The Toyminator (4 page)

Jack looked at Eddie.

“Apart from the fact that they are a damned nuisance,” said Eddie. “This seems to have been a very well-planned mass-murder. All in a single night? All the work of a single killer? I wonder.”

“So what do you have in mind?”

“This,” said Eddie, and he pushed the cigar butt in Jack’s direction, “this is the only piece of solid evidence we have. It’s an expensive cigar. I wonder how many cigar stores in Toy City stock them? I wonder if they might recall a recent client?”

“Seems logical,” said Jack. “So how many cigar stores
are
there in Toy City?”

“Just the one,” said Eddie.

It had to be said that Jack was very pleased to be back behind the wheel of the late Bill Winkie’s splendid automobile. It was an Anders Faircloud, made from pressed tin the metallic blue of a butterfly’s wing. It was long and low and highly finned at the tail. It had pressed-tin wheels with breezy wide hubs and big rubber tyres.

Jack, who hadn’t driven for a while and who could in all honesty never have been described as a competent driver, nevertheless felt confident behind the wheel. Perhaps just a little overconfident. And as it happens, Jack was also now a little drunk. He and Eddie left Tinto’s Bar and Jack followed Eddie’s directions to Toy City’s only cigar store.

“Slow down!” shrieked Eddie, cowering back in his seat.

“I am slowed down,” said Jack. “Don’t make such a fuss.”

“Slow down, it’s right here. No, I didn’t say turn left!”

The car, now turned left upon two of its wheels, bumped up onto the pavement. Shoppers scattered and those with fists shook them. Jack did backings up.

“We’ll walk in future,” Eddie cowered. “I’d quite forgotten all this.”

“I know what I’m doing,” said Jack, reversing further into oncoming traffic.

“We’re all gonna die,” said Eddie.

Toy City’s only cigar store, Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar, was a suitably swank affair, with lots of polished wood and a window full of smoking ephemera – all those things that look so interesting that they really make you want to take up smoking.

Jack ground the polished wheel-hubs of Bill’s splendid automobile along the kerb before Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar and came to a juddering halt.

Eddie, who had seriously been considering converting to Mechanology and preparing to make his personal apologies to whom it might concern for not joining earlier, climbed down from the car, waddled around to Jack’s side and, as Jack climbed out, head-butted him in the nuts.

Jack doubled up in considerable pain.

“When I say ‘slower’, I mean it, you gormster!” said Eddie. “Now act like a professional.”

Jack crossed his legs and wiped tears from his eyes. “If you ever do that to me again,” he said, “I will tear off your head and empty you out.”

“Jack, you wouldn’t!”

“Right now I feel that I would.”

“Then I’m sorry,” said Eddie. “So if you are up to it, do you think that you could see your way to limping into Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar, doing your toff act and finding out who bought the cigar?”

“I’ll try,” said Jack. “Sometimes I really hate you.”

“Do you?” said Eddie.

“Not really,” said Jack.

Jack did a bit of trenchcoat adjustment and fedora tilting, pushed open the door and entered Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar. The door gave a merry
ting, ting
as he did so.

“You shouldn’t do that,” the bell told the door. “That’s my job.”

Jack stood in the doorway and breathed in Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar. And for those of you who have never been in a cigar store, that is just what you do: you breathe it in, is what you do.

There is a magic to cigars, a magic never found in cigarettes. Cigars are special; there are complicated procedures involved in the manufacture of them. There is certain paraphernalia necessary for the proper smoking of them, such as special end-cutters, and certain matches for the lighting thereof. And who amongst us does not know that the very best of all cigars are rolled upon the thigh of a dusky maiden? A cigar is more than just a smoke, as champagne is more than just a fizzy drink, or urolagnia is more than just something your girlfriend might not indulge you in, no matter how much money you’ve recently spent buying her that frock she so desperately wanted. And so on and so forth and suchlike.

Jack breathed in Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar.

“It really smells in here,” he said.

