Dead Men's Trousers Read online

  He’s still under, lying on his side, his arms folded, but … there’s something attached to his forehead.

  It’s … it’s a fucking dildo!

  I pull gently on it, but it seems stuck fast. Conrad’s lids dance but remain closed, as he gives out a low growl. I let go.

  Fuck! Which cunt …?

  Carl! He’s in the DJ booth. I head back to the green room, where Miguel is conversing with Emily, who is about to go on. — Who the fuck … In there, his heid, I point, as Miguel moves through to investigate while Emily shrugs blankly. — Carl … That cunt …

  I charge out to the booth as Carl is finishing up for an unenthusiastic audience, on a quarter-full floor. Emily appears at my shoulder, ready to replace him.

  — C’mere, ya cunt. I grab his wrist.

  — What the fuck –

  I’m pulling him out the booth, through the green room and into the anteroom, pointing at the still power-napping, dildo-heided Dutchman. — Did you do that?

  Miguel is in attendance, looking at us with startled wide eyes. Carl laughs, and slaps the Catalan promoter on the back. Miguel chuckles nervously and raises his hands. — I saw nothing!

  — Looks like one more complex management problem for you to resolve, bro, Carl grins. — I’m heading out onto the dance floor. There was a sultry wee honey I kept making eye contact with. She could be getting rode. So don’t wait up. He punches my airm, then shakes Conrad’s shoulder. — Wake up, ya dickheided Dutch dope!

  Conrad doesn’t open his eyes. He just shifts onto his back, the cock pointing upwards. Carl departs, leaving me to sort this fucking mess out. I turn to Miguel. — How the fuck do you remove superglue?

  — I do not know, he confesses.

  This isn’t good. I always feel that I’m on the verge of losing Conrad. Big management agencies have been sniffing around. His head will be turned. It happened with Ivan, the Belgian DJ I broke big, and the cunt jumped ship as soon as the royalties started flowing in. I can’t afford Conrad to do the same, although I scent the inevitability.

  Watching him slumber, I pull out my Apple Mac and batter through some emails. He’s still under when I check my watch; Emily is coming to the end of her set soon, so I shake him. — Buddy, time to rock.

  He blinks awake. His eyes roll into his head as his peripheral vision sees something loom above them. He touches his forehead. Grabs at the dick. It hurts. — Ow … what is this?

  — Some cunt … probably Ewart, fucking around, I tell him, trying to make light of it. Miguel is over. The sound engineer shouts that Conrad is due on.

  — Tell Night Vision to hold the fort, I say, pulling on the dildo. It looks like it’s growing out his head.

  Miguel looks on in mounting perturbation, his tones sepulchral. — He will have to go to the hospital to get it removed!

  My touch isn’t that deft, as Conrad lets out a howl. — Stop! What the fuck are you doing?

  — Sorry about this. After your set, bud, we go straight to casualty.

  Conrad sits bolt upright, storms over to the wall mirror. — What … His fingers pull at the phallus and he yelps out in pain. — WHO DID THIS? WHERE IS EWART?

  — Pussy hunt, mate, I advance timidly.

  Conrad is gingerly probing and pulling at the cock with his doughy fingers. — This is not a joke! I cannot go on like this! They will laugh at me!

  — You have to play, warns Miguel, — we have an arrangement. Sonar. It is in the contract.

  — Conny, I beg him, — help us out here!

  — I cannot! I need this off me! He tugs at it again and screams out, his face contorted in pain.

  I stand behind him, my hands on his big shoulders. — Don’t, it’ll take your skin off … Please, bud, go out, I implore. — Own it. Make it your joke.

  Conrad swivels round, breaking my grip, panting like a pressure cooker, looking at me in pure, earnest execration. But he’s off, led by the big cock, and he steps out behind the decks to cheers and the flashing of camera phones. Fair play to the fat lad, he rolls his head and lets the dick flop around, to feverish screams from the floor.

  Emily stands back and giggles through her fingers. — It’s funny, Mark.

  — It’s not fucking funny at all, I declare, but I’m laughing too. — I’ll never hear the end of this. He will make me pay with my blood, sweat and tears. I was relying on him to help me elevate you and Carl, but he’s no going to play nice now!

