by John Niven
After an hour or so, the remains of his lunch cleared away, sipping a second cup of coffee to clear his head of the rich burgundy he’d had with his beef, Terry closed his notepad, satisfied he had the rudiments of a plan he could take to the boss. Terry thought of some of the things he’d seen and done in his career – the polonium swirling gently in a teapot in the kitchen of an Israeli hotel, Terry in waiter’s uniform. The Ukrainian politician he’d killed with a syringe in a lift. That perfect shot in the Gulf, a little under two thousand metres in a high wind – with the CheyTac, the .408 calibre, a wonderful American weapon that had cost him 12,000 dollars, how he wished he still had it – the guy’s head just evaporating in a red mist. Indulging a rare moment of introspection – as we are all given to with a little alcohol at high altitude – Terry saw himself in various poses over the years: behind a door clutching piano wire, crouched in a bedroom closet with chloroform and hunting knife, in the freezing cold on moorland with his eye pressed to the telescopic sight for hours on end, and, just the other day, in Bogotá, on his back in the parking structure, underneath the embassy car with pliers and a pan to catch the brake fluid. Yes, it would be fair to say that morality hadn’t featured much in Terry’s professional life. Indeed, the only time he felt he was in the presence of a force less indebted to morality was when he did what he would be doing tomorrow.
When he met the gaze of Steven Stelfox.
ELEVEN
‘You’re kidding, right?’
Dr Ali was stretched out on the sofa of his house, fresh from the golf course in chinos and Lacoste polo shirt, the Pacific crashing just the other side of the highway. Schitzbaul sat across from him, uncomfortable, sweating, in rumpled suit and stained shirt. He was, of course, drinking, a bourbon on the rocks to Ali’s tumbler of pineapple juice. He reckoned he’d averaged about two hours’ sleep a night for the past week.
‘I’m not. Trust me. This is the only way out of this.’
‘No, I mean you’re kidding about the money.’
Ah. Schitzbaul relaxed a little. So the hard part was over. This was now a negotiation. What he did best. ‘What were you thinking, Ali?’
‘You said “a few months”, right? You’re asking me to uproot my life, not see my kids –’
‘You never see your kids.’
Ali – four kids, three wives – let this slide. ‘I don’t know. Two seems low.’ Tossing off ‘two’ as though he were talking about bagels, or toffees, rather than two million dollars. The lack of respect for money irritated Schitzbaul, an old Jew who had started out the lowest of the low in the William Morris mailroom, back in the seventies. ‘Five would be more in the ballpark …’
‘You know, Ali,’ Schitzbaul said, getting up and crossing over to the wet bar in the corner, ‘if this goes down, who knows where it’ll end.’ The fresh ice clanged like bells as he dropped it into the heavy crystal. ‘I mean, I’d think, given the allegations involved, the man’s personal physician would very likely be subpoenaed. There could be a court-ordered physical. A search of the property. Who knows what they’d find in his medicine cabinet. In his system …’
‘DON’T TALK BULLSHIT, SCHITZBAUL!’ Ali exploded.
‘I mean,’ the manager continued, staying calm, listening to the styrofoam creaking of the ice as it splintered under bourbon, ‘where does the buck stop with all that? Whose name are they finding on all those prescriptions?’ He sipped his drink. The rich old Arab and the rich old Jew regarded each other.
‘Are you fucking threatening me, Lance?’
‘Not at all. Just pointing out that we both have a dog in this fight. My interests are best served by staying here. Yours by being with your patient.’ Schitzbaul watched Ali’s shoulders slump. ‘Three,’ he said, going in for the kill. ‘I can get you three, Ali.’
Ali grinned. A three-million-dollar bonus for a few months’ vacation. There were worse ways to earn a living. ‘Do they have golf there?’
‘They sure do,’ Schitzbaul said, his tone brightening, putting his briefcase on the table, popping the catches. ‘Matter of fact – I think the Sultan has a personal course, so you’re guaranteed a good tee time, right?’
‘And when is this going to happen?’
‘Not one hundred per cent on that yet. But soon, maybe next week. So pack a go bag. Here, survival kit …’ Schitzbaul started laying things out on the coffee table: a passport with Du Pre’s face on it, but bearing the name of his new identity, Mr Fergal McCann, a Platinum Amex in the name of Mr Fergal McCann and several banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. ‘Just in case. Otherwise keep track of your expenses and you’ll be reimbursed. Just think – you’ll be with your own people! Back in the old country!’
