Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  She checked his pulse and it seemed strong and regular, and his chest was rising and falling steadily, so she dressed and walked out into the room where the two titans were waiting. She explained what had happened, and one of them detained her while the other went to check. He came back moments later and nodded to the other, who had escorted her to the lobby, given her an envelope with one thousand dollars in it, called her a cab, and waited with her on the street until it arrived.

  Back at her flat, she fixed herself a stiff drink and got into a hot bath. She soaked for an hour and went to bed, but her racing mind would not let her sleep. She got up again an hour later and made coffee, fidgeted for another hour, and finally reached for the phone.

  It hadn’t been a very good fight. Nothing broken except for a couple of glasses. The two protagonists, one with a bleeding lip and the other with a gashed knuckle, were sitting at the bar with their arms around each other’s shoulders and tears in their eyes, professing undying love and fealty to one another. Stavros “Big Bazouki” Papastopalotovus, having mopped up the blood, keeping a sharp eye out for gold teeth but finding none, sighed as he righted the chairs. He looked down the long length of the bright bar. Every chair was occupied, and the floor space filled. The jukebox was blasting and some of the girls, at least those who could still stand, were dancing. The clientele were mostly aboriginal—a few pure of blood, many more mixed—and a scattering of whites, rough-looking men with big muscles and big bellies, dressed in vests and wearing hats to a man.

  A lot different than when I first moved here, he thought. The girls behind the bar were working full-on, trying to keep up with the constant demand. Saturday afternoons are always good, Stavros was thinking happily, when a voice hailed him from the office door. He looked over to see his wife, a full-figured black woman, holding the phone. Stavros lumbered over and grasped the receiver in his hairy grip.

  “Yeah, Stavros.”

  The voice on the other end sounded far away, and foreign. “Can I speak to Woolloomooloo Wally?”

  “Not unless yer got a fucken loud voice, mate. Who are ya?”

  “Wally was a friend of my father. In Vietnam. I’ve got some things for him. I’m trying to find him. I’m calling from the States.”

  “Well, you won’t find ’im ’ere, mate, ’e’s gone.”

  “You mean he’s dead?”

  “Nah, don’t be a bladdy drongo. ’E’s gone walkabout.”

  “Oh, he’s gone for a walk. When will he be back?”

  “Jesus. Are you dense or what? I didn’t say walk, I said walkabout.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “’E’s gone away. ’E doesn’t live ’ere anymore.”

  “Well…do you know where he is?”

  “Yeah, course I bladdy know. ’E’s me mate.”

  “Well, will you tell me?”

  “’Ow do I know who yer are, or why you want ’im?”

  “I got the address of your hotel from my old man. He and Wally were good friends.”

  “Is that right? What was yer old man’s name?”

  “Parker. Captain Philip Parker.”

  “Ah, yeah. Fair dinkum, mate. I ’eard Wal talk about ’im. Sorry, but you ’ave to be careful.”

  “I understand.”

  “Yeah. Well, Wal’s in Vietnam. ’E’s got a bar in Ho Chi Minh City called Wal’s Outback. ’E…”

  The line went dead. Stavros looked at the receiver in his hand with some puzzlement, until the sound of breaking glass informed him that another fight had broken out. He dropped the receiver back into the cradle.

  “Strewth,” he muttered, reaching for his mop.

  Of course, Crispin Capricorn’s right name was not really Crispin Capricorn. Even in a country whose greatest icon of rugged masculinity was actually called Marion, and where parents can actually saddle their own kids with names like Shaquille, nobody could really be called Crispin Capricorn. Crispin had been christened Alvin Hardware, and might have continued quite happily as Alvin Hardware had it not been for two circumstances, which you may or may not consider unfortunate depending upon your sexual persuasion, but which were undoubtedly consequential.

  The first was the problem he developed with his feet—the problem being that he couldn’t keep them out of Burger King, thereby ensuring that by his thirteenth birthday he was already the wrong side of two hundred pounds.

