Come Clean (1989) (26 page)

‘I don’t believe it,’ Loxton had replied. ‘I don’t feel it’s like that at all. This have got real genuineness in it, on his side, I mean. Daphne been talking
to him, maybe – a time for live-and-let-live. I wouldn’t be surprised she been thinking like that. She got a nice soul full of decency and calm.’

‘Except she hatched Lay-waste.’

‘Not out of her soul. Didn’t nobody ever tell you how babies was born? A woman can’t be blamed for how her kids are. Or not total. Think of Mrs Hitler. I heard she was smiles
and sweetness and “Have another slice of applestrudel.”’

‘Look, Daphne Tacette still got to go in the shooting, most probable,’ Macey had said.

‘All right, that’s obvious. All I’m saying, maybe she been putting some gentle influence.’

Just the same, Macey had not liked it, nor Norman, but Loxton told them discussion was over and he would see Leo where Leo wanted and alone. If you ran an outfit you ran it. You listened to
advice, yes, but in the end you had to do what you thought was the best. The best was to let Leo believe he could come closer in a sort of partnership, and also to let him get nice and lulled by
hosting and swaggering in his waste-tip golf club.

‘I like this place, Leo. It got class.’ There were photographs of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on the walls, one with a yellow and green water stain across the bottom, like a
flood from an upstairs toilet or something, and a board with the names of captains of the club in gold lettering going right back, people nobody outside ever heard of but glorious years ago in this
tripe den. ‘There’s tradition here, that’s the secret, Leo.’

‘Reasonable people. A bit loud. Not much spare pussy, not that’s worth looking at: arses all corners, like drawing boards, and in tartan trousers. Watery eyes. I can’t stand
having a woman under me all bloodshot and runny. You’d think you were in bed with a funeral. Now and then you see something dinky by herself out on a green, but there’s always a husband
having a piss in the bushes. What I was hoping, Benny, was that today these could be talks about talks. That’s what the union boys and the diplomats call these kinds of preliminaries.
It’s a useful formula.’

‘Sounds fair enough.’ Loxton decided it had been so right to let Tacette fix the meeting here. The place made him real confident, unworried, anyone could see. Loxton had never heard
him talk so much before, and he could talk good – top quality accent, proper grammar and everything. You would not have known the only school he been to was Marl View, and they thought he was
thick as mud pies even there.

‘We want some headings, Benny – the ground we could cover later in detail. Maybe we’d both like others present then. I’d probably ask Anthony to join us, and you could
nominate anyone you want.’

‘Today, just see which way we’re going?’

‘Right.’

‘That looks to me real civilized and positive, Leo.’ Loxton stood up and went to the big window that gazed out over the last hole and away to other greens in the distance. He watched
as the smuts from the factories swooped down on golfers like birds on worms. Or it reminded him of in the Navy, passing some foul old merchantman, spewing its smoke everywhere. ‘You’ve
got nobody with you at all, Leo?’

‘Not a soul. Same for you?’

‘By myself. That was the agreement. Real outlook here. It’s a soother.’

‘Maybe I could get you membership, Benny. If you were interested.’

‘That’s very nice of you, Leo.’ The bastard would really enjoy being kindly like that, offering a leg up. Who would have believed Leo could have ever got to that situation?
Year or two ago he would have been kept out of the Muggers And Threatening Behaviour Club, for being too savage.

‘It would cost, one way and the other. You know what I mean?’

‘No problem.’ Loxton returned to his seat.

Leo leaned forward and spoke quietly, a real confidential, intimate voice, a buddy’s voice. ‘As I see it, Benny, there’s six casinos worth talking about. That’s three in
the town and then Baize, The Spinning Wheel and The Pimpernel, outlying.’

‘Right.’

‘There are others in the patch and they might do something one day but just now they’re not worth protecting, that’s our thinking – more trouble than the take.’

‘Accepted,’ Loxton said. Yes, Leo was no great talker usually, but when it came to business, and here in the golf club, he could really take off. This sort of thing was obviously
what he was made for. In some way he would be a loss. It was a pity he could not have offered a lot earlier to arrange the club membership. Too late now.

‘Okay, in the town, you hold Black Jack, undisputedly, and we have Cleo’s,’ Tacette said. ‘I don’t know the figures, not details, but they ought to be around the
same. Say we’re taking from each about two hundred grand a year, more if it’s a wet summer, or the royal wedding, so everybody’s excited and flash with their cash.’

