Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon Read online

  I light a cigarette.

  “Lovely,” I say to him. “A fairy tale of old Soho. Warms the cockles, it really does. Wolf Mankowicz should write it.” I click out the lighter flame and inhale. Then I say: “What was it Wally’s old lady went out with?”

  There’s a small silence before Gerald says:

  “Now look—”

  “Cervical cancer, wasn’t it?” I say.

  “Now look—”

  “Fine looking woman, Wally’s old lady was. Pity she was took from us so soon. A great loss.”

  “Now look—”

  “You see?” Les says to Gerald. “See how your fucking policies divvy up?”

  Gerald turns his back on me and looks up at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus fucking Christ. You start doing some cunt a favour and then you digress a little bit how you do some other cunt a favour and suddenly it’s all snide innuendo and that. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “I tell you,” Les says, “that’s what you get if you try and treat the workers as equals. They bite at your balls.”

  I smile and look at Les.

  “In that case I don’t know what you’re so stand-offish for,” I tell him. “Seeing as how you’ve got no balls to lose.”

  Les stands up and Gerald snaps out of his supplicant pose and shifts his body between Les and me although Les doesn’t move an inch in my direction once he’s got up. There’s a lot of eyeball stuff between the two of them and eventually Les sits down the way he was always going to do. Then he gets up again and goes over to the drinks and makes himself another one and sits down where he was before and then he lights a fresh cigarette. Gerald doesn’t move, he just stands there with his back still to me.

  The silence goes on for a bit longer and I’m just about to finish my drink and get up and go when the door opens and who should come in but Audrey looking for all the world as though she’s spent the afternoon relaxing at the hairdresser’s instead of humping away in bed with me. Everybody looks towards the door when it opens and Audrey stands there taking in the atmosphere before she closes the door behind her. Then she says:

  “What happened? Did the Arsenal lose the replay?”

  Les clears his throat and would complete the job by spitting if it wasn’t his own carpet. But Gerald behaves differently from usual: instead of going through the slagging routine with Audrey he walks over to her and puts his arm round her shoulders and shepherds her into the room like a protective host would a shy late arrival. Audrey looks at him in complete suspicion.

  “What’s all this in aid of?” she says.

  “You know bleedin’ well, darlin’,” Gerald says. “Don’t come the old one-eyed soldier with me.”

  Gerald and Audrey make their picturesque way over to the drink cabinet.

  “Now then, sweetheart,” Gerald says. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Les. “My stomach isn’t this strong. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Leave it out, will you?” Gerald says. “We celebrated our wedding anniversary last night.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Les says. “Your wedding anniversary isn’t till April.”

  “So?” Gerald says. “What do you do on the night you get married?”

  Les just looks at him.

  “Right,” Gerald says. “So we celebrated that, didn’t we.”

  Audrey shrugs his arm off her and starts to make herself a drink.

  “Bit of all right, wasn’t it, darlin’?” Gerald says to her.

  “I don’t remember,” Audrey says.

  Gerald grins at Les and he puts his hand up the back of Audrey’s skirt and feels her fanny from the rear at which Audrey knocks over the glass she’s filling as she starts fetching round a swing which is intended to connect with the side of Gerald’s head, but he’s prepared for it and he grabs her wrist before she can connect. He laughs and says: “What’s the matter? Frightened Jack might get a flash of your sweet little bum?”

  Audrey doesn’t answer, not verbally anyway. She just gives him the look.

  “Well don’t you worry about that. Jack’s broadminded. He’s seen plenty, haven’t you, Jack?”

  “I’ve seen some,” I say to Gerald.

  Audrey wrenches her hand away from Gerald’s grip and turns back to the drinks and sets her glass straight and starts all over again. Gerald winks and walks away from her and says: “Giving the old lady a seeing to from time to time makes a nice little change. You forget that nobody does it like the old lady. But you single men don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  Les ignores him and I stand up.

  “Where are you going?” Gerald says.

