Necrophenia (19 page)

The snow dropped down like dandruff from the Holy Head of God.

In my business, which is one of private detection, you see these cosmic similes all the time. You have to keep in touch with your spiritual side, never forgetting that every next step could be your last and a watched boil never pops. It’s keeping this balance that helps you succeed; that and the pistol you pack.

I always pack a trusty Smith & Wesson. In this town, packing a trusty Smith & Wesson can mean the difference between pursuing a course in elegant maths and perusing the corpse of the Elephant Man, if you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do. You got to keep a balance, see, and that is what I do.

I do what I do from my office at 2727 27th Street. The office has my name on the door. And also my profession.

‘Lazlo Woodbine’, it says on the door. And ‘Private Detective’, too.

Sometimes it also says ‘GONE TO LUNCH’. But that’s when I’ve gone to lunch.

I hadn’t gone for lunch on the day that the young guy walked into my office. But then it wasn’t lunchtime. If I’d had a clock, then it might have struck ten. But I didn’t, and so it struck nine. The young guy had come all the way from England just to seek my help on a case. He didn’t tell me that this was the way of it, but then he didn’t have to. In my occupation you either know things, or you don’t. It’s an instinct, a gift, if you like, and some of us have this gift, though most of us do not.

The young guy wore black, but he wasn’t Swiss, nor was he Jewish, it seemed. He was a musician, travelling with a band called The Sumerian Kynges, in the company of something called The Flange Collective, a kind of five-and-dime carny that was presently encamped in Central Park. Although he and his fellow musicians had taken rooms at the Pentecost Hotel because, unlike carny folk, all musicians are cissies and don’t like the cold weather. And the guy’s name was Tyler and he had worries on his mind. And in this town, if you have worries on your mind, you either hit a bar or call your shrink. And if neither of those hit the spot and there is the possibility that the quelling of these worries might only be facilitated by a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a great deal of trench-coat action and a denouement that involves a final rooftop confrontation during which a villain takes the last dive to oblivion, then you call on me.

If, however, you have Georgia on your mind, then I’d recommend the jazz club down the street.

So the young guy sat down in the chair that I reserve for clients and I poured him a glass of Kentucky bourbon to ease his passage whilst he spilt his beans. His beans, it seemed, were curious beans, beans of an outré nature. In my business I encounter many a curious bean. A curious bean, a wayward sprout and a parsnip in a pale tweed. It’s all meat and fish to a guy like me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘So, kid,’ said I as I tipped him the wink, ‘what is it worries your mind?’

The guy sipped his bourbon and looked ill at ease, but ain’t that the way with the Brits? It was obvious to me from the start that getting the full story out of him was going to take some time. But I was prepared to take this time as I had to know all the facts. It is of the utmost importance to know all the facts. Facts are the lifeblood of a private eye. As would be a very small whip to a trainer of cheese. So I sat back and let him speak. I let him spill his beans.

‘I’m in no hurry,’ I told the guy. And anyhow I charge by the hour.

‘It is this way, Mr Woodbine, sir,’ said the kid, with respect in his voice. ‘I have become involved in something so strange, and indeed horrifying, that I hardly know where to begin. Corpses are being reanimated, imbued with souls that are not their own. A plan is afoot to destroy all life upon this world and reduce the planet to a Necrosphere. I have seen these undead with my own eyes and I am not the only one who has. In England an organisation that calls itself the Ministry of Serendipity is involved in the extermination of these undead creatures whenever it locates them. A gentleman called Mr Ishmael told me all about this. And there is something very wrong about this gentleman, but that is not why I am here.

‘Mr Woodbine, I am here to call upon your expertise. I wish to employ your services to investigate this matter, with a view to identifying the evil mastermind behind it.’

And I made the guy pause there. ‘Kid,’ I said to him. ‘Kid, did I just hear you use the words “evil mastermind”?’

‘That you did, Mr Woodbine, sir,’ said he.

