The big guy nodded happily. 'Aye; Ah used tae think you guys wiz great. An you were really brilliant; you used to write the songs, didn't ye?'
'Some,' I said, finally signing away fifty-seven and a half grand.
I glanced over at where McCann was sitting on a bar stool, one of the waitresses sticking a plaster onto his head. He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read.
'Na; you wrote them all, didn't ye?' The bouncer by my sideinsisted. 'Aw those other names were just fur a laugh, were they no?'
'Well,' I said, noncommittally, and left it at that.
'Oh, here, wait a minute,' the bouncer said, with the look and tone of somebody who's just had a really good idea; he disappeared round the side of the bar. The manager was inspecting the voucher I'd signed. He'd already had me confirm the name and address of my lawyers, which the Amex people had given him as the place they sent my statements to, but he was still suspicious.
The bouncer who'd been a fan came back with an album. One of ours. Well, in a way; it was Nuggets, the God-awful-titled collection of album off-cuts and not-quite-good-enough attempts at singles that ARC put out after we'd split up. It was a poor album; the best thing on it was a high-speed punk version of 'Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool' we'd done as a joke one very drunken night in Paris. I'd disowned the LP when they brought it out, and still had arguments with Rick Tumber about it (and especially about that title; Nuggets, I ask you).
'Hey, Mr Weird, would ye sign this, aye?' The bouncer looked enthusiastic, grinning happily.
I sighed. 'Sure.'
McCann had had the nerve to order another drink; he slurped noisily at a lager and scowled at me. My earlier euphoria at not being turned into a mewling heap of pulped flesh and broken bones had evaporated. The bouncer with the album looked at my picture on the cover, looked at me, and grinned boyishly. ' Aye, ye can see it's you. That's amazin. You just back here visitin, aye?'
'Aye,' I said, getting off the bar stool and handing the manager back his pen. He took it and put it in his inside jacket pocket, along with the carefully folded Amex voucher.
'Hey,' the bouncer said, looking serious all of a sudden, 'Mr Weird, I was really sorry, ye know? Tae hear about...'
'Yeah,' I said, quickly. 'I know. I don't like talking about it ... sorry .' I shrugged, looked down. He patted me on the shoulder.
'Aye, 'sokay, Mr Weird.' He sounded sincere. Jesus, I thought. Six years; six years ago it happened and people still talk about it like it happened last week.
I gave the guy a weak smile and walked over to McCann. 'You okay?' I asked him. 'Ready to go?'
McCann nodded. He finished his lager. We made our apologies again, shook hands with the bouncers (they were getting five hundred each; there were no really serious injuries, so they were happy enough), then we left.
We walked in silence through the smirring rain and sleet to West Nile Street, where I hailed a taxi.
'You really who they said?' McCann asked, standing outside, the taxi as I held the door open for him. His wee, grey eyes stared into mine. There was still some dried blood on his face.
'Aye.' I looked down at the dark, glistening road, then back to his eyes. 'Yes, I am.'
McCann nodded, then turned on his heel and walked away.
I stood there, still holding on to the cold handle of the opened taxi door, and watched him go. Sleet curled on gusts before the slabs of light from shops. Headlights and rear lights moved above the rain-bright roads, and the streetlights seemed to wear little flowing capes of rain and snow, swirling cones under the orange lamps.
'Haw, Jimmy!' the driver shouted. 'Sgettin cold in here; you gettin in or no?'
I looked at him, a white face in the darkness.
'Aye.' I climbed in and closed the door.
TEN
You can't even give the stuff away. Crazy Davey once tried to give away his Rolls Royce, just to prove a point.
It was the eve of the Three Chimneys tour (not that I knew that at the time). We were driving through the leafy lanes of Kent, just off the motorway, heading for Davey's mansion near Maidstone.
It was... summer of '80, I think. We were leaving for the States on the first leg of our new world tour the following week. Davey and I had been up in the East End of London, at a rented warehouse in Stepney where a frighteningly large number of roadies and technicians had been putting the finishing touches to the stage set we'd be using on the tour, including the Great Contra-Flow Smoke Curtain.
We'd had a final test of the whole rig the previous night, and it all worked; the Curtain itself, the lights and lasers and magnesium charges and smoke bombs... everything. We'd even bought a new sound system, perversely enough to keep Wes quiet. I told people the old one was bought by a quarry company in Aberdeen; they just pointed it at a granite rock face and played some Sex Pistols at maximum volume; much cheaper than dynamite.
If you ever saw that set, Smoke Curtain and all, you won't need me to tell you how good it was. If you didn't, well, tough; you never will. It was dismantled and never used again after one hot and humid night in Miami, just a month later.
'What do you want to do?' Davey said, shaking his head. He lit a cigarette, put the cigar lighter back in the dash. He was driving appallingly fast; he made Jasmine look safe for Christ's sake. I was just glad that he'd chosen the Roller for the trip up to London. It wasn't as fast or as flimsy as the 'only slightly rusty' Daytona he'd bought himself for Christmas.
Davey had started collecting cars. The Rolls hadn't been his first choice of limo; he'd wanted a Russian Zil ('You know; one of those big black bastards the Politburo boys hang out in'), but hadn't yet got his hands on one.
I took up all the tension I could on the seat belt and told myself Rollers were solidly enough built to let you crash in comfort. 'I mean,' Davey said, waving the cigarette round vaguely in my direction. 'So we've got some money; okay; a hell of a lot, as far as what we might have thought we'd ever get, yeah?'
'Yeah,' I said quickly, wondering if agreeing quickly would make Davey put both hands on the wheel again.
'But it's nothing really, I mean not compared to what some people have, like... Getty, or the Sultan of Brunei, or the... ah... the Saudis; you know, the royals. Even our royals have more, and, like, companies have even more. IBM; ATT; Exxon ... I mean, what they've got makes our... our money look like petty cash, am I right?' He looked round at me.
I nodded as quickly as possible, hoping he'd look back at the road. I certainly did. 'And countries,' Davey went on. 'Look what the States or the Russians spend on weapons, billions, isn't it?'
'Sure,' I said, watching the thirty-mile-an-hour limit signs of a village approach rapidly with a feeling of cautious relief. 'But that doesn't mean we couldn't do something.'
'What, though?' Davey said, braking as we passed the speed limit signs, so that we were only doing about fifty-five. 'I mean, we already donated that studio in Paisley. Probably the best thing we could have done, but what else could we do?'
The no-limit signs flashed by and the Roller lifted its snout as we accelerated again. I wondered again why the hell I'd agreed to let Davey drive me down to his place. Wanted to show me his new plane.
Jesus, what was I doing? Stay out of the plane, I told myself. I couldn't forget that trip down the Corinth canal in the unmarked plane. What would he try here? Flying through the Dartford Tunnel? Stay out of the plane.
I clutched the edges of my seat, considering whether it would be more or less terrifying if I closed my eyes. 'I don't know,' I said (my voice still sounded normal, don't ask me how). 'Maybe just... give it to the Labour Party, or something like that.'