Pipsqueak (11 page)

Chapter 16

L
ike most emergency rooms I’d seen in New York, this one was strewn with people in various states of disrepair. Folks with bloody towels wrapped around their hands (missing digits?), others puking into pans (cyanide poisoning, for all anyone knew), others flat on their backs groaning (acute appendicitis, perhaps). And as usual, the staff only seemed concerned with “processing” those who were actively dripping blood onto the carpet. I marched up to the admissions desk. Next to the desk was parked some poor son of a bitch in a wheelchair who looked like his face had hit the windshield. The nurse’s station was vacant, and there was no bell to ring for assistance. Surprise, surprise.

“Don’t thuppose you could thpare a drink for a fellow General Buster fan down on his luck?”

I turned once, then twice, to the swollen face next to me in the wheelchair. Realizing it was Nicholas, I flinched in surprise. The large hands of an even larger orderly on Nicholas’s shoulders kept my brother from escaping his seat.

“I know, not a pwetty thight. Thign me out, will ya, Garth? That’ll make Mighty Joe Young here loothen his gwip long enough that we can get out of here and make last call over at Dew Dwop Inn.”

“Jumpin’ Jesus . . .” was all I could muster. His normally slim, angular face was all puffed out, red, and scratched. It was like a doll head had been snapped onto my brother’s body and was mimicking Nicholas’s argot. A doctor breezing through the room happened to look up from his clipboard long enough to register me talking to Nicholas, and he detoured.

“Are you Mr. Palihnic’s brother?”

“Yes, I—”

“I’m Doctor Schumate. You should know that your brother is refusing an MRI scan.” A ballpoint pen clicked nervously in Doc’s hand. “There’s a strong possibility that he’s suffering from a concussion, or worse. Subdural hematoma is a distinct possibility.”

“Yeth, but how’th my cholesterol, Doc? Maybe I thould cut back on the liverwurst, whaya t’ink?”

“This isn’t a game, Mr. Palihnic.” Doc waved an admonishing pen in front of Nicholas’s face, and turned back to me. “If you— I beg your pardon!”

Nicholas caught the orderly off guard, lunged forward, and grabbed Doc’s pen in his teeth, growling.

“Mr. Palihnic! Please!” Doc struggled to get his pen back from my brother. “You’re being childish, Mr. Palihnic!” The lifegiver’s glance around the emergency room at the growing smiles among the wounded betrayed he was interested more in his image than retrieving the pen.

“Nicholas, maybe you should stay and have the MRI, huh?”

Those in the room who had an ounce of humor left eked out enough chuckles to make Doc turn red, let go of the pen, and storm out of the emergency room. “Nurse,” his voice yelped from the next room.

Nicholas spat the pen on the floor. “Garth, I want outta here now. I need you to thtand by me.” He looked up at the orderly. “You can let go now, Junior. To keep me here against my will is unlawful imprithonment, a cwime punishable by up to three years in a thtate penitentiary. I can get a cop, if you want. There’s always one parked outhide a hothpital.”

“I’ll take him home,” I reassured.

Joe rolled his eyes and stepped back. I helped Nicholas to his feet.

“I can walk, Garth, they only mamboed on my fathe.”

“Excuse me!” A nurse burst into the room, nervously fussing with the front of her cardigan. “He’s not permitted to leave!”

The first thing that popped into my mind was something akin to one of Otto’s colorful Russian expletives. But I learned a few years back to count to three before replying. Five, better still.

“He can’t leave until he’s signed out!” she shrieked.

“I happen to agree with you that he should stay, but he wants to leave.” She could see my slow burn. “So we’re signing out. Now.”

There was a taxi sitting in front of the hospital, and we interrupted the cabbie’s Fab Form break. I folded Nicholas into the backseat and gave the driver my address.

“Belay that order, cabbie. Downtown, corner of Water an’ Dover, next to the bridge.” Nicholas held a hand up to my face. “I know, Angie wants to nurthe me back to health. Forget it. They know where you live, but not where I live.”

“Who? What happened to your face?”

“Our fwiends, the retwos, happened to my face. Real pwos, though, gotta hand it to ’em. Use the flat of their handth, with gwoves. No bwoken teeth. Lipth cut on the inthide, from my teeth. Nose is bwoke again, but what the hell. Didn’t blind me or collapse my twachea. Mainly scwatches, swelling. In a coupla days, I’ll look like a Tawwyton Thmoker, an’ thath all.” He widened one of his black eyes as if to prove it. The white was shot with bloody veins.

