Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  He had arrived the previous evening and checked into the suite that management always gave him. He had ordered a bottle of Moët from room service, drank it as he settled down in the tub for a long luxurious soak, and afterwards slept like a baby. In the morning, he had walked down to the corner for coffee and bagels with cream cheese and blueberry jelly and had watched the colorful people entering and leaving the gondola station, and the little cars climbing over the treetops, glistening in the morning sun. And now he was back in the hotel calling Nigel, who had stayed in Vegas to dog-sit Oberon. Crispin pretended that he was sorry Nigel couldn’t be with him, but secretly he was glad of a little time on his own, and you never knew, a guy in a hot-pink Italian ski suit just might get lucky.

  “Hey, Nigel. How’s it going?” he said.

  “I’m fine. How was your drive?”

  “Oh, it was an absolute delight. Just like a picture postcard. How’s my baby?”

  “Oh, he really misses you already. Like me. I had ever such a job to get him to settle. I had to give him a glass of wine in the end. That did the trick.”

  “Oh, my. I swear that dog is an alcoholic. Well, must dash. I just wanted to let you know I got here all right. I’ll call you tonight, after my show. Ciao.” Crispin blew a kiss down the receiver, pressed the button, and called the bell captain to have someone come up and carry his ski gear downstairs.

  “Black queen takes vhite knight,” Bjørn Eggen said.

  A black family was standing next to him. The lady looked at him and pulled the child closer. The man stepped forward. The father and the son were wearing the same red t-shirts and caps. “Roll Tide” was written on them.

  “Come again, pops?”

  Bjørn Eggen looked up from the grave absentmindedly. He smiled at the man. “Oh. Please excuse me. I am old, ja. Talk to meself sometimes.”

  “Are you okay?” the lady said.

  “Ja, ja. For sure. I am fine. Thank you for asking.” Bjørn Eggen turned his gaze back to the grave. “Was me wife,” he said.

  The lady looked at the headstone. It read,

  Maybelline Celeste Christiansson née Parker.

  Loving Mother of Capt. Philip Parker, US Airborne.

  Loving wife of Bjørn Eggen Christiansson.

  September 13th, 1925 to September 13th, 1979

  Finis vitae sed non amoris.

  “What does it mean?” she said.

  “The end of life, but not of love.”

  “That is very beautiful.”

  “Ja. So vas she. Vind took her. Vas her birthday.”

  The man motioned to the woman. She touched Bjørn Eggen on the shoulder, and walked away. Bjørn Eggen smiled as he heard the boy say something about his clothes to the father, and the mother tell him to shush. He looked at the roses he had brought, red against the white marble. As red as blood. He closed his eyes. He could hear the birds. The sun was warm on his face.

  He felt anew the pull in the pit of his stomach that he’d felt all those years ago, when she’d walked into the restaurant to meet him. She’d been so beautiful he felt that he could not breathe. He had not known what to say. It was in Naples, in 1946. The floor was black and white marble, like the marble that now marked where she lay. It had been in huge squares, like a chessboard. She’d been very dark. He was very white, except for where the sun had burned his face and arms. Later, she laughed when he she saw him naked, with his bronzed face and his lily-white ass. That’s what she had said.

  “That there is the whitest ass I ever seen, boy. Why, it’s as white as a lily.”

  Bjørn Eggen smiled at the memory. He remembered standing there, not knowing what to say.

  Finally she’d said, “Damn, boy. Don’t you ever hush up?”

  He had smiled then and said, “Ve are looking like the chess pieces on the board, you and me, ja?”

  He had felt foolish saying it, but she’d laughed, and the ice was melted, and the warmth that came flooding in to replace it stayed with them until the day she died, and held them together even when the war took Philip from them.

  He had not been there, when the wind came and took her from him, just as he had not been there when the war took Philip, and, even though he knew it was not his fault, and there was nothing he could have done, he felt ashamed and guilty because he had not protected her.

