Ken Bruen - Rilke on Black

“Hey Nicky, leave the humour to us better able, the strong silent shit suits you better.”

“Was there something you wanted to tell me.”

“Testy! Yeah, there’s something... strap yer legs round this dance. Your chick knows Baldwin.”

“What?”

“You heard. Guess she didn’t tell you eh. Do I hear the soft sound of dee shit hitting the fan. Catch you later big guy.”

My first impulse was to go direct to High Street Kensington. As soon as she’d opened the door, I’d bounce her across the hall. Used to be my job... But I phoned instead.

She was in the bath and half in the bag as her speech was very precise. Modulated, as if she knew slurring was but a word away. She asked, “Yo’ baby, do I hear Bo in the background?”

“Fuck Bo.”

“You wish... and me too I guess. I wish you were here in the bath with me. I’m all sudsy... and you’re so hard baby.”

Which was definitely a factor. But the coke was giving me an icy concentration that would evaporate in seconds. I had to cut through the smoke screen.

“You know Baldwin.”

“Who?”

“For fucksake Lisa, the guy we’re going to snatch.”

I expected denial. What I got was purring. I dunno if you can slur that but she was close.

“Don’t be mean to me baby... y’all come on over and let me stroke yah.”

The coke moved into overdrive. The kill before the burnout.

“How many of us were you planning to service, is Baldwin invited too?”

The line went dead and my high and my dick. A depression moved right in to fill the vacant lot. I wanted to hurt somebody, anybody. The idea of crossing over to Dex and kicking the shit outa him was powerful.

The phone rang. Sliced across my fried brain. She launched right into it.

“I worked for him at his first club. A long time ago. How do you think I know so much about the dude? What, ’cos he’s coloured, you think I found him in the yallah pages. Listed under kidnap possibilities. Don’t be jealous baby... don’t be jealous honey-chile... I’ll come over and lick it better.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, eh?”

“I was afraid darlin’, you so big, yo’ so well hung.”

“Cut the crap sister. Put yer act together by this evening.”

“I’ll be there baby. I’ll be there for you.”

I could have walked then. Pull a righteous indignation act and split. For one glorious brief moment I thought and roared... “FUCKEMALL.”

I went rummaging in the cupboard to see if Lisa had left any other chemicals. Found some white powder and hoping to hell and gone it wasn’t talc, I snorted deep. Nothing for a few moments.

“Bummer,” I said.

Then a massive rush. What a coronary must be like. My nose was corroded as if red hot peppers were running riot.

Not coke.

  Not talc

but friggin methedrine.

A cold sweat leaped all over my body. I was leaking chills. I had a ferocious compulsion to smoke about nine cigarettes. Why that number I dunno but it seemed to make perfect sense. A cascade of noise in my head. Strung out thus, hours went by.

At one stage I tried to read, thinking words would calm me. I had collected a diverse collection of articles culled from my Digests on every subject. All in that quest for vocabulary. Among these were some letters William Burroughs had written to Allen Ginsberg.

Thinking the literature of drugs was appropriate or should that be vice versa?

Never no mind. This is what I read: “I was first arrested when I beached, a balsa raft suspect to have floated up from Peru with a young boy and a toothbrush. (I travel light, only the essentials.)”

This wasn’t doing me a whole lot of good but it’s hardly fair to blame Burroughs.

More: “One night, after shooting six ampoules of dolophine, the ex-captain found me sitting stark naked in the hall on the toilet seat (which I had wrenched from its moorings) playing in a bucket of water and singing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’.

“At the same time complaining, in clearly enunciated tones, of the high cost of living.”

Two things I realised I didn’t know after I read this. What the hell were dolophines and, maybe more important, what were the words of “Heart of Texas”?

Food... yeah, I could eat. Perhaps that would ease me on down. I wanted warmth too... the Bonny brand. Some sort of sanity was essential, nigh vital.

“You look like shit,” Bonny said.

“This is hello?”

The rush-hour manic food crowd had gone. Grease hung in the air and a breath-gasping pung of vinegar ruled. She was drinking tea. A pack of Marlboro lights before her. I leant over and took one.

“What are you doing?”

“Borrowing one of your cigarettes. Why you won’t buy mule kickers and be honest is beyond me. Marlboro lights for fucksakes. Why... you mind?”

She looked as if she minded a lot. A cigarette?

Deep sigh from her. Worse, it had a horrible lilt of understanding in there. True sickener. She said, “You’ll walk in here tomorrow and say — ‘Here’s that cigarette I owe you’ — is that how it’ll work? I thought you quit.”

“What’s this, you’re my mother now... what do you care?... here, keep the bloody thing.”

And I crumpled it, threw it on the table. It curled there like a sad dream. Stood up and went to the vending machine, praying I had change.

I did.

Bought a pack with health warnings so heavy on it that it throbbed in my fist. Sitting back down I felt like a horse’s arse. Made a childish display of “borrowing” her lighter and lighting up.

All the time she just watched me. Vintage Bonny. Let you jump in with both feet. I drew heavy on the cigarette and it tasted like stale manure. But I had to stay with it. I dunno what flavour I was expecting... not hope anyway!

Bonny reached over, took my hand. She had green eyes but I didn’t think I’d tell Lisa. A faint aroma of chips around her. A comforting aroma of false childhood was mixed in there somehow.

“Nick, what’s going on? You’re going to hell in a bucket. Is it money? I do know it’s the woman but there’s nothing I can do about that. You’ll take it all the way to burn out. But I can help financially.”

“Yeah, it’s cash.”

“What do you need?”

“How does five hundred sound?”

Sounded harsh is what it did. Her face gave only a tiny moment of hesitancy, then she said, “OK... give me a few seconds.”

What the fuck I thought. In a short while, I’ll be getting half a million and I’ll treat her proper. She returned and gave me a soiled envelope, felt solid. The voltage that money gives. I whispered, “Pat Eddery.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just an old memory.”

“A man’s dress tells you what he does”

Ecclesiastics 19:27

How to tog out for a kidnapping. Dex was wearing a green combat jacket, black combat boots and dirty blue jeans. He asked, “Recognise the look?”

“Early evening wino?”

“Mickey Rourke in A Prayer for the Dying .”

“Missed that.”

“And a whole lot else besides.”

I was wearing trainers, grey sweat shirt and jeans. The urge to dress entirely in black I’d suppressed. It wasn’t a night for overstatement. Least not yet.

We were parked outside Baldwin’s club in Brixton. Lisa had already gone in. One o’clock in the morning and the streets were hopping. If Lisa was right, Baldwin left at the same time without fail. Dex had produced some animal tranquilliser which now rested in Lisa’s bag. She measured the dose and provided the syringe.

I’d worried. “Is it safe?”

“Well baby, the animals haven’t complained.”

Needless to say, Dex got a kick outa that.