  The second, and most significant, was his tendency after the onset of puberty to develop spontaneous erections at inappropriate moments, such as the time he developed a full-on boner while reaching for the soap in the shower after a school football practice, having found his face at butt-level of the well-scrubbed cheeks of his classmates.

  By the time he got out of hospital, and by the time, upon advice from the principal, Mr. and Mrs. Hardware had removed him to a different school district, Alvin had come to the conclusion that he was “different.” However, unlike the thousands of young men who make the same discovery every year and go through the tortures of the damned—wracked by guilt, daily hiding, and denying their secret desires—Alvin threw himself into his new lifestyle with gay abandon, no pun intended. And while he was experimenting with handjobs and blowjobs in the company of likeminded young men and deciding whether or not it is truly better to give than to receive, he found that many of his clandestine paramours were employed in the so-called “performing arts.” When, at a particularly riotous New Year’s bash in his seventeenth year, memorable for some old queen losing a testicle to an improperly adjusted vacuum cleaner, he discovered that he had a halfway-decent singing voice, the die was cast. Naturally outgoing and with a good talent for mimicry, he was on his way to diva-dom, and the only looking back from that point on was to see who was coming up behind him.

  A good stage name being essential to any aspiring artiste—especially one of his calling—he struggled initially to come up with anything suitable, trying and discarding Jacob Sladder, Madame Buttockfly, Bobby Helmet, Melissa Missionary, Patricia Pudenda, and Gloria Euphoria. He seriously considered Crispin Cornucopia for a while, picturing his cup ever full as it were, before being inspired by a close encounter of the weird kind with a very well-endowed, but not especially hygienic, astronomer and goat enthusiast, the details of which need not concern us here. So Crispin Capricorn it became, and Crispin Capricorn it remained, although he did flirt briefly with the idea of Dick Ramsbottom. As his fame grew, and he sank more and more comfortably into the fluffy pink pillow of the life he had made for himself, and as Alvin Hardware became nothing more than the fading and vaguely discomforting reminiscence of gin-induced nostalgia, Crispin changed his name officially and Alvin became a yellowing photograph in a dusty yearbook that nobody ever opened, half a continent away.

  As with any self-respecting moth, Crispin was inevitably attracted to the brightest flame. He headed for the scintillating lights of Vegas, where he became—by virtue of his talent, his wit, his industry, and the occasional blowjob in the right quarter—quite a gaudy flower even in that outrageous garden.

  Alas, as it goes with seasons, so it goes with the affairs of men. Public tastes changed, regimes changed, and his star waned, until by his fiftieth birthday Crispin was reduced to the matinée performance in a low-watt fleapit on the wrong side of town, pretending to be Bette Midler six days a week amid the clang of slot machines for a bunch of blue-rinse geriatrics who didn’t know an E-flat from a heart bypass. But though there was more life in a Haitian cemetery than at one of his gigs these days, Crispin was not complaining. He had prospered while it lasted, was well-respected and well-liked in his circle, had a nice comfortable apartment in the right part of town which was all paid for, and had enough in the bank to see that he wouldn’t have to go without for whatever time he had left. In fact, he didn’t even really have to keep working but, old trooper that he was, he clung to the dimming vestiges of his former glory while he still could. And anyway, he liked pretending to be Bette Midler.

  He was cu
rrently—and had been for a couple of years—seeing his boyfriend Nigel, who, while not the brightest match in the box, at least had the advantages of being loyal, half Crispin’s age, and only moderately annoying. Crispin was becoming attached to him, in more ways than one.

  Other than Nigel, the person he spent the most time with these days was Asia Birdshadow, a young woman who he liked to think of as his protégé, whom he had taken under his wing when she had just gotten off the bus from some fetid, mosquito-ridden swamp south of the line. She was currently prospering as an up-market sperm receptacle, but Crispin could tell that her heart wasn’t in it, and he hoped that she would have the sense to quit before the light went out of her eyes. She was feisty and fierce and independent, more the pro with the balls of steel than the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold, but he knew that she didn’t have the necessary flint in her soul to swim unscathed in these waters for very long.

