Hertz was going to be thrilled. “Well, what happened was, I parked next to this Mercedes, and it exploded, see? Honest!” As he huddled against the tire, making himself as small as possible, a hard rain began to fall around him—glass and steel, copper and hot plastic. Something soft landed on his knee, something white and red and furry. It was a dog’s ear.
Baby Joe stood up with his ears ringing and looked at the smoldering piece of twisted metal that had, only moments before, been a fine example of German precision engineering. Whoever and whatever had been inside it were toast. Well, at least the Don’s wage bill is getting smaller, he thought, racing towards the fire escape as the first curious faces began to appear.
He didn’t have to slap Crispin as many times as he thought he was going to, to get him to stop screaming. He killed the gas, severed the bonds with the knife that Thumper had used to prop open the oven door, and said, “Let’s go, Crispin. You’ve been a very naughty boy.”
As Baby Joe headed for the door, Crispin’s plaintive voice pulled him up.
“Baby Joe,” said Crispin, looking at the floor, “I need to change my underpants.”
Baby Joe tried his best not to laugh, but it was like Canute trying to hold back the waves.
Crispin announced, “Well, I’m glad someone thinks it’s fucking funny,” and flounced into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
“Where are your car keys?” Baby Joe said through the door, still laughing.
“On the fucking table. Are you blind as well as ignorant?”
The sound of approaching sirens choked the laughter in Baby Joe’s throat, and he banged on the door and told Crispin to stop looking at himself in the mirror and hurry up. As the flustered Crispin emerged from the bathroom, a volley of tomato ketchup caught him in the face and chest. His eyes went wide in shock and amazement.
“NOW WHAT THE FUCK? JUST LOOK AT THIS SHIRT. THIS SHIRT COST THREE HUNDRED FUCKING…!”
Baby Joe grabbed him and pushed him towards the door. Crispin shuffled up to the elevator and narrowed his eyes at Baby Joe when he said, “No. The stairs.”
Out back there were already two squad cars, and two officers were pushing the crowd back while another one was looking at the torched Merc, and one was on his car radio. Baby Joe grabbed Crispin as he was about to go waltzing out.
“Where’s your car?”
“In front.”
“Good. C’mon.”
He dragged Crispin down the short passage and into the crowd of people gathered in front of the door. “Make way, please! Let us through, this man is injured.”
There were gasps and comments from the crowd as they parted, and Baby Joe pushed the Heinz-splattered Crispin in front of him to the car. A minute down the road they pulled over for an ambulance and a fire engine coming in the opposite direction, and two minutes later they hit the freeway.
“I don’t suppose you have a tissue?” Crispin said hopefully.
Baby Joe shook his head.
“Oh, Baby Joe,” Crispin said, with tears beginning to form in his eyes, “what is happening to me? Nigel is dead, Oberon is dead, people keep trying to kill me, my career is ruined, and I’m sitting in a hired car with a madman, covered in tomato ketchup. What did I do to deserve this? Why me?”
Baby Joe shook his head. “Fucked if I know, Crispin,” he said, softly. “Fucked if I know.”
Chapter 11.
Frankie Merang always got nervous when he had to use the telephone. He didn’t know why, but it was just one of those things, like some people stutter and some don’t. It made his throat dry, and it confused him, so the right words were hard to find. On this occasion he was even more nervous than usual. So nervous, in fact, that a half a pint of bourbon had been required to relax him to the point where he felt confident of making sure he found the right words. On this occasion, choosing the wrong words would be like choosing the short straw. He was calling the Don.
“It’s Frankie,” he said, when Liberty answered.
“Yo, Frank. How’s the dink pussy?”
“Like a shit-faced dwarf. Small and tight. Let me speak to the Don, will ya?” Frankie waited, listening to the faint hissing of the line.
“Mr. Merang. How are you enjoying your stay in the Orient?”
“Good, Don Imbroglio. I like it just fine.”
“How gratifying. And how are our affairs?”
