Southpaw, p.12
Southpaw, page 12
part #2 of Robert Hoon Series
Reaching into the wardrobe, he produced a pinstripe blue shirt. From the way his face contorted as he looked at it, the garment would have been no less appealing if it was liberally smeared with dog shit.
“But first, I’m hitting the shops,” he announced. “Because, if I know Stephen White—and I am him, so I fucking well should do—then he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing this gear.”
Miles’ gaze went from Hoon to the full wardrobe, and back again. “But… we already bought all this. I don’t know if we have the budget for more.”
Hoon returned the shirt hanger to the rail, then gave Miles a couple of gentle slaps to the cheek that might, if you were feeling particularly generous, be described as ‘friendly.’
“Well, then. Looks like someone’s breaking out the fucking credit card,” he said. “And it sure as shite isn’t me.”
Hoon had seen the inside of many’s a pub in his time, although the memories of a significant number of them were foggy at best. He knew what he liked in a drinking establishment, though, and the Red Lion on Crown Passage had all of it in spades, from its cluttered walls and dated stained glass windows to the threadbare red upholstery that did absolutely nothing to enhance either the cosmetic appearance or the comfort level of the seating.
There were a good range of beers on tap, a broad selection of spirits mounted on optics on the back wall, and—for this part of the world—an impressive array of malt whiskies sitting on slightly dusty shelves.
The beermats were cardboard, the snacks were predominantly nut-based, and while it had been several years since the smoking ban was introduced, the smell of nicotine still lingered in the ageing woodwork. It wasn’t a pub, it was a boozer, and Hoon could think of no higher honour to bestow.
He had earned himself a few funny looks from the punters inside when he’d thrown open the front door and announced his presence with a booming, “Alright, ya wanks?”
To be fair, the shirt had probably drawn as much attention as the greeting. It was a black long-sleeved number with bright yellow pineapples scattered across it like polka dots. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d usually be caught dead in, but as soon as he’d seen it he’d instinctively known how much it would wind up Miles Crabtree, and he knew he had to have it.
Besides, Hoon wasn’t the one wearing it. Stephen White was, and this was just the sort of thing old Whitey would go for, the brash, loudmouth prick that he was.
There had been no instructions from MI5 to make him a brash, loudmouth prick, of course, but that was the direction Hoon had decided to take the character, although when questioned about it by Crabtree, he could offer absolutely no explanation whatsoever as to why.
Sometimes, you just had to go with your instinct, and his instincts were telling him that Stephen White was an arsehole.
He sauntered up to the bar, admiring the boozer’s traditional stylings while simultaneously scoping out the punters inside. There were eight of them in total, one group of four, and two pairs. Or maybe couples. They were all men, but who did what with who these days was anyone’s guess. None of the conversations looked particularly romantic, though, and Hoon imagined that this wasn’t really the sort of place you went for a date, particularly not at half-past five on a weekday.
The group of four were all young lads in their twenties. Loud. Worked in banking, given the volume and content of their patter. Their current conversation seemed to be some sort of pissing contest about whose investment portfolio management strategy was best. Or something along those lines, anyway, Hoon tuned out at the first mention of ‘unrealised returns,’ and turned his attention to the two groups of two.
He’d put one of them down as father and son. Builders, he thought. Some sort of manual labourers, anyway. No doubt much better craic than the four chortling muddlefucks in the expensive clobber, though they were currently too busy consuming their pints and the opinions of the printed gutter press to be demonstrating this.
The remaining two seemed a little out of place. They were Chinese or Japanese—he’d never taken time to learn how to tell the difference—and were busily photographing the small basket of condiments that had been placed on their table, presumably in anticipation of food arriving.
They were taking it in turns to hold up sachets of tomato sauce and salad cream, dangling them from the sides of their heads like glitzy earrings, while their opposite number across the table laughed and snapped off yet another set of pictures.
Fair play to them. Whatever kept them happy.
