Raucous (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

The pick-up was a fake.  The money Raucous needed to collect would go straight back.  A childish cover for one of the untouchables. 

Raucous had no fixed plan, just an idea.  Kick it up, see what flies out.  Maybe get the lunatic to be too crazy.  See the reaction.

The shop was empty of people.  Dusty boxes, faded from direct sunlight were on display in the large glass front.  Their prices were displayed on small pieces of yellowing card, each one handwritten years before and still too expensive for anyone to buy.  The shop was about five meters wide, with a counter at the back that ran wall to wall.  All the walls were covered in wooden shelves running the length of the space available.  The shelves were stacked with electrical pieces, models and kitsch air-fix kits of spaceships found in 60s sci-fi.  Behind the counter, sat in a worn black swivel chair, was a middle-aged man whose skin had not seen sun, and who ate but didn't exercise.  His charcoal grey T-shirt sported the emblem of a seventies rock-band that toured once before fading into oblivion.  His stomach hung over the front of his jeans.  He stood and showed that the only place his body decided to store unburned calories was his gut.  The rest of his body was that of a lazy forty-year-old that had spent a lifetime avoiding all manual work.  He was physically weak, all bone.

"Mike," Raucous said by way of hello.

The front door was a glass panel in aluminum frame.  Its spring mechanism set too high.  The door slapped shut and the glass vibrated.  Mike leaned forward over the counter. 

"Where are the twins?"  He asked.

"On holiday," Raucous said.

Raucous and Ben stood in the middle of the room. 

Mike looked at Ben. 

"You look familiar," he said.  "I know you?"

"You know everyone, Mike," Raucous answered.  "That's your job, right?  Keep an eye on things."

Mike smiled and held up his palms level with his shoulders.  "Hey, I'm just a model man.  What you see is what I have."

"Can we look out back?"  Ben asked.

Raucous looked at Ben, Mike looked at Raucous.

"Not OK," Mike said.  "As you should very much know."  Mike paused and looked at Ben again, "You sure we never met?  You look real familiar."

Ben smiled, "Maybe you snitched on me once."

Mike lost his pleasant grin.  "Say what?"

"He's messing with you, Mike," Raucous said as he smiled his pleasure.

A silence fell.  Mike rubbed the back of his head like he had just been bitten by nits. 

"Turk wouldn't let that go," he said as he scratched.  "A bloody snitch.  Your friend is an idiot, Raucous."

Ben stepped up to the counter, an innocent in wonderland.

"Maybe the Turk passes on your info, like old times.  Right up to the top," Ben said, looking around in amazement.

Mike smiled showing his teeth, dark brown along the edges where they touched.  "You are going to get yourself killed."

"Strange you haven't.  Mike Spillman, right?"  Ben asked, his attention now completely on the fat guy.

"That's right.  So we do know each other."

"I know of you.  Pretty sure you have a few channels of an official nature to keep you alive and untouched."

"Only channel, and only protection I have is the Turk.  And you need to remember that."

"Maybe the Turk is in on the game too."

Mike laughed.  "Man, you are one dumb guy.  I'm recording this."  Mike held up a digital recorder no bigger than a ten-pack of cigarettes.  "This gets to the Turk, he'll kill you."

Raucous leaned over the counter and grabbed Mike's collar.  He pulled and stepped back and dragged Mike over.  He forced Mike down onto the floor and snatched the recorder. 

"Smashing this under my heel isn't going to break it.  So it will come with me."

"You defending this moron, Raucous?  He just said we were snitches."

"He's allowed the opinion.  You are hardly the most honest man.  And pretty secure here in the worst disguised drug dealers headquarters in the east side."

"We go back a long way, I'm clean."

"Back far enough to remember you being the biggest grass in school.  And let's see if your smarmy acting is still in the high-school class.  That there is Christian."

Raucous watched the reaction on Mike's face.  Raucous shook his head.  "At least make the effort, Mike.  You look in no way surprised.  You look like Stan Laurel doing a comic exaggeration.  You knew who it was before we got here.  Christian turns up in town and you don't know.  Please."

"I didn't know."

"Oh, pack it in."

Raucous pressed his palms against the counter top and jumped over to the other side.  He stepped to the till.  "How do you open this thing?"

"The money you want is in an envelope in my back pocket."

Raucous leaped back to the shop side.  "Why didn't you just say that at the start?"

"I'm wondering the same thing myself."

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Charlotte thought he was on medication.  His eyes were duller and his confidence gone.  It was like he was broken.  He spoke quietly and had difficulty meeting her eye. 

Her and Roach were going nowhere.  She needed to heat it up, find a catalyst.  The idea was dumb, but brilliant if she didn’t analyse.  She moved and she didn’t stop.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

Ben nodded his head as he tapped his thighs with the tips of his fingers.

Charlotte thought he looked like a heavy smoker who was coming to the end of a long-haul flight and knew nicotine was getting closer.

