by Paul A. Rice
‘Fight it,’ I said, ‘we can…’
She cut my words off, saying: ‘No, we can’t! Derek has said that if we try that then he’ll take Harley and, no matter what, he’s not having that boy!’
‘Fair-play to you,’ I said. ‘Not knowing Harley’s Dad, apart, I’m pretty sure that the young fella is better-off staying where he is…’
‘You know what?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘We never had that much anyway, so fuck-him – it’s nothing but blood money anyway. He can choke on it, the bastard! I just know that nothing will good will come of it for him… well, that’s what I hope!’ She raised her glass and knocked the contents back in one swallow.
‘Damn it!’ she said, ‘I was gonna be a good girl tonight, but suddenly I don’t feel like being good anymore – fancy another bottle?’
I nodded in agreement and so we ordered another two.
Then we sat and cursed all the arseholes in our lives, Bryony nearly cried when I told her that the biggest arsehole in my life, was sitting opposite her…. She said I was a fool, laughing at my stupid insecurity and making some nice comment or another.
To be honest, I was too busy watching her dimple doing its thing to remember exactly what she said.
At one stage I did mention, and only half in-jest, that I may actually be able to get a few guys to have a word with the number-one problem in her life, if she’d really like me to…
She stopped laughing. ‘Don’t even go there, Jake,’ she whispered, holding up her wine glass. ‘Two more of these and we’ll be making a serious plan, so, let’s just drop it, shall we? You are a very bad man!’
We spent another hour or two in the restaurant before taking a cab home, Bryony dropping me off at the hotel on her way past.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Dinner at our place, I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock sharp!’
I said that I’d be there, bending down to wave at her through the window as she drove away. I wandered into the hotel and went up to my room. There were thoughts in my head, and none of them were any good. I let them drift through the black swamp of my mind.
Derek… now there was a man who had a hiding coming his way if ever there was one, yeah, him and Gino both.
I cracked open a beer and lay on the bed to watch the TV, flicking through the channels until I found a film that I hadn’t watched, at least six times. It didn’t matter anyway as I was far too busy planning to give a shit about some Australian bloke with a blue flag on his face. He was going on about freedom, screaming out the word in a bad, Scottish accent. ‘Freedom…!’
‘Freedom… I’ll give them freedom, too right I will!’ I thought, turning out the lights to lay there with my mind racing as I calculated my next move. Tomorrow was going to be another big day.
23
Freedom
After spending the afternoon wandering around New York, doing a bit of shopping and having a coffee whilst I made some phone-calls, I went back to the hotel, put myself through some agony in that well-equipped gym, and then sat and waited for the evening to arrive.
As promised, Bryony arrived at seven o’clock on the dot. She had a little, red Mazda, it was way past its sell-by date and did a fair bit of rattling as we cut through the side streets, but she drove it well, making her way through the maddening traffic like an expert. In half-an-hour we arrived at her parent’s house, easing onto the street outside a double story, white-washed building. The sky was black and the wind was cold, rushing down the street and whipping up the leaves.
‘Come on inside, it’s freezing out here!’ Bry said, slamming the driver’s door and hastening around the car to take me by the arm.
We went inside and it was one of those places where I immediately felt at home, being filled with the urge to kick off my shoes and slouch around. It was, indeed, that sort of place. The house was neat and tidy, pictures of the kids, and Harley, lined the wooden staircase. Paintings, diplomas, framed newspaper-cuttings and all sorts of other family memorabilia could be seen in every room. Ushering me into the sitting room, I was given a seat in front of a roaring fire and handed a glass of Ray’s favourite tipple. I don’t normally drink whiskey to start off an evening, but I didn’t complain. Besides, it was bloody good whatever it was.
We had a nice meal of homemade goulash and dumplings. It was the perfect dish for such a wintery night and was followed by Mary’s, absolutely delicious, apple pie and ice-cream. After the meal, we were all soon back in the sitting room and supping on a glass of Ray’s special. It wasn’t long before Harley had nodded-off and I watched as Bryony carried him up to bed, the boy flopping like a ragdoll in her caring arms.
We talked for a while and they were pleasant company, just nice people, all of them. In the end, and seeing that it was time to go, I walked over to get my shoes, bending to tie the laces. Rising to my full height, I looked at them, as they sat gathered around the fire. At that precise moment, I knew the decision I’d made last night, whilst lying sleepless in my hotel room, had been and was still, absolutely the right one.
‘Ray,’ I said, softly.
‘Yes, Jake, is there something you need, another coffee, perhaps?’
I shook my head, saying: ‘Listen, I want to help you, and you must let me help you, promise you’ll let me…’
They turned to look at me, Bryony’s face darkened. ‘Jake, no – we said that we wouldn’t go down that road!’ she said, sharply.
I laughed and she scowled at me, saying: ‘It’s not even funny, now, come on, let’s get you a taxi before this all goes badly wrong!’
‘Hey there, tiger…’ I said. ‘Can I just finish before you bite the rest of my head off?’
‘Oh, sorry, but I thought you were going to… well, you know – your friends?’ Bryony turned to her parents and brushed away their confused expressions with a gentle wave of her hand.
