How to Be Bad (10 page)

A very tall, charismatic man with a beard was standing in front of her, holding her up against a tree. His left hand gripped her chin so firmly that she couldn't move her head. I knew this guy; we'd met before. It was the Jesus look-alike who had set fire to my book. Behind him, watching and smoking, stood the young guy with face studs who had accompanied him to the shop and a heavy, bearded guy in his forties who looked like a jazz trumpeter.

When Jesus saw me, he released Caro. He stepped back and leered at me.

“Hello, hello. You must be Killer.” Absolutely no trace of recognition in his face.

I said nothing. I was too scared to talk.

“Caroline here says you're dangerous. You don't
look
dangerous. Then again, I look like the Prince of Peace. Appearances can be deceptive.” Jesus nodded at the pastries in my hand. “Aw. Look. He bought us some cakies.”

Jesus reached for the bag. I snatched it away. “What's this about?”

“Ask her,” said Jesus.

Caro just glared at me.

“I didn't get my wedge this month,” said Jesus. “Payment was due five days ago.”

Caro said, “You'll get the money in a few days. In full.”

“Yeah? Expecting a windfall, are we?” Jesus stepped round and looked at me, head tilted to one side. “Do I know you from somewhere, sonny?”

I didn't answer. Jesus returned his attention to Caro. “How come you're wasting your time on this chump?” he said.

“We love each other.”

Jesus nodded and smiled. “Do you really? Well, that's very touching. That's what I tell people they should do. Love one another. Isn't that right, Pete?”

The guy with the face studs grinned and nodded.

“You better stay away from this woman,” declared Jesus. “Every time you touch her, you lose a little bit of your soul. This wo-man will only bring you woe, man.”

Jesus, Face Studs, and the Jazzman had a nice little chuckle together. Caro stared down at the ground.

Jesus put his arm around the studded guy. “This is Pete,” explained Jesus. “He's my little brother. I call him Rock. Peter the Rock.”

Rock took a bow.

“Okay,” said Jesus to Caro. “I'm adding another five thousand to the total. It's gone up because of the disrespect you've both shown for me, your benefactor, by not even bothering to tell me where my money is and when I'll see the next installment.”

“The end of the month, I promise,” said Caro.

“Your promises are worth shit.” The Jazzman grabbed Caro while Jesus searched her bag. There must have been about twenty credit cards in there. He sorted through them, tossing them on the ground as he came to them. “AmEx, Egg, Alliance and Leicester for the smarter investor … I bet you've got about a hundred and fifty grand's worth of credit here. You can draw cash with these fuckers and use it to pay me. And I still want this week's interest.”

Jesus glanced at me, waiting for a reaction. I didn't say anything, but I took a step forward. Instantly Rock slipped a hand inside his jacket. Jesus stopped him with a look and a shake of the head.

“I don't want to see you again,” Jesus told me. Turning to Caro, he clicked his fingers and pointed at her. “
You,
I want to see again.”

Jesus, his brother, and the Jazzman laughed as they walked away.

*   *   *

“H
IS REAL
name's Victor Callaghan, but everyone calls him Bad Jesus. He was on that list I gave you.”

“I thought that was a joke.”

We were drinking Southern Comfort at Caro's favorite pub by the river in Richmond. It was pissing down, the raindrops hitting the Thames like arrowheads. “You haven't heard of Bad Jesus? I thought everyone knew him.” She looked at me sideways. “Not very streetwise, are you?”

“I think that's well established.”

“Jesus is the reason I need my dad's cash.”

“Go on.”

Caro put down her glass and looked out at the lights on the water. She was solemn and silent for a long time. When she spoke again her voice was quiet and dead-sounding. “I met him through Warren. Warren used to work for him. I got in bad trouble with a credit card scam.”

“How bad?”

“I was running up debts under an assumed name. The police had all they needed to put me away. Warren said he knew a man who could sort out my problems. That's how I came to know Bad Jesus. I met him in a pub in Eltham, and he told me that he'd get me out of trouble for a price. The price was twenty thousand, which I didn't have. Jesus said he knew it was a lot of money, so I could pay him back in monthly installments. It seemed like an amazing deal. So I took it. Two weeks later, I got word that all charges against me had been dropped. I couldn't believe it. I was overjoyed.”

