Incompetence

by Rob Grant

  I heard a cough behind me. A pretty phlegmy cough, too, like it had some serious tobacco abuse behind it. I twisted my head, and I was looking at Twinkle.

  Twinkle was not your average bunny. For a start, your average bunny is not bald. Your average bunny is usually under eighty. Your average bunny tends to be a girl. Twinkle must have been a hundred and seven years old if he was a day. His little white gloves and starched cuffs covered up most of the liver spots, but the skin on his arms looked like someone had draped the Dead Sea Scrolls over a broom handle. I swear, it flapped when he moved his hands. I'd never seen a loose bunny suit before, and I'd rather not see one again. The fluffy tail dangled limply between his bony legs. The bodice hung baggy over his concave, ribby chest. The fishnet tights bunched up around his knees and bagged over the map lines of varicose veins that networked his calves. Hell, even the bunny ears were limp.

  His lips parted in his best bunny smile, but his denture fixative wasn't up to its job, so the teeth stayed nestled on the bottom while his upper gums did all the work. He closed his mouth and did some repair work with his tongue, looking for all the world like a decrepit mongoose struggling to swallow an oversized and lively snake. Finally, the dentures clicked into place. He smiled again, better this time, said his name was Twinkle and asked if I'd like him to dance for me. I gathered, from his accent, that Twinkle was from England, originally. From the north country.

  Well, I didn't want him to lap dance for me. I didn't even want to think about him lap dancing for me. I turned him down politely, patted the seat beside me and asked if he'd like to join me for a drink.

  He seemed relieved. He thanked me, put his gloved hands on the table and lowered himself creakily onto the red leather sofa with a low, drawn-out moan of chronic rheumatic pain. After a minute or two, he recovered from the effort of sitting down, got himself more or less straight in the chair and flashed me another bunny smile. 'Hang on a minute,' he said, and with two hands lifted his left leg over his right, presumably to comply with regulations on how the bunnies were supposed to sit when entertaining a customer. It took more than a minute. It also took a lot of creaking and groaning and more than a few smothered expletives. When the legs were finally crossed, he flashed his smile again, though his exertions had wiped some of the sheen off it, and asked if I'd buy us a bottle of champagne.

  Now, I would never order 'champagne' in a joint like this. Not unless I had a spare piece of beachfront property in Monte Carlo I didn't mind remortgaging. 'Wouldn't you rather have a beer?' I offered, as charmingly as I could.

  'Aye.' He nodded wistfully. 'Frankly, I'd rather have a glass of stout and a pickled egg. Only, we've got to order champagne. House rules, see.' He nodded at a bunny colleague, who sashayed over to the bar. 'Course,' Twinkle plucked at his fishnets, 'pickled eggs are illegal now. I don't suppose you remember 'em.'

  I did remember pickled eggs, vaguely. A hazy childhood memory. I once spotted them lurking dangerously in a greasy recess of some antiquated seaside fish and chip shop. As I recall, they looked fossilised -- green-tinged ovoids submerged in a huge jar of murky vinegar. I never tried one, but that won't come high on my list of regrets. Still, I affected lamentation at their passing for Twinkle's sake.

  He warmed to his theme, and started listing some of life's deceased great pleasures. Beer in pints. Pubs that didn't serve food. Pubs -- and this was stretching even Twinkle's memory -- with men-only snug bars for swearing in. Some kind of beer called mild. Pubs with sawdust on the floor, supposedly to facilitate cleaning up spilt beer and blood. Cars without seat belts. Riding motorbikes without helmets. Roads without speed limits. Police without breathalysers.

  Twinkle was old.

  His colleague returned with a bottle in an ice bucket, two glasses and a bill that was surely intended to cover the national debt of Nicaragua rather than the fizzy slop in the bottle that couldn't have passed as champagne to an eight-year-old schoolgirl enjoying her first drink. Damn. Now I'd have to settle with a credit card. I certainly wasn't carrying that kind of cash. Let's face it: Credit Suisse didn't carry that kind of cash.

