The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2)

by Norwood, Shane

  “What the fuck are ya waitin’ for?”

  “It don’t seem right, Roll.”

  “Fuckin’ shoot, asshole.”

  “Fuck it.” Hard D squeezed.

  Low Roll turned to him. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Low Roll put the glasses back to his eyes. “Yeah, well, shit. That might come back to bite us in the ass. Finish the job. No, wait.”

  “What?”

  “The nigger. He’s getting away with the dildo. Drop that cocksucker.”

  That was going to be different. That was going to be fun. A black guy against a black background—a running target, moving away, on a downward trajectory, in dodgy light. No fucking problem. Hard D aligned the sights on the back of Monsoon’s bobbing head, and let fly. The crack was surprisingly loud.

  ***

  The shooting stopped. The sounds reverberated into silence. The bell stilled, the echoes slowly resonating into nothing. Incredibly, Maurice Chevalier still sang. Thank heaven for little girls. And then a new sound: the sirens.

  Wally helped Baby Joe to his feet. Nightingale was still on the floor, nursing his broken hand. The light was feeble. Some of the candles hand been shot out, or knocked over, and those that remained glittered for the souls of the dead who lay twisted and contorted and heavy with the weight of all eternity, appearing in the gloom as strange, doomed beasts stranded on some alien shore.

  Low Roll and Hard D lay dead in each other’s prurient embrace, with Low Roll crushed under the weight of Hard D’s bulk. They were surrounded by broken stone, and a hideous, gaping gargoyle head leered at them from the cobbles, mocking the frailty and foolhardiness of man.

  “Ya right there, mate?” Wally said.

  Baby Joe grinned at him. “Yeah. Just my shoulder, and a few flesh wounds. I’ve been worse. I thought that might be you, you old bastard.”

  “Ya can’t give ol’ Wal the slip that easy, ya bladdy drongo. Sorry I’m a bit late. Some blokes downstairs didn’t wanna fucken let me in. Din’t like me togs, I reckon. ’Ad ter fucken convince ’em.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks, brother. Listen, you better split. The cops’ll be here soon.”

  “What about that bludger Monsoon? I reckon ’e’s made off with the goods.”

  “Can you catch him?”

  “Are a wombat’s bollocks fucken furry? Course I fucken can. Can you take care o’ the sheilas?”

  Baby Joe grinned again. “Never had a problem up to now.”

  “Right, then, I’ll be off, mate. ’E won’t get fucken far.”

  Baby Joe watched as his friend ghosted off into the night, a dark, happy hellhound on the trail, a wiry, laughing demon from oceans away.

  He limped over to Asia. She smiled but did not speak. There were no words. They looked at each other for long seconds. Baby Joe walked over to where a man lay. His eyes were open, looking at nothing. He was wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier shirt. Dressed to kill—or to die. Baby Joe pulled it from his body and took it to Asia. She smiled and nodded toward Fanny, and Baby Joe moved toward her. There were lights now, and the sirens were louder, and Baby Joe could hear the voices of the people congregating below. The lights of the police cars reflected from the bell. It was pretty. Baby Joe bent down in front of Fanny and smiled at her. He wrapped the shirt around her shoulders. He went back to the body and searched the pockets for the knife—there was always a knife. He bent to cut her bonds. Her eyes looked at him, hurt and helpless—and then beyond him. A shadow passed across her pupils. Baby Joe spun around.

  Khuy Zalupa loomed out of the darkness at the head of the stairs.

  ***

  The gargoyle had stood sentry for eight centuries, witness to battle and execution, torture, revolution, excommunication, persecution, exorcism, murder, and suicide. It had watched rivers of blood flowing over the flagstones below, and heard ghosts shrieking in the crypts, and the masses chanting and singing, and the entreaties of poor, condemned souls praying for salvation who could not be saved because that from which they required salvation was themselves. It had heard the exhortations of the righteous and the supplications of the damned. It had heard Jesus Christ uttered in a hundred languages. It had never heard “Jesus H. fucking CHRIST—aaaaaaargh!” before.

