***
Bettina Bunsen wasn’t always wizened, wasn’t always old, and wasn’t always a crone. In fact, at one time, she was plump, young, and very pretty. But eighty years took care of that. She wasn’t always alone and sad, either. She’d had a husband and a baby. The RAF took care of that when they bombed the shit out of Dresden. She survived and managed to make it to Switzerland as a refugee. Because God had decided that she should live, she did not wish to offend him by taking her own life, and therefore she supported the unsupportable and bore the unbearable. Eventually she married a confectioner from Geneva, and learned that she had a natural gift for making sweets that she never suspected, and enjoyed a year of…not happiness, but at least the closest approximation to it that she could imagine.
When her husband’s cuckoo clock gave out on the night of their first anniversary, she decided that God was seriously taking the piss, but by that time she was so old that knocking herself off seemed like jumping the gun, and anyway, daily existence was such a painful experience that it felt like atonement for the guilt of having survived.
She took over the running of the shop, which had a small but loyal clientele, and waited for God to come and get her so that she could give him a piece of her mind. Maybe God was trying to evade the issue, because the years went rolling by, and Bettina dried up and shrank and withered, but she didn’t croak.
One day a young woman walked into the shop who was so beautiful that it made Bettina think of the lindens, and the children laughing in the fountain before the war, and she felt as if she wanted to cry but the tears had long dried up along with the rest of her. So she asked the young woman what she wanted and the young woman said that she wanted a particular candy, made out of caramel in the shape of a cat, and that she wanted them only for her own self, and that she would pay Bettina to keep it a secret.
Bettina didn’t give a coon’s crotch about the money, but she liked the young woman for having made her think about the lindens, and the children laughing in the fountain before the war, and even though she was very old she still believed that women should be allowed to have their secrets and so she agreed. She made the candy for the young woman, and she even put in the very rare zedoary spice that she grew in her own greenhouse, and the young woman thanked her and went away, and Bettina did not think about it again until a few years later when some men came into her shop and showed her one of the candies. They said they were policemen, and they talked about forensics and ingredients, especially the unusual zedoary, and water quality, and chemical composition, and soil characteristics, and geographical specifics, and told her that they had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the candy was produced locally and did she know anything about it. Bettina thought about the young woman and the lindens, and the children laughing in the fountain before the war, so she told the policemen to geschissen, and they did.
But then another man came, who was the ugliest man Bettina had ever seen, and had a thing sticking out of his head that looked like a baby vulture peering out of a nest. She was afraid—not of dying, because she had no fear of that, but because she knew that this was a man who would hurt her. He smiled at her, but that made him look even scarier than before. He asked her about the candy, and she told him to geschissen, and he punched her in the face. The man knew what he was doing and he hit her just hard enough so that she did not pass out and she did not die. The man asked her again about the candy, and she told him about the woman, and the man asked her when this had happened, and she told him that also. Then he asked her where she kept her records, and she told him on her computer, and he asked her for the password and she told him to geschissen and he broke her arm.
Bettina was hoping that she would die, but she did not. The man told her that he would keep breaking her bones until she told him what he wanted to know, and she knew that it was true, so she told him. When the man had verified what she told him was the truth, and had looked at the records, he came back and put a pillow over her face and suffocated her.
When Bettina got to heaven, St. Peter told her that God had been called away on business and had left the keys with him, but to please make herself at home.
***
“Goddamn, girl. I could live here. This is paradise. It’s like being royalty.”
They were on the lawn by the side of Lord Lundi’s ornate pool. Crispin twirled the ice in his julep as he watched the golden carp lazily wafting their gossamer fins in the clear water.
“And that Lord Lundi. What a gentleman. I mean, I know he looks a bit creepy, but how lucky were we to have met him. Talk about Southern hospitality. Shee-it.”
Asia smiled. “Now you sound like a Southerner.”
“I’m just practicing, dearie. I may decide to stay here.”
