Waiting for Godalming (3 page)

“I remember that,” said the other voice.

“Yeah, well I remembered it and looked at the flowers. First the violet ones, then the indigo ones and so on. And they spelled out letters. Letters and numbers. They spelled out a chemical formula. The chemical formula for Red Head.”

“With the corner up,” said the other voice.

“It’s true. Well, the formula is true at least. The drug works. I wish to God now that it didn’t. But it does. When I’d written the formula down, I thanked the flowers and then I smashed the floodlights so that they could sleep and dream and then I walked all the way home and went to bed.”

“Incredible,” said the other voice. “Insane.”

“Oh yes,” the tortured soul agreed. “It’s quite insane. All of it. I went into the Ministry the next day. Gained access to the laboratory and mixed up a batch of the drug. It was remarkably simple and straightforward. And then of course I had to test it. See if it really worked. So I tested it upon myself.”

“And it worked?”

“It worked all right. But not in the way that I’d been expecting. I thought it would speed up my thinking. But the human brain is not a calculating machine. It functions by entirely different processes. Organically. Thinking is organic, that’s what it’s all about. The drug enhanced my thinking processes. It opened my eyes and allowed me to see clearly. To understand everything. To see things as they really are. And people as they really are. The ones who actually
are
people. And the ones who aren’t. The wrong’uns.”

“Careful,” said the other voice.

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you? You have to keep your secret. If humanity knew about you and your kind and what you’re up to and how to see you—”

“Careful.”

“Be damned,” said the tortured soul. “Be damned the lot of you. I know you for what you are. And I know what you want.”

“Only the formula.”

“But you won’t get it.”

“You’ll tell us what we want to know eventually.”

“Not I,” said the tortured soul. “I’ve only told you this much because I wanted to spend the last few moments of my life free from pain.”

“What?”

“The poison I’ve taken will kick in at any moment. You’ll never find the drug. But someone will and that someone will learn the truth and they’ll put paid to you and your kind. That someone will change the world for ever. That someone will make things right.”

“Perhaps you’ve told us enough anyway,” said the other voice. “We know where to find the formula. On the Memorial clock.”

“Oh yeah. Right.” A laugh came from the tortured soul. “The flowers. I got very angry over the flowers. Because of what they’d done to me. Because they’d given me the power to see something so awful that it would ultimately lead to my own destruction. As it has. So I went back there, to punish the flowers. To stamp them to oblivion. But then I thought no, it wasn’t their fault. They were quite mad, you see, the flowers. That’s what happens when you’re deprived of sleep. When you cannot dream. You go mad. The flowers couldn’t dream and so the flowers went mad.

“But I did go back. I made a kind of pilgrimage. I wanted to see whether the floodlights had been repaired. And if they had, then I would break them again. So I returned to the Memorial Park, and do you know what I found when I got there?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said the tortured soul. “Nothing whatsoever. You see, there was no floral clock in that park. There never had been.”

“What are you saying? Speak to me.”

Another silent moment, then another voice spoke.

“Save your breath on him,” it said. “He’s dead.”

Now this is where I came into this tale, so listen up people and listen up good.

With me you get what you pay for, when you pay for the best private eye in the business. I don’t come cheap, but I’m thorough and I get the job done. I know my genre and I stick to it. When I’m on the case, you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a corpse-strewn alley and a final rooftop showdown.

And along the way you’ll get all the stuff that you get when you pay for the best. You’ll get a generous helping of trenchcoat humour, a lot of old toot being talked in a bar, running gags about the mispronunciation of my name and my trusty Smith and Wesson, a dame that does me wrong and a deep dark whirling pit of oblivion that I tumble down into, when she bops me on the head at the very beginning of every new case.

That’s the way that I do business, always has been, always will be. Because, like I say, I stick to my genre. And because, like I say, I’m the best.

