The beer splashed its icy way down my throat and sizzled in chicken madras that had been my tea. I sat back in my chair and listened to the sounds of the city. Through my open window I could hear the newsboy hawking his last late editions, the ball game echoing from a neighbour’s wireless, the crackle of neon lights, the poot of poodles and the celestial harmonics of the cosmos. I figure that from where I was sitting you could hear anything you darn well pleased on a Saturday night.
One thing I didn’t expect to hear was the ringing of my telephone. And sure as sure that’s exactly what I didn’t hear.
What I did hear was a rappety-rap-rap-rap on my partition door. I yawned, stretched, put aside all thoughts of learning Esperanto. This could be the Big One. ‘Come,’ said I.
The door swung open like water off a duck’s back and there, framed in the portal, stood the most beautiful woman I’d seen all day. She was nearly wearing a white angora evening number. Off the shoulder but not off the peg. She was the kind of blonde you don’t get from a bottle and her lips looked more at home around a long Martini than a dwarf’s dongler. This lady had class written through her like rock has Brighton.
‘Hi toots,’ I said, smiling from the waist down. ‘You looking for a little action?’
She shot me a glance like she was putting out a bad cigar and came over with a lightning Veronica Lake. ‘Is your name Woodbane?’ she asked. ‘Woodbane the dick?’
‘The name’s Woodbine, maam. Lazlo Woodbine. Some call me Laz.’
‘I’ll just call you Mr Shithead,’ she responded in a manner I considered most winsome. ‘I need your help.’
Well, I never played reggae in the Australian hinterlands so I don’t know how to beat around the bush. And this lady looked as though she meant business and business is my business, if you catch my drift, and I’m sure that you do. ‘I ain’t cheap,’ I told her. ‘But I’m thorough and I get the job done. With me you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a trail of corpses and a final roof-top showdown.’
‘No loose ends or spin-offs?’ she asked.
‘None. I charge five hundred thousand dollars a day, plus expenses and I only work in the “first-person”.’
She twitched a languid dewlap and movied in my direction. ‘I think I’ll just call you Shithead for short,’ she quipped. I was beginning to fall in love. ‘Five hundred thousand dollars a day and no expenses.’
‘You drive a hard bargain, maam.’ I let the hard sink in. ‘Who needs to die?’
She dipped into her purse, took out a small contrivance and tossed it on to my desk. I gave it some perusal. It was hard, black and buttoned and occupied the space of a Camel pack.
‘Aha,’ said I, in a fashion which suggested an almost mystical insight into all things electronical. ‘What you have there maam, is a watchmacallit.’
She ran her velvet tongue around her up-town dental work and smiled me a bitter-sweet. ‘Press button A.’
I did as I was bid. Light locked up into a cube above my desk and showed me a range of 3D images that were beauteous to behold.
‘Aha,’ said I, it being a favourite with me when lost for words.
‘Artworks.’ The lady manipulates a manicured mitt midst the mirage. ‘Religious artworks.’
‘I don’t know what I like. But I know about art.’
‘And do you know these men?’ I was now looking into faces. Unsmiling. Unlovely.
‘Do I know them?’ I leaned back in my chair and narrowly avoided falling out of the window. ‘Maam. These two cost me my wife, my job at the department, a dog named Blue and six months in intensive care. And you want I should go looking for them?’
She glanced me up and down like a Times Square neon and Devil take the hindmost. ‘Think you’re up to it, Shithead?’
I gave her the kind of smile I generally keep for Tuesday. ‘Lady,’ said I, with more panache than a muff diver in a Maltese meatball factory, ‘do you realize that every law enforcement agency in the galaxy is looking for these two?’ She nodded.
‘And that the future of civilization and probably the very fabric of universal existence hangs upon the apprehension of these men and the return of the artworks?’ She nodded again.
‘And you come to me?’
She leaned into the hologram. The faces of the two hoods glared at me from her bosoms. ‘What do you say, Woodbone?’
‘I say, what took you so long, lady? I’ve been expecting you for a week.’
‘Please extinguish all cigarettes, fasten your safety belts and prepare for touchdown.’ Rex assumed the foetal position.