  Twinkle said, 'Champion,' and upped his glass. He swallowed, paused, let out a belch like Krakatoa -- which, in actual fact, is west of Java -- and begged my pardon. 'It's the champagne.' He belched again. 'Filthy stuff. I've got a gas ball in my gut like the planet Jupiter. Any road,' he took out his lipstick and a small hand mirror, 'enough about me. Let's talk about you, big boy. Are you here on business, or...' Suddenly, his entire frame was racked with a coughing fit that came alarmingly close to putting him in his grave. He carried on coughing at more or less full intensity through three entire songs. I fully expected him to bring up an entire lung, possibly along with some other vital organs and a good length of intestine as garnish. In the end, all he produced was a ball of phlegm the size and texture of a Portuguese man-of-war, which he thoughtfully ejected into the champagne bucket. He recovered his composure almost instantly, shot me another patent bunny smile and finished: '... pleasure?'

  I watched in fascinated disbelief as he attempted to outline his mouth in bright red lip gloss with a hand that was less steady than an amphetamine addict's ECG.

  I asked him what had drawn him to erotic dancing. He smacked his lips together. 'Dunno, really.' He decided he was satisfied with the effect and put the mirror away. 'The glamour, I s'pose. The missus used to lap dance till she were well into her nineties. Till the cow ran away with that Japanese porno star. I took it up for summat to do, really.'

  I figured I'd made enough small talk and paid a fat enough bill to warrant talking business, so I asked Twinkle if he knew a guy called Klingferm.

  That got his attention. 'Dick? You know him?'

  'Yeah, I know him.' I didn't use the past tense, in case Klingferm had been a friend of his. No point in upsetting Twinkle unnecessarily. 'He leave any messages for anyone?'

  'You're Harry Salt?'

  'That's what it says on the office door.'

  'You'll have a card, then?'

  I fished out the card I'd picked up at Klingferm's dry cleaners and handed it over. Twinkle studied it, and sighed. 'This mean he's dead, then?'

  'I'm afraid so.'

  Twinkle handed me the card back and sighed again. 'Aye, he gave me a message for you. Dunno what it means, mind.'

  'Maybe I'll know.'

  'He said I was to tell you "locker one nine nine".'

  'Locker one nine nine?'

  'Or nine nine one.'

  'Locker nine nine one?'

  'One of the two.'

  'That's it?'

  'I'm pretty sure it was one nine nine.'

  'No mention where the locker might be?'

  'Or three nine nine.'

  'But that's it? Just a locker and a number?'

  'Or nine nine three.'

  Marvellous. I had a locker number and a key. Actually, I had four locker numbers and a key. Surely Klingferm would have left a hint where the locker might be. I tried pumping Twinkle a little further. 'He didn't give you a place to tell me?'

  'It might have been nine nine nine, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.'

  Great. I was getting less information the more I pumped. 'Are there any lockers here, at the Plaything?'

  'Not that I know of.'

  'And when did Klingferm give you this message?'

  'Yesterday.'

  'Yesterday?

  'No. The day before.'

  'Tuesday?'

  'Or Monday, possibly.'

  'Definitely this week, though?'

  'Oh, yes. Definitely. Definitely this week.'

  Well, that was good, at least. I was getting closer to Klingferm's trail. I was getting warmer.

  A loud electronic fanfare boomed. Twinkle looked up. 'Oh bugger,' he shifted his teeth around with his tongue, 'it's Horny Hour.' He grabbed his knees again and started to uncross his legs, accompanied by the usual gurning grimaces, grunts and grinding of worn-out cartilages. I looked around. All the bunnies were getti
ng ready to dance.

  Twinkle was going to dance, too. Twinkle was going to dance for me. I really didn't want that image pressed in my book of memories. I had to stop him.

  'No,' I said, 'I didn't come here for the lap dancing.'

  "S all right,' he grunted. 'It's Horny Hour. This one's on the house.'

  He creaked himself almost upright, then his knees suddenly gave way, and he crumpled towards the table. I shot up and caught him just in time to stop him cracking his head open.

  There was a loud whistle.

  I asked Twinkle if he was all right.

  Breathlessly, he wheezed, 'You'll have to let go of me.'

  'Let go of you? Why?'

  'You're not allowed...' He tried to catch his breath. There was another whistle, closer now, and the sound of feet running towards us in a big bad hurry. 'You're not allowed to touch the bunnies.'

  I heard the whistle again, just behind me, now. I half turned, but I caught a vicious jab to the back of my head, just exactly where I really needed a vicious jab right now, and went down.

