White Rage (41 page)

He looked at Chasm and said, ‘I'll speak to the Fat Man.'

‘Good luck.'

‘We have old scores.' Perlman rose finally, and remembered a question he'd wanted to ask for a very long time: ‘Where does Leo go for target practice?'

‘What makes you think he goes anywhere?'

‘Just answer the question.'

‘He doesn't leave the house, Perlman.'

‘No?'

‘It's clever and convenient. He has a shooting range in a sub-basement he dug out. Soundproof, state of the art. Spends an hour down there three days a week. Funny thing, he's got a photo of your face glued to one of the targets.'

‘I'll bet,' Perlman said. ‘He's a good shot?'

‘What do you think?'

48

Kilroy woke in the late afternoon. He pulled on his robe, a Japanese silk garment big enough to house a small bridge party. A huge embroidered eagle with wings spread decorated the back. He padded downstairs, calling out Chasm's name. No response. In the vast white gleaming kitchen he drank three glasses of fresh orange juice and ate four croissants with butter, clotted cream, and rhubarb jam.

Burping slightly with each step, he wandered into the conservatory. Empty. He looked out at the garden, remembering that Chasm was away on business. But he'd been due back hours ago. His tardiness worried Kilroy.

He walked outside. Uneasy, he gazed at the waterfall. He checked the flowerbeds with no great interest – he'd lost his passion for lilacs and tulips – then he went back into the house just as the telephone was ringing. It stopped before he could reach it.

Irksome and unnerving, he thought. An unknown caller.

He entered the kitchen, toasted two muffins, spread them with butter, gobbled them standing at the counter. He wiped his lips with a napkin and went inside his office and made a business call. He checked a detail concerning pricing changes demanded by an unlicensed supplier of black-market beef to his fastfood interest,
Eat'n'Run
, known to some cynical consumers as
Eat'n'Runs
. Usually he left this kind of menial task to his managers, so why was he bothering with it today?

Checklist:

to keep my mind off things –

to pretend life is ordinary
–

He opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out
the
photograph. He couldn't help himself. He studied it for a while. The figure in the car. The lamplight. The street name. He fetched a magnifying glass and peered through it, enlarging the details but clarifying nothing.

He stuffed the picture back in the drawer and went back to the kitchen where he took a tub of Cherry Garcia out of the fridge and dug a spoon into it and ate ravenously.

The telephone rang. He didn't want to answer it. He had a bad feeling. He picked up the stainless-steel handset.

‘Leo?'

He knew the voice. He hadn't been expecting it.

‘This is Leo,' he said.

‘I'm thinking a meeting might be useful.'

Sweat poured over the Fat Man's cheeks. ‘Our meetings usually are, Lou.'

Perlman said, ‘That depends on your perspective. To keep you up to date with events – we have Chasm, Leo.'

‘What do you mean you
have
Chasm?'

‘He's in custody.'

‘For what?'

‘Better we speak face to face.'

‘I get to look at your ugly fizog, Lou?'

‘Your treat.'

‘You come alone. I don't want a posse.'

‘All right.'

‘And not here.'

‘Name a place.'

Kilroy thought a moment. ‘The Bluebird Café. In Yoker.'

‘Yoker?'

‘I was born and brought up there. Call me nostalgic. One hour, Lou. No friends tagging along.'

‘No friends,' Perlman said.

Leo Kilroy put the receiver down and pressed his fingertips very softly to his upholstered eyelids. He saw zigzagging lines created by his retinas. They reached back into the black of his brain.

You should be dead, Perlman.

Chasm is in custody
.

He got up and stumbled into the edge of his desk. Rubbing his thigh, he rushed wobbling towards the stairs. He'd wear his black suit, it was properly solemn. A black shirt, say. A canary tie for a slash of colour. Black shoes, of course. Unless he decided on his two-tone slip-ons, black with white tassels.

What do you wear when the world is going awry?

Whatever the fuck your little heart desires, he thought.

When he stripped off his robe and stood naked in front of the mirror he sang,
‘Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger …'

49

‘You can't bloody well go alone,' Scullion said.

‘He won't meet me otherwise,' Perlman replied.

‘It's folly. It's lunatic.'

