The Great California Game l-14 Page 7

  “That’s taken care of, Lovejoy.” Then, just as I was settling down to the new batch of grub, “You seemed to take a particular interest in Sophie, Lovejoy. Why?” I rescued myself from a choke. “Sophie Brandau, Lovejoy. The lady in blue velvet.”

  “I saw her bloke on television. I looked their name up.”

  There’s not a problem in human affairs that crime can’t solve. So crime had to be my explanation.

  “He’s a politician, Gina. I was scared, because I’m in political trouble.”

  She was enjoying my discomfiture, chin on her linked hands, very fetching 1920s while Orly glowered. Nicko and Tye were listening.

  “I’m not American,” I confessed. ”I’m from East Anglia. Illegal immigrant, trying to work my way home. I’m wanted by the police there.”

  “We know, Lovejoy. You’re not exactly our streetwise New York spoiler.”

  Sandpaper grated nearby. We all looked. It was Nicko, laughing, shaking up and down in his deck chair.

  “Lovejoy. You think you’ll put the bite on Denzie Brandau?”

  Nicko fell about. It really narked me. I’d been so American I’d convinced myself completely. Gina was nodding.

  “Through Sophie, perhaps,” she murmured. “Except generosity’s never been her strong point.”

  She and Nicko exchanged glances. Tye Dee was with me still, noshing but keeping out of it. Orly put his oar in.

  “Lovejoy’ll be able to try his hand at exploitation—when the Brandaus come aboard this afternoon.”

  We were turning towards the east, leaving Manhattan behind. I felt entitled to ask, myself again.

  “Is this still New York?”

  “Both sides. We’re headed for Long Island Sound.” Gina extended a hand. Orly leapt to take it, haul her up.

  Nicko showed no emotion as Gina and Orly paired away. He was reading from a folder. I avoided asking the obvious. Their business.

  “Excuse me, Nicko. What am I here for, exactly?”

  He didn’t look up. “To help decide fraud, Lovejoy. And play a game.”

  It didn’t sound my thing. I lowered my knife and fork.

  “I’m sorry, Nicko, but I want out…”

  Tye suddenly shoved a plate of scrambled eggs and waffles across the table, warning. Nicko hadn’t interrupted his reading.

  “Great, great,” I said quickly. “Look forward to it, Nicko. Fraud’s my thing.” Thereby being responsible for the deaths of two people. One was a foe, one a sort of friend. And one was nearly me.

  FOR an hour I stood on the after deck watching New York glide by. Tye described where we were. The names were oddly familiar, the places resonant of some primeval dream time: Queens, the Bronx, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Brooklyn. The old jeweller Mr Sokolowsky astonished by coming out to stand and reminisce. He was amusing, got me laughing about local quirks in buying silver, pricing jewels, a goldsmith’s slender finances ha ha ha. A witty old bloke with shrugged-off humour. Orly passed by once, to say I was to “get something decent on by the time we hit the Sound.”

  “Long Island Sound,” Tye translated. “That’s where it happens.”

  “Oy vey,” Mr Sokolowsky lamented, shrugging. “Happenings should wait a liddle now and then.”

  Gina sent her Blanche with a message that she wanted me. It was to do with clothes. She’d had the vessel combed for clobber. It was highly fashionable, which I am not. I settled for some loose grey trousers and a white shirt. She pulled a face when finally I showed myself. I grimaced back, grinning to set her laughing. It was the last laugh for some time.

  I wanted to know what happened to Tony, if Berto Gordino had managed to spring Busman, what Della and Lil were telling Rose when she came by Fredo’s and asked where I’d got to. But by then the boat was thrusting through some narrows into Long Island Sound, breath-taking in its expanse and shores, and my duties began.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  « ^ »

  THEY started coming aboard about mid-afternoon. I watched them from the rail, a mere bystander like the crew.

  Glamour isn’t simply something in the eye of the beholder. It’s a kind of heat, emanating from the glamorous. But it’s cold, heat that doesn’t warm. Which I suppose is one way of saying it’s radiation, the stuff that eventually kills. This thought struck me when I recognized a familiar elegant lady ascending our gangway from a small power boat. Good old Moira Hawkins was accompanied by Sophie Brandau and her politician husband. My head didn’t quite spin off, but my breathing went funny. Was I the link? I hated this notion, because chains have a tough time. A score or more arrived, laughing and full of that strange chilled charm only the rich exude.

