Amphetamines and Pearls (10 page)

‘I walked all night long, with my 32-20 in my hand,

I walked all night long, with my 32-20 in my hand,

Lookin' for my woman, well, I found her with another man.'

The classic blues, the all-time statement of human jealousy aroused to the pitch of murder. It wasn't only the eeriness of that disembodied Negro voice coming through the door into that black space in which I stood; it wasn't only the edge to the voice as it sang of death which reminded me of Candi's voice on her last recording; it was a pricking at the base of my skull, a crackling of the hairs along the back of my hands, a tightening of the skin across my forehead.

For the time it took the singer to finish his statement I was held at that door. Then I moved away. If Howard was in there, listening in the dark, he was unlikely to hear me taking a look around.

I searched and found nothing: nothing that I wanted. Whatever Howard was going to give he was going to give in person. Or not at all.

I went back to the room. The piano began its introduction to another blues. I held the handle, thought for a split second, then went in—fast. I slammed the door shut behind me and its sound echoed dully in the darkness of the room. No other movement as the echo died on the air. Just the crackling surface of an old recording sending out a woman's voice: rich, powerful, filled with scorn and knowledge.

‘I've had a man for fifteen years, given him his room and board;

Once he was like a Cadillac, now's he like an old, worn Ford;'

Gradually my eyes were getting used to the light and I made out a shape away across the room. Not tall, not small. My hand was tight on the grip of my gun and now I raised it and aimed it at this shape.

‘I'm tired of buyin' porkchops to grease his fat lips,

And he has to find another place to park his old hips,'

‘Howard!' My voice cut across the record and it sounded wrong in that room, intrusive and somehow out of time.

‘Howard! I said I'd be back to talk to you. Find the light switch.'

No movement.

‘The light switch! If I fire this gun in this light I may only wound you in a very nasty place.'

Slowly the shape started to move, away from me, towards the wall.

‘The groundhog even brings it and puts it in his hole,

So my man's got to bring it to satisfy my soul,'

The light came on and I was ready for it with one hand up to shield my eyes. But Howard didn't try anything. Just stood over by the wall. Even in the total blackness of that room he was wearing his dark glasses. A short, fat man with dark glasses and short, balding hair; plimsolls on his feet and fear in his hands as they moved up from his sides then fell back again, hopelessly.

‘You got to get it, bring it, and put it right here,

Or else you can keep it out there.'

The voice rose to a climax: the needle hissed off the record. I looked around the room. It was partly sound-proofed and the walls were covered in black fabric. To my right there was a huge record player, amplifier and a cabinet full of what looked like old 78's. High on the wall at either side were two speakers. There was nothing else in the room.

Except for Howard and myself—and I had a gun.

When he spoke he didn't say any of the things that I expected him to say.

‘That was Bessie Smith. Do you like Bessie? She was the greatest of them all of course. A fine singer. Fine singer.'

I couldn't tell if he was talking out of nervousness or if he was stalling for time. It didn't occur to me at the time, but now I guess it could have been that at that moment Bessie's voice was the most important thing to him. Even if I had thought it then, it wouldn't have mattered.

‘I'll tell you something, Howard, then you tell me something. A few hours after Candi Carter was killed you made a phone call to London. You called a creep called Cook and told him you'd make it worth his while to tail me. Well, he believed you and he tried his best and now he's been paid off all right but not by you. Now for you to call him then means one of two things. Either you murdered Candi, or you've got a good idea who did. Whichever it is, I want to know and I want to know fast.'

He didn't move. I did. I went over to the cabinet and picked out a record. Heavy black shellac. It broke easily when it hit the floor. So did the next. Howard still hadn't moved, hadn't spoken.

The next few records I smashed across my knee, the ones after that I threw at the wall above his head.

In ‘Kiss Me Deadly' the records belonged to Fortunio Bonanova and they were grand opera. Arias for a failed wop singer to sing along to. Now it was different. I might have liked to listen to a lot of these records. Instead I broke them into little pieces.

But still Howard had not moved or spoken.

‘Tell me, Howard. Tell me before your collection gets down to zero.'

I took one in my hand and went over to him. I looked at his face: from under his dark glasses the lines of his tears ran silently.

I dropped the record and brought my hand back across his face; the glasses flew off and skidded over the floor. The eyes that had sheltered underneath them were white at the rims, pink at the centre. I slapped him again then punched him in his fat gut. He folded over and went down on to his knees.

