Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  And if he had been a cruel and ruthless man before his blinding, since the accident he had become worse. Much, much worse. As if the extinguishing of the light from his eyes had caused the extinguishing of any remaining vestiges of humanity in his black and bitter soul. Life, suffering, and human dignity had become concepts as meaningless to him as the sun that he would never see again, and his own mortality would be just an extension of the darkness in which he already existed.

  Small, slight, and always impeccably dressed, the Don had perfected a faux British accent to such an extent that few people could tell he was not English. He had used this to great effect over the years, causing many to underestimate him who would later live to regret it. Or rather, wouldn’t. He’d begun his love affair with all things British while seconded to an English artillery regiment in Korea, in the frozen windswept hills above the parallel. He was a forward observer, another fact he would have viewed with some irony if he had recognized such a thing, given his current circumstances. The English officers had impressed him with their poise, their style, and particularly their stoicism and sangfroid in the face of the uncountable hordes of the People’s Republican Army that came pouring through the valleys and over the hills. After the war, he bought recordings of recitals by Noel Coward and Gilbert and Sullivan, listened to the BBC world service, watched endless movies, and practiced and practiced, until only the most practiced ear could discover him.

  The Don—or plain old Ignacio Imbroglio, as he had been then—had never risen above the rank of corporal, although his records miraculously showed him receiving an honorable discharge with the rank of colonel and a whole lapel full of gongs. His proper name was not even Imbroglio. It was Lo Vuolo, and he was descended not from the proud and imperious lords of Palermo, but from a fishmonger in Taormina. But as the Soviets were well aware, and Ignacio Lo Vuolo soon learned, history can be anything that you want it to be and, in fact, the only genuine thing about Don Ignacio Imbroglio was his Patek Philippe wristwatch. And his power.

  Don Ignacio lived for power. It was a current that ran through him. A living, pulsating thing, a thing that he could feel, spreading its tentacles into the avenues of the city, into the corridors of power, into hotels and homes and boardrooms, reaching with an icy and pervasive grip into people’s hearts and minds and souls. The Don could feel the city the way other people could hear it and see it, and he sat in its epicenter like a chill, sinister spider in his web, leeching life from the life around him, projecting images onto the black screen of his eyes, always thinking, always calculating, always waiting.

  People came to the Don with information, with knowledge as gift and supplication, as sacrament, and the Don used that knowledge to fasten his teeth ever tighter into the jugular, into the arteries. And now, word had come to him of a drug, some new exotic drug, and drugs meant dependence and control and money. And power.

  “I can’t believe you fucked Dorothy!” Crispin was saying. “Incredible. What a fucking sight.”

  “Well,” said Nigel, “you never told me she was a real woman, until it was too late. How the fuck was I supposed to know?”

  “Jesus, Nigel, you’re not blind. And even if she wasn’t, how could you? I mean, how on earth did you know where to stick it, with all those wrinkles?”

  Crispin and Nigel were lying in each other’s arms on Crispin’s massive four-poster, with the morning sun coming through the opened window. What they were feeling was somewhere between euphoria and incredulity. What the fuck had they smoked? The world had become a many-splendored thing, the bubbles in their champagne had turned to angel’s kisses, Barry Manilow had turned into Luciano Pavarotti on the stereo. And while Nigel usually bore more resemblance to the old gray mare than the Italian Stallion, last night he had looked like Tom Cruise, Omar Sharif, and Clark Gable all rolled into one, and had kicked the stable door in all night long. Oh, and he had fucked Dorothy—albeit by mistake. The three of them had rocked and rolled and writhed on Dorothy’s antique heirloom bed in a bewildering variety of positions and configurations while nuclear butterflies exploded around them and the mirror in the ceiling turned to undulating golden honey, dripping down to form great glistening globes that floated around the room. At one point, as Crispin had been hunched over preparing to penetrate the nearest orifice that presented itself, he had looked down and had actually done a double take. He was prepared to swear to Christ, Congress, and Chuck E. fucking Cheese that it had actually gotten bigger. He had been a ram, a mandrake, an incubus, a Roman legion, Adonis, Antony and Cleopatra, Leda and the Swan, and Snow White and the seven bastard dwarfs.

