by Ted Lewis
I walk over to him and sit next to him on the bed and take hold of the front of his coat.
“Now then,” I say to him. “What are you talking about?”
He starts to shake his head and I start to shake the rest of him.
“What she was offered,” I say to him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Mallory raises his arms and gently places his hands on mine and the way he does it causes me to stop shaking him and let go. Beyond his shoulder I can see that although Con is still dabbing away at Lesley’s face he’s focusing his concentration on Mallory and myself. Mallory passes a hand across his eyes and then slowly heaves himself up off the bed and walks out of the bedroom and then comes back carrying his briefcase. He stops in front of me and opens the case and takes out a Manila file tied up with crimson ribbon. He puts the case down on the bed and unties the crimson ribbon and riffles through the file until he finds a small white letter-size envelope. He looks at it for a moment and then he throws it onto the bed. I stretch out my hand and pick up the envelope. It isn’t sealed so I flick open the flap and take out the contents of the envelope.
There are about a dozen postcard-size photographs and a cellophane packet containing some negatives. I look at the photographs. They are photographs of a man and a woman and they are doing all sorts of imaginative things to one another. For instance, in one photograph the girl is lying on a bed and has her wrists handcuffed together and the man, still fully dressed, is taking her clothes off, but not in the usual way; the clothes are being torn to shreds. Perhaps the man in the photograph is in a hurry. In another of the photographs the man is pushing the girl’s face down into the quilt and in his free hand he is holding a thin cane with which he is beating the girl’s bottom. And in another photograph the girl is kneeling on the floor, her hands now cuffed behind her back, and the man is sitting on the bed and grasping bunches of the girl’s hair and pulling her down on him. The photographs are literally six of one and half a dozen of the other because half of them involve a reversal of roles in which the girl has the cane and the man is wearing the handcuffs and it is the girl who is pulling off the man’s clothes, not tearing them, of course, because the suit is an expensive one and the shirt is handmade. And as I go through the photographs I am struck by my familiarity with the man and the woman and with their surroundings. Which is not surprising, as the bed I’m sitting on features prominently in most of the photographs and the girl is at present having her face repaired by Con McCarty.
Mallory sits down beside me on the bed.
“Walter’s insurance,” he says. “They had me set it up. The girl, this place. Everything.”
Con stands up and walks round to our side of the bed.
“What’s going on?” he says.
I look up at Con and then I hand him the photographs. He glances at the first one and then his eyelids flicker and he looks at me for a moment then moves on to the next photograph.
Mallory says, “You know what Walter’s like. He wanted to have the edge. He was going to let him see the prints after Christmas, to let him know there was never any point in crossing Walter and Eddie at a later date.”
While Mallory’s talking Con begins to laugh, quietly at first, but the further he gets through the photographs the louder his laugh becomes and his laughter attracts Peter who appears in the doorway, holding his drink. Con continues laughing and Peter drifts over from the doorway and looks over Con’s shoulder and then, like Con did, he shoots a quick glance at me and then maneuvers himself into a better position to see the photographs. Eventually Con stops laughing long enough for him to get some words out.
“Jesus Christ,” he says. “What was it I said the other night? You can walk on the water?”
“I don’t get it,” Peter says, taking the pictures from Con. “This is—”
“We know,” I tell him. “We fucking know.”
“Jack the fucking Lad. All the time we’ve been charging all over the place and it was here. Right here.”
“We didn’t know that, did we?”
“Oh no, we didn’t know that, did we. But you’re Jack Carter, aren’t you? And Jack Carter knows every fucking think there is to know, doesn’t he? Or so he’s always saying.”
“Shut it.”
“And the other thing, what was it? We’ll be safe here. He won’t be back. Supposing he’d come back for another session? Jesus fucking Christ.”
“All right. I know. Now shut it.”
“Supposing she’d shopped us? Supposing she’d given us to him?”
“Well, she didn’t get the chance, did she? And besides, she didn’t know what was going on. She’d no reason to connect us with him.”
I get up off the bed and go out of the bedroom and start making myself a drink. Con follows me out.
“I mean, this is really one for the Guinness Book of Records, this one. Jack the Lad. Shacked up with all we need to sort the situation and he doesn’t fucking know it.”
I take a sip of my drink.
“Well, we know now, don’t we?” I say.
Peter comes out of the bedroom, still looking at the photographs.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “What’s Hume doing with this slag?”
--
Hume
I drive round and round the island where the tube station is and after the second time I see Hume standing near the newsstand and after the fifth time I’m sure Hume has stuck to the conditions so I slow down and pull in to the curb, not quite coming to a standstill, and almost immediately Hume steps forward and opens the door and gets in and I pull away from the curb. I cross into the outer ring of traffic and take the first left and then some more lefts until I’m back on the roundabout again and this time my left turn is exactly opposite to the first one I took. Neither of us says anything to each other. Hume takes out his cigarettes and lights one up and I light up one of my own and I carry on driving until we’ve almost finished our cigarettes and then I pull into a side street just behind the Earls Court Road and park underneath the light of a streetlamp. After I’ve switched off the ignition I roll my window down and throw out my cigarette.
