Golden Throat

by James P. Alsphert

  GOD OF OUR FATHERS

  Pasta and Guns

  I was rather anxious to make contact with Toggth so I could hand over the capsule to him and get Ravna’s monkey off my back by giving him the phony. So each day I looked for a tell-tale sign that things would finally come to a swift and happy ending. Well, sort of…

  Sergeant O’Flaherty called me and Mario in one morning after Honey and I got back, for a rather peculiar assignment. It seems there was this very bad guy named Johnny Porrello who had been in hiding for a couple of years. The cops found out his whereabouts and wanted us to bring him in. I guess he was such a horrible piece of shit that even the crooked cops couldn’t stand seeing him go ‘gently into that dark night’. He had been living incognito as a “non-alcoholic” vintner in the valley around Escondido, out of San Diego. The wily sergeant warned us he was dangerous and since at least one of us was sort of in training for a detective’s rank eventually, this assignment was a good choice— even if a bit dangerous.

  Escondido was mostly a flat land of orange groves and lemon trees. Some grapefruit grew here and there, but we were hard pressed to find Porrello’s vineyard. Finally, we were led to a small hilly area east of the main town. On the side of the highway in front of the vineyard stood a small café called Piero’s. Mario and I went in. The menu pushed wine, cheese and pasta as the mainstays. A cute little blonde number in her late twenties stood behind the counter. She was chewing gum like the stereotypical mobster’s moll. “Welcome, gentlemen, and have a seat. Some of Piero’s 1927 grape juice—non-alcoholic, of course—as an appetizer?”

  Every once in a while I forgot it was still Prohibition. “Yeah, swell,” I said. Mario nodded and we ordered some of Piero’s vino and some pretty good pasta. “Is…is Piero around?” Mario asked the waitress.

  “Who wants to know? And who do you think made the pasta, Little Bo Peep?” the young lady said in a strident tone of voice.

  Mario laughed. “Maybe…you never know nowadays. You didn’t answer my question—is that Piero out there slaving over a hot stove?” Mario kidded.

  “Well, we can call him out and see if he answers to that name now, can’t we, gentlemen? I can’t say for sure, but underneath the wonderful smell of the food, don’t you smell a rat—maybe a dead one?”

  “Maybe something died in your larder, Miss—” I said.

  “—Theda. You know, like Theda Barra, the vamp? But about that rat—maybe coppers smell like that, too. Don’t you think?” she asked, popping her gum.

  “Oh, I thought vamp had a ‘tr’ in front of it—wasn’t she some kind of over-sexed dish?” Mario said.

  “It’s sort of a free country, Mister. You can have your opinion about how ‘sexed up’ a woman can get. But it sounds to me like you’ve got a little cottage with a pretty wife and kiddies, now, doesn’t it?” Then she gave me the once over. “But not you, buster. There’s a tough streak in you and I’d hate to get on your mean side. And I’ll bet you’re still a bachelor.”

  “Not bad,” I said, peeking back at the kitchen. “So, can we talk to Piero?”

  “Piero! A couple of flatfeet wanna talk to you.”

  Both Mario and I had seen mug shots of Porrello and the little guy who came out definitely did not fit that description. He had a slight build and seemed nervous. “So, whatsa happenin’ a now, eh?”

  “Is your boss in, Piero? By the way, we really enjoyed the pasta.”

  He lit up. “That’s-a nice, caus-a my Mamma she teach-a me…”

  “To answer your question, the boss ain’t here. Hardly ever comes in, but hangs out up there stamping out the grapes for curious cops. Why do you wanna to meet the boss? He’s just a nice guy trying to make a decent living in these prosperous times.” She pointed to a pretty nice landscaped dump at the top of the hill with three-stories and a large grain silo on the side.

  We thanked the brazen young woman and made our way up the hill. We knocked at the freshly painted front door. Immediately Mario and I knew it was Porrello by the beady black eyes and scar right above his left eyebrow.

  “Yeah, are you the guys who want the hooch delivered yesterday? I told your boss I run a legitimate business here—except for that silo. Somehow it got found with a lot of mash in it the other night.”

  “We don’t want any of the bullshit, Porrello,” I said, forcing the door open with Mario backing me up. “All we want is you. Now ain’t that simple?”

