by John Harvey
‘I probably wouldn’t be able to follow it in detail. A hundred thousand dollars has been mentioned, though.’
‘Ha! And pigs might fly,’ Marika said with a rare stab at idiom.
‘Yes,’ Harry said.
Derek poured them both a Stella. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said. ‘Say the dosh exists. For a hundred grand I could lose you both in this country, no probs.’
‘For a few months, maybe.’
‘All right then, say it doesn’t exist. You still get their car, whatever gear they have on them, their watches, wallets and all that – you’re still coming out ahead on the day. And, put it this way, the more mess you make, the more it turns into a war-type situation where you and the kid become idle bystanders, mere nothings.’
‘Making good sense now, Derek.’
‘Or,’ the former medical orderly and Brighton drag queen concluded, ‘you could just knock her out again, deliver the goods and sod the lot of them.’
‘What have you got in the way of weaponry?’
‘Me?’ Derek protested.
‘Bloody hell,’ Harry said.
They were going to have to do this work with a pistol that hadn’t been fired since 1987 and five rounds of ammunition, arms that until last night had been under a floorboard in Harry’s bungalow. He sighed.
‘You know what this is all about? Honour. These geezers have seen too many films. The girl goes home in the most insulting way possible, done up like a turkey. It’s a power thing, like I spit on your shoe, Düsseldorf. Yeah, Düsseldorf says, and I spit in your eye because there is no hundred thousand dollars. That is the bones of the plot, Derek.’
‘You got five shots. You miss with two, that’s three shots to off the boys who turn up. Which requires a cool head.’
In that instant they heard a distant and unmistakable report out in the marshes. M. Dieumegard, a retired lawyer from Soissons, was playing at duck-hunting with his Japanese pump-action. It was all very illegal, what he was doing, and he turned to greet the car with French plates with the faintly queasy feeling that he had been rumbled. Which he had. He surrendered the gun and nineteen cartridges, accepted a receipt for them scribbled on a pink slip, gave a false address and counted himself lucky. As the jovial plain-clothes policeman pointed out, the gun was in any case pretty useless. A duck would have to be sitting at the next barstool to be sure of being slaughtered.
‘It was an impulse buy from a catalogue,’ M. Dieumegard admitted gloomily.
Back to Marika, wearing some jeans and a white T-shirt Harry had purchased at a supermarket the moment they got off the ferry. No bra or knickers but a pair of what looked like red bowling shoes, two sizes too big.
‘Now listen,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going to have a go at these people we’ve been talking about.’
‘Impossible,’ Marika cried.
‘No, it’s just ordinary common sense. But none of it need involve you. If you stay here, you should be safe for a week or so. So long as you don’t go outside. And if there are any dollars, then I’ll see you right.’
‘They will kill you,’ the girl said.
‘Maybe.’
‘I know. Because, if they were going to do business, then they wouldn’t send old man like you. You and me both pffft. That is the plan.’ She put her forefinger to her head and pulled the trigger.
Harry glanced at his watch. ‘I’m taking Derek with me for company,’ he said.
The meet had been arranged an hour after sunset, a time when the last tractor had grumbled away into the gloom. The spot was well chosen, for it lay upon a crossroads at least two kilometres from the nearest farmhouse. Harry’s car was parked up on a little rectangle of ground where the local council kept their pile of gravel. There was also a very handy bottle bank on short stilts.
The Audi with German plates drove up at normal speed, turned left and disappeared into the night. Harry stared at the pistol in his lap, opened the car door and then drew it gently to without engaging the latch. The seat was pushed back as far as it would go, leaving his arms free of the steering wheel: other than these precautions he did not have the faintest idea what to do. Except smoke. He lit a rollie he’d made earlier.
When the boys came back it was from the direction they’d taken earlier. The lights were on main beam and raked the interior of Harry’s car. The Audi slewed to a halt a hundred metres away.
‘Yes. Get out of the car please,’ a guy yelled from the driver’s side.
‘Let’s get out together,’ Harry yelled back.