I paused for a moment, in case he wished to add the words ‘Gawd strike me dead, guv’nor, if I’m telling you a porkie pie’ in that manner so favoured by the Brits. But as he did not, I spoke certain words of my own.

‘Kid,’ I said, ‘to use the downtown vernacular, you may well be blowing Dixie out of your ass, but if there is an evil mastermind involved, then you came a-knocking on the right detective’s door this brisk morning.’ And I topped up my glass and that of my client and let him go rambling on.

He was no literary eruditioner, like some of those famous Brits are. Your Walter Shakespeare, or your Guy Fawkes-Nights. But he could put his sentences together in the right order, and he kept his feet off my desk, so I kinda took a liking to the guy. Clearly he was suffering from a mental condition, chronic schizophrenia allied with an acute persecution complex resulting in audio/visual hallucinations, or was simply a fruitcake, as we in this town would say. But I liked the cut of his shoulders and as business was slack for the time of the year, what with most of the New York criminals being down in Miami at Crim-Con 69, I agreed to take the case and see which way it led.

‘Kid,’ I told the guy, ‘you may have bumblebees in your watering can, but who can say what your uncle keeps in his shed?’

The kid said, ‘Eh?’ But he knew what I meant. And I knew that he knew I knew.

‘So,’ said the guy, ‘what do we do next?’

‘We?’ I said. ‘We? Well, I’ll tell you what you do. You hoik your bankroll out and peel me off two hundred bucks.’

I noted a certain hesitation here, but I put this down to that British reticence and sexual repression that I’d heard so much about. From Fangio, who had once been to Brighton. At a barmans’ convention, Toot-Con 55. Fangio had sung the praises of the English women, whom, he claimed, rarely wore anything other than three trained ducks. And wellington boots for the rain.

The guy paid up front with two fifties, three twenties, two tens, four fives, nine ones and a three that I handed back to him. Those crazy Brits, eh, what do you make of them? And they say that they won the war.

‘Where to?’ asked the guy of me.

And I said, ‘Fangio’s Bar.’

Like I told the guy earlier, I work only the four locations. No genre detective worthy of his ACME sock-suspenders and patent-pending ball-and-socket truss needs more. And once I’d interviewed a client in my office, the next stop was always the bar. It can be any bar, let me be clear on that, but it must be a bar. It is the way things must be done, if they are to be done with style. And according to format.

I put the ‘GONE TO LUNCH’ sign on my door, although you wouldn’t have seen that because I do not work corridors, and moments later, as if through the means of a lap-dissolve, found myself in Fangio’s Bar.

As it was nearing lunchtime now, the joint was beginning to jump. The uptown chic in natty black and downtown noncer in beige. A cheese-trainer from Illinois, here searching for a venue for Cheese-Con 70.
[21]
A couple of Dacks, a McMurdo and a chim-chim-cheree-chim-cheroo. The McMurdo was sitting on my favourite bar stool, so he got the short shrift that was coming to him.

‘A bottle of Bud,’ I said to Fangio, the fat-boy barman. ‘And whatever my client here is having. And put it on my client’s tab, as soon as you’ve written one up.’

‘That all sounds rather complicated,’ said Fangio. ‘Would you care to run it by me again? Or perhaps not so much run as jog purposefully? ’

‘Not as such,’ I said to Fange. ‘Especially not on a day like this.’

‘This day is a new one on me,’ said the fat-boy, with wisdom. ‘And I’d just come to terms with yesterday when this one turns up and oh dear me.’ And he began to sob.

‘Do you need a hankie to dry those tears?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ said Fange. ‘I have a hankie of my own.’

‘Then stick it in your mouth and bring us over two Buds.’

‘I’d quite like to try a cocktail,’ said the young guy called Tyler as he leaned upon the bar counter and ogled the ashtrays in the way that strangers so often do.

‘Don’t get me going on cocktails,’ said Fangio, weeping away like a woebegone woman bewailing a badly drawn boy.

‘Two Buds,’ I said, using the natural authority that God in His infinite wisdom had seen fit to grant me.

