As his last breath left him, and he turned his eyes toward the only woman he had loved, and who had loved him, but there was no light left to see her with, and in that eternal darkness the demon that lived in Khuy Zalupa’s soul finally found peace.
***
Even the French police were prepared to concede that if you found two naked women—one suffering from shock and who had recently been beaten with a riding crop, and the other suffering from minor contusions and abrasions and in a state of emotional distress—surrounded by several dead guys, including one known Corsican Mafioso and a guy later identified as a feared Russian gangster, who had all been eighty-sixed in a brutal, close-quarters armed conflict, the women were probably not the guilty parties. Asia and Fanny were therefore interviewed but not detained.
Baby Joe’s involvement was not so straightforward. He was hospitalized under secure conditions, with a twenty-four-hour police guard at the door. He was questioned several times by different people in a manner ranging from friendly and sympathetic to aggressive and downright hostile, but Baby Joe stuck to the facts, and the facts spoke for the fact that he had done nothing but defend himself and the women.
On the third day, a smartly dressed individual who spoke perfect English came in. He said, “They are not happy that you fucked up the bell.”
“Say what, now?”
“The bell, monsieur. Somebody shot the bell in Notre Dame. It will have to be replaced.”
“Not guilty,” Baby Joe said.
“Apparently not. I am Duvalier of the Sûreté. We received a communiqué from your government. As soon as you’re well, you are free to go.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I always liked that fucking bell. So. Au revoir. Oh, and one more thing. As soon as you are well, we would appreciate it if you would go back to your own fucking country.”
***
Monsoon was a bright-lights-big-city kind of guy. The only river he knew anything about was Joan, and he thought that meander was a guy who used to play for the Carolina Panthers. The dynamics of current and tide and drift were lost on him. So he could be forgiven for thinking, as he saw Woolloomooloo Wally gradually receding from view, that he was home free. As he lay there, his wrist and ankle throbbing, but the Fab 13 cradled in his arms like a million-dollar baby, a sudden exhaustion came over him. And a marvelous sense of relief. Relief tempered by pain, but blessed relief nevertheless. He had made it. Old Monsoon had finally made it. All that dreadful foreboding shit was just natural anxiety. Fucking stress. He was away down the home straight, a yard from the goal line with the ball firmly in hand, and nobody near him. Nobody to stop him from scoring. He closed his eyes for a second. Just a few moments’ rest and he would be ready to rock and roll again. Within seconds, he was in the embrace of a deep and dreamless sleep.
And it was in that condition that Wally found him. Wally had walked to the nearest bridge and studied the water and the curvature of the river. He re-crossed the bridge and walked downstream. He only had to swim out twenty feet to catch hold of the bow of the boat and tow it to shore.
He smiled down at Monsoon as he gently lifted the Fab 13 from his grip. There was a chill in the night air, so Wally took off his coat. He laid it over the sleeping figure of Monsoon and softly patted him on the cheek.
“See ya later, ya useless bladdy dingbat,” he said, pushing the boat out into midstream again.
***
Crispin could not remember feeling better. His injuries from the beating the gypsies had given him were only superficial. He had survived his fall with remarkably little injury…but his demons didn’t. They died. The things that had happened to Crispin—the absurd Perils of Pauline lurching from one life- and sanity-threatening situation to another, every day apparently another terrifying tippy-toe trip down Trauma Street—had passed into the realm of the ridiculous, and Crispin felt like a cartoon character, and that the worst that could happen was some whimsical music and butterflies flying around his eyes. As he’d come screaming down through the Parisian sky, tumbling end-over-end to a certain and brutal death, a sudden peace had enveloped him. In extremis, surreal serenity. A thought had risen in his brain in a weird un-Crispin-like voice, as if stated by another, and yet his own voice nevertheless: Is this all it is? it said. So what’s the big deal? What’s there to be afraid of?
