“I need six bullets,” I said. “My gun’s empty. I don’t think my client would want to hire a private detective who carries an empty gun. Don’t you have a gun you keep here in case stiffs get up and start chasing you with axes?”
“Not so loud,” Peg-leg said, looking around, though there wasn’t anybody else in the room. He had taken Sergeant Rink’s advice about not telling people about the ax-murderer incident very seriously. I was one of the few people that he had told about it. We were pretty close friends until I started borrowing money from him and couldn’t repay it. We were still friends but he wanted his money, so there was kind of like a short wall between us. It wasn’t serious but it was there.
“Well?” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve still got it here. You never know.”
“Will you loan me some bullets, then? Six would do fine.”
“First, you start out borrowing tens, then you switch to fives, then it’s ones and now you want the bullets from my fucking gun. You take the cake. You are a loser. A real loser.”
“I know that,” I said. “But I need some bullets. How can I ever pay you back if you don’t loan me enough ammunition so that I can go to work?”
Peg-leg looked slightly disgusted.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “But I’m not going to give them all to you. I’m going to keep three of them for myself just in case something weird happens around here again.”
“You still think that was real, huh?” I said.
“Watch it, ‘Eye,’ ” Peg-leg said.
He took another look around the room. We were still alone. He pulled the drawer of his desk out very cautiously and removed a revolver. He opened up the cylinder and took out three bullets and gave them to me. Then he put the revolver away.
“Deadbeat,” he said.
I looked at the cartridges in my hand. Actually, I was staring at them.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“What caliber are these?” I said.
“.32s,” he said.
“Ah, shit!” I said.
.38
“You’ve got a .38, right?” Peg-leg said.
“How did you guess?”
“Knowing you it wasn’t hard.”
“What am I going to do?” I said.
“Why don’t you get a job?” Peg-leg said. “A lot of people work. It’s not like leprosy.”
“But I’ve got a client,” I said. “A real client.”
“You’ve had clients before and you’ve been fired before. Face it, pal. You’re not any good at this private detective business. If my wife was cheating I’d hire Donald Duck to find out who she was doing it with before I’d hire you, and I’m not even married. Why don’t you buy some bullets for your God-damn gun?”
“I don’t have any money,” I said.
“Not even enough to buy some bullets? Hell, they only cost a dollar or so.”
“I’ve fallen on hard times,” I said.
“I think the only good times I ever saw you have was when you got hit by a car last year,” Peg-leg said. “And some people don’t consider being hit by a car and breaking both your legs good luck.”
“What am I going to do?” I said.
Peg-leg shook his head and smiled painfully.
He opened the desk drawer and took out his gun and handed it to me.
“If some dead stranger comes back to life and throttles me while I’m trying to wash their face, it’ll be your fucking fault and I’ll come back and haunt you. You’ll never get a decent night’s sleep again. I’ll be flapping my sheet right up your asshole. You’ll be sorry.”
I put the gun in my coat pocket that didn’t already have a gun in it.
“Thanks a lot, Peg-leg,” I said. “You’re a true-blue pal.”
“You’re a total fuckup,” Peg-leg said. “I want to see that gun back here tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling like a real private detective with a loaded gun in my pocket. My luck was definitely changing. I was on my way up.
The Morning Mail
Peg-leg walked me out to the front door. He moved quickly and gracefully for a man with a peg-leg. Did I mention that before? I don’t think I did. I should have. It’s kind of interesting: a man with a peg-leg taking care of dead people.
Then I remembered something that I was going to ask him.
“Hey, Peg-leg,” I said. “Did you see that blonde who came out of here a little while ago? She had short hair, a fur coat, real good-looking.”
“Yeah,” he said. “She was here visiting one of my clients: the good-looker that somebody used as a substitute because they couldn’t wait to open their morning mail.”
“What?” I said.
“The letter-opener job.”
“Did you say a letter opener?” I asked.
“Yeah, the girl who was killed with the letter opener. The blonde saw her. She said she thought the girl might be her sister. She read about it in the newspaper but it turned out she was the wrong girl.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “She was crying when she went out the door.”
“I don’t know anything about that but she wasn’t crying when she left me. She was very unemotional. A cold fish,” Peg-leg said.
The letter opener!
Now I remembered.
Sergeant Rink was playing with the letter opener that killed the girl I had just seen Peg-leg drooling over. I knew when Peg-leg first mentioned a letter opener that it rang some kind of bell and this was it. The letter opener was the murder weapon.
A bunch of amateur coincidences for no particular reason, I thought, but they don’t have anything to do with me.
“Good-bye,” I said.
“Don’t forget to bring the gun back tomorrow morning,” Peg-leg said, peg-legging it back into the morgue.
The Boss
Hurray, I had a loaded gun! In a few hours I would be able to meet my client with confidence in my step. I wondered what they wanted me to do that required a gun. Oh, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I really needed the money.
