Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (10 page)

“Yeah,” I say, hanging the second shirt. “Well there’s fuck all out there, and after tonight the matter will be purely academic as far as I’m concerned.

“And when you get back,” D’Antoni says, “it’ll be academic to the Fletchers?”

“Oh no,” I say. “It’ll be much more down to earth, that will.”

D’Antoni walks over to the bed and picks up his shooter and looks at it. “Nobody ever took that away from me before,” he says.

“You mean nobody ever tried?” I say, walking through into the adjoining bathroom

I turn on the taps and start to get undressed. D’Antoni now appears in the bathroom doorway and watches me. He’s beginning to give me the fucking creeps. I get into the bath and lay back and when I look up again a shadow has appeared behind D’Antoni and the shadow is Wally, peering over D’Antoni’s shoulder, far enough back to be safe. I look at them both and they both look back at me.

They don’t say anything and neither do I. So I reach for the soap and start washing myself, looking up from time
to time to see that they’re both exactly as before, standing there very interested, watching me take a bath.

When I’ve finished I get out and dry and powder myself and put on my midnight blue dressing gown and walk out of the bathroom which entails D’Antoni and Wally having to move slightly to allow the operation to be a success. The next event for them to enjoy is me lighting a cigarette then picking up my copy of
Men Only
and lying down on the bed and beginning to read. Eventually the silence is broken by Wally.

“I get you anything, Jack?” he says.

“Yes,” I tell him. “When the fellow comes round with the hot-dogs, you can leave out the onions on mine.”

“You feeling hungry, then?” Wally says.

I shake my head and turn back to the magazine.

“I can do you whatever you like,” Wally says. “I got just about everything.”

I carry on reading.

“Got some nice steak,” Wally says.

“The butchers haven’t been affected by the rains, then?” I say, not looking up.

“What?”

“Never mind. Tell you what you can do. You can go and put the kettle on and fetch me a nice cup of tea, all right?”

Wally brightens up.

“Will do,” he says. “You like one, Mr. D’Antoni?”

“Coffee,” D’Antoni says.

Wally hurries out of the bedroom. I carry on reading the magazine.

D’Antoni stays standing where he is. Then after a while he goes over to the window and makes sure the curtains are pulled tight together. When he’s done that he goes out of the bedroom.

I lay the magazine down and lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I try and make my mind a blank in preparation for sleep but my mind’s eye keeps coming up with photo-fits of Gerald and Les and with their faces in the front of my consciousness I start to boil up again
about the whole fucking situation. Those eggs. Well this time the liberty taken has been too large. There’s no way there’s any obligations for me to fulfil in this instance.

Wally reappears carrying a tray as if he’s transporting the crown jewels for me to pick a couple out of. He sets the tray down on the bedside table.

“Here we are, Jack,” he says and starts to do the honours.

“Where’s D’Antoni?” I ask him

“Dunno, do I?” Wally says. “Probably sellotaping all the windows together.”

I look at him

“You don’t seem very worried, considering,” I say to him.

“Well, I mean to say,” Wally says, handing me my tea, “they’re all the bleeding same these yanks, isn’t they? All mouth. One hundred per cent spill. I mean, I don’t know what he’s doing here, but whichever way you look at it, there’s no chance anybody’s going to turn up here with machine guns, is there? I mean, that’s probably why Gerald and Les let him come here, they thought, so what, what’s a fortnight’s room and board? I mean, they probably never even bothered to tell you seeing as how there’s nothing to break sweat over. I mean, they’d not risk you getting knocked off on account of a berk like this one.”

“Oh no,” I say to him. “They’d never do a thing like that. Not to me.”

“That’s right,” Wally says, the world suddenly beginning to appear to veer back towards its proper axis.

I take a sip of my tea.

“I mean,” I say to him, “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you what he might be running away from?”

The world tilts again.

“What?” Wally says.

“How the fuck should I know?” I tell him. “I mean, we just don’t know, do we?”

“No,” Wally says.

“And that, apart from being told fuck all about anything, is why I’m flying back to Blighty in the morning.”

Wally starts stoking himself up again.

“Hang about a minute, Jack,” he says. “I mean, what about me? What if some geezers do turn up? What happens to me? They’re not going to stop at him are they? They’re not going to say be a good boy, Wal, keep stum like a good bloke, now are they?”

