The Great California Game

CHAPTER SIX

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THE commonest question is, how can you stay poor yet recognize antiques a mile off, by vibe? The answer’s pretty grim: imagine having responsibilities to every antique you ever met. A divvy has exactly that. It comes with the gift. Like being Dad to all the children on earth, you never know where you are, what to do. Even the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe only had forty kids. She had it made. She should have been a divvy, and learned the hard way.

Plus this thing called crime. Tell anyone that you’re a divvy, and you can see evil thoughts flit through their minds. And they aren’t innocent good-heavens-how-interesting thoughts. They’re greedy how-can-we-use-this-nerk-for-sordid-gain thoughts. I’ve seen it a hundred times. And don’t pretend you’d be any different. You wouldn’t be. Why am I so certain? Because avarice rules, that’s why.

Antiques equal treasure, yes indeed. But some are more equal than others.

Look at your average newspaper. In one week the Greeks re-excavate a temple to the God Poseidon in Corinth, and Boston University architects date it a sensational 665 BC; the Chinese find their earliest known celestial map—painted on a tomb’s vaulted roofing over twenty-one centuries ago; and two new living species of fly are discovered in Wales. I’m thrilled by the first two, because they’re antiques. But the flies are a yawn. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m all for conservation. Flies have to manage as best they can, and have wings and whatnot to do it with. But antiques can’t. They have nothing except soul. And they can only become fewer and shoddier, as we batter and revarnish and “mend”them whenever we think we’ll have a hamfisted go… See? Somebody has to be on their side. So far, I’ve only found me.

TWO o’clock I went to my crummy hotel, and found Zole in the lobby trying to lever open something under the desk.

“Hi, ma man. Watch yo back, Lovejoy. Tye’s waitin’ n’ baitin’”

The greetings alone are enough to wear you out. “Hello, Zole.”

I warned him in passing that the desk dozer was coming back down the corridor, and saw him ease silently out into the street. A minigangster, that one. What had he said? Watch my back? Tye Dee was waiting in my room, talking with Magda. He turned from her the instant he saw me, cutting her dead. It seemed odd at the time, but not later. I gave her a wave, got one in return.

Quarter past, we were in a skyscraper’s lift rising in grand style. We shared the lift with a suave bloke wearing an antique stock pin in his tie, the cret. Can you imagine? It had the true zigzag stem —I could actually see its shape—projecting slightly from his idiot modern tie. Well, I’m used to these Flash Harrys back home so I just glared a bit when he got out on the eighteenth floor in a waft of expensive aftershave.

On the nineteenth floor Mrs. Aquilina was waiting. Not Nicko, not Jennie.

Sumptuous was the only word. I stood in the doorway being searched for concealed ironmongery by Tye while she strolled and blew cigarette smoke towards the vast expanse of windows. She wore a confining black dress, scallop neck, and looked half as young as before.

“Clean,” Tye announced in his gravelly bark, and closed the doors as he left.

“I don’t doubt it.” Mrs. Aquilina avoided smiling, gestured me to sit opposite, a callous trick to play on someone undergoing enforced celibacy. A log fire seemed genuine. The air hummed coolth. The vast flat was dull as ditchwater, everything modern and expensive and thoroughly objectionable. Tastefully decorated, but who cared?

“Today I’m going shopping, Lovejoy.” She had aloofness, but not her husband’s terrifying knack of speaking to distant planets.

“Yes?”

A pause. She didn’t drum her fingers, but was impatient. She returned my gaze, squared. “You’re going to buy me some jewellery.”

“Sorry, missus,” I said apologetically, “I’m not well up in modern stuff. You’ve got some good tom shops in New York —”

“You proved your worth with gems, Lovejoy.”

“Spotting Mrs. Brandau’s jewellery was accidental, Mrs. Aquilina.”

“Sokolowsky gave you full marks. Yes, Blanche. Martini.” A bonny maid appeared and vanished. I wasn’t offered any revelry. “One hour, Lovejoy. Go and dress. Be in the foyer. Dee will show you.”

Dress? I was already clothed. I rose and like an idiot thanked her. For what?

“One thing, Lovejoy.” She ground out her cigarette. “I will not tolerate any more insolence. Last warning.”

“Right. Thank you, Mrs. Aquilina.” I almost nutted the carpet making an exit bow. Blanche’s glance avoided me as I left, but it felt sympathetic.

EXACTLY an hour later I was in the foyer, standing like a lemon with Tye Dee. I kept wondering how I’d been insolent. I’d done my maximum grovel, agreed with everything she said, not complained when she’d not offered me any victuals. I’d been for a shower, shaved again in case I’d missed a chin patch. I was hungry as hell, not having had time to snatch a bite while hurrying down the New York canyons.