“I know the doc was an asshole—”

“Thow me one that ain’t,” he growled.

“—but you should see someone about your head. There could be bleeding.”

His twisted lips coughed a laugh. “I doubt it. They held me off the gwound by the arms tho my head didn’t hit the fwoor or anything. My neck, that’ll be thtiff for a few days. And a headache? I’ve got the world’s wortht. Tylenol and codeine? Plathebos. Cabbie? Pull over to this liquor store. Yeah, ’ere. Garth, you wanna get your little brother some scotch, please?”

“Is that a good idea?”

“Didn’t you know scotch is an anticoagulant, Doc Cawthon? Thins the blood, break up the clots you’re so worried about forming on my bwain. Make it Macallan, huh? No thense in half meathures.”

We pulled over and I paid way too much money for the single malt. But it didn’t take long.

“Recognize the guys who did this?” I asked once we were back on track.

“Maybe . . .” Which I knew from past experience meant he wasn’t telling. “Driver? You know the car wash down here on the left? Let’s go through the wash, okay? My tweat.”

“Something
is
wrong with your brain. A car wash?” I said.

“Please, Garth, I won’t tell you how to cwean a buffawo hide if you don’t— Yeah, cabbie, over there.”

In a few minutes we were in the car wash, sudsy rivulets flowing down all the glass. The driver didn’t seem to think this was unusual. I guess some cabbies have seen it all.

“Here.” Nicholas pulled what looked like a sausage in leather bondage from his torn jacket.

“What’s this? A blackjack?”

“Take it. I didn’t get a cwack at them. Maybe you will.”

I pushed it away. “Where’d this happen, Nicholas? Near my place?”

“Naw. I went back uptown t’another retwo hangout.” He sipped from the bottle and convulsed with pain. A wall of undulating felt strips approached the windshield and slithered like an octopus over the top of the car. “Thon of a . . . bitch, that thmarth! Damn! I know a girl, a waitress and singer. I asked for her at the bar. I got a note telling me to come backstage. I go into a woom, as directed, and there’s four guys behind the door, in dinner jackets, crew cuts, and plaid cummerbunds like the frickin’ Four Lads, ’sept they got Ace bandages wrapped around their faces.”

“Like mummies?” The jet-nozzle rain frothed up soapsuds on all sides, the watery image of a phalanx of huge pink paint rollers fast approaching.

“Yeah, like mummies, Garth. Common pwactice in some circles. Beats wubber Nixon or Pluto masks. Better pewipheral vision too. Then they hustle me out back, into a van, and start driving an’ hitting. Dropped me near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, stupid schmucks.” He laughed briefly before shooting back more scotch, whereupon he cursed bitterly for a few fractured sentences. The pink rollers drummed along the hood, fender, roof, and doors. It was raining again.

“I can’t believe you can even chuckle about—”

“Cameras, Garth! They got camenas all over the pwace to watch the traffic backup for the Lincoln Tunnel. I know people who know people. Might just be able to lift the license plate off the video. Too bad it wasn’t daylight.”

“I thought these types use stolen cars.”

I got a disappointed stare from one of his bloody eyes. “Excuse me, Mr. Fwea Market, but just what do you know about
those types
?”

I shrugged.

“Well, I got a question for you, bwother. Just what kind of
types
are you familiar with that wear plaid cummerbunds and dinner jackets to a thumping?”

“Okay, Nicholas, okay.” A wind tunnel had been activated in the car wash, droplets racing every which way on the glass.

“You know, mobsters, they don’t thteal cars before taking thomeone for a ride. They take the family thedan. They got the juice, not like some Podunk jokers holding up a Piggly Wiggly, you know, those
types
. You ask me? Mummies in plaid cummerbunds are pwetty confident. They had juice.”

“Just how— Oh, forget it.”

“Out with it.”

I gave him a hard look. The whole episode—from Marti’s murder to Nicholas getting pummeled—was making me ill. My stomach was in knots. But it was the intellectual and emotional impact of this kind of violence and intimidation that had my mind floundering. I was in danger. Angie was in danger. They knew where I lived. The police were even a threat to me. The scenario was largely foreign and completely repulsive, and my immediate childish reflex was to reach out and stop it like a record on a turntable. Or maybe even spin the record back to the start and never let this wretched song be played.

“Is this what you wanted out of life?” I finally blurted. “Sleazing around bars, getting beat up, being on familiar terms with practices of the world’s underbelly? Jeez. You were smart, ambitious . . .”