“Couldn’t be better, Don Imbroglio. The slope has the stuff.”
“Oh, he has? And?”
“The contact claims that what he has is all there is left. He wants ten mill for it. Cash.”
“Ten million dollars. Hmmn. Somewhat less than the amount quoted by our friend Mr. Parker. Must be having a discount this week. Have you seen the merchandise?”
“Sure, boss.”
“But didn’t our associate, Mr. Parker, say that it would take time to bring in the goods from the jungle?”
“Yeah, but we fixed things up real fast, boss, and the stuff got here real quick.”
“I see. And you have met the contact personally, of course.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“And just who is our benefactor?”
“Some slant businessman, boss. I can’t even pronounce the name. Our guy knows.”
“Very well. I shall send out some associates to verify your findings, and make the purchase if all is satisfactory. I’ll let you know when to expect them. By the way…how is our friend Belly Joe behaving himself?”
“Ah, well. You see, boss, Belly Joe screwed up.”
“Indeed. In what fashion?”
“Well, see, boss, he went to this clip joint, see. Jeez, I tried ta stop him, but he wouldn’t lissen. Anyways, he gets this bill for champagne for, like, five hundred bucks, and of course he don’t want to pay it. The dinks start to come on heavy, so Belly Joe has to straighten a few of them out. Only, they call the cops, see, and Joe gets put in the wagon. They got him in the slammer, boss.”
“How unfortunate. And what steps have you taken to remedy the situation?”
“Well, our guy is tryin’ to fix it, boss. We think we can get him out for a coupla bucks, but it might take a few days.”
“Hmn. And in the interim, are you able to handle things on your own?”
“Sure thing, boss. No sweat. I got it all sewn up.”
“All right, then. Congratulations, Mr. Merang. Rest assured you will be rewarded commensurate with your endeavors. I shall be in touch.”
The line went dead, and Frankie dropped the receiver and reached for his cigarettes. He blew a series of smoke rings and, poking his finger through them, reached for his bottle of bourbon.
“So, Donny baby,” he said aloud, grinning at his reflection in the mirror in front of him, “yez ain’t as smart as ya think ya are, are ya? Ya guinea fuck.”
The Don had a theory. He called it his Matryoshka Doll Theory. It was how he liked to conduct his business. Like one of those Russian dolls, where each one opens up to reveal another smaller one inside. Painted dolls with inscrutable, relentlessly smiling faces, each one in turn concealing another secret self, none of them being what they seemed to be, until you reach the very last and very smallest, hidden away inside the layers of her sisters. The only one who was not a façade. The one who was the final truth.
The Don’s schemes were like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. Everyone who was involved had a piece, a partial image from which they could extrapolate whatever design their imagination would furnish, but only the Don had the box. Only he knew what the finished picture looked like. The Don also believed that no man should be required to support the burden of responsibility alone, particularly when the burden of responsibility involved large sums of the Don’s money.
Therefore, each participant in his ventures was provided with not only an aide-de-camp, but also another pair of eyes and ears, just to ensure that he didn’t inadvertently stray from the path. For reasons of practicality, the identity of the eyes and ears remained unknown to th
e participant, thus allowing the Don to indulge in some interesting games of I Spy to while away a tedious hour. And on really important errands the eyes and ears were themselves provided with someone to watch over them. This second observer’s piece of the puzzle had a picture of the first pair of eyes and ears but not the original participant, in accordance with the Don’s Russian Doll Theory.
Thus, the Don insulated himself by several degrees from the potential consequences of any unforeseen or unfortunate turns of event. Like the unfortunate turn of events that had resulted in the tragic demise of Thumper Thyroid, for example. Not to mention that distasteful piece of excrement Maxie Grimmstein. Not that either one was any great loss, but the point was there was untidiness here, unacceptable untidiness, by which the Don could not abide. Thyroid had presumably dispatched himself through the sheer carelessness and ineptitude which was his calling card, but that was by no means certain. Grimmstein had been a professional job, which meant that he had two problems. Neither of the people he had ordered to cease to exist had ceased to exist, which would have to be remedied. Furthermore, somebody was cutting up the help. Somebody dangerous. Steps would have to be taken, and quickly, before things got out of hand.
