Necrophenia (23 page)

‘And so why exactly do you want to employ me?’ I asked Elvis.

‘I want you to find my brother Keith, Mr Woodbine. If anyone can find him, you can.’

‘This is true,’ I said to Elvis. ‘So when did he escape?’

‘About twenty years ago.’

‘Twenty years? Haven’t you waited rather a long time to report him missing?’

‘I guess so, sir. But I guess I thought, like my daddy and my mummy thought, too, that he was dead. We thought that the Ministry of Serendipity men had changed their minds, taken him away and killed him. But he ain’t, sir. He ain’t dead.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked Elvis. ‘How do you know he isn’t dead?’

‘Because I saw a picture of him in the newspaper. He’s still alive.’

‘Let me get this clear,’ I said. ‘You recently saw his picture in the newspaper? Did it tell you where he was?’

‘Yes, sir, I have the address.’

‘Then he’s not really all that lost, is he? Why do you want me to find him if you already know where he is?’

‘Mr Woodbine, sir, this is my brother, Keith. He is at large in the world. He is the most evil man who ever lived, capable of channelling all the powers of Evil through him. He is the Homunculus.’

‘Yes, I see,’ I said.

‘I don’t think you do, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘I don’t want you just to find him.’

‘You don’t?’ I asked.

‘I don’t,’ said Elvis. ‘I want you to kill him.’

Now, to be honest, I was having some problems with this.

And I now felt suddenly sober.

It might well have been that I had drunk myself sober. I had heard of such a thing happening, but never actually experienced it myself. I always fell asleep. But I was definitely feeling rather sober now and it was probably down to all that the King of rock ’n’ roll had just told me.

And how I was having some problems with it.

With quite a lot of it, actually.

Such as, well, that was an awful lot of deeply personal secret stuff that Elvis had just spilled out, to a complete stranger. Even if he did believe that the complete stranger was Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

And there was a rather big gaping hole in the timeline going on here.

If Elvis was born in nineteen forty-five rather than nineteen thirty-five, as I had otherwise been led to believe, then he would only have been nine years old when he went into Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios to record ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’. And that didn’t seem all that likely.

And then there was the matter of him seeing a picture of his brother, Keith, in a newspaper. Surely this would be his twin brother. So whatever Keith was pictured doing, folk would have thought it was Elvis doing it. Which might well have had Colonel Tom Parker asking questions. These and other problems I was finding with this.

Ah, yes, and one in particular.

And this being that I was Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

And not Lazlo Woodbine, Assassin.

‘Are you okay, sir?’ asked Elvis. ‘You look kinda strange. Do you want that I should sing a song or something? I always do that in my movies when folk get that strange look on their faces.’

I stared hard at Elvis and said, ‘Do you know any Sumerian Kynges songs?’

And he might very well have said to me, ‘Why yes, sir, they’re my favourite band.’ But happily he didn’t. Instead he just shook his head, showering me with a fine film of olive essence. ‘There’s only one King,’ said Elvis. ‘And that one and only King is me.’

‘God bless you, Elvis Presley,’ said I.

‘Well, thank you very much, sir,’ said he.

‘And so then,’ I now said, ‘I do have many questions that I need to ask you, because things do not tie up as neatly as they might. But I do have to say to you that I am not an assassin.’

‘But the villain always dies, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘At the end of every one of your cases. In the final rooftop confrontation. They take the big, long fall to ultimate oblivion. They always do. And that’s why I came to you. Most other detectives bring the criminal to justice by taking him to stand trial. But the criminal always dies when you take on the case.’

‘Ah,’ I said. And, ‘I see.’

‘You do, sir, yes.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right.’

‘I have the newspaper-cutting here, sir,’ said Elvis, ‘so you can recognise my brother, Keith.’

‘I think I’d know him if I saw him,’ I told Elvis.

‘How, sir?’ he asked me. ‘Cos you ain’t ever met him.’