  — Everything happens for a reason!

  Like fuck it does. I have to hand it to Conrad though: he sidelines his petulance. On the chorus of his hit ‘Flying High’ with the refrain Sexy, sexy baby, he faux wanks the cock to great cheers, roaring into the mike, — I luff house muzik! It is the ultimate headfuck!

  It’s a monster gig, but when it’s over Conrad’s understandably back in the strop big time. We get him to the hospital where they apply a solution to loosen and remove the dildo quite easily. He still isn’t happy, as a nurse sponges the excess glue off his forehead. — Your friend Ewart, trying to build his comeback on my reputation. There is no way! I am laughing stock! It is all over social media! He shows me Twitter on his phone. The hashtag #dickhead has been well used.

  The next morning sees the familiar shaky rise for another flight, this time to Edinburgh. A favourable article I find while netsurfing lifts my spirits. It’s by an influential dance-music journalist who was at the gig. I show Conrad, who reads, his eyes bulging and a wheezy purr insinuating from deep within.

  A lot of the modern DJs are humourless bores, dull tech-heads with zero personality. You certainly can’t slot Technonerd into that box. Not only did he play a blistering set in Barcelona’s Nitsa, shining in comparison to the stodgy veteran N-Sign who preceded him, he also displayed great levity, hitting the box sporting a dangling penis, swinging from his forehead!

  — See? You fuckin owned that shit, I say with a passion only partly contrived, — and you owned that fuckin crowd. It was a flawless display of dance-music entertainment, the humour and wit matching the tunes and –

  — I did. Conrad punches his big tits and turns across the aisle to Carl. — And I owned his tired old has-been ass!

  Carl turns his head into the window, doghouse hung-over, and lets out a groan.

  Conrad leans into me, and says earnestly, — You say flawless performance … this was the word you used, flawless. But this implies, does it not, that it was purely technical? It was contrived, and it lacked soul. This is what you mean, yes?

  Fuck sake, what kind ay a life is this tae lead …? — No, mate, it had soul brimming out of every pore. And it wasn’t contrived, it was the polar fucking opposite. How could it be contrived, I point over at the now slumbering Ewart, — when this cunt did that to you? It forced you to dig deep, I slap his chest, — and you fucking came up with the goods. Proud as fuck of you, bud, I say, watching his face for a reaction.

  A satisfied nod tells me things are okay. — In Edinburgh, the Scottish pussy is good, yes?

  — The city boasts the most stunningly beautiful women in the world, I tell him. — There’s a place called Standard Life; mate, you do not want to know.

  His brow arches in intrigue. — The Standard Life. This is a club?

  — More a state of mind.

  When we land, I scrutinise the emails, the texts, fire off some in return, round up the DJs, check into another hotel like a zombie. Get the DJs to bed, get some sleep myself, then stroll down Leith Walk in the murky cold, biting after the Californian sun, and even the Catalan one. But bold in my strides for the first time in decades, not caring about bumping into Begbie any more.

  Perversely, some stretches of the old boulevard of broken dreams are not too dissimilar from parts of the Barcelona I just left: old pubs tarted up, students everywhere, rip-off flats like cheap false teeth in the gap sites between tenements, cool cafes, eateries of every type and cusine. Those sit comfortingly alongside pockets of the familiar: a vaguely recognised tab-puffing bam outside
the Alhambra strangely reassuring as he gives me the snidey eye.

  Down to Dad’s gaff by the river. I stayed here for a couple of years after we moved from the Fort, but it never felt like home. You know you’ve turned intae a cunt with nae life, whose fetid arsehole is owned by late capitalism, when times like this feel an imposition and you cannae stop checking your phone for emails and texts. I’m with my dad, my sister-in-law Sharon, and my niece Marina and her infant twin boys Earl and Wyatt, who look indentical but have different personalities. Sharon has packed on the beef. Everybody in Scotland seems fatter now. As she fingers an earring, she expresses guilt about them staying in the spare rooms, while I’m in a hotel. I tell her it’s no hardship for me, as my dodgy back demands a specialist mattress. I explain that the hotel room is a business expense; my DJs have gigs in the city. Working-class people seldom get that the wealthy generally eat, sleep and travel well at their expense again, through tax deductables. I’m not exactly rich, but I’ve blagged my way into the system, onto the steerage class of the gravy train that bulldozes the poor. I pay more tax registered in Holland than I would in the USA, but better gieing it to the Dutch to build dams than the Yanks to build bombs.

