Raucous (23 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY

Jean was awake for five minutes before she was bored.  She opened her eyes, immediately alert and sneered at the play apartment of a single adult male.  She lay under the soft duvet that smelled of chemical lavender and thought of a man who worked from home but pined for a past they had never lived.  An Adams family pinball machine from the mid eighties pulsed lights but no sound in the corner of the vast open space that was the apartment.  An arcade machine of heavy wood-chip panels and garish colors arranged in strips on a black background lay idle in the far left corner next to the large window which was blocked by Venetian blinds. You could play any shoot-em-up or scrolling adventure ever created in the 1980s as they were all loaded onto a modern computer hidden in its depths.  A small trampoline and boys toys everywhere as if the interior designer had fallen in love with the grown up Tom Hanks in Big.  There was no wishing machine.

Jean slipped out of the bed and cursed at Ben’s choice in nightwear.  Always grease stained jogging bottoms.  Jean opened the Venetian blinds to reveal the walls of glass that were permanently closed windows.  She looked out across the city and tried to trace Ben’s walk from the previous day.  She thought of his thoughts, depressed and scared but safe with his follower.

Jean saw her reflection in the glass.  The top she wore bore the action shot of Spiderman.  Nearly 38 and the guy wore Spiderman to bed.

Jean moved to the basic dresser at the foot of the double bed.  It was IKEA in design but sold for more: the wood was heavy, thick and dark chocolate in color.  She opened the top drawer and saw grey Everlast shorts, vest and sweatshirt.  Prize and size tags hung, Jean bit and spat the plastic clips away, slipped into the new clothes, with a perfect fit, found new trainers underneath - they were new Balance, they were the perfect size.  She tied the laces, paced and jumped bringing her knees to her chest.  She headed to the gym.

Jean pushed the large door and heard the whoosh of air and the pop of a rubber seal being broken.  The gym was for executives who believed breaking beer sweat on a treadmill for fifteen minutes twice-a-week would balance out the accumulated cholesterol gained through business lunches, sat-on-arse desk work and late supper nightcaps of large ports and expensive pungent cigars.  They were wrong.  The exercise, if that’s what they wanted to call it, was nothing but a trigger for the heart-attack they would inevitably have.  They would wear heart-rate monitors to keep Beats per Minute below a set limit, and wear the chest monitor like a badge of honor.  Look what this work is doing to me.  Dumb fucks.

Jean saw that the treadmill was the only piece of equipment that was in any type of regular use.  Weight machines with stacks of rectangular slabs of black iron and pulleys and cables sat clean and shop-new.  Unused because muscle is not the normal businessman look.  Just like a tan back in the day showed you to be an outside labourer and thus scum to all the white make-up faced ponces of wigs and idiocy.  A body in-shape marked a businessman out as having far too much time to kill.  A paunch and pallid skin meant you worked for your money.  If premature balding or early grey topped your head then you were on the way to greatness.

The room was silent.  Jean appreciated this.  There was no shitty high-paced music to inspire sprints, or a row of TVs blaring the latest and coolest twenty-four-hour music channel of talentless teens that made their names on the Disney channel.  They were now touching twenty and growing up by being mentally shot and adding an edge to their output and helping sales by being photographed by pathetic paparazzi as they lay unconscious outside nightclubs, or nakedly on their own Instagram accounts.

Jean ran in silence.  She set the speed at 12 km per hour, a steady, easy pace for her.  No headphones, no running to a play list of AC/DC or two-tone Ska.  The first ten minutes she thought, snapping through ideas in quick steps.  She ran into her rhythm and blankness fell, a constant breathing, a repeated step and a meditating state of no thought.

Jean snapped from her trance as the machine automatically slowed as she reached 12km, just shy of one hour of running.  She cursed Ben’s cigarettes.  The residue of tar caused a rough edge on the depths of her lungs.  She walked in time with the decreasing speed of the treadmill until it stopped.  She looked up at the security camera that was fixed on the opposite wall staring at her directly.  She remembered Ben’s day, the thoughts Ben had, the reasons they were there.  Mitch would be here tomorrow and she knew what he would think, she knew what he would try to do.  They had an opportunity here, a way to live.  A future in a way their past had once been.  An easy ride of freedom.

