I’d lost the thread. “Eh?” He’d just been talking about cooking.
“Run.” He reached and closed the book on his small table. “Lovejoy. They’ll know you’re alive sooner or later. My advice is run, run till you’ve no need. Then you can stop. It’s life. I’m telling you because I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m running from, Mr Sokolowsky.”
He removed his spectacles, replaced them. “That’s something I don’t know, Lovejoy.”
“Run where?” He knew I was honestly asking.
“My advice isn’t good, Lovejoy. So tell me what you’ve done since you didn’t die.”
More or less, I told. He poured more tea, holding up his kettle to condemn the water company. I worried it was all some delaying tactic to keep me here while he secretly signalled Tye and Al and Shelt.
“The California Game’s a legend, Lovejoy,” he said at last. “I’ve lived a lifetime and can tell you legends are nothing but trouble. Like New York’s water supply,” he interposed bitterly. “Legends you’ve got to handle like bombs. Cover them up, hide from their effects. The rest of the time, ignore them. But their fame spreads. People want to walk with legends. See the problem?”
“Publicity would prevent the California Game.”
He sighed as only old Sokolowskys can sigh.
“You’re teaching me, Lovejoy? Oy vey. You know so much, you’re running from you don’t know with nothing in a strange land?”
“I apologize.”
“No hard feelings. Manners I remember.” I had a sudden image of him elsewhere, fumbling for a fire tiger to poke some nonexistent fire. “The California Game’s the biggest and most illegal. Take a fraction of every business in America, that’s the stake. It’s always simple faro—you know faro? Your win, my win. Nothing simpler, the one game nobody can cheat, no skill required.”
“Faro?” I’d had visions of some exotic protracted gambling game lasting through nights of smoke and drinks.
“One card’s chosen as marker. Everybody sees it. You deal a new deck into two separate piles, one your win pile, one your loser. Whichever pile the marker card falls into, so you’ve won or lost.”
“Is it worth it?” I’d heard of the great poker championship in Las Vegas, with fans saving a lifetime to enter. “You might as well do it by phone.”
“It’s a secure way of passing power, Lovejoy. Handing over power’s where all trouble starts.”
“Whoever wins gets the hacks?”
“And decides who can play next time. Nicko won last year.” His gaze was the saddest gaze I’d ever seen. “This hurts me to say, Lovejoy. Go from here. I’ve to phone or they kill me. I’ll give you time. But go now.”
I thought I’d misheard, reluctantly decided I hadn’t. I finished my tea, thanked him.
“You need a loan, Lovejoy, speak this side of the door.”
“No, thanks.” I paused in the dimly lit corridor. “If you were me, where would you go until daylight?”
“There’s all-nighters. Tell jokes until dawn. Here in America there’s so much to laugh at.” His expression was sobriety itself.
“Thanks, Mr Sokolowsky. Maybe there’ll be a time…”
“Maybe, Lovejoy,” he agreed, and I was out and on my own.
THAT night I walked, was accosted intermittently by figures and shapes that frightened me. I lurked in all-night diners where I could, ducked out when the going got rough. One seemed to specialize in brawls. Eventually I risked a taxi, got dropped off where comedians talked jokes into a hang of smoke over tables populated by an audience who never laughed. The worst was, those comedians were the best I’d ever heard. It broke what was left of my heart.
Came dawn. I decided I’d risk visiting Mr Sokolowsky to check the details of the Game. I went by Metro, riskily joining the first commuters of the day, lighting at Christopher Street on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue line. I felt death warmed up, as my Gran used to say.
The view from the end of the old jeweller’s street kept me moving on. Ambulances and police and fire engines wah-wah about New York every hour God sends, so I’d not sussed the significance of a team tearing past as I’d headed that way. But outside his house a small crowd had gathered, and a covered shape was being gurneyed into an ambulance. I didn’t look back.
A suspicious mind like mine might conclude that old Sokolowsky had told his masters that I’d called. They’d possibly hunted, failed to find me, and exacted the ultimate forfeit. My mouth was dry. I was tired, lost.
But antiques beckoned. I went into a huge commercial building that claimed to be the centre of World Trade. I believed it. I submitted to a professional shave which started me imagining gangsters bursting in to do a routine assassination, had a headwash (exhausting), manicure (embarrassing), and shoeshine (most embarrassing of all).
The tonsorialist, he said he was, talked ceaselessly, praising Thomas Maynooth’s brilliant innovation — a midnight to midnight Law Day, which was the talk of the town because it seemed to be working. Grand Central to Tenth, West 34th to 48th, not a single mugging or killing yet, a whole ten hours!
I did my best with the accent. “Who’s this Maynooth genius?”
“Here.” He showed me a morning paper a foot thick, Maynooth being honoured by one Major J. Lister. “Tommy Maynooth maintains this foreign orphanage. He’s mad the papers found out.”
Good hearted, and modest with it.
I left, into Manhattan sunshine. I felt prepared. Let me die among antiques.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
« ^ »
PLAYING antiques auction houses against each other is the ultimate. It’s the dealer’s fandango. Sooner or later we all skip the light fantastic, to their tune. The Big Two skip fastest of all.
I’d chosen Mangold, of Geneva, London, Paris, Monaco and everywhere else where money lurks. Nicko’s people—I supposed Tye Dee, Al, Shell—would be watching Sotheby’s and Christie’s, because the plan I’d formed with Gina included these. Mangold’s wasn’t big. I’d chosen it from many. The reason was its forthcoming lawsuit against the Big Pigs, as dealers call them.
I simply got a hire car—you can get these in America—and drove there in splendour. Remembering Oscar Wilde’s essential for the con trick, I smiled constantly, trying for an aura of wealth. I was Mr Dulane, of Geneva and London, I was also a lawyer. The head man saw me with all the readiness of the smaller company under threat.
We shook hands, some more amiably than others. I apologized to Simon Mangold for my appearance, claimed jet lag and airports. He said it gets everybody.
“You’re the son of the founder?”
“Dad died last year.”
His attitude announced that he was going to go down fighting. But that only tells everybody you’re going down anyway. It must be something about the antiques that does it, makes bravery ridiculous. We were in a panelled office, nothing old in it except a couple of beautiful Chelsea porcelains that warmed my soul. Here was a man who loved antiques, but whose love was the doom of his firm.
“That’s when your troubles started, I hear, Mr Mangold.”
“It’s in the papers,” he said bluntly.
“The Bigs are nothing if not acquisitive.” I went all sympathetic. “I’m here to give you information which may help you.”
He digested this. No fool he. “Give?”
“Give. As in donate. If you like the gift, I’ll suggest a course of action which will benefit us both. If you don’t you’re free to use the information for nothing.”
That fazed him. He excavated with a toothpick, examined his palms for buried treasure, stroked the surface of his desk. I watched, marvelling. We just ask to be researched by sociologists.
“That clear cut?” When I nodded, he asked to see my business card. I shook my head, said I was travelling light.
“Would you hang on a second, Mr Dulane?”
“Not that either,” I said, varying my smile to show no hard feelings. “Your secretary can check the International Business Directory, you won’t find us. I haven’t much time.” I was narked and shut him up. Hell, it was my prezzie. People want jam on it.