Laura nodded. ‘I watched the direction monitor on your pilot’s console. We drove round in circles for an hour and now we’re back in the Butcher Building. About the thirty-sixth floor, I think.’
‘Clever girl. The thirty-seventh actually. Would you like to experience something truly wonderful?’
‘It will cost you the sofa then.’ Laura rose to undress.
‘No, no, no. That’s not it. Not yet, anyway. Come with me and I’ll show you something you’ll never forget.’
Rex and I exchanged expositions. He told me his and I told him mine. And when we’d both done I freshened our cups.
“Thanks,’ said he. ‘I’m gobsmacked. Fancy you working with Barry. Does he know where Elvis is?’
‘He never even told me he knew Elvis. But listen. There’s one thing I just have to ask.’
‘Ask on.’
“This other you, with all the credit facilities. Does he have an account with a dry cleaners? I’ve got these real bad spots of industrial lubricant on the trenchcoat and I want to get them out before they sink right in.’
‘You might try some lemon juice,’ Rex suggested. ‘Is the trenchcoat a running gag by the way? I like to know where I stand.’
The lift went down and it kept on doing it. It passed the ground floor and ran out of little numbers to flash.
Jonathan looked up at Laura. ‘Intrigued, eh?’
‘Extremely.’
‘Won’t be much longer.’ And it wasn’t. The little pinger went ping and the lift doors opened. ‘Go ahead, Laura.’
Laura took a step forward and then one back. ‘BAH-REAH!’ she gasped.
‘Impressed?’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
“Then don’t say a thing. Step out and have a good look around. There’s a catalogue on the table there. Take it.’
Laura took it. The catalogue was large and glossily bound. Only three words were printed on it and these three were THE PRESLEY HOARD.
Laura wandered amongst the treasures. The gilded icons, the statuary, the great paintings, the bas reliefs. She flipped through the catalogue and drew breath time and again.
Jonathan sat upon a garish garden lounger which had once graced the poolside at Graceland. He wrung his hands in pleasure at her pleasure. And in the pleasurable contemplation of erotic scenarios to come.
‘I may not approve of the theology,’ Laura perused a Caravaggio, which pictured Elvis as one of the three kings offering gifts to the infant Jesus; Elvis was offering a tiny guitar, ‘but the quality, the sheer magnificence. How did you come by it all?’
‘I acquired it all as a job lot. A kind of cosmic car-boot sale. Except for the centrepiece. The real treasure. Would you like to see that?’
Laura nodded dumbly. Yes, she would like to see that very much.
‘Follow me then.’
Jonathan led her through the vault. To either side of them the wonders spread, daunting in their opulent splendour. They approached a blank stone wall and the lad touched certain buttons upon the contraption he wore on his wrist. The wall dissolved to reveal a chamber, lit subtly by muted neon. In the centre stood a sarcophagus. It was fashioned into the likeness of a golden jukebox, inset with precious metals and gemstones.
‘Take a look inside.’
‘Inside?’
‘Certainly. Have a peep through the viewing glass. I promised you something you’d never forget.’
Laura took a step into the chamber and then paused. A curious sensation overwhelmed her. One of unutterable sadness. Laura shook her head, cleared her thoughts, but to no avail. The very air was charged with a terrible heart-rending loneliness.
‘No. I don’t want to see.’ Laura turned to leave.
‘But I really must insist.’ Jonathan displayed his pistol. ‘Go on, look inside.’
Laura turned back to the chamber. The hairs rose upon her arms.
‘Do it.’
She walked slowly over to the golden sarcophagus. The room had become impossibly cold. Her breath steamed before her face. She hugged her arms.
‘Look inside, Laura.’
She leaned over the sarcophagus and peered through the viewing glass.
The head and shoulders of a middle-aged man were clearly visible. The face was gross and swollen, heavy jowls covered by thick black sideburns. A red silk scarf was tied around the bloated neck.
Laura stared back at Jonathan. ‘Who is he?’ she asked.
Jonathan began to laugh.
