The Great California Game

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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YOU got that, Lovejoy?”

“Aye, love. Off pat.”

“Your story of what happened after the explosion?”

“I found myself running over the hillside away from the fire. Got a lift, hid out at a filling station in El Segundo. Stole money and clothes from a motorist who stayed over.”

Jennie had worked with me the full twenty-four hours.

“And where are you heading?”

“For Manhattan. I’ll stay with Melodie van Cordlant on Madison. If not her, then with Mrs. Brandau. Should I check Jim Bethune out?”

“Bethune died in the fire.”

Another. I didn’t sigh, just nodded and quoted the contact numbers Jennie’d drilled into me.

“Good, Lovejoy. You’ve got it. Contact in emergencies.”

So they’d come and save me? Like they did Bill? Like Sokolowsky? Tony?

“You’ll take over the antiques place, tie in with Busman like you did. Peel off the auctioneers, same as you suggested. Then you’ll big-buck buy, establish the chain of selling through the international art market…”

I went along, listening to her gunge. Loony tunes, for a bloke like me. I’m the one who thrills to a single Chelsea porcelain figurine sold over a nosh bar counter in a Suffolk village. This scale of things was money madness, coin crazy. I only felt right at a village jumble sale, with one woman whose eyes I could safely look at, playing that most ancient of all games.

“Sure, Jennie,” I said most sincerely. “Exact. I got it exact.” God. I almost sounded right.

“You establish contact first from here. They’re still in L.A.. We got their numbers, okay?” She passed me a typed list. They were all there. Sophie, Melodie, Kelly Palumba, Moira Hawkins. I was into a winner here—as long as I loved what I was to do. “You arrange to meet them here, play them along. They’re in separate hotels.”

“Gimme the phone, hon.”

Jennie frowned. “Try to keep that Limey talk, okay? It kinda pleases, y’know?”

“Very well, love.”

I spoke to Melodie, Kelly, and Sophie Brandau in that order. Melodie was over the moon, thrilled I should be desperate to check she wasn’t injured in the fire.

“I’ve been worried sick, Melodie doorling,” I said, almost starting tears at my deep sincerity. “How soon can I see you, sweetheart?

“Come right away, Lovejoy! We can have dinner, and —”

“I’ve very little money, honey.”

“What’s a dollar?” she screamed softly. I swore I was on my way, and dialled Kelly.

She was more difficult.

“Is that goon Epsilon with you, Palumba?” I demanded, “If so I hang up.”

“Yes, but don’t,” she said, thinking with a woman’s natural alacrity when deceiving by phone. “It’s my financial advisor, Eppie. I have to see him tonight. You go to the premier, I’ll follow on, okay?”

We fixed for eightish, her place.

Sophie was circumspect, very Grace Kelly, polite and distant.

“You weren’t at the Revere, love,” I accused. “I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known you weren’t going to come. Though it’s marvellous that you didn’t. I’d have been frantic you might have been hurt.”

“Denzie?” I heard her call. “A woman’s guild want me to speak on political family life tonight. Will that be… ?”

“Nine o’clock, Sophie Brandau,” I told Jennie curtly. “Pencil her in. Any more?”

“No, lovejoy.” Her mouth was set into severe disapproval, squared. “Go whenever you must.”

“Can I get a lift?”

“Cab it, Lovejoy. You’ve enough. Expenses.”

“So I have!” I said brightly. “See you back at the precinct house.” We’d arranged weekly reports to begin with.

I got a taxi from the rank six blocks along. I walked in the fading sunlight, which slanted across the boulevard from the lovely western horizon. You don’t get horizons like those in California for colours. I strolled, looking out for muggers, sidestepping rogue joggers, watching for falling meteorites. I was learning American vigilance.

“Where to?”

It seemed an age since I’d been elsewhere, in the East, telling a Chinese cabbie to take me to America, fast as he liked. I watched the lovely curved shore line recede as we turned inland and joined the flood of traffic. God knows where everybody was going, but they were all on the hoof.

The central station wasn’t quite so crowded.

