by John Niven
Les came through with the bugle, an ounce – twenty-eight grams – of very good blue flake Peruvian cocaine. I’ve been doing it pretty much constantly for at least seventy-two hours now and there still seems to be a fair bit of it left, here in the limo, in the baggie stuffed in the little icebox in the back.
I haven’t done all of it by myself of course. I’ve had some help at various points. There was the bunch of escorts I hired for a while on day one, three or four of them. We drove around, hitting bars and nightclubs from Hollywood all the way to Santa Monica. Pumping and sucking and grinding and snorting and doing all the usual stuff behind the tinted glass while the big grey stretch glided down Melrose, through the Canyons, along Ventura. Then one of the brasses started talking about how much of a fan of Lucius Du Pre she was and I kicked the fucking lot of them out onto the sidewalk somewhere in Beverly Hills, throwing a fistful of hundred-dollar bills at them as the car peeled away. Then there was a bunch of Mexicans I met in a bar on day two. I partied with the beaners for a while until we wound up back at one of their places – some toilet in Encino – and I went into the bathroom and stared in the mirror for a long time until my face turned into an anus and the anus began talking to me, I freaked out and climbed out the bog window and took off in the limo, crunching Xanax and doing bumps all the way back into the city.
We drove around downtown for a while, all over Skid Row. Now and then I’d get out and methodically burn a high-denomination banknote in front of some bums. A mob nearly came at me but whoever was driving at the time (Greg? Tab? Burt?) got out and let them see the swelling beneath his armpit and they all backed the fuck off.
‘CUNTS! FUCKYOU! SUCK ME OFF!’ I shout through the open window at no one in particular, at the traffic, as we join the 101 at Burbank and head back to Hollywood. On the back seat, on the other side of the little armrest, is a pile of the trades I picked up at a news-stand. Oh, it’s out. The front-cover story on MusicWeek screams: ‘STELFOX BUYS UNIGRAM’. The headline is, of course, oversensationalised as the detail in the story inside makes clear …
… on Tuesday the troubled industry giant, which has long been the subject of takeover rumors, announced its sale to a group of private investors headed by former American Pop Star producer Steven Stelfox. Stelfox began his career as an A&R scout at Unigram in London in 1994 …
Oh fuck oh fuck oh Jesus fuck. Buyer’s regret. Have you experienced it? You’ve gone out and spunked a couple of grand on a coat you can ill afford. Some nice shoes. A car. Imagine you’ve spent the best part of a billion quid on a shitbox company you were going to turn around overnight by bringing the biggest pop star in history back from the dead only to have the cunt just fuck off. My mobile starts ringing again – Trellick. For the umpteenth time. He must be losing his mind. There’s a few million shitters of his personal cash in all of this as well as his block of Unigram shares. I let it go to voicemail (I now have nearly two hundred missed calls) as I recall the last conversation I had with Roddy Myerson, the head of investment banking at Stern, Hammler & Gersh, just the other day, as we were finalising the deal. He said: ‘Steven, you better really have something up your sleeve, because the only way we can see of paying off the investors within the agreed time frame is the immediate liquidation of Unigram.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I told him. ‘Relax, Roddy.’
Now and then, even through the monstrous amount of nose-up, tranquillisers and booze, the enormity of the situation I am in will dawn on me. I am on the line for over two hundred million dollars of my own fucking cash. I have invested this money – almost all of my liquid assets – in tumbling Unigram stock. Using another eight hundred million of the Sultan’s funds (having promised him a quick, laundered, untraceable profit), I am about to complete a hostile takeover of Unigram. This is all predicated on the huge leap the share price will take when I unveil the third act of the Lucius Du Pre story. The third act I obviously no longer have. Those clowns over at Murphy, Murphy and Hinckley actually believe they’ll soon be signing contracts that guarantee them an in perpetuity piece of Du Pre’s back-end action. They’re expecting the carefully stage-managed return of Du Pre to take place next week. Lucius Du Pre is in fact loose, out there somewhere in the world, liable to pop up at any moment and start giving his own unique take on recent events. I am finished. Game over. See you later, Sooty.