Asia wasn’t as altogether comfortable as Crispin. By the time they’d gotten through partying in the cat house in back of the Mama Mambo neither one of them was perambulatory. Things had gotten seriously wild and weird. The English-sounding dude, Sir Cornbread or whatever his name was, had gotten a corncob up his ass when he finally got it through his skull that he wasn’t going to make any time with Asia, and had sloped off with a couple of Lord Lundi’s showroom models.
A few of the working girls had joined the party, and even through the sepia- and rose-tinted light of an improbable number of cocktails, and despite the blanketing bayou heat, Asia had felt the chill of remembrance of all those Vegas nights, and it had instilled in her a strange discomfort.
When Lundi had offered his hospitality, Asia hadn’t had much choice but to accept. Crispin was spark out on the floor wrapped in a faux tigerskin rug, wearing some kind of aviator’s helmet on his head and nursing a half-full bottle of Bollinger, and nothing short of a team of oxen was going to budge him. Even in her condition, Asia had managed to concern herself with her mother, but Lundi had reassured her that he personally would see to it that her mother got a message to say they were okay.
And Lundi had been a perfect gentleman and not given the slightest hint of any ulterior motive. But somewhere deep inside her something was twanging on her nerve strings, playing a strange and moody melody, inflicting her with an uneasy sensation that something was not quite right, like a cloud shadow crossing in front of you on a cloudless day. Or maybe she was just feeling jumpy for no reason. She was missing Baby Joe, and feeling a sense of undefined guilt, as though, even though she had not done anything to feel guilty about, she feared that she might.
For her mama’s sake, she had accepted Lundi’s invitation that they should all stay a few days. Even though she herself would have preferred to head home, she knew how much her mother would enjoy all this, and it was her birthday, after all.
Just then a uniformed waiter came across the lawn, carrying a message. It said that Lord Lundi had arranged a massage for her. She was explaining that she had to go to the hotel to collect her mother when Crispin chimed in.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ve already had my massage. I can’t tell you how highly I recommend it. Why don’t I go and get mama and you stay here and enjoy yourself?”
Crispin was already standing as he said it, so Asia just smiled and nodded. She smiled again as she watched Crispin waddling across the grass, fighting with his silk robe in the gathering breeze. She picked up her glass and turned to look at the fish.
***
Fanny was never quite sure if her transformation from the novice Arantxa Marinelarena to the criminal seductress and weaver of fantasies Fanny Lemming had been a journey of self-discovery in which every random choice of direction altered her course and she had simply arrived at one of an infinite number of possible destinations, or if it had been an inevitable metamorphosis, a slow and sometimes raspingly painful shedding of the skin in fulfillment of some genetically coded imperative that meant that she would have found herself here in this now and this reality regardless of any decisions she made en route. Who is to know such things, or if they are even knowable? The only thing she could say for certain was
what her next step had to be, mandated by the discovery she had just made.
Like most people in the know—like Benjamin Peabody, for example—Fanny Lemming thought the Fab 13 was a myth. A chimera. An urban legend from the days when urban didn’t exist. The Fab 13 was the subject of conjecture and speculation, not to mention the odd ribald remark. Of course people had searched for it. Humans have a deep underlying need for mystery, for veils to be parted, for wonders to be revealed. Especially if the veils that get parted reveal wonders that are worth incalculable shitloads of dosh. We want these things to exist. This is why legends persist, and people spend lifetimes poring over old documents and digging through the ruins of civilizations long gone. Who knows what priceless artifacts and treasures have been lost in the seething tides of history and among the struggles and dramas of the heaving masses? Rare and delicate objects, and works of art, jewels of the mind, lost and found, and lost again, or destroyed, or that perhaps never existed in the first place other than in the imaginations and desires of dreamers. And we love nothing more than a good search. Bartholomew’s gold, El Dorado—people will search for anything from Jesus’s cutlery to dinosaurs in Scotland.
