Dreaming of Babylon

by Richard Brautigan

  The hood nodded his head and tears started flowing from his eyes.

  The sergeant pulled the tray out until his entire face was visible. He pulled it out very slowly. Then he stopped and stood there, staring down at the destroyed hood. A benevolent smile crept its way onto Rink’s features. He patted the terrified hood on the check affectionately with his hand.

  Mother Rink.

  “Ready to sing?”

  The hood nodded his head.

  “I want it all, right from the top or back in you go and I might not take you out the next time. Also, I’m not above embalming a cheap rat like you alive. Get the picture?”

  Mother Rink.

  The hood nodded his head again.

  “OK, tell me all about it.”

  “I don’t know where she put all the beer,” the hood started talking hysterically. “She had ten beers and she didn’t go to the toilet. She just kept drinking beer and not going to the toilet. She was so skinny. There was no place for the beer to go inside her body but she just kept packing it away. She had at least ten beers. There was no room for the beer!” he screamed. “No room!”

  “Who was that?” the sergeant said.

  “The woman who hired us to steal the body. She was a beer drinker. God, I never saw anything like it. The beer just kept disappearing.”

  “Who was she?” Rink said.

  “She didn’t tell us. She just wanted the body. No questions asked. Good money. We didn’t know this was going to happen. She was a rich dame. My father told me never to get involved with rich dames. Look at me. I’m in a cooler full of dead people. I can smell them. They’re dead. Why in the hell didn’t l listen to him?”

  “You should have listened to your father,” Rink said.

  Just then the hood lying in the corner started coming to. The sergeant looked over at the statue of a hood sitting in a chair above him.

  “Your friend’s coming to,” he said to the hood. “Kick him in the head for me. He needs some more rest.”

  The hood in the chair, without standing up because he hadn’t been told to stand up, kicked the other hood in the head. He went back to sleep.

  “Thank you,” Rink said and then went back to grilling the hood handcuffed on the tray. “Do you have any idea why she wanted the body?”

  “No, she just drank beer all the time. The money was good. I didn’t know this was going to happen. We were just going to steal a body.”

  “Was she alone?” Rink said.

  “No, she had a bodyguard chauffeur-type with a big neck like a fire hydrant. We came here and got a body but it was the wrong one, so we came back for the right one but it wasn’t here. We weren’t really going to hurt your one-legged pal. We were just going to rough him up a little bit, so we could get the right body.”

  “What body were you going for?” Rink said.

  “The whore who got knocked off today.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No! No, oh, God, no!” the hood said. He didn’t like that question at all.

  “Don’t use the word God around here, you little prick, or I’ll stick you back in the freezer.”

  The sergeant was an Irish Catholic who went to Mass every Sunday.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” the hood said. “Don’t put me back in there.”

  “That’s better,” Rink said. “How many bodies did you guys take from here?”

  “Only one. The wrong one. Some lady. We got her instead of the whore, so we came back to get the right one but she was gone. We weren’t going to hurt your friend. That’s all I know. I promise.”

  “You’re sure you’re not keeping anything from me?” Rink said.

  “No, I promise. I wouldn’t lie,” the hood said.

  “You guys only took one body, huh?”

  “Yeah, some dead lady. The wrong one.”

  “There are two bodies missing,” the sergeant said. “Who took the body of the whore?”

  “If we were paid to take the body of the whore and we got her out of here, do you think we’d be so stupid as to come back to get her body if we already had it?” the hood said, making a mistake.

  Rink didn’t like his attitude.

  He slid him about six inches back into the cooler.

  That stimulated a predictable response.

  “AAAHHHHHHHHH! NO! NO! NO!” the cheap crook started screaming. “I’m telling the truth! We only took one body! You can have it back!”

  “This is interesting” the sergeant said. “There seems to be an epidemic of body theft going on in San Francisco.”

  “Are you sure this guy’s telling the truth about not stealing both bodies?” Peg-leg said, adding his two cents. “Because who else would come in here on the same night and steal a body? I’ve been working here since 1925; and this is the first time anybody has taken a body und the chances are a million to one that two bodies would be stolen by different people on the same night. Put the son-of-a-bitch back in there and get the truth out of him.”

  “AAAHHHHHHHHHH!” was the hood’s response to that remark.

  “No, he’s telling the truth,” Rink said. “I know the truth when I hear it and this bastard’s not lying. Look at him. Do you think there’s a lie left in this quivering mass of bullshit? No, I’ve got him telling the truth for the first time in his life.”

  “Then I don’t know what in the hell is happening,” Peg-leg said, pretending to be angry. “Maybe there’s another nut loose in San Francisco. All I know is I’m short two bodies and I want you to put it in your report that I want them back.”

  “OK, Peg-leg,” Rink said. “Calm down. These guys have got the divorcée’s body, so I’ve already got one of them back for you.”

  “You’re right,” Peg-leg said. “Getting one of them back is better than having both of them gone. I need dead bodies, so I can make a living.”

