Stalking the Dragon (9 page)

C
HAPTER
11

11:01
PM
–11:20
PM

As Mallory's little group approached Seymour Noodnik's Emporium they were greeted by the outraged screams of a woman who was arguing with the proprietor.

“But I don't want brontosaur!” she yelled. “I just want a pound of hamburger!”

“Diplodocus, then,” said Noodnik. “Three cents a pound. You can't beat that price anywhere in the city.”

“All right, all right,” said the woman. “I've got to make Marvin his dinner. Give me a pound, you thief!”

“I can't break up the cut,” said Noodnik. “You'll have to take it all.”

“How much are we talking about?” demanded the woman. “Two pounds? Two and a half?”

“Eighty thousand.”

She stormed out of the store, almost knocking Jeeves over. “I'll be damned if I'll ever shop here again!” she thundered.

“I'll bone it for you,” Noodnik shouted after her.

“You're sure this is the place?” asked Joe. “Personally, I wouldn't pay more than two cents a pound for diplodocus, and I'd want it delivered.”

“I can tell you're going to be right at home here,” said Mallory. He walked to the door and entered the store.

“Any lewd women in the case yet?” was Noodnik's greeting.

“Not yet.”

“Any naked ones?”

“I just said—”

“Not all naked ones are lewd,” interrupted Noodnik. “And not all lewd ones are naked, though they usually wind up that way. Can I sell you some zebra horns?”

“Zebras don't have horns,” said Mallory.

“
This
one doesn't, at least not anymore,” said Noodnik as he wiped his hands on his bloodstained apron. “Or better yet, how about some Easter eggs?” He pointed to a nearby carton of eggs in a refrigerated unit.

“They're white,” noted Joe.

“That's right.”

“So what makes them Easter eggs?”

“They've been sitting there since early last April,” answered Noodnik.

Joe made a face, and Noodnik turned back to the detective. “Some dognip for your cat-thing?”

Mallory frowned. “Dognip?”

Noodnik suddenly snapped his fingers. “Damn! I forgot! The cops took Fido away for rabies testing today after he nipped old Mrs. Satterfield.”

“Seymour, will you shut up for a minute?” said Mallory.

Noodnik checked his wristwatch. “Okay, you got it. Sixty seconds.”

“I'm not here to buy anything.”

“Then why are you wasting my time?” demanded Noodnik.

“You were supposed to get some information for me, remember?”

“Of course I remember. Just because I climbed into bed with Troubles McTavish last night instead of the beloved Mrs. Noodnik doesn't mean I have a bad memory,” said Noodnik. “A bad sense of direction, maybe…”

“Seymour, did you get the information or didn't you?” demanded Mallory.

“Of course I did!” snapped Noodnik. “I'm Seymour Noodnik, aren't I?”

“Are you?” said a shopper with an amused smile. “I heard you telling your wife that you blacked out and thought you were Angus McTavish.”

“Well, I had to tell her
something
,” said Noodnik.

“Was that before or after she emptied her shotgun into your car?” asked a female shopper.

“Hey!” said Noodnik to the store at large. “Do I pry into
your
private affairs?”

“All the time,” came an answer.

“Besides,” said another shopper, “what's so private about running down the block with your pants off at three in the morning while your wife is shooting at you?”

“Special on carrier pigeon eggs!” yelled Noodnik, cupping his hands to his mouth. “A dollar a dozen.”

Nobody moved.

“Tenderloin steaks, eight cents a pound. Fresh cuts of tenderloin, eight cents a pound.”

There was a mad rush to the meat section.

“You were saying?” said Noodnik, turning back to Mallory.

“Are you actually going to honor that price?”

Noodnik grinned. “If they can find it, they can have it at eight cents a pound.”

“You haven't changed,” said Mallory.

“Just my socks. And maybe my bedmate.”

“So who sells elephant-shaped chocolate marshmallow cookies?”

“Buy a dozen pickled bats' wings and we'll talk,” said Noodnik.