I dropped down beside him and the .38 was so close that even with his eyes he couldn't miss it.

‘You've got five seconds and then I'm going to start taking you to pieces like I've taken your precious records to pieces. Only you'll feel it more. You might not believe that now, but once I start in on you then you will. Now! How did you find out I was at the flat when she was killed?'

I hit him with the barrel of the gun and he flinched away and grasped his chest. But he started to talk.

‘I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know until he came, John came. He had been to see her. She owed money, a lot of money. He had been here first but I was fed up with paying her bills and getting the kind of treatment from her that I had been getting. So he went to see her himself.

‘When he came back he said that she was dead. Said that he heard someone inside the flat and waited. You came out and he knocked you down. He took some pills you were carrying and saw your name from your wallet. Then he went inside and found Candi. He came straight out and left you there. He went out of the building by the fire escape and came here. He said it didn't look like the work of a private eye but I didn't know. Cook had done some jobs for me before so I phoned him. I thought if he watched you for a few days he might pick up something I could use. I don't really know why I did it. It was stupid. Stupid.'

I put my gun away in its holster.

Howard was still kneeling in the middle of the floor of his blacked-out room surrounded by broken pieces of rare recordings, spread like crazy paving over everywhere.

He picked up the nearest section. He said: ‘This was Bessie Smith's last ever Columbia recording. “Safety Mama”. November, 20th, 1931.'

But I was no longer listening. I went out and shut the door behind me.

12

Patrick lived in a large block of flats near Regent's Park. Lots of white paint everywhere and bushes in tubs outside, from behind which doormen in braid and peaked caps suddenly appeared to whisk open car doors.

I left the keys to the Saab with a superannuated juvenile lead from the days of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and allowed myself to be ushered through the revolving doors. Jane went just ahead of me, turned in the foyer and waited. There was enough snob and chic in there to sink the QE2. She was wearing a short fur over a plain black dress with a neckline that did things to my blood pressure that sent it strictly over the limit. I asked one of the waxworks the way to Patrick Gordon-Brown's flat and hated the sound of my voice as I did so. It was one of those scenes that tricked you into behaving as though you had manners. In the lift Jane stood close to me and squeezed my arm. She reached up her mouth and kissed me on the point of the chin. I was thinking that it was a long while since anybody kissed me there; the only contact that usually came the way of my jaw was in the manner of right hooks. I was still thinking that when the lift stopped and the door opened out on to a corridor with a few hundred yards of red carpet. They must have known we were on the way after all.

The face at the door didn't like the look of a guy standing in the shadow of the young lady in the dark fur. When it saw me at closer quarters, it liked me even less. We were told to wait. The next face was even less impressed and distinctly rude. Until Jane tried some of her girlish charm: he didn't say anything nice, but at least he stopped being nasty and went away.

The face which appeared next belonged to Patrick. Although he recognised me, he wasn't any too pleased to see me there. Perhaps I should have said because he recognised me. But this time Jane's smiles were more successful. The door opened and we stepped over the threshold.

Patrick led us to the bar, excused himself and left for what were obviously more important matters. I got Jane a gin and tonic and myself a double whisky—all courtesy of Dragon Records, no doubt—and took a careful look around. Most people were standing in little knots, drinking and waiting for something to happen. They mostly looked Kings Road trendy—which made me look like an exhibit from a V and A retrospective. I suggested to Jane that we wander around to see what we could see. Or who.

The next room looked more promising. For a start there was hardly any light, though when your eyes became accustomed to it you could see a little more than shapes. A stereo played a watered down version of black soul and the atmosphere was sweet with the scent of cannabis. A few couples were dancing in the middle of the room; or they were holding each other and checking out all the vital parts were present. I stared harder at one of these groping couples: a disc jockey of supposedly virile appetites was fondling the tight little arse of a fair-haired boy in baby blue denim. No one seemed to think it extraordinary, least of all Jane, who pointed to a gap in the floor cushions and suggested that we went over and sat down.

We sat for a while and drank and she began to tickle the edge of my ear with the tip of her tongue. Every now and then people would get up from the floor and head in the direction of the door at the other side of the room from where we were. I guessed it was the bedroom, though it could have been the communal bathroom. The end of Jane's tongue had now begun to explore the inner reaches of my ear and I shivered with what I could only suppose was pleasure. I sure wasn't cold.

