Necrophenia (21 page)

And I ran back through the streets of New York, to the Pentecost Hotel.

And I felt sick to my very soul and took myself off to the bar therein.

Now, a hotel bar is a hotel bar and they all have points for them and points against. This one had mostly points for. It was not Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery and it did not have Fangio for a barman.

I ordered a Kentucky bourbon, double, on the rocks. And I sat at the bar and I hung my head, feeling very bad indeed.

It occurred to me that it would probably be for the best if I didn’t mention to Andy that I had met Lazlo Woodbine, what with Andy being such a big fan of the great detective and everything. He might just be a bit jealous and perhaps ask me why I hadn’t taken him with me when I went to visit Laz. And then the conversation might turn to what exactly went on when I did meet Laz. And then I might have to explain, just in passing, that Lazlo Woodbine had passed, so to speak. And that, perhaps, I was partially to blame for this passing. And it might all get rather messy and embarrassing and there might be some unpleasantness. And Andy might point accusing fingers at me and maybe knot these into fists and throw them likewise in my direction.

So it would probably be better just to say nothing.

But I still felt sick at heart.

It was my fault. I had got Laz into that fatal situation. I was to blame.

And as to Papa Crossbar! Well! So he was the super-villain. A black-magic voodoo evildoer. And it was he, Papa Crossbar, whose intention it was to destroy every vestige of life on this planet and reduce the Earth to a Necrosphere.

Scary stuff indeed it all was and I knew it all to be true.

And Papa Crossbar knew that I knew and so it was odds-on favourite that he would be sending some of his awful minions to butcher me horribly before I passed my information on.

I did nervous lookings around to the right and the left of me. Were any of his awful minions already here? He could read my mind, which was probably why he had let me run – for a bit of sport, because he knew where I was staying. The clientele looked normal enough. But, as I have already mentioned, I have never been able to define exactly what normal might be. And so the apparent normality of these folk, these chaps in their business suits and ladies in sweatsuits and pearls, might well belie the awfulness of what they really were.

I became now not only sick to my soul but frightened.

I would have to tell someone. Mr Ishmael, that was who I must tell. And he must help me. It was his duty to help me. After all, it was he who had got me into this mess in the first place. In fact, it was all his fault that I was involved in it. And so it followed that it was really his fault that Lazlo Woodbine had come to such a terrible end. But this was really absolutely no consolation whatsoever, so I sat and sulked and fretted and feared and gulped away at my bourbon.

And then the barman sauntered along to me and pushed the bar bill that I had signed for my double Kentucky bourbon on ice (although the ice was complimentary) under my drooping nose. ‘This is no good,’ he told me. ‘You’ll have to pay with cash.’

‘Of course it’s good,’ I told him in reply. ‘That’s my room number. Stick it on my bill.’

‘Sir does not have a bill to stick it on, sir. Because sir is not a resident at this hotel.’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ I said. ‘I’m booked in with the rest of The Sumerian Kynges. We’re a really famous rock ’n’ roll band. You must have heard of us.’

‘Indeed I have, sir,’ said the barman, adopting that obsequious tone that oh-so-easily becomes sarcasm. ‘In fact, I have two of The Sumerian Kynges’ albums, one of them signed by Andy, the lead singer.’

‘You what?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I am talking about The Sumerian Kynges, sir. I am a big fan. But they are not staying at this hotel and neither it seems are you. Now, do you wish to pay for your drink, or should I call for the services of the doorman? He is a master of Dimac, I understand, and although he only uses his vicious martial skills in self-defence, it is remarkable how much damage he does to folk whom he clearly believes, although perhaps misguidedly, are trying to attack him.’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ I said. ‘I don’t want any trouble. I am booked into this hotel. And I am one of The Sumerian Kynges. And all of us are booked in here. But we haven’t any albums out yet.’

‘Sir would appear to be wrong on all counts there,’ said the barman. And he reached down beneath the counter top.

Fearing the arrival of a knobkerrie, I took a cautionary step back. But no such cudgel was brought to light, rather a long-playing record in a glossy twelve-inch sleeve. ‘Wallah,’ went the barman. ‘Doubt this if you will.’ He held out this album to me and I stepped up and took it from his hands.

