Maxie’s Demon

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘Christ, you look rough!’ was his greeting. ‘What’s all this I hear ’bout you bin up to sumfin’?’

  The world probably knew it by now. ‘I blew a big job for Ahwaz,’ I admitted.

  Chaddy guffawed. ‘What you doin’ ’ere then? Blew more’n that, by all I ’eard—’

  ‘Ah, leave it, Chaddy. Look, if he shows up, give me a shout so I can duck out the back, won’t you?’

  Chaddy shrugged. ‘Do my best. But you better get them booths slopped out firss, hear? An’ there’s the ashtrays in the girls’ room—’

  It was always a delight working for Chaddy. Not that this place was his; the owners, once you got back through a chain of holding companies, were apparently Maltese, invisible and scary. Chaddy was just a minder for the minder, but it didn’t stop him being a complete little Hitler. I was sure he was paying me half what he put in the books; but if I tried telling anyone, I might just be dead sure.

  I mooched on through the shoddy shopfront with its flaking Formica panelling and slather of suggestive posters, unlocking all the windows that weren’t painted shut, and Chaddy roared, ‘F’Crissake! Born in a fucking barn, were yer?’ But I knew he was too lazy to close them himself, and the warm city fug that drifted in was better than the residue of last night’s stinks, little boys’ room and worse. I clanked around the crudely carpentered booths with my mop and bucket, using the handle to knock out the chewing gum and paper wedges that the johns were forever sticking in to block the little shutters when their coins ran out. It never worked; the mechanisms were too strong, and the shutters just forced the stuff down to make a mess along the bottom rim, for guess who to clean up. I swept them hastily under the seat, along with the dog-ends and tissues; there’d be more along presently.

  The door slammed, and I nearly dived under the seat myself. It was only Ellie, one of the girls on this morning. She gave me a friendly wave, the way most of the girls did; not a bad kid, but built like a starving parrot, dyed crest and all. ‘’Allo, Maxie, how’d ya get on lass night? No go? Aw, shame – me, I hadda great time – out wi’ Frankie – went t’see the wrestlin ’n’ got shitfaced after – gor any coffee?’ She trailed on into what was laughingly called the dressing room. I remembered I hadn’t emptied the ashtrays, and had to move fast. With her in, they’d be overflowing any minute.

  I sidled through the reek of powder and perfume and nicotine and armpits, dodging stray garments and wondering what the hell the punters got out of gawking at Ellie’s assortment of bones, sticking out of her skin at odd knobbly angles. Sam, the other girl, breezed in, kissed me on the cheek, said, ‘Dahling!’ in her idea of a posh accent – she’d got me to coach her – and flicked Ellie’s tights off my shoulder where they’d somehow settled.

  They liked me, the girls, in a sort of mild, detached way. Some of them even went out with me, when I had any cash and very occasionally when they had. They said I knew how to treat them, which compared to their average boyfriends wasn’t too great a compliment. They weren’t all tarts, professional or amateur. Some were, including one or two who were bringing up kids, but a couple even came from fairly stable backgrounds. Most of them seemed to drift out of a kind of fearful stratum of low income, low expectations and low-grade council estates, with low IQs and domestic violence practically programmed in. Almost inevitably, unless something got them first, they’d drift back into it again.

  Now my real background …

  I could keep that secret from men, but the girls sussed it out at once – or a bit of it, they probably wouldn’t have believed the whole of it. They never could understand how anyone with the kind of start I’d had could have sunk so low. Drink or drugs or gambling, maybe; but though in years past I’d had a pretty good bash at all three, sometimes at once, I wasn’t an obvious slave to any of them. Not even to cars, really.

  I told the girls I was always asking myself that same question, but that wasn’t true. I’d given up asking long since. I was just trying to find my natural level, and maybe I hadn’t found it yet.

  Sam was holding forth on the latest TV part she hoped to get – two hours’ extra work on a cop show – when I heard the door slam with real force. I jumped, but Chaddy hadn’t made a sound. So when the dressing room door flew open just as explosively I wasn’t prepared, and just stood staring at Ahwaz as he filled the frame.

