Duffy (10 page)

He looked round the punters, searching for his man. He covered half of them, then moved his seat. Movement isn’t very popular in these cinemas. It disturbs the entranced communion between the man in his seat and the image on the screen; it makes the punters shifty and guilty about their hard-ons. Some managements send a patrolling heavy round every so often to make sure the punters aren’t jerking off over the seats; others decide this is bad for business as it disturbs the customers, install washable plastic seats, and pay the cleaners a bit extra.

Duffy couldn’t see his man among the second half of the audience either. He looked around the cinema, while careful not to catch any punter’s eye for fear of enraging him. Down at the end, next to the screen, there was a toilet (the clubs are wisely punctilious about G.L.C. regulations on membership procedures and toilets). The side walls of the cinema were solid. The box office had just been a plywood insert into the front six feet of the building.

Duffy got up again and went to the toilet. A narrow corridor ran past it for another fifteen feet or so. Duffy went along to the end and saw some stairs doubling back up to the left. At the foot of the stairs on the right was an emergency exit. The two horizontal push-bars, one on each door, had been chained together; the padlock which held them looked rusty. Duffy slowly walked up the stairs, trying not to make any noise. When he was about halfway up he heard a door open, and footsteps at about the level of his head. Immediately he started walking up at a normal pace, whistling quietly as he did so. When he got to the top of the stairs he saw a large, ginger-haired man with glasses closing a door on the right.

‘Where’s the pisser, mate?’ he asked in a no-trouble voice.

‘You walked right past it,’ the man replied. ‘First bloke to walk past our pisser,’ he added genially, ‘yer nose must be all blocked up.’

Duffy pulled out a handkerchief and blew hard, then sniffed, and acted being knocked out by the stink. ‘Think I can find it now, mate,’ he said, and headed off downstairs. There’d been three rooms at the top of the stairs, and he could hear voices coming from the one on the right. He walked back to the toilet, waited a few seconds, and pulled the chain; nothing happened; he pulled again and smiled at the wasted subterfuge.

He sat in the cinema for a bit longer while a girl with big tits who ran a sex shop invited customers into her back room for a bit of mild fladge (Duffy caught himself wondering who was minding the shop in the meantime). She pulled up her skirt, took down her knickers and leaned over a desk. The men pretended to beat her with a riding crop while she made a whimpering noise which the sound system turned into the cry of an eviscerated goose.

As Duffy left he had a bantering word with the hippy cashier, who confessed he found the films ‘really boring’, that he’d ‘been through that scene’. Duffy recommended that he try again, and mentioned the sex shop number. ‘I mean, maybe tits aren’t your scene, but if they are, man, then that’s the film for you, I’d say.’

‘Nah, I think they’re all really boring.’

Meanwhile, Duffy had completed his casual examination of the locks on the cinema doors; he said goodbye and wandered off.

When he got back home he phoned McKechnie.

‘What did Sullivan say?’

‘He said he couldn’t understand it. He’d put two of his best men on the job, and the bloke had got clean away again.’

‘Did he say how?’

‘Yes, he ran into Regent Street and jumped into a cab. Sullivan’s men waited on the pavement but there wasn’t another cab for a while.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘No. Should I have?’

‘No. Did you tell him you didn’t?’

‘No. What really happened?’

‘The red-tie merchant in the café when you made the drop got up and left almost at once, just scarpered. Whether there was another guy or not I can’t be sure; but if there was, he couldn’t tail a man in a wheelchair. He was nowhere when I got to the end of my run.’

‘Where was that.’

‘A place called the Double Blue. It’s a cinema club in Frith Street. The bloke vanished inside. Somewhere upstairs. I couldn’t follow him.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘Dunno for the moment. I’ll nose around for a bit. By the way, the cinema cost me eight-fifty.’

‘Got a receipt?’

‘I’ve got a membership card.’

‘I said receipts, Duffy.’

‘I’ll tell you about the films in incredible detail if you like.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

‘No – it’d probably be better.’ McKechnie laughed.