“I haven't got any time to waste,” said Mallory. He turned to the goblin. “Joe?”

Joe Enlai Smith leaped forward, struck a martial arts position, and screamed.

“Is he sick?” asked Noodnik.

“I'm intimidating you, damn it!” snapped Joe.

“You are?” asked Noodnik curiously. “How can you tell?”

Joe screamed again, chopped the air with his fists, and delivered a devastating spinning kick that missed Noodnik by a good eighteen inches.

“Is that the best you can do?” asked Noodnik.

“I'm nearsighted,” answered Joe. “There's no call for you to belittle me.”

“Why aren't you wearing glasses?”

“It doesn't go with being an action-adventure hero,” answered Joe.

“I got a special on 'em,” said Noodnik enticingly. “Ten bucks an eye, and the price drops to seven for three or more.”

“We're getting off the point here,” said Mallory. “Seymour, I'm on a tight schedule. Are you going to tell me what I want to know or not?”

“Are you going to buy a dozen pickled bats' wings or not?” shot back Noodnik.

“What if I report you to the city health inspector?” said Mallory.

“Be my guest,” said Noodnik. “He's laid out there with the frozen ham in Aisle Three.”

“Men!” snapped a feminine voice. “I'm sick of all your macho threats and posturings!”

“Who was that?” asked Noodnik, looking around.

“Belle, keep out of this,” said Mallory. “I have enough problems as it is.”

“Belle?” demanded Noodnik. “Who's Belle?”

Mallory pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and held it up “Seymour, say hello to Belle.”

“Your phone?”

“Stop looking at me as if I'm just some mere
object
!” demanded Belle.

“But you
are
just some mere object,” said Noodnik reasonably.

“Watch your mouth, Mac!” said Belle. Suddenly her voice softened. “God, I love the feel of your hands on me! You want me to solve your problem, Lover?”

“Can you?” said Mallory.

“If he doesn't tell you what you want to know, take me to Mrs. Noodnik. I'll tell her I belong to Troubles McTavish, and I want him to stop calling and talking dirty at all times of the night and day.”

“You'd do that to
me
?” demanded Noodnik. “A peaceable, decent guy who'd never hurt a fly. Except for the candied ones in Aisle Seven, that is.”

“You heard me,” said Belle.

“But what am I going to do with a dozen pickled bats' wings?” complained Noodnik.

“You're a clever man,” said Mallory. “You'll think of something. Now my information, please?”

“You know where that new zillion-dollar building is, the one populated by all the rich divorcées and widows with no taste?”

“Are you talking about Frump Tower?” asked Mallory.

“Where else?” said Noodnik.

“On Fifth Avenue, right?” said the detective.

“Right. The fancy gift shop there sells elephant-shaped chocolate marshmallow cookies.”

“Anyone else?”

“Do they sell anyone else?” said Noodnik. “How the hell do I know?”

“Does anyone else sell the cookies?”

“Not that I've been able to find. Buy the bats' wings and I'll spend another day looking.”

“By tomorrow afternoon it'll be too late,” said Mallory.

“Then we're done, and I can go back to making an honest living?”

“Well, we're done, anyway.”

“Okay—and thanks for not bringing the cat-thing this time,” said Noodnik. “She's always so disruptive.”

Which was when Mallory discovered that Felina was nowhere to be seen. He made a beeline to the fish section, found her reaching into a tank where Noodnik kept his prize South Dakota Fighting Fish, pulled her away, and headed for the door.

“She ate seventy-three fish, Mallory,” said Noodnik as Mallory was walking out. “I'll add it to your tab.”

Mallory stopped and stared at the grocer. “Seymour, I've never seen more than six fish in that tank.”

“Today is the commencement of the breeding season,” replied Noodnik. “They multiply like crazy. Seventy-three.”

“Mallory, have we got time to call Mrs. Noodnik?” asked Belle.

“I suppose so,” said the detective.

“How many fish?” said Belle.

