Monsoon carefully chose a spot in the outside wall, midway between two of the avuncular Buddhas, and gunned the engine. He was still singing as the forklift splintered the wooden wall, crashed out into the night, dropped miraculously down a six-foot embankment, and rolled away across the manicured lawns, through the immaculate flower beds, out onto the road, and headed downhill towards the docks.
It goes without saying, or ought to, that the Living Buddha’s golden makeup was completely organic—in this case made of a base of beeswax—and a little-appreciated fact about golden beeswax body makeup is that when hot, especially when compounded with sweat, it becomes very slippery. This fact can come in unexpectedly handy when Living Buddhas happen to find themselves restrained by duct tape in complete darkness.
The Living Buddha was able to writhe free of his bonds and struggle to his feet just in time to hear what appeared to be a reenactment of Gettysburg start up above his head. The heady smell of incense gave him a clue as to where he might be and he shuffled forward, stubbed his toe on something hard, made a very un-Zen-like statement, and lumbered into the wall where he groped for and eventually located the light switch. He found himself in the inner sanctum, a small room behind the main hall where the Living Buddhas could relax from relaxing, and where people seeking enlightenment could find out exactly how deep the Buddha’s wisdom was, and be initiated into one or two yoga positions that were not featured in the average meditation session.
Against the wall there was a gold-painted wooden chaise longue, replete with gold cloth-covered cushions, and a golden, lacquered Japanese table was set at right angles on the gilded tile floor. Next to it was a rather moth-eaten gold rug. The obligatory Buddha, this time solid brass, sat next to the table on a small platform on which oversized incense sticks smoked gently. Unfortunately for the Living Buddha the only door led into the main room, from where the noise was now truly alarming.
Some serious transcendental meditation was called for and he was about assume the position on the rug when the door burst open and a nightmare apparition hurtled itself breathlessly into the room, collided with him, and knocked him flat on his face. With an effort he struggled to his knees and then to his feet and turned to see Crispin staring at him, wide-eyed and panting, fanning himself desperately with his pudgy hands.
The Living Buddha had lived a life of study, and had applied himself religiously to his studies, but his studies were not of a temporal nature, and did not include languages. He was therefore compelled to draw upon the only two English words he knew.
“Fuck you,” he said.
Crispin stopped panting and fanning himself with his pudgy fingers. “I beg your pardon.”
“Fuck you.”
Straws and camels’ backs came to Crispin’s mind. Something clicked in his brain. He heard it. Audible, like a switch. From hot to cold. He began to speak, slowly and softly at first, and then gradually building up steam.
“All right, that’s it. Enough is enough. Listen, you fat cunt. In recent weeks, I have been beaten, threatened, shot at, kidnapped, humiliated, terrified, dispossessed, and upstaged by a fucking elephant. I have been dragged halfway around the world from one festering shithole to another. I have lost my house, my career, my lover, and my dog. Furthermore, I have literally shit myself. And I’ve had it. I am not taking any more shit from anybody. Especially, and I mean fucking especially, from a grotesque, ridiculous, circus-looking ponce like you. And you know what the difference between you and me is? I mean, apart from brains, looks, talent, intelligence, and charisma? The difference is, I make this shit look good, you fat turd!”
“Fuck you,” said the Living Buddha, making up for what he lacked in vocabulary with succinctness. After all, he hadn’t exactly had the best day of his career, either.
Crispin clenched his pudgy fists, lowered his head, and propelled himself at the Living Buddha. The Living Buddha decided it was time for a temporary abandonment of pacifism and did likewise. The two charged headlong at each other like two golden sumo wrestlers. The Living Buddha’s education did not include languages, but it did include the rudimentaries of the martial arts, which meant that as Crispin charged, head down, bellowing like a bull walrus with its nuts caught in an ice floe, the Living Buddha was able to nimbly sidestep him and karate chop him on the back of the neck. Crispin’s stunned momentum carried him forward onto the golden Japanese lacquered table. This Japanese lacquered table had not been constructed with weight support as a major concern, either, and, as Crispin landed square upon it, all four legs surrendered to gravity simultaneously, with the customary sickening crack of breaking bone. Amid all the pain and rage and confusion, Crispin suddenly became aware of an acute sense of déjà vu. Oh, here we fucking go again, he thought. All I need now is a fucking dog to bite me.