Scullion played the scold well. He'd had years of practice. Perlman gazed at him over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘I can work him on my own.'

‘I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, Lou.'

‘I'll give that a miss.' Perlman drained his coffee, set the cup down. He looked round the café in Bewley's Hotel. He had a sense of mild bewilderment; he couldn't remember travelling here from Dennistoun. His memory highlighted bits and pieces in a selective way. His radar was malfunctioning. Don't look back. Keep going forward while you can. You know your name, rank and serial number, you know your purpose. All you need to know.

‘We should just haul him into Pitt Street,' Scullion said.

‘Grounds?'

‘Conspiracy to smuggle illegals,' Scullion said. ‘Suspicion of aiding and abetting in murder.'

‘Whose? Indra Gupta's? Blum's? The gun isn't linked to the Fat Man.' Perlman wondered about another cup of coffee. The caffeine in his system conflicted with the painkiller. One part of him was close to shutdown, the other up and jittery. ‘Somebody can drive me to Yoker.'

‘Muggins can take you.'

‘Knew you would.' Perlman rose. ‘I want to pee – and I have a phone call I have to make before we go.'

‘I'll be waiting.'

Perlman found the gents'. The painkiller's effect was subsiding. He felt raw. The outer layer of his flesh might have been skinned and a sensitive subcutaneous expanse exposed. He zipped up, looked at himself in the mirror: pale, bleached, sunken-eyed.

Scullion's right. It's folly to go to Yoker.

He splashed cold water on his face and hair and let it drip down his neck. He stepped out of the toilet and walked to the public telephone where he dialled Miriam's number. She answered on the second ring.

He asked, ‘How are you?'

‘Lou, oh God, Lou. I heard. Scullion phoned me. How are you?'

‘Tidying loose ends.'

‘Don't tell me you're
out and about
?'

‘Very briefly.'

‘Lou, you should be –'

‘I know where I should be.'

She was quiet a second. ‘I need to talk to you about Latta. He's been badgering me again.'

Latta? His mind flapped at the name. ‘I'll come over when I'm done and we'll talk,' he said. ‘I can't give you an exact time.'

She said goodbye, almost whispered the word.

He hung up with a feeling of – what? Disappointment because he hadn't told her how he felt, how much love he carried? Or was it irritation because Latta was still so fucking determined to occupy her world?

He returned to the table where Scullion waited. ‘You ready, Sandy?'

‘Ready and unwilling.'

‘My destination is the Bluebird Café. In deepest Yoker.'

‘Nobody goes to Yoker,' Scullion said.

Perlman followed Scullion into Bath Street. Traffic was gridlocked. Perlman sucked the bad air in lieu of a cigarette. His pain was creeping back. He reached in his pocket and touched the single remaining painkiller. Reserve supply. The last saviour. He postponed the moment. His brain was like a butterfly on downers, flopping in a wing-weary way from one leaf to another.

‘What do you expect to come out of this meeting?' Scullion asked.

‘Some simple truths, if I'm lucky.'

They reached the place where Scullion had parked his car. He unlocked the doors. Perlman slipped into the passenger seat. Scullion drove west along Dumbarton Road, following a line parallel to the Clyde, passing Scotstoun, Garscadden, iron works and engine yards and cranes and old buildings whose functions were unadvertised and therefore mysterious. Gulls swooped in the air, diving at the Clyde in the endless quest for scraps.

Gulls and cops, Perlman thought, always looking for scraps.

‘You want me just to drop you off in Yoker?' Scullion asked.

‘At the door of the Bluebird Café.'

‘Then what? You'll call a taxi to get back into the city?'

‘I expect.'

‘Where is this café precisely?'

‘Yoker isn't a big place. We can find it.'

Yoker, in the extreme west of the city, was an unadorned suburb Perlman usually found depressing. It lacked what – vitality? Charm? Character? Roofs and buildings were cluttered with satellite dishes. Endless TV was beamed at Yoker, a constant stream of dross from space, TV-made movies and American sitcoms and an assortment of hand-me-down programmes from a klatsch of religious evangelists who operated out of the US Bible belt. Perlman stared at the array of small dishes. In the dire insomniac moments before dawn you could murder time shopping with a credit card, buying hair-curling devices and tacky ornaments.

