by Darren Dash
“Lucy, tell Mickey what he’s missing,” No Nose said to the small woman to his left. Lucy just smiled. She hardly ever spoke. She was shy, even around friends. A capable but cautious driver. Always put safety first, and anticipated danger as if she had a sixth sense for it. The only one of us never to have had a crash, even though she’d been at it longer than me, longer than Dave, almost as long as Mickey Goodnews. She was a pretty, ginger lady. Had a crush on No Nose, despite the fact that he had a button of a nose that looked ludicrous in his broad, heavy face, but nothing had ever happened between them, at least not that any of us knew about.
“Don’t listen to them, Goodnews,” Adrian said. “That stuff’s poison. The government put chemicals in it to stunt people’s minds.”
“It stunted your mind, that’s for sure,” Caspar giggled.
Adrian scowled, then nodded at Caspar. “Case in point. He eats steak tartare for breakfast and wonders why he ends up looking the way he does.”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?” Caspar growled.
“Check the mirror.”
It was true. Caspar – who hated being called that – was as pale as the ghost he was named after, but far blotchier than any character you’d ever find on a kids’ TV show. His puckered, marked face was like a map of some long lost islands out beyond Tahiti way.
A waiter refilled our cups. “Hey, Bernárd,” Mickey Goodnews said. “You cook, right? You studied to be a chef?”
“I did,” Bernárd said. “Still hope to run a kitchen one day.”
“Then you know about these things. Tell them. Meat is poison, yeah? Full of chemicals that cause cancer and brain damage, right?”
“Sorry,” Bernárd smiled. “Not my place to put the customers off their food. All I can say is that my grandmother ate meat at every meal, all her life, and she lived to be ninety-three, never lost her senses, and only died when she was run over by a bus on her way to play a game of tennis.” He moved away to serve a table of truckers.
“A game of tennis,” I chuckled. “He should be on stage. Caspar, pass the sugar.”
“It’s Charles,” he snapped, shoving the mug filled with sugar cubes my way. “Not Caspar. You know I hate that name. Why do you always –”
“Shut up already, you tart,” Dave shouted, entering the café, slapping Caspar over the head as he moved to take his seat. “I come in from a hard day’s work, this is what I have to listen to? Behave.”
“Up yours,” Caspar grunted but he couldn’t help smiling. Everyone liked Dave, one of those guys you naturally warmed to.
“You’re talking about meat again, aren’t you?” Dave guessed. “The same old argument. Don’t you ever get tired of rattling on? Hey, Bernárd, a coffee please, quick as you can before I die of thirst.”
“Coming up,” the waiter called back.
“Any news?” Dave asked.
“Yeah,” Goodnews beamed. “You’ll never guess who Eyrie picked up last week while the rest of us were sheltering from the storm.”
I groaned, regretting ever bringing it up. Lewis Brue was much better known than I’d anticipated. My interesting story, which I thought would be a conversation piece for a few minutes, was a major saga as far as the others were concerned.
I’d already gone through the tale three times, but Dave looked at me with open curiosity and an eager smile, and I didn’t have the heart to disappoint him.
“I was east of Shoreditch and hadn’t had a fare for about three hours,” I began, and out it all reeled again.
“I’ll take two, no… three, no… hold on a minute, let me… two. Gimme two.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
We all laughed. Mickey Goodnews was a lousy gambler. No Nose flicked a chip at him and told him to get on with it and make up his mind. Goodnews reacted with a curse. Then he sighed and asked Adrian to give him three cards. Lucy smiled at Goodnews sympathetically, then asked for a single card. Dave sat pat. And it was up to me to bet.
I should have been out earning my keep, but we’d started fooling with the cards in TERRY’S, then No Nose had produced a crate of craft beer – he had a cousin who worked in a supermarket and was always getting stuff cheap – and we’d got to bullshitting. Dave rang home and said he was working late, I decided to take the night off, and we ended up back at Caspar’s for a late game.