Part of the mystique of the Fab 13 was the very unlikelihood of its existence. Carl Fabergé was a man of wit and genius, but was not given to frivolity. But then, he was a Russian and a businessman first and foremost, catering to a clientele who were not short of the odd ruble, were used to getting what they wanted, and were not noted for being the souls of propriety. So who knew? And coupled with the improbability was the titillating fascination of what it might actually look like. Over time, the Fab 13 had become the Atlantis of the jewelry business. Hinted at, mentioned in letters and diaries, told of in secondhand accounts by third parties, unreliably witnessed by unreliable witnesses. Gossiped and giggled about. But there was no concrete evidence. No design, no stock number, no shipping order, no receipts for raw materials, no invoices. No photographs. No record of its use or public display. François Birbaum, Fabergé’s senior master craftsman for twenty-five years, left copious writings about the works he had been involved in, but as to the Fab 13, not a peep, only a couple of tantalizing half-references that could be interpreted as anything or nothing. Nothing that you could put your finger on. The only real piece of evidence was a cryptic comment from the diary of King Edward the Seventh from 1909:
Presented Fab 13 to her majesty Queen Alexandra. She was not well pleased. Perhaps should have opened it first…Will be demanding refund from Fabergé, by way of Czar.
In 1918 the Bolsheviks nationalized Fabergé’s business, and in October they confiscated his stock. Many of the fabulous Fabergé eggs were subsequently lost, or otherwise removed from public knowledge, so a similar fate could have befallen the Fab 13. So, reluctantly and with wistful sadness, like a child learning the truth about the tooth fairy, Fanny Lemming was on the point of conceding that the Fab 13 was a myth. Until she saw the photograph.
***
Crispin was ever so slightly taken aback when he saw the limo that Lundi had given him. It was jet black and somber, and if he didn’t know better he would have said it was a…
“Hey. That’s not a…”
“Hearse. Yeah, man,” the driver said with a gap-toothed grin.
“But it’s not…I mean, they don’t still…?”
“Easy, bro. It’s a gimmick, man. You know, voodoo an’ all that shit.”
“Oh. All right, then. Show business, so to speak.”
“Yeah, baby. Show business.”
Crispin settled into the gloom at the back, sinking into the deep black leather upholstery behind the almost opaque tinted windows. His reservations dissipated when he saw the bar. He poured himself a glass of chilled Chianti and closed his eyes to enjoy the ride. Apart from a sense that the drive was taking rather longer than he thought it would, he was comfortable until the road started to judder underneath the car. He tapped on the glass that separated him from the driver, but the driver either couldn’t hear or ignored him. He tapped louder but there was no reaction. His mild alarm turned to outright worry when he wound down the window and saw that they were driving down a dirt road, with a body of water on one side and some kind of jungle on the other.
As he was looking for something hard with which to pound on the glass, the car screeched to an abrupt stop. He flung his door open and bustled himself out into the heat. The driver regarded him nonchalantly, grinning like Mr. Ed.
“Hey, you. Just what the hell is going on here? This is not the way to the hotel. Where the fuck are we?”
“Easy, bro. We in the Big Easy. You got to learn to relax. Time move different down here.”
“Where exactly is fucking here? Where…?”
“Cool it, man. I gots to pick somethin’ up for Mr. Lundi. That’s all. Then we go.”
“Oh, I see. Well, all right then. But I do wish you would have told…Ow.”
“What’s up, man?”
“My neck. It hurts. I think something stung me. A hornet or something.”
Crispin put his hand to his neck and felt something. He bent down to the driver’s side mirror. His eyes went wide in shock as he saw a small feathered dart sticking out of his neck. He looked wild-eyed at the driver. The driver grinned at him. Crispin suddenly felt nauseated and dizzy. The tops of the trees started to whirl in circles. He put his hand on the hood of the car to steady himself. It was hot and it burned but he didn’t feel it. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he collapsed onto the dusty dirt road and lay still.
“Goodnight, sweet prince,” said the driver.
