Abnormal Occurrences: Short Stories

by Thomas Berger

  Scarcely had I reached the next corner when behind me I heard that cry which, veteran though I am, never fails to thrill me to the core. I think that, underneath it all, my principal motive for originally joining the force might well have been to hear a voice, seething with fear and outrage, cry, “Help, police!”

  I ran back to the store. A pudgy man, wearing a smiley-face button that probably marked him as manager, was pointing into the sky.

  I looked up. A pelican was flying heavily up the side of a nearby office building. There was some question as to whether or not he could clear its roof, though the structure was a modest one of only a dozen floors.

  “They’re not the most graceful of birds,” I said. “Furthermore, if he’s the one I think he is, he’s weighed down by a beakful of Tums, Maalox, and Pepto-Bismol bottles.”

  “None of them paid for,” said the stout man. “He’s a shoplifter. And where are the cops when you need them?”

  “Say no more,” I said. “Sergeant Vinnie DiFalco, Animal Crime Squad, at your service.”

  “I’d like some ID.”

  I considered this an insulting demand, but when I went for my shield I couldn’t find it! That pelican was also a pickpocket! But apparently he was not a violent criminal, for my weapon was still holstered at the left side of my belt.

  I drew it now and pointed it up at the bird, who was really laboring with his wings in an all-out effort to gain the roof and get out of sight. I couldn’t help feeling a certain sympathy for him, but there’s no room for sentimentality in my job. I squinted, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. I missed him altogether and everything else as well. I’ve always wondered where such bullets end up—maybe as the work of a mysterious sniper in Queens.

  Before the week was out the pelican had hit ten more stores in various parts of town, and the city was on the verge of mass hysteria. The mayor was burned in effigy, the police commissioner resigned in disgrace, and had I not been the only officer who could recognize the wanted bird, I wouldn’t have kept my own job.

  The creature had refined his technique. He would march into any retail establishment that took his fancy, that shield of mine dangling from his beak, and be taken everywhere as a legitimate cop. But, like any human, the bird had a weakness. It wasn’t booze, broads, the ponies, or dope. By all counts, this pelican was an absolute abstainer when it came to any of the usual vices. He didn’t even smoke. But the son of a gun had a sweet tooth he simply could not control. If he robbed any store that had a candy counter, you could be sure in making his exit he would always spare a moment to stop and help himself to a couple of pounds of chocolates with that great big scoop of a beak.

  “He’s got a childish streak, Vin,” said Fogarty.

  “Okay,” I said, “but what gets me is how he can get away with posing as a police officer. When’s a thing with feathers and a beak like that a sergeant of detectives? Do these people believe everything they read on a badge?”

  “Heck, Vinnie,” said Fogarty, “I can’t fault you in your low opinion of the average civilian’s intelligence, but we can’t use that as an excuse to let this bird keep making a fool of us. He ain’t supernatural, is he? Listen, why can’t we dose all the candies in the parts of town that he usually hits with knockout drops? Then when he—”

  “Fogarty, Fogarty,” I chided. “What about all the innocent folks who’ll also be eating the stuff, the poor kids?”

  “A harmless drug, Vin!” he insisted. “Sleeping-pill formula, you know? So they nap a little. What’s the damage?”

  “I won’t dignify that with a detailed answer,” said I. “You can figure it out. But the basic idea’s not all bad...” I was thinking, but at the moment all I could come up with was, “A bird has no teeth, you know.”

  Fogarty shrugged his round shoulders. “And a fish can’t shake hands. So what?”

  Before I ever could have answered that question, the pelican suddenly and for no apparent reason did what has always been considered unlikely for a professional criminal: he changed his M.O. I don’t mean with a minor trick or two. He transformed his entire act from start to finish. He was no longer a shoplifter. Now he would approach the nearest salesperson to the cash register and show a note that read:

  10, countem, 10 sticks of dynamyte is wyrd to my boddy

  Give me all the mony else I will blo us all upp.

  Despite its eccentric spelling, the note was hand-printed impeccably. By whom? Did it matter?

