“Yeah, Frankie. I’m with you, my man. That is a real cool plan. But how are we gonna fix it so the Don don’t twig?”
“Okay. Good point. This is the most important part. The deal is, the Don didn’t get to be the Don by bein’ dumb. The only way this can work is if the Don thinks we are both dog meat. Otherwise they ain’t never gonna be no escape. I know the Don put a tail on me. I jus’ don’t know yet who. That we gotta find out. When we do, we gotta make it look like we was double-crossed and iced by the slopes. And we gotta fix it so the tail sees us both go down. This guy will be one of the Don’s most trusted people. He goes back, tells the Don what he seen, the Don swallows it, and you an’ me are away clean an’ on the next plane to Graviesville. Capisce?”
“Yeah. I’m impressed. That’s smart, Frankie-boy. Real smart.”
“Thanks. Now, I figure we spend a few days goin’ around like we looking for the stuff. Only we ain’t. We looking to flush out the tail, and set up the phony sell. The more runnin’ around we do, the more chance I have to pick him up. In the meantime, I keep the Don sweet, an’ figure some story to explain how come the late, lamented fat fuck ain’t with us no more, an’ you get a crew together to help us pull the con. An’ we both keep ’em open. Wide open, baby. Right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Now you know it’s in your own interest to go through with this. You speak the lingo, and now lardass ain’t in a position to help, you can probably ditch me. But how far you goin’ to get, and what you goin’ to get out of it? ‘Cos, without me, there’s no do-re-mi, correct? Plus, you gotta figure the other character, who we don’t know who it is yet, an’ who is on our asses twenny-four-seven. I can’t make the set-up without you, so you know I won’t be dealin’ you no seconds. The only way for us to come out of this alive and in the green is if we play it straight with each other. The fact that you ain’t dead, an’ he is, an’ I done it in front of ya, has to tell ya that I’m on the level. So, what say we shake on it, pal?”
Monsoon was smiling as his hand disappeared into Frankie’s huge ham. He was smiling because he knew he had just rolled a big seven. So, all along Frankie had been planning a carbon copy of the scam he had been planning—minus a few essential details, of course. He knew he had a few days’ grace to figure things out. The tub of lard with the glazed eyes lying on the carpet had just halved his odds. He knew he couldn’t outmuscle big Frankie, but he was damn sure he could outsmart him. He was damn sure Foghorn Leghorn could outsmart him. What he needed now was a place to start, and the place to start was with Woolloomooloo Wally.
Chapter 13.
It was a contest of wills, and Handyman Harris was losing. He was doing a little research on behalf of the Don, research that involved pumping hookers for information. And one he was pumping at the moment was writhing about underneath him like a con in the chair, trying to get the job over with, while Handyman was trying to slow the proceedings down and get his money’s worth. In the end he had to settle for one minute and thirty-eight seconds, and the smell of burning rubber. Handyman liked them proud, which was just as well because this one had trouble sitting upright as Handyman rolled off. As she finally made it, with a small romantic grunt, rivulets of sweat ran down her sides and formed little creases in the folds of her belly.
“Gee, that was great, hon,” she said, idly evicting an errant piece of wet lint from the hole that contained her belly button. As she bent over to retrieve her capacious knickers, a wet used condom smacked into the cheek of her considerable ass.
“Hey,” she yelled, “playtime’s over, asshole.”
“No it ain’t, Miss Piggy. It’s only just begun. Now sit the fuck down.”
The girl studied Handyman with a professional eye. He didn’t look like rough-stuff material and, anyway, wasn’t built for it. Pushing fifty, small-framed and skinny, he didn’t get that baggy paunch and those pipe-stem arms and spindle legs in Gold’s Gym. She decided she could take him without having to resort to either the .22 or the straight razor she kept in her purse, and walked over to give him an instructional slap in the teeth with her pendulous melon breasts wobbling on her chest. She pulled up sharp as Handyman swiftly grabbed his coat and reached into the inside pocket. As the girl started to take a backward step, reaching for her purse, Handyman pulled out…an envelope.
