The Last Card

by Kolton Lee

  With Eric and Hodges still behind him, Gavin stepped up to the entrance to the club. They passed through a short passageway that opened out into the body of the club. There was a stage at one end, a bar that ran the length of one wall, and a dance floor which took up half of the area in front of the stage. The other half of the area was filled with tables and chairs for the enjoyment of those who opted to chance the overpriced pleasures of ‘Roxy’s’ kitchen.

  The club was winding down and a number of the well muscled, handsome men behind the bar lounged, counting the minutes until the end of the night; similarly, the ‘waitresses’ – tall, outrageously dressed transvestites – were waiting for the night to end.

  While Eric and Hodges sat at the bar and ordered drinks, Gavin made his way round the side. He was about to go through a door leading upstairs but he paused. Nina, the house singer with the unnaturally clear, porcelain skin, mounted the stage to sing her last song for the night. Nina was the only thing that gave ‘Roxy’s’ a semblance of class. Statuesque in build and poise, she looked good. She was wearing a long, tight evening dress that glistened under the small spotlight. Without any introduction she unhooked the microphone from its stand, sat on the stool that was placed before it and began a melancholy, sentimental torch song. The few clubbers who were still around knew enough to pay attention because although Nina wasn’t a great singer she wasn’t bad. She exuded sex appeal and she knew how to invest a song with emotion.

  But Gavin had pressing business. He moved on, disappearing through the door next to the bar, passing through a narrow hallway, and climbed the stairs at the end. He walked with a heavy tread. As he neared the top he met four bovine-looking toughs sitting and standing, looking awkward. It was one thing about working for White Alan that he’d never entirely accustomed himself to: the number of moronic-looking toughs – knuckle boys he called them – who were constantly hanging around waiting to be told what to do. As Gavin approached these particular four, their awkwardness and unease became more apparent. Nina’s torrid song of love could still be heard, just, floating up from the stage. Over this however, Gavin became aware of muffled, rhythmic grunts.

  At the top of the stairs now, Gavin could hear them more distinctly. They were coming from White Alan’s office, a short landing away. Gavin looked round at the four men with raised eyebrows. What was going on? The muffled grunts were louder now, bestial. The four men looked nervously back at him. Whatever shabby existence had spat out these four specimens of manhood, it had not prepared them for the uninhibited gruntings now emanating from behind White Alan’s door. Gavin, however, was of a different ilk. He stepped forward boldly and knocked on the said door. There was no answer.

  Gavin cautiously opened the door the office. The grunts were now loud and clear. The room was dark. As Gavin’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, odd things caught his attention: the light from the door falling on the black and white photograph on the wall of White Alan and his slightly younger brother, Paul. Both stood on either side of a punch bag in a gymnasium. On a shelf beneath that was a small, lead, statue of a laughing circus clown, arms spread, riding a one wheeled cycle. Gavin had never noticed that before.

  The grunting continued. It was at the end of the office, deep in shadow. As Gavin’s eyes adjusted he soon had a pretty good view of what was going on. It was White Alan, standing behind a figure lying face down, bent over Alan’s desk. The person had their pants down, round their ankles. Alan stood behind them, thrusting his groin in and out, into their arse. The guttural, animalistic grunting came from the throat of White Alan. It was now clear to Gavin that they were expressions of pleasure.

  Gavin stood for a moment, transfixed. What to do? Did Alan know he was there? Should he interrupt? While Gavin pondered his next move, the decision was taken away from him. One of the knuckle-boys, displaying a discretion and sensitivity that Gavin would never have given them credit for, gently closed the door behind him. Gavin was shut in. And almost as though to emphasise his predicament White Alan suddenly began grunting and thrusting more feverishly now, grunting and thrusting, grunting and thrusting, pounding away into the figure’s arse. With one last thrust and a last extended growl, it was over. White Alan stepped back. Breathing heavily, he zipped up his fly.