The Sumerian Kynges ~ CHEESEMANIA ~

That’s what it said on the album cover, all in psychedelic writing in the style of Rick Griffin. And there was a picture of The Sumerian Kynges, wearing kaftans and looking suitably trippy. There was Andy and there was Rob and there was Neil and there was Toby.

I flipped the album over. It was a Greatest Hits album.

‘The Smell in the Gents’. ‘The Land of the Western God’. ‘The ‘Two By One Song’, not to mention ‘Your Soul Will Burn’.

Which I did not.

But I gawped at that album cover. Gawped at it and felt a tad more sick. Well, more than a tad, an avalanche of pukiness. It had to be a hoax of some kind, surely. We hadn’t even had a single single out. How could there be Greatest Hits album? It was a trick, wasn’t it?

I pulled out the vinyl record inside. It certainly looked real enough, though.

‘Careful with your fingers on that,’ said the barman. ‘I know there’s millions of them about, but that one is mine.’

‘Millions?’ I said, in a breathless, whispery voice. And I peered closely at that record. And I read the date upon it: 1973.

‘It’s a fake,’ I cried. ‘Nineteen seventy-three! It’s a fake.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said the barman. ‘It came out in nineteen seventy-three. I know it’s four years old, but it’s mine and it’s signed, so hand it back here.’

‘Four years old?’ I said. ‘Nineteen seventy-seven?’ I said.

‘Do you know what?’ said the barman. ‘The Sumerian Kynges did stay in this hotel. Way back in nineteen sixty-nine, it was, before my time. That must have been about the time New York was going for the Jewish look and folk were dressing the way you’re dressed now.’

I sank down onto my bar stool. But missed my bar stool and fell down onto the floor.

‘You’re drunk,’ cried the barman. ‘I’m calling the doorman. He’ll make it look like self-defence.’

‘No,’ I blubbered and I got to my knees. ‘Something is very wrong. It can’t be nineteen seventy-seven. It was only nineteen sixty-nine this very morning. The Sumerian Kynges were leaving tomorrow to play Woodstock.’

‘I understand they were brilliant at Woodstock,’ said the barman, leaning over the bar counter to further enjoy, it appeared, the spectacle of me on my knees on the floor. ‘I wasn’t there myself. Too young. And The Kynges don’t appear in the movie of the festival. Contractual differences, apparently. Which is why The Beatles and Bob Dylan, who also played there, aren’t in the movie.’

‘What?’ I went. ‘What? What? What?’ It couldn’t be true, could it? Nearly nine years had passed. The Sumerian Kynges had become world famous without me and had a Greatest Hits album out. Was I dreaming this? And if not, how could it have happened?

I climbed giddily to my feet. ‘I need another drink,’ I told the barman. ‘And I will pay in cash.’

‘Happy to serve you, sir.’

I paid in cash and happily I had enough. I quite expected the barman to tell me that my money was out of date and thus no good, but he didn’t. Apparently American dollars have remained the same for the last one hundred years. Apparently so that if you do commit a bank robbery and get caught and sent to jail, but manage to avoid giving back any of the money, it will be waiting for you wherever you buried it, ready for use when you get out of prison. And not be out of date. It is something to do with the American Dream, Democracy and Freemasons running the world. Or something.

So the barman accepted my money.

And I tucked into my bourbon.

‘Has the mobile phone been invented yet?’ I asked the barman. ‘Or the jet-pack?’

The barman shook his head sadly. ‘Shall I call for the doorman?’ he asked.

And I shook my head. Sadly. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will be all right. I won’t cause any trouble. Something very weird has happened to me. I must have lost my memory or something. Perhaps I had an accident.’

The barman eyed me, queerly. ‘Are you telling me,’ he asked, ‘that the last memory you have is of nineteen sixty-nine?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It seems so. One minute it’s nineteen sixty-nine and I am over on Twenty-Seventh Street. Then I run back here and it’s nineteen seventy-seven. How weird is that?’

‘Most weird,’ and the barman nodded. ‘Twenty-Seventh Street. That used to be the Detective Quarter, didn’t it?’

