The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2)

by Norwood, Shane

  “Khuy. No. No. I was waiting for you. Someone hit me. When I woke up, you were gone.”

  “Huh. Some fucking writer if that is best story you come up with. No wonder books are so shit.”

  “You said you liked my books.”

  “That was before you try kill me.”

  “Khuy. How can you even think such a thing? I love you.”

  “You love me so much you fuck Oleg so he set dog on me.”

  “I never fucked Oleg.”

  “You lie.”

  “Khuy, you have it all wrong. Somebody is trying to…”

  “Better you kill me now. When I get strong back, I kill you.”

  “Khuy. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I saying to kill me so you can steal R3 and Fab 13. Was you plan all along. You lucky I so weak or I break you neck now.”

  Fanny jumped up from where she had been sitting on the side of his bed. Her face was flushed, the skin taut across her cheekbones, and her eyes could have drilled more holes in him than he had already.

  “Right. I’ve had enough of this shit. I’ll fucking prove it. I’ll prove to you that you’re talking out of your fucking fat, flabby Russian ass.”

  “You always say you like my ass.”

  “That was before you threatened to kill me every five fucking seconds. Well, I’ve got news for you, buster. I’m going to find the R3 and the Fab 13, no matter who has them, or where they are. I am going to find them and bring them back to you, just so I can prove to you what a seismically stupid Slavic shithouse you are. And then you can fuck off, and stay fucked off.”

  As Khuy watched her bodacious buttocks bouncing out of the cellar, he had reason to ponder if he might not perhaps have made a mistake.

  ***

  “Not bad for a guy with a broken rib.”

  “Yeah, well, it was only my rib that was broken.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, baby.”

  Baby Joe had been lucky, and he knew it. Lucky the slugs had only been .25. Anything bigger, and the one that went through his thoracic wall would have taken some major plumbing with it, and it would have been Goodnight, Irene. Lucky that he had a woman who loved him enough to tilt at windmills, and moxie enough to knock them down. Lucky that life had given him another roll of the dice. Usually fate was not so forgiving, and when you made a knucklehead play like the one he made by not figuring on the mouse gun Oleg had stashed, fate made you pay. Maybe it still would.

  So he was lucky. But he still had some hard questions for himself. Lying awake, under the dim green lights, listening to the subdued and creepy ambient noises of a nighttime hospital ward, which were somehow stiller and more evocative than no sound at all, gave a guy time to reflect. Maybe too much. What the hell was he doing there in the first place? Not physically there—that was cause-and-effect, the end result of a chain of circumstances and consequences over which he hadn’t had much control.

  He meant the place he’d arrived at in his mind. His perception of who he was, and what it meant to be Baby Joe Young. It somehow meant less than it used to, and there was no way he could deny it.

  Was it all to do with Asia? Or was it deeper than that? Was it battle fatigue, depression, some subtle psychological devaluation of his life force to the point where it was no longer precious to him, where he felt the need to put his life in needless jeopardy? Was it some unrecognized or unacknowledged siren call to oblivion? Was he tired? Had he had enough? Was something broken in his clock, some spring gone haywire, a cog flipped out, some spoke snapped? Some subtle but catastrophic failure of his will to survive? Oleg would have killed him if not for Asia. Was he beat? Or did he quit? Okay, except for the gun, he would have won, but how could he not have foreseen and forestalled that? You don’t just suddenly forget things that you’ve known all your life. Your instincts don’t just suddenly abandon you. Was he asking for it? Like when he just walked into Lundi’s place, unprepared and uncaring, just barreling in through the door. At least then, he had a reason. Asia. But this shit—it was none of his business. Like Agent White said, all he’d had to do was wait in the car. So why didn’t he wait in the fucking car? And if he had known that Asia was there, that she had followed him, would he have waited in the car then?

  Asia’s hand on his dick interrupted his train of thought.

  “I like Russian hospitals,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Ooh, yeah. They don’t let you do this in the States. They don’t let you bring drinks in and take all your clothes off and sexually harass the patients.”

