London Bloody London

by Michael Avallone

  A mild breeze fanned along the open ground. A vibrant guitar thrummed something that sounded like Tiger Rag, but couldn't be. It was generations away from the Now sound. Or so I thought. Curbing my impatience and gnawing uneasiness, I dug out my Camels and lit one.

  "Got a light, Yank?"

  I turned without jumping. Standing about a yard from my elbow was a skeleton. A tall, so cadaverous man that the ill-fitting black suit he wore with a matching black tie emphasized a face that was about a breath away from being a skull facsimile. He wore no hat, and the hand he had extended toward me, clutching a filter-tip cigarette maybe five inches long, was nearly ludicruous. I've been to the Fun House before, so I didn't jump. But the man's eyes, flickering and jumping with an odd sort of speed and blinking rapidity, put me on whatever guard I had left. The skeleton's request, for all his bony thinness, had sounded like a barrel dragging along the floor.

  I put my cigarette back in my mouth when he indicated he wanted to light his own from mine; I shook my head and produced a lighter, holding it up for him. He smiled a grim smile, eyes still darting, and lowered his head, but he was easily within reach of my upheld hand. He was my height, maybe an inch higher. But the scarecrow thinness made him seem taller. I watched him very closely, knowing he wasn't Torin Bird, but also knowing he wasn't as innocuous as he ought to be.

  "Much obliged, Yank."

  "What makes you think I'm American?"

  He exhaled twin jets of smoke through his narrow, long nose and smiled. Horsey teeth shone yellowishly. A real Dracula type.

  "Oh, nothing I'd bet on. Your clothes. Way you have of walking and looking about. But then again there's your entire demeanor. I know Yanks. I knew many of them during the War."

  I had the feeling that the raspy voice was reaching for the British accent somehow. That its normal register and language were something infinitely more guttural and Old World. It was a hunch, but it made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up and take notice.

  I started to toss my lighter up and down in the air. Catching it and flipping it genially. The way George Raft did in Scarface with a silver coin. The walking skeleton grinned at the performance and did not move away but puffed serenely on his cigarette. A Death's Head grin.

  "You were in the War, huh?" I said with a poker face. "Our side or theirs?" The darting eyes darted again but his skull-face was still calm. He even managed a deprecating chuckle. The barrels dragged on the floor again. I flipped the lighter up and down. Up and down.

  Behind his back, I had a clear view of the Memorial, the acres of green, the whole panorama of the monument and its worshippers. There was no sign of any newcomers, no glimpse of anyone who might be Torin Bird. My skeletal acquaintance decided on another tack.

  "Been in London long, Yank?"

  "Long enough. You?"

  "This is my home. I live in the Chelsea District. Do you know it——a bit of all right even at today's prices——King's Road is—"

  It was then that I saw the boy.

  Then that I knew there was no more time for idle conversation. He was hurrying along the stone path, looking about desperately, and for only a second I wondered how a small, tow-headed kid who looked no older than twelve or thirteen could know anything about Desmond Allan Cursitor or Sudden Death, Espionage and a world full of spies.

  Only a second. A pin-wheeling, skyrocketing instant.

  Because when he was about thirty yards away, he saw me, saw the man I was with, and what happened on his young face was something impossible to describe. Much less justifiably appreciate. He went dead-white, his face literally drained of blood, and his hands flew up to his mouth and he braked to a halt as if he had been electrocuted by an invisible bolt of lightning. Or simply gone into shock.

  And the tall skeleton saw him, too. And his face came apart with hate and jubilant malevolence and both of his hands flew to the pockets of his long, floppy black coat. Like magic, two snout-nosed, dark automatics leaped into his spatulate fingers. Shazam!

  Torin Bird started to turn. To run. To get away as fast as his dungaree-clad legs could carry him. His sweater was an orange hue, the color of overripe peaches, almost matching the yellow splash of his mop of hair. He looked as forlorn as an orphan.

  All of this took only flying seconds to happen. And I had still been playing catch with the cigarette lighter.

  On the last toss, with the skeleton going for his guns, I didn't catch the lighter. I let it drop but my right hand, bunched into a fist, followed through in one of the hardest punches I have ever thrown. Whatever it was, it did the job with a vengeance.

