Maxie’s Demon (6 page)

I swallowed again. ‘I … I haven’t got it, Ahwaz! I’m sorry—’

‘You blew it! I do not, I do not believe you are telling me this! The biggest job I ever set you up on, and you little bastard, you blew it!’

‘Look, it wasn’t my fault! The cops got on to me somehow, they were after me, they were boxing me in—’

‘Of course they got on to you,
you fucking idiot, the way you were driving! They had a frigging helicopter on to you – I know, we were listening in to it right here! What do you think I give you that scanner for, huh? So where’s the red one – you just ditched it, huh, you crappy little coward?’

‘No! I crashed it! I was trying to get away – I was nearly killed, honest—’

‘You—’ The phone erupted, so loudly I had to hold it
away from my ear. Half of it I couldn’t understand, but I didn’t need to. He was calling me every name under the sun and threatening to rip out my liver. At least he hadn’t put the phone down; that might have meant he really was going to rip it out.

The big A was not a gangster or anything of that sort. He was a car dealer, expensive and above, with pukka dealerships in London and Bradford and
Manchester and suchlike places. He really did handle the odd legal Ferrari, now and then. He just liked the bigger profit margins on the free variety. Mind you, rumour had it he liked the margin on certain dodgy substances almost as much, and was moving into them in a big way. Certainly he kept some very large lads on the payroll; but I hadn’t heard of anyone actually being worked over, at least
not too seriously. So didn’t I have a right to open my mouth here too?

‘Look! I
said I was sorry, didn’t I? I mean, come off it, this isn’t a secure business, is it? Risks of the game, eh? Long odds! You win a few, you lose a few! And this was bloody difficult – I mean, a red Ferrari, you can’t exactly hide that in traffic, can you?’

‘Difficult? You said you wanted a difficult job, you little
shit!’

‘I said I wanted a real job, a chance to earn some real money!’

‘And I gave you it, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Job I’ve been three weeks setting up, customer waiting – real money – I’m too bloody generous, me, I should have known—’

‘Oh yeah! Real money! A lousy two grand out of the two hundred you’re going to make!’

‘More than you’ll ever be worth! Me, I’m sorry for you, I take a risk—’

That did it. I’d been through too much. ‘You? Just for ringing the chassis numbers and sticking cars in a container? Some fucking risk! Getting ink on your suit duffing the papers?’

‘This is an open line, you stupid bastard!’

‘Yeah, isn’t it! Listen, I got hurt, I got burned, I got the shit scared out of me – you’re going to pay me for that, you hear?’

‘
Pay
you? Get this, I don’t know nothing
about you, who you are, what you’re blabbing about – and if I so much as set eyes on you again, I’m going to have to scrape you off my fucking shoe, right?
Right,
you crappy, useless little pimp? Say it! I want to hear you say it, say I’m right, say you’re a lousy little pimp—’

I’ve never
been a pimp. Unlike Ahwaz. And I hate pimps. I’d never treat a girl the way they do. I haven’t much left,
but there’s that. I don’t know what I was about to do, scream at him down the line, maybe. I’d had too much, I was pretty near a breakdown. And maybe if I had said it, I might have woken up in a plastic sack on the local tip.

Something else happened instead. The whole phonebox lit up in a flare of crackling red light, blasting red that blazed in the veins of my eyeballs and drew lancing streaks
of sparks across the glass. The phone itself glared red-hot; I could feel the heat. The handset blazed in my hand, I threw it up and it hung there stiff on its cord for an instant, held by the force of the energies coursing through it. There was the beginning of a startled screech from the earpiece, then only a fearful crackle. The electric chair might sound like that, maybe; from the inside.

But it was gone in the same instant, with a suddenness that left a hole in the air – that’s the only way to describe it. Sudden silence on deafened ears, sudden cold on my scorched face. That was just the cool night air blowing around the booth. The handset dropped and swung, rattling against the glass. It was smoking a little. I could feel heat from the phone, but not enough for the colour it had
just turned. Gingerly I reached out and touched it. It was about as hot as a dinner plate. But at my faint dab it sagged and fell limply away from the iron back.

A shower of hot coins
vomited on to my aching feet.

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
I was pretty damn hesitant about going in to work, or anywhere else I’d be recognised. Well, anywhere at all, really.