‘Right,’ I said once more. But nevertheless Elvis pulled from the pocket of his jumpsuit (because he was wearing a jumpsuit – white, rhinestoned, big-golden-belted, bell-bottomed-trousered) a rather crumpled-up newspaper-cutting. And he flattened out the creases in this with his hands and patted it down on the bar top.

And I viewed the photograph before me.

And then I fell back in surprise.

Although, fair doos, it should not really have been a surprise, should it? Because I am sure, fair reader, that you knew who that picture was of.

A rather stumpy-looking fellow, who resembled an amalgamation of Dickens’ Mr Pickwick, a shaven-headed Shirley Temple and bad old buck-toothed Caligula of Rome.

Papa Crossbar. That’s right.

“‘Keith Crossbar”,’ I read aloud from the text beneath the photograph. ‘ “New York entrepreneur night-club owner to open brand-new venue – Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery Two. ‘It is a dream come true for me,’ said the colourful man about town, ‘combining my favourite hobbies – clubbing, cycling, cooking and the Black Arts-’ ” ’ And there was more, but I didn’t bother to read it.

And I weighed up the pros and the cons of the matter. It was Papa Crossbar who had dispatched Lazlo Woodbine into the great beyond. And it was Papa Crossbar who was threatening to dispatch everyone on Earth into the great beyond. So killing Papa Crossbar would be at the top of the list of anyone’s priorities really. It was right there at the top of mine.

But, and this was a big but, I didn’t really want to kill anyone. And I was determined to stick with the Tyler Technique. Because the Tyler Technique would keep me out of danger.

But – and the ideas were now spinning around inside my sober head – but perhaps I could call upon the services of my brother Andy to do the actual assassination. He had dispatched the Zeitgeist without so much as a second thought, so he might well go for it. And he wouldn’t need to take a share of the very large fee I intended to extract from Elvis. He’d probably do it just for the buzz and for a chance to wear the real Lazlo Woodbine’s trench coat. Yes, the ideas were certainly spinning around, so I ordered further drinks and Fangio, who had remained throughout my conversation with Elvis, stumped off to prepare them.

‘All right,’ I said to Elvis. ‘I will take on your case. But as you are well aware, your brother Keith is a very powerful being. I have already met him and it will be no easy matter to catch him unawares and assassinate him-’ (I couldn’t really believe I was actually saying such things and saying such things to Elvis. But as I was, I continued) ‘-so it will be a very expensive case and I will need some money up front.’

And Elvis now produced an envelope from another jumpsuit pocket.

And he handed me this envelope, and I, in turn, tore it open.

And lo, there was a cheque for ten thousand dollars.

And lo, this cheque found favour in my eyes and brought joy unto my heart. And I was thankful, withal. Blessings unto thee, oh Elvis Presley.

‘Many thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s the first couple of days covered, then.’

Elvis rubbed his hands together. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said he. ‘Shall we head for the alleyway now? Or do you want to wait around for the dame-that-does-you-wrong to come in here and bop you on the head?’

‘Ah,’ I said to Elvis. ‘We’re not doing it like that any more. That was the old format. That’s old-fashioned. Now we have a brand-new nineteen-seventies-style format. It’s a more Zen kind of thing. It’s not quite as hands-on as the old format, it’s-’

And I looked up at Elvis and the blankness on his face.

‘Never mind,’ I told him. ‘I will be doing it my way. You have nothing to worry about. You can go back to your rehearsals. You want to be your best for Begrem.’

‘But, sir,’ said Elvis, ‘I took a week’s vacation so I could help you out. And I brought this.’

And wouldn’t you know it, he had another pocket in his jumpsuit, an inner pocket this time, and from this pocket he produced a pistol. And it was a very big pistol.

‘This is a World War Two Colt Forty-Five, just like the one I gave to President Nixon in the Oval Office.’

‘Put it away!’ I told him. And Elvis tucked it away.

‘You still carry the trusty Smith & Wesson?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But neither of us will be involving ourselves with guns at the present.’

