Raucous (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Raucous was suited and booted and ready

A polyester two-piece from a high-street shop that sold t-shirts with the life expectancy of three months.  They were all made exclusively in Bangladesh.  It was a shiny grey slim fit, white shirt and slick black brogues.  Everything for less than a hundred pounds.  But he felt good.  His fists and elbows cracked and shot pain when he moved, his back was stiff and his legs ached on every step.  But he smiled, walking the streets of where he had grown up.  Old terraced houses that were now too expensive to buy and held none of the squalor his childhood had seen.  They were clean back then too, but now they looked new.  He knew people were looking, he knew they recognized him, had at the very least heard of his fight, his victory, and his return.  The prodigal son of a family that no longer existed had returned and half the people in the district had no idea from where he had come.  He was as foreign to them as the Pearly King, and as rare.  Raucous beamed, but it faded as he thought of Jim.  He was one of the originals.  A relic from the sixties, old school in the sense of having grown up being the hard man his physique demanded.  Raucous would see him again, and carry out the promise he had made.  He had told Jim, looked him in the eye as he sat across that plastic table inside, and swore he would kill him,  He remembered the words, simple, easy to remember.  I promise you, Jim, I’ll kill you.

Jim would have travelled and arrived.  Raucous had given him time.  It was needed.  Two days h waited from the fight.  Three would be best but he couldn’t give it all.  He had to move now.  The alarm won’t have sounded, they won’t know where he has gone.  And he will have gone.  Earlier than he would have wanted, but Parker was an unforeseen.  If Parker knew, and Raucous knew he did, then Jim needed to travel fast, just like Raucous had taken the risk of heading straight to the top by taking on that kid.  A dumb move, too much risk but it worked out and now he was heading for Turk.  The man had called him, asked for his presence.  A simple step and the Turk was now in need of Raucous.  Raucous had the information the Turk needed.  Raucous was one of three.  Jim was heading there fast, but would be coming back, Parker was an unknown.  But complex plans have a million variables and Parker was one he could do little about.  The Turk was the way in, the way to the outcome he had thought about for years.  Raucous looked up and saw the Den.  It had been seventeen years since he’d been inside the nightclub of burnt carpet and sticky floors.  The name had stayed but the clientele had moved on.  Its neon lights and shiny façade were a long way from the old man’s ballroom of years past.  The front door was unlocked.  Raucous inhaled deeply. 

It started. 

All plans do. 

It would not go the way he had seen, no plan ever had.  But the key moments, some in which he would not be involved had to be met.  The Turk was first.

CHAPTER SIX

Mitch saw Jon-Jon from their Kitchen window.  Jon-Jon had come early, looking to hide. Mitch ate breakfast and thought.  He had two ideas, two possibilities.  The first was best, but the second more likely.  He hated being hit.  But Jean had caused confrontation.  She had insulted to big for a kid so small.  Jon-Jon needed face.

Mitch dressed, putting on a loosely ironed black shirt and well-worn jeans.  He left the apartment block and walked to where they would meet.  The White baseball cap and startled-deer eyes popping, every ten seconds, from behind the alley corner.  Mitch saw him, knew he was there, and knew Jon-Jon’s plan.                Mitch stopped four meters from the alley.

“You saw yesterday I can fight better than you,” Mitch said.  “You know from me speaking to you now that I know where you are.  There is no surprise.  You will not win.”

Jon-Jon stepped out into the street.  He was wearing the same clothes from the day before.  The Sports-style stupidity-indicator of polyester cheapness.  From the pocket in his jogging bottoms he produced a knife.  It was a plastic handled, chipped-blade of a kitchen knife, available free with thirty five tokens from all good co-ops in 1987.

“Do you know how to use that?” Mitch asked.  “While I’m not exactly Mick Dundee, I can take that off you if you want.”

Jon-Jon hesitated, lowered the knife till it was at his hip.

“Maybe this isn’t who or where you should be,” Mitch said.  “I was defending myself yesterday.  That’s all.”

“The day before?  With the comics?”  Jon-Jon asked.

“I was different, ill, I guess you could say.”

“You humiliated me.”

“I defended myself.”

“If I want in, they say I have to cut you.”

Jon-Jon took a step forward with his knife raised.

“That’s not smart,” Mitch said.  “Think about it.  There are cameras here.”

Mitch pointed out the three cameras that recorded action on the street

“Too late then.  They’ve seen this already.”

“That’s not how it works.  If something happens they’ll go back and check.  No complaint and nobody watches film of this little through road.”

“So I don’t do it here,” Jon-Jon said and placed his knife back in his pocket.

Mitch smiled.  He knew option one had gone.

“If by some miracle you sneak up on me, manage to wound and walk away, when I’m found dead they’ll look at this video because this is where i live.  Who’s the first they are going to look for?”

Jon-Jon looked at the three cameras in turn.  He rubbed his head.

Mitch saw the chance.  “You’ll be In prison, but a man’s prison, big men, scarred with prison stories, strong guys.  Because you don’t get the Hilton for murder.  Can you survive that, at what, how old are you?  Seventeen?  You want that life?”

