Gascoyne Read online

  “What?” I ask. “What?”

  “GASCOYNE please excuse me for hitting you over the head, I thought you were Dmitri.”

  It’s Nancy.

  “Nancy do me a favor and call my doctor and tell him I’m coming right in to have my head looked at.”

  I give her the number and she calls. My head hurts like hell and I’m not sure I’m going to live. She must have used a tire iron.

  After she calls she helps me down to the car and I talk her into driving me in my car to the doctor’s which isn’t too far away. We walk around to the alley and I lie down in the back seat and she gets the thing going.

  “Go down Mirindaranda Road east,” I say. “What did you want to hit Dmitri over the head for?”

  “Because he tore down my house, the bastard.”

  “And tell me Nancy, what were you doing at Roughah’s the afternoon he was murdered?”

  “Just screwing around,” she says. “Hey why do you drive an old wreck like this for?”

  “Old wreck? It still runs.”

  “Oh well you know GASCOYNE. It smells bad.”

  “Smells all right to me. But never mind, tell me do you know anybody who likes to dress up as a tree sloth?”

  “To screw in? I don’t go in for that kind of trick,” she says. “I like to do it in the raw.”

  “Umm. Well do you know what O’Mallollolly was doing there the afternoon of the murder?”

  She gives a little shriek and swerves and goes through a red light.

  “How did you know he was there?” she asks weakly.

  “Because I was there too.”

  She gasps. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Nobody else did either. Turn left at Lantana Lane.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Next signal. Well what was O’Mallollolly doing there?”

  “GASCOYNE please don’t ask, please!”

  “Why not?”

  “There are some things people just must never know,” she says.

  “I won’t tell anybody.”

  “Promise? Left here?” she asks.

  “Yes here.”

  “What’s it worth to you GASCOYNE?”

  “Third building down.”

  “The pink one?”

  “The pink one,” I say. “Look Nancy it never pays to buy information like that. Either you tell me or you don’t.”

  “But I’m broke GASCOYNE.”

  “Broke? You’re broke? How can you be when you’ve been getting exactly thirty-two hundred a month from Roughah for the last three years?”

  “How did you know that?” she asks.

  “I know most everything. It’s my profession. Now you must tell me why you’re broke.”

  She goes quiet and stiff. “I can’t. They’ll kill me.”

  “All right we’ll talk about it some other time when they won’t. Stop here.”

  She pulls up to the curb and we get out and she gives me back the keys.

  “My car’s back at Dmitri’s,” she says.

  “So?”

  “How do I get back to it?”

  “Take a taxi.”

  “Sure,” she says.

  I give her a crisp new dollar bill. She isn’t grateful. Sometimes she can be a real bitch.

  I walk into Doc’s reception room which’s got the thickest carpet money can buy and soft music piped in everywhere and three large aquariums filled with slow-moving imitation fish, and I give a little wave to the receptionist and then go on in to Doc’s office.

  “Hey Doc some broad hit me over the head with a tire iron. See what’s the matter with it.”

  “Mmm,” he says looking at my head up close.

  “And as long as I’m here, expect three girls on Thursday, four on Friday and nine on Saturday.”

  “Good. GASCOYNE, someday you’ve got to tell me how you infiltrated the Salvation Army Door of Hope. Ha!”

  “Easy, ducks in a barrel. Hey, I told you not to eat garlic on the job,” I say because boy does he reek.

  “Ha!”

  “Stop it for God’s sake.” Disgusting.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your head.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say. “It still hurts.”

  “Then wear a hat to keep it warm a few days, then take off the hat.”

  “Quack,” I say.

  “Ha!”

  “Next week,” I say, “I want you to raise your rates twenty bucks.”

  “What do I get out of that?”

  “Seven.”

  “Cheapskate.”

  “You know where it all goes.”

  “Sure.”

