The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2)

by Norwood, Shane

  ***

  Crispin’s eyelids started to flutter, as if he had an eyelash in his eye or he was giving an impromptu performance of the Mikado. He assumed an imperious facial expression and snapped his fingers in the direction of the maître d’. They say that looks can speak volumes, and the maître d’s contained a whole tome at least, but Crispin must have forgotten his reading glasses.

  “Hey. You,” he said, “tell this peasant with the fiddle to play some proper Russian music.”

  “I think you’ll find that Prokofiev was a Russian, sir.” The maître d’s voice had the frost of a Siberian winter in it, and the way he pronounced the word sir, he may as well have said “you fat twat.”

  “Don’t you get uppity with me, boy. I’ll have you know I’m a professional musician. I want to hear one of those Cossack songs. Like in Taras Bulbous.”

  “I believe sir means Taras Bulba.”

  “Sir knows perfectly well what he means.”

  The maître d’ smiled. His eyes glinted. “But of course, sir,” he said, nodding to the violinist.

  Asia was away with the faeries, but still sober enough to see what was coming. She went to the bar to pay the bill, while Crispin went to the bathroom to clean up after he had slipped face-first into the cheese trolley while trying to do the Ukrainian Hopak dance and slathered brie and gorgonzola all over his kisser and matted Roquefort into the fur of his new hat. She caught the attention of the maître d’.

  “I’m so sorry about my friend,” she said. “He’s not usually like this. He had a bad experience a while back, and it affects him sometimes.”

  “That is quite all right, madam. I understand perfectly,” he replied in a tone of voice just a shade too pleasant, which Asia was a little too tipsy to pick up on.

  Crispin scraped the cheese out of the fur of his coat with serviette, as best he could, and washed his face and hands. A valet tried to brush him off, but Crispin brushed him off.

  While Crispin was looking in the mirror, the door was forcibly bumped open, and a man in a wheelchair propelled himself into the washroom. He was wearing a red headscarf, tied gypsy-style, and a fur pelisse over his shoulders, and dark glasses with big pear-drop lenses. He was heavily bearded, with a pendant walrus mustache. The beard was Barbary black, but the long hair that fell from under the bandana was polar bear white. Crispin stared, despite himself.

  The valet seemed to know the man. He rushed over and helped him to stand, and assisted him to walk to the urinal. The man could walk, but he moved in a strange, robotic kind of way as if it pained him to do so. As he relieved himself, the man looked up and caught sight of Crispin staring at his reflection. There was something about the man’s movement that was spiderlike and mesmeric. Crispin wanted to avert his eyes, but he couldn’t. The man slowly raised his hand to his face and took hold of the corners of his mustache, like an old silent movie villain. He lifted the hair. Crispin cried out and rushed from the bathroom.

  He hurried to the table and sat down heavily, and was about to speak when the maître d’ came over carrying a tray with two glasses on it, filled with a rose-colored liqueur.

  “We didn’t order this,” Crispin said archly.

  “This is a little gift, for our esteemed guests, sir. La spécialité de la maison. The specialty of the house.”

  “Oh,” Crispin said, somewhat mollified.

  The maître d’ stood watching over them with a vulpine smile, so they felt compelled to drink down the concoction. He bowed politely as he collected the glasses and walked away.

  “Asia, you’ll never guess what I just saw in the bathroom,” Crispin blurted out once the maître d’ had left.

  “What?”

  “It was awful,” Crispin said, “and so embarrassing. I mean, I almost barfed. That poor man.”

  “Who?” Asia said.

  “A man I just saw in the bathroom.”

  “What was wrong with him?”

  “He had no lips.”

  ***

  The officers were relieved when Major Oblov told them that this wasn’t strictly speaking official police business and that they could wait in the cars, not that they were planning on going in, anyway. There is insubordination and then there is suicide, and in terms of consequences of actions, Khuy Zalupa had Major “Sloth” Oblov beat hands-down. Not that Oblov was planning on any heroics himself. As far as he was concerned he had pointed out the house and his duty was done, and he was staying in the car too.