Eddie Bear made growling sounds.

“A fine smell, though,” said Jack.

Mahogany-framed glass cases displayed a multiplicity of wonderful cigars, cigars of all shapes and sizes and colours, too. There were pink cigars and blue ones and some in stripes and checks. And of their shapes, what could be said?

“These ones look like little pigs,” said Jack, and he pointed to them.

Eddie cocked his head on one side. “Do you see what
those ones
look like?”

“And how might I serve you, sir?”

Jack tipped up the brim of his fedora and sought out the owner of the voice: the proprietor of Smokey Joe’s Cigar Bar, Smokey Joe himself.

“Ah,” said Jack as he viewed Smokey Joe.

The proprietor smiled him a welcome.

Smokey Joe was a sight to behold

A sight to behold was he.

His head was a ball,

And his belly a barrel,

His ears were a thing of beaut-ee.

He was built out of brass,

And if questions were asked

Regarding the cut of his jib,

He’d reply with a laugh

And a free autograph,

Signed by a pen with a nib.

And he chugged a cigar

In his own cigar bar,

For bellows were built in his chest.

And he blew out smoke-rings

And numerous things,

Which had all his clients impressed.

“What exactly
was
that?” asked Eddie.

Jack shrugged. “Poetry?” he said.

“Odd,” said Eddie. “Now go for it, Jack.”

And so Jack went for it.

“My good fellow,” said Jack, “are you the proprietor of this here establishment?”

“That I am, your lordship,” said the proprietor, sucking upon his cigar and blowing out a puff of smoke in the shape of a sheep. “Smokey Joe’s my name and I am the purveyor of the finest cigars in Toy City.”

“Well, be that as it may,” said Jack.

“It may well be because it is, your lordship.”

“Right,” said Jack. “Well, now we’ve established that, I require your assistance concerning a cigar.”

“Then you have certainly come to the right place, your lordship. If there is anything that needs knowing about cigars and isn’t known to myself, then I’ll be blessed as a nodding spaniel dog and out of the window with me and into the duck pond.”

“Quite so,” said Jack.

“And you can use my head for a tinker’s teapot and boil my boots in lard.”

“Most laudable,” said Jack.

“I’ll go further than that,” said Smokey Joe. “You can take my wedding tackle and –”

“I think you’ve made your point,” said Jack. “You know about cigars.”

“And pipes,” said Smokey Joe. “Although that’s only a hobby of mine. But every man should have a hobby.”

“Well, if they can’t get a girlfriend,” said Jack.

“You are the very personification of wisdom.”

“Well …”

Eddie gave Jack’s left knee a sound head-butting. “Get on with it,” he whispered.

“Cigars,” said Jack, to Smokey Joe. “Well, one cigar in particular.”

“Would it be the Golden Sunrise Corona?” asked Smokey Joe. “The veritable king of cigars, made from tobacco watered by unicorn’s wee-wee and rolled upon the thigh scales
[6]
of golden-haired mermaids?”

“No.” said Jack. “But you sell such cigars?”

“No,” said Smokey Joe, “but a proprietor must have his dreams. And speaking of dreams, last night I dreamed that I was a chicken.”

“A chicken?” said Jack.

“They worry me,” said Smokey Joe.

“They do?” said Jack. Eddie head-butted his left knee once more. “Well, I’m sure that’s very interesting,” said Jack, “but I have urgent business that will not wait. I need a straightforward answer to a simple question. Do you think you could furnish me with same?”

Smokey Joe nodded, puffed out a question-mark-shaped smoke cloud and said, “I’d be prepared to give it a try, but things are rarely as simple as they seem. Take those chickens, for example –”

“I am in a hurry,” said Jack. “I merely wish to know about a cigar.”

Smokey Joe let free a sigh of relief, which billowed considerable smoke. “Not chickens, then?” said he.

“No,” said Jack. “What is your problem with chickens?”

“The scale of them,” said Smokey Joe.

