That Old Gang Of Mine

by Leslie Thomas

  The Miami office of Smileytime Tours was decorated with murals of large, good-time grins. Overpowering open lips and happy teeth looked down from the walls of the lobby as Zaharran waited. He selected each monstrous painting in turn and returned the grin with a grimace.

  'Mr Burlestone, our tour director, will see you now, Mr Zaharran.' The voice interrupted a particularly rude face he was projecting towards the back of the lobby. The expression was still nailed to his face when he turned at the girl's voice. He removed it hurriedly.

  'Oh, sure, good,' he said. The girl was sharp in a peppermint uniform, green and white stripes curved over her curves.

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  Zaharran sighed inwardly and tried to pat his hair flat. She turned her provocative backside on him and swayed off ahead of his haunted eyes.

  'So he's tour director now, your Mr Burlestone?' he called after the girl. His shambling amble had already left him yards behind her incisive steps. Her legs were opening and closing like scissors.

  'Sure he is,' she sang over her shoulder with the briefest turn of her head. 'Best one we ever had.'

  Zaharran's luxuriant but ragged eyebrows often reacted to the strange ways of the world. They did so now, rising ponderously like twin hedgehogs at the thought of Larry K. Burlestone, the beleaguered guide on the Everglades bus first robbed by the masked gang, now being an executive of Smiley-time Tours. The peppermint girl stopped almost reverently outside the panelled door marked with Mr Burlestone's name. Zaharran thought her fingers actually touched, caressed the gold lettering before closing into the delicate fist that knocked upon the panel.

  'Larry K. Burlestone says come in,' came a jovial shout from within.

  'What a guy,' breathed the girl.

  'Sure, what a guy,' agreed Zaharran in a puzzled tone.

  They went in. The girl's face sweetened into a beatific smile as she saw the fat young man behind the desk. It was a big desk; to Zaharran it looked as if he were driving it. He was wearing a shirt of the same design and material as her dress except that the stripes were crimson. He rolled his young, well-fed eyes at her and Zaharran, three feet away, felt her quiver. 'Mr Burlestone,' said the girl. 'This' - she abruptly shut off her smile and looked at Zaharran as she might have looked at a mangy camel - 'this is Mr Zaharran.'

  'Thank you, thank you, Selina,' said Mr Burlestone, rising heavily from the desk. It was like a striped sun coming up. The girl made a little bob with her bottom and, after another disparaging look at Zaharran, left the room.

  'Are there any tours I can go on with her?' asked Zaharran. 'Like on a bicycle?'

  'Ha!' The laugh was sweaty. So was the hand that shook

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  Zaharran's. 'We aim to please at Smileytime.' Burlestone looked at the card which the visitor had sent ahead. 'And what service can we do for George Zaharran, Criminalistic Inquirer and Investigator?' he read. 'I guess it's about the bus hold-up, is it?'

  'Sure,' nodded Zaharran. 'Unless there's some different crime you'd like to talk about. Something maybe I could solve for you. Something simple?'

  Mr Burlestone indicated first one chair, then checking Zaharran's bulk, went through a half circle and offered another more suited to the load it would have to bear. Zaharran sat down gratefully. His back was beginning to ache. He had suffered with his back lately. Maybe he would have to lie down before too long. There was a pause, but Mr Burlestone was not going to speak first.

  'I expected you to be in the basement, servicing the oil in the buses,' began Zaharran. 'Or showing the tourists how to walk through a snake pit. But instead you're Larry K. Burlestone, tour director no less. How come, Larry?'

  'Just great business,' beamed Larry Burlestone with jovial frankness. 'Just great. Have to turn folks away all the time. Since the hold-up just everybody in the United States wants to travel on the same bus on the same route. They're just dying to be robbed, Mr Zaharran. That's how folks are.'

  'I can understand that,' nodded Zaharran heavily.

  'My God, I thought I'd be right out on my ass when the robbery happened. Goodbye Smileytime Tours. So did the bosses, including the bum who was sitting behind this desk. But when the news got around and the business rolled up, it just hit them that we'd struck gold. Extra buses, extra novelties. We call it the Hold-Up Trail now and we even have a staged robbery take place in the exact spot where the real crime was committed. We have the masked gang and the guns and every goddamn thing. Folks love it. It's put that fucking Indian and his weary fucking alligator right out of business, I can tell you. Who the hell wants to see a guy fighting an old 'gator when there's a fun robbery?'

