‘Got it.’ Rex had got many things in his time but this however wasn’t one of them. He took off the loathsome loafers and dropped them into the wastepaper bin, slipped on the blue suedes, and prepared to take his leave.
‘Just one more thing, fella.’
Rex half turned. ‘Yes?’
‘Any chance of tickets for your show? The wife’s a big fan.’
Barry and I walk these mean streets together. These streets have no name, there’s blood on the tracks and a darkness on the edge of town. But that’s the way we like it. We’re on the road to Hell and it ain’t paved with good intentions.
I take Barry back to my office. Outside my window the neon sign flashes on and off the way some of them do, and inside the carpet looks no better for it.
‘So what’s the deal then, chief?’
I place Barry upon my desk. He’s put on a bit of weight since last we met, so it’s a top-pocket number rather than an in-your-ear job. I crack open a bottle of Bud, light up a Camel and in the cause of exposition (cos like I say I’m not enigmatic) explain what’s to do. I display the dame’s watchmacallit, run the holographics and talk through the moving pictures.
‘There’s two to finger,’ says I. ‘The big heist at the Museum of Mankind. The entire theological section gone in the twinkling of a fly’s eye. No alarms thrown. No evidence of break in. Just gone.’
‘Some big number, chief. But how do these two fit into it? Who put them in the frame?’
I explain further. ‘These two busted out from a penal colony on Cygnus Major a day after the heist. Same set up. No alarms thrown. No evidence of break out.’
‘A day after the heist, chief? I don’t get it.’
‘Do the names Johnny Dee and Ed Kelley mean anything to you?’
‘Dee and Kelley? But chief, those two cost you your wife, your job at the department, a dog named Blue and six months in intensive care.’
‘I know that.’ I knew that. ‘Two of the most dangerous men in the galaxy. Tempus Fugitives. Time-travelling criminals. None meaner and none smarter. See the beauty of their evil scheme. Using a time-travelling device they bust out of jail, go back and commit the robbery on the previous day. This gives them not only the perfect alibi but a chance to sell all the loot, and raise the cash to purchase the time-travelling device to break out of jail with….’
‘Er, chief ... I don’t think that quite . . .’
‘This is one we can’t play by the book, Barry. It’s going to need a lot of thought.’
‘Certainly more than you’ve given it so far.’
‘What’s that, Barry?’
‘Nothing, chief.’
‘I got a big score to settle with these two. A big score.’ I suck upon my cigarette, strike a manly pose against the flashing neon and muse upon the exact dimensions of the score I have to settle.
‘You suit the open neck, Laz,’ says Barry. ‘Good strong profile, also.’
‘Thanks.’ I never court a compliment, but when one’s offered I know how to take it. Only a frog wets its own bed when there’s a rain hat in the closet.
‘Sounds like it could be a tricky business, chief. These two could now be anywhere, at any time, disguised as anybody and travelling under any name and if I recall correctly, you only work the four sets.’
‘Just the same four.’
‘Does rather limit our field of operations, chief. You couldn’t stretch a point and add, say, a marketplace in ancient Rome or a bordello in nineteenth-century Paris?’
I raise the eyebrow of admonishment towards the Time Sprout. He knows the score. Me and him go back a long way. A long way.
‘Remember that run in we had in Atlantis?’ I ask.
‘Sure, chief. Wasn’t that in Death Wears a Green Tuxedo?’
‘You got it.’
‘Where we tracked down Micky “Spangles” McMurdo, otherwise known as the Manhattan Mangler?’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, as I recall, Spangles had gone Tempus Fugitive and set himself up as the high priest in the temple of BAH-REAH the All Knowing.’
‘Correct.’
‘A temple of unimaginable splendour, twice the size of the Yankee Stadium. A temple whose golden adornments and jewel encrusted statuary made that of Solomon look like a five-and-dime.’
‘That’s the one. And do you also recall where I made the arrest?’
‘In a darkened alleyway at the rear of the temple, wasn’t it?’
I lower the eyebrow of admonishment, which is beginning to give me a headache, and make a knowing wink. ‘You ever see a city without an alleyway?’