She needed to speak to Rollin. 

******************************************************************

Jean walked through the reception in sweat-stained grey. The secretary rose, started to speak, sat down and watched. Jean hit the large wooden double doors to Rollin’s office with the palms of her hands. The shudder of impact rippled along her arms, pushing her shoulders back. The doors did not move. Jean turned to the secretary.

“Only he can buzz you in,” the secretary said.

“And if he dies in there?”

“We’ll find him after.”

“Phone him.”

“That won’t be at all necessary, he’s watching,” the secretary said, lifting her right hand and indicating above the door then each corner of the ceiling.

Jean looked and saw the small dark semi-spheres in which cameras worked.

The double doors buzzed and a solenoid slid with a click from its lock. 

The secretary mimed a double-handed push.

******************************************************************

Rollin sat at his desk, while Jobs stood, head bowed waiting for instruction.

“What is it?” Rollin asked. 

“I’m a little bored; I did the touristic thing yesterday with the man here-”

“All of it,” Jobs said.

“The bits that interest me.  And now I want in.”

Rollin stared at Jean, no smile came.  He had a dead business face.  He looked up to The Follower.

“When are you due to start the rounds?” Rollin asked.

“Tomorrow morning, Mr. Rollin.”

“Would there be a problem if we moved it up to today?”

“None that I can envisage,” Jobs said.

Rollin looked to Jean, his face as passive aggressive as he had been before.  “This man here goes by the name of Jobs.  Go clean yourself up.  Meet Jobs in the foyer.  He’ll tell you what to do and what not.”

******************************************************************

“Cash or protection?” Jean asked as she and Jobs passed the fourth estate of the day.

They were the monstrosities of the sixties and seventies. Huge, multi-storied semi circles of grey and moulding concrete, designed as a futuristic paradise but rapidly becoming the brothers of communist functionalism with much lower production costs.  They collapsed and crumbled and the poor never moved away.  Large green areas thought of as social meeting places, no doubt designed in publicity to show a young mother in a pencil skirt and bouffant, socializing while husbands went out to earn their keep.  They were waste grounds now, the territory of youths who had nothing better to do than protect their worthless piece of earth from the encroachment of other youths who wanted in.  A turf war among teenagers for land without value.

They had not spoken, Jobs aloof and concentrated as he paced steadily on. Jobs had knocked on two doors.  The first was answered by a woman who were she to be aged by counting rings would be just short of a hundred.  She had a wrinkled face and a lot of gold on her hands.  It drew attention away from her face, which was cracked, red and broken.  Jobs asked if everything was ok, she replied it now was.  There were no warm hellos, or invites in.  An exchange and on they moved.  The second they climbed the three floors by the emergency stairs.  Two groups of four kids sat inhaling from silver foil.  They made space for Jobs.   An old lady answered the door.  “Are they still making noise after midnight?”  “No,” the old lady said, looking at the floor and closing her door.

But he stopped when Jean asked and turned to her.

“Cash or protection?  Neither.  Simple inquiry to see if everything is OK.  No problems, no hassles.”

“Bullshit.  Rollin makes you promise not to tell me the dirty side of his empire?”

“There is no real dirty side to this, excepting some of the obvious local tenants.  It’s a good business.  Rollin owns the property, the rent he charges is a little higher, five to ten percent in most cases.  But that extra hires us.  A safety net that works.”

“And it’s just you?”

“I’m the face, I front up to disgruntled customers.  I’m a big guy, six six, seventeen stone, a bit of it fat.  I’m a decent fighter.  My pro-boxing career came to an end after seven fights because I’m slow and lumbering for that elite level.  But I can fight, when I’m told to.”

“You’re the BFG,” Jean said.

“Big Friendly Giant.  It’s been said, had to look it up to understand.  Literary references are mostly wasted on me.”

“You offer protection.”

“I offer a calming influence.”

“You don’t seem to enjoy it.”

“I don’t.  But it pays well, and I’m always moving up.  Started as a guard, now I’m here.”

“You don’t take any for you?”

“Money?  Everything is electronic.  Recorded.  It’s not the eighties no more.  No cash collections, weekly salaries.  It’s all bank transfer.  Criminality in that system requires skill.  We don’t have it.  Their money comes in, and before they can touch it, ours comes out.  No threats needed.  The bank does the work.”