Suddenly, I can see it all ending. All gone. No more Learjets. No more chartering yachts at a million quid a week. No more Bentleys and Aston Martins. No more houses in Holland Park and Beverly Hills. I’m living in, what, Queen’s Park and Glendale? Worse? Harlesden and Pasadena? I’m flying premium economy. Going on package holidays. Driving a fucking Prius. Oh God. Oh sweet Jesus no. Not now. Not like this. What the fuck have I done? For a moment, on my knees on the floor in the back of the limo, a bottle of vodka in one hand and a handful of cocaine in the other, I actually think I am going to burst into tears. And then, thankfully, the familiar warm embrace of pure rage overtakes the grief …
That fucking piece of shit Trellick, dragging me into this nightmare. Cocksucker Du Pre and his fucking manager cunt Schitzbaul and bastard Dr Ali couldn’t fucking organise a gang bang in a whorehouse, useless fucks. Bitch whore Ruth couldn’t have seen this all coming on her fucking massive retainer. Fucking Murphys letting some paedo rapist lowlife animal use their own fucking kid as a human spunk bucket for a few quid. Chrissy, the useless cow, letting me fucking blow my load up her woefully fertile fucking fanny. They will all fucking pay. Every cunt is going to pay.
Energised by all of this anger, and, let’s not lie, by the heroic belt of cocaine I have just stuffed up my hooter, I see that we are passing a strip of sleazy bars in Little Armenia. My throat desiccated by the cocaine, my stomach burning from the raw spirits, I am suddenly overcome with the desire for a simple glass of cold draught beer. ‘Pull over,’ I shout to Mike. I change my shirt (at some point I ordered one of the drivers to go into Barneys and pick me up a load of fresh shirts) and spritz some Evian on my face and figure I can just about pass muster to get a drink in one of these gaffs. I pick my way carefully across the parking lot. It has been a very long time since I stayed up for three days straight and I find I am really having to concentrate quite hard on just putting one foot in front of the other. ‘Daywalking’, we used to call it. The sign in the window says ‘HAPPY HOUR 5–7. DOUBLES 5 DOLLARS!’ I push the door open.
Thankfully the place is dark and loud, the clientele a mixture of old alkies who look worse than me and young hipsters who probably think this toilet is ‘authentic’.
‘Hi, what’ll it be?’ the barmaid (young, decent rack) says.
‘Miller, draught,’ I croak, pointing to the nearest pump.
She gives me a sideways eye as she pours. ‘You OK?’ she says.
I nod. ‘Just tired.’ I flatten a fifty on the bar and this – and probably the Rolex, the quality of my clothes – seems to ease her fears that I am a bum or a lunatic. She sets the frothing, beaded glass down and moves off along the long bar. This place is not filled with silicone-jugged models in tiny dresses. No actors or producers or pop stars. You need no membership to get in. There is no waiting list for tables. There is no designer furniture, no menus offering small sharing plates at twenty bucks a throw. Very much not my natural environment. A TV noiselessly shows some basketball game. How? How the fuck did the drug-addled paedo cunt get away? The last time I saw him he could barely lift a fucking teacup. Again I indulge the fantasy of pulling up a comfortable chair and watching while Terry really goes to town on Dr Ali: pliers, scissors, car batteries, starving rodents, the lot.
Up behind the bar the TV screen changes abruptly as the channel is switched – Trump’s face filling it. He’s talking to some interviewer with the sound down while the rolling chryo across the bottom of the screen says ‘TRUMP ANNOUNCES UNITED STATES WILL LEAVE THE 2015 PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT’. Of course, this being California, the hipsters in the bar are already booing the TV, shaking their hea
ds. Muttering in disgust. One of the guys playing pool throws a cube of chalk at the screen.
As well as a picture of my impending financial ruin the other thing constantly looping through my gak-addled mind is this: the tiny madman in his padded cell. Growing. Three months she said. She’d not been sure because she has very light periods anyway and then the second time it happened she did know but she was terrified to think about it and then she finally went to the doctor and the test was positive and – oh who gives a fuck, I’d stopped listening at that point.