  Without turning he said, ‘Don’t you ever knock?’ He said it breathlessly but without embarrassment. He turned, flicking on a desk light. The figure who had just been rhythmically violated groaned quietly but made no move to rise, remaining bent over the desk. White Alan now sat on the desk. He was wearing his customary white suit, and he had on a white shirt with ruffles down the front and at the cuffs. His face glowed from his recent efforts.

  ‘I did,’ said Gavin. He stepped further into the office, closer to the figure over the table. Gavin was seeing something new about White Alan and he could feel horror, revulsion and fear welling up inside his stomach. The figure moved now, rising, turning over. It was a man. His face bashed and bloodied. He was dazed, disoriented. He staggered as he tried to prop himself up on one arm.

  ‘Don’t answer back, Gavin, I don’t like it. And get him out of here.’ Gavin stepped quickly back to the door and opened it a fraction. The four men outside had edged closer to the door. As Gavin opened it they jumped back. Gavin beckoned two of them in.

  ‘He’s ready to go.’ Two of the four men silently entered and, instinctively averting their eyes from both Gavin and Alan, each took an arm of the man on the desk, hoisted him up and dragged him out. It was only now, as he was being dragged out, that Gavin recognised him: a troublesome nightclub owner who, only two days earlier, had crossed Alan for the third time in the last two months. He’d been late with a payment.

  Once the man was outside Gavin closed the door behind him. He could feel his head beginning to pound again. Alan now bounced off the desk, walked around it and sat in his executive chair. Before he spoke he opened one of the desk drawers, pulled out a small canister and sprayed a little breath-freshener into his mouth. He then tossed the canister back into the drawer, slammed it shut, ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his nose loudly. Only then did he look up at Gavin.

  ‘What’s so urgent?’ He drummed his hands on the desk. Like a man who had just had a refreshing shower.

  ‘We had trouble from the new shebeen tonight, Alan.’ Gavin worked hard at keeping his voice steady. The drumming stopped. ‘I need to go back with some more of the boys.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ Alan looked back at Gavin, surprise replacing contentment.

  ‘They wouldn’t pay.’

  ‘They wouldn’t pay? They wouldn’t fucking pay?’ Gavin looked at his boss. This he could understand. Alan was angry. Soon he would be fuming, given the mood he seemed to be in these days. That other thing, the thing he’d witnessed earlier when he came in, that, he didn’t like. In fact, for the first time in the three years that he’d had worked with White Alan … Gavin was frightened.

  5.

  Nina finished her last song for the night, an old one from the mid 90s – Des’ree’s ‘You Gotta Be’. Nina wasn’t a great fan of all that gospel stuff that came with Des’ree but you couldn’t argue with her voice: the woman could sing. And Nina had always found the lyrics uplifting. That’s why she always chose to make this the song that she performed at the end of the night – for all the women out there.

  Nina took her bow and the applause from the sparse crowd was enthusiastic. With a gracious smile she left the stage and trod delicately over to the bar. She lifted the bottom of her dress so she could sit on one of the bar stools. As she sat down loud, pumping disco music started up. Nina turned to survey the room. The gracious smile she had beamed down to her audience at the end of her song was now replaced with a surly look. She glanced quickly at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Two small, vertical lines appeared in her otherwise smooth forehead, just above her eyebrows. They always appeared when Nina had this particular expression on her face and she always had this particular expression on
her face when she was unhappy. Those two lines had become almost constant companions over the last month or so. When she first noticed them she tried to smooth them out by using one hand to pull the skin between her eyebrows to the left and the other hand pulling the skin to the right. It didn’t work. As soon as she stopped pulling the two small, vertical lines reappeared. This made her more surly. The lines became deeper. She had decided the only way to stop these two small, vertical lines appearing in her forehead was to stop wearing a surly expression. She had to smile more. But now, as she forgot this resolution and wore the surly expression, she turned back to look round the room.

  ‘Every time, Nina. You bring tears to my eyes.’ Tony, the barman, was a nice guy. He was from Nigeria, very dark skinned, good body … and as camp as a Spanish bullfighter.