I regret opening up this particular avenue in Wally’s mind.

“Well, we don’t know, do we?” I say to him. “Maybe you’re right what you said earlier. Maybe he’s full of shit.”

“Yeah, and maybe he isn’t.”

The conversation is brought to an end by the reappearance of D’Antoni. He comes into the bedroom sideways and that is because he is carrying a tubular steel poolside lounger, already opened out. Wally and I watch him put the lounger down in the middle of the room. When D’Antoni’s done that he straightens up and looks at us, then goes out again.

“What the fuck’s he playing at?” Wally says.

I look at Wally.

“Wally,” I say to him, “you ever thought of going on Mastermind?”

D’Antoni comes back again with a sheet and a couple of pillows and the jug of champagne and a glass. He dumps the sheet and the pillows on the lounger then walks round the bed to the marble cupboard and puts down the champagne and the glass and points at the remaining cup on Wally’s tray. “That mine?” he says.

“Yes, Mr. D’Antoni,” Wally says.

D’Antoni picks up the cup and takes a drink. He winces and says: “Tastes like the inside of a hustler’s mouth after a long night.”

He replaces the cup and picks up the jug and the glass and goes back to the lounger. He lowers himself down until he’s balancing his backside on the edge then he pours himself a drink and takes it all at one go. Then he pours himself another one and does the same with it
that he did before. After he’s done that he pours himself another one only this time he only drinks four-fifths of it. With his free hand he juggles a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his shirt pocket and manages to light himself. When that’s over he looks at me and Wally, blowing smoke out at regular intervals.

“Well, this is cosy,” I say after a while.

D’Antoni just keeps looking in our direction.

“Sort of reminds me of when I was in the Scouts,” I say. “All boys together.” D’Antoni still doesn’t say anything. I light up a cigarette of my own and then I say: “Just carry on as if I’m not here, all right?”

No answer.

I smoke my cigarette and when I’ve finished I put it out in the saucer of my tea cup. Then I sit up slightly and take off my dressing gown and when I’ve done that I re-arrange the pillows and lie down in the bed. Wally stays standing where he is.

“Goodnight, Wally,” I say to him.

Wally looks down at me but he can’t manage to think of anything to say.

“It’s all right,” I say. “Don’t bother to tuck me up. I’ll be all right.”

Wally stays as he is.

“Goodnight, Wally,” I say again. “Switch the light out before you go, will you?”

This time Wally gets the message. He leans over and clicks off the wall light and then in the darkness I can hear him pick up the tray.

“What time you want calling in the morning, Jack?” he says.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll be awake bright and early. Don’t want to miss my plane, do I?”

There is a silence from Wally’s shadow, then I hear him move off towards the door. D’Antoni says:

“You going to bed now, Wally?”

Wally stops moving.

“Well, I was, yes,” he says.

“Get one of the other loungers,” D’Antoni says. “You’re sleeping in the hall.”

“Hang about,” Wally says. “I won’t get no sleep with that bleeding fish dribbling away all night.”

“I mean up here,” D’Antoni says. “Outside the door.”

“Stroll on,” Wally says.

“Don’t be too long,” D’Antoni says.

Nothing happens for a moment, then Wally resumes his progress to the door. When he gets there he says:

“Well, why can’t I sleep in here with you two, then?”

D’Antoni doesn’t answer him.

“Jack?” says Wally.

I don’t answer him either.

Eventually Wally goes out of the room. Nothing happens for a while. Then D’Antoni says:

“You asleep?”

“Oh yes,” I tell him. “I been driving them home for hours. It’s the mountain air.”

“You’re going back tomorrow?”

“If a twenty-nine bus ran past the gate of this place I’d be on my way now.”

“And what do your bosses say when an employee of theirs refuses to fulfil the obligations of his contract?”

“Normally they’d tell him he took a dead bleedin’ liberty and then shoot off his kneecaps just so he’d remember why he didn’t get a Christmas card next Christmas.”

D’Antoni laughs.

“Yeah,” he says.

There is a short silence.

“But not in your case,” he says.

“No,” I tell him, “not in my case.”

“I kind of got that impression earlier,” D’Antoni says.