  Of course that bastard Chaddy hadn’t sung out, or meant to. He’d phoned Ahwaz the moment I got in, as no doubt he’d been told to. And no doubt he was sitting out there, giggling to himself and hoping Ahwaz wouldn’t break the furniture with me, at least not beyond the powers of his tube of glue. I didn’t hold out much hope of that, as a meaty fist closed on my jacket and hoisted me on to my toes with straining seams, and the girls ran out squealing. A bandaged fist.

  ‘Take – take it easy, Ahw—’

  ‘Why should I? Are you looking at me, you bloody little snot rag? Do you know what you have bloody well gone and done?’

  ‘I couldn’t help the car – I’ve got you others, haven’t I? I’ll get you more – it was that cutout switch—’

  ‘I am not talking about the frigging Ferrari! Look at me!’

  I had been, but I was trying not to, because it made me want to double up with laughter. Instead of his long black tresses, expensively swept back, oiled and curled, he had what was practically a jail-crop crew cut. Yet even that couldn’t conceal the fact that the hair along the right side of his head was brownish and frazzled, and his ear and cheeks had a sooty, stained look about them, with little patches of angry red like sunburn. Even his gold earring looked scorched and dull. He looked like a slightly blowtorched phrenologist’s dummy.

  ‘Look what you have done! And a hundred-and-fifty-quid shirt and a genuine Armani suit and a silk tie my brother brought back from Milan! All an absolute fucking ruin! And first I am going to—’

  ‘Wha’ happened? It wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything – ech! ’ That was because his grip kept tightening.

  ‘My bloody dog an’ bone exploded, is what has happened! Right there in my own hand, right up against my frigging ear! Up like a fucking bomb! I thought I was gonna be deafened for life!’

  ‘Your – your phone exploded? Yes, mine too, I mean the call-box phone – or something – uk! – and I’m very sorry, but how’m I supposed to have done that?’

  ‘It was you I was talking to!’

  ‘Yes, but – ulk! – how? I don’t know how to do a trick like that! You may, but I don’t! And listen, was that your usual phone? That little pocket mobile job?’

  He was frowning now, which was a good sign. Anything that didn’t involve beating the daylights out of me qualified. ‘Sure. Three hundred quid, wafer-thin. So?’

  ‘Well, I mean – gllk! – that wraps it up. Don’t you see? Cellular radio – no wires – no nothing, it all goes through relay stations – even if I’d connected the line to the mains or something, I couldn’t have done that – uk! – I’m sure I couldn’t have even on an ordinary line, they must have circuit breakers or something. For lightning and that – but even lightning wouldn’t blow up a mobile—’

  He shook me absent-mindedly. Ahwaz was by no means stupid. ‘Then what the hell could have done it? And blown your end too?’

  ‘Don’t ask me – have you asked the phone people? And since it wasn’t me, could you please put me down? My head’s bursting—’

  ‘No more than you deserve for the Ferrari, you little bastard!’ He shook me again. ‘Next time I need a kiddie’s pedal-car, I’ll think of you!’ He slapped me quickly across the face and back about five times, then threw me at the wall. That would have been a bit more bearable if it hadn’t been for his fistful of rings. I pressed back the stinging flap of skin he’d torn from my nose – it always catches the worst, God knows how the French missed Wellington’s at Waterloo – wiped the blood from my mouth and picked myself up. Luckily he was more preoccupied with the phone business, and like a lot of people he was in the habit of asking m
e for intelligent information.

  It had got me known as the Prof, for a while; but that suggests some respect. It’s the truest nickname that sticks, and for about five years now I’d been Waxie Maxie, aka the Fifth Wheel.

  ‘Something happened,’ he said slowly. ‘Too strong a signal from the radio station, maybe?’

  ‘I wouldn’t think so. Enough radio energy to do that – God, I don’t even think a national transmitter’d be enough. And it would have fried the thing, not exploded it. Fried everything in its path, I’d have thought. Something explosive in the phone. The battery, now – there are some weird chemical mixes in those nowadays. Maybe one of those might react wrongly and explode.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t hurt the phone at your end – wait a moment, how come you’re not burned?’

  ‘Maybe because it was a payphone, and I was just holding the handset. It was the body of the phone that got hot. It didn’t explode.’

  He shook his head, then winced as his burn-tightened skin cracked a little. ‘Beyond me. I suppose I will go and kick ass at the phone company. This phone box of yours, I’ll have a look at that too. As for you.’ He considered. ‘You still want your money?’

