Improvisato

by David Crossman

  Albert added a third finger.

  “Showing up in different parts of New Zealand every two months,” said Jimmy.

  Fourth finger.

  Mikaera tossed the final ingredient into this stew of confusion. “And one of those women on Parliament Row dyin’ each time.”

  “At least two of ’em harvested,” Ngaio observed.

  “No,” said Albert. “They were all harvested.”

  “How do you know?”

  Albert didn’t know how he knew, but he knew, just as surely as he knew what was still buried under the purposeless little ledge in Langar Chapel back in England.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Albert had once heard someone say “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” which he felt, if true, made him one of the deadliest objects on the planet. His hope was that he had enough knowledge to ask the right questions.

  But of whom should they be asked?

  Apart from Dr. Chan, what if, as seemed to be the case, there were doctors and nurses involved in the Trade—medical people beyond the few whose names had been mentioned? Of whom could he inquire?

  He ruled out inquiry in a medical direction.

  That left the police. Ultimately, of course, they’d have to be consulted, but his experience with those whose natural proclivities drew them into the police business inclined him to suspect they’d need enough evidence to bring down a charging elephant before they’d take anything he had to say seriously.

  He knew nothing of Emelda, the wife of Senior Sergeant Hawkes, and how her comments about Albert had led him to inquire into recent events in Albert’s life, and how the testimony resulting from those inquiries had left him, the Senior Sergeant with a profound respect for the deductive powers of “the musical gentleman”, however accidental or unorthodox they might be. In fact, with eviscerated bodies piling up like kindling at the foot of the stake upon which he imagined himself soon to be immolated, Hawkes would like nothing more than to consult Albert at that very moment if only he could find him, which, Jeffreys had informed him, was in a Mr. Pookie’s Crisps and Pretzels truck.

  “Of course he is,” Hawkes had responded. “Where else would he be?”

  As to the specific whereabouts of the potato crisp truck, Sergeant Jeffreys was able to say only, “They were headed somewhere north.”

  From the perspective of someone situated pretty far down in the Southern Hemisphere, “somewhere north” represents a broad territory. “May I assume said vehicle is still in New Zealand?” he said sarcastically.

  Jeffreys refrained from smiling.

  Of the exchange between the senior and junior sergeants, Albert had no inkling as he, Phuong, and Jimmy barreled south from the dirt roads of Shelly Beach to the highway 16 toward Auckland.

  Between them, it had taken Jimmy and him— mostly Jimmy—a full twenty minutes to convince the girl to go with them. In the end, however, she relented after Albert promised her a place of refuge where she couldn’t be found.

  It wasn’t really a lie. In fact, it would probably be the truth if he could get from Angela the information he needed to make it a reality, which was, where did her sister and brother-in-law live? He wondered, briefly, if it was a lie to say, as if it were true, something that, though not necessarily true at that moment, might become true by the time it became important that it was.

  Anyway, lie or not, it settled her down for the time being.

  Familiarity was beginning to prove that Jimmy, after all—apart from having legs—was a lot like Jeremy Ash. Not only in the fact that—once his initial reticence was overcome—he talked a lot, but in the kinds of things he said, and the way he thought.

  That’s how it seemed to Albert. And he was fine with that. It meant he had to talk less and, if he listened, might find out something useful as he often did when listening to Jeremy Ash, who thought things that would never have occurred to Albert in a way he’d never have thought about them if they had. Like the little cut-crystal cross that swung and swayed from the rear-view mirror in the cab of the potato crisp truck, catching, refracting, trifurcating, and reflecting light from its various facets in infinite variety, Jimmy’s mind was a dance along reason’s third rail, with possibilities on one side, impossibilities on the other, and a narrow high-voltage divide between the two upon which the dance was performed.

  “What about your ticker?” he said. “How are you doing today?”

  The remark interrupted Albert’s contemplation of the passing countryside that telephone poles—passing at seventy kilometers an hour—divided neatly into measures in three-quarter time. He looked at Phuong, to whom the comment had been directed.