I left my office chair to pine for my speedy return and took myself over to the window. The neon light outside flashed on and off the way some of them do and brought my profile into full play. ‘Would you say I had a lantern jaw?’ I asked.
‘What, and spoil it for all readers with weak chins?’
‘Oh yeah, thanks.’
‘So what do you propose to do next?’
‘My plans haven’t changed. Get to the Presley hoard, hole up there until after the Big Bang. Barry knows that’s where I’ll be, and if he’s half the sprout I know he is, he’ll meet up with me again.’
As Laz was now gazing at his reflection and feeling his chin, Rex finished the bottle of Old Bedwetter. ‘I think I might join you there. But there are several things I have to do first.’
‘Like move some mouth with Elvis, top your other self, wring the truth out of Crawford, get back your dame and generally put the world to rights. Right?’
‘I think that covers most of it.’
‘Well, I’ll help you out as best I can. But we’re working on a tight schedule and if we’re gonna keep to it, there’s one thing we gotta do first.’
‘Get to the dry cleaners?’
‘Uh-uh. Get the Hell out of here. About half a dozen big black cars have just pulled up outside.’
‘Kindly lead the way,’ said Rex. ‘I’ve had about all I can take for one day.’
‘Elvis?’ Laura stared at Jonathan in disbelief. “That’s not Elvis.’
‘Elvis the Ever-living. Except he’s not any more. Died an unnatural death in 1977.’
‘But he’s so . . .’
‘Fat?’
‘Well, yes, and so . . .’
‘Dead. That’s the word I think you’re looking for. Fat and dead.’
‘A false messiah.’
‘A false God. What do you think would happen to the fabric of this society if the truth were told?’
‘There’d be a . . .’ ‘A revolution?’
‘A revolution, yes.Followed by a change in government and ideology. And theology.’
‘With you in control?’
‘And you beside me. If you want it.’
‘Do you run the Repo Men?’
‘Me? No. I designed them and I service them. I have one or two for my private use. But as for the rest, I have no control over them.’
‘Then who does?’
‘Our common foe.’
‘The Rex Mundi on the telly?’
Jonathan laughed. ‘No, not him. I know who he is. I’ve dealt with him before.’
‘Then who?’
Jonathan tapped once more at his dear little nose. ‘All in good time. Now I am going to ask you a simple question and you are going to give me a simple answer.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Are you with me or against me?’
Laura took in the boundless wealth surrounding her, the possibilities of power, she gazed back at the golden coffin of the false messiah and back at Jonathan. ‘I’m with you,’ she said.
Jonathan smiled. Complicated mechanisms networking his body buzzed and purred, as sensors woven into his scalp registered minuscule fluctuations of electrical resistance upon Laura’s skin. Grafts beneath his fingernails monitored her brain activity and the modified ceramic film coating his contact lenses recorded changes in her body heat to five decimal places. The information fed directly into Jonathan’s cerebral cortex.
The read-out between his ears said, ‘She’s lying in her teeth.’
br /> ‘I’m so glad to have you with me,’ smiled the lad.
Laura smiled too. You’ll get yours, she thought.
Oh no I won’t, thought Jonathan.
14
37. And the children of Elvis did multiply greatly. Even to the four corners of the world.
38. And happy were they, what with the oil revenues and all. And the natty duds and the good rocking tonight.
39. And once in a while Elvis did dash off on some divine business or other. But verily he did return, smiling, if a trifle shagged out, saying, ‘That’s done.’
The Suburban Book of the Dead
The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Laura Lynch. In a white exclusive bedroom, halfway up the ButcherBuilding. Which somewhat spoiled the metre, but there you go.
Laura looked approvingly upon all the little ‘sold’ stickers dotting the finest furniture of the room. A good night’s work. If a mite tiring. Jonathan was snoring loudly as she detached his hand from her breast and slid from the bed. The boy genius had been singularly unforthcoming and had told her no more regarding his revolutionary schemes. But Laura had made up her own mind as to her next move. She crept across the bedroom, stepping carefully over the unlikely collection of ‘marital aids’ littering the floor.
