Drake by Peter McLean Page B

believer in not backing the losing side, by and large, and I don’t like to let these pricks pull the wool over my eyes. I wouldn’t have survived long in my line of work otherwise.
    â€œSure,” I said. “I know how it is, Steevie.”
    He uncrossed his legs and leaned forwards, resting his forearms on the edge of my desk.
    â€œSo, listen baby, I’ve got a little piece of work for you,” he said. He was close enough that I could smell his expensive aftershave. “A little job, you know, what you do best.”
    I nodded. This wasn’t going to happen, but I could hardly come straight out and tell him so. That, I knew, wouldn’t be good for my health. Now luckily I’ve always been a bit of a showman. The punters expect it, after all. It makes them feel like they’re getting a real magician for their money and not just some hired thug. Whenever Steevie or someone like him came to me with a job I always made a big show of consulting the omens, making plenty of mumbo-jumbo about whether it was auspicious to do what they wanted or not. Funnily enough, the more they were paying the more auspicious it got, by and large. Not today though.
    I opened a drawer in my desk and took my cards out. They looked very old, those cards, ragged and creased and stained and a bit greasy round the edges. None of your new age shop nonsense for Don Drake, oh no. In truth those cards were all of a year old, bought after I lost my last deck somewhere one drunken night, but I’d gone to a lot of trouble to make them look like they’d been handed down from my wise and powerful old great granny. It’s all part of the show, you understand.
    â€œLet’s see what I can do for you then,” I said.
    I shuffled and cut the deck, my eyes never leaving Steevie’s. He’d seen me do this enough times before to know to be patient. I cut again, palmed a card, shuffled, palmed, cut. I’m good with cards, if I do say so myself. If only Wormwood had let his customers deal the cards once in a while I’d never have got myself in this bloody situation in the first place.
    â€œShow us the way, oh spirits of the magnificent ether,” I muttered, and began to lay out the spread.
    The first card was the Wheel of Fortune, reversed. Then came the Devil, then the Ten of Swords. I winced, feigning surprise. That was just about the worst spread I had managed to think up in the short amount of time I’d had to tickle the deck. I flipped the last card off the top of the deck, trusting to luck that it wasn’t going to spoil things. It didn’t – the cards obliged nicely and gave me my old nemesis, the Tower.
    â€œOh dear,” I said softly.
    Steevie stared down at the cards, then at the carefully arranged expression on my face.
    â€œWhat?” he said.
    â€œSteevie, this isn’t good,” I said. “This really isn’t good.”
    â€œBollocks,” he said. “It’s bullshit. I want this doing, Drake.”
    â€œI can’t,” I said. “Look at the cards, Steevie.”
    â€œNo, you fucking look at me,” he countered. “Paul’s downstairs in the motor with a bag with ten grand in it. You want it or not?”
    I wanted it. Of course I wanted ten grand for a few hundred quid’s worth of ingredients and a day’s work, who wouldn’t?
    I could see the boy’s face, the bloody pits of his eyes staring up at me.
    Steevie’s driver Paul would be sitting outside the Bangladeshi grocers in Steevie’s big, overly conspicuous Bentley, drawing stares the way a turd draws flies. Sitting there with ten grand in a bag. Ten grand for me, if I just said yes.
    He was five years old.
    â€œI can’t,” I said again. “For you Steevie, for you I can’t. The cards say you’ll go to Hell this time.”
    Steevie stared at me. Strange as it might seem, I knew the crucifix wasn’t just for show. Steevie