Remote Control (18 page)
Authors: Andy McNab
We entered through two blackened glass swing doors and were hit by the frosty blast of air-conditioning. We were at one end of a semi-lit hallway that ran the length of the frontage. Halfway down was a young receptionist sitting at her desk, looking very upmarket and friendly. I was impressed with Pat’s taste. The girl smiled as we walked towards her, Kelly’s hand in mine.
As we got closer I realized that the smile was a quizzical one. By now she was standing up, and I could see she was dressed very smartly in white shirt and black trousers. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, ‘we don’t . . .’
I held up my hand and smiled. ‘That’s fine, we haven’t come for lunch. I’m trying to find a friend of mine called Patrick. He used to come here a lot, maybe six or seven months ago. Does that ring any bells? As far as I know he was going out with one of your staff. He’s an Englishman, speaks like me.’
‘I don’t know, sir, I’ve only been here since the beginning of the semester.’
Semester? Of course, we were in Georgetown, the university area. Every student was also a waiter or waitress.
‘Could you maybe call somebody, because it’s really important that I make contact with him.’ I winked conspiratorially and said, ‘I’ve brought a friend of his – it’s a surprise.’
She looked down and smiled warmly. ‘Hi. Do you want a mint?’ Kelly took a small handful.
I went on, ‘Maybe one of the people in the back might know him?’
While she was thinking about it a couple of boys in suits came in behind us. Kelly was looking up at them, lumps in her cheeks. ‘Hi, little lady,’ one of them laughed. ‘You’re a bit young for this, aren’t you?’
Kelly shrugged. Not a word.
The receptionist said, ‘Excuse me a moment,’ and went off to do her hostess bit, opening the door beyond the desk for somebody else to meet the two guests and show them to their table.
She came back and picked up the phone. ‘I’ll call.’
I looked down and winked at Kelly.
‘We’ve got somebody here with a child, and they’re after an Englishman called Patrick?’ she said with that upward inflection at the end that had started in Ramsay Street and taken over the world.
She put down the phone and said, ‘There’ll be somebody here in a minute.’
It rang again almost immediately and she took a booking.
Kelly and I just stood there. In a minute or two a waitress appeared from the dining room. ‘Hi. Follow me.’
Things were looking up. I got hold of Kelly’s hand and we went through the door to the dining room.
People here obviously liked eating in semi-darkness because all the tables were lit only by candles. Looking around, I noticed that all the waitresses seemed to wear small white T-shirts that exposed their midriffs, with tight shorts and sneakers with little ankle socks.
On the right-hand side, against the wall, was a bar with overhead lighting. The two suits were the only two customers. In the middle of the room I noticed a small raised stage with spotlights above.
I laughed to myself; good stitch, Pat!
Arse or no arse, Slack had always been successful with women. At the time of Gibraltar he was single like me and rented the house next door. For about a year he’d been having what he called a ‘relationship’, but we all knew better. They’d met at a Medieval Night fancy dress party; at four o’clock the next morning I was woken by the sound of a vehicle screeching up outside his house, then doors slamming and lots of giggling and laughing. We lived in a small estate, the sort of houses they threw up in about five minutes all through the Eighties, so I could hear his front door crashing and thought, Here we go. Then I heard a bit of music and the toilet flushing, which is always nice at four in the morning. Then lots more laughing and giggling and they were away. At noon the next day I was in the kitchen, mincing around with the washing-up, when a taxi drew up, and that was when Queen Elizabeth I and one of her young ladies-in-waiting came scuttling out of Pat’s front door, hair all over the place, looking incredibly embarrassed as they jumped into the cab, hoping no-one would see them. When we grilled him, it turned out he was doing it with a mother-and-daughter combo. We hadn’t let him hear the end of it ever since. Now it looked like he’d got his own back.
One of the girls waved to Kelly. ‘Hi, honey!’ Beneath her T-shirt was what looked like a dead heat in a Zeppelin race.
