Pulp Ink
Page 10
Then Mrs. Blue would start spying. She’d keep Barry off school so he could walk the streets with her looking for Mr. Blue and “fallen women.” When it got really bad she’d call the police and say that her husband’s fancy women were trying to burn the house down. Or there’d be a fight with someone she’d accused of making the two backed beast with her husband. And so she’d be sectioned again and given the old EST. Then she’d come out of hospital and they’d move home and everything would be okay until it started again.
When Mr. Blue died of asbestosis, Barry and his mother were left with a massive wad of insurance and compensation money. So, Barry gave up his job at the Thermos flask factory to take care of his sick Ma.
She didn’t look that sick now though. She was dolled up to the nines, wearing a red PVC dress and a leopard skin coat. It seemed as if it had done her and Barry a world of good when she’d moved out.
“Did our Barry send you to look for me?” she said.
“Aye.”
“Does he know where I am?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you going to tell him, then?”
“That’s my job, Mrs. Blue. I’m a private eye now,” I said.
She finished her cigarette, put it out, and lit up another one in a flash.
“How’s he doing?”
I took out a bottle of water and glugged it down in one.
“Not too bad,” I said. “In fact, he’s getting married later today.”
She started to laugh.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, really,” I said.
“He told you to tell me that didn’t he? To get me to come back.”
“Naw, it’s true!”
Mrs. Blue made a tutting sound, stood up and walked back into the caravan.
“Piss off back to your comics, son,” she said as she slammed the door.
***
The turnout at Barry and Lightning’s wedding wasn’t exactly Charles and Diana standard, apparently. It wasn’t even Charles and Camilla standard. Just Harry Shand and a couple of booze hounds. But the low attendance was more than compensated for by the appearance of Mrs. Blue bursting into the registry office brandishing a golf club and screaming at Lightning, calling her a number of variations of the word slut.
This resulted in Lightning giving Mrs. Blue a gut punch which had her doubled over and puking. Barry then grabbed Lightning by the throat and continued Mrs. Blue’s dialogue theme as he tried to throttle her. And then Lightning turned to Barry and punched him in the jaw, knocking him clean out. Which was what I meant by Lightning striking twice.
Not that I saw any of this, of course. I was feeling a tad delicate after my meeting with Mrs. Blue so I decided to go back home and have a kip before phoning Barry and telling him of his mother’s whereabouts.
Not the best idea, in retrospect.
***
The evening was melting into night and dark, malignant clouds were spreading themselves across the sky. I pulled down the metal shutters and locked up Las Vegas Amusements as a battered yellow taxi cab spluttered to a halt in front of the arcade. Living above an amusement arcade was hardly ideal but my landlord, Mr. Raymond, give me a cheap deal as long as I locked up the place and did the bingo when one of the callers rang in sick.
I shuffled into the back seat and was attacked by the overpowering aroma of air freshener and blow.
“Where to?” said the taxi driver, a constipated-looking rat boy with a checked Burberry baseball cap and a crackly shell suit.
“Belle Vue Cemetery,” I said.
“Dead center of town, eh?” said the driver as the taxi coughed itself to life.
In less than ten minutes, we were outside the Belle Vue Cemetery’s wrought iron gates. I paid the driver and popped into Costcutter for a can of wife beater to get me through the morning and a bunch of flowers. I downed half of it as I stood at the counter. The tall Sikh that served me paid me no heed as I pushed the can into my jacket pocket.
As I rushed into the graveyard I bumped into the gangling form of Reverend Abbott, pulling up his fly as he stepped out of a Portaloo. He nodded and we walked toward the grave together.
Mrs. Blue was inconsolable although the big ginger Welshmen next to her was doing his best. Harry Shand, complete with a black eye and an arm in a sling stood scowling. Then, Reverend Abbott, his long hair flowing in the cold north wind began his eulogy.
