The Great California Game

CHAPTER FIVE

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THAT Monday started so odd that I began to wonder what I was doing wrong. Or right. I had a visitor, discovered a familiar face, and got yet another job.

The minute I arrived at Manfredi’s I got an envelope. The place was hardly open when in came a Suit. It was the huge truncated man who’d sat beside the limo driver the previous night. He gave me a thick manila, asked for coffee.

“I’m Tye Dee, Lovejoy,” he said without blinking. He sat on a stool like a cartoon elephant, overflowing all round. “I bring the word. Capeesh?”

“Sure, sure.” The word?

He watched me pour coffee, then left without touching it. Lil was close by and gave a phew.

“Ya got him for a friend, Lovejoy, ya gotta friend.”

Well, hardly a friend. I opened the envelope, found it stocked with money. Hastily I hid it and hoped nobody had seen. Josephus and Jonie were busy, and Delia was in Fredo’s office signing on a new waitress. Maybe this was my pay for my extra unknowable job. The speed of America was bewildering. Should I tell Fredo? Was there a message in with the gelt? I was scared to look, with Manfredi’s starting to fill with breakfast customers. I gave Fredo the envelope to stick in his office safe.

That day, I started taking an interest in the bar’s television. We always kept it on. As the hours slid by in a cacophony of talk I kept watch, throwing in the occasional comment about politicians, bankers, showbiz personalities as they showed on screen. I wasn’t being nosy, you understand. Just human. Fredo had been blunt: I should say nothing about the special job he’d sent me on. I understood that. Us illegal immigrant workers love anonymity. But there’s nothing wrong with learning about a city, is there?

By evening I started activating the customers. I’d got nowhere with the telly.

“Hey, man,” I responded to one enthusiast who’d challenged my supreme ignorance about New York. “I’m from the West Coast. What do I know?”

He was a regular, a cheery early-nighter from Brooklyn. I got him onto local politicians, easy with so many news bulletins on the million TV channels they have.

“See, N’York’s a kinda special case,” he told me, well into his third manhattan. “This city’s the world’s business leader. The Federal Government should help, ’stead of trying to tax us out of existence.”

A lively debate struck up. Everybody seemed to be from somewhere else, but with know-all opinions about running New York.

The elegant lady—she of the Belgian gold handbag —the far corner soon after six, silently reading, but listening.

“Look at the way Washington treats N’York…”

“Mmmh,” I went, polishing glasses, serving. “Sure does.”

Background was my role in life. Get enough money for the fare homeward. Until then, be silent as wallpaper, your friendly barman.

“Hi, Lovejoy. Remember me?”

“Hi, Rose.” It was a careful greeting. She’d cautioned me yesterday about saying “Howdy’. I was narked, but she’d said it’s cowboy. “What can I get you?”

“You have to ask, Lovejoy?”

Tunafish salad, sliced eggs, coffee, glass of white wine. And her usual end stool. I served as Brooklyn’s argument heated up. Lil chipped in. It was all so friendly. Lovely, innocent, and so American.

Still no recognizable faces on the news. Good newscasters, a hundred times better than ours back home. One up for USA.

Maybe it was preying on my mind, but by now I was almost certain I’d seen two of the faces before. I could only have seen them on the news. I’m hopeless with names, but I love faces. The trouble is we disguise ourselves with posh speech, fine clothes. We go about hoping everybody thinks we went to a better school than we actually did. Or that we’re richer. Anything but truth. Faces are often the only way in to the real person beneath. I wish I’d remembered that. It might have saved a life.

Rose spun out her meal for well over two hours. By then Manfredi’s was quiet, the cheerful arguers reduced to sports grumblers. She put it to me as I passed her the chit.

“Lovejoy. Moira wants to know if you’ll call. Maybe come round for coffee after work?” She smiled at my hesitation. “She’ll pay the taxi to your hotel.”

“I’m not good with relatives, love.”