‘Near enough.’

Some biggy of the golf club in a purple sweater came in with what seemed to be a golf reporter from a paper and they sat down not far away. This great club star began telling him pretty hearable
about his great dramas out on the grass, thirty yard putts, and his ball in a lake, or something like that, the whole fucking bagful, and this kid with the notebook got to write it all down, and
cry ‘Really?’ and ‘Fantastic’. Maybe this gorgeous bit of golfing history owned the paper.

Leo came closer still. ‘And then we turn to the tricky one in town, Benny. Well, this is a touchy subject, we’d both agree, but it has to be faced.’

‘Captain Dreyfus?’

‘Your people, my people fight over Captain Dreyfus. Christ, that carnage. Off and on for how long is it? Three years, four?’

‘Since it opened. More like four. Yes, a lot of pain, a lot of sweat. So regrettable.’ Jesus, Captain Dreyfus was one of the reasons Leo had to go, Leo and especially Lay-waste. They
made that casino a battlefield, Lay-waste turning real fiendish there. It was funny to be talking to Leo about it like this now, so reasonable and calm. That was never going to be solved, Captain
Dreyfus, not until the Tacettes went their way at the silver wedding, if you could call that being solved.

Leo said: ‘Talking of pain and aggro, who did they pull out of the dock in that Metro?’

‘Search me. Some drunk?’

‘Maybe. Where was I?’

‘Dreyfus.’

‘Yes, all right, so we’re into bigger cash here, at Dreyfus, much bigger. This could be up to, what, three-fifty, three-seventy-five grand?’

‘A real peachy place. Brings in your finest big money carriers, Arabs, of course, and the Chinks, naturally, but all sorts of other wallets as well. It really pissed me off, Leo, being
forced to smash up a pretty spot of such quality, the tastiest in fitments. But people like that, they had to be taught unmistakable how much they needed protection and a guiding hand here. They
come in from London because they been getting a hard time from their guardians wanting bigger and bigger takes, and because they hear about development and heavy investment going this way. All
right. However, they had the stupid idea they could do it here alone, no professional defenders, because they’re not in the capital no more but out among the patsies and nobodies – how
they regard it. They’re looking for a saving and we’re supposed to be it. Such a basic error.

‘Well, obvious, first thing they need a bit of a revelation that this is not the home of the brothers Pushover. Or to put it otherwise, if they thought it was St Francis of Rififi or Oxfam
running this place, they got to find out different. Oh, it hurts, I know, to do a demolition treatment and, like I said, it’s damn regrettable. Only way to let them know the picture, though.
They’re all right again now, the insurance took care, but you’re right, the Dreyfus is still problematical.’

‘That’s what I mean, Benny, talks about talks. The Dreyfus has to go on any agenda. I don’t know it can be resolved, but that’s the heart of things.’

‘Can’t argue.’

‘Whether we can protect it together, a straight split.’

‘Is Anthony going to wear that?’

‘Anthony will do whatever’s agreed, Benny. It’s only the uncertainty of the situation, the competitiveness, that led to incidents. Once we have a working pattern, Anthony will
be as good as gold, oh, yes, as good as gold. Underneath it all, that boy’s a natural conciliator, you know, Benny. He loves amity, co-operation. These outbursts, they’re deplorable and
he knows it and is ashamed, believe me. It’s entirely nerves, an essentially gentle spirit put under unbearable strain.’ He had on a padre voice now.

‘Fine.’ Loxton felt strange and a bit solemn and sad – to be talking like this, so level and friendly, and calling that fucker Anthony, like a boutique, instead of Lay-waste,
and knowing all the time that none of this chatter mattered because Leo and Lay-waste and Gerald and their whole operation would very soon be deeply unavailable to take from Captain Dreyfus or
anywhere else. They had asked for it, especially Lay-waste, but Leo and Gerald, too, and it was coming. Until it came, Benny did not mind discussing collection arrangements and the partnerships and
splits, but it seemed spooky, all the same. Never mind, he was comfortable and he felt safe. Was Leo going to try anything in front of a picture of the Queen?