The Mexican stand-off. A long-eared owl, a European rarity, flew through the Audi’s beam and then veered indignantly away. After an uncomfortable pause three doors of the German car opened and the same number of men got out, each carrying an Uzi. Harry opened his own door and stood behind it, the pistol dangling in his right hand. The only good thing so far was that these guys were young.
‘Where is your passenger?’ one of them cried.
‘I have a parcel in the boot,’ Harry countered.
Every second that passed, he felt heartened. They were cocky wee sods, toting their own shooters at arm’s length, chewing gum, acting up. Tarantino. They sauntered towards the car.
‘Stay very still, old man,’ one advised.
‘No probs,’ he said, trying to match the international tone.
‘Stand away from the car.’
‘I’m scared, boys.’
It got a laugh. They ambled a little closer.
‘You are a dead man,’ the smallest of the three suddenly decided.
Harry missed with the first shot, hit with the second as Derek let loose with the shotgun from underneath the commune’s bottle bank. All three Russians fell, cursing. Harry fired twice more and jumped back into his car, reversing away in a shower of gravel and the smaller roadside weeds. Four more agonising minutes passed, punctuated by a final blast from the shotgun and then he saw the Audi speed away, Derek driving. The headlights blipped in a victory signal.
Bloody hell, he thought. This is too easy. It was only then that he realised that all along the Russians had been firing at him. He was sitting in a pool of blood. The old motor was handling a bit funny but he drove the back roads to the coast with what he liked to think of as professional calm, passing through village after village of shuttered houses and empty streets.
‘They were after your tackle,’ Derek murmured in the scorching heat of Cabin 7. The wound that had caused all the mess was inside his right thigh, high up. It had passed through the car door before hitting him, which accounted for what the ex-medical orderly called a rare bit of good luck but a nasty jag all the same.
‘There was no money, of course.’
‘Nah. We got the Audi, one of the guns, a laptop and a few hundred euros.’
‘You are brave men,’ Marika said, holding Harry’s leg down while the wound was sutured.
‘Was anyone killed?’ he asked.
Derek tutted. ‘And you a hardened criminal! These were kids sent on a man’s errand, Harry. It’s terrible, the things that happen nowadays. And d’you want to know what I think?’
They did.
It happened that the European Cup Final was held that year in Dortmund. The two Russian rivals who had started all these shenanigans met in an hospitality suite high up in the stands where they were photographed sharing a joke. One was toting a recent Miss Austria and the other one had girl-band superstar and Essex bimbo Robyn Nevill on his arm. The mood was cordial, fuelled by cocaine.
‘So, how’s your big boat?’ one of them said in rapid Russian, referring to a monstrous white mini-liner presently moored in Monaco.
‘It’s good. How is your island?’
‘Yeh, yeh, the island. It’s good. But I tell you frankly, the Sicilians can be a pain in the arse about such matters. With them everything’s a history thing.’
‘History!’ his rival repeated jovially, and they both laughed long and loud at the absurdity of the concept.
‘These pum
ped-up clowns had very little sense of yesterday. They are villains with no need of the healing balm that memory provides the rest of us.’
So Derek, trying to teach Harry how to play golf. ‘That, and the simple fact that they’d rather be pop stars or footballers than decent honest criminals. They are shoppers, is what they are. It’s a bloody disgrace, Harry boy.’
‘Grateful to you as ever, Derek.’
At that moment, Derek was fiddling about, moving Harry’s fingers this way and that on the golf club. It was, apparently, all in the grip. ‘Heard from the girl?’ he asked.
‘What a romantic old queen you are, Dekker.’
Even Cliffie survived the adventure, though minus the toes on both feet, which he explained was just a bit of fun, just their way of marking his card. He walked a bit strange and his shoes cost a bloody fortune these days but all in all he counted himself a lucky man. He looked around the Carpenter’s, where the whole scheme was first hatched.
‘Don’t you ever get tired of living down here?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘It suits me. Jean liked it.’
