Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  Long Suc spread his features into a jovial grin, which didn’t do much for his oriental inscrutability. “You auntie good business woman. And you plan very good. This number one plan I think we use.”

  “Well, thanks, No Suc. Don’t mind if I call you No Suc, do you? First, though, I have to tell you, these are some seriously evil motherfuckers we dealin’ with. I’m talking about the mob.”

  “Ah, gangsta. Al Capone. Dadadadadadadada.” Long Suc fired an imaginary Tommy gun, spraying hot lead at the G-men. Then he smiled gently at Monsoon, the way you would smile at a child who had just made an inaccurate statement. He made an expansive gesture with his skinny arm. “You forget you history. Chinaman, Frenchman, American, Al Capone-man. All same. No problem. Ho Chi Minh City no same Chicago.”

  “So you’re ready to rock and roll?”

  Long Suc nodded sagely, although not really sure what dancing had to do with it.

  “So where do I come in?”

  “You DNA.”

  “Say again?”

  “You DNA. Same same you father. You about same age you father when he die, no? We bury you one year, two year, no problem. Asia people patient. Know how wait.”

  “But wait,” Monsoon said, his voice rising in panic, “what about my auntie?”

  The General smiled benignly. “Oh, she be okay. Get new microwave. No problem.”

  Before he could start to beg and plead in the required manner, Monsoon felt a pinprick, and a rainbow-colored ferryman came to take him across the river to the land of Nod. The general made a sharp movement with his head, and the two henchmen cut Monsoon loose and began to drag him to the far recesses of the cellar. Long Suc rose laboriously from the chair and, aided by the Sasquatch, shuffled slowly up to his office, where he sat in red silk-upholstered luxury. He sent the Sasquatch to fetch tea and reached for the phone.

  To find out the number of one Don Ignacio Imbroglio of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

  Chapter 16.

  Rodney was a really good judge of character, and she liked Asia immediately. For one thing Asia smelled really nice, and she didn’t object to a gentle bit of sniffing and probing from the old trunkaroonee. Furthermore, giving her a bun right off the bat was a great way of earning Rodney’s immediate and undying affection, and that is exactly what Asia had done. In fact, Rodney liked Asia so much that she wanted to stand as close to her as possible whenever she was near, a fact that resulted in not a few people getting unceremoniously shunted aside.

  Crispin, for example. Crispin was not enamored of Rodney. The fat bristly beast smelled atrocious, had no manners whatsoever the way it kept rudely shoving him, and it got way too much attention for a dumb animal. In truth, there was probably a bit of professional jealousy mixed in with Crispin’s antipathy, since Rodney enjoyed celebrity status and Crispin’s career was in something of a slump, to say the least. However, Crispin’s spirits had risen considerably since arriving in Vietnam. It was really pretty, and exotic, and colorful, and the shopping opportunities were mouthwatering, and nobody had tried to shoot him or explode him for almost a full week. And anything was an improvement over that nasty, smelly, sweltering, bug-ridden swamp and all those gauche peasants that infested it.

  They sat in the Thao Cam Vien botanical gardens, sitting under a large candy-striped parasol at the foot of a towering red and gilt pagoda eating delicious glacés and watching Wally and Rodney run through their repertoire for a busload of tourists on the lawn in front of them. Beyond was a tranquil lake with willows hanging into it and elaborately plumed birds like overgrown ducks sailing serenely by. It was early morning and the temperature was warm but not oppressive, and if Crispin closed his eyes he could almost imagine himself on a bench in a park back home on some sunny summer’s morning.

  Crispin was wearing baggy yellow Bermuda shorts and a billowing magenta short-sleeved silk shirt, and the gentle breeze flowing around his appendages was very soothing. Next to him Asia was chatting to the nice old lady that Bjørn Eggen had brought with him. When they had first arrived, and Baby Joe had met them and taken them to Wally’s bar and then to the boat, Crispin had imagined, for one horrendous moment, that they were going to be required to stay on that floating barnyard. Much to his relief they had been driven over a bridge on the Saigon River and down quiet tree-lined streets to a charming little colonial bungalow set in lovely gardens with a lawn that ran down to the river, where there was a jetty with a little sampan tied to it. Crispin had been given his own room, which had a big bamboo fan in the ceiling and a veranda that opened onto the garden, and an old, old lady in black pajamas with a beehive on her head had smiled a toothless smile and given him clean towels. If he tried very hard he could imagine that he was on vacation and that all those horrible things had not really happened to him at all.

