The Great California Game

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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SHOPPING is hell. God knows what women get out of it, but for me it’s Doom City. Today, it was even worse, because I’d been sent out with Orly, who clearly hated me.

“For a start,” I grumbled as we trekked from shop to shop, “everything’s new. Different with antiques.”

“Lovejoy.” He stopped, right there in the middle of Fifth Avenue, arms full of parcels, and tried to stare me down. It didn’t work, because I was in the California Game too, whatever it was. “I don’t trust you. You’re a loose cannon. You’ll roll about the deck and sink our ship. I know it. Okay. But don’t try charming me. You’re today’s Fifth Column.”

“Don’t hold back, Orly. Spit it out.”

He didn’t smile.

“There’ll be a comeuppance, Lovejoy. You’ll die the death. After you’re buried I’ll laugh all I want.”

“Orly,” I said, riling him who was determined to be riled. “Did you think that silk tie was worth the money? Only —”

He dumped the parcels in our limo—it was following us—and marched imperiously into the next store.

“Orly,” I tried every so often. “How comes it that you and Gina, well, y’know? While Nicko and Jennie are… ?”

“Stupid,” was all he said back.

I noticed Zole ogling us from across the street. He saw me in a brand new off-the-peg suit, trendy shoes, striped shirt. His yo-yo almost froze in mid-air. He didn’t come across, though I waved. I wondered what they’d say in Fredo’s.

I got into the car after him and tapped our driver on the shoulder. “Manfredi’s Eatery, mate.”

“Orly?” the driver asked.

“Bugger Orly,” I said. “I told you Manfredi’s.”

We drove to Manfredi’s. I endured a few minutes of leg-pulling from Della and Lil, was congratulated by Josephus in a melodiously outdated rap, envied by Jonie, and caused Fredo moans of outright grief by resigning. No sign of Rose. I made them drop me off at the corner by Hawkins’s, and got a satisfactory ping! from the little bell over the bookshop door. Seeing Orly’s thunderous face as the limo rolled away was pleasant.

Rose was at the desk, invoicing.

“Lovejoy!” she cried, flushing red as fire, “I thought you’d left us in the lurch!”

I bussed her cheek, looked round smiling. “Won a few quid on a, er, betting game.”

“You look splendid! Moira’ll be thrilled!”

“How’s Moira?”

Her expression clouded. “Busy. She’s at a meeting.”

As ever, I added for her. With Denzie Brandau. I did a stroll. No customers behind the stacks.

“Listen, Rose. This money I’ve got. It could take you and me to Southsea. We could bring over the Sherlock!”

“Uh-huh.” Another New York enigmatic, meaning anything you cared to read in. “Well, that’s great, Lovejoy!”

Meaning I was to serve, not lead. Okay, but it wouldn’t do.

“I’ll book our flights, okay?” I coursed over her indecision. “Tell Moira we’ll be there and back within a week.”

“Wait, Lovejoy,” she tried desperately, but I’d already bussed her and was out of the door heading off down the street, calling that I’d be back about four.

For a couple of blissful hours I delved into the public library, Fifth Avenue west side, looking up California and various people, with patchy success. Nice library, though the white marble and the smug lions by the steps cloy, and its marble candelabra are a bit much. I loved it. No sign of Zole at the corner, so I used the public phone. Still amazed by the cheapness of the USA phone system —ours in UK’s three times dearer.

“Lovejoy. Locations, please. Moira Hawkins, Sophie Brandau.”

“One moment.” And, less than five seconds I swear, the girl gave me both.

“Ta, love. I’m going to the latter.”

Moira at a hotel restaurant in which, surprise surprise, Denzie Brandau happened to be chairing a campaign fund-raiser. Sophie was at home, so I phoned her, asked her could I see her urgently in strictest confidence. I got a taxi to Park Avenue, where the doorman fawned. Flung to the penthouse by a lift that just managed to judder to a halt before crashing out into orbit, I rang the bell. Sophie herself came to the door.