“Chickens don’t have scales,” said Jack. “Chickens have feathers.”

Smokey Joe fixed Jack with a troubling eye. “Beware the chickens,” said he. “If not now, then later. And somewhere else. I am Smokey Joe, the only cigar store proprietor in Toy City. I am one of a kind. I am special.”

Jack sighed somewhat at the word, but Smokey Joe continued.

“I have the special eye and I see trouble lying in wait ahead of you. Trouble that comes in the shape of a chicken.” Smokey Joe blew out a plume of cigar smoke, which momentarily took the shape of a chicken before fading into the air of what had now become a cigar store somewhat overladen with “atmosphere”.

Eddie Bear shuddered. “Just ask him, Jack,” he whispered, and fumbled the cigar butt from his trenchcoat pocket. Jack took the cigar butt and placed it before Smokey Joe on his glass countertop.

“This cigar,” said Jack, “did it come from this establishment?”

Smokey Joe leaned forward, brass cogs whirring, cigar smoke engulfing his head. He viewed the cigar butt and nodded. “One of mine,” he said. “A Turquoise Torpedo.”

“But it’s brown,” said Jack.

“But what’s in a name?” said Smokey Joe. “Or what’s not? It may be brown, but it tastes like turquoise.”

“And it is one of yours?”

“It is.”

“Then my question is this: do you recall selling any of these cigars recently?”

Smokey Joe nodded. “Of course I do. I recall the selling of every cigar, because in truth I don’t sell many.”

“And you sold one of these cigars recently?”

“I sold one hundred of these cigars yesterday evening.”

“One hundred,” said Jack. “That is an incredible number.”

“Really?” said Smokey Joe. “I always thought that the most incredible number must be two, because it is one more than just one, yet one less than any other number, no matter how great that number might be. And there must be an infinite number of numbers, mustn’t there be?”

“I’m sure there must,” said Jack. “But please tell me this: would it be possible for you to describe to me the individual who purchased those one hundred cigars from you yesterday?”

“Your lordship is surely mocking me,” said Smokey Joe, adding more smoke to his words.

“No, I’m not,” said Jack. “I’m well and truly not.”

“But your lordship surely knows who purchased those cigars.”

“No,” said Jack. “I well and truly don’t.”

“Of course you do,” said Smokey Joe.

“Of course I don’t,” said Jack.

“Do,” said Joe.

And, “Don’t,” said Jack.

And, “Do,” said Joe once more.

“Now listen,” said Jack, “I am not asking you a difficult question. Please will you tell me who purchased those cigars?”

“I will,” said Smokey Joe.

“Then do so,” said Jack.

“Then I will,” said Smokey Joe. And he did. “That bear with you,” he said.

“It wasn’t
me
.” And Eddie fell back in alarm. “It wasn’t me – I’m as innocent as.”

“It
was
you, you scoundrel.” And Smokey Joe huffed as he puffed. “I’d know the looks of you as I’d know the colour of moonlight, those mismatched eyes and your scruffy old paws.”

“It’s cinnamon plush,” Eddie protested. “I am an Anders Imperial.”

“Oh yes? Oh yes?” Smokey Joe did rockings and smoke came out of his ear holes. “You weren’t wearing that fedora when you came into this here establishment, but I’ll wager that under it there’s a bottle cap in your left ear.”

“That’s my special tag.” Eddie now cowered behind Jack’s legs. This was all a little much.

“Scoundrel and trickster,” puffed Smokey Joe, pointing an accusing cigar at this scoundrel and trickster.

“Now just stop this,” Jack said. “I feel certain that you have made some mistake.”

“Mistake?” said Smokey Joe and rolled his eyes, which seemed to smoke a little, too. “He took one hundred of my finest Turquoise Torpedoes and I demand proper payment.”

“I am confused,” said Jack. “You said that my associate here purchased these cigars from you.”

“With tomfoolery coin of the realm.”

