by David Pierce
I got Uncle out of there and we headed for Dago Don's famed bar and eatery, which we'd passed earlier on our stroll. I may not spot every Symphoricarpos albus when I'm strolling, or driving, but you can bet I don't miss all that many bars.
Dago Don's—what a place. There was so much dusty bric-a-brac on the walls and hanging from the ceiling it was ten minutes before I noticed the stuffed ostrich. I was too busy putting away a couple of brews and admiring the lobster with the decals on it, the blowfish with the corncob pipe in its mouth, the ratty old deer head—or was it a small moose?—and the old photos of the old days and the hundreds of dollar bills stuck mysteriously to the ceiling.
"Ok ,I'll bite," I said to the bearded geezer tending bar, who might even have been Dago Don himself, for all I knew, "how do they get up there?"
"Got a buck?" he said.
"Yeah, I got a buck," I said, handing him over one. "But I get the feeling I won't have it for long."
He grinned through his nicotine-stained whiskers, took a silver dollar out of his watch pocket, folded the, or rather, my, dollar bill around it somehow, dipped it all in beer, then lofted the ensemble ceilingward, where it stuck, what else? After a minute or so my dollar bill, traitor that it was, unfolded itself just enough to go on sticking up there but to let the silver dollar slip out and fall down into the bartender's awaiting palm. Bet Mike never saw that one, I thought. But who knows—maybe it was Mike behind all that beard. Or even Lethal Lou. Which reminded me—I took a quick look around—at the clientele this time instead of the artifacts—no Solomon. There was a husband and wife, obviously sightseers, drinking soda pops at one table, and three deaf folks, drinking booze, signing away busily at one another. I wondered if they ever said to each other the equivalent of, "What a chatterbox that woman is! Doesn't she ever stop signing?"
About then an old-timer wearing a chefs hat and a long white apron appeared in the doorway to the dining room. He was holding a large brass bell, which he proceeded to ring violently.
"Come 'n' get it," He said, "if you want it. Special's pot roast." He surveyed the room briefly, then scuttled back into the dining area. Uncle Theo looked at me inquiringly. I pointed to my mouth and made chewing sounds. He nodded eagerly.
We had the pot roast. So did the husband and wife, the three deaf people, and a table of four locals next to us. I divided my attention between the food, (terrific), our fellow diners (harmless, as far as I could tell), and an intriguing business card which was propped up against the mustard pot on our table "Charlie Chan's Tattooing," it said. "No drunks. Free Hand. Ladies in private. 100s of designs. Wide choice of colors. Noon to midnight." Hum, thought I. A tattoo, thought I. Something tasteful, of course, nothing ribald. Perhaps merely a heart entwined with flowers, and underneath, "Evonne." That'd show her I was willing to endure grievous pain over her, that I wasn't just some fly-by-night incapable of suffering over a woman. I changed my mind when I perused the back of the card. "Remove bandage in 24 hours," it said. Bandage?? "Use medication on tattoo for first 3 days. Spray with alcohol frequently." That bit was easy, just breathe heavily. "Light amounts of neosporin or dermassage is recommended. Your tattoo should form a light dry scab that will fall off in about 7 to 10 days. Do not pick it off." No way, José, I thought. Maybe I'd try a little mental suffering instead.
Uncle Theo and I finished up with store-bought apple pie, the kind with too much cinnamon in it, à la mode, then I settled up, asked for and was given a receipt by the matronly waitress, then we departed without seeing any more of the feisty little cook. My dollar bill was still stuck to the ceiling, I couldn't help noticing on the way out. What a racket.
I stuck pretty close to Uncle Theo the rest of the day. If I'd stuck any closer we'd have been sharing the same BVDs. If he sighted whoever it was he was purportedly there to sight, he didn't bother letting me in on it. We didn't do much, we took another stroll around town after lunch, then read for a while in the hotel lobby, me a top-notch Len Deighton called Yesterday's Spy, him a who-knows-what and in what language. The hotel business in Locke wasn't exactly booming. I snuck a look at the register when no one else was around and noted that apart from me, Theo, and a Henry C. Clam, alias Nature Boy, there was only one other guest, a lady doctor, and she remained invisible, as did, thankfully, Nature Boy. Then, as I recall, we both took naps, then went for a spin out of town, along one of the levees. Then we returned to the hotel to sit around some more and attempt to communicate by means of our phrase books, not all that easy a task as most of the phrases therein were thing like, "Tavarich predaviets! Chto koupit dlia malien keve mal tchike?"