She was driving her BMW, sat and encased in a seat too large for small women.  Ben was beside her, fidgeting away.  He reached and pressed buttons on her radio, changing the channels, altering the volume, changing the balance by chance.  He found the lever to adjust the position of his seat and tried in vain to discover a comfortable combination.

Charlotte stayed quiet.  She didn’t watch.  Her annoyance she hid by concentrating on the road.

Charlotte had picked him up on the same stretch of road she had previously.  It was late afternoon.  She had watched Raucous leave him.  Tonight he wouldn’t be staying.  What she was doing now was childish, forcing events when a natural evolution was the best course of action. 

Charlotte was surprised with how easily he had complied.  She asked him to get in and he had.  He hadn’t asked where they would go, maybe, she thought, he was expecting another night in bed, another night of reliving something they had never done in their youth.  He sat there like a hyper-active nervous child and played.  He was different, compliant.  In a different world.

She remembered the doctor's words.

She parked her car near their destination.  There was a parking meter.  She had no change.  She left her car and would accept the fine.  It wouldn’t be her first.  She hoped, as she always did, it would be her last.  She would change her ways, she promised, always carry change.  But she knew she would never listen to herself.

Ben followed without question or concern.  She held his hand and dragged him smoothly through crowds and eventually through a revolving glass door into a modern glass reception.  There were three security guards, not the retired fat policemen type, but the alert ex-military corps brought together for their ability to follow orders and look scary.

Charlotte paused.  She had made the decision quickly, had not thought it through, but she knew that if she thought she would back out.  She needed and wanted this. 

Each compartment in the revolving door was designed for one person.  She pushed Ben first and followed.  She expected him to just circle round and pop back out at the end of this little side road off Oxford Street.  But Ben stepped into the reception area and the three guards sized him up.  Through a signal, the one to Ben’s right started to approach at a calm pace.

Charlotte entered and walked Ben to the reception desk, where a fourth security guard acted as receptionist.  She was petite, with short cropped blonde hair.  She watched them walk toward her.

The reception area was empty.  Behind the reception desk there was a large board displaying names of companies present.  There were five names.  The building had five floors.  The companies were paying a lot to be based here.  They were paying a lot for a wall of human protection.

“We’re here to meet Mr. Rollin,” Charlotte said. 

The walking guard arrived at the desk as she did.  She spoke before he could ask a question.  He looked to his female colleague, she nodded and he took three steps back and stood upright with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I am unaware he had any appointments today,” the security woman said.

“He will very much want to speak to us,” Charlotte said.

“The nature of your visit?”  The security woman asked.

“Tell him it is a family matter.”

“And what name should I give?”

Charlotte told her.  And the woman nodded as if she had heard it many times before.  The phone at reception rang.  She picked it up and placed it to her ear without looking at it once.  She listened to a voice which sounded calm.  Her head was still, she made no movement.

“Yes, Mr. Rollin.  Yes, that is the name she gave.  No, the man’s I do not have.  Yes, that is clear,” she said and placed the phone down. 

She looked to the standing security Guard, “Mr. Rollin would like you to escort his guests to his office.”

Charlotte gave the female security a puzzled expression.  The security guard pointed up.  Charlotte followed her indication and saw the camera. 

“And he watches all the time?” she asked.

The female security guard made the smallest shrug.

***************************************************************

Rollin acted as if he had fixed the appointment weeks before.  No surprise or anger, only calm.  Charlotte betrayed her anger by clenching her teeth.  Rollin saw and smiled. 

Rollin sat behind his desk in a large office with en suite bathroom.  The wall behind the desk was one large pane of glass with a view over the city.  He had left two chairs on the opposite side of his desk.  Charlotte let Ben sit first.  He took the chair on the left.  She sat in the other.

Rollin was the same as the photo she had seen.  The photo had been taken two years before but it appeared his face, hair and clothes had not altered in that time.  And by the way his face swelled, it appeared the amount of paralysis he had paid for in the last two weeks was keeping seventy percent of his facial muscles in hibernation.

Charlotte thought it was a miracle he could speak. 

Rollin watched Ben.  He didn’t seem in any panic, more a curious tourist in an exotic zoo seeing a unique specimen of ape for the first time.  An amused acceptance that they were similar to him.

Ben, after an initial nod of greeting, refused eye-contact.  Charlotte observed wanting to see discomfort, but all she saw was confidence.

“I was expecting a more discreet approach,” Rollin said.  “A more genteel meeting.  A request maybe, an invitation to come in and help.”

“We felt it was the right time,” Charlotte said.

She was watching Rollin carefully.  Rollin was watching his son, he seemed surprised.  He hadn’t stared, he hadn’t hugged.  He had made no effort to approach.  There was a distance but Charlotte assumed Rollin was like this with everyone.

“How did you know who we were?” Charlotte asked.  “Just from the camera?”

Rollin patted his right hand against his left shoulder, and cricked his neck.  He smiled but no lines appeared on his face.

“I’m a reasonably influential man, as you know. I’ve known about Christian’s reappearance since the day he arrived.  I had someone check.  I saw Photographs.  Some had you in them”

Ben looked up when Rollin said “Christian.”  He didn’t look into anyone’s eyes, merely lifted his head, became aware of what he was doing, and returned to gazing at the floor.