  *

  I slip out the office and through the reception room and make it to the car. Nancy’s gone I see and climb into the Nash and fire her up and then make a U-turn to get me headed back toward Mirindaranda Road. Nancy might crack open, I’m thinking, with a little old-fashion third degree but I’ve also got the feeling that there’s nothing inside and she doesn’t know a damn thing. All she knows is that something’s going on and why not try to cash in on it, she can’t fool me, but if she does have something important in her little head it’ll probably leak out in the course of time, no extra charge. With items like her, you’ve got to be patient.

  I dial Chester but the line’s busy and then as I’m turning left onto Mirindaranda Road, Marge calls.

  “Hel-lo dear,” she says.

  “Hello Marge, how’s the time passing?”

  “Oh not so bad but I’m horribly tired.”

  “Tired?” I ask. “What from?”

  “Oh nothing dear, just the altitude or something. The air’s so thin up here. Like pea soup.”

  “Pea soup?”

  “Isn’t that thin?” she asks.

  “No, thick.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you all right Marge?”

  “Yee-es dear I’m fine, feel great, just a little tired though. My back aches.”

  “Your back aches?”

  “Oh I think it’s just the bar stool or the altitude or something. So tired. I can hardly hold up the phone. Excuse me! Heel Oh my legs hurt, I think I’ve got a charley horse.”

  “How’d that happen?” I ask.

  “Well I must have strained a muscle in my thigh dear.”

  “But how Marge?”

  “Oh I don’t know dear, it’s the altitude or the bar stool or something. Oh I feel so good!”

  “I thought you said you were feeling bad.”

  “Oh no dear, I feel just grr–eat, it’s this fresh mountain air that just fills you up and renews you.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right Marge? Are you with someone?”

  “No that nice cowpoke left a little while ago. He was feeling rather pooped himself. No there’s nobody here but the nice boy behind the bar.”

  “You’re sure you’re not drinking too much now Marge.”

  “No dear I’m just taking a little sip now and then. I even had a cup of coffee a little while ago.”

  “How nice.”

  “The cowpoke made it.”

  “How resourceful of him.”

  “Not really. He went up to his cabin and made it.”

  “What cabin?” I ask.

  “He has a cosy little cabin right behind the gas station.”

  “But are there any cows at that altitude?”

  “Not a one,” she says.

  “Then what does he do for a living Marge?”

  “Well now dear I didn’t ask him. After all that’s a very personal question.”

  “Oh. When will the car be ready?”

  “Frankly dear I just haven’t got the energy to go out there and ask.”

  “Well I hope soon,” I say.

  “Of course dear.”

  “Well Marge I’ve got to be going so give me a ring when you feel like talking again.”

  I hang up and dial Chester again but the line’s still busy, very unusual and damn annoying. Suddenly I notice in t
he rearview a silver Porsche I think I saw behind me earlier on Mirindaranda Road and I wonder whether I’m being followed. My old Nash is no match against anything like that except ballistically, but anything is worth a try. But first I need gas and so I pull into the next BIG DADDY SERV-UR-SELPH STATION and stop the car and hop out and flip open the gas port and unscrew the gas cap. Then I stick the nozzle in and let go with BIG DADDY PURPLE CROWN HIGHER OCTANE ETHYL and tell the boy to shove three quarts of BIG DADDY ROYAL GRADE IMPERIAL 30 SAE SLUDGE BANISHING DETERGENT LUBRICATING LIQUID into the engine and add a little can of Garfield F. Geen’s Original Friction Stopper because I’ve got about seven clackety valves.

  About the time I finish with the gas the attendant lets out a yelp and there’s steam and water flying all over, the idiot let off the radiator cap too fast which was under great pressure because of the excessively hot manner in which the engine often runs. I close up the gas pump and go up to the front of the car and find the joker didn’t really burn himself, a little scared is all, and just to make him feel a little better I have him put in a can of BIG DADDY’S COOL ENHANCING WATER ADDITIVE though I know it doesn’t do a damn bit of good.