He was met at the bar by exactly the sort of barmaid he’d been hoping for. She had a wrestler’s arms and Popeye’s chin, and a look on her face that told him she was one wrong word away from putting him on his arse. She was the very definition of surly, and when she spoke it was with an overtone of utter contempt.
“What can I get you?”
“A wee smile wouldn’t go amiss,” Hoon told her.
“You’ll be lucky,” she replied, and her expression became even more resentful, as if to prove her point.
Hoon’s eyes narrowed. “That a wee east coast twang in there? Newcastle neck of the woods, maybe?”
“Maybe, aye,” she conceded, but was no more forthcoming than that. “What you wanting?”
“Pint of Guinness, thanks,” Hoon said. “And whatever you’re having yourself.”
The barmaid reached under the counter and fetched a pint glass, then placed it under the Guinness tap and flicked the pump handle down without an ounce of interest or panache.
“Nice shirt,” she remarked.
Hoon held out his arms and admired the printed pineapples on the sleeves. “You think?”
The barmaid stopped the tap with the glass three-quarters full to give the stout time to settle, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Where are you headed after this? The Copacabana?”
Hoon grinned. Olde World pub charm, and withering sarcasm. This place was fucking great!
“Don’t know yet. It’s early days,” he said, as she rang two drinks through the till. “I’m meant to be meeting a mate of mine here later. Well, no’ a mate, exactly, just some guy I met who offered to show me the sights. Dale Martelle. You know him?”
From the way the barmaid’s face contorted, it was clear that she did, in fact, know Dale Martelle.
“Shite. He’s not coming in, is he?”
“Aye. Why?” Hoon asked. He took twenty quid from his Stephen White wallet, and slid it across the bar. “He an arsehole or something?”
“With a drink in him, yeah. Bit of a creepy letch.”
“What, to you?” Hoon asked. It sounded far more shocked than he’d intended it to sound, and he considered himself lucky that he wasn’t immediately on the receiving end of a thick ear.
“Aye, well, we’re not exactly stowed out with women round here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she replied, then she finished pouring his pint and set it down in front of him with a clunk.
“You didn’t draw a shamrock on the top,” he noted.
She responded by dipping her index finger into the smooth white foam and tracing the outline of something shaped less like a four-leaf clover and more like a penis. “There. Enjoy,” she said.
Hoon chuckled to himself as he raised the pint to his lips. “Aye,” he said. “I could get fucking used to this place.”
By the time Dale Martelle rocked up to the Red Lion, Hoon was several pints deep, somewhat worse for wear, and best friends with the two Asian gentlemen who didn’t speak a word of English. He had, miraculously, resisted the urge to start a fight with the bankers, despite the ever-increasing volume of their voices, and their regular braying cheers.
He was also substantially better informed about the man he was due to meet, despite the barmaid’s initial reluctance to engage him in any sort of meaningful conversation. He’d broken her down eventually, and now knew the names of several of Dale’s friends, who he worked for, and a pretty solid idea of where he lived.
Not bad for a few hours’ work and a few quid in tips.
The pub had slowly filled up in the hours since Hoon’s arrival. There were now just shy of twenty punters in there, of which a whole five percent—or, to put it another way, one individual—was of the female persuasion. She sat in the corner looking thoroughly uncomfortable, laughing along just a second or so behind who Hoon presumed were her male work colleagues.
Poor cow. Just doing her best to fit in, but standing out like a sore thumb.
“Wahey! There’s the man himself!” Hoon cried, when Dale came striding in.
“What? God. Wait. What time is it?” Dale asked. “What time were we meant to meet?”
“Fucked if I know,” Hoon announced, putting an arm around the other man’s shoulder. “Couldn’t remember when you said to meet you so I thought, fuck it, get in early.”
“What’s with the shirt?” Dale asked.
Hoon looked down at his arms again and blinked in surprise, like he was only just seeing the shirt for the first time. “What about the shirt? It’s a good shirt.”
