The Song of the Flea (24 page)

“I wouldn’t trust you, Harry, if you were sitting on your mother’s grave with your father’s soul up your sleeve and your pocket full of diamonds. But I tell you what … You tell me something, and I’ll think about letting you have a stake.”

“Well, what?”

“Take a walk along the street with me and I’ll tell you.”

Harry Fabian put down half-a-crown for the cups of coffee and the sandwich, and followed Leo out of the café, with a jaunty swagger and a heavy heart.

“What is it, Leo?” he asked.

Leo had stopped to stroke a tabby cat. “What’s that, Harry?”

“What was it you wanted to know?” asked Harry Fabian.

Leo looked at him blankly, and said: “Know? Know what?”

“You said you’d stake me if I told you something,” said Fabian.

“Did I? I’ll tell you something, little man—you’re getting good at repeating what people said. You’re getting better than a shorthand notebook.”

“Cut my throat if—”

“Go and cut your mother’s throat,” said Leo, still smiling. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“You wanted to ask me something,” said Fabian.

“Walk along here,” said Leo, leading Fabian into a quiet turning. “Now tell me—what was it you wanted to tell me?”

“You wanted to know something.”

“What did I want to know? Make it quick.”

“Would it be about some white paper-money?”

“How much?”

“A fifty-pound note and eight hundred in fivers and tenners. Is that it?” asked Fabian.

“Who’s got it?”

“Would I get my hundred and fifty now?”

“Who said anything about any hundred and fifty?”

“I’ve got to have a hundred, Leo.”

“If it’s worth it, we’ll see. Come on, now: who did
Three-Fingers
give it to, that money?”

“It was a fifty-pound note, seventy ten-pound notes, and twenty fivers,” said Fabian.

“I know. Go on.”

“It was eight hundred and fifty pounds——”

“In big notes. Go on, Harry, who’s got it?”

“You know me, Leo,” said Fabian; “they couldn’t get
anything
out of me with red-hot pincers. You know me, by Christ—I’d god-damn well tear my tongue out with a plumber’s wrench before I dropped a single solitary word. And there you are, where does it get you? Where the hell does it get you to be a strictly honourable guy? You know me, Leo——”

“—I know you all right. Save it for your girl friend. Come on, let’s have it. You know where that money is, and I know you know.”

“Leo, for the love of Jesus, put yourself in my shoes,” said Fabian, in agony.

“Little man,” said Leo, stopping to stroke another cat and grunting with the effort, “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a
half-share
in the Bank of England. Not if you double-cross
me,
little feller. You know what’ll happen to you, don’t you, sonny boy?”

Fabian dabbed at his cold wet face with a silk handkerchief.

“You’re shaking, little man. So would I if I were you,” said Leo. He had picked up the cat and was tickling it under the ears. “Nice pussy, nice little pussy.”

Fabian felt as a man must feel who is caught in a quicksand and, having screamed his voice away to a whisper, feels the mud closing about his neck and straining desperately upwards sees nothing but the night. On the one hand there was Three-Fingers; when he and the Australian learned that he had betrayed them to Leo, their anger would be terrible. On the other hand there was Leo, and he was the most dangerous man in England to cross. Three-Fingers was murderous in his rage; violent, cruel and reckless. A trickle of sweat that felt like ice-water ran down Fabian’s spine as he remembered a gruesome night when
Three-Fingers, with horrifying deliberation, poured the contents of a boiling coffee-urn over the head and shoulders of an enemy in the Greek Dive. The Australian, too, was resolute and vindictive; and hideously strong. Fabian could almost feel the steel tip of the Australian’s boot heel on his teeth. They would not kill him, no—they would make him wish that they had killed him, before they were done with him. Yet Leo was more terrifying than all the rest put together. He never raised a finger. He never lost his temper. He smiled quietly, said “All right”—if that—and went home to his motherly little wife and three growing daughters in Hampstead, where he lived in a pleasant old house near the Heath. But somehow,
somewhere
between here and there a word was spoken through those torn-up ventriloquist’s lips, and someone else went to work. Leo was known to the police as a sort of Jonathan Wild—a great organiser of robberies and receiver of stolen goods: they knew that he had arranged the Great Bullion Robbery, and a dozen other brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed crimes, including four murders. They had known Leo for twenty years, and he had never been convicted. He had never even been accused. His was the wisdom, the cunning, the strength and the intuition of a King Rat, that senses traps, and lets smaller rats taste the poison put down for it. Leo’s whisper between Oxford Circus and Regent Street sent diamond cutters in Antwerp scuttling underground and made mysterious commotion among fur dealers in Hamburg and silk merchants in Paris. The devil knew the geography of his underground runs. He had a bright-eyed, sharp-toothed agent behind every wall and under every floor. And he was a man of principle, too, fastidious as the book-keeper of a bank in the matter of a penny gone astray—he would spend a pound to trace it and put it in its proper place, which was in his pocket.