  He turned pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—I’ve farmed up here for years, and I don’t know this Porrello guy you’re talkin’ about—you got your wires crossed, boys. My name’s Frankie Lorso.” He took out his wallet and showed me his California driver’s license with Frankie Lorso’s

  name on it. “See? But since you’re here, the least I can offer you for bustin’ into my house uninvited are a couple of drinks—I mean the real stuff here.”

  “No thanks, Porrello, we’re on duty,” Mario said. “Now do you get our drift? We’re here to take you in—or have you forgotten so soon?—your rap sheet reads like a who’s who in corpses, graft and missing young things that mysteriously get stolen in the night and end up as whores on a street in Hong Kong.”

  Porrello started to make a run for it. We drew our guns and he stopped. He threw his arms up. “Can’t we let bygones be bygones, boys? I can make it worth your while—I mean, really worth your while—money, broads—how about a small percentage of my special ‘wine’ sales?”

  “You know, that sounds pretty good to me, Porrello, but somehow I just ain’t in the mood for your brand of evil shit this week.” Mario got out his handcuffs and fastened them onto Johnny Porrello’s wrists.

  “You see, what my fellow officer here is saying, you dimwit, is that someone has to stand up in this asshole of a world opposite crap like you. It’s our way of saying you can’t always have what you want, including your nice spread here, your booze racket and the hot little number who warms your bed at night.”

  He snickered. I didn’t like his tone of voice. “You cops are dumb. You just don’t know the score, do ya? Maybe overnight…yeah, maybe overnight you might hold me downtown. But you know I’ll be back tending my grapes in no time while your superiors will be eating humble pie.”

  “Not on my watch, Porrello,” Mario asserted. “And if you do get out by some miscarriage of justice, you can bet I’ll be tailing you until I bring you in for keeps. You can count on that.”

  Mario and I hauled Johnny Porrello in. But a strange thing happened. Just as Porrello predicted, the next day he was out and back home tending his grapes! I went stomping in to O’Flaherty’s office, mad as hell. The sergeant looked at me with a rather sheepish look on his face. “I know I ordered ya to bring ‘im in, lad. And so ya did. But truth be told, it’s out of me hands, Denning. The guys upstairs—they’re the ones that tell ya—and bein’ that I’m so nears retirement, it’d be foolhardy for O’Flaherty here to be doin’ himself in now, wouldn’t it?”

  I was pissed and disgusted and knew in that instant I was going to quit the force one day soon. And the sooner the better. “So what happens to guys like Porrello, sergeant? They live a life of luxury and give murder and graft and white slavery a good name and everyone lives happily ever after? And do you know what we’re setting up here? A goddam vigilante force. As soon as my partner Mario Angelo hears about this—well, I prefer not to think about it, sergeant. He just might take matters into his own hands…”

  O’Flaherty looked at me, his eyes softened. “Denning, me boy…honest cops like you and Officer Angelo are a rare breed. Seein’ that I was one for a bitty time, I can vouch that law and order indeed does not run city hall. So sooner or later you have to wise up, lad—and catch up to the times you’re livin’ in. Thin line there, me boy. I always said you’d make a good detective. But I was wrong, Denning. You’re too honest and they’d kill ya before you could drink your next Jack Daniels!”

  I stalked out, all the mor
e determined that my police force days were gonna be far behind me in the not too distant future.

  No sooner had I gotten home to my little flat that night and sat in my old comfy chair with a gin and tonic in hand, than I saw a dark red envelope being pushed under my door. I got up and rushed to the door and opened it, hoping to catch the deliverer. I ran downstairs and flew into the street, looking up and down. Nothing. I made my way back up to my apartment, grabbed the envelope and sat back down. Only my name in exquisite black penmanship blemished the front. I carefully unsealed it. I drew out an equally red note and read: “She still very mad at him over Hatchet Man’s death. But chance to redeem. Come Zeng Ping Café, Calle de Los Negros, tomorrow 6:00p.m. Ask for Da Chung. Bring Fen de Fuqin.” The content of the note felt to me like Lei-tao’s playful sense of humor, but that didn’t make sense either, since it was Toggth who was supposed to collect the God of Our Fathers from me, wasn’t it? Or did I get my wires crossed? In these days I never knew where the next punch was coming from. I had to follow through but stay guarded every minute. For all I knew it was Ravna shortcutting his way to the capsule—if he had gotten wind of the plan to trade out the real capsule for an optical illusionary phony.