The fucker, I know from the stack of open Google searches on my phone, will weigh about twenty-three grams now – ironically about the same as the amount of cocaine I’ve got through in the last three (four now?) days – and will be three inches long from crown to rump, around the length of a pea pod. No doubt about it – it’s growing fast in there, tucked in among the warm piping and tubing of Chrissy’s organs. In a couple of weeks’ time it’ll be the size of an avocado. Then a melon, then … oh Jesus. I feel an icy trail of fear creep up my back and neck. The cells doubling, multiplying, unstoppable, like the chain reaction entrained by a nuclear device. The atomic power of my spunk, devastating, like the hydrogen bomb, with no theoretical upper limit. All of his organs and muscles will be in place, microscopic kidneys, heart, liver and spleen. ‘Your baby’s facial muscles,’ one of the articles says, ‘are getting a workout as their features form one expression after another, squinting and grimacing, and they may even have hiccups now and then as they practise the movements necessary for breathing.’ The body will be starting to develop a fine coating of hair (‘lanugo’) to help keep the baby warm. The brain will be developing, too, particularly the part that’s responsible for memory and problem-solving. For a brief second I almost manage a smile at this, at the thought of my child trying to solve a problem, perhaps one as thorny as its father is currently grappling with. The baby’s father signals for another drink as he thinks how many of the tiny madman’s brothers and sisters he’s had aborted over the years. The enormous bills at private clinics. The red-eyed and broken former assistants and aspiring pop stars, comforted only by the eye-watering cheques. The entire football team of his would-be predecessors who’ve been unceremoniously hoovered, sucked and flushed to oblivion over the years. Funnily enough it’s always more grief getting it done over here, as well as, naturally, far more expensive. It’s a weird one, something the Shermans are mentally touchy about. You’d have thought – here in the land of the free, where market forces are king – that as long as you were able to smack the dough down then you’d be entitled to have some cunt who came bottom of their class in med school up to his fucking elbows in your unwanted foetus quick as you like. But, no, not the case. And it’s probably only going to get tougher, given the way things are headed. (Like the man said, ‘There has to be some form of punishment.’) Then again, let’s face it, it’s only going to get tougher if you’re poor. As ever, if you’re minted, you’ll be able to recline on scented pillows in what is basically a Four Seasons with saline drips and blood transfusions, sedate and stately under the woollen anaesthetic while the unwanted growth is deftly removed. If you’re broke you can go on throwing yourself downstairs or into hot baths. Or taking yourself off to some former midwife with a pail and a bag full of twenty-year-old surgical instruments in her spare room.
I become aware that some diesel – tattoos, buzz cut, all the usual – is at the bar next to me, talking to me as she gets a round in. ‘Sorry?’ I say.
‘This fucking guy, huh?’ she says, nodding towards the news, where the Donald is still talking soundlessly, the captions still telling us that he is wiping his arse with the Paris Agreement.
‘Yeahhh,’ I slur. ‘S’great, isn’t it?’
Her eyes narrow. ‘How’s that?’
‘Getting your country out of all that … that fucking shit.’
‘Hey, that affects the whole planet.’
‘What does?’
‘Climate change.’
‘How?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘How does it affect you?’
‘The … the ice caps, man. The sea levels.’
‘Fuck all that. No one gives a shit about that.’
Behind her one of the more bearish guys has appeared to help carry the beers. He’s black, about six foot, and he senses something is afoot. ‘Everything OK, Jane?’ he says.
‘Why?’ I ask her, speaking kindly now, as you would to a child or an idiot. ‘Why do you think Trump’s undoing all of this, uh, Jane?’
‘Hello? For, like, profit? To benefit coal and fracking?’
‘Because,’ the black guy chips in, lifting bottles off the bar, ‘he doesn’t give a shit about the environment.’
‘No no no,’ I say, shaking my head. This pair, the black fella and the dyke, have already noticed that I am much older than them. They are now clocking my shoes, the Rolex, the fine cut of my shirt and, undoubtedly, the fact that what questionable sanity I have has been fried by cocaine. But I am way past caring. ‘That’s not why he’s undoing it,’ I say. ‘Think, kids.’ I lift my refilled glass and take a long draught of beer. ‘Think.’