  Bone met bone, there was a cracking sound of fury and damage, and the tall man who would have been a reject in any army in the world except the undercover kind went down like a slab of concrete. He bounced off the paved walk, his funny eyes closed, his lantern jaw slackened, and both the mankillers in his fists went off on impact. Two startling, thunderous explosions of automatic pistol fire split the Albert Memorial atmosphere like a cannonade. The guitar and sitar music strummed to an instant conclusion. A long-haired girl screamed and Torin Bird paused in flight, as if he thought the shots had been meant for him, intended as a persuasion to make him stop running. I didn't bother to dissuade him.

  There was no time to lose, no hands on the clock now.

  Time meant everything. And I didn't want Scotland Yard, the tall thin skeleton with the funny eyes, or any of the people in Hyde Park. I wanted only the boy who somehow held the key to Cursitor. At least he had mentioned his name, and that had to mean something.

  I caught up to him in about three rapid bounds, grabbed him by the wrist, didn't look back, and hustled him quickly toward the nearby Kensington Street exit. A huge, red, double-decker bus was roaring on by, accompanied by charging Renaults, Volkswagens, and black taxis. The blond boy let me drag him, seemingly still in a stunned sort of shock. Behind us, there was that familiar tumult of yells, shouts, screaming girls. At best it must have seemed that I had quite unceremoniously decked a man who looked like a walking skeleton or an undertaker, and that now I was practically kidnapping a young boy. Something was up, okay. The shrill blast of a police whistle suddenly pierced the air. Some strolling patrolman constable was obviously close enough to come on the dead run. But I lowered my head and ran, pulling Torin Bird with me. We didn't have that far to go. The sidewalk or kerb, as they say in London, was only footsteps away. I waved frantically when I saw a shining black taxicab, looking as if it had been freshly painted, zooming toward us from the direction of High Kensington.

  "Sir—" Torin Bird said in a dazed voice. "Sebastian—what were you doing with Sebastian——"

  "Later, kid. Not now. We have to get out of here."

  "But he's one of them! They've got Mr. Cursitor, and—"

  "Save it, will you? Or we'll both be squatting in the lock-up answering a lot of questions I can't answer. Dry up, hop in, and let's lam out of here. Pronto. The posse's too close, son."

  Torin Bird dried up, shook his head, swallowed fearfully, and hopped into the waiting door of the little cab. The driver batted his meter flag and I said, "Tower of London. Fast. The boy's got a music lesson at five o'clock —" and leaped in, slamming the door. The driver, separated from his fares by a panel of sliding glass, winked, nodded as if he too knew me for a Yank, because of my big hurry, and dutifully spun his vehicle out into the traffic. We burst away from the high-walled, exit-entrance to the Memorial and shot ahead like a mechanical rabbit. I had a fleeting last glimpse of towering, massive, golden Big Al all agleam in the pale rays of the feeble sun and a kind of mob scene of hippies, Mods, a blue-bonneted Bobbie asking questions, and somewhere on the ground, trying to rise, the spectral, skeletal man. And then the view was gone. In a flash of light and movement. Green masses of Hyde Park and the distant horizon showing the too-high structure of the Hilton loomed in the distance. We were making great time.

  I sat back against my seat, took out my cigarettes, and looked at Torin Bir
d. The rear of the cab dwarfed him. He was so slight, so frail, so tiny. His face had regained some color, but he was still swallowing hard, and his little chest under the orange sweater must have been beating like a tom-tom. I've never seen a younger face on anybody. He was as smooth and as pink as a baby. His eyes were a startling blue, his nose a turned-up pug, and his mouth the sort that belongs on adorable girls. There wasn't a freckle or a mole or a dimple on him. He couldn't have been more than ten or eleven, but you just never know with kids, do you?

  In Hyde Park, from a distance, he had seemed somehow older.

  The silence between us was awkward, as if he were afraid of me, didn't really trust me because I had been talking with Sebastian. Sebastian. The last name in the world I would have picked for a skeleton. I drew slowly on my Camel and relaxed a little.

  "You don't look old enough to smoke, and I don't want to foul you up with vices at an early age, so I won't offer you one. Okay?"

