Dreaming of Babylon

by Richard Brautigan

  I of course knew that. I just wanted to hear him say it.

  I had a delightful ego problem.

  “Now what can I do for you?” I said. There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Dr. Francis?” I said.

  “Is it all right for me to speak freely over the telephone?” he said. “I mean, nobody could be listening in?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If anybody does any telephone tapping in Babylon it’s usually me. Tell me what your problem is.”

  Little did I know that the diabolical Professor Abdul Forsythe was listening to our conversation. I had been a little too glib with my telephone-tapping joke and it was to cause me a lot of trouble later on.

  “Well, Mr. Smith Smith,” Dr. Francis said.

  “Just call me Smith,” I said. “Everybody does.”

  “Smith, I have reason to believe that somebody is trying to steal my latest invention and use it for evil purposes.”

  “What’s your invention?” I said.

  “I’ve invented mercury crystals,” Dr. Francis said.

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  I had been afraid this was going to happen: that somebody would come along and invent mercury crystals. I frankly didn’t think the world was ready for it yet. After all, this was the year 596 B.C. and the world had a lot of growing up to do.

  Smileys Genuine

  Louisiana Barbecue

  SSSCCCRRREEEEEECCCHHH!!!

  I slammed on the brakes.

  Babylon almost caused me to drive right past the cemetery. I pulled over and stopped and turned my lights out. I didn’t see any other cars there. If anyone was coming I’d arrived first. I didn’t even know if the neck and its beer-drinking keeper were going to show up, but I had a hunch they would. That’s why I was there. Now I’d just wait and see what happened. You don’t get a chance at ten thousand dollars every day.

  Suddenly I was curious about something.

  I reached into my pocket and took out a match.

  I lit it and read the registration on the steering wheel:

  Smiley’s Genuine Louisiana Barbecue.

  That figured.

  I’d have to stop in and visit Smiley someday and try some of his barbecue. It would really be worth it to see the expression on his face when he saw me coming through the door.

  I blew out the match and waited in the dark for a while.

  I started to think about Babylon but I was able to wrestle it out of my mind by carefully not being impressed by how dark it was. That could lead me very easily back to Babylon. If I thought about the darkness, I’d soon be thinking about the shadow robots, and that wouldn’t do at all.

  I didn’t want Babylon to put me behind the eight ball again. I was lucky that I saw the cemetery. I could have driven halfway to Los Angeles and be on Chapter Seven of Smith Smith Versus the Shadow Robots. Then I never would have had a chance at finding my client and getting ten thousand dollars. All I would have ended up with was a dead whore in my refrigerator.

  That’s what you would hardly call the successful conclusion of a case.

  Into the Cemetery

  We Will Go

  I had been sitting there—I don’t know how long—when a car came down the road. It was the only traffic that I had seen. The car was driving very slowly. It looked as if its destination was the cemetery.

  It was too far away to tell what kind of car it was. Anyway, I couldn’t tell. I wondered if it was the Cadillac limousine. The car stopped two hundred yards down the road from me. The headlights went black and some people got out of the car. They had a flashlight but I couldn’t make out who they were. It could be the neck and blonde company or just some plain ordinary grave robbers.

  I had no way of knowing until I got out of the car and became a stealthful confident private eye starting to conclude the biggest deal of his life, so that’s what I did. I got out of the car.

  I was lacking only one thing: a flashlight.

  Then I got an idea.

  I got back into the ear and opened up the glove compartment.

  Bonanza!

  A flashlight!

  This was a sign from heaven.

  Everything was going to work out OK.

  I was supposed to meet the neck and Our Lady of the Limitless Bladder by a monument to some fallen soldiers of the Spanish-American War. The monument was about three hundred yards into the cemetery. It was only a little ways away from my father’s grave.

  I had passed that monument many times visiting his grave. I sure wish I hadn’t killed him. Perhaps if everything worked out with this case, I might have a few moments left over at the end of it to do a little mourning for him. Why did I throw that ball out into the street? I wish I had never seen that ball!

  With the flashlight in one hand, I didn’t have it on, but it was ready to stab a ray of light if I should need it, and the loaded gun in my other hand, I slipped into the cemetery and made my way among the graves toward the Spanish-American War monument.

  I moved with a great deal of caution.

  Surprise was a very important element in this situation and I wanted it on my side. I had to cut through a grove of trees to get to the monument. It was just on the other side of the trees. I had to be careful going through the trees. It was very dark and I didn’t want to fall down and make a lot of noise. When I got into the trees, I measured every step as if it were my last.

  I was halfway through the trees, moving like a shadow, when I heard voices coming from the direction of the monument about fifty yards in front of me.

  I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying but there were three of them: two men and a woman. I was too far away to recognize them. The trees muffled their sound.

  I took ten more very careful steps forward and then stopped for a few seconds and collected my thoughts and tried to make out what they were saying and who it was but they were still too far away.

