by Ted Lewis
“Is that what you really think?” he says.
“Well,” I say, “look at it this way. Jimmy was at Norwood. He was at Walthamstow. He was at Ealing. He was at
Finsbury Park. Granted that wasn’t one of ours but it’s another job. He was at Luton and he was at Dulwich and we all know what happened there.”
There is more silence and so I go on.
“At a rough calculation, I make it that Jimmy has done about a million and a half quids’ worth of overtime for us over the last six or seven years. A real little cornerstone to the firm he’s been. A right sweet little catch he’d make for some rising star in West End Central.”
“Yes, but Jack,” Gerald says, “it’s Finbow, for fuck’s sake. Herbert fucking Finbow.”
“If it was Finbow that plucked Jimmy, he’d have phoned by now. And in any case Jimmy’s been put out of the way. Finbow’d never do that. Unless Finbow’s had the operation.”
Gerald snorts. “Oh, yes, and I’m a fucking fairy.”
I shrug again.
“Why don’t we get in touch with Finbow and find out?” Les asks, as if I should have done it already.
“If it’s Finbow, there’s no point,” I say wearily. “If it’s not Finbow, there’s still no point. Can’t you see what I’m trying to say? Jimmy’s being done proper. So whoever’s doing him we can’t get to. They’re sticking it on him.
And because they’re sticking it on him they’ve made
him some kind of offer so that it looks good for him to stick it on us.”
“Yeah, but look,” Gerald says, “supposing he gets offered fifteen instead of twenty-five. Christ, that’s not big enough for him to drop in everybody else.”
“You’ve got more faith in Jimmy Swann than his mother ever had,” I tell Gerald.
Les gets up from the edge of the desk and walks over to the drinks cabinet.
“Anyhow,” he says, “even if he took the ten years’ difference he’d know we’d get him fixed on the inside. And Jimmy never was happy in a brace-up.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Gerald says. “He wouldn’t have the bleeding stomach for it.”
“Unless,” I tell them, “they’re fixing it so nobody can get to him, ever.”
“But why would they?” Gerald says. “What’s the point? Christ, if Jimmy spills, half the population of Inner London’d be standing side by side in the fucking dock and half of Old Bill’s mob as well. Jesus, they’re understrength as it is without putting their own boys away.”
“We don’t know what the point is, do we?” I say. “That’s just it. We don’t know what’s going on.”
“I thought that’s what we paid Cross for,” Les says, again looking at me as if I was to blame for Cross’s lack of material.
“If Jimmy’s turned Queen’s evidence then Cross will be sending his information in the other direction from now on,” I say.
After a while Gerald says, “If Jimmy’s done a deal he must have given them something already.”
“That’s right.”
“So if it’s like you think it is then why hasn’t anybody been picked up yet?”
I shrug. “Depends. If they want everybody Jimmy’s worked with for the last half-dozen years, they want them all at once. They don’t want anybody clearing out at the first arrest.”
“But it still doesn’t mean we can go on our holidays before we get to Jimmy,” Les says, rattling the ice cubes in his drink. “And if you’re right, then of course we’ve got to get to him, haven’t you, Jack?”
I’m expecting that one so I say, “Sure. That’s right. If you’ve got one of those diaries with tube maps on the back then I’ll start right away. If I go through the alphabet I’ll be at Wembly about 1980.”
“We pay you,” Gerald says. “You find him. I mean you haven’t tried Finbow yet. Or Mallory. Christ, what about Mallory? Why the fuck hasn’t he been in touch? It was yesterday. Bleeding yesterday.”
I look at Les and Les looks at me. Gerald looks at both of us.
“What?” he says. So I have to spell it to him.
“If Mallory hasn’t been in touch then he knows what’s going on. So he won’t exactly be sitting behind his desk waiting for us to get in touch with him.”
Gerald stands up and walks a few paces then turns back and sits down again. His arse on the leather makes a noise like a bad diver hitting the surface of the water.
“So where are you going to start?” he says.
I shrug and get up.
“May as well start with the obvious,” I say. “At least that way we’ll make sure it’s the way it looks.”
Les downs his drink and says, “Maybe, but don’t forget Swann’s got to be found this week. Next week’s too late. And when he’s found, no mistakes.”
I walk over to the door and open it and before I close it behind me I say to Les, “I don’t make mistakes. Like, for instance, employing Jimmy Swann in the first place.”
--
Walter
The ringing tone whirrs in my ear for a long time before the receiver is lifted at the other end. There is no greeting so I say, “My name is Eamonn Andrews and this is your life.”
There is a sigh of relief and Tommy says, “It’s always nice to hear your voice on this number, Jack.”
“Seeing as I’m the only one who has that number.”
“Something like that.”
I shake a cigarette from my pocket and say, “You doing anything tonight?”
“Yeah, I was taking the old lady down Ernie’s.”
“Not any more you’re not.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re going to look for Jimmy Swann before he coughs so big you’ll never be taking your old lady down Ernie’s or nowhere again.”
There is a long silence. Tommy knows better than
Gerald and Les to worry his head about whether I’m wrong or not so he says to me, “What do you want?”