As a consequence of his belief in the fundamentally flawed character of human beings, the Don tried to ensure a secure and reassuring working environment for his employees. They could toil away happily, secure and reassured in the knowledge that if they even considered for one nanosecond pulling a fast one they were assured of being provided with a swift, certain, and excruciatingly painful demise. Don Imbroglio considered one of his greatest assets as an entrepreneur, and one of the key reasons for his success, to be his essential faith in human nature. His essential faith that people would try to slip him the Big Bamboo at each and every opportunity that presented itself. His essential faith that the people who worked for him were greedy, opportunistic, shortsighted, devious, untruthful, and basically lacking in those ideals of nobility, honor, and loyalty by which man distinguishes himself from the herd and rises above his base and brutish instincts and desires.
Take, for example, the case of Mr. Frankie Merang. Here was a man who had obviously failed to rise above his base and brutish instincts and desires. It is said that bats “see” sound, the way that we see light. In the same way, in his inability to see light, the Don had learned to take information from the sounds he heard with a musician-like skill. Subtleties and nuances of tone and timbre, alterations in pitch, slight hesitations, or changes in tempo were, for the Don, as obvious as a neon dildo. In short, the Don could detect bullshit at five thousand yards, in a thunderstorm, wearing a balaclava. It would take an extremely subtle weaver of tales to mislead Don Ignacio Imbroglio, and if Frankie Merang had sophistication of speech then Frankenstein’s monster had good table manners.
Since Frankie and his simian companion were ensconced on the other side of the world, accompanied by a seriously suspect character of dubious origin, entrusted with the disposition of the Don’s freshly laundered green, full precautionary measures had naturally been taken. Furthermore, in accordance with the essential neatness of the Don’s thinking, he had sent his cleaning lady to tidy up the mess that would inevitably attend a venture of this nature. However, in light of Merang’s cloddish and clumsy attempt at deception, additional steps would be required.
The Don wasn’t sure exactly what half-baked plan Merang had cooked up, but it was sure to be something risibly transparent, and although he suspected that Merang would be too stupid to identify his tail and give him the slip he wasn’t going to take the chance. And also, who else was involved? What despicable collusion was taking place between his minions in that far-off place? Independent arbitration was called for.
And then there was the small matter of the disappearance of the two missing parties, whose disappearance needed to be made a little more permanent, and also the issue of the improptu barber who had ventilated the late Mr. Grimmstein. All this would be best farmed out. The fewer people in his immediate organization who knew of his recent inconveniences, the better.
The Don reached for his phone, dialed, and said, “Ah, Mr. Harris. I wonder if you would be so kind as to pop round and see me. Yes. At your earliest convenience. Say, immediately, for example.”
Watching the red taillights of Crispin’s car receding down the road, Baby Joe came to an important decision. He decided to go and get shitfaced. He looked in on the old man, but he was still deep in the embrace of Elysium, so he made coffee and woke him up. He decided to level with him.
“You haf maybe something for to put in the coffee?” Bjørn Eggen said, looking odd and out of place in a pair of canvas pants and a thick woolly sweater.
“Sugar?”
“No. Fock the sugar,” he said, with a devilish grin that made him look like some ancient mythical satyr. “I can say such vords now the ladies not any longer here, ja. Whiskey maybe.”
Baby Joe smiled, walked through to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He poured a generous shot into the old man’s coffee and poured a glass for himself. He paused for a second before he began.
“Listen, Bjørn Eggen, I have to talk to you. I think your grandson is in some kind of trouble. I don’t know what, yet, but I know it involves some very bad people. People who want to hurt Asia and Crispin, which is why I had to send them away. I’m going to have to send you away for the same reason. These people might come here.”
