“Fucked if I know.”
As I watch the Pole at the bar, I’m thinking it through. My first thought is he’s come because there’s a problem with something we’ve sold him, he’s had the old Bill knocking on his door. But now I’m not sure. If it was grief, he wouldn’t be buying us a pint. He’d be in a hurry, and pissed off. “Have to wait and see.”
Eventually Mr. Pzlowsky gets back to us with our drinks on a little tray. He sits down at our table, his back to the rest of the pub, and I start to relax. Whatever he’s here for, he’s playing by the rules. He’s drinking neat gin, no ice. Ugh.
“Cheers,” I say. “So: what’s up?”
He lights one of his weird little cigarettes, coughs. “I have something for you.”
“Sounds interesting,” I say. “What?”
He reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out a brown envelope. Puts it on the table, pushes it across. I pick it up, look inside.
Fifties. Ten of them. Five hundred quid. A “monkey”, as they say on television, though no fucker I know does.
“Fuck’s this?”
“A bonus,” he says, and I can hear Baz’s brain fizzing. I can actually hear his thoughts. A bonus from the Pole, he’s thinking: What the fuck is going on?
“A bonus, from the Pole?” I say, on his behalf. “What the fuck is going on?”
“This is what it is,” he says, speaking quietly and drawing in close. I won’t do his accent, but trust me—you have to concentrate. “It is from that jewellery you bring me last week. The silver. The American silver. I have one of my clients in this afternoon, he is the one sometimes buys unusual things, and I decide I will show this silver to him. So I get one of these things out—I always show just one first, you understand, because it can be more expensive that way. He looks at it, and suddenly I am on high alert. This is because I am experienced, see, I know what is what in my trade. I see it in his eyes when he sees the piece: he really wants this thing, yes? I was going to say two hundred to him, maybe two hundred fifty, this is what I think it was worth. But when I see his face, I think a moment, and I say seven hundred fifty! Is a joke, a little bit, but also I think maybe I see what is in his eyes again, and we’ll see.”
“And?”
“He says ‘done’, just like that, and he asks me if I have some more. I almost fall off my stool, I tell you truthfully.”
I nearly fell off my own stool, right there in the pub. Seven hundred and fifty fucking notes! Fuck me!
The Pole, sees my face, laughs. “Yes! And this is just the smallest one, you understand? So I say yes, I have some more, and his eyes are like saucers immediately. In all the time I do this thing, only a very few times do I see this look in a man’s face which says ‘I will pay whatever you want’. So I bring them out, one by one. You bring me five of them, you remember. He buys them all.”
Baz gapes. “All of them? For seven-fifty each?”
The Pole goes all sly, and winks. “At least,” he says, and I knew there and then that one or two of them went for a lot more than that. There’s quiet for a moment, as we all sip our drinks. I know Baz is trying to do the sums in his head, and not having much luck. I’ve already done them, and I’m a bit pissed off we didn’t realise what we had. Fuck knows what the Pole is thinking.
He finishes his gin in a quick swallow and gets up. “So, thank you, boys. Is a good find. He tell me is turn of the century American silver, from East Coast somewhere, he tell me the name, I forget it, something like Portsmouth, I think. And... well, the man says to me that if I find any more of this thing, he will buy it. Straight away. So... think of me, okay?”
And he winked again, and shuffled his way out through the crowd until we couldn’t see him any more.
“Fuck me,” Baz says, when he’s gone.
“Fuck me is right,” I say. I open the envelope, take out four of the fifties, and give them to him. “There’s your half.”
“Cheers. Mind you,” Baz says, over his beer, “he’s still a fucker. How much did all that add up to?”
“Minimum of seven-fifty each, that’s three grand seven-fifty,” I said. “But from that fucker’s face, I’m thinking he got five, six grand at least. And if he got that off some bloke who knows it’s nicked, then in the shops you got to double or treble it. Probably more.”
“Sheesh. Still, good for him. He didn’t have to see us right.”
“Yeah,” I said, because he wasn’t completely wrong. The Pole could have kept quiet about his windfall. His deal with us was done. “But you know what that cash is really about?”
Baz looked at me, shook his head. He’s a lovely bloke, don’t get me wrong. He’s my best mate. But the stuff in his head is mainly just padding to stop his eyeballs falling in. “What it means is,” I said, “he’s very fucking keen to get some more. In fact, probably says he was lying about the seven-fifty for the cheapest. He got more. Maybe much more. He got so much dosh for them, in fact, it was worth admitting he did well, and paying us a bonus so we go to him if we find any more.”
“Better keep our eyes open, then,” Baz said, cheerfully. “More beer?”
“Cheers,” I said.
I watched him lurch off to the bar. My hand slipped into my pocket, and I found my cold little friend. The bit of polished stone, coral, glass, whatever. I knew then that Clive had been right. My little piece was probably worth a lot of money. The bits of jewellery had been all right, but nowhere near as pretty as my stone.
I wasn’t selling it though, no way. I had got too used to the feel of it in my hand. Twenty, thirty times a day I’d hold it. I liked the way it fitted between my fingers. Longer I had it, better it seemed to fit. Sometimes, if I held it up to my face, I thought I could smell it too. Couldn’t put my finger on what it smelled of, but it was nice, comforting. The Pole wasn’t getting hold of it. Not Jackie neither.
It was mine.
* * *
On the Sunday Baz goes on holiday. He’s off to Tenerife for the week. This is fine by me, because I need time to plan.
Now Baz, he thinks we’ve just got to keep an eye out for this stuff, that it’s something like a particular DVD player or whatever. I know different. If it’s this fucking valuable, then it’s not something we’re just going to find in some gaff in Kentish Town, mixed in with all the shit from Ratners or Argos or wherever. This isn’t just common-or-garden thieving we’re looking at. This is nicking to order, which is a different kind of skill. Happens all the time, of course: you pass the word to the right bloke in the right pub that you want some particular BMW, or a new Mini in cream, and they’ll go do the business for you. There’s big money in it. Not my area, normally, but this is different. We do all right with the usual gear, but if me and Baz can take some more of this silver to the Pole, we can do very nicely indeed. It’s worth making an effort.
So on the Monday night, I’m out on the streets by myself. It’s about ten-thirty. I park the van around the corner, and I take a stroll down the street where the house is, the house where we found the stuff. Couldn’t remember which one it was at first, but in the end I worked it out. All the other houses in this street, they’ve been done up. Windowsills painted, bricks re-pointed, new tiles on the path, that kind of thing. Scaffolding on a couple others. Lot of people have moved in recently, the area’s coming up. But this particular house, it looks a bit more knackered. I’m thinking the people have been there a while, which makes sense, what with it being so untidy inside. Could be they’re foreign. You get that, sometimes. People moved in just after the war or whatever, when it was dirt-cheap. House gets passed on to the children, and then bingo, suddenly they’re sitting on a gold mine. Could be they’re Yanks, even—which would explain the old silver being from the US originally.