The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  “Maybe he doesn’t know,” he said, smiling.

  “You could have told him,” I said. “Mmmh,” he concurred, “but then what?”

  And I saw the problem. His life would be an instant media circus. Reporters would rifle his dustbins. Every female he raised his hat to would be hounded to suicide. He would be dissected in public with that well-known frenzy the media reserve for ante-mortems.

  “No what?” the Dallas supporter was asking.

  God, I must have spoken out loud. “No way,” I said. “They ain’t got the pitchers.”

  “Pitchers is baseball, jerko.”

  Hell fire. “Shows how much them Cowboys know,” I improvised quickly. “They’re advertising for pitchers in the Herald Tribune.”

  That got a chorus of shouts and laughs. In the middle of it an old and valued customer arrived.

  “Hello, Lovejoy.” She was hugging herself.

  “Too early for wine, Rose.”

  “Coffee, two eggs, toast.”

  “Coming right up.” I shot the order through, eyed her. “I had to go on a visit, love. Sorry.”

  “Back just in time, Lovejoy. We’ve located a precious heap of paper for you.”

  I stared. “You have?” I’d never heard of a grailer actually becoming reality. Fakes do, of course. Trillion to one, I gave mental odds. News indeed for Gina; she was so endearing it’d be a shame to disappoint her.

  “Hand it over, then. Let’s have a look.”

  “I said located, not obtained.”

  Surprise, surprise. I tried to look enthralled, but probably failed, being distracted by Bill who blew my theory about then by suddenly not being dead after all. He went straight across to the nooks, sat and read his paper. I made demented small talk with Rose, the Cowboy fan, a state-of-the-city grouse. Bill left after a quick serving, paid Della on the till. No sign from him. Meantime, Rose had been telling me some cock-and-bull tale about letters received, transatlantic phone calls…

  If Bill wasn’t dead, was Tony? I felt a bit let down, decided the entire episode was my spooky imagination. All over. I felt relieved. I smiled at Rose’s charming features. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as the wicked old treble-entendre has it.

  “… to England,” she was saying.

  “Really?” How convenient for me, if Moira wanted somebody to cross the Pond and bring it over! “How interesting, Rose.” I looked into her eyes, sincerely as I could while serving a bloke with a breakfast I could hardly lift.

  “Hey, I was in England once!” the customer put in, just when I wanted to tell Rose how deeply I’d missed her.

  Conversation struck up from all around. No time for chat with desirable ladies. I resumed my loud comments on the telly newscasts, the plight of City Hall, the nation’s finances. And promised Rose when finally she left that yes, I’d be along to the bookshop the minute Fredo’s closed, to discuss plans.

  Two letters came for me that morning. One was by special messenger, a bicycle dervish with his head clamped into trannie muffs. The other was handed in by a uniformed chauffeur. I saw Della looking, grinned and told her it was the circles I moved in. I stuffed them into my pocket. More marked money from Nicko’s Pittsburgh robbery? It could do without my fingerprints.

  I worked on, surprised to find myself thinking less now of escape Somewhere Else, USA. Magic California? I didn’t realize it then, being thick, but America’s favourite risk was already setting in. I was being amused by the good cheer, the bustle, the aggressive glee all around. And the noise, the sheer willing ease of encounter. That American risk called seduction.

  My grotty walk to the grotty Benidormo was interrupted. A few seconds after I’d called goodnights to Fredo and Della, envying as I did Della’s special friendliness towards Fredo this particular evening, I caught sight of a reflection in a shop window. He was behind me, closing casually but fast. One flash of a passing police car’s blue was all it took. I paused to let him catch up, not looking.

  “Wotcher, Bill. Not dead, then?” Now I wish I’d not said it.

  “Good eyes, Lovejoy.” He was amused, cool, in charge. As a luxury yacht barman, I hadn’t been certain. One look on this street and I had him sussed.

  “All the better for seeing you, officer.”

  He paused to let some theatregoers pass, chasing taxis. “You have two ways, Lovejoy. Out, or in. Either way, you’re recruited.”

  Another job? Three, or was it four? Maybe the letters in my pocket were offers from Paramount. I suddenly wanted to be in that museum Rose had taken me to, safe among antiques where life was simple and any other Homo sapiens was a foe.