And suddenly he was no longer afraid. Out of the game, out of his tree, off his trolley, hobnobbing with the hobgoblins, Waltzing Matilda with his tucker-bag full of crud, yes. On the night train with a first class, one-way ticket to Hysteriasville, certainly. Tap-dancing upside-down on the dunes inside the sandman’s skull, yup.
But afraid? Not anymore, and never again. The soul scars and psychological lesions had been sloughed away, washed clean in the Seine. He felt safe. Blessed. Touched by the hand of some mystical guardian who would let no harm befall him. He was certain of that.
He looked at the beautiful flowers that Asia had brought. He looked at the bottle of whiskey that Wally had brought, even though the wrinkled old bastard drank half of it before he handed it over. He looked at the light in his window and at the blue sky beyond, and the single white cloud that seemed to be watching over him. He watched the sunlight glow in the bubbles of his champagne. He drank deep. He closed his eyes and slept. They say that God protects fools and drunks…maybe he protects piano players too.
***
If Baby Joe Young had a dollar for every time he had cried, he would be skint, bumming it on skid row without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. But when he wrapped his arms around Woolloomooloo Wally on the Champs-Élysées in the midst of a bustling Parisian sunset, he earned a dollar and then some. He couldn’t help it. Wally and Joe hit the cafés and the cafés hit them back. By the time they got to the Arc de Triomphe they were fucked-up and fearless. When the night came down and the inevitable solemnity descended upon them and the time came for Wally to tell of how Bjorn Eggen Christiansson had gone to stand at the right hand of Odin, Baby Joe wept openly and he didn’t give a flying fuck who knew it, and God help the man who made comment.
A taxi crossed two lanes of traffic and pulled up to the curb, and the driver got out to exchange insults with the world in general, and Asia climbed out. The taxi started rocking backward and forward, and Crispin heaved himself out of the back and sailed imperiously into the bar. His waving blonde bouffant saluted Wally’s wiry badger’s-arse bristle thatch. Two hairy survivors acknowledging each other.
“Strewth. I never thought I’d be so ’appy to see a jumbuck-lookin’ fat poofter in me fucken life.”
Crispin had his entrance prepared, but he collapsed into tears before he had the chance to be acerbically witty, and he draped his flabby arms around Wally, and clung to him as if to prevent himself from falling.
“Wally. Oh, Wally. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he gushed.
“Shut yer gob and get the measures in, ya fat cunt,” Wally said, winking at Asia.
When Wally managed to prize himself out of Crispin’s grip, Asia flung herself upon him, and began slathering him with kisses. He leered at Baby Joe over her shoulder.
“’Ere, Baby Joe. I reckon this ’ere sheila’s wasted on the likes a you, mate. Why don’t ya be a good fucken sport and turn ’er over to a bloke what knows what ’e’s doin’?”
“Your ticker would give out after ten minutes, you silly old fart.”
And so the night progressed.
No decent Parisian bar is without a piano, and La Chatte de Piaf was no exception. The piano player was actually relieved when Crispin muscled in just as he was about to be compelled to play “La Vie en fucking Rose” for the fourteen-millionth time. Crispin eased his way into the gig with something gentle, and by the time he had finished singing “Chanson D’Amour” in a very creditable impression of the Manhattan Transfer, all four of them, and a few of the tourists, were sobbing into their sambucas. From there, Crispin cranked it up. The patrons hit the pavement to
boogie, the original piano player went next door to look for another job, and the owner went and sat behind the till with a frog-eating grin on his greasy Gallic chops. Asia danced with anyone who could handle the pace.
After a while, Baby Joe and Wally strolled back out onto the street and sat at a table a few yards away. The light and jollity from the bar washed over them as they sat, drinking without speaking. There was no need. The words were in the deed and in the understanding, of which there was none, for who could understand or explain such things, and yet they had happened, and that was all.