And Elvis gave me another blank look.

And Fangio arrived with our drinks.

‘Two Jamaican Longboats,’ said Fangio.

‘Jamaican Longboats are Wimpy Bar ice-cream desserts,’ I told him. ‘One scoop each of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, topped with glacé cherries.’

‘Arr harr-harr! Correct,’ cried the fat boy. ‘Then that makes us even. Do you want to go for a double-or-quits on the next ones?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘And bring us some alcohol. We don’t want these ice-cream desserts.’

‘I do,’ said Elvis. Although it was difficult to make out his words as he was already tucking into both Jamaican Longboats.

Fangio left our company and later returned to it in a company of his own. A company of two Avast-Behinds. ‘You are never going to figure out what I’ve put in these,’ said Fangio.

‘I’ll just bet that I won’t,’ I said.

‘You’re on.’

And we raised the stakes and Fangio went off, chuckling.

I fished a napkin from the chromium-plated napkin dispenser that stood upon the bar top and handed it to Elvis. ‘You might need this,’ I told him. ‘You have a bit of ice cream… on your… well, everywhere, really.’

Elvis looked somewhat baffled.

‘You don’t actually do wiping yourself, do you?’ I asked him.

‘Would you?’ asked Elvis. ‘If you were me?’

And I supposed I would not.

And so Elvis and I drank on into the night. And I ordered further drinks and failed to identify their ingredients. And at the end of the night’s drinking, Fangio handed over the deeds to his bar and told me that I had the luck of a Latvian.

And so I didn’t have to stagger back to my unelectrified office. I was able instead to pass out on the floor of my new bar.

Which I did, with a smile on my face. Because I had only been Lazlo Woodbine for about twelve hours. And already I was chumming it up with Elvis. Had become ten thousand dollars richer than the nothing I was previously worth. And was the very proud owner of Fangio’s Bar.

It was clear that Fate had finally decided to smile upon me, and that my fortunes were already changing.

And so I kipped down with a grin on my chops.

And ne’er a care for the future.

And do you know, I sometimes think back to that night in Fangio’s Bar as being one of the happiest moments of my life. Really. Truly. And for a man such as myself, who has done so many things, that might sound strange. I had played Hyde Park in front of a quarter of a million people. And made love to some of the most beautiful women in the world. Well, the former, anyway. But that night, in Fangio’s Bar, I was happy. Which, I suppose, is why I remember it so well. Because I was never happy again.

I think it may be that prior to that night in Fangio’s Bar, my life never had a focus. I might have thought it did and that I had a purpose, but it wasn’t true. And I was manipulated. And my life was orchestrated. But now, for the first time, I acquired that focus, that purpose, that sense of direction. I knew what I was and what I had to do. And I will write more of such things, but not now.

Because something else happened that night. Something that shocked me and set my focus, my purpose, my sense of direction all to the same grim goal.

To destroy the being that called itself Keith Crossbar.

It happened to me while I slept, but it wasn’t a dream. I had a vision. The detail was so precise. And I watched every bit of it as if I was watching a television show.

I had a vision of Death that night as I lay upon the floor of Fangio’s Bar. Or Tyler’s Bar, as it might soon be renamed.

And in this vision I learned the identity of Death.

And Death was Keith Crossbar, brother of Elvis and evil Homunculus.

And I awoke in a sweat.

Which is why I remember the night before with such fondness. Because in the days that followed, things got very grim indeed.

Elvis was asleep on the counter, with his sweetly smelling head resting upon the chromium-plated napkin dispenser. I rose from the floor, clicked my limbs, did stretchings, clutchings at my skull, searchings and findings of my fedora and, at length, quiet stumblings towards the bar counter.

Where I beheld the other King of Kings.

The King of rock ’n’ roll.

True, it was a fair old time since Elvis had actually done any real rock ’n’ roll and he had long ago sacked Scotty Moore and the other members of his original backing band. But he was the King. Elvis was a one-off.

