Nothing for it. I was uneasy, spinning out the coffee because it felt safer. I felt unshaven, soiled, tired, almost doomed from dispirit. I went into the maelstrom of travellers to seek Busman.
A small cluster of youths marauding on the outskirts of a passenger group seemed the most promising. I went up to them and said Busman had sent for me. They didn’t mug me, just directed me into the concrete warren. I plodded down, feeling the loneliest figure on earth.
The atmosphere had gone, somehow. I walked the tunnels, asking loudly at every molestation for Busman, telling I was sent for, that Busman wanted to see me. Whatever the previous impression I’d had of this subterranean dump, now it was sickly, sordid. The mystique had gone. What had seemed a strange pervading smell had become a fetid stench. The walls were smeared offal slabs. The perverts and prostitutes mauling in corners, the junkies rubbing bloodstained sleeves, the muggers brawling over thieved wallets had once seemed exotic derangements. Now they were a mess of degradation. I ploughed on, saying loudly I was to see Busman and Trazz.
A Flash Harry emerged from nowhere, came along with me the last few airless corridors, telling me stories of problems they’d had with police lately. I said sure and yeah.
The big control place was shoddier than I remembered, strewn with waste paper, more crowded, more smoke and screens but now a dungeon-like tomb. Busman was there, hearty and welcoming. Trazz came creaking up aslant, doing a laugh of surprise, tsss-tssss.
“Lovejoy, ain’t it? You made it back to the Apple.”
“Hello, Trazz.” I gave Busman my hand. He took it with more of a practised lean than he had once before. A politician’s grip now, but still friendly.
“Wotcher, Busman.”
“You been away, Lovejoy.”
“Bit of a holiday.”
We did some word sparring. He unbent a little more, laughing properly and telling me stories of his activities in the terminal. I eased too, thinking I was just tired, imagining things. Trazz went to check some of the screens’ scrutineers.
“Busman. I came with a proposition.”
“I thought, Lovejoy.” The big man beamed. “I can’t agree outright. Gotta warn you.”
“I understand. Could you stifle all the crime here, for twenty-four hours?”
He fanned himself slowly in astonishment. We were at his desk. No phones, I noticed. Everybody else seemed to have several. I gave him time to work it out. Slowly he shook his head, regret uppermost.
“You askin’ me to throw a fortune, Lovejoy? Ma money comes in steady, fourteen scams. In N’York scams is business. Halt business, ma people suffer.”
“Suffer how, Busman?”
“No money, that’s how. They pay breath, make deals, pay the vig on loans, up cuts, things you never even heard of, Lovejoy. They gotta work, or I displeased.” He chuckled.
“If they didn’t work a day, Busman. Got free paid instead?”
He whistled, thinking fast. “You know how much that’d cost, boah?”
He’d never called me boy before. It had an alien sound.
“The protection for a block of real estate’s tenth of the annual rent. A ten-million dollar rental, they pay some syndicate a million?”
“Right.” He swung in his chair, finally put his feet up, like great boats. “I get five cents on every took dollar, Lovejoy.”
“That, then. Plus what your others’d need?”
“This real?” he asked, figuring as he went.
“Depends on the price, Busman. The man might well be the big P before long.”
He called Trazz, They talked out of earshot, made phone calls, got a girl to work a computer for a while. Then he returned, giving me his new and disturbing beam.
“You got it, Lovejoy. Midnight to midnight, in three hours.”
“From now?” That shook me. I hadn’t realized it would happen so fast. I took the paper on which the girl had written the sum, seven figures. I gulped, nodded, said the deal was probably on.
We shook. I was to phone a number in a few minutes. I was given the same Flash Harry guide, and left.
But something then worried me more than it should. As I turned,
reflection move. It was Busman’s head, swivelling as he looked at Trazz. He gave a shrug and a nod combined, turning his palm upwards, thumb out. An odd gesture, it seemed out of character, macabre. Yet when I turned to wave goodbye from the door, Busman was beaming in my general direction and gave me a wave. Trazz, shuffling and angled, grinned after me with the grin of a cadaver. I didn’t shiver. I walked away from my friends, just managing not to break into a run.
The escort got me safely to the street. I phoned Mr Maynooth, said it was on, how and where the money should be paid, and rang off.
Then I really did scarper, like a bat from Hell, into the New York night, not really knowing who was after me but travelling at speed in case I found out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
