THE INFORMATION

fuckin hippy. And Clasford says, A nippy. And I say, Nah-a hippy. And Clasford says, An ippy? Jesus.

'They all want the big car and the chain round the troat as big as you fist. Gold taps. Diamonds in the ear and the teet.'

Steve turned to Richard and said, 'When do you want this to happen?'

'Soon. This week.'

'Okay. I'll give you a freebie. A teaser. And we'll get a schwartzer. Clasford. Nice, that. It works out. You know: Demi. You all right? Try the bacon sandwich.'

The three men sat in what Scozzy had referred to as a spieler: a private (i.e., illegal) gambling club, way up the Edgware Road. You reached the back room through a low-morale beauty parlor and a half-flight of stairs. The ambiance was one of entrenched and hallowed old-firm London villainy: Jesster's was the resort of senior felons, of various career sons of bitches, and it was no small thing to be here among them. But if you didn't know any of this you could look around Jesster's and mistake the place for the lounge of an indulgent granny, with the teapot on the counter in its tasseled cozy, the antique fruit machine which would certainly respond to no current coin, the pictures on the walls of soldiers and fox hunters and the four or five old stiffs at the card table, playing not poker or even brag or pontoon but some strictly indigenous whist-derivative called Swizzle. Steve Cousins had a nice word for old men: he called them results. And Richard quite liked flips or flip: for girls. Otherwise, Steve contented himself with a smattering of rhyming slang-and Richard had written off rhyming slang long ago. The only ones that were any good were jekylls (for trousers, via Jekyll and Hides-strides) and syrup (for wig, via syrup of figs). And there was something almost poetically crass about boat (for face, via boat race. What boat? What race?) It was midmorning. Jesster's seemed wholly innocuous. Richard, whose internal alarm system was not what it ought to be, felt quite at home.

'Terry mate,' said Steve, applying himself to his concentration. He stared without blinking into Terry's face, which was in fact a kind of deep yellow, like the seam of an aging banana, but darkened by its innumerable impurities-pocks, brown speckles, black freckles. 'I'm having no trouble understanding you. You want my thing, right. You want my ting.'

'Yeh. They want you thing. The helt.'

Steve Cousins liked to think of himself as a criminals' criminal. Every day he pulled off the crime of the century. They didn't have to be complicated or successful crimes, because he didn't mean this century. He meant the next one. Steve's thing was sweet-and it made money, unlike his other crimes, which were largely recreational (administering concus-sive beatings, for instance, to people whose drinks he had spiked with mind-expanding drugs). Steve's thing was: he sold cocaine and heroin tohealth clubs. No steroids or any of that buff stuff or sex-change shit. Coke and Smack. Frequenters of health clubs were by definition overin-terested in the body and often wanted to push it in both directions. All the way to detox, in some cases. Steve was proud of his thing, easy, safe, regular; but the point was that it came from left field. It was cute. It was cute, feeding a bushel of heroin to some stinking jock, a pinhead in a singlet under a crane of weights . . .

'Say you just changing you supplier,' Terry suggested.

'You guys. You fucking guys. Where's it all leading, mate? You Quacks. I mean, when slicing up each other's kids and grans is what you nan with. That's dinosaur stuff. It's all paperwork now. That's how far we've come. From pickaxes-to paperwork.'

Richard was wondering about the relationship between the history of modern crime and the history of modern armaments-or of modern literature. Gang A was in a garage polishing its knives. And Gang B showed up with handguns. And that was that until Gang C showed up with shotguns. And then Gang D showed up with machineguns. Old firms, then new firms, then Yardies, then Quackos. Gang Z. In the outer world, out there, the escalation ladder ended with-or pointed up towards-nuclear weapons. But the Quackos sounded more like Chaos Theory. That was the Quacks: tooled-up chaos. And the same with literature, getting heavier and heavier, until it was all over and you arrived at paperwork. You arrived at Amelior.

'We reach an understanding.'

'Yeah I know about these understandings. I give you all my money,'

'Any message for my people?' said Terry as he got to his feet.

'If I wanted to send them a message, you know what I'd do?'

Terry's top lip curled up in appreciative anticipation.

'Send you home in three different minicabs.'

They laughed. They laughed on, with willed raucousness. Then Steve turned to Richard and they worked out how they'd do it.

Half an hour later, as they were about to leave, Richard said, 'I just want to see what it's like. Violence. It might not be … It might not be appropriate.'

'Okay. We give him a slap. See how it goes down. Looking further down the road. Just thinking. Has he got any powerful friends?'

'One or two.' Richard named the financier-Sebby.

'That one's connected,' said Steve. 'He's the fucking army.''

'Yeah, but Gwyn's a moron. He'll never work anything out.'

Now Steve said, 'None of my business. You got your reasons. Nothing to do with me. I respect that. None of my business.?

Richard thought he saw where all these disclaimers were leading. He could open up a little now, or he could consign Steve Cousins to the merely menial.

'It's to do with your uh, literary …'

'No no.' He hadn't thought of anything to say but it came out awful quick: 'Son of a bitch fucked my wife.'

'Piece of shit,' said Scozzy.

Gal Aplanalp called.

'I'm sorry about the delay,' she said. She was sitting at her desk.

'That's all right,' said Richard. He, too, was sitting at his desk.

Gal always tried to be as straight as possible with her clients. She told Richard the plain truth. The weekend before last she had taken Untitled home with her, as promised. Like an old-style literary agent she had a light supper and settled down on the chaise longue, wearing a dressing gown and reading glasses. Halfway through page four, an acute migraine-and she never suffered from migraines, or even headaches- sent her crashing into the bathroom pill shelves. She still had a bruise where she'd barked her forehead against the mirror. She slept well enough that night, and got up early. On page seven the migraine returned.

'How unfortunate,' said Richard.

'I'm afraid it's kind of missed its slot with me now.' Gal had a seven-hundred- page family-saga novel written by a slimming expert to read and place by the end of the week. 'I'm giving it to Cressida, my assistant. She's damn smart-don't worry. I'll have a report for you in the next four or five days.'

Among the tacks and paper clips and unpublished novels on Richard's desk stood a jug of tapwater-tapwater boiled and then chilled (Gina showed him how). This was his new health kick: drinking water all the time, not instead of but on top of the usual quarts of coffee, the wriggling jolts of scotch, the cleansing beers. Drinking water all the time assisted him in the massive task of daily rehydration. Drinking water all the time didn't cost anything. And it didn't actually hurt.

Richard pushed the jug aside and sat there with his hand on his brow.

Midnight, and the orange van was parked on the corner of Wroxhall Parade.

13 sat at the wheel. He was alone-alone but for Giro, twitching in nightmare on