1951 - In a Vain Shadow (2 page)

I hadn’t meant to say that. It jumped out of me; a thought that had been tucked away in my subconscious mind for a long, long time. It was out now. No longer subconscious.

chapter two

T
hree days later what I was waiting for arrived.

Around nine o’clock, Netta brought in the breakfast tray.

Propped up against the toast were three letters. She put the tray on the bedside table, and began to fiddle with a circular, trying to pretend she wasn’t aching to know who had written to me.

Two of the envelopes contained bills. The third carried a two penny-half penny stamp. As I usually have only penny stamps on my letters I guessed this must be the answer to my application for the bodyguard job.

From the way Netta was fidgeting she guessed it was too.

I made believe I was in no hurry to open the letter. I looked at the bills: three pounds for petrol; three pounds, four and eight for gin.

I showed the gin bill to Netta.

‘I have it on good authority gin has an adverse effect on the inner workings of a woman. Two bottles of gin this week, baby.’

‘Don’t be silly, darling, you drank most of it yourself.’

‘Did I? So you’re counting the drinks I drink now. What are you doing - keeping a dossier on me?’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, what have I said wrong now?’

‘I haven’t the time to tell you, but I promise I’ll tell you what you say right if it ever happens. Would it be too much to ask you to pour out the coffee before it gets cold? And try not to slop it in the saucer as you did yesterday I don’t know why it is but I hate a cup that drips over me. Come to think of it, maybe it’s because my father was a drip. That’s psychology, baby. You can trace everything back to childhood if you try hard enough. I believe I could get a line on you If I dug into your past, and I don’t think I should have to use anything bigger than a teaspoon.’

‘You haven’t opened your letter, darling.’

‘Would you like to open it for me.’

She reached out, but stopped herself just in time. She hadn’t lived with me for three months for nothing. Even for her the penny drops at times. She saved herself a slap on the wrist.

‘I’m not interested in your letter. You know, Frankie...’

‘Yes, I know. I’m not kind. I’m snappy. I say hurtful things. But in spite of it all, you love me.’

‘If you’re going to be horrid...’

‘Look at your nice catalogue and choose yourself a dress. I shan’t pay for it but choose it. It’ll give you something to do.’

While she was looking at the catalogue I drank some coffee and then opened the letter. It didn’t take me long to read: nicely typed, to the point, cheapish paper and a spidery signature only a bank clerk could read.

‘Do you remember the other night I showed you an advert? Some guy wanting a bodyguard?’

As if she hadn’t been thinking and worrying about that ad every hour of the day.

She said cautiously, ‘Yes. Did you answer it?’

‘You know very well I answered it. When you went to bed with the sulks I composed a masterpiece and posted it that very night. This is the answer. I admit it is a little disappointing. It hasn’t the smell of money I was expecting. The paper isn’t handmade and the letter heading isn’t from a die: two certain signs of money. But on the other hand it’s straightforward and to the point. I have to present myself for an interview at twelve o’clock this morning, and I’m to bring my references clutched in my hot little hand.’

‘Have you any, darling?’

‘Have I any - what?’

‘References.’

‘No, unless you would like to write me one. You could always say you found me very tough and unkind. Would you like to do that for me? I’ll guide your hand if you’re nervous about your handwriting.’

‘You’re not going, are you, Frankie?’

‘Certainly, I’m going. This may be my big chance in life. Every door is a door of opportunity. None but the brave deserve the fair. Besides, they call themselves Modern Enterprises, and I’m modem and enterprising if nothing else.’

‘Frankie...’

‘Now, what?’

‘You sounded awfully reckless that night. It’s been worrying me.’

‘I am awfully reckless even this morning.’

‘But you said some very wicked and silly things. I just want you to tell me you didn’t mean them. You didn’t, did you?’

‘Would you like to take the tray away? If there’s one thing I dislike more than a dripping cup it’s the ruins of a meal. Maybe it’s because my aunt was a ruin. I remember hearing my fattier say so when I was just beginning to walk. People should be very careful what they say in front of children. You are still a bit of a child, aren’t you, Netta?’

