Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold

by Stringer, Jay

  Bauser was a couple of steps up the food chain. He was one of the stoppers for the Mann brothers, and he was rarely away from his estate or one of the pubs on the outskirts of the city. My questions had got me noticed.

  I followed the messenger down past a row of kebab shops. He turned into a side street that I recognized as the back entrance to an old rock club. He accelerated to walk away faster, making it clear he’d done his job.

  I heard my name called, and Bauser stepped toward me from a doorway.

  He had a gun.

  You don’t really see guns in the city.

  They’re expensive, and the bullets are precious.

  But they’re there.

  Never let anyone tell you there isn’t a gun culture in the Midlands. They’re kept out of sight so that the police don’t have to worry about them, and the public can feel safe because the media just wants to talk about knives. But you see them. For example, I was seeing one in Bauser’s hand.

  I’d talked to armed kids when I was on the force, but my job had provided protection then. Even without an actual badge pinned to my chest, one hovered over me. But I didn’t have that protection anymore, and when I saw the silver of the gun sticking out the sleeve of his hoodie, I felt my stomach flex just a little.

  “What’s up, Bauser?”

  I’d known him a long time and watched him grow. I’d arrested him when he was barely into his teens and still going by the name Boz, a kid wanting to play at Scorsese. But now he was growing into his frame, and he knew there weren’t many black kids in Scorsese films. His broad shoulders flexed a little, a play at showing me he was a grown-up, but in his cheeks and eyes I could see he was still younger than Matt.

  Our streets are run by children.

  “You’ve been asking a lot of questions today.”

  “Not been getting any answers.”

  He eyed me for a minute.

  “You’ve been asking about our stuff. You knew it would come up the chain.”

  “I hoped it would, yes. Baus, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  He stepped in close and patted me down. He knew I wouldn’t be armed; I’d never carried on the force. If I’d wanted an illegal one after leaving, I would have gone through him. But he went through the motions.

  “Ask your questions,” he said, once he finished.

  “Has anyone had a stash stolen?”

  “All the time, man. But you mean a big stash? No.”

  “I’ve heard about a new face selling. That mean anything to you?”

  “The Polish guy? Yeah. He’s selling good shit, good price. He’s not really making any moves into serious territory, though.”

  “Is he going to?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  A new face would annoy the establishment. For all the people out there moving and selling the drugs, only a handful of people at the top take the money. And it’s an uneasy truce between them as it is.

  “Who are you asking for?” Bauser asked.

  “Myself.”

  Bauser eyed me again. His gun hand looked a little twitchy. Not the kind of nervous twitch that filled me with confidence. He would be wondering why I hadn’t gone straight to his bosses, the Mann brothers.

  “Gyp, you’ve never been interested in drugs. Why start now?”

  On the list of people I allow to call me Gyp, those with guns tend to rank quite highly. I switched up my questions.

  “Who’s working for this new guy?”

  “Say what?”

  Everyone’s an American these days.

  “Look, this new guy’s been selling in the city and pubs, right? He can’t be doing all of this by himself. If he’s not taken any territory yet, he doesn’t need a lot of people to stand and make a claim. But he’s got to have people out there using their feet, pushing for him.”

  Bauser blinked a couple of times. He didn’t say anything.

  He’d always been loyal to the Mann brothers. That had never been in question. But a blink is a blink.

  “Baus, are you switching up?”

  His body language changed, all wounded pride and anger. Defiance. His words and tone changed as well.

  “Fuck you, man, nobody questions my loyalty. I’ve always been straight.”

  His eyes told a different story.

  So whatever this new guy was, he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t trying to take away territory from the Mann brothers or Gaines. He was letting them keep the territory; he was taking the staff.

  So he was smart, but was he a killer?

  I could imagine the motive. Fucking with me would give him another way to get at the Mann brothers. Or leverage to hire me, if he was still looking for staff.

  “OK, Bauser, I’m sorry. Listen, you hear anything interesting, let me know, yeah?”

  He nodded and put his hand out for a shake.

  Respect is important with these boys; if you don’t show it, you don’t have it. And if you don’t have it, you don’t get to speak. I shook his hand. I didn’t give him any cash. Mid-level guys never touch cash, and you don’t disrespect them by offering bribes. You just make deals, always make it about business.

  “Listen, I’m serious. I’ve got a personal stake in all this right now. Any moves made by this guy, or against him, you tell your uncle Eoin.”

  He laughed, which was as close as I was going to get to a yes.

  We nodded at each other, and I walked back the way I’d come.

  I still needed to find Jelly, and I’d just thought of the best place to start.

  The Mann brothers’ newest investment was a couple of miles out of town, behind the Angel pub on Junction Road, not far from where I’d found Lee Owen. The council had built a new block of low-rise flats and made room for it by clearing away an older estate of almost exactly the same design, relocating the tenants, and smoothing out the land. They should have salted the earth too, because the minute the new blocks went up, some of the old tenants came back.