  “Who’re we against?”

  “Everybody, Lovejoy. Far as we know.”

  A three-star general, a Monsignor, antiques magnate, bullion heiress, bankers, drug handlers, property baronesses, television moguls… They’d all been there. Plus politicians, and somebody the guests had called Commissioner. As in police?

  “I’d come like a shot, Bill. But I’m on my way to a job.”

  He was amused. “That Sherlock gig? We know all about that, Lovejoy. What we don’t know is what it’s for. Suppose you find out from Miss Hawkins and tell us, huh? Your first assignment.”

  “Sure,” I promised. One more tyranny’s nothing to a serf. “How’ll I contact you?” As if I ever would.

  “You agreed too fast, Lovejoy.”

  I was so tired. “Look, Bill, if that’s your real name. I’m in a cleft stick. You’re in the law. You’ve given me orders. I’ll comply. Now leave me alone. I’ve a chance of seeing a bird for a few minutes’ quiet nooky.”

  “Phone number in your pocket, Lovejoy.” He moved off, blending expertly among pedestrians. I thought I saw him fade through a doorway, but couldn’t be sure. It was a card with a typed phone number. I walked on, head down and thinking.

  Tyrants. It’s all very well for them. Even among other tyrants they can make a living. It’s us that catch it. I paused, hurried on and found a phone. I caught Fredo at the bar. He sounded a little breathless, relieved it was only me.

  “Fredo? I need Gina’s phone number.”

  “Christ, Lovejoy!” He spoke off phone to somebody. I heard a woman’s offended expletive, a door slam. “I can’t, Lovejoy. Even a dickhead like you should know the score by now.”

  “Listen. Gina said I was to report in. What must I do, send a carrier pigeon? Tell me Nicko’s, then. Or Jennie’s. It’s urgent.” I hesitated for only a second, opted for betrayal. “That barman, Bill. He’s police. Asked about Moira Hawkins.”

  “Wait, wait.” He came on in another second, asked where I was ringing from, and finally gave me a number.

  While the traffic rushed past and people tried to hustle me, I got it picked up first ring.

  “Hello? This is Lovejoy. I need to speak to Gina, please.”

  “Jennie, Lovejoy. Why are you ringing this number?”

  I explained I’d got it from Fredo. “I was ordered to report to Gina.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bill. The barman on the Gina, remember him? He’s a bobby. He’s just asked me to spy on the Hawkins family.”

  “Bobby? You mean police?” She made me repeat his every word. I did, almost with impeccable accuracy.

  “Look, Jennie. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do any more.”

  “You did right, Lovejoy. Just behave normally. Leave things to me.”

  “Look,” I started to tell the phone, but it was dead and the queue was threatening my life. I escaped.

  SOME things go wrong, don’t they. Had I caused them to, telling Jennie about Bill? Fredo didn’t matter. Anyhow, he was only interested in making smiles with Della.

  Zole was in my room. I looked at the key in my hand. I’d had to unlock the door. He was eating a hamburger and watching a small colour television from the bed.

  “Hey, Lovejoy ma man. This gasket’s gonna blow.”

  A cop chase, to gunfire. “The hotel management upping i
ts image?” I got my soap and towel, still damp from morning.

  “You talk sheet, Lovejoy. It’s yo’ present, y’know?”

  He still didn’t think much of me. I went the length of the corridor, washed, did a weary shave, and returned as Magda saw a client off the premises.

  She came with me. “You’re great with Zole, Lovejoy. He’s talked about nothing all day, except how pleased you’d be with the set.”

  “Look, Magda.” I hated to say it. ”How did Zole come by it? Might it have been, well, stolen?”

  She stared at me so long I thought she was controlling outrage at the scandalous suggestion.

  “Of course it’s stolen, Lovejoy! Jeech! You know how much they cost? Zole works the stores with three other kids.”

  She took my arm and walked me. Zole was yelling obscenities, exhorting the gunmen to even greater mayhem. “Tell him you like it, Lovejoy,” she whispered. “He’ll be thrilled.”

  I cleared my throat, put my soap and towel away. “Zole. That set’s the very best I ever saw. It’s splendid. Thank you.”

  “Ain’t nuthin’, Rube,” he said, engrossed.