  He thought of her very fondly, almost paternally, as the daughter he never would have, since the product of his ejaculations invariably took a wrong turn at the first bend. In fact, he was thinking of her fondly when she rang his mobile.

  “Asia. I was just thinking about you. How’s the traffic?”

  “Pedestrian. Listen, we have to meet. The most bizarre thing has just happened to me. I want your opinion.”

  “Well, you know where I live, dearie.”

  “Right. Don’t move. I’ll be round in an hour.”

  “Okay, Sweetie.” Crispin blew a kiss down the phone and wandered into his walk-in wardrobe to find something appropriate to wear.

  Monsoon was on hot bricks and had not slept or eaten for over forty-eight hours, such was his state of high excitement. He was existing on coffee, bourbon, amphetamines, and nervous energy. He had an acquaintance called Weeds. He had given Weeds a couple of bucks to call Wal’s Outback and ask how long they had been open. Weeds had told him they had been open since ten o’clock. Monsoon had called Weeds an absolute cretin and explained that he had meant since what year had they been open. Weeds had called back and asked if Wally was around and if there was any Machine Gun Jelly—for sale. Someone had asked Weeds what the fuck he was talking about, called him a drongo—whatever that was—made reference to his mother’s genital region, and told him to fuck off. So much for the direct route. It didn’t necessarily mean that Wally wasn’t around or that there was no Jelly. It just meant that Weeds was a drongo.

  A day later he called Wal’s Outback himself. Woolloomooloo Wally had not been able to speak, but the person who he had spoken to, who sounded like a child, had confirmed that Wally was alive and well and would be able to speak in about eight hours, by which time he would have more or less recovered from the effects of the twenty-eight bottles of beer which he had just finished drinking. The boy also confirmed that the bar had been opened during the war, but had closed when the Americans left, then opened again about ten years ago, and yes, it was in the same place that it had been before. He also confirmed that Monsoon was himself a drongo and told him to fuck off.

  Monsoon had made some calculations, the results and implications of which had almost sent him around the bend completely. He had replaced the broken magnifying glass with a more powerful one, and examined the photo minutely. There was no question that the walls of the shithouse were lined with MGJ. Of crucial importance, also, was the fact that the shirt that Wally was wearing as he was rogering the girl in the outhouse was the same as the one he was wearing in the picture of him and Monsoon’s father outside the bar. This led Monsoon to conclude that either Woolloomooloo Wally only had one shirt, or that the pictures were taken in the same place on the same day. Almost too conveniently, and in keeping with the ever-swelling wave of good fortune upon which Monsoon now found himself riding, the latter fact was confirmed by the date and location written on the back of the photos, together with the legends, Wal opens his bar and Wal opens his pants, respectively.

  His now-unshakeable belief in the inviolable preordination of his lucky break, coupled with the fact that he now knew the bar to be in its original location, led him to conclude that the chances were astoundingly good that, due to its construction material, the real estate value of Woolloomooloo Wally’s shithouse was approximately the same as Bill Gates’s townhouse. Extrapolating from what he could see, there were no fewer than a thousand packets in the walls, resulting in an erection-inducing equation, which—although mathematics, and in particular multiplication, had never been Monsoon’s strong point—appeared to resolve itself at an extremely significant amount of money. Or, in simple terms, THIRTY-EIGHT MILLION MOTHERFUCKIN’ DOLLARS, AND CHANGE. Monsoon began to hyperventilate, and his brain began to throb with an almost audible hum, as if it could not accommodate the enormity of the consequences of the calculation it had just made.

