by Simon Brett
Pouring the drinks into the shallow cone-shaped glasses did not prove too much of a challenge. When Blotto turned back, he found Choxy had draped herself over a sofa in a manner that revealed an eye-boggling amount of white-stockinged thigh (and even a hint of suspender at the top). She patted the space at her side. ‘Join me.’
He did as instructed. (Having grown up with the Dowager Duchess in the house, he never argued with what a woman told him to do.) Close to, he felt enveloped in the heady aura of her musky perfume.
‘So, Blotto, here we are.’
‘Here we are indeed. Hoopee-doopee.’
There was a silence. Blotto began to wish he’d brought Twinks’s list of suitable things to say to Choxy Mulligan. Except, of course, she might have noticed if he started reading.
On the principle that you can never have too many ‘Hoopee-doopees’, he once again said, ‘Hoopee-doopee.’
‘You say you’re not a duke, Blotto . . .’
‘No.’
‘Then what are you?’
‘I’m the younger son of a duke.’
‘Oh. Is that bad?’
‘Well, it’s not as good as being a duke . . . that is if you like being a duke.’
‘And would you like being a duke?’
Blotto thought about his brother Loofah spending his entire life devoted to the cause of impregnating his wife Sloggo with something other than a girl, and said that he wouldn’t.
‘So what do you do?’ asked Choxy Mulligan.
Blotto was perplexed by the question but still replied, ‘People of my sort don’t do anything.’
He took a sip from his martini. Though without the immediate brain-shredding impact of a St Louis Steam-hammer, it was still very good.
‘One thing’s puzzled me since I’ve been here, Choxy,’ he said. ‘I keep hearing from boddos that the manufacture and sale of alcohol is forbidden, but people still seem to be able to get drinks. How does that work?’
‘It’s a matter of having the right friends.’
‘Is it, by Wilberforce?’
‘And I’ve got a very good friend.’ She chuckled throatily. ‘A rather rough kinda fairy godfather called Spagsy Chiaparelli.’
‘And he supplies you with the booze?’
‘He supplies Chicago with the booze.’
‘That’s very public-spirited of him. Bringing alcohol to the deprived. Rather like those St Flipmadoodle dogs who bring brandy to stranded travellers in the Alps.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Blotto, but I do love listening to your voice.’
‘Oh, good ticket. I must say I was very impressed last night by Mr Chiaparelli’s rather unusual approach to justice. He’s a very dedicated public servant, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, you can say that again.’ She turned the full beam of her smoky blue eyes on him. ‘You’re very brave, Blotto. I like that in a man.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. Anyway, why do you say I’m brave?’
‘You came to see me.’
‘It wasn’t too hard a rusk to chew. The doorman turned out to be a very helpful boddo.’
Choxy Mulligan’s white hands leapt up to cover her appalled face. ‘You let the doorman see you?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘That doorman is Boggy “Two Noses” Taormina.’ Admiration replaced horror in her face. ‘Wow, you’re quite a man, aren’t you, Blotto? Just stepping right out and challenging him like that.’
‘Challenging who? The doorman?’
‘Spagsy. Spagsy Chiaparelli.’
‘What’s he got to do with anything? I mean, apart from his good works in supplying booze and justice?’
‘Surely you realize, Blotto, that I’m Spagsy’s girl? I’m his very close friend. His moll. His goomar.’
‘Ah,’ he said, trying to work this out. Perhaps he should have pieced it together from the way she had draped herself over Chiaparelli the previous evening. ‘But if you’re already spoken for, why did you give me your telephone number?’
‘To see what kind of a man you are. And now I’ve seen. And I like what I see. Kiss me,’ she commanded.
Blotto ventured further into the heady miasma of her perfume and planted a kiss on her powdered cheek. The sensation was not unpleasant.
As he drew back, Choxy Mulligan snarled, ‘Call that a kiss?’
‘Well, that’s what it’s called in England,’ he replied.
‘But what about lips?’
‘I did actually use my lips,’ said Blotto, slightly put out that she hadn’t noticed.
‘What about my lips?’
‘Tickey-tockey.’ Blotto offered his cheek to be kissed.
‘Are you just playing dumb or are you the real McCoy?’
‘My name’s Blotto,’ he said. ‘I thought you knew that.’
‘Forget it.’ She snuggled up close, almost asphyxiating him with her musky perfume, and running her fingers up and down his thigh. ‘I like men who’re dangerous.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m dangerous. I’m rather a whale on the concept of honour, actually. You’ll be quite safe with me.’