  When You’re Dead Your Nails Grow Faster

  Unlike the San Francisco experience, “Chinawon,” as some of the locals called it, sat in darker and rougher places. The Calle de Los Negros wasn’t Chinese, first of all, and the area had been knocked back and forth between ethnic and commercial forces over the past sixty years or so. I hadn’t been there since that Friday afternoon when Ardizzone and Blinthe got it on Alameda Street in ‘Chinawon’. Near the Canton Bazaar, now occupying the old Lugo Adobe house, were the side-by-side shops many in disrepair, but with their colorful lanterns hanging as if symbols of hope for better times… comprised the core of the Asian settlement. And that was the town except for a few open-counter soup and tea cafes. I had forgotten the Southern Pacific Railroad had purchased a big plot of encroaching land for a right-of-way and most of the few hundred inhabitants had been scattered. So, then, I figured, it would be easy to find this Da Chung character and get on with it. The damn capsule was burning a hole in my upper breast pocket and it was feeling like a hot football—you never knew who to pass it to next.

  I found the Zeng Ping Café, a run-down little food shack with a torn canvas overhang. There were a couple of guys sucking up soup and an elderly Mexican lady with a young girl sitting at the counter. I sidled up between them and sat. I saw no one behind the counter, so I waited. Soon the others had sipped the last of their soup and left. I was about to call it a night when I heard a very odd cackle. Then, through a side door behind the counter came a very small, very old Chinese woman with hardly any teeth. The ones she had were brown and stained with age and chew-tobacco as she approached me, waving a finger. She seemed to be admonishing me for something I hadn’t done as she spoke in a high, raspy voice, always concluding with that odd cackle of hers. “You no want Da Chung soup! You no belong here! Bad man! Hurt Chinese Hatchet Man!” she cackled. “You no eat here—I poison you with my food! You have nerve show up here….no money, no woman—where your woman?” the old hag laughed again.

  I could barely understand a word she said and was also getting impatient. “Look, lady, I’m here to meet someone—I don’t even know if it’s a man or woman—can you help me out here? Understand English?”

  She continued to rant and rave and cackle. Finally, I’d had it and got up to go. “Oh, I learn engineering and build railroad over Sierra Nevada Mountain as well, impatient man,” she now spoke in a familiar voice and when I turned the old lady had gone and in her place stood the exquisite and stately Lei-tao. In the semi-dark of the little joint with its yellow and red paper lanterns swaying in the night breeze, for a moment I fell in love with her. She smiled at me just the way she did the night we got back from the Cave of the Seven Truths. “I was punishing you, Cable, for killing my faithful Wong Lo San.”

  “I didn’t kill him, lady. Toggth did—but I gotta tell you, had he not come in the nick of time, there’d be two halves of my skull still glued to the wall of my apartment.” She came closer and checked out my eyes. “He came to kill you?”

  “He kept saying I was a bad influence on you or something—that I might ruin you—something about me and my ‘sex desire’, as he put it.”

  Lei-tao dropped her gaze. “Oh. Then you are telling me true.” She looked around restlessly and summoned me into a nook behind the bar. “Now…the Fen de Fuqin—do you have it, please?”

  “I might,” I said with caution. “How do I know you’re the real thing? You could be another shape-changer being shifty in someone else’s skin…I’ve—I’ve seen it happen, you know.”

  She smiled at me and came up close to my lips. “What would it take for you to remember the real Lei-tao?”

  “Well, let me see now,” I teased her. “Maybe a little peck right about, uh, here,” I said, pointing to my lips.

  She leaned up and really kissed me. “You mean like that?”

  “Yeah…say, have you been practicing? I don’t remember the last ‘peck’ being quite so ‘peckish.’” I chuckled. “And you didn’t evaporate into thin air or explode into a red ball of dragon fire.”

  She laughed out loud. “Oh, Cable, you always make me laugh! When you make humor, my whole self lights up! Were you always so gifted?”

