‘And I soon will be running the show,’ said Billy, picking up the telephone.
The Secret of Eastern Moguls
Swanky stretch-limos from faraway states
With Arabic symbols on gold licence plates,
Driven by sheikhs, you can see by their smiles
Own gardens the size of the whole British Isles,
And more fine women than our dog’s had fleas,
And thousands of acres of valuable trees,
And Turkish Delight that they order by phone,
And barrels and barrels of Eau de Cologne.
I once met the son of a rich potentate,
Who taught me the way to fish peas from your plate.
When you’ve nothing at all but your fingers to eat ‘em,
I tried it myself and quite frankly was beaten.
7
God must really love the working class,
I mean, he made so many of them.
ANTON LAVEY
I awoke with a terrible pain in my head.
‘How are you feeling, chief?’ Barry asked.
‘Like hell. What hit me?’
‘Danny hit you, chief.’
‘Danny?’ I rubbed at my head and I looked all around me. I was lying in an alleyway. It was the real McCoy all right. Bar back door with a neon sign above, fire escape with retractable bottom section, lots of scrunched-up paper and cardboard cartons. I cocked an ear.
‘He’s gone for his lunch,’ said Barry.
‘Who has? Danny?’
‘The saxophone player, chief. The one you were listening for. The solitary sax player who always sits at an open window playing mournfully to add that extra bit of atmosphere to an alleyway like this.’
‘Fine, so where’s—’
‘I’m here,’ said Danny, looming in my direction.
‘Don’t breathe on me,’ I told him, ‘and don’t loom so close.’
‘Some thanks,’ said Danny.
‘For knocking me out?’
‘For saving your life.’
‘Are you kidding, or what?’
‘He’s not kidding, chief, listen to what he has to say.’
‘I saved your life,’ said Danny.
‘Are you kidding, or what?’
‘Put a sock in it, chief.’
‘Oh, do excuse me.’
‘I followed you,’ said Danny, looming a little further away. ‘I got fed up with being walloped by male nurse Cecil so I upped and awayed.’
‘Feathered wings?’ I enquired.
‘Nah. I tried to figure out what was the least most obvious way of escaping, but then I figured that if I could figure out the least most obvious way, then it couldn’t really be the least most obvious, because I’d obviously—’
‘Frankly, I don’t care,’ I said. ‘So why did you hit me?’
‘To save your life, I told you.’
‘Are you kidding, or what?’
‘Chief, the humour of that line frankly evades me.’
‘So sorry, Barry. Please continue, Danny, but keep down wind.’
‘A while back,’ said Danny, ‘I met this mendicant in a pub and he told me a story about hitch-hikers. You see there is a fleet of old VW Campers and they—’
‘Heard it,’ I said.
‘About how they recycle dispossessed people?’
‘Heard it.’
‘Have you heard the similar one about the woman who pretends to be a nurse and hangs around in mental hospitals waiting for patients who are hoping to escape?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Well, she takes them in her car off to this house in the middle of nowhere and they go inside and—’
‘I don’t wish to know. Thanks very much for getting me out of there.’
‘No sweat,’ said Danny. ‘You’d have done the same for me.’
‘That’s not altogether true.’
‘Well you’re best out of there, that’s for sure.’
‘Too right.’
‘I mean, how much could you have taken?’
‘Of plunging to my death in a mincing machine? Not too much, I should think.’
‘I’m not talking about a mincing machine. I mean the other thing, her thing.’
‘Her thing? You mean it’s an even worse thing?’
‘Damn right. According to the story I heard, this woman keeps her victims there for months.’
‘Months?’
‘And does it to them again and again and again.’
‘Does what?’
‘Screws them. Like sex slaves, makes them have sex with her morning, noon and night.’
‘Don’t hit him, chief.’
‘You’re too late, Barry.’ I caught Danny a fine right-hander and sent him into the cartons. ‘You stupid git!’ I told him.
‘Look on the bright side, chief.’
‘What bright side?’