  After the meal prepared by Sharon and Marina, we’re kicking back in the cosy cramp of this small room, and the drinks slip down nicely. My old boy still has a decent posture to him, broad-shouldered, if a little bent over, not too much muscle wastage in evidence. He’s at the time of life where nothing at all surprises. His politics have drifted towards the right, in a moany auld cunt nostalgia way, rather than intrinsically hardcore reactionary, but still a sad state of affairs for an old union man, and indicative of bigger existential distress. That leakage of hope, of vision and passion for a better world, and its replacement by a hollow rage, is a sure sign that you’re slowly dying. But at least he lived: it would be the worst thing on earth to have those politics at an early age, to be born with that essential part of you already dead. A sad gleam in his eye indicates he’s holding on to a melancholy thought. — I mind of your dad, he says to Marina, referencing my brother Billy, the father she never saw.

  — He’s off, Marina laughs, but she likes to hear about Billy. Even I do. Over the years I’ve learned tae recast him as a loyal, steadfast big brother, rather than the violent, bullying squaddie that for a good while dominated ma perception ay him. It was only later that I realised that both were complementary states ay being. However, death often serves to bring somebody’s good qualities to the fore.

  — I mind after he was killed, Dad says, his voice breaking as he turns tae me, — your ma looked oot the windae. He’d just been hame on leave and had gone back that weekend. His clathes were still hingin oot tae dry; everything except his jeans, his Levi’s. Somebody, some scabby bastard, he half laughs, half scowls, still hurting after all those years, — had swiped them off the line.

  — Those were his favourite jeans. I feel a tight grin stretch my face, looking at Sharon. — He fancied himself a bit in them, like that model ponce in the advert who took them off in the launderette and put them in the washer dryer. Became famous.

  — Nick Kamen! Sharon squeals with delight.

  — Who’s that? Marina asks.

  — You’ll no ken, before your time.

  Dad looks at us, perhaps a bit miffed at our frivolous intrusion. — It fair set Cathy off that even his favourite jeans had gone. She ran upstairs tae his room, and laid aw his clathes oot oan his bed. Wouldnae let them go for months. I took them tae the charity shop one day, and she broke down when she found out they were gone. He starts bubbling and Marina grabs his hand. — She never quite forgave me for that.

  — Enough, ya auld Weedgie radge, I say to him, — of course she forgave ye!

  He forces a smile. As the convo moves on to Billy’s funeral, Sharon and I share a guilty glance. It’s bizarre tae think that I was shagging her in the toilet after that grim event, while Marina, sitting comforting ma faither with her own kids, was unborn inside her. I would now have to class that one as bad behaviour.

  Dad turns tae me, tones heavy with accusation. — It would have been nice tae have seen the wee man.

  — Alex, well, that just wisnae gaunny happen, I muse out loud.

  — How is Alex, Mark? Marina asks.

  She’s never got to know her wee cousin so well. Again, that’s my fault.

  — He should be here, he’s as much a part ay this family as any ay us, my dad growls in contention, his square-go-then-ya-cunt expression on. But he cannae add tae ma considerable hurt on this issue.

  — Dad, Sharon gently reprimands. She calls him that more than I do, even though she’s the daughter-in-law, and with more justification.

  — So how’s the jet-setting life, Mark? Marina changes the subject. — You seeing anybody?

  — Mind you ain business, nosy! Sharon says.

  — I never kiss and tell, I say, feeling wonderfully schoolboy bashful as I think ay Vicky, and switch the tone myself, nodding at my old man. — Did I tell you that I’m pally with Frank Begbie again?

  — Heard he did awright wi this art stuff, Dad says. — Ower in California now, they say. Wise move. There’s nothing here for him but enemies.