She entered the kitchen and took herself over to the knife rack above the Aga. From this she selected a twelve-inch Sabatier filleting knife and ran her thumb gently along the length of the blade. The bead of blood gave her pleasure, she took it to her mouth and sucked upon it.
Returning to the bedroom she crept back to the bed, raised the knife and without a moment’s thought drove it down into the sleeper’s chest.
Rex awoke with a start in the back seat of Bill’s cab. It was parked in an alleyway. There were a lot of trash-cans about and one of those cast-iron fire escapes with the really tedious retractable bottom sections. Rex clutched at his chest. Blinked at his eyes. Focused at his vision and wondered where Laz was.
‘Breakfast, Rex.’ The man in the trenchcoat opened the driver’s door and dropped into the cab. ‘Coffee, two eggs over easy, sausage, black pudding and a fried slice.’ He passed Rex a styrofoam carton labelled Old Shep Bar-B-Q.
‘Thanks,’ Rex made lip-smacking, yum-yum sounds, and then, ‘hang about - how could you afford breakfast? I thought you were penniless.’ Rex wasn’t slow to notice that Laz no longer sported the unfashionable open-necked look. That he was wearing a spanking new snap-brimmed fedora. And that stains of an industrial lubricant nature no longer besmirched his immaculate trenchcoat.
‘I got up early and pawned your watch,’ Laz explained. ‘Just slipped it off your wrist. You were hunkered down so cosy I didn’t like to wake you.’
‘How very considerate. So what time is it now, then?’
‘About five in the afternoon. Your breakfast, my tea. Eat up.’
‘Five in the afternoon?’ Rex was appalled. ‘You let me sleep all day?’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ said I, slipping into the first-person with more delicacy than a dog log in a dowager’s duffle bag. ‘But I had to buy the hat and tie. And supervise the dry cleaners. These things take time. You have to stand right over those cleaners if you want the job done properly. You can’t skimp on good cleaning. I skimped once back in ‘thirty-four. That skimp cost me a learned pig of prodigious memory, two weeks in Benidorm with a beautician called Tracey, a life peerage and my entire collection of Marc Bolan records.’
‘Including “Pewter Suitor”?’
‘Including.’ I gave Rex the kind of nod you could tell your grandchildren about. ‘So I don’t take chances no more. The way I see it, only a plater’s mate turns vegan when there’s hair pie on the table.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t agree more. But tell me if you will, whilst you were attending to these sartorial niceties, the small, yet I feel not insignificant matter of our impending relegation to Sheol, didn’t, perchance, wend its winged way into your mercurial consciousness?’
‘Come again, fella?’
‘Well, to paraphrase one of your own charmingly idiosyncratic bon mots. Only Beau Brummell powders his wig when his arse is on fire.’
‘Ah, I got you. You’re talking about the case.’
‘I am.’ Rex lifted a Burnt Weenie Sandwich (a Frank Zappa LP.) from his breakfast pack and waggled it in my direction. ‘What, if anything, have you found out?’
‘Some, and then some more.’ I tapped my hooter like I was shooting ducks in a cracker barrel. ‘I’ve been sniffing around and nothing about this city smells kosher. For one thing, I walk into three hat shops and they ain’t hat shops at all. Just store fronts. For another, what you got here is a city full of fops and only one dry-cleaners. And this don’t even have a Gold Star Valet Service. What kind of deal is that?’
Rex shook his head. ‘You tell me.’
‘Okay then,’ says I, ‘I will. This place ain’t for real. I bet if you walked into any of those apartment houses or office blocks, you’d find zero. It’s all a phoney. A big set-up.’
‘A big set.’ Rex tossed his sandwich out of the car window. ‘It’s a big set.’
‘What? Like film set?’
‘Something much more than that. This was all designed for a specific purpose. And it’s not the work of Jonathan or the other me. They, I suspect, are both planning to tear it down.’
‘Who then? Some higher power?’ I get a real depth into my voice, but it doesn’t come out too well in print. ‘Some higher power?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Then if it’s a higher power you’re looking for, you should go check out the shopping mall. There’s a flying saucer in the car park.’