  ‘Bring tears to my eyes, Tony, and fix me the usual. A double, please.’ As she ordered her drink, White Alan, with Gavin following behind, made his way over.

  ‘It’s off tonight, Nina. I’ve got business, I’ve got to go home.’ White Alan often dispensed with the formalities of greetings these days. And if Nina had thought carefully about how this made her feel, she would have realised that this was one of the main reasons why she had two small, vertical lines furrowing the smooth, clear skin of her forehead.

  ‘But what about the party at Janine’s?’

  ‘I’ve got to work, I’ve …’

  ‘But I want to go to the party! It was her first night on stage tonight and, and …’ Nina lapsed into silence. The look Alan now gave her was encouragement to nothing less.

  ‘I’ll take you home.’ Now that he had silence from Nina and had told her of her new arrangements, he turned to Gavin.

  ‘What did Dunstan say when he rang?’

  ‘He said he had a problem with Paul; he wants to deliver directly to you this month.’

  ‘Coont!’ Alan’s expletive made Nina flinch. She knew tonight was not going to be a good one.

  ‘And what does Paul say?’ Alan continued.

  ‘He says it’s a local problem. He can handle it.’

  Alan looked at Gavin as though he was the cunt and it was him who was saying he could handle it.

  ‘He can handle “it”? But he didn’t say what “it” was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right! Ring him back and tell him his big brother wants to know what the foock is going on! I’m sick of this shit!’ Tony returned with Nina’s double Tanqueray and tonic. Alan swept it from the bar and took a big gulp. He spluttered into his hand and glared at Tony.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Alan slammed the glass on to the bar. Tony stepped forward and took it from Alan’s hand. He bent down smelling the remaining contents of the glass as though he, Tony, had not just poured the drink himself. Sixty seconds later, having smelt and examined the glass and its contents in minute detail, he looked nervously over at Alan.

  ‘Smells like, like gin and tonic to me.’

  ‘So why are you giving me a gin and tonic when you know I only drink dry Martinis?’

  ‘Er … I wasn’t, I wasn’t giving it to …’

  ‘Forget it! You’re fired! I can’t stand this foocking incompetence all around me! Foock off!’

  ‘What? Alan, I wasn’t, I didn’t …’

  ‘You’re fired! Go! Gone! You’re history!’ Without another word Tony turned and left the bar area. Nina stole a glance at Gavin. He caught the look but made a point of not holding it for more than one, maybe two nanoseconds.

  Alan suddenly remembered something. ‘Give me two minutes, Nina.’ And he too left, round the side of the bar and back up the stairs. Nina watched him leave.

  ‘What’s his problem now?!’ She spat the words out as she looked up at Gavin. She didn’t like Gavin – he walked around as though he had a poker up his arse. The kind of pompous idiot who thought he was better than everybody else. She certainly couldn’t trust him, but the way she was feeling right this minute she had to let her feelings out to someone. Gavin paused before he spoke, weighing his words carefully.

  ‘You know what I think? I think he’s going through a mid-life crisis.’

  ‘So see a therapist!’

  ‘That’s not exactly his style.’

  ‘Can’t you make it his style? You’re his batman!’ As soon as she’d said it Nina knew she’d said too much, but Alan was making her feel more and more uneasy these days. She had no time for Gavin’s delicate sensibilities. Gavin looked at her coldly.

  ‘He has his own style.’ Nina waved to another barman, gesturing for him to fix her another drink. Gavin again paused before he continued. ‘Alan carried out his threat.’

  ‘Oh, God, no!’ Nina’s hand flew to her mouth a look of horror on her face.

  ‘The night club owner? He …’ Gavin nodded. ‘Sweet, Jesus!’ Nina leant over the bar to where one of the barmen had left a packet of cigarettes. Fingers outstretched, she lifted one out. She put it in her mouth and tried to light it with a book of matches from the ashtray in front of her. Her hand shook so badly she couldn’t do it. Gavin carefully took the matches from her and lit the cigarette.

  ‘I thought you stopped smoking?’

  ‘I did.’