  “I’ve got some work to do. I’m one of the workers, remember?”

  “Hang about, hang about,” Gerald says. “Les didn’t mean what he said. It’s just his time of the month.”

  Les doesn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t, did you, Les?” Gerald says, looking at him. Les shifts a bit on the crackling leather and looks out at the black plate glass and says:

  “No, all right. I didn’t mean it.”

  Both Audrey and me look at Les as though we’re witnessing the second coming. Gerald beams at me and says: “You see? If Les says he didn’t mean it, he didn’t mean it.”

  “You mean he didn’t mean it when he said he didn’t mean it.”

  Gerald looks blank.

  “Forget it,” I tell him and start towards the door.

  “What in Christ’s name’s going on?” Audrey says.

  “Oh, nothing,” Les says. “We’re only offering him the holiday of a lifetime, two weeks of carefree sunshine at the resort of his choice.”

  Audrey looks at me and you’ve got to hand it to her, she’s a great little performer.

  “So what’s wrong with that?” she says to me.

  “I told them I’d prefer Skegness.”

  “The villa,” Gerald says. “He can have the villa to himself for a whole bleeding fortnight.”

  “I might get lonely,” I tell him.

  “What’s the matter?” Audrey says, her face absolutely straight. “You frightened of flying or something?”

  I just look at her but not the way I’d like to.

  “Here,” Gerald says, and for once I’m glad he’s missed the point. “Is that what it’s all about? You scared of aeroplanes?”

  I’m about to answer when Les cuts in.

  “You ever been abroad before, Jack?”

  I don’t answer.

  “That’s it,” Gerald says. “He’s never been abroad before.”

  “As a matter of fact, no, I haven’t,” I say to him. “But that doesn’t have fuck all to do with it.”

  Les slaps his thigh and comes as close as he’ll ever come to laughing.

  “Brave old Jack,” he says. “Jack the fucking lad. He’s nervous of leaving his patch.”

  “Listen,” I say. “Leave it out.”

  “You’re right,” Audrey says. “He wouldn’t know how to say ‘Leave it out’ in Spanish.”

  “Listen—”

  “Fuck me, Jack,” Gerald says. “You should have said. Now I understand what the routine was all about.”

  “The routine—”

  “Come fly with me, come fly, let’s fly away,” Audrey starts off singing.

  “Listen,” I say. “I didn’t say anything. If there was a routine, it came from that cunt over there, and that I can do without.”

  “So why are you cutting off your nose to spite your face?” Audrey says.

  “I—”

  “That’s right,” Gerald says. “Don’t let Les put the mockers on it.”

  “That’ll be the fucking day, when he puts the fucking mockers on anything I ever do.”

  “Right,” Gerald says. “Then you’ll go, then?”

  “I—”

  “What’s to stop you?” Audrey says. “Obviously not the flying. Obviously not Les. And obviously, if yo
u get my meaning, not the foreign parts.”

  I look at her. There is a silence. Then Gerald says, “Great.”

  And having said that, Gerald skirts the room’s depression and goes over to the plain white Swedish desk over by the plate glass and picks up an envelope and walks back again and hands it to me.

  “There you are, then,” he says. “No sweat. Tickets, money, the lot. You leave four o’clock Thursday afternoon.”

  I look at the envelope. Audrey anticipates my saying anything by saying to Gerald:

  “While we’re on the subject, I’m going to Hamburg next week; I need a couple or three new birds downstairs. Those last ones are nine-day wonders.”

  “Well you fucking fixed them up, didn’t you?” Gerald says.

  “As a matter of fact I didn’t,” Audrey says. “Sammy did. That’s why I’m going myself this time.”

  “Well I don’t give a fuck what you do,” Gerald says. “Go wherever you like. Only I want those chancers out.”

  “They’re already on their way.”

  “Well don’t worry me about it, then,” Gerald says. “I’ve got more important things on my mind.”

  Gerald turns back to me.