I was on the point of suggesting that we go across the room and take a look at what lay beyond the door when Patrick came up and started talking to us. Not that he had anything special to say, but he was very interested in what I was doing there. I mumbled something about being curious about how the other half lived but it didn't go down too well. So I left him with Jane and went looking for a little more scotch. Hell! I needed a lot more scotch!

There were more people milling around now and more faces that I half-recognised. Maybe if you were good enough or big enough to be known straight-off you didn't need to hustle your business with a load of free booze and sex. Not that there had been much of the latter yet. Though I was still to penetrate beyond that much used door.

When I got back to Jane and Patrick, two other guys had joined them and Patrick was busy selling product as though his life depended on it. Which in a way I suppose it did. Just a little more air-play, sweetie, and it's bound to break big.

I pulled Jane to her feet and as I did so I wondered why I had never kissed her. When I had, I wondered why I had waited so long. I kissed her again and took hold of her hand, firmly. We went over towards the famous door.

On the other side it was darker still and I had the sense of having stepped into a Chinese puzzle and hoped that I had the key. I nudged down with the inside of my left arm against the weight of my .38.

There appeared to be a large bed in the centre of the room and a lot of writhing around going on top of it. More movement was evident around the sides of the room, along the floor. Just down by Jane's foot I could see fairly clearly a figure half out of a dress, whom I guessed was a woman, though who was I to make such rash assumptions, being serviced—I can think of no better word—by two other figures which were quite evidently male.

On one wall someone had erected a screen and the flickering light from this lit up forms and faces for seconds at a time. One epic had obviously just finished and the coloured titles advertised the start of another. It was called ‘Hot Pussy' but it was not about to appeal to cat-lovers everywhere: not even roast cat with orange sauce.

The scene opened with a white girl in a short polka dot dress going to the front door and gasping with surprise at seeing her coloured friend standing at the other side. At least, I assume she was her friend as she kissed her full on the mouth for some time and in close-up; she certainly wasn't the milk-lady as she wasn't carrying any bottles.

In the next scene they were in the bedroom and whitey was showing her friend the contents of her wardrobe. Then—what do you know!—her friend started to try on some of the clothes. Whoever scripted this should get a Nobel Prize for originality above and beyond the call of duty.

She took off her white blouse to reveal a hefty pair of tits bulging out of a little coffee-coloured bra. She took off the bra and they sagged down a couple of inches; this must have worried the hostess as she spent the next few minutes trying to revive them with various manipulations of her hands and lickings with her tongue. I'll say this for her—she tried hard. But it didn't seem to work. So they forgot about the new blouse and lay down on the bed.

The coloured girl began to unbutton the top of the other's dress. Well, fair's fair. They played with each other's tits for a while and just as this was getting pretty boring—for us as well as for them, our hostess sneaked her hand under the hem of her friend's skirt. And would you believe it? She wasn't wearing any knickers. This was soon reciprocated and they lay back along the bed kissing each other and pushing their fingers inside each other with practised ease.

I tried to catch a look at Jane's face in the flashes of light, but I couldn't tell if she was aroused or embarrassed. Whatever effect it was having on her, it was working on the others all right. The figures on the bed were moving around as though they had suddenly found a nest of fleas. The lady to our left was now less in her dress than out of it and the two young studs were working hard.

All the while I was looking around me I was trying to imagine how Candi would have reacted to the situation. It's difficult to imagine someone with whom you have experienced sex in the most private and personal of ways indulging themselves in public in a place like this. But when she got high perhaps she hadn't cared. Still it wasn't a thought I liked: orgies were okay as long as you didn't get your emotions messed up in them,
Ä® guessed. So what was I doing here with Jane?

I must have missed the end of the movie, because when I looked at the screen again the film was in black and white and it looked as if whoever had made it had switched on the camera and fallen asleep. No movement from that area at all; but plenty on the single bed against the wall. They hadn't even bothered with the excuse of a plot—just three people screwing and sucking.

A girl lay on her back, buttocks slightly raised. A man lay half over her, penetrating her from above. Alongside the girl, whose face I could see, lay another girl, incongruously wearing stockings and a suspender belt. The two girls had their mouths open and were touching tongues. The girl whose face I could see had her eyes shut and was smiling.

