* tug-of-war value = m1⁄m2 × (d1⁄d2 )2
13. Special Delivery
The bottle hit the copper surface hard. The beer stayed in it, just. Andres turned his back on 'El Ingles'. A couple of Gitanos smoked – close as lovers over one of the two tables in the bar. Other beers had been spilled on the green-tinged bar top. Kiss FM was playing the soundtrack to someone's life. Some electronic euro-kack from the 80's: Vic had hated them; he'd been too old for pixie boots and high-waisted pants. The clothes had been worse than the music, but only just. There'd been money though: enough to drink in better bars than this one.
'¡Gracias, hombre!' Vic said, 'cheers, geezer'.
Andres looked back over his shoulder, rattled his adenoids in true Andalucian style.
The bar was the size of someone's lounge. In fact, it had been – once. The plastic strips hanging over the entrance wafted in the breeze, the flies dodging and weaving to get out of the heat and into the bar. Vic's mobile rang:
'¡Digame!' Safer to answer in Spanish.
'Vic? It's Rhys.'
'Yeah?' Vic lipped the bottle neck and chugged.
'They're on it. It's on time, I checked.'
'Good. I'll be waiting.'
Vic thumbed the button and slid the phone shut. He tossed two Euros onto the copper: they rattled long after the strips had closed behind him.
The 'taxistas' glared over their cab roofs as Vic double parked opposite the rank. Sodium lights punctured the dark, occasional dud tubes allowed the night more territory.
'Vic! Vic!' The voice, sharp as the sodium, pierced the hubbub.
Vic looked across the road. The tall woman and her companion were fake-baked to an orange glow. They stood in front of arrivals, designer luggage as counterfeit as their tans. Vic waved. The shorter of the two squealed like an excited pig. Vic saw Roni's eyes roll even from two lanes away. He reached them and picked up two of the lighter bags, made his way across the road to the Peugeot Partner Rancho. The luggage fit snugly, in the rear – and on the women's laps.
Traffic was backed up in front of the San Miguel brewery. Vic sighed.
'Put the fucking window up! Let's use the effing A/C, eh?'
The younger one pouted, but wound the handle anyway.
Roni stared out of her window, the alternative was Vic's bald spot.
'Fu-uck!' Roni shouted. Vic jumped forward, eardrum inconvenienced, if not perforated.
'Wha'?'
'He nearly hit us!'
'Didn't though, did he?'
The quasi-van cleared the roundabout and headed down the side street.
They passed other bars crammed into the front rooms of terraced-houses. Occasionally, double gates yawned wide offering admittance to unofficial airport parking. Vic thought it was a nice earner, people never checked the speedos when they picked their cars up. Too busy rushing for the holiday home. Perfect vehicles for moving certain commodities around the Costa.
'Have you got it?' Vic barked.
A snarl came from the passenger side:
'Like we'd be welcome without it!'
Vic's eyes slid to the young woman. He felt his forearms bulge and his knuckles cracked as his grip tightened on the wheel.
'Nikki, show some respect!' Roni said.
Vic saw her shoulders shrugging in the rear-view mirror. He thought about respect: how it was earned and how it felt when you no longer had it. Vic flicked the indicator stalk, pulled in, double parked in the narrow street. The horns started blaring behind him.
'Hand it over.' he said.
The young woman had it. A girl really: 18? Who knew nowadays? She reached into a huge handbag. Except for the garish colour John Wayne could have used it as a saddlebag. The girl withdrew a terracotta storage pot. Like one from a middle-class kitchen, except for the absence of 'Original Suffolk Canister' on the outside. The tape securing the lid came off easily. Vic checked the contents, re-secured the lid and handed it back.
'OK, let's go.'
Vic raised a middle finger out of the window and pulled out, the horns behind still blaring.
'Busy?' Roni asked.
'This and that.' Vic said.
'Reggie says…'
'Stuff Reggie, Roni. I'm not coming back.'
'But it's squared, safe…'
'So what?'
'So you're a dogsbody for some Spanish firm. Come on!'
'It's OK.'
But it wasn't. Vic spoke Spanish, of a sort; enough to make him useful, once: Russian, or even Romanian, was more use nowadays and didn't people know it. Besides, he was too old. A teenaged girl could mug him off without a second thought.