“I’ve changed my mind.” He laughed bitterly. “
In
with it, big brother.
In
with it.”

The watery windshield began to glow brightly as the taxi emerged from the far end of the car wash. “Cabbie? We’re gonna duck down here under the seat. No towel dwy. Flip on your Off Duty light, and dwive down Broadway like you’re goin’ home, ’kay?”

The driver cleared his throat. “That’s extra.”

“Jeez, I already picked up the car wash. Five bucks, ’kay?”

The driver shrugged. “Yeah.”

I lay down on the seat, my unruly hair catching on Nicholas’s bristly scalp. “Why are we—”

“If we’re being followed, they’ll think we thkipped out of the cab in the car wash and ditched them.”

“Hmm. Not so dumb, little brother.”

“Well, gee whith,” Nicholas snickered.

“Sorry. About the lecturing, I mean.”

He didn’t say anything, for once. If you knew Nicholas, a shrug was about the best response to an apology you could hope for. As we lay there, the streetlights flashed overhead on the cab ceiling, and I was reminded of backyard camping trips we did together when he was seven and I was ten. Headlights from cars passing on the lane would cut through the yard and reflect off the neighbor’s side windows, shimmering across the rippling tent roof like aurora borealis. It would be fall—chilly enough, Mom said, so we wouldn’t get eaten by mosquitoes or steam like ears of corn in our musty Army-surplus mummy bags. Lots of leaves were still on the trees, but dry and scratching together in the breeze, mimicking the sound of water falling on stone. Wafting leaves would pass across the headlight flickers in oddly shaped shadows. Nicholas and I would imagine we were in the Yukon, sleeping outside our gold mine (Nicholas’s idea), gazing at the northern lights, silhouettes of satellites passing through the glowing dust clouds. We’d talk about the mine, about how deep it was, how we’d have helmets with lights on them, eat nothing but hot dogs, french fries, and milkshakes, have our own jackhammers and use dynamite every day. Back then, Nicholas and I occasionally shared the boundless imagination all youngsters possess. And as brothers we were close primarily because we belonged to and shared the trials and indignities (bow ties, family photos, tea at Aunt Jilly’s, dancing lessons) imposed by our parents. But the competitive wedge of the teen years was driven between us, and as older brother I had nothing to say that he cared to hear.

In the cab, I wondered how much if any of the youngster remained in Nicholas, a man seemingly devoid of any innocent past or any wholesome future. Even if there was some feeble morsel left, was that enough to reconstruct a relationship between us? I sensed that he wasn’t the same avaricious scoundrel who took such a toll on Dad and Mom. That night he first reappeared—when we went for a drink and “exchanged words”—even through the wisecracking veneer, I sensed some genuine hurt from my rebuff. And I savored that on the ride home, enjoying the flavor of revenge for what I felt he’d done to our family. He actually listened to me, I affected him, and he seemed to care what I thought. It had been a long time.

And what about Angie? When she castigated him, he seemed to react to the family angle.

I thought about the red, puffy doll head on the seat next to me that was my brother. No longer the young hotshot. I heard him groan slightly from exhaustion and was reminded that I was tired too. Hell, I was flat-out beat, and the streetlights rippling across the cab roof were lulling me to sleep. At that moment I felt there might be a way into Nicholas through all this. Maybe.

Chapter 17

I
awoke the next day on Nicholas’s couch. Through the open window came the thrum of cars on the Brooklyn Bridge and the faint smell of fish and briny piers. He lived on Water Street near the Fulton Fish Market, and an expansive brick wall at the intersection forms the anchorage to the bridge. I could tell by the slishy sound of tires on the cobblestone pavement below that it was raining. The sky was overcast, and I couldn’t judge the time of day. I lay there and recalled arriving at Nicholas’s digs. I was so beat that I called Angie and told her I was flopping at my brother’s, adding that she shouldn’t go anywhere without Otto, a brute of a man known during his wrestling career as the Moscow Mastiff. Kidding, of course. Otto looks like he was the runt of his litter, but I figured that as a gulag graduate, he might actually be able to put up quite a scrap. Ultimately, though, I felt the retros had done all the assaulting they were going to do in one evening. What sense would there be in coming after us again, after the recorded warning?

