Bleeding Hearts Part 10

'No extra charge.'

Which was my cue to hand over the cash.

We took a mini-cab from the office at the corner of Harry the Cap's road. Our driver didn't even know where Marylebone was, and mention of Baker Street and Regent's Park didn't ring any of his rusted bells. So I gave him some directions, 89.and kept giving them all the way back to the hotel. He radioed his office to see how much he should charge.

'Depends whether they look loaded or not,' said the crackly voice. The driver looked at me in his real-view, and I shook my head at him. I gave him the money, but no tip, seeing how I'd have been better driving myself and letting him sit in the back.

I'd got him to drop us a couple of streets from the hotel. If anyone got to Harry the Cap, they might ask questions at the cab office, and the cab office wouldn't forget a fare from Tottenham to Marylebone Road. I didn't want anyone coming any closer to me than that. And yes, I did have someone specific in mind.

'Hang on,' said Bel, 'I want a pizza.' So we went to a takeaway and stood with the delivery riders while Bel's deep-pan medium seafood was constructed. Then it was back to the hotel. I took her to her room. She lifted the pizza box to my nose.

'You want to help me with this?'

Which was, however innocent its intention, an invitation to her bedroom, where we'd have to sit on the bed to eat.

'Not hungry, thanks,' I said. But I'd paused too long.

'I won't tell my dad.' She was smiling. 'Shouldn't we talk anyway? Go through the plan for tomorrow?'

She had a point. 'Over breakfast,' I said.

'Cold pizza maybe?'

'Don't be disgusting.'

I went to my room and called Max. He'd been sitting right by the phone.

'Everything's fine,' I said. 'I'll give you the number here, you can call Bel any time you like.'

'Thanks,' he said grudgingly. He then found a pen and some paper. I gave him the hotel number and Bel's room number. 'She'll probably be calling you herself,' I said.

'If she hasn't already forgotten me.'

'Don't be daft, Max, she talks about you all the time.' This 90.was a lie; she hadn't mentioned her father all day until I'd brought up the subject in the pub. I won't tell my dad.

"Night, Max.' I put down the phone.

I'd known Bel for a few years now, and naturally s.e.x had never ... well, it wasn't that I didn't like her. It wasn't that we didn't flirt. It wasn't even that I was scared Max would bury me in one of his walled fields. It was mostly that I didn't, as the Americans say, 'do' s.e.x any more. It didn't exactly go with the lifestyle. The women I met in my life I met infrequently and for necessarily short periods. If I wanted to get to know any of them, I had to construct a set of lies and half-truths. You didn't get too many ads in the lonely hearts columns from women looking to meet 'tall okay-looking a.s.sa.s.sin, 30-35, interested in ballistics, cuisine, international travel'. So I'd given up on women. I didn't even use hotel wh.o.r.es often, though I liked to buy them drinks and listen to their own constructed stories.

Speaking of which, I knew I had one more call to make. It had taken me a while to get round to it. I picked up the receiver and pressed the digits from memory. I have a good memory for numbers. The call was answered.

'Allington Hotel, can I help you?'

'Yes, I'd like to speak to a Mr Leo Hotter, please.'

'Hotter? One moment, please.' A clack of computer keys.

'I'm sorry, sir, we don't appear to have a guest with that name.'

'I'm sure he's staying there,' I persisted. 'He was there today, or maybe he's booking in tomorrow?'

'Hold on, please.' She m.u.f.fled the phone with her hand and asked a colleague. The colleague took the receiver from her.

'h.e.l.lo, sir? I think there must be a misunderstanding. Mr Hotter did visit the hotel earlier today, but he isn't a guest here.'

'd.a.m.n,' I said. 'I must have got a crossed line. You don't happen to know where he's staying, do you?'

9i 'I'm sorry, sir. At least you know Mr Hoffer's in town.'