We sit there in silence for a few minutes and then Hume says, “So what’s your deal?”
“My deal?” I say, all innocent, looking forward to the next five minutes.
“Don’t shoot shit,” Hume says. “You call me up and tell me you can give me the Fletchers, so you want to make a deal. You want me to leave you out of it. And while I’m lifting Gerald and Les you’re over the sea to Skye.”
I don’t say anything.
“You make me sick,” he says. “All you fucking heroes. Underneath it all you’re all the fucking same.”
“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Hume,” I say.
“Don’t come it,” he says. “You’re in no position to give me that kind of crap.”
I don’t say anything.
“I really want the Fletchers,” he says. “Lifting them will do me no end of good. But the thing is I’d like to take you just as much. Only you’re not quite so famous as the other two. That’s the only reason I’m even considering your scabby little deal.”
“I realise that,” I say, lighting up another cigarette. Then, almost as an afterthought, I say, “Oh, by the way. Eddie Coleman asked me to give you his Christmas card.”
I take the envelope containing a single photograph out of my inside pocket and hold it out to him, not looking at him, as if I’m doing just what I described: delivering a Christmas card.
Hume is as motionless as a block of ice.
“Yes,” I say. “I saw Eddie earlier. Said if you liked the card he’d let you have some more of the same so’s you could send them round to your friends.”
Hume still doesn’t say anything but he reaches out and takes the envelope from me and looks at it without open
ing it.
“What is this?” Hume says at last.
I shrug. “Why not have a look and find out?”
Hume suddenly jerks to life and rips the envelope off the photograph and holds it at an angle to catch the light from the street-lamp and then when he’s finally managed to believe his eyes he keeps staring at the picture as if in some way his staring will change what he sees in front of him.
“I thought the handcuffs were a nice touch,” I say to him. “Special issue, were they?”
Hume makes a noise like a mad elephant and starts going to work on the photograph, not able to decide whether to crumble the picture or tear it to bits and his fingers alternate madly between the two actions. When he’s finished he lets the remains of the photograph drop to the floor of the car.
“What you should never do,” I tell him, “is do deals with villains. They just can’t be trusted. You take my word for it.”
Hume clenches his fist and hits himself on the forehead, just twice.
“Those cunts,” he says. “Those fucking bastards.”
“You really should have smelt it,” I tell him. “I mean, a bird like that. A place like that. A man of your experience.”
“Those fucking chancers. I had it made. With what Jimmy was going to put out I could have had twenty of you in the fucking dock. I’d have had more space than Reid.”
“Yes, well, don’t be like that. Look at it this way: I’m saving you a lot of bother. Instead of Walter having the snaps, we’ve got them. And me and Gerald and Les are much more reasonable to deal with than Walter. We wouldn’t use them as a lever the way Walter would have. I mean, we’ll never use them. We’re much too nice for that.”
There is silence for a while.
“All right,” Hume says. “Tell me.”
“You know what I want. And Jimmy apart, there are some events that have happened during the last twenty-four hours that you’ll be laying at the door of the Colemans and one or two other people you won’t find it hard to fit up. I mean, fitting people up is no new game to you, is it?”
“And if I tell you where to find Jimmy?”
“We’ll smack his hands for him, won’t we?”
“He’s guarded day and night.”
“ ’Course he is.”
“You’ll never manage it.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Think of all the other things you’ve got to worry about. Like what would happen if the pictures went to the Commissioner and the press. Think of all the fun you’d have thinking up your explanation.”
“What about the Colemans? If I try to pull them they’ll blow the whistle on me.”
I shake my head.
“This time tomorrow they won’t be in a position to blow the whistle on anybody. Ask Eddie. And so anything that happens from now on you can put down to them.”
There is another silence.
After a while Hume says, “Jesus Christ.”
And then, after he’s said that, he begins to tell me what I want to know.
--
Jimmy
When I get back to the flat Peter is lying on the chaise longue reading a copy of Vogue. Mallory is on the other side of the screen sitting bolt upright on one of the Swedish chairs, his briefcase lying neatly on his lap. As I appear in the doorway Peter drops the magazine and sits up but Mallory stays the way he is, motionless, vacant.
“What happened?” Peter says.
I walk through the lounge and open the bedroom door. Lesley is now in bed, propped up with two pillows at her back. Con has wound a damp towel round her head and has cleaned up Lesley’s mouth and he is now sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to her. They are both smoking and although Lesley’s face isn’t going to be straight for the next three weeks and in the meantime she’s going to need a good dentist, she’s better than she seemed earlier, both physically and mentally. Con looks up immediately I appear in the doorway and then I have both him and Peter asking me what happened with Hume. I turn away and push past Peter and pick up Eddie’s black case from the tabletop and take it into the bedroom and motion for Con to get off the bed, and then for both him and Peter to go out of the room while I talk to Lesley. When they’ve closed the door behind them I sit down on the bed and put the case between Lesley and me and open up the lid. She looks at the money but it doesn’t seem to do an awful lot to brighten up her expression.