  Maybelline Celeste had become pregnant with baby Philip and, given the ruinous and austere state that Europe was in, they decided to live in the States. They moved to Alaska at her suggestion, so that Bjørn Eggen could continue to work with dogs. She couldn’t expect Bjørn Eggen to fully comprehend that, given an alternative, no woman in her right mind would voluntarily choose to raise a mixed-race child in 1950s ’Bama. She also thought it advisable to avoid the distinct possibility of her and Bjørn Eggen, as a mixed-race couple, having the shit kicked out of them on a biweekly basis. Philip was already three months old when they were married in Kodiak, and he cried all through the wedding. As if he knew something. With all the shit that was going on after the war, it took a while for Bjørn Eggen’s paperwork to come through, by which time Philip already had his mother’s maiden name on his birth certificate. They kept meaning to change it, but time went by and they were busy being happy, and somehow they just never got around to it.

  Her father died in ’79, and she flew home for the funeral. She never came back. Hurricane Frederic only killed five people in Alabama, but she was one of them, taken by the sea from the bridge to Dauphin Island when the hurricane tore it into pieces and hurled it into the ocean.

  Bjørn Eggen did not attempt to fight the tears as he knelt down and put his lips to the cold stone. He had fought enough in his life. If the tears wanted to come, let them. He stayed like that for a long time, and the shadows had moved across the grass to touch him on the face before he said softly, “Black queen takes vhite knight. Checkmate.”

  He struggled to his feet, and walked slowly to the gate of the cemetery. As he approached the road, he could hear the tooting of car horns and singing, and, as he rounded the final bend he saw a throng of young people parading past the gate, laughing and dancing. They were mostly wearing red.

  He could not cross the street because of the people, and he stood watching. A group of young men stopped in front of him.

  “Shit, dude, where’d ya get them crazy threads?”

  The boys were obviously on the wrong side of some serious alcohol abuse.

  “Threads. Vat is threads?”

  “Your clothes, man,” another one said. “Far out, like in the movies. You foreign?”

  “I am from Norway.”

  “Man, we kicked LSU’s sorry butts, man,” another young man explained.

  “There is no need to be sorry.”

  “Say what, now?”

  “Sometimes the butts are having to be kicked, ja.”

  “Shit, man. This old dude is cool. Let’s take him with us.”

  “Hey, old timer. You want to come with us?”

  “Vhere are you going?”

  “For beer. We handed LSU their asses, big time. We’re going to get shit-faced.”

  “You said beer, ja.”

  “Yeah, bro, beer.”

  “You said the magic focken word. Let’s go.”

  The boys were laughing and singing as they put their arms around Bjørn Eggen’s shoulders and led him down the road.

  And that was how Bjørn Eggen came to miss his flight to Las Vegas.

  Don Ignacio Imbroglio leaned his head back and blew a cloud of gray smoke towards the ceiling. Behind him, through the opened window, the lights of the Strip were chasing the last vestiges of twilight from the sky. The Don looked at Thumper, sitting across from him, nursing a glass.

  “So, who did you say these clowns were?”

  “According to the slope, the one fat guy is some fruit lounge act goes by the name of Crispin Capricorn.”

  “Oh, yes. I know him. He used to be quite big, back in the old days. Not a bad tenor, as it hap
pens.”

  “Well, he’s still pretty big. Two-fifty, easy.”

  “Yes. And the lady in question?”

  “That weren’t no lady, boss. That was a hooker. The reason I know is because it was the same one that me and Frankie brung ya, yesterday.”

  If the Don was surprised, he didn’t show it. “What did Mr. Parker have to say about it?”

  “He sez he knows Capricorn and he sold him a coupla ounces, but he don’t know the girl, an’ he don’t know how come they come to be inside his house.”

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “I think so, boss.”