‘Used to be?’ I shrugged.

‘Nice shrugging,’ the barman observed. ‘Did you know that the Shrugger once got drunk in this bar?’

‘I just bet he did,’ I said. ‘I was with The Sumerian Kynges, you know, really I was. And we were in New York with The Flange Collective.’

‘I’ve read about that – a sort of freak show, wasn’t it?’

‘Something like that, yes. I wonder whatever became of it.’

‘It closed this very year. The Flange, that was the guy who ran it, retired to Brentford in England to pursue a sacred quest of his – to create The Lounge Room of Christ, to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus.’

‘That is, perhaps, a little bit more than I can take in at the moment. Although I do think he might have talked about that. Although it’s getting a bit hazy now. But then, I suppose it was over eight years ago.’

The barman went off to serve some normal people. I picked up a copy of American Hero Today magazine from the bar top and gave its cover a good looking over. It was the March edition for nineteen seventy-seven. I gulped down some more Kentucky bourbon and made a mournful face. What was I going to do now? Where was I going to go? I supposed I could assume that Papa Crossbar wasn’t going to have me killed. But, I supposed also, that it was he who had done this to me somehow. Through voodoo? I didn’t know, but somehow. But perhaps I was free of him. Because what was I going to do, expose him? Tell everyone what I knew about him?

What, a mad boy with a defective memory? The more I thought about this, the more it all fell into place. In a weird and twisted fashion.

And I wondered, and I feared, too, just what had been happening during these missing years. Was most of the world now dead? How far had the bad things gone? I rubbed my hands at my temples. If I wasn’t careful, I might soon become a truly mad boy.

And mad boy? Had I aged? That was an interesting one. I took myself off to the toilet, which hadn’t really changed much. But for the bowl of flowers and the nail brushes. I examined myself in the mirror. I hadn’t changed at all. Which meant that although nearly nine years had passed for the rest of the world, they had not done so for me.

So what did that make me? Something special? Someone special? I liked the idea of that. Although I suppose I had always considered myself to be someone special. So this was confirmation, really, wasn’t it? In fact, perhaps God had done this, and not Papa Crossbar. I liked the idea of that.

And I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. ‘I am really, truly messed up here,’ I told it. ‘My thinking is all out of kilter. I’m lost and alone and falling to pieces.’ And I gazed some more at my reflection. But my reflection did not have anything to say on the matter, so I returned to the bar.

The barman was awaiting my return.

‘That’s him,’ he said to the fellow standing beside him. A burly, useful-looking fellow dressed in a doorman’s livery.

‘I don’t want any trouble,’ I said. ‘If you want me to go, I’ll go.’

‘I don’t want you to go,’ said the useful-looking one. ‘I have a message for you.’

‘You do?’ I said, reseating myself. ‘Do you think you might pass it to me, along with the double bourbon on the rocks that you have most generously purchased for me?’

‘That, I think, can be done.’ The useful one nodded to the barman, who returned to his place behind the bar and did the necessary business.

‘I’ll have the same,’ said the useful one. And the same was also dispensed.

My drink was pushed in my direction and I gratefully accepted it.

‘Drink up,’ said the fellow, and I did so. ‘Now then,’ said the fellow. ‘The message.’

And I said, ‘Yes, go on please, the message?’

‘Your name is?’ asked the fellow.

‘Tyler,’ I told him, and he nodded.

‘Tyler, yes, it is you. He said that one day you would return here and that you would probably be rather confused. And that I was to give you this.’ And he withdrew from an inner jacket pocket a very dog-eared envelope. ‘I’ve carried it with me since nineteen sixty-nine. He said you’d come back sooner or later and now you have.’

‘Who said I’d come back?’ I asked.

‘Mr Ishmael,’ said the fellow. ‘Oh, and he said that the future of humanity rested upon you receiving this letter. And that I wasn’t ever to open it, just wait until you turned up and give it to you.’

I looked this fellow up and down. ‘And he told you that, and you have had the letter in your possession for all these years and never opened it to see what was inside?’

The fellow nodded. ‘That is so.’

‘And you really never opened it?’