  That was it. Zole, aged seven, was also a gang leader. I said so-long, started downstairs with Magda along.

  “Look, love,” I said. “This is a bit awkward to say. But if the police catch me with a stolen television I’ll be in real trouble. Can you tell Zole no more presents, please?”

  She laughed. We came into the hallway. The desk man was watching a quiz show, impatiently muttering answers to himself.

  “Lovejoy. Watch out for yourself, okay? There’s people watching you. I just want you should know.”

  “Me? You sure, Magda?”

  She made to move off. I caught her. “Look, love. What about Zole? Who’s looking after him while you’re, er, working?”

  All she did was laugh at me. “Murder, man,” she said.

  I must have recoiled because she stopped scanning cruising cars and looked at me directly. She didn’t often do that.

  “Hey.” Yanks are brilliant at inflexion. She squeezed more compassion into that one syllable than Molière averaged in a Paris rep. “I mean you’re weird, okay?”

  “Sorry, Magda. Just spooked, is all.” It was a phrase picked up from a dozing bar bum. “I just wish I could help. You have a difficult time, the pair of you.”

  She smiled. “Most guys are shovers or pullers, Lovejoy. You’re weird because you’re neither. You off to see that skinny bitch?”

  I said nothing.

  “She’ll not fly you far, hon. Fly Magda Airlines some time.”

  If it hadn’t been for the prickly feeling of unease I’d have talked longer. Anyhow, a crumpled motor crawled by and she trotted off to answer the whistled summons. I sighed and walked off. People do what they’re good at, I always think.

  As I started off, I tried working out this Land of Opportunity’s determinants. Like, how come Kelly Palumba was rich beyond the dreams of whatnot, while same-age Magda was a street prostitute? It couldn’t simply be silver-spoon-at-birth, could it? Kelly had offered me more money for a pinch of drugs than Magda saw in a month. Maybe our olden-day system was simply continued here in the USA? Except in America the bosses didn’t wear emblazoned coats of arms.

  Then I heard sirens, denoting carnage somewhere close. It wasn’t far, maybe three hundred yards, to where the cars congregated around the man lying near the pavement.

  Taxi drivers were yelling and horns blared accompaniment. I didn’t bother listening to the explanations and shouts of whose fault it all was, how some car had suddenly accelerated and the man suddenly fell off the kerb… I went on past the crowd, sick to my soul. No question of what had happened to Tony, not now I’d seen Bill lying there. The taxi drivers were wrong. It was my fault. I’d assumed the police were invulnerable, that nobody could possibly harm a special agent, or whatever Bill was. Had been. I’d rung the Aquilina number to ingratiate myself. I knew that. Well, I’d made myself secure now. Bill had paid up, for me.

  Against all habit I went into a late-night bar up from Times Square. I had some Californian wine, pale and faintly opalescent. I vowed no revenge. How could I? I was just badly shaken, even leaping like a scalded cat when the bar door banged in the night wind. I was frightened. I didn’t know what I was into. Stupidly, I’d assumed I was free of obligations to Nicko’s crowd once Gina had sent me back to pasture in Manhattan.

  In Apple Zee’s nutritious joint I pulled out the letters. I memorized Bill’s phone number, but kept the card to give to Nicko. It wouldn’t matter to Bill, not now. All betrayal is a one-off, complete and entire of itself. The card would add nothing, but be proof of my good faith. The first letter was a note from Sophie Brandau’s secretary, on scented notepaper that must have cost a bomb. It said to call on Mrs. Brandau at my earliest convenience, Park Avenue. The second was a scrawled note from a Mrs. van Cordlant’s secretary’s assistant, saying to call, on Madison Avenue.

  Not much. So? The only way was to feel my way out of New York, along any thread. Rose was my least likely thread. The others? Well, Sophie might reveal most. Except this Mrs. van Cordlant coming out of the blue… When in doubt, grab for antiques. Therefore Sophie, Park Avenue.

  I was about to go when Zole slipped in beside me.

  “Two more burgers, ma-main,” Zole sang. He had his star-spangled yo-yo.

  “Not for me, ta. And put that yo-yo away.”

  “You ain’t gettin’, Rube.”

  I watched him in the bar mirror, grabbing the food. A lad after my own heart. “Eat well, Zole.”