  Crispin had experienced an unprecedented series of orgasms that felt as if his soul were being pulled out of his stomach, his fading libido had made a better comeback than Frank Sinatra, and he had performed with such astounding vigor that his member had resembled a boiled wiener when he had finally run out of steam. It was going to be red-raw for a week. It had been like popping amyl nitrite and Viagra, with a mouthful of shrooms, a noseful of uncut Colombian, and a jalapeño suppository, all at the same time. What the fuck was in that shit? And, more important, when could they get some more?

  Finding drugs in Las Vegas was about as difficult as finding a hot dog at Wrigley Fields, but they weren’t talking about just any run-of-the-mill drug. And right now, they needed Monsoon Parker.

  “I wish I had got his number,” said Crispin.

  “Who?”

  “Mel Tormé, who do you fucking think? Monsoon Parker, you dildo.”

  “Well, Dorothy will know.”

  “Dorothy will be unconscious for a week, after you turned her pussy into a shopping basket. She’ll be pissing blood and rubber for a month!”

  “Well, call her anyway.”

  “Okay. Give me the phone, put some coffee on, and see if Oberon is awake.”

  Surprisingly, Dorothy answered on the second ring.

  “Crispin, I was just going to call you. What on earth was that? I feel like the fucking Jersey Tunnel.”

  “Tell me about it. My dick looks like something you’d find in a longshoreman’s sandwich. We have got to get some more of that shit. Have you got Monsoon’s number?”

  “I haven’t, unfortunately. He’s not really on my guest list. Or at least he wasn’t. He fucking is from now on. But I think I know where he lives. He slipped me an address last night.”

  “Right. Give me the address, and I’ll get round there right away, before he sells it all to somebody else.”

  “Right-ho. Give me a second.”

  Crispin waited while Dorothy rooted around in her purse.

  “Here we are, darling. Oh, dear. Not in a very nice area, I’m afraid. Are you sure you want to go there?”

  “If it meant getting hold of that stuff, I’d go to Baker on a fucking bicycle.”

  “Yes, well, I know you’ve always enjoyed a Bun Boy, dearie. Anyway, it’s 2694 Wampum Vista, all the way round the 95, off Lake Mead. Maybe you should take Nigel.”

  “Nigel!” Crispin snorted. “Nigel couldn’t frighten Winnie-the-fucking-Pooh. I’ll take Oberon. At least he’s got all his own teeth. I’ll call you later.”

  Crispin hung up, rolled off the bed, and opened the door to his walk-in closet, shouting to Nigel as he entered, “Ho. Where’s that coffee, you dilatory ckoff?”

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary’s holy fuckin’ pissflaps!”

  The daylight screamed at Baby Joe as he drew back the curtains, and he squinted his eyes against the piercing light. Outside his kitchen window the grass appeared a flickering stroboscope, sunflower-yellow. The kettle began to howl like a banshee and he staggered across the kitchen, killed the flame, and attempted to spoon some coffee into his cup, but the palsied trembling of his hand kept dumping the grains back into the jar and he had to resort to pouring coffee directly from it. The resulting brew looked as if it had been dredged from a Hoboken sewer and tasted about the same way. Inside his skull, a crew of fugitive mining engineers were attempting to drill th
eir way out, while in the pit of his stomach the National Association for the Advancement of Swamp Eels was holding its annual convention. Parking it on a stool, Baby Joe surveyed the aftermath of the night before.

  Strewn around two empty John Powers bottles was an uncountable legion of empty Guinness cans, and rising from the center of the wreckage like a queen among her subjects was a slender, elegant, and empty bottle of Galliano.

  Where the fuck did that slime come from? he thought, momentarily uncomprehending.

  And then he remembered the girl. Indistinct images began to hover at the periphery of his memory. A wild careening car ride, a bar somewhere, some loud Sly Stone rhythms, a party, a tall black girl. The images started to come into focus. He had been in the Whale, and the band had forced him to go with them to some new club that had opened. There had been a group on. A soul group. And they in turn had compelled him to go to this party. And this one girl, a backup singer, had forced him to bring her home.

