this one turns up and oh dear me.’ And he began to sob.
‘Do you need a hankie to dry those tears?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ said Fange. ‘I have a hankie of my own.’
‘Then stick it in your mouth and bring us over two Buds.’
‘I’d quite like to try a cocktail,’ said the young guy called Tyler as he leaned upon the bar counter and ogled the ashtrays in the way that strangers so often do.
‘Don’t get me going on cocktails,’ said Fangio, weeping away like a woebegone woman bewailing a badly drawn boy.
‘Two Buds,’ I said, using the natural authority that God in His infinite wisdom had seen fit to grant me.
‘Coming right up, sir,’ said the barman.
‘Might I ask you something, Mr Woodbine?’ said the guy.
I nodded in the affirmative. ‘Not now, kid,’ I said.
‘But it’s important. Please.’
‘Well, all right. Go on. And don’t feel that you have to rush yourself. ’
‘All this talking of the toot – it really does help you to solve your cases?’
That was some question and I was the fella to answer it.
‘Kid,’ I said. ‘Kid, over the years Fange and I have talked a great deal of toot in this bar. We talk the toot and we chew the fat.’ And as it was nearing lunchtime, I dipped into the complimentary bowl upon the bartop and helped myself to a prize gobbet of said chewing-fat. ‘It’s the way things are done, kid,’ I continued, munching as I did. ‘You might argue that it is a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But I would argue that it ain’t nothing of the sort. It’s more of a dynamic symbiosis. Or, more rightly, a symbiotic dynamic. You can’t squeeze salt from a billiard ball, no matter how long you soak it.’
The guy looked thoughtful and nodded his head. ‘Right,’ said he. ‘So all this talking of the toot – it really does help you to solve your cases?’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Here’s our beers. And Fangio’s brought your tab.’
‘I’m not sure that it really is a tab,’ said the fat-boy, presenting us with two glasses of cherry brandy. ‘It looks more to me to be something connected with golf. A tee, possibly, or a five-iron-gone-apeshit-crazy. ’
I gave the item he’d brought out a stern looking-over. ‘Nope,’ I said, in the negative. ‘That’s a bar tab all right. See the words “BAR TAB” printed at the top? That’s your guide to its correct identification, right up there in lights, as it were.’
And Fangio smiled, which brought joy to the world. ‘God bless you, Lazlo,’ said he.
The guy sipped at his cherry brandy and asked me whether it was a cocktail. I didn’t want to complicate things and so I nodded that it was, discreetly, without any fuss.
‘Tastes just like a cherry brandy,’ said the guy. ‘But I was asking you about the toot.’
‘Kid,’ I said, ‘we’ve been through that. And repetition does nothing more than labour a point. It’s the way things are done and that’s that. I’m on your case now, so everything that happens from now on will be pertinent to your case. These folk in this bar – pertinent. Those Dacks and that McMurdo lying on the floor-’
‘The one who was sitting on your bar stool?’ said the guy.
‘Same one. All pertinent. What we have to do is to wait here, talking the toot, until she arrives.’
‘She?’ asked the guy.
‘The dame that does me wrong. You’ve read the novels, right? Everyone’s read the Lazlo Woodbine Thrillers, right?’
‘From the poignant pen of Penrose? Yes.’
‘Well, you must then understand that you must never mess with a winning formula. All the big guys know this, which is why they are big guys. Right?’
‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘So we sit here talking the toot until the dame that does you wrong turns up. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Right. And is this the same dame every time, or a different dame?’
‘Different dame.’
‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘Because if it was always the same dame, you’d probably be forewarned that she was going to do you wrong. Right?’
‘Right,’ I said once more. ‘So it would lack for the element of surprise. Which would mess with the format. The dame that does me wrong always furnishes me with some vital clue that is necessary to the solving of the case. But she will do me wrong, in that at the end of the chapter she always strikes me hard on the back of the head and sends me down into that whirling pit of black oblivion that all genre private eyes get sent to in that chapter.’
‘This chapter, right?’
‘Next chapter.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Don’t you mean “right”?’ I asked.
‘Right,’ said the guy.
And then I saw her. And she was beautiful. She breezed into that bar like a bat out of Hell that would be gone when the morning came. But without a hint of the bat about her. By the way she walked I could tell that here was a dame who knew what the sound of one hand clapping was like. And if she wasn’t built for the pleasures of the flesh, then Rome was built in a day with a bucket and spade. She was long and blonde and when God designed her, She wasn’t kidding around.
The guy nudged the elbow of my trench coat and asked me, ‘Is that the dame?’
‘I wish, kid,’ and I shook my head. ‘It’s that great fat munter behind her.’
40
Now, I retract that word ‘munter’. It’s a cruel word, that, and although it rarely fails to raise a titter, that’s no need to go using it willy-nilly. Especially in a derogatory fashion.
And especially when referring to Mama Cass.
‘Hi there, Laz,’ said the legend from the Mamas and the Papas.
I tipped the lady the brim of my fine fedora, told her to pull up a bar stool and park her big butt and join me in taking a drink.
‘I can’t stay,’ said the rather broad broad. ‘I need to use the phone. Our limo broke down and we have to get to Woodstock for the festival.’
‘I’m playing at Woodstock,’ said the guy, ‘with my band The Sumerian Kynges. Perhaps you’ve heard of us – we closed the Hyde Park gig for The Rolling Stones.’
‘Don’t go getting all bent out of shape,’ I told the guy. ‘The Rolling Stones closed the Hyde Park gig for The Rolling Stones, and I should know, I was over there on a case. And Mick Jagger let me into the green room. He’s a big fan of my work, you see.’
‘But-’ said the guy.
‘It’s a true story,’ said Fangio. ‘Tell him about the kid, Laz, the one who got really stoned on a Banbury Bloater and had to be chucked out of the green room. How uncool was he?’
‘What?’ said the guy.
‘What indeed,’ said I.
‘ Woodstock?’ said Mama Cass. ‘You and your band are playing Woodstock?’ But she didn’t address this question to me, rather to my client, the kid.
‘Yes,’ said the kid. ‘I think we’re on just after you. This is a real pleasure.’ And he stuck out his hand for a shake.
But I edged this hand aside. ‘Kid,’ I told him, ‘you’re muddying the waters here. Sending the plot off on a tangent. Lazlo Woodbine doesn’t do tangents. He’s a real straight arrow. He talks the toot, yes, but he gets right on with the job in hand. So kindly step aside and watch how the dame that does me wrong does me wrong. Pay attention, now – it will be an educational experience.’
The guy made a noise that sounded like ‘Hmmph’ but which might have been ‘Yes, sir’ in Swiss.
