Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (15 page)

Chapter Eight

I
AM AWAKENED BY
a splash.

For a moment I am unaware of where precisely in the world I am supposed to be. I open my eyes and I am blinded by bright sunlight which, I realise at once, is why my pyjamas and my robe feel as though I’ve just stepped from under a shower. The shade has moved but apparently Wally has had the nous to move the wrought iron table to where the shade is and the Bloody Mary jug has fresh ice in it. I walk over to the table and pour myself a drink and when I’ve done that I pick up the jug and turn round and walk to the end of the villa and turn the corner to find out what the splash has been caused by.

The chasm and the retaining wall make a turn at an angle similar to the right angle the corner of the villa makes, and between the second aspect of the villa and the retaining wall is the swimming pool. Dead centre of the pool, like a doll in aspic, is Tina, floating on her back, a rubber ring round her waist, staring up into the deep blue sky. Floating near her, spinning lazily in the wake of Tina’s entry, is one of those inflatable lilos. On the edge of the pool is a towel and that is the only piece of material in sight because Tina hasn’t bothered to put on anything
except the rubber band or whatever it is that’s drawing her hair back from her face, making a pony tail that floats on the top of the water.

I watch her as she swans about, occasionally kicking a lazy leg to change direction, the rubber ring beneath her armpits pushing her tits even higher than ever so that her nipples are pointing skywards at an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees.

Sipping the Bloody Mary and watching the almost prehensile nipples is not in fact an unpleasant way of whiling away the following ten minutes, particularly as the warmth of the sun has by now crystallised the sweat on my soaking pyjamas, causing an aroma that makes me feel a little more at home, reminding me of the kind of smell I wash off in the shower in my flat after I’ve given Audrey one, or anybody else who might be present at the time, Audrey not being privy to that particular kind of information. Eventually the girl manoeuvres herself into a position from which she can see who’s watching her. When she’s taken that in, she closes her eyes and lazily does a half circle so that her toes are pointing towards the chasm and I’m presented with a view of the top of her head.

“Enjoying the view of the chasm?” she says.

“I was.”

“Dirty old bastard,” she says.

“Not so much of the old,” I tell her.

“Let’s put it this way. Last night we’re in the same bedroom, but in different beds. I’ve been trolling about starkers. The upshot of the situation is that the sleeping arrangements remain the same. Now, that I call old.”

I sit down in a wrought iron chair by the pool’s edge.

“Supposing I called it disinterest?”

“That’s what I mean. Old.”

“Your old man wasn’t wrong, was he?”

“Has he ever been right?”

“What he said about you having a good opinion of yourself.”

“Well you have to, don’t you. No bugger else will.”

“Depends how you go about things.”

“Of course, people have a good opinion of you, don’t they? On the strength of how you go about things?”

“On the strength of it, yes.”

She makes the other half of the circle and her toes are pointing at me again. Her nipples haven’t changed direction at all.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “That’s something else I was thinking about.”

“What?”

“I was wondering if you were one of those persons who got their kicks by bashing other persons about. You know, rather than actually getting down to the other.”

This conversation seems to be resonant with vague echoes of the conversation I was having with Wally before I got my overdue kip.

“There are people like that, you know,” she says, looking straight at me.

“Oh really?”

“I mean,” she says, “they may not necessarily know it, might never occur to them in a million years, but they do.”

“They do?”

“Well, like you. Probably enjoyed yourself so much getting a grip on me and bashing that yank about and treating my old man like a piece of loo paper that you hadn’t any appetite left for crawling in with me.”

“Is that so?”

She closes her eyes again.

“It could be,” she says. “Personally, I couldn’t give a fuck.”

Another half circle, and I get the back of her head again.

I smile to myself and pour some more from the jug into my glass and I take a drink and continue to watch her still closed-eye figure suspended by the reflection of the deep blue sky.

But the peaceful reflection doesn’t stay intact for long. It’s shattered by Wally doing a Buster Keaton round the
corner of the villa. When he sees me he proceeds crabwise along the white plasterwork, looking back over his shoulder to the corner from time to time. When he’s finally opposite where I’m sitting he quick-marches across the flagstones like a private trying to avoid a one-stripe.