  I hit the floor and rolled over immediately, in case whoever was handing out free vicious jabs was offering a two-for-the-price-of-one Thursday night special. I sent the champagne bucket scuttering across the floor. It was an expensive fall.

  I looked up. The blind bouncer was swinging away at thin air with his telescopic white stick, which doubled as a pretty effective, pretty nasty cosh. Somebody shouted out that I was on the floor. I didn't blame them: the bouncer could have hit anyone with one of those wild swings. He started kicking out, but I'd managed to roll out of range of his flailing feet.

  A group of German businessmen at a neighbouring table started laughing and calling out directions, so the bouncer could home in on me, like it was the Golden Shot or something. I was turning into a sport.

  I scrabbled to my feet and headed straight for the table that was grassing me up, shouting taunts at the sightless lunk so he knew exactly where to head.

  The bouncer waded into the Germans' table, swinging his cosh with merry abandon. Bottles and glasses started flying all over the dance floor, along with blood and teeth and German mucus.

  Nobody else seemed eager to finger me, so I backed away, straightened myself up and left them all to enjoy the floor show.

  I didn't settle the bill.

  Quite frankly, I was disappointed with the service.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It was 2 a.m. when I left the Plaything Club. The street was bright. The bars, nightclubs and cafes were all in full swing. Vienna was jumping. There were plenty of late-night revellers happily milling along the pavement.

  I put my hand to the back of my head and winced. Another lump. Any more of this and I'd wind up looking like the bloody Mekon. I'd have to shave my head and paint it, so I could pretend I was permanently wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  I'd had no idea where the Twinkle lead might point me, so I hadn't bothered booking a hotel. I still had no idea where the lead pointed. Klingferm wouldn't have left me a clue I couldn't make sense of. But what did it mean?

  I wasn't bothered too much that Twinkle couldn't remember the precise locker number; he'd given me a narrow enough range, and once I'd tracked down the lockers, the lock would match the serial number on the key. On the other hand, it would have been nice to know whether I was looking for a place with two hundred lockers or a thousand.

  Somehow, Klingferm would have given me enough to work out where the lockers would be. There was a part of my brain somewhere that already knew it.

  I thought I'd find an all-night cafe and worry at the problem over a coffee and some strudel.

  I walked along the street, only ten per cent aware of what was around me. The rest of me was turning the locker conundrum over and over in my mind. That's how the male brain works, well, my male brain, anyway: it obsesses. That's how it invents things. That's how it creates. That's how it solves problems.

  That's also how it overlooks small details. Small details that sometimes turn into lethal problems.

  That's how I failed to spot a threat lurking in a doorway shielded by burst garbage bags until it was far too late.

  I felt something very stiff jab into the small of my back. It didn't feel like a knife, but it didn't feel like a roll of liver wurst, either. A mouth hissed close to my ear, bringing with it a pungent wave of stale breath. 'This isn't a hard-on pressing on your spine, buddy.'

  'No?' I rolled my eyes sideways and caught a glimpse of an unfriendly smile through a rack of teeth that looked like a wooden glockenspiel someone had thrown on a fire, then ill-advisedly rescued. 'What is it then, buddy?'

  Dumb question. The smell, the teeth; I didn't figure him for a professional. I figured him for some street trash junkie with a rolled-up copy of the Viennese Big Issue, an urgent appetite for some kind of white powder and a whole lot of bluff. I was wrong. A bolt of electricity of sufficient voltage to illuminate the whole of New Orleans throughout the entire period of the Mardi Gras shot up my backbone, deep-frying my brain, scorching my lungs and singeing my pubic hair.

  'It's a police stun stick,' my tormentor told me, unnecessarily. 'With the safety stripped off,' he added. Like I hadn't worked that out already.

  I didn't go down. I just stayed there, swaying, waiting to find out, with a detached kind of interest, if my lungs would ever recover sufficiently to accommodate air again. My cheeks and my eyes must have been bulging like a toad that's had an air hose jammed up its rectum. I suspected my hair was standing on end. I hoped I wouldn't die like this, because whoever had to identify my corpse would certainly collapse in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

  After a couple of failed attempts, I finally did manage to suck in some oxygen, and with it the raw beginnings of some kind of dignity, and my panic subsided.

