The Black Llama Caper

by Robert Muccigrosso

  I didn't like that and I told him so. First of all, the little twerp had got my name wrong. And second, who's he kidding? What kind of dame that size can't take care of herself?

  “I'm sorry, Mr. DeWitt, but she can't fend for herself. You see, she's so tall that she gets dizzy every time she looks down, which is pretty much all the time.”

  “Well, she's sort of a horse of a different color then,” I said as I tried to soothe his ruffian feathers. “Any leads for me to go by? Any enemies? Maybe someone who'd like to cut her down to size? Do you think some basketball team wanted her? How about the Harlem Globetrotters? Did she have a tan? Or maybe the House of David. Did she have a beard?”

  The poor bastard just shook his head. “No, she's a fair-skinned blonde. She did used to have a beard, but it kept scratching my monocles when she stooped to kiss me and so she shaved it off about a month ago without my having to ask. Oh, she was special, my poor lost Mona.”

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture. What about work or places she liked to frequent?”

  “She used to work as a bouncer at Happy Hooligan's over on 10th and Boozer Boulevard but had to quit and lay low after some guy hit on her and she stuck a martini, glass and all, up his … well, you know.” His brows began to furrow and I could see that the monocle was causing some blood to flow. “She did go to the museum a lot, especially after she lost her job. I know that she adored the moderns. She said that seeing their paintings made her feel ten feet tall, although why she needed to feel taller than she is I don't know.”

  I looked up from the pad on which I had been furiously doodling as he spoke. “I'll check this out,” I promised. “Anything else you can think of?”

  He scratched his head vigorously, and I ducked as the dandruff flew my way. “Well, as of late she has been going to a certain Chinese restaurant, the Jaded Pavilion over on Shadow Lane. But whenever I asked if we could go there together, she'd give some excuse, like she'd been there just a few days ago or that she heard it was closed by order of the Board of Health.” He paused. “Does that sound a little suspicious to you, Mr. DeWitt?”

  “Not in the least,” I lied to reassure him. I hadn't had chink food in a cat's age, and that was as good a reason as any—better, in fact—to follow up on the lead. “Mr. Baker, I'm your man. Now as for my fees and expenses…”

  He cut me off faster than my ex-wife had when I tried to explain the traces of lipstick on my trousers. “Please, sir,” he began to sob, “I'm not a wealthy man, although I make a living, but—and I'll tell you this if you can keep a secret—I'm due to come into a lot of moolah as soon as they read the will that my dear departed Uncle Ebeneezer Baker left when he died a few days ago in Perth, Australia. He made his money in sheep rustling and swindling aborigines out of their seashells.” He paused. “And you can be sure, Mr. DeWitt, that you'll share in my good fortune once you find little Mona.”

  “I know that your word is as good as the next man's, Mr. Baker, and I'm sure you'll do the right thing.” We shook hands on our gentlemen's agreement and exchanged good-byes.

  Had I made a mistake, I wondered, by not demanding some money right then and there or at least getting him to sign a chit? Maybe. But beggars can't be choosy, and this worm had his bird in hand. Besides, I had quietly picked up the monocle that had fallen to the floor and was holding it as collateral.

  3

  The wind was picking up as I headed for the Jaded Pavilion to search for Mona and to grab some lunch, although not necessarily in that order. I turned my coat collar up and made the twenty-block trip from my office to the restaurant in good time.

  The chink eatery looked dilapidated from the outside and predictably proved a dump inside. The frayed, discolored leaves of an ancient potted palm slapped my face as I opened the door. I returned the favor, flooring and then kicking it repeatedly. My toes hurt, but I think the plant got the worst of it.

  I was hoping for some slit-skirted broad to slink up to me with a menu in hand and show me to a table. Any table. None of them were occupied. I waited, but no broad. After a quarter hour or so I concluded that actions speak louder than words, unless, of course, you're yelling yourself hoarse. I picked up a dish that held some stale chop suey breathing its last and hurled it out the nearest window.