Nicholas’s apartment had a decor familiar to anyone whose mailbox is frequented by Pottery Shed catalogs, although his furnishings were real. That is to say, they were actual twenties to fifties American antiques. Like the genuine Bakelite table radio, the brass wall sconces, the low red armchair with matching ottoman, the green-shaded desk lamp, and the stainless-steel–edged Formica kitchen table. The exception was the couch on which I was sprawled. It was probably from Macy’s, and so were the drapes. They matched the dark large floral print. The apartment had a certain amount of style, but like most bachelor pads, it appeared to have been furnished in a hurry. He’d put some money into it, but to my eye, the mix of deco and fifties clashed a bit.

Footsteps were coming up the stairs, and I heard someone stop in front of the door. It opened and Nicholas stepped in, his hair soaked from the rain. His face was still red, but the swelling had gone down. Just not evenly. The baby-doll head had been replaced by the Elephant Man with black eyes. By the next day, he’d probably progress to the Uncle Fester look.

“Where were you?” I sat up.

“Went to my doctor. Brother, you should see your hair. Look like a mad scientist.”

“Have you looked in a mirror, Igor? What doctor?”

“I don’t want to name names, but he’s a Spanish guy over at the Pathmark drugstore. I mean, what do doctors do but size up your condition and give you pills? Or not, as is more often the case. I go to my amigo, cut out the middleman. I get the good drugs, the real stuff the doctors are too afraid to prescribe. You think there’s anything but powdered sugar in Tylenol?” Nicholas ripped open a bag, and several brown prescription bottles rolled around the table.

I figured out for myself that this pharmacist–patient arrangement was illegal and didn’t think he needed me to point that out. “Well, at least you’re not slurring anymore. So what’d he say?”

“That I look like crap, but in Spanish.” He started opening pill bottles.

“What about bleeding, in your brain?”

“Well, Dr. Welby, he concurs that I might want to get an MRI. Good news is I don’t need a doctor, I just need an appointment at one of these outfits that do MRIs. He’s got a friend named Rodriguez, an MRI technician, that he’ll fix me up with. Tech guy reads the scans better than a doctor, says my amigo. Meantime, I got all this great stuff.” He tossed back a palmful of pills and chased it with water from a tiki bar mug that had been sitting on the table. His neck was so stiff that he had to bend backward at the knees to accomplish this feat.

“You may not like this, Nicholas, but we had to tell the cops you were at our place when we found Marti.”

Nicholas plunked into his red armchair. His one open eye was unfazed. “What’d you tell them, exactly?”

“They asked whether anybody else was there when we found her.” I went to the kitchen sink for a glass of water. “We told the detective my brother was there, and he asked for your address. I handed him your card. He didn’t notice there was only a PO box on it.”

“That explains the message on my service. Tsilzer, wasn’t it? I worked with him once. Just so you know, I don’t give this address or phone number to anyone.” He put his head back and closed his eye. “Feel privileged.”

“What now, Nicholas?”

“What now? Well, the way I see it, you’ve got two choices. One, you join forces with me. Two, you don’t.”

“What about option three: going to the police and telling them everything?”

“Didn’t you tell me last night, before you nodded off, that the retros left you a message warning you not to go to the cops?”

“Seems to me there’ve been plenty of cases where kidnappers warned their ransomers not to go to the cops, they do anyway, the kidnappers are caught and the victim saved.” To be honest, I was back envisioning Steve McGarrett on the job.

Nicholas smirked. “They don’t exactly go out of their way to publicize cases where the victim is murdered because of stunts like that. Besides, you’re talking about federal cases. You trust this Detective Tsilzer like you would the FBI? I think you’re going to have a hard time selling them on the idea that this is all about a TV puppet.”

“And if you and I team up? Then what?”

Nicholas shrugged. “We get a message to these guys that we want to know what it will take to get Pipsqueak back. No questions, no hard feelings. A business deal.”

“You mean buy him back? What if they want a lot of money?”

“I’m authorized by my client to go as high as $100,000. Client doesn’t think they’ll bite, though.”

“Your client, huh? Look, Nicholas, if I’m going to throw in with you, you’ve got to tell me everything you know about this, including who your client is.”

He was shaking his head. “Not about the client. Some of the rest, maybe. Like what Marti was doing in town. But not the client.”

“Okay, what about Marti?”

“I can’t tell you about her without giving you some background on Bookerman. Lew Bookerman is General Buster’s real name.”

I didn’t let on that I already knew that. “Really. Okay, Nicholas, please tell your ignorant older brother more.”