Duffy wasn’t sure what line to follow. He sat down to review what had happened so far. Some things were certain, some things were hopelessly ambiguous. Someone had cut McKechnie’s wife for a start. Someone was now trying to presh him, though how far was anyone’s guess. Someone with a sense of humour was using a dead racketeer’s name. Then there was Sullivan – what was he up to? Was he simply taking the easy way out by missing the pick-ups, or was he taking a cut? What was Shaw doing – old Rick? Was he just doing what Sullivan told him, or was he being cut in? He’d always remembered Shaw as a copper who didn’t go in for accepting too many Christmas turkeys. Still, every year around the Golden Mile brought different temptations. He knew how it happened: you didn’t take the free booze even if everyone else did; you didn’t take the first girl you got offered; you turned down the smokes and the snort; and then something quite trivial happened, like you asked for a couple of days to pay at the bookie’s. Quite suddenly, the place had got you. It wasn’t necessarily that there was a particular gang always on the look-out to bend coppers (though sometimes there was); it was somehow the place that got you. It was one square mile of pressure, and everyone had a weak point.

Duffy felt he had to know some more background. He really needed to talk to someone like Shaw, but that was out of the question. Maybe Carol; or maybe that wasn’t fair, well, maybe he could ask her about the place without letting her know what he was up to. Apart from Carol, there was Renée: he ought to go and have a chat with her, if only for old times’ sake. That was a dangerous phrase, ‘old times’ sake’ – if he started thinking like that he’d be sentimentalising about Sullivan before he knew where he was. And then there was the black girl at the Peep Show. What was she called? Something with a B or a P. Belinda? No, that was McKechnie’s dumb secretary. That was it – Polly. Not that she owed him any favours.

And then there were a few other things which Duffy wondered about. One was that McKechnie didn’t seem as worried by everything as Duffy thought he ought to be; he even seemed to find parts of it almost exciting. No, maybe he was just phlegmatic; and he had seemed genuinely upset when he’d told Duffy about what had happened to his wife. Perhaps McKechnie was really much richer than he thought, and could soak up a lot more presh; though you’d never guess, to look at the shack he operated from. It wasn’t exactly buzzing with clients, either. Still, maybe that sort of business was mainly mail order. But then – there were so many buts in the case – what about the gap on the tape? McKechnie had been completely plausible about it; but was it Sullivan’s style to call a member of the public a ‘syphilitic sheep-fucker’? Well, that again was possible; actually, quite probable. And finally there was the little incident at Paddington Station that nagged at Duffy: if the secretary had managed to remember about getting there, arriving at the right time and the right place, and recognising him, could she be so thick that she didn’t carry out the rest of the instructions he had given McKechnie? Or what if McKechnie had changed those instructions, what if she’d actually been doing exactly as she’d been told? That was an undermining thought; but Duffy decided to shrug it off. McKechnie probably wasn’t an entirely straight-up-and-down guy, but which of his clients ever had been? And did you expect a guy who sold King Kong masks in Soho to behave like a clergyman? There was one rule you tried to stick to in this business: you believed the client was dealing straight with you until you had strong evidence to the contrary.

He rang Carol and asked her if she’d like to come round that evening. She said she couldn’t, she was going to the pictures (who with? But the rules said you weren’t allowed to ask). She could come the next night, though. Duffy said Yes please, and he’d make her the best toasted cheese she’d had since the last time she’d had toasted cheese.

He contemplated another evening alone in his flat. Maybe he’d better go out and find someone. Soho made you randy, there was no doubt about that. Not the films he’d seen – the Hoover, the sheepdog and the goose – or the memory of having his windscreen squeegeed in the Peep Show; it was just being there. The air over mill towns used to be heavy with a precipitate of soot; you breathed it into your lungs and body; over Soho, the air seemed filled with a precipitate of sex.

Duffy’s mind idled over the choice between trawling for a man and trawling for a woman. To Duffy it was like choosing between bacon and egg and bacon and tomato. Whichever you decided on you had a good time; it was just what your taste-buds felt like that evening. Women were usually less likely to leave you needing a visit to the clinic. On the other hand they were a bit more expensive; they tended not to stand their ground if they were going to go to bed with you later; and some of them made the sentimental mistake of believing that because Duffy was nice to them it meant that he wanted to see them again. Then he had to be firm, and tell them no, and that often added a sour note to breakfast.