There is more drinking in the darkness and then I hear D’Antoni’s swallow as it goes all the way down, and the noise of his swallow coincides with the sounds of Wally fixing up his set of camping equipment on the landing outside.

“I could always make you stay,” D’Antoni says. “I mean, how about if I did that? I’m the one with the artillery, when all’s said and done.”

“That’s a fact,” I tell him, sliding down a little farther between the sheets.

“I could keep you here as long as I liked,” he says.

“And of course I’d just naturally let you and your toys stay together, just like last time.”

There is a creak as I hear D’Antoni get up off the camp bed and then I can hear him moving around aimlessly in the darkness, propelled by the workings of his mind.

“Jesus,” he says at last, after another long swallow, “here I am. I mean, what the Christ am I doing here? I never been out the States in my fucking life before, except to Canada one time. And here I am. In the middle of nowhere, on an island in the middle of a nowhere fucking ocean, with a couple fucking creeps who I don’t want to know, just waiting to get off this fucking place.”

I turn onto my back. My sentiments exactly, I think.

The creak occurs in reverse as D’Antoni sits down on the camp bed again. There is silence out in the hall. Wally has finished his manoeuvres. There is a sort of non-noise as I sense Wally drift into the bedroom. Then more silence.

“You all right, Jack?” Wally says eventually.

I swear to myself then I push myself upwards and find the light switch and flick it on.

“Look,” I say to Wally. “Why don’t we do the job properly? Why don’t you go and make a midnight snack and get hold of a pack of cards and we can all pretend it’s like it used to be, under canvas with the bleeding wolf cubs.”

“I was only asking,” Wally says, giving his impression of not actually being in the room.

D’Antoni gets up off the camp bed and walks between us, gargling some more champagne, looking at nothing in particular.

“I should’ve known,” he says. “Those two cocksuckers. But what choice’d I have? I get off the plane and who else
could I contact? They’re the only ones, and I get this. I should have got straight back on the plane, taken my chances. I sure as hell got no cover here. They can walk right on in and take all the time there is. The creep’ll probably show them to my room and ask for a tip before they splash him all over the plaster. Jesus Christ.”

I sit up in bed and lean back against the wall and fold my arms. Wally looks at me and tries to express something that is apparently on his mind but without actually saying anything. I stare back at him. Wally keeps flicking his head in D’Antoni’s direction and then back at me but as I give him no response he gives up before he breaks it. D’Antoni’s doing his own share of head shaking as well, but after a while he gets back on the lounger and pours himself some more of his drink and drinks it. I wait a while before I say anything.

“Both finished?” I ask them.

They both look at me.

“I mean,” I say to them, “you’ve jacked it in for the night? You’ve just about tired yourselves out?”

Wally just looks at me and D’Antoni doesn’t look at anybody; the champagne and orange juice is almost finished. D’Antoni takes another large guzzle and then puts down his glass and lies full length on the camp bed.

“There’s nice,” I say.

Wally stays where he is.

“Why don’t you go and get your head down as well, Wally?”

Wally looks at D’Antoni, then back at me, the way he was doing before. I take no notice of him and switch off the light and slide back down between the sheets. In the darkness there is the sound of D’Antoni’s breathing and nothing at all from Wally because he hasn’t moved a muscle, he’s still standing exactly where he was when the light went out. Fuck him, I think to myself. He can stand there all through the night as far as I’m concerned. Then there’s a slight rustling and there’s warm breath on my face because Wally’s squatting down at the bedside and he’s talking to me in a low voice.

“Listen,” he says, “Jack, you can’t clear off in the morning. I mean, you can’t leave me on me own. Supposing some bastards do turn up? I mean, like he says, they ain’t going to ask me what time the next bus leaves after they’ve knocked him off, are they?”

“Go to bed, Wal,” I tell him.

“But Jack,” he says, “I’ll be in dead lumber, won’t I? If they turn up, I’m as dead as he is.”

“How dead do you think you can get?” I ask him.

“Beg pardon?” Wally says.

“Go back to bed, Wally,” I tell him.

“But Jack—” Wally begins, but his protest is cut off by a cracking fart from D’Antoni, followed by a few mumbled words from the back of the American’s throat.