***
It was not the kind of joint where royalty are supposed to hang out. Which was exactly why they were there. Crathie is a village in Aberdeenshire, half a mile down the road from Balmoral Castle. The Royal Lochnagar distillery is just to the east. Behind the Royal Lochnagar is The General Hugh Mackay informal tavern and drinking establishment, which had for centuries been a well-known bolthole for royalty and titled guests bored shitless with pomp and circumstance. Which was why Czar Nicholas the Second and King Edward the Seventh were kitted out in gear borrowed from Old Irn the game keeper, and tam-o’-shanters blagged from Crankcase Campbell the chauffeur, and were ensconced in a corner next to the fire with Old Irn and Crankcase, getting fucked up beyond all recognition on Deeside single malt scotch.
“Ay see you Jimmy, al tek yee ya papist bastard, yee,” said Old Irn by way of conversation.
“Vhat have this serf said?”
“Apparently, old chap, you have incurred the displeasure of Old Irn, and he wishes to smash your face in.”
“Tell him go ahead and try.”
“Now, Irn, old boy, one is really not supposed to knuckle visiting heads of state, you know?”
“Ay, right enough Jimmy, no offense pal, ya Russian cunt ya.”
“There, that’s more like it. Now, Crankcase, did you bring the item?”
“Ay, yer highness. How could ah fucken ferget thas?”
Crankcase reached into the capacious pocket of his fowling jacket and pulled out an object wrapped in oilskin. Just then the hosteller hoyed another log on the fire, and the blaze glowed golden in their glasses and on the almost empty whisky bottle.
“Eh, Hamish. Are ye fucken blind, er what? Can ye no see the fucken soldier’s nearly fucken deed, man?”
A full whisky bottle came flying over the bar, which Old Irn deftly caught and corked. As he refilled the glasses, Crankcase removed the oilskin from the object and placed it on the table. It irradiated the room with a ruby glow, sparkling in the firelight like Vulcan’s forge itself.
“Fuck my old boots,” offered Old Irn.
“Jesus Christ. Tha’s nearly as fucken big as mah one,” said Crankcase.
“Now, Nicholas. Perhaps you could explain to me what this is.”
“What it looks like, pirozhki-brain?”
“It looks like a bloody dildo, you dildo.”
“Da. Pravda. Is dildo.”
“So explain this to me, cousin. I know concepts sometimes get lost in translation, but how does a piece of jewelry for my wife possibly translate into a foot-long crystal dick? What exactly did you say to Mr. Fabergé?”
“I tell Carl Fabergé exactly vhat you tell me. In same words. Queen of England vant big piece of jewelry she can shove into box.”
***
It was a while before Baby Joe realized that he hadn’t felt like a drink since he landed in the States, not even while he waited for his connection at LAX, such was the state of his preoccupation. He had sunk a few on the flight over, but what the hell else was he going to do—watch the fucking movie? Sit there and worry for fourteen hours? So he drank. But it didn’t help. He was sick-to-his-stomach worried. He knew what that sick son of a bitch was capable of. He should have finished the fucking job. Should have, shouldn’t have, what difference did it make now? It had been thirty-six hours since he saw the photo. He had been lucky with the flights, and had made good time, but how lucky was Asia? Thirty-six hours. It takes a lot less time than that to hurt someone. It takes even less time than that to die.
It didn’t get dark on the plane. He was flying east. Toward the sun that ever rises. Toward the light. Toward hope? He looked out of the window and down through the sparse clouds to where the vast silvered Pacific rolled. An endless, shimmering mirror wherein man may view his vanity and his folly. He saw the waves that swept across half a world to thunder onto some far forbidding shore. He thought of the leviathans that ploughed its depths, hunting in its black profundity, the albatrosses that wandered its immenseness. He thought of himself. His smallness. His frailty. His lessness. Less than he was. But still enough? Fuck yes. The sea had kept him in shape. His mind was clear. Sometimes. He limped now; that would never go away. And he was slow. Too slow? Maybe. But still strong. Still fierce. Still Baby Joe Young? Damn straight.
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 8