  The doors of the kitchen swung open. “Hey, what you do that for?” an angry voice called. “That food for tonight's guests.” As he drew nearer, I could see that the voice belonged to an older man, say, eighty or so, who was brandishing a hatchet in one hand and a dead furry animal in the other. I reached for my .38 but realized that I had left it in the office. Damn! I had to think fast. My Boy Scout training hadn't taught me much else than how to tie knots and play strange games with my scoutmaster. And I hadn't used my fists since I pummeled my ex-brother-in-law for taking the last pork chop one night when he was cadging a meal off his sister and me. I figured it was time to play cut or run: Confucius with a cleaver would cut if I didn't run.

  “Easy, old man,” I cautioned. “I was just admiring the chop suey, especially with all those little things moving around in it, and the plate just slipped out of my hand.”

  “Okay, Mr. Lound Eyes, for minute I think you clazee but now understand. Likee sit down?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, nodded, and followed him to the farthest table, the one next to the sign that read: “No likee food? Tough.” Years of experience and instinct told me that this was not your everyday chink restaurant.

  “What you like?”

  “Lemme see,” I said. “I'll have some wonton soup.”

  “No have it.”

  “Then I'll settle for the egg drop.”

  “No have it.”

  By this time I almost regretted that I hadn't gone to Ma's for lunch. “Well, what kind of soup do you have?”

  Canton Charlie thought for a moment and played with his pigtail. He was totally bald on top but wore the pigtail wrapped around his neck. “We have Flench onion, Mulligatawny, and Campbell's tomato. Which one you like?”

  “Forget it,” I said. I'll just have Colonel Tso's chicken.”

  “Colonel Tso no wok here any more. He go home to Egypt. But we have Major Ho's hose meat. It velly good.”

  “Just bring me some fried rice and some tea,” I said.

  A half hour passed. No patrons entered the joint, but weird sounds were coming from the kitchen. I could have sworn that I heard someone dribbling a basketball and cursing in a high-pitched voice. I was suspicious but reminded myself that I had to concentrate on finding Mona.

  Charlie finally shuffled back with my order. I wished that he hadn't used his fingers to mix the tea with the rice, but by this time I could have eaten anything. And probably was about to do so. I scarfed down the meal. Charlie was sitting by himself in a corner, puffing on a cigarette that didn't smell like any ordinary tobacco, if you get my drift. And I sure got his, as it wafted across the empty room.

  “Hey, Charlie,” I called, “I'm finished with this poison. Bring the check.”

  Charlie stumbled back to the kitchen and after another seeming half hour or so stumbled back with the check and a fortune cookie. “Lead the fortune, lead the fortune,” he urged.

  The cookie was so stale that I had to use the blackjack I always carry in my hip pocket to crack it open. “You will soon meet a black llama. Beware.” Now I knew I was getting somewhere on the Mona case. I took out a fin and caressed it between my fingers to show Charlie what he could expect if he rolled dice with me. The fiver fell into what remained of the fried rice and tea. Charlie went for it, but I beat him over the hand with my blackjack before he could grab it.

  “Now listen, old man, before I play my rendition of 'Chinatown, My Chinatown,' on your ugly bald head and tattoo a picture of Anna May Wong on your hairless chest, I want some information,” I cooed, figuring to nice-talk him before getting tough.

  He was trembling. I realized I was standing on his foot. He looked around to make certain no one else was there. “Sure, s
ure, I give you inflammation.” He was sweating a lot. “Wha you wanna know, misser?”

  “Ever seen this dame?” I asked as I reached into my pocket for a snapshot of Mona. Then I realized that I had forgotten to get one from my client.

  “I never saw her,” Charlie whined. I could tell that he was eager to answer my question. Maybe too eager.

  “Did a real tall dame with a thing for basketball ever have the bad luck to eat in this greasy spoon?”

  He said the restaurant only used greasy chopsticks, not greasy spoons.

  “Don't get wise with me,” I snarled and raised my blackjack.

  “Only makee jokee,” he cried.

  “You better make nicee, Charlie, or else. Have you seen her or haven't you?”

