Verismo Bliss - Chapter 15

15.

They also serve who only stand and wait. That should have been the private dick’s motto. Too many hours spent holding your dick in your hand, waiting for something to happen. Then again, Milton was blind when he wrote those words, so he probably wasn’t a good role model for a detective. Waiting, like everything else, was ok if your disposition was sunny, but Harry, at 7.30 p.m., in the Black & White Café in Soho, was not walking the sunny side of the street. Too much time waiting. Too much time for introspection. He was on his second coffee. He didn’t even know what the fuck Verlaine looked like, or who he was supposed to be meeting.
Harry flipped open his smart and looked at the naked Ramona. He’d looked at it a lot the last couple of days. His mind told him he should just delete it, but his body screamed that he should look at it, that he should call her, that he should fuck her. God, how he wanted to fuck her. The problem was there was this other pain. Deep in his chest. The pain was a vision. A vision of Carr with the same picture. A vision of Carr fucking Ramona. A vision of Ramona with Carr’s dick in her mouth. Why did that make him feel so fucking bad? It wasn’t that he was in love with her – he was pretty sure he wasn’t in love with her – it was just that once he’d like something to himself.
Harry gazed out the window. Shit, he hated self-pity. He had a roof over his head, pretty good health, money in his pocket, food on the table, and if he really needed sex he could pay for it. Shelter, food, sex. That was good enough for animals, why wasn’t it enough for humans? Why are we wired to think there must be something more? Without that yearning void would all the great art ever have been produced? Would Shakespeare have bothered penning Hamlet if he hadn’t been so sick with grief over the loss of his only son? Would Picasso have bothered painting so many women if he’d been better looking with more money and able to fuck any woman he wanted to, without being an artistic genius?
And would Harry be sitting in a café, watching the beautiful people and the freaks go past on the pavement, if he was happy with his life? It was anger that drove him on - drove him on looking for the Schadenfreude moment, when he brought Falsham down. The moment he’d seen Falsham at the club, the very same club where his daughter had let strangers reach out and touch her, he’d wanted to bring him down. It wasn’t the fetish stuff - shit, he’d known worse, much, much, worse sexual depravity than lusting after pregnant women; it wasn’t even his supercilious attitude and the way Harry had just been discarded. It was for two reasons: firstly, if he really cared for his daughter, he could have done a lot more than send Harry after her. Harry was the least Falsham had to do to assuage his conscience and make it look to those who knew him that he did care. (Did Falsham have any idea that his daughter had been to the Bump Banger’s? Did Gwen know her father put money into it? Harry doubted it. Even a man like Falsham couldn’t be left cold by the sight of his daughter parading herself for a bunch of fetishists – could he?) The other reason was that people, like Apricot for example, believed that Falsham and Raf-Med were somehow operating for the good of the people. That was bollocks. Anything Falsham did that appeared to be charitable was done to impress or there was another angle that Harry just hadn’t sussed yet.
That’s why he sat there, waiting and watching, because an anarchist group called Wat Tyler had told him to talk to Richard Verlaine. And Verlaine might help him fuck up the man.
A neo-punk paused by the window to light a black cigarette with a Zippo lighter. She had green and black hair, and just for a moment Harry thought it was Navaho. But then the girl looked at him, her eyes heavily eye shadowed in purple. She sneered at him and mouthed the word pervert, blew him a kiss, and stalked off in boots that went up to her knees.
Pervert, yeah, that’s how he must look, sitting in a café gazing out at girls young enough to be his daughter. Sometimes he forgot how old he was, how old he looked.
His smart vibrated against his thigh. It was a message from Carr. He’d heard back from the Mossos d'Esquadra. Gloria Isles had been in Barcelona for a few days. She stayed at an average hotel, done the touristy things, flirted with a few men in the hotel bar, and then moved on. She said she was touring Europe. Whereabouts now unknown.
Harry punched the contacts button and called Ramona’s smart. It rang six times then her voice came on, telling him that she couldn’t answer right now because she was flat on her back letting Carr fuck her so that he’d drop the Isles angle. He snapped his smart shut. Nah, even Carr wasn’t that fucking stupid. Carr was the one who got women to do what he wanted, not vice versa. Gloria Isles probably was alive and travelling around Europe. Ramona might be manipulative, but she wasn’t a murderer, and that was his professional view. There’d be a postcard par avion from Paris or Rome finding its way to Ramona’s abode before long.
