Necrophenia

  ‘But I do have all my own teeth.’

  ‘I’ll bet you can’t open a beer bottle with them.’

  ‘Oh yes I can.’

  ‘Then a bottle of Bud, please, barman.’

  And I applauded this.

  And Fangio bowed and Lazlo Woodbine bowed. And Fangio brought Laz a bottle of Bud. ‘I was lying about the teeth,’ he said as he opened it with an opener.

  ‘So, young lady,’ said Lazlo Woodbine to me, ‘what is it that I can do for you? You are a long way from Switzerland, and your vast bank vaults of Nazi gold.’

  ‘And I’m not a young lady,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? Swiss? Anabaptist? Abortionist? Young lady?’

  ‘One at a time,’ said Fangio. ‘I only have one pair of hands. Form an orderly queue, if you will, Swiss boys to the rear.’

  ‘Do they?’ said Laz to Fange. ‘I thought that was an English thing. All those Jimbos and everything.’

  I took to massaging my temples. I had never encountered the talking of the toot before, and frankly it was giving me a headache.

  ‘Freemason also,’ said Fangio to Lazlo as he passed him over his Bud. ‘They always do that thing with their temples. It’s called a Masonic temple, you know. But I can’t tell you more than that or they’ll cut my nipples off and post them through a vicar’s letterbox.’

  ‘They’re only being cruel to be kind,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, and he drew on his bottle of Bud.

  ‘And I am not a Freemason,’ said I.

  And Lazlo Woodbine placed his bottle on the counter. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘we have established all the things that you are not. You are not a woman, neither are you Swiss, an Anabaptist, a Doctor of Death, a Freemason, nor, I believe, a dogger.’

  ‘Certainly not a dogger,’ I said. Although I did harbour some secret yearnings to dog. But then whom amongst us does not?

  ‘And so,’ Lazlo Woodbine continued, ‘I conclude therefore that you must be English, a private detective who is presently serving his time as a rock ’n’ roll musician, a stranger to New York and a young man with a problem that he believes only Lazlo Woodbine can solve.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. And then no more, for I was somewhat speechless.

  ‘Never underestimate the power of the toot,’ said Fangio, the fat-boy barman. ‘Many before you have and all have paid the price.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right, well, I don’t quite know what to say.’

  ‘Then you must accompany me to my office,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘And there you will outline to me the nature of the case in point. And I, Lazlo Woodbine, will then endeavour to solve it for you.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Honest engine,’ said he.

  And so we left Fangio’s Bar and crossed the street to the building that housed Lazlo’s office. Fangio left his bar and followed us halfway across the street, complaining that Lazlo Woodbine had not paid for his beer and that the Swiss maid hadn’t even bought a bar of chocolate.

  And concluding that it would be a cold day in Cairo before he let autumn leaves start to fall, he returned to the comfort of his bar.

  ‘Have you and the Fange been friends for a very long time?’ I asked Lazlo Woodbine as I followed him up the stairs that led to his office.

  ‘We were Marines together in the last war,’ said the great detective. ‘Both won Purple Hearts in the Pacific. I won mine for outstanding bravery and Fange won his in a pie-eating contest.’

  ‘I won’t get you going on that,’ I said.

  But Lazlo Woodbine ignored me.

  And soon I found myself in the famous office. And it was just as I would have imagined it to be. Indeed, as anyone who is a fan of the nineteen-fifties American genre detective’s office would have imagined it to be. There was the carpet that dared not speak its name. The water cooler that cooled no water and the hatstand that stood alone without a hat. There was the filing cabinet, the detective’s desk with its telephone on top, and, I felt confident, its bottle of Kentucky bourbon in a drawer.

  There were the two chairs and the ceiling fan that revolved slowly above. And there was the venetian blind. And I could definitely hear a solo saxophonist playing outside in the alleyway. I breathed in the ambience and then had a very good cough.

  ‘You hawk it up,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, patting at my back. ‘You never know, it might be a gold watch.’

  ‘It never is,’ I said. And I concluded my coughing.

