“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I don’t want to talk to you. I told you before, bitch. In Russia. You don’t have jurisdiction, and anyway, I haven’t done anything even if you did. You can’t fucking touch me. So blow me, officer.”
“Oh, no,” Lucretia said pleasantly. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not with the agency anymore. I quit.”
“Yeah? So what the fuck do you want to talk to me for then?”
“Well, actually, it’s personal. It’s about something you said to me, in Moscow.”
“What was that?”
“Well, I said something about heads can’t be replaced, and you said ‘neither can fucking teeth, bitch.’”
Before Endless could absorb the implications of what had been said to him, he absorbed a knuckle sandwich, followed by a knee in the groin. He folded and went down, gasping and holding his nuts.
“Well, Mr. Heal,” she said, “I just wanted to tell you that you were right.” She drew back her foot, and booted both his maxillary central incisors, both his maxillary lateral incisors, and one of his mandibular first premolars, halfway across the car park.
“Have a pleasant evening,” she said, walking away, smiling, with the freshening sea breeze in her face.
***
Of the other peripheral characters that the reader may be curious about…
When he got out of traction, Militsiya Major Leonya Oblov, a.k.a. Oblov the Sloth, was given a new office in which to busily occupy himself doing fuck-all, and strenuously avoid all forms of work while continuing to earn unmerited promotions on the back of other people’s efforts.
He was a celebrity, and had the photos to prove it. The important visitors in the hospital, the reception at the Kremlin, the commendation for “Extreme bravery in the line of duty and enhancement of cooperation between the forces law and order of mother Russia and the United States and upholding the reputation of the incorruptible Russian Police.” His superiors stopped calling him a useless fat-ass waste of government money and started being nice to him. He even got some fan mail from one or two devotchkas.
The papers called him a hero. A man who had risked his life and suffered grievous injury singlehandedly facing down a vicious mob of Americanski gangsters, and protecting the lives of federal agents. They reported his many injuries and fractures and pointed out how he had stoically borne the pain without complaint. They discreetly neglected to mention that his underpants had been filled with excrement when they lifted him from the roof of the cab, and the official report charitably pointed out that the shit must have been extruded from his bowels by the impact of the fall.
In the comfort of his new accommodations, enjoying the benefits of his newfound status, Oblov often paused to reflect on how lucky he had been. He had been lucky in that, in the darkness and confusion and the panic caused by the gunfire, nobody noticed that he had shat himself at the sound of the first shot, attempted to climb out of the third floor window and escape down the drain pipe, and plummeted screaming onto the top of the taxi when the cheap fittings had given way due to shoddy Soviet workmanship.
***
Edward “Well-Read Ed” Cream took Fanny’s comment that maybe he should join the Moonies to heart. Not that he had any intention of actually joining the Moonies. It was just that, the next time the bitch showed up for a signing, he wanted to be ready with a really cutting, well-rehearsed, off-the-cuff, impromptu remark about the Moonies. So he took a copy of The Exposition of the Divine Principle home with him, to study it.
On the bus, a girl, comely but for a rather unnerving tick in her eye, sat next to him. She saw what he was reading.
“Far out, man,” she said.
Well-Read Ed was intrigued. He didn’t realize that people actually said, “far out, man” anymore, and he was not used to being importuned by lovely ladies on buses, dodgy retinas or no.
“Er, what is?” he said.
“Cults, man. They’re really cool. I’m into it, man. You know, God freaks, alternative lifestyles, let it be, shine a light on Mary, let it all hang out, free love, dropping out, shining it on and kicking back, you dig? The counter-culture, the revolution, all you need is love, Hunter S. Thompson, digging old Bull Lee, suicide is painless, purple haze, man, all in my fucking brain, you see what I’m sayin’, baby? Sayin’ yes and no at the same fucking time. It’s beautiful, man.”
“Er, um, yeah. Well, er. Right on, sister,” Ed said.
“Cool,” she said. “Where ya goin’?”
“Er, Indian School Road,” he said.
“No, man, I mean, where ya goin’?”
“Oh. I see. Er. Nowhere.”
