She probably wasn't far wrong. It would be hard for most people to sleep with their chins on a shelf, but Bogus was dreaming about Merrill Overturf.
30
What Happened to Merrill Overturf?
ONCE TRUMPER HAD read a magazine article on espionage. He remembered that the US Treasury Department controls the Federal Narcotics Bureau and the Secret Service, and that the CIA co-ordinates all government intelligence activities. This seemed plausible; at least, he wasn't worried any more.
He was in a rear office of the American Consulate in Vienna, so he supposed he wasn't going to be murdered and dumped in the Danube - not yet, anyway. If he still had any doubts about where he was, they vanished when the vice-consul intruded on them nervously.
'I'm the vice-consul,' he apologized to Arnold Mulcahy, who was apparently more important than a vice-consul. 'I wish to inform you about your man out there, please ...' Arnold Mulcahy went to see what the trouble was.
According to the vice-consul, one of Mulcahy's thugs, a big man with a livid burn scar, was frightening away people who were coming to take the US immigration exam. In two minutes Mulcahy returned; the man with the burn scar had come to take the immigration exam, he told the vice-consul with some asperity. 'Let him in,' he advised. 'Any man that mean-looking is good for something.' Then he settled down to work on Bogus Trumper.
They had the goods on Trumper, and the bads too. Did he know he was a 'missing person' back in America? Did he know that his wife was wondering where he'd gone?
'I haven't been gone so long,' Trumper said.
Mulcahy suggested that his wife thought he'd been gone long enough. Trumper told him who Merrill Overturf was. He said that he had no plans to do anything with the hashish, though he probably would have sold it if someone had come along wanting to buy. He told him that a whore had taken all his money and that he was a little uncertain about things in general.
Mulcahy nodded; he knew all this already.
Then Bogus asked him to help him find Merrill Overturf, and it was then that Mulcahy made his deal. He would find Merrill Overturf, but first Bogus would have to do something for Arnold Mulcahy, for the US government and for the innocent people of the world.
'I guess I don't mind,' Bogus said. He really wanted to find Merrill.
'You shouldn't mind,' said Mulcahy. 'Also, you need the plane fare home.'
'I don't know if I'm going home.'
'Well, I know,' Mulcahy said.
'Merrill Overturf is in Vienna, I think,' Trumper said. 'I'm not going anywhere until I find him.'
Mulcahy called in the vice-consul. 'Locate this Overturf character,' he ordered. 'Then we can get on with it.'
'It' was then explained to Bogus Trumper. It was pretty simple. Trumper would be given a few thousand dollars in US hundred-dollar bills. Trumper was to hang around the Kaffeehaus Leopold Hawelka, wait for the man who said 'Gra! Gra!' all the time and who'd given Trumper the parcel of hashish, and to give the man the money when he showed up. Then Trumper was to be taken to Schwecat Airport and be put on a plane to New York. He would take the hashish brick with him; his luggage would be searched at Kennedy Airport customs; the hashish brick would be discovered; he would be seized on the spot and driven away in a limousine. The limousine would take him anywhere he wanted to go in New York City, and then he would be free.
It all seemed pretty straightforward. The reasons for all this escaped Trumper, but it was obvious that no one was going to do any explaining.
Then he was introduced to a Herr Doktor Inspektor Wolfgang Denzel, who was apparently an agent at the Austrian end. Inspektor Denzel wanted as much of a description of the man who had said 'Gra! Gra!' as Trumper could give. Trumper had seen Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel before; he was the natty, agile waiter whose tray of coffee and beers Trumper had spilled.
The only part of the deal that Bogus didn't like was getting on a New York plane as soon as he had handed over the money. 'Don't forget about Merrill Overturf,' he reminded Mulcahy.
'My good boy,' said Arnold Mulcahy, 'I'll go with you in the cab to the airport, and this Overturf character will be sitting right there with us.'
If Mulcahy wasn't quite the sort of man you'd actually trust, he was at least the sort whose efficiency you could have confidence in.
Bogus went to the Hawelka and sat around with his few thousand dollars for three nights running, but the 'Gra! Gra!' man never showed up.
'He'll show,' said Arnold Mulcahy. His overpowering confidence was chilling.
