the law, 'playing ball' the cops call it. Others call it something else: Ab the Fuzz Lover, Finky Marv, The Crooning Hebe, Ali the Stool, Wrongo Sal, The Wailing Spic, The Sheeny Soprano, The Bronx Opera House, The Copper's Djinn, The Answering Service, The Squeaking Syrian, The Cooing Cocksucker, The Musical Fruit, The Wrong Ass Hole, The Fairy Fink, Leary the Nark, The Lilting Leprechaun... Grassy Gert.
He opened a sex shop in Yokohama, pushed junk in Beirut, pimped in Panama. During World War II he shifted into high, took over a dairy in Holland and cut the butter with used axle grease, cornered the K.Y. market in North Africa, and finally hit the jackpot with slunks. He prospered and proliferated, Hooding the world with cut medicines and cheap counterfeit goods of every variety. Adulterated shark repellent, cut antibiotics, condemned parachutes, stale anti-venom, inactive serums and vaccines, leaking lifeboats.
Clem and Jody, two oldtime vaudeville hoofers, cope out as Russian agents whose sole function is to represent the U.S. in an unpopular light. When arrested for sodomy in Indonesia, Clem said to the examining magistrate:
''Tain't as if it was being queer. After all they's only Gooks.' They appeared in Liberia dressed in black Stetsons and red galluses:
'So I shoot that old nigger and he flop on his side one leg up in the air just akicking.'
'Yeah, but you ever burn a nigger?'
79
They are always pacing round Bidonvilles smoking huge cigars:
'Haveta get some bulldozers in here Jody. Clean out all this crap.' Morbid crowds follow them about hoping to witness some superlative American outrage.
'Thirty years in show business and I never handle such a routine like this. I gotta dispossess a Bidonville, give myself a bang of H, piss on the Black Stone, make with the Prayer Call whilst dressed in my hog suit, cancel Lend Lease and get fucked up the ass simultaneous.... What, am I an octopus already?' Clem complains.
They are conspiring to kidnap the Black Stone with a helicopter and substitute a hog pen, the hogs trained to give the Bronx cheer when the pilgrims show. 'We try to train them squealing bastards to sing: 'Three cheers for the Red White and Blue,' but it can't be done....'
'We connect for that wheat with Ali Wong Chapultepec in Panama. He tells us it is a high grade of shit this Finnish skipper die inna local jump joint and leave this cargo to the madame.... 'She was like a mother to me,' he says and those were his last words.... So we buy it in good faith off the old gash. Laid ten pieces of H on her.'
'Good H too. Good Aleppo H.'
'Just enough milk sugar to keep her strength up.'
'We should look a gift horse in the ass already?'
'Isn't it true than when you got to Hassan you gave a banquet for the Caid and served couscous made from the wheat?'
'We sure did. And you know those citizens were so loaded on that marijuana they all wig inna middle of the banquet.... Me, I just had bread and milk... ulcers you know.'
'Likewise.'
'So they all run around screaming they is on fire and the bulk of them die the following morning.'
'And the rest the morning after that.'
'What they expect already when they rot theirselves with Eastern vices?'
'Funny thing those citizens turn all black and their legs drop off.'
'Horrible result of marijuana addiction.'
'The very same thing occurred to me.'
'So we deal directly with the old Sultan who is being a well-known Latah. After that everything is plain sailing you might say.'
'But you wouldn't believe it, certain disgruntled elements chased us right down to our launch.'
'Handicapped somewhat by lack of legs.'