This was getting intriguing. The girl decided to play it coy and produced the approximation of a seductive look from her limited repertoire.
“Now, that ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t holler sooey. If you want what’s in here, you betta lissen.”
“I’m all ears, baby.”
“No you’re not. You’re all ass. I need some info. You tell it right, the grand that is in here is yours.”
In light of his continued personal remarks concerning her gravitationally-challenged condition, the girl was reconsidering her decision not to slap Handyman silly, but the magic word, “grand,” restrained her.
“Lemme see.”
Handyman zipped open the envelope, pulled out ten crisp centuries, and flipped through them like he was flipping through the pages of a book. The girl held out her fat, sweaty palm.
“Uh-uh. First the word, then the deed. W’as your name?”
“Ethel.”
“Sure. And I’m Winston Churchill. How long you been around here?”
“Ten, twelve years.”
“So you know the score.”
“Honey, I know the score, the line, the players, their jockstrap sizes, their wives’ phone numbers, and the schools their kids go to. What you wanna know?”
“You come across a tall redhead working the same beat? Good body, nice face, long, wavy, auburn hair, yea long?”
“Yeah. I seen her. I seen every piece a meat that ever got slapped on the counter round here.”
“You ever talk to her?”
“Yeah. Couple a times. Nice kid. Not really cut out for the business. Too soft.”
“Know her name?”
“Yeah. Anna, Aysha, somethin’ like that. From some place south. French name.”
“Orleans?”
“Maybe. I ain’t seen her around lately.”
“Lemme ax you something else. You know a fat faggot by the name of Crispin Capricorn?”
“Sure. Everybody knows him. He’s a scream. An’ a gentleman,” she added, giving Handyman a pointed look.
“Seen him around?”
“No. Now you mention it, I ain’t.”
“Well, lissen, Ethyl Nitrate, this ain’t much for a grand. You gonna have to do betta. Can you think of anything that she said, or mighta did, that might give you a clue to where she is?”
Ethel was thinking hard. In fact, she was doing a thousand dollars’ worth of thinking. With a grand she could afford to keep her legs closed for a couple of days. That Anna was a nice kid, but whatever it was that this creep wanted her for was none of her business, and she knew better than to ask. Suddenly, trawling through the gutter of her mind, she hit pay dirt.
“Wait, I got sumthin’. I remember this one time, a few of us was hanging out. It was a cold night, and the johns was thin on the ground. We went for coffee and got to talking, and this Anna tells us how she sends a money order home to her mom, every week. I remember ‘cause nobody said anything, but that was when we all knew she wouldn’t last long in the business.”
“Hey. That might be something. You done good, Ethel. Here.”
Handyman tossed the notes onto the bed, and Ethel snatched them up. She was so busy counting them that she wasn’t really listening when Handyman said, “Oh. An’ here’s a little sumthin’ else for ya.”
“Huh?” Ethel said, looking up just in time to receive a caustic blast of mace in her florid, porcine face.
“Squeal, piggy,” Handyman said, as he lifted the money from the bed.
Pulling away from the curb, Handyman was feeling relieved. Working for the Don was a double-edged sword. It gave him protect
ion in the city, and he could go about his enterprises unmolested by either side of the law, but the sword of Damocles was always hanging over him like an Italian switchblade shiv dangling on a piece of spaghetti. It was like cheap fireworks. You never knew when something was going to blow up in your face. Like, he had put the Don onto that Mick gumshoe Baby Joe Young. The Don had wanted someone to go to Vietnam, and he knew the Paddy had seen combat there. But he knew Young liked the sauce, and if he fucked up, then Handyman himself fucked up by association.