‘It’s just me, being silly is all, I’ve got the wrong-end of the stick, haven’t I, Jake?’ she said, making light of it, but staring at me with her eyes flashing.
I walked over and stood facing them with my back to the fire. Seeing the expression on my face, Bryony and her parents fell into silence. I cleared my throat, not really knowing where to start.
‘Jake, what is it?’ Ray asked.
‘I know that it’s none of my business,’ I said, ‘but I want to help you with this Derek situation, if I can.’
‘Oh, damn him!’ Mary said, angrily. ‘He can go to hell – we’ve already signed the papers to say we won’t fight his claim. He can keep the money, if it means we never have to see his face again, then so much the better! Harley is our only concern, and when he gets older he can go and find Derek, if he wants to…’
‘Yeah, and that’s just what I was thinking,’ I said.
Ray shrugged, looking at the others in slight bewilderment.
I continued by saying: ‘But, you guys need to be able to get things done, you know, everyday things, Harley and bills… right?’
They nodded, curiously, not seeing where I was going with this.
‘And to get things done, you need money, right?’
They still didn’t get my drift, so, not wanting to drag this out any longer, and before they could say anything, I pulled out the brown envelope, which had been nestling inside my coat pocket, and handed it to Ray. He took hold of the envelope and sat staring at it.
Looking at them, I said, ‘That’s for you guys, use it to free yourselves from this situation, and to raise young Harley.’
‘What is it?’ Bry asked.
‘It’s a piece of luck that came my way, Andi,’ I said. ‘And I want you guys to have some of it.’
Ray opened the envelope and stared at the banker’s draft inside. Without a word, he passed it across to Mary. Looking at the piece of paper, Mary’s face went red, and then white. With shaking hands, she passed it across to her daughter. Bryony glanced down at the draft, and then looked up at
me, her eyes swimming.
‘No, Jake – no!’ she said. ‘We couldn’t possibly accept this, it wouldn’t be…’
‘What?’ I said, quietly. ‘It wouldn’t be right to give Andi’s son the best possible start in life? It wouldn’t be right to free yourselves from the worry and the grief of not knowing whether you’ll be able to afford his college-fees? Just knowing that he has a secure future, that you have choices, that wouldn’t be right, would it not, Bry?’
She had no answer for me, and I didn’t need one.
Nor did I need any justification. I knew I was interfering, but sometimes a man just has to do that. I stood in silence, allowing the realities of my words, and of their situation, to hit them.
We had a few more words about the issue, but, basically, they could see that I wasn’t going to budge on the subject, and they knew that I was right – through all of their pride and selflessness, through all of their terrible grief and deep anger, at the way in which fate, and Derek, had treated them, the one, stone-cold fact remained.
I was offering them freedom, freedom from it all, and there were absolutely no strings attached. With the money I was giving them, Andi’s family would be free from anything and everything that Derek, or life, could ever throw at them. Money brings power, power to make decisions, and, most of all, to see those decisions through.
I had been to the bank in the afternoon and spent some time in finding out how I could get the money to Andi’s family. The bank I was in had carried out some checks, spoken to my bank, spoken to everyone who they needed to, then after copying my passport and taking down all my details, in triplicate, they had finally allowed me to authorise the transfer of funds from my off-shore account to them. Ten minutes later and they had issued me with a banker’s draft in the name of Raymond Jackson.
As far as I was concerned it had been two hours well-spent.
In the end, Bry and her family had capitulated. They had no other choice, other than to throw me out of the door with a boot up my arse, and they weren’t going to do that. I stayed for one more whiskey, Ray absolutely insisting that we drank on it. I think they were shell-shocked more than anything, and I sympathised. It must have been a shocking end to an even more shocking fortnight.
I left soon afterwards, promising that I would call them from the airport before I departed and that I would keep in regular touch with them in the future. I shook hands with Ray, had a very emotional hug with Mary, and then, accompanied by Bry, I headed for the door.
We stood on the doorstep for a while, me smoking and her standing by my side with her arm looped through mine. I could feel her shivering, and so I pulled her closer, shielding her against the bitter wind, which still whipped down the road like a demon.
It was a pleasant moment and I stayed there for a while longer than was good for me, just holding her and thinking about how perfectly she seemed to fit, how nice she smelled, how…
The taxi arrived and I made a move to leave.
‘Jake,’ she said, looking into my face.
‘I know, Bry – but not yet,’ I whispered.
She nodded, slowly.
‘It’s not anything to do with Andi, not really, and it’s definitely not anything bad to do with you, Bry. In fact, it’s quite the opposite,’ I said, smiling ruefully at her upturned face.
‘Are you Okay?’ she asked, ‘I mean, really Okay, it must have been horrendous for you, all that stuff with Andi… and then you’ve had to come over here and deal with us?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s just that my head is a little bit cooked at the moment, and I don’t think that I should be pouring fuel onto the fire, not just yet, you know?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I do – but we have time, don’t we?’
‘All the time in the world,’ I said.
‘You’ll come on back here and see us, won’t you, promise?’
‘Oh, yeah – that’s a definite; I’ll be back because, amongst some other people,’ I said, tightening my grip on her arm, ‘I want to see how that young man is getting on!’