'Yes, that's true. At least I know that. You've been very helpful.' I put down the phone. After a minute or two, I allowed myself a small smile. It was good to know Leo was here. Where he was, the circus would surely follow, by which I mean the media circus he seemed always to attract ... and to covet. I always knew when Leo was on my trail, no matter how far behind.

I only had to pick up a paper and let the interviewer tell me about it.

I'd seen Leo on TV in the States. Frankly, I wasn't flattered. They say it's nice to feel wanted, but Leo looked like the one who should be in the slammer.

There was a soft knock at my door. Two short, one long:- our agreed signal. I sighed, got off the bed, and unlocked the door.

'Got anything for indigestion?' Bel said.

'Okay,' I said, letting her in, 'let's go through tomorrow.'

And we did. I had us stand in front of the mirror and showed Bel how to act like a police officer, how to stand, how to speak, what to say. She smiled too much at first, so we got rid of that. And she had a natural slouch, the result, so she said, of always being taller than her girl friends and trying to bring herself down to their level.

After an hour, she got bored and started making mistakes again.

'Listen,' I said. 'We'll get one or two shots at this. After that it'd be too risky. The police are bound to find out there are impostors going around. So we've got to make the most of it, understood?' I waited till she nodded. 'Remember, these IDs weren't cheap. Now, look at yourself in the mirror, you're slouching again.'

She straightened up.

'Better.' I was standing close behind her. 'Now do one last thing for me.' She turned to me.

'What?'

92.'Go phone your father.'

She narrowed her eyes. 'Yes, boss,' she said.

I locked the door after her.

93.9.The hardest work Hoffer had done so far in London was find a dealer who didn't think he was an undercover cop or the vigilante father of some teenage addict.

There was crack around, but not much actual cocaine.

The stuff he'd ended up buying was far from premium grade, probably five parts lidocaine and three parts baking soda, but there was no way he was going to start doing crack or free-basing, he'd seen too much hurt result from those particular by-ways. He'd been a New York street cop when crack first hit town. In a matter of months the drug had swamped the housing schemes. Earlier in the 80s he'd been friends with another cop who'd started free-basing. That cop had gone downhill like a well-oiled skateboard, careering all the way.

Hotter had got into drugs the same way. He spent his days busting pushers and users, living so close to drugs that it was like the f.u.c.king things were whispering to him, even in his sleep. One day he'd confiscated some bottles of rock cocaine, only he'd handed them in one short. He soon found that there was an undercla.s.s of police officer that used a lot of drugs. Some of them just took drugs off one pusher and resold to another, keeping a little back along the way. Others had deep habits and pinhole eyes, real smack heads. You were in a privileged position, being a cop. You didn't have to look far or try hard to score a baggie of white s.h.i.t, and you so seldom had to pay. But free-basing, that was a nightmare.

Someone had tried to introduce him to it, recycling their smoke into a balloon and offering him the used smoke.

Hoffer had never enjoyed the more social aspects of drug 94.use, and drew the d.a.m.ned line at breathing somebody else's high.

So here he was in London, doing what he did.

He added a couple of hundred milligrams of speed to his purchase, and to offset the speed asked about quaaludes or 'bennies', but ended up with Librium and a bit more boo.

'Packing heat,' he said to himself afterwards. Soho had still failed to provide a night's fun, so he'd prowled the West End, sitting in a f.a.g bar for quarter of an hour before realising his mistake, and finally locating a hooker who wouldn't accompany him to his hotel, but could provide relief in her own quarters. Hoffer couldn't agree to this; he'd gone to a hooker's greasy bedroom before, only to have her pimp try to roll him. So they made do with a back-alley b.l.o.w. .j.o.b, for which she charged a twenty. That put her on 240 an hour, which was decent money. It was even more than Robert Walkins was paying.

In the morning he had a shower, the bath being too narrow for anything like a soak, put on a sober blue suit, and went to see his bank manager.

Mr Arthur looked like he was the one begging a loan for his daughter's life-saving surgery.

'Events will take their course, Mr Hopper.'