The sheer improbability—but somehow, inevitability—of their being there together, in the Parisian night, survivors and victors of another outlandish adventure, and of a fate which had conspired yet again to bring them from the ends of the earth and put them together and set them to violence and redemption and leave them there together to dance on the bones, was not spoken of. Nor did they speak of Monsoon Parker, who by some unknowable hand had seemingly been given the key to their destinies and who, even though he was without dignity or will, was somehow able to summon them to war.
As the first faint light appeared over the trees, Wally downed his beer and stood up. He looked at Baby Joe. Baby Joe stood, and they shook hands. They looked into each other’s eyes.
“See ya, mate,” Wally said softly.
Baby Joe looked at that great, exuberant, invincible Wally grin, tinged with a sadness he had never seen before. He smiled a solemn smile and nodded.
He watched as Woolloomooloo Wally turned and walked away into the gathering light, as ancient and mysterious as the city itself and, despite his years, as serpentine as the river that flowed through it. Baby Joe sat back down and looked at his hand. He could still feel the pressure of Wally’s steely claw. He took up his drink and smiled. From inside he could hear Crispin’s voice, trouper that he was, still going strong, and he knew that Asia was in there somewhere, laughing and dancing and having fun. Safe.
Baby Joe looked across the street to where darkness still reigned under the trees. He felt privileged. He raised his glass to the new day.
“Fuckin’ A,” he said.
***
According to some sources, US law enforcement (and in fact probably law enforcement agencies everywhere) doesn’t have much of a history of interdepartmental cooperation. Sometimes rivalries can get fierce, and squabbles over jurisdiction can get out of hand. The County guys don’t like State butting in, and the State boys don’t like the Feds, and the Feds don’t see eye-to-eye with the CIA, the DEA doesn’t like the ATF on their turf, and everybody and their mother thinks that Internal Affairs are a bunch of jerks. It’s probably always been that way. Back in the day in London, the Peelers no doubt thought that the Bow Street Runners were dickheads.
But Heinie Peerick didn’t think that way. Sure, he enjoyed a little banter as much as the next guy, but he would never let it get in the way of good police work. And he would certainly never let it get in the way of his getting himself some trim. Which was how he ended up in the sack with a gal who was with the Feds out in Elko, Nevada, who was in town to catch a show. They dug each other’s company, so the following weekend, Heinie hopped into his reconditioned cherry-red ’59 Chevy Impala and zooted over there to see her. The residents called it the “Best Small Town in America.” The Shoshoni used to call it “Rocks Piled On Top of Each Other.” Take your pick.
After dinner in the Stockmen’s Hotel and Casino, and a quick bounce in the bed during which she didn’t even give Peerick time to get his boots off, they headed down to the bar. Over drinks, the conversation drifted around to his encounter with Agents Black and White. He told her he was curious about the investigation, and if she had heard anything. She said she hadn’t, but if he promised to stop talking about work, she would promise to find out what she could on Monday, and she also promised that when she had finished her margarita she would take him back upstairs and find out what he was made of.
Seems old Peerick was made of the right stuff, because she called him on Monday evening. What she told him surprised him: she couldn’t find out shit about the investigation. It was FYO, need-to-know, top-secret, and people’s lips were sealed tighter than a crab’s ass at fifty fathoms. She did find out a bit about Agent White, however. She was a decorated and respected BATFE agent, with a flawless record, who was being tipped to go far. The surprise, though, was Agent Black. According to his records, he was dead.
***
Baby Joe smiled as he heard Asia singing “La Vie en Rose” in the shower.
He looked at his face in the steamy mirror. Jesus, what a mug. More stitches than a Mexican saddle. And the body. Looking too young and fit for the face, but ragged and torn, the new Prometheus put together from secondhand sinew and old rawhide. Still going strong, but for how long? He lathered his face. He suddenly looked twenty years younger with just the clear blue eyes peering out of the white mask.
He began to shave with slow, even strokes, up against the grain. The mirror steamed up completely and he splashed water on it. He watched as his image shimmered and transformed, a leering water monster gazing from the bottom of a lake. Or a drowned man.