The relief on her face was painful to see.

‘You were only fooling then, Frankie? Oh, darling, I was so worried. That talk of murder. It made my blood run cold.’

‘Take the tray away and come back. I’ll change your temperature for you.’

***

Modern Enterprises had offices on the fourth floor of a dilapidated building in Wardour Street. There was no lift, the lobby smelt like a chicken house and the banister rail left a black mark on my forefinger and thumb.

I toiled up the four flights of stone stairs and discovered the offices at the end of a dimly lit corridor.

By now I was angry. This wasn’t the kind of set-up I had expected. The higher I climbed the farther away the dream of big money receded. I began to wonder if this was a hoax, and if it was I made up my mind to leave the mark of my knuckles on the joker’s mouth.

I didn’t bother to knock, but turned the handle and walked in. Even when I was inside there was nothing to reassure me this wasn’t a joke.

The room was small and dirty and mean; There was a steel filing cabinet by the uncurtained window, a mat on the dusty bare boards, a rickety desk m the middle of the room and an electric bowl fire on the windowsill.

At the desk sat a woman: a fat, ugly Jewess who might have been twenty or forty, and who was as sexless as an octopus, and as unattractive as a sinkful of unwashed dishes.

She wore a black satin dress, gasping at the seams, and her eyes looked like small, unripe gooseberries behind the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles.

I took heart. There was something about her that told me she was smart and nimble and as sharp as a razor. The difference between her and Netta was the difference between a tiger and a kitten. If her boss was anything like her, he would do. I reminded myself that appearances meant nothing to Jews.

They can work in a cellar and go home in a Rolls-Royce, and think nothing of it. There still might be a chance of finding what I was looking for; even a door into a dump like this could be a door of opportunity.

I dropped the letter on her desk, ‘It’s twelve, and I’m here.’

She held the letter about six inches from her hooked little nose and stared at it as if she had never seen it before. Then she peered at me and pointed a fat dirty finger to a chair. As she did so I caught the flash of a diamond.

‘Sit down. I’ll see if Mr. Sarek will see you.’

I was surprised. I expected her to talk like Arthur Kober’s Gross family. She looked like a refugee from the Gross family; but apart from a whining intonation and an accent you could hang your hat on, she spoke as well as I did.

I sat down.

She wasn’t in a hurry to break the news I had arrived. First she cast up a row of figures in a big ledger that looked as phoney as no doubt it was. Then she re-read the letter I had given her and looked me over again. I had a feeling she was counting the small change in my pockets and the hairs on my chest: that kind of look.

Then she pushed herself of the chair and walked across the room to another door. She opened it and went in.

I’ve seen some fat women in my time, but she was in a class of her own: hard, thick fat like the back of a prize pig.

From behind she looked like a keg of beer on legs, and the funny thing was her feet were small enough to fit in my band, feet Netta would have raved about.

I waited and listened, but didn’t hear anything not even a murmur of voices, and I wondered. I was no longer fooled by the sordid room. I was beginning to smell money. Although I had only a quick look at it, and although she wore it with the stone turned inwards, I had seen the fat woman’s ring. I know something about diamonds. The diamond she was trying to hide was worth three to four hundred pounds. She didn’t pick that up in the gutter and it wasn’t on her engagement finger.

It could have been a gift for services rendered or for keeping her mouth shut or something like that. The kind of gift a racketeer might make: a racketeer who could afford to indulge in whims like sordid rooms or hiring himself a bodyguard.

The smell of money was getting stronger every second.

When I’m happy I whistle, and that’s what I was doing now: whistling.

The hands of my watch showed twenty minutes past twelve when she came out of the inner room.

‘Mr. Sarek will see you now. Will you go in?’

I had spent a little time making up my mind what I should wear for this interview. Netta had said I should wear my blue herringbone worsted, but although she knows how to dress herself, I don’t let her think she can dress me. I finally decided on a pair of brown whipcord slacks and a light navy-blue sweater that came high up at the neck. I didn’t wear anything under it, and I knew it showed of my muscles the way nothing else could show them of and when I take the trouble to flex them they’re something to see.

