The Condimental Op

by Andrez Bergen

  I glanced away. “Yeah.”

  “Roy.” Suzie stepped back to me and placed her arms around my waist, her face coming close, hair wet. I never noticed before how dazzling she was, even with the glasses spattered with raindrops and the bloody sleeve. “We’ll be fine.” I heard thunder somewhere distant. Then she winked and headed for the entrance.

  “Suze,” I called.

  She stopped to look at me, a resourceful smile on her lips. “What?”

  “Don’t forget the business card the old coot dropped.”

  “Mmm. More like it.”

  I started out writing East of Écarté as a background piece for Floyd Maquina, my narrator from Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, intended to address a comment he made in the pages of TSMG: “Turns out they were Seeker Branch reps and were recruiting me because of my experience as a private investigator (I don’t know why — I was a hack — but that’s a long story for another day and another book).”

  But by August 2012, when I decided to steer the unfinished yarn into ‘weird noir’ territory to suit K.A. Laity’s ace anthology (fittingly called Weird Noir, for the fine people at Fox Spirit), it stood to reason I needed to ditch Floyd — who’s rooted in a real if surreal, dystopic/dystrophic world — and induct my other detective character Roy Scherer, of Scherer and Miller, Investigators of the Paranormal and Supermundane.

  Aside from the fact he dabbles with the supernatural, Roy is most things Floyd is not. Floyd is more I: self-doubting, addicted to movies, a lush. Roy is the rumble-and-tumble type, cocky and cynical.

  Here Roy is younger and fresher than in the other stories I’ve written about him and his partner Suzie. He hasn’t reached the pinnacle of sarcasm and cynicism but he’s started the trek.

  Mocha Stockholm is a tiny wink at my daughter Cocoa, six years old when I put together this story (she’s now seven). Cocoa’s a similarly incredible force of nature, and while I write she often entertains herself practicing ballet beside me in our tiny Tokyo apartment that’s 33 square metres.

  She accompanies DVDs of performances by Aurélie Dupont, Gillian Murphy and Dorothée Gilbert. Like Mocha, Cocoa adores ballet and creates her own choreography on the fly, with touches of comedy, so of course I glance her way and it’s had its influence.

  The character of the male dancer here, Bruno Lermentov, is heavily based on Bruno the “Slobokian Acrobatic Bear” from Robert McKimson’s Bugs Bunny cartoon Big Top Bunny (1951) — a favourite for me and Cocoa — while the artistic director of the ballet company, Murray Helpman, is a loose nod to the great Sir Robert Helpmann, the Australian ballet dancer who choreographed The Red Shoes (1948) and played the evil Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

  In a review, Raven Crime Reads said “I particularly enjoyed…‘East of Ecarte’ which made me feel that I’d wandered into the darkest recesses of Raymond Chandler’s imagination.” I mention this here ’cos the vaguest comparison with Chandler knocks off my socks.

  Finally, there are some subverted quotes and character names buried in here from a wealth of ballet-oriented movies, everything from Dario Argento’s Suspiria to Center Stage. Why not?

  And do check out the original Weird Noir anthology if you get the chance, “a brilliantly tough-talking, visceral and disturbing collection…”

  East of Écarté

  I hugged the curve of the desk, partially playing sham detective but more honestly hungover and bored out of my brain, when the dame came to call — unannounced, as the choice ones usually do.

  Which is an intentional play on words. This woman had no choice.

  The fact was my employer not only underpaid me but also refused to invest in a receptionist, and this accounted for the fact our visitor wandered in with an addled expression stuck on her mush. I sat up straight to wave, before contemplating how stupid that looked.

  If she noticed, the woman let me off the hook. She indicated the only chair on the other side of the bureau, her ironing-board posture putting mine to shame.

  “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  She was young, late teens sliding into early twenties, had long, golden-brown hair severely tied back in a way that framed a beautiful face with minimal makeup.

  To balance this and likely buck any unwanted attention, the woman wore an abstract floral dress looking like Claude Monet and Jackson Pollock painted it in wild collusion.