  “My heart?”

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy. His window was open and his right elbow rested there. His left hand was draped over the steering wheel, and he looked, to Albert, like someone who knew his place in the world and was happy with it.

  “It not good,” said Phuong.

  “Really bad?”

  Phuong hung her head and nodded slightly. “But not want other heart. Not Woolie-Woolie heart. Not nobody heart. I die? I die. Some live short. Some live long. So, okay. I live short.”

  Jimmy considered this for a mile or two during which the metallic creaks and groans of the truck took up the slack of conversation. “Your folks, was it? They wanted you to get a new heart?”

  Phuong nodded. “I not know this. They say me birthday cruise. They say me big party. I not know what . . .”

  Sensing that she was struggling to find the words to express her thoughts, Jimmy said, “You didn’t know that it was all just a set up to get you a new heart.”

  Phuong pointed at him. “This,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So, where are your parents?”

  She shrugged, but said nothing.

  “They must have heard about you washing up on the beach?”

  Phuong shrugged. “I not know.”

  Jimmy was sensitive to the girl’s pain and confusion. “Probably in knots with worry for you.” Pause. “They must love you a lot, to do all that.”

  “It murder!” Phuong objected sharply. “Murder for heart!”

  “Still,” said Jimmy thoughtfully, “must be awful to know your kid’s going to die.” Pause. “People do crazy things.”

  Albert’s attention turned once more to the countryside. “People do crazy things,” he said to himself and slowly, as the miles slipped beneath the potato crisp truck, the words became the refrain to the melody that draped itself on the wires between the poles that passed in three-quarter time.

  By the time the truck pulled up in front of the Braemar Hotel, the eastern sky was dark—a mixture of purple and black—and the light in the west was, thought Albert, who had decided to make a conscious effort at noticing such things, the color of the fringe of an ice cube in iced coffee. Not the immediate fringe, which was usually clear, but the rim around the fringe which borrowed from both the ice cube and the coffee, and was magnified in the bubbles.

  This coffee had a lot of cream in it.

  He smiled as he climbed from the cab. Analogies and metaphors were just ways of describing something you couldn’t describe by connecting it with something you could. Simple. He was getting the hang of it.

  “I not go in,” said Phuong.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Jimmy volunteered.

  Albert hesitated, but he understood. “Okay.”

  For no particular reason, as he walked along the brick path to the front door, he looked over his shoulder. What confronted him, in the form of a bright yellow and orange Mr. Pookie’s Crisps and Pretzels truck, was a two-ton slap in the face.

  He returned to the vehicle.

  “Forget something?” said Jimmy, still leaning casually on the window.

  “I think,” Albert began, “your truck is a little . . . it’s like a . . .” like a what? A lighthouse? An orange tuxedo? Then he remembered an analogy he’d heard in Tryon, North Carolina that seemed apropos, and it was out of his mouth before
he had a chance to examine it, “a fart in church.”

  Jimmy laughed and, when she was made to understand through various signs and wonders performed by Jimmy that transcended the language barrier, Phuong laughed, too.

  “I’ll take it back to the warehouse,” Jimmy said. “We will. Then we’ll hop my bike back here.”

  The hour that followed was one in which warm reunion was followed by fragmentary exchanges of information which flew back and forth, their trajectories now and then intersected by speculative shrapnel from all angles.

  “She’s here now?” said Angela, when the moment arrived for the question.

  Albert explained.

  “How far away is this warehouse?” James wanted to know. “Shouldn’t they be back by now?”

  Albert suspected they were nearby. “They’ll be all right,” he said. He’d been turning Tanny’s ring over in his fingers and staring at it, as if staring would make it give up its secrets. “What do you think this means? ‘F’?”

  “Some kind of club or sorority, James thinks,” said Angela.

  James cleared his throat. “Well, something like that—a group, a gang—perhaps even a team of some kind.” He tapped the cross on his collar. “We all belong to one tribe or another. Each has its signs of membership; a password, a secret handshake, an insignia.” He tapped the cross at his throat.