Which means, roughly, "Comrade salesperson, what would you recommend for a little boy?"
"A little girl," Uncle Theo pointed out, which wasn't bad for an uncle. Or any one else, either, come to think of it. Then I betook myself back to Yuen Chong's General Store, where I made a couple of purchases. Once back at the hotel I dropped my purchases off in my room, trying to see if I could walk down the hall without making the floor creak. I found I could if I kept to the edges. I checked out the second floor briefly; the stairwell to the floors above was firmly blocked by a screwed-in sheet of heavy plywood. I checked out the fire escape, too, briefly; it looked solid enough to take a person's weight. It had a barrier as well separating the second story from those above but it was only waist high.
We had supper in the town's other restaurant, Sam Li's, which was down behind the museum, hot egg rolls, Chinese spareribs, noodles, wonton soup, the usual stuff. Uncle Theo made no attempt to hide the admiration he felt at my dexterous use of the chopsticks. I noticed he blew on the soup in his spoon to cool it, a habit my mom particularly disliked. Which reminded me.
I called her up after supper, using the old-fashioned wall pay phone in the hotel lobby. Uncle Theo planted himself in front of the TV.
"Is Mrs. Daniel available, please? It's her little boy."
"Hang on, I'll check," a woman's voice said.
I hung on. While I was hanging on, Nature Boy came bustling in, holding a large bunch of what looked like weeds to me. He disappeared up the stairs; maybe he was going to mash them up for his supper.
After a lengthy while, the voice said she was sorry but my mother didn't seem to know who I was. I said I was sorry, too, and hung up. Then, what the hell, it was marginally more than watching "Dallas" with Uncle, I shoveled some more change in and dialed the twerp's number. Her mom answered.
"Is your charming daughter available to come to the phone, Mrs. Silvetti? V. Daniel here, calling from the wilds of upstate California."
"I think she's in her room, mooning. Hang on, I'll see." I hung on. After a minute or so, the twerp said, "Yeah? What do you want?
"I don't want anything but the pleasure of hearing your sweet and soothing tones," I said. "So how are you doing, anyway?"
"Shitty," she said.
"Willing Boy back?" I said.
"No," she said. "Not that it's any of your business."
"Thanks for your message at the airport, by the way," I said.
"You owe me for the phone call," she said.
"In the mail," I said.
"Also for my time," she said. "Do you know how long it takes to get to that airport by bus?"
"Also in the mail," I said.
"Sure, sure, " she said. "Now if there's nothing else, so long."
"Wait a minute, grumpy," I said. "There is something else. If I don't call you by, say, ten o'clock tomorrow morning, give me a call up here in the sticks, or chopsticks is more like it." I read her off the phone number from the dial.
"Why?"
"Oh, I dunno," I said vaguely. "Just in case. Who knows what dangers lurk in the back room of Charlie Chan's tattoo parlor."
"OK," she muttered. She hung up, or slammed down is more like it. Ah, young love, I thought. I remember it well.
"Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite," I said to the empty line.
I went back to the man at the front desk for another
handful of silver. He was scribbling away in an exercise book.
"Studying?" I asked him.
"Studying."
"What, may I ask, just to pass the time?"
"For a belated Ph.D. in Paleontology."
"Oh," I said. "I never was much good with languages myself." He unlocked the cash drawer and converted a five-dollar bill into change for me.
"I thought you might be taking a course in hotel management or something like that."
"I'm just helping out Pop," he said. 'He owns this mausoleum. I keep telling him it would be cheaper to close it up, but not my pop. He's kept the old registers that go back to when his father bought it in 1917, he remembers when it was full, all four floors, I've closed up two of them already and I'm shutting down another someday when he's out fishing."
"Ah well," I said. "Tempis does fugit."