‘There’s a what?’ went Rex, in the third person.
Eight hours earlier Laura considered her handiwork. Jonathan was well and truly dead. The Sabatier’s hilt projected from his pigeon chest and the blade pinned him, without compromise, to the mattress. It said ‘Gotcha’ in the manner of the now legendary tabloid of old. ‘Gotcha.’ Laura was trembling from head to toe. ‘It’s done now.’
‘Just about.’
Laura’s stare left the corpse, travelled through several unfocused planes and came to rest upon the ceiling.
There Jonathan stood, upside down, with no wires showing.
‘I won’t be a moment. Just have to close off this particular scenario.’ He tinkered away at the mechanism upon his wrist.
‘Jonathan.’ Laura was shaking hard. ‘But how?’
‘Hold on. Ah. All finished. Not a very happy ending that. But one which had to be included.’ The wrist-tinkerer strolled across the ceiling, down a wall and towards Laura.
‘But you’re dead,’ she said, ever so softly.
‘Dead? Me?’ Jonathan gestured at the bed. The knife still impaled the mattress. But the body was no more. ‘Insert another dollar and begin again. Strictly business, Laura. I won’t explain because I don’t have to. Oh look what I have here.’ He produced the inevitable hand-weapon. ‘You will kindly get on to the telephone and call up your revolutionary children. It’s time they joined the game.’
‘A flying saucer?’ Rex asked.
‘Yeah. I told you. Can’t be having with spaceships myself. Ruins the detective genre for me. You get into too much wackiness when you suddenly start bringing spaceships into the plot. Especially this late. It reads like a device. Like a deus ex machina ending.’
‘I had one of those in my first book,’ said Rex brightly. ‘Worked out very well for me. I got the girl and everything.’
‘Well, it’s not for this boy. It’s the roof-top confrontation or nothing.’
‘Perhaps the lord will provide.’ Rex flung the rest of his revolting meal into the alleyway. ‘For the loss of my watch I didn’t exactly come up trumps in the breakfast lottery. Did I get any change?’
‘Some. But I used it to pay off the barman at the Tomorrowman for the damage. We have to go back there in the next chapter and I didn’t want any bad feeli
ng.’
‘Very big of you. Well, I’m going to have a look at this flying saucer. Would you care to join me?’
‘No way. I don’t work shopping malls’
‘Meet you back here later?’
‘I’d say half an hour. But I don’t seem to have a watch any more.’
I considered the antique Rolex Oyster which now favoured my wrist with its collectability. ‘I’d lend you mine but it looks too good on me.’
Rex made with the meaningful Hmm. ‘I really have some severe doubts regarding this partnership,’ said he, upping and awaying.
I didn’t have anything to add. The way I see it, although It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. (A Bob Dylan classic.)
Jonathan gave Laura a good poking with his over-sized weapon. Which probably got a cheap laugh somewhere, although I can’t imagine where. Laura picked up the bedside telephone and dialled the number.
There was a short pause. Then a brr-brr brr-brr brr-brr. Then a voice which said, ‘Who’s making that noise?’
‘It’s Laura Lynch. Is Kevin there?’
‘Who wants him?’
‘I do. Is he there?’
‘He’s in bed.’
‘Could you get him to the telephone? It’s very important.’
‘Who’s that?’ Jonathan asked.
Laura put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Kevin’s mum.’
‘Kevin’s mum?’
‘Ssh. Leave this to me. Hello. Yes?’
‘He needs his sleep,’ said Kevin’s mum. ‘He was up late last night plotting the overthrow of the capitalist system. So I’m giving him a lie-in. Can you call back later?’
‘No I can’t. Get him to the phone now.’
‘Don’t you adopt that tone with me young woman.’
‘Listen. This is really important.’
‘You’ve called before. I recognize your voice.’
‘Please let me speak to Kevin.’
‘He’s in bed. I’ll give him a message when he wakes up. What did you say your name was?’ ‘Give me the phone.’ Jonathan snatched the receiver. ‘Who am I talking to?’