PEPAC novel: excerpt: "The Beef"

You must do this alone.”  Francesco exits the car with characteristic grace and paces towards a giant, gleaming motorbike Richard hadn’t spotted parked behind the hut. 

The front passenger door of the Bentley closes with a muffled whoomph.  Richard is left alone with Gerardo the chauffeur and a lot of questions.

But face the dragon and all that!  Enter the dragon, is it? 

Enter the plane, forget about the dragon and strangle the old bastard, more like.

“Au revoir, Gerardo,” he says with more cheer than he feels.  He gets out of the Bentley and is met by an invigorating breeze.  The stairs leading up the entrance to the jet beckon.  His duty beckons, as does his future.  Something of a Star Wars moment this!  Chariots of Fire, that sort of thing!  The raw whiff of gasoline in the air is exciting. 

The cabin door is open, attended by one of his father’s Swiss staff.  Bongi or Mongi, some bloody ridiculous name, elegant Germanic-looking totty trussed up in a black trouser-suit and a false smile.  A cross between a brain scientist and a trolly dolly.  Implausibly fit, obviously, but Richard has his mind on the Great White Hunter, not his trophies.

“Your father will see you now.”  Mongi (or Bongi) says pleasantly.  As if his father is a ruddy dentist!

“Jolly glad to hear it.”  Says Richard curtly, not looking at her, taking the steps fast.  Not the time for pleasantries, my dear.  Mongi Bongi takes a step to the side as he advances, he’s through the door, turns right — and there’s his father laid out on a bed.

Or, at least, he assumes this is his father.  The face peeping from an expanse of neatly-ironed white sheet is obscured by tubes and bandage and tape.  Richard gets the impression of a squidgy, jaundiced walnut being the focus of some sort of scientific experiment.

Raul Espinosa had always looked a little like a shrunken, darker version of Albert Einstein without the preposterous hair: fleshy features, bright eyes with hooded eyelids, bushy white eyebrows.  His face a likeable, fleshly conflation of mischief and amiable potential.   

The invalid in the bed looks to have encountered one of Einstein’s Black Holes and shrunk almost to nothing.  Surrounded by high stacks of electronic medical equipment and flanked by two ramrod-straight doctors dressed in white coats and face masks, Richard’s father looks tiny.

Mongi Bongi closes the cabin door and the air pressure changes.  The noise of the wind outside is cut dead.  Richard does not notice.   

There is a sign of life from the bed: a twitching hand is visible and it is clutching, for some reason, the pristine white sheet; it looks like a claw, a claw with veins.  Surprising the old boy’s got any blood in him at all at this stage of the game!  But clutching, quite literally it seems, onto life. 

Maybe?  Or maybe it’s rigor mortis?

Richard looks at his father’s minions for answers.  But the doctors are inscrutable behind their face masks.  Mongi Bongi is concentrating on being professionally dispassionate in a suitably Swiss manner. 

Richard is soon put right.  His father – neither asleep, comatose or dead — suddenly farts loudly and chuckles weakly.  Elastic tendrils of spittle arc between his lips, lips that look like mean little slivers of cooked liver.  His eyes open half-way.  He peers at Richard.

“Ricardo, que onda?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that.  You’re not a bloody surfer.”

“And nor are you … you look like … like aristocrat lay-about, mi huevon.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, either.”

 “I know.  Of course I know!”  Raul grunts.  “What does a father not know of his son?”  He tries to clear his throat.  “I knew you would come.”  A contented, slightly wry, look flits across his eyes. 

More gently, he adds, “I knew you would come.”  As if that is somehow all that he does need to know.  Raul growls in his throat somewhere and lets his eyelids fall. 

Richard is aware of the incessant bleep of the heart machine (or whatever it is).  He notices for the first time that there is a haphazard, almost desperate, air to the arrangement of medical machinery and supplies in the cabin, despite the immaculate bedclothes.  There’s a veritable cascade of dusty-looking paperwork down the side of the bedside-cabinet-thing.  Although his father’s usual luxury paraphernalia has been removed to make space for The Deathbed, the cabin is cramped.  The lighting chaps have gone crazy and lit the place up like an abattoir.  It smells, of course, like a hospital. 

