Jim nodded. He knew of similar scams in Coventry. Break into a house, steal the car keys and drive to a lock-up. Easy money as long as you changed the plates or avoided the number plate recognition cameras. The people involved weren’t to be messed with though. Organised crime from Russia and the Baltics involved nasty people. Getting out once in wasn’t easy.
“Thanks,” said Jim. He felt himself blush again. He really didn’t know what else to say.
Mick nodded and sipped at his pint. “There’s other ways too. You heard of that gang doing jewellers?”
Jim paused. “The motorbike gang?” He’d heard about them. Everyone inside had. A high-powered bike pulls up outside a jewellers, passenger gets off the rear and smashes the window with a sledgehammer. A handful of rings and necklaces taken, they get back on the bike. Less than a minute from start to finish.
“Is there anyone you know got a bike?” Mick took a large swig of his pint.
Jim shook his head. The only person he knew who could even ride one lived in Coventry and only had a moped. A getaway driver restricted to 30mph? No, it wouldn’t work.
“No. Anyone round here with a bike?”
Mick shook his head. “My brother’s been on the lookout for a year. Says he’s going to drive one himself one day.”
Jim shrugged and carried on marking the cards, getting used to the weight of them while shuffling. Quaffing his own pint, he realised just how late in the afternoon it was getting. There was still a long way to go. That seemed to be the story of the last week. Finishing his pint and thanking them, maybe too much, he left the pub and headed for Filthy Alan’s.
The smell was worse than this morning as Jim waited for Filthy to waddle through the shop. The small, foldaway table Jim stood in front of was designed for picnics, but was ideal for a small stall or performing card tricks. It was maybe too low for Jim’s height, but by adjusting the legs it would go higher but be less stable.
“How much, mate?” asked Jim.
Filthy sucked in air past his rotten teeth. “Thirty quid new these are.”
“This isn’t new. How much?”
“I’d be robbing myself if I let it go for less than fifteen.”
“It’s covered in dust. I’ll give you five.”
“Twelve’s my last offer.”
“Ten.”
“Go on then.”
Filthy insisted on shaking Jim’s hand. His sweaty, unwashed palms made Jim shudder. He didn’t dare think when they’d been last washed. The table folded up well, and was easy to carry on the tube as it whisked him westwards.
“Now, finding the queen is a very old English trick. I’m going to show you.” Jim looked at the assembled small crowd that was building. Mainly tourists, about half of them not having English for a first language made his job easier. The late afternoon sun was heavy and shining in most of their faces, another trick of the trade Jim had quickly learnt watching others. He shuffled a pack of cards with as much flair as he could muster. Most of their eyes were on the cards, searching out his secret, trying to outwit him.
“That’s the problem with us Brits. We love our queen. Of course, they have different sorts of queens in your country don’t they?” He pointed towards a group of Japanese tourists. Japan was near enough to the Philippines for the joke to work. Most of the crowd turned to face the bemused and curious Japanese pair hidden behind their cameras. Jim took the opportunity to cut the pack and palm a queen from his right sleeve onto the bottom.
The crowd, some of them smiling, some half afraid to smile at a politically incorrect joke returned to him. With his hands constantly moving over the cards, and doing a pretend shuffle that only shuffled the first half of the pack, he continued.
“The job is to find the queen. Anyone can do it. There’s plenty of queens about. You been to the East End?” He looked directly at a couple from America.
“No, sir,” he replied with a southern twang.
“Ain’t no cowboys there, pal.” Jim looked at some others in the crowd and smiled. “There are pearly queens though. You seen them?” He looked back at the couple. The man looked ready to rip Jim’s head off. He looked like he normally took no shit, but this wasn’t his domain. He was alien here. Jim had the upper hand.
“No, I have not.”
“You ought to see them while you’re here.” He stopped shuffling and turned fully to the man. “Their clothes are covered in sequins. Millions of them. You must have seen a picture.”
“I’ve seen a picture,” said his wife. A few murmurs in the crowd agreed.
“Worth a look. Right then, sir.” Jim still had the American’s goat up. “Find the queen.”