The other thing was that, in practical terms, men could be more relied upon if you wanted to get laid. You spent longer chatting up women than you did men; and even if you were in a singles bar where it was generally assumed that everyone was on the prowl, it was still part of the accepted convention that a girl had every right to dump you with a final No, even if all evening she’d been giving off signals which said Yes. Whereas if you went to a gay club, you never left disappointed. Not everyone went there determined to get laid, of course; there was a certain amount of ‘Well, I’ll see’, and ‘Try me later’; but as long as you were clean and neat, you were bound to end up with someone. There was rarely any of that breakfast trouble, either. Indeed, what some of the guys you brought back wanted to do was just get up and leave before the sheets were dry. Well, that was O.K. by Duffy too.

It looked as if it was heading for another evening down at the Alligator. Besides, if he were seeing Carol tomorrow, it always gave him a jolt if he’d spent the previous night with a girl. And that spoiled the previous night as well; it had him making all sorts of comparisons which weren’t a good idea. No, Duffy decided, it would definitely have to be a guy tonight. He headed off to the bathroom to smarten himself up.

A few hours later, he finished his evening at the Alligator with Jack, a gentle, blond American from the Mid-West who was hitch-hiking round Europe with a copy of the
Spartacus Gay Guide to Europe
and a reverent determination to visit every major club and bar listed in it. The tourism side of the venture almost outweighed the gayness side of it: Jack had been sipping a Campari at the Alligator in the manner of a camera-laden tripper lighting a candle at Chartres. He almost had to be reminded about wanting to get laid. Over breakfast, Jack confessed a shy desire to start up his own
Good Gay Guide
along the lines of the
Good Food Guide,
relying on reports from members and occasionally sending out inspectors to make spot checks on establishments which seemed to be slipping. Duffy said he’d get in touch if ever he needed a job.

After Jack had left, Duffy tidied up, changed the sheets for when Carol came (and for if Carol stayed, which weren’t at all the same thing) and went off to track down Renée. She’d always operated from a little flat in an alley off Wardour Street; it was a two-girl gaff, partly for mutual protection and partly in case clients wanted a sandwich job or an exhibition. She’d always worked for the same pimp, called Ronnie, who owned the flat, gave her what protection she needed, and took the usual cut. Renée was a lot smarter than Ronnie, though, and after she hit thirty she persuaded him to adopt a system whereby each year – as she got older and the competition got tougher and her earning potential got a bit less – she would pay him a slightly smaller percentage of what she earned. She pointed out what a good name this would get Ronnie among the other whores, and how this would make it easier for him to get new girls.

Ronnie had bought the scheme, perhaps imagining that Renée would give up at thirty-three or so. But she’d soldiered on, and, as she had planned, the scheme had worked to her advantage. Ronnie had moaned a bit, but kept to his promise after Renée had threatened to bad-mouth him all the way from Soho Square to Piccadilly Circus. That had brought him to heel; and then, to keep him sweet, Renée had upped the rent of the girls she shared the flat with.

As Duffy turned into Wardour Street, he remembered his visits to Renée. Money had occasionally changed hands, though strictly for information received. She had from time to time offered him a Christmas box (she’d smiled as she pronounced the phrase), but he’d thought it best to refuse. Still, he carried on calling on her, often just for chats; and he always followed the cardinal rule of scarpering when a client arrived.

Duffy saw the two lighted bell-pushes labelled
RENÉE
and
SUZIE
, pressed the top one, and walked up. He remembered the landing: one door straight ahead, with a card on the outside saying
SUZIE
; the other, to the right, saying
RENÉE
. It looked as if the gaff was two separate flats, but in fact they connected up and had an alarm system from one to the other. You knocked on the door and either it opened or you got a shout of ‘Five minutes, love’, like an A.S.M. giving an actor his call.

Duffy knocked on the door on the right. It opened, and there was Renée in a long dressing gown, her dark hair half piled up on top of her head and half tumbling down one side in long curls to make an elaborately confected coiffure. She looked a bit older, a bit plumper, as she briefly cast an eye over him in the way that whores do, to see if he was either copper or someone from the whores’ blacklist; it was a dispassionate gaze, like that of a shop manager checking a credit card.