“There comes a time in every young man’s life,” he said, his long arms stretched wide, “when he knows that he will never be The Fonz. Shortly after that realization it becomes clear that he won’t even be Richie Cunningham. And, so, then, he has to make a choice. Will he be Ralph Malph or Potsie Weber?”
I tuned out after that. Abbott’s frankly barmy sermons were as famous as his acid flashbacks. It was clear where he was going, though. Poor Barry wasn’t one of life’s lucky ones.
A couple of days after he split up from Lightning and his mother moved back in with him, there was knock at the door. Spammy Spampinato’s brother, Little Joey, stood there with a baseball bat which he proceeded to use to redecorate the Blue household. Harry Shand, who was visiting, tried to intervene but it was no use. Little Joey Spampinato was only known as “Little” due to his age rather than his size. And once again Barry got in the way. He was dead before he got to the hospital.
Abbott finished his rambling eulogy and we all threw dirt and flowers on the coffin.
“Do you want to say something Peter?” said Shand, as rain began to pour down in sheets.
I shuffled around and then took the half empty can of Stella from my jacket pocket.
“Here’s to Barry Blue,” I said. “Unlucky in love and not much cop at cards, either.”
I finished off the can and headed off. It was almost opening time.
-
Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D. Brazill was born in England and is on the lam in Poland.His stuff has appeared in loads of classy magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8. He writes an irregular column for Pulp Metal Magazine and his short story collection, 13 Shots Of Noir, will be published in 2011.His blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?, is here: http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/.
A Night at the Royale
By Chris F. Holm
The man in the black gabardine suit gritted his teeth and tried in vain to ignore the idiot Americans who sat behind him in the otherwise empty theater. They’d stumbled in five minutes prior – a good twenty minutes after the feature had begun – giggling like schoolgirls and reeking of patchouli and marijuana. In the man’s youth, such tardiness was not permitted; when he was a boy, if you wanted to catch a film in Amsterdam, you were to be seated before the lights dimmed or you were not to be seated at all. But then, these were different times, as the dull glow of the No Smoking signs peppered throughout the theater reminded him – and these imbeciles were as unfamiliar with Dutch culture as with the inside of a shower.
All they knew of Amsterdam they’d doubtless learned from movies. Movies they’d evidently talked through.
Of course, he really should have known better. The Royale was one of the oldest cinemas in all of Amsterdam, but it sat just across the canal from De Wallen, the city’s red light district. De Wallen is the nexus of the city’s drug and sex trade both, and no doubt the point of origin of these two cackling, dreadlocked simpletons. But the Royale’s theme nights were often too good to pass up, and tonight’s was no exception – a triple-bill of the finest exploitation the Seventies had to offer: Foxy Brown, Death Race 2000, and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The handbills dubbed the evening “Royale with Cheese.” Perhaps these two came expecting burgers.
By and large, the hellbent-on-revenge Pam Grier and punchy Motown soundtrack should have been enough to drown out all but their most clamorous of comments, but the pudgy one – he of the ratty Phish T-shirt and cargo shorts – kept ramming his Birkenstocks into the man in black’s seat back, jerking his attention away from the screen. His
friend – a beanpole of a young man in a coarse hooded Mexican pullover and a sparse dusting of reddish-blond beard – did not seem similarly jimmy-leg afflicted. His bare feet dangled unmoving just centimeters from the man’s face, the boy’s ankles resting crossed atop the seat back beside him. His feet smelled of sweat and bore thick calluses, darkened by years of ground-in dirt. A faded tattoo the size of a two-Euro coin graced the outside of one leg – an Aztec sun inside which danced a cartoon bear.
The man in black told himself they were harmless buffoons, uncultured and unwise. That their offenses were not intended to be personal. That he should exercise restraint, and should not respond as if their transgressions were intentional. For a time, at least, he was proud of his success in doing so – apart from a few withering glares cast over his shoulder whenever their inanity reached a fever pitch, he’d not engaged the two at all. And one could hardly begrudge him such glaring. Glaring, he told himself, was expected. It was what ordinary, civilized people did in situations such as these. The notion pleased him, for although the man in black thought himself an intelligent and cultured man, he knew he was not ordinary – nor was he civilized.
