“Your friends.”
Magda, Zole and the dog Sherman arrived, all breathless.
“Ah, just in time!” I babbled. “Cancel the ticket.” I grabbed Magda’s arm, pulled her across the road and into an alleyway, Zole expostulating.
“Where the hell’ve you been, you lazy bitch?” I gave her.
“Hey, stay cool, ma man,” from Zole. I clipped his ear to shut him up.
“There’s some people after me,” I stammered, trying for calm and failing. “They’re here, on the riverside. I want you to go and phone Tye now. Not tomorrow, not next week—
Magda was so sad. She stood there, filled with sorrow. Sometimes women are so frigging useless. I almost knocked her down in my terror. It was bubbling up into my brain, blotting all thought.
“He checked everybody out, Lovejoy. You too. Gone. And Al and Shelt.”
“Gone?” I stared at her. Al and Shelt, the peanut eaters? A kitchen hand frightened me to death by suddenly bursting out of a raucous interior and rattling a dustbin into place. He slammed back inside. The alley darkened, the light extinguished. “Gone where?”
“Just gone, Lovejoy. Everybody.”
“Didn’t he say where?” I glanced towards the lights. The gleaming river looked a barrier now, not an escape. But Magda’d promised me she wouldn’t phone him, and she had.
“Sheet,” Zole said. He was carrying Sherman. The dog looked knackered. Why do they always gasp when they’ve done nowt?
“I had to come, Lovejoy, in case you…”
Fight or flight? Always the latter, for Lovejoy Antiques.
“Come on. We’ll try to hire a boat and go…”
“Sheet, man,” Zole was saying over and over. I realized why when I made to drag Magda towards the riverside lights. A man was standing against the glow, in silhouette. He was the one with a snappy hat, rakishly angled, and a suit of many stripes’. I’d never seen such huge white cuffs, spats even.
“Mine,” he told his left shoulder, and his mate faded away round the corner. “I say mine, man,” he told over my head. The two sneakers-and-jeans were deep in the alley.
“Okay,” one called, laughing. “But he looks real mean, okay?”
They emitted hoarse huh-huhs of laughter. I wanted the loo, a hang-glider, anything. We were left with our killer. I mean my.
“Okay, lady,” the man said. He was about ten feet away when he finally stopped strolling forward. Where the frig was that kitchen hand now, when I wanted him? I could have dashed through the kitchen… ’You and the kid take off.”
“Magda,” I pleaded weakly. I was quivering, my voice pathetic. I’m disgusting at the best of times.
“Come on, Sherman,” Zole said, treacherous little traitorous bastard reneger, betrayer of a friend who’d helped the corrupt little sod.
Sherman. The dog. They’re supposed to guard us, right?
“Kill,” I said weakly to the stupid hound.
“You got it,” Zole said.
I don’t really know what happened next, only that Zole dropped Sherman to the ground as the man reached into his jacket and pulled out a weapon. There was a crack, but near me, not near him. A second shot came from the man into the ground with fragments of stone pavement flying everywhere. Magda yelped, I whimpered, Sherman screeched, any mixture of the three. In that same millisec Zole had gone flying backwards, spinning and hitting the ground. The man was sagging, slowly sinking to the ground, as if trying to pick something up at a party without being noticed much. He seemed preoccupied.
I picked Zole up, tears streaming down my face.
“Zole. I’m sorry. I thought he’d just do me —”
“Let me down, silly fucker,” Zole said, wriggling. “Where’s ma gun? I gotta finish the motha fucka —”
He escaped, searched for something on the ground. Sherman was howling, shivering worse than me. Magda was shouting, holding my arm, pulling, trying to get me to run past the kneeling man who had stilled, slumped ominously against the wall.
“Hang on,” Zole was calling. “I gotta find ma gun an’ finish him—”
Sherman howled and Magda screamed for Christ’s sake to come on, the others’d be back. Zole was stumbling after, Sherman’s lead round his legs, the mongrel howling and whining. And bleeding, I saw as we stumbled up the alley towards the street lights, from a scratch near its nose, presumably a splinter… And Zole was fiddling with a gun as he followed, grumbling at the thing. He shook it like a rattle, listened hard to its sound as he tried to work the trigger.
I snatched it off him and flung the thing into the alley. We ran towards the boat, the pretty girls waiting for the last trippers to climb aboard. We joined them. Thank God for New Orleans music. It deafens you to everything else. I paid, and though the girls looked at us a bit oddly, Magda was talking breathlessly to them and I was paying money over, and all was peace and light and safety as the boat pulled away from the mooring and we glided away up the lovely broad flowing Mississippi.
WATCHING the paddles turn water on a steamer is hypnotic, even a new and utterly phony side-paddler. The trippers seemed to be some sort of convention, fez hats with tassels and secret songs bawled into the universe. Beer flowed. Some other passengers were like us, normal and very, very glad to be there.