Scullion spotted a sign for the Bluebird Café in a side street. He turned right, parked just beyond the front door. Perlman stepped out.
Fuck the Queen
had been whitewashed on a nearby wall.

‘Christ, you look shaky, Lou.'

‘Shaky? Not me. I'm walking tall.'

‘Yeh. Right.' Scullion scanned the café, a greasy window, a half-length curtain drawn across, the menu on a single sheet of paper taped to the glass. ‘It's not getting a Michelin rating any time soon, is it?'

‘It's where Kilroy wants to meet.' Perlman felt a slight sagging of self, as if he were about to dwindle into a shapeless pile of flesh and fluid and bone right here on the pavement. To die in Yoker. It didn't have a
ring
to it.

‘I don't suppose you have your mobie, do you? Take mine. In case.' Scullion handed him the phone. ‘Don't lose it. Call Pitt Street if you need anything. It's programmed. Just press 3. Got that?'

‘Got it.'

Perlman turned towards the café. He could smell fried food wafting out. Scullion wheeled his car around and disappeared in the direction of Dumbarton Road.

Perlman entered the café. A little bell rang overhead. The room was smoky, formica tables creating a grid, tomato sauce available in big tomato-shaped plastic containers, HP sauce bottles on every table, little tower-shaped containers of malt vinegar. It was like stepping back into a Glasgow that had vanished in the late 1950s.

He saw Kilroy seated against the wall. Perlman slid into the chair facing him. Kilroy smiled, gestured around the café, where a couple of white-faced dopers picked at their food because they needed stodge until they could score again.

‘I came here as a boy,' Kilroy said. ‘I return now and again. For auld lang and auld acquaintance, et cetera.'

‘It's attractive,' Perlman remarked.

‘It's a shitebox, Lou. It's greasy spots on the menus and cheap formica and the food is swill, but I happen to like it here. Don't be snobbish.'

‘Snobbish? You're talking to a man who thrives on swill.'

‘You look like you died and an electric shock brought you back to life. You sick?'

‘You didn't know I was shot by a deranged young woman who broke into my house. She sank a bullet into my shoulder. An inch or two the other way – end of the line.'

‘Christ in crutches,' Kilroy said. ‘What an awful thing to happen.' He flicked a crumb of bread from the lap of his black alpaca coat. He wore a black suit and black shoes and a black shirt. His tie was offensively orange-lemon, the colour of a canary on a carrot juice bender. ‘Broke in and shot you? This city's going down the pan, Lou. Are you all right?'

‘I'll live,' Perlman said.

Kilroy made a few consolatory sounds, sighs and huffs, and then slid the menu across the table. ‘I recommend the mixed grill. But I suppose you're not in a food mood.'

‘Right,' Perlman said.

‘Shame. They do a special for me. Three lamb chops, a nice hunk of fillet steak, black pudding, kidneys, fried onions, fried tomatoes plus a decent mountain of chips.'

‘Are you sure that's enough?'

‘Some people it's heroin, me it's grub. Tell me about the woman who shot you.'

‘She was a racist.'

‘Oh, God, not one of those, what do you call it …?'

‘A White Rager.'

‘The same ones who got Blum.' Kilroy's puffy eyes widened from tiny slits to bigger slits. ‘I hate those racist bastards, Lou. Oh, I despise them. Killing blacks and Indians –'

‘Jews are a natural progression for them.'

An old woman in a dirty apron approached the table. She was wearing an old-fashioned clunky hearing aid. ‘Mr Kilroy. Been a wee while. Where you been keeping yerself, eh?'

Kilroy, presumably to counter the woman's deafness, raised his voice to where it assumed a mighty
honk
. ‘My dear Mrs Bane! I'd like you to meet Lou Perlman! Lou's a policeman!'

‘Izzat so? We don't get many polis in here. Nice to meet you.' She looked at Kilroy. ‘What can I get for you, Leo?'

‘What else, my dear? The mixed grill.'

‘And your friend here?'

‘Coffee,' Perlman said.

‘The last of the big spenders, eh?' Mrs Bane said. She gave Perlman a friendly nudge, which sent a painful reverberation up his arm.