by David Pierce
There was a day
There were no rules on what to say.
The whole world was a comic's oyster.
From his something something cloister
A gagster could let rip at Frogs,
Yids, and mooses, Litvaks, Wogs,
Chevies containing just one Mex
And them of indeterminate sex.
And when the last laff had been sought
From Limey, Paddy, and the Scot,
When the final giggle got
From Polish Pope and Hottentot,
There was always ah, the ladies,
The one who had so many babies . . .
The one who liked her mustard hot . . .
Who made it with the astronaut . . . .
No more male jokes re Adam's rib,
Not since the rise of Woman's Lib.
To the subject of the fairer sex we've put paid
As male chauvinism today can (a) get you in serious trouble
And (b) seriously unlaid.
What's left for the fool to make fun of:
Mooses, and himself, except that's already been done
By the King o' Comedy up above.
Hey, take a look at me.
I'm a scream. Kiddies wee
Their panties when I amble by.
"Where's your hoop and net?" they cry.
"Do noses like that really run
In your family?" The fun's been done;
There is no more to make.
So I think I'll take
Up tragedy, like Zeus.
Long live the moose!
Sara read it all the way through in total silence and without once changing her expression. Then she handed it back to me, then she burst into tears.
"That bad, eh," I said. "I know I'm no Dorothy Parker, but still."
"It's not that," she said. 'It's just, oh, like everything." I put my arm around her and she had a good cry into my shoulder. The stewardess came by and arched her eyebrows at me as if to ask, is she all right? I nodded back reassuringly and tried to look like it wasn't my fault. I remember thinking the last time anyone had cried on that shoulder it had been her too, after she found out that her real mother was dead; the people who'd raised her, the Silvetti's, were her adoptive parents. Lucky she had me around from time to time is all I can say.
The plane landed, finally. I ungritted my teeth and we alit, me and weepy Sara, into hazy warmth. I retrieved my car from the hotel parking lot without problem and without handing over any money and northward we went. A quiet drive later I dropped the poetess off at her apartment building and drove east to Windsor Castle Terrace, where I lived and Mom used to until last year. It was a little late to call her at the retirement home she was in, so I put it off until tomorrow. I did call Evonne, but she was out. I unpacked, puttered around for a bit, turned the TV on and then switched it off again, then said to myself, oh, the deuce with it! and popped around the corner to Jim's bar, the Two-Two-Two, for a couple of large brandies and ginger ale. I needed something to rinse the taste of the airline's Bloody Marys out of my mouth and unfortunately I was fresh out of mouthwash at home.
I had a quiet think, too, in Jim's, about what to say to Fatty the next day. If he was still in circulation, that is, and not already encased in solid cement twenty feet under some new freeway extension. Maybe tomorrow, Friday, I wouldn't even open up the office, just do whatever errands I had to do first, then see Fats, then take the rest of the day off. That way a certain lilac-eyed stunner wouldn't be able to get hold of me and send me off to slay dragons for her in the wilds north of Oakland. The last thing I needed was to become foolishly involved with her; one love-bitten, long-suffering wreck in the family was more than enough. So stay on your guard, Daniel, the heart is a wayward child, obeying mysterious rules of its own. Right. Now you're thinking.
Hell, if I collected from Fats, what with Will's contribution, I wouldn't even need another job right away. So: Man/Tana sleep in late. Do expense sheet. Errand(s). Fats. Leisurely lunch at Fred's. Get bet down on Les Habitants winning the cup. Siesta. Evonne. Candle-lit supper. Evonne. Late snack. Evonne.
I got to the office Friday just on opening time, which, as the sign on my door said, was ten o'clock weekdays and weekends by appt. I might even have been a bit early, who knows, but it's me who pays the rent, I can open when I want to. And if that lying petticoat did call, boy was she going to get a piece of my mind.
