Two for One

by Barry Day

  I heard a low keening sound. To be accurate, I heard two. One was from Mike, whose tail was now firmly between his legs. The other was from Petit, who, I now saw, was standing by Mallory’s covered face.

  As I moved towards him, he suddenly whipped the cloth away, like a chef presenting his specialité du jour. At which point I nearly lost my breakfast and the combined meals of the past several days.

  For Quentin Mallory no longer had a face. Somebody who had a handy way with a scalpel had neatly removed it. I also saw that I had been correct in my supposition that his crowning glory was a hairpiece, since it was nestling cozily on top of his skull. I had heard of people being scalped but here was someone who had been de-faced and his scalp left in situ.

  Now, when the time comes for me to make my exit, I have to say that, all things considered, I’d prefer to meet my Maker face—as it were—to face. But perhaps at that time all normal bets are off. And, in any case, before I hastily replaced the cloth, I had time to observe that it wasn’t a loss of face that had caused him to shuffle off to Buffalo.

  Someone had drilled a neat bullet hole through Mallory’s forehead, leaving him with a third eye through which he wouldn’t be seeing a thing either.

  “Watson,” said Holmes’s voice in my head, “I see you have discovered the cause of death. Would you be so good as to come over here? It would appear that our hyperactive oriental friends have been at work again.”

  I looked around but Holmes was nowhere to be seen. From which I deduced that he must have returned to the showroom. I made my way back there with Petit bringing up the rear. Mike decided to stay put well out of harm’s way.

  Holmes was standing in the midst of what looked like a battlefield. There was medieval armor, weaponry, banners. You could have staged a rerun of Agincourt with no trouble at all and had enough left over for a couple of small sieges.

  There was also, now that I came to look more closely, a long row of kneeling terracotta figures. I remembered I’d seen something about them on a cable TV show. That’s right. The Xian Warriors. Hundreds of years old but only unearthed in northern China in fairly recent times and now replicas were de rigeur in all the most pretentious gardens coast to coast.

  Holmes was standing somewhere near the middle of the row and his thin hand pointed to the warrior nearest him. As I came closer, something in the pit of my stomach told me what I was about to see. And it was right.

  One of the warriors was wearing Mallory’s face like Halloween mask. It had been put there and then lacquered in place. The pot of lacquer and a brush were at the statue’s feet. Among the impassive faces of the line of Chinese chorus boys Mallory’s deathly white grin stood out, as he took his final bow.

  Well, it was certainly a memorable way to go, that had to be said for it.

  Behind me there was a soft thud. I turned to see that Petit had fainted. The only consolation was that at least he hadn’t had far to fall.

  “I suppose it would be too much to ask for you to find your bodies the way decent ordinary people do—stabbed in the library by the butler, dumped in a dumpster by the Mob, swinging from a bellrope? No, you have to give us Baron Frankenstein’s laboratory, complete with Igor over there. While we’re here, perhaps you’d like to give us some idea of Coming Attractions? God knows how I’m going to do the paperwork on this one …”

  McNulty seemed to have arrived almost before I’d put the phone down. Now the premises were discreetly sealed with the shop’s CLOSED sign. But, to my surprise, there was no yellow crime scene tape and he hadn’t filled the place with uniforms. In fact, apart from the police surgeon, who was now examining Mallory’s body, he only had his regular sergeant in attendance.

  McNulty soon made his thinking clear.

  “I don’t know if that little weasel Nicky is behind this one, too, but I sure ain’t taking chances. We’re piecing something together on his operation and if I move too soon, he’ll be through the net and walking away whistling Dixie. Which I definitely don’t want.

  “Mallory’s been mixed up with him somehow or other but a couple of things don’t add up. If this is another execution, the bullet’s in the wrong place. Back of the head is the friendly family way. Pow! Caio! And it’s the wrong kind of bullet. Nothing more than a .22, from the look of it. We call it the ‘Lady’s Special’ in the trade. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that. And this stuff with the face. That’s not the work of a pro—not unless we’ve got somebody who’s thinking of retiring and taking up taxidermy.