  “Harass me, harass me.”

  Asia reached down for the bottle of champagne that stood in the ice bucket and poured herself another glass. She said, “I’ve figured out what it is.”

  “What what is?”

  “What it is with us.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you see the way we are now? We’re back. We’re close again, like it used to be, before…well, before we weren’t so close anymore. You know, drifting away, just like you said, both of us trying to keep the closeness and failing, both of us not knowing what to do, how to keep it. Both of us wanting to stop the bleeding, but not knowing how. Well, this is what I think, now. It’s the adventure. The danger. The uncertainty. Just like when we met. It’s the peace that kills us. We’re not meant for a mundane existence. Our love is like a wild thing that sickens and dies when you put it in a cage.”

  She was right. He thought about how it had been back in Australia, just before all the shit with Lundi started. How it was then and how he’d felt then, and how his love suddenly flared up again into a wild and desperate urgency when he’d needed to protect her. Just like when it burst into flame in the first place, when he had needed to protect her from the Don.

  “So, philosopher, what happens when we go back to the cage?”

  “Baby Joe. Don’t ask that. Please. I don’t know. Neither do you. I only know that I never loved you so much as I did when I thought I’d lost you. I love you, and I love this. I don’t ever want to go back to those horrible days of uncertainty and coldness. Let’s have this time. These moments. Let’s worry about what happens when we have to. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Baby Joe whispered. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  “Have you seen the state of my arse?”

  They both looked up. Crispin was standing there with an enormous bunch of flowers and a bottle of vodka.

  “Hey, Crispin.”

  “Don’t you fucking ‘hey, Crispin’ me, Baby Joe Young. You should see the bruises on my arse. It took them hours to get me out of that fucking taxi. I could have been squashed. If I’m going to get squashed by a guy, I’d at least like him to be conscious. Every time I’m around you something fucking bad happens to me. I’m going to be black and blue for…”

  Asia and Baby Joe turned to each other and smiled. They kissed, long and deep, as Crispin rattled on about his damaged derrière.

  ***

  “Killed by dildo” was not the epitaph Yevgeny would have chosen for himself. Not many people would. The problem with World War Two revolvers is the last time they were fired in anger was in 1945, or thereabouts. Sixty-odd years of inactivity will fuck most things up. There was nothing wrong with the ammo, though—it was just that the hammer drop was too arthritic to detonate the charger.

  Even someone as flaccid and chickenshit as Monsoon Parker can be spurred into action by imminent peril. Three billion years of evolution cannot be superseded in one wastrel’s meaningless lifetime, and as Yevgeny stared in frustration and annoyance at his impotent hogleg, Monsoon instinctively hurled the Fab 13 at his head. The Fab 13 weighed at least five pounds, and when the knob end bludgeoned Yevgeny dead center between his beetle brows, he had listened to his last performance of Swan Lake.

  Sasha the Spaniel immediately obeyed the command hard-wired into his genes, and he opened one eye, cocked an ear, farted, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Low Roll let out a conte
nted sigh as he dreamed of lying naked in a seven-foot Philly cheesesteak and polishing his ammunition. Hard D was so engrossed in watching Last Tango in Paris, with John Candy replacing Marlon Brando and Madeleine Albright in the Maria Schnieder role, that he failed to notice that a life-and-death struggle was taking place less than five feet away.

  Hyatt immediately went into a carefully calibrated situation analysis involving precise distances between possible assailants, guns, and expensive dildos, potential muscular strength, lung capacity and cardiac efficiency, end result permutations, variations, probabilities, and possible outcomes.

  Monsoon, meanwhile, picked up a plaster replica of a Russian Orthodox Church-approved representation of the dance of Salome and belted Hyatt in the brain box. The contents of Hyatt’s skull were first-class but the packaging was a little thin, and a blow that would have, at best, brought tears to Little Miss Muffet’s eyes, put Hyatt down for the count.