  “l know. I know,” the sergeant said, walking over to the desk and getting some more coffee. He just left the hood lying there on the tray with half of his face out in the light. The hood didn’t say a word about his condition. He didn’t want to ruin a good thing and find himself all by his lonesome back in the dark with the dead people for company. He was going to let well enough alone.

  Sergeant Rink took a sip of coffee.

  “There’s no reason why anybody would want to short you some bodies, is there?” Rink said to Peg-leg. “You haven’t noticed anything suspicious going on around here, have you?”

  “Fuck no,” Peg-leg said. “This place is filled with corpses and l want that dead whore back.”

  “OK, OK,” Sergeant Rink said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He turned casually toward me.

  “Do you know anything about this?” he said.

  “How in the hell would I know anything about this? I just dropped by to say hello and have a cup of coffee with my old friend Peg-leg,” I said.

  The hood lying in the corner started to come to again. He began fluttering like a drunken butterfly.

  “You didn’t kick him hard enough,” Rink said to the statue of a hood sitting next to him.

  The statue obediently kicked him very hard in the head.

  The butterfly hood became unconscious again.

  “Thank you,” Sergeant Rink said.

  The

  Labrador Retriever

  of Dead People

  I started thinking about my involvement with all of this and did a quick little summary of where I was at, taking into consideration the answers Sergeant Rink had gotten from the hood on the tray.

  In other words, I was thinking about my client: the beautiful rich woman who could put away the beer. She’d hired these cheap hoods to do the same thing that I was hired to do, to snatch that body. It didn’t make any sense. We’d practically fallen over each other stealing a corpse, and the guy lying handcuffed on the tray had certainly gotten more than he had bargained for.

  Rink returned to the slab to do a little more grilling.

  “Com
fortable?” he said in a motherly tone.

  “Yes,” the hood said, sonlike.

  What else could he say?

  “Here, let me make you feel a little better,” Mother Rink said.

  The sergeant pulled the tray out, so that you could see the hood’s chest.

  “Comfy?”

  The hood nodded his head slowly.

  “Now, what were you supposed to do with the body of that God-damn whore? What did the rich dame want done with it?”

  “We were supposed to call a bar at ten o’clock and ask for a Mr. Jones and he’d tell us what we were supposed to do, then,” the hood sang like a choir boy.

  “Who’s Mr. Jones?” Rink said.

  “The guy with the fire-hydrant neck,” the hood said.

  “Good boy,” the sergeant said. “What’s the name of the bar?”

  “The Oasis Club on Eddy Street.”

  “It’s eleven now,” Rink said.

  He walked over to a telephone on the desk where Peg-leg was sitting. He dialed information and then he dialed the Oasis Club. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Jones.” He waited for a moment and then he said, “Thank you,” and hung up the telephone. He walked back over to the refrigerator.

  “There’s no Mr. Jones there. You’re not looking for a little more time with the dead people are you?”

  “No! No,” the hood said. “Maybe he got tired of waiting. He said if we didn’t call him then the deal was off and he’d assume that we hadn’t been able to get the body. He also said something else.”

  “What was that?” Rink said.

  “He said, ‘Don’t fuck up.’ He really meant it.”

  “You should have listened to him because you guys fucked up.”

  “We tried. How did we know that we were taking the wrong body? They told us what slab it was on and everything. l mean, how could we go wrong?”

  “Easy,” Rink said. “l wouldn’t hire you clowns to walk a dog.”

  Then Rink turned to Peg-leg.

  “l wonder how the employers of these goons knew which tray the body was on,” he said.

  “Obviously they didn’t,” Peg-leg said. “Because the wrong body was snatched. Speaking of the wrong body: I want that suicide wino divorcée back and pronto.”

  “Where’s the body?” Rink said to the hood sitting on the chair beside his freshly-unconscious friend.

  “Can I speak?” the hood said. He didn’t want to do anything that would get the sergeant excited. He wanted things to stay the way they were because he wasn’t handcuffed on a tray or lying unconscious on the floor.

  “You’re talking right now,” Rink said. “You just answered me.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” the hood said, surprised to hear his own voice speaking. “What do you want?” he said, trying it out again.

  “Besides stupidity, deafness rims in your family, too, huh? l want to know where the body is, you asshole,” Rink said.

  “In the trunk of our car.”

  “Where’s the car?”

  “Parked around the corner,” the hood said.

  “Go and get the body,” Rink said.

  “Sure, then what?”

  “What do you mean then what? Bring it back here, stupid,” the sergeant said.

  “You’re going to let me walk out of here by myself?” the hood said, dumbfoundedly. He couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Why not?” Rink said. “Go and get it. You’re stupid but I don’t think you’re crazy enough to try and take a powder on me. I’m a mean man. You want to stay on the good side of me. I’m beginning to take a liking to you, so go and get that fucking body right now.”

  “OK,” the hood said apologetically. I don’t know why he was apologetic but he was. Human behavior is hard to bet on.

  A few moments later he came back lugging the laundry bag with the dead divorcée in it. He bore a great resemblance to a Labrador Retriever bringing back a duck to its master.

  “You’re a swell guy,” Rink said. “Give that body to Peg-leg and set your ass back down.”

