Raucous (4 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Turk asked the Twins to leave.  He wanted Raucous alone.  Raucous hadn’t asked but he wanted one-to-one.  He needed the Turk alone.  They didn’t ask why or complain, they followed his orders as if he were never to be questioned.  Raucous waited to hear the thump of the door close against its frame.  The noise never came.  He turned to look at the door.  It was closed.  He turned back and the Turk was leaning forward, half-a-meter closer to Raucous than before.  His hands were clasped. 

“Do I need to ask the question?”  Turk asked.

Raucous leaned back; if he had a cigar he would inhale and blow rings in the air.  “The answer is, I’m here for the money I’m owed.”

“I don’t owe you any.”

Raucous leaned forward, “Seventeen years of my life inside and I never spoke.”

“You had nothing to tell”

“I had plenty. I learnt more.  But I stayed quiet.”

Turk leaned back and unclasped his hands.  His eyes never left Raucous.  “And how much do you believe that is worth?”

“My cut, the original figure.  No interest, just what I should have banked back then.”

“It wasn’t my operation.”

“Nothing could have happened without your compliance.”

Turk blew air from his mouth as if it were a cold winter morning.  “You seem to have educated yourself during the years.  I never remember you using so many words.”

“A lot of time in solitary with books.”

“Any particular favorites?”

“Treasure Island.”

The Turk squinted, unsure.  He knew there was meaning, but he couldn’t find it.

“Associate with any character in particular?” he asked.

Raucous nodded.

“Ben Gunn,” he said.

Turk smiled showing yellow nicotine teeth worn down by grinding. “You believe you were abandoned?”

“No, I just like cheese.  For the trip you are about to send me on to meet Jim, I’ll stock up on Parmesan.”

Turk waited.  Raucous knew he didn’t get the reference, but was pretending to ponder like an intellectual in on the joke.

“I can offer you work,” Turk said. “But as you see, if what you believe were true, with all the money from that little heist, I wouldn’t be here now.  I’d be retired, long since.”

“No, you love this life.  The attention, the young women.  No amount of money would get you out.”

Turk raised his eyebrows, surprised that someone knew the truth

“Had I been involved, I would no doubt be like the rest, very dead.  It didn’t end well.  Were you not inside you’d be dead too.  Each of those men would have taken a million and been happy before.  A million, that’s a lot of money.  That’s retirement.  No more criminal bullshit, or the game of school-kid bullies acted out as adults.  But when that type of money falls a certain person’s way it is never enough.  They want it all.  And they each tried and they each died.  I was intelligent enough to stay out. You were lucky enough to be inside without a share to be killed for.”

They let the idea float in silence.  Turk was passive, waiting.

“The money is somewhere,” Raucous said.

“Obviously, most was never recovered.  But deposit boxes, property taken back by the state, hell, i knew some of them well, had grown up with a couple, and they would have gone treasure Island and buried the stuff and drawn an incomprehensible map and told no one.  That money will be found many years into the future, and no one will know what the hell it was for.”

Raucous pursed his lips and thought.  He looked up, tired.  “That almost sounds like you believe it,” he said.

“You are asking for a share of something I had no involvement in.  And certainly no come back from.  But I can do with a man.  Timothy and Simon, as efficient as they can be, don’t understand us.  They are failed public school psychos who want the gritty life.  They aren’t you.”

“You haven’t asked me why Jim has run.”

“I don’t know that he has.  You are the only one saying so.  I have no idea what there is between you, other than an angry father.  Bring him back and I would be very willing to speak to him.”

“Do you have a car?”

Turk opened his top drawer and removed a gun.  A small snub-nosed .38 revolver.  Six-shot rotary chamber.  A gun Dirty Harry may carry in his sock.

“Traceable?”  Raucous asked, knowing it was for him.

“Yes, if you leave finger prints all over it.  Otherwise, no.”

Turk produced a key.  “Ford Transit.  Parked outside.  White, obviously.”  Turk smiled at himself.  “White van man, hell, it’s what you were heading for anyway before you blew it.”

Raucous didn’t answer.  He knew that was what most thought of him.  He reached with both hands and took the gun and key.  He stood pushing the gun into the back of his jeans.