  “You know, Fogarty,” I said, watching my partner open his hot hero sandwich and suspiciously inspect its contents. “Maybe we should just tell people to call his bluff. ‘Okay, bud, set off your so-called dynamite.’ I think he’d end up with egg on his face. Where would a bird get high explosives, plus a detonating system compact enough to be carried on his person? He’s short on pockets, you know.”

  Fogarty grimaced at his sandwich but finally closed the top lid and took a big bite. I had to wait until it was thoroughly masticated and swallowed. At last he said, “But could we afford a mistake?”

  “Thanks, Fogarty,” I said. “I needed that reminder. Can’t ever forget we’re here to protect as well as serve.”

  Fact is, we never did collar that pelican. But the one-bird crime wave ended soon after his adoption of the new modus operandi. He really did get hold of some dynamite sticks, don’t ask me how, because within another day or so he suddenly blew up while crossing a downtown street. Luckily, traffic was thin at that hour. No human beings were hurt, and aside from a lot of broken plate glass and an excavation in the middle of the street, no damage was reported. They say feathers continued to float down for a quarter hour after the blast.

  He was an enterprising bird, and despite Fogarty’s sneers I frankly admit to having a certain admiration for such a worthy adversary.

  The Snake with Stars in His Eyes

  SO FAR AS I know, the only call there ever was for snakes in the world of entertainment was to accompany exotic dancers, and that’s a thing of the past. But even then, the kind of reptile used was one of the big devils, python or boa constrictor, whereas the snake I’m talking about was a little garter type. Hell, he couldn’t have made more than a foot and a half in length if he stretched, so to speak, on tiptoe, and in girth your ordinary frankfurter might be thicker. But it could be truthfully said that the little guy was all heart.

  I got to know the serpent in question through a squeal that came in from the stage-door man at a Broadway theater. Contrary to what you might think, this bald-headed, white-fringed coot was called not Pop but Wayne.

  It seems that the ingénue of the musical comedy then in performance claimed she was being harassed by a snake. Wayne was right to call us in. If this charge could be substantiated, the reptile would be guilty of an aggravated misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the length of his body and whether he carried a deadly weapon. Nevertheless, at first the old doorman had failed to take the young woman seriously. One, how would a snake get into a dressing room in a theater in the middle of town? Unless of course it had been the partner of one of the aforementioned exotic dancers, none of whom had ever been known to perform on this stage. The second reason had to do with the notorious nearsightedness of the actress. In fact, coming to complain about the snake, the girl had fallen over Wayne as he sat near the door in his classic camp chair, reading a tabloid and, naturally, wearing a battered old felt hat on the back of his head and exposed suspenders on his shoulders.

  “Okay,” said I. “Just when and why did you correct your first impression, uh, Wayne? Sorry, I keep wanting to call you Pop.”

  We exchanged stares for a moment; then he went on. “Fact is, there really was a snake, all right. Not twenty-four hours went by before I seen him with my own two eyes. I went to the water cooler is when it was, just after the first-act intermission and at the Wednesday matinee, house full of ladies on theater parties—gee, I tell you, Falconi, I never get tired of that suspense just before the curtain goes up, when all the world
is waiting for that moment of magic—”

  “All right, hold the schmaltz and get to the details. And my name’s DiFalco, Pop.”

  He shrugged and measured off a foot, foot and a half, with two hands on edge. “Little bugger he was, there on the floor underneath the water cooler. Now, the impulse of a lot of people is when they see a snake to run get something to smash him with. But as it happens, I’m a farm boy, born and raised upstate. I tell you, Falkowitz, you don’t know what milk tastes like until you drink it warm right after the cow gave it, maybe with a thick slice of warm homemade bread and—”

  “Mouth’s watering, Pop, but go on about the reptile in question.”

  “So what I mean is, you been around a farm, you never kill a snake. And this theater’s full of mice that been around since it was built at the beginning of the last century.”

  “Say,” I asked, “this actress, is she a good-looker?”

  He made his mouth sag and punched the air with an elbow. “There’s all kinda tastes. For my money she’s a bit skinny, but I could be wrong.”

