by Aidan Truhen
“Carla right now I am sending an email to the reception account with a number put that number into your browser window and you will find an account with your name on it with money in it. I will give you the access details the moment you tell me what I want to know.”
“I—”
“Carla are you aware of the existence of a rich old Dutch lady who smells like someone sexually molested a coffeepot with a violet cream?”
“O shit her yes sure she does not stay at the Zebedee but—”
“But she is so fucking rich every hotelier in Bogotá knows when she is in town.”
“Yes sir.”
“Million-dollar question Carla when was she last there?”
Carla tells me and of course it is the same time as Frankie Leclerc and his emeralds. That would not hold in a court of law but I am not one and I already know. If you join the dots in the money you find the same thing that is in the picture: the guy in the nice suit standing a little way off and behind Mrs. Van der Zee and totally not her date or her friend he just happens to be in proximity…why that is François Leclerc.
This is not about me at all.
(I know weird right?)
It is not about me at all.
And most specifically this whole thing—this whole thing is not about money or even politics. Volodya is dead and Reinhard and Sharkey and Agent Hannah’s left-hand guy and her right-hand guy and some of the G-Wagen guys and a lot—really a lot—of other people are about to die because of one thing and that thing—
Tycho the saluki’s questionable libido.
Tycho does not fuck Mrs. Van der Zee’s dog and Mrs. Van der Zee takes offense and so obviously—OBVIOUSLY this is just what you do in that situation OF COURSE—she buys a shit ton of conflict emeralds and puts them in Eiger’s bank and uses them to hire Frankie Leclerc to do horrible things to Doc’s friends. She lets him see the stones and she lets him hold them but unless he wants to try and kill her right here in Bogotá against whatever precautions she has taken—I am guessing big sturdy Dutch security assholes—he cannot have them unless he does what she wants and even then she is going to keep him on retainer. A billion is a lot of money when you are trying to make your way in the world so Frankie swallows the hook and on her instruction he nudges up to Eiger to hire us and kill us off because that will solve his money problems. It’s like stupidly complex but she is Mrs. Van der Zee and no one ever tells her no.
Mrs. Van der Zee set us up—she made all this happen—because Tycho did not bone her dog.
She did all this to hurt Doc. Just to be mean.
And if this is all about Doc…
…then they will be looking for the subtle move behind the loud stupid Banjo thing…
…and Doc’s plan to rob Die Festung is probably about to get the same treatment as Mrs. Van der Zee’s Semper Augustus. Which means we need a new plan and Doc cannot be a part of it. She cannot even know until after.
I do not know what she will think about that.
* * *
—
Apart from Mr. Friday and a guy in Japan who says he will have me killed if I go there most of my friends are dead. I do not have lots of people I can ask for advice and if I did I could not tell them about this.
I go out and see the little guy in the cigar store and once again we do not talk but this time he hangs a note on the door and we go and not talk in a café and it is a really great coffee place you can tell these guys are serious but impossibly the coffee is bad.
I see in the little guy’s face that he is embarrassed but does not wish to say so to the team here. This is a legit thing they are his people but also it is a legit thing for a great coffee place to fuck up no one needs to be ashamed. I go and nudge the guy behind the laminated wood bar top and I say that the beans have gone over and he says that cannot possibly be true and I put my hand in the jar of the grinder and lift out one bean and rest it on the tip of my finger. Guy smells the bean and looks at me and just nods and a little while later we get amazing coffee and we sit. I kind of figured we would play chess or something but the little guy evidently does not like chess so we play backgammon. We play for wafers and for about twenty minutes I owe him something like 140 wafers and then the game shifts a bit and by the end we agree without speaking that we can eat the difference and we do.
TEN
RING RING “HI HELLO IS THAT THE COMMODORE HOTEL? I need to speak to the concierge please—yes hi yes—yes it is Banjo Telemark—very well I am fine I am totally alive and I have not been assassinated in your establishment at all no sir all forgotten of course—yes I need some things put on my bill—yes—no no I would be delighted for the manager to send wine but for the rest well you will see. Yes. Yes thank you yes. Yes you have a pen? Okay. I will need a chair like a throne plus a rug plus also some balik and fine white wine I will tell you where. Also ten gallons of aniseed oil and a bunch of schoolkids for a—what is it that you say a Geh-mineshaft-pro-yuckt?—for one of those—o you have children in the local—that is ideal how—a boy and a girl that is a full set I suppose—yes yes indeed I am sure they are lovely. Please yes I have a credit card here—”
RING RING—“O hello is that the Grand Kircheisen Palast? Yes this is Søren Welk yes Welk—W E L K—yes. Yes I understand you have an excellent view of the—yes of the valley and the mountain and the cable car station O it is that close? That is wonderful you could walk that how lovely—well I am organizing the—ah yes quite so you have already heard from the school very good Mr. Telemark is quite emphatic—yes of course we will keep the children away from the pool quite so but—no I cannot tell you but I assure it is just aniseed oil it will—it will—oh very well since you insist it will form an olfactory imprint of a text Banjo has written it will be almost impossible to distinguish although theoretically a person might follow all the trails and map it to read the text although as a practical matter no human really has a sufficiently astute sense of smell so it both exists and does not—yet of course you see quite so yes—no I appreciate that you run a very dignified hotel and that your present register includes a lady of some age who has taken the whole top floor yes quite so we will not trouble her—no no it is quite harmless to animals I assure you in fact I believe some even quite like the—yes quite so do not worry for one instant I am entirely cognizant there will be no harm to the dog I can assure you. No indeed I understand entirely leave it with me I will instruct the children to utmost respect—”
Loud Banjo Telemark playing the fool.