The phone rang once that morning. I answered it by saying coolly, "Victor Daniel here," but it was only some hustler—an out-of-work thespian, he sounded like—trying to peddle me ball-point pens or key chains with my name or company logo on them; I suggested he stick his rubbish up a narrow, dark passageway. There was nothing in the accumulated mail to occupy me for longer than it took to chuck it all in the wastepaper basket under the desk, so I got to work on the expense sheet for Fats. Who said art is dead? I even scribbled out a receipt, in pencil, from a mythical cab driver called Ramón, dated yesterday, for $7.45. And I did manage to find an old bill I could use to replace the unusable one from Dunkin' Donuts. When I was done, the total came to a tidy $1,244.50. Most, if not all of the entries were backed up with stubs and receipts and the like, which I neatly stapled to the expense sheet after I had neatly retyped it. Well, it soon adds up, what with the plane fares, the cabs, including the one Sara took in L.A., various bribes, all those long-distance phone calls, airport parking fees, meals and so on. I had to swallow our plane fares back and forth to Montreal, unfortunately, as that leg of the journey was our little secret. Added to the expenses of course was the five hundred dollars remaining of my fee—all right.
The phone didn't ring.
I phoned the home about eleven but Mom was not available, I was told; why, I was not told. I called Evonne at her school and she was available. She was also available that evening, she informed me, but it meant breaking her date with Clint Eastwood. I laughed heartily. She said she had a "welcome home" present for me. "Was it bigger than a breadbox?" I asked her. I had a present for her, too, I'd bought at the last minute at Dorval—no, not moose paté—some real maple syrup to put on the waffles she made once in a while if I promised to wash the waffler afterward. I'd promise almost anything for her waffles. I had a present for Sara, too, that I bought when she wasn't looking, a book of ballads by that terrific Scottish versifier Robert Service, who writes those great poems about the Canadian northwest like "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and the one about the lady who was known as Lou. I hoped she'd learn something from it about real poetry.
I rang Fats, told him I had news and made a date to pass by his office after lunch. I called John D. at the Valley Bowl just to shoot the breeze; we shot it until he had to go back to work. I tried the Lewellens and got the runaround again.
The morning dragged on. The phone didn't ring. I stuck it out till twelve-thirty or so, then closed up shop and strolled down to Fred's Deli for some brain food, i.e., cream cheese on toasted raisin twice, a slab of peach pie, and a large glass of buttermilk. Two-to-One Tim was propped up in his customary booth just inside the front door; I joined him for a minute. He remarked he hadn't seen me around for a few days. I said that was because I hadn't been around for a few days, I'd been closeted with back issues of the Sporting News but now I was ready to plunge. He wanted to know what kind of plunge I was interested in taking. Fifty on the Dodgers, fifty on Les Canadians, I said, both to go all the way.
Tim whistled through his teeth, of which he had just enough left to whistle through.
"Dunno if I can handle that much action, Vic," he said. "I might have to lay part of it off."
I grinned. We haggled good-naturedly about the odds; you could always haggle over the odds with Tim, but it was odds on it would get you where it got me—nowhere.
After lunch I walked the two blocks to the travel agency my pal Ron owned half of and caught him just as he was going out for his lunch. Ron Rogg was an obliging, mild-mannered, corpulent gent of some forty summer
s, who had a fondness, or is it weakness, for embroidered waistcoats and tartan caps; he'd been Evonne's travel agent before becoming mine as well. On the wall behind his desk was a glass-fronted cabinet containing a tiny portion of his collection of hand-painted, lead toy soldiers, all from the Napoleonic era, about which he'd bore you stiff given the slightest opening.
Ron had half my requirements already waiting—first-class round-trip L.A.–New York TWA ticket stubs. It took him but a minute or two to provide the other item I needed, and then photo copy it; he wouldn't take a dime for it, either, sterling chap that he was. I paid for the tickets with plastic, winked at Evie, the lucious signorina at the next desk who'd been with him at least as long as I had, then Ron went for his belated lunch and I drove downtown to Fats'.
I was prepared for Fats. I was even prepared for Fats if he was prepared for me in some sneaky way. I was wearing a lightweight white cotton jacket over my Hawaiian shirt, with my wallet in the inside breast pocket. I had my story together, with documents to prove it, I hoped, and I had that more-than-together expense sheet.
After ten minutes of circling the block his office was on, plus a few adjoining ones, I finally left the car in an official parking lot; what the hell, this was no time to quibble over a few bucks. Five, actually; those bandits.