“You mean the guy's a loan shark?”

“Among other things, yeah.”

“You borrowed twenty thousand from a loan shark? Caro, that's insanity.”

“It runs in the family,” she said bitterly. “Jesus seemed okay at the time. It was only later that I found out what kind of sick monster he was.”

“What's the debt now?”

“It's hard to say. Maybe about a hundred and twenty grand.”

“God almighty!”

“Yeah … you see, the interest doubles every month. And then there are the unpredictable extras like today's five grand!”

“You'll have to do something about this.”

“Like what?”

“Let's go to the Citizens Advice Bureau.”

She thought this was so funny that she laughed, spraying me with liqueur-whiskey.

“So what made him come to my shop?” I said.

“He probably knows you never stopped loving me.”

“Why? Have you told him?”

“No way.”

“So how would he know?”

“Jesus sees everything.”

“What you're telling me doesn't add up, Caro. Why would a loan shark worry about your ex-boyfriends?”

“I don't know.”

A thought occurred to me. “I've been getting anonymous e-mails. Pretty sick stuff. Could they have come from him?”

Caro shook her head. “Guys like Jesus never write anything down. If he wanted to make someone feel bad, he'd be more likely to drag him behind a car at high speed until his head fell off.”

I sipped my drink, trying not to ask a question but failing. “You and Jesus,” I said, “you haven't…?”

“No!”

I sighed with relief like a very bad actor. “But I must say, Caro, for an intelligent person you've behaved very, very foolishly.”

“I know. But I kept thinking,
I'm my dad's next of kin. One day I'll inherit the house and the money and pay Jesus off.
” Her eyes filled with tears. “Mark, have you any idea how frightened I am?”

She didn't look particularly frightened. A little drunk, maybe. “What did Bad Jesus mean about interest?” I asked her.

She only hesitated for a second. “How should I know? The guy's a prick. He just opens his mouth and shit pours out.”

“He said he hadn't had any interest this week. How could you have been paying interest? You haven't got any money.”

“I've given him a couple of hundred quid now and then,” she said, pressing her face against my shoulder. “Just to keep him off my back.”

*   *   *

T
HAT NIGHT,
I returned to my one-to-one unarmed combat class, realizing that I might need to be fit for whatever lay ahead. Again, Lenny insisted that I punch him in the stomach as hard as I could.

“Isn't this the way Houdini died?” I asked him.

“How the hell should I know?”

That was the frightening thing about Lenny. He was a world-class exponent of karate, but he had no interest whatsoever in Japan or Zen or Shaolin monks. His areas of expertise were drinking, putting out fires, and causing grievous bodily harm.

As a firefighter, he had cut people from wreckage and walked into burning buildings, yet the only anecdote he had to offer involved giving a fireman's lift to a naked eighteen-year-old. “She had the biggest pair of knockers you've ever seen in your life.”

Obeying orders, I drew back and hit him in the stomach as hard as I could. Lenny let out an angry yell.

“Sorry,” I said, surprised by my own strength.

“I'm not shouting 'cause you hurt me. You daft prick. I was using … what's it fucking called? Chi. Spirit. If you cry out when you're hit, it limits the damage your opponent can do to you. It's like I'm directing all my resistance here.” He patted his solar plexus. “Hit me again.”

I whacked his belly a few more times. Each time, he roared defiance. Then it was my turn. “But you're a black belt third dan,” I objected.

“Yeah?”

“You could cause me permanent damage.”

“Don't worry. I'll hold back a bit.”

I braced myself, and as his fist flew forward I summoned all the chi at my disposal and yelled. A few seconds later, I was lying on my back on the floor of the gym.

“Fucking hell,” I said, rubbing my aching gut.

“No,” said Lenny. “That was good. You showed good spirit.”

