Jack Carter's Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

you want some extra muscle get hold of Mickey and Del but make sure they’re sweetened up. The less that gets around the better.”
    “I won’t need them,” Tommy says. “This kind of thing boils me up to the value of three.”
    “Yes. And if you do find him, leave enough of him for me. I want to know who he’s dealing with.”
    “I’ll try. I’ll be phoning you.”
    The line goes dead.
    I’m back at the flat sitting on the edge of my unmade bed with the smell of the sheets reminding me of Audrey. An hour ago I got on to Con McCarty to go down to Richmond and have a look at Mallory’s house and I’m waiting for his call.
    I get up and pour a drink and think about the time at Dulwich. After that one Gerald and Les should never have touched Jimmy again, but no, they said he’s good, he knows his stuff, that was an accident, happen to anybody. Sure it was an accident, a Securicor guard lying in the gutter with a hole in his stomach, hands grabbing at the hole trying to keep himself together, and Tony Warmby frozen with the pump action still smoking and Jimmy who’d screamed at Tony to shoot now screaming at him to move, for fuck’s sake move, get in the fucking car, and then putting his foot hard down and taking off half on the pavement and leaving Tony there to cop for it. Sure it had been an accident. After all, as Gerald and Les had said, we’d got away with it, hadn’t we, we’d got the score, and Tony hadn’t grassed and the Securicor man hadn’t snuffed it. And Tony’s old lady’d got his share, hadn’t she? Didn’t work out too bad at all. Except someone like Tony who would never grass was on fifteen to twenty and the person who’d virtually put him away was now grassing the rest of us.
    The phone rings and it’s Con.
    “Gone away,” he says. “Gone away all neat and tidy.”
    “You got in?”
    “Yeah, I got in all right. For someone who associates with society’s antisocial elements he isn’t very burglarproof.”
    “And?”
    “The works. Suits, socks, papers—you name it. Even the fridge was clear. It wasn’t what you’d call a hasty decision.”
    “And nothing to say where to?”
    “What do you think?”
    “All right,” I say. “I’m going over to Maurice’s now. I’ve got Tommy Gardner looking into Jimmy’s friends so you may as well go over to Jimmy’s place and see what you can turn up there. Which of course will be fuck all. But it has to be done.”
    “And then what?”
    “I don’t know. Come to Maurice’s and if I’m not there I’ll be back at the club.”
    Con puts down the receiver and I put on my jacket and go out of the flat and get a taxi over to Maurice’s.
    I walk down the basement steps and ring the bell and the curtain at the window by the side of the door moves slightly and then a minute later the door is opened by a tall blond Adonis with a Kirk Douglas hairstyle.
    “Evening, Mr. Carter,” he says.
    “Evening, Leo. Who’s in?”
    “The usual slags. The commoners. Nothing nice comes in till after midnight, not these days.”
    “Anybody I know?”
    “Not unless you’ve been keeping something from me.” Leo unlocks the inner door and lets me into Maurice’s room.
    The lighting is predominantly blush pink, the wallpaper Indian Restaurant relief. There is a small bar fitted under a Moroccan arch. There are a dozen or so small round tables and towards the back of the room there is another, larger Moroccan arch and beyond this arch there are four booth seats upholstered in red leatherette and this is where Maurice holds court, but before I go over and pay my respects I make my way to the bar. The boys are three-deep at the bar, as if they’re huddling together for warmth, heads flicking this way and that like bantams on the lookout for corn, all the different shades of rinses as one under the sugary lighting, chained jewelry dulled by the atmosphere, buttocks and profiles just that little bit smoother in the dimness. And of course a straight