“It’s got pineapples on it.”
“And?” Hoon asked. He was squinting, like the amount of alcohol in his system was throwing his eyes off balance. “The fuck’s wrong with pineapples?”
Dale shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with pineapples. I just…”
Hoon slapped a hand on the other man’s chest to indicate that he should shut up.
“Shh. Forget the fucking pineapples,” he said, and there was a slur to the words that seemed to make Dale nervous. Hoon glanced deliberately around the bar and lowered his voice to a whisper. “This place is shite. No offence, like, but it is. It’s fucking shite. This isn’t the good time you promised me, is it? Surely to fuck?”
He fished in his pocket and produced the wallet stuffed with cash in a way that managed to be both covert and ostentatious at the same time.
“I’ve got cash. You said we needed cash. I’ve got cash.”
Dale’s gaze lingered on the wallet for a few moments, then he placed a hand on top of it and pushed it down out of sight of the rest of the pub’s punters.
“Alright, OK. I know where we can go,” he said. “But these are serious people. You can’t draw too much attention to yourself. You have to play it cool.”
Hoon’s grin was a wobbly, drunken thing. “I’ve got pineapples all over my tits,” he boomed, indicating the chest of his shirt with a jerk of both thumbs. “They don’t come much fucking cooler than that!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hoon sat in a small, smoke-filled room at the back of a low-rent hotel, scowling at the two cards he held in his hand and wondering how the fuck this had happened.
Across the table, Dale gave him a nod and then glanced smugly around at the four other men. Hoon could almost hear the implied, ‘Ta-daa!’
Dale, on the other hand, did not successfully decipher the look Hoon shot back at him, which translated roughly as, “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” with a long line of obscenities tacked onto the end.
“You in?” asked the geezer on Hoon’s right. He was a grey-haired black man in his eighties, wearing a suit that was probably older still. He sat low in his chair, a thin cigar jammed between two fingers of one hand, while the other hand cupped his cards at a downward angle. Dale had identified him as ‘Granny Porter,’ and Hoon had been too surprised to ask why.
This was not an underground fighting ring. This was a gaggle of sad old farts playing cards for pennies.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Granny asked. His voice was low and rich, and while there was a hint of the West Indies to his accent, the rest of it was firmly rooted in the East End of London. “You need to borrow my hearing aid? I asked if you was in.”
Hoon discarded his cards, shook his head, and glowered across the table to where Dale was studying his hand. It was obvious from the expression of borderline glee on the fucker’s face that he had something decent. A king, at least, judging by the three cards that had been dealt so far in the middle of the table. No way he was getting this excited by the two or the seven.
The player on Hoon’s left matched the big blind, then raised it by—Hoon leaned in to check—a whole quid.
“Fuck me,” Hoon muttered, sitting back in his chair. “Last of the big spenders, eh?”
The guy on his left—an old boy who was almost identical to the one on his right, albeit a different colour—peered at him over the top of his reading glasses.
“Pardon me?” he drawled.
He had been introduced to Hoon as ‘Frenchie,’ although there was nothing about him to suggest he’d ever so much as set foot in France. He spoke with a slow Brummie brogue that made him sound a bit simple.
“I’m just saying, it’s hardly fucking high stakes, is it?” Hoon said, gesturing at the small pile of cash in the middle of the table.
They’d been playing now for the best part of forty minutes, and the highest the pot had climbed had been just shy of a tenner. At which point, three of the men at the table had been forced to take their heart medication.
“It’s not the money. It’s the fun,” said the guy on Dale’s left. He was a little younger than the others, though that still put him in his sixties. The final man at the table had so far said nothing, but his eyes were flitting around everyone else, suggesting he was following proceedings with interest.
“Fun, you say? And when’s that due to start?” Hoon asked, checking his watch. “Because maybe I’ll fuck off out for a while and come back then.”