At which point the Living Buddha’s Lhasa Apso came charging out from where it had been sleeping under the chaise longue and sank its teeth to the hilt in Crispin’s beefy calf.
The silence was eerie, in some ways more frightening than the noise of the battle. In the drifting and dissipating smoke, Baby Joe and Wally had risen to their feet. They were the only ones that were able to. Baby Joe felt the incipient sting of a dozen flesh wounds as the adrenaline wore off. Wally was bleeding in several places, but if it bothered him he didn’t mention it. Even for two such experienced warriors, the scene facing them was as amazing as it was improbable and unlikely.
All the henchmen were gone, lying around the room in those grotesque, contorted attitudes that only death can give to the human body. All the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the furniture were perforated with hundreds of bullet and shrapnel holes. Of the gong, only a jagged circle remained.
But not one single Buddha in the whole room had so much as a scratch. No fewer than five hundred rounds of ammunition, plus two live grenades and a smoke grenade at close quarters, and not one Buddha had even been grazed. They sat, smiling and laughing at the survivors, enjoying the immense absurdity of what they had just witnessed.
Giuseppe Scungulo had died without knowing what had hit him. The Italian’s body lay in an enormous pool of blood, and fifteen feet away, upside-down and looking extremely surprised at the turn of events, was his severed head. Booby Flowers was still alive. He had suffered some superficial wounds but had slept peacefully through the whole thing. The Americans had been drugged for real.
Long Suc had reasoned that he could use events to keep the MGJ and the money and blame Baby Joe. He had reasoned wrongly. At the back of the room General Long Suc was on his hands and knees, shuffling through broken glass towards the door, dragging the suitcase, and leaving a bloody trail behind him on the polished stone. The blood came from his ankles. His feet were still attached to bottom of the forklift.
The silence was broken by the sound of sirens, and Baby Joe moved over to the gaping hole in the wall. He could see a line of flashing lights winding up the hill from the sea. He could also see the silhouette of Monsoon’s head as he gunned the forklift through the gardens.
The Lhasa Apso was savagely chewing Crispin’s leg, and frustrating his cumbersome attempts to get to his feet and defend himself as the Living Buddha advanced upon him with a twenty-pound copper Buddha raised above his head and a very unspiritual expression of his face. The Living Buddha wasn’t sure how many levels of consciousness he would have to drop down for beating this fat arse-bandit to death, with a statue of Buddha no less, but at this point he didn’t give a fuck. Nirvana would have to wait. He was going to pound this fucker’s head into meatloaf. And eat it.
Unfortunately for the Living Buddha a lifetime of meditation, pacifism, and vegetarianism do not accustom one, even one with murder in his heart, to the sight of blood. As the Living Buddha was preparing to bring the copper Buddha crashing down on Crispin’s helpless skull, he caught sight of the blood gushing from the blue-rimmed puncture wound in Crispin’s fat calf, and fainted clean away.
As he went down he released his grip on the Buddha, w
hich plummeted forward and down, landing clean on the back of the Lhasa Apso’s head, cutting it off in mid-chew and sending it to join Oberon in the big kennel in the sky.
Chapter 21.
Baby Joe had known that the smart move would have been to put the muzzle of the general’s .45 against the unconscious head of Booby Flowers and drop the hammer, but it just wasn’t in him to do it, and as he drove away in the opposite direction to the sound of the police sirens that were now very close he was reflecting upon the fact that he might live to regret it.
Sometime later, on the other side of the world, Don Ignacio Imbroglio was reflecting upon how he was going to make Baby Joe Young regret being alive. When he had received the call from Booby, his English manner and mannerisms had dissolved in a stream of Sicilian invective that would have made a Borgia blush, and his incandescent rage had sent Liberty and Stratosphere scurrying into the furthest recesses of the apartment. The Don, in his anger, was like a volcano. He didn’t go off very often, but when he did everybody knew about it and nobody ever forgot it.
