1951 - In a Vain Shadow Read online

  The relief on her face was painful to see.

  ‘You were only fooling then, Frankie? Oh, darling, I was so worried. That talk of murder. It made my blood run cold.’

  ‘Take the tray away and come back. I’ll change your temperature for you.’

  ***

  Modern Enterprises had offices on the fourth floor of a dilapidated building in Wardour Street. There was no lift, the lobby smelt like a chicken house and the banister rail left a black mark on my forefinger and thumb.

  I toiled up the four flights of stone stairs and discovered the offices at the end of a dimly lit corridor.

  By now I was angry. This wasn’t the kind of set-up I had expected. The higher I climbed the farther away the dream of big money receded. I began to wonder if this was a hoax, and if it was I made up my mind to leave the mark of my knuckles on the joker’s mouth.

  I didn’t bother to knock, but turned the handle and walked in. Even when I was inside there was nothing to reassure me this wasn’t a joke.

  The room was small and dirty and mean; There was a steel filing cabinet by the uncurtained window, a mat on the dusty bare boards, a rickety desk m the middle of the room and an electric bowl fire on the windowsill.

  At the desk sat a woman: a fat, ugly Jewess who might have been twenty or forty, and who was as sexless as an octopus, and as unattractive as a sinkful of unwashed dishes.

  She wore a black satin dress, gasping at the seams, and her eyes looked like small, unripe gooseberries behind the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles.

  I took heart. There was something about her that told me she was smart and nimble and as sharp as a razor. The difference between her and Netta was the difference between a tiger and a kitten. If her boss was anything like her, he would do. I reminded myself that appearances meant nothing to Jews.

  They can work in a cellar and go home in a Rolls-Royce, and think nothing of it. There still might be a chance of finding what I was looking for; even a door into a dump like this could be a door of opportunity.

  I dropped the letter on her desk, ‘It’s twelve, and I’m here.’

  She held the letter about six inches from her hooked little nose and stared at it as if she had never seen it before. Then she peered at me and pointed a fat dirty finger to a chair. As she did so I caught the flash of a diamond.

  ‘Sit down. I’ll see if Mr. Sarek will see you.’

  I was surprised. I expected her to talk like Arthur Kober’s Gross family. She looked like a refugee from the Gross family; but apart from a whining intonation and an accent you could hang your hat on, she spoke as well as I did.

  I sat down.

  She wasn’t in a hurry to break the news I had arrived. First she cast up a row of figures in a big ledger that looked as phoney as no doubt it was. Then she re-read the letter I had given her and looked me over again. I had a feeling she was counting the small change in my pockets and the hairs on my chest: that kind of look.

  Then she pushed herself of the chair and walked across the room to another door. She opened it and went in.

  I’ve seen some fat women in my time, but she was in a class of her own: hard, thick fat like the back of a prize pig.

  From behind she looked like a keg of beer on legs, and the funny thing was her feet were small enough to fit in my band, feet Netta would have raved about.

  I waited and listened, but didn’t hear anything not even a murmur of voices, and I wondered. I was no longer fooled by the sordid room. I was beginning to smell money. Although I had only a quick look at it, and although she wore it with the stone turned inwards, I had seen the fat woman’s ring. I know something about diamonds. The diamond she was trying to hide was worth three to four hundred pounds. She didn’t pick that up in the gutter and it wasn’t on her engagement finger.

  It could have been a gift for services rendered or for keeping her mouth shut or something like that. The kind of gift a racketeer might make: a racketeer who could afford to indulge in whims like sordid rooms or hiring himself a bodyguard.

  The smell of money was getting stronger every second.

  When I’m happy I whistle, and that’s what I was doing now: whistling.

  The hands of my watch showed twenty minutes past twelve when she came out of the inner room.

  ‘Mr. Sarek will see you now. Will you go in?’