‘Why don’t you just tell us, buddy?’ the guy says. ‘You seem pretty confident about American politics for a Brit.’
‘Just leave it, Carl,’ the girl, Jane, says.
I set my glass down. ‘He’s undoing it for the same reason he’s going to throw millions of you off health care. He’s undoing it because a Negro did it.’ She flinches, like she’s been slapped, but the black guy takes it. ‘Don’t you get it, you fucking clowns? He’s standing up there and half of your country is cheering him on while he says “fuck all niggers”.
Carl drops the beer bottles onto the floor and makes a fist while behind him a barman is already vaulting the bar with a baseball bat clutched in his fist. I am ready for this. I am fucking begging for it. I leap off the bar stool and onto my feet, into a fighting stance. Weirdly this manoeuvre results in me lying on my back on the floor, looking up into the faces of Carl, Jane and the barman. ‘You fucking asshole,’ the barman growls as he brings the baseball bat up, over his head. This is really going to fucking hurt, I find I have time to think as the bat reaches the apogee of its backswing.
And then something happens behind me, a blur of motion, something moving over me, towards my attackers. There’s crashing and banging while I scramble backwards, propping myself up against the bar. It takes a moment or two before my smashed, blurred vision allows me to comprehend what I am looking at: a man is standing with his back to me in a kind of karate stance. The barman and Carl are both unconscious on the floor and a mob of three or four of their friends, armed with pool cues and beer bottles, are facing the karate man.
I can hear girls screaming and sobbing. One of the guys lunges forward, swinging the cue. The karate man easily sidesteps the blow and, with apparently no effort whatsoever, deftly rabbit-punches the guy in the throat. He goes down choking and spluttering. ‘Any more for any more?’ the guy says, kind of cheerfully. The last couple of would-be brawlers drop bottles and cues and back away, hands up.
The man turns and extends a hand down towards me. ‘Let’s get you home, shall we, boss?’ Terry says.
I pass out.
FORTY-THREE
So this is a hangover, I think, waking up. All those other things, they were just practice. Limbering up. Training for the big one. I prop myself up on the pillows enough to establish that I am in bed in my apartment – the effort of this sending sparks shooting through my vision, making my limbs ache as though I’ve just climbed a mountain – and see in the darkness that a tumbler of water has been placed beside my bed. I try to pick it up. It’s like trying to lift a gold bar. A housebrick. I cannot remember the last time I felt like this and it is difficult to imagine that, back in the nineties, I woke up feeling like this three or four days out of every week. I cough, which feels like someone setting a pound of plastic explosive off inside my head. A
moment later a wedge of light falls across the room and I see Terry standing in the doorway. ‘Look who’s up …’ he says.
‘Jesus Christ. How long have I been …?’
‘About twenty-four hours. We gave you a fair old load of Valium.’
‘Fuck me …’
‘Take your time, boss, but throw some clothes on and come next door and I’ll bring you up to speed. I’ve got some coffee on.’
Half an hour later I am in a dressing gown, gingerly sipping cappuccino while Terry lays it down.
‘So, after a while, Ali admits a couple of things. It seems that Lucius had been off his meds for a few weeks …’
‘Why the fuck didn’t he tell us?’
‘Scared, I should imagine. I don’t think he wanted to rock the boat. He’s a pig in shit out there. Anyway, it gets better. It turns out your old pal Schitzbaul had given him a new credit card in the same name as his false passport. Just in case the bugger fancied a shopping spree or something. Somehow the new and improved Lucius got hold of passport and credit card, hid himself in a bloody laundry van, got to the city, jumped a cab to the airport and – boom. Bought himself a first-class American Airlines ticket to New York City. He’s at the Plaza under the name Fergal McCann. Don’t worry – I’ve got a guy in the lobby. We’ll know if he moves. Apparently he hasn’t left the room since he checked in two days ago.’
‘How, I mean … we got him into Quatain on a private jet straight into the Sultan’s gaff. How the fuck is Lucius fucking Du Pre managing to walk about airports and hotels and New York fucking City without it being all over the news?’