  “Naw, kid, it’s the hurt inside that gives you the edge, you know. So you cover it up with humor. But then again, you—you, uh, immortals don’t know about those things, I guess.”

  Then her face grew serious. “Please…the Fen de Fuqin…”

  “Toggth told me I was to hand it off to him. Somehow, toots, you don’t look like him.”

  “He’s away preparing what is necessary to make the illusional synthesis. He will extract the inner key tablet, duplicate it for later use and I will re-instate the golden capsule with the Tone of Creation.” She stopped, looked up at me with those wonderful dark-brown eyes betraying a mystic innocence. “Besides, I wanted to see you again.”

  “Sure of that now? It took a lot of doing, waking up an errant knight and missing a boring late-night dinner with William Randolph Hearst just for openers—not to mention all the people who have died along the way.” I took the capsule out of my pocket and held it in my palm, giving Lei-tao a glimpse of it. “Maybe we’d—we’d better make real sure you’re who you say you are. One more of those well-practiced Red Dragon Lady kisses might convince me.”

  She approached me again. “But I warn you this time, mortal man,” she grinned. “This one might give you the Curse of the Red Dragon Lady.”

  “Now, what in the hell could that be? And don’t fool with my head, lady, I’ve had enough for one lifetime already and I’m not even thirty yet.”

  “It’s that no human female will ever make you completely contented, for in knowing the kiss of the immortals, your soul will long for her all of your days. Do you want to take that chance?”

  “C’mon, Lei-tao, let’s get this thing over with. I’ve got a lot on my plate yet, in case you haven’t noticed—including how to keep ravenous Ravna off my back until Toggth delivers me the dupe.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. With that Lei-tao, the beautiful Red Dragon Lady, kissed me more deeply than ever before. In a flash of a second I saw red and orange and then black. When I opened my eyes to thank her for one of the best kisses I ever had, she was gone. So was the golden capsule.

  I walked up the stairs to my little flat feeling a thousand eyes had been watching me all day. I hesitated at the doorway. The door was slightly ajar, telling me I wouldn’t be alone and the next surprise of the day was awaiting me. I drew my .38 and entered. There in my comfy chair with a low lamp light on him sat Nazar Ravna. “Surely, you were expecting me, Mr. Denning?”

  I put my gun away and walked in. “Yeah, more or less.”

  “I don’t mind telling you I ‘ve been hard put to
keep track of you and the more important whereabouts of the God of Our Fathers. You do have the capsule on your person, I assume?”

  I went over to my dresser that served as my wet bar and poured me a stiff gin without the tonic, lit up a cigarette and faced Ravna. “Wanna drink?”

  “I could not stomach that putrid acidity you consume. No, thank you.”

  “Anyway, you assume wrong, Ravna. I don’t have it on my person. And let’s not play polite patsy here—your goons have been following me like I was their next breath—and you know where I was this evening.”

  “This little Oriental shape-changer puzzles me. And why does she risk herself by showing up in person when she could easily send that nasal jack-sprint who works for her?”

  I put my tongue in my cheek. “Beats me, Ravna.”

  “But you know I wanted you dead from the beginning. I really can’t abide miscreants like you, Denning. So, for the last time, let’s get to it. I know you have the capsule. Hand it over to me and you won’t die—at least—not just yet.” He got up from my comfy chair. “So…let’s have it…”

  “I told you, Ravna, I don’t have it. It’s coming, but not today.”

  He went to the window and signaled down to the street. “I don’t believe you. So, now, we have to do it the hard way—and then kill you.”

  Just then I felt a strange sensation, like a hand reaching into my suit pocket, depositing something. I checked out my pocket. A walnut-sized object lay at the bottom—the capsule! I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to die at this particular time, so I darted for my open door and fled out into the hall just in time to see two of Ravna’s mugs coming up— brass knuckles and all. Ravna followed me out. “Find the capsule, then leave him…almost dead…just a breath or two for another day, perhaps.”

  Out of nowhere something was slugging the two goons on the stairwell and they went crashing down to the bottom, unconscious. Ravna and I both looked at each other in surprise. “It seems we also have invisible company, Ravna—what’s next?”