  It had been the perfect plan. The Mann brothers had owned most of the estate and sold it at a good price to the council. After the building work was done, the brothers used a front company to buy the property at a discount through an urban redevelopment scheme. The face-lift had worked, and there were young, honest families in many of the apartments, but also in the mix was a collection of stash houses, safe houses, pill presses, and grow ops. But the buildings were kept clean and the paint was fresh, so nobody seemed to mind.

  The man given the job of keeping an eye on all of this, making sure the buildings were clean and everything stayed low profile, was Bobby. He wasn’t stupid, but his brain worked at a different speed. This gave him a simple, trustworthy air and made him the perfect caretaker for a number of the Mann brothers’ estates. It also made people underestimate him, which is why he came in handy when I was investigating things. Just as Jellyfish was the life of every party, Bobby was ignored wherever he went. He could often ask questions that I couldn’t, and as we both worked for the same people, I didn’t have to pay him for it.

  I pressed the intercom buzzer for Bobby’s flat and waited. There was no answer.

  I took a look around, but the grounds were quiet. There were no kids playing outside, nobody to ask. I tried again, and when I got no answer, I tried the buzzers for other apartments that I knew Bobby looked after.

  On the fourth attempt I found him. His voice sounded electronic through the intercom. It was like talking to Stephen Hawking. It sounded like there was someone else with him, making strange noises in the background.

  “Hey, Bobby,” I said. “Can I come up?”

  He didn’t reply, but the door buzzed open, and I made my way up to his floor.

  As I came out of the stairwell, he stepped out of the first door on the left, pulling the door almost shut behind him. I heard the strange noise again, halfway between a chew and a whimper. I thought it was a dog for a second, but then I heard very human moaning.

  “Who you got in there?”r />
  He shrugged. Like I said, he’s good at being discreet.

  “Whoever it is doesn’t sound too healthy.”

  “Broken jaw,” he said. “I’m trying to feed him.”

  I could make an educated guess about who’d be locked away in a Mann brothers’ safe house with a broken jaw. It didn’t take much.

  “Lee Owen, huh?”

  Bobby shrugged again, a great non-answer.

  I wasn’t surprised that Lee hadn’t had the money on him when Gav Mann had paid him a visit last night. They’d be keeping him almost healthy until he gave up the dough.

  “Listen, have you seen Jellyfish around?”

  Bobby shook his head. “Naw. Last time I spoke to him, he was off chasing some blonde from the university. You know Jelly.”

  “Could you take a look for him? I really need to catch up with him.”

  Bobby shrugged again. This time his shoulders rolled forward in a way that said yes.

  “Have you heard of any stash grabs lately? Anything big.”

  He stared at me. I could see his brain working behind his eyes as my question worked its way into his memory and the answer worked its way back out.

  “No, not for a while.”

  “OK. I’m hearing about a Polish dealer? You know anything about him?”

  He shook his head. This time the answer hadn’t taken as long to retrieve.

  The moaning sound came from inside again, and I touched Bobby’s shoulder.

  “You better get back inside and feed the poor bastard.”

  As he turned to step back inside, I thought of something. The last thing I needed was to go back to that empty house, to sleep alone with memories and ghosts.

  “Hey, Bobby. I might need a place to crash tonight. The house is giving me the creeps. Is there a vacancy?”

  He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a keychain that was so burdened it seemed fit for a jail warden. He selected a copper-colored Yale key and a silver one of a different make. He worked them off the chain and handed them to me.

  “Number thirty-four is clean. I repainted it yesterday, so behave. The gold key is for downstairs.”

  “Cheers, Bob.”

  He nodded. He stepped back into the flat, and before the door shut, I caught the coppery smell of blood. I pushed the thoughts away. I was carrying enough around without feeling guilty for Lee Owen. He chose his fate when he stole. Then I thought of Mary and how she’d stolen as well.

  Too many questions.

  I shook my head and left.

  I was drained.

  My brain was fizzing with images and sparks, altogether too many thoughts that were failing to connect to one another. A headache was building, but my body was too tired to follow through on it.

  I’d gone the whole day without food, and as the night set in I decided to do what I always did when I was hungry: I checked in at Posada for a couple of drinks. I settled in at the bar for a while and talked to some of the regulars. Their jokes were as bad as usual, but laughing at them made me feel human again. My wires cooled down. I flicked through the day’s paper. Usual crap. The local council was going bankrupt, the police were short staffed. There was a story of a guy in Walsall who’d been lying dead in his council flat for three years before anyone noticed. You couldn’t make that shit up.

  How could you be dead for three years and nobody notice? Not even a creditor. Dark thoughts, nothing you want floating round your head unchecked.

  As I sipped at a pint of mild, not really in the mood to get drunk, a woman slid in next to me at the bar. I kept my eyes on my drink. There was no way on earth I was making the same mistake two nights running.

  After a few seconds, though, I could feel her looking at me.

  Don’t.

  Don’t.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Fuck.

  Somehow I’d known she was going to talk to me. In hindsight, I should have made the connection there and then, but at the time all I wanted to do was be left alone. I didn’t think an all-out glare would be a fair response. Nor did it seem the moment to explain that the last woman I’d chatted to in here was dead.