  Then again, it had never been subjected to a combined weight of 517 pounds across the transversal plane of its plinth before either, resulting in a sheer fracture, causing it to plummet fifty-three feet and ferry two terrified, screaming, and somewhat surprised erstwhile assassins to their doom, splattering them to oblivion on the granite flagstones below.

  At least Hard D could go to his death with the satisfaction of knowing that he would have made the shot, but for an event of exquisite and evil synchronicity all the more astounding for having taken place on such hallowed ground. At the precise moment that Hard D exerted the pressure required to release the round, Low Roll leaned forward to get a better look. The difference was only a groat’s weight of silver, but it was sufficient to be the proverbial straw, enough to crack the stone, send the gargoyle plummeting into space, send the souls of Low Roll and Hard D plummeting to a place deeper still, and cause the bullet to incline the angular mil required for it to whisper a sweet nothing in Monsoon’s ear as it whizzed past his head, leaving him, instead of brainless and lifeless on the chill slabs, brainless and very much alive, fleeing oblivious and gleeful out into the Parisian night.

  ***

  Maybe it was the gargoyles, grimacing down and lolling their stone tongues at him, or maybe it was a neurochemistry deal, a natural physiological reaction, a come down from what, by his standards, had been a pretty run-of-the-mill complete brain fracture weird-out near-death experience, but as soon as Monsoon got clear of the cathedral, a dread foreboding assailed him. His elation evaporated as the chill of night settled around his bones and the sweat cooled on his face, and an abrupt depression overtook him. The specter of suspicion rose up to swirl in front of his face, pointing and smirking. Sucker, it seemed to say. Loser.

  Doubt ambushed him as he ran, and he watched in his mind’s eye as a big pink bubble popped in the hidden part of his brain where grim reality lurked underneath a pretty cloud of sweet dreams. Who did he think he was kidding? It had to be another setup. Guys like him didn’t have happy endings. Guys like him got the shit end of the stick. The shaft. The light at the end of the tunnel was a cop’s flashlight.

  He didn’t want to believe it, and every step of distance that he put between himself and the dread retribution that was surely coming allowed him to cling to a tiny straw of self-delusion, but somewhere up there the great, lascivious lips of bitter fortune were creasing up into a slobbering, mocking grin, puckering up to give him the big kiss-off again. It was only a matter of time. Sure he could try to con himself, but setting wild hope and divine intervention aside, Monsoon suddenly realized that, deep down, he didn’t really expect to get away with it.

  He did expect to get more than two hundred yards, though. The problem with being a city boy was that it always seemed like safety was in the light, when it often resided in the darkness. A guy of his skin tone in the shadows might have had half a chance, but under the lights, not a hope.

  At least when he heard the swooping, whooshing sound like someone whirling a rope around their head he had had the good sense not to turn around to see what it was. That way the hubcap, which Wally had prized from the wheel of a parked Citroën hatchback and sent fizzing and looping Frisbee-style through the air, cracked him on the back of the bean and not in his teeth.

  He was running with that peculiar high-stepping incoordination common to those unused to physical exercise, lifting his knees and elbows too high, holding the Fab 13 clutched tight like the baton in a relay. As he was propelled forward and downward by the shock of the hubcap zinging of the back of his bonce, a calculation flashed though his adrenaline-fueled brain at subatomic particle speed. It went like this: Dropped Fab 13 plus impact with cobblestones equals probable s
hattering, and therefore equals Monsoon Parker minus prospective bright future of unwonted ease and comfort. However, failure to release Fab 13 in order to use hands to protect against fall equals probable broken wrist and need for dental reconstruction.

  Fuck it. He had thirty-odd teeth and two wrists, but only one Fab 13. Monsoon went down like a bag of shit, with his eyes closed tight and his teeth clenched against the up-rushing cobbles, using his left arm to try to cushion his fall while clinging grimly to the Fab 13 and trying to hold it aloft with his left. His calculation was correct in one sense: he did break his wrist. What he had failed to calculate, though, was this: Teeth-rattling, lung-crushing impact with stone plus feeble triceps, limp grip strength, and sweaty palms equals Fab 13 flying from grasp and rolling over edge of embankment into River Seine.