  “Like ’em zaftig, do you, Wayne?” I eyed him narrowly. In how many old movies was the doorman a sex maniac? I made a mental note to have Fogarty run a make on him when I got back to headquarters. “But go on about the snake. So you didn’t do him any harm?”

  “Far from it, I don’t mind saying it gets pretty lonely back here when the performance is finished and you’re waiting for the last few cast members to wipe off their makeup and leave.”

  “That’s a notoriously melancholy time,” I said.

  He grinned at me, showing ill-fitting dental plates. “Got a showbiz background, Falkland?”

  “Pop, my job has put my foot in many doorways. Don’t try to make too much of it.” I didn’t like the way he immediately tried to get familiar. I’m nobody’s buddy when I’m on a case.

  My rebuff served the purpose of getting him back to the subject. “Fact is, far from doing damage to the little fella. I picked him up on a broomstick and carried him back to a private corner I’ve made for myself in the property room. I got a hotplate there and some powdered coffee, and I keep a little can of evaporated milk. I poured some in a jar lid and set it down for the snake. I tell you, he lapped it up like he was famished, and did the same till the whole can was empty. Poor little devil obviously hadn’t ate in a long time.”

  “Okay, so you’ve brought me close to tears,” I said in the raspy voice I assume when dealing with certain members of the public. A cop is trusted more when he seems hard-bitten. “But if this reptile just became a pet of yours, you wouldn’t have called the department, or am I missing something?”

  He had been smiling, but now his old face fell. “I’m getting to that. First thing that happened, after Bobby had been with me only a day or so—I named him Bobby, after the son I never had.”

  This seemed warped to me, but I’m not paid to be judgmental about the tastes of civilians I come across in an investigation. I nodded in silence. But he wouldn’t let well enough alone.

  “I guess that seems warped to you?” he asked.

  “Frankly, it does,” I answered. “It’s a snake, after all.”

  “To hell with you,” said he. “It’s my life.” Suddenly, tears welled in his eyes and he took a balled handkerchief from a back pocket and daubed at his face.

  “Turned on you, did he?” I asked, not without sympathy. “Well, console yourself with this thought: that then he was behaving like a real son. I did it to my own dad. As an old bunco artist it broke his heart to see a boy of his become a cop.”

  Wayne stopped sniffling and showed an almost cruel expression. “No,” said he, “it wasn’t that way at all. But if you’ll just let me tell my story... In a day or so, Bobby was helping himself to the canned milk. Next he found some doughnuts I had brung along, and darn if he didn’t wriggle through one and make it like a hula hoop, you know.”

  “Oh yeah?” I scowled but actually I thought it was pretty cute.

  “I got to admit,” he said, “I thought it was pretty cute, even though he usually ruined the doughnut by getting it going so fast it would shoot right over his head, bang against the wall, and break apart. I guess I showed him I thought it was real clever, because the next thing I knew, he began to make the trick more fancy. He’d switch on the little radio I got back there, get some music to accompany the hula hoop act. You know what happened next, doncha?”

  “What I do know is that snakes are deaf.”

  “Yeah,” Wayne came right back, “but I ain’t.”

  He had me there, but I couldn’t admit it. “Say,” I said to divert him, “isn’t there a show tonight?” Have I mentioned that we were standing under the light of one bare bulb?

  “Don’t you know we’re always dark on Sundays?”

  I don’t know why they call Broadway glamorous. The theater was cold backstage and awfully shabby. I shivered inside my bulletproof vest.

  Wayne must have noticed my chill, for at this point he pulled a flat bottle from the back pocket of his rumpled old gray pants. “Take a pull on this, sonny.”

  I wiped off the mouth of the bottle with a twist of my palm and took a swig. I couldn’t identify what it was, but it was filthy stuff.

  The old man reclaimed the bottle and swallowed a good quarter of its remaining contents in one breath. Then he said, “I admit I got a taste for the juice. That’s why my own career went noplace. I was a pretty fair hoofer in my day—when I could stand up.”

