Blotto, Twinks and the Stars of the Silver Screen

by Simon Brett

  Which meant that, though only one Terminal Services hitman was delegated to kill Blotto, three had been given the job of killing Twinks.

  And, of course, Giovanni and Giuseppe were on a mission to kill both of them.

  Early the following morning, in separate anonymous Los Angeles apartments, four hitmen checked that their weapons of choice – automatic pistols – were in perfect working order.

  Meanwhile, in Lenny ‘The Skull’ Orvieto’s headquarters, Giovanni and Giuseppe did the same.

  Blotto’s instinct, when talking to Corky Froggett in the Hollywood Hotel garage, had been to rush straight to the Barolo Brothers’ hideout, but the chauffeur had deterred him. Filling the role of Twinks rather well, he had advised spending some time planning their assault before taking action. Grudgingly, Blotto had been forced to agree.

  The idea occurred to both of them at the same time that it would be jolly useful, before they faced the real-life situation, to have another viewing of Chaps’ Lonesome Stand. Surely, in Hollywood, centre of the movie world, arranging such a viewing shouldn’t be too difficult.

  Nor was it. Remembering that J. Winthrop Stukes had talked about having a private cinema, Blotto rang through to Britannia. The actor was delighted to hear from the new star of the White Knights cricket team, even more delighted to hear that Blotto wanted to use his private cinema, though considerably less delighted when he heard that it wasn’t one of his own movies they wanted to watch.

  The arrangement was, however, made. Blotto and Corky spent an enchanted evening watching Chaps Chapple once again surmounting all odds to rescue the beautiful innocent young girl from the hideout of the O’Connor gang. They were spellbound right to the moment when Chaps touched the brim of his leather hat to the lady and rode off into the sunset.

  J. Winthrop Stukes, who’d been the perfect host all evening, then asked if they’d like to watch one of his movies next. He was considerably less genial when they said they wouldn’t.

  ‘Absolutely the lark’s larynx, that film, isn’t it?’ said Blotto as Corky eased the Lagonda back to the Hollywood Hotel.

  ‘It certainly is, milord.’

  ‘I love the rolling of the barrels, sending the O’Connors flying, and all that rombooley, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly do, milord.’

  ‘And that swinging down on the rope bit at the end – if that isn’t the panda’s panties, what is?’

  ‘Nothing, milord.’

  ‘I’d be in seventeen kinds of bliss if I could do that, you know, Corky.’

  ‘I’m sure you would, milord.’

  ‘But I’d use a cricket bat rather than a rifle.’

  ‘Very right and proper, milord.’

  Though they then sank into contented silence for a few moments, their mood could not have been described as ‘relaxed’. They had watched the movie many times, but never before with such concentration. Its content was a vital component in the plan they had hatched for the following day.

  In Chaps’ Lonesome Stand the hero had also decided to make his raid on the O’Connors’ hideout very early in the morning. That should provide an element of surprise. ‘THEY’LL BE DOZY WITH SLEEPING OFF THE EXCESSES OF THE NIGHT BEFORE’ the caption read as he explained this to Tubby (though the point of explaining things verbally to a deaf-mute was one of the many questions the film did not address).

  So Blotto and Corky Froggett also decided they would make their raid very early in the morning. The Lagonda purred its way out of the Hollywood Hotel garage at five-thirty.

  At about the same time four hitmen stepped into cars parked outside separate anonymous Los Angeles apartments. Giovanni and Giuseppe also got into a black limousine parked outside Lenny ‘The Skull’ Orvieto’s HQ. They all knew where they were going. The Hollywood criminal grapevine had proved as efficient as ever. The hitmen’s quarries would be found at the Barolo Brothers’ hideout, where Twinks was being held and where Blotto was going to rescue her.

  The Lagonda arrived first, and parked behind the shelter of some scrubby bushes, exactly where Chaps Chapple had tied up his faithful horse Lightning in Chaps’ Lonesome Stand. Blotto, resolutely armed with his trusty cricket bat and feeling he had the strength of at least ten because his heart was so, so pure, stepped out of the car. Dawn was beginning to colour the sky grey, just as it had done in the monochrome movie.