‘What a stroke you pulled, son,’ Cliffie muttered. ‘That kid owes you her life.’
Harry threw him a very sharp glance. ‘Nice of you to say so,’ he said with elaborate irony.
It passed clean over Cliffie’s head. As Jean always said about her brother, he wasn’t thick exactly but he never really got out of the playground. Mind, Harry thought, if he asks one more question about Operation Crossroads, I’m going to tear his lungs out. He watched indulgently as Cliffie reviewed all the possible things he might say next.
‘I always loved her, you know. Jean, I mean.’
Harry touched him on the sleeve of his jacket and called for two more doubles. As happened once every three days or so, the fruit machine down at the far end of the bar paid a jackpot. Neither man looked up. Now there really was an activity designed for losers.
DOUGGIE DOUGHNUTS
Don Winslow
Doug Day don’t have breakfast the morning of his father’s wake.
He’s too frickin’ busy and besides, he don’t have much money left. The factory’s laid him off and the unemployment’s run out and he was busy looking for a job when his father died but there ain’t a lot of work out there and most of his time’s been taken up trying to get his father buried.
Devon Day was a small-time thief and alcoholic who when he wasn’t in the hole killed a lot of Bushmills, and the Bushmills finally paid him back in kind. He kicked out in a room over Chuck’s Bar and Grill, and Pachetti’s Funeral Home only agreed to take care of the body and have calling hours because they hope to get Chuck’s business when he passes, so they do Chuck this favor and have calling hours for Devon.
‘Could we do monthly payments?’ Doug asked Tommy Pachetti Jr. They’ve known each other since junior high and play midnight hockey together at Ice World.
‘Okay,’ Tommy says, ‘but this has to be like “no frills”, okay, Doug?’
No frills is no shit, Doug thinks as he stands next to his father’s cheap coffin, which Doug is not sure but thinks is made from plasterboard. Doug stands there to receive the callers who come to pay their respects and this is not exactly hard work because hardly anyone comes.
For one thing hardly anyone in Torrington, Connecticut had any respect for Devon. Second, any of the guys who did, like Dev’s old cronies, are either dead or in the joint or just too down-and-out drunk in some shitty New England bar to know or care that Dev has checked out of his last SRO hotel. Third, there are a few guys – mostly hockey buddies of Doug’s – who would have come except they know this thing is going to be very frigging depressing, which winter in Torrington already is without dragging your ass down to Pachetti’s for a wake that is no frills.
It’s one of those stone-gray New England Saturdays where it ought to snow but won’t. It’s just icy instead, so your car slips sideways every time you hit the brakes, which is often. And when you get out of your car the wind whips you in the face like it’s saying Fuck you – you’re an asshole for living here.
So all you’re going to get by going out today is a head cold and a fender bender that won’t meet the deductible, so a lot of people stay home for Devon’s wake.
Edley Carpenter is there, though.
Edley also plays hockey at Ice World with Doug and figures he owes him the respect.
‘Sorry for your loss,’ Edley says after he walks past Devon’s coffin without hardly looking at the body. ‘Cold in here, isn’t it?’
Doug nods.
Shit yes, it’s cold in here, he thinks. He can practically see his own breath. Shit, he can practically see his dad’s breath.
‘Tell Tommy to turn the heat up,’ Edley says.
‘Well, this is sort of “no frills”,’ Doug says.
‘Oh,’ Edley says. He thinks about this for a second then says, ‘They got any coffee, Doug?’
‘I think that would be a frill.’
‘Sure,’ Edley says. From his mouth it comes out Shoo-ah. Edley’s family having been in New England as long as Doug’s, he’s genetically incapable of pronouncing a terminal ‘R’.
‘Tommy should turn the heat up,’ Edley says. He goes and sits in one of the metal folding chairs, because he doesn’t know what else to do and otherwise Doug is just left standing there all alone in a cold room with just him and his dead father.
‘You gonna play tonight?’ Edley asks Doug.
‘I dunno.’
And this is the truth because Doug hasn’t really worked it out whether it’s the right thing to do, to play hockey the same night your father has his calling hours.