"Not for my pop," he said, returning to his studies. I returned to the phone and called up Precious. Precious was out. I could leave a message after the pip. I left a rude noise after the pip and went to rejoin Theo on the battered old sofa in front of the TV. I couldn't swear to it, but I suspected Theo had already developed a crush on Victoria Principal. Hell, join the club.
So we sat through the "Dallas" rerun, then watched Columbo get his man again, only this time it was a woman, then we switched the TV off and went upstairs to our rooms. Uncle Theo started leafing through his phrase book outside his door to find some suitable words of parting. I sighed, and said "Come on, Uncle, give over, you probably speak English as well as I do. Maybe even better."
"When did you find out?" he said finally in accented but otherwise correct American.
"Shit, I've known it for years," I said.
15
Now that we had a language in common, wouldn't you know Uncle Theo clammed up; we communicated more with those useless phrase books. And what he did tell me was more likely another pack of fibs, misrepresentations, and evasions, to say naught of the complete and utter falsehoods.
It was a few minutes later. We were sitting on the bed in my room and I was trying to get a few answers out of the polylingual ex-Estonian, if he was even that. I'd answered his questions frankly, openly, and with almost complete candor. I told him that what gave him away wasn't so much what he did but what he hadn't done, aside from the basic fact that whatever Miss Ruth Aphrodite Braukis told me I had learnt the hard way to disbelieve. Therefore, as she told me that Uncle Theo could only speak Estonian and Russian, I immediately assumed he was not only fluent in every major tongue but most of the minor dialects as well. Why the pretense in the first place, Uncle Theo refused to say.
"I don't speak languages, like some I could name," I said with an admirable lack of jealousy, "so I know what it's like. But I can always pick up a word here and there if I try, lots of words are the same or almost the same in Spanish or French or Canadian even; you couldn't pick up one word, not even easy ones like San Francisco, over the loudspeaker. Hell, even I know a few words of Russian, I go to the movies, I read a lot of spy books; who hasn't picked up a few words of English? You protestedeth too much, Tovarich. Also, it's hard, what you were trying to do, like pretending to be deaf, or blind. Next time leave it to us experts."
"There won't be a next time, I hope," he said, looking slightly crestfallen.
"Me too," I said. "But if there is, may I suggest once in a while try to go through a door that is marked, 'Do Not Enter' instead of not trying to go through it. You picked the right washroom, too, and it wasn't one of those with the figure of a little man above it, 'Men' is all it said. You also downed that pizza as if it wasn't the first one you'd ever seen in your sheltered life. However. Onward. Tell me this, Uncle—what's going on? Don't you think it's about time you filled me in?"
He shrugged.
"You know all I know."
"That'll be the day," I said. "How about your sighting, how's that coming along?
He shrugged again.
"Still planning on leaving tomorrow?"
This time he nodded.
"Solly going to pick you up, or What's-her-name, maybe?"
"Maybe."
"Why don't you leave tonight, if you've seen what you wanted to see?'
"I was told to stay here."
"Could you get in touch with Solly or What's-her-name if you wanted to?"
"Nyet," he said.
"Which doesn't mean yes," I said. "Bet'cha they're in one of those campers at the trailer park we passed on the way in. That's where I'd be."
Theo looked innocent.
"So how do you like living in Israel?"
"It's a living," he said.
"What do you do there, Theo?"
"Retired teacher. I live on a kibbutz in the Negev with my daughter. Still teach a bit. Run the library. Help out in the machine shop. Garden. Usually go on a dig in the summer. Make wine in a modest way."
"Some retirement." I said. "Especially when you chuck in and go to war every few months. Do me a favor?"
"Maybe."
"What's your real name, anyway?"
"The kids call me Abba," he said.
"What's that mean?"
"Pop."
"That's a big help," I said. " OK, how about this, I want you to switch rooms with me for the night. I am being paid to baby-sit you, after all. I figure it couldn't hoit, whoever you sighted or didn't sight or are going to meet or not going to meet or get a phone call from or a smoke signal or a grapefruit with a secret message inside."
He thought it over for a minute, then said, "Why not?" He got up, went out, and returned in a minute with his pajamas and toilet articles.