  Monsoon’s mortification at seeing the Fab 13 whirling though the night air, end over end, glittering in the lights from across the river like a giant priapic firefly, propelled Monsoon to his feet. He didn’t even feel the pain in his wrist. He reached the edge, frantic with despair. He looked down at the murky water. He didn’t fucking believe it. The consecrated cunts had finally cut him some slack. Somewhere up there, a buxom demigoddess was smiling down at him.

  There was a rowboat tied to the bank, and the Fab 13 had landed neatly and unharmed right on top of the cushion on the central board. Dream officially reinstated—Monsoon snapped himself out of it. He looked over his shoulder. That fucking wrinkled old boot was less than fifty yards away, and closing with a speed entirely unfeasible for an old fart of his age.

  He knew he had to jump—but whether to jump into the water and try to climb into the boat, or to jump straight into the boat? It was a least a six-foot drop. If he jumped into the water he might not be able to get into the boat with his broken wrist. If he jumped into the boat, he might sink it, or tip it over. He looked back again. Thirty yards. Monsoon leapt into the boat. He broke his ankle.

  He didn’t have time to scream. He frantically loosened the guy rope and shoved off with his good hand. The boat was only twenty feet from the bank when Wally poked his wooly head over the edge. Monsoon grabbed the Fab 13. He looked up, clutching it to his chest, alarm painted on his face. He expected Wally to jump into the water. But Wally just stood there, looking down, grinning like a new moon. It was only when the boat began to spin in the current that Monsoon realized there weren’t any oars.

  The boat drifted into midstream. At least he was away. He had made it. Sooner or later, the boat would run into shore. Wally was walking slowly down the bank, keeping pace with the drifting boat, but the boat was floating slowly but inexorably away from him, toward the opposite bank. Monsoon lay back and looked at the sky.

  “Whoever you are up there,” he said aloud, “thank you.”

  A curious cloud formation drifted into view, white against the dark of the sky but colored in pastel hues by the reflected lights from the city. It was so lifelike that even someone with an imagination as limited as Monsoon’s could not fail to recognize the accuracy of the depiction. It was a huge hand, clenched in a fist, with the back of the hands and the knuckles facing toward him. The middle finger was extended.

  ***

  Zalupa came forward. His neck was held at a peculiar angle, and you could see that it pained him to walk. Battered and punished seemingly beyond endurance, yet still coming. How? How was that possible? Baby Joe watched him, weary. He glanced at Asia. He summoned his old bones to war. He raised the knife.

  Zalupa raised his hand.

  “Nyet,” he said.

  Baby Joe regarded him, watching, looking for a trick. There was none. Zalupa passed his hand slowly across his chest. It was an odd gesture, regal and theatrical and strangely moving. Fanny ran to him. They embraced. Her, lovely and silken, yet bearing red welts and contusions like rare flowers, and him, dark and bloody and twisted. It was as if some beautiful vine had enveloped a gnarled and knotted tree.

  “I sorry,” he said. His deep voice was ragged and constricted, as if the words struggled for passage.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I make big mistake.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I was big asshole.”

  Fanny pushed him away and held him at arm’s length. She smiled. “You still are.”

  Zalupa smiled too. “You forgive me?”

  “Of course.”

  Zalupa turned to Baby Joe. “I should have listen. You was right.”

  “Yeah, well,” Baby Joe said.

  “You save Fanny. I thank you.” Zalupa held out his hand. Baby Joe took it. Two strong hands that, minutes before, had been gripped in a bitter death struggle were now clasped, if not in friendship, then at least in acknowledgment that the treaty was signed and the war was over.

  There was a sound. They both looked. Nightingale was trying to stand, levering himself up using the back of his deck chair.

  Zalupa turned to Baby Joe. “Take woman and go. I finish this.”

  Baby Joe nodded. He walked over and cut Asia free. Zalupa walked slowly toward Nightingale. Fanny was embracing Asia, and they had both begun to cry.

  “Some fucking party, huh?” Fanny said.

  Asia smiled at her through her tears. “Ain’t that the fucking truth?”

  “We have to go,” said Baby Joe.

  “What are you going to do?” Asia asked Fanny.