“I’m everywhere and nowhere baby, that’s where I’m at. I like you, man. Come with me. We can make beautiful music together.”
“Well, er, where are you going?”
“Arizona, man. There’s this, like, really cool commune out there.”
It was Saturday. Ed figured he could be back by Monday.
“Hey, what the heck. Let’s, er, let’s shine a light on it, baby,” he said. “So, er, what do I call you?”
“Out at the ranch, they call me Number Thirteen,” she said.
Well-Read Ed went with her on the midnight Greyhound to Flagstaff. He was surprised at himself. He had never done anything even remotely so adventurous before. He was rewarded with the greatest sexual experience of his life. He returned to Albuquerque redeemed, righteous, and ready to rock and roll.
Naturally, he had assumed that Thirteen was some kind of nickname. They got him on the Mann Act. By the time he got out, all he could get was a matinee gig, playing Jasper T. Jowls at the Chuck E. Cheese’s franchise in Lubbock, Texas, for $3.25 an hour.
***
Heinrich “Heinie” Peerick married the gal from Rocks Piled On Top of Each Other, known to the palefaces as Elko, Nevada. Her name was Brigitte Parker and her daddy grew sunflowers out on the Llano Estacado. She traced her ancestry back to Quanah Parker. They decided that what they had was the real deal, and they wanted a family, so they both quit. Heinie got himself elected Sherriff of Andrews County, population 14,876, they bought a three-story adobe that dated back to 1876, and pretty soon there were a whole mess of little Peericks, galloping through their grandpappy’s sunflowers.
One night they were out on the porch under a Comanche moon, drinking a bottle of Espolón Reposado and sending the details of their lives skipping at each other like stones in a pond, and Heinie told Brigitte that he had been in Vietnam, and had done things that he now regretted and wished he had not done, but that he could wish upon all the stars that now glittered over the Staked Plains but it would not change or undo what had been done. Brigitte told Heinie that she’d had a second cousin three-times removed who had won a lot of medals in Vietnam and who had been one of the last people killed in the war, and that he had been a captain also, and that his name was Philip Parker.
***
A year after the events described, at Langley, Virginia, a junior-level CIA operative reported to her superior a suspected breach of security in the storage facility. Item A4/273Z was missing and unaccounted for. An investigation was implemented, but no evidence of a break-in was uncovered. The integrity of all security systems was intact, the CCTV revealed nothing, and a close screening of employees with access revealed nothing out of the ordinary, or anything to suggest that anyone had been compromised.
Since it was only a very small crate, and nobody knew what the fuck was in it anyway, the director decided not to draw the heat by making a big deal out of it, so he put it down as an administrative error and let it go at that. Nobody said anything more about it. Case closed!
Six months later, a book was published that became an overnight bestseller. It was called Womb Raker. It was about a foxy female thief who breaks into a supposedly impregnable CIA storage facility to swipe a fabulous jeweled dildo that had once been presented to the wife of Czar Nicholas the Second.
*
**
It was a hot day even for the time of year. Wally was almost invisible as he sat on a bench in the shadows under the eaves of the balcony of the hotel, with his back against the warm planks. All he could see was the vague outlines of the distant eucalyptus as they shimmered in the heat haze. Flies buzzed around his face but he made no effort to shoo them away. He felt ancient and exhausted, and it was almost too much effort to lift his beer can to his lips. Almost.
Over the rim of his tinny he could see something coming. At first he thought it was a roo, but as it neared he saw it was a child. Even his eyes had failed him at last. The boy approached. Bright, moist eyes shone out of a handsome face the color of ebony. On top of his head, a mass of indomitable hair writhed about like a sea urchin resisting arrest. The boy smiled at Wally.
“G’day, son,” Wally said. “What’s a young billy-lid like you doin’ out there all by yer lonesome? Strewth, kid, ya look so much like me, ya must be one a mine. What are ya? Me grandson, or me great-grandson?”
“I am you,” the boy said.
Wally gazed at the boy. He looked past him into the distance. He saw a line of people dancing. He heard the sound of didgeridoos and sticks, and low singing. He saw the paint on the faces and the red dust rising up from the bare feet as they danced. He heard the laughing of the kookaburra.