“A paying job, Lovejoy. Antique stuff.”

She was speaking confidentially. Nobody else within earshot.

“Fine.”

She slid off the stool. “You remember the address?”

“It’s the only one I know in New York.” She left a tip, to my embarrassment, but Delia barked at me when I demurred.

“We’re taxed eight per cent of our salary, Lovejoy. Refuse a tip, you’re subsidizing Uncle Sam.”

“Thank you, miss,” I called after Rose. A minute later, the elegant woman in the corner also left. No coincidence, not any more. She was Moira all right. But why the secrecy?

What harm could a third job do? I’d already got two. I joked my way towards closing time. Fredo quietly told me he was pleased I’d done well at Mr Aquilina’s, and to leave an hour earlier that night. He looked rough and tired, so I said I’d stay. He insisted. I obeyed.

NINEISH on a wet New York evening isn’t beautiful. I walked carefully, keeping to the well-lit areas as Rose had told me. I saw some old geezer preaching God is Love and was coming to exterminate us. Two blokes were brawling on the pavement with drunken sluggishness. People in doorways start soliciting an hour after dark, demanding change and offering packets of God-knows-what. Taxis always seem to be heading the opposite way.

Odd, but the dozy old man on the hotel counter gave me a greeting, his first ever. Really unnerved, I climbed up to my grotty pad, and found Jennie there. Now, I always keep the room key whenever I’m in a hotel, so she was a surprise.

She didn’t move, just pointed to the chair opposite. No smile. I exhaled, having had some ludicrous notion of asking what the hell but deciding the better of it. Where Nicko’s catering manageress was, various goons wouldn’t be far behind.

“Zircons, Lovejoy.”

I was beginning to wish I’d never mentioned the bloody things. “Did I get some wrong, then?” I meant the jewel tests they’d made me do.

“No.” She was eyeing me like I was a curiosity. For women this is nothing new, but I’d thought America would be different. “Hundred per cent. Even the mounted gems.”

Oh oh. I knew what was coming. There’d been a piece of beautiful amber in a Balkan wooden carved mount. I’d loved it. These votive pieces are religious objects, nothing truly valuable in themselves but exquisite antiques. (Take care. There’s a zillion forgeries about, usually copal resin with carved walnut wood, mostly made in Italy.) It had chimed warmly at me. It was authentic all right. At the time, I’d vaguely wondered about the coincidence. Rose’s amber, now this.

“One of which you didn’t even touch, Lovejoy.”

“Miss one, did I?” I said brightly. ”Well, get the old soak to drop it by and I’ll —”

“Sokolowsky says you didn’t. A wooden-cased amber pendant. Yet you scored it genuine.”

“He’d nodded off, Jennie,” I lied quickly.

“We video everything at Brookmount.” She stood, walked the one pace and twitched the curtain. It shed dust over her. “You’re some sort of divvy, Sokolowsky tells us.”

Good old Mr Sokolowsky, not as sleepy as he’d seemed. And who was this us?

“Guesswork.”

“Could you repeat the test, Lovejoy? On other items of our choosing?”

She spoke with authority greater than that of the usual serf. Jennie was big medicine. In fact, I bet that she and Nicko… I tried a disingenuous smile, little boy found out—

I said offhand, “Sometimes guesses work.”

“Life or death on it, Lovejoy?”

I swallowed. “Er, look Jennie. I, er…”

“Just tell me the truth.” She was simply asking, perhaps even a little sad. “If you aren’t a divvy, that’s fine. Nicko wouldn’t blame you, for a skill you haven’t got. If you are, that’s fine too. Just don’t lie.”

Her voice had gone hard. I nodded a yes.

“Only for antiques, Jennie.”

That made her think. She started to speak, cut out, reached inner agreement.

“Very well. Be here two o’clock tomorrow. Nicko has an idea.”