  ‘This is all creamy éclair,’ whispered Blotto as he and Corky crept across the rocky terrain towards the hideout’s entrance. ‘I’m as sure as the favourite in a one-horse race that this was the actual location used in the movie.’

  ‘I think you’re right, milord. And having watched it only last night, we know the layout of the place precisely. Everything will work just like it did in Chaps’ Lonesome Stand.’

  ‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto.

  Corky Froggett’s prediction that everything would work out just like it did in Chaps’ Lonesome Stand proved to be distressingly accurate. A moment later, as he rose to cross over to the shelter of another bush, a shot from inside the hideout hit Corky in the shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Blotto, just as Chaps Chapple’s caption had asked in the movie. ‘Should I stay and look after you?’

  Corky Froggett’s head shook with just the same amount of vehemence as Tubby’s had in the movie.

  Blotto confused art with reality for a moment and said, just as Chaps’ caption had, ‘You’re a brave man, Tubby.’

  Then he zigzagged, cricket bat in hand, from sheltering bush to rocky cover, until he reached the narrow gap between the rocks which was the entrance to the Barolo Brothers’ hideout.

  He pressed himself close against the stone wall, confident that if he couldn’t see the snipers above, then they couldn’t see him either. At this point, he remembered, Chaps Chapple had lit a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the middle of the Barolo Brothers’ natural fortress. But since dynamite was not one of the items available from the Hollywood Hotel’s room service, Blotto had known he would have to use another approach. And he had come prepared.

  After all, the only purpose of Chaps Chapple’s stick of dynamite had been to create a diversion so that he could sneak into the hideout. And Blotto had his own way of creating a diversion, which he was convinced could not fail.

  He had checked at the hotel that it was fully wound up and he knew this was its moment. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the clockwork jumping frog and threw it into the middle of the Barolo Brothers’ compound. Then he rushed forward after it.

  Whether anyone actually noticed the frog’s presence is hard to tell. Certainly no one reacted to it. Blotto found himself looking down the barrel of a rifle, at the end of which was the leering face of Umberto.

  Blotto looked round with some disappointment at the rocky amphitheatre in which he found himself. (It was three-sided so as to give access for the cameras.) Rodents, he thought, it’s a bit beyond the barbed wire to change the set so much from the way it had been in Chaps’ Lonesome Stand. Now there were fewer buildings in the space, just a wooden hut in the middle. Worse, there was no convenient pile of barrels visible. Nor was there a lifting apparatus attached to a beam on the side of a building. Nor a rope to swing down on.

  Blotto was going to have to think of another way of mopping up the final remainder of the Barolo Brothers. If it worked as well as his substitution for dynamite of a clockwork jumping frog, the omens were not good.

  Everywhere guns seemed to be trained on him. Not only was Umberto’s rifle virtually up his nose, the ground level was full of Barolo Brothers with cocked revolvers. And high on the rocks looking down on them stood three men with automatic pistols.

  Though Blotto usually welcomed having the odds against him, this went beyond a normal imbalance.

  Umberto’s grin had not got any less malevolent. ‘It is very generous of you to come here, Mr Lyminster. To save me the trouble of coming to get you. Your sister is already here, as a guest of the Barolo Brothers. And now it
will give me great pleasure to kill both of you and brand your bodies with the “BB” insignia of the Barolo Brothers!’

  He cocked the rifle, which was only inches away from Blotto’s chin. No need to worry about taking aim in a situation like that.

  ‘Move round to your right,’ said Umberto. ‘I want all my Barolo Brothers brothers to see my revenge.’

  Blotto did as he was told, thinking that, well, he’d had a pretty good life, bit of a damper not finding his Holy Gruel by rescuing Mimsy La Pim, or Twinks come to that, but—

  A shot rang out. Umberto dropped to the ground, dead.

  Up on the rocks the Terminal Services hitman, who had had his automatic pistol trained on Blotto till the moment he moved, kicked himself. He tried to find his target again, but on the lower level all hell had broken loose. A fusillade of shots came towards him from the Barolo Brothers. Everyone seemed to be shooting without anyone being very clear what they were shooting at. Barolo Brothers fell like ninepins. The two other Terminal Services hitmen joined in the game.