‘Or maybe one of us take Dreyfus and the other get all the so-far small-timers,’ Leo suggested. ‘Nursed along, two or three of them might be into the Dreyfus class themselves
in a couple of years.’

‘Yes.’

‘No need to decide anything now, Benny. Well, we can’t, can we? We both need to consult. It’s just a matter of fixing an agenda. So, Captain Dreyfus at the top, yes? Leave
Black Jack and Cleo’s the way they are, giving no trouble. The minor league stuff for discussion along with Dreyfus? How does that grab you as an outline for the start of casino
negotiations?’

‘Grand. Tidy.’

‘Then, outlying, you’re looking after Baize and The Pimpernel. We have The Spinning Wheel. It’s two to one, but The Spinning Wheel is bigger, we take about a hundred and
seventy-five grand a year protection there. Maybe Baize and The Pimpernel together give you that much? I don’t know? A little less? This is the kind of area we could talk about in detail.
And, of course, with Baize you’ve really had to do some work, give active heavy minding now and then, because of the lout gangs who get in there, no sinecure. You see, we could be very
understanding about special problems. Benny, what I’m trying to say is, we would be ready to come more than half-way to get a working pattern. You’d find us very, very
flexible.’

‘That’s really something.’

‘I don’t consider business can be done in any other way. Well, yes, of course, it can be done by confrontation, confrontation and more confrontation. But that’s so stupid, so
self-destructive and uneconomic. That’s the behaviour of another, cruder era.’

‘We’ve thought ditto.’

‘Of course you have. So, then, that will be the first stage of negotiations. It’s not the main money for either of us, I suppose, but it’s where the most bother has come in the
past. Obviously, after this, we go on to the grass and coke aspects, where there have also been troublesome misunderstandings, though not so head-on or fierce.’

Leo gave a grand, comfortable laugh, like the two of them was bigger than this crazy fighting and could easy put it all right, man to man.

The king of the golfers had finished his interview and the two of them left, the purple wool gleaming like a bruise for the
Guinness Book of Records
.

‘Squabbles like that spill money and blood, Benny, and they draw attention. It’s so foolish to send signals to the police.’ Leo spoke more quietly: ‘As to police, I might
be building something with Iles.’

Loxton was shocked and disbelieving. ‘Iles? Christ, go careful there. You remember what happened to Cliff Jamieson, the one they called You-know-who? You-knew-who now.’

‘Iles was down the Chaff the other night, plus lady.’

‘Taking meals? Iles? Can’t be.’

‘No, of course not. That’s too primitive and low. But don’t tell me he didn’t know we’d bought Chaff. No, he had come on purpose, I’d say. This was
introductory. He’ll be there again. I’d bet he’s looking for a deal, some share of the action. They get an idea of the kind of cash that’s going into the casinos and what
we’re taking for protective services. Meals and drinks – he’s not interested, not going to sell his soul for a dozen oysters and a glass of stout, you’re right. But talk a
few figures with noughts on, that could be different. It generally is with these boys. Not right away in this case, obviously. But in due course.’

‘Iles? You sure?’

‘Give it a while. We had quite a private conversation. At this stage, some of it has to be confidential. You’ll understand that, Benny, I know.’

God, this bastard thought he was chairman of Barclay’s Bank.

‘Well, I’d say we’ve made sensational progress here today, Benny. Some ground has been cleared. A few weeks, we could have another meeting for the detailed stuff. I’ve
got a silver wedding coming up, you probably heard, it’s no secret, so let me get that out of the way first.’

‘No, that right? Silver wedding! I didn’t know. But yes, I suppose it would be about that now. Well, that’s to your credit, Leo, that’s to be admired, you and Daphne
still together and happy, from being kids in school. That’s not something you see every day, no, sir.’

‘Just a family thing, Benny. You’ll understand. That’s how she wants it.’

‘Best like that, more real, more enjoyable, oh, yes. Intimate. Your boys, a few other relations, who else do you need?’

‘As soon as that’s over – Look, how many people in your outfit these days?’ He sat back very relaxed in his green chair again, smiling the good friend smile, and looking
like a child abuser just acquitted because the kids had too much trauma to testify. ‘Is it all right to ask that, since we’re future partners? It’s the sort of thing we need to
know about each other: I mean, the split, and available manpower.’

‘That’s all right.’ Loxton did not rush to answer, though. What went on? Number, for God’s sake, names?