A sparkle entered his eyes, and I could tell he was bursting at the seams to share the whole story with me.

“I’ll give you a teaser. Marti was staff on
The General Buster Show.
When the show was canceled, Bookerman’s puppets were deemed property of the station, and though he tried to get them back, his contract had language that was ironclad. The whole concept and all creative materials belonged to the station. The management was a bunch of hard-asses. I mean, they didn’t need the puppets, right? Anyway, Bookerman moved to Illinois. He was a hypochondriac with a budding passion for natural-healing techniques that got him into naturopathic medicine. So he opened a small shop selling assorted herbs, books, etc. Came out with a successful line of health snacks. Years pass, the station changes hands, and next thing you know they’re clearing out all manner of junk, including the puppets. This was only a few years ago. Marti grabbed Pipsqueak, and two others got Howlie and Possum. Bookerman got wind of this somehow—maybe through a third party, a friend at the station—and went after his old puppet pals. One of the parties gave him Howlie, and he bought Possum from the other. Marti, however, wouldn’t sell. Seems she and Bookerman once had a romance, and she still harbored malice for whatever transpired between them. That biker Tyler Loomis had been by her shop before, trying to convince her to sell the puppet to him, virtually begging her at all costs not to sell it to Bookerman.”

“How did you come by all this information?” I asked.

“Secret.” Nicholas waved a finger. “Let’s just say I have an informer in the Church of Jive.”

“You have an informer? Then why the hell did you try to recruit my help?”

“The problem with informers is you never know when they’ll be caught. And I have this feeling that Pipsqueak will surface and somehow you’ll be there when he does.”

“Nicholas, doesn’t any of this sound, you know, completely wacko?” I stood up, flapping my arms in frustration. “My brain is spinning in my skull. So tell me: Why did Loomis want a squirrel puppet?”

“I’ve got theories on that, but I’m not going to say what they are. Anyway, Loomis warns Marti that Bookerman will do anything to get Pipsqueak, but she laughs him off, remembering Bookerman as a wimpy hypochondriac. Well, Pipsqueak is stolen, but she never tells the cops about Bookerman.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“I’ve got theories about that too.”

“Like?” I persisted.

Nicholas thought about that a moment and then shrugged. “I think she intended to shake him down. That’s what she was doing in New York. Apparently, she sent a veiled threat to him through his health-food company.”

I blinked. “General Buster is in New York?”

“Maybe.”

I blinked some more. “Buster is with the retros?”

“Well, let’s put it this way: Scuppy Milner is his nephew and sole heir to Bookerman’s budding fortune.”

“Really? Then what are all these people really after? I mean, if Bookerman—or Scuppy—is psychotic, that’s one thing. But now there are gangs in plaid cummerbunds and mummy wrap beating people up, a whole religious movement, all to protect Pipsqueak. It’s nuts!”

One of Nicholas’s black eyes widened. “Seems to me you know more about all this than you let on, brother.”

I grinned. “Sure, and I’ll tell you all about it once you tell me what your client has to do with all this. From my vantage, you’re a joker in this deck.”

Nicholas’s eye closed. “Can’t.”

I started putting on my shoes. “I won’t trust you unless you trust me. Doesn’t sound like this is a good idea.”

“My client pays for anonymity. That’s a trust I have to keep. How could you trust
me
if I didn’t?”

“Yeah, but your client probably knows why these retro people want the puppet.” I put on my pinstripe jacket. “I mean, there’s something about Pipsqueak, something other than the fact that he was a local kid-show hero. Come on, Nicholas, he’s not worth $100,000.”

Nicholas didn’t say anything. He just peered at his knees, deep in thought. I headed for the door, but before I got out, Nicholas piped up.

“Is that the suit you wrestled away from the Salvation Army in the nude?”

“Yup.”

“Thought so.” He grabbed a notepad and jotted something down. “What are you going to do now, Garth?”

“I stand to gain nothing and lose everything by sticking my nose any further into this. It’s no longer about Pipsqueak, it’s about murder. These people play too rough. Angie and I are going to the cops, like any sane person would do, and let them sort it out.”

“And if they ask where they can reach me?”

“We’ve got to tell them everything.”

“Great.” He sighed. “Look, here’s my cell number.” He handed over a yellow square of paper and gestured to one of those tiny black phones that clip to your belt. “Give the number to the cops if you want, though I’m hoping you’ll call and tell me you’ve changed your mind. And do your little brother a favor? One little favor? Discuss this plan with your lawyer first.”