Jack Carter's Law Read Online Free PDF Page B

there, watching his progress.
    Walter stops in his tracks and gives me his look and then he says to his missus, “Hear, Maur, I told you them stories was right. Jack Carter’s gone butch, whatever you used
to say.”
    Maureen screeches her head off and repeats the very funny joke to Eddie’s wife, who finds it even funnier than she did.
    “Hello, Walter,” I say. “Seeing where your boys go on their night off?”
    He laughs at that but he finds it as funny as I found his remark.
    The four of them struggle into the booth, Walter and Maureen with their backs against the wall, Eddie and his wife, Shirley, on the low stools opposite them.
    Five seconds after they’ve sat down Walter says, “All right, then, where’s the fucking drinks?”
    “Fucking place this is,” says Eddie, lighting the wrong end of his cigarette.
    “Coming, coming,” Maurice shouts from beyond the throng at the bar.
    “That’ll be the day,” Maureen says and they all fall about laughing again. Maurice ponces over again and apologises for the poor service and Walter blows him a kiss and there’s more laughter.
    Then Walter focuses on me again and says, “So how’s your governors keeping then?”
    “Nice and fat, like you two,” I tell him. “It’s only people like me that keep slim.”
    “Up the bleeding workers,” Maureen says, crossing her legs so you can see right up to the maker’s name.
    “No good flashing in here, darling,” Walter says. “The dirty looks won’t be the kind you’re wanting.”
    “Don’t you fucking believe it,” Maureen says and swivels round on her seat and places her elbows on the table behind her and lifts her legs in the air and opens them wide. Shirley nearly pees herself and the crowd at the bar all have heart attacks.
    “Here, you fucking ponces, don’t you know it’s rude to ignore a lady when she winks at you?”
    This is too much for Shirley who slides onto her side on the booth seat.
    Walter spins Maureen round in her seat and says, “All right, keep them on. We’ve all seen it before.”
    “Not bloody lately you haven’t.”
    “I’m the only one then. I’m telling you. Pack it in.”
    Maureen starts swearing at him but she’s interrupted by Maurice arriving with the drinks.
    “That slag behind the bar,” Maurice says, dishing out. “She’ll have to bleeding go.”
    Walter slides up the seat towards me a bit and returns to the welfare of Gerald and Les.
    “So they’re all right, are they? Prospering?”
    I shrug. “I get my wages. That’s all I care about.”
    “Wages.” Walter throws his head back and laughs. “Wages. The jobs you’ve been on.”
    “What jobs would they be, Walter?”
    “Never mind. So long as you’re happy.”
    I have a few thoughts whether to suss Walter as to whether he’s got wind of Jimmy. He probably has, but there’s no reason why he should give me a helpful answer. The Colemans and the Fletchers are like steak and porridge. The only reason the four of them are still walking this earth is that they’re so shit scared of each other they’ve never had the nerve for a face-up. They leave that kind of thing to people like me; every now and again Gerald and Les, for some reason, real or imaginary, will send me round to have a look at one of Walter’s boys and every now and again some of Walter’s boys do the same in our patch. It keeps the four of them happy and chuffed with the publicity the papers give their apparent hardness. Not that they’re soft. They wouldn’t be the Fletchers and the Colemans if they were. It’s just that they’ve built up their legends so strong that they don’t want to put the reality to the test. So they try and fuck each other in every other way they can think of.
    “Only one thing, though,” Walter says. “I hope you never wish you hadn’t turned me down.”
    “Hello, what’s this?” says Maurice, who’s adopted the role of magnanimous old queen by drawing up a stool between Maureen and Shirley and