There was a blundering cut in the film. Now the man was lying on his side and I could see that he still had his socks on. The girl in suspenders was lying behind him, leaning over his body and kissing his side. The other girl was lying on her back, with her left arm holding her left leg in the air so that the man could find his way inside her. Her leg was thin and covered up to the top of the knee by a shiny plastic black boot; the other leg hung over the edge of the bed. Her vacant eyes were staring straight at the camera as if she were lying there taking a rest before dying. The eyes of Buffy Thurley.

I grabbed hold of Jane's arm and pulled her out of the room. I wanted to find Patrick and fast. He was leaning against the bar looking as if cold cream wouldn't stain his nylon sheets. I tried hard to look a little excited but basically unconcerned.

‘Great stuff, Patrick. The films, I mean. Really good—better than the usual run-of-the-mill thing.'

I leaned over away from Jane and tried the old man-to-man bit.

‘I'd like to get hold of something like that for a little home consumption. Where do you pick them up from? Or does somebody bring them along?'

He looked at me as if I were proving to be an even greater embarrassment than he had feared. I asked him again, pretending to be rather drunk and getting louder by the minute. I hoped he would say something if only to shut me up. He did.

‘They're brought along, old man, I just ask for a fresh supply each time. They seem to keep some people happy.'

He looked at me with something near contempt, and then behind me to where Jane stood, wondering what the hell was going on and wishing she had never come in the first place—had never brought me.

‘Look, there's the chappie over there. Standing with his back to us talking to that girl in blue.'

I thanked Patrick and told Jane to go and powder her nose. She didn't like it, but she went all the same.

I walked over and stood behind him. Put my hand firmly on his arm, just by the elbow. Excused him from the conversation. Led him to a corner.

He was wide-eyed with a mixture of astonishment and fear and I could see the expression magnified through his glasses. I wondered what classification this little experience was classified under.

‘Well, Martin. I didn't expect to speak to you again so soon. Or did I?'

He was looking wildly around himself now, looking for someone who would come and get him off the hook. But I was hoping that everyone else would be too concerned with their own peculiar reasons for being there to worry about us.

‘Do you come here often? Or is that too corny a question?' He spluttered and stumbled over his words: it was really his first time. I tightened my grip on his elbow and smiled into his glasses in case anyone was looking.

‘You liar! You're often here, Martin. You often come here because you've got business here. And the sort of business you've got involved in brings all kinds of pleasures on the side. Doesn't it?' My grip was stronger still and the sweat was starting to run down his face; his mouth was twisting into a grimace of pain.

‘It must have been very different from all those dry and dusty volumes, Martin. Very different. Lots of willing girls only too anxious to drop their knickers for some of that extra cash you found yourself with. Not just any old girl, either. Some important ladies, Martin, some important people. Stars, even, stars, Martin. You creep! I bet that really turned you on—the idea of getting inside the knickers of somebody famous. Like Candi, Martin. Like Candi. She was good, Martin, wasn't she? You don't have to tell me though, Martin. I know how good she could be!'

I let go of his arm and pushed the flat of my hand into his stomach. I began to increase the pressure and I held him as I did so. I didn't want him going down yet.

‘You weren't only into leather-bound classics, Martin, your export business brought you in touch with more than that. Like some nice pornography. That's where the big money was, wasn't it? A little filth for the expense account taste. A little sex for those who can't get it straight.

‘What happened once you'd started, Martin? Found you'd taken a liking to it, did you? Well, they say a man should be interested in his work, don't they? Maybe someone thought you would be a good front man for posh set-ups like this one. Perhaps they looked a bit rough—your contacts over here—for this sort of trade. So they thought you would make a nice smart messenger for them. Here, Martin, just drop these films round to the party tonight, will you? Collect the cash while you're there and grab yourself anything that's going while you're there.'

My voice was louder now and I was conscious that people were listening. Patrick called across and started to come over towards us. Martin shook free of my grip and began to run across the room, heading for the door. He made three paces before my foot tripped him and sent him sprawling. I reached down and yanked him to his feet. I wanted something in return. I wanted to hear him shout with pain. Now. Here. Here where he and Candi had …

My fist smashed into his face and his nose poured red blood out on to the carpet. He went back against a trolley of glasses and sent it flying. I dived down among the broken fragments and held him by the throat; then I shook him and drove my knee hard between his legs as he threshed on the floor. Hands pulled me up and I took Martin with me. I jerked free and lashed out at him again, splitting his mouth at its edge. We were both splotched with his blood.