“I’m sorry, but I…” Her expression changed to a light sleet. I smiled my most ingratiating smile. “Right, right.”

She paused on her way to the door. “Good luck, Lovejoy. Mrs. Aquilina is very… strict with all employees.”

“Meaning what?” I asked, but the door wafted her away into New York, leaving me alone.

Lovely lass, worried sick and living on her nerves. Nicko her lover, yet she warns me about Nicko’s wife’s fearsome nature. I could do without all those implied threats. But that tip about Mrs. Aquilina unsettled me.

I put the telly news on to get the time, and coming back from the washroom with my one towel I caught sight of a face I recognized. It was Brandau, his wife Sophie beside him. That was why I couldn’t decide why it was one face or two. I switched off and went out to get a taxi, smiling at the irony. Maybe they’d be in some newspaper tomorrow—if newspapers in America did what newspapers do all the time back home, simply filch their scoops off the nine o clock news and pretend.

“SORRY I’m late.”

Rose let me in, more flustery than usual. I’d have said edgily excited, had I known her better.

“I’m pleased you came, Lovejoy.” She smiled me into a chair, sat with an intent frown.

“Do you know anything about Sherlock Holmes, Lovejoy? Conan Doyle?”

“Nothing. I remember the Basil Rathbone films, though.”

She winced. I sighed inwardly. Was she one of those truly boring fans who dress up?

“Not quite the same thing as Dr Watson’s accounts, Lovejoy.”

She made it a reprimand. I mmmhed to show I thought the same, though quite honestly these nerks who forever delve into fictional characters as if they were real people annoy me. She spoke as if Dr Watson was real, which tipped me the wink that she was one of those loons who’d come to believe the writer’s fantasy. It’s a danger we all skate near.

“Dr Watson didn’t write the stories, love,” I said clearly, to nip delusions in the bud. “He was fictitious. The real-life physician was Conan Doyle.”

“Lovejoy. My sister has made a lifelong study of the Holmes literature.”

“Good.” I waited. Rose was acting on Moira’s instructions.

“I’ve a proposition, Lovejoy. Your antiques expertise convinces me you are the right person.”

My newest new job loomed. I donned a pleasant you-can’t-mean-me smile. “I doubt it, Rose. You need an antiquarian if you’re making a collection of Sherlockiana.”

“Let me tell you a story, Lovejoy.” Rose was hovering, tidying piles of papers, quietly placing books. “It’s the most valuable of all modern manuscripts.”

“Not that old joke about some beautiful?”

It was honestly meant as a quip, but I saw her face set in anger, suddenly suppressed. She knew instantly what I meant. A “beautiful” in the antiques trade is a long-lost treasure. Captain Kidd’s chests of gold, King Solomon’s Mines, Chippendale’s secret warehouse in Wapping, that ton of priceless pearls hidden under Birmingham, the whole dustbin of burdensome fable which troubles us antique dealers night, day and dawn. I’m not being unromantic. It’s just that the public ought to grow up. George Washington’s secret treaties with the Emperor of China, King George or Napoleon are so secret they never existed at all. See what I mean? Getting close to myths is dangerous. You start believing.

She calmed, with effort. “Lovejoy. I expected better from you. It’s a matter of simple record that Dr Conan Doyle wrote The Narrative of John Smith about the time he married Louise Hawkins. His first novel! The manuscript was lost in the post.”

Well, what’s in a name? Though I should talk, with a name like Lovejoy. I tried to remember. Conan Doyle? It’s one of those names which slip in and out of consciousness like sparrows through your headlights, gone unremarked. I’d better own up.

“I know nowt about him, love.”

“My father’s people came from Southsea. Where Dr Conan Doyle practised. Where, in fact, he wrote it.”

“This being the Sherlock beautiful? The John Smith novel?”

“Of course.”