Kelly was loving it. I held her hand tight. As we followed the girl, Kelly looked up at me and said, ‘What is this place?’
‘It’s a kind of bar where people go to relax after work.’
‘Like TGI Friday’s?’
‘Sort of.’
We came to another set of double doors and went through into a world of bright light and clatter. There were the kitchens on the right, full of noisy chaos; on the left, offices. The walls were dirty-white plaster with gouge marks from where they’d been knocked by furniture – or maybe by runaway Zeppelins.
Further down the corridor we came to another room. Our friend led us in and announced, ‘Here he is!’
This was obviously where all the girls hung out – in some cases, literally. If I’d had to imagine a changing room in a lapdancing bar I’d have thought of semi-naked girls in front of mirrors with big bulbs around the edges, but this didn’t fit the bill at all; it was much more like somebody’s sitting room. It was clean, with three or four settees, a couple of chairs, a few mirrors. There was a No Smoking sign, which I could smell was observed, and noticeboards full of university meetings and goings-on.
Everybody went, ‘Hi. How are you?’ to Kelly.
I looked at a policewoman wearing a skirt that was very non-regulation length. ‘I’m trying to find an Englishman called Pat. He told me he came here a lot.’
Kelly was getting dragged away by two of the girls. ‘What’s your name, honey?’ There was nothing I could do to stop it.
I said, ‘Her name’s Josie.’
They were all in their fantasy rigs. One held out an Indian outfit, with fringed buckskin sleeves, feathers, the lot. She said to Kelly, ‘Do you like this?’ and started to dress her. Kelly’s eyes widened with excitement.
I carried on talking with Washington’s finest. ‘It’s just that there’s been a big mess-up on the dates. We were supposed to have met Pat so Josie and him can go on vacation. It’s no problem, I’ll look after her, but she really wants to see him.’
‘We haven’t seen Pat for ages, but Sherry’ll know, she used to go out with him. She’s late but she’ll be here soon. If you want to stay, that’s fine. Help yourself to some coffee.’
I went over, poured myself a cup and sat down. I watched Kelly giggling. For me, this should have been like dying and going to heaven, but I was tense about Kelly letting something slip.
I could see textbooks lying around. There was one girl on a settee who looked as if she’d come out of a Turkish harem, and she was there with her laptop, tapping away at her dissertation.
Twenty minutes later the door burst open and a girl carrying a black sports bag ran in like a thing possessed, out of breath, hair everywhere.
‘Sorry I’m late, girls. I wasn’t on first, was I?’
She started to take off her shoes, catching her breath.
The police sergeant called over, ‘Sherry, this guy wants to know where Pat is. Have you seen him lately?’
I stood up. ‘I’ve been trying to find him for ages; you know what he’s like, he’s all over the place.’
‘Tell me about it.’ She started to take off her jeans in front of me as casually as if we’d been married ten years. ‘He’s been away for a while. I saw him about a month ago when he came back.’ She shot a glance at Kelly and back at me. ‘You a friend of his?’
‘We go way back.’
‘I guess he won’t mind. I’ve got his number here, if I can find it.’
Dressed now only in her bra and pants, she rummaged through her bag as she talked. She looked up at one of the other girls and said, ‘What number am I?’
‘Four.’
‘Christ! Can somebody go ahead of me? Can I go number six? I’ve got no make-up on yet.’
There was a grunt from behind the laptop. It seemed the Turkish harem girl was going on fourth now.
Sherry tipped out an Aladdin’s cave of a handbag. ‘Here we are.’
She handed me a restaurant card with an address and telephone number scribbled on the back. I recognized the writing.
‘Is this local?’ I asked.
‘Riverwood? About a quarter of an hour by car, over the bridge.’
‘I’ll give him a ring. Thank you!’
‘Remind him I’m alive, will you?’ she smiled with weary hope.
I went over to Kelly and said, ‘We’ve got to go now, Josie!’