‘No, chief. You got me on that one.’
I knew that I had. The run in with Spangles had cost me three children, a goldfish called Neville, life membership of the Groucho Club and two years in Detox. But that was all water under the knee as far as I was concerned.
‘So, Barry. To work.’ I flick my smouldering cigarette butt out through the open window and settle back into my chair. From the street below comes a sudden cry of pain, a squealing of motor-cycle tyres and a number of deafening crashes. I get up and close the window. I need interruptions now like a five-bar gate needs a continental breakfast. ‘To work.’
‘Right, chief.’
‘The way I see it, Barry. I got a big score to settle with these two. A big score.’ I light up another cigarette, strike a manly pose against the flashing neon and muse once more upon the exact dimensions of the score I have to settle.
But, as that kind of stuff can get a little samey after a while, I decide to take a dive under my desk instead.
The bullet sang through the etched glass of my partition door, ate a hole out of the middle of my chair-back and buried its face in my wall. I don’t wait for Goddo, I tear the trusty Smith and Wesley from my shoulder holster and come up firing. The barrel spits its Cargo of Death (A Lazlo Woodbine thriller). I pump five rounds through the door and hear the body fall, rise to my feet and dust down my trenchcoat.
‘Nice shooting, chief. Who do you think you killed?’
‘Couldn’t say.’ I check my cuffs. Sometimes when you take a dive for cover you lose a button. This time I was lucky.
‘Think we should go over and check out the corpse?’
I shake my head. ‘No can do.’ I give the belt loops the once-over, an awkward dive can often put undue strain on the stitching. It looked fine, though.
‘But chief, the identity of the assassin could be just what you need to bust the whole case wide open.’
I give my head another shake. I noticed a small grease stain on my left lapel, but it was nothing to worry about. Any leading brand of spot remover could handle that.
‘But chief . . .’
‘What, Barry?’ I straighten my collar.
‘The body, chief.’
‘Do you see a body, Barry?’
‘No chief, but. ..’
‘And why don’t you see a body, Barry?’
‘Because he fell outside in the corridor, chief.’
‘And?’
‘And you don’t work corridors, chief. Sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it, Barry. You just got carried away in the heat of the moment. That’s why I’m the hero of this novel and you ain’t.’
‘That’s all you know, Dickhead.’
‘What’s that, Barry?’
‘Nothing, chief.’
The big front hall of the police station looked very much the way they always do. Cavernous, echoey. A lot of cops with sharp-looking uniforms and seen-it-all expressions berating all and sundry and reading people their rights. Super-Fly-style pimps, all broad-brimmed hats, long leather overcoats and stack-soled shoes, making free with the ‘F word and demanding the return of their ‘old ladies’. Street punks with bandaged heads being comforted by girls in black bondage wear. A padre consoling the parents of a murder victim. A bag lady singing. Gang boys with headbands and oily teeshirts calling everybody ‘homies’. Winos pleading the fifth amendment. Detec
tives in shirtsleeves punching the coffee machine. Prostitutes in short fur coats looking like Tina Turner. Recidivists doing whatever it is they do. You’ve seen the movies, you get the picture.
Rex collected his ‘personal effects’ from a desk sergeant who bore an uncanny resemblance to Spencer Tracy.
‘Sign here.’ The desk sergeant turned clipboard and pen toward Rex. Rex shook his head and signed. It didn’t make a lot of sense. They were giving him back the stolen billfold and everything.
‘Well, I’ll be off then.’ Rex turned to be just that.
Officer Cecil loomed large. ‘This way out, Rex.’ He took a firm grip upon the hero’s right elbow and steered him towards a side corridor which Rex correctly surmised led to a nice quiet alley.
‘Oh no.’ Rex jerked back. ‘No more hitting. The chief says you are to extend me every courtesy. I will leave by the front door, if you don’t mind.’
‘I do mind as it happens.’
‘Cecil.’ Rex stood his ground. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of all the mindless violence?’
Cecil scratched his shaven head with the business end of his truncheon. ‘Well.. . now that you mention it. No. And it’s Officer Cecil to you. Come on.’
