Only When I Larf. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ I can lady, maybe I can’t,’ said the driver. ‘But if the fuzz starts crowding me, I’ll roll around the block and pull into this same slot again. So, if I ain’t here tell him to stay put. Italian guy huh?’

      ‘White fedora, dark glasses and tan coat,’ I said.

      ‘Whadda say his name was, Al Capone?’ said the driver, then laughed.

      I leaned close to him and spoke softly, ‘Try out a gag like that on Sal,’ I growled, ‘and you could wind up in the East River.’ I hurried to catch up with the two marks who were waiting in the lobby. ‘That’s not the regular driver,’ I said. ‘We have so many drivers nowadays and they all forget their instructions.’

      The marks nodded. There were two of them; Johnny Jones was about forty, over-weight, but attractive like a teddy bear in his soft overcoat. The other one – Karl Poster – was tall and distinguished looking, with grey eyes and a fine nose, down which he looked at me. He was the type they cast as unfaithful husbands in Italian films that get banned by the League of Decency.

      ‘I was just going to get coffee for you,’ I said. ‘Our coffee machine upstairs is on the blink today.’

      Karl looked me over slowly, like a comparison shopper in a slave market. ‘Why don’t we just take time out for a coffee here and now?’ he said. He looked at his watch, ‘We are five minutes early.’

      ‘Fine,’ I said turning back to the elevator.

      ‘You have coffee too,’ said Karl. He put his hand on my arm with just enough pressure to endorse the invitation, but not enough to make a girl look around for a cop.

      We found a corner seat in the half empty coffee shop, and they insisted upon my having do-nuts too. Sugar coated do-nuts with chocolate chips inside.

      ‘Sky’s the limit,’ explained Johnny the shorter one. ‘Expense no object, it’s our big day today. Is that right Karl?’ Karl looked at him, and seemed annoyed at the ingenuous admission. ‘Karl would never admit it. Eh Karl?’ He slapped Karl’s shoulder. ‘But this is a big day for both of us. Let’s have a smile, Karl.’ Karl smiled reluctantly. Johnny turned to me, ‘Have you worked for this company long?’

      ‘Four years,’ I said. ‘Five next February.’ I had it all pat. Marks often asked questions like that. How long have you been with this boss. What make was the company plane. Or there were trick questions to double check things that Silas had told them, like how long since your boss started wearing glasses or what kind of car does he drive.

      I looked at them. I sometimes wondered why I didn’t feel sorry for marks. Bob said he felt sorry for them sometimes, but I never felt really close to them. It’s like reading about people dying in traffic accidents, if it isn’t someone you know, it’s almost impossible to care, isn’t it? It’s like feeling sorry for the dead angus when you are eating a really superb fillet with béarnaise. I mean, would it help the angus if I scraped the steak clean and just ate the béarnaise? Well, that’s the way I felt about the marks; if I didn’t eat them, someone else would, they were nature’s casualties. That’s the way I saw it.

      ‘Do you like children?’ asked Johnny the short one.

      ‘My sister has three,’ I offered. ‘Twin boys, nearly five, and a three year old girl.’

      ‘I’ve got a boy, nearly six,’ said Johnny. He announced the age like it was a trump card, as though a son of seven would have been even better. ‘Would you like to see a photo?’

      ‘She doesn’t want to see photos,’ said Karl. Johnny looked offended. Karl amended his remark. ‘Not your photos, nor mine,’ he said. ‘She’s working, what would she want with them?’ He ended the sentence on a note of apology.

      ‘I’d like to see them. I really would,’ I said. ‘I love children.’

      Johnny brought out his wallet. Under a transparent window in it there was a photo of a woman. The hair style was out of fashion, and the dark tones of the picture had faded. The woman had a strange fixed smile as though she knew she was going to be trapped inside a morocco leather wallet for six years. ‘That’s Ethel, my wife,’ said the mark. ‘She worked with us until the baby came. She was the brains behind the whole company, wasn’t she Karl?’ Karl nodded. ‘She brought us out of the soft toy, and into the mechanicals and plastics. Ethel pushed us over the red line. She got our first contract with the big distributors here in the east. For a long time we were in Denver. Manhattan seemed big time to us when there were just the four of us working in Denver. Ethel helped me with the design work and Karl did the books and the advertisements. We worked around the clock.’

      ‘She doesn’t want to hear about Denver,’ said Karl.

      ‘Why not,’ said the fat mark. ‘It’s quite a story you know,’ he pulled photos from his wallet. ‘It’s quite a story,’ he repeated quietly. ‘We had only nine hundred dollars between us when we began.’ He prodded the photos with his stubby fingers. ‘That’s my wife in the garden, Billy was three then, going on four.’

      ‘And now?’ I said. ‘How big are you now?’

      ‘Now we are big. We could get five million if we sold out today, if we bided our time we’d get six. That’s the house, that’s my wife, but she moved. The negative is sharp, but the print’s not very good.’

      ‘Five million is peanuts to a big company like this,’ said Karl.

      ‘A big firm like this; who owns it,’ said Johnny. ‘A company like ours; it’s flesh and blood. It’s most of your life, and most of mine. Am I right?’ I nodded but Karl went on arguing.

      ‘Ten million is peanuts. A company like this is world wide, their phone bill is probably more than a million a year.’

      ‘You don’t measure companies in dollars,’ said Johnny, the fat one. ‘You’ve got to reckon on it differently to that. You’ve got to reckon on it like it’s a living thing; something that grows. We’d never sell out to just anyone.’

      ‘No?’ I said.

      ‘Lord no,’ he said. ‘It would be like selling a dog. You’d need to know that it was going to a good home.’

      ‘A company like this wouldn’t need to know,’ said Karl. ‘A company like this works on a slide rule. Lawyers figure the profit and loss.’

      The fat one smiled. ‘Well perhaps they have to. After all they’ve got shareholders Karl.’

      ‘They’ve got different sort of minds,’ said Karl.

      ‘I don’t think we are like that,’ I said.

      ‘No,’ said Karl coldly. ‘Well you look like that.’

      ‘Aw come on Karl,’ said Johnny. ‘Do you have any pics of your sister’s kids?’ He was anxious to assuage the effect of Karl’s rudeness.

      ‘No,’ I said.

      ‘What are their names?’

      ‘The twins are Roger and Rodney and the girl is Rosalind,’ I said.

      Johnny beamed. ‘Some folks do that don’t they? They keep the same first letter СКАЧАТЬ