‘Coming right up, sir,’ said the barman.

‘Might I ask you something, Mr Woodbine?’ said the guy.

I nodded in the affirmative. ‘Not now, kid,’ I said.

‘But it’s important. Please.’

‘Well, all right. Go on. And don’t feel that you have to rush yourself. ’

‘All this talking of the toot – it really does help you to solve your cases?’

That was some question and I was the fella to answer it.

‘Kid,’ I said. ‘Kid, over the years Fange and I have talked a great deal of toot in this bar. We talk the toot and we chew the fat.’ And as it was nearing lunchtime, I dipped into the complimentary bowl upon the bartop and helped myself to a prize gobbet of said chewing-fat. ‘It’s the way things are done, kid,’ I continued, munching as I did. ‘You might argue that it is a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But I would argue that it ain’t nothing of the sort. It’s more of a dynamic symbiosis. Or, more rightly, a symbiotic dynamic. You can’t squeeze salt from a billiard ball, no matter how long you soak it.’

The guy looked thoughtful and nodded his head. ‘Right,’ said he. ‘So all this talking of the toot – it really does help you to solve your cases?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Here’s our beers. And Fangio’s brought your tab.’

‘I’m not sure that it really is a tab,’ said the fat-boy, presenting us with two glasses of cherry brandy. ‘It looks more to me to be something connected with golf. A tee, possibly, or a five-iron-gone-apeshit-crazy. ’

I gave the item he’d brought out a stern looking-over. ‘Nope,’ I said, in the negative. ‘That’s a bar tab all right. See the words “BAR TAB” printed at the top? That’s your guide to its correct identification, right up there in lights, as it were.’

And Fangio smiled, which brought joy to the world. ‘God bless you, Lazlo,’ said he.

The guy sipped at his cherry brandy and asked me whether it was a cocktail. I didn’t want to complicate things and so I nodded that it was, discreetly, without any fuss.

‘Tastes just like a cherry brandy,’ said the guy. ‘But I was asking you about the toot.’

‘Kid,’ I said, ‘we’ve been through that. And repetition does nothing more than labour a point. It’s the way things are done and that’s that. I’m on your case now, so everything that happens from now on will be pertinent to your case. These folk in this bar – pertinent. Those Dacks and that McMurdo lying on the floor-’

‘The one who was sitting on your bar stool?’ said the guy.

‘Same one. All pertinent. What we have to do is to wait here, talking the toot, until she arrives.’

‘She?’ asked the guy.

‘The dame that does me wrong. You’ve read the novels, right? Everyone’s read the Lazlo Woodbine Thrillers, right?’

‘From the poignant pen of Penrose? Yes.’

‘Well, you must then understand that you must never mess with a winning formula. All the big guys know this, which is why they are big guys. Right?’

‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘So we sit here talking the toot until the dame that does you wrong turns up. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Right. And is this the same dame every time, or a different dame?’

‘Different dame.’

‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘Because if it was always the same dame, you’d probably be forewarned that she was going to do you wrong. Right?’

‘Right,’ I said once more. ‘So it would lack for the element of surprise. Which would mess with the format. The dame that does me wrong always furnishes me with some vital clue that is necessary to the solving of the case. But she will do me wrong, in that at the end of the chapter she always strikes me hard on the back of the head and sends me down into that whirling pit of black oblivion that all genre private eyes get sent to in that chapter.’

‘This chapter, right?’

‘Next chapter.’

‘Quite so.’

‘Don’t you mean “right”?’ I asked.

‘Right,’ said the guy.

And then I saw her. And she was beautiful. She breezed into that bar like a bat out of Hell that would be gone when the morning came. But without a hint of the bat about her. By the way she walked I could tell that here was a dame who knew what the sound of one hand clapping was like. And if she wasn’t built for the pleasures of the flesh, then Rome was built in a day with a bucket and spade. She was long and blonde and when God designed her, She wasn’t kidding around.