“Jack,” he says, “Jack, the bastard’s—”

Then he catches sight of Tina on the surface of the pool and the image drives the information he was about to impart straight out of his mind. Apparently it’s driven out everything else as well because all that happens is that his mouth falls open to no effect because no words accompany the action.

“Yes, Wal?” I say to him.

But Wal isn’t listening. He walks as far to the edge of the pool as he can without getting his feet wet and then he launches himself another way: “You fucking tart,” he screeches at her. “You bleeding little brass; get out of there and get your fucking gear on.”

There’s not a ripple on the pool.

“Do you hear me?”

“No.”

“Listen—”

Tina starts singing.

“You don’t come out there right now—”

“You’ll what? Come in after me? You’ve spent all your life not getting your feet wet.”

“Listen—”

“Get your mate to fetch me. From what I’ve heard he should be able to walk on water.”

“Listen—”

“Oh, piss off.”

Any additional dialogue to this exchange is precluded by the appearance of D’Antoni at the same corner round which Wally had made his entrance. Not that it cuts off anything from Tina because she is not facing in D’Antoni’s direction, her eyes are still closed, and in any case I get the impression she has nothing further to add to what has
gone before. It is Wally, with his shit-house rat’s instinct, who terminates the conversation by facing D’Antoni and then shuffling backwards along the edge of the pool, like a man on a tightrope, until he feels relatively secure on the western side of my chair. Why he should worry, except for the fact that he’s Wally, I’ll never know, because D’Antoni is in no shape to do anybody any harm except himself. At the moment it’s all he can do to support himself, one arm at full stretch, against the corner of the villa. He’s looking in our direction, but whether he’s seeing us or not is another matter. There is a long silence. Tina is motionless in the pool, Wally is motionless by the side of it, and D’Antoni is fairly motionless trying to keep upright at the corner of the villa. The only positive action is myself pouring more from the jug.

Finally D’Antoni detaches himself from the villa and makes it to the edge of the pool and sits down in a chair which is a twin to the one I’m sitting in. Nothing happens for a moment or two. I’m just about to take a sip of my drink when the silence of the mountains is disturbed, and not the only thing that is disturbed, because D’Antoni jackknifes forward in his chair and is violently but briefly sick right into the fucking swimming pool. Several things happen at once; I don’t drink my drink, Wally almost imitates D’Antoni, and Tina, for the first time, is upright in the rubber ring, looking at D’Antoni and then at what is gradually floating out from the edge of the pool.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, and splashes her way to the floating lilo and paddles her way to the far side of the pool, where the towel isn’t. When she gets there she scrambles out and stands on the edge and gives D’Antoni the kind of verballing he’s never heard since maybe he shot the wrong geezer on his first contract, if he was listening. When she’s finished she walks all the way round three sides of the pool until she reaches the towel which is about six inches away from my right foot. She picks up
the towel and gives D’Antoni some more mouth. D’Antoni just stays as he is, head in hands. Then after she’s given him everything she can think of she walks off round the corner, dragging the towel behind her. This time, Wally doesn’t say anything to her.

I put my glass down on the flagstones.

“It’ll soon go through the filter,” Wally says at length.

I don’t say anything. D’Antoni says:

“Jesus Christ.”

I look at him again. He is no longer bent double. Now he is leaning back in the chair, his head hanging backwards, his face parallel with the sky, his arms hanging perpendicular.

“God,” he says. “Jesus.”

Then, abruptly, he stands up. He sways so much I think he’s going to bellyflop into the pool. But gradually the swaying slows down until he’s more or less vertical. Then he turns around to look at me and Wally. Wally and me look back.

“Is this the end of Rico?” I say to him.

D’Antoni focuses all of his uncomprehending attention on me. He probably never even saw the movie, I think to myself. Then D’Antoni disengages his gaze and visibly seems to snap himself back together. He strides forward and round my chair and grabs Wally by the shirt and says:

“I want scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, toast, and a lot of fruit juice. And I want it now, O.K.?”