Reflecting on that evening – and its unfortunate conclusion – from some distance, the man in black felt he had done nothing wrong. He’d given them every opportunity to avoid their fate; it was not his fault if they ignored his generosity at every turn.
“Yo, Harvey,” said the fat one, kicking the man in black’s chair. “What’s your name?”
The man in black ignored him, instead focusing on Pam Grier strutting across the screen in her lime-green halter.
“Dude, why you asking his name if you already know it?” asked the beanpole.
“I’m not saying that’s his name. I called him Harvey ’cause that’s the dude who played Mr. Black in Reservoir Dogs. You know, Harvey Weinstein.”
“Keitel,” said the beanpole.
“Huh?” said the fat one.
“Not Weinstein, Keitel. Except not him neither, ’cause he was Mr. Blonde.”
“So who was Mr. Black?”
“Steve Buscemi.”
“Nah, Buscemi was Mr. Pink. ’Member, he thought it made him sound like some kinda Commie fairy.”
“Then who was Mr. Black?”
“I dunno… Sam Jackson?”
At that, the man in black could take no more. He turned around – slowly, but with purpose. Placid-faced until the moment he made his move, he slapped the beanpole’s ankles off the chair back, causing him to pitch forward in his seat. As the boy’s head swung toward the man in black, the man grabbed a handful of dreadlocks and yanked. The beanpole shrieked and fell to his knees, his gaze forced skyward as the man applied a little downward pressure. A wince of sudden pain showed beneath the boy’s pathetic beard.
The man in black leaned in close – so close he could smell the reek of beanpole’s breath. “There wasn’t one,” he said, in lightly accented English.
“What?!” the beanpole squealed.
“I said, there was no Mr. Black. Keitel was White. Buscemi was Pink. Madsen was Blonde. Roth, Bunker, and Tarantino were Orange, Blue, and Brown, and Samuel Jackson wasn’t even in the fucking movie. And if you paid even the tiniest shred of attention to what Cabot told them at the outset, you’d know he was sick to death of all the hard-asses in his employ fighting over the Mr. Black moniker, so he took the option off the goddamn table. Now, are the two of you going to shut your fucking mouths and watch the movie, or are there any other notions you’d like me to disabuse you of?”
“We’re cool,” said the beanpole, his face twisted into a rictus of pain. The pudgy one just nodded.
“Excellent,” said the man in black. He released his grip on the beanpole’s hair and smoothed his suit-coat out with both hands. Then he straightened his tie and returned his attention to the movie, hopeful that this interruption would be their last.
It wasn’t.
It took a whole fifteen minutes for them to bother him again. This time, he’d heard it coming – the two of them whispered amongst themselves like schoolgirls, first about what a goddamn psycho that dude in front of them was, and then eventually, as their meager wits returned, about how badass the whole affair had been – like something out of a movie, they agreed. Once they fit the experience into its proper box – named it something they could understand – it was only a matter of time until they were emboldened to try again.
This time, it was the beanpole who spoke first.
“So, you’re like some kinda serious Tarantino fan, huh?” he asked, leaning over the same seat back where his ankles had rested until the man in black removed them. They hadn’t returned since.
“I am a fan of the cinema in general,” the man replied with a resigned sigh. Clearly, enjoying a film tonight was not in the cards. “In my line of work, one finds one has a great deal of free time.”
“And what line of work is that?” asked the pudgy one.
“I’m a consultant,” said the man, the non-answer/lie rolling off his tongue with ease, “a fixer, you might say. People hire me when they have problems to take care of. I make those problems go away.”
“You got lots of free time doing that?” The beanpole, incredulous. “Seems to me, everybody’s got problems – enough to keep a guy who fixes problems pretty fucking busy.”
