Serious People (20 page)

Almost everything Mickey knew he had learnt from those two men.

“Mick I didn’t mean to offend you,” Seamus said.

Mickey awoke from his doze and looked across to Seamus, who stared back at him apologetically.

“You’re right, I’m here to learn from you, and I guess my head got turned by Max Fame and all that rock ‘n roll stuff,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” Mickey said, taking his hat off so he could remould his hair.

“Seriously Mickey, I’m sorry,” Seamus continued.

“Yeah alright Seamus, you made your point. Jesus, there’s no need to get all gay about it,” Mickey said, uncomfortable by Seamus’ show of emotion.

“Sorry,” Seamus replied.

“Stop saying sorry, Jesus!” Mickey said, almost jumping out of his seat. “Right remind me, who are we going up to this God forsaken place for?”

“The drummer—the guy’s called Dave Crossbones. At least, he can’t be a fag!” Seamus said, with a nervous laugh.

“OK, well let’s try and be quick about it. I want to get back to London before tonight and make sure that prick Fame hasn’t had his feet up all this time.”

Early put his phone back into his trouser pocket; he didn’t feel like a good man.

He had nothing against Khan. There were actually some things about her he quite liked and admired. But he’d learnt long ago, that if you want to get something in life you had to make cold decisions. He
deserved
his retirement in the Algarve, he’d worked for it. He and the Mrs would be happy there; sun every day, nothing that needed to be done. It was going to be perfect.

Perfection always needs money though. He’d put a down payment on a little ice cream business—it wasn’t a lot, not much more than a tiny shop front a couple minutes from the beach. All they’d need to do was open the place up a couple of nights a week, to top up the pension. It wouldn’t be hard work serving ice cream at inflated prices; this would be his heaven.

All he needed was a bit more cash, and to make sure the cash kept coming for a bit longer, he had to keep the boss happy. And to keep the boss—Hawkins—happy he had to make sure he escalated things. The boss needed to know about about Khan’s case, and against all the odds, Khan seemed to actually have the start of one.

Early wasn’t sure what the consequence for Khan would be of this information sharing, and it made him feel bad. But he had learnt, through many similar situations, that there was only one way of dealing with this kind of feeling—don’t think about it. Not thinking about it was more simple than it sounds; unless you have big plans to think about as he did.

Early was retiring young and this would give him many years to forget, many years to be the good man he could be. He just had to be the bad man he was now for a bit longer, to be the good man he wanted to be in Portugal.

Charlie O’Neil walked into the coffee shop, flanked by his driver, Pete.

Charlie looked at Pete. He was a good guy to be flanked by. He was a bodybuilder, one of the few people Charlie knew whom he was smaller than. O’Neil didn’t like to use drivers a lot, mainly because it got in the way of his natural love for motoring, but also because it displayed weakness.

All the old gangsters, when he and Robert had first been getting into the business, had drivers. Back then; the two of them saw this as a sign of the old guard’s age, that they were going stale.

Charlie had never been convinced about drivers. On one occasion, he’d paid off a driver to threaten their own boss; a great move for him, but it didn’t say anything good about the loyalty of the driver profession. The boss in question had been known as Dirty Del and, at the time, was the head of a local porn empire. He was known to be a connected man and had claimed a distant link to the Kray’s gang—supposedly real criminal elite. After his driver, of over ten years, threatened him and told him that he must either bow down to O’Neil and Payne or be dead before night fall, Del had immediately gone round to O’Neil’s house and offered him a deal. The deal meant O’Neil and Payne taking over his porn business, in exchange for Dirty Del being allowed to make an escape to Spain with money in his bank.

Looking back, it seemed like a fair deal at the time; most underworld takeovers went hand in hand with a body bag. O’Neil wondered for a moment if Del was still there in Spain; it had been twenty years, and they had never heard from him again. He’d done it right, just disappeared, or maybe he was dead.

O’Neil grimaced at the memory as he nodded to Pete, who was holding open the coffee shop’s door for him. Pete was solid; he ran one of O’Neil’s gyms for him and, apart from his love of steroids, he was dependable and looked the part. Although O’Neil couldn’t help but shake his head as he thought again about how weak using a driver at all made him look. What scared him more was how weak he actually felt. He’d never felt weak before; he wondered if this was how Dirty Del felt on that fateful day?

“What do you want boss? I’ll get it,” Pete asked, as they approached the front counter.

“Just get me a tea,” O’Neil replied, sitting down at a table by the window, deliberately choosing one that faced the door.

