Necrophenia (18 page)

We didn’t eat all of the groupie.

We left the trotters and the snout.

I really took to New York, which, I learned, was so good they had named it twice. It was midsummer, but as this was New York, it was snowing heavily and folk were skating about on various outdoor ice rinks. All the women looked like Barbra Streisand and the blokes like Elliott Gould. Which meant very little to me, because I was English.

I had no idea just how much kudos being English held in America. Folk just ‘love that English accent’, and we were asked repeatedly whether we owned bowler hats and regularly had the Queen round to tea. Which was handy for Toby because, apparently, he did!

This was nineteen sixty-nine and New York was in the throes of a big Jewish craze. Being Jewish was the in thing and people who did not look even the remotest bit Jewish were adopting yarmulkes and Jewish accents, greeting each other with oy veys and catching gefilte fish. The year before it had been fashionable to be Irish. And in the early seventies you weren’t anyone in New York if you weren’t black and didn’t sport an afro. I don’t know what the present fashion is in New York, but I have heard talk of cross-dressing.

But as Jewish was the look, we trooped into a downtown boutique and got ourselves kitted out. Black. All black. Black suit, black coat, black shoes, black homburg. It was a really cool look, and we took it with us back to England and unwittingly started the Goth movement.

And there’s something about black, isn’t there? There’s really nothing cooler to wear than black. You can go anywhere in a black suit and folk will always show you respect. Because you will always look sophisticated. We didn’t wear black onstage in America, though, because after all, we had invented Glam Rock and we wanted the American public to appreciate our glamour. Before they got too deeply into our sophistication. We did have an ingrained natural sophistication, though, which is why we didn’t eat the snout, or the trotters.

Andy just loved New York. He acquired an all-black police uniform, augmented with silver trimmings and badge, and took to performing random stop-and-searches on young women and issuing on-the-spot fines for breaches of style. Andy adored New York, and in its turn New York, it appeared, loved Andy.

Neil loved New York also and hung around the recording studios, mixing with the big stars of the day. Rob checked out Madison Avenue, home of advertising, and found favour in all that he met with there.

Toby engaged in all manner of wheelings and dealings, some of which, I felt certain, had to be legal.

Which left only me.

And I suppose that I loved New York also, even though it was so cold. But I had so many things on my mind that I could not concentrate on looking cool and having a really good time.

This whole undead business was really getting me down. I just didn’t know what to make of it. I’d seen it with my own eyes – the zombies in the cemetery and the undead at the Hyde Park gig. And the knowledge that Shadow Night really existed at Club 27 meant that it was not just me, Mr Ishmael and the mysterious crew at the Ministry of Serendipity who knew about it. This thing was big and growing ever bigger.

What I didn’t know, but really wanted to know, was who or what was behind it. Was it some evil necromancer? Or a black magician, or perhaps the Homunculus himself? It was definitely a baddy of some big-time description. A super-baddy. And whether Mr Ishmael had been telling me all of the truth, or indeed any of it, I had no way of knowing.

So I really truly did want to talk to Mr Ishmael.

But Mr Ishmael was nowhere to be found.

I still had his telephone number – I’d found it in the lining of my mother’s trench coat – and I called several times, using the special trans-Atlantic prefix and everything. But there was no answer. And thinking about that scrap of paper and the trench coat had me feeling all nostalgic and gave me a crinkly mouth. I quite missed my mum and dad, and even though I was now a rock ’n’ roll star, on the way up with a glorious future ahead of me, I actually missed being a private detective.

And this line of thinking set me to thinking of something else. So to speak. And had this been an animated cartoon rather than real life, you would have seen, at this point, a little light bulb materialise above my head and frantically start flashing.

And the word ‘IDEA’ might even have appeared within it.

And there might also have been heard the sound of a bell ringing. Flash and Ding and IDEA. Just like that.

Because I was in New York. And New York was the home of the private detective. Los Angeles was too, of course. But not really. Los Angeles was the home of the private detective in the Hollywood movies, because the studios were all in Los Angeles and if they shot the movie in LA they didn’t have to travel, or pay the cast and crew’s hotel costs. Cheapskates!