On the fifth night, the man came into the Hawelka. He didn't pay any attention to Bogus, though; he sat far away and never looked at him once. When he paid the waiter - who of course was actually Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel - and then put on his coat and headed for the door, Bogus thought he should make his move. Walking right up to the man as if he'd suddenly recognized an old friend, he called, 'Gra! Gra!' and grabbed the man's hand and pumped it. But the man looked petrified; he was trying so hard to get away from Bogus that he didn't even utter one little 'Gra!'
Bogus went right after him out the door and down the sidewalk, where the man tried to break into a jog to get free. 'Gra!' Bogus screamed at him again, and spinning the man around to face him, he took the envelope with all the money in it and crammed it into his trembling hand. But the man threw the envelope away and ran off as fast as he could.
Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel came out of the Hawelka and picked the envelope up off the street. 'You should have let him come to you,' he told Trumper. 'I think you scared him off.' Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel was a genius at understatement.
In the cab to Schwecat Airport, Arnold Mulcahy said, 'Suffering shit! Boy, did you ever blow it!'
Merrill Overturf was not in the cab.
'It's not my fault,' Bogus told Mulcahy. 'You never told me how I was supposed to give the money to him.'
'Well, I didn't think you'd try to cram it down his throat.'
'Where's Merrill Overturf?' Trumper asked. 'You said he'd be here.'
'He's not in Vienna any more,' Mulcahy said.
'Where is he?' Trumper asked, but Mulcahy wouldn't tell him.
'I'll let you know in New York,' he said.
They were late getting to New York; there'd been a delay on their Lufthansa flight. The runway in Frankfurt, their first stop, was stacked up, so they missed their first connection to New York, a TWA flight, and ended up on a big Pan Am 747. Their luggage, however, had gone through earlier on the TWA flight. No one could explain how this happened, and Mulcahy was nervous about it. 'Where'd you put the stuff?' he asked Trumper.
'In my suitcase,' Trumper said, 'with everything else.'
'When they find it in New York,' Mulcahy said, 'it would be good if you pretended to run away - you know. Not too far, of course; let them catch you. They won't hurt you or anything,' he added.
Then Kennedy was stacked up, so they circled New York for an hour. It was late afternoon when they landed, and it took them an hour to locate their bags. Mulcahy left Bogus before he went through the customs declaration gate.
'Anything to declare?' the man said, winking at Bogus. He was a big, warm-faced Negro with hands like a black bear's feet, and he started pawing through Bogus's suitcase.
There was a pretty girl in line behind him and Trumper turned around and smiled at her. Won't she be surprised when they arrest me?
The customs man had taken out the typewriter, the recorder, all the tapes, and half of Trumper's clothes, but he hadn't found the hashish yet.
Bogus looked around nervously, the way he thought a potential smuggler would look around. By now the customs man had the suitcase completely emptied on the counter and was pawing back over all the stuff. He looked up at Bogus, worried, and whispered to him, 'Where is it?'
Then Bogus started pawing through all the stuff with him; they went through it twice more, with the line behind them growing and grumbling, but they couldn't find the hashish.
'All right,' the customs man s
aid to him. 'What did you do with it?'
'Nothing,' Bogus said. 'I packed it, I know I did, honest.'
'Don't let him get away!' the customs man yelled suddenly, apparently figuring he'd better go ahead with the plan. Bogus did what Mulcahy had told him to and started to make a run for it. He ran out through the gate with the customs man yelling at him and pointing and setting off a horn that had a jarring shriek to it.
Trumper got all the way through the exit ramp and up to where the taxis were waiting before he realized that he'd probably escaped, so he ran back. As he neared the customs gate, a policeman caught up with him. 'Christ, at last!' Trumper said to the cop, who looked puzzled and handed Bogus the envelope containing the few thousand dollars. Trumper hadn't given it back to Mulcahy, who hadn't asked for it; it must have fallen out of his pocket when he'd run through the terminal.
'Thank you,' Bogus said. Then he ran back down the exit ramp, where he was finally captured by the Negro customs man who hadn't found the hashish.
'Now I've got you!' the man yelled, holding Bogus gently around the waist.
In a funny, Formica-covered room, Arnold Mulcahy and five other men were hopping mad.