THE Theory of Sexual Understanding is mine. I created it. It works between a man and a woman. It’s this: everything’s up to her. I coined it years ago over a bird I fell for over some antique she said she owned. God, I slogged, broke my heart, agonized, plotted, just to get near her. Nearly four whole days. I finally gave it up as hopeless on a rainy Thursday at an antiques auction. She came in, offhandedly told me she’d brought along her Roman mosaic glass bowl, about 10 AD. (These small objects, astonishingly difficult to fake, are still pretty common.) I shrugged and went with her to the auctioneer’s yard.

In her car, she practically raped me, whimpering and ripping at my clothes. The car windows mercifully steamed up and the auction was under way so nobody saw us. I hope. Her preoccupied husband was at the same auction. See what I mean? I’d set out to win her affections, against all odds, and failed. Then she decides on frontal assault, and it’s the halleluiah smile. Of course, the lying cow really hadn’t got a Roman mosaic glass anything, so my love didn’t stand the test of time and I ditched her for a vicar’s widow whose collection of Continental barometers came up for sale about then.

My ToSU worked the second Sophie opened the door. I myself am never quite sure when a woman takes the decision. But I am certain it’s always up to her. We blokes just trot along obediently hoping the whim’s in the right direction. But I knew I was favoured. Not that she did anything to suggest she was about to. I mean, her reception of me was almost exactly the same as Gina’s, by which I mean an erg above glacial. She looked imperial, gowned as if for an evening do.

No maid, I realized, but that incidental’s never more than half a clue, and open to misinterpretation.

“No, thanks.” I declined the offer of a drink. “I didn’t come because of your antiques, Sophie.” I didn’t need to mimic hesitation. I was worried enough. “It’s that something’s really wrong. But I want to help, any way I can.”

“I know.” She didn’t mind her hand in mine.

“Look, love. I’ve been taken on the payroll by Gina, to advise on antiques. I’ve been told it’s to do with the California Game. I’m telling you this, well, because.”

“What are you saying, Lovejoy?”

Why ask me? I wasn’t really sure. “Anything I can do for you, love, I will. I promise.” Aghast, my brain shrieked caution, not to make frigging promises that might get it killed. I wallowed on just because of the way she was looking at me.

“I need help, Lovejoy.” Tears welled in her eyes. She suppressed them, came to.

“I don’t mean I’ll help Denzie. I mean help you.”

Drive a harder bargain, you pillock! shrieked my brain in a panic. What’s she giving in return for lobbing us both in jeopardy?

“Please, Lovejoy. He’s not a bad man. Honestly. I promise you. He’s just… wayward, driven by ambition. He’s a consummate politician, capable, kind. Everybody’Il tell you. He’s in line for the next presidential nomination. People don’t know Denzie. I don’t know which way to turn, not since Moira inveigled him into taking a half share in the Sherlock stake.”

I let her talk through her exhortations, hopes, fears. I rose and went to stand, as if in deep tortured thought, before a decorative shelf of pewter tankards that pulled me like a magnet. I’d been dying to inspect them ever since I’d stepped into the flat. I was so excited by what I saw I almost shouted the joyous news to Sophie. In the nick of time I remembered I was in spiritual anguish, and just loved that dulled glowing metal. They were stupendous, the only complete set of Channel Isles tankards I’d ever seen. The giveaway is the measure, for obstinate old Jersey people still use the “pot”, which is a cool 69.5 fluid ounces. All six stood there, each with cunning little double acorns on the thumb catches. I stood, warmed with love. How many ancients had drunk from them in their two centuries? You don’t get love like that any more —

“Lovejoy?”

Sophie was asking me something. She’d come to stand beside me. I turned away from the pewters, heartbreak coming easy.

“Shhhh.” I put my finger to her lips. “I promise I’ll help Denzie.”

“You will?”