‘Officer Cecil. Don’t you feel that there might be a little more to life than whacking people about with your nightstick?’
‘I’ve never given the matter a lot of thought,’ said Officer Cec. ‘I personally subscribe to a somewhat syncretic world view. It is my inherent belief, founded I might add, upon observation and experience, rather than conjecture and theory, that society consists of two basic castes. Namely, in essence, those who get whacked and those who do the whacking. Now, you might consider this an overly-simplistic dichotomy, issued by an apologist as a disclaimer for the practice of brutalism. But there you would be misinterpreting the underlying pluralistic duality which subdivides the sociological framework and constitutes what Jung referred to as “an unfolded totality symbol, the self in its empirical aspect”.’
‘I would?’
‘You would. You see, the metaphor is axiomatic. Which is to say that at an unconscious level the whacker and the whackee become one and the same. The master becomes the servant, the punisher the punished. Have you ever read Sir John Rimmer’s Differential Determinants of Psychophysical Judgements and their Significance in the Transposition of Relational Responses?’
‘I believe I might have skimmed through it.’
‘Fascinating work,’ Cecil continued. ‘Suggests that we each hold within ourselves the germ of Godhood, but that we create our own limitations through an ingrained subconscious desire to merge with the whole, rather than draw apart and find our true selves. The text does at times become somewhat sesquipedalian but I can empathize with the syllogism behind it.’
‘Yes,’ said Rex. ‘I’m sure that you can.’
‘So if you’ll kindly accompany me to the alleyway I’ll give you a sound whacking and we’ll say no more about it.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Rex. ‘Down this way is it?’
6
5. And later Elvis did play Memphis which was then in Egypt. And greatly did the gig go down.
6. But afterwards the cheque of Pharaoh did bounce mightily.
The Suburban Book of the Dead
Rex didn’t receive a whacking in the alley. Instead, he and Cecil discussed Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, logical positivism and the Hegelian dialectic, in which the contradiction between a proposition and its antithesis is resolved into a higher truth. They touched upon Gestalt psychology and behaviour potentiality and finally, as it was growing late, Cecil shook Rex by the hand, hailed a cab for him, tucked a fifty-dollar bill into his top pocket and instructed the cab driver to drop Rex off at an inexpensive rooming house where he might be put up for the night.
Rex thanked Cecil very much, promised to return his copy of Human Reactions in a Maze of Fixed Orientations as soon as he’d read it, and was driven off into the darkness.
Rex sank back into his seat, praying for all he was worth that the road ahead was not paved with running gags about psychology.
Having driven Rex through streets of ever-increasing ghastliness, the cab driver dropped him off on a windblown corner. He waived the fare upon Rex’s promise of free tickets for the Nemesis show and mentioned in passing that he had once had Sigmund Freud’s great-granddaughter in the back of his cab. Rex smiled his thanks and enquired exactly which of the sordid-looking buildings in the run-down neighbourhood the cabby recommended.
‘Over there pal. It’s down at the end of Lonely Street, it’s called . . .’
‘No. Don’t tell me,’ Rex replied. ‘I think I know exactly what it’s called.’
‘Cheers then, pal. Have another day.’
Rex trudged down to the end of Lonely Street and gazed up at the gaunt façade of Heartbreak Hotel. Warm and welcoming it wasn’t. Four storeys of grey concrete relieved by windows of blackened glass. Rex shook his head; this promised to be a bundle of laughs.
He slouched up the down-trodden steps, pushed open a creaking door and entered an ill-lit lobby. A single naked bulb managed to cast a wan grey light, which suited the all-grey decor just fine. Rex peered through the gloom towards two figures, hunched in attitudes of disconsolation at the reception desk.
‘Good evening,’ said Rex.
‘Good?’ The bell hop’s tears kept flowing. The desk clerk was dressed in that hue which is forever night.
Rex smiled cheerfully upon them. ‘I’d like a room for the night.’
‘A room for the night?’ The bell hop collapsed into further sobbings. The desk clerk fixed Rex with a bitter glare.
‘Are you taking the piss, or what?’
‘No. I’d like a room for the night. That’s all.’