The guy nudged the elbow of my trench coat and asked me, ‘Is that the dame?’

‘I wish, kid,’ and I shook my head. ‘It’s that great fat munter behind her.’

Now, I retract that word ‘munter’. It’s a cruel word, that, and although it rarely fails to raise a titter, that’s no need to go using it willy-nilly. Especially in a derogatory fashion.

And especially when referring to Mama Cass.

‘Hi there, Laz,’ said the legend from the Mamas and the Papas.

I tipped the lady the brim of my fine fedora, told her to pull up a bar stool and park her big butt and join me in taking a drink.

‘I can’t stay,’ said the rather broad broad. ‘I need to use the phone. Our limo broke down and we have to get to Woodstock for the festival.’

‘I’m playing at Woodstock,’ said the guy, ‘with my band The Sumerian Kynges. Perhaps you’ve heard of us – we closed the Hyde Park gig for The Rolling Stones.’

‘Don’t go getting all bent out of shape,’ I told the guy. ‘The Rolling Stones closed the Hyde Park gig for The Rolling Stones, and I should know, I was over there on a case. And Mick Jagger let me into the green room. He’s a big fan of my work, you see.’

‘But-’ said the guy.

‘It’s a true story,’ said Fangio. ‘Tell him about the kid, Laz, the one who got really stoned on a Banbury Bloater and had to be chucked out of the green room. How uncool was he?’

‘What?’ said the guy.

‘What indeed,’ said I.

‘ Woodstock?’ said Mama Cass. ‘You and your band are playing Woodstock?’ But she didn’t address this question to me, rather to my client, the kid.

‘Yes,’ said the kid. ‘I think we’re on just after you. This is a real pleasure.’ And he stuck out his hand for a shake.

But I edged this hand aside. ‘Kid,’ I told him, ‘you’re muddying the waters here. Sending the plot off on a tangent. Lazlo Woodbine doesn’t do tangents. He’s a real straight arrow. He talks the toot, yes, but he gets right on with the job in hand. So kindly step aside and watch how the dame that does me wrong does me wrong. Pay attention, now – it will be an educational experience.’

The guy made a noise that sounded like ‘Hmmph’ but which might have been ‘Yes, sir’ in Swiss.

‘So,’ said Fangio to Mama Cass, ‘ Woodstock, eh? I’ve heard tell of this. An outdoor Hippy Life-Affirming Cosmic Celebration. Or as we right-minded Republicans would say, a bunch of them no-good peace-queers and drug fiends smoking reefers and supporting the cockney work ethic.’

‘What?’ said the guy. And I for one joined him in this.

‘Are you for real?’ asked Mama Cass of Fangio.

The fat-boy felt at his person.

‘That is disgusting,’ said Mama Cass.

‘It’s my person,’ said Fangio, ‘and I’ll feel at it if I wish.’ Adding, ‘And as it’s also my bar, I can propound right-wing bigotry also, if I so wish. It’s the prerogative of the barlord. That and fiddling the change.’

‘And skimping on the toilet rolls in the gentlemens’ John,’ I added.

‘That goes without saying,’ said Fangio.

‘So, where is the phone?’ asked Mama Cass.

‘Now that,’ said Fangio, ‘is a question.’

‘But you do have a phone?’

‘It depends on what you mean by “have”,’ said Fange. ‘I had measles once, but I’m damned if I know whatever became of them.’

‘I had a lost weekend once,’ I said to Fange. ‘But I’m damned if I know whatever happened to that.’

‘I was with you on that weekend,’ said Fangio. ‘And I do know, but I’m not telling. Being enigmatic is also the prerogative of the barlord.’

‘So, no telephone,’ said Mama Cass.

Fangio the barman shook his head. ‘Don’t you just long for the invention of the mobile phone?’ he asked. ‘Or cell phone as we’ll call it over here. Because people will use them in prisons, I suppose.’

There was a small but perfect silence.

‘My mum predicted that,’ said the guy. ‘And do you know what? I miss my mum.’ And he got a rather sad face on.