‘See how you feel,’ Edley says.
‘Yeah, see how I feel.’
Edley gets up and leaves as soon as Frank King comes in.
Frank King takes the accident of his surname as destiny.
He takes it real serious.
Why shouldn’t he, Doug thinks, as King makes a royal entrance in his camel-hair overcoat, cashmere scarf and his usual two heelnippers behind him. He’s got more money than probably most kings these days.
King takes a look at Dev in the coffin then comes over to Doug. ‘Nice suit your father’s wearing.’
Should be, Doug thinks. It’s a three-hundred-fifty-dollar suit and Doug’s going to be out on the street at the end of the month because Dev is getting buried in the rent money. Doug don’t tell King that, though. All he says is, ‘Thanks.’
‘Your dad didn’t have the jack for a suit like that,’ King says.
‘Yeah, I bought it,’ says Doug.
‘You don’t have the jack for a suit like that.’
Even though at six-three Doug has five full inches on King, he feels like he’s looking up at the man. Looking at his big shiny face and smelling his aftershave and the spray on his black hair. Looking at him like what the fuck business is it of yours?
King tells him. ‘Your dad owes me money,’ he says.
Which makes Doug laugh even though he don’t mean to because it will piss King off. But anyway, Doug laughs, more like a chuckle, as he tilts his chin toward Dev’s body, like, so collect it.
Then he’s sorry he did that, because if anyone would take the clothes off a dead man, it would be Frank King. The man would do about anything to get his money, and Doug knows this because King has most of the money in north-west Connecticut.
King shakes his head, says, ‘You’re your father’s heir, right, Douggie?’
Doug also has black hair except it’s in a crew cut, and if anyone’s paying attention they’d see it practically bristle. ‘Don’t call me that,’ he says. ‘My name is Doug.’
King’s eyes go like frickin’ death. ‘But my point still pertains, doesn’t it.’
‘What point?’
‘You inherited your father’s entire estate,’ King says.
Now Doug really laughs. Dev’s entire estate consists of a hot plate that got maybe warm and one dollar and fift
y-eight cents in wet change. And medical bills and a funeral bill. And Doug’s already sold his ’eighty-six Charger and he’s still way behind. So he says, ‘Yeah, I got the whole thing, Mister King.’
‘You can call me King.’
And the asshole means it.
‘You inherit his assets,’ King says, ‘you inherit his debts.’
‘I do?’
This is like, really bad and shocking news to Doug. This is something he did not know. But why not? In the world of shit storms, when it rains, it pours.
‘How much did my dad owe you?’
King looks to Clark, standing behind him. Clark is King’s accountant, which means basically he’s a whiz at calculating compound interest. Clark makes a little show of looking into a little black notebook, although Doug knows that Clark has the exact figure in his head.
‘Twelve thousand three hundred eighty-eight dollars,’ he says.
‘How much of that is interest?’ Doug asks.
‘Most of it,’ King says.
‘Growing every day,’ says Whitey.
Whitey has the build of a dumpster and a soul to match. He got his tag because of his prematurely white hair. Guy’s hair turned white when he was like twenty-eight or something. Which is like fifteen years ago, the same amount of time he’s been working for King.
Collecting King’s debts, Doug thinks, yeah, that would turn your hair white.
Doug does some quick math in his head and says, ‘I can’t make the next goddamn interest payment.’
Never mind the principal.
King nods like he’s already figured that out. Then he asks, ‘They got any coffee in this place, Douggie?’
‘This is kind of a no frills deal.’
‘Why don’t you go get us some coffees?’ King asks. He takes a five out of his pocket and hands it to Doug. ‘Cream, two sugars for me. Black for Clark and Whitey.’
There’s a 7-11 across the street, Doug thinks. He can be there and back in three minutes. He takes the five and says, ‘I’ll just bop across the street.’
‘Go to Dunkin’ Donuts,’ King says. ‘I like Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.’
Dunkin’ Donuts is seven cold, icy blocks away.
