‘Where does he live?’
Edmond looked like a cricketer who suddenly finds he’s walked on to a baseball diamond. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said.
‘Tell me where the fuck he lives!’ Hoffer reached around his back to scratch it. Or maybe he was tampering with the stitches on the ball.
‘He lives in north London,’ Edmond said. Then he gave the American the address.
Tottenham seemed a pretty sleepy place. Though it was a warm summer’s night, there weren’t many people on the streets. What people there were on the streets were black, which didn’t bother Hoffer one bit. He didn’t have a racist bone in his body. He’d take on anyone.
He was running up some good cab receipts for Walkins. He got a couple more blanks from his driver and gave the guy a healthy tip. The house where Harry Capaldi lived was a narrow three-storey building, its third storey no more than an attic. But from the doorbells, it had been sliced and diced into three apartments. Hoffer rang Capaldi’s bell. There wasn’t any answer. He looked around him. The street was quiet and dark. It was like they’d turned down the juice; the street-lamps were a puny glow most of which was obscured by insect life.
Hoffer charged the door with his shoulder. He kept low, putting his weight against the keyhole. The door gave a little, but then resisted. At the second attempt, it flew open. He walked quickly to the first floor. There was no use knocking at Capaldi’s door. The guy was either in and not answering, or else not in, and the only way to answer it one way or the other was to keep on going. This time it took a good four attempts before the door gave. When it did, it brought Hoffer into a hallway smelling of cooking fat and stale beer.
‘I only want to talk,’ he called, pushing the door closed. ‘I’m not the cops, I’m just a guy. Mr Capaldi? Hey, anyone home?’
There was a light on in the room at the end of the hall, and the sound of a TV or something. But Capaldi could have left it on when the police had come to take him to Vine Street. Or maybe he left it on all the time whatever, so nobody’d think the place was empty. Hoffer eased the Smith & Wesson out of his pocket and felt a little more comfortable.
‘Mr Capaldi?’ he repeated. Then he pushed the door at the hall’s end. It was a cramped room, mostly due to the large piece of photographic equipment sitting in the middle of it. Edmond had mentioned this. It was for taking reduced-size photos and fixing them on ID cards and the like. As Edmond had said, you couldn’t prosecute; Capaldi was legitimate owner of the equipment. And he was always too clever to let them find anything else, no fake IDs or blank forms, nothing incriminating.
There was an old dining table by the window, the sort with legs which folded beneath it and wings which folded down so it didn’t take up space. Something was making a noise beneath it, a cat or dog. Hoffer crouched down and took a look, then walked forward a couple more steps to get a better fix on it. He crouched down again and pocketed the gun.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’d talk more comfortably if you came out of there, Mr Capaldi.’
Capaldi came out stiffly from beneath the table. He was shaking, and had to be helped to a chair.
‘Who are you?’ he said. But Hoffer was busy pouring Irish whiskey into a used glass. He handed it to Capaldi.
‘Drink this. Sorry if I gave you a fright.’ He looked over at the table. ‘You’d hardly believe a full-grown man could squeeze into there, would you?’ Then he turned back to Capaldi and grinned. ‘You must’ve been scared shitless. Who’d you think was ringing your bell, aliens? Think I was going to suck your heart out? Nope, all I want to do is have a little talk... Jesus, what’s wrong with your head? It’s like a fucking snowstorm.’
‘Who are you?’ Capaldi repeated. He found his cap and placed it firmly on his head.
‘Doesn’t matter who I am, Mr Capaldi. What matters is, I want to know about Mark Wesley.’
‘I already told the police, I only met the guy—’
‘I know, in a bar. But between you, me, and the police, that’s a crock of shit. Now, they can’t do much but tut-tut and send you off with a warning. Me, I can do better than that.’ He produced the gun again. ‘I can shoot you.’ Capaldi looked like someone had stuck him to the chair with superglue — head, arms, legs, the lot. ‘Now, I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t know anything about you, it may be you’re a very nice man, generous to a fault, friendly with the neighbours, all that jazz. To be frank, that doesn’t mean squat to me. I still might have to shoot you, unless you start telling me what you wouldn’t tell the police.’
Hoffer leaned forward and lifted the whiskey glass from Capaldi’s unresisting hand. He turned the glass around to drink from the clean side, and finished the whiskey in a single gulp. Now that he was calmer, he could hear a thudding bass sound from upstairs, shaking the ceiling and walls.
‘Ten seconds,’ he said quietly. ‘And I’m not counting aloud.’
He always believed in giving people time to consider their next move, especially when they were scared senseless. He’d been that scared himself once or twice in the past, and you really did lose your senses. You could eat, but not taste. You couldn’t smell anything, except maybe your sweat. Your sense of touch was restricted to the cooling damp of your trouser legs, or the gun nuzzling your head. You certainly couldn’t see straight, or hear rational arguments.
It was good to have some time to adjust.
‘Nine, ten,’ Hoffer said. ‘Shame it has to end like this, Mr Capaldi.’ He touched the gun to the counterfeiter’s head.
Capaldi started to speak, sort of. It took him five or six goes to utter the single word ‘Jesus’, and a few more tries before he could manage ‘Don’t shoot me.’
‘Why not?’
‘What?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not... because I... Jesus, all I did was...’ He came to a dry stop.
‘All you did was what? Make him up a new ID? What?’ Then Hoffer too stopped, his mouth gaping. ‘You son of a bitch,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you? I mean recently, in the last day or two?’ He glanced towards the photographic equipment, all set up with a flash-lamp and a chair for the sitter.
‘He’s still in town, isn’t he?’ Hoffer could hardly believe it. ‘Why’s he still here? No, wait.’ He knew there were other questions to ask first, so many of them it was a matter of getting the order right. Capaldi was staring past Hoffer’s shoulder. When Hoffer turned his head, he saw why. There were two big black men standing in the hall, looking in on the scene. They had their mouths open, lower lips curled.
‘No problem here, guys,’ Hoffer called.
But there certainly was a problem. They’d probably seen the busted main door, and now Capaldi’s door in the same state. And whoever they thought Hoffer was, he wasn’t police. Even the cops in Tottenham didn’t pack a .459 with their handcuffs.
They ran for the front door, yelling out someone’s name. He could hear them climbing the stairs, heading for the second floor. Hoffer looked back at Capaldi, seeking an explanation.
‘They deal a bit of dope,’ Capaldi said. ‘They don’t like strangers.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Hoffer started pulling Capaldi to his feet. ‘You’re coming with me.’
But Capaldi resisted. More than that, he was still too scared to operate his legs, and Hoffer couldn’t carry him, not with dope dealers on his ass.
‘We’ll finish our chat later,’ he promised, then ran for the door. He could hear loud voices upstairs, not just two of them but three or four or five. He started down the stairs for the front door. He could hear footsteps pounding after him. Finish it now or keep running? He wondered if they’d fire on him out on the street? If yes, then it was better to make a stand here. But some instinct told him to get his fat self outside. There were houses on one side of the street only, the other being wall and embankment leading to a railway line. He didn’t know which way to run. There didn’t seem an obviously busier road in either direction. So he took a left and ran.