'Suffering shit!' Mulcahy yelled. 'Someone must have picked it off in Frankfurt.'
'The suitcase was in New York for six hours before you got here,' one of the men told him. 'Someone could have picked it off here.'
'Trumper?' Mulcahy said. 'Did you really pack the thing, boy?'
'Yes, sir.'
They whisked him into another room, where a man who looked like a male nurse searched him all over and then left him alone. A long time later, he was brought some scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, and after another long wait Mulcahy reappeared.
'There's a limousine here for you,' he told Bogus. 'It will take you anywhere you want to go.'
'I'm sorry, sir,' Trumper said. Mulcahy just shook his head. 'Suffering shit ...' he said.
On the way to the car, Trumper said, 'I hate to ask you this, but what about Merrill Overturf?'
Mulcahy was pretending not to hear. At the limousine he opened the door for Trumper and then shoved him inside quickly. 'Take him anywhere he wants to go,' he told the driver.
Bogus rolled his window down quickly and caught Mulcahy's sleeve as he was trying to turn away from the car.
'Hey, what about Merrill Overturf?' he said.
Mulcahy sighed. He opened the briefcase he was carrying and took out a photostated copy of an official-looking document with the raised seal of the American Consulate stamped on it. 'I'm sorry,' Mulcahy said, handing the photostat to Trumper. 'Merrill Overturf is dead.' Then he smacked the roof of the car, shouted to the driver. Take him anywhere he wants to go!' and the car pulled away.
'Where to?' the driver asked Trumper, who sat in the back seat like an armrest or some other stationary part of the car itself. He was trying to read the document, which in officialese seemed to be called an Uncontested Obituary, and concerned one Overturf, Merrill, born Boston, Mass., Sept. 8, 1941. Father, Randolph W.; mother, Ellen Keefe.
Merrill had died nearly two full years before Bogus had returned to Vienna to find him. According to the document, he had bet an American girl named Polly Crenner - whom he had picked up at American Express - that he could find a tank on the bottom of the Danube. He had taken her to the Gelhafts Keller out on the Danube and Polly had stood on the dock and watched Merrill swim out in the Danube holding a flashlight over his head. When he located the tank, he was going to call to her; she had insisted that she wouldn't go in the water until he'd found it.
Miss Crenner had waited on the dock for about five minutes after she could no longer see the flashlight bobbing around; she thought that Merrill was kidding around. Then she'd run into the Gelhafts Keller and tried to get some help, but since she didn't speak any German, it took some time for her to make herself understood.
Overturf might have been drunk, Polly Crenner said later. Evidently she hadn't known he was a diabetic, and neither apparently did the consulate, for it wasn't mentioned. In any case, the cause of death was listed as drowning. The identification of Merrill's body had not been completely confirmed. That is, a body had been found three days later that was snagged on an oil barge bound for Budapest, but since it had gone through the propellers a few times, no one could be sure.
The story of the tank was never confirmed. Polly Crenner said that Merrill had started hollering about a minute before she lost sight of the flashlight that he'd found the tank, but she hadn't believed him.
'I would have believed you, Merrill,' Bogus Trumper said aloud.
'Sir?' the driver said.
'What?'
'Where to, sir?' the driver said.
They were cruising past Shea Stadium. It was a warm, balmy night and the traffic was fierce. 'This stretch is slow,' the driver informed him unnecessarily. 'It's the Mets and the Pirates.'
Trumper sat baffled over that for a long time. It was December when he'd left and he couldn't have been gone more than a week or so. They're playing baseball already? He leaned forward and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror of the limousine. He had a lovely, flowing mustache and a full beard. His back-seat window was still rolled down and the steamy New York summer air rolled over him. 'Jesus,' he whispered. He felt frightened.
'Where to, sir?' the driver repeated. He was obviously getting a little nervous about his passenger.
But Trumper was wondering if Biggie was still in Iowa - if it was summer already. Jesus Christ! He couldn't believe he'd been gone so long. He looked for a newspaper or something with a date.
What he found was the envelope with a few thousand dollars in it. Arnold Mulcahy was a more generous man than he at first appeared.
'Where to?' the driver said.
'Maine,' said Trumper. He had to see Couth; he had to clear his head.