  Dangerously put. ‘Well, I did get the car – it wasn’t my fault—’

  ‘Huh! But you have had your uses, true. Maybe I give you a second chance. You know Parker Street corner, along from the showroom? Be there tonight, ten sharp; don’t go near the showroom. Dark clothes. Look for a blue Ford van.’

  ‘Er – OK – registration?’

  He shrugged. ‘Haven’t made up the plates yet. Fee is one hundred pounds, flat.’

  Not much, but a lot more than I had now. ‘OK, but what …’

  He snorted. ‘You think I’m putting announcements in the papers? Ten sharp. Be there or I’ll be looking for you. Seriously.’

  I swallowed. ‘Sure, sure. Ten sharp.’

  I watched him lounge out. His minders, who’d been gassing to Chaddy, glanced at me with mild surprise, and as they fell in behind him I saw to my horror that one of them was holding something that looked a lot like a petrol can. No doubt about it, Ahwaz was playing rougher.

  ‘Hey, Mr Lucky!’ yelled Chaddy. ‘Go make me a coffee, will yer? Three heaped sugars, an’ don’t go spillin’ it all over the bleedin’ place!’

  I closed my eyes an instant. Take a lesson – never demand coffee from someone you’ve just dropped in the shit. Sugar is good at concealing tastes, so my revenge really was going to be sweet.

  I was a bit dubious about taking up Ahwaz on his evening jaunt, but not too seriously. If he’d really wanted to do me an injury he could have, without all the palaver. I wouldn’t be in any more danger on a street corner at ten than I was here. So I got through the rest of the day with as light a heart as you can manage in that sort of place. Towards the evening I was even able to tickle the peepshow takings enough – Chaddy being suddenly seized with a violent stomach upset, and going home in a cab – to take Trace, one of the late-shift girls, for fish and chips, and pick up some suitable clothes.

  So at ten of a cloudy night there I was on the corner, well fed, comfortable in a leather motorcycle jacket and intact jeans, and with a couple of pints and a whisky chaser under my belt to keep the wind out. Very comfortable, but I began to regret the pints. No sign of a van, so I nipped around the corner and took advantage of the side of an anonymous parked truck. Until, that is, the door flew open and Ahwaz stuck his head out, and I narrowly missed my right shoe.

  ‘You! What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he hissed.

  ‘What’s it look like! You said a blue Ford …’

  ‘That is our transport!’ he snapped. ‘Get back out there and watch!’

  Fortunately just then the van rolled to a stop, and Ahwaz and one of his minders spilled out of the truck. The other one leaned over and threw the van doors back, and I was bundled in before I could finish zipping up. I made for the front seat; I usually do the driving on this sort of thing. But the gorilla at the wheel didn’t make way, and I ended up sandwiched between him and Ahwaz. Around about this point in the movies somebody slips a cheesewire round your collar from behind, but I still felt reasonably safe, the more so as Ahwaz was busily directing the driver, who was in a rebellious mood. I was even brave enough to ask where we were going.

  ‘The seaside,’ grunted the ape in the back. ‘Bring yer bucket ’n’ spade?’

  I didn’t quite like the sound of that. ‘And … uh, what’s the deal? What’ve I got to do?’

  Ahwaz shrugged. ‘Some lifting – real lifting, I mean, not stealing. And keeping your mouth shut and not messing about. Otherwise it will not just be me you are dealing with, but Stifaoin O’Faolain.’

  My heart went down through the floor pan and bounced along the road behind. ‘What, Stevie Fallon? Christ, you’re not getting mixed up with that bugger, are you? He’s bad news, he’s bloody mad. Used to run dope for the IRA—’

  ‘I know. Shut up.’

  ‘Horse, even – I mean, he’s really evil—’

  ‘Shut it, I said. We are picking up a shipment from him, you help load it into this van and transfer it back here, and you do not need to know any more about it. Sit down and enjoy the ride.’