  “Maybe…” The chink had been about to say something when he fell to the floor. Green slime was oozing from his mouth. It was probably something he ate, I concluded, sorry that my stomach was also trying to digest what passed for food here but not necessarily elsewhere. He gasped for breath and motioned for me to come near. I took off my jacket for fear that he would barf some green stuff onto it and moved my ear close to his mouth. I could smell his stinking breath, which also tickled my ear.

  “The woman … the woman, she…”

  I shook him violently and then kicked him in the ribs just in case he was playing possum. But he wasn't. Those few words he had mumbled were the last that anyone was ever going to hear from him. Someone had put out the chink's lights. I stood up, reached for one of the soiled napkins—they were all soiled—and draped it over the poor bastard's face. Then I pocketed the fiver, which I had intended to do in any case, gave the potted palm another good kick, and went out the door. The wind was still blowing hard, but I had miles to go before I slept. Mona, I'm going to find you, baby, or my name isn't Dick DeWitt.

  4

  The afternoon was hoarding a couple of hours, enough time to follow up on the client's second lead and visit the museum. It was located across town. With the wind stiffening by the minute, I decided to hail a bus, which I managed to catch after chasing it for at least a dozen blocks. I boarded it, greeted the driver with a few choice words that caused him to clench his teeth, and dropped a nickel into the slot. Both he and the slot deserved a slug.

  An elderly lady on the bus noticed that I was having trouble catching my breath and offered me her seat before I could ask for it. Grateful and always the gentleman, I was about to tip my fedora to her but noticed that I was hatless. Had I lost it chasing the bus or left it behind at the Jaded Pavilion? I continued to fret over the loss until I realized that I had missed my stop. The five-block walk back to the local temple of culture probably did me no harm. Or any good.

  It had been a couple of years since I had visited the museum. Art doesn't faze me for the most part, although I do like to draw those pictures where you have to connect the dots. My mom always insisted that I had artistic talent and should have gone to Paris to study at the Sorbet. My ex, on the other hand, said that I lacked any appreciation for art and that I was a Phila Steen. (I never could figure out who this Steen guy was and whether my wife had been shacking up with him.)

  This being Saturday, admission to the museum was free, a fact that had not been lost on me when I made my decision to go there rather than back to my apartment and snooze the day away. Mona fancied modern art, according to my client. So I started with the Egyptian gallery. How the hell was I to know that the joint was showing old Egyptian exhibits rather than new ones—and revolting ones at that. I've seen a few dead ones in my day, but imagine a place of culture throwing corpses wrapped in dirty black rags into boxes that looked like coffins and calling it “art.” Gimme a break!

  I was tempted to call it quits, go home, and make some serious zzz's but decided to keep on the key vive, as the Froggies said during the late war against the krauts. I stopped and questioned several people who seemed in a trance in front of various pictures. They were annoyed, maybe because I woke them or maybe they didn't like being poked in the ribs. One geezer asked me if I had no shame but backed off when I threatened to take his cane.

  Finally I came across a fat guy in a uniform who appeared to perform some function. Can't fool a dick, I always say. Fatso was a guard, it turned out. I went right to the point.

  “Seen any six-five blonde who might have been dribbling a basketball in front of a Picasso or Matisse,” I asked?

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  Bingo! “When? Is she still here?”

  “It's not a she, it's a he. And get your cottonpickin' hands off my lapels or I'll call for the police.”

  “I am the police, fatty, so watch your mouth and your step before I trim a few inches off your waistline with my fingernail clipper.”

  “Sorry, sir, but with all the violent crime that goes on in a museum you can't take chances. Why just the other day some lady tried to take two museum pamphlets instead of one. She would have gotten away with them if me and another guard hadn't tackled her and broke her hip. Geez, I don't know what makes people act the way they do these days.”

  “All right, all right,” I told him, “enough of the vicious crimes.”

  I reached into my pocket and he flinched. Stupid guy. I was only reaching for my business card, which I gave to him. “Here, George, take my card and give me a buzz if some big blonde dame comes in here with a basketball. There'll be something in it for you if you can square it with me.” Then I handed him my museum pamphlet.

  “Thanks a lot, mister. My name's not George but it is Georg. How did you know?”

