Free Jack Carter's Law by Ted Lewis

and I want you to listen to them as hard as you
possibly can, because I’m not going to tell you again. One of the alternatives will just happen, right? Now. You can help us and in helping us you can do yourself a bit of good, because I can speak for Gerald and Les in saying that if Jimmy comes a cropper then Jean and the kids will be looked after, and if you’re Jack the Lad and help us they’ll look after you too. Either way you don’t lose. Where you do lose, Charlie, and where the rest of your family lose, is if we get no cooperation. Whether we find Jimmy or not is beside the point. Gerald and Les will want Jimmy to know how they feel, and they won’t care who they use to show him. So all that I’m telling you is for your own good. You see that, Charlie, don’t you?”
    In the following silence Con, who has been watching Grafton’s game, says, “That bastard’s still giving that little girl the shitty end of the stick.”
    “Yeah, well forget it,” I tell him. “We’re here on business, not pleasure.”
    Charlie treads his cigarette into the floorboards.
    “All right,” he says. “I’ll help you. I’ll do what I can.”
    “That’s the idea, Charlie.”
    Charlie stands up. “In fact I’ll drop over there tonight. You never know, the old girl might have heard from Jean already.”
    He begins to move away from us.
    “Charlie,” I say.
    Charlie stops in his tracks and looks at me. He relaxes and says, “I suppose I knew you’d want me to stick with you. I just . . .”
    His voice trails off and he slumps into his suit even more.
    “That’s right, Charlie,” I say, and put my glass down on the bench and as I turn away from Charlie he throws himself into a sprint and hares round the end of the nearest snooker table and starts to make for the double doors of the cardroom. Beyond the cardroom there is a small passage with two doors at the far end. If you go through one door you’re in a karsi, and if you go through the other door you’re in a back yard with a six-foot slatted fence that drops you down into Villiers Street.
    “Oh, Jesus,” I say. “The silly fucker.”
    Con is already close behind Charlie by the time I get up off the bench seat. Charlie makes the double doors and smashes them to behind him. There are angry cries from behind the frosted glass. Con yanks the doors open again and disappears from sight. By the time it’s my turn to open the doors the card players have got down on their hands and knees and are trying to pick up as many notes as they can from the floor in the hope that they can argue from strength when the divvying starts. The card table is on its side in the fireplace, I imagine more as a result of Con’s progress through the cardroom than Charlie’s. I walk down the passage and find Con in the back yard, levered up on the fence and looking down into Villiers Street.
    “No signs of the bleeder,” he says, lowering himself down. “But the yard door was swinging to and fro so he must be able to move a sight faster than you’d think.” Con grins at me and winks and I nod at him.
    “Well, that’s it, then,” I say. “The crafty little bleeder’s fucked us.”
    “Looks like,” says Con. “Could be anywhere by now.”
    We walk back into the passage, closing the yard door behind us. We walk as far as the door that leads back into the cardroom and Con reaches forward and closes it with a rattle and we both stand there in the dark, not making a sound. After a minute or two there is the sound of the karsi bolt being drawn back and then there is more silence. Then the karsi door creaks and Charlie begins to make his exit. I can just make out his shape as he creeps over to the yard door.
    I let him get as far as opening it a crack and then very quietly, I say, “Boo.”
    “Jesus Christ,” Charlie says. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” and as he says it he falls to the floor as if he’s been pushed over.
    Con opens the cardroom to let some light on the scene. Charlie