Fats buzzed me in and I went up. The front office was empty except for the water cooler, which was also empty. I continued on to the inner office, where Fats was relaxing in his favorite armchair.
"Where's Legs Diamond, Jr.?" I said. "Out playing marbles with the other kids?"
"Dunno," Fats said. "I think he went back to Chi. He kept complaining there wasn't enough weather out here."
"Better no weather than what Chicago gets," I said, sinking into the chair opposite him and laying the folder with my paperwork on the glass table in between us.
"Fats," I said. "here it is. I got some good news and some bad news."
"I hate conversations that start like that," he said. "Dom DeLouise, you know him? Comic right? Heard him once say in Vegas his wife once started a conversation with him like that. The good news was she was leaving, the bad news not till next week."
I smiled, although you well know by now that I am not particularly fond of any humor based on antifeminism.
"The good news is," I said, "I found William Gince."
"No shit," Fats said. "How?"
"By spending two days with my assistant in a small room at Kennedy Airport in New York, New York."
"So where is William Gince?"
"Ah," I said. "Thought I'd hold that little detail till I laid the bad news on you."
I opened up the card folder and tossed him the expense sheet, and receipts appertaining, to which I'd added the ticket stubs from Ron.
"Voilà," I said. "That's French for something."
Fats examined the sheet, occasionally checking an entry against one of the bills. He looked at the scribbled cab receipt from "Ramón" with particular distaste.
"I know, I know," I said. "Guy could hardly speak English, let alone write it." Fats passed to the next item. "Airport bus into town," I said. "For two of us, twice, a lot cheaper than a cab. And please note there's no hotel receipt for the night we spent in New York, we stayed with friends of mine, what the hell, why run up your bill needlessly?"
"Thanks a million," he said. Too bad it's so hard to fake hotel bills these days as they are all computer printouts. I wondered if my PC couldn't produce a passable imitation of one if I knew how to do it and had the appropriate stock. Certainly something to look into on a rainy day.
Fats had a few additional queries but his heart wasn't really in it; with surprisingly little reluctance he took out his wad and peeled me off $1,244, plus the $500.
"And fifty cents, please," I said, tucking the bills away in my wallet and replacing it in the jacket pocket.
"Excuse me," he said, digging out the change and dropping it on the table. "Now, if there's nothing else—maybe you hired a helicopter and forgot to tell me—where is that little welsher Gince?"
I took out the one slip of paper remaining in the folder and flicked it across the table. "That's what took two days to get," I said untruthfully; it had taken five minutes at Ron's. It was a photocopy of an airline ticket he'd made out for me on a proper Air France ticket form, and it revealed that one William Gince had taken Air France flight 229 to Paris three days ago and from there had gone on to Rome, or at least he had been ticketed to, the following day. Fats looked it over, then looked me over; there was not a lot of warmth in his regard.
"Two days," I said bitterly. "You know how many flights leave Kennedy? About one a minute, I almost went blind. And I had to call in outside help. I might've been able to persuade one airline to give me access to their recent passenger lists by telling them some yarn about trying to check on a friend I missed contact with at the airport, but not them all. A New York cop I know helped me out; it cost, check the expenses; he and a security type at Kennedy split four hundred, but it got us into a small room, it got us two computers to use, and it got us all the access codes. Did you know passenger lists aren't alphabeticized? I do, now." (Whether they really are or not, who does know, or care.) "What we were checking on was every flight out of the country since Tuesday; there was only about a million. If we came up empty, then we planned to cover all interior flights we had time for, although as Willy could have used any name for one of those, good luck."
"How did you know he was in New York?" Fats said.
"From his sister," I said. "I went to see her. She heard him phoning for a reservation L.A.—New York. She told me he had a passport that he took; the whole family got them at the same time to go to England one vacation. London was so quaint, she said. And so old!"
"So I heard," Fats said. "Maybe she knows where he is now."
