Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

“Ye’re not such an effin’ great deal now, are ye, Colin lad?” he’d ask while gumming a sausage. “Wi’ yer toff suits of clothes and yer leather shoes all nice and shiny. Now yer content to have a cup of tea with yer old gentleman’s gentleman, who ye haven’t bothered to as much as send a pack of fags to, and a year gone past. No, you were too good, then, wi’ yer ’hores and yer poofters and floggin’ dope like a Chinaman.”

Which brought up a touchy subject.

His grandda had tremendous stamina for such an old croaker, Colin thought as the coot launched into yet another diatribe against him. Colin’s only solace was that his grandmother had died, so he didn’t have to listen to this in stereo.

Colin tuned him out and reflected on his own misery. Not only did he not have Alice, with her delicious body and the delicious things she did with it, neither did he have his twenty thousand quid that bastard Neal had done him out of. Worse than that, his hard-won drug and prostitution business, which he had spent years building up, was going to skat because Colin didn’t dare show his face aboveground, lest he be chopped into Tuesday’s lunch special. Which brought him back to brooding about Neal, who had caused this whole mess. And here he was, living in a root cellar with a crazy old man who smelled like a dead goat, dribbled his breakfast egg down his one decent shirt, and talked to the telly.

Weren’t you the one, Colin asked himself, who swore he’d get out of this neighborhood and never come back? Now look at you, Colin lad, with one shirt to your own back, and afraid to go home. He had to find Neal and Alice, and that was an end to it.

Life was no holiday for Crisp these days, either, what with two Chinamen following him every step that he took.

They had let him up off the floor that night, pushed him around a little for emphasis, and told him they’d be watching him. He’d better lead them to Colin, they said, or they would hold him responsible for the money. The girl, too. And they gave their opinion that it would take this girl one long time to work off twenty thousand pounds.

So now they followed him, not even bothering to be subtle about it, confident that he was frightened enough to lead them straight to Colin. He would, too, if he could figure out where the bugger had got to. He wasn’t anywhere on the Main Drag, or on King’s Highway or at Paddington or Victoria or any of the clubs. He had buggered off, left his old china (no pun intended) holding the old bag. He was probably in France by now, soaking up the rays on the beach, but Crisp wasn’t going to tell his twin shadows that. They might get upset and go back to work with the knife. So for the time being, he settled for the uneasy status quo, and wandered around London as if he was looking for someone.

Sod Colin, anyway. Sod and double sod him.

In his mind, colin kept going back to the flat on Regent’s Park Road. To be sure, it was a painful and humiliating memory, and he knew he had made mistakes there, but he knew it was his only starting point. As he lay on the filthy mattress, he went over it again and again, asking himself the same questions. Whose flat was it? Why bad Neal gone there?

To sell a book, perhaps?

Or perhaps to take one home.

Colin knew only one way to find out.

Much to his surprise, Neal liked mornings best. He had always been a night person, but in the cool and quiet of the Yorkshire mornings, he found contentment of a sort. He got up long before Allie, who still had tough nights a week after her last fix. As she slept off her exhaustion, Neal would start the fire in the stove and fireplace and then haul water to the bathtub. He’d force himself into the cold water, even coming to the point where he found it refreshing. He’d wash his hair quickly, towel off, and trot back inside to stand by the fire. He’d put the water to the boil, make himself a strong pot of tea, generously heaping in milk and sugar. Then he’d make toast over the open fire and eat it outside with his second cup of tea. All he found missing was a newspaper, but after a few days, he hadn’t even missed that. He didn’t care about who was killing whom, or even how the Yankees were doing. It didn’t seem to matter up here.

Sometimes in the early cool of morning, he thought about just disappearing and not dealing at all with the troubles he knew were waiting. He recognized it as a fantasy-Graham would track him down through Keyes; he would run out of money; Allie would recover and want to move on with their deal-but he was surprised at its appeal. The quiet and seclusion were powerful drugs. He started to forget about Colin, about John Chase, even about Levine fucking him over. There’d be a time to deal with all of that.

Not necessarily this morning, however-or any particular morning.

So sometimes he’d read a book along with the second and third cup, and other times he’d just sit-something he never thought he’d do-and enjoy the morning as it brightened and warmed. He’d watch the mist clear over the wood in the valley, and watch the shepherd and his dog move their sheep over the crest of the ridge.

He’d have maybe an hour of this quiet before Allie would wake up. He would hear her pad down the creaky stairs, stop and look for him in the kitchen, and then come outside. She would bring her cup with her and pour the last tea out of the pot. She liked it sticky sweet, and would spread gobs of butter and jam on the toast he’d make for her.

They spoke little on these early mornings. Sometimes she would tell him about her dreams from the night before, but mostly they just sat and listened to the morning. Sometimes she would fall asleep in her chair for a few minutes, and he would know that her dreams had been bad and her sleep shaky. Other mornings, she would light one of her few remaining cigarettes and smoke it slowly with deep, long drags. She’d sit far back in her chair and stare at the sky, and Neal didn’t have to ask or wonder about what she was thinking.

It was always Allie who broke their reverie, suddenly standing up and carrying the teapot and cups back into the cottage. She’d come back a few minutes later, dressed and her hair brushed, and gently kick the leg of his chair, where he would be taking a catnap. He would get up and they would walk over the top of the hill. The first time they did this, three days into her withdrawal, they made slow progress, and she leaned on his arm for the few minutes that they walked. He knew it embarrassed her. He watched her determination take over as their morning walk became a symbol of her independence, her shift from passive victim to active participant, and he always let her set the pace. She was recovering quickly.

The crest of the hill was a revelation, as it sloped steeply on the other side to a deeply wooded valley, which lay in stark contrast to the bleak beauty of the moor. The first few times that they climbed to the crest, they were content to stay there and enjoy the view: the short tufts of stubby grass and heather giving way to the lush green meadow, a brook, and then the wood. But on the third morning, Allie wordlessly set off down the slope, leaving him to follow or not. He did, staying well behind her, letting her lead them to the side of the brook. He sat down beside her on a fallen log. She was puffing, fighting for air, and her face was flushed with the effort. She was smiling. They sat for a long time until she could catch her breath, and the climb back up to the cottage was hard for them both.

“You’re going to owe me sixteen thousand dollars, mister,” she said between gasps, “and I’ll have earned every penny.”

After that, they pushed their walk a little farther every day. They found some stones on which they could cross the brook without getting wet, and it led to a natural footpath through the thick green wood. It was cool in there, cool and dark. Birds they didn’t recognize fled in short hops in front of them, scolding them for their intrusion. Sometimes Neal and Allie would sit in the dark of the wood and listen to the birds. Other times, they would walk straight through and come out the other side to a meadow bordered by a rail fence. The meadow was oval-shaped and at the far end was a narrow gate that opened onto a trail leading back up the slope to the open moor. Some mornings, they arrived to find the shepherd there. The old man would lean on the rails of the fence, smoking a pipe, a shotgun cradled in his arm as he directed the efforts of his dog.