"Uh-uh," I said. "You can keep the bottoms, I need the other stuff." I took them from him, collected the necessities from my room, pulled down the window blind, asked him to hand over his false teeth, which he did reluctantly, told him to lock the door behind me and keep it locked, then tiptoed to his room without being detected as far as I could tell. I pulled the blind down, turned on the light, then made my simple preparations for the long night to come. I used the extra blanket on the bed and one of the pillows to make up a dummy Theo, then dressed it in his pajama top, shaping it to appear that Theo was laying on one side, facing the wall and away from the door, one pajama-clad arm curling up and around his head to hide the fact he didn't have a real one. I added a few tufts of cotton batting I'd bought at the store for that final touch that means so much.
On the small bedside table I laid out a box of his pills and then his upper plate, in a plastic glass of water. I hung his pants over a chair. I lined his shoes up neatly by the bed. I put the book he'd been reading on the table as well, then a small pocket mirror I chanced to have in my toiletries. Ah, vanity. Then I switched off the overhead light, remembering to unscrew the bulb so I wouldn't be dazzled if someone turned it on suddenly and also to prevent anyone throwing too much light on the subject. Who looked pretty good, all things considered, as I found out when I checked the dummy Theo by the light of the miniature flash I'd also picked up at Mr. Chong's. In the darkness, I tested the window to see how easily it opened—very, unfortunately. And its only lock was a simple hook and eye anyone could open from the outside with a penknife. And the door's lock wasn't much better.
Into the bathroom I went. It was roughly the size of one you'd find on a Pygmy Airlines flight. The door opened the wrong way, too, for me to be able to watch the window and the door directly. I sat on the uncomfortable do-it-yourself plastic toilet seat, closed the bathroom door all but a crack, and peeked out. The mirror I'd left on the bedside table to give me a reflected view of the window was at the wrong angle. I snuck out, rearranged it, then went back to my perch. OK. I'd changed earlier into my basic black outfit (all but the pearls, dear) plus a comfortable old pair of sneakers, so as soon as I'd strapped my shoulder holster on and assured myself that the gun was loaded and the safety on, there was nothing to do but wait.
So I waited.
And waited.
Then waited some more
.
All was quiet in the hotel, except for the occasional creak as I cautiously stretched a leg and as wood contracted in the cooling night air. All was quiet in Locke, too, except for the occasional pooch barking in the distance and once a car starting up. And once I heard brief high-pitched snatch of a conversation in Chinese coming from the parking lot out back. Otherwise it was quiet as a giraffes' tea party. Oh—my stomach made the occasional noise as well—probably those damn greasy spareribs. Good, though.
Did I really expect some ancient storm trooper to come sneaking in, Luger blasting, as soon as the witching hour struck?
Part of me did, part of me didn't. The back of my neck did and the palms of my hands did. The logical part of my brain did not, it mocked the very idea. But who do you trust these days, amigos? Right. I hear ya talking.
I waited some more. I sucked my way through a package of butterscotch I'd had the foresight to stock up with. There was a day I could have chewed my way through it. I had a sudden moment of panic and reached for my Police Positive. It was still there. Under my breath I intoned a litany from the past I'd forgotten I'd ever learned: action, barrel, chambers, cylinder, cylinder latch, ejector rod, firing pin, forcing cone, frame, front sight, grip-stock, hammer, hammer block–transfer bar. Muzzle, rear sight, spur, star, trigger, trigger guard, yoke. Amen. In the trade, they like you to call cartridges rounds; anything but bullets. You charge a magazine, too, you do not load it, landlubbers.
More creaks. Florida is weird. There anyone can take a course that lasts a few hours and then if you answer a bunch of questions correctly and hand over your fifty bucks ($50.00) you can apply for a permit that allows you to carry a concealed weapon. Even I can't carry a concealed weapon in California, crime-busting fool that I am. I was in Florida once and I went through a course at a place outside Miami called the Open Fence Range. Some of the questions in the exam were pretty tough, though, as I remember. See how you do with a few I can recall, and I am talking memory here, not make-believe. 'When unloading a revolver, keep your finger off the ——." (Fill in the blank.) "The rounds should always —— the gun." "Keep firearms out of the reach of ——." If you have any trouble with the answers, ask any five-year-old kid.