‘Ha ha – very fucking funny.’
‘We’ll bring you home in a few months and this’ll all be over.’
‘When you say “this” – what exactly is going to happen?’
‘That’s on a need-to-know. And, trust me, pal, you do not need, or want, to know.’
TWELVE
Another day, another endless ride up the long driveway of a madman. It’s just Trellick and me in the back of the limo (Schitzbaul will already be there, hopefully having ‘warmed up’ the room) as acre after acre of Malibu scrubland slides past.
Have you ever done an eleven-hour and two sixteen-hour flights across a dozen time zones in the space of a few days? Even given the extreme comfort of the Gulfstream, it’s a shocker. You don’t need drugs, sex or music to have an out-of-body experience, everything is an out-of-body experience. Opening a can of soda. Crossing your legs. Yawning, which you’re obviously doing a lot of. Here in LA it’s 10 a.m. In my body it’s three o’clock in the morning somewhere over the Atlantic. Of course, back in the old days, I’d have dealt with this via the simple method of snorkelling a ton of Vim up my fucking hooter. Given all the travel – London/LA, LA/Quatain, Quatain/LA – I’m actually in pretty good shape. Not boozing or doing class A’s any more definitely helps. Back in the day a trip across the Atlantic was basically a ten-hour drinking session, starting in the bar at Heathrow and finishing just before the ‘Fasten seat belts’ light came on for landing. But we were in our twenties then. It was all doable. Instead I take a draught of coffee. ‘What time is it?’ I ask.
‘Just after ten,’ Trellick says.
‘Actually, fuck that, what day is it?’
‘Friday,’ Trellick says. ‘Racking up the air miles, eh?’
‘Christ.’
‘Do you think he’ll go for it?’ Trellick asks, again.
‘James,’ I say, knackered, ‘if he doesn’t then it’s plan B. It’ll be a lot less profitable and a lot more boring, but it’ll work.’
‘And you reckon you can trust this what’s-his-name?’
‘The Sultan? It’s a gamble,’ I say. ‘But at this point …’
‘Everything’s a fucking gamble?’
‘Correctos.’
‘When does your guy get in?’
‘Right about now. I’m meeting him after this.’
‘Is … is he –’
‘Mate,’ I say, ‘you really don’t want to know any more. Trust me.’ He nods. ‘I just want to get through this fucking meeting, go home and sleep for ten hours.’
‘Remember, we’ve got James’s birthday party tomorrow.’
‘Who the fuck is James?’
‘Ah, my son?’
‘Oh yeah, shit. Sorry.’
‘From three. At the house. Bring a date if you like. Though I’m sure Pandora has a few friends she wants you to meet …’ Yeah, I think, forty-something yummy mummies looking for victim number two. Or three. ‘Christ,’ Trellick says. ‘No wonder he’s broke …’
I follow his gaze out of the window. A bunch of llamas are running alongside the car, inhabitants of Du Pre’s petting zoo. We can see the vast ranch coming up and, in the distance behind it, the Ferris wheel topping the full-size amusement park. Parked in front of the house is an array of high-end motors: Humme
rs, Porsches, a Ferrari. We crunch over gravel and park up. ‘Narnia …’ I say, looking at the word spelled out in flowers in an enormous bed.
Trellick sighs. ‘The Paedo, the Rapist and the fucking Wardrobe.’
A huge Samoan bodyguard is walking towards us, reaching for the car door.
Once again – show time.
Now, I have spent much time with the truly famous and I can generally testify to the old adage about their mentalities being frozen at the age at which they became famous. Anyone who gets there much over the age of twenty-five has a shot at some kind of sanity. As you slide further towards youthful success you’re on a scale of diminishing returns. Many pop stars and actors get there in their late teens and that’s what you’re stuck with forever – a screaming fucking teenager. Elvis, who became famous at nineteen, is the paradigm here. Look at his life, forever surrounded by a gang of cronies, watching porn, living on a diet of Coca-Cola, mashed potatoes and burgers, never getting out of bed: basically what happens if you give a teenage redneck free rein. From him right on down to One Direction you’re pretty much dealing with people who are by turns truculent, petty, grumpy, exuberant, illogical or whining. So you take someone like Du Pre: he’s been famous since he was fucking nine. You’re dealing with a nine-year-old billionaire who hasn’t much heard the word ‘no’ in forty years. But with the additional complication that the nine-year-old’s cock and balls are fully grown and riddled with spunk and his brain has fused somewhere along the line and he’s decided that what he really wants to do, what he has to do, is fuck other children. So, you have a slightly overgrown toddler with a God complex. Just listen to him. Listen to what I’m listening to here, sitting in the Kew Gardens-like conservatory.