‘Well, if you’d spent months as a sex slave, you’d never get your case solved, would you?’
‘No, I reckon you’re right.’ I climbed wearily to my feet, went over to Danny and gave him a good kicking.
‘Got that out of your system, chief?’
‘Yes, Barry. I have.’
‘Jolly good. So where to next?’
I pointed to the neon sign. ‘What does that say to you?’ I asked.
‘It says EXIT, chief. But then what do I know?’
‘Wake up, Barry. I’m in Lazlo Woodbine mode here. Knocked on the head at the end of the first chapter. Wake up in an alleyway. Woodbine only worked the four locations, didn’t he, so what’s next on the list?’
‘A bar, chief, where you stand around talking a load of old toot. Something you excel at.’
‘I shall ignore that remark. But a bar it is. And would you care to hazard a guess as to the name of this bar?’
‘Might it be Fangio’s Bar, chief?’
‘Isn’t it always?’
And it always is. Or, at least, was in the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers. Woodbine’s best buddy was Fangio the barman. Woodbine always went into Fangio’s, talked a lot of toot and met up with a dame in trouble. The significance of this dame’s trouble would not be immediately obvious, but it would cleverly dove-tail in with whatever case Woodbine was working on. The dame would inevitably do Laz wrong, but then dames always do, but he’d get her in the end, and she’d help him solve the case. That’s the way Woodbine did business, here or there, or elsewhere.
‘Come on then,’ said Barry. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
I pushed open the exit door, stepped along a dingy hallway and out into a bar of equal dinginess.
I say ‘of equal dinginess’, but this doesn’t quite paint the poodle. This bar was drab. Which is to say, it was lacklustre. Here was a cheerless bar, uncomforting and uncongenial. A dismal bar, lugubrious, funereal and dull. A bar that was gloomy and sombre, long-faced and woebegone. A bilious bar. A tearful tap-room. A doleful dive. A pulch—
‘Turn it in,’ said Fangio. ‘I’ve just had the place decorated.’
I copped a glance at the fat boy. There he stood behind the counter, large as lard and smiling like a dead cat on the road to Hell. Fangio was girthsome, which is to say—
‘I said, turn it in.’
‘I’m sorry, Fange,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’
‘Well if it’s a running gag, then it’s a stinker.’
Oh how we laughed.
Although I don’t remember why.
Fangio called me over to the bar and I sat right down before it.
‘New stools,’ I said, as I comfied myself.
‘I bought them in a job lot,’ said the fat boy.
And we laughed again.
And then we stopped.
‘The humour of that is quite lost on me,’ said Fangio.
I took off my fedora and twiddled with the brim. ‘I think it’s word association and toilet humour,’ I explained. ‘You said “stinker”, I said “stools”, you said “job”, as in “job
bie”, and then we both laughed again.’
‘What a pair of characters we are,’ said Fangio.
And this was true. We were.
‘So,’ said Fangio, once we’d both stopped laughing and he’d served me with a shot of Bourbon and a plate of Twiglets. ‘Now we’ve put the stools behind us, as it were, let’s turn our attention to the chairs; what do you think?’
I viewed. Fangio’s chairs. ‘Disproportionately large,’ I said. ‘Where did you buy them?’
‘At Big Chairs R Us.’
‘And these were the biggest they had?’
‘These were the smallest.’
‘I see,’ I said. But I didn’t.
‘I can see you see,’ said Fange. But I don’t think he did.
We laughed again, just to be on the safe side, and I tucked into my Twiglets.
‘So,’ said the fat boy, ‘any luck with the case?’
‘It’s not a case,’ I told him. ‘It’s a handbag.’
‘A handbag?’ Fange whistled. ‘All I hear today is “a handbag”, “a handbag”.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes, indeed I do. Take this morning, for instance. I’m standing here behind the bar minding my own business when this bloke walks in. Ordinary bloke, smart suit and tie, polished shoes, but something odd about his head.’
‘His head?’
‘Tiny,’ said Fange. ‘He’s got a tiny head, about the size of an orange.’
