Thomas Perry: Sleeping Dogs

The car sped along the highway, floating past other vehicles as though they were laboring against a thicker medium, like water. “We don’t keep horses anymore,” said Peter regretfully.

The conversation became intermittent and tentative, as conversations involving Michael Schaeffer often were. There were always questions that required answers about his life before Bath, or that might reveal something about his education, income or past acquaintances. Schaeffer was quick and responsive, but his mind always seemed to be full of observations about the present. He never introduced the past except as a way of prompting someone to talk and thus divert attention away from Michael Schaeffer.

Meg sidled into the void as they reached the outskirts of Brighton. “Michael needs a Baedeker tour. He’s never been to Brighton before.” The two men in the front seat were silent. “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”

They cruised slowly past the Royal Pavilion. Its vaguely Arabic spires and domes made Schaeffer think of Disneyland, but Meg supplied the commentary. “The Prince Regent built this as a playhouse where he could get away from it all.”

“Which prince?” asked Michael. He had accepted his responsibility to feign interest.

“Later he was George the Fourth. But all his friends built houses here too, and that was the start of the carnival mess you see around you. What you can’t see is in the palace—the reason why Peter and I have always been so close, like brother and sister, almost.”

“We have?” said Peter Filching. “I wasn’t aware.”

“You know. The mock Oriental bed in the red bedroom.” To Michael she said, “Most of the place was refurnished in Regency furniture from the Royal Collection. But that bed was bought by the National Trust from my father only ten years ago. It used to be in the family digs in Yorkshire, but it was moved to Bath during some massive housecleaning a couple of generations ago. I was conceived on it, and I’ve always suspected Peter was, too. My father probably felt guilty …”

“Nonsense,” Peter protested.

Jimmy Pinchasen coughed and cleared his throat. “I think I’ll drive up and let you two out right at the track. Peter and I will put the Bentley where they won’t crash a lorry full of horse fodder into it, and then catch up.” He pulled the big car over into a crowd of pedestrians, letting them grab each other and sidestep to avoid the gleaming machine’s inexorable progress into their midst. Once out of danger, they glared into the dark windows impotently.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Meg. “I’m a very good walker and I wore sensible shoes.”

“I insist,” said Jimmy. He glanced at the silent Filching. “I really do.”

Meg opened the door and stepped out onto the grass. “Come on, Michael. We’ll go tell the horses what we want them to do.”

Schaeffer got out of the car and stood beside her as the vehicle resumed its deadly progress through the crowd. “Your story offended him.”

“Peter? Don’t worry. As soon as he’s served his time as the Monk of Bath and his father frees his trust fund, he’ll return to Babylon and tell the story himself, after altering it to his taste. I’ve always done this to him.”

“I wonder if anyone will believe it.”

“He doesn’t have the conviction I have, but they might,” she said. He noticed that she was assessing him as though she were trying to decide how far she could push him. “I taught him to lie when we were children, just in case I wanted him later as a lover.”

Beside the grandstand, several small wooden structures had been erected that were not much more than desks with awnings. They looked as though they had been clapped together in haste, but the apparent age of the wood argued that they had been assembled on the grass for the races and carted off each season for generations. The awning over one of them bore a printed sign that read B. BALDWIN, TURF ACCOUNTANT. When the Bentley had knifed its way into the crowd, Mr. Baldwin had grinned and displayed the peculiar arrangement of his teeth, which were straight and even, but had small, regular spaces between them as though they had once belonged to a much smaller person. In fact, they had: Mr. Baldwin, a man in his forties whose face had already acquired a permanent, wizened squint, still had his baby teeth. The others had never grown in to displace them, and when he’d had his jaw X-rayed, he had learned that he was the victim of a minor genetic disorder. One theory expressed by the scientific minds around the betting circuit was that he was so greedy he couldn’t bear to give up anything he had. But another theory that gained more popular credence was that Baldwin was like a shark, growing row after row of sharp little teeth, each row moving forward to replace the last as he wore them out on the victims of his voracity.

Baldwin’s grin caused the two men with him to follow his gaze to see what was causing the commotion. They saw the beautiful girl get out of the Bentley and listened to Baldwin’s appraisal: “I’d give five hundred pounds.”

“For one of her earrings,” said Mack Talarese. “That’s a Rolls she just got out of.” His name was Mario, but nobody called him that anymore except his relatives. One of them was his uncle, Tony Talarese, whom he called Uncle Antonio with the greatest humility and a hint of gratitude. Uncle Antonio lived in New Jersey, but he had managed to get young Mario a chance to make his bones as a soldier for the Carpaccio brothers, two entrepreneurs who were trying to establish a business in England. Someday, Uncle Antonio hoped, his nephew would wear Savile Row suits and carry a briefcase into a two-hundred-year-old building, where he would manipulate the computers and fax machines Antonio thought of as the instruments of power, buying and selling and controlling the immense flow of cash that would be coming from America. The money would be translated into investments of incalculable value and unassailable strength. But first Mario would need a few years to make himself into the man who could do it. He needed the experience that would make him different from the other men in tailor-made suits in the old, gleaming offices. He had to know without faltering what he would do when a man tried to avoid him on the day his loan was due, what he would do when one of his hookers withheld a portion of her earnings, what he would do when a rival appeared to be surpassing him. He had to know that when the time came he would not hesitate to act with force and certainty. He had to know where all that money came from.

Now Mario saw something that struck him as the greatest good luck. The man who had emerged from the Rolls-Royce looked familiar. Mario couldn’t remember his name, but at home they would sure as hell remember. He was the hired specialist who had gone crazy years ago and whacked all those guys. He had killed even Mr. Castiglione, who must have been eighty at the time, living like a withered emperor in a fortress on a man-made oasis outside Las Vegas. Mario considered how to use his good luck. He could call his uncle Antonio on the telephone and tell him what he had seen. But then his uncle would be the one who would get the credit; he would put a couple of men on a plane. If Mario could just handle this himself, take a careful grasp of the good luck so that it wouldn’t slip through his fingers, he could take years off his apprenticeship. Somebody would hear about it and elevate him to a place of respect that was rare for a man of his years, and free him from dependence on the meager patronage of his conservative uncle.

Mario took inventory of the assets at his command. There was Lucchi, the young Sicilian who was making the rounds with him. Lucchi had been a waiter in a small, dirty London restaurant that the Carpaccio brothers owned. They had brought him here from Sicily and given him a job to pay off some debt they owed someone through the complex and prehistoric accounting system they carried in their heads. Lucchi still dressed like a waiter in tight black pants and loose, bloused white shirts with ancient stains on them, and he walked like a woman.