It was 7:50 p.m. and the sky had turned a weird burnt umber colour. People were coming out for the evening, changed from work to personal attire. The streets were busy. The Black & White café had filled up, making it harder for Harry to try and spot Verlaine. All he knew was that Verlaine was a guy. Zip all else.
A man walked in, looked around the room, searched the faces. He was around fifty, with short grey hair, and glasses. He wore a long duster, which was strange for this time of year, and this heat, but what really attracted Harry’s attention was the suitcase he carried. Harry was sure it was the same suitcase he’d seen in the Whitechapel apartment.
The man saw who he was looking for and made his way to the back of the café. Harry had a good view of the newcomer, but not of the person he had joined. It was a man in a powder blue suit, dark skinned. The waitress, a Mediterranean charmer with a smile that could melt cheese, approached the table, but the man in the suit turned a glare upon her and waved her away. Harry saw the profile. It was Adam Cannon. This meant that the man with the suitcase had to be Richard Verlaine.
The two men spoke briefly. Adam’s head stared ahead, straight at Verlaine, but Verlaine moved nervously like a bird sensing attack from every angle. Verlaine did a lot of nodding and then he passed something over the table; Cannon gripped his hand and squeezed. It was like a bear shaking hands with a child. Whatever Verlaine had passed Cannon was now dropped into his inside pocket and Verlaine was nodding vigorously as though desperate to persuade Cannon of something. Cannon, presumably persuaded, got up from his seat and strode out, not looking back once.
The girl who could melt cheese tried approaching the table again. At least this time she received a smile from Verlaine, but it was as weak as a grandmother’s cup of tea, and he shook his head. She loitered for a moment, not sure how to deal with a customer who wasn’t ordering anything. But he said something and she nodded, leaving her smile hanging in the air like an upturned rainbow.
Verlaine took off his glasses and pinched the top of his nose. He breathed out heavily, shrugged the tension from his body and then left the Black & White café with the suitcase. Harry spilled a tip of coins onto the table and followed the duster through the door. Heat hit him like a sirocco of Soho detritus. The streets were loud with young men and women, the freaks and the straights, the poseurs and the gawpers, the hetero and the homo. Everybody trying to out-shout everybody else. Police sirens and ambulances close and far.
Verlaine was being helped to put his suitcase in the back of a black cab. Verlaine was said, ‘Heathrow.’ Harry walked towards the cab. Verlaine got in the left side rear. The cabbie got in the driver’s seat. Just as it was about to pull away, Harry jumped into the right side rear.
‘Hey,’ said the cabbie, ‘what’s your game?’
‘It’s ok, drive on, we know each other,’ Harry said.
‘Really, I don’t…’ Verlaine began.
‘Richard Verlaine, good to see you,’ Harry said, reaching out his hand.
The cabbie pulled out into the traffic and a horn sounded behind them. The cabbie raised two fingers out the window and cursed with such aplomb that Chaucer would have roared with delight had he heard it.
Verlaine didn’t take the proffered hand; perhaps his fingers still smarted from Cannon’s grip. ‘Look, I’ve played my part. I’ve handed the stuff over and now I’m going. I promise I don’t hold any other evidence.’
Harry said, ‘That’s a shame because I would love to bring Raf-Med, and particularly Falsham, down.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You can call me Wat Tyler.’
Verlaine blanched. ‘How did you find me? What do you want?’
‘Where are you going, Richard?’
‘Away.’
‘How much did Raf-Med pay you?’
Verlaine snorted. ‘Are you going to get all moral on me? They are businessmen at heart, but people like Adam Cannon, the man I met just now, I think if I’d have refused the money he’d have been visiting me late at night with a garrotte. I get the feeling he likes to do his killing up close, and don’t tell me I’m living in a fantasy world. I’ve worked for Raf-Med a long time and I know that when you are dealing with such huge amounts of money there will always be those employees who work the dark side of the street.’
‘Richard, we have between now and Heathrow. I’m not going to hurt you, or threaten you in anyway, but I’d like you to tell me what you know. Nobody will know you told me.’
Verlaine looked at the cabbie who was shaking his fist at a cyclist who had just spat on his bonnet.