Except, of course, I had now learned that he was anything but. He was one of a three-off. But a good one. And he lay there, sleeping like the King he was. And yes, I confess it, I had a little sniff.

And Elvis smelled sweetly even there.

Captain Lynch had once told me about the odour of sanctity, which issues from the incorruptible bodies of the saints. He had personally sniffed Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, he told me, and could confirm the smell. She smelled of lilacs.

I had a good old sniff at Elvis. And yes, he smelled of lilacs, too. And my sniffing awoke the King of rock ’n’ roll and I had to back off in a hurry.

Elvis roused himself and yawned and saw me and said, ‘Hey, Laz, sir. Have you been awake all night, guarding me?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Yes, I have. I will add that to the bill, if you don’t mind.’

‘Nope,’ went Elvis, and he straightened his hair. ‘I was having me a weird old dream there. And my brother was there, and he was Death, and-’

I said, ‘Really?’ and yawned a bit myself.

‘Do you think it might mean something?’ Elvis asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it. You leave the thinking to me.’ And Elvis made the face of relief. ‘I love it when folks say that to me,’ he said. ‘Colonel Tom, or the movie director, or some Jimbo that the manager of Caesar’s Palace has had sent up to my room.’

I opened my mouth, but then closed it again. We wouldn’t go into that.

‘I could do breakfast,’ said Elvis. ‘Peanut butter and banana-stuffed French toast with cinnamon butter and maple-beer syrup, washed down with strawberry shasta.’

‘Sounds delightful,’ I said. ‘Do you think you could get it delivered? ’

‘Am I Elvis?’ said Elvis.

And I agreed that he was.

And so Elvis made a phone call from the phone that Fangio had denied all knowledge of to Mama Cass. Or perhaps he’d had it installed later, in case any other rock icons needed to use it. Elvis, for instance.
[24]

And soon as you like, Elvis and I were chowing down upon peanut butter and banana-stuffed French toast with all the trimmings and the strawberry shastas.

And I rather enjoyed mine. And Elvis clearly enjoyed his. Because he telephoned for further helpings. And then Fangio came down in his dressing gown and Elvis made another call for even more breakfast.

‘I don’t normally do my own phone calls, you understand, sir,’ he said to me, ‘but as this is a special occasion.’

‘And it is for me, too,’ I said. And it was – breakfast with Elvis. But I wasn’t happy any more. I just had too many things all gnawing away at my mind.

‘So,’ said Elvis, when finally done with breakfast, ‘are we going to my brother’s night club now? So you can lure him onto the roof and send him on the long and final journey down?’

‘Ar-harr,’ went Fangio. ‘Can I come too and watch that?’

‘Ah, no,’ I said.

‘Do you mean “Ah-harr, no”?’ asked Fangio.

But I just shook my head.

‘So what is your plan, Mr Woodbine?’ asked Elvis.

‘Well,’ I said. And I made a face suggestive of deep thinking. ‘This is not something that can be rushed into. It will be necessary to set up a surveillance network. Plot your brother’s every move. Work out graphs and pie charts. Get sample opinions from the general public. Do market research into key areas which may need re-examination to determine prime targets. Define-’

‘Why are you reading from the copy of Advertising Executive Today magazine on the bar counter?’ asked Fangio.

‘Shut up,’ I said to him.

‘Oooh,’ went Fangio. And he mimed the holding up of a handbag.

‘We can’t just go in all guns blasting,’ I said to Elvis.

‘Why not?’ asked the King of rock ’n’ roll.

‘Because, for one thing, I am not certain whether it can be proved that your brother has actually broken any laws. I know I’ve seen him do-’ And I cut myself short. I didn’t want to mention what had happened to Laz to Fangio. But regardless, I couldn’t prove anything. Not, I agree, that it mattered, as he was going to have to be killed. I just didn’t really want to be around when the actual killing was done.

‘That’s no reason not to shoot him,’ said Fangio. ‘It sounds like he’s a wrong’n. That’s good enough for me.’