“Time to go,” said the boy.
“I reckon, son,” Wally said.
The boy helped Wally to stand, and took his hand, and together they walked slowly toward where the people danced and sang. The people stopped dancing and singing and they came around Wally and smiled and put their hands upon him.
Together they began to the walk toward the horizon where the sun waited, pulsing softly like the golden heart of great Australia, and Birring Barga disappeared into the glistening mirage and was gone from the world of men.
***
It wasn’t much of a Christmas. A rag-arsed gang of stumblebum winos gathered around a brazier in an alley under a shit-colored sky. A few of them were out of the game already, passed out in piss-stained castoffs in pools of vomit. The only good news was the bucket and Matilda. The bucket was filled with the dregs from every bar that was willing to indulge in a spirit of goodwill to all and heave whatever spirits were leftover into whatever receptacles the boys could come up with. The bucket was being constantly topped up throughout the night as more drunken, destitute, scarecrow desperados joined the party.
Matilda was lying in the deepest part of the darkness, with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, taking on anybody that could still crank one up for the price of a cigarette or a slug from a rusty tin can.
Somewhere, somebody sang in a remarkably pure and clear voice, “I’m dreaming of a shite Christmas…”
Monsoon sat on the periphery of the group, the flickering light from the fire illuminating the side of his face as he sat huddled in a blanket clutching his tin cup full of who-knew-what, staring into the night at the images of an incomprehensible past, and the road strewn with shards of broken glass, gypsy kisses, and angel farts that had led him to this.
A rummy with toxic breath and a face like a warthog’s sanitary towel staggered over and sat next to him. Monsoon ignored him. The hobo stared at him intensely. Monsoon took a deep swallow from his cup of whatever. At that particular moment it was the nectar of paradise. He closed his eyes.
The bum suddenly began to shout. “Hey. Hey. Fucking look at this. It’s fucking Tiger Woods.”
Monsoon stood up as all heads turned toward him. He walked up to the bucket and dipped his cup in, filling it to the brim, and walked away from the light and the mob. At the corner of the alley, a solitary yellow bulb held the night at bay, and by its dim light, the tears that ran down Monsoon Parker’s cheeks glittered like rivers of gold.
Finis.
Dedication
This installment of The Big Bamboo novels is dedicated to Sara Bangs, its editor, for once again turning a clapped-out Model T into a Ferrari.
Without Sara and her inspiration, this book would never have been written.
About the Author
A line in Ulysses reads, “Only the sacred pint can unbind the tongue of Dedalus.” Shane Norwood firmly believes this, just as he believes that it would be foolish in the extreme to argue with James Joyce. For this reason he has dedicated himself to the diligent consumption of copious amounts of booze before sitting down to write, in an effort to emulate the great ones. How successful this experiment turns out to be remains to be seen, but in the meantime it can be safely said that Shane Norwood seriously enjoys his writing.
Shane is a devoted family man who keeps food on the tables by walking around in circles in Chile masquerading as a casino manager, and occasionally pretending to be Robert Mitchum. Shane was born in a steel town in the north of England in 1955. Shane has five children. He is engaged in a breeding competition with his eldest daughter who is currently winning six to five. Although his soul knows it is English because of the larceny that lurks therein, the rest of him is no longer sure. One daughter is American, one is from Kenya, one son is from South Africa, two sons are from Chile, his wife is from Argentina, his horse is an Arab, and his dog is Italian. At one time Shane was a fisherman in Hawaii. In his heart he still is, although he hopes that, pretty soon, he will also be able to think of himself as a writer.
Credits
This book is a work of art produced by The Zharmae Publishing Press.
T. Denise Clary | Editor-in-Chief
Sara Bangs | Editor
Tony Kuoch | Artist
Star Foos | Designer
Benjamin Grundy | Typesetter
Rachel Garcia | Reader
Allison Oesterle | Copy Editor
Sarah Landauer | Proofreader
Ally Boice | Copy Writer
Andrew Call | Reviewer
Edward Mack | Coordinating Producer
Erin Sinclair | Managing Editor
Travis Robert Grundy | Publisher
January 2016 | The Zharmae Publishing Press
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 47