'That's Hofifer.'

'Of course, Hoflfer.' Arthur gave a smile like a toad at mating time. 'But it's a bit early yet to expect any results, as I say.'

'Say whatever you like, s.h.i.thead, but listen to this.' Hoffer leaned forward in his cramped chair. 'I don't have to play by any rules, so if you want to be able to leave your office every lunchtime and evening without having to check both ways for baseball bats, I suggest you give events a kick along the course they're taking.'

'Now look here'

'I am looking, and all I see is something I try not to tread in on the sidewalk. And I don't mean manholes. Now get 95.ha.s.sling head office for all you're worth, and meantime let me see what you've got here behind the scenes.'

Arthur's top lip was glistening with sudden perspiration.

He looked like he'd lost about twenty pounds in stature.

'I've got an appointment at eleven.'

'Cancel it.'

'Look, you can't just'

'I thought I already was.' Holler stood up, keeping his hands in his pockets. With his elbows jutting from his sides, he knew he looked like something from the jungle. Arthur would have clambered up the cheese-plant in the corner if he'd had any motive power. 'Now go fetch me the flies.'

He sat down again, trying to look comfortable. The bank manager sat there for a few moments, just to show he wasn't intimidated. Hofler allowed this with a shrug. They both knew the truth. Mr Arthur got up slowly, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. Then he walked out of the office.

He came back with a couple of files and some sheets of photocopier paper. 'This is all I can find just now. Most of our records get sent to head office eventually.'

'Tell them you want them back here p.r.o.nto. What about the check on Wesley's current account transactions?'

'It's being carried out. We have to go through all the old cheques. They're not kept in neat little piles.'

Hofler reached out a hand for the files. There was a knock at the manager's door.

'Ignore it,' said Hofler.

'I certainly shan't.' Arthur walked briskly to the door and pulled it open. 'This is the man, officers.'

Hotter turned his head lazily. At the door stood two uniformed policemen. So Arthur hadn't just been seeking out the files. Hoffer peeked at them anyway. They contained only blank sheets of typing paper.

'You sonofab.i.t.c.h,' he said. The policemen then asked him 96.to accompany them, and he rose from his chair. 'Certainly,'

he said. 'No problem here,' he a.s.sured them.

But all the time he had eyes only for Mr Arthur.

'Never again! Do you hear?'

Heifer heard. He was bored of hearing it. Bob Broome didn't seem to have any other words in his vocabulary.

'Can we turn the record over. Bob?'

Broome slapped his desk. 'It's not funny, Hofler. It's not a game. You can't go around threatening bank managers.

Jesus Christ, they run the country.'

'That's your problem then. Still, it could be worse.'

Broome waited for an explanation. 'At least Arthur didn't look Jewish.'

Broome collapsed on to his chair. 'You're slime, Hoffer.'

Hotter didn't need that. 'Yeah, I'm slime, but I'm slime that pays. So what does that make you?'

'Hold on a second.'

'No, shut up and listen. Remember, I've been a cop, I know what it's like. You try to look busy, but most of the time you're treading water waiting for somebody to come tell you who it is you're looking for. I can't do that any more. I don't have that luxury. What I've got is a head and a pair of fists, and if you don't like that, then just keep out of my way.'

'I just saved you from a barrow-load of manure.'

'And I thank you for that, but I've walked away from s.h.i.t before without needing a pitchfork up my a.s.s.'

Broome shook his head sadly. 'I don't want you around, Hoffer.'

'Tough t.i.tty.'

'I mean it. I don't want you anywhere near.'

'I can handle that, Chief Inspector.' Hotter stood up. 'But remember, you're the one who called me, you're the one who took my money.' Hoffer walked out of the office. He didn't bother closing the door.

97.On his way out of Vine Street, he saw DI Dave Edmond going in. They knew one another through Broome.

'Hey ... Dave, right?' said Hoffer, the bright smiling American.

'That's right,' said Edmond.

'Are you busy?'