‘So do you want to do the actual shooting?’

Fangio stuffed peanut buttery stuff into his face. ‘Not as such,’ he said. ‘But if you want him throwing out of this bar, then I’m your man.’

‘I will bear that in mind.’

‘Why doesn’t Elvis shoot him?’ asked Fangio. ‘It’s a family affair, after all. As Sly Stone used to say when he drank in here. Before I threw him out.’

‘Uh uh,’ said Elvis. ‘I can’t kill one of my own, no matter how evil nor intent on the extermination of all human life they may be.’

‘I’ll just make a note of that,’ said Fangio. ‘Not that anyone I tell will ever believe you said it.’

‘Mr Woodbine must do it,’ said Elvis, ‘because this will be Mr Woodbine’s greatest ever case. The one everyone will remember him for. And be forever in his debt-’

‘Hold it there while I get a pencil,’ said Fangio.

But Elvis continued, ‘This case will be the case for Lazlo Woodbine. And who but Lazlo Woodbine could solve this case? My evil brother must be tracked to his secret lair and destroyed. And the world will be saved and all the world will honour Lazlo Woodbine for saving it.’

‘Got it,’ said Fangio, raising a pencil. ‘One more time, if you will.’

But Elvis shook his head. ‘Mr Woodbine will deal with this,’ he said. ‘And he was right – I must return to Vegas and prepare for my tour. I will leave this case in the safe hands of Lazlo Woodbine.’

And he reached out a hand to me and I shook it.

And Fangio stuck his out for a shake, but Elvis did not shake his.

And then Elvis said, ‘I have your address, Mr Woodbine. I’ll have further money sent on. And you know my address – keep me informed, if you will. And thank you, sir. The whole world will thank you when this is done. But I can thank you now.’

And then he sort of bowed. And did that thing where he whirls his arm about and goes down on one knee. And he produced from another pocket a silk scarf, and this he hung about my neck. And then he swiddled from the bar. My bar. Like that.

Just like that.

Elvis had left the building.

And I looked at Fange.

And Fangio looked at me.

And we shared a moment. An Elvis moment. And it was a special one, too.

‘Who was that masked man?’ asked Fangio.

‘Why, don’t you know?’ I said. ‘That was the Lone Ranger.’

And then we both laughed and shared another moment. And I came almost close to being happy, but not quite.

‘So what would your plan be now, Laz?’ asked Fangio. ‘If you are no longer going for the four-location format, how do you intend to deal with this Case of Cases, this Case to End All Cases, this Ultimate Case, this Case Beyond-’

‘Shut up!’ I said to Fangio. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘Do you wish to indulge in further pirate repartee? Or do some more guessing-the-ingredients-of-cocktails humour? Or should we simply talk the toot and see what comes to pass?’

‘It’s a Woodbine format thing, talking the toot,’ I said.

‘I’ll miss that, then,’ said Fangio, sadly.

‘Oh, don’t worry, you’ll have plenty to think about, training for your new career.’

‘My what?’ asked Fangio. ‘I mean ah-harr-harr-harr. My what?’

‘New career,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget, I own this bar now, so you can consider yourself sacked. And I’ll take over behind the bar. Where I can think about this case in peace. Dawn of a new era and dawn of a new format, eh? Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye/Barman. Hold on, it’s coming to me – Lazlo Woodbine, Private Barlord. A pint, a quip and another case solved.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking,’ said Fangio.

‘I am,’ said I. ‘But not entirely. I wish to employ my newly developed Tyler Technique to this case. Which, I agree, will be the Biggest Case That Ever There Was. It would appear to be my fate to deal with this evil being that is the brother of Elvis. So, Fange, today will be the dawning of a new era in crime detection. And it will all begin here. What is today’s date, by the way?’

‘The sixteenth of August, nineteen seventy-seven,’ said Fangio.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘And so this is the date that people will always remember. As the day I took on the Ultimate Case.’

And yes, folk would remember that date.

And I’m sure you know why.