‘The Swiss,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘They’ll be the death of me. And indeed of us all, with their cuckoo clocks and chocolate bars and garden gnomes called Zurich.’
‘I did that bit,’ said Fange. ‘I mentioned Swiss neutrality, though.’
‘Don’t get me going on that.’ And Lazlo Woodbine doffed his fedora and wafted it round and about.
‘I’m really not Swiss,’ I told the both of them. ‘Really. Not.’
‘Ah,’ said Fange. And he tapped at his nose with a thumb like an unsliced pastrami. ‘You’re here undercover. I understand.’
‘And I’m not undercover. And I am certainly not an abortionist. And I’m not even sure what an Anabaptist is.’
‘Don’t get me going on that,’ said one or other of them, but I couldn’t tell which one.
‘It was me,’ said Fangio. ‘I have the deeper and more resonant voice. A natural baritone, I am.’
‘But not a natural blonde,’ said Lazlo Woodbine.
‘But I do have all my own teeth.’
‘I’ll bet you can’t open a beer bottle with them.’
‘Oh yes I can.’
‘Then a bottle of Bud, please, barman.’
And I applauded this.
And Fangio bowed and Lazlo Woodbine bowed. And Fangio brought Laz a bottle of Bud. ‘I was lying about the teeth,’ he said as he opened it with an opener.
‘So, young lady,’ said Lazlo Woodbine to me, ‘what is it that I can do for you? You are a long way from Switzerland, and your vast bank vaults of Nazi gold.’
‘And I’m not a young lady,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? Swiss? Anabaptist? Abortionist? Young lady?’
‘One at a time,’ said Fangio. ‘I only have one pair of hands. Form an orderly queue, if you will, Swiss boys to the rear.’
‘Do they?’ said Laz to Fange. ‘I thought that was an English thing. All those Jimbos and everything.’
I took to massaging my temples. I had never encountered the talking of the toot before, and frankly it was giving me a headache.
‘Freemason also,’ said Fangio to Lazlo as he passed him over his Bud. ‘They always do that thing with their temples. It’s called a Masonic temple, you know. But I can’t tell you more than that or they’ll cut my nipples off and post them through a vicar’s letterbox.’
‘They’re only being cruel to be kind,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, and he drew on his bottle of Bud.
‘And I am not a Freemason,’ said I.
And Lazlo Woodbine placed his bottle on the counter. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘we have established all the things that you are not. You are not a woman, neither are you Swiss, an Anabaptist, a Doctor of Death, a Freemason, nor, I believe, a dogger.’
‘Certainly not a dogger,’ I said. Although I did harbour some secret yearnings to dog. But then whom amongst us does not?
‘And so,’ Lazlo Woodbine continued, ‘I conclude therefore that you must be English, a private detective who is presently serving his time as a rock ’n’ roll musician, a stranger to New York and a young man with a problem that he believes only Lazlo Woodbine can solve.’
‘Well,’ I said. And then no more, for I was somewhat speechless.
‘Never underestimate the power of the toot,’ said Fangio, the fat-boy barman. ‘Many before you have and all have paid the price.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right, well, I don’t quite know what to say.’
‘Then you must accompany me to my office,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘And there you will outline to me the nature of the case in point. And I, Lazlo Woodbine, will then endeavour to solve it for you.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Honest engine,’ said he.
And so we left Fangio’s Bar and crossed the street to the building that housed Lazlo’s office. Fangio left his bar and followed us halfway across the street, complaining that Lazlo Woodbine had not paid for his beer and that the Swiss maid hadn’t even bought a bar of chocolate.
And concluding that it would be a cold day in Cairo before he let autumn leaves start to fall, he returned to the comfort of his bar.
‘Have you and the Fange been friends for a very long time?’ I asked Lazlo Woodbine as I followed him up the stairs that led to his office.
‘We were Marines together in the last war,’ said the great detective. ‘Both won Purple Hearts in the Pacific. I won mine for outstanding bravery and Fange won his in a pie-eating contest.’
‘I won’t get you going on that,’ I said.
But Lazlo Woodbine ignored me.
And soon I found myself in the famous office. And it was just as I would have imagined it to be. Indeed, as anyone who is a fan of the nineteen-fifties American genre detective’s office would have imagined it to be. There was the carpet that dared not speak its name. The water cooler that cooled no water and the hatstand that stood alone without a hat. There was the filing cabinet, the detective’s desk with its telephone on top, and, I felt confident, its bottle of Kentucky bourbon in a drawer.
There were the two chairs and the ceiling fan that revolved slowly above. And there was the venetian blind. And I could definitely hear a solo saxophonist playing outside in the alleyway. I breathed in the ambience and then had a very good cough.
‘You hawk it up,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, patting at my back. ‘You never know, it might be a gold watch.’
‘It never is,’ I said. And I concluded my coughing.
Lazlo Woodbine removed his hat and his coat and flung them in the general direction of the hatstand. He seated himself behind his desk and gestured for me to take the chair before it (which I did). Then he leaned back in his chair and placed his feet upon his desk. And then he took from his top drawer a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and two glasses, uncorked the bottle and poured out two golden shots.
‘Down your shirt,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘As you Brits will have it.’
‘Up your Liberty Bell,’ I replied, a-raising of my glass. ‘As you Yanks will have it.’
And oh how we laughed.
But not much.
‘And so,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, ‘you will now tell me all about the case, but first you must understand certain things. They are very important things and you must understand them now if we are going to work together.’
‘Work together?’ I queried.
‘Lazlo Woodbine works with his client, never for his client. There is a subtle distinction, but an important one. Are you sitting quietly?’
I nodded. Noisily.
‘Then put a sock in it.’
‘A sock?’
‘A sock all filled with olives. Such as this one that I recently liberated from Fangio’s Bar. But hear me now and take heed of what I say, because I will only be saying it once. My name is Lazlo Woodbine, private eye, and some call me Laz. In the tradition of all great nineteen-fifties American genre detectives, I work only the four locations. An office where clients come to call. A bar where I talk the toot with the barman and meet the dame who does me wrong. An alleyway where I get into sticky situations. And a rooftop, where I have a final confrontation with the villain. Who then takes the obligatory long from-the-rooftop-fall-to-oblivion. These are the only locations that I work. No private eye worthy of his trench coat and fedora ever needs more. Do I make myself understood?’
I nodded my head and said that I did.
‘And one more thing,’ said Laz. ‘I am always the hero, and as such I work strictly in the first person.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Now that might be tricky.’