I walked into the inner room, not making a sound, with that lithe, springy stride athletes put on when they see a pretty girl coming they want to impress. Going in there I must have looked a cross between Freddie Mills stalking his man and Scarface Muni meeting the rival mob.

The inner room was no better than the outer one. If anything it wasn’t so luxurious. For one thing, it didn’t have an electric bowl fire on the windowsill. But the desk was just as rickety, the mat on the bare boards just as threadbare, and the dust just as dusty.

Seated behind the desk was a small dark-complexioned man in an overcoat that stopped me dead in my tracks.

I’ve never seen such a coat. It was unbelievable. It reminded me of the kind of suit Max Miller used to wear on the stage of the Holborn Empire when I was a kid. It was fawn colour with dazzling red lines forming three-inch squares, and if that wasn’t horrible enough, there were emerald-green flaps to the pockets.

The first thought that jumped into my mind was this little man was crazy. That would explain the ad. in the paper and the coat. No one but a madman would be seen dead in a coat like that. I began to wonder how I could get out of the room and away without having a scene. If there’s one thing that really scares me it’s someone crazy in the head.

‘Come in, Mr. Mitchell,’ the little man said. He had the same whining intonation and accent as the fat woman. ‘You don’t like the coat, hey? I don’t either. Come in and sit down. I tell you about it while you light a cigarette.’

That sounded sane enough, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I pulled up a cane-bottom chair and sat down, keeping the desk between me and the coat.

‘I been in this office for three year,’ he said, picking his nose with his little finger, ‘in three years, eight overcoats belonging to me have been stolen. Is a lot, hey? So I buy this one. No one steals this one; maybe it last me a lifetime, is something no one would want, hey? I don’t like it myself, but I catch cold easily, and to go home without a coat is dangerous.’

He took out a soiled handkerchief and polished his hooked nose.

‘And another thing; is good for business. People take trouble to find out who I am. I’m known up and down Wardour Street as the man with the coat. Is good business, Mr. Mitchell.’

‘It’s got to be good business to wear a coat like that.’

The small mouth curved up in a sly smile.

‘We foreigners have an advantage. We are not self-conscious.’

‘Yes.’

Now I was convinced he wasn’t crazy. I studied him as he was studying me. What sort of Jew he was I didn’t know. If there’s such a thing as a Turkish Jew, maybe he was that. He was very dark, and there seemed nothing to his face but his nose. It was a parrot’s face. His eyes seemed to cling to the sides of the enormous, hooked nose. His tight, lipless mouth was just a continuation of his nostrils. Above the hook of the nose was a bulging forehead. He was bald, and a frizz of black hair grew just above his bat-like ears and down into his collar.

He was about as ugly as they come, but once you noticed the small, black eyes you forgot about the ugliness What I saw in those eyes impressed me. They were the eyes of a man who could build an empire, make a million, cut his mother’s throat and then weep for her. Now I was sure the dirty, bare little room was a front. It couldn’t be anything else. A man with those kind of eyes wouldn’t work in a dump like this unless he had a reason for it. Those eyes and the fat woman’s diamond told me I’d come to the right place. I wasn’t wasting my time: this was the in I was looking for.

I had smoked two cigarettes: not his, mine. He had asked a lot of questions, checked over the details I had given him in my letter. There was nothing about his face to tell me how the interview was going. Every now and then I rolled my muscles.

They were what he was buying. I thought he should see them.

Suddenly: ‘Mr. Mitchell, you don’t mention you have been in prison.’

Just for a moment he had me. A sucker punch.

‘Well, who advertises a thing like that? It’s not good for business.’

‘You killed a man and a woman when drunk and driving a car?’

‘That’s how it happened. The brakes were on the blink, anyway. It could have happened to anyone.’

‘People who drink make me nervous.’

‘They make me nervous too. That was four years ago, I’ve learned sense since then.’

‘People I employ have to be on the wagon, Mr. Mitchell.’

‘Count me in. I swore of it when I came out.’

The little black eyes searched my face. If there’s one thing I can do better than most people it’s to tell a convincing lie. My face didn’t help him.