Colin smiled and removed her hand. “Very sexy, love. Very nice. Now be a good girl and pop back upstairs. I have to use the shitter.”
She brushed past Neal on the stairway. His hand almost reached for her. Instead, he ignored her and followed Colin into the gents’.
To find that God had given it to him on a platter. Colin had draped his jacket over the stall door.
19
“Yes, sir?” the headwaiter asked as Neal stood at his station.
“Somebody lost a wallet. I wanted to turn it in.”
“Oh dear. How good of you, sir.” He looked through Colin’s wallet and managed to mask the flood of what was welling up in his soul.
“Yes, sir. I shall just put it up here until someone claims it.” Neal sat back down. Colin and company were happily devouring their steaks, conversation having given way to gluttony. They ate like pigs, though, so as not to let the side down.
Neal enjoyed his lamb. Dessert, coffee, and we’ll see how this shakes out, he thought.
The headwaiter had obviously shared the happy news with the rest of the staff, who wasted no time in leading Colin down the primrose path of destruction. A good waiter can hurry or stretch a dinner with a few chosen words and inflections, and these guys were artists. They had now begun to treat Colin like the Duke of Topping-on-Snot, suggesting expensive extras in a tone that suggested that only lowlifes would refuse. Colin, swayed in equal parts by gin, beer, wine, cocaine, heady sex, and sheer hubris, put up a feeble resistance.
“Pudding, sir?”
“Perhaps some brandy, sir?”
“A liqueur for the coffee, sir?”
(A bill that equals the gross national product of Paraguay, sir?)
And finally: “Your check, sir.”
“Thanks, guy.”
The table was littered with the detritus of a glorious bacchanal that would have done Squire Weston and his ten hungry friends proud. Crisp punctuated the trencherman’s orgy with a satisfied belch of Richterian tenor.
Colin wiped the last trace of his third chocolate mousse off his lips and reached in his jacket for his wallet. He reached again, then the other pocket; then his trouser pockets, side and rear. He stood up.
The waiter arched an amused eyebrow. That did it.
“Some fucking bastard stole my fucking purse!”
“Indeed, sir?”
The headwaiter came over and hovered ostentatiously, making dead sure that everybody in the place was watching. Everybody was.
“A problem, sir?” he asked.
“Some groveling whelp of a poxy tart stole my money!”
The headwaiter was nearly delirious with joy. “We will happily accept your personal check.”
“I don’t have any bloody personal check!”
“Oh dear.”
Allie chuckled. A glance from Colin stopped her.
“Credit card, sir?”
“Right, he lifted me purse and handed me back me credit cards,” Colin shouted.
Crisp got up from the table. “Let’s just walk out. Come to a decent place and it’s full of thieves.”
The headwaiter was unperturbed. “How do you intend to settle your bill, sir?”
“I’ll come back with the money.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do, sir.”
“I’m quite capable of paying for it!”
“With what, is the issue.”
“With the money in me fucking wallet!”
Now the headwaiter held center stage. With generations of music hall behind him, he gave a perfect delivery. “Oh, yes”-one, two, three-“your wallet.” He rolled his eyes for the benefit of his audience.
Neal heard his cue. Enter, stage left. “Excuse me, maybe he’s talking about the wallet I turned in.”
The headwaiter turned scarlet and stared at Neal, his eyes accusing him of base treachery. He was trying to decide whether to bluff it out or not. There was a lot of money in the wallet. Neal turned up the heat.
“Yeah, the wallet I found in the men’s room. I turned it in to you.” He put a little extra New York street into his voice for Colin’s benefit.
“What?” Colin stormed.
The headwaiter didn’t take his eyes off Neal as he hissed, “Harry, did we have a purse turned in?”
“I’ll go look.”
“Thank you, Harry.”
“I should mash your ugly face in, mate,” Crisp said to the headwaiter.
“Shut up,” said Colin. He studied the headwaiter’s face, memorizing details. The purple and orange crew cut was looking around the restaurant, making sure that everyone saw their vindication. Allie smiled behind a napkin.
The waiter came back. “Is this it?” he asked. He wasn’t as good an actor as his boss.
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Colin, snatching it from him.
The headwaiter played it out. “Do you have some identification, sir?”
Colin flipped the wallet open to a picture of himself. “Happy?”
“Overjoyed.”
Colin flipped some bills on the table. “Keep the change. I owe you one, guv.” Then he addressed the crowd. “And to all you happy couples out there, I hope you get fucked as good tonight as you got in this place! C’mon, you lot.” He led his band out of the restaurant.
Yeah, okay, now what? Neal thought. You’ve made contact so you have to follow up on it. Otherwise, if you try just to follow them, and get spotted, you’re screwed. You’ve walked through the door, so it’s time to smile and say hello.
He left a ten-quid note on the table and headed for the door. The headwaiter stopped him.
“Thank you, sir, for returning the gentleman’s purse,” he said with a smile as cold as his chilled salad forks. “I do hope we can do something equally helpful for you someday.”
“Like force-feed me pate with a coal scoop?”
“Something along that line, sir, yes.”
“Sounds like fun. Now get out of my way.”
“Running off to join our new little friends, are we, sir?”
The waiter wasn’t moving and Colin and friends were. Neal also saw that the other much-abused waiter was standing directly behind him. Attacked by a gang of vicious waiters, for Christ’s sake?
Neal smiled pleasantly. “You know, usually, supercilious little fucks like you keep people like me out of the restaurant, not trapped in it.”
“We just wanted to express our gratitude, sir.”
Tick, tick, tick. Every second he stood there dealing with these assholes, Allie was getting farther away. Neal wondered whether the police were already on the way. Oh, well, what the fuck, he thought. He crossed his hands in front of his chest and grabbed the waiter’s lapels. Then he straightened his hands with a snap, popping the waiter’s stiff collar into his carotid artery. The world got all nice and woozy for the waiter, who pitched forward into Neal. Neal spun him and handed him to his startled assistant, and ran out the door.
Step one, he told himself, is to get lost in the crowd. You don’t want the waiter doing any funny “He went that-away!” numbers for the local constabulary. Step two is to spot Colin and the Little Lost Kids before they fade back into a city of thirteen million other sweaty individuals. So pick it, kid, right or left out this door, and hope like hell you make the lucky choice. Neal would rather have licked every toilet bowl in greater Cleveland than explain to Graham and Levine how he could possibly have lost Allie Chase when she had been sitting right beside him in a restaurant. He made the choice to turn left outside the restaurant and plunged into the crowd of tourists who now thronged the street.
Now most people don’t know how to get through a crowd, but most people didn’t spend their entire adolescence chasing Joe Graham through Chinatown on market days and down Fifth Avenue at Christmastime. Neal silently blessed the malevolent leprechaun as he eased his way quickly through the traffic toward Leicester Square, his best guess and hope as to Colin’s destination. He knew that angry people walk fast, and that they also tend to go to familiar places to cool off. Colin was sure as hell angry.