Pity. I decided that the USA was now a terrible disappointment. America should have done better. What about all those ancient land deals with the Red Indians? The lost deeds to whole silver mountains? Columbus’s long-lost maps, Captain Henry Morgan’s treasure from sacking Panama? If I started starving here I’d have to fake a few Eric the Red mementoes…

“Thanks for the offer, Rose. I’d best be getting back. Big working day tomorrow.”

Rose watched me rise. I hesitated, but what claim did she have on me? I mean, okay, Rose had befriended me. And I’d welcomed it. But that didn’t mean I had to listen to her barmy ramblings.

“See you,” I said cheerfully.

I was making my way to the door when Rose spoke. “Moira?”

The elegant woman stepped into the room. I’d assumed the little door led to a closet, toilet, some nook. Careless old Lovejoy.

“My sister, Lovejoy,” she explained apologetically.

“You’ll help us, Lovejoy.” Her voice was as melodious as she looked, but with added threat.

“Not me, love.”

“Lovejoy,” Moira said, perching on the desk with such style that like a fool I stopped to gape. “Late of Hong Kong. Before that, East Anglia.” She even gave the address of my cottage. “Divvy, wanted by your own police. By antique dealer syndicates. In debt to seventeen antique dealers, two finance houses, three mortgage companies. All that plus six lawsuits, Lovejoy—as soon as I have you deported as an illegal alien.”

Rose was pale as her sister spoke. I dithered, returned, cleared my throat, looked at the time. Nigh midnight, and me being blackmailed into balderdash.

“You’ve got the wrong bloke, Moira,” I tried for the record.

“Rose?”

“Yes, Moira.” Rose passed me a sheaf of typewritten notes. Taking them, my mind went: My career was documented pretty well, but with that bizarre slant with which libel uses truth. “We are associated with antiquarians in England, Lovejoy. It took only an evening’s phoning. People didn’t even have to look you up. They already knew you.”

See how falsehoods spread? I was indignant with the sly bitch, but swallowed my ire. Why was deportation such a threat? Maybe America deports illegals to wherever they want to go! I could try for Australia, if they’d let me. Yes. That was clearly the way. Resist this attempt to blackmail me into helping the loony women. Bluff and double bluff. Be strong, show defiance. The American Way!

“All right,” I said weakly. “What do I have to do?”

BEING in the greatest of all lands is all very well, but antiques are antiques. And money rules. I was fast learning that America knew money. It is very, very dear to the US of A’s big beating heart.

In my time as a dealer I’ve seen all sorts of legend about priceless antiques. Every dealer has. Crazy, daft, loony—but they’ve generated fortunes, liaisons and affairs that have led to multiple murders, robberies galore. I’ve seen a million ancient charts to Lost Cities, King Solomon’s Mines, Merlin’s magic wands, Beethoven’s missing symphonies, and extinct species of plants living on under the Cotswold Hills. All pure imagination, maybe nothing more than wishes formed of faded sorrows. But—remember this—all confidence tricks have a basis in greed. And cons make money, right?

So I did a little diligent spadework using New York’s phones. And after a fortune in coins so minute I kept dropping the damned things, I got through to Thurlough in Buxton, Derbyshire. It felt really strange talking with somebody on the other side of the Atlantic but who sounded within reach. I had to shout over the night traffic.

“Thurly? Lovejoy. I haven’t got long.”

“Lovejoy? Do you know what frigging time it is?”

“Sod the time, Thurly. Look. A Sherlock Holmes bookseller…?”

“The best?” He took time off to complain to his missus that Lovejoy was ringing at this hour. They sounded in bed. “That’ll be Brian Cheeryble.”

Cheeryble, opposite the British Museum, up those rickety stairs. I got Thurly to find me the number, and when he tried to suss me out told him I had a chance of an earthenware bust of Conan Doyle, probably a modern fake. He rang off still grumbling, old misery. Brian Cheeryble. He’d know about any Conan Doyle grailer, if anyone would. I’d not contact him until I’d learned what I was really contacting him about.