Jon-Jon looked up to the white Victorian building that was now low rent flats.

“They’re watching this,” he said.

Jon-Jon tensed.  He had to do it.  The idea was planned.  He needed to balance out an equation, equal the shame he felt by causing pain for Mitch.

They were a meter apart and Jon-Jon, arced his arm back and threw an untrained punch.  It was slow and easy to avoid.  But Mitch didn’t move.  The inside of Jon-Jon’s clenched fist caught Mitch’s cheek.  In boxing terms a slap.  Mitch rode the power, turning his head with the force of contact.  And they stood and nodded.  The slap had exaggerated the strength of contact.  But a red mark appeared on Mitch’s left cheek.  Mitch knew it would fade quickly and there would be no bruise.  Jon-Jon was no fighter and unable to break blood-vessels.

The equation was balanced.  It was Mitch’s turn to react.  Jon-Jon was happy, but nervous.  The peace hung on Mitch.  For Jon-Jon this was an end.

Mitch did not move.  He stared into Jon-Jon’s eyes.

“Are we finished?” Mitch asked.

“I am,” Jon-Jon said.

Jon-Jon walked away toward the apartment.  The curtain swung closed as the boys inside went back to sitting around and doing nothing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You don’t bruise easily,” Raucous said.  “I thought I would have left a mark.”

“You really are thick,” the man said.

Raucous was in the Turk’s office, a room decorated in dark wood and leather in a bad attempt at replicating Italo-American gangster comfort.

The Turk sat behind his mahogany desk, the lighting low.  He probably had cotton wool stuffed in his cheeks to give him an incomprehensible Marlon Brando mumble.  His face sure looked like fat blubbery hamster.  His palms were face-down on the green felt cover.

Raucous looked at the Turk, received no nod or shake, turned to the man and took a step cutting the two-meter space between them in half.  He didn’t take the second.  To do so would mean impaling himself on the sharp flick-knife the man had produced as if it were attached to a quick-draw mechanism on the inside of the forearm.  Raucous could feel the steel point pushing into his chest through his rough check shirt.  He was looking directly into the man’s smug face.  The same face he had smashed with his elbow the day before.

“That isn’t Timothy, Raucous,” The Turk said.  “This is Simon, his twin.”

Raucous examined every feature of Simon’s face as if it would help with mental calculations.  He saw no physical difference.

“I repeat” Simon said, “You’re thick.”

Raucous took a step back, Simon left the knife where it had been in the air, and then with a quick, smooth movement, he concealed the knife in his Armani suit sleeve.

Raucous placed his right fist into his left palm and rubbed his knuckles.  Simon smiled.  And they stared each other down like two boys in a playground fight the night after watching a Sergio Leone classic.

“Timothy will be along shortly,” Turk said.  “I am led to believe he will be accompanying Jim.”

Raucous took his time turning, not wanting to back down from Simon’s stare but needing to show the Turk.  Raucous smiled and fixed his gaze on the Turk.  “You really believe Jim is going to walk through that door, after what I told you?”

“That is what the man means,” Simon said.

“And I’m the thick one?”

The heavy oak door opened in silence. Well oiled hinges and perfect weighting made the whole thing seem built of card.  Timothy walked in alone. 

Simon and Turk waited for Jim.  Raucous sat down in an antique wooden chair with a worn leather seat.  He had his back to the door.

“Jim is not blessing us with his presence?”  Turk asked.

“He wasn’t where he should be,” Timothy said.  His words carried a small lisp caused by the large split in his lower lip.  “I couldn’t find him.  And he hasn’t been seen since the fight.”

Timothy had a large swelling around his eyes, the black of bruising from elbows driven hard.  He nodded his approval to Raucous. 

Simon produced a phone as quickly as he produced his knife.  He pressed a single button and the sound of a ringing number came through the speaker.  The number rang for fifteen seconds and then was switched to an answer phone.  Simon pressed a button to end the call and slid his phone into the back pocket of his chinos.  “He’s not answering.”

The Turk looked down at his desk, examining the back of his large hairy hands.  He tapped his fingers in quick rhythmic rolls.  He inhaled deeply and looked up at raucous.  “Do you have something to do with that?”

Raucous still smiled.  He enjoyed being the smartest man in the room.  “In a roundabout way, I guess,” he said.

“Enlighten us,” Turk smiled.  “Where exactly is Jim?”

“I couldn’t tell you exactly where he is right now, but in an average car, following the speed limit, I can tell you he got to be in the town he was heading for sometime yesterday morning.”

“You are sure of that?” Turk asked.

“As sure as someone can be, when they are this thick.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

He was part of Christian’s life.  He was old now, visibly thinner, the bulk of manual work faded to leave sinew and skin.  His full, flat features had developed troughs and angles.  A wasting away of a sculptured face chipped down by time.

The name wasn’t there, but the memory was.  This man was the first Christian had ever hit.

The two lives never entwined.  There was no overlap.  This wasn’t science fiction.  Two worlds did not collide.

But unmistakably him.  Twenty years on, an illness taking him down.  Ben thought of John Wayne in The Shootist, an old bastard of a killer, coughing up shit, hopped up on morphine while Richie Cunningham from Happy Days learnt the reality of a gun-man’s life.