“Still not fully understanding.” Jack gave his shoulders a shrug.

“Bogus coin, he paid me with. A high-denomination money note, in fact. I placed it into my cash register and moments after he left it went poof.”

“Poof?” said Jack, miming a kind of poof, as one might in such circumstances.

“Poof,” went Smokey Joe. “And never take up mime as a profession. The money note went poof in a poof of smoke and vanished away.”

“A poof of smoke?” said Jack, not troubling to mime such a thing.

“And of no smoke that I have ever seen and I’ve seen all but every kind.”

“I am most confused,” said Jack.

“And me also,” said Eddie. “And wrongly accused. Let’s be going now.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said Smokey Joe, and with the kind of ease that lent Jack the conviction that it was hardly the first time he had done such a thing, Smokey Joe drew out a pistol from beneath his counter and waggled it somewhat about.

“Now hold on,” said Jack. “There’s no need for that.”

“There’s every need,” said Smokey Joe. “You were thinking to depart.”

“Well, yes, we were.”

“And you cannot. We shall wait here together.”

“For what?” Jack enquired.

“The arrival of the constables, of course.”

“Ah,” said Jack. “And you expect their arrival imminently?”

“I do,” said Smokey Joe. “I pressed the secret button beneath my counter when you entered my store. It connects by a piece of knotted string to the alarm board at the police station.”

“Most unsporting,” said Eddie.

“Which is why I engaged you in a lot of time-wasting toot,” said Smokey Joe, “to give the police time to appear.”

“Then all that business about chickens?” Jack asked.

“That
wasn’t
toot. You should fear those chickens. I know whereof I speak.”

“You failed to mention that I should similarly fear the arrival of the constables.”

“I kept that to myself. Now just you stand still, or I will be forced to take the law into my own hands and shoot you myself.”

“For stealing one hundred cigars?” Jack threw up his hands. Smokey Joe cocked the pistol.

“Easy, please,” said Jack, his hands miming “easy” motions and miming them rather well. “I will pay you for the cigars. There’s no need to go involving the police.”

“But I never bought the cigars,” said Eddie. “It wasn’t me, Jack, honest.”

“I know it wasn’t, Eddie.”

“It was too,” said Smokey Joe. “And his soggy feet made puddles on my floor. I had to employ the services of a mop and bucket. And they don’t come cheap of an evening, I can tell you. They charged me double.”

“I’ll pay you whatever you want,” said Jack.

“With
what
?” whispered Eddie.

“I’ll write you an IOU,” Jack told Smokey Joe. “I’m a prince, you know.”

“Then why aren’t you wearing a crown?”

“Actually, I am,” said Jack. “It’s under my fedora.”

“It never is,” said Smokey Joe.

“It never is, is it?” said Eddie.

“In fact,” said Jack, “you can have the crown and all the jewels on it. Will that be payment enough?”

“It must be a very small crown to fit under that hat,” said Smokey Joe, cocking his head in suspicion.

“Would you mind doing that again?” asked Eddie.

“Why?” said Smokey Joe.

“Well, you did it rather well, and it’s not the sort of thing you see every day.”

Smokey Joe obligingly did it again.

“Even better the second time,” said Jack.

“Thanks,” said Smokey Joe.

“So, would you like to see the crown?”

“More than anything else I can presently imagine.”

“Right, then,” said Jack, and he swept off his hat with a flourish. It was a considerably flourish. A considerably hard and sweeping flourish. As flourishes went, this one was an award-winner. So hard and sweeping was this award-winning flourish that it knocked the pistol right out of Smokey Joe’s hand and sent it skidding across the store floor.

“Run!” shouted Jack to Eddie. And both of them ran.

Although they didn’t run far.

They ran to the door and through the doorway and then they ran no further. They would have dearly liked to, of course. They would dearly have loved to have run to Bill’s car and then driven away in it at speed. But they did not. They came to a standstill on the pavement and there they halted and there they raised their hands.