‘No,’ said the fellow. ‘Never, ever, I swear.’

‘But why?’

The fellow made the face of fear. ‘Have you ever met Mr Ishmael?’ he asked.

I took the envelope from him and he sighed. Deeply. Very deeply, he sighed. And then he made a joyful face and shouted, ‘I am free! I am free!’ And he ran from the hotel bar. Somewhat madly.

Leaving his drink. To which I helped myself.

‘I shouldn’t let you steal his drink,’ said the barman, ‘but I will turn a blind eye to it if you let me see the contents of that letter. That doorman has sat on that letter for so long, like a lady hawk on a nest. It’s nearly driven him insane. But he wouldn’t open it. He’d been told not to and he did what he was told. Have you ever met this Mr Ishmael character?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’

‘So open up the letter, let’s have a look.’

I glanced up at the barman. ‘If you will stand me drinks in this bar until I want no more, I will.’

‘It’s a done deal.’ The barman stuck out his hand for a shake and I shook it.

‘Then let’s have a look inside,’ I said. And I opened the envelope. There was a sheet of paper inside, good quality vellum. And a message, handwritten, upon it.

Dear Tyler (it read)

If you are reading this, then it means that you survived your encounter with Papa Crossbar. And if this is the case, then it means that I chose wisely when I chose you. I have orchestrated your life since you were a child, and for one purpose only: that together we may thwart the plans of the Evil One. You and I, together. Do not return to England. Feel free to call your family and tell them that you are alive, but do not return to England. Your future lies here. There is much that I will explain to you, but not yet. You will not know at this moment what you should do next. So have a drink and give it a moment and it will come to you. As if delivered. As if it was meant to be. I enclose a one-hundred-dollar bill. Use it unwisely.

Yours sincerely

Mr Ishmael

And there was a one-hundred-dollar bill enclosed in the envelope.

The barman examined it. ‘It’s real,’ he said. ‘Real as real.’

‘And why wouldn’t it be?’ I asked him.

‘Well.’ The barman took up the letter again. Because he had been reading it with me. ‘This is pretty far-out stuff. You coming in here, thinking it’s nineteen sixty-nine. And this letter. I mean, “thwart the plans of the Evil One”. That’s not the kind of line you hear every day. Except, perhaps, down on East 2001 Street, the Science Fiction Quarter.’

‘There isn’t really a Science Fiction Quarter in New York, is there?’ I asked the barman.

‘No, not really,’ he said.

‘I thought not.’

‘It’s in San Francisco.’

‘And that’s not true either, is it?’

The barman shook his head. ‘Give me a break,’ he said. ‘I was just trying to big-up my part a bit. If you are some kind of Saviour of All Mankind, then just being in the same room as you and talking to you is probably going to be one of the most significant things in my life.’

‘You think?’

‘Of course. So when I get to tell my grandchildren that I met you and they say, “So what did you talk about, Grandpop?” I don’t want to have to reply, “Nothing. I just poured him drinks.” ’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘But as I, although I might at times have a high opinion of myself, do not believe that I will be a Saviour of All Mankind, I doubt very much whether it matters what you tell your grandchildren.’

‘Well, thank the Lord for that!’ said the barman.

‘What? ’

‘Well, I’m gay, aren’t I? And the thought that I was going to have to go straight and get married and have children, so that they could have children, so I could tell them that I met you, frankly had little appeal.’

‘So it’s all worked out okay for you,’ I said. ‘Would you care for a drink?’

‘I would.’

‘Then help yourself to the optics as all barmen do.’
[22]

The barman went off in a bit of a huff and I gulped on with my drinking. And I reread the letter and I did a lot of deep, deep thinking.

I really didn’t like that bit in the letter about Mr Ishmael having orchestrated my life since I was a child. But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that he had been orchestrating my life from the moment I met him at the Southcross Road School dance, and from then until now. Which I didn’t like one bit.

I drank my drinks, ordered more and paid with the hundred-dollar bill. And I counted my change when I recovered it, because I wasn’t that drunk yet. Although I was obviously sufficiently drunk as to have forgotten that the barman was supposed to be paying for all my drinks that evening, because I’d showed him the letter. And then I had a bit of an idea. I would phone home. Speak to my mum and dad and to Andy.

