Gascoyne Read online

  We cross over to the door leading to O’Mallollolly’s office and I figure the best thing to do is just walk in, no gunplay unless necessary, and that’s what we do except for Albert who goes and passes out again. O’Mallollolly’s sitting at his desk reading a list into the phone and surrounded by the Goon Squad and when we come in he just keeps on reading.

  “… O’Brian, total demotion. Rogers, dismissal without compensation or benefits. Black, dismissal with half pension. Scoville, transfer to State Forestry Service. Jones, Arthur, dismissal with public trial for appropriating municipal property. MacGanymede, demotion from sub-commissioner to third-floor janitor or dismissal, at his option.”

  Those are all my people he’s canning of course and it’s putting it pretty mildly to say he’s doing it without my permission. I suspect he’s bought out the rest like the Goon Squad which, by the way Victor refuses to look at me in the eye, I can tell I’ll have to write off, but what I want to know is where O’Mallollolly’s getting the backing for this kind of operation which isn’t cheap and isn’t something he can pull all by himself.

  He hangs up the phone and right away starts dialing another number which really pisses me off. Here I am standing here right in front of him with not exactly a birthday party expression on my face, though I’ve never seen him look as hot and bothered as he does now. I decide I might as well pull out the big gun right now.

  “All right O’Mallollolly,” I say, “I want your resignation. Three copies, signed and witnessed.”

  He clamps the phone between his shoulder and cheek and starts chewing on a fingernail and says, “You’re through GASCOYNE, go away.”

  Just then the door opens and O’Mallollolly just about falls off his chair but it’s only some sergeant who comes in and plops a paper down on the desk and runs right out. O’Mallollolly looks at it and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him sweat between the nose and upper lip and I think maybe he’s just suffered a big defeat on the fifth floor.

  “I’m not through,” I say, “I’ve just begun and I want all nine subcommissioners out and replaced by MacGanymede who’s going to take your place until the election.”

  He doesn’t seem to be listening when I say that and hangs up the phone and dials again and I’m wondering what the hell I have to do to get it through his thick skull that he’s at the end of the line.

  “Listen O’Mallollolly—”

  “Shut up GASCOYNE, and go away will you?”

  “You know who you’re talking to don’t you,” I say pretty mad, “you know who you’re talking to. Me, GASCOYNE.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got better ways to spend my time.”

  “You do, do you? Well look O’Mallollolly either you start scribbling out a resignation right this minute or I’m going to throw a scandal at you and Police Tower so big they’ll be talking about it in Medicine Bow Wyoming for ten years. I’ll make it easy for you the first way but—”

  “Big deal.”

  “You interrupted me,” I say.

  “Because I’m busy and it’s my turn. GASCOYNE I want you out of this building in twenty minutes, out of town in twenty-eight hours, out of the state in thirty-one hours. I’ve written it down in case you forget.”

  He searches through about five piles of papers on his desk and comes up with a little scrap of envelope and hands it to me with the figures on, I guess, but I can’t read a thing up close without my glasses.

  Just then the phone rings and O’Mallollolly picks it up and listens a moment and hangs up and says to Victor behind him, “Start moving the desks over there against the door and throw up a barricade out in the reception office and don’t let anybody in here without a signed pass, got it?”

  The Goon Squad starts moving across the office but rather reluctantly because they’re supposed to be exempted from manual labor and O’Mallollolly gives them a dirty look and gets back on the phone leaving me stand there like a goddamn hatrack.

  “Look O’Mallollolly—”

  “Hey I’m busy, huh? Scram, before I have to throw you out.”

  Well things are going pretty far and I figure the best way to handle this is on my own territory where at least I’ll get the respect I’m entitled to and be able to fix O’Mallollolly’s wagon in a way nobody’ll be able to repair.

  “Well I guess we ought to get a start on it,” I say to the boys and we head out around the furniture the Goon Squad’s piling up, sweating and swearing like the devil at the way their white uniforms are getting all smudged up, serves them right. We climb over the pile of sofas and coffee tables in the reception room and walk to the executive elevator which is waiting there ready and open and I push the button.

