The Evil And The Pure (20 page)

He found it hard to
return to penny-ante deals. He made the rounds as before but he had no enthusiasm for it now, poor sales, no satisfaction in those he made, obsessing about Drake and his cronies, the money and contacts he could have made with the actor’s assistance. Depression setting in hard. Couldn’t turn to drink or drugs like most people, since he had no stomach for them. Feeling his life was a waste, precious years slipping by, Shula moving out of his sightline, America dwindling in the distance.

He fell to thinking about Tony Phials and what he might be working on in the lab. Phials
was now his only decent contact, his one hope of making it big and hitting America in style. Involved in something major, something he couldn’t tell Clint about. He’d told Clint to ask cousin Dave — if Dave OK’d it, Phials would talk. Clint curious, wondering if there was an angle for him in this.

On Thursday he dropped by the office. Dave was in a meeting but could see him later. Clint went for a long lunch, returned in the afternoon. Dave grim-faced. Clint asked about Shula,
trying not to appear too concerned, not wanting to betray his feelings for her.

“She’s as well as can be expected,” Dave sighed, his standard answer. “Her mother flew over
on Monday and has been taking care of her. She’s hoping to take her back to Switzerland soon, if that’s what Shula wants. I’m hoping Alice goes with them. I’m getting nothing but grief from her at home.”

“Why?” Clint asked. “It wasn’t yuh-you
r fuh-fault.” Inwardly thinking,
More my fault than yours
.

Dave laughed sharply.
“Try telling the women that. Whenever anything like this happens, we’re supposed to know about it in advance. Alice is of the opinion that I should have guessed what was on that bastard Drake’s mind and moved to stop him before he had a chance to hurt Shula.”

“
Do you think she’ll return to Switzerland?” Clint asked.

“I don’t know,” Dave said. “I don’t think she knows either. Still in pain, still in shock. I think she’d be better off there, but I’ll support her if she wants to stay.”

Clint wasn’t sure if he wanted her to leave or not. He’d miss her if she went, but maybe she’d be safer there. She lived in a small town, much quieter than London, fewer men to pester her, less competition for Clint when the time came to go a-courting.

Dave s
tretched, yawned and changed the subject. “So what can I do for you, cousin, or did you just come to offer your sympathy?”

“Mostly that,” Clint lied. “It was a tragedy. Shula didn’t deserve it. Anything I can do to help…”

Dave raised an eyebrow. He almost said,
And just what the fuck could
you
do, cousin, and so late in the day?
But he didn’t. The kid was only trying to help.

Clint caught the Bush’s unvoiced thought
and blushed. He almost lost his nerve, but he knew that if he didn’t ask now, he never would, so he muttered miserably, “I also wanted to ask about Ph-ph-ph-Phials.”

“The good doctor.” Dave
was surprised but pleased. Fast Eddie had reported to him about Clint and his sessions with Phials. Dave had been brooding over what to do about it, wondering if he could use Clint to slip inside the chemist’s defences, whether it would be better to direct Clint or let their friendship develop naturally.

“I’ve been wuh-wondering…” Clint halt
ed, not sure how to phrase his question.

“…why I keep him locked up?” Dave prompted.

“Yeah.”

“Have you asked him?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

Clint shrugged. “Not muh-much. I think he’s working on something buh-buh-big and he can’t talk about it. He said I should ask you — said he cuh-could discuss it with me if yuh-yuh-yuh-you gave me the all-clear.”

Dave’s eyes narrowed
. Phials was testing him. If he came straight out and told Clint why the chemist was so valuable, Phials would swiftly distance himself from Clint, as he had from Dave’s other envoys. He had to play this cagily, keep Clint close, but not so close that Phials would think he was a plant.

“You doing anything
next Tuesday?” Dave asked.

“No.”

“Want to come to a football match?”

“Spurs?” Clin
t blinked, bewildered. Dave had never taken him to a game before.