  Blotto had quickly decided that the only place where Twinks could be being held was the wooden hut, so he rushed towards it, knocking armed Barolo Brothers out of the way with his cricket bat.

  He burst through the flimsy wooden doors to find Twinks facing him. Between them, with his back to Blotto, stood a man with an automatic pistol. Had he not been such a stickler for protocol, the results might have been very different, but the hitman was saying, ‘. . . and I thought you would like to know that your death will be the result of a contract taken out with Terminal Services, Los Angeles’ most efficient organisation for—’

  A downward stroke of the cricket bat (a shabby shot that would never have been tolerated at Lord’s) felled the hitman in mid-flow. Blotto grabbed his sister by the hand. ‘Come on, Twinks me old toast-rack, let’s get out of here like a pair of cheetahs on spikes!’

  Outside the few men still standing kept up their unremitting fusillade. Again, nobody seemed too worried about who they were shooting at.

  Soon Terminal Services would have to start the business of recruiting four new employees.

  Because neither Blotto nor Twinks was armed, no one took any notice of them as they threaded their way through the throng to the narrow passage by which Blotto had entered the compound.

  ‘Larksissimo!’ said Twinks, as they gambolled down the rocky slope to the Lagonda. ‘You’re a Grade A foundation stone, Blotters! I knew you’d come and rescue me in the nick of time!’

  ‘How did you know that, Twinks?’

  ‘Because you always do.’

  When they reached the Lagonda, they found that, in spite of his injury, Corky Froggett had dragged himself there and was lying on the ground beside it.

  ‘Why didn’t you get in, you voidbrain?’ asked Blotto.

  ‘I didn’t want to spill my humble peasant blood on your aristocratic leather upholstery, milord.’

  ‘Don’t talk such toffee, Corky. Twinks had better have a look at that shoulder of yours.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you let the young mistress bother about something as unimportant as that, milord. It would be a great honour for me to die of gangrene in the service of the Lyminster family.’

  ‘You’re talking complete meringue glacé,’ said Twinks. ‘You’ll provide a much more useful service by getting better and being fit to drive again.’

  ‘If you say so, milady.’

  Twinks had cut through the fabric around the wound with a small pair of scissors, which she produced from her sequined reticule, and was now probing at the bloody hole with a delicate silk handkerchief. ‘Does that hurt, Corky?’

  ‘Yes, milady, but a little pain in the cause of the Lyminster family is a small price to pay for—’

  ‘Oh, Corky, for the love of strawberries, stuff a pillow in it! The bullet’s still in the wound. It needs to be hoicked out quickly to avoid infection.’

  ‘Should we get him to a hospital?’ asked Blotto anxiously.

  ‘Don’t don your worry-boots about that,’ his sister replied. ‘I can do it right here.’

  She reached into her sequined reticule and produced a set of surgical instruments, along with gauze, cotton wool, bandages and bottles of lotion. In no time she had removed the bullet, disinfected the wound and dressed it. Corky Froggett was made to lie, after many assertions that it wasn’t his place to do so, across the back of the Lagonda.

  ‘Tickey-Tockey,’ said Blotto, getting into the driver’s seat. ‘So where do we pongle off to now – back to the hotel?’

  Twinks sat down beside him. ‘Isn’t there something you’re forgetting, brother of mine?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘Is there?’

  ‘Mimsy La Pim.’

  ‘Great galumphing goatherds!’ How could he have forgotten his mighty quest for the Holy Gruel? ‘Do you know anything about where she is?’

  ‘Yes. She was locked up in the hut where I was.’

  ‘So you actually saw her?’ asked Blotto, thunderstruck by the splendour of the idea.

  ‘Yes, I did. And she told me what the Barolo Brothers were planning to do to her this morning.’

  ‘We know about that. Thanks goodness I got there in time.’

  ‘What in the name of snitchrags do you mean by that, Blotters?’

  ‘The gunfight we’ve just escaped from must mean that she’s all right. We just have to go back to the hut and get her. None of the Barolo Brothers will be left alive to take her off to the fumacious fate they’d prepared for her.’