He made me stand up while he hit me again. After the third time, I started to feel a little pissed off. When it was my turn to hit Lenny again, I summoned all my strength, yelling as well as punching. This time, the blow contained all my accumulated pain and embarrassment, and when it connected, Lenny rocked slightly on his heels. At that point, he beamed. “I'll tell you what, my son,” he said. “That was a fucking beauty. Keep punching like that and you'll have no problems whatsoever.”

Later, in the shower, Lenny made me an opportunistic offer. “Listen, I've been thinking,” he said. “You know that little chat we had about your kicks? How I said there was room for improvement?”

“If I recall, you described me as ‘fucking useless.'”

“Did I? Well, listen. I've got something that might help you. A set of leg stretchers.”

“Leg stretchers?”

“Yeah. They're yours for forty quid.”

We went out to Lenny's little white van, and he produced two long movable metal bars joined by a handle. The idea was that you held the device between your ankles and pressed down on the handle until the bars forced your legs apart.

“Do they work?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Lenny. “How do you think I got to be so supple?”

I didn't really want the stupid contraption but thought that buying it might further my relationship with my karate tutor. “Okay, you're on,” I said. “But could you give me a lift home? This thing's a bit heavy.”

“Deal,” said Lenny, and we shook on it.

So he drove me all the way to East Sheen, saving me a tedious bus journey. On the way, I asked him to tell me a few firefighter's jokes. He didn't know any. “There is one thing we say. Some of the houses we go to are so filthy that we have to remember to wipe our feet on the way out.”

I forced a laugh. Lenny asked me what I did for a living. I told him. He nodded. “And business is bad, is it?”

“How did you know?”

“Because you worry a lot. I can see it. You got frown lines on your forehead.” Lenny cackled, having thought of a joke. “You're s'posed to be following the way of the warrior. Not the way of the worrier.”

Lenny took a look at my book collection while I went upstairs to get his money. Without much hope, I suggested that if he found a nice book he wanted, we might be able to arrange a trade. Lenny found this hilarious. “A book that's worth forty quid? There's no such thing.”

While I was taking a piss, I heard a knock at the door. I assumed it was Caro, or someone complaining about the way Lenny had parked the van on the pavement. The lavatory window was open, and I peered down into the street. I heard Lenny answer the door; then came the sound of shouting and scuffling. A moment later I leaned forward to peer through the window and saw three shapes spinning about in the darkness.

I cut my piss short and ran down to see what was happening. Lenny was standing on the pavement, looking down. A large man was lying on his back in the gutter, illegally parked on the double yellow lines. The big man was gripping a baseball bat that had obviously not done him much good. His face looked like a strawberry flan that someone had trampled on.

“What happened?” I said.

“I opened the door and this idiot took a swing at me,” said Lenny incredulously. “There were two of 'em. The other one legged it.”

The guy on the ground, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, coughed and blew out a huge bubble of blood.

“Fuck,” I said. “What did you do to him?”

“Simple block, then elbow strike to the face,” said Lenny. “The elbow's one of the deadliest parts of the body.”

“What about that speech you give us about how it's always safer to run away?”

“I didn't have time to run.” He eyed me warily. “I got the impression they thought I was you. Is that possible?”

I looked at Lenny. I hated to admit it, but we were the same height, with similar haircuts and similar sticky-out ears. I'd swear I was far more handsome, but maybe not.

“All right,” he said. “Do you mind telling me what you've been doing to bring fellas with baseball bats down on you?”

I chose to ignore the question. “We better call an ambulance.”

“You call the ambulance. I need to run some cold water over this elbow.”

Lenny went up to the bathroom. Before dialing 999, I went out to see what Lenny's victim was doing. He wasn't doing anything. He'd gone, leaving a trail of blood that stretched all the way to High Street.

CHAPTER 7

AND WHEN DID YOU LAST KILL YOUR FATHER?

T
HE NEXT
day started promisingly enough. I opened the shop just before nine. There was the usual crowd of people standing outside, none of them wanting to come in. But then I logged on to my Web site to learn that someone had ordered my most valuable book, a very good first edition of
Casino Royale
without a dust jacket, price three thousand pounds. I was elated and went to the case to remove the book, only to find it wasn't there.