Free Take the A-Train by Mark Timlin

me. My leg was killing me and I massaged it with my hand. I looked round the bar. It was a young crowd, with just a few old codgers sprinkled about, looking lost and forlorn as their old boozer got taken over by the Snakebite and Pina Colada set.
    It was a big old Victorian gin palace on the outside and it was a big old Victorian gin palace on the inside. The ceilings were high and tobacco-stained, with red-shaded lamps hanging down. The walls were covered with flock wallpaper and dotted with sporting prints. There were tables with seating for fifty or sixty. The bar itself was U-shaped, long, solid and polished. Every surface in the place was hung with Christmas decorations. There must have been a grand’s worth of tinsel. A twenty-foot Christmas tree, dripping with lights, stood next to the juke-box. From half a dozen vantage points Sandra and Frank wished me the compliments of the season from under a photograph of a bullet-headed heavy and a tiny blonde dripping with gold. The real pair were dispensing drinks and cockney bonhomie from the opposite side of the bar.
    Right beside me was a raised podium, like a small stage. A bloke in blue jeans and a psychedelic shirt was setting up a twin turntable plugged through a bank of amplifiers, linked to some dangerous-looking speakers which made it obvious why the table we’d nicked had been vacant.
    Shit, I thought.
    Fiona had a hard time getting to the bar, she was so popular. She must have stopped and chewed the fat with about a dozen faces on the way to the counter. Most of the characters who buttonholed her gave me the once over. I nodded back a couple of times but soon gave it a rest. My leg still hurt and I wanted a drink.
    She was grabbed round the waist by a bloke sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, close to the public telephone. Their heads were about level and he whispered something into her ear and pulled a Harrods bag up from the floor and gave her a squint inside. She laughed and shook her head and gave him a cuddle. He was dark-skinned and balding. I didn’t know him, but I knew he was bent, not that I cared. If I’d ever been inside a villain’s pub, this was it.
    Finally she shucked off the old pals and connected with the barman. In less time than it takes to tell she came over to the table with a couple of glasses.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said.
    I shrugged. ‘Old home week?’
    ‘Sort of. I know a lot of people here.’
    ‘You don’t say.’
    ‘Here’s your drink.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    She pushed her hat and coat over and sat down opposite me.
    ‘Who was the affectionate one?’ I asked.
    ‘Who?’
    I pointed at him with a glance.
    ‘Oh, him. He’s harmless. Mickey Lipman. He fences for the hoisters. I thought you might know him.’
    ‘Do you think I know every lowlife in London?’
    ‘No, you just look like you do.’ And she stuck out her tongue.
    She looked around and then up at the geezer who was setting up the audio equipment on the stage. ‘Phil!’ she said by way of a greeting.
    He looked twice, then connected. ‘Fi,’ he said back, and hunkered down on to his boot heels. ‘How are you doing?’
    ‘All right,’ she replied, and sank a third of the contents of her glass in one gulp. ‘Meet Nick.’ She gestured to me.
    ‘Hello,’ I said.
    ‘Hello,’ he said back, extending his hand. I shook it.
    ‘Phil’s Johnny’s roadie,’ said Fiona by way of explanation. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.
    ‘He’ll be along,’ said Phil. ‘With his box of records, just in time for the show. You know he likes to make a big entrance.’
    I got the feeling Phil thought that Johnny Smoke had an overinflated reputation, especially with young women, especially the type who wore lavender lace teddies.
    ‘Don’t be bitchy, Phil,’ said Fiona. ‘He is the star of the show.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Phil. ‘I’d better get on with setting up the gear.’ He climbed to his feet and and went back to tinkering with leads and amps.
    ‘Happy little