  “Are you Mister Miller?” she asked as my eyes adjusted to the glare.

  “Sorry, he’s out. I’m in.”

  “I see. I’m Mocha Stockholm.”

  “Course you are.”

  The woman frowned, though on that face the expression barely made a dent. I noticed her eyes mugged the colour of cinnamon.

  “You know me?” she asked.

  “Nah. Just sounded like a quip Humphrey Bogart would’ve rolled out — with far more flair.”

  “To which, Lauren Bacall would lob back her own face-slapping wisecrack?”

  “The devil, you say…?” I grinned. “You know your classic cinema.”

  “A wee bit. My mum was a movie journalist, so I grew up force-fed on the stuff. She particularly loved her black-and-whites detective stories, Mister—?”

  “Scherer.”

  “Mister Scherer.”

  “Call me Roy.”

  “Roy, then.” She smiled. We looked at each other for several seconds. “Care to know why I’ve come today, Roy?”

  “Oh, yeah, ‘course — sorry.”

  I grabbed a notebook, and the first biro I scribbled with refused to work. I rifled through a desk drawer, searching for another.

  “Would you mind if I smoke?” I heard the woman ask as I ransacked the bureau. What was her name? Mockba? Momo? Better to stick with Miss Stockholm.

  “No worries, Miss Stockholm.”

  “Mocha.”

  “Mocha. Sure — so long as you don’t mind sharing one of the cigarette’s brothers. I’m out.”

  Mocha pulled her chair closer.

  As she renounced good deportment and reclined back into it, the woman crossed a pair of obscenely long, narrow legs. I hadn’t noticed before the minimal length of her overwrought dress.

  She conjured up an ostrich-skin-covered cigarette case and slipped out two cigarettes.

  “Help yourself.”

  Case in hand, Mocha leaned over and I prized one free. I tried my urbane best to snap up the fag with style, but my mitt shook. That would be the excessive amount of cognac, consumed the prior evening, revealing itself.

  The woman lit our cigarettes with a Zippo that had the slogan La Chauve-souris inscribed in a flowing font across its surface.

  Settling back to enjoy the moment I sensed the return of a wayward backbone, and granted my guest a grateful smile. She’d earned the truth.

  “I have a confession,” I said. “I’m not really a detective, just hired help.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  Mocha held the cigarette between her teeth as she placed the case and lighter into a small purse, and then she took it in her left hand.

  “There’s only one name on the business card — Mister Miller’s. You’re also a little young.”

  “No younger than you.”

  She pursed her lips, but there was a smirk there. “Too young to play the hardened, streetwise PI. You need to get out in the sun more often, weather-up the good-looks.”

  “You’re a better detective than me.”

  “Something I’ve always aspired to. Let me guess: Part-time job?”

  “Bingo. Pays the bills and saves me scabbing off my parents.”

  “They object?”

  “I do.”

  The woman nodded, but I noticed she was looking over at the tattered venetian blind I had closed to fend off an offensive midday sun.

  “The odd-jobs you do here. Surveillance, or that sort of thing?”

  “Would be neat if true. Alas, no. Mostly paper shuffling and photocopy chores. I double-up as a cleaner and shor
t order cook. I’m quite the whiz with an egg and a pot of boiling water. But I don’t think Art trusts me enough at this point in the field, doing things like surveillance. Prob’ly never will.”

  “Art would be Mister Miller?”

  “Yep.”

  With her free hand, Mocha pulled at the hem of her dress, which was riding too high on her thighs. I praised my lucky stars that Art had never invested in a wider desk.

  “Speaking of whom,” the woman murmured, “can I ask where he is? We had an appointment for twelve.”

  “That so?”

  Mocha gifted me a laugh. “That is so.”

  This was a potential problem.

  Art had been on the receiving end of most of the cognac the night before — two bottles of Château de Plassac, an undeserved gift from a grateful client. I’d drunk maybe half of one of them, Art the rest. Plus a couple of lines of speed. Given the current state of my brain, I assessed he’d be sleeping the cocktail off right into the next week.