  Down we go but I change my mind and hit the five button because I want to see how things are going on there which has always been one of my best strongholds when things get difficult. The elevator stops and the doors fly open and I can’t see a damn thing because the place is filled with smoke and what smells like tear gas with small arms and machine guns going off everywhere in little orange flashes and everybody shouting their heads off and glass breaking and furniture clanging. Just then a breeze carries away some of the smoke in front of the elevator and I can just make out three cops setting up a small mortar and then this officer comes running past, black all over his face, and sees me and runs up and cries “GASCOYNE!” He takes my hand and I’m pretty moved by this and so I take out my monogrammed handkerchief which unfortunately isn’t clean but he’ll never notice in this mess and I give it to him and say, “God bless you child!”

  “Oh GASCOYNE thank you!” he says and rushes away tying the handkerchief around the tip of one of those poles they use for opening transoms and high windows, and he disappears into the smoke chanting a very flattering version of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

  All of a sudden there are a couple of shouts close by and somebody yells “Retreat! All is lost!” and a crowd of cops and secretaries emerges out of the fog toward us and a corporal shouts, “GASCOYNE, help! Save us!”

  Well there are just too goddamn many to fit into the elevator so I very reluctantly press the one button and the doors close and down we go to the ground floor where I remember we’ve forgotten poor Albert, passed out in the executive bedroom, but what the hell it was his fault. The elevator doors open upon a pretty thick crowd of officers and policemen and secretaries and office help who are carrying guns and broken furniture legs as clubs and looking quite excited, but everybody goes quiet when I step out of the elevator with Gilman and Gary following. The crowd silently parts and lets us pass through the side entrance and I can hear people whispering, “It’s GASCOYNE.” Though this is all rather touching I’m a bit bothered by the feeling that this isn’t really my territory and that O’Mallollolly is damn close to having all of Police Tower to himself, which isn’t good.

  As we walk through the crowd to the car a party of wounded stops to let us pass and I look down at the stretcher to see ex-Subcommissioner MacGanymede lying flat on his back. He looks up at me dimly and as blood oozes from his lips he says, “I tried, GASCOYNE, I tried. I only wish …” But the cold hand of death stops what promised to be memorable last words. Poor MacGanymede, a good man, hate to lose him.

  Slowly we work our way through the pressing and staring crowd whose hostility is held back by the awesome spectacle. I see here and there a club raised to strike but always there is another hand that reaches up gently and pulls it down which almost makes me weep. We reach the Kaiser and some brave soul jumps forward to open the front door for me and helps me inside while Gary the ass tries to get in the left back door. “Use the other door for God’s sake,” I say and he runs around to the other side and Gilman gets in the front.

  I press the starter button but I’ll be damned if the lousy thing won’t start. Wow-a-wow-a-wow-a goes the starter without a sign of the motor catching, probably the starter pinion’s jammed which happens now and then.

  “Say,” I call out the window to the fellow who opened
the door, “do you suppose you could give us a little push?”

  The fellow looks around and says something and then as if by magic the whole crowd converges on the rear of the Kaiser and starts pushing with some even fighting for pushing room and some even go around the front to pull. This is all so overwhelmingly moving I can hardly see straight enough to drop the thing in low, and we get pushed onto Avenue of Police Commissioner O’Mallollolly and then they really push and soon we’re rolling fast enough to turn over the automatic transmission and motor, and the thing catches and coughs and off we go in a cloud of exhaust.

