicking sound, then a metallic voice reciting something Rossi didn’t hear, Rossi too busy swearing a blue streak and scavenging through the mess on Shirley’s dresser, looking for a pencil or some shit, Christ, who didn’t own a fucking pencil?

  Karen

  That morning, Ray leaving, Karen’d said: ‘So I’ll see you about nine, same place.’

  But Ray’d said: ‘Why don’t I swing by here first, pick you up? We can go in together.’

  Again with the together stuff, making Karen wonder if it was a line after all. Which Karen didn’t like, she wasn’t in the habit of re-making up her mind.

  She showered and changed, ate some tuna salad with chopped peppers and tried to remember how long it’d been since she’d eaten dinner and not had to wash up afterwards. The way it felt to Karen, she was always the one who had to clean up afterwards, especially with Anna, like earlier on, Karen with a paper tissue mopping up the stringy brown mess Anna had dribbled onto the floor. Hearing Madge again: ‘No way I’m taking Anna in if you get caught.’

  Karen sighed and pushed away the plate of half-eaten tuna, rolling her head around on her neck, worn out after the hour’s play with Anna. Wondering if it wasn’t already too late to ring Ray and cancel – and then remembering, lighting a cigarette, shit, she didn’t have his number anyway.