‘Who wants to be safe?’ Choxy Mulligan purred, increasing the pressure of her thigh-stroking.
Blotto had heard the expression ‘getting hot under the collar’, but he wasn’t sure that he’d ever felt it. But he was feeling it now. He eased a finger round the inside of the relevant article of clothing and abruptly stood up, moving towards the window.
‘Hey, what’s up, dreamboat?’ asked Choxy.
Blotto improvised desperately. ‘Um, just wanted to check the old Lag’s all tickey-tockey.’
Through the beaded curtains he looked down to the street and saw that the Lagonda was far from tickey-tockey. Where he had parked it there was now just a space.
A moment behind this discovery came the realization that his precious cricket bat was in the car. Two of his most prized possessions had disappeared in one fell swoop.
In the heat of emotion he managed to blurt out, ‘My car’s gone!’
‘Wodja say?’ asked Choxy.
‘My car. My Lagonda. I parked it right opposite and it’s not there any more.’
‘Oh, that kinda thing happens a lot round here. The doorman will have taken it.’
‘What, to park it somewhere safe?’
Choxy Mulligan was about to say where the car would really be taken, but she didn’t want to provide any further distractions to Blotto, so she just let out a reassuring ‘Yeah.’ Then she once again patted the sofa beside her. ‘Come back here.’
Blotto moved across and perched rather gingerly on the edge of the upholstery.
‘Tell me, Blotto,’ Choxy asked huskily, ‘how do you come to be so brave?’
‘I don’t really know, but one of my beaks at Eton used to pongle on about “cowards dying many times before their deaths”, some quotation from . . . I don’t know, the Bible possibly . . . ? Anyway, the gist of what this beak said was that people only got afraid because they imagined murdey things happening. And since I had no imagination, I was never going to be afraid of anything.’
This was quite a long speech for Blotto, and also contained a greater depth of self-analysis than he usually allowed himself. He felt quite exhausted after it.
‘Well, bravery in a man really gets me excited,’ murmured Choxy, her hand back in thigh-stroking mode. ‘The way you’ve just come to see me, openly, without any security measures.’
‘What would I want with security measures?’
‘Look, pretty soon all of Chicago’s going to know you and me’ve got a thing going on.’
‘Hoopee-doopee! That’s the aim of the exercise.’
‘Howdja mean?’
‘I want all Chicago to know about us! I want it shouted from the rooftops regularly on the hour. “Blotto is having a thing with Choxy Mulligan!” The more people know about it, the better.’
‘Even Spagsy?’
‘Yes, of course Spagsy. Because Sp
agsy has an understanding with Luther P. Chapstick III, so the old meat-packing magnate will very quickly hear about what’s supposed to be going on.’
‘And why are you so cheerful about that happening?’
‘Well, old Chapstick’s not going to be so keen on his daughter twiddling the reef-knot with some boddo who’s consorting with a woman of dubious morals.’
‘Are you suggesting my morals are dubious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ She hugged herself with satisfaction. ‘That’s the way I’ve always wanted them to be.’ The arm that wasn’t engaged in stroking his thigh coiled itself around Blotto’s manly shoulders. ‘Anyway, I think we should get on with the “consorting”, don’t you?’
‘Oh, we don’t actually have to do anything.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not the kind of lump of toadspawn who’d take advantage of a lady.’
‘Even when that lady wanted you to take advantage of her?’
‘Erm . . . Um . . .’ He didn’t quite know how to answer that question. ‘Look, the thing is . . . I know in one way it’s not very honourable and all that, but if Mary Chapstick marries me she will be condemned to a life of suffering, because her love can never be reciprocated. And my sister and I were thinking of ways to get out of that particular gluepot, when I remembered the piece of paper you put in my pocket. Suddenly – there was the solution. I’m seen to be consorting with a woman of dubious morals – something on which, as you say, you pride yourself – old Chapstick hears about it – end of engagement! All tickeytockey wouldn’t you say?’
This speech had an effect on Choxy Mulligan that Blotto wouldn’t have predicted (but then he wasn’t much good at predicting anything where women were concerned). Abruptly she removed both hands from his body and when she spoke it was in a snarl rather than a purr.
‘You two-faced hornswoggler!’ she cried.
‘Sorry?’ said Blotto.
‘Are you telling me you don’t find me attractive?’
‘Toad-in-the-hole, no. I think you’re a real breathsapper with veg and all the trimmings.’