  So I ignored her instead.

  “Fine, then.” She ordered a glass of Coke and said to the kid behind the bar, “Grumpy here is paying.”

  For some reason I turned and half smiled at that. Maybe it was the class with which she’d handled the situation, maybe it was just stupidity.

  Leaning against the bar she looked to be a few inches shorter than me, maybe around five feet seven, and maybe a year or so older. Her nose had been broken and reset at some point when she was younger, but it suited her, added a little wear and character, which was backed up by the mischievous glint in her eye.

  “Oh, now he’s interested.”

  She turned to smile at me, and it took a few years off her age. I revised my guess and put her about five years younger than me—and very attractive once you’d looked at her a couple of times.

  And she was a prostitute.

  I felt safe in the guess. Sometimes you can just tell.

  “I’m broke,” I said and returned to my drink.

  “And tactful too,” she said.

  I smiled again. I couldn’t help it. I liked this girl, and she seemed to like me.

  Of course, liking me was her line of work.

  She looked down at the bar and smiled, just a little, like it was a game. Mary had pulled the same look. Like she’d been counting in her head how long it would be before my next move.

  But this girl didn’t wait for that move.

  “Don’t know about you,” she said. “But I’m tired and worn out. I’ve had a crap day, and nobody seems interested in me when they can get a younger model. I could do with a cheap laugh.”

  I held my hand out, and she took it.

  I used the keys Bobby had given me to let us into flat number 34. It was modern and tidy and lacked any kind of character. It had a small hallway that opened onto a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room. The living room had a small kitchen area in an alcove. The walls had just been painted, as Bobby had said, over the plaster. There were marks on the wall in the hallways, dents where something heavy had hit. The whole place smelled too clean, as if someone had worked hard at disinfecting and covering bad odors. I didn’t want to think why.

  I sat down awkwardly on the sofa and thought, Yes, you’re really doing this, and she is really here. “So what do we do now?”

  “You need it explained?” She smiled, but there was a sad, distracted look in her eyes that I would have missed if it wasn’t part of what was attractive about her.

  “Well, no, I just…ah…I’m not used to this.”

  “Imagine I’m just a girl you picked up in a bar.”

  “God no, don’t go there.” I wanted to think about anything but picking up girls at bars. Because that meant thinking about Mary.

  “OK. Normal small talk it is. Where do you like to go?”

  A smile played across my face as I thought of a list. This was working. I’d spent at least a few minutes already pretending that I hadn’t found a dead girl in my house that morning.

  “Films,” I said. “I love the cinema, but that’s never very good for dates because you can’t talk. It’s not a good thing.”

  “You think? I always liked the cinema for a first date; it replaced the awkward silences with explosions and maybe even dinosaurs. Then you could talk about the film afterward, and you’d have some kind of common ground to base a conversation on, to break the ice.”

  “You know, I never thought of it that way before.”

  “What’s your favorite movie?”

  “Funny, I have no idea. I mean, I love a lot of movies, but I’ve never thought of what my all-time favorite would be.”

  “You strike me as a French Connection kind of guy. I bet you love that movie.”

  “You’re not wrong, I do.”

  “You’ve got that harried look, like the guy in it, the younger one.
”

  “Roy Scheider,” I said. “He was in Jaws too.”

  “You know his name?” She laughed. “He looked different then, though. But in The French Connection? Totally looks like you.”

  That wasn’t a look I’d choose, but it was better than Gene Hackman.

  I was warming to movie chat now. “Or maybe something really old with one of those old-time actresses in it. Bacall, someone like that.”

  “Yeah, those are great movies. The women are the only people who ever really know what is going on.”

  “How about you?”

  “I never know what’s going on,” she said.

  “No, what’s your favorite movie?”

  She closed her eyes and beamed.

  “Easy. Big Trouble in Little China. It’s just so much fun. When Kurt Russell says, ‘How’d you get up there,’ and the old guy shouts down, ‘Wasn’t easy.’ Makes me laugh every time.”

  And just like that, we knew each other and we had sex.

  And it was good. It was easy and functional, and we both seemed to enjoy it. It was sober sex, something I’m not so used to. We smiled as we went. We didn’t make too many mistakes. We didn’t overdo the noise or hurry through it. I relaxed into my orgasm, and she let out a contented groan, but then I’m sure she always seemed to enjoy it.

  I lay back and thought I might actually sleep, but my stomach wouldn’t let me be. It wanted actual food, which was just inconvenient.

  “How about I buy us some food and a decent drink?”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  Before I stood up, I took some cash out of my wallet and left it on the side table for her. I’d never paid a prostitute before and didn’t know the polite way to discuss price, but I figured she’d tell me if it wasn’t enough.

  I shopped at the all-night garage down the road and returned to cook a meal fit for royalty. I assume kings and queens enjoy a fry up as much as the rest of us. I cooked us a plate full of chips, bacon, and beans and my famous scrambled eggs.

  I tried to pour her a drink, but all she wanted was coffee, so I made up for it with a large whiskey for myself.