Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1)

by Shane Norwood

  “But couldn’t we be happy, in a small place, where nobody knows us? Who we are, or what we were?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We’re happy now, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, Asia. We’re happy now. And now is all there is. I wanted to let it go, but I can’t. I’m so much older than you, and…”

  “But…”

  “Let me finish. I’m older than you and can see the end of things. But I realized that it is foolish to not pursue something that you want, just because you can foretell the end of it. Because you know it can’t last. What does? So I’ve decided to take it one day at a time, and enjoy it while it’s here, and remember it without bitterness when it’s not.”

  “You’re going to make me cry.”

  “No, I’m not. There have been tears enough. Come on, get dressed. I’ve got to go.”

  “You’re not leaving before the ship sails?”

  “No, of course not. I’ll stay and see you safely away. I’ll be back when it’s done.” Baby Joe dressed quickly, kissed Asia’s hair as she struggled with her underwear in the confines of the cramped tent, and slid out into the gathering heat.

  Baby Joe and Monsoon were out back of Wal’s Outback, waiting for Booby Flowers and Giuseppe Scungulo. The appointed hour had come and gone, and there was as yet so sign of the expected pair. Monsoon had a severe case of the jitters; he’d had second thoughts, and third thoughts, and was now well on the way to fourth thoughts.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We wait.”

  “For what?”

  “To see what happens.”

  “What is going to happen?”

  “What am I, a fucking prophet?”

  “So how long do we wait?”

  “Until something happens.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Monsoon, for fuck’s sake, man.”

  “Well, it’s all right for you. You do this all the time. I don’t know how you do it. I’m bored shitless.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot to bring the portable TV. How silly of me.”

  Monsoon sat quietly for all of eight seconds and then said, “But what…”

  “Listen. I don’t know any better than you. The meet was supposed to be at three, right? Then you and the two guys go see the General?”

  “Yeah, but maybe they ain’t comin’.”

  “Well, maybe they are.”

  “But what if they don’t?”

  “Who the fuck knows? Let’s just wait and see.”

  “And then what?”

  “Just wing it. Have you spoken to Long Suc?”

  “No. With everythin’ that was happenin’ I never had the chance to go. Not since Frankie bought the farm. I tried phonin’, but I couldn’t get ahold of him.”

  “Did you call their hotel? See if there was a message?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think that means?” Baby Joe said.

  “Fucked if I know.”

  “So as far as you know, the deal is on.”

  “Are you fucking deaf? I don’t know.”

  “Without Frankie’s sample, you are the only one that can positively ID this shit, right?”

  “As far as I know, yeah.”

  “And the Don wants you on the team because of the coffin scam, correct?”

  “Could be.”

  “Which is why he told Long Suc to let you out of the shit pit?”

  “That’s the only reason I can think of.”

  “So Long Suc can’t do the deal without you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, no. I mean, maybe not, I guess.”

  “And the bankers won’t produce the cash until they’re convinced that the merchandise is legit, which is what you set up with the General, no?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how come they ain’t here?”

  “Well, you’re the dick. You figure out what’s goin’ on.”

  Baby Joe consulted his watch. It was close to four-thirty. “They ain’t coming. So we go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Wonderland to see Alice, dipshit. Long Suc’s, where do you fucking think?”

  While Baby Joe and Monsoon had been fruitlessly waiting for Booby Flowers and Giuseppe Scungulo, at Wal’s Outback, Booby Flowers and Giuseppe Scungulo were fruitfully conducting business with Long Suc in the antechamber of his business emporium. The conversation was going smoothly, or at least as smoothly as a conversation involving a retired Viet Cong warlord and a monosyllabic old-school Sicilian gangster—neither of whose commands of English could be said to be impeccable—and a smart-assed college grad bean counter who insisted upon conducting the proceedings with his earphones in, could go.

