Quintin Jardine - Poisoned Cherries

‘Puerto Vallarta.’

‘I know that, but whereabouts?’

‘In a cafe.’

‘Does your drink have ice in it?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask that?’

‘Because I hope it gives you the shits. Is he there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Put him on.’

‘No.’

‘Listen, sooner or later, it’ll happen. Might as well be now.’

‘Okay,’ she murmured, after a while. ‘Nick.’

Johnson tried to sound cool as he took the phone. ‘Oz, buddy, I’m sorry; you have to believe that. But these things happen; we just couldn’t help ourselves.’

‘Sure,’ I said, as harshly as I could, for Miles’s benefit. ‘You just couldn’t help banging my wife. Well here’s something else that’s going to happen; you’d better get ready to play ugly parts. When I’m finished with you, you’re going to look like Brando did at the end of On the Waterfront .’

‘Oz, please,’ I heard the weasel protest. ‘This isn’t your style. Don’t act the tough guy.’

‘I’m not acting, Johnson; I am a tough guy. I’ve trained with tough guys. I know ways to hurt you that you couldn’t even imagine.’ That much was true; my time working with my wrestler pals had taught me plenty. I was beginning to look forward to showing him, too.

‘Put my wife back on.’ He did as he was told; I guessed I’d convinced him, because when Prim took the phone she sounded worried.

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I made him a promise. Miles was going to blow him out of Hollywood, but I want that pleasure for myself. Now listen, honey; I’ll ask you this just once. Come home. Leave that bumhole sitting in the bar and catch the first plane back to LA.

‘But I really mean it. Now or never; I won’t ask you again.’

There was a silence. The longer it lasted, the more I worried. Christ, maybe I’d done too good a job, and she would catch the bloody plane.

So as she answered, I concentrated hard on wincing, and on not cracking an involuntary smile.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told me. ‘I just can’t do that. I don’t love you any more, Oz.’

‘You never did love me,’ I murmured, with an Oscar-winning edge of bitterness in my voice.

‘Maybe not; and maybe that cut both ways. Listen, I have to go. You do what you have to do, see a lawyer; I want a fair split, that’s all. Just don’t hurt Nicky, please.’

‘That’ll be difficult, but for you, okay; I won’t touch him.’ I decided that I’d leave that piece of business until she’d signed the divorce settlement. ‘Take care; just don’t trust that guy.’

‘As if I would, after you,’ she replied. ‘Goodbye.’

I looked across at Miles, just as Dawn appeared at the poolside, and shook my head, slowly, and. . I hoped. . sadly. ‘You heard me,’ I said.

‘Yes, mate, I did. I don’t know if I could have done that in your shoes.’

‘You’ll never be in his shoes,’ exclaimed his wife, indignantly. She looked at me. ‘You called her after all?’

‘Yes, more fool me.’

Miles opened yet another beer and handed it to me. I took it, but made a mental note to slow down. I didn’t want to get pissed, not there, not then.

‘Bruce has gone down for the night,’ Dawn said. ‘I thought we might cook steaks and bake potatoes on the barbecue, if that’s all right with you boys.’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ I told her.

We threw a few chunks of Texas beef on the outdoor grill and sat down to eat them with the spuds and a salad, at the big oval table at the shallow end of the pool. I was starving, but I made a show of shoving my food around the plate, and sipping morosely at my Long Flat Red. . Miles imports most of his booze from his home country.

He watched me for a while, until eventually he leaned across towards me and punched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘I can see this has blown you right out of the water, mate,’ he began. He was speaking slowly; the Tyrrell’s is heavy stuff. ‘Me too, I don’t mind telling you. I always thought Primavera was a straight arrow. . and for her to go off with an arsehole like Johnson, that just makes it worse.

‘But you must not let it get you down.’ He rapped the table with his knuckles, hard enough to make him wince. ‘You have a future in our business, buddy. You were good in your first movie, and better in the one we’ve just finished. You’re a natural actor, Oz Blackstone, and you could be a big star. My advice is, concentrate on your career and use it to get over what Prim’s done to you.’

I felt myself frown. ‘What career, man?’ I asked him. ‘Okay, I’ve made a couple of movies for you, and I’m very grateful for the chance. . not to mention the money. . but my agent in London hasn’t exactly been bombarding me with projects.’

‘Fuck him,’ Miles drawled, earning a nod of disapproval from Dawn. ‘We’ll get you a real agent, out here in California. But even before that, I’ve got a proposition to put to you. I was going to talk to you about it in a couple of days, but now’s as good a time as any.

‘I’m making a sack of money from the last Scottish project.’ I knew this for myself; I was on one per cent of the gross and up to that point I’d made one and a half million dollars. ‘So much, in fact, that I’m going back there for my next movie. I’ll direct, not act, but Dawn will have the female lead. I want you in the second-guy role.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I felt my ears prick up, and my eyebrows rise. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a cop story, based on one of a series of novels. If it works out right it might even be the first in a series of movies.’

‘Where’s it set?’

‘This is the bit you’ll like most of all. It’s set in your old home town; in Edinburgh.’

I made a show of thinking over Miles’s offer of the Edinburgh part; I was even pretentious enough to ask to look at the script. Because of my grief, he humoured me, and I spent a few days at Malibu reading it between teleconferences with Greg McPhillips, my lawyer in Scotland, and meetings with Roscoe Brown, my brand new Hollywood agent.

I briefed Greg to draw up a legal separation from Prim, and a property settlement that was fair to us both, yet left me well fixed financially. He was gob-smacked when I told him, of course; he’d known us both when we lived in Glasgow and had played a significant part in our interesting lives. His shock didn’t stop him giving me some pretty sharp advice, though, and promising me his personal loyalty in the event that my ex decided to cut up rough. I knew quite a bit about Greg’s practice, having worked for him in the past, and I reckoned that I was on my way to becoming his biggest private client.

Roscoe Brown was positive too. Miles sent him along to see me the day after Prim dropped her bombshell. He was a young black guy, and he was offered to me as the coming player in the game. I figured out why, straight away; the reek of sharpness coming from him was as strong as his Eau Sauvage. I wasn’t sure who was interviewing who. . sorry, whom. . at our first meeting, but whatever the truth of it was, we both passed.

It took him three days to make me realise that I didn’t have to go back to Scotland. He came back to see me on the following Tuesday with offers of parts in three different projects, two of them to be shot in the States and the third back in Canada, in Vancouver this time.

He also brought with him an offer of a voice-over in a golf ball ad. I admit that I went a bit Hollywood when he tabled that one; I thought it was a step back down the ladder, until he showed me the money on offer. It was enough to change my mind. ‘If it’s good enough for Jack Nicholson,’ I told him, ‘it’s good enough for me.’