  I’d been sussing any chance of jumping out, at a roundabout even, but I was too firmly wedged. It was an unpleasant situation, like Nagasaki. I sat back miserably, caught between the gorilla’s armpits and Ahwaz’s aftershave – distilled from genuine polecats – and watched the scenery. This sounded like the hard stuff, or at least a big run of hash, and I didn’t like that one bit. I hadn’t much use for hash since the cancer scare, beyond an occasional puff when it was going around. And I wanted nothing at all to do with the hard stuff, not as pusher, certainly not as user, not even as middleman. Ahwaz had a nice line in cars already; he needed his head examined going for more, especially this way.

  Something occurred to me; from the look of things his goons thought so too. There were tensions flying about in here, none of the usual oafish backchat, and Ahwaz was visibly fretting and peering at his watch and map all the time. Well, anyone dealing with bastards like Fallon is likely to do that; nobody wants to get deeper into their clutches than they have to. Then a cold light dawned. That would be why they’d brought me along. I was expendable. Fallon could saw my head off and they’d just stand there giggling. Nice thought.

  And that was how it turned out. We weren’t really going to the seaside proper, just along the Thames Estuary, the kind of little bay smugglers had probably been passing through for hundreds of years, though Ahwaz only grunted when I said that. Moonlight filtered patchily through thin bits of cloud, and the river was a sullen black mirror. You could only see things as highlights against it, and thorn bushes and nettle patches don’t have any.

  Somewhere out there was a boat, though I never saw it, and coming ashore, barely visible in the gloom, was a very big inflatable, lifeboat style, with a very quiet outboard. It seemed to be riding extremely slowly, and as it drew in to the bleak and miserable patch of marshy shore I was currently sinking into, I realised why. It was towing something, something big and below water that dragged, and could be conveniently cut loose. And sure enough, as it reached the shallows the top of a heavy black plastic sack broke surface like the Loch Ness Monster, bulking high. Not quite high enough, though; you wouldn’t go to this much trouble for mere pot. This had to be higher-profit stuff, and that meant nasty. More crystal than a chandelier, probably.

  ‘Right,’ muttered Ahwaz, ‘you get down there and greet him. Be nice to the man, give him what he eats, but keep your eyes open. Help him get his stuff in. We’ll be right back here.’

  I swallowed. I knew what Ahwaz had in mind. Go down to the shore all open and above board, and a couple of squirts from a machine-pistol would let Stevie keep his crack and beat it, as you might say. And if you think that’s paranoid, it’s because you do not deal with the likes of Stevie.

  Certainly nobody see
med in any hurry to hop ashore. ‘Isn’t trust a wonderful bloody thing?’ I said to the darkness, and mooched down to the muddy edge, and waved my arms. There was a moment’s silence, and then the boat nudged the bank and Fallon himself jumped ashore. I knew him by sight, a lanky thug with a face like a mangy wolf and a grin without a bare ounce of Irish humour. He was looking a bit bulkier, ten to one because there was a flak jacket under his windcheater. Maybe he had some ideas about Ahwaz, too.

  ‘I’ve seen you about,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘Where’s the wog?’

  I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. ‘Back there. With company. I’m supposed to help you unload.’

  ‘OK,’ he muttered, gesturing to the other figures in the boat. ‘Faster the better. The filth have got the area lousy with radar. You come help drag this lot in.’

  A line was passed to him out of the boat, and I glimpsed something that was almost certainly an Armalite barrel. Shuddering, I hauled in the sack. Fallon left me to it, adding a laconic hand only to heave the formidable weight on to the bank, a rustling, multilayered bulk swathed in duct tape. I could feel tight lumps shifting.

  ‘Open it!’ came Ahwaz’s voice. ‘Carefully! And check what’s inside!’

  Fallon flicked a knife open. It slashed through the tape in a scalpel stroke, though I had the feeling that wasn’t what he kept it for. Inside was exactly what I expected, plastic-wrapped parcels of white crystal, twenty-five of them, each about as heavy as a sugar bag. ‘Check it!’ said Ahwaz.

  ‘You bloody check it!’

  ‘D’you want your money or not?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know horse from horseshit! I don’t do this sort of stuff!’

  Fallon sucked in his breath impatiently. ‘Sod this! I’m not hanging around for the filth to zero in on!’ He caught me by the scruff of the neck and dug the knife under my chin. ‘You check it or he can, but if I haven’t got my dosh in five minutes flat, it’s you floating face down out there – got it?’