  I pretended to check a desk calendar my boss never used. “Stockholm,” I mused, feigning diligence. “Named after the city?”

  “No, silly — the city’s named after me.”

  “Right.” I looked up at the woman. “He’s — um — indisposed right now, out on a case, but give me all the details and I’ll fill him in.”

  “Have you found a pen that works?”

  “Right here.”

  I was holding aloft a gaudy pen with cute images of Minnie Mouse splashed all over the thing. Where the blazes had Art acquired that?

  “Fine.” The woman gave me a pleasant enough smile — difficult to read. “I think someone is trying to kill me.”

  I’d just crossed the t in ‘think’ — shorthand wasn’t my forté — when she finished talking. The comment hung in the air like a predatory slap about to happen. I looked at her under my brow.

  “You think…?”

  Mocha glanced at the pad beneath my pen. “I think someone is trying to kill me.”

  “I know — you said.”

  “Well, you haven’t finished writing.”

  “I’m not sure I need to — easy enough to remember.”

  I took a last drag on my cigarette, which was already burning at the filter. Damn.

  “What I meant to ask is this: You think someone is trying to kill you, or you have actual proof of the matter?”

  “I have these. See what you make of them.”

  Mocha had popped open her handbag — it was a Prada, no idea if counterfeit or real — and she took out a handful of twice-folded beige envelopes that she placed on the desk within easy reach. I picked them up and counted. Five in all, no address or postage stamp — just Mocha’s name typed on the front.

  “They were slipped under the door of my apartment,” she said. “Well, four were put there. The fifth I discovered in my locker at the theatre.”

  “You’re an actress?”

  “Ballet dancer.”

  The perfect comportment of her legs crossed my mind. I opened the flap of one of the envelopes and opened up an abnormally sized page.

  Mocha leaned forward to place elbows on top of Art’s ink-blotter map of the world, her chin in her palms. “It’s U.S. Letter, eight-point-five by eleven inches.”

  “You measured it?”

  “Well, like you, obviously, I thought this was a weird size. I checked into it. Whereas we use the international standard A4, U.S. Letter is the standard in—”

  “The U.S.?” I hazarded.

  “Spot on.”

  “Ta. Wasn’t that difficult.”

  I turned my attention to the contents.

  “Let’s see: ‘YOU WILL DIE!!’ …To the point, all caps, double exclamation marks for effect — making the threat childish. Not so sure of him or herself, since ‘WILL’ is employed instead of ‘GOING TO’. Wow. You’re right. This is a threat.”

  “Using a manual typewriter.”

  “Manual?” I stared closer at the print. “Old school. Scrub the childish quip. And looks like the ‘L’ drops down lower than the other keys.”

  Mocha narrowed her eyes as I showed the page. Straight after I had to shake my head to clear it of the vision. The woman’s eyes were dazzling.

  “I hadn’t noticed that,” she was saying.

  I flicked through other envelopes in my hands. “All these letters are written with the same machine?”

  “I’m fairly certain, yes.”

  “Similar commentary?”

  “Pretty much. Things like ‘Die, bitch’, ‘Prepare to meet your maker’ — et cetera, et cetera. I haven’t learned all of them by rote.”

  “Original content.”

  “Requiring writerly skill and excessive imagination.”

  “For sure. Any idea why some dipstick would want you bumped off?”

  “I haven’t the faintest.” Straight after she lifted her head from her hands. “Actually, that’s not exactly true. I was recently promoted to principal.”

  “Of which school?”

  Mocha rolled those mesmerizing cinnamon peepers. “I’m nineteen. A little young to be a teacher, let alone running a school. I mean principal dancer at the company — what the French call étoile.”

  “Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out early,” I laughed.

  She charitably joined me. “That’s true. Could have led to some disastrous misunderstandings.”

  “Oh, yeah. Now, back to the manual typewriter.” Balancing the chair on its two back legs — which my boss hated me doing — I scratched my head. “Prob’ly it’s easy enough to find in this day and age. What a giveaway.”

  “Then you’ll take the case?”

  “I’ll have to run it by Art when he steps in. Guy’s a busy man.”