Tye Dee had inspected me doubtfully when I arrived. “You okay like that?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Kind of him, I thought in my innocence. He looked monolithic, even bigger in daylight. I felt as if I were standing beside a gasworks. I watched people come and go through the foyer.

“Lookin’ at people?” he said after a while, suspicious rather than interested. ”

“Eh? Oh. I try to guess what they do.”

The foyer was marble and brass. A modern desk was set out for the receptionist, flowers and notepads and console, a couple of couches for waiting serfs. Except Tye had told me to stand beside him at the windows. A doorman in comic opera regimentals strode about marshalling taxis and leaping to serve. Mostly ladies, one or two with the tiniest dogs you ever did see. Fantastic. One was no bigger than a mouse, and wore a collar worth me twice.

“Rum world, eh?” I said conversationally.

“Uh?”

“Rum world, Tye.” I nodded to indicate the diminutive hound being passed to a liveried chauffeur. “Bet that dog’s got more servants than —”

He did an odd thing. He spun me round to face him. It took hardly any effort on his part, but I was held in a vice, completely immobile. I’d never seen anybody move so fast. His face lowered and he spoke softly.

“You say nuthin’, Lovejoy, less’n you’re spoke to. Got that?”

“If you say so, Tye,” I got out, throttled.

“No names. We’re not here, see? Gina’s our total responsibility.”

He lowered me to the ground and let go. I straightened and recovered my breath. Don’t speak. Don’t mention names. Protect Mrs. Aquilina. Do as you’re expected to do, which meant be invisible and anonymous. Take the money and do the job, in whatever order either comes. I sighed inwardly as the lift went and sundry serfs leapt to fawn on Mrs. Aquilina as she emerged. Okay America, I thought, you’re the boss. I too advanced, smiling the anxious smile of the abject ingrate.

She swept by me without a word, doors parting and kulaks bowing and scraping. I trotted after, a humble ninth in the entourage. Except there was something wrong. And it wasn’t that Mrs. Aquilina also seemed mad at me. It was that a bloke stepping forward in the morning coat of a hotel manager had a luscious eighteenth-century stock pin, ruby head and zigzag stem, in his lapel. Lovely stone, glamorous design, gold mount all just the same as earlier. I’ve only seen about six in my life. Now two on the same day, in one building? Were there scores in New York? And he’d grown a moustache—in an hour?

“Excuse me,” I said, plucking Tye’s sleeve as our lady stopped and we all collided up against each other.

“Shtum.” It was more than a hiss, not proper speech. I only wanted to explain about the bloke with the tiepin, ask why a stylish gent in sunglasses and suave gear would want to change into serf’s uniform. Was he too one of us hirelings, on perpetual guard against New York’s unknowable mayhem? If so, it was overdoing things a bit. This Nicko lot seemed to live on its nerves… Then I saw Tiepin look at a dark blue motor down the street, surreptitiously raise his hand. Two men. Tye was facing the other way, though he scanned the traffic closely as we left the foyer for the pavement.

Mrs. Aquilina got into her limo. I recognized the driver. Tye said, “Hi, Tony,” so that was all right. I made to follow her into the motor. She rounded on me from the interior.

“Out!” she snapped. I’d never seen anybody so furious. “You look like a hobo! Out!”

Tye hauled me back onto the pavement, saying desperately, “Wait, Gina —”

“Andiamo!”

Tiepin disappeared into the building, moving faster than a major domo should. They stroll, august and serene. This one was… escaping? Definitely at a fast trot. Wrong. Our limo containing Mrs. Aquilina moved off, I thought a little slower than normal. And Tony’s gloved hand reached out of his window and slickly tapped the limo’s roof. Why?

The big blue motor down the street started up, rolled after her no more than sixty feet.

Tye was signalling to a taxi — so the strange motor with the two men couldn’t be ours. Therefore they were…

I barged the commissionaire aside, grabbed his posh metal stand and heaved the damned thing into the road, catching the blue motor. Two other cars swerved. The blue limo tried hard, but dived into a skidding yellow taxi. Tyres squealed, glass fractured and horns parped.

A passing scruff delightedly went, “Wow-eeee, man!” Drivers began bawling with that immediacy New Yorkers manage so easily. I’d never seen so many gestures. Even pedestrians joined in, exclaiming and gesticulating and thronging about. Tye had vanished. Some friend, I thought bitterly. Just when I wanted him.

The commissionaire had me in some deathlock. It had taken ten seconds. I was alone, the centre of attention. In one minute flat I was arrested. The druggie bent to peer in at me as I was clouted into the police car. “Wow-eeee!” he cried after us. I wore handcuffs, heavier and more serviceable than ours. The policemen were about two stone overweight, and brutal masters of invective. Genuine police, at last. I’d made it back to normal.