  ‘If only life were that simple, Blotto. A bunch of the Barolo Brothers had driven off with her just before you arrived!’

  The cloud of dust sent up by the Lagonda as it roared away was big enough to cause the weather stations of Los Angeles to warn of a potential tornado.

  27

  Rescue!

  Blotto and Corky’s reconnaissance mission of the day before stood them in good stead as they knew exactly where they were going.

  ‘And the stenchers told Mimsy what they were going to do to her, did they?’

  ‘They spoffing well did, yes!’

  ‘They don’t deserve the name of human boddoes!’

  ‘What’s more, they said they were going to film the whole clangdumble.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘They said she’d lived so much of her life on screen, it made sense that her death should be on screen too.’

  ‘But why? What kind of leechworm would behave like that?’

  ‘It’s a turf war.’

  ‘What, you mean there are jockeys involved?’

  ‘No, Blotto me old screwdriver. A “turf war” is a war between rival gangs. Lenny ‘The Skull’ Orvieto and his family got to Hollywood first and started to control the criminal activity there. Then the Barolo Brothers arrived. They want to take over from him. There are rich pickings to be had in this town. But how do you put pressure on a man who’s always surrounded by bodyguards? You can’t get at him, so you kidnap his girlfriend.’

  ‘So she wasn’t kidnapped for a ransom, after all?’

  ‘Not the old jingle-jangle, no. In spite of what it said in the note. They just wanted power.’

  ‘And what about you? Were they going to ask for a ransom in good old spondulicks for you?’

  Twinks’s azure eyes hardened as she said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So what kind of fate were they planning for you if . . . ?’ Blotto’s words trickled away. He realised how lucky he had been to get to Twinks in time. He also realised how much his sister meant to him. For a moment he contemplated taking her hand or saying something mushy. But no, boddoes like him didn’t go in for that sort of flim-flummery.

  ‘We’re getting close now, aren’t we, milord?’ said Corky Froggett. He could see enough from his recumbent position on the back seat to recognise the route they had travelled the day before.

  ‘Yes, we are, by Denzil,’ the young master agreed.

  ‘There was that little thi
cket near the embankment, milord, where we reckoned we could park up and get a view of what was going on.’

  ‘Which is exactly where I’m parking now,’ said Blotto, as he brought the Lagonda to a graceful halt in the appointed place.

  ‘Off we go, by Denzil!’ he shouted as he got out of the car. ‘To rescue Mimsy La Pim! Come on, Twinks!’ And, cricket bat in hand, he ran across the dusty field towards the embankment.

  Twinks had a quick word with Corky Froggett, handed him something from her sequined reticule, and then ran fleetly to catch up with her brother.

  * * *

  The Lagonda had raised so much dust on the old dirt road that they hadn’t been aware of the black limousine following them.

  Giovanni and Giuseppe had arrived at the Barolo Brothers’ compound a little after the four Terminal Services hitmen. Alerted by the sounds of gunfire, they had kept their distance until they were clearer about what was going on.

  But when they saw Blotto and Twinks running down the hill to the Lagonda, they knew what they had to do. And they knew what Lenny ‘The Skull’ Orvieto would do to them if they failed in their mission. In business matters Orvieto was a man of almost excessive probity. If he had taken out a contract on someone, it was a point of honour with him to see that the contractual obligations were fulfilled. And if any of his employees proved inadequate in the commission of those obligations, then contracts were immediately out on them too.

  Giovanni and Giuseppe would not have risked going so close to the Lagonda if they had not seen Blotto and Twinks leave the vehicle and set off across the fields towards the embankment. As it was, they parked their black limousine right next door to it. They were not worried about its being discovered. While the two of them were going to come back to their car, there was no way that Blotto and Twinks would be coming back to theirs.

  The two hoods once again checked their automatic pistols before emerging from the thicket and following the path taken by their quarries.

  Completely unaware that their every move had been watched by the injured Corky Froggett in the back of the Lagonda.

  Blotto knew exactly where he was going. The reconnaissance trip had not been wasted. They were at the location used by all the major Hollywood studios for tying-women-to-the-railway-line scenes.