And, here’s the rub — there has been, as yet, no offer of a cup of coffee, caffeinated or otherwise!  Which, bearing in mind the 45XR can fly 2300 miles without refuelling, bodes ill for anybody remotely human stuck onboard the next time she takes to the skies!  If she ever does! 

Richard is trying very hard to take this fin de siècle moment in his stride, he honestly is, but with equal honesty he has to admit that it is all rather a vex.  He’s only just got on the bloody plane and already he’s bursting to take down the prim Mongi-Bongi a notch or two.  He would gladly knock the dumb doctors over like bowling pins.  The notion to strangle his father with his own pristine bedclothes is far from unappealing. 

And what’s even more annoying than his father is the fact that Richard can’t help but find him annoying, which Richard will gladly and shamefully admit is a bloody poor show under the circumstances.

Suddenly his father’s eyes open fully.  There is a gleam there.  A fierce determination.  The claw-like hand stranded above the sheet begins, inexplicably, to shake.  The growling noise from his throat intensifies.  His nostrils flare, like a horse. 

Is he on the point of a seizure?  Is this The End, already?

“Relax, mi huevon!  I’m not kicking on the bucket yet.  But you need to know something.”

“Ok.”

“Ok?  Ok, he says?  Que madres!  Ricardo, hay un problema, un …”  Raul begins to cough.

Richard waits, trying out his acting skills with a look of benevolent patience.  He is rewarded by the charming spectacle of his father wiping his mouth on the bed sheet.  The two doctors stand impassive, obviously trained not to interfere without being asked. 

“Son, there is … there is … “ Raul begins to cough again.  A sheen of sweat gleams on his forehead.  The beeping from the machine accelerates.  The two doctors remain motionless.  The coughing continues.

Exasperated, Richard volunteers: “I can see there’s a problem, you’re bloody dying!  Are you going to tell me what of?”

Raul shakes his head, frowning, and coughing in a consuming spasm.

“Cancer?”  Raul continues to shake his head, still coughing.

Richard tries again.  “Heart disease?” 

Same response.   More coughing.

“Come on dad!  This is … well …”  Richard doesn’t know what to say.  Unexpectedly he has hit a wall of some form of Emotion.  He doesn’t like it. 

So he goes on the offensive.  “Or have you managed to poison yourself at last?  Too much totty?”  Richard glances meaningfully at Mongi Bongi, who remains, impassive, at his left shoulder.  “Too much tequila?”

Raul knits his bushy white eyebrows in irritation.  His coughing only intensifies in the struggle to reply.

Richard knew that would stir him up.  Raul has never touched a drop of alcohol in his life, let alone that God-awful cactus-crap tequila.

But then, just as it looks like his father is going to manage a reply, there is another electronic beeping to join the heart machine, and an irritating droning, buzzing from somewhere.  This place is like air traffic control, all this bloody noise! 

It’s a mobile phone and Mongi Bongi is quick on the draw.  “Si?”  She mutters, eyes on Raul as his coughing fit slowly subsides. 

Listening for a moment, she nods her head curtly.  She addresses Raul:  “Es Francesco.  El esta en la casa.  Vamos?”

Raul looks like he is going to cough again.  But he fights.  He manages a shallow breath, and then another.  Staring rather oddly at Mongi Bongi, he looks conflicted (constipated actually, thinks Richard). 

Then Raul’s lips flatten into a tight grimace, and a light falls from his eyes, almost in resignation.  “Si.” 

The now familiar accompaniment of the beeping machine intensifies.

He’s going to start bloody coughing again, isn’t he?

But Raul doesn’t cough.  Just as Mongi Bongi is about to end the call, he strains forward and speaks urgently.  “Pero … pero no el asunto del niño.  No!” He gestures feebly at the phone with a twitch of his fingers.  “Dice.”

“Pero no el asunto del niño.” Repeats Mongi Bongi down the phone.  She waits for a response.  “Gracias a dios, si.”  She ends the call.

What “business about the boy”?  Did they mean him?  He’s not a boy!  He’s almost thirty!

Well, enough is enough.  Time to establish some sort of order in this fiasco.  Time to roll out the big guns and risk some of the old lingo del Sombrero. 

Richard fixes his father with a resolute, demanding look, opens his mouth to speak, feeling determined and foolish at the same time … and magically, actual Spanish words roll off the tongue, and he’s got far more in the tank, as it turns out, than Chinga las Sandías:

“Usted decía que hay un problema.  Con que?  Somos nosostros, tenemos un problema?”