  “I’m staying with Khuy. It’s where I belong. You better go.”

  “Okay. See ya later,” Asia said.

  “Sure,” said Fanny with a sad smile.

  Baby Joe led Asia away. The cops met them halfway down the stairs.

  Zalupa took Nightingale by the throat and looked into his eyes. There was pain, but no fear. In Zalupa’s black eyes, beyond all hope of entreaty, Nightingale saw the thing that had pursued him all his life. Not the man—however monstrous, he was a man and no more—but the agent of his destruction, the relentless and implacable retribution which was his due and his fate and which he himself had summoned by his deeds and had brought forth to drink from the blood-red waters of the well pool of sin in which he had been baptized and in which he had bathed all his life. It was his birthright and he had always known that it would end thus.

  Zalupa lifted Nightingale from the floor. A blade came up. Very thin, elegant and evil. It slid into Zalupa’s stomach up to the hilt. Zalupa reached down slowly, almost casually, as if he’d expected it. He took Nightingale’s wrist in his fist and twisted it. The wrist snapped. Zalupa took the hilt of the dagger and withdrew it from his belly. His face was impassive. Nightingale watched, fascinated, despite his pain. The drama played out in silence—a danse macabre, a kabuki. The movements were elaborate and deliberate, as if rehearsed.

  Zalupa held the knife up to the light. It glittered. It was slender, and beautiful, the hilt of gold and jade. It was not a weapon, it was an ornament, a piece of mortal jewelry—but it would suffice. The blade was just long enough for the heart. Nightingale did not struggle. He knew it would do no good. The grip about his throat was absolute. Zalupa opened the front of Nightingale’s dressing gown with the dagger. There was something tender in the gesture, almost sexual.

  Nightingale’s skin was white and sickly, something that had never seen the sun. His chest bore a tattoo, beautifully rendered—a nightingale. The eyes were lifelike. They looked at Zalupa—for pity? They did not find it. Zalupa drove the knife in where the wing met the breastbone.

  Nightingale looked down at the blade, then back at Zalupa. The eyes still showed no fear, and then no pain either. No light. The nightingale sang no more. Zalupa released his throat. He fell backward over a wall. Zalupa watched. Nightingale lay on the flagstones under a gargoyle. A piece of yellow silk had been torn away by the gargoyle’s teeth. His limbs splayed out at odd angles—a broken flower. The gargoyle watched over him while he slept.

  Footsteps came loud on the stairs, and the police were shouting. Fanny was examining Zalupa’s wound. There was surpr
isingly little blood.

  “Are you okay?” Fanny asked.

  Zalupa grinned. “Is nothing. Cut myself shaving worse.”

  “This way,” Fanny said.

  She found a gallery and maneuvered them into the darkness of an apse. They saw the light from the flashlights and heard the crackle of the radios. The police stopped in the nave to view the carnage. Fanny took Zalupa by the hand and led him down a narrow passage.

  “There must be another way down,” she whispered.

  Zalupa didn’t say anything. His grip on her hand slackened. She looked into his unfocused eyes. He looked back at her, but he didn’t see her. His mind had taken him back in time. He heard the howling wind outside, and he saw the glow of the candles, and by such he saw the light in his sister’s eyes, the light of the one love that had shone upon him, gazed down at him tenderly. His renal artery had been perforated and he was bleeding into his chest cavity.

  Zalupa fell to his knees, then onto his back. He lay like an obelisk, toppled by time. Even giants fall. Fanny dropped to her knees beside him, crying out his name over and over. She fell upon his chest and gathered him in a desperate embrace. He felt no pain. He heard nothing. The stones were cool beneath him. His breathing became shallow. He felt cold.

  The monster lay dying on the stone cold floor of an ancient house of worship, and the great shadow of eternity crept across his prostrate form, and perhaps in that holy place it could be acknowledged that he who was born into darkness and deformity and denied all innocence, and from whom all chance or hope of a destiny different and unblemished had been wrested in his cradle, and who had been formed by the uncaring hand of who-knew-what cruel and vindictive craftsman and fashioned and shaped into a thing inimical and hateful by the brutality of men, could be found blameless, and forgiven.