  Long Island is, well, sort of a long island, if you follow. Everything tends to astonish me, so America had it made. But why should I be dumbfounded by the Atlantic’s proximity? And by Long Island’s enormity, its beauty? Glamour is America’s par, wealth an incidental. Everything’s so vast that your eyes run out of vision. Tye Dee was supervising the welcomes—which probably meant seeing they all arrived unarmed—so I’d nobody to ask. Old Sokolowsky had vanished. How strange that he was along, on a fantastic cruise like this. Mind you, the same went for me. Except the old jeweller and me were two of a kind; different bookends, same purpose. Sokolowsky was the experienced gelt merchant, techniques to his fingertips. I was the… the what? Neither Gina nor Nicko had mentioned antiques, which is basically what I’m for. Sole purpose in life. Tye Dee was simply a trusted bouncer, with his thick holster bulging his chest lopsidedly. Orly was Mrs. Aquilina’s “friend” again today.

  It was a pleasantly open day, light breeze, rich thick American sunshine. Innocent, fresh.

  The little boats shuttled between the shore and us. A small township, its streets open and the traffic casually undeterred by the growing aggregate of Rolls-Royces and lengthy American cars I couldn’t name. How pleasant to live in such a place, I was thinking, when I saw Jennie alighting from a limo with a fat man. They made quite a pair, him flashy and corpulent and Nicko’s lassie slender and pert. Wasn’t I thinking a lot about gelt? Something in the climate.

  Fatty and Jennie were the last, the occasion for much jibing from the party on the after deck.

  “Hey, Jim!” one voice yelled through the growing music. “Antiques doin’ okay, keeping you late.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Denzie!” the fat man bawled as his boat slowed. “You politicians ride on my back, man!”

  Desperate needling, it seemed to me, but it earned a roar of laughter. You can say anything in America, as long as you grin. Orly’s shoulder tap made me turn. I wished he’d stop doing that. Worse, he prodded my chest.

  “Lovejoy, go help Bill in the bar. You know how?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell Tye to close the rail. Mr Bethune’s always last.”

  Antiques, Jim Bethune. Busman had asked about some art dealer, Bettune… Orly shoved me so I almost stumbled.

  “Move ass, Lovejoy.”

  “I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying.”

  Correction: almost everybody in USA is charming. If Orly prodded me once more I’d break his digit, in a charming sort of way of course. I sprinted to obey, fuming but silent.

  THE pace of the Aquilinas’ party was sedate, compared to Fredo’s in full spate. It was noisier, and the grub went almost untouched. I was astonished at the transformations the guests had undergone. They’d changed, instant butterflies, even Jennie emerging gorgeous from the cabins.

  Bill the barman was twice as fast as I’d ever be. He was tall, lean, tanned, wavy-haired, the sort I always think must be every woman’s heart-throb, straight off a surfboard. Blokes like him evoke archaic slang.

  “Handle the ladies when two come together, Lovejoy,” he ordered. He didn’t tap or prod. I warmed to him.

  The women? I went red. Barmen the world over hate women customers. Men are more decided, can be served fast. Women take their time, change minds, negotiate. That’s why sluggardly barkeeps get the slowest
jobs. And me a veteran of Fredo’s famed happy hour! I swallowed the insult.

  In spite of being narked I slotted in, doing my stuff, trying to remember to maintain that wide American smile. The crowd swelled to thirty, as guests already on board before the influx made their colourful entrances amid hullabaloo. Quite frankly, I admire people who put on a show of style. I mean, it’s something I could never do in a million years. The women were bonny, slim, slick. I’d never seen what I call evening dresses worn during the afternoon before. Jewellery gleamed genuine gleams and antique settings bonged into my chest, but I kept my mind on my job, trying to please. It was a pretty scene. I avoided Mrs. Brandau’s eye, didn’t look at Jennie, tried my damnedest not to lust too obviously after Gina when she queened into the deck arena amid a storm of applause. The men were not my concern.

  Denzie Brandau was smooth, suave, your friendly politician. He was perfectly attired, cuffs mathematical and suit impeccable, his manner subtly saying that he was slumming but was too polite to say so. Power anywhere is a threat, very like glamour.