  Lazlo Woodbine removed his hat and his coat and flung them in the general direction of the hatstand. He seated himself behind his desk and gestured for me to take the chair before it (which I did). Then he leaned back in his chair and placed his feet upon his desk. And then he took from his top drawer a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and two glasses, uncorked the bottle and poured out two golden shots.

  ‘Down your shirt,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘As you Brits will have it.’

  ‘Up your Liberty Bell,’ I replied, a-raising of my glass. ‘As you Yanks will have it.’

  And oh how we laughed.

  But not much.

  ‘And so,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, ‘you will now tell me all about the case, but first you must understand certain things. They are very important things and you must understand them now if we are going to work together.’

  ‘Work together?’ I queried.

  ‘Lazlo Woodbine works with his client, never for his client. There is a subtle distinction, but an important one. Are you sitting quietly?’

  I nodded. Noisily.

  ‘Then put a sock in it.’

  ‘A sock?’

  ‘A sock all filled with olives. Such as this one that I recently liberated from Fangio’s Bar. But hear me now and take heed of what I say, because I will only be saying it once. My name is Lazlo Woodbine, private eye, and some call me Laz. In the tradition of all great nineteen-fifties American genre detectives, I work only the four locations. An office where clients come to call. A bar where I talk the toot with the barman and meet the dame who does me wrong. An alleyway where I get into sticky situations. And a rooftop, where I have a final confrontation with the villain. Who then takes the obligatory long from-the-rooftop-fall-to-oblivion. These are the only locations that I work. No private eye worthy of his trench coat and fedora ever needs more. Do I make myself understood?’

  I nodded my head and said that I did.

  ‘And one more thing,’ said Laz. ‘I am always the hero, and as such I work strictly in the first person.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Now that might be tricky.’

  ‘Tricky, kid?’ said I.

  And the kid looked kind of cockeyed at me. But ain’t that the way with those Brits?

  39

  The snow dropped down like dandruff from the Holy Head of God.

  In my business, which is one of private detection, you see these cosmic similes all the time. You have to keep in touch with your spiritual side, never forgetting that every next step could be your last and a watched boil never pops. It’s keeping this balance that helps you succeed; that and the pistol you pack.

  I always pack a trusty Smith & Wesson. In this town, packing a trusty Smith & Wesson can mean the difference between pursuing a course in elegant maths and perusing the corpse of the Elephant Man, if you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do. You got to keep a balance, see, and that is what I do.

  I do what I do from my office at 2727 27th Street. The office has my name on the door. And also my profession.

  ‘Lazlo Woodbine’, it says on the door. And ‘Private Detective’, too.

  Sometimes it also says ‘GONE TO LUNCH’. But that’s when I’ve gone to lunch.

  I hadn’t gone for lunch on the day that the young guy walked into my office. But then it wasn’t lunchtime. If I’d had a clock, then it might have struck ten. But I didn’t, and so it struck nine. The young guy had come all the way from England just to seek my help on a case. He didn’t tell me that this was the way of it, but then he didn’t hav
e to. In my occupation you either know things, or you don’t. It’s an instinct, a gift, if you like, and some of us have this gift, though most of us do not.

  The young guy wore black, but he wasn’t Swiss, nor was he Jewish, it seemed. He was a musician, travelling with a band called The Sumerian Kynges, in the company of something called The Flange Collective, a kind of five-and-dime carny that was presently encamped in Central Park. Although he and his fellow musicians had taken rooms at the Pentecost Hotel because, unlike carny folk, all musicians are cissies and don’t like the cold weather. And the guy’s name was Tyler and he had worries on his mind. And in this town, if you have worries on your mind, you either hit a bar or call your shrink. And if neither of those hit the spot and there is the possibility that the quelling of these worries might only be facilitated by a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a great deal of trench-coat action and a denouement that involves a final rooftop confrontation during which a villain takes the last dive to oblivion, then you call on me.

  If, however, you have Georgia on your mind, then I’d recommend the jazz club down the street.