  As a nod to his American friends, Long Suc had added a Yankees baseball cap to his ensemble, worn with his long braid protruding through the adjustor in the back, which had the effect of making him appear as every bit as trustworthy as a rat with a gold tooth. And, in a touching gesture of concern for his business partner’s sense of security, he had added to his complement of oily, bare-chested, bandolier-wearing, expressionless evil henchmen, bringing the number to five. As the Americans entered the doors were closed and two henchmen immediately took up positions behind them, denying them exit. Long Suc smiled and half-raised his right hand, which for him was an effusive gesture of affection.

  “Ah. Welcome, friends. Very pleased you come see me. You bring money?”

  Giuseppe stepped forward to the accompaniment of the harsh click of an automatic weapon being cocked. He stopped.

  The general smiled. “Please, my friend. You lift arm. Like this.”

  The general raised his hands above his head and Giuseppe did likewise, as if they were playing a sinister version of Simon Says.

  “Please. You also.”

  Booby joined in the game, wrinkling his nose as the evil henchman who frisked him breathed the obligatory foul breath into his face.

  The frisking concluded, Long Suc said, “Thank you. Is necessary, you understand. Please. You bring money.”

  Booby grinned at the general. He was loving it. It was some kind of whacko late night TV show. Raiders of the Lost fucking Ark. He couldn’t believe this kind of shit still went on. Groovy.

  “Er, well, actually, Mr. Suc, we are under instructions to see the merchandise before we produce the money. Is necessary, you understand.”

  There are those who might consider imitating the accent of homicidal Asian warlords, especially in front of their men, to be a trifle unwise. Long Suc smiled pleasantly at Booby. He was smiling pleasantly at the mental image of the insolent little du ma suffering the death of a thousand cuts.

  He snapped his fingers, and an engine burst into life. A cloud of smoke accompanied by the stench of diesel filled the room as a forklift trundled in through an archway, balancing a pallet on which were neatly stacked a perfect pyramid of briquettes of Machine Gun Jelly. Each one had been thoughtfully numbered by Long Suc in big red letters. The driver killed the engine. He was diminutive, very young, wore black pajamas, and although a henchman was obviously not qualified for evil status. In fact, he seemed quite pleasant.

  “You count. Okay. All there.”

  Giuseppe had just about had enough of this B-movie-looking slope clown, and even though the pieces were patently all there, he made a point by sauntering over and methodically counting them.

  “Tutti bene,” he said, after taking his time.

  “Good then. Now you go bring money, yes? But I forget manners. You want drink?”

  “Sure, why not. Giuseppe, our host is offering us a libation.”

  “Quello che hai detto?”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Bourbon, straight.”

  “He would like…”

  “Okay. I hear. You same?”

  “Could I have beer?”

  The general made a subtle gesture, and the pleasant henchman scuttled down from the forklift and
disappeared through a door at the back.

  “Now, about money.”

  “Ah,” began Booby. The general held up a hand.

  “How come you all time speak? How come you friend no say anything?”

  “Vaffanculo, slant,” Giuseppe said.

  “Ah, okay,” said the general, turning back to Booby. “Okay. About money.”

  “We’ll go and get it now. We can be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Very good. But no come back here. Different place. Much better, safer. Also have very good karma. Bring good fortune.”

  “Where?”

  The general smiled, and said proudly, “Temple of the Dawn of the Living Buddha.You bring money, we bring drugs, have nice dinner, all friends.”

  “Whata kinda fortune cookie bullshit isa this?”

  The general turned his gaze to rest upon Giuseppe. He was imagining the death of ten million rabid leeches.

  “Okay, General, fine, we’ll be there,” Booby said, hastily, before Giuseppe could make any more helpful comments, and then he quickly added, “General, there is another matter to be discussed.”

  “What you need?”

  “Monsoon Parker.”

  As unfortunate coincidences go, think Titanic and iceberg, for Monsoon chose this precise moment to step through the door with a beatific grin on his face.

  “Ah. Mistah Parker. We been expecting you.”

  Long Suc turned expectantly to Booby, who felt a little embarrassed speaking in front of Monsoon as he said, “The Don would like to know if you could kill him for us.”

  Monsoon had one hand on the door before the karate chop felled him.

  Long Suc snapped his fingers in order to demonstrate of what little consequence the demise of Monsoon Parker would be. “Easy. But you friend Don say he no want me kill this man. I very confuse.”