He spread the cards out into ten small piles. Knowing the queen was on the bottom of the pack, he knew its exact position in the third pile. “Choose a pile, sir.”
“That one.” He pointed at the furthest one.
“Come a bit nearer, come on. Let the dog see the bone.”
He shuffled nearer, his wife now taking pictures on her camera.
Discarding the chosen pile, Jim collected the other cards together and started shuffling again, while incessantly talking and making jokes about Las Vegas. After a minute of choosing piles and discarding them, the American picked the pile the queen was in. Luckily at that moment a few European tourists turned and walked away.
“Where you going? I haven’t got to the good bit yet. Don’t go please.” The crowd turned to look at the people leaving giving Jim the chance to collect up the cards and switch two piles around. He continued for a few more minutes. Now nearly twenty people were around his little picnic table, but he also noticed some attention from another entertainer opposite him. The man was talking to a security guard. The
piazza
had regular guards who doubled as movers-on in the case of street entertainers without a licence. Jim knew he had to hurry up.
He speeded up both by talking and moving faster. He was nearing the endgame of the trick, but he still hadn’t had the opportunity to plant the card properly. An idea struck him; it might just work.
“Of course,” he picked up the remaining cards and shuffled them again, “the queen isn’t in here. It’s in your back pocket.” He pointed at a hapless man in the crowd. The rest of the crowd turned to stare at him. Obviously, the man checked his back pocket and on finding nothing shook his head. “Well of course it’s not in your pocket,” said Jim. “How could it be, you’re over there.” The crowd laughed, unaware what Jim had just slipped into the American’s back pocket.
Another minute or so of creating piles and reducing them produced nothing. Jim finally turned over the last card announcing, “You’ve picked the only queen in the pack.”
The card was the four of spades. “Shit.” He added. The crowd laughed. Some of them looked ready to walk away. The finale beckoned. “Actually,” Jim pulled the last stack of cards the American had split up and turned them over, “all of these are queens and you couldn’t pick any of them.”
The crowd looked stunned. Mouths open. They’d seen the cards seconds ago, but they’d morphed into queens.
“Finally,” said Jim pulling a hat from behind the table, “could you check your back pocket please.”
The American, still only a gag or two away from lamping Jim, wasn’t buying it. “You’re not making a fool of me, pal.”
“Seriously,” said Jim. “Just take a look.”
He did and produced a queen. His face fell in a stunned, open-mouthed trance.
“But ...” was all he could say.
“Thank you very much, folks. My name’s Jim, and if you could spare some change I’d really appreciate it. Thanks for watching.”
A few left, sneaking off without paying, but the majority dibbed into his hat. The higher sums came from the Japanese tourists. Jim thought that was probably indicative of the exchange rate or world economy or something. The American couple, still bemused and more than confused, slipped a twenty into his hat.
“Thank you,” said Jim and gave his wife a theatrical wink.
As the security guard started to move over, Jim emptied the hat, packed up the table and left. Counting the coins he was surprised; almost a hundred quid. Deep down though, he knew this was a losing game. Getting moved on every half hour would never see him do more than four or five tricks a day.
Just outside the main square, he set up his table again and played a variation on three-card monte, not for money, just for entertainment. It had been a while since he’d practised it, so the first few times were failures, but he kept his banter up which the small crowd liked. A quarter of an hour gained him just twenty quid after which he got moved on. Getting moved on twice again got him another thirty, but it was becoming too much of a problem. Finding another spot, he lasted just ten minutes before a couple of policemen appeared from round a corner. Packing away instantly, and with only a fiver, he headed for the tube. Waiting for the train, he considered life as an entertainer. If he could make a few hundred a day, which seemed fairly easy, he could rent a bedsit somewhere south of the river and still keep seeing Charlotte after Wednesday.
After crunch day. Assuming there were any bits of him left after Wednesday.
The table dropped off at the hotel, Jim collected a few bits and made his way to Waterloo Station. A busy evening in the rush hour, the station was split between commuters heading home and people heading for the Eurostar. Wishing he had a passport that would let him travel unhindered across Europe, he waited in a queue at an exchange bureaux.