  I had spent a little time making up my mind what I should wear for this interview. Netta had said I should wear my blue herringbone worsted, but although she knows how to dress herself, I don’t let her think she can dress me. I finally decided on a pair of brown whipcord slacks and a light navy-blue sweater that came high up at the neck. I didn’t wear anything under it, and I knew it showed of my muscles the way nothing else could show them of and when I take the trouble to flex them they’re something to see.

  I walked into the inner room, not making a sound, with that lithe, springy stride athletes put on when they see a pretty girl coming they want to impress. Going in there I must have looked a cross between Freddie Mills stalking his man and Scarface Muni meeting the rival mob.

  The inner room was no better than the outer one. If anything it wasn’t so luxurious. For one thing, it didn’t have an electric bowl fire on the windowsill. But the desk was just as rickety, the mat on the bare boards just as threadbare, and the dust just as dusty.

  Seated behind the desk was a small dark-complexioned man in an overcoat that stopped me dead in my tracks.

  I’ve never seen such a coat. It was unbelievable. It reminded me of the kind of suit Max Miller used to wear on the stage of the Holborn Empire when I was a kid. It was fawn colour with dazzling red lines forming three-inch squares, and if that wasn’t horrible enough, there were emerald-green flaps to the pockets.

  The first thought that jumped into my mind was this little man was crazy. That would explain the ad. in the paper and the coat. No one but a madman would be seen dead in a coat like that. I began to wonder how I could get out of the room and away without having a scene. If there’s one thing that really scares me it’s someone crazy in the head.

  ‘Come in, Mr. Mitchell,’ the little man said. He had the same whining intonation and accent as the fat woman. ‘You don’t like the coat, hey? I don’t either. Come in and sit down. I tell you about it while you light a cigarette.’

  That sounded sane enough, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I pulled up a cane-bottom chair and sat down, keeping the desk between me and the coat.

  ‘I been in this office for three year,’ he said, picking his nose with his little finger, ‘in three years, eight overcoats belonging to me have been stolen. Is a lot, hey? So I buy this one. No one steals this one; maybe it last me a lifetime, is something no one would want, hey? I don’t like it myself, but I catch cold easily, and to go home without a coat is dangerous.’

  He took out a soiled handkerchief and polished his hooked nose.

  ‘And another thing; is good for business. People take trouble to find out who I am. I’m known up and down Wardour Street as the man with the coat. Is good business, Mr. Mitchell.’

  ‘It’s got to be good business to wear a coat like that.’

  The small mouth curved up in a sly smile.

  ‘We foreigners have an advantage. We are not self-conscious.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now I was convinced he wasn’t crazy. I studied him as he was studying me. What sort of Jew he was I didn’t know. If there’s such a thing as a Turkish Jew, maybe he was that. He was very dark, and there seemed nothing to his face but his nose. It was a parrot’s face. His eyes seemed to cling to the sides of the enormous, hooked nose. His tight, lipless mouth was just a continuation of his nostrils. Above the hook of the nose was a bulging forehead. He was bald, and a frizz of black hair grew just above his bat-like ears and down into his collar.

  He was about as ugly as they come, but once you noticed the small, black eyes you forgot about the ugliness What I saw in those eyes impressed me. They were the eyes of a man
who could build an empire, make a million, cut his mother’s throat and then weep for her. Now I was sure the dirty, bare little room was a front. It couldn’t be anything else. A man with those kind of eyes wouldn’t work in a dump like this unless he had a reason for it. Those eyes and the fat woman’s diamond told me I’d come to the right place. I wasn’t wasting my time: this was the in I was looking for.

  I had smoked two cigarettes: not his, mine. He had asked a lot of questions, checked over the details I had given him in my letter. There was nothing about his face to tell me how the interview was going. Every now and then I rolled my muscles.

  They were what he was buying. I thought he should see them.

  Suddenly: ‘Mr. Mitchell, you don’t mention you have been in prison.’

  Just for a moment he had me. A sucker punch.