  2

  POLICE HARASSMENT

  It’s a nice enough little house, he concedes. That Mediterranean burnished-antique look many Santa Barbara homes have, with its Spanish colonial-style architecture, the red-tiled roof and whitewashed courtyard, covered in climbing bougainvillea. It has steadily gotten hotter, the breeze coming off the ocean having faded as the overhead sun stings the back of his neck, the roof down on the convertible. What burns Harry more, though, is being on a stakeout without a badge. That tight omnipresent ball of acid in his gut, despite his over-the-counter drugstore shit, waiting to rise and blister his oesophagus. Suspended, pending investigation. What the fuck did that actually mean? When were those IA assholes actually going to investigate? Harry has been swinging by the Francises’ deserted home in this quiet cul-de-sac in Santa Barbara for months now, worried that the killer Melanie lived with has done something to her and their kids, just as he most certainly had with those drifters Santiago and Coover.

  It isn’t a bad spot for surveillance: a tapering street, on a turn-off from a highway and close to a narrow intersection, then a slip road onto the freeway. They probably thought they were being smart when they picked it. Harry smirks to himself, wet hand leaving a damp trace on the leather wheel he’s been tightly gripping, although the car is long stationary. Close to downtown, accessible to the freeway.

  Assholes.

  For a while his only sighting has been the couple from next door. They have a dog, one of those big Jap bastards. Sometimes Melanie’s mom – he remembers her from his high-school days, a looker like her bitch of a daughter – swings by to pick up the mail. Now she’s an older woman, her blonde hair fading to ash-grey, with complementary silver-rimmed specs. Is she still fuckable at a push? Hell, yeah, Harry would spring to giving the old girl a taste of dick. But she’s not his target. Not her, nor the two little grandchildren Melanie and the killer have given her, whom she’s now looking after.

  It’s felt like an age but it must have been only a few days, and suddenly, one late afternoon, Melanie is back. The car pulls up and there they are. Her little daughters, the oldest not that much younger than Melanie herself was when he first met her … and there he is … that monster she married.

  Harry rubs the bristle on his face, adjusts the rear-view mirror to see anything that might approach from the bend behind him, in the quiet, tree-lined street. To think he looked up to Melanie, thought of her as strong, smart and good. But he was wrong; she’s weak, deluded by a sense of her own self-righteous liberal bullshit, easy prey for that animal. Harry can imagine him, with that weird gravelly voice of his, giving her that jailbird hustle, that born-on-the-wrong-side-of-the tracks BS. But maybe she’s just blind. And if that’s the case, then it’s Harry’s duty to make her see straight.r />
  He watches the old Paddy motherfucker helping their two daughters out of the station wagon, into the home. The way his evil eyes look back, scanning the street. Scum, scum, scum. Oh, Mel, what are you fucking doing? She worked with the killer in that Irish jailhouse – or was it Scotch? – what the fuck was the difference? – where he first conned her. She knew then he was a killer! Did she really expect him to change? Why can’t she see through him?

  Those two bums; no sign of Coover, the water and fish probably doing their work on his body right now. Forget him. But the other one, Santiago, found snagged onto the oil platform, though with his pulped face and the gunshot wound still easily detectable. The bullet extracted, bagged and tagged in the evidence room. It could be traced, to a still-missing weapon. But he is no longer on the case (on any case), and nobody else freaking cares.

  Then Melanie appears again: wearing a blue hoodie, sneakers and shorts. Is she going for a run? No. She gets into the car. Alone. Harry takes his chance, waits till she drives past, then pulls out and follows, tracking her all the way to the mall. This is good. It’s public; she won’t suspect his motives.

  He follows her inside, slipping past her, before stopping and doubling back, so that he accidentally-on-purpose runs right into her. On seeing his approach and widening smile of recognition, she pointedly looks the other way. This is bad. Even after everything that has happened, and with that drunken phone call, he didn’t expect such a blatant snub. He has to say something. — Melanie, he pleads, stepping in front of her, his palms turned outwards, — I need to apologise. I made a terrible mistake.

  She stops. Looks at him warily, her arms folded across her chest. — Fine. Now that’s the end of it.