‘You’re making this up.’
‘I swear I’m not. Well, the bloke orders a beer, but he can see I’m staring at him and he says “Go on, ask me, then,” and I say “Ask what?” and he says “About my head.” And I say, “I had no intention of asking you.” And he says, “Well, I’ll tell you anyway,” and he does.
‘ “I wasn’t always like this,” says the bloke, pointing to his tiny head. “Once I was chief petty officer ‘on The Mary Grey, a pleasure cruiser out of San Francisco. I’ve always been one for the women, you see, and a job like that was right up my street. Smart uniform and plenty of unattached females looking for love. I was at it morning, noon and night, it was marvellous.” ’
‘Swine,’ I said.
‘Quite so,’ said Fangio. ‘ “Well,” the bloke continued, “we were several days out of Frisco on this particular voyage and I was enjoying the attentions of a particularly well-endowed young woman who liked to get it on in the lifeboat. And one night we were bonking away and she kicked out unexpectedly and I got tipped over the side. The ship went on without me and I was left all alone drifting in the sea. I thought I was a goner, I can tell you, but I kept afloat somehow. I drifted in and out of consciousness and then I saw a bloke go rowing by using a swordfish saw for a paddle, but he didn’t hear my cries for help. After what seemed like days I was finally washed up on a desert island.
‘ “There was food enough to eat: I caught fish, and ate fruit and survived. But I was mad from loneliness and lack of female company. I was dying for sex. And then one day, as I’m walking along the beach, I come upon this handbag.”’
‘A handbag?’ I said.
‘A voodoo handbag,’ said Fangio. ‘But let’s let the bloke tell it. “I recognized it at once,” says the bloke, “because we’d docked a while back in Haiti and I’d been to one of the voodoo temples to see the black girls dancing with their kit off. And on one of the altars I’d seen one of these handbags. All covered in skulls. Real weird stuff. So I pick up this handbag from the beach and I open it up. And out comes this beautiful woman. A genie like, she materializes right before me.” ’
‘Get away,’ I said.
‘Shut up,’ said Fangio. ‘“You have freed me from the voodoo handbag,” says the genie, “where I have been held captive for a thousand years. In order to reward you I will grant you a wish.” Well, I should have said, ‘Get me off the island,’ but I didn’t. All I could see was this beautiful woman and I was gagging for it. ‘I want to make love to you,’ I said. But the beautiful genie shook her head. ‘Genies don’t have those parts,’ she said, pointing to her groin regions. And I was desperate, so I said—” ’
‘What about giving me a little head, then?’
‘Correct,’ said Fangio. ‘However did you guess?’
‘Because it’s a rubbish old joke and I’ve heard it before.’
‘I haven’t,’ said the fat boy. ‘So you think he was making it up?’
‘I think you made it up.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Fangio reached beneath the counter and brought out what appeared to be a tiny Homburg. ‘So what do you make of this then, sucker? He left his hat behind.’
I examined said hat. ‘This,’ I said to Fange, ‘is the hat of a glove puppet. The hat of a Norris the Boil glove puppet, to be precise. Norris was the creation of an illustrator called Albert Tupper back in the 1950s. Albert wrote a whole series of books based on Norris’ adventures. Norris was a boil on the back of a nightclub owner’s neck and he got into all kinds of humorous scrapes. Sadly, however, the world was not ready for books about buboes and Albert died, the tragic victim of a freak accident involving rubber bands and a bathing cap.’
Fangio whistled. ‘You sure know your spin-off products,’ he said.
‘Buddy,’ I told him, ‘in my business, knowing your spin-off products can mean the difference between crawling the kerb and fouling the footpath, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’
‘Excuse me, chief,’ said Barry, ‘and I do hate like damn to break in on you like this. But much as I know that talking a lot of old toot in bars is an important part of the Lazlo Woodbine methodology, I can’t help feeling we’re losing the plot here.’
‘Patience, Barry. It will all become clear.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘So,’ said Fangio, ‘I’m sorry you don’t believe me about the man with the little head. Perhaps if I showed you the handbag.’