  Relieved to discover that none of this had been his fault, he shuffled into the bathroom. Some debauched gargoyle leered back at him from the mirror, with red swollen eyes entrenched in sandbags. He leaned forward, with his hands on the sink, and peered at himself.

  “You’ve got to stop fucking doing this to yourself,” he said aloud.

  The debauched gargoyle said nothing.

  “Okay, pal. You asked for it.”

  Baby Joe stepped into the shower, and steeled himself for the icy blast that came rushing out to take his breath away. He stood there for five minutes, trying to let the fierce jets batter the fog from his brain and the nausea from his stomach. Shutting off the glacier, he padded still-wet into the kitchen, took up his coffee, went out into his small garden, and sat on the grass against a wall to let the morning sun dry him off.

  Baby Joe was in his forty-fourth year, beyond the age of reason and into the age of regret. He was the quintessential survivor, but had recently come to the conclusion that that was all he was and that survival was the rhyme and the reason. Nothing more, nothing less. A hard man in a hard game, he was just hanging fire, going on one day at a time, and waiting for it to be over, one way or another. Not happy, not unhappy, just there; halfway down the street of broken bones, hearts, homes, and promises, but not yet broken in spirit.

  Inside him, the dragon still coiled and uncoiled in the darkness, waiting for some circumstance to release it. Tired? Hell yes. He was tired. He was entitled to be tired. But he was in much better condition, physically, than he was entitled to be in at his age, considering the way he lived. He worked out, ran some, but counterbalanced that with an almost continuous supply of Guinness. It sometimes seemed to him that he spent half his time trying to stay in shape, and the other half fucking himself up.

  He had his share of ghosts, but had not been in love—or what he recognized as love—for many years now. He did okay, though. Women liked him for some reason. Here, late in the eighth round, he wasn’t handsome or distinguished-looking, as he had once been before the bell rang. But he had charisma and a certain bad-dog charm, and despite the anger that smoldered in him, despite what he had seen, something of the boy still remained in Baby Joe Young’s soul, to shine out on the world through his ice blue eyes.

  He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced.

  “Fuck that shit,” he said, tossing the brew onto the lawn.

  He stood and, with grass imprinted on his ass, headed for the fridge. A solitary black can formed the entire inventory of its contents.

  “Hallelujah, brother,” he said, cracking it with a sharp hiss.

  As he was heading back out to the garden a tall, willowy shape emerged from the bedroom, rubbing its eyes, and said, “Hi.”

  The girl was naked except for one of his shirts, which she wore hanging open, with the tips of her breasts exposed. Baby Joe stared, momentarily taken aback. Last night she had looked like Halle Berry, but this morning she looked more like fucking Chuck Berry.

  “Morning,” he said, wittily.

  He had absolutely no idea what her name was but she had a very good body, with long legs, high, tight breasts, and a look on her face that said he ought to remember more than he did.

  “Can I offer you some coffee?” Baby Joe said, struggling with his recalcitrant memory.

  “I’d love some,” she replied. “You lose your pamas?”

  “They don’t make them in my size.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, baby,” she said, easing her long legs behind the counter.

  Baby Joe handed her a steaming cup. “I hope you like it strong. I was having a bit of trouble with my spoon control this morning.”

  “I can see you’re having trouble controlling your spoon,” she said.

  Baby Joe grinned. He liked her, whoever she was, and he was sorry for his uncharitable thoughts.

  “Listen,” he said, “you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m afraid I can’t remember your name.”

  She smiled, graciously.

  “I’m Miriam. Don’t worry, baby. The state you were in, I’m surprised you can remember your own.”

  “I think it’s Dickhead, isn’t it?”

  “Something like that.”

  Miriam stood and slinked over to where he was perched on his stool, his member at half-mast as if waiting to hear how the conversation was going to turn out. She leaned forward and kissed him, gently, and put one hand on his dick. His dick immediately made up its mind as to which way the wind was blowing.

  “Mmm,” she purred.