  ‘Well, who advertises a thing like that? It’s not good for business.’

  ‘You killed a man and a woman when drunk and driving a car?’

  ‘That’s how it happened. The brakes were on the blink, anyway. It could have happened to anyone.’

  ‘People who drink make me nervous.’

  ‘They make me nervous too. That was four years ago, I’ve learned sense since then.’

  ‘People I employ have to be on the wagon, Mr. Mitchell.’

  ‘Count me in. I swore of it when I came out.’

  The little black eyes searched my face. If there’s one thing I can do better than most people it’s to tell a convincing lie. My face didn’t help him.

  ‘In that case...’

  Well, I was three-quarters there. I could sense it, and when he asked for references I felt I could be frank with him.

  ‘I could get you references, Mr. Sarek, but they wouldn’t mean anything. You want a bodyguard. I have never been a bodyguard. No one could tell you if I was suitable or unsuitable. You must judge that for yourself.’

  ‘I’m interested to find out if you are honest, conscientious and reliable.’

  ‘They would tell you I am, but that still wouldn’t mean anything. Those things you have to find out for yourself.’

  He studied me for about ninety seconds.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Mr. Mitchell.’

  So I was in. I knew it. It now depended if I wanted to work for him. Now was the time for him to trot out the details about the good prospects and pay. It all depended on that.

  ‘For a reason which I go into later, I need someone like you to go with me on my business trips. The hours will be long. I thought ten pounds a week and everything found might be acceptable. I am not prepared to bargain.’

  ‘You said prospects.’

  The beady eyes glittered.

  ‘It’s something we can discuss when we know each other better. Certainly there are prospects for the right man. I tell you at the end of the month if I think you qualify.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to the end of the month.’

  The fat woman came in just then with a handful of letters.

  She slid them across the desk towards Sarek.

  ‘Emmie, this is Frank Mitchell. He is going to work for me. Mr. Mitchell, this is Miss Pearl.’

  If I had known what she was going to do to me in the very near future I might have been a lot more polite. But I didn’t know.

  I gave her a race-discriminating sneer and let it go at that.

  chapter three

  Did you get it?’

  ‘Of course I got it. You don’t think I would bother to go nil the way down to Wardour Street, unless I was sure I was doing to get it, do you? Now, look, baby, don’t worry me just now I have to pack.’

  ‘Pack?’

  ‘That’s right. Put clothes and things in a bag: pack.’

  ‘You’re going to leave here then?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m going to leave.’

  She trailed after me into the bedroom, looking as happy as little Eva on the icefield.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Frankie.’

  ‘That makes two of us. Still, this kind of thing happens every day. I’ll be along to worry you from time to time. This isn’t goodbye, baby, just au revoir, and in case you don’t know, that’s French for I’ll see you again soon. Now, take it easy and don’t get in my way.’

  She sat on the edge of the most uncomfortable chair in the room and folded her hands in her lap.

  ‘I won’t get in the way, but I could pack for you if you like.’

  ‘I’ve seen the way you pack. No thanks. You leave this to me.’ A long pause, then: ‘What was he like, Frankie?’

  ‘A small Jew. Without his clothes he would pass for a vulture. He wears a comic overcoat: the kind of coat a clown wears at the circus. He says people steal his overcoats, so he wears this one to stop anyone stealing it. If someone did steal it they would have to be colour blind or crazy.’

  ‘But why does he want a bodyguard?’

  I took from the wardrobe my two suits and laid them on the bed. From under the dressing table I collected my three pairs of shoes.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to get me a drink, would you? Make it a stiff one. I’m supposed to be on the wagon, and maybe it’ll be the last I get tonight.’

  She fetched me a double whisky with a teaspoonful of water floating on top of it, the way I like my whisky. As she handed the glass to me I saw she was trembling.

  ‘Don’t bear down on it. This had to happen. You couldn’t expect me to live here forever, could you?’

