Chapter Seventeen

As I mentioned, Tick-Tock had changed in the more than ten years since I had last seen him. He didn’t look like Tyrone Power anymore. He looked more like Gandhi.

“I know you,” he said. “I remember you. You’re Saint-something-or-other.”

“St. Ives.”

“Yes. St. Ives. What do you want?”

“Maybe he wants a party, Tick-Tock,” the girl said.

“Shut up,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Information.”

He stared at me with dark eyes that had lost their flash and sparkle. All that remained in them was a kind of dead cunning. He had been not quite plump when I had last seen him, with quick and graceful movements, but now he was stick thin and when he moved, he jerked. He no longer wore a turban and what little hair he had left was egg-shell white and his dark skin, once smooth and supple, was dry and stretched with tiny deep wrinkles that gave him the tight, drawn look of a poorly done mummy. Tick-Tock was a mess and he was not quite forty.

“Information, is it? Well, come in.”

We went into a sitting room that opened onto a primitive-looking kitchen. The sitting room was furnished with some old chairs and couches that seemed to have been rescued from a rescue mission. There was a four-color print of Jesus on one wall and in two of the chairs were sprawled two more young girls, one a blonde, the other a brunette. They both wore see-through blouses. The blonde wore a short skirt. The brunette wore pants. They smiled at me professionally.

“If you want one of these cunts, it’s five quid for short time upstairs,” Tick-Tock said in a mechanical tone. “Or you can have all three of them for a tenner.”

“No thanks.”

“Get out,” he said to the girls. The two blondes and the brunette shrugged and left through the door that led to the kitchen.

“Want a drink?” he said.

“All right.”

“Whisky?”

“With water.”

“Whisky’s seventy-five pence.”

“All right.”

He went over to a chest, took out a bottle of whisky, poured some into a smeared glass, and added water from a pitcher. He handed it to me. I gave him a pound. “Thanks very much,” he said and made no move to give me the change.

“Want anything else?” he said.

“What have you got?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got hash and I’ve got pot. I’ve got cocaine. I’m fresh out of heroin.”

I shook my head. “What the hell happened to you, Tick-Tock?” I said. “I thought you were into gold.”

“What happened to me?” he said. “Two years in Dartmoor is what happened to me. And a cunt. God, I hate cunts. When was the last time I saw you?”

“Almost a dozen years ago.”

“I remember now. It was in the Ritz, right?”

“Right.”

“That was the night I quit the watch business.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the week after that my partner and I went to Paris and we spent almost every penny we had buying gold. We bought 1,280 ounces for forty-five thousand dollars U.S. A good price then. And we brought it back here with no trouble. No trouble at all. Then I went on a diet and lost two stone. It took me two months and I damn near starved, but I lost it. Then we had it all set. These two cunts and I would fly to Goa.”

“With the gold,” I said.

“That’s right. With the gold. You know how much gold was bringing in Goa then?”

“No.”

“Ninety-four dollars an ounce. Christ, it’s more than that now, but do you know how much our profit would have been? Seventy thousand dollars. Net. For a plane trip.”

“What happened?”

“My partner and I got greedy. We decided that since I’d lost so much weight, we could rig a special girdle so that I could carry fifty pounds with no problem. Originally I was going to carry forty pounds and the two cunts were to carry twenty each. But with me carrying fifty pounds, we only needed one cunt. She could carry thirty and look a little bit preggy, you know. It was what is known as an economy move. You want another drink?”

“You’ve watered the Scotch,” I said.

“What did you expect?”

“Watered Scotch. I’ll take another.”

He fixed me another drink. “That’ll be a pound,” he said. I paid him.

“So what happened?” I said. “The girl you left behind blow the whistle on you?”

He nodded glumly. “She blew it all right. We barely stepped foot in Heathrow before they were swarming all over us. You asked what happened to me. Well, prison is what happened to me. Two years of it. Have you ever been in prison?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

“I couldn’t stand it. I went crackers. I lost even more weight until I was nothing but skin and bones — just as I am now.” He held out a thin arm for me to inspect. “My hair fell out. I developed ulcers. My teeth went. And when I got out after two years I looked just about as I do now and who would buy a gold watch from somebody who looked like me?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“You’re right. Nobody. So now I’m into brothel-keeping — on a small scale, of course. I push a few drugs, because if I didn’t, I couldn’t keep the cunts. I run an after-hours boozer with watered-down spirits and I sometimes peddle information for a fair price and what is it that you’re after?”

“That partner of yours.”

“Him!”

“You’re still in touch?”

“Oh, yes, we’re still in touch. After all, he’s a fine Christian gentleman, he is. I went to prison and he did buggerall. But every Christmas he comes around to see me with a big basket of treats.”

“He faked those watches for you, didn’t he? Could he fake anything else?”

“Him? He could fake the crown jewels if he put his hand to it. He’s a bloody artist. What d’you have in mind?”

“Maybe a sword. Could he do an old sword?”

“No problem. He’d have to pray over it for a while, but he could do it. He takes his religion seriously. As I said, he’s a proper Christian. After all, when I got out of the nick, didn’t he set me up in this wonderful business I’m in? That’s true Christian charity, isn’t it?”

“You’re bitter, Tick-Tock.”

“You damned right I am.”

“How much for his name and address?”

The dead cunning in his eyes moved over to let the greed in. “How’d you find me?”

“Manny Kaplan.”

“Oh, him. What have you got on, St. Ives?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come off it. If you be needing an old Indian gentleman,” he said with a quaver, “I could play me old granddad now instead of me.”

“I don’t think so, Tick-Tock.”

“Just the name and address, right?”

“Right.”

“Fifty pounds.”

“Jesus.”

“My ex-partner will be glad to introduce you to him.” He pointed to the print of Christ on the wall. “He brought that around last Christmas. The cunts like it. Fifty pounds, please.”

I counted him out fifty pounds. “His name’s Billy Curnutt with a C and two t’s and he lives over his shop at fourteen Beauclerc just off Hammersmith Grove.”

“What kind of a shop?” I said.

“He’s a locksmith when he’s not down on his knees praying.”

I rose. “Okay, Tick-Tock. Thank you very much.”

“One more thing,” he said.

“What?”

“He might be in low spirits.”

“Why?”

“His wife left him this past Christmas Eve. I hear he’s not over it yet.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It’s also something else.”

“What?”

“It was the only good news I got last year.”

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