“Ah, but most people cannot afford my services. And I’m paid handsomely enough for them I’ve the luxury of only working when I see fit.”
“Oh.”
Silence followed, but it was a pregnant silence, and the man in black was not fooled into believing their interaction was over. Which was fine by him. Since their presence had forced him to abandon the notion of a night spent watching movies, he’d settled on another form of entertainment for the evening – one in which these two young men played a central role.
“So,” said the pudgy one, made brave by the fact their last interaction had not come to blows, “is it true what Vincent Vega said? Can you get an honest-to-God glass of beer at the movies here?”
The man in black smiled, showing too many teeth it seemed. The smile never touched his eyes. “Mr. Travolta spoke the truth. In fact, perhaps I could buy the two of you a round. Consider it an apology for my prior lapse in manners.”
“Dude, are you serious?”
“Deadly so,” was his reply.
He was back in minutes, carrying three pilsner glasses full of Amstel on a tray. They accepted theirs with glee, and greedily gulped them down. He purchased them another round – the same result. By the time the three of them stumbled out onto the street – the stars nearly as bright as the city lights, the crisp, cool air rustling the leaves of the elms that lined the canal – he’d learned quite a bit about his fair foreign friends. Most of it, of course, was useless to him, and would be soon forgotten – names, states of origin, the college they attended and their respective areas of study (horticulture, the tall one told him, and his cohort claimed an interest in pharmacology; the two were nothing if not consistent). But one bit of information he’d been quite interested in: the hotel at which they were staying.
The Hotel Mon Signor.
It was a modestly expensive affair not three blocks from where they stood – not quite the nicest the city had to offer, but far more respectable than he might have guessed from these two. Perhaps one or both of them come from money, and this hippie lifestyle they pretended at was no more than a rebellious phase. The man in black was shocked when they told him of their accommodations – the trusting duo supplying their room number with scarcely any prompting – though not entirely due to the dissonance between it and their mangy appearance. As it happened, he’d done a job at the Mon Signor that same night – only having decided upon the sturm und drang of tonight’s triple feature after cleaning up back at his flat and finding himself too energized by the day’s work for sleep to come. Such was often the case for the man in black – he was a man whose passion for his chosen field was matched only by his apt
itude for it.
It was nearly three a.m. when he bid the boys adieu – they stumbling west along Sint Jannstraat, he following the canal north. At the first cross street, he turned left, his drunken stumble giving way to a more compact, contained gait, almost military in its efficiency. He fetched a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his overcoat and set one afire, his fingers deft despite the lambskin gloves he wore – gloves almost but not quite justified by the hint of autumn in the air.
Two left turns later, and he was back to where the three of them had parted. He’d made a stop – a brief errand to a twenty-four-hour druggist – and walked with no great hurry; by now, he thought, the boys should be ensconced in their hotel beds.
Just where he wanted them.
Before entering the hotel, he turned up the collar of his overcoat, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets as though hunched against the cold. He needn’t have bothered. There was no one on duty at the front desk, and the camera coverage in the lobby was obvious and easily avoided.
As he’d done once that day already, the man in black bypassed the Mon Signor’s sole elevator, instead opting for the stairs. He took them all the way to the fifth and top floor. There was only one room on the fifth floor: the penthouse suite. Its door sat opposite the elevator in the center of the hall; at the other end was a doorway to a second staircase. The corridor was as quiet and empty as the lobby’d been.
Quiet as death, he thought.
Though, as he has cause to know, not all deaths are quiet.
The man in black removed a device from his coat pocket that was half molded-plastic box and half swipe-card, the two connected by a thick braid of multicolored wires. Ignoring the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the knob, he inserted the swipe-card into the lock, and clicked a button on the plastic box, unconcerned with being interrupted at this hour while his equipment did its work. After all, he was certain not a soul was stirring on this floor but him.