"No way," I said firmly. "Know what she said when her mom was in the kitchen making us all a nice cup of tea? See, I didn't know how much Willy might have told them about the fix he was in, but they sure knew something was rotten in Denmark, he took off so quickly, he didn't even tell his boss where he worked he was going. I convinced them I was a friend, like his only hope, and there could be serious consequences for him if I couldn't get in touch with him before some far-less-friendly types got to him. Sis was practically crying by then. What she said was she only wished she could help but Willy had deliberately not told them where he was going so no one would come bothering them, there'd be no reason – least he could do was try and keep them out of it." I hoped Fats believed me because that was my plan, too. "Oh, yeah, he did say that if anyone did hassle them he had a way of finding out about it and he'd drop the fuzz a line, naming names. But hell, Fats, you wouldn't go bothering a widow lady and her only daughter, now would you?"
"Perish the thought," Fats said.
"But I'm a mite confused, Fats," I said. "What's he running all the way to Roma and, who knows, Singapore and points east, over a few measly grand? It must have cost him half that for his plane fare, for God's sakes."
"With small-time crooks like that, who can figure," he said.
"Who indeed?" I said.
"So that's it, eh?" he said.
"That's about all she wrote," I said. "But I do have an idea. He's not going to stay away forever, what's he going to do, and on what? He'll probably be back in six months with a dose of yellow fever or something. He's also probably too dumb to change his name even if he knows how, so what you do is wait awhile, then get some hotshot kid to run a computer trace on him. If you don't know anyone, I can put you in touch with a guy I know, Phil the Freak, who is frankly unbelievable, he taught me what little I know about computers when I got mine. Ever tell you I call it Betsy? That's the same name Davy Crockett, king o' the wild frontier, gave his favorite rifle."
"Live and learn," Fats said. He got to his feet and wandered over to the window. He didn't seem particularly upset by my news, but then that was one of Fats' few, if not only, redeeming characteristics, you n
ever saw him get upset about anything.
"Right on!" I said brightly, getting up as well. "Sorry you're out the five grand, Fats, but I did my best and, like the man said, win some, lose some." I patted my breast pocket reassuringly, then departed. He didn't bother to wave me good-bye.
I paused briefly on the stairs outside, readjusted my personal belongings slightly, and descended, whistling.
It was only a few minutes' stroll to the car park; I waved at the guy in the booth and headed toward the back of the lot where I'd left my Nash. Just as I was unlocking the door, I got jumped by the punk kid from Fats' office—who had a new pig-sticker, I couldn't help noticing—and a tough-looking black kid in some flashy gang jacket who was brandishing a tire iron; they poured out of a black Ford that had been following me ever since I'd left Fats'. Which is why, I suppose, he hadn't waved at me, he was too busy waving at them. There's one I owe you, Fats.
Well, there are times to get tough and times to get moving. I got moving. "No! Please!" I screamed at the top of my voice as I was rolling over the hood to the far side of my car. 'Here! Take my money!" I threw my wallet at them and took off, sprinting for the entrance and people and crowded streets. They followed a few steps, then went back and collared the wallet, then jumped into the Ford and screeched after me. I ducked down a line of cars trying to figure out what to do if they followed; they didn't, which was lucky for someone, probably me. The front gate was up; they flew through it, hung a right, and disappeared into the traffic. I got up from my crouch, dusted my hands, and made my way briskly back to my car. I took off immediately, not thinking it would be all that smart to linger. When I was well away from the area, I pulled over to calm down and count my losses.
Which were: one two-dollar wallet, bought at a yard sale. One American Express credit card, in my name, reported lost or stolen by me a while back when I had merely misplaced it and had found it again the next week. Hopefully, the punk would try to use it, maybe to buy a sword this time. Also included: nine fake twenty-dollar bills, but good fakes, good enough so maybe the dynamic duo would try passing a few of them; a photo of Sandra Dee, which was in the wallet when I bought it: one used, slightly greasy, comb; and a perfectly genuine U.S. one-dollar bill. Too bad the boys were in such a hurry; they could have been the new owners of my elegant Rolex Oyster timepiece as well. Evonne bought it for me on a street corner that time we visited Mexico together. I recall we had been slightly suspicious as to whether or not it was the real thing as oyster was spelt "oister", and even I knew that was wrong. Also the price, forty-five thousand pesos, translated into American dollars, comes to two of them, plus fifteen cents. Roughly. So children, your nature lesson for today is—in the jungle, watch your ass.