  Peals of laughter drifted over to them from the lawn, and he looked over to see Rodney flourishing an oversized straw hat with flowers all around it and placing it on her dome head.

  Asia giggled and tapped him on the thigh. “Oh, look at Rodney. Isn’t she adorable?”

  “Isn’t she adorable?” Crispin mimicked. “If you like overgrown, show-off pigs with vacuum cleaners instead of faces, then yes.”

  “I think he’s sweet,” said Mary Rose Muffin.

  “I am liking him too, now, ja. Only he is not he, he is lady elephant.”

  “Really?”

  “Ja, sure. Only one trunk this elephant.”

  Mary Rose giggled and slapped Bjørn Eggen on the shoulder. “You naughty old man,” she said.

  Applause signaled the end of the show and Rodney came swaying over, with Wally gliding beside her with a fluidity that belied his years, appearing to barely touch the ground. Rodney lifted her trunk and began to nuzzle Asia’s cheek, simultaneously treading on Crispin’s foot.

  “Ow! You fat oaf,” he said, retreating down the bench and regarding his discolored loafer with dismay.

  “’Owareya,” said Wally brightly. “You blokes enjoy the show?”

  “It was very nice, Wally, thank you.”

  “Ja, vas gud, ja?”

  “Rippa. Well, Baby Joe said ’e’ll be tied up this afternoon, so I thought you might like to take the boat out for a spin on the river. I’ll send one o’ me Billy lids to steer yer round.”

  “Ja, ja. I like very much. Mary Rose?”

  “Oh, yes, I love boats.”

  “I’ll need a hat,” said Crispin.

  “No worries, Crispy. I’ll get you one. Come on, then.”

  Asia stood and straightened her skirt, and Bjørn Eggen offered his hand to Mary Rose. Crispin lifted his ice cream cone to his mouth and closed his eyes in anticipation of the cold, delicious raspberry taste. He opened them in surprise when his lips encountered dry pastry, and stared in puzzlement at his empty cone. He looked round to where Rodney stood, softly swaying, with her trunk in her mouth, gazing at him with her enormous brown eye. Crispin narrowed his eyes.

  “You fucking fat sow,” he hissed. “Ooh, just you wait. I’ll fix you, snake snout.”

  As they set off in procession across the grass, with Wally leading, Bjørn Eggen holding hands with Mary Rose, Rodney plodding as close to Asia as she could get without actually pushing her over, and Crispin sulking behind them, a nondescript man—a European in a khaki suit who had been sitting, unnoticed, three benches away—rolled up his newspaper, flicked his cigarette at a passing duck, and sauntered after them.

  Although the Don’s pleasures were, of necessity, mostly in the mind, he did not begrudge himself a little enjoyment. As one of his favorite Gilbert and Sullivan pieces pointed out, being a despicable villain did not necessarily preclude the ability to have a little harmless fun. Having just hung up the phone, and being alone, the Don permitted himself a little un-Don-like giggle.

  One of the things that the Don always found highly amusing was when somebody thought they were smarter than he was. Not morons like Frankie Merang, you understand—that was merely the equivalent of a pupp
y hiding one’s slippers—but people capable of formulating some kind of a plan, counter to the Don’s own, and seriously expecting to get away with it. That was the really funny part, when people actually thought they could put one over on him. Take the Irishman, for example. Following some torturous, unfathomable Celtic logic, that misguided Mick gumshoe had not only seen fit to spirit away the grandfather of Monsoon Parker, but now, as a little bird had just finished telling him, had the girl and the portly singing sodomite under his wing.