Bjørn Eggen nodded. “Ja. I am not yet the senile. My grandson’s house did not do that to itself, ja.”
“I think the best thing for you to do is to check into your hotel room and hang about for a few days to see if I can come up with anything. If you go running off to Vietnam, you might be going on a wild goose chase.”
“I haf chase many gooses in my time,” the old man said with a gleam in his eye, and then, abruptly, “Is my grandson dead, Baby Joe?”
Baby Joe said nothing. He looked into his glass.
“Baby Joe, I am an old man, ja. I am not expecting much older to get. I do not know if even I vant to get much older. In a long life, such as mine haf been, is much pain. Is necessary. If you know something, you must tell me, ja?”
“Bjørn Eggen, if I knew I’d tell you. I only know what I’ve told you already. If you do as I suggest, I’ll keep you posted and let you know as soon as I know myself.”
The old man nodded and shuffled on his bowed old legs into the spare room to get his things. Bjørn Eggen reappeared wearing a parka.
“For fuck’s sake, Bjørn Eggen, you’re going to a hotel, not on a fucking caribou hunt.”
“Maybe I do hunt. Old is not dead, ja?”
“Come on, you old fart, get in the car.”
Baby Joe dropped Bjørn Eggen off in front of the hotel, saying, “Go well, old man. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Bjørn Eggen took him by the hand and said, “I know you are a good man, ja. You know, the sapling cannot grow in the shade of the oak.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Think about it, my friend,” said the old man, turning and humping his backpack into the lights and noise of the Mirage.
Baby Joe watched him go, shook his head, smiled, and headed for Tropicana and the Crown and Anchor.
Stratosphere and Liberty had been told what to expect from Baby Joe Young and had been warned not to take any chances. That’s why, apropos of nothing, Stratosphere hit him on the back of the head with a leather sap in the parking lot behind the Crown and Anchor pub as Baby Joe was staggering towards his car, just about to break a fair cross-section of the rules in the Nevada Highway Code. Not hard enough to really do damage, just enough to drop him to his knees. And that is also why, when Baby Joe dropped to his knees, Liberty kicked him in the ribs—not hard enough to really tear anything, just hard enough to take the wind out of his sails.
“The Don is waiting,” Liberty said, as Baby Joe rolled over and up onto his knees again.
“D
on who? King? Tell him I’m retired. Can’t make the weight,” said Baby Joe, feeling his ribs, making sure nothing was cracked.
“Very funny, smart guy,” Stratosphere said.
“Yeah, well, if you’d wanted snappy comebacks, you should have got Robert B. Parker down here.”
“You talk pretty cute for a washed-up Mick wino laying on his ass in a parking lot,” said Liberty, who, although he had never heard of Robert B. Parker, was fairly certain that Baby Joe was being pretty cute.
“You should listen to me when I’m sober. I think I smell KY jelly—whose turn is it to be on top tonight, ladies?”
Now, some fairly basic rules of the strong-arm business are: never underestimate your mark; if you are going to knock somebody down, make sure that you do so in a manner that precludes their getting up any time soon; and never lose your temper. Liberty and Stratosphere had been doing this kind of thing for a long time, and figured to have most of the angles covered. But, as they say, sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you!
Blame it on the steroids, but Liberty lost it and swung his boot at Baby Joe’s face, hard. Baby Joe waited until he could smell the leather, then rolled his head, leaned in, and punched Liberty in the testicles. Stratosphere was already barreling in as Baby Joe rolled to his feet. Three heavy, killer punches came in quick succession. Baby Joe weaved between them, slammed his heel into Stratosphere’s shin, and stabbed him in the eyes with two stiff fingers. The big man howled and put his hands to his face, and Baby Joe stepped behind him and propelled him by his own weight headfirst into the red brick wall of the pub. It was touch-and-go which one would give way, but the pub held out and Stratosphere fell to his knees and rolled over. Over and out! Liberty was back up and coming in, but cautiously now, watching, measuring. Respectful.
Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1) Page 18
