“So if you have a criminal record,” continued Mr. Thoth, “don’t try to hide it from us.”
“My criminal record,” Timuroff said, “consists of only a few parking tickets.”
“And don’t try to conceal your assets,” added Mr. Thoth. He produced a clipboard and—his voice uncannily shrill and birdlike—proceeded to ask the questions one might have to answer to get a job with the CIA, adopt a child, or secure an exorbitant mortgage on a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar residence. Timuroff answered promptly, drawing on his fertile imagination. Something told him that, with Lydia Hanuman backing him, the only checking the gods would do would be with a local bank or two and his very solid credit-card accounts.
“Good, good!” approved Wotan.
Mr. Thoth produced a large parchment. “These are the Lord God Jehovah Wotan’s Commandments. Memorize and destroy them!”
Timuroff read them:
“I. It is the Lord God Jehovah Allah Wotan, ruler of heaven and earth, to whom you owe absolute fealty and obedience.
“II. Even if in ages past men worshiped you, thou shalt accept no worshipers but shalt content thyself with those powers and privileges given you by the aforesaid Lord God Wotan.
III. Thou shalt not practice or condone human sacrifice, nor the blood sacrifice of any living creature, other than such horses as may be ritually sacrificed to my kinsman Thor. (Timuroff, a one-time cavalryman, was horrified.)
IV. Thou shalt never violate flagrantly the customs of this Age, for the Lord God Jehovah Allah Wotan watches you, his thunderbolts in readiness.
V. Thou shalt at once report any of thy transgressions to the god Thoth for appropriate punishment, all payments to be made in full immediately. I, your Lord God Jehovah Allah Wotan, have spoken.”
“Is that clear?” asked Mr. Thoth.
“Clear as crystal.”
“And there is nothing to which you take objection?”
“Perish the thought.”
“Timuroff,” thundered the All-Father, “you are a discerning man.”
He lifted his great drinking-horn, and Timuroff saw that on his arm was tattooed a faded Marine Corps emblem and Semper Fidelis. His opinion of him immediately went up several notches.
“Now,” said Mr. Wotan, “if you pass all Mr. Thoth’s tests, which god would you care to become?”
“I’d rather hoped for Thor. Is he taken?”
“By two or three people, though you might persuade them to contend with you for it.”
“In that case, could I be Huitzilopochtli?”
“Who?”
“I’m sure you know him, All-Father—the Aztec god of war.”
The All-Father harrumphed. Of course he knew him, but wasn’t he sort of a dirty bastard, what with hearts ripped out on stone altars and other abominations?
“That was then,” said Timuroff. “Now he’s really kindly.”
“Well, we can give it a try. Anyhow, you have my approval, Huitzi-whatever. Sigrid, honey, will you wrap this chopper up for the gentleman?”
Timuroff thanked the All-Father, promised to do his best in his new persona, and, having received the axe neatly wrapped in brown paper, allowed the Valkyries to escort him to the door.
“Hey,” growled Mr. Wotan, “don’t forget to give Thoth your check on the way out.”
Timuroff wrote a check to cover the five hundred for the axe plus his several-hundred-dollar initiation fee and an additional sum for miscellaneous charges and services. “I’ll send your new axe over first thing in the morning,” he promised.
Just as Thoth opened the door for him, the phone rang and a Valkyrie answered it. She signaled to Mr. Wotan, looking troubled. “What’ll I tell him? It’s that son of a bitch in Vegas again.” Timuroff didn’t hear the reply, for the door was hastily slammed shut behind him.
By the time he got back to the shop, Olivia had already closed for the day.
“Where’s Pete?” he asked.
“He called about twenty minutes ago, all excited, and said to be sure we both wait for him. I guess something really big’s happened. And now what will it be, Your Godness? Nectar or ambrosia on the rocks?”
“Neither one.” He put down his package. “More likely a beaker of blood. Soon I shall be Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, and a more bloodthirsty fellow you can’t imagine. And it’s costing me a pretty penny, too, though luckily I was able to trade Mr. Wotan out of a genuine Norse axe from the Eleventh or Twelfth Century, of superb quality. Don’t let me forget to send him one of those two nice German replicas—the big ones—that’s part of the bargain.”
