Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon by Ted Lewis

Author:Ted Lewis [Lewis, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-61695-508-3
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

DINNER.

I suppose you’ve got to hand it to Wally. He’s done a huge Spanish prawny dish with fried rice and he’s done it a treat. Under different circumstances it would be a Meal to Remember, one of the Great Meals. But as things are, it’s about half as jovial as things were during the Last Supper. D’Antoni spends the whole time alternating between looking at me and looking at Tina, his expression the same for both of us, a sort of hate-filled contempt expressed by a smirk. And Wally of course, in between dishing up, he’s wondering what the fuck the looks mean, if I’ve been straight with him or not, and he spends more time biting back his questions than eating his dinner. D’Antoni is still stoking himself up on the booze, but like I say this time it’s not causing him to have the verbals; it’s just making his expression smoulder even more grotesquely. Tina looks a little better than she did this afternoon but she’s putting as little effort as possible into moving her knife and fork about. On the other hand, I notice that she doesn’t seem to be having any trouble in lifting her glass.

So as the atmosphere is laying heavily on my tits, the minute I’ve finished eating I get up from the table and go through into the lounge and sit down and light a cigarette and pick up an old Express off a pile on a nearby table and for the fifth time I read how Liverpool knocked out the Hammers in the fourth round, as if I cared. By the time I’ve almost finished D’Antoni appears, bringing his anaesthetic with him.

“You checked everything outside?” he says to me.

“Yes,” I say, folding up the paper. “I checked everything. Everything’s fine. I’ve land-mined the road all the way to the airport and the mountains are all dynamited. I left the plunger on your bedside table, all right?”

D’Antoni takes a drink.

“O.K. Give me all that crap. I’ll do it myself, O.K.?”

He starts moving towards the windows.

“Gone a bit chilly out,” I say to him. “Mind you don’t catch cold.”

I pick up another paper but before I can sort out the sports page the lights go out. Then I hear D’Antoni making his way across the room. A few seconds later the curtains part a little bit and let some post-sunset light into the room. Then there’s the familiar sound of the window being slid open. D’Antoni manages not to stumble outside. After he’s disappeared I sit there in the dark passing the time by trying to listen to D’Antoni’s progress. Maybe he’ll imagine one of the mainland-bound jets has got machine guns sticking out of the portholes and while he’s shaking his fist at it he just might fall over the wall and into the canyon below. In fact I’m just thinking I might go out there and give him a helping hand when suddenly the room’s full of light again and when I’ve got used to it I can see that Tina’s the one that’s pressed the switch.

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