Ten a.m as Ben left the house, unwashed, unclean and heading for coffee.  The man was standing outside the tobacconist pulling on a filterless cigarette, making no effort to hide.

The image hit Ben’s eyes, kicking memory into work.  A flick of a million connections and Ben saw the past.

Christian aged six, in toweling shorts and blue striped shirt.  A Queens Park Rangers kid.  Short blonde hair and the piercing blue eyes.  Christian climbed on the old man’s knee.  Their mouths moved but Ben heard no words.  A faulty film recorded on a hand-held played out as remembrance.  The audio cable was disconnected. 

A battered brass military Zippo, a rasp, smoke and a flame.  An inhale and the crackle of burning tobacco and paper with a circular red glow.   Christian’s right hand was encased in a child’s lace-up red boxing glove.  He swung and the old man blocked.  Ash fell from the cigarette and the old man laughed at someone Ben could not see.  Christian swung again and the old man blocked.  Christian dropped his arm.  The old man looked to a person out of frame, his mouth moving and each silent word encased in passive smoke drifting between his lips.  Christian swung again.  The old man’s cigarette flew from his fingers and mouth.  He looked to Christian and smiled.  He rubbed Christian’s hair with a big gnarled palm.  There was a sprinkling of blood on the old man’s teeth. 

“Still fighting?” The old man asked.

Ben jumped at the voice.  A familiarity without knowing why. 

“I’m not who you are looking for,” Ben said.

“I’m inclined to agree with you.  What happened to you?”

“You aren’t from our lives.”

“Our?  I was in yours. Still am.”  He held his right index finger to his lips, "But, shhhh, that’s a secret.”

Ben entered his mind, he shut down externally.  He entered a trance.  His eyes lost focus, and would have rolled up white if they could like a possessed character actor destined to die in a John Carpenter B-Movie.  He looked dumb, distanced from the world with an open mouth and the unfocused stare of a lobotomised Jack Nicholson.  Jim took Ben’s arm and ushered him into the pub.

The Somerset Arms was dying quickly. A Wetherspoon had opened and every ancient pub with expensive pints had caught a terminal disease and was never coming back.  The only money coming in was from the residents of Pistachio Villa, community apartments.  As if no one would ever understand the exotic equivalent of nut house.  The hilarious civil servant who had conjured the name must be fun at the Christmas Do waving around his useless Social Sciences degree and writing witty replies on Facebook posts to kids who used to bully him.

The lounge bar, shaped as an L, held a collection of the genetically slow or emotionally incapable.  Some, once almost regular people, reduced to human ruins through events beyond their control.  They were now the latest first-line in human drug therapy, which managed to remove any trace of individualism and replace it with a long glazed gaze.

The medication they took was not to be mixed with booze but with no one to control their lives or anyone to care, they spent their days supping beer, downing vodka and entering the ethereal world of mixed medication and alcohol aggression in a nicotine stained pub adorned with brass farming instruments and flowery wallpaper.

“Do you remember?” Jim asked.

Ben sat transfixed.  He stared at the bar.  No one felt unease, at least four mental collapses happened here a day.

Ben didn’t answer.  Jim grabbed the inside of Ben’s right thigh and squeezed.  A camel’s bite he had called it at school. But that was back in the 60s.  Ben yelped and woke.  He turned to Jim.

“I don’t know your name.  I know some things you did, but I don’t know you.”

“You had better start remembering.  Another day and all of this ends.  No more easy life.”

“Why?”

“It’s easy to hide when no one is looking.  Only now everyone is.  And you’re the penultimate.  A game of very expensive hide-and-seek started seventeen years ago.  Four years ago they thought it had ended.  Now they know it hasn’t.”

Jim sipped at his long grouse whisky and water.  Ice rattled on the rim.

Ben squinted and looked

“Are you playing?” he asked.

Jim smiled with the glass still at his lips.  He placed the glass down, perfectly central on the stained beet mat.  He stared at Ben’s eyes as if they were the wrong colour.

“I think the big kids in the playground want me to go home.  And I’m too old, ill and tired to say no.”

Ben, blinking, unable to find peace with the presence of this man stuttered, “I don’t understand what you want.”

“I owe a debt,” Jim said.  I’ve been paying it for years.  Looks like I can’t keep on.  You need to go home.”

Jim squinted as if defocusing Ben’s face would give him the image he wanted.  Ben moved his weight forward toward the table, rocked on the balls of his feet to stand.  “I’ll go now,” he said.

Jim grabbed Ben’s shoulder.  He prevented Ben from standing.  Pulled him back down again.

“Not the expensive flat you’ve got.  That, soon as you know, will be gone.  You need to go back to where you were born.”

Jim looked at Ben and shook his head slowly.  The words, the way of speaking, the shame and coward that came through were never there as a boy. 

“I’ll be here tomorrow.  We’ll speak again.” Jim rose to his feet and let a roll of twenties in an orange elastic band fall from his palm onto the table.  “Drink yourself silly, you won’t get the chance again.”