  "All right—" He nodded and bit his lower lip. "I say—why the Tower? It will be awfully crowded and busy—"

  "That's the idea. We can lose ourselves there and no one will notice us. Unless you know a better place?"

  "No, no. Sounds fun, sort of. I haven't seen the Tower since Mum—" He broke off, twisted around in his seat to look at me. Up close, his blue eyes were incredible. Cobalt blue and piercing. "You are Mr. Noon, aren't you? I mean, I recognized you from your picture and—oh, sir, this is the most frightfully devilish mess!"

  "Sure it is," I agreed, peering through the rear window for signs of some pursuit. But all I saw was everyday London. A broad red Number Nine Piccadilly bus was right behind us, more cars, and little else. "But save it, Torin Bird. Until we get where we're going. You must have a lot to tell me, and I want you to collect all your thoughts and ideas so I can get it straight. Like how you knew about me, who showed you my picture, how you knew how to contact me, who this Sebastian creep is—and please, somewhere in the middle of all of it, don't forget to make some mention of Desmond Allan Cursitor. You do all that and you and I are going to get along like the Beatles and American rock fans. You dig?"

  Torin Bird almost smiled, as frightened and tired as he so obviously was. "Yes. I dig, Mr. Noon. I think I do, at least."

  He settled back against his leather seat cushion, nodding to himself, his eyes narrowing in concentration and his youthful face the picture of what any adoring mother would love. He was a great-looking kid, for all his daintiness of size. Maybe, because of it. He sighed heavily suddenly and I reached over and patted his knee. He looked surprised and stared at me. Almost suspiciously.

  "Yes, sir?" His tone went up a little higher, too.

  "Just answer me two things before we get to the Tower and make like tourists. It's the only information I want right now."

  "Very well, sir. I'll try to answer them."

  "That's the ticket. One—is Cursitor still alive?"

  "Yes, sir," the boy answered rapidly, his eyes seeming to gleam. "But he's come awfully close a few times, if you know what I mean. And I'll take you to him as soon as I'm sure of you and what you want. What's the other question, Mr. Noon?"

  I stared directly into the cobalt blue eyes.

  "How old are you?"

  "Fifteen," Torin Bird said with deliberate pride and a little anger. "I shall be sixteen come Christmastime."

  "Jesus Christ," I said, "you're really the small economy size, aren't you?"

  "Yes," Torin Bird sighed unhappily, "I suppose I am."

  There wasn't anything else for me to say. He looked unhappy enough for two kids, let alone one small boy somehow involved in the middle of what was shaping up to be an enormous, incredible, international dilemma. A Grade A, certified, underlined rat race.

  "Torin," I said very quietly.

  "Yes, Mr. Noon?"

  "Take it easy. You could shoot up overnight yet. Be a six-footer, put on forty pounds, and knock the ladies dead."

  His blue eyes took on hope, wonder, and surprise again.

  "Really, sir? Could that really be the way? For me?"

  "Sure, Slugger," I grinned, taking off my sunglasses so he could see my sincere brown eyes, which can make people feel better. Or so they tell me. "Wait and see. I was a real underweight kid myself once, believe it or not. After sixteen, I shot up like a Sequoia. You wouldn't believe it, but in school one of my nicknames was Shorty. So help me. Of course it was my big friend who called me that, and he was a mere six foot, five inches tall. It's all relative, you understand. To a petite little lady, you'd be a big guy, too."

  Torin Bird smiled. A big smile that showed all of his teeth, which were all very white and all very good. I'd said my good deed.

  All of which made him feel a whole lot better about being shortchanged in the size department, but did very little toward unwrapping the Chinese boxes of Desmond Allan Cursitor's disappearance and present whereabouts. Still, it killed the awkward time between myself and little Torin Bird on the way to the Tower of London.

  Which is in what they call Old London. The old city.

  A grim old fortress dungeon, the Tower of London, which used to be the place of no hope for any and all prisoners placed in its turreted bastions of confinement. From the nobility on down.

  But it was the spot where I hoped to finally learn what had become of the man I had traveled to London to find.

  Desmond Allan Cursitor.

  The missing what-not, what-is-he, what-was-he, and where-does-he-stand-for-the-Union. If he had been left standing at all.

  I sure as hell still didn't know.