“Two,” said Noodnik.

Mallory smiled and walked out the door with Felina, followed by Jeeves and Joe.

“Welcome to the team, Belle,” he said as the turned left and headed toward Fifth Avenue.

C
HAPTER
12

11:20
PM
–11:51
PM

Some people said it was a seventy-three-story monument to bad taste. Others said that was an understatement.

It was the glittering self-proclaimed crown jewel of Fifth Avenue, a mostly shining needle piercing the Manhattan sky with an outer epidermis of polished (and occasionally tarnished) brass, a metal the architect seemed to have fallen in love with. The interior decorator, on the other hand, appeared to have an ongoing affair with red flocked wallpaper and cheap Oriental rugs. The shops, selling everything from tasteless lingerie to fake furs to designer knockoffs, all of which could be purchased for a third of the asking price on the Internet or a few blocks away in the garment district, did not seem out of place…and neither did the residents.

The builder, who had abandoned his first four wives in pursuit of younger and cheaper bimbos with more impressive silicon implants, was finally visited by an enormous sense of guilt at just about the same time his erectile dysfunction pills finally stopped working. He declared that the policy of the Tower would be to rent only to widows, divorcées, and single women over the age of forty. In fact, its official name was the Brass Edifice, but the press and public got one look at the residents and promptly dubbed it the Frump Tower, a name that stuck despite one lawsuit on the part of the builder and seventeen more brought by various residents. The lawsuits stopped only when the Manhattan press started describing the plaintiffs with a nasty relish usually reserved for Republican politicians and the Boston Red Sox.

As Mallory and his group approached the garish front entrance, the detective noticed two liveried guards bowing obsequiously to a rather dumpy woman who entered ahead of them.

“She must be someone very important,” whispered Jeeves.

“I think probably the most important thing about her is that she pays her rent on time and her checks don't bounce,” replied Mallory.

The doormen paid no attention as Mallory approached, and remained motionless except to shoot Felina a pair of disapproving glances.

The entire ground floor, as well as the mezzanine, was filled with shops that made every effort to appear exclusive. Most failed miserably. Which is not to say that there were no unique shops (all of which preferred to call themselves “shoppes”), but rather that they were usually unique for the wrong reasons.

The first store they passed was a rental agency, and it rented just a single commodity: butlers. It differed from most of its competitors—Mallory was inclined to think
all
of its competitors, but this Manhattan had conditioned him never to think in absolutes—in that the butlers it was renting were displayed in the store's windows. Not photos of them, or models, but the actual butlers, all standing at attention except for the occasional twitch of an eyebrow or the wrinkle of a nose.

Take Frothingham home with you
, said a sign next to a balding butler.
He's brave, loyal, always laughs at your jokes, promises to pinch you when no one's looking, and hardly ever passes out from exhaustion. $75.00 a day takes him away.

Oglethorpe's the butler for you
, said another sign next to another butler.
Charming, articulate, mixes a dynamite vodka martini, death and taxes on dirty carpets and smudged windows, and he's always there with an intimate suggestion whenever your visitors are close enough to overhear.

Try Reginald!
claimed a third sign, this one next to an underweight butler who had clearly seen better days, if not decades.
He cooks, he cleans, he'll scrub your back in the shower, he'll read
Fanny Hill
aloud to you while you're in bed, and best of all, you can feed him for less than $5.00 a day!

“I want that one,” said Felina, pointing to Reginald.

“No you don't,” said Mallory.

“Why not?” she asked curiously.

“You're a growing girl, and he'd barely make dessert,” answered the detective.

“Then get me two of him,” she said after a moment's thought.

“Let's concentrate on finding the cookies,” said Mallory, moving on to the next store, which specialized in selling and delivering greeting and holiday cards. There was a huge display of valentine cards in the window, and a discreet
sign noting that there was no postage needed because obviously the cards would never leave the building, and delivery could be made within five minutes of the seller receiving a phone call telling him which apartment to deliver them to.