O’Neil couldn’t remember when he had started choosing seats in bars and restaurants where he could see the door, allowing him to watch all who entered. He liked to believe this was a trait he’d always had and that it was part of his naturally suspicious mind. Deep inside though, he knew it was a lie. It was something he’d only started doing in recent years.

Pete walked towards him and put a cup of tea onto the table. “Is it just Leroy coming down then?”

“Yeah,” O’Neil answered, looking down at his tea.

Pete was used to the signs that showed that Charlie wasn’t looking for a conversation. He walked over and sat down at a nearby booth, only a few steps from him. He was careful to ensure there was not too much space for him to jump over if he needed to protect of his boss.

Charlie looked at his watch; it was gone eleven o’clock. Leroy was late, but this was to be expected of his old friend. Leroy Elkins was always late—he was the only person Charlie would allow to be guilty of this kind of disrespect without any form of retribution. Robert was never late for Charlie; had he ever been, even he would have been given a verbal dressing down for getting his priorities all wrong. But Elkins was permitted this characteristic.

Leroy Elkins was the only friend who he didn’t see as subordinate to him. They had worked together on and off down the years, but Leroy never worked directly under him. He would also, never have worked as any kind of opposition to him, though they of course did operate in the same industry. Elkins had his own interests in a few bars and clubs, but these were always in different parts of town. This enabled the two men to have the type of friendship that is hard to sustain when you share the same riches. They were not always in regular contact and would sometimes go the best part of a year without speaking, this mainly being due to Elkins’ extensive interests in his homeland of Jamaica.

Leroy Elkins had played a pivotal part in the bank robbery gang from the eighties. On most of the jobs, he had been the one who identified the bank and put together most of the early plans; he was far more of a natural career criminal than Charlie. He had a big appetite for theft that Charlie never shared.

Charlie saw the benefit of developing a vast range of business interests—admittedly from time to time he may have to get his hands dirty—but he knew the value of a subtlety, whereas Elkins liked the buzz of being on a job. He constantly had a plan in the making, and whenever the two men met up it always seemed to Charlie that his friend was just starting or had just finished something big. He had paid for his more reckless lifestyle, of course, with stints inside, and boasted that a man should never be afraid to go down; otherwise it would make him soft and more liable to get done. Charlie quietly disagreed with this and had never spent a day behind bars. In his own opinion, prison life was to be avoided as much as you can. Anyone with a blasé attitude to going down, he thought, was far more likely to be doing just that.

This though did not stop him enjoying Leroy’s company. Being with the guy always made him more chilled, and this was something he was in real need of at the moment.

“Boss,” Pete hissed from his table.

O’Neil looked out the window and saw the rhythmic walk of Leroy Elkins approaching the coffee shop. Elkins was a large man; he was well over six and a half feet. And his mouth was every bit as a big. Charlie had lost track of the amounts of scuffles they had got into on the back of something Elkins had said.

Charlie watched the Jamaican walk into the small café; Leroy nodded a greeting to him and Charlie gave a grim smile back. Pete saw this signal and the bodybuilder picked up a newspaper and walked out of the coffee shop. Charlie watched him stop by a nearby wall, lean against it and start reading the sports pages while keeping half an eye on his boss. Good boy, Charlie thought.

Elkins walked over to the counter, winking at the woman who was serving. “Mine’s a latte please love,” he said, turning to Charlie and giving him a mock salute.

Cheeky git, Charlie found himself smiling; no one did that to Charlie O’Neil. If that was anyone else it would probably be the last thing they did. But everyone needs someone to keep their world relative.

The woman behind the counter served up Elkins’ drink and the Jamaican grabbed it, giving her another wink before striding towards Charlie’s table. “I bet you’re a right dirty hoe,” he called back to her before sitting down with his old friend.

The woman flushed and walked away from the counter and into a back office to avoid any further embarrassment. Elkins grinned back at Charlie, clearly proud of his performance.

“You’re unfucking believable, do you know that?” Charlie grinned.

Leroy waved a derogatory hand at the counter. “Ease up Bad Man, nutten hurt there.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you made her day Leroy,” Charlie said, pleased he now had some reason to lighten his mood.

“That’s probably the best action that Swaaty’s had in a long time.”

One of the many traits he couldn’t help but like about Leroy was the eternal youth he seemed to exhibit; the man was in his late forties and talked like he was still in his teens.

“It’s good to see you again though mate,” Charlie said.