“I’m relieved,” she said. “That sounds more like the old Timuroff. I won’t have to lock up the obsidian knives, after all.”
She was handing him his brandy and soda when Pete arrived. “Tim!” he burst out. “Say, is your girlfriend going to be upset!”
“I think he means Medusa,” explained Olivia.
“That’s right, her. Well, that baby brother of hers, Cheesy, has finally become a defunct—deader than a doornail.”
“Oh, dear, I am sorry,” Olivia said. “She did seem really fond of him. What happened?”
“They found him less than an hour ago. He was behind a tall mess of bushes in the park, and it looked like Paul Bunyan or somebody had taken a double-bitted axe to him. He wasn’t split quite to the chin, but it was close. It looked like Cheesy’d been lying in wait. Anyhow, there was a twenty-two auto with a silencer, a typical Mafia execution weapon, with one shot out of it by his body.”
“When did this happen?” asked Timuroff, frowning at his package, at which Olivia, too, was staring, open-mouthed.
“Sometime last night, says the M.D.” Pete saw the expression on their faces. “Hey, what cooks?”
Timuroff stood up and unwrapped the battleaxe. “I made a trade with L. G. J. Wotan,” he said.
“Tim, you do come up with the damndest things! They found Cheesy not ten minutes from where Wotan has his heaven!”
Timuroff picked up the axe and fondled it lovingly. “So I suppose your lab men will want to take this and ruin it with their corrosive chemicals, looking for poor Cheesy’s blood and brains.”
“You know damn well none of our boys’ll do it any harm.”
“I hope not,” said Timuroff. “It’s a mistaken idea that all Vikings were crude, simple-minded sea-rovers and looters. They had great artisans among them.”
“And it’s worth a great deal of money,” added Olivia. “Tim, make him give you a detailed receipt for it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Pete, “we’ll keep it no longer than we have to. We already have Minky Ganymede down at the station being grilled about how he knew Cheesy was slated to become a defunct, and I’ve a hunch what he says will be very interesting, involving all sorts of gods, to say nothing of goddesses like the one whose check was in Minky’s envelope. Now, how about telling us about your afternoon?”
Timuroff did that, describing Wotan, his staff, and his establishment. “They’ll let me know tomorrow whether I can be Huitzi, as Wotan affectionately put it, but now I imagine my transfiguration may be postponed indefinitely.”
“Well,” said Pete, “I’d best be getting back. By this time, Minky ought to be spilling everything he knows. Will you give Olivia a lift home for me?”
“I’ll do better—I’ll treat her to dinner. I forgot to mention that Mr. Wotan boasted he has gods planted everywhere—the IRS and the Police Department included.”
“That’s all we need,” Pete grunted. “A nice pagan god loose in our command structure. Well, if I get back soon enough, maybe I can keep him from protecting Minky. I’ll let you know.”
No sooner had he left than the phone rang. Olivia answered it. “It’s Briscoe Hanuman. He says it’s important.”
Timuroff sighed, not knowing whether Hanuman
was going to sue him for alienation of affections or challenge him to a duel.
“You heard the news?” Hanuman demanded stridently. “They’ve murdered Cheesy—he’s Lydia’s baby brother and she’s fit to be tied. I thought I’d warn you. She’s got the hots for you, so she may come camp on your doorstep. That drink you made her sounded swell—I’d like to try it myself sometime. Anyhow, she told me you’re joining up with us gods. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it. Believe me, it works. Since I decided I’d be this Hanuman character, I can outfox any team of lawyers in California. Anyway, when you see Lydia, kiss her for me and try to get her calmed down a bit. I’d sure appreciate it. Sleep tight.”
He hung up, and so did Timuroff. “I’ll be a soukinsin!” he told Olivia. “That’s son of a bitch in Russian. Briscoe told me his wife has what he called ‘the hots’ for me, and would I kindly do what I could to soothe her fevered brow. Let’s get out of here before—”
The phone rang again, and Olivia picked it up automatically. “Hello?”
“You listen!” shouted Mrs. Hanuman. “I want to talk to Tim! And don’t you dare tell me he’s not in!”
Resignedly, Timuroff reached for the phone.