“Now you're
sure
you can deliver them at precisely eleven forty-five tonight?” a dumpy middle-aged woman was asking the man behind the counter.

“Absolutely,” he assured her.

“That's seventeen valentines, all addressed to me?”

“Right,” said the man. “Six from Secret Admirer, seven from Lovelorn in Brooklyn, three from You Know Who, and one with just a question mark for a signature.”

“Okay,” said the woman, slapping a pair of fifty-dollar bills on the counter. “I'd better get back to my mahjong game.” She lowered her voice. “They think I'm in the bathroom.”

“It'll be our secret,” the man assured her as she left the store and headed to an elevator.

“Sad,” said Belle, from within Mallory's lapel pocket. “Very sad.” Then: “Thank God I found you before I was like that.”

Mallory looked from the cell phone to the woman and back to the phone. “You were never going to be like that.”

“I know,” said Belle. “It was fated that we should meet and spend all eternity together.”

“Do you have a second topic of conversation?” asked Mallory.

“Sex.”

“Forget it.”

They passed a bookstore that sold nothing but
Cliff's Notes
and
Reader's Digest
, a dress store that had meticulously removed the first digit from their dress sizes, so that sizes fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen miraculously became four, six, and eight, and a florist who sold only artificial flowers (and whose slogan was: “You're a busy woman of the world. Why buy something that needs constant care, and which you must eventually throw out?”).

“I don't like the way some of these women are looking at me,” growled Joe as a trio of residents passed by.

“Like you're intruding?” asked Mallory.

“Like they
wish
I'd intrude,” complained Joe. “One of them even blew me a kiss!”

“It could be worse,” said Jeeves. “See that gray-haired one in the print dress and the shawl?”

“Yes.”

“She whispered something to me as she walked by.”

“What?” asked Joe.

“It was so filthy I can't repeat it out loud,” said Jeeves.

“That's okay,” said Belle. “You can whisper it to me.”

“Now
that's
interesting,” said Joe, who was staring at Jeeves. “I've never seen a gremlin blush before.”

“Are you sure you don't want to tell us about it?” persisted Belle. “Some obscene propositions are better shared.”

Jeeves shook his head. “Besides, it was a physical impossibility.”

“Don't be so sure,” said Belle. “I majored in human geometry. Just whisper it to me and I'll tell you if it can be done, and if I don't know, why, my Sugar Daddy here and I will find some private alley or storeroom and field-test it.”

“One more remark like that and you're back in the pants pocket.”

“Closer My God to Thee,” intoned Belle.

“And one more like
that
and I give you to Felina.”

“After everything we've been to each other?” she demanded.

“You heard me.”

“Wait till you turn down one of these frumps and she hollers ‘Rape!'” said Belle. “Maybe I'll testify and maybe I won't.”

“I'll just have to live with the doubt,” said Mallory.

“We could sneak off for an hour and then everyone would
know
you're too tired to rape anyone,” said the phone.

“You're all heart,” replied Mallory.

“Not
all
,” said Belle seductively. “Want me to prove it?”

“Not just now.”

They passed a second bookstore, this one dealing exclusively in paranormal romances—in fact, the manager was in the process of ejecting a woman who'd had the temerity to refer to them as vampire sex books—and
since it dealt in such a rigidly defined commodity, there were only about fifteen thousand different titles in the store.

Posters announced the newest dramas, especially produced for residents of the Tower. There were
Hamlet
,
Macbeth
,
A Long Day's Journey into Night
, and
Our Town
, each condensed to a thirty-minute one-act play so as not to bore anyone. (
Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down
, with a larger orchestra than the original Broadway production, was of course playing at its normal length.)

The busiest shop of all was one that seemed to specialize in lingerie exclusively designed for the Tower's residents. There were padded bras, waist cinchers, corsets that looked like they'd be more at home in medieval torture chambers, and the pièce de résistance—a row of funhouse mirrors that took fifty pounds off anyone who stood in front of them.