Because there to greet them outside the store were very many policemen. Some stood and some knelt. All of them pointed guns. They pointed guns as they stood or knelt and they laughed and grinned as they did so. For these were Toy City’s laughing policemen, though this was no laughing matter.

A very large and rotund policeman, a chief of policemen in fact, leaned upon the bonnet of Bill’s splendid automobile. He was all perished rubber and he was smoking a large cigar. It wasn’t a Turquoise Torpedo, of course, but an inferior brand, but he puffed upon it nonetheless and seemed to enjoy this puffing. Presently he tapped away ash and shortly after he spoke.

“Well, well, well,” said Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis, for it was none but himself. “Surely it is Eddie and Jack. Now what a surprise this is.”

The “shaking down” and the “cuffing up” were uncomfortable enough. The “flinging into the police van” lacked also for comfort, and the unnecessary “necessary restraint”, which involved numerous officers of the law either sitting or standing upon Jack and Eddie during the journey to the police station, lacked for absolutely any comfort whatsoever. In fact, the unnecessary “necessary restraint” was nothing less than painful. The “dragging out of the police van”, the “kicking towards the police cell” and the “final chucking into the cell” were actually a bit of a doddle compared to the unnecessary “necessary restraint”. But not a lot of fun.

“I can’t believe it,” Eddie said, at least now uncuffed and brushing police boot marks from his trenchcoat. “Wrongly accused and arrested. And this only our first day on the case.”

“My first and indeed my last,” said Jack.

“Now don’t you start, please.”

“Look at me,” said Jack. “They trod on me, they sat on me. That Officer Chortle even farted on me. And I could never abide the smell of burning rubber.”

“We’ll soon be out of here,” said Eddie. “As soon as my solicitor arrives.”

“
You
have a
solicitor
!”

“I’m entitled to have one. I know the law.”

“But do you actually
have
one?”

“Not as such,” said Eddie. “It’s always details, details with you.”

“And it’s always trouble with you.”

“You love it really.”

“I don’t.”

The face of the laughing policeman whose name was Officer Chortle, a name that made him special because it was printed across his back, grinned in through the little door grille.

“Comfortable, ladies?” he said.

“I’m innocent,” said Eddie. “Wrongly accused. And Jack’s innocent, too. He’s an innocent bystander.”

“Looks like a hardened crim’ to me,” chuckled Officer Chortle. “And a gormster.”

“How dare you,” said Jack. “I’m a prince.”

“Aren’t no princes,” laughed Officer Chortle. “That mad mayor we had did away with princes.”

Jack cast Eddie a “certain” look.

“And,” said Office Chortle, “who can forget Edict Number Four?”

“I can,” said Eddie. “What was it?”

“The one about curtailing police violence against suspects.”

“Ah, that one,” said Eddie. “How’s that going, by the way?”

Officer Chortle chuckled. Menacingly. “And when it comes to it,” he continued, “you look a lot like that mad mayor.”

“No I don’t,” said Eddie. “Not at all.”

Officer Chortle squinted at Eddie. “No, perhaps not.” He sniggered. “The mad mayor had matching eyes and those really creepy hands.”

“They
were not
creepy,” said Eddie. “And neither was the mayor mad.”

“Not mad?” Officer Chortle fairly cracked himself up over this. “Not mad? Well, he wasn’t exactly cheerful when the mob tarred and feathered him.”

Eddie shuddered at the recollection. “Has my solicitor arrived?” he asked.

“I’ll have to ask you to stop,” said Officer Chortle. “Solicitor, indeed! If you keep making me laugh like this I’ll wet myself.”

“We are innocent,” said Eddie. “Let us out please.”

“The chief inspector will interview you shortly. You can make your confessions to him then if you wish. Although if you choose not to, I must caution you that me and my fellow officers will be calling in later to beat a confession out of you. And as we do have a number of ‘unsolveds’ hanging about, you will find yourselves confessing to them also, simply to ease the pain.”