  “Not your Mister Miller — you. Will you take the case?”

  I stared at her. “Me?”

  “I like the way you think, even while you’re nursing what I can only imagine is the hangover from Hades.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Mmm. But I think we have something, a spark. I trust you, in spite of any —er — alcoholic tendencies.”

  “Well, I’m not qualified, anyway. I’m no detective. Art runs the show and he’d hit the roof.”

  “I don’t care. Qualifications are often a ruse or no help at all. I’ll pay you well — and I’ll throw in a few front-row tickets.”

  “You have that kind of pull?” I guessed it must be a third-rate affair, probably some amateur collective doing rehearsals in a dilapidated warehouse on a forgotten back alley in Richmond or Clifton Hill.

  “Right now, I seem to.”

  “Which company?”

  “The national one.”

  “Ah.” I seriously needed to reassess my detecting skills. “The big time.”

  “These days, with the world falling apart out there — I guess.”

  “Sorry to say, I’m not such a ballet fan, so the tickets would be a wasted perk.”

  “Any sisters?”

  That made me twig. Art’s kid Suzie.

  I could imagine her killing for the tickets — or, better yet, strangling me if I passed up this kind of opportunity. A tough ten-year-old mad about ballet. I peered at my watch. God knows why. The old man wouldn’t be back for days and, anyway, he wouldn’t notice I was MIA.

  “Okay,” I decided. “You’re on.”

  We entered the Arts Centre complex via a back door that reminded me of hidden panels used by ninja in old Japanese TV shows.

  I didn’t even see it there in the wall until Mocha stopped and swung it open. Just as I stepped forward, another skinny woman — coming from inside — whacked into my guide.

  The glare this woman sent Mocha’s way bookended the intentional nature of the bump. I would have guessed her age as early thirties, with crow’s feet around the eyes and a boyish body she didn’t hide. Pretty woman, but washed out and agitated.

  “I see you’re replacing me in the part,” this woman said.

 
; Mocha held her ground. “It’s just temporary.”

  “Of course. Nobody here is a permanent fixture.”

  After that, the woman waltzed down the street. I’ll give her this much — she waltzed well.

  “Who’s grumpy bum?” I asked.

  “Neve Ryan.”

  “And the name is supposed to be meaningful to me, because…?”

  “The darling of the company over the past decade — but she’s being forced into retirement by our new director Murray Helpman.”

  “Bound to make someone grumpy. Any chance you reckon she could be the author of your fan mail?”

  “Well, she doesn’t like me.”

  “I don’t like people, either — but that doesn’t mean I send irate love letters or plan to knock them off.”

  “True. C’mon.”

  I followed the woman’s lead along a narrow corridor wrapped in pale linoleum and very little else aside from intrusive fluorescent lighting above our heads.

  “So this is ballet central?”

  “The bowels of it.”

  Near an open door a wiry-looking middle-aged man in a baggy chocolate-brown suit, boasting a beige cravat around the neck and thinning hair up on top, intercepted us. He had a somewhat magnetic ski-jump nose undercut by a lopsided sneer.

  “Darling,” he purred, ignoring me as he washed bulging eyes over Mocha. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “Having lunch with my friend Roy here. Roy, this is Murray Helpman — the artistic director of the company.”

  “Yes, yes, charmed,” Helpman crooned, allowing his gaze to flick my way for all of one five hundredth of a second. “Now—” His attention had jumped back to Mocha “—I want to create, to make something big out of something little, to make a great dancer out of you. But first, I must ask you a question: What do you want from life? To eat?”

  The man appeared genuinely disgusted at the thought.

  “Don’t worry, I threw down only a salad,” Mocha assured him.

  “With a liberal dashing of Thousand Island dressing,” I added.

  Helpman fairly swooned. Mincing with feeble, the man leaned against a wall, wiping his brow.

  “Oh, my God! Insanity!”

  “Roy’s only kidding round,” Mocha said, granting me a look that was thirty-three percent annoyed and the other two-thirds mischief. “No Thousand Island dressing, I swear.”