Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

“Yeah, Colin, how come?” she asked. It was a joke between them. “Better living through chemistry, love,” Colin said. “Better loving, too.”

Oh boy.

“Have you decided, sir?”

The waiter startled him,

“I’ll have the lamb, please.”

“And the wine, sir?”

“You decide.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Colin was playing to a full house and loving it. He knew just how much he could bait the crowd of locals and tourists without forcing the manager to toss him. He had just the right edge, loud and sharp enough to disrupt the place. Putting it to the middle class he was, and no mistake.

“Well,” Colin asked his mates, and anyone within earshot, “have you ever met a bloke from Oxford who wasn’t a buggerboy?”

Crisp tried to keep up with him. “Have you ever met a bloke from Oxford?”

“Not me. I hate buggerboys.”

“Or do you just hate Oxford boys?” asked Allie.

“Oxford boys, Cambridge boys, Eton boys, Arundel boys… they’re all buttjockeys. What they get up to between the sheets when the lights go out would make me mother weep.”

“Your mother’s dead.”

“All the same.”

“I need to hit the loo,” Allie said.

“Again?”

“It’s been a while.”

Do I detect a slight tinge of the defensive? Neal asked himself.

“So go.”

“Come with me.”

“You’re a big girl now. It’s the one with the frock on the door.”

“You know what I mean.”

Their voices had dropped. This was private business. Neal saw that Colin didn’t like his act interrupted.

“Later,” Colin said.

“C’mon, Collie. Now.”

Collie? As in Lassie, as in woof-woof, come quick, Timmy fell down the well?

“C’mon, please?”

Neal checked out her eyes. He could never remember whether the eyes were supposed to be the windows or the mirrors of the soul. Maybe both, like those one-way mirrors they use in precinct houses and your finer department stores.

Allie’s eyes were tilting toward teary. Moist and soft, and Neal could swear they had been sharp and clear when he came in. A look like that on Seventy-second Street would draw the sales force for blocks around.

Colin took control. “Have another beer.” Allie’s fingers started doing a Buddy Rich imitation on the bottle. Her nostrils, as they say in the romance books, flared. Then she turned on the charm she’d learned from Mom and Dad.

“Maybe just a little something for my cold. Runny nose?”

Is it ever thus? Neal wondered. He had a friend at Columbia who claimed that life was just a stack of record albums on an automatic drop. Problem was, they were all the same record.

Colin smiled back at her. A compromise had been reached. “Yeah, those summer colds are always the worst. Got a bit of a sniffle meself.” He stood up. “Come on then, love. You two hold the table, eh? You can go when we get back.”

The loos were in the basement at the end of a dark, narrow corridor. Allie leaned against the corridor wall as Colin screened her from view and held the spoon to her nose. She steadied it against one nostril and rested her finger against the other to keep it closed. She inhaled sharply and deeply and held her head back while Colin carefully dipped another spoonful from the vial in his hand. She snorted this one and shook her head gently back and forth.

Colin dipped into the vial again for a quick hit. Then he ran the little finger of his right hand around the rim of the vial, and with his left hand pushed Allie’s shirt up and over her breasts. He gently rubbed a little coke around each nipple and bent over and licked it off. She bit down on the knuckle of her index finger and whimpered once, softly, as her right hand found his crotch and rubbed. He pulled her shirt back down. Her nipples stood out against the thin black fabric.

Colin smiled and removed her hand. “Very sexy, love. Very nice. Now be a good girl and pop back upstairs. I have to use the shitter.”

She brushed past Neal on the stairway. His hand almost reached for her. Instead, he ignored her and followed Colin into the gents’.

To find that God had given it to him on a platter. Colin had draped his jacket over the stall door.

“Yes, sir?” the headwaiter asked as Neal stood at his station.

“Somebody lost a wallet. I wanted to turn it in.”

“Oh dear. How good of you, sir.” He looked through Colin’s wallet and managed to mask the flood of what was welling up in his soul.

“Yes, sir. I shall just put it up here until someone claims it.” Neal sat back down. Colin and company were happily devouring their steaks, conversation having given way to gluttony. They ate like pigs, though, so as not to let the side down.

Neal enjoyed his lamb. Dessert, coffee, and we’ll see how this shakes out, he thought.

The headwaiter had obviously shared the happy news with the rest of the staff, who wasted no time in leading Colin down the primrose path of destruction. A good waiter can hurry or stretch a dinner with a few chosen words and inflections, and these guys were artists. They had now begun to treat Colin like the Duke of Topping-on-Snot, suggesting expensive extras in a tone that suggested that only lowlifes would refuse. Colin, swayed in equal parts by gin, beer, wine, cocaine, heady sex, and sheer hubris, put up a feeble resistance.

“Pudding, sir?”

“Perhaps some brandy, sir?”

“A liqueur for the coffee, sir?”

(A bill that equals the gross national product of Paraguay, sir?)

And finally: “Your check, sir.”

“Thanks, guy.”

The table was littered with the detritus of a glorious bacchanal that would have done Squire Weston and his ten hungry friends proud. Crisp punctuated the trencherman’s orgy with a satisfied belch of Richterian tenor.

Colin wiped the last trace of his third chocolate mousse off his lips and reached in his jacket for his wallet. He reached again, then the other pocket; then his trouser pockets, side and rear. He stood up.

The waiter arched an amused eyebrow. That did it.

“Some fucking bastard stole my fucking purse!”

“Indeed, sir?”

The headwaiter came over and hovered ostentatiously, making dead sure that everybody in the place was watching. Everybody was.

“A problem, sir?” he asked.

“Some groveling whelp of a poxy tart stole my money!”

The headwaiter was nearly delirious with joy. “We will happily accept your personal check.”

“I don’t have any bloody personal check!”

“Oh dear.”

Allie chuckled. A glance from Colin stopped her.

“Credit card, sir?”

“Right, he lifted me purse and handed me back me credit cards,” Colin shouted.

Crisp got up from the table. “Let’s just walk out. Come to a decent place and it’s full of thieves.”

The headwaiter was unperturbed. “How do you intend to settle your bill, sir?”

“I’ll come back with the money.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do, sir.”

“I’m quite capable of paying for it!”

“With what, is the issue.”

“With the money in me fucking wallet!”

Now the headwaiter held center stage. With generations of music hall behind him, he gave a perfect delivery. “Oh, yes”-one, two, three-“your wallet.” He rolled his eyes for the benefit of his audience.

Neal heard his cue. Enter, stage left. “Excuse me, maybe he’s talking about the wallet I turned in.”

The headwaiter turned scarlet and stared at Neal, his eyes accusing him of base treachery. He was trying to decide whether to bluff it out or not. There was a lot of money in the wallet. Neal turned up the heat.

“Yeah, the wallet I found in the men’s room. I turned it in to you.” He put a little extra New York street into his voice for Colin’s benefit.