I light a cigarette and I say, “It isn’t that I think there’s any danger of you going to the law, but there’s one or two things I want to tell you, just in case. First, I know you only know what you were asked to do. Why should you know any more? You were fixed to set Hume up and you were paid for it. But what you will realise is that having done what you’ve done, you won’t be all that popular if you go in to see them with your story. But by the same token, things having worked out a certain way, nobody’ll be coming to see you either. From any direction.” She doesn’t say anything. She’s stopped staring at the money and now she’s looking at me but her expression is still the same.
“And if nothing I’ve just said does anything for you, there’s twenty thousand Christmas presents in the case that for a start will buy you a little sunshine to convalesce in.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute or two. We carry on looking at each other.
Then she says, “I might prefer chancing the law. Seeing you and those others done might make me get well sooner.”
Her voice is without expression and because of what’s happened to her mouth she sounds like a different person.
“But we won’t, not now. That’s the point. You’d be turning the money down for nothing.”
“Only on your say-so.”
I shrug.
“And if you’re telling me the truth, why the money? You don’t need to do that.”
“Walter didn’t need to set up Hume. But he did. Everybody likes a little insurance.”
“I could take the money and still drop you in it.”
“Well, look at it this way,” I tell her. “If you did, we’d know you were the only person who could.”
An expression of remembered pain pulls briefly at her features. She doesn’t say anything else after that.
I get up off the bed and stub out my cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table and walk out into the lounge and close the door behind me. Con and Peter are standing there with their mouths open, like when West Germany knocked England out of the World Cup in Mexico. I go to the dresser and pour myself a drink.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Con says. “What’s happening?”
“We’re going to wish Jimmy Swann a Merry Christmas,” I say. “But first we’ve got to pick up one or two things along the way.”
I put my drink down by the telephone and before they can start asking the whys and wherefores I’ve got Sammy Hale on the phone and at first, until he’s convinced who’s calling, he’s understandably cagey, which is one of the things he’s paid to be. I tell him what we want and that we’ll be over inside the hour to pick the stuff up and he tells me it’ll be ready. I put the phone down and the gabble starts again but I quieten them down by telling them I’ll explain in the car. Then I put my hand on Mallory’s
shoulder and shake him out of his trance and tell him that it’s time to go. Mallory raises his head and looks into my face as if that helps him to understand what I’m saying to him. Eventually he rises and I shepherd him across the lounge and out of the flat and Con and Peter follow and we go down the stairs and out into the street. I tell Peter where I’m parked and to go and get Lesley’s Mini and follow us to Sammy’s. This brings more abuse from Peter but I remind him of our earlier conversations and he goes off to get the Mini while Mallory and Con and I walk down to where the other car is parked. Con and Mallory get in the back and I get in the driver’s seat and switch on the engine and we wait for Lesley’s Min
i to appear. I look at my watch. The atmosphere in the car is thick with Mallory’s fear. It’s like waiting for a drip of water to fall from the mouth of a tap; any second I expect Mallory to blow it, for the words to come streaming out, but they don’t, not until the very last minute, when I see the flashing of Peter’s headlights in my driving mirror, and then it all comes out, a stream of consciousness as inventive as the “One-Note Samba,” running together into one long plea for his life. I tell him to shut up and pull away from the curb but he doesn’t stop and for the next five minutes we’re treated to descriptions of Mallory’s wife and children and their lives without him, when of course Mallory is only thinking of his life without himself.
After a while I can’t stand it any longer so I pull in to the curb and say to Con, “All right. Let the cunt out.”
Mallory stops in midstream.
“You what?” Con says.
“Let him out.”
“You’re joking.”
“All right, I’m joking. So let him out.”
In the driving mirror I see the lights of the Mini as Peter pulls in behind us. Con begins to speak again but I cut him short.
“So what can he do? Go to the law?”
Con digests that and then leans across Mallory and opens the nearside door. The door swings open but Mallory doesn’t move. In the mirror I can see Peter get out of the Mini and walk along the pavement towards us.
Still Mallory remains where he is so I turn round in my seat and I say to him, “Look, just get out of it, will you? If Gerald and Les want you put down I’ll come looking for you in the New Year. Until then it’s up to you. So just piss off, will you, before I start remembering how this whole fucking shambles started.”
Peter appears at the open door and bends down and sticks his head inside the car.
“You’re not doing it here?” he says.
“Piss off,” I say.
“He’s letting him go,” Con says.
“What?” Peter says.
I look at Peter. Peter steps back and straightens up.