“Take one of the twins for security,” Turk said.

“Which one?”

Turk shrugged.

“Either or, I don’t care.  I can’t tell them apart for shit.”

CHAPTER TEN

She tried sneaking up on him, but he turned just as she reached out to touch his shoulder.  Jim was standing outside the tobacconists and he was pulling on a filterless.

Jan knew h would be waiting.  He had shown too much to Ben.  Jean knew the old man couldn’t walk away.

“I saw you in the reflection,” Jim said. “Pub?”

Jean shook her head.

“I don’t go in there with those loons.  Have you seen the place?  Full of dead-eyed morons.”

“Suggestions?”  Jim asked as he exhaled smoke.

Jean hated smokers.

“I usually jog right now, but looking at your state I’d say if you accepted you’d be offering yourself to suicide.”

“Probably still take you,” Jim said.

Jean looked him up and down.

“Not too many can in your shape.”

“You carry a gun?”

“Never needed one.”

Jim’s eyes moved from Jean’s face to the road.  He didn’t swivel his head, his eyes tracked past her into the traffic.  Jean looked around and saw a white Transit van.  It wasn’t flying a union jack on its wing-mirror, but the big guy driving sure looked like he had a house draped in one.  He gave them both an emotionless stare as he cruised past at twenty miles per hour. 

“You may now,” Jim said.

“Fat men in vans don’t scare me.  Or are you planning on shooting me?”

“Do you still draw like Audie Murphy?”

Jean stared.  It was him, and he knew.  Audie Murphy.  His films hadn’t been shown in years.

“And drink my milk,” Jean said.

“You always liked Audie Murphy.”

“A real genuine all-American hero.  What’s not to like?”

“Shit actor.”

“The worst.”

Jim’s eyes looked to the traffic again.  Jean watched the same white van pass in the opposite direction.  It looked like the true-Brit van-driving handyman had picked up a wall-street broker from a car-crash.  The high-class suit gave them the same dead stare with added smug smile through swollen lips and bruised face.

“Do they know you, or can you pick a fight with anyone from safety of the pavement?”  Jean asked.

Jim turned slowly, stared into Jean’s eyes

“You not recognize one of them?”  He asked.

“Not the people I hang with.  I’m more your solitary type.  If I had to make a list of what annoys me most, sitting right there at number one would be people.  What about you?”

“Betrayal.”

Jean nodded approval.

“Good choice, but that’s essentially people too.  So what have you got to say?  You were all enigmatic yesterday.  Is someone coming to find me, or do I have to make it back to a tree before being seen in this hide-and-seek mystical claptrap?”

Jim looked at the white van

“Looks like we’ve already been found,” Jim said.  “A day early, but you never can plan.”

The white van pulled up to the curb.  The doors opened and the two men stepped down with ease and walked around to stand facing Jim.

Jim nodded a hello to them both.  They returned the greeting. 

“Wow, who would have thought we would have bumped into you today, Jim,” Timothy said.

Timothy reached out quickly and grabbed Jim’s collar.  Jim swung a right uppercut into Timothy’s ribs and connected clean.  Timothy released his grip and staggered back against the side of the van.  A hollow ring sounded from the thin panels.

Timothy stepped forward and caught his breath.  Raucous held up a hand to stop him.

“You could have blocked that for me,” Timothy said.

“Yeah, probably, but I don’t actually like you all that much.”

Jean threw a straight right at Raucous, aiming to clip his chin.   Raucous moved slightly to his left and avoided the shot.  He reached his arm up and swung it down, catching Jean’s elbow in his armpit. He added his weight and pushed at Jean’s shoulder and forced Jean to the ground. 

“Leave it be,” Jim said.

Raucous smiled but didn’t release his hold.  “We’re here for you. No one else.Fancy taking a seat in the back of our very well-kept van?”

Jim didn’t move.  Raucous applied pressure to Jean’s arm, and the force made Jean squeal as her shoulder twisted to breaking point. 

“No need to be the hero, Kid,” Raucous told Jean.  “As I said, we’re here for him.”

Jim looked down at Jean.  “I would have liked to have said more, explained things more clearly, but it looks like I won’t have the chance.”