  I had a haunted feeling that this case was rapidly coming to a close. Something was not right. I started moving forward again. Every step was an eternity. I wished I was in Babylon, holding hands with Nana-dirat.

  The Surprise

  This is what I saw when finally I was positioned in the trees to see what was happening at the monument: The first thing I saw was Sergeant Rink standing there, holding a flashlight in his hand.

  I stood in the trees out of sight staring at him.

  He was the last person in the world I expected to see there. I was dumb-founded. What in the hell was happening?

  The next thing I saw was the neck and its beer-guzzling mistress standing there, fastened together by a pair of handcuffs. The neck looked very unhappy. The rich blonde looked as if she needed a beer really bad, which in her case meant a case.

  Rink was in full control of the situation.

  He was talking to them.

  “All I want to know is why did you murder the girl and then try to steal her body from the morgue? When you killed her you could have taken the body away with you. It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t· figure it out. Stealing that body is what caused you to be caught.”

  “We have nothing to say,” the neck said.

  “Who said I wanted to hear from you?” Rink said. “I’m talking to the lady here. She’s the one who ran this show, so you keep your mouth zipped or I’ll take care of it for you.”

  The neck started to say something and then changed his mind. Sergeant Rink’s presence could cause that “Well, lady, tell me the truth and I can make it easier on you. Nobody really cares about a murdered whore. At the most it can only cost you a few years if you level with me.”

  Rink waited.

  Finally she spoke, wetting her lips first.

  “Listen, fat cop,” she said. “First, these handcuffs are too tight. Second, I want a beer. Third, I’m rich and it’s already easy for me. And fourth, you can’t prove a thing. All you’ve got is a chain of circumstantial evidence that my lawyers will blow away like a summer breeze. After they ge
t you on the stand and are through with you, the police department will retire you as a mental defective. Either that or your next case will be cleaning up after the horses at the police stables. Are things a little clearer now?”

  Nobody had ever called Sergeant Rink a fat cop before.

  He stood there unable to believe it.

  He had made his bet and he had been called.

  “Think it over,” she said. Then she looked down at her handcuffed wrist with a very sophisticated expression of exasperation. After that she looked into the sergeant’s eyes. She did not look away.

  I just stood there like somebody in a movie theater watching it all happen in front of my eyes. The price of admission was only a trip to the cemetery at midnight in a stolen car after having shot a Negro in the leg and then stopping at my apartment and putting the body of a murdered prostitute in my refrigerator.

  That’s all.

  “I think you’re bluffing,” Sergeant Rink said.

  “You can’t be as stupid as you look,” the rich blonde said. “Do you know what twenty-five years of horse shit looks like?”

  The sergeant had to think that one over. Rink was a very smart detective but he had met his match. He didn’t have any more cards up his sleeve.

  Too bad I had been out of earshot when Sergeant Rink was telling them his evidence. That would have given me some idea of what was going on. Right now I hadn’t the slightest idea. I was totally in the dark.

  I was still stunned to see Sergeant Rink there. How in the hell had he found out where we were to meet? It baffled the imagination. I had expected the possibility of seeing the neck and its rich pal, but the sergeant never.

  Then Rink shook his head slowly and reached into his pocket for the key to the handcuffs. He walked over and released the neck and the blonde. The sergeant didn’t look too happy.

  The rich woman rubbed her wrist and then looked at the sergeant sort of sympathetically. “It was a nice try,” she said.

  The neck started to growl.

  It liked having the upper hand now.

  “Shut up, Mr. Cleveland,” she said.

  The neck stopped growling and changed from a bear into a lamb.

  “Well,” Sergeant Rink said. “You can’t win them all. At least if I’m going to lose, I like losing to some class.”

  The socialite smiled at the servant of the law.

  The neck trying to please its owner smiled, too. But it failed miserably. Its smile resembled a movie marquee advertising a horror film.

  “H0w about a beer, Sergeant?” she said, smiling. “There’s a tavern back down the road.” She held out her hand toward him. Rink looked at it for a few seconds and then gave it a good friendly shake.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go have a beer.”

  Boy, did he have a surprise coming.

  Good-bye, $10,000

  After they had gone to get a beer, I just stood there for a few moments. There went my prospects for wealth. Good-bye, $10,000. That body in my refrigerator wasn’t worth a penny now.

  I walked out of the trees over to the monument dedicated to those who had fallen in the Spanish-American War. I felt as if I were one of them.

  Oh, well, I still had five hundred bucks in my pocket.

  I wouldn’t be able to have all the things that I had envisioned like a fine office and a beautiful secretary and a good car, so I’d have to compromise. I’d have a small office, a plain secretary and a Model A.

  I was standing by the monument, lost in thought, thinking about all of this when I was rudely surprised by the sudden appearance of four black men all carrying razors. “Hi, Stew Meat,” Smiley said, who was limping at the head of them. He had a tie wrapped around his leg just above the bullet hole.

  Where in the hell did they come from?