But Don Imbroglio, despite his Latin origins, was essentially a man of calculation rather than passion, and once the fire in his brain had subsided to a smolder he set about picking through the ashes to assess the situation in a rational manner. To borrow a phrase from his army days, this venture was FUBAR and becoming more FUBAR’d by the day. This fiasco was turning into his own private meltdown, and the casualty list was fast becoming as big as Chernobyl. Any organization such as his is based on respect—read “fear.” Fear of pain and death. Fear of the all-seeing eyes, the ears that miss nothing, the hydra that can never be destroyed no matter how many heads are lopped off, the tentacles that reach into people’s lives, that root them out no matter where they go, the shadowy nemesis from which there is no escape. At the minute, the Don’s mob was more like blind and deaf Siamese twins who couldn’t root out a fucking turnip.
This could get really serious. Already there were whispers. Rumors. Too many people had disappeared. Cracks were appearing, the mystique beginning to wear thin. Soon there would be insurrection, disobedience, disrespect. Warnings ignored, debts not paid, desertions and defections, small resistance gradually becoming bolder and more flagrant until you had outright rebellion. Until there was no longer any respect, and then you had nothing but a blind and helpless old man, sitting in an ivory tower, waiting for someone to end it.
Sooner or later, the story of what was really happening would come out, and when the word hit the streets that a hooker, a fat fruit, an Irish rummy, and a small time schwarz bunko steerer had taken down two of his best people, taken him for ten mill, and probably instigated an international incident with some Golden Triangle gook warlord, it would be arrivederci-fucking-Roma. He had to resolve this, and fast, and in such a spectacularly, unforgettably brutal fashion that the status quo would be restored and reaffirmed. PFQ.
But what to do? He had already lost more people than he could spare, and he could not afford to take anybody out of his local operation, especially at a time like this when a show of strength was needed. Admittedly, most of those he had lost had been strictly minor league, but Mary Rose and Horatio had been on the all-star team. This Mick must really be something, to pick those two out of the lineup. What kind of a sick mind would suspect a sweet little old lady like Mary Rose? Not to mention slicing up Grimmstein like a pizza and feeding knuckle sandwiches to his two so-called bodyguards. And then there was that paisano creepo ex-cousin, Scungulo. It was going to be really entertaining explaining that one to his aunt. Maybe he should just hand the Mick over to her. But no, even he wasn’t that cruel. There was only one solution.
One of the Don’s remarkable mental facilities had been a phenomenal, almost photographic, memory, but it was failing him with increasing regularity lately, and for phone numbers that he didn’t use very often he had adopted the ingenious device of having them embossed in braille on a brass plaque attached to the underside of his desk. He now reached down and read the number he needed, a number he hadn’t had to use for over eight years.
It’s strange how sometimes that which appears the ugliest by day can be the most beautiful at night: like a steel works, or Las Vegas, or a skid row hooker. Crispin was thinking along these lines as he leaned against the railing at the stern of the MV Wollongong, watching the lights from the docks shimmering on the water and the little toy-looking boats cutting back and forth across the bay.
With the cool breeze carrying the faint scent of spices from the estuary it was almost romantic, and Crispin’s mind’s eye was filled with warm and reassuring images. In particular, the warm and reassuring image of the ten million dollars that was sitting in the cabin below. The ten million dollars which they had appropriated as compensation from the Don, damages for loss of life, property, reputation, and dignity, and expenses for travel costs and replacement of possessions. Also, in his case, two dog-chewed legs—even though the first one hadn’t been the Don’s fault, strictly speaking—and several changes of underwear.
He almost required another one when the ship’s horn sounded with rib-vibrating intensity right next to his ear, signaling two hours to sailing and summoning the Wollongong’s inebriate and no doubt pox-ridden bilge rat crew from every seedy gin mill and knocking shop along the waterfront. When his heart stopped pounding he strolled around the deck to the bow, and stared out beyond the flashing red and green lights to the faint white swirls on the dark water beyond. A sickle moon balanced on the eastern rim, and pale seabirds ghosted past on silent wings. In less than two hours a new life would begin, past buoys and the green headland and out onto the vast churning Pacific. To a new continent, and to who-knew-what?