  “Anyway, compadre mio, I don’t know what your interest in this guy is—and frankly, at this moment I don’t want to know. So what I’m saying to you, nicely as I know how, is … for the next twenty-four hours it’s the zipped lip. OK?”

  “OK.”

  Which suited me just fine. Twenty-four hours was just about long enough for me to play out the scheme that was forming in what passes for my brain.

  At that moment the medic came over, stripping off his gloves.

  “As we thought, Lieutenant. Single shot from a .22 at close quarters. Somebody he knew, most probably, to get that close. No sign of a struggle. We’ll sweep the place, of course, but the only thing I’ve found so far is this …”

  He took a clear plastic evidence envelope from his apron pocket and handed it to McNulty, who held it up to the light.

  “Looks like a single hair. Too long to be a man’s. Blondish.”

  “Mid-blonde. Chignon Style.” It was Holmes whispering in my head. “Come along, old fellow, there is nothing more we can do here and time is of the essence.”

  I told McNulty I’d keep in touch and he told me he’d keep in touch. And neither of us believed a word of it. All the same I had a shrewd suspicion he wouldn’t be far away.

  Twelve

  Flamingo Street hadn’t looked much when the sun was shining. In the rain its feathers looked positively bedraggled.

  No. 75 seemed to have shrunk, as if it were pulling its shingles tighter around it to ward off the chill. It looked like nothing so much as a disgruntled garden bird waiting for the rain to stop so that it could move on to another anonymous perch.

  There was no answer to Anna K. Adam’s bell. Nor was there any ‘Anna K. Adam’ business card in the slot any more. Just a fragment of scotch tape to show where it had been. I can’t say I was entirely surprised.

  I then pulled the trick that has always annoyed the hell out of me when I’ve lived in buildings like this. I rang all the bells in turn. Somebody would be stupid enough to press the release buzzer. They always had in my buildings.

  No buzzer buzzed but the door did suddenly open a crack. There behind the security chain was an eagle eye I recognized from our last visit.

  “Oh, it’s you. Thought somebody would be round. Told you, didn’t I? Always tell a fly-by-night. Get the money first, my motto.”

  “I wonder if I could see Miss Adam’s room for a moment, madam? She said she’d leave something for me.”

  Quick thinking, Watson. They’ve got to get up pretty early …

  The ‘Madam’ must have been what did the trick. There was a murmur about pulling the other one, then the chain clicked and the door opened. I saw that the eagle eye was one of a pair and belonged to a tiny old lady who could have been Petit’s mother. By the time we had stepped through, she was pattering back to her own room on carpet slippered feet.

  “Make sure you lock up behind you and see to it that dog doesn’t do his business. I’m missing Oprah. Nuns from families with bi-sexual fathers—or something.”

  Her door closed and there was a rattling of chains and bolts that would have rivaled Marley’s Ghost. Maybe Oprah’s topic for the day was security around the home.

  Anna hadn’t even bothered to lock her door and we walked straight in.

  Even more than last time, I had the impression of walking on to a very low budget stage s
et. Everything was there to create an effect. Nothing was there to be lived in.

  The bed was stripped, the sheets bunched up by someone in a hurry and left on the floor. The clothes were gone from the rack and an empty Jack Daniels bottle lay in the bin among the fragments of broken glasses.

  There were only two items of interest in the place.

  On the bed lay a blonde wig—chignon style. I doubted the makers would take it back. After all, it was missing at least one hair. I stuffed it in my pocket. I’m a great one for souvenirs.

  The other item lay in the corner of the room, where it had obviously been tossed.

  It was a canvas picture frame and, when I turned it over, I saw what Holmes had described.