  I remind him he’s got to do the glass and tires and I head for the John where I take a leak and a crap and wash my face and comb my hair and brush my teeth with the brand-new toothbrush I lifted from Dmitri’s. I always carry a small tube of toothpaste around in my pocket but a toothbrush I can never keep ahold of.

  I go back outside and notice that the Porsche is getting a similar treatment at the Standard Station down the street, which means pretty clearly I’m being followed by them.

  The guy hands me my bill for fifteen dollars and eighty-nine cents along with thirty-two BIG DADDY PURPLE PAISLEY STAMPS which can be redeemed at the end of every year for the appropriate number of cases of BIG DADDY SUPER KRAZY KOLA which cannot be otherwise obtained or bought from any source whatever. I pull out my BIG DADDY BIG CHARGE CARD and present it to the attendant and he goes through the usual facial gymnastics upon looking at it and of course when he goes into the office I can see him rounding up the rest of the staff to come take a peek at the BIG DADDY HIMSELF IN PERSON.

  When he comes back I have only one criticism to offer him on how the place is run, which is, “Son, I think you’ll inspire more customer loyalty and make people feel at home here if you do not erase what they write above the toilets.”

  He mumbles some apology and helps me into the car which I start with a cloud of black smoke, which somehow happens every time I stop for gas. I bounce out of the station and immediately the Porsche is on my tail out of the Standard Station, I don’t know what they’ve got that I haven’t at slightly higher prices, and stays there so close that playing the signals game is out of the question. The only thing to do is to get out of town a ways and then try to clear matters up. I slip over into the fast lane and set the thing at forty-three. Then Chester calls.

  “Where’ve you been?” I ask right off.

  “Sorry boss, everything was going on at once and the switchboard just couldn’t handle it all so I had to use the private line. Here’s the situation. First, the U.A.R. man who was to take the jeeps off our hands didn’t show up for the rendezvous.”

  “Damn!”

  “Well we’re still waiting.”

  “Didn’t we get a deposit from him?”

  “Ten percent,” he says.

  “That helps.”

  “Well it’s not hopeless yet. Now about this tax man Robinson, he’s going into the WESTBINDER BRANCH BANS the day after tomorrow with the state auditor so we’ve got till tomorrow at the latest to do something boss. Flash Fingers is willing to heist and fire the bank tonight even, for forty grand of clean money, for example an immediate deposit in a Manhattan account of his. He’ll give back to us whatever he takes tonight whatever way you want, the sooner the better for him. I told him about the tunnel you’ve had dug to the vault, and he thinks a good hot fire’ll be an easy proposition. He suggests he leave a bunch of shell cartridges lying around for the heat to set off.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah boss, with all those shells going off the fire department will be scared to go inside.”

  “Of course, I see. Well tell him he can do it for thirty grand,” I say.

  “All right, he’ll take that boss. Now the next thing is insurance. We were going through some of Roughah’s office records for a couple of years ago and we found a vague reference to an insurance policy, that is, something about the high price of premiums.”

  “That sure rings a bell somewhere Chester.”

  “Wish I could help you boss but the thing dates from before my time.”

  “Well keep looking.”

  “Will do—” he says but is cut short by a coughing spasm like I’ve never heard before.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t sound so well Chester.”

  “Just a little tired boss.”

  “Well hang on for another week Chester and I’ll let you have a little vacation. Just can’t spare you now, you know that.”

  “Boss I wouldn’t think of asking for a vacation until we get this Roughah thing settled.”

  “That’s the spirit Chester.”