The car-cum-van pulled off the road into Barrio Zapata. Vic skirted the potholes gracefully until he reached the end of Calle Paraiso. He bumped the motor into the parking space, adding damage to the cars at front and rear – without reducing their value. The house opened directly onto the street. It stood in a row of two-storey terraced houses. Andres' bar was further up . Some young people stood under a lamp a few metres away. Vic nodded at them. The clink of bottle on glass proved that the “Bottellon” would never die, no matter what the law said. Vic helped unload the bags.
The girl looked up at the building:
'What a fuckin' dump!'
'It's my home, girly.' Vic hissed.
'It's not exactly Benalmadena, is it?' she whined.
'No, no it's not.' He shrugged.
Vic threw the front door wide, and waited. Roni and the teenager picked up a bag each.
'Upstairs. On the left.' he said.
The cigarette tasted good; someone had to stand guard outside with the rest of the bags. Vic blew a couple of rings before shouting:
'Come on, I've got things to do.'
Roni came down, stood outside, lit one up herself:
'She's in the lav.' She said.
'How old is she now?'
'How long have you been here?'
'Fifteen years, give or take.'
'There you are then.' She dropped the cigarette, ground it out with a vertiginous heel
andpicked up two of the remaining bags:
'They're all hers, you know.' Roni said.
'For a week?'
'I was hoping-'
'No way.'
'There's a boy.'
'There always is.'
'He's not one of us.'
'Good. Let them get on with it.'
'Don't be daft.'
She gave a crooked smile at the thought of it. Vic thought she was right: it was daft. It had been daft forty years ago when he'd been nineteen, and it was still daft now. He picked up the rest of the bags and motioned Roni into the lounge.
'She can take them upstairs at least.' He winked. 'Give her a shout, tell her to get a move on.'
Vic stepped outside, out of range of Roni's strident bellow.
He'd lit another Ducados by the time they came out. The girl still had her pink monstrosity of a handbag. She let the door slam behind her. Vic winced.
'Give it to me.' He held his hand out. The terracotta was heavy, he hefted it, nodded once.
'Come on.'
'Where are we going?' Roni asked.
'For a drink.'
'Like, where?' the girl groaned, gaze fixed on the group under the lamp-post.
'My local.'
She rolled her eyes and followed with the slap-footed slouch of disaffected youth .
They followed Vic and a swarmlet of flies through the plastic strips into Andres' bar. Roni raised an eyebrow:
'Not the Hat and Beggar is it?'
'It's not so different.'
Vic gave a nod to the group huddled in the corner, the flash of high-denomination notes as eye-catching as the gold in their teeth. The girl was staring round in disbelief:
'This place is so not me.'
'Thank God for that,' said Vic
r /> He pointed at a round wooden table in the opposite corner.
'Sit down. Voddy tonic, Roni?'
'And me,' the girl said. Vic ignored her, his mouth twisting a little.
He stood at the bar. The owner was in the back, behind another plastic-strip curtain. Andres claimed to offer tapas. Vic had never seen so much as a nut come out of the kitchen. God knew what actually happened back there. Whatever, Andres spent a long time doing it. Vic banged the copper bar top:
'Andres!'
He came out:
'Buenas Tardes! You come back.'
'Si, had to get out of the house.' Vic placed the jar on the copper, avoiding the puddles of beer.
'What you want?' Andres smeared beer along the bar top, missed most of the puddles with a filthy rag.
'Vodka Tonic, beer, Fanta.' Vic listened to the hiss as he put his dog-end into a puddle.
'For them, Table?'
'Yeah.'
Andres raised his eyebrows: 'Que raro!' How strange!
'Can't a man take his family out for a drink?'
Andres got the drinks. He'd never win Barista of the Year, Vic thought. The beer was placed in front of him. The big publican danced light-footed out from behind the bar and served the females with a flourish. Back behind the bar, he asked:
'Are you daughter, Veek?'
'One of them is ' Vix exhaled.
'The other?'
'Her mother.'
Andres laughed: 'I knew she you wife.'
The heat had peeled the tape from the terracotta lid . Vic lifted it, showed Andres the dust and ashes:
'She's not; this is.' He said.
14. The Great Callimachus
The mirror was foxed. He took in the baggy-kneed trousers, grubby cuffs and beer-stained dicky with its bow-tie askew. The Great Callimachus's next trick might produce a coin from an empty pocket. He made an untidy pass and flourished the metal disc at the tired looking glass. A token from a Harlesden laundrette. He did the swallow fake and pulled the dull metal from his left ear. His reflection winked at him and he left the flat, leaving the door to swing on its hinges.