“I want you to talk to some of Jimmy’s crowd and I want at least one of them to have something interesting to say to you. If you want some extra muscle get hold of Mickey and Del but make sure they’re sweetened up. The less that gets around the better.”
“I won’t need them,” Tommy says. “This kind of thing boils me up to the value of three.”
“Yes. And if you do find him, leave enough of him for me. I want to know who he’s dealing with.”
“I’ll try. I’ll be phoning you.”
The line goes dead.
I’m back at the flat sitting on the edge of my unmade bed with the smell of the sheets reminding me of Audrey. An hour ago I got on to Con McCarty to go down to Richmond and have a look at Mallory’s house and I’m waiting for his call.
I get up and pour a drink and think about the time at Dulwich. After that one Gerald and Les should never have touched Jimmy again, but no, they said he’s good, he knows his stuff, that was an accident, happen to anybody. Sure it was an accident, a Securicor guard lying in the gutter with a hole in his stomach, hands grabbing at the hole trying to keep himself together, and Tony Warmby frozen with the pump action still smoking and Jimmy who’d screamed at Tony to shoot now screaming at him to move, for fuck’s sake move, get in the fucking car, and then putting his foot hard down and taking off half on the pavement and leaving Tony there to cop for it. Sure it had been an accident. After all, as Gerald and Les had said, we’d got away with it, hadn’t we, we’d got the score, and Tony hadn’t grassed and the Securicor man hadn’t snuffed it. And Tony’s old lady’d got his share, hadn’t she? Didn’t work out too bad at all. Except someone like Tony who would never grass was on fifteen to twenty and the person who’d virtually put him away was now grassing the rest of us.
The phone rings and it’s Con.
“Gone away,” he says. “Gone away all neat and ti
dy.”
“You got in?”
“Yeah, I got in all right. For someone who associates with society’s antisocial elements he isn’t very burglarproof.”
“And?”
“The works. Suits, socks, papers—you name it. Even the fridge was clear. It wasn’t what you’d call a hasty decision.”
“And nothing to say where to?”
“What do you think?”
“All right,” I say. “I’m going over to Maurice’s now. I’ve got Tommy Gardner looking into Jimmy’s friends so you may as well go over to Jimmy’s place and see what you can turn up there. Which of course will be fuck all. But it has to be done.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. Come to Maurice’s and if I’m not there I’ll be back at the club.”
Con puts down the receiver and I put on my jacket and go out of the flat and get a taxi over to Maurice’s.
I walk down the basement steps and ring the bell and the curtain at the window by the side of the door moves slightly and then a minute later the door is opened by a tall blond Adonis with a Kirk Douglas hairstyle.
“Evening, Mr. Carter,” he says.
“Evening, Leo. Who’s in?”
“The usual slags. The commoners. Nothing nice comes in till after midnight, not these days.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Not unless you’ve been keeping something from me.” Leo unlocks the inner door and lets me into Maurice’s room.
The lighting is predominantly blush pink, the wallpaper Indian Restaurant relief. There is a small bar fitted under a Moroccan arch. There are a dozen or so small round tables and towards the back of the room there is another, larger Moroccan arch and beyond this arch there are four booth seats upholstered in red leatherette and this is where Maurice holds court, but before I go over and pay my respects I make my way to the bar. The boys are three-deep at the bar, as if they’re huddling together for warmth, heads flicking this way and that like bantams on the lookout for corn, all the different shades of rinses as one under the sugary lighting, chained jewelry dulled by the atmosphere, buttocks and profiles just that little bit smoother in the dimness. And of course a straight arrival like myself causes the heads to flick and the lips to flutter even more. The whole place smells like the inside of a handbag. I manage to reach the bar without too much friction and I tell the drag barman to give me a vodka and tonic and while he’s getting it for me I look in the mirror behind the bar and in the mirror is the reflection of Peter the Dutchman.
“Buy us a drink, Jack?”
The reflection has dyed blond hair and purple tinted glasses. It’s wearing a coffee-coloured suit and a wide brown tie on a pink shirt. It’s smiling a great ice-cream smile using all the muscles you use for that kind of smile, but I know exactly what’s going on behind the purple tints. The barman waits for me to give him the nod and when eventually I do the reflection orders Campari, and sits down on the next stool but one.
“Haven’t changed a bit, Jack,” Peter says. And I say, “Who, Peter? You or me?” Peter the Dutchman giggles and says, “I’ll never change, you know that.”
No, I think, you’ll never change; you’ll always be the sadistic puff you always were. Peter’s the kind of queer who’s not content with getting his pleasure with the other boys; he has to take it out on the girls as well. Looking at him, I remember a little croupier girl he took home once. I saw her a couple of days afterwards, when she’d managed to summon up the courage to come to the club to pick up her money, because there was no way anybody marked like she was going to sit at a table and encourage the customers to part with their money. I remember her well. She’d even had to buy herself a wig because Peter had cut most of her hair off for her. But thank Christ I don’t have to have much contact with him. He’s a specialist but he won’t be doing any business with our firm as long as I’m working for it. He’s just done remission on five for going over the top with someone who got in his way, and with a bit of luck the next tickle he goes on he’ll do the same, and then it’ll be more than five he’ll be out of the way.