“Can't keep 'em in stock,” confided a salesgirl to Mallory, who was staring into the store.

“Can't keep what?” he asked. “The bras or the waist cinchers?”

She chuckled. “The mirrors. We must sell an average of twenty a day.”

“Makes sense,” said Mallory. “Your clientele consists of a bunch of overweight residents, I take it?”

“And a bunch of underweight ones, too,” she said. “But of course they buy different mirrors.”

“Let's stick with the overweight ones for a minute,” said Mallory. “I presume a lot of them have a taste for candies and cookies?”

“Who doesn't?”

“If I wanted to buy a chocolate marshmallow cookie without leaving the building, where would I go?”

“Probably to Satan's, up on the seventy-third floor.”

“That's the top floor, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Everything between the mezzanine and the penthouse is condominiums, but the penthouse has a restaurant, a bar, a couple of other things…and of course Satan's.”

“Thanks,” said Mallory, heading off toward an elevator.

“Uh…sir?” she called after him.

“Yes?”

“They're pretty liberal-minded up there,” she said. “They'll serve goblins and gremlins, and I think they'll even tolerate a cat-thing as long as you keep her under control.”

“But?” said Mallory. “I sense a ‘but' in there.”

“But your cell phone just winked at our janitor.”

“Belle?” said Mallory.

“I was just kidding around,” said Belle innocently. “You know you're the only one for me.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Mallory told the salesgirl. He pulled Belle out of his pocket. “Felina, hang on to this.” He tossed the phone to the cat-girl.

“Suddenly I'm a
this
?” demanded Belle. “I'm not even a
her
?” Her voice softened. “I was just fooling around, killing time, honest I was. I couldn't even tell you anything about him, except that he has brown hair, is probably about five foot ten, maybe one hundred and sixty-five pounds, blue eyes, straight teeth with no more than five fillings on the lower molars, and his suit was starting to wear out at the elbows. Oh…and he hasn't shaved since yesterday.”

“Maybe
he
needs a phone,” said Mallory.

“
No!
” screamed Belle. “Just put me back in your pants pocket, and pay no attention to my piteous, body-wrenching sobs.”

“Deal,” said Mallory, taking the phone back from Felina and putting it in a pocket. “Now let's get this show on the road.” He led Felina, Jeeves, and Joe to an elevator, where the obviously annoyed operator was speaking on his cell phone.

“Come on!” he was saying. “You're my union steward. You have to stick up for me.” He listened for a moment. “I'm telling you: I goosed her twice, and she only tipped me once. I want to make an official complaint. If I'm going to go around pinching and goosing women for free, they're going to be women
I
want to touch, not the frumps who live in this joint…Yeah, you bet your ass I will!”

He put the phone in a pocket and turned to face his passengers.

“I remember when being a member of a union
meant
something,” he said.

“I remember when elevator operators said ‘Which floor?'” replied Mallory.

“Okay, okay—which floor?”

“The seventy-third.”

“Is it all right with you if I just hit the seventy-third,” came the sarcastic reply, “or do you want me to say ‘Going up' too?”

“Just hit it before
I
hit
you
!” snapped Joe.

“You think I'm scared of a goblin?” said the operator contemptuously.

Joe screamed and aimed a karate kick at the side of the elevator, which caved in. “
Are
you?”

“How did you know?” said the operator, promptly pressing the button for the seventy-third floor. “I'm sorry if I offended, sir,” he continued. “I'll pinch your cat-thing for free if you'd like.”

“Why not?” said Mallory as Felina hissed and spat at the operator. “You'll still have one hand left for pushing buttons.” He smiled at the operator's discomfiture. “Maybe we'll just stand still, be quiet, and ride up in silence.”

“That's a very good suggestion, sir,” said the operator as the elevator began ascending. “I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact—”

“Joe,” said Mallory, “pull your sword out, and if he finishes that sentence, cut his tongue off.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence, and a moment later they stepped out onto the seventy-third floor of the Frump Tower.