The Pattern Mafia - The Man’s A Gentleman
CHAPTER THIRTY – The Man’s A Gentleman
The Story So Far … Charli Parker is trapped in the Burning Bear and slowly going mad. Ed the Ted is assembling the Cockney with the help of Lord Charles and a cast of heavies. What Charli doesn’t know is what Ed is planning for her.
The seagulls are as trapped in time as I am, stilled in their flight, a blink in time going on forever or until the ceiling they are trapped in is torn down at some indeterminate point in the future when they finally demolish the Burning Bear. Maybe they will find my desiccated corpse still lying on this bed, mummified by the ages, my Tom Ford suit in rags and tatters. Cops in plastic suits would scan my remains for clues and forensic scientists would trace my DNA. Anthropologists would study the seagulls and seashell lamp and TORQUAY poster and speculate about the worship of littoral icons. Eventually I would be reincarnated as a sim for public display in a museum and given an English south-coast accent and an inventive but counterfactual lifestyle. Molly would approve.
I can hear sounds from the high-street and the bar but in here they are reduced to a homogenised burr, as if the room had tinnitus. It complements the hissing in my head. I am going slowly insane with nothing to do, with my world reduced to the perimeter of the Bear, guarded by the goons at each door. I can move about anywhere in the pub except behind the bar or in the kitchen, but wherever I go two big men are always within reach or waiting outside the door to the ladies. The window in the ladies is glued shut with years of paint, I tried it. Eventually I retired to my room and washed my skanky panties and put them on the radiator near the window to dry, then lay on the bed to stare up at the painted seagulls trying to work out other ways to escape. The drop to the high-street from my bedroom window is too great, I’d break an ankle or an arm in the fall, and the café opposite is full of more big Mediterranean looking men with seemingly nothing to do all day but drink coffee. There’s a back yard with rough and heavy wooden tables, benches, and a barbecue made from scrap metal that looks as hygienic as a dumpster. But the walls are too high and the furniture too heavy for me to move. Plus I have no idea what is on the other side of the wall. Currently I think my best ploy is to try to steal a phone and call for help, but who can I call?
Then there is Palinstone. There was only one way they could have got my number and that was Janey. But Janey had only ordered the phone and had it delivered hadn’t she? Had Janey even known the number of the phone? The only way she would know that would be to take delivery first, unbox the phone, fire it up, log the number, then re-box the phone and send it on to me at the Airbnb that she had arranged for me. Janey was the only person who knew where I was staying. Think about that Parker; a lot of things are pointing to Janey right now. But I just can’t see it. If Janey was working for Algebra why had she helped me? Unless she was a late recruit. Maybe Algebra had set the new Bleach Boy or Captain Grey loose on Janey. That was an ugly thought. And this, Charli Parker, is exactly how you go insane, inventing dark endings for innocents just to fill the hissing void in your head.
There is a loud knock on the bedroom door. I look at my panties drying on the radiator. Too late. The door opens. One of the big men put his head around the door and speaks.
“Mr Ed wants a word, miss. Now.”
“Two minutes,” I said, and turned back to my seagulls. Next thing I know there is this vice around my arm and big dark MediMexi goon is pulling me to my feet and towing me stumbling towards the door.
“Shoes, fuckhead!”
Big dark MediMexi goon looks at my naked feet and let’s go of my arm. I find my beaten up Blanicks and pick my panties from the radiator. Big dark MediMexi goon looks at my lace hipsters then at me.
“Turn your damn back, mister,” I demand.
I am officially sick of this alpha-dickhead bullshit. But he steps out of my room and closes the door. Who knew? The man’s a gentleman. So there’s that. And my panties are still wet - there’s that too.
Skeleton Man’s motorbike is in bits. It’s laid out like an exploded diagram on the garage floor. The chrome pipe do-dads are on each side of the frame, a big chunky part of the engine placed on the floor in front. Bolts and screws are set out in rows according to size. A cloth is stuffed into each of the open mouths of the engine cylinders. Skeleton Man is standing by the long bench that is along the brick wall of the garage, covering something with a cloth. He points to his office and Gentleman Goon leads me gently inside and sits me down on the dead sofa. It’s as sticky as I thought it would be, like sweaty flesh.
Skeleton Man sits on his diseased office chair and stares at me.
“You can’t sell it.” I get my challenge in first.
“You are going to do as I tell you, Hollywood,” Skeleton Man replies.
“How do you reckon that?”
“Because you don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t care what you do to me; I am not going to help.”
“That is a deeply stupid thing to say. It means you don’t really understand the situation you are in, Hollywood. No one is going to rescue you because nobody cares about you. You only have value to me while you can help me.”
“You can’t let anyone have it; it’s so fucking dangerous. I can’t believe you are being so irresponsible.”
“Says the girl who made it possible.”
“That’s not right, that’s not fair…”
“It’s the TRUTH,” the last word bursting from the old man in a roar.
“You’re going to have to face facts, girl. It’s here. It’s happened. Whatever happens next, that is never going to change. Whatever happens, you can’t stop it. You are here now under our protection, and that is only because you can do something we can’t. I don’t give a fuck what happens to you, Hollywood, but if you do the job, then maybe you can come with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You already know; this is too big to leave witnesses. Isn’t that why you ran away from that hit squad last night?”
“Yes.”
“You told me what you will need to stay ahead of their machine. You need a lot of money, and you need a lot of help.”
“And you have that?”
“Not the money no, not yet, but every skill you can imagine has walked through the doors of the Bear one time or another and most of them owe me a favour, one way or another. The Bears’ an embassy for an invisible country, because that’s what the East End is, a secret country hiding in plain sight. An anarchy of free men and women living under the noses of them that claim to be civilised..”
“A simple yes would have done.”
The old bastard glares at me.
“You that smart-lipped with everyone you meet.”
“It’s a reflex; sometimes I don’t know what I am going to say until I have said it. It keeps people distant. It feels safer that way; always has.”
“You feel safe now Hollywood?”
I shake my head, wipe my treacherous eyes.
“So how does it work, this uber network of anarchists?”
“I call in favours. If I vouch for you, you’ll be as safe as a virgin in a convent.”
“What about the money?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Me? I don’t have any money. I don’t even have a spare pair of panties.”
“You are going to provide the money.”
“How?”
“You are the authenticator. Nobody is going to take our word we have it. You are going to tell them you have seen it, the weird bollox. Convince them we have it.”
“And then what?”
“We collect the money and disappear. You can come with, or you can take your chances.”
“But I will have painted a target on my back helping you!”
“That’s another advantage.”