“See your twenty. Raise you fifty.” Adrian looked around the table and grinned. “Heat’s on,” he drawled. “Can you take it? I know Goodnews can’t. I can see him folding already. Ain’t that right, Mick?”
“Feck you,” Mickey snapped and tossed in a couple of pound coins. “See you and raise.” Then he winced and scratched the back of his neck, wondering if he’d done the right thing, wishing he could take back the money.
We never played for much. Kept it friendly. Never fleeced Mickey Goodnews, though we were about the only ones in the city who didn’t. He couldn’t play for shit but he loved to gamble. He’d sit in on a game for hours, or spend an entire day at the races, leave with empty pockets and still return the next day, believing this time he’d win, that his luck would turn eventually. We tried keeping an eye on him, to stop him slipping too far into debt – he already owed more than he could easily pay back – but he was a grown man, we had our own lives, and we couldn’t watch out for him every hour of the day.
“See. Raise a pound.” Lucy squinted apologetically at Goodnews. He shrugged and tried to make little of it, but you could see he’d fold as soon as the bet came back to him. Lucy was a shrewd player. Rumour had it she’d made a living at it once, before coming to London. She could make her face go blank as a mask. Always cool and in command. She was way too good for the likes of us, but played beneath her best, so we stood a chance. Not that she ever went away from one of our games with less than she’d started with.
“That was a decent little story you spun earlier,” No Nose murmured as he studied his cards seriously through the old-fashioned spectacles he only ever wore when we were betting.
“I didn’t know he was a big deal,” I muttered, wanting the attention to pass.
“Lewis Brue?” No Nose tutted. “As Fervent Eld would no doubt put it, he’s a major player. Surprised you’d never heard of him.”
I shrugged. “I don’t move in those circles. No interest in them.”
“Even so,” No Nose said, and raised another pound.
“Doesn’t matter who it was,” Dave grunted. “You shouldn’t have let a killer in my cab, especially one who was bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“It was only a trickle.”
Dave grunted again. “And if others had shot at him while he was with you? If they’d shot up my car?”
“There was no one left to shoot. He’d killed them all.”
“Oh well, that puts me right at ease.” He shook his head. “It was a stupid move, Eyrie. You don’t want to go mixing with people like that.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“So why do it?” he pressed.
I thought about Zahra and Dancing James.
“I hadn’t had a fare in hours,” I said. “I was bored.”
Knowing that wasn’t the truth. I hadn’t known it that night. It had taken a few days of harsh introspection to figure it out and realise I’d been attracted to the danger, that I’d hoped for action, that part of me had wanted to get caught in crossfire or betrayed by the guy in the fancy shoes with the gun. Part of me had wanted to die, to escape the memories that had haunted me since the desert.
Maybe Dave saw through my lie. Maybe he guessed something of what I was thinking, even though I’d never told any of them about my past, the desert, Zahra and Dancing James. Maybe he just saw my pain and didn’t want to cause any more. But whatever he knew or guessed, he let me be.
No Nose moved his glasses to the end of his nose (an almost minimal movement). “I ever tell you about the time Bond Gardiner sat in the back of my cab?” he asked and we all shook our heads and perked
up. Every cabbie in the city has stories, but few can match No Nose’s.
“I’ve been keeping it back for an occasion like this,” No Nose said, “so that when someone came up with a really juicy story, I could top it.”
“Why would you care about topping someone else’s story?” Goodnews frowned.
“I’m known for my stories,” No Nose said immodestly. “Don’t like to blow all the big ones cheaply. I save them for the right time. Storytelling is all about the timing. Anyway, I was driving along one night – up round Tottenham, near as I can remember, though I’ve no idea why I would have been in such a backwater – and a couple of guys hail me. I stop and let them in. They sit in back. One of them tells me to drive. I forget where they wanted to go.
“After a while I look in the mirror, because they haven’t said a word since they told me to drive. And it’s a dangerous silence. Tension in the air, thick as a properly cut sandwich. So I look to see what’s going on. And it’s Bond Gardiner and some other guy.”
“Who’s Bond Gardiner?” Caspar asked. Then, as Lucy dealt, he added, “One.”