“All this is Rollin’s?”

“The rent side of things, yeah.  That’s Rollin.  Took him a while, competition, Chinese, Europeans, Jamaican and so on.  But boundaries are defined, borders maintained.  No need for fighting.  Money for everyone.”

They heard a shout, they turned to its origin.  Eight boys on low slung BMXs.  Baseball caps of teams from another continent, oversized basketball jerseys over long sleeved shirts.  All trousers four sizes too big. 

Jobs spoke, his voice low, “the problem is the kids.  They are just plain dumb.”

The boys circled, nothing fancy, a simple snake with no leader: an interchange as they tried tricks.  Ollies, spins and jumps.  Most placed Nike covered feet to the floor to protect balance and pride.  But they circled, weaving in and out of a wavy line.

Jobs watched, standing still, waiting for the attempt at intimidation to reach an end.  He looked bored, as if this were how every walk he took panned out. 

A bike broke free, spun clockwise on and around its stationary front wheel as the rear rode up and swung.  The back wheel fell to the tarmac and the rider lifted the front and spun again.  He couldn’t finish the move, his balance went.  He stamped his left foot down on the ground to stop his fall.  The rider, a small youth of sixteen was wearing American basketball apparel seemingly stolen from a professional power forward of two-metres-twenty.  He looked at Jobs and smiled.

“Not see anything you like, Jobs?”  The kid asked.  “We too old for you now?”

Jean watched, the boys paid no attention to her.  She was free from any curiosity.  The kids formed a line of stationary bikes.  Jobs stood with his arms folded across his chest. 

“You are all grown up now.  Nice to see,” Jobs said.  “Do we have a problem?”

The small kid of failed bike tricks stared at Jobs.  Jobs unfolded his arms.

The group, as if there had been a secret message sent through signs, started to pedal in a line again.  They circled Jobs and Jean, once, twice, three times. Each of the eight boys staring at Jobs.  They didn’t make the fourth circle.  A boy broke free at speed and pedalled off, standing up, moving his bike quickly from side to side.  The seven others followed in the same style, and Jobs watched them go.  Jean saw a small smile flick on his lips.

“What was that?” Jean asked.

“Boys with pasts that are bad, but nothing compared to their futures.”

CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

“They prefer a first timer,” Jobs said.

Raucous looked at Jobs.  It was late afternoon.  Jobs had been late, giving an excuse of an unplanned collection route with a new recruit.  He had brought unhappiness.  Jobs and Raucous stared into each other’s eyes.

“What did I say?” Raucous asked.

“Don’t bring anyone who hasn’t been before.”

“So who aren’t you going to bring?”

“Anyone new.”

“Exactly, now go and make the pick up.”

The Villa was not how Raucous imagined.  He had expected luxury, imagined an old-fashioned wild-west whore-house furnishing.  But he had been very wrong.  The place was bare and white.  Tiles covered the walls until one meter sixty in height.  Above that were whitewashed walls.  The downstairs had four even sized rooms, four meters by four meters. Two each side of a long thin corridor.  Each was empty.  The activity happened on the first floor.  Raucous walked a steep set of straight steps, with a sliver of carpet running down its centre, held in place with ornate brass strips. 

The first floor had four rooms, spaced exactly as those below.  The first was an aperitif room, a large circular table covered in bottles of expensive whisky, brandy and gin.  Mixers were bunched together in a small square.  The other three rooms each contained a double bed and an armchair.  The quality barely more than a cheap bed and breakfast in a long since dead seaside resort.

Raucous walked to the bottom of the stairs.  A tall bookcase stood at the bottom.  He moved it away from the wall, plugged in the adaptor placed the box on the top shelf, making sure it was concealed between some original French literature, attached the wire to the second device and pressed the button. He walked to the top of the stairs and walked down again.  He checked the second device and was happy with the result.  He sat down on the soft chair next to the door and waited.