If you’re looking to get all fancy and post-modern, then don’t come a-knocking at my partition door. Because if what you want is a lot of psychological fol-de-rol and a tormented detective with a drink problem and a broken marriage, who’s coming to terms with a tragedy that happened in his youth and is reaching out to his feminine side, then buddy you’ve come to the wrong address.

But if your taste is for a hard-nosed, lantern-jawed, snap-brimmed-fedora’d, belt-knotted-trenchcoated, bourbon-swigging, Camel-smoking, lone-walking, smart-talking, pistol-packing, broad-smacking, mean-fighting, hot-pastrami-biting, tricky-case-solving son-of-a-goddamn-prince-among-men, then knock at the door and walk right in and ask for me by name.

And the name to ask for is Woodbine. As if you hadn’t guessed.

Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

Some call me Laz.

You see me, I keep it classic and I keep it simple.

I work just the four locations. An office where my clients come. A bar where I talk a load of old toot and where the dame that does me wrong bops me on the head at the beginning of the case. An alleyway, where I get into tricky situations, and a rooftop where I have my final confrontation with the villain.

No spin-offs, no loose ends and all strictly in the first person. No great genre detective ever needed more than that and no detective ever came greater than me.

So, with that said, and pretty goddamn well said too, let’s get us down to the business in hand and begin it the way that it always begins.

And it always begins like this.

It was another long hot Manhattan night and I was sitting in Fangio’s, chewing the fat with the fat boy. The fat boy’s name was Fangio, but the fat we chewed went nameless.

It had been a real lean year for me and I hadn’t had a case to solve with style since the big one of ’98. Times were getting tough.

It’s all well and good being hailed as “the detective’s detective”, and having your craggy silhouette on the cover of
Newsweek
magazine and your office featured in
Hello!
, but fame won’t buy you a ticket to ride if you don’t have the fare for the ferryman.

At the present, I was down.

My bank account was redder than a masochist’s butt and the trench had washed out of my trenchcoat. The trusty Smith and Wesney Snipes was gathering rust in Papa Legba’s pawnshop and my now legendary snap-brim seemed to suit my landlord who had taken it in lieu of last month’s rent.

I was down.

Down. Down.

Deeper and down.

I was deeper and down than a pit lad’s purse in a pocket of Pleistocene pumice. More at sea than a Lascar’s lunch on a leaking Liberian lugger. Further south than a tired Tasmanian’s toe-jam tucker-bag take-away.

But hey, when you’re deeper and down as that, my friends, the only way is up. You can’t just sit there on your sorry ass, waiting for the wind of fortune to blow in your direction.

You have to lift yourself high above adversity.

You have to make your own wind.

“Holy humdinger,” flustered Fangio, fanning his face with his fat. “If you make wind in my bar one more time, Laz, I’ll kick your sorry ass out.” Oh how we laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” the fat boy flustered further. “I put up with a lot from you, Laz. The running gags about your trenchcoat and your trusty Smith and West Bromwich Albion. The dame that does you wrong always bopping you on the head in my bar.
And
you calling me the fat boy all the time. But I do draw the line at you making wind. I’m running a business here.”

“But you
are
a
very
fat boy,” says I, faster than a ferret in a felcher’s footbath.

“
And
those dumb surrealistic metaphor jobbies you insist on using all the time because you think it gives you your own style. The ones that gradually get more and more obscene and obscure and are neither funny nor clever.”

“Ease up, Porkie,” says I. “I may be down, but I’m far from out.”

“Do you want to settle your tab?”

“I’m out,” says I. “You have me there.”

Oh how we laughed again.

“By the by, Laz,” says Fangio to me, when the laughter has died down once more in the bar that bares his name. “I’ve been thinking of taking up a hobby. Is there anything you’d recommend to me?”

“How about slimming?” I offered in ribald recommendation.

“Would that involve eating less?” asked Fangio. “Because as you know I gorge like a pig, for it’s my only pleasure.”

“Rubber bondage?”

“Well,
almost
my only pleasure. I was thinking of something cerebral that required next to no exercise, cost but a penny or two and could win me a first prize at the annual bartenders’ orchid-breeding competition.”