Leo was at large, and always would be at large; whereas Three-Fingers and the others were locked behind iron doors for a year or so.

Harry Fabian said: “Hell, Leo, I wouldn’t double-cross you or anyone else, not even my worst enemy. But—hell, well, you know how it was. Three-Fingers was the boss. I was taking
orders from Three-Fingers. And Jesus, Leo, I’m no
double-crosser
….”

“Where did he leave that money?” asked Leo, letting the cat fall and looking at his watch. “I’ve got two minutes. This is your last chance, little feller. Hurry up. I want that money, little feller.”

Fabian swallowed saliva and said: “Okay. Three-Fingers left the dough with Little Ziggy.”

“What for?”

“Well, there were seventy tenners, twenty fivers, and a fifty; eight hundred and fifty quid in all, all in big notes. The idea was, that there was a note of their numbers—see? So Ziggy was going to give us sixty per cent of the money. Only as you know, Leo, there wasn’t time.”

What
would
you
do
with
such
people?
said Leo to himself.
Can’t
they
read?
Didn’t
they
see
in
the
papers
that
the
man
never
mentioned
any
eight
hundred
and
fifty
pounds?
Didn’t
anybody
ever
tell
them
that
two
and
two
make
four?
God
save
us
from
fools!
Didn’t
they
stop
to
think
that
there’s
no
easy
way
of
tracing
the
serial
numbers
of
money
a
bookie
takes
on
the
course?
Didn’t
they
stop
to
think
that
he’s
got
a
partner,
and
that
he
was
holding
out—just
the
same
as
they
were?
That’s
why
the
money
was
in
his
private
safe
on
Sunday;
and
that’s
why
the
other
stuff
was
mentioned
in
the
papers,
but
not
that
money.
Oh
no,
the
silly
little
men
—
they
want
to
be
clever.
They
think
the
Yard
kept
it
out
of
the
papers
to
put
them
off
their
guard
until
one
of
them,
the
mugs,
tried
to
crack
a
big
note.
He said aloud: “Ziggy. That’s all I wanted to know, sonny boy.”

“What about my hundred and fifty, Leo?”

They had reached Wardour Street. Leo said: “You know, little feller, I made a mistake about you. There was a time, not very long ago, when I thought you were all right. But there you are, you see. Truth will out, little man. They knocked all the fight out of you when you went on that little holiday. You’re no good, Harry. You’re no good to me. Here you are—catch hold of this,” said Leo, giving Fabian some money, “put it in you pocket. It’s all you’re going to get. And if you take my advice, you’ll stay out of Soho.”

Leo walked on. Fabian looked at the money in his wet hand and saw that Leo had given him crumpled and soiled notes to the value often pounds ten shillings.

“And some people say there’s a God!” he said.

*

Enraged, humiliated, damp with fright and palpitating with resentment, he went to a News Theatre, to calm his nerves, clarify his mind and get away from his troubles with the help of Donald Duck. Instinctively he made his way to a seat next to a young woman. Donald Duck, that most unfortunate of birds, was caught in a washing-machine, which filled its mouth with bubbles and covered its backside with suds. The duck went under with a bubbling quack, came up again with a Santa Claus beard of froth and a venerable wig of foam; was dragged down on steel hooks, rinsed thoroughly, and hurled into a wringer from which it emerged flat as a pancake; whereupon a metal hand pegged it on a clothes line. Donald Duck wept. Fabian took advantage of the universal laughter to kick the young lady on the ankle and say: “My old pal Walt! My pal Walt! What a boy, what a boy!”