‘But you don’t want to “consort” with me?’
‘Not really, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘Hell, look, I gave you my number because you’re the kind of hunk of beefcake who gets my juices flowing. When you called and said you wanted to see me, I thought it was because the attraction was mutual. Now it turns out I’m just being used as a patsy in some game you’re playing to get out of your engagement.’
‘Well—’
‘Isn’t that true?’
‘Well, the way you put it makes it sound much worse than it is.’
‘Yeah? Listen, buddy, it couldn’t sound worse, because what you’ve just done is as worse as it gets. The only reason any dame wants a man to come on to her is because he’s got the hots for her. Doing it for any other reason is just plain insulting. Can you get that into your thick skull? And can you also get out of my apartment – pronto!’
Blotto’s slow brain added what he’d just done to the list, beginning with ‘standing them up’, of things women couldn’t forgive. Oh, broken biscuits, they were a gender he’d just never understand.
When he stepped outside the apartment block, Blotto noticed, parked directly outside, a Cadillac limousine with darkened windows. He could just see the outline of the driver. The back door was open and two heavy-set men wearing double-breasted suits and carrying violin cases were standing by it.
‘Hi,’ said the larger one. ‘We’ve come to take you for a ride.’
‘Oh, that’s frightfully decent of you,’ said Blotto. ‘There don’t seem to be any taxis here for love nor money.’
18
A White Knight on a Mean Street
Twinks had never really worried about her brother’s safety. Though his intellectual processes moved rather more slowly than her own, in the face of physical danger Blotto was infinitely resourceful. He thrived on the challenge of impossible odds. He loved defeating hordes of villains, preferably armed with nothing more than his faithful cricket bat.
But when he hadn’t got back to Chapstick Towers by midday after his assignation with Choxy Mulligan, Twinks did suffer a rare moment of doubt. Had it perhaps not been entirely wise for her to encourage her brother to cosy up to the moll of one of Chicago’s most notoriously jealous mobsters?
She was in her bedroom trying to come up with an answer to this dilemma when one of the Chapsticks’ obsequious servants tapped on the door. On a silver salver he carried the brown envelope of a cablegram. Thinking it might be from Blotto, Twinks snatched the message up and opened it the moment the deliverer was out of the room.
Though not from her brother, it was from an equally welcome source. Professor Erasmus Holofernes. From his academic fastness in St Raphael’s College, Oxford, the mighty brain had responded. And the length of his cabled message suggested that he was unworried by such worldly considerations as cost.
MY DEAR TWINKS, the message began, I APOLOGIZE FOR MY EXTREME TARDINESS IN RESPONDING TO YOUR MISSIVE. THIS WAS DUE TO MY GETTING ONE OF MY COLDS. AS YOU MAY BE AWARE, THOUGH OTHER PEOPLE DO GET COLDS, NONE OF THEM EVEN APPROACH THE SEVERITY OF THE ONES THAT AFFLICT ME. EVERY ORIFICE OF MY HEAD BECOMES EITHER STUFFED OR STREAMING AND I AM FORCED TO TAKE TO MY BED FOR SOMETIMES AS LONG AS A WEEK. WHEN I AM THUS AFFLICTED, I AM UNABLE TO UNDERTAKE EVEN THE SIMPLEST OF CHORES. AS A RESULT MY EXTENSIVE CORREPONDENCE FROM CONTACTS AROUND THE WORLD GOES UNANSWERED AND BUILDS UP AN ENORMOUS BACKLOG. AND I AM UNABLE TO RESPOND EVEN TO MY FAVOURITE, MOST EMPATHETIC OF BRAINS – YOURS, TWINKS.
I HAVE CONSIDERED THE DILEMMA YOU APPRISED ME OF, AND THINK THE ONLY SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEMS WILL BE FOR YOUR BROTHER TO ABANDON HIS NORMALLY HONOURABLE MODE OF BEHAVIOUR AND DO SOMETHING THAT WILL LEAVE HIS PROSPECTIVE FATHER-IN-LAW NO CHOICE BUT TO END THE ENGAGEMENT. THE PRECISE NATURE OF WHAT IS DONE I LEAVE UP TO YOU AND YOUR EVERFERTILE BRAIN, BUT IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES A FAVOURED METHOD IS FOR THE MALE PARTY TO FORM A PUBLIC LIAISON WITH A WOMAN OF TOTALLY UNSUITABLE SOCIAL STANDING AND MORALITY.