  ‘Thanks, boss,” the hood said.

  “There’s one body for you, Peg-leg,” Rink said. “Said case solved.”

  Dancing Time

  Peg-leg was holding up his end of the deal perfectly. What a pal. Of course two hundred and fifty dollars cash money helps. A one-legged man can get a lot of dancing time out of that in San Francisco.

  “Well, I’ve got to be on my way,” I said. “This has been very interesting but I’ve got to make a living.”

  “That’s a joke,” Sergeant Rink said, then he kind of sighed. “You could have been a good detective, Card, if you hadn’t spent so much time daydreaming. Oh, well…”

  He let it drop.

  I’d always been a major disappointment to him.

  Rink didn’t know that l was living part of my life in Babylon. To him I was just a daydreaming fuckup. I let him think that. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to understand Babylon if I told him about it. He just didn’t have that kind of mind, so I let it pass. I was his fuckup and that was all right. Babylon was a lot better than being a cop and having to wage the war against crime on time.

  I started toward the door. I had a body out in the car that needed to be delivered, and I’d have to drive around for a while first and think about it. Things had gotten a little complicated with the entrance of the three hoods. I needed some time to think it all over. I had to make the right move.

  “See you later, ‘Eye,’ ” Peg-leg said.

  “Keep your nose clean and stop being a fuckup,” Rink said.

  I looked over at the hood handcuffed on the slab.

  He was just lying there staring up at the ceiling.

  This had not been a good day for him.

  The hood in the chair sat there looking as if he’d been caught with his pants down at a nuns’ picnic.

  The third hood lay beside him on the floor.

  The electric company had turned off his lights for not paying the bill.

  I think when he came to he would think twice about continuing the profession of being a hood, not unless he liked to sleep on morgue floors.

  The Blindman

  The car was waiting for me parked across the street from the morgue with the body of the murdered whore in the trunk. That body was my ticket to live hundred more bucks but things had gotten a little complicated.

  Why had the beer-drinking rich dame hired these three hoods to steal the same body that I had been hired to steal? It didn’t make sense. By doing that this whole business had been turned into a Bowery Boys’ comedy with everybody falling all over everybody else, but the results hadn’t been too amusing for those hoods hack in the morgue.

  Sergeant Rink had turned their lives into hell on earth. I shuddered when I thought about that poor son-of-a-bitch who’d been put alive into the cooler. I don’t think that was his idea of fun. I think he would have preferred watching a baseball game or doing something else.

  But I had spent enough time thinking about those jerks. I had more important things on my mind. What was I going to do with this God-damn body? The hoods were supposed to get in touch with the neck at a bar at ten, but he wasn’t there when Sergeant Rink had called.

  My appointment with the rich beer drinker and the neck was at Holy Rest Cemetery at 1 A.M. Now I had to figure out what I was going to do next. Should I keep the rendezvous?

  That was my only chance to get the five hundred bucks and be able to afford an office, a secretary, a car, and be able to change the style of my life. They’d already paid me five hundred dollars for half my fee and given me three hundred dollars expense money. I still had the five hundred bucks and so I was ahead of the game anyway you looked at it.

  Maybe I should just take the body and dump it in the bay and forget about meeting the people and consider myself five hundred bucks closer to having some human dignity. I could probably afford some kind of office, secretary, and car for that if I counted my pennies and made each one of t
hem run a mile. It wouldn’t be a fancy operation but at least it would be.

  I didn’t know what kind of weird business might happen if I kept the appointment with them. Normal people don’t hire two different sets of men to steal a corpse from the morgue. That didn’t make any sense at all and I had no way of anticipating what would happen if I went out to the cemetery and kept my appointment with them.

  They might not even be there.

  They might be in China right now for all that I knew, but if they did keep the appointment I had a gun to put a dent in any weird business they might try. That neck was a frightening human being. I’d hate to tangle with him but I did have six pieces of lead to throw at him. I wasn’t a bad shot and he’d be hard to miss.

  Those were my options: a sure five hundred dollars or a gamble for five hundred more with some very strange citizens, a beer-vanishing rich woman and a chauffeur with a neck the size of a herd of buffaloes.

  At least I had some options.

  A couple of days ago I’d been reduced to bumping into a blind beggar and knocking the cup out of his hand. I picked the money up off the sidewalk for him and he was fifty cents short when I handed his cup back to him. I think he was a very perceptive blindman because he started yelling at me, “Where’s the rest of the money! It’s not all here! Give me my money back, you God-damn thief!”

  I had to take a quick powder.

  So what I was thinking about now was a lot more interesting than the things I had been thinking about.

  There are only so many blind beggars in San Francisco and the word gets around.

  BABY

  What in the fuck do I have to lose? I thought as I turned the key in the ignition. I’d made up my mind. I was going to deliver the body. It was now a little after eleven and I had some time to kill before I was due at Holy Rest Cemetery, so I decided to drive around for a little while. I had been without a car for a long time. I looked at the gas gauge. The tank was 3/4’s full. This would be fun. I started up the engine and was off.