  Belatedly I realized that he had been about two-thirds drunk when I began to talk to him. “Okay,” I nevertheless persisted. “So the snake developed an act using doughnuts like a hula hoop?”

  Wayne nodded. “But they was brittle, so we switched to bagels. But along about now he finds a bottle I had put aside for a rainy day, gets the cap off somehow, and has a taste. Well sir, he don’t mind if he takes another, and before long you got a little reptile lush.”

  I made a joke. “A snake who sees snakes, huh?”

  But Wayne made a face. “He’d get real surly when he had a skinful, I tell you. There wasn’t no living with him at such times. Trouble was, though Bobby did get better and better at his act, I didn’t dare ask nobody to come to my little hideaway to see him perform.” He took another blast from the bottle, but thank God didn’t offer me a second. “They’d think I was having the deetees!”

  “And they’d be right, you old wino,” I said in disgust. “Get me over here on a Sunday afternoon to tell a drunken lie about a dancing snake. I ought to work you over.” Part of this, anyway, was for the purpose of provoking him. Long experience with animals had prepared me to believe they are capable of anything, and I am personally convinced that a number of cold-case files could be closed if we found the animals involved.

  In answer, Wayne took a battered wallet from his hip pocket. He found a snapshot inside and handed it to me. The photo was blurred to start with and had acquired a yellowed patina, but its subject was discernible: a snake, standing on its tail. About halfway along its length was a blurry object that could have been a whirling bagel or doughnut.

  “All right,” I said, “but don’t think that’s conclusive proof. It could be faked. There’s a funny smell to this whole business, if you ask me. If this snake exists, where is he now? More importantly, what’s the crime?”

  Wayne resumed his narrative. “Unless he got his chance, I could see Bobby was going to drink himself to death. So I went to the producer of the show and told him about the little snake, crazy as it seemed, and lo and behold Mr. Armbruster not only listened to me but when I was done, he says, ‘Come on, let’s audition him!’ So before he changed his mind, I went to get Bobby.” He stopped, lifted the bottle, and drained it dry. Then, “That was yesterday afternoon.”

  “So?”

  “So Bobby was gone, along with a number of my valuables, which I kept tucked away back there in places only a snake could of got into: the diamond ring I stole back from a fiancée who dumped me f
orty years ago, a silver-handled ebony cane—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I growled, “and your billfold containing a couple grand in hundreds. Wayne, if you ever had a ring it went to the pawn-brokers right after you stole it from the girl—which frankly I don’t buy, having tried that once myself and got scratched real bad for my pains, but I tell you, it takes a mighty special lady to become a cop’s wife; Fogarty’s never been able to hold onto one, either—” I was running off at the mouth. I checked myself, and finished up, “Same thing happened with your so-called silver-headed cane. The truth is that the combination of the rotgut you swallow and your loneliness in this empty theater resulted in the snake-and-bull story you made me listen to.”

  He lowered his rheumy old eyes and with a sad nod seemed to admit what I was charging him with. “Gonna run me in, Sarge?”

  I glared at him for a long moment, then said, “No, Wayne, in view of your age, I’m letting you off with a warning. My game is animal crimes, not geriatrics.”

  But he was looking past me. I turned, and there was the little snake, on the floor not two yards away. His body was encircled by a diamond ring just behind his head, and in a loop of tail he clasped the ebony cane with the silver hand, drawing it along in his wake.

  “Bobby!” cried the old stage-door man.

  As if in answer, the reptile somehow raised the cane to the vertical and wound himself around it, balancing it erect on its tip!

  “By Godfrey, Wayne,” I admitted, “that’s quite a feat in my book. I’m impressed.”

  “So am I,” said he. “The little guy must of learned that one in secret. So that’s what he’s been doing for the past day. I feel lousy about calling you, Sergeant.”

  “Don’t be,” I said with enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Let’s give him the big hand he deserves.”

  So the two of us gave Bobby an ovation that would have done credit to a whole audience, and you can be sure he took more than one bow. Then Wayne produced a stale bagel and the snake performed his hula-hoop stunt.