“Yeah,
Worthington Cup, what used to be called the League Cup. We’re playing Birmingham, the night before Halloween.”

“Should win,” Clint noted.
He didn’t know much about football, but he knew Spurs were in the Premiership, Birmingham the division below.

Dave snorted. “We’ll see. Coming?”

Clint smiled uncertainly. “Sure.”

“My place, six o’clock
, and be on time — traffic’s a nightmare.”

They got to White Hart Lane early. Passed kids trick or treating, clad as skeletons, witches, ghosts. Nobody in fancy dress inside the stadium, everybody sombre, in no mood to party, the air thick with self-doubt. Dave had three season tickets — he usually brought a couple of friends or business associates to the games. The seats were in the South Stand Upper, towards the centre. Not the best view. He could have got premium seats in the West Stand, or a director’s box, but his grandfather had been a South Stand die-hard and Dave was sentimental where his beloved Spurs were concerned.

Dave kn
ew Clint was a football novice, so he filled him in on the recent history of Tottenham Hotspur while they were waiting for kick-off. “We’ve had a shit decade, bad managers, poor signings, nowhere in the league. Won the Worthington Cup the season before last, but that’s it as far as silverware goes — and the Worthington Cup’s more commonly known as the Worthless Cup, doesn’t mean a thing. The fans blame the chairman and manager. The former, Alan Sugar, hasn’t invested enough money in the club as far as the fans are concerned, while George Graham used to manage Arsenal, our arch rivals. Most Spurs fans would resent him even if we were doing well — since we’re not, they hate his guts, but Sugar’s even more, for hiring him in the first place.”

The teams ran out. Half-hearted applause, the stadium far from full,
the Birmingham fans making more noise than the home crowd, the Spurs players looking edgy.

The boos started when Bir
mingham scored their first goal. “Sugar out! Sugar out!” When they scored their second, most fans were standing, screaming, all their hatred directed at the chairman, abusive, vulgar, demonic. When the visitors got a third, the abuse intensified, calls for Sugar’s head, venomous chants, Birmingham fans laughing, Spurs players demoralised. Clint listened to the furious fans around him — Sugar had to go, he was clueless, tight, money had to be pumped into the club, Sugar not the man for the job. Some criticised Graham and the players – a few even claimed it was the fault of the fickle fans – but most agreed that Sugar was the source of their sorrows.

Dave Bushinsky was also listening to the fans
— and he was smiling.

The game ended 3-1, Spurs booed off the pitch, screams for Alan Sugar’s resignation, hundreds of hardcore fans remaining after the game to protest, singing
loudly, “We want our Tottenham back!” Police moved in to disperse them. An ugly end to an ugly night.

Dave was upbeat
for the first time since what had happened to Shula, whistling as they slipped through the departing fans, as happy as if Spurs had won, leading the way to a pub called the Victoria, ordering a pint for himself and a bottle of beer for Clint, finding a free table in a room out back, nobody to eavesdrop, saluting Clint with his pint, “Bottoms up!”

“Cheers.
” Clint looked at his cousin quizzically. “Why aren’t you pissed-off? Your team just got huh-hammered.”

“Humiliating, wasn’t it?” Dave laughed. “I’ve seen some terrible games at the Lane and endured some woeful results
. This ranks with the lowest of them.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” Clint frowned.

“I’m ecstatic.” Dave gulped his beer, drained a third of it, remembered he was driving, eased up. “We’ve all got dreams,” he said, eyes on his beer, voice low, having decided over the weekend how to play the Clint card. “You know I’ve been distancing myself from my less legal operations lately, concentrating on my legitimate business interests.”

“Yeah…” Clint
was nervous, wondering if his cousin was about to announce his retirement from the narcotics industry, flashing on a horrible image of himself out of work, standing in a dole queue.

Dave sighed
. “It’s the wise play. I’ve put in my time, taken more than my fair share of risks, made the fortune I set out to. Now I want to enjoy it. Time to kick back, leave the dirty work to the young and hungry, get out before I become a victim of my own success. It’s not an easy thing to do but I think I can pull it off.”

