Butcher (6 page)

‘Will do.'

As Chuck climbed the steps to the aquamarine glass doors of the Fitness Centre he was struck by the realization of how many more interests he had than before. Apart from an upmarket bistro and a chain of health spas and a factory supplying bootleg Aberdeen Angus beef, all of which were in his possession before the deaths of Curdy and Stoker and their various underlings, he now found himself the owner of a fleet of buses equipped for the transportation of the handicapped, a squadron of taxis and minicabs, several brothels, a casino, an underground pharmaceutical concern geared to produce E and speed and assorted designer drugs, a textile company in need of reorganization,
plus
four boutique hotels scattered throughout Glasgow, three tenement blocks in Partick, two fish and chip shops, a dry-cleaning chain, one point nine acres of prime city-centre land licensed for commercial development – and, of course, the clapped out bowling-alley. He had his lawyers, Roman, Glebe & Hack, going twenty-four hours a day on all the paperwork, documents of ownership, deeds of exchange, the reassignment of which involved some serious diddlin and fiddlin – whatever it took. This wasn't the old days when you could just seize whatever took your fancy, today you had to make it appear legal, so you needed inventive suits who knew the score. More, you needed layers of suits, solicitors and clerks and an assortment of other figures who worked for lawyers, but whose affiliation with the law was not easy to define.

Chuck was blasted out of his thoughts by a sickening eye-scalding cloud of chlorine. Annoyed, he sought out Tommy Lombardo, who was in the ground floor gym training a muscular Romanian woman to lift weights.

Tommy was urging her on in his enthusiastic way. ‘Concentrate, Slaca, concentrate, hold aw the air in yer lungs. That's my girl. Aw the air, keep it in. Know when to release it. Hang on.'

The woman sweated, trying hard to please Tommy. ‘So deefycull, Tommy.'

‘You'll get it.'

‘Tommy,' Chuck said. ‘A minute.'

Tommy Lombardo looked round. ‘Mr Chuck, I didn't see—'

‘I telt you to go easy on the chlorine. Explain to me why the first thin I notice as I come through the front door is the heavy stink of the stuff? This place is mingin.'

‘I musta used too much.' Lombardo, who was six foot four inches tall, had gobbled enough steroids to make him the Muscle King of Glasgow. He also pumped iron every spare minute he had. Chuck was convinced the steroids had interfered with certain important cerebral connections, because Tommy was incapable of just about any task he was given – except that of attracting a certain clientele to the gym, gays who wanted
look-at-me-sweetie
muscle tone, butch lesbians who fancied themselves weightlifters, and assorted good-looking women who had nothing better to do than come down here and admire Tommy's musculature and even touch it. They were groupies, these women. They kept the membership high.

‘That smell drives customers away, Tommy.' Chuck spoke slowly, as if to a child.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Chuck.'

‘And why is there nobody at the reception desk? I telt you, Tommy, make sure there's always somebody to sign in the customers. Remember?'

‘It's Zondra's fault, Mr Chuck. She's always slipping out for a smoke.'

‘Then deal with it, Tommy. Tell her don't smoke. This place is meant to promote
health
.'

‘Right, I'll say to her. Don't smoke.'

Chuck patted one of Tommy Lombardo's biceps. Hard as rock. Like his brain. ‘I don't have time to be runnin round checkin on employees.'

Chuck walked away quickly. When people don't do the job you pay them for, if they don't follow orders …
Flashpoint. Business stress
. Self-control wanted, Rube. He gulped air that tasted of bleach. He walked through the reception area and climbed the stairs to the upper gymnasium where a half dozen people were working the machines. A white-haired overweight woman pounded the Lifestride treadmill, and an elderly guy, his expression one of stark fear at the idea of cardiac arrest, rode the Sportsart bike.

Chuck thought of this area as the Drop Dead Zone.

He found Glorianna in a private room at the back. She was lying on a lounger, earphones attached to her head and an iPod on her flat belly. She wore white shorts and a blue singlet with the logo Number One Fitness. Her hair was curled, black with blonde highlights. Her espresso-brown eyes were just a shade too wide for her slender face, but Chuck thought her straight nose perfect in all ways, the nostrils pleasingly symmetrical. He had a thing about noses.