She stuck out her lower lip. ‘Ohhh . . .’ Maybe it was being in the company of other females, but she looked more relaxed than at any point since we’d driven away from the house. ‘Do we?’ she pleaded with big round eyes that were covered in make-up. So were her lips.
‘I’m afraid we must,’ I said, starting to wipe it off.
The policewoman said, ‘Can’t we keep her here? We’ll look after her. We’ll show her how to dance.’
‘I’d like that, Nick!’
‘Sorry, Josie, you have to be much older to work here, isn’t that right, girls?’
They helped Kelly to get all her feathers off. One of them said, ‘You work real hard at school, honey. Then you can work here with us.’
They pointed to a quicker way out, through the service exit at the back. As we were leaving, Kelly looked up and said, ‘What do they do, then?’
‘They’re dancers.’
‘Why do they put on bikinis, and all those feathers?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Some people like watching that sort of thing.’
Just as we got to the exit I heard Sherry shout, ‘His daughter? The lying bastard!’
14
We walked back down the hill, looking for somewhere to sit out of the rain. A place that looked more like a house than a restaurant had a sign calling itself the Georgetown Diner. We went in.
We sat in the three-quarters-empty café, me with a coffee, Kelly with a Coke, both deep in thought – me about how to make contact with Pat, she most probably about growing up and going to college dressed like Pocahontas. Our table was by a rack of greetings cards and local drawings for sale. It was more like an art gallery than a coffee shop.
‘We can’t just turn up at Pat’s address because we might compromise him,’ I thought aloud to her. ‘And I can’t phone him because they might have made the connection between us and there could be a device on his phone and a trigger on the house.’
Kelly nodded knowingly, not understanding a word I was on about, but pleased to be part of grown-up stuff instead of being abandoned or dragged around.
‘It’s so annoying because he’s only fifteen minutes away,’ I went on. ‘What can I do?’
She gave a little shrug, then pointed at the rack behind me and said, ‘Send him a card.’
‘Good idea, but it would take too long.’
Then I had a brainwave. ‘Well done, Kelly!’
She grinned from ear to ear as I got up and bought a birthday card showing a velvet rabbit holding a rose. I asked for a pen and went back to the table. I wrote, ‘Pat, I’m in the shit. Kev is dead and Kelly is with me. I need help. IT WAS NOT ME. Call 181-322-8665 from a public landline ASAP. Nick.’
I sealed the envelope and wrote Pat’s address, then asked to borrow their Yellow Pages. I found what I was looking for, and it was on the same road, seemingly within walking distance. We did up our coats and left. It had stopped raining, but the sidewalk was still wet. I checked the street numbers; we had to go downhill towards the river.
The courier firm’s office was next door to a weird and wonderful New Age shop with a window full of healing crystals that could change your life. I wondered which one they’d prescribe if I went in and told them my circumstances. Kelly wanted to stay outside and look in the window, but I wanted her with me; people might look twice at a child on her own outside a shop and something might register. There was a risk of someone in the shop identifying her, but it was a question of balance between exposing her and making the best use of her as cover.
‘Can you get this to my friend after four o’clock today?’ I said to the guy at the desk. ‘We’re in real big trouble because we forgot to post his birthday card, aren’t we, Josie?’
I paid the $15 fee in cash, and they promised to bike it round at 4 p.m. I needed the intervening two hours to prepare the ground for a meet.
We went into the Latham hotel. I’d guessed my accent wouldn’t stick out in there and I was right; the large reception area was full of foreign tourists. I sat Kelly in a corner and went to the information desk.
‘I’m looking for a mall that would have a Fun Zone or Kids Have Fun,’ I said.
It turned out there were about half a dozen of them in and around the DC area; it was just a matter of looking up all the different addresses in the city guide she’d kindly lent me. There was one at the Landside Mall, not far from the Roadies Inn. I hailed a taxi, and this time the driver knew where he was going.
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