“You’re telling me. It’s been time since we last link up, although what we doing in a damn coffee place? Coulda least been a bar, Charlie.”

“I’m trying to keep a low profile right now,” Charlie replied.

“You’ve always got a low profile man; if you went any lower you’d have to be a lickle snake!” Leroy cackled.

Charlie looked at his old friend; there was something different about him, something in his manner? Maybe the way he was sat, not quite as relaxed as he was normally?

“You cool?” Leroy asked.

The question grounded Charlie again; he was getting paranoid. Leroy was the one guy, with the exception of Robert, he could trust completely. They were both criminals, they’d shared the takings from some pretty significant work, and they weren’t competition, they were just friends. Charlie hated the paranoid mind that he seemed to be developing.  He knew it was blinding him; he had to try and switch it off and start to think straight.

“Sorry, it’s been a long night,” O’Neil confessed. “I need a favour from you Leroy”

“Shit and here was me thinking you called me down here just to get a little coffee and a chat,” Elkins grinned and slurped his drink.

O’Neil looked across at Elkins sternly. “I think someone’s making a move against me.”

“What?”

“I think someone’s moving against me,” O’Neil repeated.

“Who the fuck would move against you?” Leroy said now smiling. “You’re paranoid man; there’s no bwoy left dat’s big enough to do dat, even if they want to.”

O’Neil shrugged. “There’s a lot of shit I can’t explain going on at the moment.”

“Like?” Leroy asked.

“Some of our collections haven’t been happening; to such an extent that we had to send in Mickey to sort them out,” O’Neil replied.

He wished he didn’t have to go through all his concerns. It was as if going through them, in some way, seemed to affirm their seriousness in his mind.

“Dat shit can happen any time man! You know dat, dat ting means nuttin.” Leroy went back to slurping his drink. “You need to chill!”

O’Neil felt uncomfortable; he needed to tell Leroy the main reason for his concern, but a part of him wanted to stay quiet.

“What’s up Charlie?” Elkins asked, clearly sensing his old friend was holding something back. “What you not saying?”

“I haven’t heard from Robert for three days,” O’Neil replied grimly.

“Shit.” Elkins looked at O’Neil, now sharing the concern. “You bwoys are normally joined at d’hip—dat is not good. But let’s be honest; he a grown man.”

O’Neil wasn’t sure what to say. Leroy seemed his normal chilled self. He showed no obvious concern about Robert’s apparent disappearance; he looked down to see his hands trembling and quickly thrust them under the table.

“It could be nuttin though, serious. Robert might have gone out on some wild ting, you know with some ladies,” Elkins offered.

“Leroy, I’ve been trying his phone every bloody hour,” O’Neil replied, allowing anger into his voice, revealing some of the frustration he was feeling with the situation.

“You tink someone smoked him?” Leroy asked.

“I don’t know? I can’t see how but then none of this makes sense,” O’Neil replied.

“Why don’t you get Mickey or one of your other bwoys on dis?” Elkins asked.

“I got Mickey on another thing at the moment, and I don’t really want to involve anyone else in my crew,” O’Neil replied, not wanting to admit right now he could only seem to trust Leroy.

“OK Bad Man. I’ll put my ear to da ground, see what I can hear. If I do hear something, I’m tinking you want it put down?” Leroy said, tapping the back of his belt, where O’Neil knew he normally had a gun stored.

O’Neil nodded. “I would appreciate it.”

Elkins smiled. “Who could ask more than a friend’s appreciation?”

“Thanks Leroy.”

“I gotta go Man. I got other shit to do down here.”

“Sure. We’ll have to catch up properly some time soon,” Charlie said.

Elkins nodded got up and walked towards the exit, stopping to lean over the counter to see if there was any sign of the woman who was serving. “I’m just going, no kiss for me?”

There was no movement or reply from the backroom; Leroy turned and grinned back at O’Neil.

“She probably putting her make up on for me!” Leroy gloated back.

Charlie smiled and shook his head at the brashness of his friend as he watched him walk out. Pete looked up as the Jamaican was walking away and took this as his signal to re-join his boss. He sat down in front of O’Neil.

“How’s Leroy?” Pete asked.

“Leroy’s Leroy; he’s got to be the most relaxed person I know. I think the whole world would be a better place if we were all from Jamaica.”

“So what you want to do boss? Hang round here or what?” Pete asked.

“I think we’ll pop round to Robert’s.”

“Is he back then?” Pete asked.

“Could be,” O’Neil replied, closing down the conversation.