Raul evinces no surprise at Richard’s resurgent language skills.  “No, Ricardo, es tu quien tiene la problema.”

“Me?  I’m the one with the problem?”

“Si.”

“How?”

Raul is silent for a moment.  The beeping machine slows down.  Richard can hear his father breathing through his mouth.  Raul extends his tongue slightly, and bites his top lip.  Evidently, he is on the point of saying something he doesn’t want to say.

“Son, you have always been a disappointment to me, yes?  You know this.”

“Yes, dad.”

“Disappointment — no es problema.”

“No, dad.”  Richard genuinely agrees.  Why should it be a problem?  A problem is what happens when that fantastic girl from Latvia agrees to join a shooting weekend at Cornelius Waddington’s and you lock your Purdeys in the back of the Aston Martin— now that was disappointing.

“Sons are meant to disappoint their fathers.  It is La Moda Vida.”

“Quite so.”  Says Richard, slightly puzzled that his father is choosing this moment to refer to a pop song by Puerto Rican heart-throb Ricky Martin.

“You have friends in Spesnaz, yes?  But you are not James Bond.  You do not need to be.  You have always been yourself and that, that Ricardo, is all we can ask of anybody, I will assure you of this.”

“But what is the problem?”

“You are not the problem, my son.”  Raul sighs with great intensity.  “The problem is me.  La problema, una chingada de problema, es  … es que … the problem is that there is no money.” 

“What?”

“Money.  None.”

“What?”

“Nada.  Gone.  All of it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”  Raul eyes Richard slowly for a moment, a flicker of mischief returning to his face.  “There are more important things, mi Huevon, than money.”

“What about this … the, the … plane, jet, the bloody Learjet?”  Richard knows he is sounding petulant.  But he is in shock.  This is an outrage.

“Leased.  Bought back.  And sold again.  Muy complicado.  Not mine, es por certo.”

“The businesses.  In Mexico!  You own half of bloody Chihuahua for God’s sake!”

“Not anymore.  RICO.  Or whatever aquellos cualquieros are calling it nowadays.  The Government.  Los Federales.  And the States.  They have it all.  Complicated.   Bankers, lawyers, all these men in suits, they play with my property like marbles in an alley.  Like .. gutterkids … con los granujas del favela!  Que cabrón!”

“Fifteen billion pounds?  Fifteen billion quid, and you’ve lost it all?”

“It is good to see you angry, Ricardo, but I am surprised.”  As much as he can in his weakened condition, Raul affects a haughty expression.  “I was not going to give any of it to you anyway.”

“What?!”  Richard can actually feel the pulse in the side of his neck.

“I am joking.  Of course.”

“This is the time for jokes?  Christ Almighty!  What about the European conglomerates?  Rorco?  Nadelswerke?  The manufacturing plants!  I’m surprised the German economy hasn’t ground to a standstill —”

Raul lifts his hand with authority and raises his eyebrows at Mongi Bongi.  She whips out her superphone, whizzes into an app, checks a few figures, and shakes her head. 

“Not as yet.”  She reports.

Raul shrugs, as if destabilizing the strongest economy in Western Europe is the least of his worries.  Which, as far as Richard is concerned, it is.

“To Hell with the bloody Krauts!” Richard is almost spitting with exasperation now.  “What about us?  What about me?  The factories, the plants in the rest of Europe?  The cement, the sand, the … building stuff?”

“Kaputt.”

“South America then?  Columbia, Paraguay?  What are your guerrilla chaps going to do now?  What are the government going to do now?”

Raul says nothing, patiently.

“The Dutch principalities.”  Richard is emphatic, a touch of hysteria beginning to flirt with the upper register of his voice.  “The Caymans!  Your banks, yes, the banks!  Surely the banks have got clear?  They get out of everything!”

“Out of debt, yes.  Out of jail, no.”

“The plantations, the sugar, wherever the Hell they are?”

“Gone to Hell, yes.”

“The hotels, Honduras?”

“Vacancy — new owner.”

“The mines?”

“Not mine.  Anymore.”

“The laundry business in Tyneside, for God’s sake!”

“I do not like to make more of the punning at your expense, Ricardo, but … cleaned out.”  Raul allows himself a little smile.  “All cleaned out.”