But this was New York. And New York was the home of the private eye. In fact, the real Lazlo Woodbine lived and worked in New York. Or at least had, in the nineteen-fifties. P. P. Penrose based his Lazlo Woodbine thrillers on a real-life New York private eye and I wondered, just wondered, whether this fellow was still practising his craft. And if so, whether he might care to take on an English sidekick for a couple of weeks, at no charge to himself. It would be a dream come true for me, to work with the legend that was Woodbine. But hold on! Even better than that! Although the great Lazlo Woodbine might not take to some complete stranger (no matter whether or not he had experience in the field of Private Eyedom) trying to muscle in on his field of activity, he would never refuse a commission. Especially from a stylishly clad Englishman. If I were to offer him a job, then he would work for me. And how cool would that be?

Very cool, that’s how.

That little light bulb over my head grew burning, burning bright.

And popped.

I awoke early on what I recall was a Monday morning, dressed in modish black, stepped carefully between the bits of groupie that were scattered about my room and left the Pentecost Hotel.

I knew that Laz had his office somewhere in Manhattan and that he drank in a pub called Fangio’s Bar, where he regularly sat and chewed the fat with Fangio, the fat-boy barman. And talked the toot also. Because talking the toot was something that Laz and Fangio did in a manner that surpassed any other toot-talking, past, present or future. And if he was still in business, then he was bound to be in the telephone book.

Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed it in Hollywood movies, so I will not dwell upon it here, but isn’t it odd how all American telephone numbers begin with 555? What is that all about?

In a public phone booth, which didn’t have a door and looked very much like the record booths they had in the Squires Music shop in Ealing Broadway, I beheld a telephone book.

It had pages missing and smelled somewhat of wee wee – but the vandals who had been abusing it had not got as far as the classified section. And so I ran my finger down the list of private eyes.

And I saw him! Large as life!

Lazlo Woodbine Private Detective 2727 27th Street 555 272727

Result!

And just two blocks away. I could walk it.

And so I did. For those who don’t know New York, allow me to explain to you about it. New York divides itself into quarters. You have your Irish Quarter, your Latin Quarter, your Trinidadian Quarter and your Tierra del Fuego Quarter. And many many other quarters, all to do with commerce. These quarters are also called districts. So you have your Slaughterhouse District, Fashion District, Tiger’s Eye Pottery District, et cetera and et cetera. So, once you have a map of New York with all these quarters/districts marked upon it, you can’t go wrong. And at least you know where everything is. And there is a quarter for everything in New York.

Twenty-Seventh Street is the Detective Quarter. It’s just past the Gay Plumbers’ Quarter, but before you reach the Elvis Impersonators’ Quarter. Depending upon which way you approach it, of course.

I really really liked 27th Street. It may have changed now, of course, but back then, in the heyday of private detectivedom, it was the place (for private detectives) and it was very seedy indeed. It was all run-down ‘brownstones’ and crumbling nineteen-thirties Art Deco office blocks. There were alleyways a-plenty and each owned to its fair share of cast-iron fire escapes with those retractable bottom sections. And trashcans and the rear doors of down-at-heel nightclubs. And each and every one of these alleyways echoed softly to the music of a solitary saxophone. Sweet.

I did most approving noddings as I strolled along 27th Street.

And then I saw it, and, I kid you not, my heart skipped a beat. It was Fangio’s Bar and it was open.

The neon sign flashed out its message and the shatter-glass door opened before me at my touch. And then I was there, in that very bar immortalised by the poignant pen of P. P. Penrose.

Long and low and loathsome was Fangio’s Bar. With photographs of boxers all framed up on the walls. And a lengthy bright chromium bar counter that ran the lengthiness of the room (on the left, looking from the front door). There were bar stools, there were booths, and there, behind that bar counter, he stood. It had to be him: Fangio, the fat-boy barman of legend.

I straightened up my shoulders, disguising my scholar’s stoop, dusted non-existent dandruff from said shoulders and nonchalantly made my way to the bar.