My brain resigned, stormed out of ken shrieking abuse and insults. But what could I do? She was closer, letting her hands touch my jacket and gradually raising her gaze from my chest towards my face and then opening her mouth ever so slightly and keeping her eyes fixed on my mouth as she gave the gentlest of tugs so we were closer than ever and what could I do when it’s women decide every single time?

“DARLING?”

Sophie moved with a woman’s awkwardness from sin into confession. I never have any problem shifting these gears. They do. Mmmmmh?

Women’s greatest—maybe only—mistake is to chatter straight after love’s made. Beats me why. What’s there to say? But they find something, anything. If ever I find a woman willing to stay mum during that transitory death after loving, I’d love her for nowt. I know I keep on about this.

“Darling. I didn’t… you know? Just to… y’know, Lovejoy?”

“Mmmh?” (See? They don’t even know themselves.)

“I don’t want you to think, well, just because.”

“Mmmh.”

“You don’t, do you?” Apprehension raised the ending, so a denial would suit best.

I gave up, carried the small death along, rolled over to find her propped on one elbow. The bedroom was semi-dark, curtains drawn. We were a million feet off the ground, but she’d had to ensure we were safe from the prying balloonists.

“Look, love.” I couldn’t stop looking at her breasts. She covered them by gathering her nightdress with her spare hand. I hadn’t remembered her donning a nightie, but orthodoxy rules. “If you think I’m that cynical, then —”

She shushed me. “I just want to hear you say you don’t think that way.”

“Do I need to, love?” I’m easily confused. Was she asking me to deny an affirmative based on a denial of a suspicion… or the opposite?

“Please.”

“Very well.” No chance of escaping with a light laugh. I cupped her lovely face. “Sophie Brandau, your anxieties are unfounded. I admire you. I fell for you instantly. I’m head over heels in love with you.” I gave her a quiet smile, my sincerity revealed.

She sighed in relief. The answer she’d needed was in there somewhere.

“Thank you.” She lay back, thinking. I waited. After confession, the penance. They go for both together. Sometimes I wonder if it’s women whose instincts determine religious liturgy. You could make out quite a case.

“Lovejoy. Were you… shocked by, well, by it all?”

What the hell now? “You want the truth?” I asked with reluctance. “Yes, quite frankly. It was something…” Words are such sods. I never know which ones women want.

“I knew it, darling. I could tell. But you must realize. America’s a harsh country. Below the surface we don’t make any allowances. It’s dog-eat-dog. The California Game’s that.”

At last I was in. A moment’s thought, so as not to spoil the drift of her talk, then, “But why need it be quite so… ?”

Women are good at jumping to conclusions, even when other people haven’t the faintest idea what they’re talking about.

“Enormous is America’s way— And it isn’t necessarily corrupt. The sports percentages would still get slipped to some syndicate no matter who was playing the championship. Political nominations always have been fixed. Drug companies have done secret deals ever since they were quoted on Wall Street. Drugs arrive in tons, not ounces, so payola rolls on over all Federal enforcement agencies. It’s the American way to grab a piece of the action. A percentage of major-city real-estate development always gets hived off…”

Antiques, business, labour movements, union dues, local politics, imports. I listened, wondering. Game? Stakes?

“I just wish it had stayed at that level for Denzie’s sake. But ever since Moira’s crazy idea that he’d have a cast-iron presidential ticket, he’s been like a mad thing. It was Moira’s idea to add it to the stake.”

“Shhh, love,” I said. “Hold together for a moment. Forget all this. You’ve an ally at last.”

We lay embracing, langour and warmth stealing over us.

“Darling?” she said at last.

“Yes, love.”

“Are there… are there different ways of making love?

Sometimes, women don’t expect uncertainty. They’re positive we blokes know everything about sex. You lose credibility by showing hesitancy. It’s one of the few times reflexes come to help. Even my brain went along this time. We answered jointly in the affirmative.

ORLY delivered me at Bethune’s, by 74th Street near Columbus Avenue. I grumbled because I was starving, and Anita’s Chili Parlor exuded aromas that made me weak at the knees. Even if it was spelled wrong—America’s got rotten spelling—we could give it a try. Orly wouldn’t hear of it, hurried me in.