  Quite how, and for what reason, this circumstance had arisen, the Don was not sure, but it seemed to the Don a delicious effrontery that the Paddy should not only deliberately interfere with his plans, but actually do so while being in his employ, thereby causing him to pay for his own inconvenience. No doubt the Gael was enjoying gales of laughter at his own cleverness. Well, Mr. Young, he who laughs last, laughs loudest, as they say, so enjoy your little schemes while you may.

  Monsoon was in the shit, again. In this case it was about six feet deep, with the consistency of goulash, and artfully decorated with a smattering of dead rat, tastefully set off by a sprinkling of used sanitary towels. Furthermore, it was rising, and Monsoon was failing dismally in his desperate attempts to keep his head above the surface, due to the fact that ship’s chains and padlocks are not very efficient flotation devices.

  Long Suc had concluded that the best way to add a little authenticity to the skeleton scenario would be to lower Monsoon into the sewer that ran beneath his emporium and leave him there until nature took its course. Monsoon had, like most of us, heard the survival stories from people who had had near-death experiences, stories about one’s entire life passing before one’s eyes, but all that was passing before his eyes was a procession of rancid turds. It was when one brushed against his actual lips that his wild-eyed, hysterical panic turned into wild-eyed, demented laughter. His brain disassembled completely by terror, Monsoon began to cackle like a pack of stoned hyenas watching Saturday Night Live.

  A voice inside his head said, “What so funny?”

  “This,” he struggled to answer, gasping through the stench of the effluent that was now flushing past his nose, “this, dying like this, after a life full of shit, now I have to drown in it, hahahahahahaha…”

  “You lucky.”

  This struck Monsoon as even funnier. He wanted to tell the voice in his head to fuck off, to stop being so fucking stupid, to ask it how the fuck drowning in a fucking Vietnamese shit drain could possibly be considered lucky, but was unable to speak because of the large, semi-solid hunk of unpleasantness which was now lodged in his mouth.

  “You lucky. America big boss say he want you alive.”

  Monsoon just had time to realize that the voice inside his head was actually a voice beside his head before he passed out.

  Frankie Merang was really enjoying his sandwich. The reason being that it was the kind of sandwich which required him to lie on a soapy, inflatable rubber mattress with two petite, naked, and very slippery Vietnamese girls sliding all over him. On a tray next to him was a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and on a big-screen TV in the corner young girls were performing improbable acts with a variety of household objects.

  “A taste of what’s to come, Frankie my boy,” he was thinking to himself, as one of the girls expertly slipped a condom over him using her lips. After the girl had perfunctorily performed her act of fellatio Frankie waved dismissively, watching her leave through a cloud of cigar smoke, and grabbed the ass of a passing waitress. It was firm and rubbery. “I might just have to get me some more in a little while,” he thought, miming the drinking of a beer. The waitress, who looked about twelve, smiled and nodded. Frankie grinned like a happy stegosaurus.

  It had always secretly annoyed him that people thought he was slow just because he was big, but now he was beginning to understand that it was actually an advantage. The more people that dismissed him as dumb, the better. Like El Greaso the Don, back there. That little wop dipshit was sending Francis A. Merang a present, a great big fat bag of used green, special delivery. The Don had called him that morning.

  He smirked again as he recalled the Don’s faggot limey voice. “Our congratulations, Mr. Merang. You have done extremely well. You can expect my financiers tomorrow. And since your partner has fallen by the wayside, as it were, you can expect his share of the proceeds as well.”

  I got ya share of the proceeds right here, ya Spick prick, thought Frankie, grabbing his crotch with one hand and reaching out to grab a passing ass with the other.

  “Buddha teach us know our self. Me, I know myself very good. I know very good I no good. Good for you I no good, because if I no no good, you still be in smelly place, very dead.”

  Monsoon was doing his best to follow Long Suc’s philosophical dissertation from the far corner of the room where he had been placed, surrounded by incense, due to the fact that several brutal scrubbings had failed to entirely remove the stench of the sewer from his skin.

  “If I no no good, I no double-cross you and call Don, and Don no tell me better me no kill you, so you see, it good for you I no good. See?”

  Monsoon managed a vacant nod, which was about all his motor neuron system could muster at the moment.