What had happened on the phone? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to think about it. But I had hardly any money left, even after the jackpot from the phone. I’d spent most of that on a cab, because I was too shaken to get a bus or a train,
and some more on a jacket and trainers. Pre-owned, by a macaque maybe, but Maxies can’t be choosers.

My jeans, washed hastily in my cracked little basin, weren’t quite dry, but I wriggled into them anyway, shuddering and trying not to strain the seams. It had been the grease holding them together, mostly.

I ought to decamp to Birmingham or somewhere else, fast – but then Birmingham, Alabama,
probably wouldn’t be far enough, if Ahwaz was really mad.

I’d never heard of him actually bumping anyone off, true. But then maybe his boys were efficient enough so you didn’t hear; and I had heard he was not above breaking a few bones himself in his early days. Anyway, I’d need money, whatever I did. If I could just get through the day unscathed, maybe I could scarper with the takings or part
thereof. So there I was, bright and early at ten o’clock, just as Chaddy was unlocking the ten or so separate locks on the steel-panelled door.

‘Christ, you look rough!’ was his greeting. ‘What’s all this I hear ’bout you bin up to sumfin’?’

The
world probably knew it by now. ‘I blew a big job for Ahwaz,’ I admitted.

Chaddy guffawed. ‘What you doin’ ’ere then? Blew more’n that, by all I ’eard—’

‘Ah, leave it, Chaddy. Look, if he shows up, give me a shout so I can duck out the back, won’t you?’

Chaddy shrugged. ‘Do my best. But you better get them booths slopped out firss, hear? An’ there’s the ashtrays in the girls’ room—’

It was always a delight working for Chaddy. Not that this place was his; the owners, once you got back through a chain of holding companies, were apparently Maltese,
invisible and scary. Chaddy was just a minder for the minder, but it didn’t stop him being a complete little Hitler. I was sure he was paying me half what he put in the books; but if I tried telling anyone, I might just be dead sure.

I mooched on through the shoddy shopfront with its flaking Formica panelling and slather of suggestive posters, unlocking all the windows that weren’t painted shut,
and Chaddy roared, ‘F’Crissake! Born in a fucking barn, were yer?’ But I knew he was too lazy to close them himself, and the warm city fug that drifted in was better than the residue of last night’s stinks, little boys’ room and worse. I clanked around the crudely carpentered booths with my mop and bucket, using the handle to knock out the chewing gum and paper wedges that the johns were forever
sticking in to block the little shutters when their coins ran out. It never worked; the mechanisms were too strong, and the shutters just forced the stuff down to make a mess along the bottom rim, for guess who to clean up. I swept them hastily under the seat, along with the dog-ends and tissues; there’d be more along presently.

The door
slammed, and I nearly dived under the seat myself. It was
only Ellie, one of the girls on this morning. She gave me a friendly wave, the way most of the girls did; not a bad kid, but built like a starving parrot, dyed crest and all. ‘’Allo, Maxie, how’d ya get on lass night? No go? Aw, shame – me, I hadda great time – out wi’ Frankie – went t’see the wrestlin ’n’ got shitfaced after – gor any coffee?’ She trailed on into what was laughingly called the
dressing room. I remembered I hadn’t emptied the ashtrays, and had to move fast. With her in, they’d be overflowing any minute.

I sidled through the reek of powder and perfume and nicotine and armpits, dodging stray garments and wondering what the hell the punters got out of gawking at Ellie’s assortment of bones, sticking out of her skin at odd knobbly angles. Sam, the other girl, breezed in,
kissed me on the cheek, said, ‘Dahling!’ in her idea of a posh accent – she’d got me to coach her – and flicked Ellie’s tights off my shoulder where they’d somehow settled.

They liked me, the girls, in a sort of mild, detached way. Some of them even went out with me, when I had any cash and very occasionally when they had. They said I knew how to treat them, which compared to their average boyfriends
wasn’t too great a compliment. They weren’t all tarts, professional or amateur. Some were, including one or two who were bringing up kids, but a couple even came from fairly stable backgrounds. Most of them seemed to drift out of a kind of fearful stratum of low income, low expectations and low-grade council estates, with low IQs and domestic violence practically programmed in. Almost inevitably,
unless something got them first, they’d drift back into it again.