The place itself was another disappointment. The showroom was nearly bare, with a few Edwardian bits of furniture, a silver salver or two, a scatter of paintings that had yet to age into conviction, a couple of scientific instruments—a microscope, sextant, a couple of timepieces—of modern design. Fatty Jim Bethune came to greet us, cigar in pollution phase, waistcoat bristling pens.

“Lovejoy, huh? You’re going to revitalize the antiques stake, huh?”

“How do.” I put out a hand. He ignored it, shouted to a matronly assistant to take five, and wheezed into a captain’s chair—fake, lacquered brass studs, railings set into coarse six-ply. We sat on a poor 1940s couch fraying in a desperate attempt at authenticity.

Orly gave me a warning glance. Whatever it was, I was in the California Game now. Gina’d said so. Presumably just as much as this gentleman. We were all evidently sharing one stake.

“He doesn’t know much about the Game, Jim,” Orly said.

“Then what the hell? Sheet, this ain’t no nursery.”

“He’s a divvy, a scammer from the old country.”

“Jees.” Bethune wheezed, coughed, spat phlegm into a huge handkerchief. His hair flopped with every breath, side to side with metronomic regularity. I watched it, fascinated. “What you do, Lovejoy?”

“Do?”

“Jesus H. Christ.” He stared. His eyes were rheumy close to, set small into putty features. “You think N’York’s a pushover? That it?”

“Well, actually —”

“You listen up, dumbo.” He leant forward to prod. “Jennie passes word, okay we got to. But you’re shit here, right?”

The pause seemed long to me, but maybe it was infinitesimal. He took my silence as meekness. He was nearly right.

Ash fell onto his waistcoat. He looked shop soiled. It crossed my mind that maybe Jim Bethune was less than superb at running the antiques side of things for the Aquilinas and their stake in the Game. Maybe I was here as a stopgap? Catalyst?

“We raise our part of the stake, Lovejoy. From antiques. You heard antiques?” His flab oscillated with merriment, settled as the wheezes died. “We take a cut of selected prices from the auction houses. We’re currently adding a national museum to our contributions…” More splutters of amusement. “… They start contributing next week. In time for any little card playing we might wanta do.”

I waited for the jubilation to lessen. “How do you make them chip in?”

His eyes were beads through a smoke veil.

“This dumbo’s going to raise our ante, Orly?”

Orly smiled weakly.

Bethune spoke quite kindly, as if he’d realized at last that I was no threat.

“We make a bomb threat against a museum, right? It’s glad to pay a little, stop them bad old bombs. Same with auction houses. It’s regular money.”

“You accept payment how?”

His pleasantry evaporated. “That’s no concern of yours, boy, and don’t you —”

He stubbed his cigar, lit a fresh one from a humidor younger than himself. In an antiques warehouse? But I was all attention to this mastermind, and clearly listening with nothing less than total admiration.

“Pay? Okay. They see Bethune’s gets antiques to the value of the protection money. I sell, and that forms the stake, see? It’s simple, easy.”

“That’s amazing, Mr Bethune!” I exclaimed. “Don’t they go to the police?”

I felt Orly stir, as if he suspected pretence.

“Police, Lovejoy?” Bethune grinned, charred teeth sausaged in two rolls of pink blubber. “We got friends there.”

I warned myself not to overdo it. “But suppose this museum doesn’t pay up?”

He was amused at my naivety. “Why, a little fire in their basement. Nothing serious.”

“Marvellous, Mr Bethune,” I said, clearly thrilled. “Well, thank you for explaining. Is there anything you want me to do? I’m ready to help.”

He smirked at the very thought. “Not yet, Lovejoy. I’ll be sure and let you know.”

“Orly. Anything else to add?” I asked meekly.

He was puzzled, but a little wary. “No. Jim’s covered it all.”

I rose, smiled, said thanks. “Then I’d better report in. Can I use your phone, Mr Bethune?”