The young woman turned her head very slowly and said: “I
beg
your pardon!”

Harry Fabian said: “
I
beg
your
pardon, Miss. Did I kick you? Hell—well, look, I’ll kick myself, and that makes us even Steven.” He kicked himself and pretended to writhe in pain. The young woman, who had appeared to be properly haughty and self-contained, could not hold back her laughter. She snorted, choked, and then giggled. Fabian put a reassuring hand on her thigh, pressed his right shoulder to her left, and said, in a confidential whisper: “No, but honest to God. You see the way that duck moves? That’s what they call animation. I was Walt’s animator up to the time colour came in. Ever hear of a man called Ub Iwerks? The man who invented Flip the Frog? He worked with Disney too. I walked in when Ub walked out. And there’s no use talking, that boy’s got
something
. What do you think?”

The young woman said: “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

Fabian slid his hand down to her knee and felt her leg under her skirt. She said, whispering into his right ear: “Let us go away from here.”

“Where to?” whispered Fabian.

“Anywhere, anywhere away from here.”

“To hell with that,” said Fabian, investigating her bosom with an experienced hand. He felt her heart beating. She felt very young in the dark. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” said the young woman.

Donald Duck disappeared, honking disconsolately, hung up by the tail. Something told Harry Fabian that God was with him again. “Okay,” he said, “come to my place.”

She said, imperiously: “Wait. I want to see Mickey Mouse.”

“You can see anything you like,” said Fabian, tickling her backbone with an urgent little hand. “You can see anything, any place, any time. Get me?”

Pushing his other hand away, she said: “Not here. Not now. Patience.”

“Okey the Doke,” said Fabian. “Hokey-da-dokey.”

She giggled.

“Dokey-the-hokey. Hokey-the-poke,” said Fabian. “
Pokey-the
-wokey. Wokey-the-oke.” He blew into the young woman’s ear and, as she wriggled and laughed, tickled her abdomen. “Let’s get
way
out of here—let’s get (to be crude) the
hell
out of here,” he said. “Come to my place. I could tell you in one word what I like about you.”

“What?”

“Personality. What’s your name?”

“Catussher.”

“How d’you spell it?”

“K-A-T-U-S-H-A.”

“Unusual name, that.”

“It’s Russian. What’s yours?”

“Harry. Ooky-da-wook!”

“No, don’t be silly—Ooky-da-wook!”

“Ssh—don’t laugh so loud, Pritt. People want to listen to the news.”

“What sort of talk is
Pritt?”

“Short for ‘Pretty’—get it? That’s what they all say on the Coast right now. Okey-the-soakey?”

Mickey Mouse faded out sheepishly, half-drowned in a prodigious cream cake with which Minnie Mouse had beaten him over the head. Fabian took advantage of the introductory music to a travel film, and let Katusha into the lobby, where he looked at her with an experienced eye and said: “Jesus, it seems funny, somehow, to look at this stuff here in this town. It sort of gets you kind of ashamed. Could you have any respect for me if I told you I animated that duck? Hell, if I knew then what I know now—God Almighty, that duck would jump out of the screen and lay an egg on your lap. Sometimes, Katusha, I think I was a mug to quarrel with Disney, and then again, on the other hand, some people say that Walt was a mug to quarrel with me. The trouble with us was, we were just a couple of geniuses, and geniuses never get on together. I grant you, Katusha, that I couldn’t of drawn Donald Duck in six months; whereas Walt could draw you anything—ducks, mice, bloodhounds and even squirrels. But where, I ask you, would your Silly Symphony be if I hadn’t animated it? You know what I mean—brought it to life. Oh, I know you’re laughing at me deep down inside. And mind you, it does seem like a god-damn silly job for a grown man to do—making Donald Duck move like a duck. But believe me or believe me not, Katusha, you sort of get to be kind of proud of a job that sort of gets to be kind of world-wide. Go on. Laugh at me and have done with it. Laugh, go on.”