  The thought of thirty-eight million motherfuckin’ dollars and change, and what he could do with it, sent his already-agitated mind into overdrive, which, combined with lack of sleep and drug and alcohol abuse, allowed him to think with a clarity that would not otherwise have been possible. It was in this almost nirvana-like state of lucidity that the curtains in his brain parted to reveal an idea of unparalleled brilliance.

  What if he went to Vietnam and ingratiated himself with this Wally? What if he showed him the letter? What if he said that he had come to find out all about the father he never knew, from Wally? What if he told this Wally character that there was a missing piece in his life that only Wally could give him back? That only by knowing about his father would he be able to know who he himself really was. Nobody could fail to fall for a sob story like that, coming from the son of his late, lamented best friend. This was when the curtains parted yet further, and an idea of unprecedented sophistication exploded into his fevered sconce.

  What if he took his grandfather? What if he took Philip Parker’s father? He would have Woolloomooloo Wally’s heart on a platter. Wally would welcome them with open arms into the bosom of his family. The old man would be here in a week. All he had to do was bullshit the old bastard into going with him. And he knew exactly how to play that hand. After that, it was just a matter of demolishing the shithouse and getting a shitload of illicit dope out of Vietnam and into the good ol’ US of A undetected. Of course, it didn’t necessarily follow that Machine Gun Jelly had to be illegal, just as heroin was once perfectly legal, but why take the chance? Having his grandfather with him had the added advantage of being able to stash some in the old man’s suitcase, just in case.

  It was as he was appreciating the irony of the fact that he might not actually be breaking the law that the idea of Machiavellian complexity flew into his brain like a jeweled bird. He grabbed the phone and dialed, sucking from the bourbon bottle while he waited impatiently for a response. After what seemed to him an interminable number of rings, a high falsetto voice answered.

  “Yo, Chicken Man,” Monsoon said.

  “Don’t call me that. What do you want?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “No you don’t, you need a kick in the balls,” replied Chicken Man, not sounding entirely thrilled to be talking to Monsoon Parker.

  “Least I got some.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I need a coffin.”

  “A what?”

  “A coffin. I need a coffin.”

  “For you, I hope.”

  “Very funny. I mean it. I need a coffin.”

  “Well, go and fucking buy one.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I need a used one.”

  “I don’t think there is a real big trade in second-hand coffins.”

  “Listen, dipshit. I need a coffin with bones in it. I need you to dig one up.”

  “You got to be shittin’ me.”

  “No, I’m serious. And it has to be full of bones. I don’t want to open it and find some ripe fucker who’s only been dead for a week.”

  “Hey, in case you ain’t aware, grave robbing is a felony.”

  “So is armed ro
bbery, I believe.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning maybe the cops might like some information about the jewelry store job last week. You know, the one where the guy got shot?”

  “You shit bird asshole,” the voice said, hanging up.

  Monsoon grinned and took another shot from the bottle. He went into the kitchen, took a pen and legal pad from a drawer, picked up the receiver again, and dialed Information.

  “LA. California. Yeah. Gimme the number for Singapore Airlines.”

  Crispin had been wrong. Dorothy wasn’t a more reliable source of information than the Las Vegas Revue Journal. Dorothy was a more reliable source of information than CNN! Within two days the buzz was in the streets, and Monsoon had set himself up with a mobile and was sliding around some very up-market real estate and making frequent trips to his safety deposit box. Apart from a couple of minor losing propositions, he hadn’t even had time to really gamble, and even after his repayment to the Don he still had twenty grand and half the MGJ.

  On the fourth day, he got a call from Handyman Harris.

  “Handyman, my man. How’s it hangin’? Are you getting any?”

  “More than a candle in a fucking convent. Listen. I hear you got some serious merchandise on offer.”

  “Serious ain’t the word, amigo. Try spectacular. You want?”

  “Not me, bro. A friend of mine. A real cool dude.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you better tell him this shit ain’t cheap.”

  “Money is no object to this guy. He’s loaded for bear.”