  “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “I dunno, boss. Sumtin like this drug could turn out to be a big deal. Don’t want a coupla fuckheads screwing thing up. If they was in the house, they seen the joint turned over, and they musta seen the coffin. Plus, the bitch was here, and she seen ya…well, like, she seen ya, ya know?”

  “There is no need to be more explicit. I understand. Continue.”

  “Well, ya know how people talk. I say we waste ‘em. Just in case.”

  “I think your assessment of the situation is correct, Thumper. We are talking about potentially a very great deal of money. The streets of Las Vegas will not be noticeably poorer for being minus one hooker and a has-been lounge act. Pity, though. He was a good singer. Well, never mind. Take care of it. Do it yourself. The fewer people involved in this thing, the better.”

  “Okay, boss. Consider it done. Just one thing. They had a dog with them?”

  “What kind of a dog?”

  “I dunno, boss. Little fluffy thing. Kinda like a sheep.”

  “I see. Well. Take care of the dog as well.”

  “Okay, boss.”

  “And one other thing. I want to know everything there is to know about Mr. Monsoon Parker.”

  “Sure thing, Don Imbroglio.”

  Thumper walked out of the room. The Don got to his feet and walked through the open French windows to the balcony and stood feeling the cool breeze, listening to the faint honking of horns below and the occasional roar of a jet overhead, blowing smoke into the gathering night. And thinking.

  Monsoon was nervous. The kind of nervous that three vodka and tonics would not dispel. He kept looking from the TV screen behind the bar to his watch, then to the elevator, and back to the screen. He looked at his watch now. It said eight fifty-one, twenty-nine seconds later than the last time he had looked. There was a fight on the TV—two junior middleweights going at it pretty good—but Monsoon could not concentrate. His eyes were locked into an uninterruptible rhythm. Screen, watch, elevator, screen, watch, elevator, over and over. He signaled the barkeep to set ‘em up.

  He had been wracking his brains ever since the Don had pulled him in, turning the shit over and over and over again in his mind, examining the situation like an Amsterdam jeweler looking at a diamond. Testing every facet. Every angle. What the fuck was he doing? He should have known better. Vegas is too small a place. He should have taken the stuff someplace else to unload it once he realized what it was. He had known he was making a mistake borrowing a lousy grand from the Don, and now look at the shit he was in. There was no going back with these people. No “thank you, nice doing business with you.” Their shadow was everywhere, and their hand in everything, and even if, by the remotest possibility, you came out of it with two of everything that you went in with, you could never again walk down any street in America without looking over your shoulder. Right from the very beginning, when there had been nothing out here but sand and scorpion shit, every inch of Vegas—every trash can emptied, every bed sheet laundered, every drink sold, every chip cashed, every burger eaten, every pair of whore’s knickers hitting the carpet from Freemont Street to fucking Parhump—had had “mob” written all over it. These people did not forget, and they did not go away. And that fucking Don. That creepy wop undertaker could kill you just by looking at you.

  Monsoon pulled his folded Revue Journal out of his jacket pocket, and looked for the hundredth time at the article.

  UNLV STUDENT KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT

  Professor Archie Medes, long time head of the Chemistry department at UNLV, walked into his lab early yesterday evening on a routine checkup and walked straight into a tragedy. Milton Gonski, star chemistry student, was killed right in front of Dean Medes when an experiment he was working on exploded. There was extensive damage to the lab, and Dean Medes’s new ten-thousand-dollar hair replacement treatment was ruined. Fire department officials are today continuing their investigation into the cause of the explosion. Dean Medes was quoted as saying he was shocked by the tragic loss, but that he would be getting another hair replacement as soon as possible.

  Milton Gonski, 19, was an extremely promising and popular student, and everyone… etc. etc.