TWENTY minutes to six when I reached there. I’d hung about as distantly as possible—not difficult in such a whopping place. I had coffee for ease of lurking, and stayed off centre until I saw them.

In she came, cool and swinging, being eyeballed and ogled as she entered. Zole was with her, yo-yo zipping to everyone’s annoyance, Sherman trotting.

It was a hard choice to make, really, for somebody like me. I’m my own worst enemy, always have been. The choice is always made for you, my old Gran used to say. You think you choose, until you see what there is. Then you find it’s all done, choice out of the window and your feet hurrying the way they would have anyway.

The trouble was Magda wasn’t going to be easy to bid farewell. She was a typical woman, sticking to your mind like glue just when you wanted to be away out of the starting block like a gazelle. Her and her idiot criminal maniacal treacherous little kid who shot people and thought it right just because it was me going to get gunned down. A cool Bonnie and Clyde couple, except once she’d told me about how she would send Zole to school and he’d be a great doctor, lawyer, a real educated man full growed, able to look anybody in the eye.

Nothing for it. I had to go. This was the moment to accost her, say goodbye, it was fine while it lasted, thanks for everything. She was looking at her watch, pacing. Zole was off somewhere. He’d abandoned his skateboard, was down to walking. Though I noticed he’d been carrying a trannie, to annoy everybody within earshot.

I cleared my throat, rehearsing my time-to-say-so-long speech. I’d the words all off pat, just as I’d decided in the taxi across town. I walked towards her, among the passengers heading for the barrier.

There was no decision to make, not really, not when you thought of it. Luxury, endless love, lusting my paradisical way from penthouse to penthouse, one lovely rich woman to another, panting and groping, ecstatic with delirious lovely wealth flowing my way, and every solid dollar legit as I took a massive percentage for my trouble. That was life. A dream.

“Hello, love.”

She spun, gladness in her eyes.

“Oh, Lovejoy! You came! I was start’n to think maybe —”

“Where the hell’s that little pillock?” I said, moving her towards the train. “Less than ten minutes to go and you let him wander off. Why do you never take any notice of what I say? Silly cow.”

“Don’t you start on me, Lovejoy. Not after what I’ve been through, waiting and worryin’ —”

“Hey, man! Time you showed —”

I clipped the little sod’s ear. “Where the hell’ve you been? I’ve been waiting this past half hour —”

“Hey, Magda,” the little cret complained. “Cain’t we ditch Lovejoy? Only, I gonna get real mean he does that one more time —”

“Shut it, pillock. And turn that damned thing off.” I gave Magda the three tickets I’d bought. “Come on.”

“Kansas City?” Magda was clipping along in her red shoes. “Why Kansas City, Lovejoy? You never tellt we goin’ there. I got bags packed back in the hotel —”

“You shut it, Magda. I’m sick of people asking me things” How the hell did I know why Kansas City? It was just that I recognized the name from the list of places by the ticket office. “I don’t even know where the bloody place is. Does Sherman travel free?”

“Lovejoy, he dumb, Magda.”

We boarded the train, impossibly high off the ground like all American trains. I was telling her how I’d teach her a few essentials about antiques, get her started in a small shop. It’s the easiest thing in the world to find one little good antique, then another…

Magda was smiling as we took seats. “Thanks, Lovejoy. Even if it is only sorta temporary. Know what? I thought you’d left without us.”

I settled back as the train began to move. First thing was to make her start apologizing profusely for her terrible wicked doubt of my sterling character. Then we’d have to take it from there.

“I see, love,” I said, hurt and quiet. “It’s always me that’s treacherous, is it? When I’ve risked everything to get here just to make sure you’d be safe, and Zole get somewhere settled—”

“No, honey. Hush. I’m sorry, darlin’. Me and my big mouth. I’d no right to say them things, Lovejoy…”

Okay, I thought, and wondered if there was a good dining car on the damned thing. Sherman snored on me, and we rolled eastwards out of L.A..

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[December 20, 2003—v1 html proofed and formatted by AnneH for Shakespeare's Typing Monkeys]