It wasn’t that he wanted to run away - especially not from Charlotte - but he just knew that escaping from this mess and starting again in some French vineyard as a grape picker would give him a decent chance of survival.
The queue was small but slow moving. Edging his way to the front, he wondered how these places still survived. Hardly anyone travelling abroad changed money anymore. Everything was done on card. Every purchase, no matter how small, was done on a piece of plastic secured by a four digit number that most people wrote down or stored in their phone.
Reaching the front, the blonde-haired twenty-something woman screwed her nose up as she asked what he wanted.
“A thousand euros please.”
“Certainly, sir.” Her face cringed while saying sir. “How would you like to pay for this?”
“Cheque please.”
She sighed and pointed at the sign. Cheques were yesterdays news. No one used cheques anymore. The sign clearly stated that cheques must be accompanied by a bankers card and two forms of identification.
“I’ve got a cheque book, driving licence and bank statement.” he offered.
“We need a bank debit or credit card,” she happily replied.
“I haven’t got either.”
She shrugged her shoulders, pleased she’d ruined someone’s day.
Walking away, he headed for a pawnbrokers or cheque-cashing shop. He daren’t visit the same one twice in a day. That was asking for trouble. Most of the central London ones were chains with good CCTV and even better procedures for identification.
Plucking up what little courage he had, he entered one.
He had considered just going to the bank. Conversely, he knew you needed a picture ID to buy fags, alcohol, football tickets, hire a car and even leave the country. Banks, however, were not as strict. This always struck him as odd. Surely drawing all of someone’s money from a bank should be classed higher than hiring a car? All he had to do was satisfy the cashier with a few forms of identification and he could clear out his account.
Well, Raif’s account.
Raif had once more proved himself to be a fool. His bank statements showed over two grand in his current account. Two big ones sloshing about just waiting for some lag to do the decent thing. “The lad was asking for it,” Harry would say, “practically begging for it.” He also had ten grand in an internet only ISA account that Jim had no idea how to touch. Raif was back off holiday tomorrow anyway, but that ten grand … It could have solved all his problems.
The bank idea had been discounted. If he got caught in the act, the police would be round him like flies round shit. It wasn’t worth it for two grand. Not when he was sure he could get a grand easy enough at a bureaux or pawnbrokers. When Raif checked his account, not to mention the state of his flat, the police would be after him anyway, but that was a few days away.
He’d found the cheque-cashing shop he was in a few streets from Waterloo Station. Payday loans, said the sign. The very, very small print said 3419% APR. Walking in, he’d been greeted by an orange uniformed, balding man with his name badge, Philip, conveniently placed over his left nipple.
“Hello, sir, can I help you?”
Jim reckoned he suffered from an overkeenness that London had yet to rip from his soul. “I need to cash a cheque. It’s a bit of an emergency.”
“Certainly. If you’d like to follow me to a booth.”
The shop was split in two halves. The front half carpeted with tabled nooks and niches oozed respectability and service. Philip and two other badge wearers walked the floor, meeting, greeting and offering a service. Behind them lay the other half. A chest-high partition, the top half bulletproof glass. In some ways Jim thought it resembled a post office, in others a bank. The cashiers behind the screen were a different breed. Bean counters. Harsh looking men and woman, the fear of being held up always in the back of their minds.
Sitting in the booth, the chair straight backed and hard, Jim looked over the table at Philip as he logged onto his computer. Efficient and friendly, he idly chatted about the weather as his computer fired up. Jim thought the whole atmosphere was designed to make this seem no different than buying a pound of apples from a supermarket. There was nothing seedy or shameful about being here. It was just a business transaction.
“Okay, name and address, please.”
Jim fired off Raif’s address. He had the statements and driving licence in front of him in case of any mishap. Luckily there wasn’t. When asked for date of birth though, he had to pretend a coughing fit while looking down at the licence for the correct date.
Things soon came to the meat of the action. The heat in the shop cum office was starting to get to Jim. Air conditioning had been forgotten about when this building was designed. Maybe it was part of the experience. Make it uncomfortably hot so people are more likely to agree to whatever it is you tell or offer them.