‘Don’t worry about the driver. Didn’t you know they take an oath like doctors or priests? They only talk about their passengers with other cabbies. Besides they have their own language, they don’t understand anything unless it has a fuck, bloody or bleedin’ before, after and in the middle of every sentence.’
Verlaine smiled briefly and wanly as though the muscles that pulled his lips had become so atrophied that it caused him pain. He looked at the red lights of the meter as it ticked slowly upwards. ‘Everything costs, doesn’t it? Information, people, they can all be bought. How much did I sell my secrets for? Secrets that could have exposed a scandal, a scandal that…well, no point thinking of that, the evidence is now safely in Mr Cannon’s pocket. When I was younger I guess I thought the world was going to be different. That I was going to be different.’
‘Hell,’ Harry said, leaning back into the red leather seat and gazing out at the traffic clogged city, ‘we all thought like that, Mr Verlaine. Then we grow up and we learn that life is about compromise and surviving; maybe just keeping our heads above the water is all it’s about. You didn’t sell yourself for money. Sure, you took the money, but you knew what would happen if you didn’t. You weighed it up and decided it was better to live with money, than die with the noose of a good conscience around your neck. You’re not a coward - you’re just a human being.’
‘It sure as hell feels like cowardice.’
Harry started to say something, then stopped himself. He looked at the red digits inching up, seconds costing a set amount, time being charged. Life counting away and the money going up. The cabbie shouted, ‘Stupid fucking Paki, fuck off home if you can’t bleedin’ drive.’
‘Anything I tell you now can’t be proved. You understand that? I’ve sold the proof. I won’t give you names. And I can’t tell you it all. Not all of it. I was involved. For a little while anyway. I remember at University we did this project about the Nazi regime. For a week we split into three groups: the ruling elite, those were who considered sub-normal and the root of all the groups’ problems and those who were just normal citizens. It just took one week. The sub-normal group were penalised and victimised, abused and ridiculed by the ruling elite. By the end of the week half of the normal citizens had joined in with persecution and the other half just ignored it, said nothing. Only one girl stood up for the sub-normal group and she ended up being treated the same as them. We all think, don’t we, that we would stand up against evil. But it’s so easy just to go along with it. We don’t want to stand out. Don’t want to make a fuss.’
‘You did,’ Harry said, ‘else you wouldn’t be on this ride.’
‘Sure. Sure. And soon I’ll be leaving these shores for a long time, if not for good.’
The red digits ticked upwards.
‘You take Zehigh?’
‘Sure,’ Harry said, ‘who doesn’t?’
‘Not me anymore. There was this Swedish researcher, he wrote a paper on Zehigh, before it was published he was given his own research building in Stockholm and fifty people working for him. He was given a yearly grant of a million dollars and carte blanche to research whatever he fancied. Of course, the company that now owned him, would own the fruits of his research, but he was rich now and would have the kudos of anything he produced.’
‘What did his paper say about Zehigh? The one I presume that was never published.’
Verlaine worried a button of his duster and a bead of sweat glistened like a blob of glue on his forehead. ‘I stopped taking Zehigh after reading his paper. The first few days I didn’t feel any different, but by the end of two weeks it was like I was walking round with a half ton boulder on my back; every movement was an effort. Just lifting a fork to eat felt like I was expending enough energy to run a marathon. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The mental side was worse. It was like…you ever have your heart broken? Sure you have, who hasn’t? Even if it was little Janet way back in kindergarten, we’ve all felt it. Well, after a few weeks without Zehigh it was as though my heart had been broken into a thousand billion pieces. I felt utter despair. One long black tunnel with no hope. I just lay in bed. No desire to do anything. There wasn’t any point in doing anything. Life had gone bad like a brown, decaying apple fought over by wasps.’
He paused for a moment and wiped his brow. ‘Shit, even remembering it makes me…every little thing just made me want to cry. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t cry. I was a dried up, withered river bed, going nowhere, finished. The stupid thing, or maybe the clever thing, is that Zehigh doesn’t even make you feel that great, does it? And you don’t crave it like you would a cigarette. Sure you feel good, but if it made you feel as good taking it as it makes you feel bad stopping it, then, well, wow. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe if it did fill us with ecstasy the alarm bells would ring. We’d be wary. Anyway, it took me a good 3 months to really start to feel anything like normal again. Zehigh is doomed. Falsham knows it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out, but he’s covered his back to avoid lawsuits. He’s destroyed or is destroying all evidence that shows he knew how addictive it was before he started peddling it. But Zehigh is nothing.’