“I was not oblivious to my son’s sudden resurrection, or his inability to remember.  Nor his rather reduced capacity to know who I am.”

Ben didn’t look up.  He had stopped fidgeting, and his eyes were taking in the office.  Charlotte and Rollin watched him for different reasons.

“There is nothing wrong with the shock tactic,” Rollin said.  “But I don’t know if it is for your benefit or mine.  It is a rather strange approach.  No phone call or warning.  What is it you are trying to achieve?  It has been unexpected.”

“You seem to be doing fine,” Charlotte said.

She saw Rollin tense and felt content that she could touch his nerves.  But he returned to control in a time counted in fractions of seconds.

“It’s a rather confusing time,” Rollin said.  His big fake grin without lines and bleached teeth.  He turned to Ben. 

“I believed you to be dead,” he said.

Charlotte saw Ben’s shoulders swell as he tightened the muscles in his back.  Ben sat up straighter and made eye contact with Rollin.

“They tell me you are my father,” Ben said.

“They tell me you are my son,” Rollin replied.  “I went to your funeral.”

Ben faked a short laugh.

“Seems the only one who didn’t was me,” Ben said.

No one spoke for ten seconds, the dynamic had changed and each was waiting for someone to take control of the room.  An awkward moment when a point of nothing in common could be found.

“Do you need work?” Rollin asked.

Charlotte thought about the phrase.  This was Rollin attempting being a parent.  He would not offer money, nothing for free in this life.  But he could offer a job.  Work for your money and progress.  It was a throwaway line, a sign of caring in place of anything physical or emotional.

“I’m no businessman,” Ben said, his voice quiet but his head high.

“I wasn’t asking you to come in and run things,” Rollin tried for a humorous ring but found only monotone.

“I would be happier with something more simple,” Ben said.  “Something easier, less people involved.”

Rollin, Charlotte saw, was excited at the prospect.  He was under control but the minuscule increase in agitation was visible in his quicker speech and movements.

“I have many positions available,” Rollin said. “What type of thing are you interested in?”

Ben sat back, he relaxed, his muscles loosened and he smiled.

“I always saw myself as a driver,” he said.

Charlotte watched Rollin tense, again, nothing obvious, small signs, a little more stiffness, and a longer look before he spoke.

“Chauffeur?” Rollin asked.

Ben was smiling broadly now, following Rollin’s eyes with his own wherever Rollin wanted to look.

“More delivery,” Ben said.  “A white van man.”

Rollin paused and thought.  He looked down at the desk.  Pressed his index finger on a grain of dust so small it wasn’t there.  He dragged his index finger to the edge of the desk and flicked the speck onto the floor.  Rollin looked up and stared at Christian.

“White van driver, you say,” he said.  “What type of van?”

Charlotte sensed something was happening, but she didn’t understand.  There was more to their words than a minor level job interview, their reactions said as much.  She watched, looking for a way into their code.  Neither seemed aware of her presence.

“I think the traditional type, a Ford Transit,” Ben said.  “Something like that.  Get the keys, hop in, find the destination and just go.  You know?  Something easy, something that wouldn’t require too much thinking.  Drop off and then come back.  Suits and desks just aren’t me.”

Rollin waited ten seconds before speaking.  He sat still, his hands palm down on his desk.

“No, I guess they wouldn’t be,” he said. “Any experience with that line of work?”

Ben mimicked Rollin.  He waited the same ten seconds with his hands palm down on the desk.

“None that I remember,” he said.

“Shame, it would help us a lot if you could recall any delivery experience you have.”

“My memory just isn’t there,” Ben said.

“Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

Ben shook his head but his eyes stayed on Rollin’s.

“I’m happy without it,” he said.

“Maybe we all are,” replied Rollin.  “And now, if you’ll excuse the abruptness, I have another appointment.”

“The receptionist said you had none,” Charlotte said.

“Then she was wrong.”

Rollin stood.  The meeting ended.  He offered his hand across the table.  Ben stood and held out his own.  They clasped and shook.  Rollin held on for longer than comfortable.

“I’ll think about that van driving job,” Rollin said. “Keep it in your mind too.  Who knows what will come of it.”

Ben smiled and they released their grips.  Charlotte stood, nodded her goodbye as she said, “Thank you for your time.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Rollins said.

Charlotte and Ben turned for the door and walked.

“Charlotte,” Rollin called.  “I was very sorry to hear about your father.  He was a good man.  Made mistakes like everyone, but he stuck by his principals and that’s all a man can do.”

Charlotte turned slowly.

“Everyone’s principals are based on where and how they grew up,” she said.

“Some people change,” Rollin said.  “Some people see their birthplace for what it is.  Some people get out, and some people stay and try to manage.  All about choices.”

“True,” Charlotte said.  “But too many people make the wrong ones.”

Rollin nodded, accepting the philosophy.

“Let’s not be those people,” he said.