  ‘People do live together forever.’

  ‘Who do you think I am - Darby?’

  ‘Frankie, if its money you want. I - I’ve saved. You can have it all. It’s no use to me without you.’

  ‘We won’t go over that again.’

  ‘But must you go? Couldn’t you stay here, and - and guard him during the day?’

  ‘This is a day and night job. Someone’s writing him threatening letters.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he go to the police?’

  ‘His sort of people never go to the police.’

  ‘Does he know who’s writing the letters?’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s had three. Whoever it is writing them isn’t very smart. The typewriter he or she used has the letters e and d out of alignment. That’s a machine that could be traced. The notepaper is unusual too: a blue, deckle-edged sheet, the kind women use. You know, when he showed me the notes I thought they might have come from his secretary.’

  ‘He has a secretary?’

  ‘Certainly, he has a secretary. Just to show him I keep my eyes open and my brain polished I told him he might do worse than suspect her. He nearly flipped his lid. When he could speak he said he trusted her more than anyone; they were practically partners; she had been with him ten years: ever since she was fourteen, and I wasn’t to say anything against her or I could quit then and there. It still could be her, but if he doesn’t want it to be her, then it’s no skin of my nose.’

  ‘What she like, Frankie?’ Elaborately casual.

  ‘She’s a Jewess.’

  ‘Some Jewesses can be very attractive.’

  ‘She is. The dark, passionate kind: and what a figure! I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Is it as good as mine?’

  ‘Don’t be silly; I said figure. Something you can get hold of voluptuous.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I laid the two suits in my suitcase, and then began wrapping my shoes in paper.

  ‘What does this man do, Frankie?’

  ‘He’s a merchant: buys and sells anything that’s in demand. Suppose you want a dozen pairs of nylons. He goes along to someone who has them, buys them, sells them to you and pockets the profit. It’s a nice business to be in. All you need know is who has the stuff and who wants it. Simple, isn’t it?’

  ‘But why is he being threatened?’

  ‘He thinks a competitor wants to get him out of the way. There’s not a lot of scope in this game. The more there are in it, the less the share-out. Because he is a little guy,
and nervous, he thinks they are picking on him. That’s his idea, but I don’t believe it. I think there’s more to it than that. There’s something childish about the letters. The first one said: “If you have a god, prepare to meet him.” The second one: “You have not long to live.” That sort of junk you can’t kid me one of these jackals would write tripe like that. If they were going to write a threatening letter they’d damn well make it threatening. The funny thing is in spite of the spinelessness of the threats Sarek is scared.’

  ‘Is that his name?’

  ‘Yes. Henry Sarek. He has a country house outside Chesham. That’s where I’m going tonight.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to stay there: as far away as Chesham?’

  ‘It’s not far: thirty-two miles from here. You make it sound as if it’s in Scotland.’

  ‘But do you have to stay with him?’

  ‘I’m to go around with him, stay in his house, hang around the office, drive the car. Ten pounds and all found.’

  ‘But, Frankie, darling, it’s like being a servant.’

  ‘What’s wrong with being a servant?’

  ‘But it’ll lead nowhere. Look. Frankie, do be sensible. Why don’t you put some capital into a business, and give yourself a chance? You know I’ll lend you the money. And - and you could stay here. It needn’t cost you anything until you get on your feet.’

  ‘One of these days someone is going to say “yes” to that offer, and you’re going to lose all your money. But that someone’s not going to be me. Don’t think I’m not grateful, I am. But I’m still too young to have a ring in my nose.’

  ‘You say the beastliest things...’

  ‘I do, don’t I? Well, that’s that I think. Where’s my rucksack?’

  ‘I’ll get it darling.’

  While she was in the other room, I finished the whisky, strapped and locked the suitcase and put on a light overcoat.

  I knew the next few minutes were going to be difficult. She wouldn’t let me go without a scene. It surprised me she hadn’t started one already.