  “Hey, Bill,” I said in sudden thought as the bar slackened. Other serfs started circulating with trays of food to encourage the starving. “Am I replacing Tony?”

  “Sure are, Lovejoy.” He was shaking a cocktail. I watched enviously.

  “I can’t drive.” A lie at home, but true in America.

  “Drivers we got. Only here in the bar.”

  “That Tony owes me ten dollars,” I invented.

  Bill dazzled the ocean with a brilliant grin. “Then you are strictly minus ten, Lovejoy. Like for evuh.”

  We chuckled, me shaking my head at the vagaries of fortune. I tapped my foot along with the music, smiling with the peasant’s pride as Fatty Bethune staved off his anorexia by wolfing all the grub within reach. Oh, I was so merry. And my soul cold as charity. Tony was extinct. My fault? I leapt to serve as Sophie Brandau and Gina drifted to the bar asking for Bloody Marys. But a lone neuron shrieked outrage. What the frigging hell did it matter whose fault it was? I get narked with myself. I don’t run the frigging universe. I only live here.

  “Lovejoy tends to ignore the ice,” Gina said mischievously. ”Something in his background, I suspect.”

  “Is he new?” Mrs. Brandau was distantly bored by serfs.

  “Practically.” The hostess took her drink. ”On probation, you might say.”

  “I aim to please, madam.” Grovelling’s pathetic, but my job.

  The ladies drifted. I turned. Bill was watching me. He wore his professional smile, and spoke softly.

  “Lovejoy. Don’t look murder. It shows.”

  “Ta, Bill. It’s er, all that grub.”

  “Hungry? We get ours during the Game.”

  “Will it be long?” I noticed Blanche undulating past, mingling merrily with a tray of edibles. I love seafood, as long as the poor creature’s unrecognizable. I mean, shrimps that need beheading and lobsters looking like they’ve just clawed over the gunwale make me run a mile. To eat, something has to die even if it’s only a plate of chips.

  “An hour or two.”

  God, would I survive? I served Mr Brandau while he talked with the dark Simon Bolivar lookalike who’d exchanged secret glances with Sophie at Nicko’s. They talked of percentages, cut-ins and shut-outs. Was this the yacht’s secret, a clandestine investment company? Or was there simply no secret, except a bit of body-rodding? La dolce vita was hardly tomorrow’s news.

  “Who needs cut-ins, Charlie?” Brandau was saying. “I can be bored in the Senate!”

  The swarthy Charlie laughed, joked his way out of some dilemma. Sophie Brandau’s face tightened and she floated over, lovely as a dream.

  “Mr Sarpi shouldn’t think that politics bores you, Denzie. Think of the effect on the electorate!”

  I caught Bill’s glance warning me not to listen. I whistled, being busy.

  “Hell, Sophie,” her husband joshed. “I’m gonna buy the electorate!”

  Moira Hawkins was being introduced to Jim Bethune. The podgy man would have fondled, except Jennie did a neat interception. I noticed Gina Aquilina watching me. I raised my eyebrows in mute appeal, and asked Bill if I could cadge some of the buffet food on account.

  “No, Lovejoy.” He had a marvellous delivery, not a decibel misdirected. He should have been a spy.

  “Okay, okay.” I carried on serving, smiling, giving out pleasantries.

  Charlie Sarpi and Denzie Brandau drifted away, mingling with Nicko’s group. Sophie Brandau hesitated by the bar, then did a simulated start of surprise to notice a restless young blonde who was definitely on the toxic twitch. She had the look of a luscious plumpster who’d slid the snake to become skeletal in a matter of months.

  “Why, Kelly Palumba! I didn’t even see —!”

  “Hey, Sophie —!”

  The party was so glad the jittery lass and Sophie were glad that even I felt glad, and served Miss Palumba her brandy sour with a beaming heart. Gladness is contagious, I find, even where something murderous is beginning to scratch your spine.

  “Beg your pardon, miss.” I was baffled. The blonde had leant close and asked for something. “Bill?”

  He was cool. “Sorry, Miss Palumba. We’re right out.”

  “Sheet,” she said distinctly, swigging her drink and replacing the glass with a commanding tap. I poured. And encore. And twice more, to the brim.

