Just Another Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

them,’ said Bunny casually. ‘That’s why he popped next door. Four of his girls are doing a tag match in mud tonight at the Eldorado. First show’s at 10.30. I should think he’ll be back after that.’
    â€˜Mud-wrestling? He’s gone to watch some tarts fighting in mud?’
    The aspiring megastar was rapidly slipping down dissolution hill, but Bunny took pity on him.
    â€˜We can pop round there ourselves, if you like. I’m a member.’ He would be. ‘I’ll take er … er …’
    â€˜The name’s Geoff, with a G,’ said the only member of Peking not out of his skull.
    â€˜All right, Geoff, if Angel here agrees to pick up my wages from Mr Stubbly, we can go off now and catch the show at the Eldorado.’
    Bunny looked at me and I nodded an okay.
    â€˜That’s it then, let’s roll – and let’s be careful in there.’ He did his Hill Street Blues routine. ‘Keep those two at the bar going, I’ll be back.’
    He walked out, alto case under one arm and Geoff under the other. He didn’t come back, of course. It was two days later that I found him to pass on his wages. He was in a launderette washing mud off his shirt.
    And by the time I’d got to the bar, they weren’t there. Ken the barman and I did the full routine.
    â€˜Did you see what happened to the two birds who were at Table Five when the band was on?’ I asked, after ordering a Pils.
    â€˜You mean the rather svelte one in the frilly blue number and her butch mate with the skinhead cut and the pink jumpsuit?’
    â€˜Yeah, that’s them.’ I gritted my teeth, knowing what was coming.
    â€˜Nobody like that in here tonight, mate.’ He went back to polishing glasses.
    â€˜Oh, come on, Ken, at least get a new scriptwriter. What happened to them?’
    â€˜They left. During the last number. What more can I say?’
    At this rate, Ken’s conversation was going to keep me at the bar about as long as the glass of Pils. I considered returning to the dressing-room to see what the girl drummer was doing, but decided against it. Head cases like that I could live without. I surveyed the disco floor. Nothing there; well, nothing spare anyway. So it looked like an early night.
    But first, there was the problem of getting our wages out of Bill Stubbly. In itself, a diplomatic mission no more difficult than, say, Munich if it was 1938 and you were Czech.
    Bill Stubbly, the proud owner of the Mimosa Club, was a bluff, no-nonsense Yorkshireman who had no business to be in showbusiness. Well, not in Soho, anyway. Despite all his drawbacks – his basic honesty, his total lack of entrepreneurial flair, his status as a happily-married, middle-aged man with two kids – he survived. There were rules, of course, by which he survived; some of his own making, many not. He loathed the drugs trade in any shape or form (thank God he never went into his dressing-room), partly because drugs to a Yorkshireman meant aspirin and partly because it would push him straight into the claws of the gangs and dealers. Yet there he was on Dean Street with a firetrap of a club well inside Triad territory, and you’re telling me he wasn’t paying somebody somewhere? He got into the club business after coming to London for the first time to a Rugby League Final in the ‘60s. It was as simple as that. He and his mates had a weekend on the pop in the big city, and Bill never did turn up for the Monday morning shift down’t t’pit. The Mimosa’s main attraction was its drinking hours. Basically, it opened when the pubs were shut in the afternoon, providing a useful social service for the army of thirsty lost souls searching for a drink in the desert hours of 3.00 to 5.30. Interestingly enough, the only identifiable ethnic minority group to be actively banned from entering the Mimosa were Rugby League supporters down in London for the Cup.