I was going to ask for fifty dollars expense money. That would go a long way in changing my circumstances. I could get the landlady off my back with a few bucks. I didn’t think that story I fed her about oil wells in Rhode Island had much longevity. I figured by the time I got back to the apartment, she’d be howling away like a banshee.
I had some time to kill, so I walked up the street to Portsmouth Square and sat down on a bench near the statue dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson.
A lot of Chinese were coming and going in the park. I watched them for a while. Interesting people. Very energetic. I wondered if anyone had ever told them that they looked just like Japanese and it was not a good time to look like Japanese.
That didn’t have anything to do with me any more because my war was over, so I thought, sitting there on a park bench in San Francisco, letting the world go by. I had a loaded gun in my pocket and a client that was willing to pay for my services.
The world wasn’t such a bad place, so I started thinking about Babylon. Why not? I didn’t have anything else to do for a couple of hours. It couldn’t hurt I’d just have to be very careful about dreaming of Babylon. I wouldn’t let it get the best of me. I’d stay on top of it. That’s what I would do.
I’d show Babylon who was boss.
The Front Door
to Babylon
I guess I should give you a little background about my involvement with Babylon. I was out of high school and looking around for something to do with my life.
I’d been a pretty fair baseball player in high school. I lettered two years in a row and hit .320 in my senior year, including four home runs, so I decided to try my hand at professional baseball.
I tried out one afternoon for a semi-pro team and figured that it was the beginning of a career that would take me to the New York Yankees. I was a first baseman, so the Yankees would have to get rid of Lou Gehrig who was playing first base for them, then,
but I figured that the better man would win out and that was of course me.
When I arrived at the ball park to try out for the team, the first thing the manager said to me was, “You don’t look like a first baseman.”
“Looks are deceiving. Watch me play. I’m the best.”
The manager shook his head.
“I don’t think I’ve even seen a baseball player that looks like you. Are you sure you’ve played first base?”
“Put a bat in my hand and I’ll show you who I am.”
“OK,” the manager said. “But you’d better not waste my time. We’re in second place, just a game out of first.”
I didn’t know what that had to do with me but I pretended that I appreciated the significance of this achievement.
“You’ll be five games in first place after I take over first base,” I said, humoring the son-of-a-bitch.
There were about a dozen halfwit-looking baseball players standing around playing catch and shooting the breeze with each other.
The manager motioned toward one of them.
“Hey, Sam!” he yelled. “Come over here and throw a few balls at this guy. He thinks he’s Lou Gehrig.”
“How’d you know?” I said.
“If you’re wasting my time, I’ll personally toss your ass out of this ball park,” the manager said.
I could see that him and me were never going to be friends, but I’d show the bastard. He’d be eating his own words soon enough.
I picked up a baseball bat and walked up to home plate.
I felt very confident.
Sam, the pitcher, took his place on the mound. He was a very unimpressive-looking pitcher. He was about twenty-five and had a slight build hanging awkwardly on a six-foot frame. I don’t think he weighed over a 130 soaking wet with a bowling ball in his lap.
“Is that the best you’ve got!” I yelled at the manager.
“Sam!” the manager yelled. “Put some smoke on it for this kid!”
Sam smiled.
He was never going to make it in the movies. He had a pair of buckteeth that made him look like the first cousin of a walrus.
I took some practice swings. Then Sam very slowly wound up. He took the longest time to wind up. He was like a snake uncoiling. The smile never left his face.
That’s the last thing I remembered before being in Babylon.
President Roosevelt
It was really beautiful in Babylon. I went for a long walk beside the Euphrates River. There was a girl with me. She was very beautiful and wearing a gown that I could see her body through. She had on an emerald necklace.
We talked about President Roosevelt. She was a Democrat, too. The fact that she had large firm breasts and was a Democrat made her the perfect woman for me.
“I wish that President Roosevelt was my father,” she said in a husky voice like honey. “If President Roosevelt was my dad, I’d cook breakfast for him every morning. I make a very good waffle.”
What a gal!
What a gal!
By the banks of the Euphrates in Babylon
What a gal!
It was just like a song being played on the radio in my mind.
A Babylonian
Sand Watch
“How do you make your waffles?” I said.
“I use two eggs,” she said, and then suddenly looked at her watch. It was a Babylonian sand watch. It had twelve little hourglasses in it and told the time by sand.
“It’s almost twelve,” she said. “Time to go out to the ball park. The game starts at one.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d forgotten about the time. When you started talking about President Roosevelt and waffles, my mind couldn’t think of anything else. Two eggs. Those sound like great waffles. You’ll have to make them for me sometime”
“Tonight, hero,” she said. “Tonight.”
I wished that tonight were here right now.
I wanted some waffles and to hear her talk some more about President Roosevelt.