  Agent White turned to Baby Joe. “Maybe you better wait in the car as well. I’m gonna go in and check it out.”

  “Dream on,” Baby Joe said. “You know there’s no way I’m letting you go in there alone.”

  Agent White conceded to herself that she was all right with it, even if it wasn’t right, and anyway, she had no authority to stop him. It wasn’t that she was scared to go in by herself, but there was something about Baby Joe Young that was reassuring. He made you feel safe. Field agents weren’t supposed to feel like that, or even feel the need to feel like that, but she was glad he was there.

  And where was that asshole Agent Black? He’d split after the Bar Strelka, saying he had something he wanted to do, and never showed up at the rendezvous. What could have happened to the creep in two hours? They’d waited nearly an hour for the jerk. She always knew there was something chickenshit about that guy. Well, there was going to be some high-level shit flying about over this when they got back stateside, that was for damn sure.

  Baby Joe asked Oblov for some heat. Oblov told him that under no circumstances would a Russian police officer hand over his service weapon to a civilian who was not legally entitled to bear arms in the state of Russia, and Baby Joe gave Major Oblov one hundred dollars, and Major Oblov told Baby Joe that he was thereby deputized, and for ten bucks he would throw in some spare ammo.

  The house was dark and quiet. The front gate was slightly ajar, but there was nothing to indicate that the lock had been forced, and the suspicion arose in the mind of Agent White that it was either an invitation or a setup. She turned to whisper to Baby Joe, “Okay. You stay here. I’m gonna—shit!”

  Baby Joe was already through the gate and running at an oblique angle up to the left side of the main door, where he waited, listening. Agent White followed and stationed herself to the right of the door.

  “You asshole,” she whispered.

  Baby Joe held a finger to his lips and indicated the door with a nod. It, too, was slightly open, although no light or sound came from within. They waited. After five minutes, during which nothing punctuated the silence or the darkness, Agent White assumed the port arms position with her revolver and nodded to Baby Joe, and Baby Joe kicked the door open, and Agent White stepped quickly through and flattened herself against the wall. Baby Joe followed and moved over to a position underneath the window. A faint light came in from the street outside, but otherwise the house was in complete obscurity. They heard a small sound from across the room. Agent White leveled her weapon in the direction of the noise. She held her breath. She could feel her heart beating in the darkness. She could feel the presence of Baby Joe as if the fact of his being there affected the very air pressure itself.

  A voice spoke. Agent White started. She almost squeezed off.

  “Brooklyn,” the voice said.

  “Dodgers,” said Agent White.

  “Somebody turn the fuckin’ lights on.”

  Agent White reached behind her and scrabbled against the wall until she found the light switch and flicked it. A massive, colored chandelier burst into light, making them squint.

  Agent Black stood across the room, grinning.

  “You fucking useless honky peckerwood prick,” Agent White said. “I nearly shot your sorry ass. Where the fuck were you?”

  “Hey, I got delayed, all right? You weren’t at the meet, so I figured you’d already left.”

  “When you two get done, you might want to take a look at this,” Baby Joe said.

  Nobody spoke,
nor did they look at each other, as they surveyed the scene before them. An enormous dog lay dead, and its skull had been smashed or crushed and small gobbets of its brain were spattered on the floor and in its fur. One of its eyes had popped out and hung suspended and dripping against its muzzle.

  A man they did not recognize, but who was huge and of an already-frightful appearance, which his several grievous wounds had done nothing to improve, lay facedown. There were bullet holes in his back and legs, and his cheek was torn so that a flap of skin hung down and his teeth were exposed. He had an ear missing.

  On the floor was a stiletto. The blade was broken. There was a scrape in the doorway and Agent White and Baby Joe spun around with their guns raised, but it was only Major Oblov, staring open-mouthed, as if he had never seen a dead person before.