  So the young guy sat down in the chair that I reserve for clients and I poured him a glass of Kentucky bourbon to ease his passage whilst he spilt his beans. His beans, it seemed, were curious beans, beans of an outré nature. In my business I encounter many a curious bean. A curious bean, a wayward sprout and a parsnip in a pale tweed. It’s all meat and fish to a guy like me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ‘So, kid,’ said I as I tipped him the wink, ‘what is it worries your mind?’

  The guy sipped his bourbon and looked ill at ease, but ain’t that the way with the Brits? It was obvious to me from the start that getting the full story out of him was going to take some time. But I was prepared to take this time as I had to know all the facts. It is of the utmost importance to know all the facts. Facts are the lifeblood of a private eye. As would be a very small whip to a trainer of cheese. So I sat back and let him speak. I let him spill his beans.

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ I told the guy. And anyhow I charge by the hour.

  ‘It is this way, Mr Woodbine, sir,’ said the kid, with respect in his voice. ‘I have become involved in something so strange, and indeed horrifying, that I hardly know where to begin. Corpses are being reanimated, imbued with souls that are not their own. A plan is afoot to destroy all life upon this world and reduce the planet to a Necrosphere. I have seen these undead with my own eyes and I am not the only one who has. In England an organisation that calls itself the Ministry of Serendipity is involved in the extermination of these undead creatures whenever it locates them. A gentleman called Mr Ishmael told me all about this. And there is something very wrong about this gentleman, but that is not why I am here.

  ‘Mr Woodbine, I am here to call upon your expertise. I wish to employ your services to investigate this matter, with a view to identifying the evil mastermind behind it.’

  And I made the guy pause there. ‘Kid,’ I said to him. ‘Kid, did I just hear you use the words “evil mastermind”?’

  ‘That you did, Mr Woodbine, sir,’ said he.

  I paused for a moment, in case he wished to add the words ‘Gawd strike me dead, guv’nor, if I’m telling you a porkie pie’ in that manner so favoured by the Brits. But as he did not, I spoke certain words of my own.

  ‘Kid,’ I said, ‘to use the downtown vernacular, you may well be blowing Dixie out of your ass, but if there is an evil mastermind involved, then you came a-knocking on the right detective’s door this brisk morning.’ And I topped up my glass and that of my client and let him go rambling on.

  He was no literary eruditioner, like some of those famous Brits are. Your Walter Shakespeare, or your Guy Fawkes-Nights. But he could put his sentences together in the right order, and he kept his feet off my desk, so I kinda took a liking to the guy. Clearly he was suffering from a mental condition, chronic schizophrenia allied with an acute persecution complex resulting in audio/visual hallucinations, or was simply a fruitcake, as we in this town would say. But I liked the cut of his shoulders and as business was slack for the time of the year, what with most of the New York criminals being down in Miami at Crim-Con 69, I agreed to take the case and see which way it led.

  ‘Kid,’ I told the guy, ‘you may have bumblebees in your watering can, but who can say what your uncle keeps in his shed?’

  The kid said, ‘Eh?’ But he knew what I meant. And I knew that he knew I knew.

  ‘So,’ said the guy, ‘what do we do next?’

  ‘We?’ I said. ‘We? Well, I’ll tell you what you do. You hoik your bankroll out and peel me off two hundred bucks.’

  I noted a certain hesitation here, but I put this down to that British reticence and sexual repression that I’d heard so much about. From Fangio, who had once been to Brighton. At a barmans’ convention, Toot-Con 55. Fangio had sung the praises of the English women, whom, he claimed, rarely wore anything other than three trained ducks. And wellington boots for the rain.

  The guy paid up front with two fifties, three twenties, two tens, four fives, nine ones and a three that I handed back to him. Those crazy Brits, eh, what do you make of them? And they say that they won the war.

  ‘Where to?’ asked the guy of me.

  And I said, ‘Fangio’s Bar.’

  Like I told the guy earlier, I work only the four locations. No genre detective worthy of his ACME sock-suspenders and patent-pending ball-and-socket truss needs more. And once I’d interviewed a client in my office, the next stop was always the bar. It can be any bar, let me be clear on that, but it must be a bar. It is the way things must be done, if they are to be done with style. And according to format.