But at least, after assuring the Don that he could get it done, he had taken care of the job at hand. The Don had pointed out to him that pulling in and leaning on half the hookers in Vegas would be a time-consuming and labor-intensive affair and would be bound to attract attention. He had also said how he felt sure that Handyman, with his knowledge of the streets, so to speak, would be able to save him all that trouble, and how grateful he would be if Handyman would just do him this little favor. Well, my greasy wop friend, Handyman Harris delivers, yet again.
A phone call told him the locations of all the post offices in the immediate vicinity of where the girl lived, and he had scored on the second attempt. The guy in the post office had been most helpful. Let’s hear it for the good ol’ US Mail customer service. Handyman had been sympathetic. He knew how hard postal work was, and he knew how nobody appreciated postal workers, and he knew that they worked long hours for doodle-squat and had to put up with lip from every jackoff in the country with the price of a fucking stamp in his jeans. In fact, he had been so understanding of the post guy’s situation that they had exchanged pieces of paper. One had a picture of a president on it and the other, the one Handyman Harris had safe in his pocket, had Mrs. Evangeline Birdshadow, 1527 Neanderthal Drive, Baton Rouge, LA, printed on it, in a neat, efficient hand.
“So vat ve do now about the grandson?”
Baby Joe and Bjørn Eggen were onto their seventh beer apiece, and neither one felt inclined to move. It had been a long, wearying flight, and, after the traumatic events of the few days prior to their departure from the States, Baby Joe was in need of a little R and R, and Bjørn Eggen never took much persuading when there was beer involved.
“Well, Bjørn Eggen, today is just about wasted. It’s already nearly four o’clock, and we still have to find a different place to stay. I need to check into the Rex, but I’m not going to stay there.”
“Why for so?”
“It has bad memories. The war.”
“Ah, ja. This I understand.”
The real reason he didn’t want to be in the hotel the Don had booked him into was the old man. In the hotel the Don would have eyes on him, and the eyes would clock the old man for sure. Of course the Don might have put someone on their asses at the airport, or even on the plane, but unless he had employed a local, a tail round here would stick out like King Kong at a scout jamboree. He was still dreading having to give the old man the hard word about his grandson, if the news was bad, and he didn’t want to worry him any more than was necessary. He had thought that if the old bastard drank enough he would want to sleep, and he would be able to go and have a scout around, but it wasn’t working. The old goat was punching his weight and not showing any sign of fading in the later rounds.
“Anyway,” Baby Joe continued, “the first step will be to recruit somebody local to be our mouthpiece. Then we check all the hotels and the most popular bars. Check out any back room gaming joints. Check the airport and the train station, ask around among the cab drivers. Then we can approach the government. Find the people who deal with the repatriation of remains, and see if your grandson has contacted them. But we’ll start tomorrow. One more day isn’t going to make any difference, and we’re both tired. I like this joint. Maybe we can eat here.”
“Ja. Good idea. Maybe I eat dat focken Rodney, ja?”
Baby Joe slapped the old man on the back and went to get a menu from the waitress. The place was filling up slowly—a few backpackers, a couple of tourists, and a lot of locals. Baby Joe noticed the karaoke machine in the corner, which was, thankfully, not turned on.
“Hi. Can I have a menu, please?” he asked the girl in the red silk dress.
“Sure.” She smiled, handing him one. Baby Joe smiled back. She was exotic and very pretty.
“What time does the karaoke start?”
“Ah, later on, mate, after dark. You want to sing?”
“No. I want to eat without some tone-deaf bastard murdering country and western songs in my ear.”
The girl laughed. “No worries. You’ve got a few hours yet.”
“Good. Listen. Do you know a decent hotel, within walking distance from here?”
“Yeah. For sure. Me dad’s got a boarding house next door. It’s cheap and very clean. Air-conditioned and everything.”
“Have you got any rooms?”
“I dunno. But me dad will be back in a bit. He’s been out since this morning, so he won’t be long. You want me to send him over when he gets here?”
“Yes. Thanks very much.”
