Things went suddenly quiet in the bar. And outside the sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance. Same sun. Different dog.
Fangio broke the sudden quiet. ‘Out of my bar,’ cried he.
‘Out?’ said the guy.
‘Out indeed. Coming in here with your beguiling gypsy ways, disguised as a Swiss abortionist. I can stand just so much and then no more. Like Popeye. And he’s a sailor!’
‘But I’m the client,’ said the guy. ‘If you chuck me out then Mr Woodbine won’t have a case to work on. And I won’t come back and pay my bar tab.’
‘You fiend in human form,’ quoth Fangio. ‘Are there any Cosa Nostra in the bar? I must have this man killed.’
‘Let’s all stop there,’ I said, as ever the voice of reason. ‘We have all had something to drink and Mr Tyler, being a Brit, cannot be expected to either hold his drink or enjoy the benefits of the American dental system.’
‘What?’ asked the guy.
‘And I,’ I said, ‘feel that I am perched upon the threshold of a major breakthrough in the case. I am only moments away from this breakthrough and I for one would not wish to be denied this breakthrough, as the repercussions for the case – and in fact for humanity as a whole – are too horrendous even to contemplate.’
‘You don’t say?’ said Fangio.
‘Oh yes I do.’
Fangio grinned and said, ‘Oh no you don’t.’
‘Oh yes I do.’
‘Oh no you don’t.’ And Fangio laughed.
‘Have to stop you there,’ I said.
‘But-’ said the guy. But I had to stop him, too.
‘A major breakthrough is coming,’ I said, ‘so let us not mess with the method. Mama Cass, is there anything else that you would like to tell me regarding Mr Ishmael and the Big Apple Corporation?’
‘I can’t think of anything,’ said Mama Cass.
‘Think very very hard.’
And Mama Cass thought hard. ‘There is one thing,’ she said. ‘It seemed a trivial thing at the time, but the more I think about it, and I often do, I think that it might mean something.’
‘Would you care to whisper it into my ear?’ I asked Mama Cass.
‘I certainly would,’ said she.
And Mama Cass whispered. And I listened hard to his whispering. And my client tried to listen too, but he couldn’t hear because Mama Cass was whispering.
And when her whispering was done, she stopped whispering.
‘Your words are sweet soul music to my ears, Mama Cass,’ I told her.
‘You think it means something?’ she asked.
‘It has the case all but solved.’
‘Case?’ said Mama Cass. ‘What case?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘A trivial matter. But let us talk about us. You are a fine-looking woman, and I a virile man. What say we jump into the back of your limo and get our rocks off?’
And Mama Cass cried, ‘Look, Zulus, thousands of them,’ and pointed, and I peered in the direction of this pointing. And then she hit me hard on the back of the head. And I felt myself falling, down, down into a whirling black pit of oblivion.
And right on cue, at the end of the chapter, which worked out perfectly.
41
Frankly, I could do without the blow to the back of my head and the long and horrid fall into that whirling black pit of oblivion, which I always have to take at the end of chapter two in every adventure I have. Frankly, and I use that word again and advisedly, I wish that there was some other way to expedite matters with the dame that does me wrong. Because, frankly, it gives me a headache. But for we genre detectives, the tried and trusty methods are the ones that get the job done. So I guess that you just gotta take the knocks along with the good times and never say die. And never ever change format.
I really cannot impress upon you too strongly the importance of format. A correct format, that is. A prize- winning, best-selling format. Correct format has seen me through thick and thin and no matter what kind of inexplicable conundrums I might find myself faced with, I will always stick to format and I will always succeed in the end.
And for any of you out there who might have forgotten the format, or possibly speed-read through that paragraph because you were anxious to get to the end of that particular chapter, probably in the hope of some really hot trench-coat action coming up in the next, I will run through the format just the once more and ask that you commit it to memory because it will prove so very important when the time comes.
So, just the once more and no more.
As a nineteen-fifties genre detective I work only the four locations:
1. An office where a client comes to call.
2. A bar where I talk the all-important toot with the barman and meet the dame who will do me wrong, who will impart important information, but will do me wrong. And strike me on the head to send me down into that black whirling pit of oblivion.
3. An alleyway where I will get into sticky situations (this is where there will be a lot of trench-coat action).
4. And a rooftop, preferably during a thunderstorm, where I will encounter the villain for that final rooftop confrontation. And from which the villain will take that final big tumble to ultimate oblivion.
And that is it. That is how it works. How it has always worked and how it will always work. You can call it a tradition, or an old charter, or something, if you wish. But I just call it a perfect winning format.
But why, you might ask, am I telling you this now? Where does me telling you this fit into the format? When would I have time to tell you this? Take my steel-trap mind off the case in hand at the present and tell you all this? When, Laz, when? I hear you ask, and the answer is oh so simple.
Right now is that oh-so-simple answer. Now, when I am unconscious, spinning around and around and around in that whirling black pit of oblivion. And I will have to part company with you now, because I think I’m coming round.
Wap! went a mug-load of beer to my mug and someone shook my trench-coat lapels all around.
‘Oh, whoa, hold hard there,’ cried I, striking away this douser of my person, unhanding their hands from my spotless lapels and making a very fierce face.
‘Sorry, Mr Woodbine,’ said the kid who was my client, ‘but Mama Cass lamped you one on the noggin.’
‘That’s no excuse to besmirch me with beer.’ I was on my feet now and wiping beer froth from my chops. And also from the shoulders of my trench coat. And that was not a good thing to be happening. Beer besmirchment of the trench coat. That was a big no-no.
In my profession, which can be likened to life in general, appearance, smartness and suavity, elegance, too, and panache – and style, of course, let’s not forget style, and cleanliness, but then cleanliness is a given – all these things make us us. Raise Man above the brute beast. Make us what we are.
Why, in my line of malarkey, having a clean trench coat can mean the difference between cutting a dash at a dandy’s conservatoire and cutting the cheese in the shed. If you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do. By golly, yes siree.
The kid who was my client was dispatched, at my behest, back to the bar to fetch napkins in order to facilitate trench-coat refurbishment. I did dustings down of myself and perused my situation.