  “That’s right,” affirmed Monsoon, in woozy voice, from where he lay on the floor.

  “Yes, well, what the Don actually meant was, don’t kill him until after we saw the merchandise.”

  “Ah. Very clear now. Okay.”

  It was as unexpected and surprising as it was beautiful, like a green bud in autumn, or a ragged wedge of geese flying north for the winter. Mary Rose Muffin had been marking time, waiting for the curtain to close on the part-tragedy, part-black comedy that had been her life. Waiting for the death scene, which she had been expecting for years, the mistake or miscalculation, the betrayal or bad luck that would herald the beating of black wings coming to take her troubled soul.

  When she reflected upon her years, which she did with increasing frequency now, in the evening of her life, her descent into darkness seemed, with the benefit of hindsight, almost inevitable, as if her life had chosen her and not she it. As if she never had a choice. What constantly amazed her about it all was that she was not essentially a wicked person, but was—and had always been—a kind and compassionate woman. It was just that she had been the sort of kind and compassionate woman who had a tendency to shoot people. Or stab them, or poison them, or push them out of windows.

  The first time had been almost an accident, back in the days when she was just a young girl from Baltimore, struggling for a living in sleazy New York burlesque, battling to feed the infant son who had gotten her kicked out of college and booted out of the family home. Her parents had been professional people, staunch Catholics, and pillars of the academic community, and one of their daughters being knocked up by some sweaty jock in the back of the family Plymouth was just not done. If they had known it had actually been several sweaty jocks, it would have been even worse. Back in those days Mary Rose had been quite a looker and a girl of healthy appetites.

  The clientele at the joints where she worked were your typical scum-sucking, douchebag dirty-raincoat types, and one night one of them—who was a lowlife even by scum-sucking, douchebag standards—had accosted her on a rainy, neon-lit street as she was vainly trying to get a taxi to stop. He had pushed her over, and ripped open her blouse, and was kneeling over her, holding her by the throat with one hand and attempting to masturbate onto her tits with the other, when she had clattered him over the head with a dustbin lid. Then she had grabbed his dick and twisted it really hard. Apparently the guy was into severe dick twisting, because he promptly spunked all over the front of her skirt. She having just paid three bits that she could ill afford having it cleaned, this seriously pissed her off and she wielded the bin lid in both hands, Sir Lancelot style, and smacked him good, right in the kisser. He staggered off the curb and into the path of a passing beer truck, and went off to sing the low-life lullaby to the angels.

  She had gotten off with a self-defense rap after the beer truck jockey testified in her favor in return for a quick tour of his cab, and the thing that she remembered most about the incident was standing over the broken stiff in the rain wishing he was still alive so that she could kill him again.

  At that time, most off your mob hitmen were your standard five-o’clock-shadow, broad-shoulder, pin-stripe-suit, gat-bulging-under-the-lapel types, so there was a definite gap in the market for a sexy ruthless femme fatale, and Mary Rose had cashed in on it. In the early years she had had a kind of morality even in an immoral profession and had adopted a strictly scum-sucking, douchebag-only policy, refusing to whack anyone she didn’t think deserved it. But the years, and exposure to the hard face of things, and personal tragedy, had coarsened her to the point where she no longer made the distinction, although pregnant women and children remained a big no-no.

  She had eventually lost the kid to scarlet fever and later another one, in childbirth, and wars, alcohol abuse, and automobiles had taken four husbands, and after that she had given up on romance as a bad job. She had eventually hooked up with the Don, and followed him on his rise to the top, and the years had zipped by until she had found herself old and alone and wondering where it had all gone. And, as is the way of things, she had begun to worry about issues of her own mortality, and atonement, and to question the waste of a life, and a road that had started on a rainy night in the Big Apple, or maybe even before that, in the back seat of a Plymouth with a gang of sweaty and fervent boys.

  And now, out of nowhere, the sun had risen in the west and a white-haired old man with bandy legs and a silly accent had awakened something in her that she had thought had been as dead as her children. Something that she did not understand, other than to know that it was something warm, and that she wanted to be near it, and to stand in its light for what remained of her days. And that maybe, even this late in the day, if she could put something back, however small, it might in some way count in the balance for what she had taken out, when the final measure was taken.