  Agent Black went to pick up the knife and Oblov said not to touch it and not to disturb the crime scene, and Agent Black told him to shut the fuck up and stop being such a jackoff, and Major Oblov shut the fuck up and stopped being such a jackoff. He walked up to where Zalupa lay and knelt down beside him, wondering when the Americans would leave so that he could go through the pockets.

  “Is that there hamburger the Zalupa character?” Agent Black asked.

  Oblov nodded. “Yobany v rot. I never thought anybody could do this to him.”

  “Anyone can die,” Agent White said.

  “Everybody does,” said Agent Black.

  “Amen to that,” said Agent White. She studied the corpse. Even in death there was something scary about him.

  Agent Black examined the knife. Baby Joe was over at the bar. He had poured himself a bourbon. The two agents wandered over, followed by Oblov. He filled glasses and passed them around. Oblov kept glancing at Zalupa, as if he couldn’t quite believe that the man could be dead.

  “What do you make of this?” Agent Black said, handing the knife to Baby Joe.

  Baby Joe set his drink down, picked up the weapon, and looked at it. The blade was snapped off clean, close to the shank.

  “Probably dig the blade out the stiff, or maybe the dog.”

  He held it up to the light and looked at it closely. The letters E and R were visible on the remaining portion of the blade. Baby Joe handed it back and picked up his drink.

  “So?” Agent Black said.

  “See the blade? See the letters? ER. When you dig out the rest of it you’ll find GERB. Gerber.” Baby Joe downed his drink and walked toward the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “That knife was made in Portland, Oregon.”

  Agent Black shrugged. He slugged back his own drink and started to follow Baby Joe. He turned to Agent White. “You comin’?”

  “You go ahead. I’ll be right out. I need a moment.”

  Agent Black smirked and walked away. She watched him go. Her eyes followed him all the way to the door. Without Oblov, how had he known where Zalupa’s place was?

  ***

  If you want to know what is in a Moscow Special, go to Johannes Places on Tverskoy Boulevard and call the maître d’ “boy.” Crispin was feverish, in a cold sweat, incapacitated by stomach cramps, and was knelt over the toilet bowl in his suite vomiting a rather pretty pink color, with a towel wrapped diaper-style around his backside to catch the involuntary liquid squirts that accompanied every heave of his belly.

  Asia was on the balcony watching the strangely balletic spectacle of the traffic negotiating a circle in the swirling snow while pale lights gleamed on the boles of the stark, bare trees. By the bed, the student that they had hired was diligently checking names from a list of hotels as she called them one by one asking to speak to Mr. Jordan Young. Asia herself had called the embassy, but the answering machine had been less than cooperative. She knew if they didn’t get any results from the hotels, she was going to have to start with the hospitals, and then…She couldn’t bring herself to think about it, and the desperation was beginning to reassert itself. She was feeling claustrophobic. Despite the dire weather, she decided she needed to get out.

  She called to Crispin, “Crispin. I need to get out for a while. I won’t be long. Will you be okay?”

  Crispin gave her a feeble half-wave over his shoulder, and launched into another spasm. Asia looked at the student, who shrugged, shook her head, and made a little circle motion with her hand. Asia nodded and walked out. She was wearing Crispin’s coat, which reached to her ankles, and his hat, which was falling over her eyes.

  As she got to the revolving door, she pulled the collar up around her ears. A strand of fur poked her in the eyes, and she pushed her face into the lining to try to brush it out. That was why, as she negotiated the revolving door, she did not pay attention to the big black woman and the small white man who were in the opposite sector, nor did she notice the compact, dangerous-looking man with the face like granite in winter who was in the sector behind them, and it was also why Baby Joe did not recognize her.