The girl winked at him. “No worries, mate,” she said.
As soon as he walked out onto the roof, the hairs went up on the back of Baby Joe’s neck. They called it the Rooftop Garden now, and tourists were drinking the kind of technicolor cocktails that only people on vacation drink. Looking out over the city you could see neon and streetlights, and not mortar fire and tracers.
They could call it anything they wanted. They could call it the Garden of Fucking Eden if they wanted, but it didn’t change anything. Baby Joe looked into the mirror behind the bar, and a seventeen-year-old boy gazed back at him. A boy who didn’t know that you could die. A cocky manchild drinking hard liquor that they wouldn’t have served him back home. Too young to drink in America, but old enough to get killed for it.
He looked around. The only uniforms now were the ones the waiters were wearing. He closed his eyes, and the ghosts of kings and pretenders past instantly invaded his brain, sweeping through the valleys of his mind and overrunning the perimeter of his consciousness. He saw the journalists and photographers. The real ones, the Tim Page guys, the ones who lived the life and walked the walk, with the shit still on their shoes; and the others, the ones who talked the talk, and walked around with eight cameras strung around their necks, and their fatigues still new and their press creds in their hats, calling themselves war correspondents. And he saw the brass and the ribbons, revved up on bourbon and bullshit, the mighty gods of war safe in their towers, behind their impregnable egos, talking too loud about kill ratios and quotas and attrition, while in the hills all around boys were dying and Charlie lurked in the treeline and stalked through the shadows, and drew close. And waited.
He opened his eyes. A group of tourists were laughing in a corner. The tigers were paper tigers now, and the dragon was asleep. He ordered a triple Laphroaig 40-year-old single malt, and a Kirin beer chaser. He viewed the bar tab with satisfaction.
That’s put a pretty decent hole in the slimy bastard’s card, he thought, as the rich peat sent his tasebuds into orgasm. He eased down onto his stool, but then caught himself. He didn’t want to get too comfortable, even though he would have liked to stay. He had told the old man he would be back in a half hour, in time for dinner, but he wasn’t going to commit the sin of rushing the scotch.
While he was savoring his drink and fighting to keep his mind out of the past and fixed on the immediate future, he spoke to the bartender. “Hey, man. See that table full of tourists over there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good man. Send them over a Singapore Sling apiece, and put their dinner bill on my room tab.”
“They are many, sir, it will be…” The barman hesitated.
“It will be what?”
“Excuse me, sir, but it will be very expensive.”
Baby Joe grinned, a big shit-eating grin. “Right on,” he said.
After Baby Joe finished his drink, he took the stairs down to the lobby and
walked over to the concierge.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“Could you reserve me a first-class ticket to Cambodia for tomorrow evening, please? Open return. And then I would like a limo.”
That’ll keep the meatball motherfucker guessing for a while, he thought, as he handed his card to the concierge.
The meal was delicious. Bjørn Eggen had fish in coconut sauce, and Baby Joe had a curry, which contained pieces of meat that he hoped hadn’t been recently chasing the postman. He tried some red sauce from a bowl in the center of the table.
“Jesus wept. We used to drop this stuff on the Viet Cong, during the war, and now they’re feeding it to us.”
“Vas bad var, ja?”
Baby Joe nodded. “There aren’t any good ones,” he said quietly.
“Ja, my friend, this I know. But we survive, ja?”
Bjørn Eggen raised his bottle, and Baby Joe did likewise. He looked at Bjørn Eggen’s lined, weather-beaten countenance and tried to imagine him as a young man in uniform, tried to imagine the expression on his face as young men around him were wrenched from their lives, as he waded through noise and blood and dismemberment, to imagine him with a weapon, firing at the enemy with no light in his eyes. Somehow, he wasn’t able to do it.
A shadow fell across the table and Baby Joe looked up to see a thin figure, wearing some kind of outsize Russian hat silhouetted against the overhead light.
Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1) Page 22
