EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE DUCK

by Gahan Wilson

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you bet I would.’

  And he was right, it did make it easy getting around; the crowds parted for you respectfully, no questions asked, and all you had to do in return was wave back to an occasional kid and say something nice, which I did because I have a pretty good Ol’ Doc Stork voice and this was the first chance I’d had to use it professionally, and because I was in a pretty good mood since this expedition seemed to be making some really interesting connections.

  Eventually Waldo led the way into a dark, dank little garden that ran along the wall of an otherwise sunny Olde English cottage, explaining that his crowd-flow experts had designed the garden’s placement so that hardly anyone ever thought to wander into it, and his landscape people had seen to it that those who did would get the creeps and quickly wander out. He went to a wall, pushed one beam and then another in a tricky way, and we stepped through another secret panel into a stark-looking hallway with hospital-green walls, a black, soundless floor, and a ceiling made up entirely of fluorescent panels.

  ‘Quite a contrast,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you afraid the public will sneak through some of these hidden entrances of yours?’

  ‘They’re not easy to open even if you do find them,’ he said, and then he pointed to tiny television cameras mounted on swivels on either side of the entrance. ‘And they’re all very closely monitored. Besides, secrets are a lot more fun if there’s a little risk concerned, and you wouldn’t be in your business if you didn’t enjoy risks, would you, Mr Bowen? This way, please.’

  We headed down the corridor, took one of two identical branches, did that again a little further along, and finally found ourselves in front of a stainless-steel door with an oversized brass handprint set into its middle.

  ‘It reads palms,’ said Waldo, placing his hand on the brass shape, and, as a sort of low thrum sounded from somewhere, the steel door glided upward out of sight and then glided back down again after we’d stepped through it into a huge room which continued the same kind of grim but efficient décor the hallways had set, but added plenty of extra detail in the way of shelves and counters, and banks of computers and numbered storage cabinets along its walls.

  I took all this in with a sweep, but then my eyes went to and remained fixed on a group of ominous sheeted tables, the sort you see in a morgue, neatly arranged in marching formation at the room’s center. A very tall, very thin man wearing a surgeon’s smock and wraparound dark glasses was curved over the head of the table nearest us, firmly and intently doing something to whatever was under the sheet, but he looked up as we entered and carefully covered his work as we approached.

  ‘I want you to meet our Dr Schauer,’ said Waldo. ‘Doctor, this is Mr Bowen, from Folks’. He’s going to do a story on us, and I thought he might like to meet President Parker. Is he is shape for an interview with the press?’

  Dr Schauer gave us a V-shaped smile with nicotine-yellow teeth which made his face even more like a shiny, pink skull than before, but he didn’t straighten up like I’d expected him to and I realized the sharp arching of his spine was permanent. He reached one rubber-gloved hand over his back and up to give his white hair a perfectionist’s pat, though the stuff didn’t need it since it was already plastered so tight to his scalp it looked smooth and shiny as a cyclist’s helmet.

  ‘Ach, zo—yes, yes, most zertainly!’ he said, making a little bob of a bow which brought his pointy chin down even closer to the table and aimed his angular grin directly at its head. ‘Are you not, my Leader?’

  Then he glanced up and gave us a cute little wiggle of his brows as something began stirring under the sheet.

  — 5 —

  ‘FIRST, ITS HAND CAME INTO SIGHT,’ I told Bone, spreading some butter on a slice of the bread we’d had sent in in order to shame the papier-mâché variations they served in the Barton Towers. ‘It reached out from under the sheet and took hold of the upper edge. And the thing was, I knew it was his hand. Not just the ring, though they had that perfect, but the way it was built, the way it moved.’

  ‘How did this Dr Schauer operate it?’ asked Bone. ‘You haven’t mentioned any control panel or microphone or such.’

  ‘That’s because there wasn’t any,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how they did it, but the effect was that the thing worked without outside instructions.’