‘And the Lord said “I will walk with my people” and I want to walk with my people. It could be so beautiful, Mr Trellick, Mr St …’
‘Stelfox.’
‘Stelfox. I love foxes. I love all animals. Some say the souls of animals do not go to heaven, but I believe the Lord will welcome all of his creatures into his kingdom. Walking, with my people. I want to walk with them. I truly do. All of us in white. You know, Lance, you might want to remind the costume designers about that before I see them in New York. Everyone in white. I had an idea, for the opening bars of “Shakedown”, everyone is looking up at this bright light, then I descend out of it …’ He goes on in his lisping, high-pitched whine.
It’s not really a conversation, as such. More of a free-wheeling monologue that could be called ‘Things That Are Passing Through My Brain’. Du Pre veers from topic to topic, dispenses with sequiturs, half finishes thoughts, attempts to start sentences three or four times before abandoning them altogether and changing the subject. It is exactly like speaking with a toddler. I should also add that he’s wearing sunglasses and some kind of military jumpsuit embroidered with gold, gold lanyards and epaulettes and stuff. He looks like a version of Colonel Gaddafi someone knocked up on RuPaul’s Drag Race. While they were pissed. It also strikes me as odd, his penchant for constantly mentioning God and Jesus when he spends half his life out of his mind on gear, pumping his mad dross up the fucking dung funnels of prepubescent boys. Then again, I’ve never read the Bible. Maybe there’s something in there that says all of this shit is fine and dandy. ‘And blessed shall be the drug-addled child molesters, for they shall bring succour to their own testes and pleasure to the rectums of the chosen ones.’
I must also be mindful of Du Pre’s upbringing, of the role of his father in all of this. I mean, it’s pretty hardcore, isn’t it? Your own dad, screaming his head off as he smashes your back door in? Punching you in the back of the head and calling you a dirty bastard, his actual balls banging off your cheeks. That’s bound to give you some pretty strange ideas about yourself, isn’t it? I mean, pick the change out of that one, cunt.
‘… and they will touch the hem of my garment as the spotlight –’
‘Uh, Lucius? Mr Du Pre? HEY!’
He turns to me, startled. ‘You need,’ I say, looking directly at whatever passes for eyes behind those black wraparound shades, ‘to be quiet now and listen to Lance.’
Du Pre looks surprised, I think, it’s hard to tell from the Botox-blasted expressionless mask he has instead of a face, but he shuts up and turns to his manager.
‘Lance?’ I say again.
‘Right. Uh, yeah. OK. So …’
Schitzbaul tells him. It takes a little while, his voice is unusually soft and he makes no eye contact, mostly looking at a spot on the marble floor, but he gets it all out. The Murphys, the video, his finances. In almost comical fast-forward we go through the Five Stages of Kübler-Ross. Stage One …
Denial. ‘That … that’s a lie. It … it’s disgraceful. I never … Connor and I, we have a beautiful relationship. So beautiful. To even think … these people and their filthy minds, it makes me –’ He goes on for a bit.