That was a good idea.

That was not a good idea.

I phoned and I did get through. And I spoke to my mum, who was up even though it was three a.m. English time, hoovering the carpets. But with the Hoover turned off, so as not to wake my daddy, who was no longer working as a roadie for The Stones but now as a roadie for T. Rex.

My mum got all tearful when she heard my voice. And then she told me that I was a very bad boy for not calling for so long and how had it been in prison?

‘Prison?’ I asked her.

‘Your brother Andy said that you had been taken off to prison for being naughty with children.’

‘What?’ I said. Considerably appalled.

‘Well, I was so worried that you were dead or something. And I kept on and on at Andy to find out the truth. And finally he said that you were okay, in perfect health and being well looked after in the psychiatric ward of Sing Sing.’

‘Oh splendid,’ I said. ‘Good old Andy.’

‘But I don’t see much of him now,’ said my mum. ‘He mostly lives on his island.’

‘His island?’

‘In the Caribbean. Near Haiti. Andy Isle it’s called, I think. He flies there on his private jet.’

And I groaned very loudly.

‘You should have stayed in the band,’ said my mum, ‘rather than getting yourself involved in illegal playground activities.’

‘Thank you, Mother,’ I said to her. ‘And goodbye.’ And I replaced the receiver and never spoke to my mother ever again.

And I returned to the bar.

‘Are you going to buy me a drink now?’ asked the barman.

‘Yes,’ I said and I sighed when I said it. ‘Why not? Go on. What will you have?’

The barman helped himself to the drink of his choice, took my money, cashed it up in the register and obligingly short-changed me.

I just sort of smiled at this and said, ‘Life.’

‘It’s a funny old world, ain’t it?’ said the barman.

‘Oh yes,’ I agreed. ‘I have no idea at all exactly what the purpose of my life has been up until now. Or even if it had a purpose. I am inclined to think that life is totally without purpose.’

‘And you would be correct in this thinking,’ the barman agreed.

‘You think?’

‘Of course. Life is a finite entity. Men live, men die, and whatever they leave behind – literature, music, art – will eventually die also. Nothing lasts for ever. All creations have a finite existence, therefore all creations are ultimately without purpose. Because once they have ceased to be, and the memory of them has also ceased to be, it is as if they have never existed. It is all without purpose. Well done for noticing it.’

‘Thanks a lot!’ I said.

‘My pleasure. So how do you intend to go about your mission of saving Mankind? You apparently being the Chosen One and everything.’

‘I have no idea at all,’ I said, downing further bourbon. ‘In fact, I have no idea what to do. It feels as if my whole life really has been orchestrated and I have absolutely no free will at all. I am just a pawn in some terrible game. Or, more precisely, a puppet, with someone pulling my strings.’

‘Nasty,’ said the barman. ‘That must be horrid. Perhaps you need something to take your mind off all this. A distraction. A hobby or something.’

I shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

‘You’re out of work at the moment, right?’

‘Absolutely. I was a musician. And also a private detective. But I’m out of work now and totally lost.’

‘A private detective, did you say?’

‘I did say that, yes.’

‘Well, that’s a coincidence. Perhaps this is what you need.’

The barman pulled that copy of American Heroes Today magazine towards him and leafed through its pages to the small ads. ‘This might be what you are looking for,’ he said.

He had circled the ad in question.

With a thick-nibbed pen.

The American Heritage Society is proud to announce that due to Government funding, the 27th Street Private Detective District is to be saved from redevelopment. A number of office placements have been made available to suitable candidates. One remains.

Lot 27. The office of Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye, missing, presumed dead. Comprising hatstand, carpet, ceiling fan, filing cabinet, desk, two chairs, venetian blind.

To be sold as a single lot. Including also the remaining wardrobe of Lazlo Woodbine, comprising trench coat, fedora, Oxfords, trusty Smith & Wesson, etc.

Eighty-five dollars.

‘How much change do you have from your one-hundred-dollar bill?’ asked the barman.

And I took out my change and counted it.

‘Eighty-five dollars,’ I said.