  “Your pal was dead before he got hit,” Zole said conversationally. ”He got throwed, man.”

  “I guessed.” Bill was no accident-prone stumbler. He was a capable bloke.

  “Hey, Lovejoy! You ain’t such a rube!”

  “He was the one watching the hotel?”

  “Him, a bad news pig and two brothers.”

  Whatever that meant. “Brothers? He had brothers?”

  Zole guffawed, a gaping mouth filled with a mash of ketchup-soaked hamburger, and mocked, “Ah mean black, Lovejoy. Ya know coloured? Jeech!”

  Leaving, I made him replace the cutlery and two saucers which had somehow fallen under his tee-shirt. We parted, me to get an armful of newspapers from an all-nighter, him to hustle a mark for Magda, he said. I nearly didn’t believe him, but worried in case it was true.

  The Benidormo was jumping, forgive the pun. Magda’s room thumped to an ancient rhythm. The other side was a pandemonium of a man and bird having a brawl, best of six pinfalls and threats of murder with free abuse.

  Before I could settle down to tranquillity, the Bad News Pig shouldered in and stood there apologetically.

  “Sorry, Lovejoy. I gotta do this.”

  My heart sank. Between the orgiastic moans from Magda’s and the howls from screamsville, my own pad had somehow earned a bludgeoning.

  “What’s up, Tye?”

  “Gina says you aren’t following orders, okay?”

  He said the same okay four times, each time hauling me erect and clouting me in the belly so I whoomfed double. I tried asking what orders for chrissakes but he didn’t answer. He was really sorrowful, though, and expressed sincere regret as I crouched and retched onto the bare linoleum.

  “It’s not me, unnerstand,” he said with compassion. “It’s Gina, okay? You didn’t report in.”

  I gagged. My sweat dripped onto my hands, into the puddled sick between them. God, I felt like death. “Okay. Sure.” What else

  An hour after Tye’d left I finished mopping the floor and went down the corridor to wash my towel. Magda came to stand in the doorway behind me. She looked sympathetic. My heart sank further. I definitely needed no more help.

  “No compassion, Magda. I’ve had enough to be going on with, ta.”

  “Lovejoy, honey,” she said softly, “leave N’York. Soon.”

  “Am I allowed one phone call first?”

  She sighed.
“Dumb,” she said.

  For the next hour, until midnight, sprawled on the mattress between two shaking walls, I ogled my gift TV and read the newspapers, under a snowfall of flaking plaster. I’d at last set to, learning New York’s news. Then at the witching hour I phoned the number Fredo had given me, and told a recording machine a negative report, but that I was invited to see the lady in question next day when I’d report in full.

  And slept, fitfully dreaming of Bill’s body being lobbed under an approaching car. I didn’t go to see Rose that night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  « ^ »

  AMERICA’S not perfect, mind. Disillusion’s the bus station, West 42nd Street.

  Sheer size is agoraphobia’s ally. I’d learnt the word panhandler from Zole the day before. The world centre of hustling, panhandling, drug pushing, aggressive dereliction, is surely here. I’d never seen so many buses in my life, commuter roarers and long-distance racers all the colours of the rainbow. It seems they’re all private companies. Passengers too are all shades and sizes. Tip: don’t go for a pee —bottle it until you reach home.

  A whole hour it took me, finding the times and places of the California runs, for my escape. The drifters with their aggressive sales pitches frightened me to death. One shabby bloke wide as a barn stopped me in the open crowd by simply shoving a flat hand on my chest.

  “Hey. Whachoo want, man?” he threatened.

  “Er…” I tried to edge away among some passengers.

  “You gotta want somethin’, man.” He dragged at me.

  “I’ve no money,” I said feebly.

  “Sheet.” He let go so I fell, got up and scarpered to palpitating safety among a horde of people queueing for hamburgers.

  The trick is to stay ungrabbable, which means beyond arm’s reach of passers-by. This means deep in a queue of ordinary folk, or ensconced in a nosh bar where the proprietor is protection for as long as you’re buying. Remember that. Solitude prevails in any loo, except here it’s a mangler’s mart, with blokes of all ages soliciting, injecting, selling syringes, even fighting over vulnerable travellers with knives. Police are on hand, sometimes. But bloodstained tiles do nothing for confidence.