“They’ve murdered my Cesare!” she wailed. “In cold blood!” She wept over the phone, then abruptly burst out, “Tim, you’re a brave man, not a lawyer! You must kill the man who murdered my little brother! For me, you must do this! Think what we can do together afterward. Do you promise?”
“My dear Lydia, we don’t even know who did it.”
“I know. It was those people in Las Vegas! They’re animals! They think because I’m a goddess my brother is protecting Mr. Wotan, so they murder him. They’re afraid of Mr. Wotan while Cesare is alive. You understand?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Bah! Why are men so stupid? Almost every week Mr. Wotan goes to Vegas and gambles. He never wears his eyepatch or his helmet. He goes as an ordinary man. But they know he is a god and cannot lose, so they hate him! They think that if Cesare dies, it’s easier to kill him. They do not know that he can’t be killed by hitmen. We, you and I, can go together and find the murderer!”
More weeping followed, along with more oaths of vengeance, and finally, when Timuroff promised vaguely to do everything he could, she rendered her impassioned thanks and renewed pledges of future raptures.
“Phew!” he said, hanging up. “You know what this sounds like to me?”
“I can guess,” replied Olivia. “The All-Father started going to Vegas and, like us common clods, started losing, and they gave him credit and got deeper and deeper into him. When he either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay, they began threatening and eventually put out a contract on him.”
“And who do you suppose their hitman was?”
“Little Cheesy, of course. He probably accepted his sister’s invitation to look over the god bit—it gave him a chance to case the joint, then he lost his temper when the All-Father said the wrong thing to him.”
“Bright girl. By this time, Minky should have turned himself inside out, and I’ll give odds he’ll prove you right. But what will I do about Lydia Hanuman? I thought all I’d have to contend with would be a woman scorned and a jealous husband. Now she wants me to take a starring role in a Sicilian vendetta, and the husband turns out not to be jealous, after all. Any ideas?”
“Yes,” Olivia answered. “First, we have dinner. Then you drive me home and we’ll hear what Pete has learned.”
* * * *
They had a quiet and pleasant dinner at Mayes’ Oyster House on Polk Street, keeping the conversation to neutral subjects, and when they arrived at the Cominazzo apartment in the Marina they found Pete already there with three glasses of Courvoisier already poured.
“Do you mean,” said Timuroff, “that Cheesy tried to kill Wotan and the All-Father beat him to the draw?”
“How did you guess? After I came back with that axe, Minky really blabbed—all about Wotan’s gambling, and the phonecalls from Vegas, and what it was Cheesy said to him. He called him a deadbeat and stomped out of Valhalla.”
“So now I suppose you have the All-Father safely in the jug?”
“No way. There’s no doubt it was self-defense. Because it was a lovely spring night, he went for a walk in the park with that chick calling herself Sigrid, him with his Wotan outfit and the axe just in case of muggers. And Cheesy, who’d been watching out of his parked car, slipped in around them to where there was a clump of bamboo. Wotan told me himself. ‘Hell, the little bastard oughtn’t to have picked bamboo to hide in,’ he said. ‘In my two-three years in ’Nam I learned what kind of noise bushwhackers make in bamboo, and believe me the Cong were a lot better at it than he was. So I told my girl here to keep on walking and talking like I was still with her, and I snuck around behind him. Sure enough, there he was. He got off one shot, but it went wild, and then I had him. Well, I went back to Sigrid, who’d done just as I told her, and she said we’d have to call you cops. So I said okay, and she phoned you.”
Pete shook his head unbelievingly. “She called 911 the minute they got back, and couldn’t get anyone to pay attention. She gave her right name and address and everything, but when she said somebody had tried to murder the Lord God Jehovah and been righteously smitten by the All-Father’s axe, they asked her to repeat it, then wanted to know what she’d been snorting and told her to sack in—she’d feel better in the morning. Anyhow, at that point Mr. Wotan, who was busy cleaning off his axe, said the hell with it, let them find him themselves. So we checked last night’s tapes and damned if it wasn’t exactly like he’d said.”