  I turn left onto Tenth Avenue and dump Gilman and Gary off at the corner of Water Boulevard and head on for the Infracity on-ramp pretty tired out by the Police Tower exercise and wanting to stop and take ten winks, but I haven’t got the time the way things are going. What gives me the headache is trying to figure out why O’Mallollolly is going to all the effort to take over Police Tower in his nasty way when he knows he’s cutting his own throat and public life-span down to three months at the most. Against me he hasn’t got a chance and it’s almost as if he actually wants me to wipe him off the face of the map which smells pretty fishy. Well, I decide, I’m the one who chooses the time and place around here so I’m going to wait a little to see if something’s brewing I don’t see and which makes a little more sense. And then there are a hell of a lot of other things to get cleared up.

  I swing left onto the Infracity on-ramp and hit the supercharger and am glad to see the old Kaiser’s got back some of its poop, and I sail very nicely into the slow lane and then squeeze through the mess to the fast lane and run it up to seventy-five, not wanting to push it too much. Then I give Chester a ring.

  “Yeah boss. Got a report from Fitz in Police Tower. Sorry.”

  “We may have lost a battle Chester, but the war’s just begun. What else is new?”

  “We got Grant the butler’s body from the Phoenix Crematorium just in the nick of time. Called Tsvkzov, he’ll meet you at the usual time and wants you to be in seat thirty-eight.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “Now as for Fernando, he doesn’t need any more financing, he says.”

  “Doesn’t need any more?” I say.

  “That’s what he said boss.”

  “Hell what’s got into him? I’ve always backed him from the very start and he always comes to me before anybody else. Suddenly getting choosey, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t know boss. Maybe he’s waiting for the O’Mallollolly thing to blow over.”

  “Shit! Chester you call Fernando. If he won’t do business with me now and damn quick he’ll find it so rough he’ll have to go out of town to take a goddamn leak, damn!”

  “Now wait a minute boss, I wouldn’t lose your head over—”

  “Chester I don’t lose my head, are you ever going to understand?”

  “Sorry boss. All I wanted to say—”

  “Be quick about it.”

  “All I want to say is that maybe Fernando’s been out of town so long he doesn’t know what’s going on,” he says.

  “Well he’s going to find out right now. Call him.”

  “Now really boss why don’t—”

  “Shut your mouth Chester and get on that phone and give him hell, understand?”

  I hang up damned pissed off. The trouble with Chester is he’s got a weak spine and is no good at carrying out orders when they don’t strike his fancy like moments like this, though I’ve got to put up with it because he’s the best of the whole shooting match and even with his bad points it would take me months to replace him with all the training a position like this calls for. He was a natural, I thought, with his pretty good telephone voice and manner which is what I hired him for seven years ago, by phone as a matter of fact, and one of these days I’ll have to hop down to GASCOYNE CENTER to see what the guy looks like because I don’t think I ever saw his written application or picture, that’s what I pay other people to shuffle papers for. Chester hasn’t got an easy job I know but this is no time to bitch about it and somebody’s got to do it since I work this way of going through Chester for the simple reason that people respect more what they can’t see. Most of these guys I’ve backed and run like Louis and Fernando and Mark I’ve never seen or talked to over the phone and Chester told me it took Mark six months to believe I really existed which is the way things ought to be. This O’Mallollolly thing shows you what happens when you don’t make people keep their distance. They get ideas and they’re always the wrong ones.

  The SLEEPY DELL EXECUTIVE GARDEN ESTATES offramp pops up and I merge right and pump the brakes and bring her down the off-ramp and notice just as I’m turning the corner at the bottom that things are getting a little crowded behind because the blue Porsche is back on my tail and behind it what looks like two plainclothes police Thunderbirds. I whip through the orange light at the underpass but the red doesn’t stop them and they all come right on through really messing up the traffic situation. I decide that if the chance comes I’ll throw them off but no rush since where I’m going at the moment is no big secret, no sense pushing it and I’m a little in a hurry right now. O’Mallollolly’s probably just trying to throw his weight around but is too scared to really do anything and I probably know the guys in the T-birds anyway.

  I roll down Vieworama Ridge Drive at about forty-five and turn right onto Mirindaranda Road and head for the Widow Roughah’s joint. Just then the phone rings.

  “GASCOYNE?” some voice asks.