Quiet Doc in the background moving her chess pieces.
And Mrs. Van der Zee laughing at us both and thinking I do not see her.
And that is fine.
* * *
—
Big boots like a cavalry officer and jeans by Yamamoto and a midnight sou’wester coat borrowed from Bruno in the Black House, which still has Z-Vat and what I suspect is Charlie’s lip gloss on the zip fastening. The coat is so much bigger than I am that it comes off my shoulders and I am basically wearing it like a cloak like a medieval tabard and I am on my way to steal the ducal hat of Burgundy—I love this country I honestly do ANYWAY anyway I am working now I am focused like a razor on the neck I am in the zone—I am in Bruno’s coat and an aqua shirt that is mostly undone and I have a cane with a rat skull on the top which I am motherfucking TWIRLING yes twirling like music hall like Fred motherfucking Astaire.
The Banjo is IN.
Walk up glass stairs with everyone looking at me and don’t know just throw that fucking door wide open on its expensive cantilevered modern art hinge and hear something pop in the mechanism so it hangs there—
“Hi Director Desirée baby it is BAAAAANJOOOOOO! Are you pleased to see me don’t answer that I can already tell that you are.”
“Oh goodness! Mr. TELEMARK what are you doing here?”
“O I am sorry you must be super b
usy I really came to say hi and let you know everything is shaping up supercoolio for the EVENT I am putting on at Kircheisen and I am of course not under arrest.”
“I was sure that you were—”
“That is my art Madame Director and I am not the first and greatest of exponent of Ambiguitionism for no reason. In doubt and dismay and the sense of a world gone mad—that sense which touches the edges of our minds at all times in this runaway century—that is where I live. I am Banjo Telemark and that is my truth now show me yours.”
“I—I am not sure I have one ready.”
“Perfect! Please tell Hans the bulldozers will arrive tomorrow by helicopter he should be ready. And some other stuff. O do you know who I talk to at the Swiss Air Defense Force to let them know there will be fireworks?”
“Well yes but the Air Force they do not fly during the nighttime it is against noise regulations.”
“…I love this country Madame Director. I truly do. Ciao! Baci!”
“…Yaawuhhh. Baci. Yaaawh. Absolutely. Quite.”
* * *
—
Since I am out anyway this will be an opportunity to return Bruno’s coat. It is not nice to keep things people have loaned you and if it rains he will need his enormous coat and Charlie would be cross with me. Plus I like Bruno I do not want him to be wet. I am an international villain bajillionaire murder kingpin bank robber that does not mean I have to be a prick.
Plus there is just something I would like to ask no big deal but I would quite like a few bags of Z-Vat and some user instructions maybe a little help practical assistance in exchange for an intro to Mr. Friday and a serious motherfucking upgrade to their revolution if they’re serious about it.
So I go to the Black House to return the coat.
* * *
—
I open the door on a scene from a horror movie and not one of those nice black-and-white or early color ones where the horror is basically a woman in a nightdress shouting fuck but one of the modern ones which are a lesson in trauma anatomy and the audience is mostly medical students and snuff perverts.
Leclerc has been here.
Charlie will be—I don’t know what this will do to her I honestly do not. It’s on another order of things.
I don’t know what it’s doing to me.
There is Loob and he’s just dead like mercifully if that makes any sense, which it does not. There is a hole in the middle of his face but no one tortured him. Rosa has been shot a bunch of times because obviously a woman who makes cakes really needs taking down hard. Thing and Thong are face-first on the sofa and someone walked a pistol up their spines from pretty close range so I’m guessing they surrendered and Leclerc’s people thought that was hilarious. I’m not going to go on because you can make it up you won’t get it wrong. The blood is like oil on water in the dark.
For a yawning moment I wonder if the farm house looks like this too and I will go there and find Doc dead and Charlie and Rex and even Saul and Lucille but no. You cannot just walk up on my Demons. They frighten me. They are strange and even quirky and bad things would happen in unpredictable ways: you would explode and pigs and doors would devour you. Strange diseases would melt you and then a walking knife collection would open your veins and a scary commando would blow you away and you would cease to exist across a whole range of media and your body would never be found. This—this is just—this is just to be unkind. François Leclerc is writing his name on the world. On Charlie.
Hell is other people they say and in this one instance it is exactly true.