He finished shaving and stuck his head into the sink. The water was almost too hot to stand. It felt good. He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded out into the lounge. He could still hear Asia singing, but fainter now. She had a good voice. Clear and tuneful, but earthy. Like her.
He poured himself a scotch, and went to stand by the open window of the balcony. The breeze was cool on his wet skin. He looked at the lights and the cars and the people down in the street. The noise of the engines and the horns drowned out the sound of Asia’s voice. He went back inside.
He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, listening to the water running, and to the song. He sipped his whiskey. It felt good, and so did he. They were back. As bad as it had been, it had been worth it. She was right. The pain and the danger, the dark thrill of the adventure, the mystery and confusion. The survival. The defense of each other, the defense of what they had, of who they were, the resurrection of the will to win and to live. It had all brought them back. It had brought him back to be with her. And it was worth any price. To be clear again in his mind how he felt about her, to know that he loved her. Doubt gone. Uncertainty gone. The willful self-destruction, the walking the edge for no good reason, the tearing at the chains as if to get the inevitable over with…gone.
La vie en rose. Damn straight! He downed his drink and set the glass down, then walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. When she came out of the shower, wet and beautiful and glowing, he was going to…
The bathroom door flew open, violently smacking into the wall. Baby Joe spun around with his fists raised. Agent Black stood in the doorway with his gun leveled at Baby Joe’s chest. The water shut off. Asia stepped out of the shower, about to speak. She froze. Baby Joe stepped in front of her. He handed her a towel without taking his eyes off the agent.
“What’s the fucking deal here?” he said.
“Easy, champ,” Agent Black said. “Never bring a fist to a gunfight. Besides, you ain’t dressed for it. I want the device.”
“Okay. It’s here. You can take it and go. Leave us the fuck alone.”
“I’m afraid it ain’t that simple, Cochise,” said Agent Black.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you gotta go down. Sorry, pal, nothin’ personal.”
“Fucking Homeland Security. I’m impressed. Good con.”
“It’s worked up till now, slick.” He stretched out his arm, pointing the gun at Baby Joe’s chest. His sleeve pulled back. There was a tattoo on his wrist. It was a blue and green shield with a lightning bolt.
“Fuck. Now I remember,” Baby Joe said.
“Remember what, hoss?”
“Where I’ve seen you before. That tattoo. 74th Rangers. Vietnam, right?”
“Yeah. Well spotted. I guess this makes it a little
tougher. No hard feelings.”
Agent White walked in. She, too, had her gun drawn. She looked from Baby Joe to Asia, then back at Baby Joe.
“Black?” she said.
“I got it covered.”
Baby Joe didn’t take his eyes off Black. He knew that Black was the one who was itching to shoot. There was nothing he could use as a weapon that he could reach without exposing Asia. He might be able to drop Black, but what about White? Maybe if he took a couple of slugs that didn’t put him down, he could do it. That was all there was. He was six feet away. Six feet, two steps. A half-second. How many shots could Black get off? Too many. How quickly would White react? Quick enough? Go. There is nothing else to do. Move. And Asia? You know. Move, now. Baby Joe moved.
“No, no, no. Ladies first.” Black swung the gun. Asia screamed, high and shrill. Baby Joe lunged. White raised her weapon. There were two explosions, loud in the confined space. Blood splattered against the wall. And something else—something viscous and gray. A piece of hair was stuck to it. Baby Joe stopped. A look of incomprehension flickered across his eyes. Then it was gone, and only cold, fathomless ice blue remained. He looked at the gun, and then at the faces looking at him. Baby Joe stepped forward again.
The End.
Epilogue.
Agent White calmly reloaded the empty chambers of her revolver before she holstered her weapon. She looked down at where Agent Black lay against the tiles, his eyes open but sightless, and his mouth agape, as if to ask why. A spreading carmine pool welled up about his head. He had been fast, and it had been close.
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 45