“OK, OK, the farms, in Australia, Queensland, all those cows.  There must be a bloody cow left, somewhere, surely?”

“Barbeque.”

“Well — well what about the Business, la Obra?” Richard blurts out.

Raul stays silent.

“Well?”  Richard is defiant.  “La Obra, ‘the Work?’  You’ve never let me near it.  And now it’s all gone?” 

Richard scans his father’s face for a response.  Getting nothing, he carries on, “and I’m not saying that it’s any of my business, but …”

“Nor is it any of my business, boy, not any more!”  Raul explodes with laughter.  “Gracias a dios!  Let’s leave it at that.”  He shrugs, apparently relaxed.  “There is nothing left.”

Infuriated, Richard explodes with desperation: “but … but, what about Mongi Bongi?!”

“Mongi Bongi? What is this?”

“Mongi bloody Bongi here!  Your bit of skirt!  How are you paying her?  She must cost a fortune.”

“Aahh, you mean Mondri, Mondriana.”  Raul remains unconcerned by Richard’s excitement.  “She is from Macedonia,” he adds a little smugly, as if Balkan provenance somehow explained everything. “She is a friend.”

Mongi Bongi lifts her chin very slightly and stares, a little too hard, straight ahead.  Richard is glad to see she is not immune to shame, not made of ice, after all. 

But damn his father’s bloody delusions!

“She is not from Macedonia, not looking like Claudia Schiffer, and she is not your friend.  My arse!  She’s been wiping your arse and God knows what else and she’ll want to be paid.  How are you going to do it?”  Richard is worried about his father now, and angry with his foolishness; both firsts.  “And what about these doctors?  They don’t do much for free, that’s for certain.”

“These are not doctors, Ricardo, they are US Marshalls.”

“WHAT?!”

“I have agreed to co-operate, to make things easy.”

“But why.  Are.  They.  Here. NOW?”  Richard spits out each word, furious that the silent, masked figures are playing witness to his father’s last minutes on earth.  Yanks?  Pantomine yanks with handcuffs instead of stethoscopes?  Talk about over here, overpaid and … what was it? … whatever …

“Over my dead bloody body!”  He shouts.

“Calm down Ricardo, calma!”  Raul is secretly proud to see his son so protective.  El huevon is soft, that’s for sure, for all his own patient attempts to harden him up, but he has ardor. 

“One trip, I said, Ricardo!  One trip only!  To see my son, I said.  My only son.  And here we are.”  Raul’s face lights up. 

For a moment, in an unexpected flash, Raul looks fiercely alive, as if he is playing like a child at this Deathbed nonsense, enjoying the drama and silly fancy dress.

And Richard is horribly, deeply, touched; or at least he assumes that is what has caused the sudden strangling, dusty-flustery feeling at the bottom of his throat and an otherwise unaccountable unwillingness to think nasty thoughts.

The feeling does not last long.  Particularly as Richard is beginning to join the dots and realise how the Americans fit into the picture.  As one, the doctors-cum-marshalls shift a little on their feet, showing signs of life for the first time, their eyes not meeting his own.  Their body language screams guilt.  He eyes them scornfully.

“I see — one last trip, one last tip, that sort of thing.” 

A minor triumph, to put two corrupt colonials in their place.  But now what?  They’re not the only ones here for the money, Richard has to admit. 

And the message has finally sunk in.  “So dad, I’m up the river without a paddle.  Or whatever it’s called.  I’m done.  I’m fucked.”

“Aahh, fuck this, fuck that … never mind that.  Not everything is gone.”

“Really?”  Says Richard dejectedly, determined to deny false hope.

“There is hope, son.”

“But is there money?”

“If there is hope, there is no need for money.”  Raul eyes his son, hoping for a flicker of assent.  There is none. 

His son is no mercenary, but he’s no saint either.  Raul sighs.

“But yes, there is hope that money will be made again.  There is, Ricardo, one business left.  And it is yours, legitimately.”

“Oh?  What is it?  A fish and chip shop?  A beauticians?  A funeral parlour?  Sorry.”

“There is one business left.  Your business, Ricardo.  And it is called PEPAC.”

“Pee-Pac?”

“You have the pronunciation.”

“What does it do, make colostomy bags?”

“Yes, funny, yes … No, boy, PEPAC …  I will tell you about PEPAC.  I will tell you what PEPAC can do that no other business can.”