  ‘Perhaps it was monitored from a distance.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Whatever, it pulled the sheet down and there was its head, President Parker’s head, smiling up at me with the big, deep dimples and the crinkly, friendly eyes, the way it does at all of us from newspapers and tv screens, and then it pulled the sheet down to its waist—it was wearing a completely unwrinkled pinstriped suit, and I don’t know how they did that either—and it sat up and put out its hand and said, “How do you do, Mr Bowen? I’m Pat Parker, President of the United States of America, and I’m pleased to meet you!” I suppose it overheard my name from the introductions.’

  ‘Bizarre,’ said Bone, after carefully swallowing a sip of tea. ‘Obscene. It was truly, credibly like the president?’

  ‘Truly, credibly,’ I said. ‘And even more so when it got off the table and stood tall, when you got a clear shot at the whole length of it, and just then I almost said “him” instead of “it.” I didn’t know whether to pinch it or myself.’

  ‘Could it walk around, or was it anchored?’ asked Bone.

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘It was fully mobile. All the previous Waldobots are locked to their platforms, but the Parker model is a whole new departure in plastic historical figures and can go where it wants, even up and down stairs. Everybody in Waldo World is very proud of it.’

  Bone frowned, brooding.

  ‘I suppose we’ll end by having one of the things elected to office,’ he said.

  I turned and reached down and started fishing in the bright yellow VIP bag resting by my chair.

  ‘Dr Schauer is a great one for backups and he had a lot of spares around, just in case any of the greats of history gets into trouble,’ I said. ‘He keeps them filed in drawers and floating in tanks. Extra heads, extra eyes. All very spooky.’

  I pulled out a human hand and waved it at Bone.

  ‘This is a Dwight D. Eisenhower extra, for instance,’ I said. ‘Got a nice tan. From golfing, I suppose. They gave it to me as a souvenir.’

  I pushed the button on the stub of the wrist and the hand’s fingers made a claw at the air.

  ‘Good heavens, how horrible,’ said Bone, but after staring at it a little longer he said, ‘then again, it’s quite good. Let me have that thing for a moment.’

  I passed it to him and, after just a little experimentation, he used it to tear off a piece of bread and carry it to his mouth.

  ‘A redundant bit of apparatus if one has one’s own hands,’ he said, chewing in a pleased way as he passed the hand back to me, ‘but it would be extremely useful if one did not. Most amusing, all the same.’

  ‘So there’s a presidential connection between the business in Washington and Waldo World,’ I said, letting the hand drop back into my VIP bag, ‘but whether it’s coincidence or synchronicity or a deep, dark plot is more than I can say. So far.’

  Bone leaned back with that smug look which always alerts me.

  ‘That is not the only element in the report you’ve given me tonight which indicates yet another potential connection, Weston,’ he said. ‘Remember our being told that, when last heard of, the investigators at the scene had been reduced to verifying whether there might actually be secret panels and passageways in the White House walls? Absurdly, they paid off. They are there, up to and including a tunnel under the Rose Garden which leads to an outside sidewalk.’

  I snorted.

  ‘Who put them in,’ I asked. ‘Thomas Jefferson or Herbert Hoover?’

  ‘They seem to be of considerably more recent vintage,’ said Bone. ‘The whole business was probably constructed within the last twelve months, since the first false wal
l was apparently set up during a now highly suspect repair job of a year ago. Then, working both ways from that initial point of concealment, the builders established an involved network connected with entrances and exits so brilliantly camouflaged by trompe l’oeil painting and illusionistic carpentry that the legal inhabitants, presumably preoccupied with weighty affairs of state, never managed to notice a one of them.’

  ‘And they did it all without tripping one single alarm or alerting any guard?’ I asked.

  ‘We are up against an organization of surreal ingenuity, Weston,’ said Bone, tapping his fingertips together contentedly. ‘A highly satisfying lot, altogether. They appear to me to be the most extraordinary opponents we have ever met. I am, of course, delighted.’

  He looked at me, smiled, and rubbed the side of his nose.

  ‘And now what is the little bonbon you’ve been holding back?’ he asked me, raising one brow. ‘Your hand has approached and withdrawn from your left coat pocket no less than five times during our conversation, so your obvious high hopes for it waver. Trot it out, whatever it is.’

