She hardly glanced up.
“Oh, Lovejoy.” I was suddenly new and insignificant. “To Manfredi’s. Soonest” She looked past me. “Blanche? Get me that Harvard architect. Two minutes.”
“Yes, Miz Gina.”
“Er… ?” I said, still oozing charm.
She noticed me with irritation. “Manfredi’s, Lovejoy. Go.”
I cleared my throat. “Er, I don’t think I quite understand —”
Hands grabbed me, mostly Tye’s but with assistance from two other hulks. I was flung into my old gear, mercifully cleaned, hustled into the shore boat, and rushed breathless and bewildered to a waiting motor on shore.
Well, I’d prayed for an end to my servitude, but I was narked now it had come.
I didn’t know it, but next dawn was the day I’d start killing people.
ONCE, I knew this bloke Ted who wrote what he called copy. Ted was a university academic, and like the rest he moonlighted on his Eng Lit job by scribing for newspapers. A sad bloke, he was simply one of these geezers who’d never done anything except teach — never known an honest day’s labour. He was made redundant in the Great Cutbacks. Suddenly he found himself facing the stark truth that he was unemployable. Now he trundles a handcart about Surrey villages scouring for tat, old rubbish which he tries to sell. He does it badly, needless to say. If he’d ever worked, with hands, he’d have been okay. As it is, he’s had to invent a conspiracy among his university alumni to justify his bitterness. Tells everybody they were all jealous.
We all do it. I did it, that morning when Fredo arrived and found me disgruntled on the pavement. He said very little, just to get the garbage out in the alleyway because Josephus was having woman trouble.
“I asked Nicko for a few days off,” I lied brightly.
“Sure.” New York’s elastic word speaks volumes.
Della was thrilled I was with them again. Jonie came and told me I’d missed a brawl in the bar between two guys berserk over the Superbowl. Lil told me she’d known all along I was crazy over her. Two new waitresses, and a new shabby shuffler to help Fredo in the kitchen, and we were ready to cope with Manhattan. I was angry, dejected in the best Ted manner, fuming to myself as I started smiling, giving out my cheery “Hi, there!” to all and sundry.
I’m not really posh-minded. No, honestly I’m not. But I really had thought that on the Gina, first names with Nicko and all that, I was plugged in to something special. As New Yorkers bowled in for breakfast and my routine banter, I found myself thinking over oddities. Bill—who was he? Nicko owned the world, sure. And Gina ran much of it, sure. But whenever anybody spoke of reporting or checking or approving, it was always Jennie’s name that cropped up. And Orly was her oppo.
“I reckon Dallas Cowboys aren’t in it this year,” I told a driver I recognized. I didn’t understand who the Cowboys were, but remembered he was for. His trigger phrase reflexed him into a soliloquy that gave me time to think.
The California Game? I’d been given orders to report nightly to Gina. Any progress on Moira Hawkins and her loony Sherlock plan. Yet here I was washing and serving at Fredo’s joint when Gina and the Gina were a-bobbing on the briny of Long Island Sound.
“They’re too erratic, for one thing,” I challenged my customer, into his third mound of pancakes. (You won’t believe this, but he poured syrup over them, next to four rashers of bacon. Warning: American grub’s lovely; its arrangement takes some beating.)
“Tell me who’s more consistent!”
“Look at the league tables,” I said, doing that American shrug —a simultaneous grin and nodded headwag which encourages instant denials.
Did Gina now expect me to phone every evening with my progress report? There couldn’t of course be any progress. There never is on a grailer. There can’t be, for they’re all myths, dreamt up by mystics and purveyors of illicit scams. You can invent some yourself. Do it today: precious diamonds from South Africa bigger than any on earth; limitless gold from the ocean floor; rare antiques in attics the world over. You only have to dream it up, and antique dealers will rush to market it for you. The fact that it doesn’t exist won’t matter. That’s what a grailer is, rainbow gold. I’m not being unromantic. I’m only trying to warn you your friend’s scheme of importing rare tapestries from the Punjab, ten cents a time and unlimited profit, is crud.
“Dallas, schmallas.” I replenished my customer’s coffee while he went wild and starting calling along the counter for allies to set this jerk straight.
I mean, I know an actor who’s fourteenth in line to the Throne. (Incidentally, so does everybody else in the U.K., but we're all too polite to mention it, him being the wrong side of the blanket and everything, and anyway, we all like his TV series, evening Thursdays unless they've changed it.) Well, this right royal bloke could reap the world, if you think of it. He’s a born grailer. Why? Because he could sell his story, his opinions, even his name for vasto gelto, and live plushly ever after. And does he? Not on your life. He simply ploughs the theatres, does auditions, is downcast when he doesn’t get them, rejoices when he does, the whole acting gig.
Why doesn’t he? Because he’s not thick, that’s why. I once met him at an antiques auction. He was bidding for a miniature portrait. I tipped him off that it was on ivory and badly warped. He said ta, slipped me a fiver and we had a bit of a chat. I waxed indignant that the auctioneer—it wasn’t a thousand miles from Sotheby’s, Bond Street—hadn’t sent somebody over to point the defect out.
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” he said, smiling.
“You could have told him,” I said. “Mmmh,” he concurred, “but then what?”
And I saw the problem. His life would be an instant media circus. Reporters would rifle his dustbins. Every female he raised his hat to would be hounded to suicide. He would be dissected in public with that well-known frenzy the media reserve for ante-mortems.
“No what?” the Dallas supporter was asking.
God, I must have spoken out loud. “No way,” I said. “They ain’t got the pitchers.”
“Pitchers is baseball, jerko.”
Hell fire. “Shows how much them Cowboys know,” I improvised quickly. “They’re advertising for pitchers in the Herald Tribune.”
That got a chorus of shouts and laughs. In the middle of it an old and valued customer arrived.
“Hello, Lovejoy.” She was hugging herself.
“Too early for wine, Rose.”
“Coffee, two eggs, toast.”
“Coming right up.” I shot the order through, eyed her. “I had to go on a visit, love. Sorry.”
“Back just in time, Lovejoy. We’ve located a precious heap of paper for you.”
I stared. “You have?” I’d never heard of a grailer actually becoming reality. Fakes do, of course. Trillion to one, I gave mental odds. News indeed for Gina; she was so endearing it’d be a shame to disappoint her.
“Hand it over, then. Let’s have a look.”
“I said located, not obtained.”
Surprise, surprise. I tried to look enthralled, but probably failed, being distracted by Bill who blew my theory about then by suddenly not being dead after all. He went straight across to the nooks, sat and read his paper. I made demented small talk with Rose, the Cowboy fan, a state-of-the-city grouse. Bill left after a quick serving, paid Della on the till. No sign from him. Meantime, Rose had been telling me some cock-and-bull tale about letters received, transatlantic phone calls…
If Bill wasn’t dead, was Tony? I felt a bit let down, decided the entire episode was my spooky imagination. All over. I felt relieved. I smiled at Rose’s charming features. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as the wicked old treble-entendre has it.
“… to England,” she was saying.