  “We thought we’d pick up our car and get a nice thank you for da loan of it,” he said. Smiley had a huge smile on his face. He had something up the sleeve of that smile.

  “Also, Stew Meat. We need dat money in your pocket for expenses and don’t reach for dat gun you shot me with or we cut you real bad, Stew Meat.”

  Ah, shit. I didn’t care any more. Everything had gotten to be a little bit too much for me. I reached toward my pocket.

  “Careful now,” Smiley said, still smiling. “I sorta like you even if you did shoot me in the leg. Don’t disappoint me now.”

  I very slowly reached in my pocket and took out the money. It was a nice roll: a few dreams. I flipped it to him.

  “Good, Stew Meat,” Smiley said.

  He looked at the money.

  “Five C’s,” he said.

  “What about the girl’s body?” I said. “Still want it?”

  “Naa, you can have it, Stew Meat.”

  “What now?” I said, expecting some wear and tear on my body from the four black men. After all, I had shot their head man in the leg and I had stolen their car. Some people take offence at things like that.

  “This is enough, Stew Meat. I like you,” Smiley said. “We got da money. We got paid. The bullet didn’t break the bone. Just went clean through. We leave you alone. Bygones be da bygones.”

  “You’re OK, Smiley,” I said. “How’s your barbecue?”

  “Da best,” Smiley smiled. “Stop by. I’ll give you some ribs. On the house.”

  And off they went.

  It’s Midnight.

  It’s Dark.

  I was standing beside the monument to the fallen of the Spanish-American War, alone again, having watched my little office, plain secretary and Model A vanish into thin air.

  Thank God I still had a wonderful office with a sunken marble bath, the most beautiful woman in the world, and a golden chariot in Babylon.

  That was the consolation prize.

  “Son!” I heard a voice yell coming toward me from behind some tombstones. “Son!” I recognized the voice. It was my mother. She came hurrying up to me, almost out of breath.

  “What are you doing here?” I said in a numb voice.

  “You know this is the day I always visit the father and husband you murdered. You know that. Why do you ask that?”

  “It’s midnight,” I said. “It’s dark.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But do the dead know that? No, they don’t. I just stayed a little longer than usual. But why are you here? You never visit your father any more.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Are you still being that private detective, chasing people with bad shadows? When are you going to pay the money you owe me? You bastard!”

  Sometimes Mother liked to call me a bastard.

  I was used to it.

  “Now that you’re here, go say something to the man you murdered. Ask him forgiveness,” she said, marching me over to his grave.

  I stood there in front of his grave, wishing at the age of four I hadn’t thrown a red rubber ball out into the street while playing with him on a Sunday afternoon in 1918 and he hadn’t run after it, right into the front of a car and stuck to the grill. The undertaker had to peel him off.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said.

  “You should be,” my mother said. “What a naughty boy. Your daddy’s probably a skeleton now.”

  Good Luck

  My mother and I walked back across the cemetery to the other side where her car was parked.

  We didn’t say anything as we walked along.

  That was good.

  It gave me some time to think about Babylon. I picked up where I left off in my serial Smith Smith Versus the Shadow Robots. After I’d finished talking to the good Dr. Francis, I gave my secretary a passionate kiss on the mouth.

  “What’s that for?” she said, a little breathless afterward.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “Whatever happened to the good old rabbit’s foot?” she said.

  I took a long lustful look at her moist delicious mouth.

  “Are you kidding?” I said.

  “I guess not,” she said
. “If that’s replaced rabbits’ feet for luck, I want some more.”

  “Sorry, babe,” I said. “But I’ve got work to do. Somebody has invented mercury crystals.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, the expression on her face changing to apprehension.

  I put my sword shoulder holster on underneath my toga.

  “Watch out, son!” my mother said as I almost walked straight into an open, freshly-dug grave. Her voice jerked me back from Babylon like pulling a tooth out of my mouth without any Novocaine.

  I avoided the grave.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Or I’ll have to visit both of you out here. That would make Friday a very crowded day for me.”

  “OK, Mom, I’ll watch my step.”

  I had to, seeing that I was right back where I started, the only difference being that when I woke up this morning, I didn’t have a dead body in my refrigerator.

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  Good News, Bad News

  Babylon

  Oklahoma

  Cactus Fog

  My Girlfriend

  Sergeant Rink

  The Hall of Justice

  Adolf Hitler

  Mustard

  Bela Lugosi

  1934

  The Blonde

  “Eye”

  .38

  The Morning Mail

  The Boss

  The Front Door to Babylon

  President Roosevelt

  A Babylonian Sand Watch

  Nebuchadnezzar

  The 596 B.C. Baseball Season

  First Base Hotel

  A Cowboy in Babylon

  Terry and the Pirates

  Ming the Merciless

  The Magician

  Barcelona

  The Abraham Lincoln Brigade

  Loving Uncle Sam

  Bus Throne

  Drums of Fu Manchu

  Friday’s Grave

  Smith

  Lobotomy

  The Milkmen

  My Day