Jim stepped around Raucous and entered the van.

Timothy slid the side door shut and entered the cab.  

Raucous looked down at Jean, he released the pressure but not the hold.  “You’re looking good,” he said.  “We’ll be seeing each other soon.  A few things to clear up.  Try and relax first, get a bit of you time in there.”

Raucous patted Jean on the cheek, released his hold, stepped into the cab, started the engine and put the van in gear.

“You know the other one?”  Timothy asked as they pulled into traffic.

Raucous turned to face him. 

“Kind of," He said.  "You know I served seventeen years, right?”

“As only the moronic can,” Jim said.

“Well, five of them were for killing him.”

“And the others?”

“For killing my daughter,” Jim said.

Timothy looked back at Jim and then at Raucous.  He laughed.  “The good old gangster days, honour among thieves.  You guys were just so much more fun back then.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He had to accept now.  He couldn’t make excuses.  If he truly wanted resolution, she thought, yes would be his only answer.  Watching Jim leave had been the start.  It was beginning.

She was walking suburbia, one associated with the post-war era of council houses.  A long terraced row, the end unseen as the curve of the street bowed the houses away to the east as if separated by the trail of a snowboarder.  Cars lined both sides and the space of open asphalt was not enough for two cars to pass.  Every third car was a white van, some with markings indicating trade and name, the majority without and worn and dirtied.  The fronts of the houses were identical by design, individualized only where families had added windows to double glaze, or changed the color of the door.  The majority of traditional front gardens had gone.  There were no more small strips of grass and flowers, but thick slabs of concrete for weekend projects and a parking space.

Charlotte counted the numbers, the odd side of the street.  Thirteen, Fifteen, Seventeen (A and B) and nineteen.  The light of the day changed as she paced, cloud cover taking the brilliant sun and its winter heat before slipping away and letting the rays hit the earth.  She stopped at twenty-one and looked down the three metre path.  The two large steps had been painted red years before and were now faded and chipped.  The green door with five semi-circular frosted glass panes was a post-war relic that had been kept going by a lazy hand.  A brass knocker had once hung, but its place was empty and the color faded.  Stolen or rotted away.  She pressed the rectangular bell button next to the door.  A white sticker sat under the bell, a name was scrawled in black marker. Roach, a name written a long time ago.  The ink had run and faded.  Charlotte knew his first name, but everyone called him Roach.  Charlotte listened to the last regular chime hum to silence before the door opened.

Roach opened the door slowly, he was dressed in blue rayon pajamas and a toweling nightgown, but he didn’t seem to have slept.  He was middle-aged but looked worn.  He had the flab and gait of a man who liked a traditional English breakfast.  Even in the loose fitting bathrobe his stomach protruded.  His hair had not aged as badly as his body.  It was thick and short but the original dark brown was only visible in small patches hidden within the light grey.

Charlotte said, “I’m. . .”

Roach didn’t let her finish.  “I know.  I remember.  Those documents aren’t for me.”

He tried to close the door, but Charlotte thrust the documents she carried through the ever closing space, their edge touched his chest.

“These are the ones I held back,” she said.

Roach looked down at the sheets of paper in new brown cardboard file.

“And why am I interested?” he asked.

“Jim is dead.”

Roach opened his eyes as if buzzed by caffeine.

“Did you see?”  He asked.

“I saw him go.”

“In his VW?”

She nodded.

“He took his time,” Roach said.

Roach looked at the ground; he lifted his right foot and the slipper in which it was encased to scratch this left shin.  He nodded his head like someone listening to Motown on headphones.  He stopped and looked up.  They paused; Charlotte fidgeted, rocking on her heels.

"He took his time," Roach said again.

"Christian is alive."

"I always thought he was."

She couldn’t help but think Roach was disappointed.  This was the moment, the decision he had already taken, already promised.  But now he wavered.

"Do we start?"  She asked.

"You've given me the papers.  No more watching?"

"Nor waiting.”

Roach opened the folder.  He turned and pushed the door with the outside of his left foot.  He walked back into his house as the door closed and said,

“I’m not inviting you in,” he said.

She watched the door close, hearing the click of the latch.

“You never have.”