‘You’re going off on a tangent again, kid,’ I told him. ‘Never take your eye off the ball. Except if you’re in a gay pub quiz.’

‘But where is this leading?’ he pleaded.

‘Just stick around and you’ll see.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mama Cass. ‘Well, if you don’t have a phone here, I suppose I’ll have to go elsewhere and look for one. I must get in touch with Mr Ishmael.’

‘Mr Ishmael? ’ went the guy. But I silenced him with a raised fist and single look so intense that it could have swallowed a pigeon, beak and trotters and all.

‘Mr Ishmael?’ I asked Mama Cass. ‘Who is this Mr Ishmael of whom you speak?’

‘You have a lovely way with words,’ said the talented, if slightly overweight, chanteuse. ‘Would you care for some free love in the back of the limo?’

‘Lady,’ I told her, ‘in my line of work, I don’t have time for love. I have time for danger and time for trouble. And time to talk the toot. But to Lazlo Woodbine, love is a stranger who wears a tweed jacket with ink on its right lapel. And leather patches on its elbows. Which can say so much, whilst still remaining mute, if you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do.’

‘Don’t get me going on tweed jacket elbow patches,’ said Fangio.

‘I won’t, my friend,’ I told him.

‘But this is free love,’ said Mama Cass. ‘It’s not like real love. In fact, it doesn’t really have anything to do with love at all, really. It’s more about meaningless sex. It just sounds nicer to call it free love. It’s one of those new buzz words, like Flower Power, that the Big Apple Corporation create.’

‘The Big Apple Corporation?’ I questioned.

‘The BAC, that’s right.’

‘Pray tell me, madam,’ I asked of her, ‘what do you know of this uptown organisation?’

‘Not very much,’ said Mama Cass. And she took the cherry brandy from my client’s hand and quaffed it away at a gulp. ‘They’re behind the Woodstock Festival. Although they’re very secretive about it and not many people know. I just happened to overhear a conversation that Mr Ishmael was having.’

‘That name again,’ said I. ‘Who is this Mr Ishmael?’

‘The backer of Woodstock. The chairman of the Big Apple Corporation.’

‘This is news to me,’ said the guy.

‘Be still,’ I said. And I meant it. And I showed him that I did.

‘Mr Ishmael is the driving force behind the BAC,’ continued the ample diva. ‘And it was the BAC that came up with not only Free Love and Flower Power, but Peace and Love, Man also. And a good thing, too, because if the BAC hadn’t got the Flower Power thing going, me and my band could never have found a record label to take our stuff.’

‘You’re on Dunhill, aren’t you?’ I said.

‘It’s Mr Ishmael’s label really. But I must be going. I need to find a phone.’

‘It’s very cold out,’ I said to the girl with the golden voice. ‘What say you and I sit here and sink a few Buds, chew the fat and talk about the good old days.’

‘You mean memories? Misty watercolour memories?’

‘The very same. Can I buy you a beer? My client there is paying.’

‘The young guy lying on the floor next to the McMurdo?’

‘The very same.’ And I hailed Fangio. ‘We need some service over here,’ I hailed. ‘And none of your service-with-a-smile-without-the-smile. ’

‘I missed his earlier smile,’ said Mama Cass, ‘because it was before I came in. But I just bet it brought joy to the world, for it certainly did to me.’

‘Sister,’ I said to her, ‘you know how to talk the toot. Let’s crack a bottle of bubbly.’

I ordered that bottle and by three of the clock that ticks out the afternoon it was delivered to us, along with a bar tab that I signed on my client’s behalf and a kitten that I petted gently and returned to Fange. Who placed it in a cardboard box to be mailed to our boys in ’ Nam.

I filled glasses and toasts were exchanged.

‘I have a black eye,’ said my client, rising unsteadily from the floor and viewing this in the mirror behind the bar.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.

Fangio excused himself from a crowd of Jimbos who had recently entered the bar and returned himself to my company.