“What’s the matter, Whitey?” Dale asked.
Hoon didn’t answer. Not right away. Not until the silence in the room told him he’d missed his cue.
“What? Oh. What do you mean what’s the matter? This is the fucking matter,” he said, indicating the table, and the pensioners huddled around it. “I mean, no offence, gents, but this isn’t exactly the big night I had in mind.”
“And what did you have in mind, exactly?” asked Frenchie.
“OK, well, see this here? Us, now? Imagine the opposite of this,” Hoon said. “That’s what I had in mind. Hot women. High stakes. A bit of danger, maybe. No’ fucking Bingo night at the Golden Pines.”
“It’s not Bingo,” Dale pointed out, which earned him a tut and an eye roll. And not just from Hoon.
“He knows it’s not Bingo,” Granny Porter said. “It was a figure of speech.”
“Aye. Exactly. Thank you!” Hoon said.
Granny threw down his cards. “And he’s right.”
“You what?” Dale said. He glanced down at his hand again, then locked eyes with the king on the table, clearly concerned that his anticipated victory was slipping away from him. “Granny, what are you on about?”
“I have wanted to say this for a long time, but never had the damn nerve,” Granny said. “I am too old to sit here gazing at you assholes and waiting to die. I’ve been coming here three nights a week for ten goddamn years. I’ve sat in this same seat, at this same table, smoking these same cigars, and I don’t want to speak for any of you gentlemen, but I am sick and tired of it.”
“Fucking preach, brother!” Hoon said, slapping the older man on the shoulder. “This is fucking London. There’s got to be something better than this happening somewhere, surely to fuck?”
He and Granny Porter both looked across the table at Dale, who squirmed in his chair.
“Right. Fine. Fine. I might know somewhere,” he declared. He looked down at his cards. “But can we at least finish this hand first?”
“Pair of kings?” Hoon said.
Dale’s eyes widened. “What?” He swallowed, trying to regain his composure, then forced a laugh. “No!”
Around the table, the remaining men all folded their cards into the middle.
Hoon grinned over at Dale. “Good work. Well played,” he said, then he got to his feet and pointed to the prize pot. “Now, gather up your one-pound-seventy-five-pee, and let’s hit the fucking road.”
This was a step up from a smoky backroom poker game, but not by much. It was still nothing like Hoon had been expecting.
It had taken a bit of time to find the place—by necessity, it moved around—and Hoon got the impression that a lot of Dale’s contacts didn’t actually care for him very much. He could understand why, given that the man was a near black hole of charm or personality.
They’d finally been directed to the back of a pub in the East End, where a gentleman with a clearly problematic steroid addiction had eyeballed Dale and Hoon like he was trying to make them burst open using just the power of his mind.
He had been unsuccessful.
Hoon had been relying on Dale to get them in, but Dale, it transpired, was a useless bastard, and none of his low, mumbled pleading had opened the door.
It was then that the bouncer spotted the older man lurking behind them. His eyes widened until the irises were surrounded on all sides by a sea of white, and he straightened like he was standing to attention.
“Are you… Are you Danny Porter?”
Granny smiled and offered a hand for the doorman to shake. “Once upon a time, maybe.”
Hoon watched both men and said nothing while he waited to see how this was going to play out.
“My old man had his photo taken with you after one of your fights.”
“Did he now?” Granny asked, still shaking hands.
“He loved it. It was his favourite thing in the world,” the bouncer gushed. “He kept it on his bedside table. Used to look at it every night as he was falling asleep.”
The smile on Granny’s face faltered for a moment, then returned, broader than ever. “Is that a fact? I am truly honoured.”
“You coming in?”
“My friends here and I would love to, yes,” Granny said. “If it’s not too much trouble?”
“No trouble at all, Danny. No trouble at all! It’s an honour. It really… Wow. My dad would be dancing on the ceiling if he knew I was talking to you!”
“You want to give him a call?” Granny asked.