Now my real
background …

I could keep that secret from men, but the girls sussed it out at once – or a bit of it, they probably wouldn’t have believed the whole of it. They never could understand how anyone with the kind of start I’d had could have sunk so low. Drink or drugs or gambling, maybe; but though in years past I’d had
a pretty good bash at all three, sometimes at once, I wasn’t an obvious slave to any of them. Not even to cars, really.

I told the girls I was always asking myself that same question, but that wasn’t true. I’d given up asking long since. I was just trying to find my natural level, and maybe I hadn’t found it yet.

Sam was holding
forth on the latest TV part she hoped to get – two hours’ extra
work on a cop show – when I heard the door slam with real force. I jumped, but Chaddy hadn’t made a sound. So when the dressing room door flew open just as explosively I wasn’t prepared, and just stood staring at Ahwaz as he filled the frame.

Of course that bastard Chaddy hadn’t sung out, or meant to. He’d phoned Ahwaz the moment I got in, as no doubt he’d been told to. And no doubt he was sitting
out there, giggling to himself and hoping Ahwaz wouldn’t break the furniture with me, at least not beyond the powers of his tube of glue. I didn’t hold out much hope of that, as a meaty fist closed on my jacket and hoisted me on to my toes with straining seams, and the girls ran out squealing. A bandaged fist.

‘
Take
– take it easy, Ahw—’

‘Why should I? Are you looking at me, you bloody little
snot rag? Do you know what you have bloody well gone and done?’

‘I couldn’t help the car – I’ve got you others, haven’t I? I’ll get you more – it was that cutout switch—’

‘I am not talking about the frigging Ferrari! Look at me!’

I had been, but I was trying not to, because it made me want to double up with laughter. Instead of his long black tresses, expensively swept back, oiled and curled,
he had what was practically a jail-crop crew cut. Yet even that couldn’t conceal the fact that the hair along the right side of his head was brownish and frazzled, and his ear and cheeks had a sooty, stained look about them, with little patches of angry red like sunburn. Even his gold earring looked scorched and dull. He looked like a slightly blowtorched phrenologist’s dummy.

‘Look what
you
have done! And a hundred-and-fifty-quid shirt
and
a genuine Armani suit
and
a silk tie my brother brought back from Milan! All an absolute fucking ruin! And first I am going to—’

‘Wha’ happened? It wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything –
ech!
’ That was because his grip kept tightening.

‘My bloody dog an’ bone exploded, is what has happened! Right there in my own hand, right up against my frigging
ear! Up like a fucking bomb! I thought I was gonna be deafened for life!’

‘Your – your phone exploded? Yes, mine too, I mean the call-box phone – or something –
uk!
– and I’m very sorry, but how’m I supposed to have done that?’

‘It was you I was talking to!’

‘Yes, but –
ulk!
– how? I don’t know how to do a trick like that! You may, but I don’t! And listen, was that your usual phone? That little
pocket mobile job?’

He was frowning now, which was a good sign. Anything that didn’t involve beating the daylights out of me qualified. ‘Sure. Three hundred quid, wafer-thin. So?’

‘Well, I mean –
gllk!
– that wraps it up. Don’t you see? Cellular radio – no wires – no nothing, it all goes through relay stations – even if I’d connected the line to the mains or something, I couldn’t have done that
–
uk!
– I’m sure I couldn’t have even on an ordinary line, they must have circuit breakers or something. For lightning and that – but even lightning wouldn’t blow up a mobile—’

He shook
me absent-mindedly. Ahwaz was by no means stupid. ‘Then what the hell could have done it? And blown your end too?’

‘Don’t ask me – have you asked the phone people? And since it wasn’t me, could you please put
me down? My head’s bursting—’

‘No more than you deserve for the Ferrari, you little bastard!’ He shook me again. ‘Next time I need a kiddie’s pedal-car, I’ll think of you!’ He slapped me quickly across the face and back about five times, then threw me at the wall. That would have been a bit more bearable if it hadn’t been for his fistful of rings. I pressed back the stinging flap of skin he’d
torn from my nose – it always catches the worst, God knows how the French missed Wellington’s at Waterloo – wiped the blood from my mouth and picked myself up. Luckily he was more preoccupied with the phone business, and like a lot of people he was in the habit of asking me for intelligent information.