There was a meditative silence, Dave still staring at his beer. Clint felt his cousin was waiting for him to say something. Chipped in with a weak, “
That’s guh-good, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Dave looked up. “But
at the same time it doesn’t excite me. I don’t want to be a dull businessman, cocooned in an office, bored out of my skull. I need a challenge, something to get passionate about. I have the hounds of course, the hunts and fights, but those are occasional pleasures. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and the one thing that gets me going… what I’d really love…”

Dave stopped. Sipped at h
is beer. Glanced around the pub at a handful of disgruntled Spurs fans moaning about the match. Dave grinned when he saw them, then faced his young cousin. “Sugar’s going to sell his controlling interest in the club before the end of the season. I have this from an excellent source. He’s had enough of the abuse and ingratitude. He’s been a success at everything he’s turned his hand to, except football. He’s ready to cut his losses. He’s history.”

Clint nodded, wondering where the hell his cousin was going with this and what – if anything – it had to do with Tony Phials. Dave noted Clint’s confusion and
said softly, “I want to buy out Alan Sugar’s shares.”

Clint blinked dumbly. “Oh.” Couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I want to run Tottenham Hotspur,” Dave continued, in case Clint hadn’t grasped the full extent of what he was saying. “Sugar’s the majority shareholder. When he sells, the buyer will replace him as chairman. I’d control the club. I think I’d be a natural. I know the fans because I’m one of them. I think the way they do, want what they want. I’d have Graham out within a week. Bring in someone we love – Glenn Hoddle maybe – and start re-building bridges between the club and the fans. We could be great again, we could build a winning team, we…”

Dave
realised he was rambling. Cut himself short. Started over, Clint listening in a daze, still not sure what to make of this — was his cousin lining him up for a role at White Hart Lane?

“I’ve been making enquiries, putting out feelers. Sugar knows I’m interested. He’s not keen to sell to me – he knows about my background – but he also knows about my love for the club, and if I can put up the money and convince him I want what’s best for Tottenham Hotspur, that I have the savvy and people to take the club forward, he might accept my offer.”

“That’s… nice,” Clint said weakly.

Dave grimaced. “Yes.
Nice
. Except do you know how much it costs to buy a Premiership club?” He rubbed his fingers together. “A team doing well, riding high in the league… forget about it, they’re the province of PLCs, multinational corporations, TV conglomerates. But Spurs are small fish at the moment, much as it pains me to admit it as a fan. Sugar’s shares won’t come cheap, but I think he can be bought out for twenty million, give or take.”

Clint whistled appreciatively, sitting to attention. “You have that
muh-much?”

Dave laughed curtly. “N
ot in ready cash.”

“But you can raise it?”

Dave hesitated. “Maybe. It depends.” Looked Clint straight in the eye. “On our good friend Tony Phials.”

Clint felt
the world dissolving around him. Dave talking twenty million pounds, Dave talking Tony Phials, Dave talking
Clint
. Ears pricked when Dave continued, absorbing every word, forgetting Larry Drake and TV stars and selling a shitload of coke, dreaming now of a slice of twenty million.

“Phials is a genius — that’s old news. What’s new is that he’s working on a drug w
hich will knock everything else out of the ring. I can’t tell you much about it, but I can tell you this, I have contacts in New York, L.A., Moscow, Tokyo – all across the globe – waiting to dump more money on me than you could dream of once I phone to say that I have the formula.” He paused, his expression darkening. “But I can’t do that until Phials cracks it, and so far, apparently, he hasn’t.”

Clint frowned. “He’s still working on it?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t he
tell you when he expects to have it ready?”

Dave sneered. “This is an experimental drug
, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, you can’t put a time limit on something like that. But if he doesn’t pull it off soon, Sugar will sell his shares elsewhere and I’ll be stuck with a shitload of cash and nothing to do with it.”