  ‘Probably it’s nothing at all,’ I said. ‘But it does give me a tingle.’

  ‘By and large,’ said Bone, ‘I have learned to trust your tingles.’

  I tossed a paper matchbook on the table and Bone’s hands picked it up on a sweep, like an owl grabs a mouse.

  ‘Le Rond-Point,’ he said, reading the raised gold lettering on its maroon front flap. He turned the matchbook around, saw nothing but an address and telephone number, then opened it, and read the inscription penciled inside. ‘JL 22 XII & ½.’

  He leaned back.

  ‘July the twenty-second, twelve-thirty,’ he said. ‘A luncheon appointment. Two days ago. Why are you interested in this bauble?’

  ‘When I was pretending to be Ol’ Doc Stork at Waldo World I slouched around with my hands in the pockets of my Ol’ Doc Stork patchwork vest a lot because that’s the way he walks in the cartoons and I always like to throw myself into a role.’

  ‘Commendable,’ said Bone. ‘I see. And this matchbook was in one of the pockets, and someone wearing what might have been that same costume had been keeping you under surveillance during your morning tour of Mr Waldo’s grotesque establishment. Promising, coupled with your tingle. And, even more promising: Have you noticed, Weston, that the ink, pen, and penmanship of this writing is identical to that of the Romanian jotting on that silly map? I see you have not. Enjoy your lunch.’

  I’d timed my reservation so I’d be dining with the late group, those who either don’t have to get back to anywhere on time, or don’t have anyone there who would dare to look at them cross-eyed if they did, and they were perfect for the place: too rich and too thin ladies; slick, dominant executives of both sexes in working pinstriped suits; a scattering of smug, very expensive professionals, and a regular crowd of those scary, fragile-looking old money types with cold, confident eyes and odd hairdos, who only go to the right sort of places. There were a few visible celebrities—it’s hard to keep them out—but they were all nonembarrassing types, and they kept themselves carefully muted.

  The food at Le Rond-Point had the reputation of being pretty good, especially since they’d gone to the expense of bringing Chef Henri Tomas over from Paris to oversee the operation, but it was mostly famous for its prices, which gave the clientele a chance to impress one another with platinum cards or large, old-fashioned wallets full of bills. As if all that weren’t more than enough, the restaurant’s table-seating technique was probably the cruelest in the city and considered by experts to be an almost sure fire way to find out if you mattered at all to the people who really counted.

  By the time I’d ordered my lunch and was doing what I could with the Terrine of Rabbit Madeira I realized I’d seriously underestimated how much I’d have to tip someone in order to get reasonably accurate information and was wondering if I’d brought enough in spite of the fact that I’d brought a lot, when I caught a cringe and a guilty look out of the corner of my eye, saw it was coming from the new maître d’ taking over from the first shift, and knew that my problems were over because he could doll up in a black tie and a waiter’s tux and wax his moustache all he wanted, but he was still Frenchy Verne to me, and he knew it.

  I smiled at him and he wilted back as I continued my lunch with an increased appetite. The Sole in Saffron Cream Sauce, for example, went down without the slightest trouble, because now I knew that if there was any information to be had I would get it, and for a fraction of what I’d started to plan on forking over. If I’d been in a mean mood, which I wasn’t, I had more than enough on Frenchy to get anything I wanted for free.

  I didn’t rush, I even dawdled so that by the time I’d worked my way through a second cup of coffee and paid the bill the place was practically empty. I rose in a leisurely manner and strolled over to where Frenchy was waiting for me by his little pulpit with the open reservation book lying on top.

  ‘How’s it going, Frenchy?’ I asked.

  ‘It was going pretty good, Mr Weston,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I won’t hurt. I’ll even give you a tip. I just want you to run over the customers who showed up for lunch a half-hour after noon on Tuesday and tell me what you know about them, especially the ones who turn out to be interesting to me.’

  He looked at me for a moment in silence.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘I knew there’d be a follow-up on those guys.’

  ‘Tell me about them, Frenchy,’ I said. ‘All you can remember.’