  Monsoon quickly gathered his wits. Not only that, but he quickly gathered the Fab 13, Hyatt’s briefcase, whatever spare cash was lying around, a bunch of car keys that were on the table, and a bottle of vodka. When he got to the main road, he didn’t have a clue which way to go, so he chose the road most travelled and took the way with the most tire marks in the snow.

  After half an hour he came to a kind of roadhouse, with trucks outside and smoke coming out of a crooked Hansel and Gretel chimney. He swung in. His appearance attracted a little attention, but not more than if Malcolm X strolled into a church in Mobile and stuck his king snake into the collection tray. Since he did not understand the language, the words “color of a Cossack’s jock strap” meant nothing to him, so he sat down to his vodka and ignored the guttural Neanderthal mutterings that went on around him.

  When he opened Hyatt’s briefcase he was surprised to find a first-class ticket to Paris, eleven thousand dollars, four thousand euros, an autographed photograph of Donny Osmond, a copy of the Bee Gees’s greatest hits, and a money-back-guaranteed patent penile expander. Oh—and the R3. As his eyes swung toward the window, wide with amazement and avarice, he saw a bright orange windsock flapping in the steady north-easter, and realized that the roadhouse was actually an airstrip. He ran outside. There was a Cessna parked on a grassy runway.

  Mime and guessing games had never been Monsoon’s strong point, but when he ran back into the “departure lounge,” pulled out a wad of dollars, and started pointing frantically at the Cessna, the owner got it in one, and in ten minutes they were aloft.

  The runway was icy but smooth, the pilot knew which end of the plane the propeller was on, and the takeoff was a breeze. Monsoon was not the most comfortable of flyers, especially on a small plane, but as the wheels lifted off the ice, he felt elevated, as if some burden had been lifted from him and his passage through life from then on would be smooth sailing.

  He even had time for amusement as he looked down and saw a shiny ZiL limousine, very black against the snow, hit the tarmac and began to pirouette on the ice like a Zamboni with a smackhead at the wheel. Obviously the schmuck didn’t know how to drive. As soon as the ZiL slid to a stop, the doors flew open. The plane veered into the wind, and Monsoon lost sight of the vehicle, so he didn’t see who got out, or the flashes of light from the runway, and, not being a habitual flyer in small airplanes, he assumed that the clicking, ticking noises like somebody using a stapler were normal. He never made the association between the clicking, ticking noises and the fact that someone was shooting at them.

  “Fuck. That was close. I didn’t think we were going to make it.”

  Monsoon took the pilot’s lack of a response as either affirmation, or as due to the fact that he was concentrating on overcoming the turbulence that buffeted the Cessna as it buzzed just above treetop level and zoomed into the robin’s-egg-blue sky and out over the majestic snow-covered valley.

  Monsoon looked down at the receding houses and the frozen river that snaked below like spilled champagne. Well, there was going to be a lot of fucking champagne spilled from now on. He hauled back on the vodka. Oh, them golden slippers! A sudden panic gripped him and he scrabbled down into the bag. No worries. The R3 and the Fab 13 were still there. You couldn’t be too careful. That capricious cunt Fortuna had switched dice on him so many times he had lost count. But finally, at last, she had smiled upon him. Rewarded him as a lover rewards a dedicated suitor for his tenacity. His persistence had finally convinced her, and she had bestowed her favors upon him. First Paris, and then the world. Riches, luxury, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, and, more importantly, rubbing tits with the buxom and well endowed.

  Monsoon took another slug. He gazed down at the buildings below—at all the peasants, scratching around in the dirt like chickens, and here was Monsoon Parker, skirting the heavens in his chariot on the way to a life of unbelievable self-indulgence. He almost felt sorry for them. Almost. He thought about offering the pilot a shot from the bottle, but then thought better of it. Why take the chance? He laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Time for a good daydream. He became aware of the chill against his right cheek.

  “Hey, pal,” he said, “how’s about closing the window? There’s quite the fucking draft in here.”