  They were sitting in camp chairs, holding hands under a green-striped parasol, she with a gin and tonic and he with his inevitable beer. It was as if they sat not on the grimy, cluttered, and noisy deck of Wally’s junk, looking at a muddy river, but on the deck of an elegant liner in a turquoise bay overlooking the palms and beaches of some Caribbean paradise.

  Mary Rose put her drink on the packing crate she was using as a table, and a pig immediately tried to steal the lemon from it. She gave him a resounding slap on the snout and then, feeling guilty, took up the slice and tossed it to him. He caught it with a dexterity that would have brought appreciative applause from any seal and then sat staring at her, waiting for an encore. She giggled.

  Bjørn Eggen returned from the frontier of slumber, and opened his eyes. “Vat for is funny?”

  “This pig is harassing me.”

  “You vant I should kick him in his arse?”

  “No. The poor thing has already had a slap on the nose.”

  “The pig is best in the frying pan, ja, or the pork pie I am also very much liking?”

  “Shush, he’ll hear you.”

  The pig wasn’t taking any chances and lumbered off to the other end of the boat.

  “See, now you’ve scared him away.”

  “Good. He was bad smellin
g, ja?”

  Mary Rose laughed, and then stopped abruptly. “Bjørn Eggen?”

  “This is me.”

  “Tell me it hasn’t changed.”

  “Vat haf not changed?”

  “This. You knowing what I do. What I used to do. What I have done.”

  Bjørn Eggen sat up, removed the dark glasses he was wearing, and looked at her. “You haf save me.”

  “It doesn’t bother you, all those people I killed.”

  “I also haf the people killed. Many people, ja. Many.”

  “But that was different. It was in a war. Everybody kills in a war. I killed people in cold blood. Murdered them.”

  Bjørn Eggen shrugged. “Dead is dead, ja. I am not to be the judge.”

  “Did you think I was going to let you be killed?”

  “For a moment, ja.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “A bit sad, ja. Surprised. But not so surprised as this other one haf been, ja?” Bjørn Eggen chuckled, and reached for his beer.

  “Were you afraid?”

  “No. I haf no longer the fear. At my time, the death is a small matter, ja. I haf loose many things and only vait. But now, is a little different I think, ja?”

  “How?”

  Bjørn Eggen reached over and took her hand.

  “Now I meet you, I think I haf reason for to try to hang on a bit longer.”

  Mary Rose reached up and put her fingers into his snowy hair. She said, “Thank you.”

  “For vat haf you me to thank?”

  “For saving me.”

  “I think you haf me saved, ja”

  “Then we saved each other.”

  “Ja. I think so ve did. I think so ve did.”

  Bjørn Eggen swallowed an improbable amount of beer, sat back, replaced his shades, and closed his eyes. Within moments he was snoring softly. Mary Rose adjusted the parasol to head off the sunbeam that was advancing across the deck towards his face. She looked down at him, and smiled.

  Chapter 19

  Throughout history, people’s lives have been saved by a bewildering and astounding variety of circumstances, contrivances, and personalities. Ninety-pound women lifting automobiles off their children; people saved from a fall by their suspenders; pilots plummeting thousands of feet, sans parachute, and landing in deep snow; emergency tracheal surgery performed with a bamboo stem or the barrel of a ballpoint pen; mountaineers rescued by big, furry, brandy-serving dogs; drowning people saved by dolphins; clairvoyants not taking doomed flights because of dreams; canaries in coal mines; cannibalism at sea; the sudden mutation of a virus; the random non-selection of a salmonella-contaminated dish; the inexplicable remission of a tumor; the inhalation of tainted breath from the lips of complete strangers; airbags, seatbelts, tourniquets, vaccines, antibiotics, electric shocks to the chest cavity, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Take any circumstance, and the odds of its being unique in the incomprehensible fandango of human experience are extremely slim. But, in all probability, Monsoon Parker was the first person to ever have had their life saved by a Polaroid camera.