She smiled. “Most guys are shovers or pullers, Lovejoy. You’re weird because you’re neither. You off to see that skinny bitch?”
I said nothing.
“She’ll not fly you far, hon. Fly Magda Airlines some time.”
If it hadn’t been for the prickly feeling of unease I’d have talked longer. Anyhow, a crumpled motor crawled by and she trotted off to answer the whistled summons. I sighed and walked off. People do what they’re good at, I always think.
As I started off, I tried working out this Land of Opportunity’s determinants. Like, how come Kelly Palumba was rich beyond the dreams of whatnot, while same-age Magda was a street prostitute? It couldn’t simply be silver-spoon-at-birth, could it? Kelly had offered me more money for a pinch of drugs than Magda saw in a month. Maybe our olden-day system was simply continued here in the USA? Except in America the bosses didn’t wear emblazoned coats of arms.
Then I heard sirens, denoting carnage somewhere close. It wasn’t far, maybe three hundred yards, to where the cars congregated around the man lying near the pavement.
Taxi drivers were yelling and horns blared accompaniment. I didn’t bother listening to the explanations and shouts of whose fault it all was, how some car had suddenly accelerated and the man suddenly fell off the kerb… I went on past the crowd, sick to my soul. No question of what had happened to Tony, not now I’d seen Bill lying there. The taxi drivers were wrong. It was my fault. I’d assumed the police were invulnerable, that nobody could possibly harm a special agent, or whatever Bill was. Had been. I’d rung the Aquilina number to ingratiate myself. I knew that. Well, I’d made myself secure now. Bill had paid up, for me.
Against all habit I went into a late-night bar up from Times Square. I had some Californian wine, pale and faintly opalescent. I vowed no revenge. How could I? I was just badly shaken, even leaping like a scalded cat when the bar door banged in the night wind. I was frightened. I didn’t know what I was into. Stupidly, I’d assumed I was free of obligations to Nicko’s crowd once Gina had sent me back to pasture in Manhattan.
In Apple Zee’s nutritious joint I pulled out the letters. I memorized Bill’s phone number, but kept the card to give to Nicko. It wouldn’t matter to Bill, not now. All betrayal is a one-off, complete and entire of itself. The card would add nothing, but be proof of my good faith. The first letter was a note from Sophie Brandau’s secretary, on scented notepaper that must have cost a bomb. It said to call on Mrs. Brandau at my earliest convenience, Park Avenue. The second was a scrawled note from a Mrs. van Cordlant’s secretary’s assistant, saying to call, on Madison Avenue.
Not much. So? The only way was to feel my way out of New York, along any thread. Rose was my least likely thread. The others? Well, Sophie might reveal most. Except this Mrs. van Cordlant coming out of the blue… When in doubt, grab for antiques. Therefore Sophie, Park Avenue.
I was about to go when Zole slipped in beside me.
“Two more burgers, ma-main,” Zole sang. He had his star-spangled yo-yo.
“Not for me, ta. And put that yo-yo away.”
“You ain’t gettin’, Rube.”
I watched him in the bar mirror, grabbing the food. A lad after my own heart. “Eat well, Zole.”
“Your pal was dead before he got hit,” Zole said conversationally. ”He got throwed, man.”
“I guessed.” Bill was no accident-prone stumbler. He was a capable bloke.
“Hey, Lovejoy! You ain’t such a rube!”
“He was the one watching the hotel?”
“Him, a bad news pig and two brothers.”
Whatever that meant. “Brothers? He had brothers?”
Zole guffawed, a gaping mouth filled with a mash of ketchup-soaked hamburger, and mocked, “Ah mean black, Lovejoy. Ya know coloured? Jeech!”
Leaving, I made him replace the cutlery and two saucers which had somehow fallen under his tee-shirt. We parted, me to get an armful of newspapers from an all-nighter, him to hustle a mark for Magda, he said. I nearly didn’t believe him, but worried in case it was true.
The Benidormo was jumping, forgive the pun. Magda’s room thumped to an ancient rhythm. The other side was a pandemonium of a man and bird having a brawl, best of six pinfalls and threats of murder with free abuse.
Before I could settle down to tranquillity, the Bad News Pig shouldered in and stood there apologetically.
“Sorry, Lovejoy. I gotta do this.”
My heart sank. Between the orgiastic moans from Magda’s and the howls from screamsville, my own pad had somehow earned a bludgeoning.
“What’s up, Tye?”
“Gina says you aren’t following orders, okay?”
He said the same okay four times, each time hauling me erect and clouting me in the belly so I whoomfed double. I tried asking what orders for chrissakes but he didn’t answer. He was really sorrowful, though, and expressed sincere regret as I crouched and retched onto the bare linoleum.
“It’s not me, unnerstand,” he said with compassion. “It’s Gina, okay? You didn’t report in.”
I gagged. My sweat dripped onto my hands, into the puddled sick between them. God, I felt like death. “Okay. Sure.” What else
An hour after Tye’d left I finished mopping the floor and went down the corridor to wash my towel. Magda came to stand in the doorway behind me. She looked sympathetic. My heart sank further. I definitely needed no more help.
“No compassion, Magda. I’ve had enough to be going on with, ta.”
“Lovejoy, honey,” she said softly, “leave N’York. Soon.”
“Am I allowed one phone call first?”
She sighed. “Dumb,” she said.
For the next hour, until midnight, sprawled on the mattress between two shaking walls, I ogled my gift TV and read the newspapers, under a snowfall of flaking plaster. I’d at last set to, learning New York’s news. Then at the witching hour I phoned the number Fredo had given me, and told a recording machine a negative report, but that I was invited to see the lady in question next day when I’d report in full.
And slept, fitfully dreaming of Bill’s body being lobbed under an approaching car. I didn’t go to see Rose that night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
« ^ »
AMERICA’S not perfect, mind. Disillusion’s the bus station, West 42nd Street.
Sheer size is agoraphobia’s ally. I’d learnt the word panhandler from Zole the day before. The world centre of hustling, panhandling, drug pushing, aggressive dereliction, is surely here. I’d never seen so many buses in my life, commuter roarers and long-distance racers all the colours of the rainbow. It seems they’re all private companies. Passengers too are all shades and sizes. Tip: don’t go for a pee —bottle it until you reach home.
A whole hour it took me, finding the times and places of the California runs, for my escape. The drifters with their aggressive sales pitches frightened me to death. One shabby bloke wide as a barn stopped me in the open crowd by simply shoving a flat hand on my chest.
“Hey. Whachoo want, man?” he threatened.
“Er…” I tried to edge away among some passengers.
“You gotta want somethin’, man.” He dragged at me.
“I’ve no money,” I said feebly.
“Sheet.” He let go so I fell, got up and scarpered to palpitating safety among a horde of people queueing for hamburgers.
The trick is to stay ungrabbable, which means beyond arm’s reach of passers-by. This means deep in a queue of ordinary folk, or ensconced in a nosh bar where the proprietor is protection for as long as you’re buying. Remember that. Solitude prevails in any loo, except here it’s a mangler’s mart, with blokes of all ages soliciting, injecting, selling syringes, even fighting over vulnerable travellers with knives. Police are on hand, sometimes. But bloodstained tiles do nothing for confidence.