  I didn't know a lot of things.

  Something I fervently hoped the kid could clear up for me.

  Torin Bird.

  Maybe even a bigger question mark than Desmond Allan Cursitor.

  They say mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. Noel Coward said it, in fact, in one of his witty song creations. If he had known better at the time, he could have included private eyes too.

  At least one that I can think of.

  And name.

  Mrs. Noon's own little boy, Edward.

  THE ONE-IN-A-MILLION KID

  □ "Don't you want to see the Crown Jewels, Mr. Noon?"

  "They'll keep. Let's find a quiet corner and get lost in this crowd. We ought to be pretty safe here."

  "Righto, sir. I feel better now, I do. Ever so much."

  "You see? The power of positive thinking. Now, come on and tell me about all this and make me feel better before I start climbing that Roman Wall they have here someplace."

  Luck had been with us all the way, but I hadn't been too surprised. The Tower is a Mecca for anybody who goes to London. When I paid our adult and half-admission in new pence at the gate, we had become part of a long, motley line of sightseers to the Tower Hill spectacle. The wide acreage of grey stone walls and battlements from another London Town of centuries gone by was at the very base of the long, winding Thames River just off from Tower Bridge. Barges, pleasure craft, speedboats, and sailboats scudded along in both directions. Everything was festive and gay but the eyes of the visiting throngs, and there must have been at least five hundred tourists of all shapes, colors, and creeds pouring down the narrow stairway over the dried-up moat, past the shako-hatted, red-uniformed sentry doing tours outside his box. This was the biggest historical exhibit in all of London. We walked with Indians in saris, kilted Scotties on leave, outlanders on holiday. I caught the blur and burr of more than one upper country accent—Africans, deeply-guttural Germans, fast-talking Italians, and excitable Frenchmen with their doll-like women. The area—stone-walled, green-gardened, and reeking of atmosphere—was like a page from one of your old history books. The Yeoman Warders, the Beefeaters you see on the label of that good Scotch brand of whiskey, were all over the area in their colorful costumes of billowing, striped uniforms with ruffled collars and red stockings, looking like so many British Santa Clauses with their white beards and spiked moustaches. The dungeon buildings, the weap
ons exhibit, the old Roman Wall dating back to the very beginning of England, the Tower itself and that vaunted Jewel House which held the treasures of all British royalty, drew the most attention and the longest queues of waiting sightseers, but Torin Bird and I skipped them all. I steered him into the courtyard placed between the Black Tower itself and the Royal Regiment of Fusileers building and parked him, like any enthusiastic kid, atop one of the old ornamental field piece cannons on display there. From where I stood, I could see the Union Jack fluttering in the breeze atop the bastion of the Black Tower, could watch the tourists coming in and going out and generally keep an eye on the situation. Torin Bird dutifully acted out the part of a man's son being sportive on the barrel of the cannon while I leaned against one of its enormous, spoked wheels. It was a .75mm. from World War One. A heavy mortar was placed at the stone stairway going into the low building that housed the history of all the English wars—the one with the red and white sign that proudly told all comers that this was: The Royal Regiment of Fusileers, City Of London Headquarters. An honor for those boys and no fooling.

  More than nine hundred years of history were enclosed on Tower Hill with its imposing relic, the Tower of London.

  I'd picked a good spot for my chin-chin with Torin Bird. No one could sneak up on us, and there was plenty of room to run. But I kept both sunglass-covered eyes wide open and ready. You can never tell. Especially when you aren't on your home battlefield.

  The sun was still trying to break past a cloudy barrier of leaden grey. A mild wind swept over the open courtyard. Tourists streamed back and forth, chattering. Children were making those "little people" noises, and the adults with them were doing the guide bit, pointing this out, saying that, referring to the many, varied brochures in their hands. Torin Bird watched them all with a hungry, almost wistful expression in his blue eyes. I somehow immediately got the picture that he had had very little childhood to speak of. It's that feeling you get when you know you're in the company of an orphan. It's unmistakable. Either an orphan or a kid from a family that knows only one parent, or at the very least has a lot of domestic hot water. I lit up another Camel and waited for the boy to collect himself. He was straddling the cannon barrel now, and he seemed smaller and more alone than ever. And vulnerable.