‘Lucius,’ Schitzbaul says, looking at him for the first time. I swear there are tears in his eyes. ‘Do you want us to play the tape?’ Du Pre stops talking. He looks at the tea and coffee things on the low table for a moment. Then he screams as he gets up and boots everything – cups, saucers, sugar, milk – across the room and we’re into Stage Two …
Anger. ‘MOTHERFUCKER! THAT LITTLE BITCH! AFTER ALL I DID FOR HIM AND HIS FAMILY! IT WASN’T ME WHO STARTED ANYTHING! THAT KID’S THIRTEEN GOING ON THIRTY! SONOFABITCH!’ He tries to grab a tall pot plant – some kind of fern – and hurl it across the room too, but it’s too big, so he just kind of wrestles with it for a bit, screaming while Trellick and I watch and Schitzbaul says ‘Lucius … Lucius …’ to no avail. ‘COCKSUCKER! LOWLIFE PIECE OF SHIT! FUCK!’ Finally, his rage abates and he collapses back onto one of the sofas and we’re off into Stage Three …
Bargaining. ‘Lance,’ he says, dropping from the sofa onto his knees on the floor in front of Schitzbaul, ‘you gotta make this go away. We can find the money. Just pay them off. We’ve done it before. We can remortgage this place. I … I’ll sell some stuff. We can go to the banks again. We can –’ He goes through a bunch of half-arsed solutions, all of which have already been exhaustively discussed and dismissed by us. Lance and Trellick tell him one by one why none of them will work. Du Pre grows more and more agitated. At one point, when Trellick is explaining just how much debt he is in, he begins wailing and tearing enormous lumps of hair out of his scalp, revealing strange brown/pink patches, the result of the mad bastard’s ongoing project to try and turn himself into a darkie. After Trellick bats down his final deranged scheme to raise cash – something about going public and offering people the chance to buy shares in his future recordings, Trellick having to wearily point out that no one is going to be lining up to buy stock in Paedo Inc. – Du Pre slumps to the floor and begins to sob and we’re into Stage Four.
Depression. ‘I’m finished. It’s all over. I … oh my God. The papers. The trial. I … I’ll go to prison. I’ll never get justice. A black man?’ We all look at each other. ‘I … can’t go on. I want … I want … I’m going …’ the words are coming between choking sobs now as he sits there, slumped, destroyed, demented, handfuls of his own hair in his hands, ‘… to kill myself.’
It’s my turn to speak now. To turn the final screw and edge us into Stage Five.
‘Lucius?’ I say very softly. ‘Lucius?’ He looks up at me. His sunglasses have flown off at some point during his frenzy and I am looking into the haunted, red, weeping eyes of a broken fifty-year-old man. ‘I can make all this go away. Would you like that?’ He looks at me, a strand of saliva hanging from his jaw onto one of his gold epaulettes. ‘All of it. The tour. Everything. You don’t want to do this stupid tour, do you?’
‘No. Oh God no.’
‘What do you want, Lucius?’
‘I … I just want everything to be beautiful again.’
‘That’s right,’ I say, moving over, closer, sitting down on the low edge of the coffee table, just a few feet away from him, lowering
my voice even further. ‘You just want to have some friends, special friends, and your candy, your treats, and be left alone, don’t you?’
‘That’s all I ever wanted,’ he whispers.
‘Well, I can make that happen. You just have to trust me and do everything I say. You’ll never have to worry about anything again.’
‘Really?’ he says, looking at me like a five-year-old on Santa’s knee.
‘Really.’
‘Oh, Mr Stelfox …’ He collapses forward and starts crying again. Different tears this time, soft tears of gratitude, of sweet relief, the tears due to someone who extends the hand to help you into the final lifeboat off the Titanic. He begins kissing my feet, getting drool all over my bespoke Foster & Son shoes.
‘There’s just one thing, Lucius …’
He looks up. ‘Yes?’
‘You won’t be able to come back to America for a while. Do you understand?’
He sits back against the sofa and wipes the tears off his face with his sleeve. He looks at each of us in turn, Schitzbaul, Trellick, then, finally, at me again. ‘I hate this fucking country.’
And there we have it – Acceptance.
THIRTEEN
Connor Murphy couldn’t believe it. His own TV and the Sony PlayStation VR! The new TV dominated an entire wall of his tiny bedroom. He was on the floor, with the VR headset pushed up on his forehead as he rooted through the haul of new games scattered around him – Superhot, Rigs, Rush of Blood, Rez Infinite. And all for nothing! It wasn’t his birthday, or Christmas, or anything. They’d just come in the day before yesterday and told him they loved him and taken him into their bedroom where there were all these boxes waiting. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his parents in such a good mood. Now, though, it sounded like things were more back to normal, the shouting coming down the hall, from the kitchen area, where they were meeting with that guy, that creepy lawyer guy. Oh well. Connor hit ‘NEW GAME’, pulled the headset down over his eyes, put his headphones on, and plunged back into the darkness of gaming, the voices from the kitchen disappearing.