* * *
—
I stare at hell for a while. I make myself look. Look Jack look. The world has this in it do you understand? The world has this man who did this. People pretend that it does not and they live and have children and if they are lucky they get old and die with their pretense intact but this is the truth right here. These are the rules. Anything you get that is not this was fought and won. A price was paid.
Someone puts a coffee cup against the back of my head and it goes phudd.
Phudd is the sound of the universe not coming to an end but for a moment there I really think I’m about to die and I just haven’t felt it yet and the only reason I do not lose control of my bladder is that I don’t have time before I realize it has not happened.
Phudd is the noise a shotgun-type weapon such as a Donnerbüchse makes when you pull the trigger and it does not fire. The hammer comes down on an empty cartridge and it goes:
Phudd.
Again. And again and—
She keeps pulling the trigger and recocking it phudd clickclack phudd clickclack phudd and I really should stop her because if it’s misfiring, sooner or later it’ll go off but I already know that isn’t going to happen and so does she. When I turn around there’s nothing in the barrel except a grief that will never go away.
Flavia throws the Donnerbüchse on the ground and jumps on my back and starts to claw at me but honestly her heart isn’t in it. She hates me about as much as she hates everyone else in the world but what she really wants right now is to book a flight yesterday to far away from here and to wake up and find this was a nightmare and she’s in Hawaii in a stinking capitalist resort with waterslides and all her friends and she knows with a stark misery that that did not happen and here we are this is the world. The best she can hope for is just a hug and I so I hug her and she screams and screams and water stuff comes out of her face that is not tears and not snot and not vomit it’s just horror.
This is the shape of the world and how it is and you believe it is not and that is nice for you.
I know better and now so does Flavia.
She gets in a few good ones and my ribs will feel those later but who the fuck cares about my ribs when Bruno’s ribs are over there on that table about two meters from his head and yeah Flavia you beat the shit out of me you are totally right that this is my fault.
But honestly it’s not me you want to kill and we’ll come to that sweetheart I swear we will.
She pukes on my shoes and then she apologizes and I just hug her some more. I am a monster and I live in a world of bad things but that does not make me a monster and if you find that confusing, then I don’t know what to tell you to make it make sense, but I wouldn’t leave you to look after my kids. No obviously I do not have kids.
Flavia pukes some more and this time she gets the back of my legs:
“Sorry sorry I’m sorry—”
“There there honey. Jack’s here now. There there.”
“Did Charlie send you Jack?”
“Naw Flavia she doesn’t know it’s gonna wreck her. Like it’ll break her apart I don’t know what she’ll do. I just came to give Bruno back his coat.”
She looks. “I gave him that coat.”
I put Flavia down for a minute and explain there is something I need to do and then I throw up into a vase. I don’t clear up. Don’t judge me it’s not like the place doesn’t smell awful already. Then I wrap her in Bruno’s coat and I hide her somewhere safe.
But not so far away I can’t use her when I need her.
* * *
—
I sit in a classic recliner chair in Agent Hannah’s apartment and I wait for her to come home. Every so often I practice raising my hands so that she does not shoot me before I get the chance to say hi, and I wonder whether maybe just waiting in the hall would be better but it would not. People get shot outside their apartments just as often as they get shot inside and I have brought schnapps and pickles and salami and this weird little rye bread thing that smells of ginger, and these are all on the table, which I hope will also make the point that I did not come to be unpleasant.
I’m not shivering anymore.
I don’t taste puke or blood when I swallow anymore.
But I can smell it when I breathe through my
nose not all the time but sometimes.
Charlie I’m so sorry.
I put my hands in the air again: I surrender.
Keeping your hands in the air for even a little while is hard you have done it in gym class so you know.
Practice: up.
Feel the burn.
Down.
Sit around getting bored and wondering whether she’s out with friends and this is a huge waste of time but I know that she is not because Agent Hannah has no friends not while this is happening in her city not now.
Up.
Keep ’em up.
Ow ow ow down.
Up.
Ow ow ow down.
Up…
Agent Hannah says:
“What the actual fuck are you doing?”
She is pointing a gun but everyone does that to me these days and her finger is quite a long way from the trigger.
“I am practicing putting my hands in the air so that you will not shoot me.”
“You are terrible at it.”
“Well I have been practicing a lot and my arms are tired.”
“You’re under arrest.”
“I’ll tell Jacinta she will love that.”
“You broke into my…Shit just pour the schnapps you look ridiculous.”
“Well that is a bit mean I am just trying to make you feel okay about me being here.”
“You want me to feel okay about an international terrorist breaking into my apartment? Pour the schnapps and fuck off out of my country that will work fine.”
I pour the schnapps and I say that I am not a terrorist and she snorts, which is rude.
“I am seriously not a terrorist.”
“Please don’t tell me you make art. Zum Wohl.”
“Kampai.”
Agent Hannah puts the whole shot down not fast but slowly and then she cuts some bread and pours another.
“What do you want?”