‘Kindly observe all landing procedures and do not leave the vehicle until the green light flashes and the little hooter goes peep peep peep. We thank you for travelling in the cause of Ultimate Truth and hope you enjoyed the trip.’
There came a terrible shuddering and buffeting, and light soared in through the Volvo’s rear window. The car came to a sudden halt depositing Rex at the front end of the art store where he lay seething.
‘I think a bite to eat would be the thing.’ It was the voice of Ed Kelley. Rex climbed once more to his feet. Above him a lozenge of light showed. Rex tested himself for broken bones.
‘A snackerel before we conclude our business.’ Rex craned his neck to the bright little lozenge. A glass hatch to the cab. Beyond it he could make out the pair of talking heads. ‘Okey doke,’ went Ed Kelley.
‘Peep peep peep,’ went the little hooter. ‘You’ll get yours!’ muttered Rex Mundi.
Rex heard the doors open and slam, and then nothing but for a dull humming. He made his way back through the artworks to the cargo bay and peered through the rear window. ‘Shiva’s Sheep!’ gasped Mr Mundi.
There was a city out there. But what a city. Rex had seen New York in the nineteen-nineties and there was much of that here. Only a whole lot more. He was looking at a broad thoroughfare, along which mighty cars, all low sleek bodies, high trailing fins and bulging chromium, drifted like fantastic land yachts. On the sidewalks, beautiful people in stylish costumes strolled and sauntered. They looked young, tall and proud. Rex wasted no time in taking an instant dislike to them. Above and beyond, most of all, above, rose buildings of preposterous proportions. They dwindled into the sky, but their design was unmistakable. They resembled nothing more nor less than titanic jukeboxes. Between them, decked with twinkling lights, great airships came and went.
‘The future.’ Rex sank on to his bottom. ‘I’m in the future.’ He hugged his knees and began to rock slowly back and forth. Had he not been half the hero I, for one, believe him to be, there seemed a strong chance that now would be an ideal time for a mental breakdown.
‘Now would be an ideal time for a mental breakdown,’ said Rex Mundi, beginning to burble. Oh no you don’t!
Rex considered his options. He was down but by no means out. Certainly he was shut in a time- travelling Volvo, wearing nothing but his underpants. But he’d been in worse situations than this and lived to save the day.
‘I have to get out of here.’ Rex sought the rear window of opportunity. Passers by were passing by. They all seemed pleasing to gaze upon and, Rex noted to his satisfaction, all were very well dressed indeed. He watched them as they went about their business. The moment had to be right.
A young man drew near to the Volvo. He was tall, nobly built and wore his hair in the order of the times. High combed and laquered, long sideburns. He was dressed in white shirt, pencil tie, wide- shouldered dark jacket, slim lapels, one button low. Grey peg pants and white brothel creepers. As he prepared to cross the street Rex rapped upon the window.
Seemingly deaf to Rex’s rappings the young man took a step forward. Rex pounded the window with his fist. The young man paused and glanced down. Rex smiled up at him. The young man looked bemused. Rex made an encouraging face and finger pointings at the door handle. ‘Locked in,’ he mouthed.
‘What?’ came a silent reply.
‘Locked in!’
The young man
shook his head. Rex whacked the window anew. ‘Help!’
The good Samaritan smiled and reached toward the handle. He turned it and swung up the tailgate. Rex grasped him by the shoulders and dragged him into the Volvo. It was all the work of a moment. A deft blow to the jaw, the tailgate pulled almost shut. The sounds of the brief struggle were swallowed up by the noise of the city. Rex stripped his unconscious victim and togged up. The jacket was a little tight beneath the armpits, but the shoes were comfortable enough.
Rex put his ear to the young man’s chest. His breathing seemed measured. Rex hadn’t hit him too hard. Rex felt bad about hitting him at all. Striking down the innocent did not lie well with him. But the situation was somewhat extreme and once he had found satisfaction from Dee and Kelley, who were far from innocent, he would apologize to the young man and bung him a couple of old masters by way of compensation.
His conscience now thoroughly salved, a well-dressed Rex slid out of the Volvo and entered wonderland. He examined his reflection in the nearest store window. ‘Damnably handsome,’ was his considered opinion.