  The pilot said nothing. Must have been those headphones. Monsoon turned and nudged the pilot with his elbow. The pilot’s head rolled toward him. The window wasn’t open—it was broken. And the pilot had a small, neat hole right in his temple. Given his current circumstances, Monsoon did the only sensible thing, and drank the rest of his bottle of vodka down in one. Then he did the next only sensible thing, which was to scream at the top of his lungs for help from Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Lucifer, Odin, Baal, Alvin the Aardvark, the ghost of Christmas past, and any deities who just happened to be passing through the vicinity. Monsoon then tried falling to his knees and begging forgiveness. It wasn’t easy in the cramped cockpit, but he managed it.

  Maybe God couldn’t hear him because of the engine noise or the wind whistling through the broken window, because Monsoon was still ten thousand feet above the frozen taiga, in a tiny single-engine Cessna on a downward trajectory, next to a dead guy, with absolutely no idea how to land an airplane and absolutely nowhere to land even if he did.

  Irrationally, he looked at his watch. One p.m. Well, why not? Maybe it did matter what time you died. That was just prior to when his head melted, his nuts congealed, and pieces of molten brain flowed out of his ears and dripped onto his crotch. He was Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, so far beyond gone that he was on his way back.

  Then he suddenly had an idea. Of course. Those Olympian motherfuckers! The immortal bunch of cunts wanted him to die rich. That was the whole point. They wanted him to crash and burn with a potentially Bill Gates-level valuable piece of software and the most priceless, sought-after sex toy on the planet in a plastic bag at his feet. Well, you know what? I hope you Greek motherfuckers speak English, because fuck you. And in case you don’t understand, that is FUCK and U. If I’m gonna die, I’m dying broke. See how funny you think that is. Stick this up your fucking robes.

  Monsoon grabbed the Fab 13 and, with a pretty convincing sadistic grin, hurled it out of the broken window. He tried a maniacal cackle as it glittered and sparkled, twinkling end-over-end into the vast whiteness below. It wasn’t actually a very good maniacal cackle, as maniacal cackles go, but under the circumstances you’d have to give Monsoon the benefit of the doubt.

  “How does that grab you, you deified dickheads?” he shouted out of the window.

  The eternal wardens of nobility and justice didn’t have a whole lot to say for themselves.

  “Ha-ha. That’s what I fucking thought. You fucking Mars Bars are all the same. You’re okay at dishing out judgment and retribution, but when you get one in the oracles you can’t fucking take it, can you?”

  The canopy flew off the plane, the plane flipped upside-down, and Monsoon Parker fell screaming into the void, three thousand feet above the snow.

  ***<
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  Maria Federovnaya was in a quandary. She was down to her last carrot, and her appetites were in conflict. She was a healthy woman. Not young, but the steam still ran though the pipes. Ever since Boris had electrocuted himself trying to heat the bath water with the electric fire she had been kind of short of supplies. It was a two-day trek to the village, and anyway, there was nothing down there but drunken layabouts, old married men, and spotty-faced teenagers who came in their pants at the first sight of a decent pair of tits.

  So, back to the carrot. Use it, or eat it? She didn’t fancy the idea of both. Fuck it. She lay back on the bed and pulled off her capacious bloomers. She reached into the abundant hair and began to get the job warmed up. She reached for the carrot. It was a real beauty. A foot long if it was an inch, fat, round, smooth, and sturdy. But cold. She lifted her mighty buttocks and wedged the carrot underneath. She continued playing with herself while she squirmed around, getting the carrot nice and warm. She reached down and retrieved it. She had it halfway inserted when something came crashing through the window and landed on the bed beside her. She shrieked and jerked upright. The carrot snapped off right in the middle.

  Maria cursed and leapt to her feet. She rushed over to the window. No one was there. She fished out the broken half of the carrot and pitched it out of the broken pane, and spat after it. She walked dejectedly back to the bed to see what had broken the glass. Lying next to her pillow was a huge ruby-colored crystal dildo, with a bright golden head, throbbing with light and energy.

  Maria fell to her knees and crossed herself. “Oh, thank you, God. Thank you,” she said with tears of gratitude in her eyes.