  This was a new thought for Albert. What tribe did he belong to? He tried to think, but none came to mind. Maybe that was his trouble; he didn’t belong.

  “No team I know of,” said Mr. Sweetman, who had been following the conversation casually, from several steps behind. The authorities, according to Sergeant Jeffreys, had decided to withhold from Mr. Sweetman the fact that his wife had been exhumed so, while he was aghast upon learning Woolie-Woolie’s fate on Chatham Island, he had no clue that the same had befallen his beloved Suzie.

  “That’s for the best,” said Albert, in consideration of this.

  “What’s for the best?” said Angela. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Albert. ET phone home.”

  Albert blinked back to the present. “‘F’”, he repeated. “And that nut.” He was impressed to learn of nuts; not the kind that came from trees, or wherever nuts come from, but the kind that keep things from falling apart, like the one etched on the ring. There should be a nut for life.

  “Is ‘F’ a nut that keeps things together?” he said. “Or does the nut keep ‘F’ together?”

  “Or,” said James, “are they symbolic of something else entirely?”

  Albert decided that fewer questions were more helpful than more questions. “You should talk to the boyfriend,” he said more or less to the air.

  “Me?” said James, signifying that he was the one to whom Albert must have been speaking. “Why? What for?”

  Albert held up the ring. “About this.” He’d seen lovers walking, and noticed that they liked to hold hands. In fact, he’d held Melissa Bjork’s hand, and it had been nice. A boyfriend would probably notice a ring like that. “He might know what it means.”

  Ricky Smethurst was summoned to the Braemar, through the somewhat puzzled intermediary of Cindy Ruakare, who had been instructed to offer a substantial reward.

  Angela, meanwhile, was sent to find and introduce herself to Jimmy and Le Thi Phuong, which errand she found easier than she’d expected since they were occupying the lower branches of a tree in the little triangle of park across the street from which they dropped like overripe fruit when she called Jimmy’s name. Once the formalities were observed, inasmuch as they can be observed when confronted by fugitives from hospitals and potato-crisp delivery men falling from trees, it quickly became apparent that the next order of business was food. “No crisps!” said Phuong, massaging her belly.

  Angela brought them quietly to the garden at the back of the house, and into the kitchen.

  When Ricky Smethurst arrived, James Simon’s first impression was that—recollecting Cindy Ruakare’s comment on the forget-me-nots in Tanny’s envelope—he was definitely not the flower-giving type. His second impression was that he was a thug. His third impression was that he shouldn’t allow his second impression to govern his opinion of the boy. He stood, walked across the room, and held out his hand.

  “Mr. Smethurst?”

  Ricky Smethurst regarded the hand suspiciously for a moment then shook it limply. “Vicar,” he said, a title that, as far as Ricky knew or cared, encompassed any cleric. “Cindy Ruakare said you wanted to see me.”

  “We won’t keep you long,” said Simon. He crossed the room, took the ring from Albert, brought it back and handed it to the boy. “Have you ever seen this?”

  Ricky glanced at it. “Sure. It was Tanny’s.” He handed it back. Contrary to Simon’s expectations he didn’t ask why strangers had the ring, or what their interest was in it. He stood and waited.

  “Yes,” said Simon, who, having inhaled in expectation of the need to deliver an explanation, mentally skipped over it, directly to the question next in queue. “There’s an insignia on it,” he said. “This ‘F’, and a nut. Do you know what that means.”

  “Frankenstein,” Ricky replied, giving no thought to the question. Nor did he elucidate.

  “Frankenstein?” said Albert. He knew Frankenstein. He’d watched the movie with his Uncle Albert when he’d been left at his house one weekend.

  “Why did she wear it?” Simon pressed.

  Ricky sensed his inventory of marketable information was dwindling. “Cindy said there was a reward.”

  “A thousand dollars,” said Albert. This, he had found, was a kind of magic number that seemed to sweep away a lot of hesitation.