Crispin thought about Nigel, and Oberon, and his apartment. About the life he had known for so long that was gone forever. The salty sea breeze blew the tears like tiny rivers across his fat cheeks. He thought about the bomb, and the shooting in the swamp, and that horrible scary man on the boat, and the throbbing pain in his lacerated leg.
He sniffed and wiped away his tears. You have to be alive to be in pain, he thought, heading for the stairs and the lights of the bridge above them.
Baby Joe climbed through the window and into the flickering light from the hundreds of candles that Hazy Doyle had burning, candles of every conceivable size, shape, and color, like the cave of some maniacal Catholic hermit. The turntable spun around, the arm clicking, the record’s label spinning hypnotically, and Hazy sat in the lotus position staring at it, too far away, too deep in interstellar space to notice that the music had stopped. Baby Joe lifted the arm and dropped it into the groove, and Hendrix’s voodoo guitar writhed into the smoky air, summoning Hazy back from the Sea of Tranquility.
He looked at Baby Joe over the top of his round spectacles without the slightest trace of surprise or curiosity, as if Baby Joe were as permanent a fixture as the fat Buddha who glowed happily in the corner. Hazy smiled and made the peace sign. “Man, they got a band out there that’s a motherfucker.”
“So how’s Elvis?”
“No, man. Elvis is on Venus, you know that.”
Baby Joe shook his head and opened one of the beers that he’d brought with him. He offered one to Hazy, who took it and stared at it as if it were some mystical artifact from a lost civilization. Baby Joe took it back from him, opened it, and handed it back.
“Far out, baby. You know, a big wind is comin’, man. A cosmic wind. I hear the bells.”
“And then what happens?”
“The fuckin new millennium, man. They gonna show us. No more color, no more hatred, no more hunger, no more religion. No more fucked-up brass sendin’ lambs to the slaughter. Just fat happy babies, laughin’ in the sunshine, man.”
Baby Joe smiled. “Listen, Hazy. What are you going to do?”
“Shit, bro. Shine it on and kick back, man.”
Baby Joe leaned forward and gently removed Hazy’s glasses. His black dilated pupils were in actual orbit, rotating around his eyes very sl
owly and ever so slightly out of sync. He was already on his way out to Venus, to dig Elvis. Baby Joe kissed him on the forehead and replaced the dark glasses.
He took the package he was carrying and unwrapped it. Inside was fifty thousand dollars. He moved over to the Buddha and hefted it. Hollow. Peeling off a bunch of hundreds, he stashed the rest under the Buddha and set it back down. The Buddha smiled at him. Picking up the inner sleeve of a record from the chaotic pile around the player, he scribbled a note.
Look under Buddha. Stay frosty bro. Baby Joe.
He propped the note against the player, set the bundle of bills next to it, and sat finishing his beer, staring into the colored smoke and into the mist of older days, seeing lost, remembered figures appear and disappear into its slow liquid swirl.
As he walked away from the foot of the ladder, the diminishing strains of “Little Wing” followed him down the unlit street.
Among his peers, Captain Joe Brew was known as “Penguin” Brew, the reason being that it was maintained, in some uncharitable quarters, that he had once fucked one while three sheets to the wind on an Antarctic expedition with the Australian navy. Joe Brew swore blind, to this day, that it had been a nun.
Penguin Brew was of average height. Average height for a Lilliputian schoolboy, that is. This dimension being almost matched by his girth, he was practically circular in profile. Add to this a nose that made W. C. Fields look like Matt Damon, a full red beard that appeared to have been acquired secondhand from a down-on-its-luck muskox, a state of permanent inebriation stretching back to 1974, and a vocabulary that included every expletive—Anglo-Saxon and otherwise—utilized throughout the English-speaking world, and you have a reasonable description of the man and his mind.
Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1) Page 36