Bryony grinned, and reached up to kiss me on the lips. I kissed her back, but contained myself. I moved and she let me go, the time had arrived for me not to be here, and we both recognised that.
‘I’ll see you later, Bry,’ I said, turning away.
‘Yes, you will, thank you so very much!’ she said.
As I climbed into the cab, I heard her final comment.
‘You’re a good man, Jake Collins, a very lovely man…’
I laughed at that ridiculous phrase and shut the door, giving Bry a final wave as the cab pulled away. I saw her blow me a kiss and then I was gone, not knowing if I would ever see her again.
24
Old Faces – New Games
I left for Italy the next day and I was as good as my word. Once I was checked in and my bag was on the way to the handlers, I took a stroll over to a café and ordered a coffee. Then I rang Bry to say goodbye, keeping it short and having a quick chat with Harley whilst I was on the line. After a few, final words with Bry, and promising to ring when I arrived home safely, I ended the call and sat there with my drink, letting the memories of the last few days drift through my head as I indulged in a spot of people-watching.
Suddenly, and whilst watching a pair of the most overweight people I’ve ever seen, queuing at a burger bar, and betting with myself on the fact they bought diet Cokes… I suddenly caught sight of someone who made my blood run cold. Seeing Bryony for the first time had been bad, at the time I thought I had gone mad. But, seeing this man, casually browsing a book in the shop that stood no more than twenty metres away from me, was even more shocking.
It could not possibly be him, it just couldn’t – not here, not in New York, in the airport, too, of all places! I turned away from him, trying to compose myself. Maybe I was imaging things…
Watching his reflection in the strip of chrome, which lay down the side of a bubble-gum machine, I knew I wasn’t hallucinating – it was him, definitely. Seeing the man place the book down and turn away, I raised my eyes and stared at him, letting my disbelieving gaze follow him as he casually walked away. Even his nice suit didn’t disguise who he was, not to me it didn’t.
The floppiness of his left foot gave him away – it wasn’t a limp, as such, more like a slight pause in his gait, as though the foot was having problems in receiving messages from his brain. I knew exactly what was wrong with him, because it had been me who gave him that limp.
Shortly after he had blasted a hole through the top of my left breast, I’d fired half a magazine of hot lead in his direction, before collapsing in a heap. I found out later that one of my bullets had almost severed his foot, but the bastard had still escaped.
I tried to remember his name. It was Atif… no, not Atif. It was Abdul… Abdullah… I couldn’t get his name to come back to me, my mind was racing. The guy had several names, and lots of aliases, too. Whatever they were, it didn’t really matter, because to me and to all of my friends, he had simply been known as ‘Wireman’.
He was the best and most technically-advanced bomb-maker in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not the modern world. What made it worse was the fact that I thought he was dead, I was sure that I’d heard he was, maybe I was seeing things, maybe…
‘Well, if it is him, then what the hell is he doing in New York?’
Scanning the crowd, I glimpsed the top of Wireman’s head; he was mingling with a large group of passengers over by the escalator, which was taking people to the arrivals lounge.
‘Shit! I need to find out about this, and in a hurry,’ I thought, desperately scrolling through the address book in my phone. Finding the name I wanted, I pushed the call button, waiting in hope that the person on the other end was still using the same number as always.
He was, and by the sounds of things, Jim Tasker was the same grumpy arsehole as he had always been. Some things never change.
‘Jake – what the hell are you doing c
alling me at this hour?’
Dispensing with the fact I’d forgotten the time difference and that the guy was probably still in bed, I gave him the bad news.
‘Jim, listen to me, The Wireman, you remember him?’
I heard him grunt in acknowledgement.
‘Well, I’ve just seen him, he’s…’
‘What? Where have you seen him, where are you?’
‘In the terminal at JFK, I’m there now,’ I said, watching as my man reached the top of the escalator.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Jim said. ‘Half the fucking world is looking for that bastard and then you ring me at midnight to say that he’s just mincing through the terminal in J-F-fucking-K without a care in the world! Are you drunk or insane?’
‘Jim, you dickhead,’ I said, impatiently. ‘Would I be ringing you if I didn’t really have to, eh? Anyway, it’s not midnight – stop being a bleeding drama-queen.’
There was a pause whilst Jim obviously tried to remember if I would have called him or not. He and I had never quite seen eye-to-eye.
‘Jim, he’s here, I’m telling you!’ I said, urgently.
Wireman was leaning over the balcony and looking into the crowd, I saw him glance at his watch. I knew for a fact he wasn’t going to detonate anything, because people like him don’t do the dirty work. That wasn’t of the slightest concern to me, but losing sight of him was.
‘Jim, I’m not joking, any time today would be good…’
‘All right, all right, Jake – keep it down, I’m trying to think…’ he said, brusquely. After a few moments, he said, ‘Right, what are you doing, coming or going?’
I’m due to leave for Italy, very shortly,’ I said.
‘Right, and what’s Mr Wireman doing, exactly?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘He’s gone up to arrivals, but that might not mean anything, plus… I’ve got to go soon; my bags are checked in.’