“Well,” I say to him, “if you ever do change, don’t waste your money on sending me a telegram.”
Then Maurice sweeps over and leads me across to his alcove, ordering my drink on the move, and I have to put up with Maurice’s brand of chitchat.
While I’m going through this routine with Maurice there’s a commotion behind us and I turn round to see that the door has just opened and let in Walter and Eddie Coleman and their wives, pissed up to their gills and all set to make their collective presence felt on the conventions of Maurice’s Club.
The Colemans, so to speak, are in the same line of
businesses as Gerald and Les. That is to say, they run clubs and various other legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses, but their real activity is directed towards the payrolls and the bullion and the banks and the import and export business. The only thing they don’t deal in on the scale of Gerald and Les is vice, and that’s because their patch is east and the Fletchers’ is west, and although they make a few bob out of it, the real money is in the west, and Gerald and Les have the west wrapped up. The Colemans would never attempt to upset that applecart, and at the same time it gets up their noses that Gerald and Les have a few vice strongholds in their territory and there’s sod all they can do about it, without starting the kind of aggro we can all do without.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” says Maurice, getting up and catching his medallion on the edge of the booth’s narrow table. “All we need. The royal family.”
He unhooks himself and gets to Walter and his crowd before they can start shoving their way through to the bar. He gives them his spiel about how nice it is to see them and how it’s been such a long time and why don’t they come and join him in the booth while Derek gets them all a drink and it’s not until Walter is halfway across the floor that he sees that I’m there, watching his progress.
Walter stops in his tracks and gives me his look and then he says to his missus, “Hear, Maur, I told you them stories was right. Jack Carter’s gone butch, whatever you used
to say.”
Maureen screeches her head off and repeats the very funny joke to Eddie’s wife, who finds it even funnier than she did.
“Hello, Walter,” I say. “Seeing where your boys go on their night off?”
He laughs at that but he finds it as funny as I found his remark.
The four of them struggle into the booth, Walter and Maureen with their backs against the wall, Eddie and his wife, Shirley, on the low stools opposite them.
Five seconds after they’ve sat down Walter says, “All right, then, where’s the fucking drinks?”
“Fucking place this is,” says Eddie, lighting the wrong end of his cigarette.
“Coming, coming,” Maurice shouts from beyond the throng at the bar.
“That’ll be the day,” Maureen says and they all fall about laughing again. Maurice ponces over again and apologises for the poor service and Walter blows him a kiss and there’s more laughter.
Then Walter focuses on me again and says, “So how’s your governors keeping then?”
“Nice and fat, like you two,” I tell him. “It’s only people like me that keep slim.”
“Up the bleeding workers,” Maureen says, crossing her legs so you can see right up to the maker’s name.
“No good flashing in here, darling,” Walter says. “The dirty looks won’t be the kind you’re wanting.”
“Don’t you fucking believe it,” Maureen says and swivels round on her seat and places her elbows on the table behind her and lifts her legs in the air and opens them wide. Shirley nearly pees herself and the crowd at the bar all have heart attacks.
“Here, you fucking ponces, don’t you know it’s rude to ignore a lady when she winks at you?”
This
is too much for Shirley who slides onto her side on the booth seat.
Walter spins Maureen round in her seat and says, “All right, keep them on. We’ve all seen it before.”
“Not bloody lately you haven’t.”
“I’m the only one then. I’m telling you. Pack it in.”
Maureen starts swearing at him but she’s interrupted by Maurice arriving with the drinks.
“That slag behind the bar,” Maurice says, dishing out. “She’ll have to bleeding go.”
Walter slides up the seat towards me a bit and returns to the welfare of Gerald and Les.
“So they’re all right, are they? Prospering?”
I shrug. “I get my wages. That’s all I care about.”
“Wages.” Walter throws his head back and laughs. “Wages. The jobs you’ve been on.”
“What jobs would they be, Walter?”
“Never mind. So long as you’re happy.”
I have a few thoughts whether to suss Walter as to whether he’s got wind of Jimmy. He probably has, but there’s no reason why he should give me a helpful answer. The Colemans and the Fletchers are like steak and porridge. The only reason the four of them are still walking this earth is that they’re so shit scared of each other they’ve never had the nerve for a face-up. They leave that kind of thing to people like me; every now and again Gerald and Les, for some reason, real or imaginary, will send me round to have a look at one of Walter’s boys and every now and again some of Walter’s boys do the same in our patch. It keeps the four of them happy and chuffed with the publicity the papers give their apparent hardness. Not that they’re soft. They wouldn’t be the Fletchers and the Colemans if they were. It’s just that they’ve built up their legends so strong that they don’t want to put the reality to the test. So they try and fuck each other in every other way they can think of.
“Only one thing, though,” Walter says. “I hope you never wish you hadn’t turned me down.”
“Hello, what’s this?” says Maurice, who’s adopted the role of magnanimous old queen by drawing up a stool between Maureen and Shirley and draping his flowered arms round their shoulders. “Something I haven’t heard about?”
