“Is this still New York?”
“Both sides. We’re headed for Long Island Sound.” Gina extended a hand. Orly leapt to take it, haul her up.
Nicko showed no emotion as Gina and Orly paired away. He was reading from a folder. I avoided asking the obvious. Their business.
“Excuse me, Nicko. What am I here for, exactly?”
He didn’t look up. “To help decide fraud, Lovejoy. And play a game.”
It didn’t sound my thing. I lowered my knife and fork.
“I’m sorry, Nicko, but I want out…”
Tye suddenly shoved a plate of scrambled eggs and waffles across the table, warning. Nicko hadn’t interrupted his reading.
“Great, great,” I said quickly. “Look forward to it, Nicko. Fraud’s my thing.” Thereby being responsible for the deaths of two people. One was a foe, one a sort of friend. And one was nearly me.
FOR an hour I stood on the after deck watching New York glide by. Tye described where we were. The names were oddly familiar, the places resonant of some primeval dream time: Queens, the Bronx, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Brooklyn. The old jeweller Mr Sokolowsky astonished by coming out to stand and reminisce. He was amusing, got me laughing about local quirks in buying silver, pricing jewels, a goldsmith’s slender finances ha ha ha. A witty old bloke with shrugged-off humour. Orly passed by once, to say I was to “get something decent on by the time we hit the Sound.”
“Long Island Sound,” Tye translated. “That’s where it happens.”
“Oy vey,” Mr Sokolowsky lamented, shrugging. “Happenings should wait a liddle now and then.”
Gina sent her Blanche with a message that she wanted me. It was to do with clothes. She’d had the vessel combed for clobber. It was highly fashionable, which I am not. I settled for some loose grey trousers and a white shirt. She pulled a face when finally I showed myself. I grimaced back, grinning to set her laughing. It was the last laugh for some time.
I wanted to know what happened to Tony, if Berto Gordino had managed to spring Busman, what Della and Lil were telling Rose when she came by Fredo’s and asked where I’d got to. But by then the boat was thrusting through some narrows into Long Island Sound, breath-taking in its expanse and shores, and my duties began.
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
THEY started coming aboard about mid-afternoon. I watched them from the rail, a mere bystander like the crew.
Glamour isn’t simply something in the eye of the beholder. It’s a kind of heat, emanating from the glamorous. But it’s cold, heat that doesn’t warm. Which I suppose is one way of saying it’s radiation, the stuff that eventually kills. This thought struck me when I recognized a familiar elegant lady ascending our gangway from a small power boat. Good old Moira Hawkins was accompanied by Sophie Brandau and her politician husband. My head didn’t quite spin off, but my breathing went funny. Was I the link? I hated this notion, because chains have a tough time. A score or more arrived, laughing and full of that strange chilled charm only the rich exude.
Long Island is, well, sort of a long island, if you follow. Everything tends to astonish me, so America had it made. But why should I be dumbfounded by the Atlantic’s proximity? And by Long Island’s enormity, its beauty? Glamour is America’s par, wealth an incidental. Everything’s so vast that your eyes run out of vision. Tye Dee was supervising the welcomes—which probably meant seeing they all arrived unarmed—so I’d nobody to ask. Old Sokolowsky had vanished. How strange that he was along, on a fantastic cruise like this. Mind you, the same went for me. Except the old jeweller and me were two of a kind; different bookends, same purpose. Sokolowsky was the experienced gelt merchant, techniques to his fingertips. I was the… the what? Neither Gina nor Nicko had mentioned antiques, which is basically what I’m for. Sole purpose in life. Tye Dee was simply a trusted bouncer, with his thick holster bulging his chest lopsidedly. Orly was Mrs. Aquilina’s “friend” again today.
It was a pleasantly open day, light breeze, rich thick American sunshine. Innocent, fresh.
The little boats shuttled between the shore and us. A small township, its streets open and the traffic casually undeterred by the growing aggregate of Rolls-Royces and lengthy American cars I couldn’t name. How pleasant to live in such a place, I was thinking, when I saw Jennie alighting from a limo with a fat man. They made quite a pair, him flashy and corpulent and Nicko’s lassie slender and pert. Wasn’t I thinking a lot about gelt? Something in the climate.
Fatty and Jennie were the last, the occasion for much jibing from the party on the after deck.
“Hey, Jim!” one voice yelled through the growing music. “Antiques doin’ okay, keeping you late.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Denzie!” the fat man bawled as his boat slowed. “You politicians ride on my back, man!”
Desperate needling, it seemed to me, but it earned a roar of laughter. You can say anything in America, as long as you grin. Orly’s shoulder tap made me turn. I wished he’d stop doing that. Worse, he prodded my chest.
“Lovejoy, go help Bill in the bar. You know how?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Tye to close the rail. Mr Bethune’s always last.”
Antiques, Jim Bethune. Busman had asked about some art dealer, Bettune… Orly shoved me so I almost stumbled.
“Move ass, Lovejoy.”
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying.”
Correction: almost everybody in USA is charming. If Orly prodded me once more I’d break his digit, in a charming sort of way of course. I sprinted to obey, fuming but silent.
THE pace of the Aquilinas’ party was sedate, compared to Fredo’s in full spate. It was noisier, and the grub went almost untouched. I was astonished at the transformations the guests had undergone. They’d changed, instant butterflies, even Jennie emerging gorgeous from the cabins.
Bill the barman was twice as fast as I’d ever be. He was tall, lean, tanned, wavy-haired, the sort I always think must be every woman’s heart-throb, straight off a surfboard. Blokes like him evoke archaic slang.
“Handle the ladies when two come together, Lovejoy,” he ordered. He didn’t tap or prod. I warmed to him.
The women? I went red. Barmen the world over hate women customers. Men are more decided, can be served fast. Women take their time, change minds, negotiate. That’s why sluggardly barkeeps get the slowest jobs. And me a veteran of Fredo’s famed happy hour! I swallowed the insult.
In spite of being narked I slotted in, doing my stuff, trying to remember to maintain that wide American smile. The crowd swelled to thirty, as guests already on board before the influx made their colourful entrances amid hullabaloo. Quite frankly, I admire people who put on a show of style. I mean, it’s something I could never do in a million years. The women were bonny, slim, slick. I’d never seen what I call evening dresses worn during the afternoon before. Jewellery gleamed genuine gleams and antique settings bonged into my chest, but I kept my mind on my job, trying to please. It was a pretty scene. I avoided Mrs. Brandau’s eye, didn’t look at Jennie, tried my damnedest not to lust too obviously after Gina when she queened into the deck arena amid a storm of applause. The men were not my concern.
Denzie Brandau was smooth, suave, your friendly politician. He was perfectly attired, cuffs mathematical and suit impeccable, his manner subtly saying that he was slumming but was too polite to say so. Power anywhere is a threat, very like glamour.
“Hey, Bill,” I said in sudden thought as the bar slackened. Other serfs started circulating with trays of food to encourage the starving. “Am I replacing Tony?”
“Sure are, Lovejoy.” He was shaking a cocktail. I watched enviously.
“I can’t drive.” A lie at home, but true in America.
“Drivers we got. Only here in the bar.”