  I could recognize Kane’s likeness but it was like seeing him through a distorting fairground mirror. The features seemed to be melting, the flesh on the face like running wax. Salvador Dali in manic depressive mood. The eyes were a fiery red , as if some demon were imprisoned and on the point of breaking free from this loathsome body to be its own even more loathsome self.

  The draftsmanship was primitive but the power of the vision was frightening.

  Emotion had streamed through the painter’s brush straight on to that canvas. But at least it had been in some perverted sense a creative power when the picture was painted. Now someone had turned a negative power on it, for the canvas was scored time and again with slashes and tears. He who creates can destroy. He—or she.

  Apartment 13A suddenly seemed an unlucky place to be.

  As we let ourselves out, I could hear Oprah addressing the daily faithful. When there was a lull in the ritual applause, I hear Old Eagle Eyes scream out—

  “Right on, girl—you tell them cocksuckers!”

  Whatever happened to class—for Chrissakes!

  “So Anna Kane killed Mallory?”

  We were driving back to my apartment. The rain was heavy now but not torrential and the windscreen wipers were working in fits and starts—mostly fits. I had to pay too much attention to my driving to look at Holmes for his reactions.

  “I’m afraid that is for you to determine, Watson. In a sense Anna and Nana Kane were both involved. The conflict between them is very real …”

  “But Nana has won.” I made it a statement, though it was really a question.

  “Put it this way, my dear chap. I doubt that we shall see Anna Kane again, though I wouldn’t bet all my army pension on it, if I were you. And you will remember that she said something to the effect that Nicky was “the only one left”, when you mentioned Mallory. By my admittedly amateur estimation he had been dead for some twenty-four hours by the time we arrived.”

  “So he was already dead when we were in Anna’s apartment?”

  There was no answer but then none was necessary. Hands that serve Jack Daniels also pull triggers.

  “There’s only one way to settle this once and for all, Holmes. I need to see Nana Kane face to face.”

  “You also need to catch a certain Bird. Don’t lose sight of that, Watson.”

  “Somehow I think the one will lead me to the other. And Nicky must have the Bird. As she said—he’s the only one left.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, for he immediately changed the subject.

  “Does that music machine of yours play any real music, Watson? A little lively Vivaldi would match my present mood.”

  As I opened the door of the apartment, I knew right away that something was different. For one thing I didn’t remember ordering two extremely large Chinese gentlemen in Italian suits who appeared to be standing waiting for me.

  You grow to expect ‘impassive’ from your average Chinese—‘imperturbable’ even. Call it racial stereotyping, if you will, but there it is. These two took it to another dimension. Their expressions—or, rather, lack of—were carved in stone and hard stone at that. I swear neither of them moved their lips but one of them must have said—

  “Mr. Watson. Would you be so kind as to come with us? Our employer wishes to see you.”

  With an invitation like that and two medium-sized pagodas between you and the drawer in which you keep your trusty Smith & Wesson, one is inclined to go with the flow. And after all, they had asked nicely. I indicated I would be so kind as to go with them …

  Somehow they edged me to the door and through it without either of them quite touching me.

  “Well, boys, this gives a whole new meaning to Chinese takeaway.”

  Yes, I know I’d used the line before but they hadn’t heard it. From their lack of response, they didn’t seem to think they’d missed much.

  Mike, I felt sure, would savage one or both of them but the older of the two said something to him in Chinese and—can you believe this?—he went into his sit-and-stay routine for the second time. I could only conclude that he must have been a fu dog in a previous existence.

  Demonstrating a comparable degree of obedience, the stretch limo I’d seen leaving my office earlier rolled to a stop outside the house—just long enough for me to be decanted into the rear half acre and for them to vanish into the mists of the front.

  In the half light—the windows were tinted, do I need to mention?—was my old pal, Kai Ling. But there was something different about him. Gone was the white jacket and black trousers and in their place a natty bit of gents’ suiting. Savile Row, at a guess. It was more than that, though. His manner was more that of a career diplomat than a cheap hoodlum who went about chopping off people’s fingers and turning them into Halloween masks. He might shave off a couple of share points in a business deal or take you to the cleaners in an LBO but that was about it. Shows how little I know.