There was one on the wall nearby. I rang the number, got the girl with the mechanical voice.

“Lovejoy. Urgent for Mrs. Aquilina, please.”

Waiting to be connected, I smiled at Bethune, who was telling Orly about some joker who’d wanted to negotiate a reduction in the protection fee. Fatty was very, very relieved I’d proved such a mug.

“Gina? Lovejoy. I’ve just finished with Mr Bethune. Yes, Orly’s here.” I listened, nodding as she asked if everything was satisfactory. “Yes, definitely. Mr Bethune’s done a perfectly neat job. Pleasing himself. He’s a dud. Replace him forthwith. Brains of a rocking horse.”

The line was silent a moment. Gina asked, “Can he hear this?”

“Yes. Bethune’s right here.” I looked back. Bethune’s complexion had gone muddy, his eyes currants in plaster. I gave attention to the phone. “Still there, love?”

“That was unwise, Lovejoy. You should have —”

“No orders in antiques, love. Anything else, I’ll hear and obey. This cret’s ripping you off. He’s taking a double cut, first on the levy, then on the antiques’ selling price. He’s hiving.”

“Hiving?”

“Taking a toll on every transaction. Your income’s less than half what it should be. Before you ask, no, he’s not told me the figures.”

“What action do you recommend, Lovejoy?”

“Do I get paid this time?”

She got the joke. “No. You’re being well paid—in dollars. Jennie’s fixed your account today. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“However much, it’s second best.” Into her gentle laugh I said, “Bethune— Save him. Demote to second advisor.”

“But Orly has other duties. So who’ll be first?”

“Me.”

“I might have guessed.” She hesitated. “One thing, Lovejoy. After what you said, you’ve got to raise the income for our stake in the California Game. You understand? Whatever Bethune raised, you must double.”

My throat was suddenly dry. Maybe Sophie had taken more out of me than I’d realized. “I understand.”

“I’ll send immediate help, in case.” A pretty hesitation, then, “Good luck, Lovejoy.”

I hung up. “Right, lads,” I told the pair cheerfully. “Let’s get down to it. Jim, you’re sacked. Okay?”

They’d both risen, appalled. The antique dealer was gazing across at the windows, the low-grade antiques, as his world imploded. Orly was motionless. He was an irritation, this one.

“Gina’s sending a team along. Here, Orly. Do you reckon that Anita’s place does takeaways? Hop across and bring some grub. I’m starving.”

He moved towards the phone. Enemies nark me. especially as I’d done nothing to make him my foe. “No, Orly. Bring it yourself. Plenty of them bread things. And be quick about it—or I’ll tell teacher.”

Orly was white. He swallowed, exhaled long and steadily. The effort to walk out of the door was superhuman, but he did it. Thoughtfully I watched him go. Funny, that. It raised the question of whether Gina was in league with the private scam Orly was running, or whether he was in it only with Fatty Bethune. But I’d peeped from Mrs. van Cordlant’s kitchen, and seen Bethune and Denzie Brandau paying her a clandestine visit, which raised the question of whether… My head ached.

“Jim,” I said quietly to the fat man. “A quick word.”

A limo slid to a stop outside, illegal parking. Tye Dee and three Suits alighted, came in. I waved. “Wotcher, Tye. Can you have a quick shufti round, see the doors are locked, and bring the staff? That means everybody, okay?” I was beginning to like this okay at the end of everything. It was sort of inviting, friendly. Tye scattered his people. A neat dapper bloke entered carrying a briefcase. I sighed. Accountants were arriving.

“The office, please. Impound all files, get them in some sort of order, okay?”

“Right.” He beckoned a clone and a secretary to follow.

“Right, Jim,” I said quietly. “Tell all. Including the private thing you’ve got going with You-Know-Who, okay?” I nodded to the street, terse and cryptic to show I wasn’t bluffing even if I was. “Orly’ll be back in a minute. It’s as long as you’ve got.”

I was in a hurry to find Magda.