Ah, I thought, the flat connection.
So we turned onto Cornwall Gardens. Angela had a permit to park on the street and she opened this big Georgian door for us and took us up in a lift to a lovely three-bedroom flat with all these Persian carpets in the lounge. It was gorgeous. And the balcony overlooked the fenced-in private gardens.
Angela started cooking a vegetarian dinner in the open-plan kitchen. She said she always ate macrobiotic food, but she kept having a break from the kitchen every now and then so she could smoke a cigarette, which didn’t seem somehow kosher to me, her being macrobiotic and that. Ted arrived home about half an hour after she’d begun preparing the dinner. He wasn’t that big, a bit skinny with wire-rimmed glasses and a ponytail. A bit of an old-time hippy. He’d been out doing business, according to Angela. What with the sunshine and the shooters and the fresh taste of the lemons, by this time we’d already finished the first bottle of tequila: at least, me and Magsy had; the girls had been chatting most of the time in the kitchen.
So then we all sat down around a tablecloth that Angela spread over the Persian carpet in the lounge and we polished off the brown rice, pickles, and veggies. I was feeling really healthy after that meal. We slumped back against the giant cushions and started on more shooters of tequila, and Ted brought out this lovely pearl-inlaid backgammon board. We all tried to concentrate on the game. That was when Ted produced a large mirror and laid out five enormous lines of white powder that he said was Colombian cocaine. Ted vacuumed up a line of powder and took the tails off the other lines and handed the rolled-up note to Magsy. Magsy dug into it and then Penelope had a line. I had a sense of relief when Angela said she didn’t want any. It made me feel a little less like a dork when I said, “Thanks, but I’ll stick with the tequila.” I’m not a prude — but I get these terrible asthma attacks if I breath hostile flower pollen, let alone cocaine, and I didn’t want to risk anything at all, given the state I was already in. The black and red and white triangles on the backgammon board already had a glow all their own after we’d finished the second bottle.
So we threw the dice and moved a few counters and then Ted laid out another set of lines of the Colombian coke and I downed another three shots of tequila and I felt a lot less nervous about the heavy drugs the boys on my right kept snorting and we threw the dice some more and we finished the third bottle of tequila and I was feeling all sunny even though it was dark and time to go home and I stood up and my knees didn’t seem to work so good and I thought, well, it’s all right because I’m going to go home now, and I really hadn’t realized just how good I was at backgammon. I thought, I really wouldn’t mind meeting Ted again, even if he is a bit of cokehead. I really wanted to play another game with him.
But you know what? I never did get to go back to that flat... not ever again, did I? I’d been there by chance, really, I suppose. I mean, it was Magsy and his girlfriend who Angela had meant to invite and I’d just happened to be along with Magsy after we bought the tequila. So I had no real business being there, did I?
Just as we were about to leave, Ted grabbed Magsy by the arm, all friendly.
“Hey, Magsy,” he said. “Think you can shift some coke for me?”
Magsy’s face lit right up. A business opportunity... Magsy liked that... and no doubt he really had enjoyed all that marching powder, and Ted liked him so much that, right there and then, he laid a couple of ounces on Magsy and told him to pay it back in a week. Even with all that liquor in me, I knew that this was probably a bad idea, but Magsy was dead thrilled. Fair play, I know for a fact he paid Ted back on the fronted coke two days before the week was up.
Ted, of course, was now my landlord. That made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but after a month or so a lovely woman of thirty-one by the name of Sheri moved in with me and I was glad I had my own gaff. Sheri was a real cockney. I met her when I got a job as a shipping clerk in Mile End. I had to pay the rent somehow. I took her round to see Magsy. He was still my mate, wasn’t he? By now he was doing a brisk trade. What I felt though... when we were around there... was that Magsy seemed a lot happier to see his clients than he did to see us. I thought, well, he’s my mate. I’ll confront him, like.
“What’s going on?” I said. “You know, really going on?”
He knew what I was talking about, when you’re mates, you do; but he just said, “I’m doing fine, son. Doing well. Just the sniffles, like. It’s just like having a cold, really. No bother at all.”
The sniffles? What the...? I wanted to push him on it, but right then Ted walked in. He had this bloke with him called Danny. Danny had a very good haircut, a very expensive suit, a black crewneck cotton pullover, and a camel’shair coat. He was not an old-time hippy at all. He was very definitely an old-time villain — even if he was only about twenty-eight or so. Danny oozed charm.
“Magsy,” he said, “how would you like to make a very sound investment, my son?”
“What’s that?” Magsy replied.
“How would you like to take out a lease on a small pornography outlet on Dean Street? Reckon it might be the perfect front for your proper business.”
Magsy’s proper business was now, very definitely, hardcore narcotics.
“Yeah,” Magsy said, big smile on his face. “I could get into that — a finger in every pie, innit? Sex and drugs and rock and roll.”
I laughed along with him. He was charmed. I was charmed. But I still didn’t know if this investment was a good idea at all. I didn’t know the financial details, of course. But who was I to know, anyway? At that time I had a shit job in a shipping office on the Mile End Road while Magsy was about to move up to the West End with all the villains. And he did. After he opened up the porn shop, I used to go up to Soho every Friday night to have a drink with him after work.
To tell the truth, I enjoyed meeting all those strippers and hookers and pimps and hustlers — who all seemed to be his mates — especially after I’d just spent the previous five days filing bills of lading. I felt like I was a very well-connected desperado... Well, not exactly... just a sort of desperado by proxy, really, wasn’t I? Magsy moved with the big fish like Ted and Danny, and, more and more often, the time came when we were out for a drink and he’d say, “Sorry, Dex, I got to push off. There’s a party at Ted’s flat.”
I used to go home to Sheri then.
“He’s leaving you behind, love,” Sheri would say. “He don’t give a damn about you, does he?”
“No, he’s just busy with all that business,” I’d respond. “Ted probably don’t want him bringing his mates around there, does he? Got to keep a low profile and that.”
But it hurt, I tell you that.
I still met Magsy every now and then for a drink. I still liked it when he’d spin all those yarns about all the gangster stuff.
So this one Friday night we were on the cognac in Steiner’s and Magsy said, “Hey, Dex, remember that flat on Gloucester Road?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Me and Penny are moving in next week.”
“Get away,” I said.
“Ted got tipped off, didn’t he? The Old Bill are looking for a major bust, so him and Angela got to leave the country in a hurry. He asked me and Penelope to house-sit for him.”