“Our Mrs. Hanuman’s going to be awfully hard to convince,” said Timuroff. “Not that Cheesy’s a defunct—she knows that—but that he was the hitman. She has it the other way around. She’s sure Cheesy was protecting Wotan from the mob.” He related the substance of his conversation with her. “Frankly,” he said, “I don’t think she’s quite in her right mind.”
“‘Cupid was a knavish lad,’” Pete quoted, “‘thus to drive poor females mad.’”
“Cupid had nothing to do with it,” said Timuroff. “If anything, it was Pan at his most goatish, or at least his feminine counterpart. Anyhow, I hope she doesn’t give anyone but Briscoe a hard time—meaning me.”
“But there remains,” said Timuroff, “the unanswered question: how did Minky and Lydia know Cheesy was scheduled to become a dearest defunct?”
“They didn’t. He insulted Mr. Wotan. Minky was there and he saw Wotan really blow his stack. So they knew there was a real chance of a thunderbolt being hurled—remember, they actually believed he had a divine superweapon—and they thought it a good idea to invest a few bucks on behalf of Cheesy’s soul. Neither of them suspected there was anything behind it except Cheesy maybe taking offense at some crack of Wotan’s.”
Timuroff rose. “Well, I’m just thankful neither of the Hanumans has my home phone. I have to take off early if I want to get to Monterey, have a look at that collection of U.S. martial pistols, and be back in time to help Olivia close up shop.”
He turned down their offer of one more Courvoisier and drove home to his Golden Gateway high-rise, hoping he wouldn’t find Lydia Hanuman haunting his doorstep. To his immense relief, she wasn’t.
* * * *
Next morning, he rose with the birds, ate the enormous breakfast Liselotte’s maid, Emilia, prepared for him, and took off for Monterey, determined not to think of Mr. Wotan’s church. On the road down, and later in the day with the collection safely in the trunk of his Acura, he either drifted along in silence or played his classical cassettes. He didn’t reach San Francisco until after four o’clock. Then he finally turned the radio on—just in time to hear the announcer say, “We’ll bring you the latest details about the murder of the cult leader by his girlfriend after these messages.”
What the devil? he thought
, and forced himself to sit through commercials for an antiperspirant, dog foods, and the world’s best Korean motor car. When the news came back on, he learned that Mr. Wotan had indeed been stabbed to death by the wife of a noted San Francisco attorney. It was alleged that she had been his on-again, off-again mistress and was the sister of the out-of-state Mafioso Mr. Wotan had chopped up in what the police said was self-defense. The announcer promised a later-in-the-day interview with Briscoe Hanuman, who, though grief-stricken, had consented to address the radio audience in his wife’s behalf.
Timuroffs first reaction was one of astonishment. This was followed momentarily by shock and, rather to his own surprise, pity—which very shortly gave way to profound relief. Liselotte, after all their years together, trusted him as totally as he did her. Nonetheless, the very thought of what she might have to say, even jokingly, about Lydia Hanuman and his taste in women when her back was turned, gave him the shivers.
At the shop, Olivia was full of the latest news as received from Pete. Apparently, Mrs. Hanuman had appeared at Valhalla and pleaded with Mr. Thoth and other functionaries to let her kneel before the All-Father and beg forgiveness for her wretched brother’s intended evil deed, and Mr. Wotan had finally placed a huge hand on her head, forgiven her for having such a brother, and then whispered an after-dinner invitation to his bed—to which, it appeared, she was no stranger. Sometime after nine o’clock, she had kept the assignation, bringing not only her perfumed self but also an antique dagger she had thoughtfully poisoned, which she had thrust into Wotan while he was taking off his breeks. Then, while the All-Father lay there in his last agonies, the police had been called, and Pete hurriedly summoned.
“Oh, and just by the way,” Olivia added, “Pete said he’d come by with your axe—the P.D. won’t need it any longer. Myself, I don’t feel a bit sorry for your Mr. Wotan. Playing pagan gods and goddesses is one thing, but calling himself Jehovah is blasphemy.”
* * * *
For the next half hour, Timuroff busied himself bringing in his acquisitions and, with Olivia’s help, listing them and putting them in appropriate cases. He was just finishing when Pete showed up. He handed Timuroff the axe. “See?” he said. “No harm done.”
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