“I’m worried about Mr Manfredi, er, Gina. He’ll be in the middle of his morning rush.”
“That’s taken care of, Lovejoy.” Then, just as I was settling down to the new batch of grub, “You seemed to take a particular interest in Sophie, Lovejoy. Why?” I rescued myself from a choke. “Sophie Brandau, Lovejoy. The lady in blue velvet.”
“I saw her bloke on television. I looked their name up.”
There’s not a problem in human affairs that crime can’t solve. So crime had to be my explanation.
“He’s a politician, Gina. I was scared, because I’m in political trouble.”
She was enjoying my discomfiture, chin on her linked hands, very fetching 1920s while Orly glowered. Nicko and Tye were listening.
“I’m not American,” I confessed. ”I’m from East Anglia. Illegal immigrant, trying to work my way home. I’m wanted by the police there.”
“We know, Lovejoy. You’re not exactly our streetwise New York spoiler.”
Sandpaper grated nearby. We all looked. It was Nicko, laughing, shaking up and down in his deck chair.
“Lovejoy. You think you’ll put the bite on Denzie Brandau?”
Nicko fell about. It really narked me. I’d been so American I’d convinced myself completely. Gina was nodding.
“Through Sophie, perhaps,” she murmured. “Except generosity’s never been her strong point.”
She and Nicko exchanged glances. Tye Dee was with me still, noshing but keeping out of it. Orly put his oar in.
“Lovejoy’ll be able to try his hand at exploitation—when the Brandaus come aboard this afternoon.”
We were turning towards the east, leaving Manhattan behind. I felt entitled to ask, myself again.
“Is this still New York?”
“Both sides. We’re headed for Long Island Sound.” Gina extended a hand. Orly leapt to take it, haul her up.
Nicko showed no emotion as Gina and Orly paired away. He was reading from a folder. I avoided asking the obvious. Their business.
“Excuse me, Nicko. What am I here for, exactly?”
He didn’t look up. “To help decide fraud, Lovejoy. And play a game.”
It didn’t sound my thing. I lowered my knife and fork.
“I’m sorry, Nicko, but I want out…”
Tye suddenly shoved a plate of scrambled eggs and waffles across the table, warning. Nicko hadn’t interrupted his reading.
“Great, great,” I said quickly. “Look forward to it, Nicko. Fraud’s my thing.” Thereby being responsible for the deaths of two people. One was a foe, one a sort of friend. And one was nearly me.
FOR an hour I stood on the after deck watching New York glide by. Tye described where we were. The names were oddly familiar, the places resonant of some primeval dream time: Queens, the Bronx, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Brooklyn. The old jeweller Mr Sokolowsky astonished by coming out to stand and reminisce. He was amusing, got me laughing about local quirks in buying silver, pricing jewels, a goldsmith’s slender finances ha ha ha. A witty old bloke with shrugged-off humour. Orly passed by once, to say I was to “get something decent on by the time we hit the Sound.”
“Long Island Sound,” Tye translated. “That’s where it happens.”
“Oy vey,” Mr Sokolowsky lamented, shrugging. “Happenings should wait a liddle now and then.”
Gina sent her Blanche with a message that she wanted me. It was to do with clothes. She’d had the vessel combed for clobber. It was highly fashionable, which I am not. I settled for some loose grey trousers and a white shirt. She pulled a face when finally I showed myself. I grimaced back, grinning to set her laughing. It was the last laugh for some time.
I wanted to know what happened to Tony, if Berto Gordino had managed to spring Busman, what Della and Lil were telling Rose when she came by Fredo’s and asked where I’d got to. But by then the boat was thrusting through some narrows into Long Island Sound, breath-taking in its expanse and shores, and my duties began.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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THEY started coming aboard about mid-afternoon. I watched them from the rail, a mere bystander like the crew.
Glamour isn’t simply something in the eye of the beholder. It’s a kind of heat, emanating from the glamorous. But it’s cold, heat that doesn’t warm. Which I suppose is one way of saying it’s radiation, the stuff that eventually kills. This thought struck me when I recognized a familiar elegant lady ascending our gangway from a small power boat. Good old Moira Hawkins was accompanied by Sophie Brandau and her politician husband. My head didn’t quite spin off, but my breathing went funny. Was I the link? I hated this notion, because chains have a tough time. A score or more arrived, laughing and full of that strange chilled charm only the rich exude.
Long Island is, well, sort of a long island, if you follow. Everything tends to astonish me, so America had it