‘Nothing? I’d say that was pretty damning stuff.’
‘There’s worse – much worse.’
‘Bliss?’ Harry offered.
Verlaine laughed. ‘The female orgasm drug? Just a sideshow. You think that was something big? You’re way off. It’ll make some money for Raf-Med but it’s pretty clean as far as it goes. Just don’t let any men take it.’
‘I’d heard it didn’t affect men.’
‘Ninety-nine out of a hundred, it wouldn’t, but give it to that one guy who’s fertile and blam! The guy could be the meekest of the meek, the one Jesus spoke about who was going to inherit the earth, but give him Bliss and he’ll be the one who is burying the meek under six feet of earth. It turns Jekyll into Hyde.’
‘How long for?’
‘Couple of hours, maybe, But, like I say, Bliss is a cul-de-sac, forget that if you want to bring Falsham down. Remember it’s all about money.’
‘You fucking twat! Stick that bike up your arse, son.’
The taxi edged along Cromwell Gardens, following the signs to the M4 and leaving expletives scattered along the street like road kill.
‘What happened to the idea that medicine was for the good of humankind?’ Harry said.
Verlaine smiled, his face getting more used to it the closer they got to Heathrow. ‘Altruism was hung up with the fetishes by the shaman. As soon as business got involved medicine was all about money. And what’s the Holy Grail of medicine at the moment?’
‘Something that would make a man avoid Bliss?’
Verlaine nodded. ‘Fertility. That’s the big deal. Sure, we don’t need men any more to get women pregnant. Not at the moment. But what if all the sperm in the world dries up, so to speak. And what about the long term psychological effects of a male race that is 99% infertile? What use is an impotent race of men? Men need to feel virile, to be able to reproduce. Being infertile, it makes us feel somehow less manly. Yeah?’
Harry nodded.
‘Fertility. That’s where the money is. Cure the male fertility problem with one simple pill – better still a pill that you have to keep taking, keep buying – and bingo, money in the bank. Certainly a money spinner to replace Zehigh when that goes belly up. All the big medical research companies are desperate to be the first to find a cure for it and will stop at nothing.’
‘Shit, they don’t even know the cause do they?’
‘Best guess? AIDS. Did you know that of all the AIDS cases in the last five years, none of them have been men who were fertile?’
‘None?’
‘Not one.’
‘So men who are fertile can’t get AIDS? So that’s why AIDS cases have dropped off? ’
‘Yes, thus precipitating the Second Sexual Revolution. Seems the body is fighting back somehow. And there, to use a technical term, is a double whammy; if you can cure the infertility then you might also find a cure for AIDS.’
Harry raised his eyebrows. Curing infertility hadn’t seemed such a big deal to him, maybe because he didn’t care, but AIDS as well? Even with AIDS on the decline it was still a massive killer. ‘I can see why they would do anything.’
‘But do you know what that means? Maybe you think it means industrial espionage. Sure, it means that, but Raf-Med takes it to another level. Do you know they have a maternity ward at Raf-Med Leeds? Women go there. Women who don’t have anybody else. Women who need money. Women who often come from the Bump Banger’s Club? You heard of that club?’
‘I’m a regular.’
‘You don’t strike me as the type. It’s a pregnancy fetish club. But what many people don’t know is that Raf-Med took over the running of it a few years back. They bankroll the whole thing. It’s all legal - they even claim some tax back on the grounds that it is semi-charitable. See, the girls, when they are due to give birth and are no longer required by the Club, are looked after by Raf-Med. They get a bed at Leeds. They get looked after. They get a nice big payoff. But what happens to the babies when they are born, when they are bought by Raf-Med?’
‘Let me guess, they’re sold to rich Americans who can’t have kids themselves. I know this. It’s all legal too.’
Verlaine turned towards Harry, his pupils wide and his lips trembling. ‘Oh yeah, they get sold to Americans. But do this, count how many babies are born and how many are sold to the Yanks. Then ask yourself what happens to the missing babies.’
‘You’re kidding me? Not even Raf-Med would…well, what are you saying? Kidnap the babies? What for?’
Verlaine turned his head to the window. A plane flew low over the motorway, heading in to land at Heathrow. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to. It all starts at the Bump Banger’s Club. Follow the trail from there.’