Fangio was stuffing olives. Into an old army sock.

He looked up from his doings and I caught his eye.

‘Out of this bar,’ quoth he.

‘Excuse me?’ I said, with politeness, as I viewed Fangio.

He was somewhat broader than he was long, having about him a respectable girth. Yet although his belly was running to fat, his feet weren’t running anywhere. He stood four-square upon the floor of his bar, a man amongst men and a titan. Bald of head and bulbous of nose and, ‘Out of this bar,’ quoth he.

‘Excuse me, sir?’ I said, this time eager to show my respect.

‘This is a non-denominational bar,’ said Fangio, ‘and I don’t want any trouble.’

‘I think there must be some misunderstanding,’ I said.

‘Some?’ said Fangio. ‘I think you will find that in this bar there is a very great deal of misunderstanding.’

‘Will I?’ I asked.

‘There’s just no telling,’ said Fangio. ‘But tell me this, while you are still here, do you think that if I were a woman, it would be a viable proposition for me to give birth to myself? When cloning is finally perfected, I could then self-reproduce. It would be the next best thing to immortality, don’t you think?’

‘You have me on that one,’ I said, ‘because I do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about.’

‘A likely story,’ said Fangio.

And I just shook my head.

‘Perhaps we have got off on the wrong foot,’ said Fangio.

‘Perhaps we have,’ I agreed.

‘So let me put it in a more straightforward way. Get out of my bar, Mr Doctor of Death, or I shall be forced to shoot you.’

‘It’s definitely a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘I am not a doctor of any sort.’

‘Oh, I hate it when that happens,’ said Fangio, and he tied up the neck of his army sock with a Gordian knot that he formed from a sinister shoelace. ‘There are always so many official forms to fill in after the shooting.’

‘I’m not a doctor,’ said I.

‘But you are dressed as a Swiss doctor of the Anabaptist persuasion. And that fails to satisfy upon so many levels.’

‘I thought this was a Jewish coat,’ I said.

‘A Jewish coat?’ And Fangio took to laughter. And with considerable gusto he took to it. He placed the now-knotted sock onto the bar counter, placed his ample hands upon his ample belly and laughed himself fit-to-go busting.

And I shook my head one more time. And then twice.

‘A Jewish coat,’ said Fangio, between great gales of gusto. ‘That’s a good’n, that is. Wait until I tell my wife. You don’t know a dame who might want to marry me, do you?’ And he laughed again.

‘I really don’t see what’s so funny,’ I said.

‘You Swiss,’ said Fangio, wiping big tears from his eyes. ‘You will be the death of me. And indeed of all of us,’ he added, ‘with your cuckoo clocks and chocolate and all that neutrality. How many borders do you have? No, don’t get me going on that.’ And he laughed a little more. Then stopped.

‘So what would you care to drink?’ he asked. The model of sobriety.

‘Well,’ I said, well flummoxed. ‘What would you recommend?’

‘Well,’ said the Fange. ‘Now you’re asking.’

‘Yes I am,’ I said. ‘I am.’

‘Which calls to mind a most illuminating and entertaining anecdote that was passed on to me the other day by one of those Jimbos who seem to be so popular in England nowadays. It concerns this fallen angel who is trying to get his car started and he-’

But Fangio didn’t get any further with the telling of his tale because the shatter-glass door now opened and in he walked. The one, the only, the man, the myth.

The Private Eye, Lazlo Woodbine.

It was he.

Applause.

He looked a little past his sell-by date.

But given the life he had led and the adventures he’d had, this was hardly surprising. But it was him, it definitely was.

There could be no mistaking those gimlet eyes, those chiselled cheekbones, the hammered hooter and that joineried jawline. And he wore the fedora and he wore the trench coat. And he looked like Lazlo Woodbine.

It was he.

‘Fange,’ said Lazlo Woodbine.

‘Laz,’ said Fangio.

‘A bottle of Bud and a hot pastrami on rye.’

‘A ploughman’s umbrella and a parsnip in a poetry.’

Lazlo looked at Fangio.