He tapped a finger on one of the earphones and startled her.

‘Rube, oh wow, you like scared me.' She affected American speech rhythms and expressions occasionally, because her ambition was to emigrate to California. Years ago, she'd been devoted to
Baywatch
and
Beverly Hills 90210
. She dreamed cinema. She studied the gossip magazines, who was divorcing who, what star was being unfaithful to wife or husband. She took voice lessons and drama classes in preparation for the moment when she hit Tinseltown.

She removed her earphones and Chuck heard modern jazz issue from them.

‘That Lombardo will be the death of me.'

‘I know. It stinks down there, so I got Zondra to send for the Oxydoro guys, who'll be here within the hour and reduce the chlorine levels.'

‘You're a star.' Chuck ruffled her hair.

She was quick and sharp and you didn't have to spell things out for her. She took action when it was needed. He'd given her control of all six Number One Fitness Centres, not just because he was very fond of her, and they shared an intense sexual history – because he trusted her more than anyone else in his tiny circle of intimates. Bottom line, she protected his interests.

She said, ‘Tommy's so thick I bet he doesn't even recognize his own reflection in a mirror. I told him, one more fuck-up and you're on your bike.'

‘He brings in the clients … Lissen, I need you to do somethin.'

‘Tell me.'

‘I have this guy I do some business with. He's a bit out there, very high strung.'

‘The kinda guy who thinks Relax is something you take when you're constipated.'

‘Right. I want you to call him.'

‘And?' Glorianna took a tube of skin cream from a box that contained dozens of similar cylinders. She opened it and worked the cream into her thighs. Chuck contemplated women and all their assorted creams. The whole lotion–skin relationship was a mystery to him.

He said, ‘I'm thinkin mibbe one of your massages will do the trick.'

She looked at him with an expression of disbelief. He'd never asked her to do this kind of thing before. ‘And if my massage doesn't work? You want me to
fuck
him, Chuck?'

‘Now hang on a minute, sweetie. I'd
never
ask you to do anythin like that. Keep in mind I need his business, and I don't want to send him some rough tottie.'

‘If he needs a great massage, Rube, that's what he'll get.'

‘It's not like I'm pimpin you—'

But you're using me
, she thought. ‘I don't fuck strange men, Rube.'

‘I hate when you swear, pet. Swearin coarsens you.' He took her hand and stroked it. He flicked a lock of hair from her cheek. She was in a sulk. He'd offended her, and hadn't meant to.

She said, ‘I remember when you used to curse every second word.'

‘People evolve. Baba says if you don't accept the possibility of change, you stagnate. And that's the death of the soul.'

Baba, Baba. Glorianna, who'd introduced Chuck to the guru nine months ago, still longed for the lapsed Catholic Rube used to be, hard-living, hard-drinking, meat-eating party beast and tireless lover. But that guy had vanished in Baba's domain. She'd imagined he might have been more sceptical about the guru's teachings. After the Catholic church had disappointed him, she guessed he'd been desperate to embrace a new system of beliefs – even if she didn't quite understand how he squared some of his business methods with the guru's words.

‘Is it because I swear you don't
fuck
me any more, Rube?'

‘No, no … it's …' He drifted a moment. ‘I'm searching for somethin. Somethin beyond all this.'

‘Peace of mind. A world of harmony.' La-di-dah.
Babaspeak
.

‘Aye, right.'

She gazed at his face, which sometimes had an unexpected softness about it.
I could show you peace of mind
, she thought. Turn back the clock to the way things were. ‘It's a tough road, Rube.'

‘Anything of value is tough to attain.'

Echoes of Baba. She'd hung around the guru long enough to recognize his sayings. She'd been to his spiritual retreats, in a house near Loch Lomond, where he preached and his acolytes chanted. It was easy to fall into the guru's ways. Hadn't she done it herself? Been through the crystals, meditated, studied massage. She had a sensational Trigger Point technique. She read interviews with film stars who proclaimed their beliefs fearlessly: Gere had his Buddhism, Travolta and Cruise their Scientology. When she got to LA, she figured she'd better have something going for her beyond looks and talent and her massage skills – which Baba had suggested, in that persuasively quiet way of his, could be used for purposes of tranquility and relaxation, instead of sexual control and material gain.

