Jack Carter's Law by Ted Lewis

Author:Ted Lewis
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-10-01T23:31:06+00:00

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The Garage

I pick up the phone and dial Gerald and Les’s number, and while I’m waiting for them to answer I take out a cigarette and light up and look at Charlie and Mrs. Abbott and try not to get too angry. Mrs. Abbott is looking round the room as if she’s paying a visit to her least favourite relative and totting up the dust particles to pass the time. Charlie is half conscious and has no interest whatsoever in his immediate surroundings.

The Garage is a little haven that Gerald and Les have set at one side where they can go to avoid any strife that might come their way. So far they’ve never had to use it themselves but it’s come in handy as a halfway house for one or two of their American friends. Downstairs it’s just a garage in a row of garages at the back of a row of big Victorian houses, but upstairs it’s been kitted out like a nuclear shelter only more comfortable.

Only Gerald and Les won’t be too pleased about Charlie’s addi­tion to the pattern on the settee.

Mrs. Abbott is sitting next to him, her arm round his

shoulder, holding an unlit cigarette in her free hand. The ringing tone car­ries on ringing and in the end I put the receiver down and stand up and walk over to the settee and flick my lighter at Mrs. Abbott. She gives me her long look but she accepts the light anyway. Then I go back to the telephone and try Gerald and Les again. Still there’s no answer so I press the tit down and dial the club’s other number.

Billy answers and I say, “It’s Jack Carter here. Are Gerald and Les downstairs?”

“Hang on, Mr. Carter,” Billy says. “I’ll check up for you.”

The receiver rattles down and Billy goes away and checks up and while he’s doing that rain begins to rattle against the broad sky­light. Mrs. Abbott’s ash falls from the end of her cigarette and I have that feeling that I’ve lived through all this before, even down to the answer that Billy gives me when he comes back to the phone.

“No, Mr. Carter,” he says. “They’re not downstairs.”

“Mrs. Fletcher about?”

“No, not at the moment.”

I thank him and put the phone down and swear. Then I get up and go over to where the drinks are kept and for the twentieth time since I left Fourness Road I think about

the two heavies and why it was them who arrived instead

of the law involved in pro­tecting Jimmy’s family. It had been known in the past for Old Bill to offer tenders for something he didn’t want to do himself but this wasn’t that kind of area. This was a grass and his family, all legal and above board.

So I pour my drink and I turn to Mrs. Abbott and I say, “Who did you phone, Mrs. Abbott?”

She looks at me and she says nothing.

“It wasn’t the law, was it?”

She shrugs. “You’re so bleeding clever, you bleeding well find out.

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