  “I see you no see,” continued Long Suc. “Confucian think very hard for American too small brain. No worry. No important. We friends again. You go now my office, call America Big Boss. Tomorrow we make deal. Everyone happy. Okay. You cousin go with you, make sure you okay. Have nice day.”

  Frankie and Monsoon were on the veranda of their hotel, drinking whiskey and having their shoes shined. A small Vietnamese boy, with the tools of his trade in a cardboard box, knelt at Frankie’s feet, zipping his cloth over the toe of his boot.

  “Mistah,” he said, “you feet too big. You pay extra.”

  “Lissen, ya little dink bastard, you’ll get that boot up ya yellow ass if you don’t shut up. An’ watch the fuckin’ socks.”

  The boy grinned and continued polishing furiously.

  Monsoon had somewhat recovered from his ordeal, although despite several more showers a faint miasma of effluent still bloomed in a delicate cloud around him. Frankie and he had spent the morning attempting to deceive each other, and discussing the deceptions they were planning to perpetrate on everybody else. Frankie had, in truth, been a little more honest than Monsoon, insofar as his conversations with the Don had actually taken place as described, and the money was actually on its way. It was not Frankie’s fault that he did not know that the money was on its way not because of his deception of the Don, but because of the Don’s conversation with Long Suc. Frankie’s only real dishonesty was in not revealing to Monsoon that he had figured out who the tail was that the Don had put on them, and that after the deal had gone down he was planning to blow Monsoon’s brains out.

  Monsoon’s fabrications had been a good deal more complex. He had altered the details of his conversation with Long Suc, studiously avoiding any mention of near-death-by-toxic-shit drowning experiences, or the fact that the Machine Gun Jelly actually existed, or the fact that Long Suc and the Don were now dealing directly with each other.

  As for his own very recent conversation with the Don—in which the Don had indicated that they were now all just as cozy as can be, and that they would go ahead with the original plan save for one minor detail—he had deemed it prudent to withhold from Frankie the details of the minor detail, because he was the minor detail.

  The conversation had gone along the lines of, “Our congratulations, Mr. Parker. You have done extremely well. You can expect my financiers tomorrow. And since Mr. Merang has fallen by the wayside, as it were, you can expect his share of the proceeds as well. However, given the rather egregious nature of his transgressions, I wonder if you could prevail upon your friend Mr. Long Suc to make certain arrangements for me.”

  Monsoon felt certain that Frankie would not especially care for the arrangements, especially the part about the Sasquatch waiting for him in
the hotel room with his evil sickle-blade knife at the ready.

  Frankie turned to Monsoon. “So, we all set?”

  “As ready as we gonna be. You nervous?”

  “Na. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. Ya get nervous, ya screw up. You okay? Ya ain’t goin’ to pieces on me now, are ya?”

  “No sweat, Frankie, I’m good to go. But what about the tail?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m on it. Wait here while I go upstairs and get my piece.”

  Monsoon smiled to himself as he reached for his smokes on the table and, as he did so, saw a boy of about ten with wild, wavy hair, looking closely at him.

  “What the fuck ya looking at, kid?”

  “Dunno, ya prawn,” replied the kid, “I never seen one before.”

  Monsoon made as if to stand, and the boy scampered off.

  The remarkable thing about Horatio Herbert was that there was absolutely nothing remarkable about him whatsoever. Horatio was everyman. Average height, average weight, unremarkable features, nondescript hair, conventional dresser. The kind of man who went unnoticed in a crowd. In fact, Horatio could go unnoticed in your bathroom while you were trying to take a shit.

  Horatio’s bland appearance was complemented by his even blander personality. He had no extreme likes or dislikes, no strong political views, no preferred food, no favorite color. The relative merits of cats and dogs were of no consequence to him, the outcome of a football game an irrelevance, and music a distracting noise. He had no wife, no children, no friends, and no sexual preferences. He drank in moderation, smoked sparingly, and did not indulge in the weed. He was not unduly concerned with financial matters and lived a modest lifestyle, well within his means, in an average house, in an average neighborhood. Meticulous in his personal habits, punctual, reliable, and diligent in his professional life, Horatio Herbert was a strong contender for the most uninteresting person in America.