Rex rubbed his palms together. Options now lay open to him. The big question was which to take. ‘Take the Volvo,’ said Rex without further hesitation. He stepped around to the front of the car and tried the driver’s door. It was locked. Rex peered into the car. No keys dangled in the dashboard. But then this was not the kind of dashboard that keys seemed likely to dangle in. This was one of those big spaceship jobs, all flashing lights and little television screens with expensive animated graphics.
Rex whistled. Trying to figure that lot out could take all day. Best to deal with the driver directly. ‘A bite to eat,’ he had said. Rex scanned the nearby likelys.
‘Oh no,’ groaned Rex. Ed and Johnny sat not twenty yards distant outside a cafe. It was another chrome and neon affair. They hovered comfortably upon legless chairs. Dead futuristic. But Rex’s ‘oh no’ was not directed thataways. It was given vent due to the sign which flashed on and off above the cafe. It read ‘The Tomorrowman Tavern’, and Rex really wished that it didn’t.
‘Paper, bud?’ It was the first voice he had heard and it had an American accent.
‘Sorry?’
‘You wanna paper?’ The news vendor waggled said article beneath Rex’s nose. ‘I said d’ya wanna paper you dumb-’
‘Yes I do. Yes.’ Rex accepted the thing as it was thrust into his hand. ‘Buck.’
‘Nice to meet you, Buck.’
‘Buck for the paper, you stoopid . . .’
‘Oh, I see.’ Rex rooted in his new jacket. He turned up a billfold and un-billfolded it. Money notes. Rex took out a big bright one and offered it to the news vendor. ‘Is this enough?’
‘I’ll say.’ The news vendor snatched it from him and pocketed it away. ‘Goddamn thick-assed son of a . .’ Rex let it slide by. Punching the news vendor’s lights out in the middle of a busy street was probably not the wisest move in the world.
‘Are you here all day?’ he asked.
‘Till the crowds go.’
‘I’ll catch up with you later then.’
‘Huh?’
Rex took his newspaper and merged with the passers by. He found a vantage point before a store window which displayed a fetching line in bondage leisurewear, and raised his newspaper ‘spy’ fashion. And two things hit him right in the face. The first widened his eyes and the second lowered his jaw.
The first was the newspaper’s title. The Presley Enquirer. The second was the date. 27 July 2061.
‘27 July 2061.’ It didn’t matter which way Rex read it, it still came out the same. It was his own time. The time he was living in. The very day he was living in. Or had been living in. But this wasn’t his world. Where was he? Another planet? Couldn’t be. Not with the American news vendor and the Presley Enquirer.
Rex studied the headlines in search of a clue.
SPACE ALIENS KIDNAPPED MY TWO-HEADED LOVE-CHILD ‘Ah,’ said Rex. ‘One of those newspapers.’ He leafed through it.
IRATE PUBLISHER FEEDS TRILOGY AUTHOR TO THE SHARKS
HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO SINCLAIR C5
‘Hmmph.’ Rex folded his newspaper and consigned it to the nearest litter bin. He glanced across the street. Ed and Johnny seemed to be enjoying themselves. Rex watched the beautiful people as they came and went. The fabulous automobiles and drifting airships. The neon lights flashing, the news vendor vending.
And then he caught the flicker of movement in the Volvo. He looked on entranced as the half-naked figure of the good Samaritan squirmed through the little glass hatch and dropped into the driver’s seat. He was even close enough to observe the deft finger motions on the space-age dashboard and to hear the peerless purr as the engine took life.
Making horror’s open mouth, Rex watched the Volvo pull out into the street and lose itself in the stream of passing traffic.
The melodic tone of the highly-tuned engine brought Rex no joy whatever. Neither did the fact that the superb power steering responded to little more than a fingertip’s application, whilst leaving the driver’s other hand free to make an obscene gesture in his direction. And as to whatever subtle pleasures lay in the contemplation of rear indicators, these slipped by Rex completely.