And with that Officer Chortle left, laughing as he did so.

“Perfect,” said Jack. “So it’s prison for us, is it?”

“It might be for you,” said Eddie, “if it’s anything more than a summary beating. You’re the meathead, after all. You have some status. It will be the incinerator for me. I’m as dead as.”

“We have to escape,” said Jack.

“I seem to recall,” said Eddie, “that you do have some skills with locks. Perhaps you’d be so good as to pick this one on the door and we will, with caution, go upon our way.”

“Ah, yes indeed,” and Jack sought something suitable.

And he would probably have found it also had not a key turned in the lock, the door opened and several burly though jolly and laughing policemen entered the cell and hauled him and Eddie from it.

Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis’s office was definitely “of the genre”. It had much of the look of Bill Winkie’s office about it, but being below ground level it lacked for windows. It didn’t lack for a desk, though, a big and crowded desk, with one of those big desk lamps that they shine into suspects’ eyes.

The walls were lavishly decorated with mug shots, press cuttings and photographs of crime scenes and horribly mutilated corpses. Eddie recognised the victims pictured in several of these gory photographs: the P.P.P.s who had been savagely done to death by the kindly, lovable white-haired old Toymaker’s evil twin during the exciting adventure that he and Jack had had but months before.
[7]

Upon the floor was a carpet, which like unto Bill’s dared not to speak its name. And it was onto this carpet that Jack and Eddie were flung.

“This treatment is outrageous,” Jack protested. “I protest,” he also protested. “I demand to speak to my solicitor.”

“All in good time,” said Bellis, settling himself into the chair behind his desk and gesturing to the two that stood before it. “Seat yourselves. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“A cup of tea?” Jack got to his knees and then his feet.

“Or coffee?” said the chief inspector.

“I’d like a beer,” said Eddie.

Chief Inspector Bellis frowned upon him.

“Or perhaps just a glass of water.” Eddie arose and did further dustings down of himself.

“You’ll have to pardon the officers,” said Bellis, leaning back in his chair and further gesturing to Jack and Eddie. “Sit yourselves down, if you will. The police officers do get a little carried away. They are so enthusiastic about maintaining law and order. They do have the public’s interests at heart.”

“They don’t have one heart between the lot of them,” said Eddie, struggling onto a chair. “They’re all as brutal as.”

“They overcompensate,” said Chief Inspector Bellis. “I expect it’s just the overexuberance of youth, which should really be channelled into sporting activities. That’s what it says in this book I’ve been reading –
Learn to Leap Over Candlesticks In Just Thirty Days
, by J. B. Nimble and J. B. Quick. Perhaps you’ve read it?”

“I’ll purchase a copy as soon as I leave here,” said Eddie. “Do you suppose that will be sooner rather than later, as it were?”

“Well, we’ll have to see about that. There are most serious charges.”

“
Charges
?” said Eddie. “There is more than one charge?”

“You can never have too many charges.” Chief Inspector Bellis grinned from ear to ear, then back again. “It’s like having too many chickens. You can never have too many chickens, can you?”

“Chickens
again
?” said Jack.

“I like chicken again,” said Bellis. “Again and again. I can’t get enough of chicken.”

Jack shook his head. “I am assuming that you are talking about
eating
chicken?” he said.

“Obviously. But it’s such a dilemma, isn’t it?”

Eddie shook his head and wondered where all
this
was leading to.

“You see,” said the chief inspector, “my wife makes me sandwiches for my lunch.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Jack asked, not out of politeness, but possibly more as a diversionary tactic, in the hope that perhaps Chief Inspector Bellis would just like to chat about sandwiches for a while, before sending him and Eddie on their way.

“That’s the thing,” said Bellis. “I like chicken sandwiches. But I also like egg sandwiches. But you’ll notice that although you mix and match the contents of sandwiches – cheese and onion, egg and cress, chicken and bacon – no one ever eats a chicken and egg sandwich.”