  The man was full of surprises. No sooner had I started to warm the upholstery than I found a flute of champagne in my hand. The condemned man took a hearty snootful. Why not?

  “As Bette Davis so aptly put it in Old Acquaintance. Warner Brothers. Nineteen Forty-Three—‘There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.’ Cheers!” Mr. Cool.

  I looked across at Holmes, who was stretching his legs out luxuriously. It was, after all, a pleasant change after the Corvette but he needn’t have made it so obvious. He nodded his approval, so I dipped the beak. First Perrier Jouet today. Gallo, eat your heart out.

  “Mr. Watson, before this rather tawdry little drama plays itself out, I thought I owed you an apology for some of the grand guignol you have been exposed to through the somewhat over-enthusiastic antics of some of my younger associates. They are children, Mr. Watson, overgrown children dedicated to a cause—as, indeed, am I—but lacking the maturity to appreciate the inevitability of gradualness. I believe you have a saying in the west to the effect that everything comes to he—or is it him?—who waits.

  “Well, we have waited. Indeed, we have waited. I must admit the Chinese temperament is a boon in this regard. You in the West are anxious to claim credit. Everyone must know that you were the one who did this or achieved that on your watch. We take the longer view. The matter is not personal. Only the desired end is important. That, at least, is our normal pattern but, alas, there are always exceptions and this is one. The sands in the hourglass are fast running out. The Bird’s holy millennium is almost upon us and … What is that children’s game you play? ‘Pass the parcel’. It is my destiny to be sitting there when the music stops and, therefore, it is I who am fated to take home the parcel or face the consequences of failure. The latter is not to be contemplated. So, you see, Mr. Watson …?”

  He managed to shrug without spilling a drop.

  I could see his point of view. I must admit I find it easy to see the point of view of anyone who plies me with vintage champagne.

  “So where do I fit into your grand plan?”

  “You are, shall we say—‘Piggy in the Middle’. Ah, all of this is such good practice for my colloquial English! You h
ave been hired by the loathsome Kane to find the Bird and, although you have so far singularly failed to do so …”

  That hurt.

  “… you at least seem to have closed certain avenues of exploration. Also you with your pale complexion may move in circles where my colleagues and I would be, perhaps, more noticeable.

  “There is one other aspect of this sorry business I should mention and on which we may well have a difference of cultural opinion. It is a tenet of our faith that the infidel must be punished. Anyone who unlawfully possesses the Bird. Over the centuries, from what we can determine, human greed has taken care of that aspect well enough.

  “In this present brief episode Mr. Perlman has been taken care of, as has Mr. Mallory. Not by us, as I think you know. The contribution of my associates has been purely cosmetic. Let us attribute it to Fate. The Bird has bitten the hands that fed it, as it always will, and its ways are often devious. There have been others who have given offence and time will take care of them but there is one on whom time may not wait—and that is the person who possesses the Bird at this moment.

  “Logic would seem to dictate that that person is Mr. Parmentieri. I come to you with a proposition, Mr. Watson. Help us find the Bird, be our Trojan Horse and we will double anything Mr. Kane has offered you. And after that, we shall be—what is your word?—history. What do you say?”

  And then—maybe it was the champagne talking—several things came together in my head that had been bouncing around for the last couple of days. I didn’t like any part of this Bird business or the people involved in it—with the possible exception of this strange little Chinese man with his English suit, his French champagne and—I could be fairly sure—his Italian loafers. At least he believed in something. I had an uncomfortable feeling in my inside jacket pocket, where a check was burning a hole. Not because I was dying to deposit it, so that I could see black numbers for a change, but because it didn’t belong there. Period. At which point I took it out, tore it up and dropped the pieces on the carpeted floor of the limo. Get the maid to sweep up later!