  ‘Who can forget anything about people like that?’ he asked me. ‘The first one, the old Limey; he wore high-button shoes! You ever seen high-button shoes on anyone? I never seen high-button shoes on anyone, but I knew right off that’s what they were the second I seen them. High-button shoes.’

  ‘How come you were looking at the old Limey’s shoes?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s one of your basic maître d’ tricks,’ he said. ‘Guys cover up pretty good on everything else but their shoes; the last thing they know how to spend that extra couple hundred bucks for is shoes, so that’s where we look if we’re checking them out. And this guy had high-button shoes. And they were old. My God, they were old. But he kept them up, you know? Nice polish. And his clothes, pepper-and-salt tweed, only greenish. They was kept up nice, too. But old. Everything about this guy is very old. And it feels damp and cold standing next to him, like there was a draft coming from somewheres, only don’t ask me how he did that.’

  He held a hand up about a half foot over his own head and studied it.

  ‘That’s him, around here, almost six feet, in spite of being a little bent over,’ he said. ‘And skinny. And bald. And pale. Bluish pale, and dark purple around the eyes like he’d painted the pits with ink. Very bright, very mean eyes, Mr Weston, so please don’t ever tell him I told you anything about him, okay? Because one look from those eyes and I gave him a table maybe five times better than the one I’d figured on giving him before.’

  He bent over his appointment book, ruffling back the pages.

  ‘Here he is, Dr Hackett, no first name, party of two, request for a quiet table; called in a day ahead so it was Hugo took it down instead of me.’ Frenchy stared at the page, tapping it slowly. ‘He had a funny way of moving his head from side to side while he watched you, you know? Like some kind of goddam cobra is what it was. So I took him to table nineteen.’

  We walked slowly over to table nineteen. There was just one couple left in the place, over to one side. They were laughing, they sounded a little drunk, and the man was settling up with his captain. All the other staff had faded away except for one pudgy little guy in a red jacket waiting to reset the table after the couple left. Frenchy rapped the fresh, white tablecloth of table nineteen softly with his knuckles.

  ‘It’s a good table, one of the best. I was crazy to sit this Dr Hackett here but he scared the shit out of me is what it was. Mrs Forsythe was sitting here to his left alo
ng with Miss Pockett; she takes care of Mrs Forsythe who needs care because sometimes she kind of gets out of control and breaks things and uses language from when she was very young, and Mr Kepler and Mr Blaine were sitting here to his right talking lawyer stuff, and he’s facing the Hendersons’ table where they’re having their daughter in from boarding school. Of course all these people spot him right away and they’re all pissed off at me for putting this weird, scary old man in the middle of them, at one of the best tables in the place, but it’s too late. I’ve done it.

  ‘“Bring me a neat Irish whiskey, a double,” he says, looking up at me with that swaying head of his. “My friend, Mr King, will be arriving shortly. Have some tea brewing for him as he will want it very, very dark the exact instant he arrives. He is a Chinese gentleman, you see.” And then he smiles, like he’s explained something to a little kid.’

  Frenchy turned and stared at the entrance.

  ‘So I fixed all that up with his captain, who could also kill me along with Mrs Forsythe and the lawyers and the Hendersons, and I’m heading back to my station when I look up and see his friend come in—and there is no doubt in my mind from the first glance that it is his friend, because my heart practically stops when I get a look at him—and I won’t say the place goes entirely silent, but practically, because the friend is only a little bit under seven feet tall, all right? And thin like a skeleton. Like a skeleton, Mr Weston, I’m not giving you any figure of speech, here, with a face to match, like a goddam skull, I kid you not, hollows under his cheeks you could put oranges in, and his eyes are green and shine the light back like a cat’s, I swear it to God, and he gave such a look down at me with those eyes at the start that I never dared meet his face again, and he’s wearing this goddam black robe with a gold dragon running down its front and a black cap with a little red ball on its top, and I’ve got to walk this horrible person, this creature like something your mother made up to frighten you with because you’ve been a bad boy, I’ve got to walk him into Le Rond-Point as a customer, Mr Weston!’