  Monsoon stuffed the paper back into his pocket. The cause of the explosion. The cause of the fucking explosion had been some psycho greaseball with a fucking grenade or some shit. And this is what he was talking about. Their eyes were every-fucking-where. He had spoken to the kid once, for ten minutes, and now he was a cinder. And what had the kid found out, before they got to him? What had he told them? What did the Don know now about MGJ that he didn’t? And if they would flambé some innocent punk kid, who had probably never even had it out of his pants, then he was going to last about as long as a bar of chocolate in a crack den if he didn’t get out of this.

  Monsoon’s drink arrived and he slugged the vodka straight down, ordered another, and continued his eye routine. Screen, watch, elevator, screen, watch, elevator. He knew what he had to do, and he knew it was his only chance. He had told the Don there was more stuff. Thirty-eight million’s worth. Why the fuck had he had to say thirty-eight million? What if he had second-guessed himself? All of a sudden his absolute conviction that Woolloomooloo Wally’s crapper was built of bricks of MGJ was not so absolute. In fact, the only Absolut was the fucking vodka he was drinking. What the fuck had he been thinking? Fifteen years, and nobody renovates the shitter? Not to mention the odd NVA shell landing here and there. And if there was no thirty-eight million dollars’ worth of MGJ, the Don was just going to pat him on the back, and say, “Nice try, Monsoon, thanks for your trouble.” Sure he was. And if he did get lucky, the Don was going to say, “Hey, Monsoon, look what we got. Let’s share.” Yeah, right. Good ol’ loveable Uncle Don Imbroglio, friend to the poor. Either way, that evil son of a bitch was planning to have him end up in a bin liner in the Mojave Desert, with the roots of a fucking Joshua tree growing through his eye sockets.

  There was only one thing to do, and hope that the Don didn’t have him figured for enough moxie to try it. Maybe, if he could just pull it off, this could turn out to be an even bigger break than finding the stuff in the first place. Maybe he had been pushed into something that would be bigger than anything he had ever imagined. And maybe what he had in mind was so unthinkable, so unexpected, so beyond the Don’s reckoning, that a nobody like himself would try to put a burn on him, that it might give him just the edge that he needed.

  Vegas was fucked for him now. Whatever happened, there would be no going back. MGJ might be a fucking pipe dream, but if he could set things up so that the Don thought he had scored some, and sent the money over, there might be a way to get his hands on it. Somehow, he was going to have to give Frankie and his man the slip and figure a way to get the money away from them. And the others. If he did find the stuff, he would have to figure a way to get his hands on that, too. The money, the drugs, the whole nine yards.

  But what about his grandfather? Where the fuck was the silly old fart? At least that missing-link-looking fucker Merang had been with him at the airport and could confirm to the Don that the senile, old bastard hadn’t shown up, and it was a legitimate snafu and not some con. The Don had decided not to delay the trip, but that would make it worse for the old man, if and when he did rock up. He would freak out when the Don’s men snatched him from the hotel
or the apartment. He had gotten his grandfather involved. He was responsible! What would they do with him? What would they do to him? Would the Don still send him over with the moneymen? What could he do about it, either way? There had to be a way. There had to be a way to make this come out right.

  He had one thing. He had managed to get away without telling the Don about Woolloomooloo Wally, whoever the fuck he was. The way this thing was panning out, anything that might prove to be an ace up the sleeve was worth hanging on to. This whole fiasco might balance on something so small.

  Things were going to get tight. As tight as a crab’s ass at fifty fathoms. But he didn’t see that he had a choice. And when they got to the ‘Nam, he would be on home turf. Even though he hadn’t lived there since he was a boy he knew the lingo a little, and the customs, and enough people to maybe be able to call on some backup. If he played it cool and close to his chest, then maybe…Close to his chest! He put his fingers through the top buttons of his shirt and felt the old man’s dog tag. Maybe this was the old man talking to him. Maybe this had all been written a long time ago.

  When he looked from his watch to the elevator and saw Frankie Merang—accompanied by an orangutan in a cheap suit—walking towards him, he realized that he would know soon enough.