“I’ll take two,” No Nose said, re-settling his glasses to examine his cards. “You remember Mikis Menderes? The Turk? One of London’s bigger crime bosses a few years back?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Well, Gardiner used to be his Tonto.”
“He’s an Indian — sorry, a Native American?”
We all laughed. “Shut the fuck up,” Dave said kindly, “and let the man get on with his story. I’m out, by the way.”
“Well, Bond Gardiner,” No Nose continued, “is a mean-looking son of a bitch. I’ve had some hard screws in my car over the years, and he’s up there with the hardest. The guy beside him, he’s no prawn, but he looks tiny in comparison. And he’s miserable as hell. On the point of crying, shaking and looking down at his shoes, saying nothing.
“This goes on, neither of them moving or saying anything, until Gardiner puts an arm across, slow as a sloth, sticks his right hand on top of the other guy’s head and clamps him.” No Nose put his cards down, spread his fingers and demonstrated for us. Picked up the cards and continued. “I’ll bet a quid. The guy gives a little shriek. Makes like he’s going to fight, then thinks twice and sags.
“Next, I see something shining and I try looking away, because I don’t want to see this, not if it’s going to be what I think it is, but I can’t help myself. I’m fascinated because there’s still no sound. So I keep checking, sneaky glimpses in the mirror, like Lot’s wife, compelled to turn and stare.
“Gardiner, he — you’re seeing me? Bollocks. I’m out. Someone throw me another beer.” There was a pause while he opened the can. “Gardiner’s got a thin blade. Lovely handle, ebony or something like that. He holds it in his left hand, puts the tip to the side of the other guy’s head, holds him steady, and starts working it in.”
Lucy shuffled the cards and dealt swiftly, faster than normal because she was concentrating on the story. We all were. She could have dealt herself four aces and no one would have noticed.
“The guy starts convulsing. Slaps Gardiner and tries to pull free, but Gardiner’s too strong. He holds him there and the guy can’t do anything. Gardiner keeps pushing it in, and the guy’s mouth is open and he’s dying and he’s still not saying a word. And I’m watching, shitting myself because I’m a witness, but knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Then the blade catches on something. Gardiner gives it a shove but nothing happens. It’s stuck, and the guy’s not dead yet, so he grunts and pushes hard, and the knife snaps forwards at an angle and pops out through the guy’s right eye, and the eyeball goes with it, slips off the blade and falls down his cheek.”
“Christ,” Mickey Goodnews gasped.
“Aye, aye,” Adrian grinned.
“And I start laughing,” No Nose said.
“What?” Caspar howled.
“I couldn’t help it,” No Nose said. “This poor guy, he’s dying on my back seat, and his eye’s dangling down his face, and I start laughing like I haven’t since I saw Peter Kaye do a live gig way back when. It wasn’t funny. I don’t get off on violence. But what can I say? You had to be there.”
“No thanks,” Dave grunted.
“So — Jesus, Lucy, what sort of cards are these? Fuck it, I’ll take three. So I’m laughing myself sick. And this guy’s being murdered. And Bond Gardiner, mean son of a bitch, looks at me, amazed and pissed, like he can’t believe it, like I’m the one behaving badly.
“Then he starts laughing too. He pulls the blade back, then pokes it through a bit more, and it pops out the other side of the guy’s head, and he takes his hand away and leaves the blade there, like one of those fake knives you get in magic shops, and we howl even harder, and he taps the handle and it quivers up and down, and I had to pull over, I was crying with laughter.”
“You sick fuck,” Adrian said, shaking his head.
No Nose ignored the interruption and pressed on with the story.
“So there we are, pulled up, laughing ourselves stupid, a corpse in the car with us. Thank God there were no cops about. Mind you, him being Bond Gardiner, they maybe wouldn’t have bothered us anyway.