  She had said “to lift my drink”. Lift where? To her lips? Or was it Americanese for strengthen? But with what? It was already as potent as distillers could make it. I shrugged as Sophie Brandau edged the girl away into the socialite press with the “How’s the family, Kelly… ?” kind of prattle. I tried not to look at the blonde, but when you see somebody screaming so silently it’s difficult. Tap on my shoulder. I turned. Prod. “Hi, Orly.”

  “Mrs. Aquilina wants you, Lovejoy. Main cabin.” I heard Bill’s warning, nodded, wiped my hands and went.

  THEY were setting out a long table. I would have called it lovely but for its newness. Gina was supervising flowers and suchlike. Blanche was scurrying, two other serfs placing chairs. Somebody was changing a picture, a Philip Steer painted in a milliard divisionistic dots, two girls running on a waterside pier. I smiled, then frowned to show Orly and Mrs. Aquilina I was all attention.

  “Blanche. A tray of hors d’oeuvres in the anteroom. This way, Lovejoy.”

  An archway led through half-drawn curtains to a slender cabin, more of an alcove. She reclined on a chaise longue and gestured me to sit opposite.

  “That’s all, Orly. Go check the arena.”

  He gave me a lethal glance and left me to be dissected by this smiling lady. She said nothing. My feet shuffled as usual under this treatment. I found myself reddening slowly. I cleared my throat, tried to look offhandedly through to see how the other kulaks were managing. Surely not laying for another nosh? But the table was bare, almost. Just small boxes of playing cards. And a couple of computer screens coming to life with that irritating come-hither bleep they make. Like a boardroom. Who cared?

  “Thank you, Blanche.”

  A silver tray of food. My mouth watered. Blanche returned to her task. I dragged my eyes from her receding form, tried not to ogle the grub, failed on both counts.

  “I’m not usually taken in, Lovejoy,” Mrs. Aquilina said.

  Now what? I was suddenly so homesick. In a new country I find I return home a lot more than I arrive, if you follow.

  “I’m sure you’re not, missus.”

  “Gina, please. Do have something…”

  I fell on the tiny things. There’s not much in one, so I had to take a few at a time. You get famished in sea air. “Sorry, er, Gina. But it’s been hours since breakfast.”

  “Of course it has,” she said. She was carefully not laughing, the way they do, but really rolling in the aisles.

  “Want some?” I can be charming, too.

  She tasted one small biscuit with a fractionated sardine balanced on its rim. It reall
y beats me how women survive half the time. Some biochemistry we haven’t got, I suppose. I didn’t like that “taken in” bit, but it’s a wise prophet who knows where his next meal will come from.

  “Lovejoy. You seem to be troubled. All eyes and ears.” She smiled. “Then I saw where your attentions really lay.” She indicated the shrinking victuals and shot an appraising look to the preparations in the long cabin.

  “Look, Gina. I can’t help being hungry. I can’t stop women from walking past, either.”

  “Of course not.” She gave a sign and Blanche’s mob withdrew. “Tell me about Bill, Lovejoy.”

  “Bill?” She was full of surprises, this one. Did she fancy him, or what? “Nice bloke, good barman. But something’s wrong.”

  She stilled with a woman’s scary tranquillity. “Explain.”

  “Well, I think he’s a thick. I tried asking him about antiques. He wasn’t interested. Hadn’t even heard of your 1760 Goddard-Townsend cabinet makers from Rhode Island—when a single one of their mahogany secretary’ desks goes for zillions.” She stared back at me. Obviously she was thick too. Annoyed, I gave it her in detail. “Furniture that exquisite’ll never come again, never on this planet. It’s all made of mahogany we call grand, natural unforced trees, not this spongiform crap — sorry, love — which they force grow nowadays.”

  She was still blank. I found myself up, walking about. “For Christ’s sake, love,” I cried, exasperated. “Can’t you see? That’s why the values increase faster than the National Debt! It’s like a Gainsborough, irreplaceable.”

  “You’re telling me Bill’s odd because he isn’t interested in antiques?”

  Give me strength. I’d thought all Yanks were fascinated by antiques, but here I was having a hard time telling them about the treasures on their own doorstep.

  “Look, love. You know that Manhattan building somebody sold for, what was it, zillions? On the news two days agone. Remember it? Well, the secretary desk I mentioned could buy two such buildings, and leave change. You follow?” She nodded slowly. God, she was beautiful, yet gorgeous women drive me at least as mad as the lesser lights.