A friend of mine who was once in the AA says that the indicators of all posh motorcars can be programmed to flash out messages in a secret code. Apparently the knowledge of which buttons to press and how the code works lie in the hands of the Freemasons, who commonly pass on information to one another in this fashion during motorway traffic jams.
I once broached the subject with Mad Tony Long who does the MOT on my Cortina. He neither confirmed nor denied it, although he did give me a very funny look. Whether this means he’s a practising Freemason I couldn’t say. And as I’ve never felt the desire to shake his hand, I’ll probably never know for sure. But it certainly makes you think, doesn’t it?
It didn’t make Rex think. In fact, if there was ever a moment when a burgeoning interest in automotive arcanum was less distant from his mind, this was most probably it.
‘Damn!’ went Rex Mundi. ‘Damn damn damn!’ He raised knotty fists and shook them at the sky. He made to run after the Volvo but stopped short in his tracks and threw up his hands again. He kicked at the air.
He stamped his feet. He wasn’t pleased.
His choice of options, slim as it was, had now become positively anorexic. There was nothing for it. He would just have to go over and have the thing out directly with Dee and Kelley. Demand explanations and deal out blows whenever the need arose. With difficulty Rex composed his features into something approaching normality, flexed his shoulders and stared across the street towards the Tomorrowman Tavern. Here, two floating and now thoroughly vacant chairs met his thoroughly jaundiced eye.
‘Gone!’ Rex began to shake in a manner most unbecoming, and passing folk steered carefully around him.
The news vendor, who had been enjoying the unsolicited performance since it first began, could contain himself no longer.
‘Is this some kind of street theatre, buddy?’ he asked. ‘Or are you just a whacko?’
Rex turned slowly upon him. ‘Does your mother know how to sew?’ he asked in an even voice.
‘My mother? Sew? Sure, I guess.’
‘Then get her to stitch this up.’
3
1. And when the ark was finished Noah said unto Elvis, ‘What do you reckon?’
2. And Elvis checked out his own cabin and shook his head saying ‘poky’.
3. And so did they knock several walls through and install a Jacuzzi.
4. And when this was done Noah scratched his beard and said, ‘We don’t have room for all the animals now.’
5. And Elvis perused the livestock list and in his wisdom said, ‘Lose the dinosaurs.’
The Suburban Book of the Dead
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, how come this Lazlo Woodbine with the nineteen-fifties’ office s
hows no surprise when confronted by sci-fi holographic gizmos and comes out with lines such as ‘every law enforcement agency in the galaxy is looking for these two’. Ain’t ya? Well, I’ll lay it on the line for you. Because, like I say, I ain’t enigmatic.
Firstly, this novel is called The Tempus Fugitives, which is a pretty Goddamn clever title by anyone’s reckoning, and I should know, as I thought of it myself. And secondly, although I might look like the guy in the trenchcoat and fedora, which I am, these are changing times. And the changing times that I happen to live in are those of the twenty-fifth century. And if you want to get by as a private eye in these changing times, certain things are expected of you.
A sense of propriety is one and impeccable credentials is another, and I got both. I got a bloodline in this business that goes back five hundred years. Class, see, born with it. Take my hat, for example. Snap- brimmed fedora. Classic. Same hat my ancient ancestor wore when he was a private eye back in the nineteen-fifties. Sure it’s had thirty new brims, eighty new bands and more crowns than the House of Hapsburg since then. But it’s the same hat. Same old hat, same old joke. Class never dates, see?
Take my office furniture. Priceless antiques. The water-cooler alone is worth more millions than I would care to shake a stick at. Not to mention the carpet, which I rarely do.
So, you are asking yourselves, and I can hear you. So how come if this Lazlo is such a class act does he let the dame insult him? Well, that’s the way business is done in this business. Always has been done, always is done and always will be done. It’s a tradition, see, or an old charter or something like that. I’m the last of the greats, with a literary legacy that reaches back to Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer.
And that’s why I get hired. I don’t come cheap, but I’m thorough and I get the job done. And I only work four sets. My office, Fangio’s Bar, an alleyway that could be anywhere and a roof-top. A really great detective rarely needs more than that. Some stretch a point and add a hotel room, a hospital ward, or a police cell, but not me. I keep it basic.