  Ricky nearly choked. “Cash?”

  Albert didn’t have a thousand dollars in cash. His pockets contained the tidal chart, the guitar pick, and the used saxophone reed he always carried. You never know. Jeremy Ash, who, since their return from England had titled himself Chancellor of the Exchequer in matters relating to Albert’s hard currency, was seven hundred kilometers away.

  He looked at Simon who, catching his eye, subtly shook his head.

  “Hey, look,” said Ricky, for whom Simon’s shake had not been subtle enough; he was especially sensitive in matters relating to his personal finances, “if you don’t have the cash, don’t make promises.” He feinted toward the door.

  Albert cast a look of appeal at Mr. Sweetman. “Well, I think I may have . . . Give me a minute.”

  He left the room upon which restless silence fell. Ricky unfeinted. Albert spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Huh? Sorry about what?”

  “Tanny.”

  “Oh. Right,” said Ricky. “We broke up before all that. Still. She was all right. I liked her.”

  “You broke up with her?”

  Ricky shrugged which, to Albert, meant that she had been the one doing the breaking.

  “How long was she your girlfriend?”

  Ricky shrugged again. He was battling emotions that his demeanor belied. “Nine months, six days.”

  Albert and Simon exchanged looks laden with understanding. Ricky Smethurst was only a thug on the outside. He’d been in love with Tanny Ruakare, and she had broken his heart.

  Both men, in the privacy of their souls, knew a broken heart.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Smethurst,” said Simon, indicating the one still warm from Angela’s bottom. The boy’s attitude brought to mind that of a dog too often beaten to trust itself to apparent kindness. Nevertheless, he overcame his suspicions and sank into the chair. “Ricky,” he said.

  “Ricky. I’m James—Jim—and that,” he swept an arm in Albert’s direction, “is Albert. Can I get you something to drink? Tea or . . .”

  “A beer,” said the boy, exploring the borders of hospitality. “Steinlager.”

  “I’ll see what we can do,” said Simon, and, upon his departure, Albert and Ricky found themselves alone.

  “I lost my girlfriend,” said Albert.

>   Ricky looked up from the nest he’d made of his fingers. “Huh?

  Albert repeated himself.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sucks.”

  “Yes.”

  “She break it off?”

  “No,” said Albert, feeling it was important that he be completely truthful. “She was killed. Shot. In my arms. On my mother’s porch. In Maine.”

  “Shot!”

  Albert nodded. “Yes. She was killed.”

  “Crikey!”

  “Crikey,” Albert agreed.

  “Shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a gun?” Ricky formed a pistol of his fingers. “Bang!”

  Albert formed a rifle of his arm—like the one Mikaere had made to direct his attention to the stars. “Bang.”

  “A rifle?”

  “Rifle. Yes.”

  “Crikey!”

  “Crikey,” Albert said again. He folded the word gently into his vocabulary. It was the kind of expression that might mean anything and, therefore, could be helpful when there was nothing else to say.

  Ricky was about to ask if there had been a lot of blood, but something in the other’s eyes gave him the answer. “Crikey,” he sighed. “That sucks.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tanny’s dead, too. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fell down the stairs, they say.”

  Among many things Albert had learned recently was that sometimes the best way to get answers, is to stop asking questions. He waited, lit a cigarette and offered one to the boy, who took it after only a moment’s hesitation. “Ta.” He lit the cigarette with his own lighter and inhaled deeply. “Fell down the stairs,” he sighed. “Tanny? That’s just not on.”

  “She was pushed?” said Albert.

  “Too right, she was!” said the boy.

  “Who pushed her?”

  Ricky’s eyebrows shrugged. “Don’t know. I reckon it had something to do with that Frankenstein business.” He became suddenly animated, as if an invisible barrier between them had fallen. “That ring showed up—not on her finger, mind. She kept it on a chain around her neck.”

  “She didn’t want you to see it,” Albert observed.