And Fange looked back at Laz.

And oh how they laughed.

Well, they did. Don’t ask me why, but they did. It was a talking the toot thing, I suppose. I had unconsciously engaged in it with Fangio a little earlier, but I did not as yet understand how it worked. The strict rules of the vernacular and the inflective. The subtleties of variant pronunciation. The coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.

Not to mention the connotive labels or the cross-referenced etymologies.

Which neither of them ever did.

‘So, would you care for a drink, sir?’ said Fangio to Laz.

‘A bottle of Bud?’ said Lazlo Woodbine, seating himself on a bar stool.

‘A bottle of Bud?’ And Fangio now took to the stroking of one of his many chins. ‘A bottle of Bud? I’ll get it in a minute, I’m sure. It rings a bell somewhere.’

‘You’re thinking of Quasimodo,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘He rings a bell somewhere – Paris, I think.’

‘Paris?’ said Fangio, selecting another chin for a stroking. ‘Now don’t get me going on Paris.’

‘Still that trouble with bicycles?’

‘Bicycles?’ said Fangio. ‘It’s Amsterdam for bicycles and Paris for the Orient Express.’

‘You can catch the Orient Express in London,’ said Laz. ‘But then you can catch almost anything in London.’

‘I once caught a tiger by the tail,’ said Fangio, ‘but that was in India. And let’s face it, I’ve never even been to India.’

‘Don’t get me going on India,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘Cambay, Chandrapur, Chikmagulur, Coonoor, Cuddalore, Cuttack-’

‘You sure know your Indian cities that begin with the letter C, buddy.’

‘Friend,’ said Lazlo Woodbine to Fangio, ‘in my business, knowing your Indian cities that begin with the letter C can mean the difference between a clean-cut curr in curlers at Crufts and dirty dogging in Dagenham.
[20]
If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’

And Fangio knew what he meant.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, and two eye-pairings turned as one to view me.

‘Who’s the Swiss Anabaptist abortionist?’ asked Lazlo Woodbine.

‘Abortionist?’ I said.

‘Doctor of Death,’ said Fangio. ‘By any other name. I speak as I find and you won’t find me speaking of raffia.’

‘He abhors raffia,’ Lazlo Woodbine explained. ‘And also Koya matting.’

‘Any form of matting,’ said Fangio. ‘Raffia, coir, logo, anti-slip, fitted, Milliken Obex – a revolutionary matting system unequalled in performance – rustic, rush or rag-rug.’

‘Buddy, you sure know your matting,’ said Lazlo.

‘Friend,’ said Fangio the barman, ‘in this business, knowing your matting can mean the difference between an uncovered linoleum floor and one that has a mat on it.’

There was a moment’s pause. Outside the sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance.

‘It’s not quite as funny when you do it as when I do it, is it?’ asked Lazlo.

‘Abortionist?’ I said once more.

‘We did that one,’ said Fangio.

‘Yes, I’m sure you did. But I’m sorry – you’re talking the toot, aren’t you? The now legendary toot that Lazlo Woodbine and Fangio the barman always talk. Especially when Laz is on a case.’

‘The Swiss,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘They’ll be the death of me. And indeed of us all, with their cuckoo clocks and chocolate bars and garden gnomes called Zurich.’

‘I did that bit,’ said Fange. ‘I mentioned Swiss neutrality, though.’

‘Don’t get me going on that.’ And Lazlo Woodbine doffed his fedora and wafted it round and about.

‘I’m really not Swiss,’ I told the both of them. ‘Really. Not.’

‘Ah,’ said Fange. And he tapped at his nose with a thumb like an unsliced pastrami. ‘You’re here undercover. I understand.’

‘And I’m not undercover. And I am certainly not an abortionist. And I’m not even sure what an Anabaptist is.’

‘Don’t get me going on that,’ said one or other of them, but I couldn’t tell which one.

‘It was me,’ said Fangio. ‘I have the deeper and more resonant voice. A natural baritone, I am.’

‘But not a natural blonde,’ said Lazlo Woodbine.

‘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?