  'So, let's move it, Lard-arse.' Glockenspiel Teeth jabbed me again. 'Unless you'd like another dose.'

  That really got my goat. Lard-arse? I don't think so. I'm not the world's trimmest guy, but in no one's imagination could I be called fat. You think a fat man could have caught that 12.27 to Vienna? On top of which, I have a beautiful arse. A truly beautiful arse. I have a really tight, pert little number back there. My arse could have its own modelling career. It could earn enough to keep the rest of me in the lap of luxury if it put its mind to it. Lard-arse? I think not, my friend. I wasn't going to let him get away with that. 'If you ever even think of using that thing on me again--' I began.

  I never finished.

  I swung back to cruel consciousness in the back of a moving car full of unpleasant aromas, some of them mine.

  For a terrible instant, I was afraid I might have voided my bowels in the white pain of that second shock, but I was mercifully spared that particular indignity. Clearly, though, somebody had recently lost their lunch through their underpants in the back of this vehicle, and although the physical evidence had been cleared away, the memory lingered. On top of that, there were the overpowering smells of burnt hair and singed flesh. My own humble contribution, I was guessing. Last and certainly not least there were the foul exhalation's from the dentist's dream lounging beside me.

  The driver was shielded from us by some sturdy-looking smoked glass. I felt a very strong urge to vomit, and instinctively reached over to the passenger window button. The steel cattle prod cracked down hard on my knuckles by way of admonition. I gave myself the satisfaction of not yelling in pain.

  'You don't learn too quick, now do you, you roly-poly jerk?' He leaned back in his seat. 'I like that.'

  I fought the instinct to nurse my reddening knuckles, and tried to put some steel in my voice. 'Hey, here's the bottom line, Mr Colgate: I'm going to throw up. Would you rather have it inside the car, or outside?'

  'Puke away, Fatso. Wouldn't be the first time.'

  I hauled myself higher up my seat, partly to reclaim a little dignity, and partly to fight the contractions in my stomach. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. 'Hey, friend,' I grinned
big, to show him what colour teeth really could be if you applied a little paste once in a while, 'I have two words that could change your life: car freshener.'

  He grinned right back. 'Me? I like the smell in here. The sweat, the cak, the hurl... Reminds me how good I am at my job.' He took out a very long, very thin stiletto blade and started picking away at his fingernails.

  That was an interesting point: he was good at his job, assuming his job was sneaking up behind innocent strollers, griddling their livers and bundling them into kidnap vehicles without making a fuss. He'd shanghaied me in a brightly lit and crowded main street, in full public view of a couple of hundred schnitzel eaters, subdued me and loaded me into a car without raising his pulse or causing a commotion. He was good, all right. Which meant but one thing: he didn't work for any legitimate operation.

  Which fact almost certainly carried negative implications for my immediate future.

  The knife was a professional choice, too. You can forget about those twelve-inch Rambo blades with their serrated edges and cruel curves. Sure, they look nasty enough, with that channel carved down the middle for blood to run freely, and they'd cause plenty of damage, no question, in a brutal, ungainly way. But a thin blade with a very, very sharp point will puncture a body deep and quick, with a minimum of effort. Less surface resistance, see? Elegant, almost, if you're a connoisseur of these things.

  I watched him use this fine weapon to work out some fingernail filth that had probably been around since the dawn of civilisation. He had long hair, lank and thin, that looked like it only encountered shampoo on the twenty-ninth of February, and not regularly, even then. The fringe hung down filthily over the right side of his face, so you only saw one of his eyes. The teeth encompassed a small colour palette, ranging from light ochre to woody brown. Some of them were so pointed, they looked like they'd been sharpened on purpose.

  Maybe they had.

  He was wearing a suit that had been expensive at some point in its career, but debris from dozens of ineptly consumed meals had irrevocably merged with the fabric, from the lapels to the trousers, somewhat undermining the splendid work of Italian tailors. Now, you'd think that this blatant disinterest in personal hygiene would indicate a certain lack of self-respect in an individual, but no. Timmy Taser here was bedecked with gold jewellery. Adorned with it, he was. Expensive stuff, too. On his wrists and on his fingers, in his ears, and through his nose. He probably wore a foreskin stud.