“How about orchid-breeding, then?”

“What, with my back? Come off it.”

“Hang-gliding?”

“Too high.”

“Bass-playing?”

“Far too low.”

“Asking after the good health of folk?”

“Fair to middling. Mustn’t grumble.”

“How about a card game?” says I.

“Not with you, you cheating Arab.”

“No, not with me, Fange. How about taking up a card game as a hobby?”

“Well,” the fat boy stroked at his chins and a bird blew by in Brooklyn. “I used to play cards a lot when I was a grunt in ’Nam.”

“You’re still a grunt in my book, Fange.”

“Thanks very much, my friend.”

“So,” says I. “Card games it is. What kind of card game do you fancy?”

The Fange gave his chins another stroke for luck and asked, “What games do you know?”

I made the face of thought, and pretty damn well too. “There’s Cribbage, Blackjack, Patience, Parliament, Chase the Ace, Rummy, Chemmy, Piquet, Strip Poker, Stud Poker, Seven Card Stud Poker, Bridge, Whist, Old Maid, Happy Families, Three Card Brag, Smiling Faces, Pontoon, Batter My Old Brown Dog in a Basket, Snap, and Snip Snap Snorum.”

“What about six card walkabout?”

“Yes, there’s six card walkabout. Strip Jack naked. Boil my brains in a barrelful of bran, Cock the snoot at the Cockney cowboy, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee and Kick butt west of the Pennines.”

“You’re just making these up now, aren’t you?”

“Have been for quite some time, actually.”

“So how do you play Kick butt west of the Pennines?”

“With aces wild and one-eyed Jacks worth double if you put one on top of a black ten or nine.”

“Very much the same as Batter my old brown dog in a basket, then?”

“Same rules apply,” says I. “Do you want me to continue?”

“Have you any more real card games on offer? Or are you just going to carry on making up ones with foolish names?”

“Just carry on, I suppose.”

“Continue then.”

“There’s Hamper the Scotsman. Whoosh goes a wimple. Cover the rabbit. Body Chemistry 4 …”

“Body Chemistry 4?” says Fangio. “Surely that’s a 1994 movie starring former
Playboy
playmate Shannon Tweed. The one where she has it away with a character called Simon on top of a pool table.”

“Well, you can play cards on top of a pool table, can’t you?”

“Not if someone’s having it away.”

“No, you’re right. Forget about Body Chemistry 4. There’s Round my hat with a pigeon on a string, Beat the bad boy Berty, Jump around Shorty and Set ’em up Joe …”

“You sure know your card games, buddy.”

“Listen, Fange,” says I, “in my business, knowing your card games can mean the difference between getting it up on a cold winter’s night, or getting them down in a Dormobile. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“I know where you’re coming from there,” says Fange, and who was I to doubt him?

We paused for a moment and chewed some more fat.

“That was good,” said Fange.

“What, the fat?”

“No, the toot. That was a good bit of toot we just talked there. A first class piece of toot.”

“Glad that you enjoyed it. Do you want me to make up a few more card games?”

“No,” said Fangio, shaking his jowls. “The secret lies in knowing when to stop. But, by the by, Laz. There was a guy in here earlier asking after you.”

“How could he be asking
after
me, if he was in here
earlier
than me?”

“Search me,” said Fangio. “We live in troubled times.”

“So what did this guy look like?”

“Well.” The fat boy pecked upon a peanut. “Looked a lot like Mike Mazurki to me.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“A hint of Brian Donleavy over the eyes.”

I scratched at my gonads with equal thought.

“Spoke a little like the now legendary Charles Laughton.”

I whistled through my teeth with less thought than it takes to pluck a turkey. “The now legendary Charles?” whistled I.

“Yeah, and he had a Rondo hat on.”
[3]

Oh how we laughed once more.

“But seriously,” said Fangio. “He left his card for you.”