‘He left the handbag here? The voodoo handbag?’
‘Said he felt embarrassed carrying it around. Said it made people stare at him.’
‘Show me this handbag and show it to me now.’
‘Sure,’ said Fange, reaching down. ‘No, wait just a moment, I have to serve this customer.’
I turned to look at the customer in question, and frankly confess that I liked what I saw. She was beautiful. A goddess. A Helen of Troy. An Aphrodite. A Venus. She was graceful and majestic, leonine and lovely, radiant and ravishing, cute and curvaceous—
‘I like the way you think,’ she said, and she grinned through a gap in her teeth.
‘Let me get this for the lady,’ I said to Fange, who was pulling her a pint of mild.
‘What a gentleman you are.’ She grinned again and swung round in my direction.
‘The name’s Woodbine,’ I said. ‘Lazlo Woodbine. Some call me Laz.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Chas.’
‘Er, Laz,’ I said. ‘Laz is my name.’
‘Oh, excuse me.’ She turned her head on one side and bashed her right ear with her fist. ‘Got a bit of carrot stuck in my left ear,’ she explained. ‘You know how it is, as much as you can eat for a fiver, so you get your head right down into that old salad bowl.’
I concurred. (Well, you would!)
‘Stuff it in while you can, I always say,’ she grinned, gappily.
‘I do so agree.’
‘Well, you would.’
Fange served the lady with her pint. ‘Another for yourself, sir?’ he asked.
‘Just a look at that handbag,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, handbag, handbag, now what did I do with that handbag?’
While he was looking I thought I’d engage the dame in conversation. Chat her up a bit and see where it led. Dazzle her with the old sparkling repartee. Mould her like putty, then play her like a violin.
‘You don’t sweat much for a fat lass,’ I said.
‘Smooth talker,’ she replied, giving me a slap across the jaw that loosened several fillings. ‘And don’t think I don?
??t know your game.’
I smiled, charmingly. ‘Haven’t I seen you in movies?’ I continued.
‘Perhaps.’ She swallowed her ale and wiped froth from her chin.
‘I know I have,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it in a moment.’
She turned her face in profile and pointed to her nose.
‘I’ve got it,’ I said. ‘You’re Jabba the Hutt.’
She smacked me right in the gob. ‘Casanova,’ she giggled, ‘you’ll be the death of me.’
I clicked my jaw. It didn’t seem to be broken. ‘You’ve got a good right hand there,’ I said, in the voice of one who knows these things. ‘Try this one for size,’ and I kicked her in the stomach.
She doubled right over, but came up fast. ‘You really know how to treat a lady,’ she said as she head-butted me in the face.
I fell hard on my neck, but I knew I was winning her round. I got to my feet and I hit her with a stool. ‘Your place or mine?’ I asked her.
‘Mine,’ she said, pulling a knife.
‘I hate to interrupt you two love birds,’ said Fange. ‘But I’ve found the handbag.’
I kicked the dame’s knife from her mitt and laid her out with a blow to the skull. ‘I’ll be right back, honey,’ I told her.
Fangio placed the handbag on the bar counter. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked.
I cast a professional eye over the handbag. ‘My goddess,’ I said. ‘I think this is it.’
The bag was about twenty inches high, handbag-shaped, covered in skulls and cast in plaster. Billy’s mum had said that I’d know it when I saw it, and now that I’d seen it I knew it.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d been searching for this handbag for ten long years. The search for this handbag had taken me from Bramfield to Brentford. And into another dimension. I’d crossed trackless deserts, wandered in the hinterlands, plundered the tundra, hitch-hiked and mountain-biked, staggered and swaggered, sallied forth and headed north, looked in high places and vast empty spaces, abseiled down—
‘Put a sock in it,’ said Fangio.
‘I’m speechless,’ I said.
‘No kidding?’
‘I am speechless. I’m lost for words. Struck dumb, choked for utterance. Made mute. Put to silence. Robbed of all—’