  The old, heavy detective shook his head solemnly. 'Maybe you could coordinate the Indian and the alligator in the rob-

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  bery,' he suggested. 'Have him take it on to the bus and threaten to bite anybody who didn't hand over the loot.'

  For a moment a spark lit Larry's face. Then it died. 'Shit no,' he said. 'Every goddamn fag in the Protection of Wildlife and the Preservation of the American Indian would go crazy. It's too much trouble. I guess we do pretty well right now. How are the police getting along with the investigation? Not too good, I guess or you wouldn't be here.'

  'Not good at all,' Zaharran agreed. 'The same gang tried a burglary at a big house in Palm Beach, you probably read. They screwed that up too, but they sure caused a disturbance.'

  'Right,' agreed Larry, looking suddenly sad. 'We tried to arrange with the people there, Van der Vatt or some fucking name, to have a Smileytime Tour around the damaged house. But they were pretty shitty about the idea. It was a pity.'

  'They would be,' agreed Zaharran sagely. 'The Van der Vatts ain't bus tour sort of folk.'

  Larry looked down at the card again. 'So the police have brought in outside help,' he said. 'George Zaharran, Criminalistic Inquirer and Investigator.' Zaharran did not disillusion him. Instead he handed him his other business cards.

  'I also do mail order astrology, real estate and novelties,' mentioned Zaharran. 'Maybe we could do business some time. For example I could provide you with five thousand inch-high plastic dolls, each one dressed like a robber, you know, little masks, everything. You could give them to the customers as a kind of souvenir.'

  'I like that,' said Larry seriously. 'You know, I really like that. Let me think about it. You cost it out. Give me some figures, huh?'

  'Okay. But right now I'm a criminalistic investigator and inquirer right? What I came for was to just get you to go over the things that took place on that day, the day of the robbery.'

  'Christ, I've been over it so many times I dream it,' protested Larry. 'What else can I tell you?'

  'You ain't told me nothing,' pointed out Zaharran. 'Others, yes. But me, no. Maybe I find something different. Working with mailed astrology and novelties, not to mention real estate, sure keeps you fresh for criminalistic work if you

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  understand me. Just go through it again for George Zaharran, will you?'

  Larry Burlestone sighed but made no more protests. He leaned back heavily in the important chair, put his large hands across his young outsized stomach and closed his eyes as if he were about to tell a bedside story to himself.

  Zaharran himself closed his eyes and the two large men sat like some dozing mystics exchanging the secrets of centuries. Burlestone described the events of the previous 27 January in a suppressed tourist guide voice, whilst the detective listened, only moving to manoeuvre his back into a less painful position.

  Eventually Larry came to the end of his story and his trance and wiped his brow with a peppermint-striped handkerchief. 'And that, Mr Zaharran, was all there was to it. Like I said, it seemed like disaster at the time.'

  Zaharran searched for something to wipe his brow. He did not have a handkerchief. Larry Burlestone saw his problem and obligingly handed his over. The detective gratefully accepted the gesture, wiping his face and his neck and then pocketing the handkerchief.

  'It gets steamy in her
e,' agreed Larry. 'It's because the air conditioning's not functioning too well. We sacked the guy who looks after it and it looks like he took a few parts of the machinery as well. You can't trust any bastard, can you?'

  'It's getting more difficult,' agreed Zaharran. 'Now I would be grateful if you could just think if anything else happened that day. Anything unusual at all. Apart from the stick-up.'

  Larry thought. 'Nothing. It was just another boring Everglades tour.'

  'Just go through what you remember, Larry. When you were at the Indian wrestling with the alligator. Anything different there?'

  'Nothing. I'm sure of that. It all went to schedule. Those things are so in the groove, with the same dumb people, and the same dumb questions - you know: "Is it a rubber alligator?" and crap like that - that I'd have noticed if anything different had gone on. No, nothing.'

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  'I take it the bus was on time.'