  The Porsche is still on my tail when I hang up, and Mirindaranda Road is thinning out some but not enough to do anything much about it so I turn right on Mallarmee Village Road and slam the accelerator to the floor, making the old Nash really shudder and howl at the tires a second. Mallarmee cuts through a third-rate commercial center of lumber yards and hardware stores and war-surplus joints whose profits might look interesting to a small boy with a couple of dogs to feed but not me, and then it hits Wrecking Row, the largest string of junk and wrecking yards I’ve ever seen anywhere, running at about five miles long. I get the Nash up to sixty, a little over the limit, and cruise down the fast lane taking a gander here and there to see if there’s anything interesting been towed into the yards. A good place to pick up a car, in fact I got the old Nash down here way back when—it had been stripped of chrome and paint and glass from a sand storm—for almost nothing because it’s pretty clear it’s in these guys’ interest to tell the poor average motorist and his insurance company that his car will never run again in a straight line or the doors’ll never stay closed. And on the other hand the market for this sort of goods isn’t the best so things are cheap if you know what you’re getting, and this is where most of the new used cars, as we call them, from Ralph’s lot come. Old Ralph sends somebody by every day to see the latest crop and to pick the best to take back and make as good as new again if that’s possible. He won’t touch anything but this year’s or last’s models so we do pretty well.

  I roll past piles and heaps and rows of cars that have had it in one way or another and wish I could stop and poke through a couple of yards because that’s one of the things I like to do best to pass the time, especially in a junk yard that’s got cars running back into the thirties and miscellaneous mechanical junk besides. There’s something about stumbling across an old maroon ’47 Ford sedan, for example, that’s been totaled on the front end in a nasty way, that’s really moving because it calls back those days, not so far away really, with the new Fords in the showrooms and the smell and glitter and the ads all over, “There’s a Ford in YOUR Future,” and you can see all this in a rusty wreck with the steering wheel smashed up into the windshield, and that’s the amazing thing. Of course it’s a little sad in a way that new cars get old and rusty but that’s what keeps the economy moving.

  I get a bit of a laugh when I run past one place and catch a glimpse of what looks like the charred remains of O’Mallollolly’s Cad limousine and think that’s one that might be picked up for a song, looks like the engine hasn’t been touched. Two months old, as I recall. A little paint and upholstery and it’ll look like new.

  The rearview tells me the Porsche is still on my tail so I swing left onto State Highway 7 and head toward the Mallarmee Badlands. The road quickly narrow
s down to two lanes and hits farming country without too much traffic for the hour. Now’s the time to shake them I think, so I floor the thing and run it up to ninety, the fastest it’ll go, and turn on the headlights and the flashing red light and the siren and lean on the air horn while pulling into the left-hand lane. This clears the highway nicely but the trouble is the Porsche can also go ninety and probably more and so it’s sitting on my tail having a nice ride as I clear the way, really annoying.

  The farmland whips by pretty fast at least and soon we hit the hills and gulleys and canyons of Mallarmee Badlands and I have to pull back into the right lane and slow down because of the blind corners. I handle them pretty well in spite of the tires screaming their heads off and the right side of the car shuddering something awful on all the curves left, but then I begin to notice a slow drop in oil pressure and a slow rise in engine temperature and I begin to worry a little and it’s pretty clear this is one race I’m not going to win.

  Then with one hand whipping the steering wheel through the curves I pull out my automatic with the other and unscrew the safety just as I hit a very sharp curve. The right front end of the car starts going whackety-whack-whomp with a lot of bouncing up and down and then the front tire goes out with a boom and I finish the curve in a nice four-wheel drift backwards, which deposits me otherwise unharmed on a nice wide hard shoulder. I turn off the ignition and crouch down behind the door as best I can, gun ready.

  In a second the Porsche buzzes around the corner in a sloppy rear-end drift, rubber flying, then slams on its brakes and slides screaming past me. There’s a crunch of gears and the thing backs up and pulls even with my door and I hold my fire because I can see pretty clearly I’m outnumbered by five very large men jammed into that sardine can.

  “Having trouble?” asks the driver, who’s got a green felt hat on with a feather in it.

  “No just stopped to let the tire take a leak.”

  The guy with the feather slams his gloved hands against the steering wheel and cackles a moment and turns to the guy next to him and mumbles something. Then everybody in the car cackles and slams their gloved hands against things, making quite a racket which must be pretty unbearable inside that can.

  “Let us help you change it,” the feather says.

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”