  “Yeah, who else? Who the hell’s this?” I ask.

  “Never mind. We’re going to give you a chance to make a deal.”

  “Who the hell’s we?” I ask again.

  “Never mind. Are you interested in a deal?”

  “For what?”

  “To make it easier for both of us. To ease you nice and soft out of the tree you’ve got yourself up,” he says.

  “I’m up no tree I know of.”

  “We’ll tell you which tree you’re up if you want to make a deal.”

  “Look mister,” I say, “you’ve got the funniest ideas of the way things are in this town of anyone I know,” and I hang up. This sort of thing happens often enough, some little frog looks at the pond and decides it’s worth making a splash in, they’ve seen too many westerns. Or probably some crackpot trying to make a little off my tiff with O’Mallollolly.

  I go straight at the Mirindaranda split and get to the Roughah main gate and decide to go on in, so I snake the Kaiser up the white gravel drive and nose it into my parking slot and am pretty pissed off to see that some joker has swiped my nameplate, two in one day makes a man feel a little unwanted. I reach out and pull the door open from the outside and climb out and crunch around to the front of the house and give the door a good beating. After a couple of minutes with my feet going numb, the Widow Roughah still dressed in that slinky black gown of hers opens the door and lets me in.

  “All right Nade,” I demand, “who swiped my nameplate?”

  “Don’t call me Nade. Nadine. N-a-d-i-n-e.”

  “Look Nade, you tell me who swiped my nameplate and I’ll call you Nadine.”

  She looks at me with those two ramrod eyes of coal black and says, “I swiped it.”

  “What did you do a silly thing like that for?”

  She sort of goes soft and drops herself down in a big white polarbearskin Morris chair.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “You ask too many questions, GASCOYNE, I can’t stand it I tell you, I can’t stand it!”

  Very casually I pull out my automatic and slip on the silencer and screw off the safety and pick a large expanse of blank wall and start blasting away but since my aim isn’t as good as it used to be the G comes out looking like a C and I can’t seem to get the top on the A and the S is a real mess and I just get started on the C when I run completely out of ammo.

  “Just to show you Nade my nameplate is not to be tampered with,” I say as I pour a little water out of a flower
vase over the barrel of my gun which is quite hot.

  “Shall we move to the sitting room?” she asks, stretching and getting up. “The smoke gets in my eyes here.”

  She’s right about that one so we make our way to the sitting room which is a small affair done in red velvet and that sort of stuff with a pitch-black ceiling and a black wall-to-wall carpet. She sits down on a little chair and pulls out a pair of dark glasses and puts them on.

  “All right,” she says, “what’s to be done for Jeremy Armstrong?”

  “Well according to my doctor friend the only thing to do is give his old octopus arm an hourly rinse with a strong solution of BONANZA BANQUETTE ALL-PURPOSE MARVELOUS DETERGENT WITH FORMULA SUD 39.”

  “Oh,” she says. “I guess I’d better tell him then.”

  “All right,” I say and she goes out another door and I think this is as good a chance as I’ll have for awhile to snooze so I plunk myself down on a couch tired as hell and no sooner do I get myself stretched out than there she is back again with Jeremy Armstrong in tow. I sit back up.

  “Mr. GASCOYNE how can I thank you?”

  Well I don’t know what he has to thank me for because he’s still got his tentacle hanging out and at the moment toying with his button-down collar. In fact I think the thing actually looks a little longer and fatter.

  “Well son,” I say, “there are a lot of ways but let’s make sure this soap thing works before we worry about anything else.”

  “Yes sir. I’m sure it will.”

  “Now don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  “Oh no,” he says just as the old tentacle gets tired of the button and starts swinging around so much it goes splat right against the wall making Armstrong stagger a little. “It’s just that when you come back from the wars,” he goes on with some difficulty, “people never seem to understand.”

  “Well I understand,” I say.

  Just then the tentacle goes into its feeding position and Armstrong gives it a half-peanut with jerky little movements.