******************************************************************

The phone in his pocket rang twice.  Raucous looked through the gap between the thick burgundy curtains.  Night had set in.  He had been sat in the chair for two hours.  Lamps on the top of tall hooked poles were illuminating the street, but the two on either side of the road directly in the front of the house were dead.  They always were.  Raucous looked down the corridor of the house.  He never thought he would see inside.  Once, long ago, he had feared this place.  He wasn’t alone in that.  They all had, no matter how tough they believed themselves to be, this house was their bogeyman.  He looked at his watch.  Nine twenty-five.  They were running early.  The ring was a ten minute warning.  Raucous walked along the corridor and unlocked the back door.

Five boys filed in.  Their eyes were glazed and their paces unsteady.  They were all ten, eleven and twelve.  Raucous knew where they were from.  He didn’t know what they had been given, but he knew they took it gladly.  A mixture, alcohol and some type of pill to relax their minds.  He had heard of a drug that caused memory loss, a rapist’s friend.  But he had heard this renders the victim immobile.  The people who came here didn’t want that.  Where would be the fun, right?

Jobs came in last.  He closed the door behind him.

He walked along the corridor and Raucous watched.  He was a confident man and stared at Raucous all the way to the bottom of the stairs.

“You got a problem,” Jobs asked.

“Don’t we all?”

Jobs scowled.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

“Go do your job,” Raucous said.

“It’s done.  Babysitting now.”

“Then go babysit.”

“I usually sit here.  They’re in no state to do anything other than what they are here for.”

“Different management, different rules.  This is my spot.  Go upstairs and stay with them.  No speaking, just watch.”

Jobs stared.  Raucous stared back.  Raucous imagined this guy got what he wanted with the dead-eye he was pulling. 

“Go upstairs,” Raucous said.

Jobs squinted, turned and walked the steps.  At the top, he stopped and turned.

“There’s something about you,” he said.  “Something that doesn’t fit right.”

******************************************************************

The guests arrived.  One by one.  Raucous didn’t recognize any of them.  They could be anyone.  Important or not, famous or unknown.  They could be actors hired for the day to fool Raucous into giving up his secret.  Raucous didn’t know.  No two arrived at the same time.  Each had been sent a specific time slot and they all respected their schedule.  Each man was accompanied by a body guard.  Raucous answered the door, no one flinched.  They had all seen an image of his face, they all knew what to expect.  They shook hands, the bodyguard left, and the men went upstairs.  Five men in total.  Raucous sat in his chair and waited.  There was little noise other than laughter at first.  Chatter became more boisterous as an hour passed.  They were drinking enough to relax.  Then movement between rooms occurred, men and boys moving together to find time and space.  The noise dropped to almost silence.  Raucous dropped his head forward, thinking all the time that he had to stay quiet, he had to let this go.  This was the first step.  There was no other way to go.  He looked up because of a feeling, an itch in his head.  At the top of the stairs, Jobs was looking back, expressionless, without emotion.  He looked at Raucous, as if trying to identify what type of animal he was by flicking through a database in his head.  Jobs smiled, nodded and walked back to the aperitif room and stayed there until the men left and the boys remained.

******************************************************************

Raucous locked up.  He did it quietly.  Raucous told Jobs to go and enjoy more of the free booze on offer.  Jobs was already half-cut.

“I don’t need a drunk accident tonight," Raucous said.  "Sit it out.  Give me the keys.”

“They are in my jacket, get them yourself.  You know where you are going?”

“I know the place well.”

“Then see you later.  I’ll save you some,” Jobs said.

Raucous waited for Jobs to enter the room upstairs.  He thought about killing him.  He couldn’t risk this man being here next time.  But he couldn’t risk killing him.  And he didn’t seem the type to scare.  He needed a reason, something believable. 

Raucous searched the jacket.  He found the keys in the first one he looked, but he kept on searching.  He found two mobile phones.  He imagined one was business and one was pleasure.  Raucous took them both.  The front door was locked but could be unbolted from the inside.  Only the drunk upstairs could let anyone in.  Raucous left through the back door and locked it.  The VW transporter was open.  Raucous opened the back door slowly.  Five boys were inside.  They had the chance to run but didn’t.  They all sat, disheveled and comatose in a shared suffering.  They were no good as witnesses.  They wouldn’t even remember who they were.  Raucous slammed the door shut.  He looked up at the first floor.  The right window was illuminated.  Jobs was staring down.  He raised a tumbler of whiskey and turned his back.