  Gavin watched her inhale hungrily and then he continued. ‘It gets worse. Paul went cocaine crazy, then went AWOL. Or some other madness. Now there’s mutiny amongst the ranks; some kind of trouble happening back in Hackney.’ Nina looked at him without comprehension.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think it’s all getting too much for Alan. I think he might be looking for a way out.’

  ‘He could just leave, couldn’t he? He’s got enough money!’

  ‘Has he? How much is enough?’ Before Nina could even begin to answer that one Gavin spoke up again. ‘I think Alan’s looking for a big pay-day. I would be if I were him. And there’s too much stuff going on right now to walk away. Like the fact that the man that runs the new shebeen on Duck Lane, he wouldn’t pay up.’

  Nina pulled hard on her cigarette. ‘Does he know who he’s up against?’

  Gavin gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘I suspect not.’

  Nina’s drink arrived, she took a big swallow. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling something very bad is going to happen.’ She said the words softly, without inflection, not expecting an answer from Gavin.

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’ Her surprise at his response prompted her to go further than she probably should have.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of this scene, Gavin. I can feel it, something is very wrong here.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ***

  Nina and White Alan made their exit from the club. They left Walker’s Court and turned right on to Brewer Street. Alan’s white Rolls Royce was parked nearby. The casually dressed Jimmy, White Alan’s driver, spotted them, stepped out of the car and nipped round to the rear passenger door to let them into the veritable landscape of white of the Rolls Royce interior.

  Nina ensconced herself on the back seat, as far away from White Alan as she could possibly squeeze herself.

  ‘Where to, Mr. Akers?’ Jimmy was one of a dying breed: a chirpy cockney, satisfied with his lot in life, with no desire to become a TV presenter or a singer or even an actor. As he looked in the rear view mirror, his eyes meeting Nina’s.

  Nina turned away, peering out of the window, not looking at anything in particular. Alan had raped a man that evening – raped! It sent waves of horror and revulsion through her that she did not know how to begin to deal with. Why had he chosen this particularly violent way to teach the man a lesson?

  As the Rolls Royce eased its way through the West End, all kinds of questions were circling in Nina’s mind. And as they circled ever more furiously, her body language became more and more distant. She squeezed herself further into the corner of the car. Alan looked across the snowy expanse of the back seat, eyeing Nina’s back.

  ‘Better make it Holland Park first, Jimmy, then up to Hampstead.’ Holland
Park was where Nina lived. In a mews house rented by Alan. Alan lived in a sumptuous house in Hampstead village.

  Nina stared fixedly out of her window. Every so often Alan turned to her, about to speak, but then thought better of it and turned away. To distract himself he removed a small canister of breath freshener, sprayed it twice into his mouth and then slipped it back in his pocket. While Nina maintained her frigid silence, Alan’s hand then took on a life of its own. It made its way across the back seat of the car and an errant finger tickled the edges of Nina’s coat. No response. The hand took this as encouragement and made its way round the coat and on to a thigh. The thigh flinched at the touch and the hand scurried hurriedly back from whence it came.

  White Alan looked casually ahead of him. Nina again caught Jimmy’s eyes watching them via the rear view mirror. Jimmy quickly flicked his eyes back to the road ahead. White Alan now touched Nina’s arm.

  ‘Why don’t you stay with me tonight?’

  ‘I’m tired, Alan. I think … I’d rather go home.’

  Nina had been hoping against hope that tonight of all nights, Alan would not ask her back to his place. They had been together for four and a half years. Early in their relationship Alan had had a live-in girlfriend, Zoe, and Nina had insisted that he had paid for Nina to have her own place in Holland Park. Now that Zoe was history Nina had continually resisted Alan’s attempts to have her move in with him. She did not intend to give up her independence lightly, small though it was. Tonight however, she knew that if she turned Alan down in a way that offended his masculinity, as a matter of principle he would insist that she return with him to Hampstead. Consequently, she had tried to add a note of disappointment to her refusal. Apparently, she hadn’t tried hard enough.