Easy for him to say. Sometimes Baba was too idealistic for her. What was he suggesting – free massages? ‘Somebody told me today I had a strong resemblance to Nicole Kidman.'

‘By any chance was he carryin a white stick?'

She threw a towel at him. ‘I got the name of an agent in Tinseltown. I sent off some photographs of myself.'

‘You checked him out first?'

‘You think I'd send them without doing background?'

Chuck said, ‘Not you.'

She watched him for a time. ‘You look tense, Rube. Take off your jacket and shirt. I'll massage you.'

He stripped to the waist. He lay face down on a towel she spread across the lounger and she kneaded the flesh beneath his shoulders in the way she'd always done. Then worked his lower spine, within reaching distance of his buttocks.

Chuck felt a familiar tingle. This celibate life had serious drawbacks.

She asked, ‘You know how long it's been, Rube?'

He said nothing.

‘Eight months. Four weeks after you first went to see Baba.'

That long. Chuck shut his eyes and heard an echo of ‘Nobody's Child' inside his head.

9

At 9 p.m. Perlman's doorbell rang. He turned on the light in the hallway and opened the door. He was surprised to see Detective Superintendent Mary Gibson. ‘A sight for sore eyes,' he said, and shook her hand. Her touch was light, her skin cool.

She held on to his grip. ‘I heard about this “discovery” of yours and I thought I'd drop in – it gives me a chance to say hello.'

‘I'm delighted.' And he was. She'd always been sympathetic to him, and fair, even at times when they had disagreements, and she was obliged to pull rank. She had an open intelligent face, shrewd dark eyes, and a feature that always pleased Perlman – a trace of girlhood freckles. She was accompanied by a detective sergeant she introduced as Jock Tigge, a dour black-bearded man who looked at Perlman and grunted a kind of greeting.

Mary Gibson stepped inside the house. Jock Tigge, wide-shouldered as a wrestler, followed behind her. He had noticeably long arms. A baboon, Perlman thought.

‘I like the new look, Lou,' Mary Gibson said.

‘New look?'

‘No specs. Contacts comfy?'

‘They're fine.' Perlman fingered the slight ridges on either side of his nose. Sometimes he felt he was wearing phantom glasses and made to adjust them, then remembered his schnozzle was gloriously naked. He escorted Mary Gibson into the living room, thankful that the place was shiny clean. Surreptitiously, he closed the door to the kitchen.

‘How have you been?' she asked.

Perlman was preparing a catalogue of complaints, but she spoke before he could get a sentence out. ‘Wait, don't answer. I know you, Lou.'

Perlman thought:
Kvetch
not. Grumbling was monotonous, and drained the spirit. Besides, he'd been diverted from self-absorption and pessimism by what Mary Gibson called the ‘discovery'. It was a discovery, all right, not one he enjoyed making, although it
did
provoke a welcome bafflement, a doorway into that world of perplexity and mystery he longed for. Forget the headless clown, he had
this
in his own house.

‘So this found object is in the bedroom,' Mary Gibson said.

‘Upstairs.'

‘Somehow I never imagined you having a bed, Lou. I always thought you just flopped out on a sofa.'

‘I'm a bundle of surprises,' he said.

Mary Gibson arched one eyebrow, and stepped across the living room. She was immaculate, lipstick perfect, hair just right. She dressed in soft colours, peaches and quiet tans, understated. She was elegant; she didn't look like a cop, didn't smell like one. She left in her wake a subdued perfume, an essence Perlman found captivating.

She surveyed the living room. ‘Very tidy, Lou. I'm impressed.'

Be grateful she never saw it before it was Bettyized
. He'd sent the pale-faced Betty McLatchie home. She might need to be interviewed at some point, he knew, but she said she was scunnered and would he mind if she came back tomorrow? Christ – he'd forgotten her missing son, blown out of his mind by the appearance of the baggie. Maybe Kirk would turn up, repentant and weary. Perlman hoped so.

At the foot of the stairs Mary Gibson paused. ‘Lead the way, Lou.'

Perlman climbed past her on the narrow stairway. ‘You'll need to step over these newspapers.'