  I winked at him. That's something else a good gumshoe knows how to do. I also made sure not to let him see the second pamphlet, which I had swiped and hidden in my underwear. With that I said good-bye to the museum. Mona, I'll have to catch you another day, I thought. Now my tired mind and body needed to catch some shut-eye. I walked outside. The wind was still blowing briskly, but the afternoon no longer was hoarding its hours.

  5

  This time I caught a bus as soon as I left the museum. Unfortunately, it was the wrong one and took me out of my way. By the time I got home and crept past the landlord's ground floor apartment and up to my third-floor one, I was exhausted. There was no Fido to greet me, lick my face, and bark, “Sit down, big fellow, and make yourself at home.” There was no Tabby to purr and rub against my tired legs. There were only the roaches and me. Two's company but a few hundred is more than a crowd. I had been thinking of getting a cat or a dog, or even a pet boa constrictor, but hadn't got around to it. Maybe I'd treat myself for Christmas.

  Saturday night, the loneliest night of the year, lay ahead. No Sassy Sally waiting out there with outstretched arms for her gumshoe to come sweep her off her feet. No Hot Hannah putting on the last of her make-up to go out on the town with her Number One Man. So let's make the most of it, I told myself, and stop wallowing in self-pity.

  I poured myself several fingers of sneaky pete, sank into my favorite easy chair–the one with the protruding springs–took off my high-top sneakers, and settled back. I put aside thoughts of Mona and turned to solving other serious puzzles, like figuring out why I played cat's cradle so poorly and why the milk that I had bought less than a month ago had gone bad. I was stumped. I took a couple of swigs of the sneaky pete. Then I took a couple more. I asked myself why I was feeling so…

  Next thing I knew the phone was ringing. Still groggy with sleep and booze, I staggered across the room and picked up the receiver.

  “Dick, is that you? Help me! Please help me!” a woman's voice begged.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “It's…” Then a click and the line went dead.

  I was at a loss to figure out who would be calling me, asking for my help, and then hanging up. It wasn't my mom, who began every call with “How are you, sonny boy? How are they hanging?” And it sure wasn't my former wife, whose almost once-a-month calls consisted of: “Where's the alimony check, you good-for-nothing bastard?” So who
was it? Could it have been Mona? That was a far-fetched thought, but I'd gone farther to fetch thoughts in other cases.

  The clock read 9:17 and I wasn't in the mood to argue. Hunger was ripping at my insides. So I went to the kitchen, opened a can of Spam, and poured a lot of catsup on it—the Spam, that is, not the can. I washed it down with coffee that had been sitting around doing nothing since the morning. Then I piled all the dirty stuff in the sink, so that it could get acquainted with the week's accumulation. The sink was getting pretty full. I made a mental note to wash its contents one of these days.

  Now I had a choice. I could either stay home, pour some more sneaky pete, and catch what was on the radio, or I could go to my neighborhood gin mill, have hooch poured for me, and catch hell from Gus the barman for having eaten three bowls of his free peanuts the last time I frequented the establishment. That was a no-brainer: I had no peanuts in the house. I put on my sneakers, coat, and fedora (I own several) and headed for the bar.

  What I liked most about The Slippery Elbow was its lack of pretense: It didn't try to appear clean. In fact, it was filthier than my place, which was saying a lot. An inspector from the Board of Health showed up periodically but only to collect some under-the-counter bribes and a couple of beers on the house.

  The clientele was great. My kind of people. Sure, a few of them were wanted for some infraction of the law or other, but nothing too serious. And what great stories they had to tell. Samuel “Southpaw Sammy” Stickit, for instance, always told how he pitched for Buffalo in the International League until a sore commissioner banned him from baseball for beaning an umpire who had objected to Sammy's slavering all over the ball. The ump probably wouldn't have beefed so much if Sammy hadn't also invited his infielders to contribute their saliva. And then there's Tony “Two-Fingers” Mangiamangia, the skinny guinea who lopped off a few of his digits while paying more attention to the meat on some broad than to the pork sausage he was preparing when he worked as a cook at Guido's Kosher Deli.