“After a few minutes Gardiner opens the door and gets out. Checks the meter and pays the exact fare, nothing extra. He sees I’m surprised that he’s not tipping me – yeah, even with everything else that was happening, I was thinking about my tip, which is how you know I’m a real cabbie – and he smiles and says softly, ‘Your life. That’s what I’m giving you on top of the fare.’ And he walks away and leaves me with the stiff. I look at the money. I look at the dead guy. And, God damn me, I started laughing again and didn’t stop till I got home into bed and fell asleep.”
No Nose chuckled at the memory, showed us his flush and raked in the chips to a chorus of groans and curses.
“Unbefuckinglievable,” Caspar winced. “The one good hand I get all night and you top it. You two have a deal going?”
Lucy smiled and No Nose gave her a friendly hug.
“What happened to the body?” I asked.
“The body?” No Nose echoed.
“The corpse. What did you do with him?”
“Oh, yeah. I took him to a lonely spot near Margate and dumped him in the sea. Luckily there wasn’t too much blood on the back seat, easy enough to clean. Got a fare on the way back and they never even noticed. I was gonna take the knife – Gardiner left it in his head – and keep it as a souvenir to remember the night by, but that would have been ghoulish.”
“You dumped him?” Mickey Goodnews asked, amazed. “Wasn’t that kind of… I mean, if I was killed like that, I’d want a proper funeral.”
“Bollocks to that,” No Nose snorted. “Was I supposed to take him to the Old Bill, explain how he got there, dish the dirt on Bond Gardiner? You think I’m as dumb as I look?”
“I didn’t realise you were such a cool customer,” Adrian said.
“Yeah, well,” No Nose said, sharing a short look with me that let me know he hadn’t laughed too much about it in the years since, “when the shit hits the fan you deal with it or go have a breakdown. Now, where are my cards? I didn’t come here to regale you buggers all night with my scintillating stories. I came here to play.”
Everyone had gone except for Adrian and me. Caspar was there too, of course, it being his place, but he’d crashed a couple of hours back. Adrian fetched another beer from the fridge and we bet on highest card drawn. Fifty pence a time. Passing away the last few minutes until dawn, enjoying the peace and quiet.
“Ever play strip poker with Lucy?” Adrian asked.
“No. Damn — a three. That’s the fourth low card I’ve had in six draws.”
“The luck of the Irish.”
“You’re not Irish.”
“I’m evidently more Irish than you. King. Top that.”
“Six. This is getting ridiculous. So, did you get her naked?”
“Lucy? Nah. She tore us to pieces. Me, Dave and a few more. There were a couple of other girls there, we got to see some of their flesh, but not her.”
“Surprised to hear that Dave was up for that.”
Adrian grinned. “His wife was away. He’d had too much to drink. Didn’t get up to any mischief, though we convinced him for a while in the morning that he had.”
“When was this?”
“A few weeks back. We tried to ring you, but you were — shit, a deuce. Maybe your luck is changing.”
We went on drawing.
“You were on a bender,” Adrian said.
“A few weeks ago?” I shook my head. “I haven’t been drunk for months.”
“Oh?” He shrugged. “Must have been further back then.”
I drink sensibly most of the time, beers with my friends, the occasional shot of rum to help me sleep. But every so often shit builds up inside my head and I have to release it. Happens maybe once or twice a year. I stack the kitchen with beer, rum, gin, some mixers, and hole up. Go wild for a week, open myself to the past, lose myself in the desert again, weep, scream, mourn. Come out of it shaken but here, suicide dodged, able to dream once again about a future where I don’t have to do this, where I’m at ease with my past, not necessarily living pretty, but in a place where the demons can’t find me.
My friends didn’t seem to worry about my benders. Just part of who I was. They rarely passed comment, and if they had any inkling of how close to the cliff edge I sometimes came, they kept it to themselves.
I cut the cards a few more times, then sighed and leant back.
“You’re done?” Adrian asked, surprised.
“A man’s gotta sleep,” I yawned.
“I suppose.” He rose and stretched. “I’ll come with you. We can share a ride and split the fare.”
“Are we taking the drinks or leaving them?”
“Leave them for Caspar, so he knows that we appreciate him letting us come play. Order a cab, let me have a slash, and we’ll be going.”
