The futile walk gave him an excuse to stretch his legs and shift the dried sweat around a little, and also work up a little fresh sweat. His route took him past, and all too often into, a Wimpy Bar, which brought up melancholy memories of Nick’s. He learned to smother the piece of cardboard the Brits called a hamburger with mustard (extra charge), catsup (ditto), and salt (on the house) before choking it down along with the greasy chips, which is what the Brits called their poor facsimile of French fries.
After the first week, he had begun to vary his route. He would walk down St. Martin’s Lane, past the perpetual demonstration outside the South Africa Embassy, over to Trafalgar Square. He’d check out the throngs of tourists and school groups milling around Nelson’s column. Good old Lord Nelson, who in winning the great naval battle of Trafalgar saved England from Napoleon and assured the rights of all Englishmen to drive on the wrong bloody side of the road. Then Neal would cross over on to Whitehall Street and wend his way through the crowd on the narrow sidewalk, then through Horse Guards barracks, across Horse Guards Road, and into St. James’s Park.
If there was any spot in London that Neal at his most xenophobic had to admit he loved, it was St. James’s Park. Here was refuge. Built around a superbly designed manmade lake, the park was an oasis of gentility in its finest sense. The towers of Buckingham Palace peeked in the distance over the several hundred varieties of the park’s trees. Neal would stroll, yes stroll, along the walkway to a large kiosk that sold tea, sandwiches, and pastries. He didn’t even mind standing in line at the cafeteria there, but would purchase his cup of tea, a couple of sugary doughnuts or perhaps a ham sandwich, and then walk over to the lakeside. Here he would rent a chair for ten pence and throw bits of doughnut and bread to the ducks, of which there were a stunning variety. He was sure he would have noticed Allie Chase if she had been riding on the back of one of the humongous black swans that glided past him, but otherwise he forgot about the case altogether.
On a bandstand near the kiosk, a military band played show tunes and light classics to a crowd gathered in canvas chairs or picnicking on the grassy slope. Neal, who hated military bands, show tunes, and light classics, grew quite fond of the daily concert and was sorry when the IRA blew up the bandstand later that summer, putting an end to the music and killing two soldiers.
This was old England, Neal thought, or at least it was what he thought old England might have been or should have been. The tourists went mostly to Hyde Park, but St. James’s Park was usually full of nannies wheeling prams or looking after toddlers, government workers from the nearby Whitehall ministries on lunch break, and retirees for whom a walk in this place was a daily routine.
After finishing his tea, Neal would sometimes walk north to the Mall, up Waterloo Place to lower Regent Street, and up to Piccadilly. Or he would head south down Horse Guards Road to Great George Street, Bridge Street, nod to Big Ben, then take the long hike up Victoria Embankment.
This broad promenade along the bank of the Thames was a haunt for some vagrants and kids, but it never produced Allie Chase for him. Still, he made it a habit. He preferred active futility over passive futility, even if he was breaking Joe Graham’s philosophy of the fat and happy tiger.
He’d get back to the square by 3:30 or 4:00, check out the scene, and then steel himself for the coming ordeal in the Underground. Each afternoon, he’d make the rounds of several tube stations during rush hour. Even amateur, unaffiliated panhandlers can make out okay in a big city during rush hour, if they have any smarts at all and a nice face. Allie had both, so Neal would launch himself on a two-hour journey from Leicester Square to Piccadilly, change to the Bakerloo Line and go to Charing Cross, check out the huge station there and then carry on to Embankment, change to the Circle Line, hit Victoria, Sloane Square, South Kensington, and Gloucester Road. There he would switch to the District Line for a quick swing to grimy Earl’s Court and then carry on up to Notting Hill Gate, where he hoped he wouldn’t find her, and on north to Paddington, where he would catch the Metropolitan Line, make a quick check of Baker Street, which always brought Sherlock Holmes to mind (maybe he could locate Allie), and over to King’s Cross, where he’d take the long Underground hike through the suburban commuter crowds to get back on the Piccadilly Line, have a peek at the Covent Garden station, and then back to Leicester Square.
All this in the faint hope that young Allie was using some variation of the “I’ve lost my purse and need enough money to get home” scam that was a favorite of panhandlers worldwide.
This tends to work better at rush hour, when there are a lot more potential Samaritans to bilk, and when one is not so obvious to the thugs who control the thriving begging trade. A quick panhandler can keep moving better through large crowds and make a fair bit of change even if she couldn’t occupy one of the key choke points smack dab in the middle of the traffic flow.
Now there are a number of different strategies in this scam, and it really depends on how gutsy you are and how well you can afford to dress. If you’re really down and out, you’re better off just asking for subway fare-small change-to a nearby stop, because nobody’s going to believe you live in the suburbs and need that much more money to get back. But if you can get your hands on some better threads, you might want to give the bigger-ticket items a try, especially if you’ve got the nerve to attempt the “I’m from out of town and need five or ten pounds to get home and here is my card with my name and address and I’ll send you the money first thing” routine. The truly wonderful thing about the world is that there are people in it who will actually believe this and give the money. If you’re a teenager and try this, pick on women who look like they might have a kid your age, because they don’t want their own child stranded in the big bad city and they’re afraid not to give you the money.
Or you can go for volume and stick with the tried-and-true “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime” routine, but you have to hit a bunch of buddies to make this one pay. Anyway, people would rather be conned, even if they suspect they’re being conned, because they want you to work a little bit for the money. Or take a shot at making a really good cardboard sign: BROKE AND DESPERATE or HUNGRY AND ALONE. Always try to go for two bad conditions on the sign, though. It’s that and that gives it the poignant quality.
Or maybe Allie wasn’t begging. Maybe she was trying to steal in the Underground. Neal hoped this wasn’t the case, and really didn’t expect it to be. Despite popular legend, subways are terrible places to pick pockets. Picks like a crowd all right, but they also like to be able to get away if something goes wrong. Subways are full of things such as turnstiles, gates, escalators, and narrow passageways that make running damn near impossible. Add to this the fact that crowds of commuters have been getting increasingly irritated with increasing delays. But it was the possibility that Allie was finding her daily bread in the Underground that sent Neal on his daily tour of purgatory. It brought to mind a sermon he’d once heard when the priest really got cooking on hell, about how it was a place where murderers, thieves, and lechers baked in perpetual, torturous stench. At the time, that had sounded like the West Side Democratic Club’s steam room when all the Ryan brothers were in it. But now, he knew differently. Neal, who had been raised on New York’s subway, had never felt anything like London’s Underground.