‘What very big women,’ he said. ‘And such deep voices. And they smell a bit iffy, too.’

I noticed my client glance over his shoulder.

‘Are you okay, buddy?’ I asked him.

‘Jimbos,’ said my client. ‘I told you about them. At The Green Carnation Club. I think they might be undead.’

‘But you can’t tell for sure because you’re not on the drug, right?’

‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘And that wasn’t funny, what you said earlier. You weren’t in the green room at The Stones in the Park gig. I would have seen you.’

‘But you did,’ I told him. ‘I was in disguise.’

‘As what?’

‘As whom. As Marianne Faithfull.’

‘I think I’m drunk,’ said the guy. ‘I don’t believe you actually said that.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Just keep telling yourself I didn’t.’

‘And add I must pay Fangio’s bar tab,’ said Fangio. ‘And, a little while later, when we’re all very drunk, you can sing us a song, also.’

‘I don’t want to,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sitting around here for hours now, drinking and lying on the floor unconscious also, although I don’t remember how that happened. And I’m beginning to believe that Mr Woodbine here is just treading water, as it were, because he is being paid by the hour.’

Things went suddenly quiet in the bar. And outside the sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance. Same sun. Different dog.

Fangio broke the sudden quiet. ‘Out of my bar,’ cried he.

‘Out?’ said the guy.

‘Out indeed. Coming in here with your beguiling gypsy ways, disguised as a Swiss abortionist. I can stand just so much and then no more. Like Popeye. And he’s a sailor!’

‘But I’m the client,’ said the guy. ‘If you chuck me out then Mr Woodbine won’t have a case to work on. And I won’t come back and pay my bar tab.’

‘You fiend in human form,’ quoth Fangio. ‘Are there any Cosa Nostra in the bar? I must have this man killed.’

‘Let’s all stop there,’ I said, as ever the voice of reason. ‘We have all had something to drink and Mr Tyler, being a Brit, cannot be expected to either hold his drink or enjoy the benefits of the American dental system.’

‘What?’ asked the guy.

‘And I,’ I said, ‘feel that I am perched upon the threshold of a major breakthrough in the case. I am only moments away from this breakthrough and I for one would not wish to be denied this breakthrough, as the repercussions for the case – and in fact for humanity as a whole – are too horrendous even to contemplate.’

‘You don’t say?’ said Fangio.

‘Oh yes I do.’

Fangio grinned and said, ‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Oh yes I do.’

‘Oh no you don’t.’ And Fangio laughed.

‘Have to stop you there,’ I said.

‘But-’ said the guy. But I had to stop him, too.

‘A major breakthrough is coming,’ I said, ‘so let us not mess with the method. Mama Cass, is there anything else that you would like to tell me regarding Mr Ishmael and the Big Apple Corporation?’

‘I can’t think of anything,’ said Mama Cass.

‘Think very very hard.’

And Mama Cass thought hard. ‘There is one thing,’ she said. ‘It seemed a trivial thing at the time, but the more I think about it, and I often do, I think that it might mean something.’

‘Would you care to whisper it into my ear?’ I asked Mama Cass.

‘I certainly would,’ said she.

And Mama Cass whispered. And I listened hard to his whispering. And my client tried to listen too, but he couldn’t hear because Mama Cass was whispering.

And when her whispering was done, she stopped whispering.

‘Your words are sweet soul music to my ears, Mama Cass,’ I told her.

‘You think it means something?’ she asked.

‘It has the case all but solved.’

‘Case?’ said Mama Cass. ‘What case?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘A trivial matter. But let us talk about us. You are a fine-looking woman, and I a virile man. What say we jump into the back of your limo and get our rocks off?’

And Mama Cass cried, ‘Look, Zulus, thousands of them,’ and pointed, and I peered in the direction of this pointing. And then she hit me hard on the back of the head. And I felt myself falling, down, down into a whirling black pit of oblivion.

And right on cue, at the end of the chapter, which worked out perfectly.