‘I’d like a room for the night.’ The sarcasm in the desk clerk’s voice was not lost upon Rex. ‘Well, you can’t have one.’
‘Why not?’
‘Can you read?’ The desk clerk thumbed over his shoulder. The sign on the wall said
BROKEN-HEARTED LOVERS ONLY.
BY ORDER OF THE MANAGEMENT.
‘Hmm.’ Rex maintained an even tone. ‘Then, if that’s the case, you can consider me as broken-hearted as they come. Single room, please, just for the one night.’
‘You don’t look very broken-hearted to me.’
‘I’m putting on a brave face. Where do I sign?’
‘You don’t.’ The desk clerk folded his arms. ‘If you want my opinion, I’d say that you’re down but by no means out. It’s probably just the jacket. If you’ll take my advice you’ll trot back up the street. There’s a hotel there, The Elton, which caters for travellers with ill-fitting suits.’
Rex could feel the red mist coming on. He’d had a ‘rougher one’ than Sam Maggott. ‘Now just you see here. I was recommended to this establishment by a certain Officer Cecil. Perhaps you know him. Big chap, penchant for sadism.’
‘Everyone knows Officer Cecil,’ blubbered the bell hop.
‘Well, he’s a very close friend of mine and he’s going to be mightily displeased if he learns that you refused me a room. In fact-’ as Rex had given up on the truth he thought he might as well press right on ‘-in fact, I happen to work for the Police Department as an undercover agent.’
‘Undercover agent, eh?’ The desk clerk fingered his chin. ‘Well listen to me, fella. I don’t care if you’re an estate agent, a travel agent, a literary agent or a bloody chemical re-agent. It’s more than my job’s worth to let you in here. This is a broken-hearted lovers’ zone and that’s that.’
‘Undercover agent?’ The bell hop sobbed deeply. ‘Damned heretic, more like.’
‘Heretic?’ Rex recalled the Curious Case of the Blasphemous Brogues. ‘Now just let me get this straight. This is Heartbreak Hotel. It’s down at the end of Lonely Street. It has a bell hop whose tears keep flowing and a desk clerk who dresses in black. And it only rents rooms to broken-hearted lovers, who n
o doubt spend their time here crying in the gloom. Am I right so far?’
‘You certainly know your scripture.’
‘Scripture . . .’ Rex paused. ‘Scripture, you say? Thus it would be heresy for anyone other than a broken-hearted lover to check-in here?’
The bell hop and the desk clerk exchanged glances. Rex sought to discern a number of unspoken words being passed to and fro.
Finally the desk clerk spoke once more. ‘Don’t I know you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Rex. ‘You don’t.’
‘Yes I do. You’re that chap off the telly.’
‘No!’ screamed Rex. ‘I’m not!’ -
‘He is.’ The bell hop blew his nose. ‘He does that game show where all the contestants get-’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, listen to me fella, and listen well. I don’t care who you are or what you are. But broken-hearted lover you ain’t. And if you don’t get out of this hotel I shall be forced to call a Repo Man. And neither of us want that, do we?’
‘A Repo Man?’ The words went click in Rex’s head. ‘Tell me what you think of this.’ He fished out the billfold and displayed the card which had waved goodbye to Laura Lynch’s legs.
‘Oh.’ Whatever colour there might have been drained at once from the desk clerk’s face. ‘Oh, I see, sir. Yes indeed ... Well, I trust you are satisfied with my stoicism ... I do my job well, sir. You’ll find no deviants or heretics here. Oh no, indeed.’
‘Good.’ Rex nodded politely. ‘I’m very pleased to hear it. Now I shall require a room for the night.’
‘Oh yes, sir. Certainly.’ With an unsteady hand the desk clerk took down a key from beneath the BROKEN-HEARTED LOVERS ONLY sign.
‘Bell hop. Check that this room is suitable for our honoured guest.’
‘Yes sir,’ The bell hop left his damp patch of carpet and sped off at the treble
‘Never stops crying, that one, sir. Credit to his calling.’
‘I see.’ Rex didn’t really. ‘Why does he cry all the time, by the way? I’ve always wondered.’