“Is it a one-eyed Jack?” I asked. “Because they’re worth double if you lay them on a black ten or nine.”

“No, it was his business card. We’ve done with the card game toot.”

“I’ve a few foolish names left in me.”

“I’m all too sure you have.” Fangio produced the card from a place where the sun never shines and pushed it over the counter to the place where I sat bathed all in glory.

I read aloud, to myself, from the card. “Mr Cormerant,” I read. “The Ministry of Serendipity.”

“Speak up a bit,” said Fangio.

“Cormerant,” said I.

“Cormerant?” said Fangio. “Isn’t that an aquatic bird of the family
Phalacrocoracidae
that inhabits coastal and inland waters, having dark plumage and a slender hooked beak?”

“No, I think you’ll find that’s a cormorant.”

“Ah, thanks for putting me straight.”

“So did this guy say what he wanted with me?”

“No,” says Fangio. “But if you want my opinion, I’d say that he was looking to engage your services as a private investigator in order that you might track down a briefcase of his that has gone missing and contains certain items which if they fell into the wrong hands, or even the right ones, might spell doom to this world of ours in any one of a dozen different languages, including Esperanto.”

“Well, if I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” says I. “Did he say that he might call back?”

“He might have,” said Fange. “But I wasn’t listening. Care for a bit more chewing fat?”

I shook my head in a negative way that mirrored my negative thoughts. There was something about this card that didn’t smell right to me. Something foully depraved and loathsome to the extreme. Something …

“Turn it in, Laz,” said Fangio. “You always do that when I give you a card and it frankly gets right up my jumper.”

“There’s something about this business card that I don’t like one bit.”

“Probably the shape,” said Fangio. “You can tell a great deal about a man’s character by the shape of his business card.”

“But surely they’re all the same basic shape.”

“Mine aren’t,” said Fangio. “Some of mine are such horrible shapes that it makes me feel sick to my stomach just to look at them. I figure that any man who owns business cards the shape of mine must be some kind of psycho.”

“And did you choose the shapes yourself?”

“Certainly not. How dare you!”

“I’ll sleep easy in my bed tonight then, Fange.”

“Gobbo the gnome who lives in my nose told me the shapes to cut them.”

“I’ll lock my bedroom door before I go to sleep.”

A guy along the bar was making waves and rattling his empty glass upon the counter. “Is there any chance of getting served here?” he was heard to ask. “Or are you two going to talk toot all night, while the rest of us die of thirst?”

“I’d better go and serve him,” said Fangio. “He’s been standing there with an empty glass in his hand since before we started chewing the fat, let alone talking the toot.”

“You go and serve him then,” says I, “while I ponder over this card and try to get a handle on the guy who left it here. By using certain psychic powers that I don’t like to talk about, I can conjure up a mental visualization of the card’s owner, by tuning myself to the cosmic vibrations emanating from the card. I’m already getting an image of Mike Mazurki, with a hint of Brian Donleavy over the eyes and a voice like the legendary Charles L—”

“I’ll leave you to it then,” says Fangio. “I’ll go serve the customer. Sorry to keep you waiting there, Mr Cormerant.”

“What?”

I bid the guy the big hello and made my presence felt. The hand that held his liquor was shaking more than a go-go-dancing vibrator demonstrator with a bad case of St Vitus. Or possibly just a little less. Who am I to say?

I looked the fella up and down and then from side to side. He had a definite hint of Brian Donleavy over the eyes. And there was more than a trace of the legendary Charles in the voice he used to speak with. But the thing that struck me most about him had to be his hat.

“Is that a Rondo?” says I, admiring the cut of his jib.

“No,” says he. “It’s a bowler.”

We established ourselves at the table near the rear. The one to the left of the gents. It’s a bit of a favourite with me. Secluded. Out of the way. That hint of exclusivity that offers the client confidence. Muted lighting that catches my noble profile just so in the tinted wall mirror and a lot of firm support in the seat, which can be handy if your piles are playing up.