  'All but a couple of minutes. We were minimally late leaving the reservation because some little old lady was in the wigwam.'

  'What's the wigwam? The John?'

  'Yes. There's a comfort station shaped like a wigwam. We have to remember to call it a wigwam not a teepee! But there's another wigwam that has the public telephone. She was making a call and we had to keep the bus waiting for her.'

  Zaharran sat up quickly but heavily. 'Making a call? Why would you want to make a call from the Everglades for God-sake?'

  Larry shrugged. 'I don't know. But people do. That's why the phone is there. Maybe she was calling the ASPCA about the Indian being lousy to the alligator. People do you know, regularly.'

  'Or she might just have been giving the starting signal to the gang,' said Zaharran.

  'Oh come on, Zaharran,' said Burlestone with a look of boyish petulance. 'She was just a little old lady. I can see her now running for the bus. She looked like she could drop dead before she got there.'

  'You don't remember her name by any chance?'

  'Well no, but I could think of it. There's a group photograph of all the people on that tour, taken at the Monkey Jungle on the outgoing trip. I could pick her out on that. The police should have her address and other details. But Zaharran, you're not starting on the right foot. Believe me, brother.*

  Zaharran shrugged with emphasized heaviness. 'There ain't any other foot I can start on,' he said. 'They used up all the feet. Anything else?*

  He could see immediately there was. He always knew by instinct. 'What else?' he repeated. He leaned forward and felt his back stab him. 'What else have you got, Larry? Not anything you've been hiding is there? Come on, tell Uncle Zaharran - or I'll get you for withholding evidence.'

  'Well,' hesitated Burlestone quietly. 'There was something and it's kinda been on my conscience, but nobody had any proof that it was anything to do with the armed robbery.

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  But anyway, maybe I ought to show you and get the record straight.'

  'Sure, maybe you'd better.'

  His big doleful eyes watched carefully as the fat young man went to a cupboard in the corner of the office. He returned with a white woollen glove and handed it to Zaharran. 'A glove,' he said as if Zaharran would not know what it was. 'It's just a glove.'

  'Where did you get it?'

  'It was found on the bus after the hold-up. It may have been one of the customers dropped it, but it's certainly unusual for people to wear woollen gloves in Florida.'

  'You ought to have been a cop,' sniffed Zaharran. 'But apart from being a glove, Burlestone, it's withheld evidence.'

  The young man glanced up, quick apprehension in his tubby eyes. 'Yes, sure, but we didn't know. I mean / didn't. It was just there. It could have been anything.'

  'The gang were wearing gloves,' remembered Zaharran. 'And it wasn't to keep them warm either.'

  'Fingerprints?' suggested Burlestone, hurrying to get on the right side again. 'They didn't want to leave fingerprints, huh?'

  'You get cuter. Maybe also to hide their hands.'

  'Why would they want to do that? Hide their hands?'

  Zaharran did not answer. 'Withheld evidence,' he intoned, holding up the glove. 'Why did you keep it?' He could see he had scared Larry K. Burlestone. The young man ran his fingers over his lips.

  'It didn't come to light right away after the robbery,' he pleaded. 'One of our couriers found it when he went out to the bus and he put it in his pocket thinking it belonged to one of the passengers. He's a blockhead.'

  'But then you thought you'd keep it. Show it to the tourists. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real glove worn by one of the robbers." That kind of thing. Good business.'

  Burlestone shrugged. 'We haven't done it yet. But we were thinking along those lines.' He looked miserably at the glove. I guess we should have turned it in to the police,' he mumbled.

  But Zaharran seemed to have lost interest in his guilt. He

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  held the white glove delicately between a large dirty finger and a bulging thumb. 'That's a real neat glove,' he said, seemingly to himself. 'Real neat. This is not just machine-knitting or crap like that, you know. This is expert work. This is what they call crochet work. It's difficult to learn, you under- stand. And there's not too many people can do that sort of work today. There's no patience around, you know Burlestone, no interest in finer things.'

  Burlestone was puzzled. 'Yes indeed,' he agreed doubtfully. 'I'm always saying that to myself. I tell the people around here all the time.'

  'This is the sort of glove that a little old lady could make, but not too many other people. The lady who made the call from the wigwam. Now could it have belonged to her?'