Wally nods his head.

“You got all that?” D’Antoni says.

The same from Wally. D’Antoni lets go of him. Wally begins to walk away. “Wally,” I say to him, “I’ll have the same. Except I’ll have the eggs fried and the coffee tea.”

“Yes, Jack,” Wally says, not breaking step. D’Antoni looks down at me, then at his watch.

“I thought you were going to be out of here by now?” he says.

I don’t answer him.

“You staying?”

I still don’t answer him. D’Antoni laughs. Then he goes back down the edge of the pool and drags the twin seat to where I am and sits down in it. Then he laughs the same laugh again.

“Bullshit,” he says, looking at me with the expression that accompanied the laugh. “A crap artist, I knew it. I knew you’d never have the balls to go against the Fletchers. A bullshit vendor. I saw it, right away. You guys always think you can hide it, but it always shows. I had you figured from the start.”

He throws back his head and laughs again.

I light a cigarette and decide against making him eat the jug that contains the Bloody Mary. Instead I say: “You’ve recovered pretty well, considering you just tried to turn the pool into the Sargasso Sea.”

D’Antoni continues to grin at me.

“I throw up,” he says, “whenever I tie one on; first thing I do I get out of bed and I throw up. Then I’m fine. Then I eat and after that I’m even better.”

“Tonight I’ll put you to bed in the bathtub,” I say to him.

The smile almost goes.

“Yeah,” he says. “I seem to remember that, last night. In the bathroom.”

I look at him.

“Yeah, I remember that,” he says. “I still kind of feel it.” He leans forward, almost confidential. “The last guy did that, he ended his days by way of standing up in a pillar that happened to support a clover-leaf on the outskirts of New Jersey.”

“Oh, really?”

“That’s right,” D’Antoni says.

“Well, I don’t think it’d be too good an idea over here. From what I’ve seen the labour isn’t quite so skilled.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is—” D’Antoni says, looking like he might get sick again. “What I’m telling you—you’re a very privileged human being. But the reason is, why I don’t
take you apart for that, is I need you, in case of certain eventualities. You’re all I got and that is better than nothing at all. I just want you to understand my meaning, is all.”

I smile to myself. It really doesn’t matter, I think. Let him think it. It’s too warm to be any other way.

“See,” he says. “Where I come from, the crowd of mechanics I’m used to, a guy like you wouldn’t even get to hand out song sheets at the glee club. None of you limeys would. Compared to us, you guys are like as scary as the Addams Family. Amateurs. You know?”

“I expect we are,” I say to him. “A pity you have to put your life in our hands.”

“Right,” D’Antoni says. “That’s right. But what choice did I have? I had no choice whatsoever. A bastard in the bureau fixed that.”

D’Antoni looks at the Bloody Mary jug.

“Here, give me that,” he says.

I hand him the jug.

“You got a glass?”

I take a sip of my drink and so D’Antoni takes a pull from the side of the jug, leaving just about enough for the melting ice cubes not to be able to imitate icebergs.

“Why not try that on the pool,” I tell him. “It’ll clean it quicker than the filter.”

D’Antoni takes no notice and finishes off the rest of the jug, cubes and all. Then he sits back and contemplates the mountains.

“Yeah,” he says. “A bastard in the bureau. The guy I talked to most. The guy was a genius. You got to give him that.”

D’Antoni continues to stare at the mountains.

“Shouldn’t have talked to him, then, should you?” I say to him.

D’Antoni looks at me.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “You wouldn’t, I take it. You’re one of the straight guys, yeah?”

“The only times I talk to old Bill—” D’Antoni’s expression causes me to qualify “—is when I’m paying their wages or
when they’re telling me the kind of thing they get their wages to tell me.”

“Sure,” he says. “And supposing the Fletchers did a deal with the authorities that served up your head on a platter?”

I look at him without answering.

“Pure public relations,” D’Antoni says. “They all figured that because of certain happenings in the State of New York it was time that the Mafia got a sacrificial goat, that goat being me.”

He picks up the empty jug, looks at it, puts it down again.