“What am I supposed to do now, eh?” Colin continued. “You’ve put my balls to the mark and I should break your thieving fingers, eh? But I’m grateful for bailing me out back in the restaurant! Why do you want to put me in a position like this?”
“Just bored, I guess.”
Colin looked him square in the eye. Either this bloke was crazy or he was the coolest character he’d seen since looking in the mirror that morning.
“Well, rugger,” he started to say, then burst out laughing, “if it’s excitement you’re looking for…”
Beware the hospitality of the sociopath. So thought Neal Carey as he leaned against the brick wall and threw up, which started his nose bleeding again.
It had started mildly enough with a few pints thrown back in a congenial Garrick Street pub. Colin played host and introduced Neal around, starting with his own retinue.
“Meet Crisp,” he said. “We call ’im ‘at because ’e’s always eatin’ the ruddy things. Known ’im ‘arf me life, an’ I don’t think I know ’is real name.”
“I play the guitar,” Crisp said.
“Pleased to meet you.”
Colin introduced the girl with purple hair. “This is ’is bird, Vanessa.”
“I’m always eating Crisp,” she said in a surprisingly middle-class accent.
“And this,” Colin said proudly, clearly saving the best for last, “is Alice, your fellow Yank.”
Alice? Neal thought. Alice? The finest schools America has to offer and that’s the best you can come up with? He reached out to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you. Where are you from?”
She didn’t take the hand and she didn’t smile.
“Kansas,” she said. Her blue eyes challenged him to call her a liar.
“Well, Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“‘Er name is Alice. She’s from California.”
Clever Alice, thought Neal. What better to hype the fantasy of a city-bound Brit than a golden California sunshine girl? “I’ve been out there. Where in California?”
She didn’t pause a beat. “Stockton. A real shithole.”
Neal smiled at her. You’re not bad, Allie, not bad at all. “I haven’t been to Stockton.”
She still didn’t smile back. Just looked at him flatly and said, “You ain’t missed anything.”
You ain’t missed anything? Don’t push it, kid. “My shout,” Neal said. The barkeep drew four Guinnesses from the tap.
“What brings you to London Town, then, Neal?” Colin asked. “What wind blows you to our green and pleasant land?”
A pusher who quotes Blake? This is getting weirder and weirder. “Work.”
“An’ what would ‘at be?”
“I’m a cop.”
Maybe Colin didn’t exactly choke on his beer, but it sure didn’t go down the smooth way Lord Ivey intended when he brewed the stuff.
It was so much fun to watch, Neal said, “A private detective.” No reaction at all from Allie, not a flinch.
“Get stuffed!” Colin shouted.
“Scout’s honor. I’m over here guarding some executive stiff who’s buying antiques, or something.”
“An’ you thought you might as well snatch a little nicker on the side.”
“Why not?”
“An’ when you saw me jacket ‘anging over the shitter door, you thought it belonged to John Q. Tourist…”
“But when I saw who it belonged to, I thought I better give it back.”
Now let’s see how big an ego you have, Neal thought. If you buy that one…
“It’s a good job you did,” Colin said.
… you think a lot of yourself.
“My pleasure,” Neal said, looking just enough over Colin’s shoulder to flash his most charming, sleazoid smile at Allie.
“Where are you from?” she asked. She wasn’t making small talk.
“New York, New York. The town so nice, they named it twice,” Neal answered. He knew that one mistake inexperienced undercovers often make is telling too big a whopper as a cover story. Keep it close to home, there’s less chance of getting caught up in your own lies, especially when you’re just feeling your way.
“The Big Apple,” Colin said, flashing his cosmopolitan outlook.
Allie whispered something in Colin’s ear. Neal didn’t catch it.
“Later,” Colin said.
She whispered again.
“I said later,” Colin answered again. A trace of annoyance played across his face. He turned to Neal. “You want some excitement, then, rugger?”
“If you have any.”
Colin’s smile could best be described as mischievous. “Oh, we got some, all right. What kind would you like?”
He opened his palm to show the capsules of speed that appeared slick as Blackstone.
This, Neal thought, is the point in the TV episode when the canny private eye figures a way to say no, or cleverly palms the pills and fakes the effects. But this is mostly because Quaker Oats is sponsoring the show and wouldn’t buy ads if the hero gets stoned for any reason whatsoever. Unless, of course, the villains hold him down and pour the stuff down his throat. Then the camera gets all blurry. But this was real life, which is even trickier than television-and often more blurry.
Neal took one of the capsules and knocked it back with a swallow of stout. Colin spread the rest around.
“Let’s go to The Club,” Allie said. “I wanna dance. And I mean dance!”
“Wha’ about your engagement?” asked Colin.
“I have over two hours!”
“The Club it is, then.”
The club was your basic cave, only more primitive than Neal was used to in New York’s SoHo. If New York was Cro-Magnon, this place was Neanderthal. It didn’t really have a name.
“I dunno, rugger,” Colin had explained when asked. “We just call it The Club.”
Neal did feel he was being clubbed by the band, which had a name: Murdering Scum. They were an opening act for the night’s headliners, The Queen and All His Family.
“What part of town are we in?” Neal shouted above the din.
“Earl’s Court!” Colin answered. They had fought their way to the bar. Allie, Crisp, and Vanessa had joined the bobbing throng on the dance floor. The place smelled of beer and sweat.
Neal took a long sip of his beer, which accomplished two things: It gave him the closest acquaintance with horse urine he ever hoped to have, and it gave him time to think. This latter activity was becoming increasingly difficult. Sort of an imposition. The band was playing four hundred beats to the measure.
Colin was in better pharmacological shape than Neal, and less stoned, so the pause in conversation dragged, as things tend to do on Amphetamine Standard Time. But the ensuing two or three decades gave Neal a chance to observe Allie, which was the point of the exercise, after all. Good to keep your mind on that. Allie was dancing in a frenzied jerking motion that threatened to tear her head from her body. And she was having a very good time.
The Scum, as they were known to their friends, switched to a romantic ballad about “fucking till it’s red and raw” and the lead guitarist seemed to be demonstrating the technique with pelvic thrusts that would have sent Elvis himself running to a revival meeting. The band reduced its harmonic structure to the sublime simplicity of a single chord, which made a certain kind of sense given the subject matter. The crowd was sure going for it in a big way, though. Of course, most of them had safety pins jammed through their ears or noses, which did indicate a tolerance for pain. They sweated inside their leather and denim.
Neal watched Vanessa and Crisp make Watusi leaps on the crowded floor. Every now and again, Crisp amused a fellow celebrant by spewing beer in his face, which seemed to be an acknowledged form of greeting. Neal looked around for Allie, and spotted her standing in front of the jerry-built platform that served as a stage. A sheen of sweat shone off her blond hair as she swung her head in a rhythm all her own.
Slow, one-beat-to-the-measure cadence somewhere in the frenzied rock and roll. Allie didn’t want her love red and raw; she wanted it slow and soft.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Colin asked. He saw Neal watching.