Splendissimo, thought Twinks, great minds think alike.
NOW MY COLD HAS RECEDED, I AM OBVIOUSLY CONTACTABLE BY CABLEGRAM, SHOULD YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN FURTHER DISCUSSION. IN THE EVENT THAT YOU NEED ON-THE-GROUND HELP, MY WIDE-REACHING STUDY OF CHICAGO HAS COME UP WITH THE NAME OF A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR OF APPARENTLY INCORRUPTIBLE MORAL INTEGRITY, TO WHOM YOU MIGHT DIRECT YOUR ENQUIRIES. HIS NAME IS PAUL SIDNEY, AND HE HAS AN OFFICE ABOVE A DRY GOODS STORE AT NO 1752 BAY STREET. KEEP ME INFORMED ABOUT YOUR PROGRESS.
AND LET US MEET SOON. YOUR PRESENCE ALWAYS DOES ME GOOD. IT IS SO RARELY THAT I ENCOUNTER AN INTELLECT THAT EVEN DISTANTLY ASPIRES TO MATCH MY OWN. (BUT DON’T YOU DARE COME AND SEE ME IF YOU’VE GOT EVEN A VESTIGE OF A COLD!)
WITH THE FONDEST OF GOOD WISHES,
RAZZY.
The timing of his cablegram couldn’t have been better. Twinks decided that, in the absence of Blotto, she might seek outside help. Using the lie that she wanted to investigate potential wedding outfits, she arranged for one of the Chapstick Towers chauffeurs to drive her into Chicago.
Once again she was unaware of the interest taken in her actions by the ever-observant Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini. Nor did she know that, when Luther P. Chapstick III returned home later that morning from his assignation with the Dowager Duchess of Framlington, the bodyguard reported to him the news of Twinks breaking into his study.
She didn’t hear the oaths sworn by her host as he was apprised of this news. Nor his vows to take revenge on the sister of his prospective son-in-law.
The November rain turned the sky the colour of dead auto tyres. Scraps of paper that might have blown about in the ferocious wind off Lake Michigan lay plastered to the sidewalk. The few people on the streets scuttled like crabs from the shelter of one awning to the next.
The Chapstick limousine stopped outside the dry goods store on Bay Street. The chauffeur was at first unwilling to le
ave Twinks alone in such a dubious neighbourhood, but a blast of the Dowager Duchess’s manner from her daughter soon had him agreeing to pick her up from the same spot in an hour’s time.
There were a few dull brass nameplates beside the door to the right of the dry goods store. They gave off an air of distant bankruptcy. Amongst them, secured by a rusted drawing pin, was a discoloured card printed with the words ‘PAUL SIDNEY, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR’, beneath which had been scrawled in smudged ink, ‘WALK ON UP’.
So Twinks walked on up.
The outer door of the office had a dusty glass panel printed in flaking gold with the name of some defunct law firm. The anteroom was cold like stepping into a morgue. The dusty door to the inner office was ajar. Twinks tapped on it and a voice rasped out, ‘Come in.’
Paul Sidney sat tipped back on a dusty swivel chair behind a dusty desk. All that stood on its surface was an ancient telephone, a half-empty bottle of scotch and a dusty toothglass in which two fingers of the hooch still remained. Blue-grey smoke spiralled lazily up from the cigarette hanging at the corner of his mouth. He was a trim man who looked after himself, but not quite enough. He wore a powder-blue shirt under a neat grey suit. His ice-blue eyes had seen a lot, not much of it pleasant.
‘Hi,’ he said without getting up from his chair. ‘You’re quite a dame. The kind the Pope might give up Lent for.’ He gestured to a depressed cracking leather armchair. ‘Sit. Tell me what gives.’
‘I’m worried,’ Twinks said as she sat, ‘that my brother may have been the victim of criminal activity.’
‘He’s here in Chicago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re right, lady. Everyone in Chicago is the victim of criminal activity. Even the ones who perpetrate the criminal activity. City’s a swamphole full of rats. And the biggest fattest rats are the ones supposed to be on the side of law and order. Tell me about your brother.’
Twinks gave him a brief résumé of Blotto’s last twenty-four hours.
‘Then he’s either stupid or mad,’ said Paul Sidney. ‘Sweet-talking Spagsy Chiaparelli’s broad is like smothering yourself in honey and then poking a burning stick into a beehive. Chiaparelli’s one jealous guy.’