  She reached down and touched her own wetness, and put her long, cool, slender fingers to his lips. Baby Joe breathed deeply, and reached behind him to put his can on the table.

  “Do you feel bad this morning, baby?” Miriam said.

  “I’ve felt better,” Baby Joe croaked.

  Miriam lifted one long leg over him, placed him with her cool fingers, and slowly slid herself down onto him.

  “Don’t you worry, baby,” she whispered. “Mama will take care of you.”

  And Miriam put her hands on Baby Joe’s muscular back and began to gyrate, ever so slowly.

  Monsoon peered through the spy hole in his front door and was dismayed to see the colorful, distorted figure of Crispin Capricorn in the silver circle, looking like the Easter Bunny trapped in a bubble. He cursed under his breath. What is that fat, perfumed ponce doing here? And how did he find the place? Dorothy! That shit must have been no good, and he wants his money back. Well, I’m sure if he asks the pit boss at Arizona Charlie’s nicely, they’ll give it to him. Anyway, fuck him. Money back, my Asiatic ass. Full refund of price of purchase if not completely satisfied? Who does he think he’s dealing with, fucking Walmart?

  What Monsoon definitely didn’t need, after waking up with a hangover of biblical proportions to the realization that the Don’s grand had gone down the drop box, plus the three from Brita the Buxom, putting him right back where he started, only worse—and before he had the chance for a cup of coffee, even—was to have to listen to the breathless twittering of this fat prick. Well, what was the limp-wristed douchebag going to do?

  Monsoon went into what passed for a sitting room, took out a snub-nosed Police .38 Special from under the sofa cushion and stuffed it down his waistband, just in case he was required to explain the situation a little more clearly.

  He systematically opened the battery of locks, deadbolts, and chains that afforded him at least the illusion of safety—although nothing short of living inside a Sherman tank was any guarantee in this neck of the woods—and forced himself to smile a big hello to the beaming Crispin. As soon as he opened the door, Monsoon realized it was worse than he had thought. A manic bounding fur ball attached itself to his shin and began a vigorous attempt at sexual congress with the hem of his jeans.

  “Crispin, my man,” he said, “what a pleasant surprise. Where’d you get the sheep?”

  Assigning it to his indelible mental book of scores to settle, Crispin let the knock on Oberon slide. Smiling relen
tlessly, he bent down to Monsoon and air kissed him in the vicinity of each cheek, starting back involuntarily when a whiff of rancid breath hit him like a slap in the face. Monsoon stepped aside and ushered Crispin in, following behind with one hand on the butt of the .38 and dragging the tirelessly humping Oberon with him.

  “Hey, amigo, what’s with the mutton?” he said, indicating the dog with a nod of his head.

  “Oh, he’s just such a playful thing,” said Crispin, detaching Oberon by main force, and holding him up to his face.

  “Oh, isn’t he just daddy’s adorable little bunny-wunny,” he said, burying his face into the animal’s fur and making a series of peculiar asthmatic snuffling noises.

  Monsoon gritted his teeth and set about resetting his defenses.

  Wrinkling his nose against the unmistakable smell of penury, Crispin surveyed the room with a mixture of distaste and contempt, eyeing the cheap furniture and tasteless trimmings, noting the cigarette burns in the carpet and the glass rings on the chipped veneer table. Oberon struggled to be free, so Crispin set him down and restrained him on his short pink leash, making a mental note to give him a bath as soon as they got home.

  Monsoon lived in a single-story, low-frame house set in a big, bare lot in an area of North Vegas so poor that pigeons were afraid to land there. The good news was that the rent was so low even he could afford it. You can’t get much lower than free. He had found the joint empty and moved in. He’d had the utilities secretly hot-wired to the guy that lived in back. Everything he owned would fit into the back of his shit-heap car and he could be out of there in five minutes, so if the real owners ever showed up it was no big deal. He kind of doubted they would. It had been six months, and nobody had pitched. On that side of the tracks, it was anybody’s guess what the story with the owners was. In the slammer, maybe? Croaked? Who knew? It was such a derelict shithole that the insurance money wouldn’t be worth the cost of the gasoline to torch the joint.