  ***

  Monsoon’s skin was parchment-dry, and he was giving off heat like a radiator. His breath came in short staccato gasps. He lay in the shade under a tree that he did not recognize. It had huge, waxy, dark green fronds. Something crawled through the undergrowth toward him. He could see the movement, but he could not see the thing, because it kept changing color. Black in the shadows, white in the sunlight, red in the flowers, green in the leaves, and dark olive brown as it crawled onto his hand. As it crawled up his torso it began to flicker, like broken neon—garish, sickly, unearthly colors, vivid and alarming. It reached his chest and looked at him. It was hideous and beautiful at the same time, a tiny dragon with eyes that rolled on the sides of its head, moving independently of each other, seeing all, everything and everywhere at the same time. Its claws rasped on his bare skin. It turned to the color of coffee. And it began to grow. Or Monsoon began to shrink. The claws began to dig into him. Sweat suddenly burst from Monsoon’s skin and flowed in rivulets down his sides, cold and clammy against the heat of his skin. The thing was huge, or he was tiny, and it swiveled its eyes and brought them both to bear on him like the guns of a battleship concentrating its fire. The creature opened its mouth. It was cavernous, gaping, a giant sucking red tunnel, pulsating and moist. Suddenly a tongue flashed out. It was monstrous and sticky and incredibly strong. It wrapped around Monsoon like the tentacle of the kraken, a great squid inexorably dragging him to his doom. He struggled, but he was powerless to resist. The beacon eyes with their tiny emotionless pupils beamed in on him as the tongue dragged him between the salivating jaws.

  Monsoon screamed. He sat up. He was dripping and bathed in sweat, gasping as if drowning, and his eyes were walled and panicked, like a fire-scared horse.

  Yevgeny grabbed him forcefully by the shoulders and pushed him back down onto the bed. “Lie down, my friend. Rest. You will be all right now.”

  “What?” Monsoon said. “Where the fuck am I? What happened to me? There was a thing. A lizard, a big motherfucking lizard. It…”

  “It was a dream, nothing more. You had a fever. It has broken. Soon you will be strong again. I will bring borscht.”

  “Fuck borscht,” said Monsoon. “Er, sorry, bro, no offense, but you wouldn’t happen to have a drop of something a bit harder, would you?”

  Yevgeny grinned, showing his gold teeth. “This is Russia, idiot. What do you think?”

  Monsoon tried to sit up as Yevgeny went to get the bottle.

  ***

  There is a case recorded in Africa of a Cape buffalo being shot fourteen times with a .450 nitro express, but it didn’t die. It refused. It acted in defiance of all recognized laws of mortality, and it lived until it had stalked its hunter through the bush and stomped him into hyena bait. The intern at the Moscow mortuary where Khuy Zalupa was laid out on a slab was not up to speed on his history of epic African animal survival stories, nor was he aware of the exact circumstances of Zalupa’s demise, other than to assume it had something to do with eight bullet wounds of varying provenance, a four-inch sliver of stainless steel embe
dded in his abdomen and puncturing his large intestine, and a plethora of vicious bites inflicted by animal or animals unknown but, judging by the size of the teeth marks, either a Kodiak bear or a velociraptor.

  If the intern had been up to speed on his history of epic African animal survival stories he would not have been so surprised when the corpse suddenly resurrected itself, slid off the slab, took him by the throat and slammed his face into the wall, rendering him toothless and senseless, removed his clothes, put them on, and pushed through the double doors and out into the unhealthy green corridor.

  Khuy Zalupa also should have died that day, but his rage would not let him. His bestial fury compelled him to survive, and his lust for vengeance became a life force in itself.

  Chapter 13

  It started to get really dark, even though it was only early afternoon. The snow had stopped but the cold was intense, even colder than before. The people walked past with their shoulders hunched and their hands in their pockets. Everything was gray. The sky, the river, the buildings. The people. Asia did not know how far she had walked on her slow, brooding peregrination through the streets, but she suddenly realized she had no idea where she was, or how to get back to the hotel. Her thoughts were as somber and dark as the clouds that oppressed the city and threatened to suffocate her with their gloom. She was about to hail a taxi when she saw a light on the corner. A bright blue light—a splash of color in all that grimness. A splash of hope. She headed toward it. It was a bar. The blue light was a neon sign in the shape of a lizard. It had letters in Cyrillic and English. In English it read “The Chameleon Lounge.”