  “All right then, Sunshine?” he says. “All set? And by the way, if you want to know the Spanish for cunt, you just ask old Wally boy. He’ll put you right.”

  Chapter Three

  “YOU’RE FUCKING BARMY,” I tell her. “I mean.”

  Her fingernails trail slowly down my spine and she kisses the lobe of my ear.

  “You’ll get us both done before you’re finished. I mean for a start, how are you going to get out of Hamburg?”

  “By going.”

  She digs her nails in, just a little pressure.

  “Oh yes?”

  “I go, I spend half a day telling Monika what I want, then I fly down to Palma. Three days later I go back, approve or disapprove, then I fly back to London.”

  “Great idea,” I tell her. “Only say something clever happened like Gerald’s old mum darkening out and he wants you back quick and he tries to get in touch with you? That’d be fucking favourite, wouldn’t it?”

  “That old string bag’s never going to go.”

  “Don’t be thick on fucking purpose.”

  “Well,” she says. “I won’t be telling Gerald where I’m staying. I never do. And in the event of unforeseen circumstances he’s hardly likely to send Interpol round looking for me.”

  “No, but he knows where Monika is, doesn’t he?”

  “So he knows where Monika is, but Monika doesn’t know where I am, and if he gets in touch with her, I’m sussing out different sources, aren’t I.”

  “And of course, Gerald wouldn’t let anything like a bit of suspicion cross his mind.”

  “Look,” she says. “Let me tell you about Gerald. Gerald thinks he’s Mr. Wonderful. He’s so convinced of that fact that even if he lived forever like his old mother, he wouldn’t believe it, it wouldn’t occur to him that I’d jeopardise my life with him by so much as even sharing a lift with a feller.”

  “And what about me? What about the times him and Les have been away and left us to look after the job ourselves? Nothing’s crossed his tiny mind about those times, I suppose?”

  “No,” she says. “You’re one of the workers, aren’t you? And Gerald’s never read Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

  I give her the look and the pressure from her fingernails is renewed and she says:

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You’re Gerald’s blue-eyed boy and you fucking well know it. He knows how the business couldn’t survive without you even though he may not think it. He makes out that the opposite is true, so that he can save his face; that all the time Les and him are doing you favours. So can’t you see nothing ever’d cross Gerald’s mind as far as you’re concerned?”

  I shake my head. “You’ve lost me,” I tell her. “But what’s the fucking difference? You’re not coming, whatever you say.”

  “Too right I fucking am,” she says, and the finger nails begin making fresh indentations.

  Chapter Four

  OF COURSE, THE MANNER of my going’s typical of those two wankers. They only get me on a package in and out, because that way it’s cheaper even though it includes the bill for the hotel I’m not going to use. So I have to join the un-legislative club of package creeps all the way from Euston to Luton to Palma, including, as the song says, all the stops along the way: hanging around with them at the air terminal, hanging around with them at Luton, hanging around with them at forty thousand feet, hanging around with them at Palma Airport waiting for the luggage to come spewing out onto the bit of fun-fair.