  Burlestone tried to show his eagerness to help. He was still worried about withholding evidence. 'I don't think so, Mr Zaharran. I mean I can't be exactly sure, but I don't think she was wearing gloves. I helped her on to the bus when we were leaving the Indian and alligator show and I'm sure I would have remembered if she'd had gloves. They're quite rare in these parts as I said before. People don't wear them.'

  Zaharran sniffed. 'Yeah, sure,' he mumbled, 'I remember you saying that.'

  Burlestone looked pleased he had remembered. He looked even more pleased when Zaharran rose painfully to leave. 'There won't be any trouble will there?' he asked. 'About the glove? I mean I did show it to you voluntarily. I could have held it back. All I want to do is help.'

  'I'll tell lies for you,' promised Zaharran without enthusiasm. 'There's nothing else, is there? Not one thing? Nothing more you can suddenly remember, like one of the gang was your uncle?'

  The fat face blanched and trembled before an uncertain smile secured it. 'Oh, you're funny too,' gushed Burlestone. 'Yes sir, you're funny.' His face dropped to seriousness. 'No, there's nothing else. On my honour.'

  'I believe you, said Zaharran flatly. 'Now I'll need to see the group photograph you mentioned and maybe you could pick out the old lady who used the wigwam.'

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  Burlestone pressed a button on his desk. 'That's easy,' he said, obviously relieved that something was. 'We can do that right now.' They waited after he had called for the photograph, then feeling he ought to say something, Burlestone said with his professional smile almost restored: 'If you'd ever like to take one of our tours, please tell me, Mr Zaharran. It will be with our compliments. Maybe you'd like to take a trip through the Everglades.'

  Zaharran smiled his ghastly, creased smile. 'No thanks, son,' he said. 'I spend my life in the jungle.'

  Detective Salvatore saw Zaharran stumble out of a bus on Biscayne Boulevard and make towards the main door of police headquarters. He howled to himself and hurried from his office to waylay him before he reached the elevator. In that building the elevators took their time and Salvatore was. sure he could stop Zaharran before he entered the doors. However, when he reached the ground floor Zaharran was not waiting there. Salvatore ran up the stairs and arrived out of breath in his office to find the criminalistic inquirer and investigator sitting like a large untid
y mole behind his desk.

  'For Chrissake,' puffed Salvatore, 'get out from there! Beat it! Jesus Charles Christ, I don't want anybody to see you in this office. I want you away from here. Now get going.* He made to pull at the big man's arm.

  Zaharran yawned and ponderously removed himself from the chair, coughed, and complained about his aching back. 'I just can't hide. There's no way 1 can hide in a whole city, let alone in a crummy office like this. You want me to get under the desk?'

  'Get out,' said Salvatore uncompromisingly.

  'I've got something,' said Zaharran rolling up his bushy eyebrows. 'A lead. Evidence.'

  Salvatore stalled. 'No, I don't believe you,' he said.

  Zaharran grinned. Salvatore said: 'Okay, let's get some coffee.'

  The detective knew the policeman would not throw him out now. 'This gets too much,' he said, pleased. 'Can I have some French fries as well? I didn't get any breakfast.'

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  'You'd better not be fooling,' said Salvatore. 'Come on before the whole goddamn police department knows you're here.' He tugged at the large man's arm. It was like a mouse trying to pull a boulder. But Zaharran turned his large frame to the door and ambled towards it under his own motivation. Salvatore followed him agitatingly, giving him tentative pushes towards the landing and the elevator.

  They went to a coffee shop three blocks away, which Salvatore hoped was far enough for him not to be observed. Zaharran was sweating when they reached there but he still said he wanted French fries. Salvatore sighed and ordered them with coffee. 'Okay, what have you got?' he demanded, as if the food and drink had to be repaid with information or at least reassurance.

  'I've got a glove,' said Zaharran quietly. From a baggy pocket he produced the crochet-worked glove and dangled it like a ghostly hand before Salvatore. The policeman reached out to touch it but Zaharran eased it away. 'My evidence,' he pointed out. 'You forget, buddy, that if I don't crack this case, I don't get paid. Once I'm on a retainer, I'll start sharing the goodies.'