'Maine?' the driver said. Then he got tough. 'Look, buddy,' he said, 'I ain't taking you to Maine. This car don't go out of Manhattan.'
Trumper opened the envelope and handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill. 'Maine,' Trumper said.
'Yes, sir,' said the driver.
Trumper leaned back, smelled the wretched air and felt the heat. He didn't quite know it yet - or he couldn't make himself believe it - but he'd been away for almost six months.
31
A Pentothal Movie
(159: Medium shot of Trumper putting down a small overnight suitcase in front of the reception desk at a hospital. He looks around anxiously; Tulpen, smiling next to him, takes his arm. Trumper asks the nurse behind the desk something and she gives him some forms to fill in. Tulpen is warmly attentive to him while he struggles with the papers)
DR VIGNERON (voice over): It's a very simple operation, really, though it does seem to frighten the patient a good deal. It is minor surgery, five stitches at the most ...
(160: Close-up of a medical drawing of the penis. A hand, presumably Vigneron's, draws with a black crayon on the penis)
VIGNERON (v.o.): The incision is made at the opening, here, to simply widen the passage. Then the sutures hold it open, here, so that it won't grow back the way it was. It will try to do that, anyway, by the way ...
(161: Long shot of a nurse leading Trumper and Tulpen down an aisle of the hospital. Trumper peers nervously into every room, bumping his suitcase against his knees as he walks)
VIGNERON (v.o.): There's just one night in the hospital to prepare you for surgery in the morning. Then rest the next day and perhaps stay that night too, if you're still ... uncomfortable.
(162: Medium shot of Trumper getting awkwardly into a hospital gown; Tulpen helps him tie the string in back. Trumper stares at the patient with whom he shares his room, an old man with tubes running in and out of him who lies motionless on the bed next to Trumper's. A nurse comes and deftly pulls the curtains around the bed, shutting off this view)
VIGNERON (v.o.): ... to put it another way, it is forty-eight hours of pain. Now, that is not so very much p
ain, is it?
(163: Sync sound. Medium shot of Ralph Packer interviewing Dr Vigneron in Vigneron's office)
PACKER: There is some psychological pain, I imagine ... you know, a sort of penis fear?
VIGNERON: Well, I suppose some patients would feel ... You mean like a castration complex?
(164: A male nurse is shaving Trumper, who lies rigidly on his hospital bed watching the man's razor zip through his pubic hair)
PACKER (v.o.): Yeah, castration ... Or, you know, afraid the whole thing will get cut off. By mistake, of course! (He laughs)
(165: Same as 163, in Vigneron's office)
VIGNERON (laughing): Well, I assure you, I have never made a slip-up in that area!
PACKER (laughing hysterically): Well, of course not ... no, but I mean if you're the sort of patient who's at all paranoid about your prick ...
(166: Sync sound. Medium shot of Trumper lifting the sheets, peering under at himself, letting Tulpen peek too)
TRUMPER: You see? Like a baby!
TULPEN (staring hard): It's like you're going to have a baby ...
(They look at each other, then look away)
(167: Sync sound. Same as 163 and 165. In Vigneron's office, both Packer and Dr Vigneron are laughing loudly and uncontrollably) (168: Medium shot. Trumper, sitting up in bed, waves goodbye to Ralph and Tulpen, who waves back from the foot of his bed)
VIGNERON (v.o.as if leaving instructions with a nurse): No solid foods tonight, and nothing to drink after ten o'clock. Give him the first injections at eight tomorrow morning; he should be in the operating room by eight-thirty ...
(Tulpen and Ralph walk out of frame together, escorted by a nurse. Trumper glowers after them darkly)
DISSOLVE
After which, you can bet your ass, I did not dissolve. I lay feeling my smooth-shaven parts - the lamb's neck fleeced for the slaughter!
I also listened to the gurgling man beside me, a man who was fed like a carburetor; whose tubes, whose intake and output, whose simple functioning, seemed to rely on a mechanical sense of timing.
I was not worried about my operation, really; I had anticipated it to death. What did worry me was the degree to which I had become predictable even to myself, as if the range of my reactions had been analyzed, discussed and criticized to the point where I was as readable as a graph. I wished I could shock them all, the fuckers.