  I put the ‘GONE TO LUNCH’ sign on my door, although you wouldn’t have seen that because I do not work corridors, and moments later, as if through the means of a lap-dissolve, found myself in Fangio’s Bar.

  As it was nearing lunchtime now, the joint was beginning to jump. The uptown chic in natty black and downtown noncer in beige. A cheese-trainer from Illinois, here searching for a venue for Cheese-Con 70.21 A couple of Dacks, a McMurdo and a chim-chim-cheree-chim-cheroo. The McMurdo was sitting on my favourite bar stool, so he got the short shrift that was coming to him.

  ‘A bottle of Bud,’ I said to Fangio, the fat-boy barman. ‘And whatever my client here is having. And put it on my client’s tab, as soon as you’ve written one up.’

  ‘That all sounds rather complicated,’ said Fangio. ‘Would you care to run it by me again? Or perhaps not so much run as jog purposefully? ’

  ‘Not as such,’ I said to Fange. ‘Especially not on a day like this.’

  ‘This day is a new one on me,’ said the fat-boy, with wisdom. ‘And I’d just come to terms with yesterday when this one turns up and oh dear me.’ And he began to sob.

  ‘Do you need a hankie to dry those tears?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ said Fange. ‘I have a hankie of my own.’

  ‘Then stick it in your mouth and bring us over two Buds.’

  ‘I’d quite like to try a cocktail,’ said the young guy called Tyler as he leaned upon the bar counter and ogled the ashtrays in the way that strangers so often do.

  ‘Don’t get me going on cocktails,’ said Fangio, weeping away like a woebegone woman bewailing a badly drawn boy.

  ‘Two Buds,’ I said, using the natural authority that God in His infinite wisdom had seen fit to grant me.

  ‘Coming right up, sir,’ said the barman.

  ‘Might I ask you something, Mr Woodbine?’ said the guy.

  I nodded in the affirmative. ‘Not now, kid,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s important. Please.’

  ‘Well, all right. Go on. And don’t feel that you have to rush yourself. ’

  ‘All this talking of the toot - it really does help you to solve your cases?’

  That was some question and I was the fella to answer it.

  ‘Kid,’ I said. ‘Kid, over the years Fang
e and I have talked a great deal of toot in this bar. We talk the toot and we chew the fat.’ And as it was nearing lunchtime, I dipped into the complimentary bowl upon the bartop and helped myself to a prize gobbet of said chewing-fat. ‘It’s the way things are done, kid,’ I continued, munching as I did. ‘You might argue that it is a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But I would argue that it ain’t nothing of the sort. It’s more of a dynamic symbiosis. Or, more rightly, a symbiotic dynamic. You can’t squeeze salt from a billiard ball, no matter how long you soak it.’

  The guy looked thoughtful and nodded his head. ‘Right,’ said he. ‘So all this talking of the toot - it really does help you to solve your cases?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Here’s our beers. And Fangio’s brought your tab.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it really is a tab,’ said the fat-boy, presenting us with two glasses of cherry brandy. ‘It looks more to me to be something connected with golf. A tee, possibly, or a five-iron-gone-apeshit-crazy. ’

  I gave the item he’d brought out a stern looking-over. ‘Nope,’ I said, in the negative. ‘That’s a bar tab all right. See the words “BAR TAB” printed at the top? That’s your guide to its correct identification, right up there in lights, as it were.’

  And Fangio smiled, which brought joy to the world. ‘God bless you, Lazlo,’ said he.

  The guy sipped at his cherry brandy and asked me whether it was a cocktail. I didn’t want to complicate things and so I nodded that it was, discreetly, without any fuss.

  ‘Tastes just like a cherry brandy,’ said the guy. ‘But I was asking you about the toot.’

  ‘Kid,’ I said, ‘we’ve been through that. And repetition does nothing more than labour a point. It’s the way things are done and that’s that. I’m on your case now, so everything that happens from now on will be pertinent to your case. These folk in this bar - pertinent. Those Dacks and that McMurdo lying on the floor—’

  ‘The one who was sitting on your bar stool?’ said the guy.

  ‘Same one. All pertinent. What we have to do is to wait here, talking the toot, until she arrives.’