  But it’s in the air they get on my tits most, and the group that gets on them more than any other is a family I haven’t been able to get away from since the air terminal. There are nine of the bastards: a couple of kids, fathered by two mid-thirty Dagenham workers, real-life brothers; they are swaggering would-be hardcases using the fashionable manufactured folk-dialogue of the East End, hairstyles courtesy whichever North London footballer’s salon happens to be nearest, decked out in expensive machine-made holiday clobber but wear their eiderdown-like windcheaters with the Ford emblem on the breast-zip pockets and the ceremonial racing stripes rippling down each of the arms. They look for all the world like T.U.C. 1975 equivalents of the Few, the major difference being the swift skinniness of their eyes, darting this way and that with the tense paranoia of those that observe others, eyeballs with a view to discover who’s for and who’s against. Their wives are anonymous but noisy late beneficiaries of their husbands’ collective hundred-pound-a-week wills, all crimplene, hairstyles ten years behind those of their husbands. Enlarging the group are the brothers’ parents, the woman past the age of caring, desperately rowdy, her husband trying to stretch himself back to be a brother to his sons by wearing the same kind of clobber and all that does for him is to accentuate the impression he gives of regretting that the present difference hadn’t started to spiral about 1935. And topping off this familial layer-cake is the inevitable and definitive Old Dad. Hogarth and Leonardo couldn’t have cross-hatched a better model. From the nose back everything about his face recedes and sinks into the depression of his hand-stitched mouth only to sweep out again to the bone of a Punch-like chin. But the support his mouth lacks tooth-wise doesn’t stop his endless jaw-bone solo. Not that any of the other generations of his family are paying much attention, they’re too busy leading off in their own directions. And it’s just my bleeding luck to get surrounded by the whole lot of them. My seat number places me next to a porthole and in the middle seat there’s one of the brats and the aisle seat is taken by one of the sons of Daghenam. Across the aisle is number two son, number two brat, and the middle-aged father. Behind me is mum and the two wives, and in front of me old dad has been sent to Coventry by the numbering of the seats. One of the three is empty but the wall seat’s been taken by a young girl of around fourteen, airline logic having placed her parents about ten rows down. The old dad starts by saying to the young girl:

  “Do you mind if I sit down next to you, young lady?” The dirty old bugger’s question is quite irrelevant because she’s got no choice. She shakes her head and number one son’s who’s stacking the old dad’s coat while the old dad creaks down next to the girl, his eyes venal and his tongue peeping through the recession in his lips. “Watch his left hand, darling,” the number one Dagenham son says to the young girl, who takes no notice of him or the old dad. He looks at me and gives me a swift deadpan wink and I give him a slow deadpan turning away of the head and I hear him sniff as I look out onto the wet tarmac and as he sits down there is an echo of his disdain in the crackle of his windcheater as he settles himself in.

  The old dad starts up a routine with the young girl. “You ever been to Majorca before, young lady?” he asks her.

  “No.”

  “Ah,” he says. “We been coming five years now. Five years ago it was when I first com
e. ’Course, took me seventy-five years to actually get round to having a continental holiday. Not like you youngsters nowadays. We had it different in my day. I was brought up down Wapping Steps. But you can say what you like, there was a strong sense of community feeling down there, them days.”

  Behind, number one son cracks a laugh. “And he should know, the old sod. Did all the feeling, he did.”

  “My Uncle Ernie used to live down there,” the girl says flatly. “He said it was dead nasty.”

  The old dad changes tack, his attitude and voice betraying a lifetime of compromise.

  “Oh, yes,” he says. “Of course we moved out in the end, that’s why we moved out. Went to live in Vauxhall, we did. Very nice, it is.”

  The way he says Vauxhall, it sounds like a bronchitic’s expiring breath.

  “I wouldn’t know,” the young girl says. “I’ve never been to Vauxhall.”

  So the young girl successfully ends the conversation and then Dagenham son number one smacks his hands together and says towards the stewardess who in no way can hear him:

  “Come on then, darlings. Let’s be having you. The above have arrived. Get cracking. Start wheeling out the duty frees.”

  He turns round in his seat and looks towards the back of the plane.

  “They’re not a patch on last year’s, Benny,” he says to his brother across the way. “Remember that little spade? What a little cracker that was. Remember? I always fancied a bit of black for that.”

  “I’ll give you a bit of black if you don’t leave off,” his wife says from behind.

  “The day you give me anything’ll be a day to remember. Here, Benny, last year she gave it up for Lent and you know how she never could count, I never had the heart to tell her Lent’s over and done with. I never looked back since.”

  Benny bellows his appreciation. Number one son’s wife says: “You just bleeding watch it or I’ll tell them stewardesses all about your operation. That’ll slow you down a bit.” There’s a trio of screeches from behind. Number one son puts his hands on the back of his seat and raises himself up slightly and gives his old lady a freezer. “You’re asking for one in the mouth, you are,” he says.