Nebuchadnezzar
When we arrived at the ball park, there were fifty thousand people waiting for me. They all stood up and started cheering when they saw me come into the park.
Nebuchadnezzar had three extra units of cavalry there to keep the fans under control. There had been a near riot the day before and some people had been injured, so old “Neb” was taking no chances with today’s game.
The cavalry looked very smart in their armor.
I think they were glad to be at the ball game watching me hit home runs. It certainly was a lot better than going to war.
I went down to the locker room and the girl went with me. Her name was Nana-dirat. When I walked into the locker room all the players stopped talking and watched as I walked through and went into my own private dressing room. There was hushed silence. Nobody knew what to say. I don’t blame them. After all, what do you say to somebody who has hit twenty-three home runs in their last twenty-three times at bat?
The team and I had gone far beyond small talk.
I was like a god to them.
They worshiped at the shrine of my bat.
The 596 B.C.
Baseball Season
The walls of my dressing room were covered with tapestries of my baseball feats woven in gold and covered with precious stones.
There was a tapestry of me beheading a pitcher with a line drive. Another tapestry showed a group of opposing players standing around a huge hole in the infield between second and third base. They never did find that ball. Still another tapestry showed me accepting a bowlful of jewels from Nebuchadnezzar for finishing the 596 B.C. season with an .890 batting average.
Nana-dirat took off my clothes and I lay down upon a solid gold dressing table and she gave me a pre-game massage with rare and exotic oils. Her hands were so gentle they felt like swans making love on a full moon night.
After massaging me Nana-dirat dressed me in my baseball uniform. It took her five minutes to put the uniform on. She did it very sensually. I had an erection by the time she finished with the uniform and I almost came when she put my shoes on. She ended by giving my spikes a delicate and loving caress.
Ah, paradise! There can be paradise on earth if you’re a Babylonian baseball star.
First Base Hotel
“OK, asshole, wake up!” a voice came grinding into my ears like somebody deliberately stepping on an old lady’s glasses. “You’ve had your beauty sleep! Wake up! This isn’t a hotel! It’s a baseball team!” the voice kept grinding.
My head felt as if a safe had dropped on it.
I opened my eyes and there was the manager and Sam standing above me, staring down. The manager really looked pissed off. Sam was smiling like a puppy with his buckteeth leading the way. I was lying on the grass beside first base.
The team was having batting practice. They kept looking over at me and making jokes. Everybody was having a good time except the manager and me.
“I knew you weren’t a baseball player,” he said. “You don’t look like a baseball player. I don’t think you ever saw a baseball before.”
“What happened?” I said.
“Listen to that, Sam,” the manager said. “Did you get that? This punk asked me what happened. What in the fuck do you think happened? Run down the possibilities and then tell me what you think might have happened. What could have happened?” Then he started yelling again, “You got hit in the head! You just stood there like some kind of lamebrain and got hit in the head! You didn’t even move! I don’t think you even saw the baseball! You stood there like you were waiting to catch a bus!”
Then he reached down and grabbed me by the collar and started dragging me across the grass toward the street.
“Hey, stop it!” I said. “Stop it! My head is killing me. What are you doing?”
My words didn’t have any effect on him. He just kept dragging me along. He left me lying out on the sidewalk. I lay there for a long time, first thinking that perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be a
professional baseball player. Then I thought about the dream I’d had of Babylon and how very pleasant it was.
Babylon… what a nice place.
That’s how it started.
I’ve been going back ever since.
A Cowboy
in Babylon
Getting hit in the head with a baseball on June 20, 1933 was my ticket to Babylon. Anyway, I had a few hours to kill before I had to meet my first client in over three months, so I’d walked up from the morgue to Portsmouth Square on the edge of Chinatown and was sitting on a bench watching Chinese people come and go through the park.
Then I decided to do a little daydreaming about Babylon. I had everything under control: a loaded gun, some spare time, so I went to Babylon.
My latest adventures in Babylon concerned me having a big detective agency. I was the most famous private eye in Babylon. I had a fancy office just down from the Hanging Gardens. There were three very skillful operatives working for me and my secretary was a knockout, a real looker: Nana-dirat. She had become a permanent part of my adventures in Babylon. She was the perfect female counterpart for everything that I did there.
When I was a cowboy in Babylon, she was a school teacher who was kidnapped by the bad guys and I rescued her. We almost got married that time, but something came up, so it didn’t happen.
During my military career when I was a general in Babylon, she was a nurse and nursed back to health after I had suffered some terrible wounds in battle. She’d bathed my face with cool water as I lay suffering and delirious through hot nights in Babylon.
I just couldn’t get enough of Nana-dirat.
She was always waiting for me in Babylon.
She of the long black hair and lissome body and breasts that were made to addle my senses. Just think: I never would have met her if I hadn’t been hit in the head with a baseball.
Dreaming of Babylon Page 3