I was in an alleyway. The one to the rear of Fangio’s Bar. But it could have been any alleyway. That Brit playwright Wayne Shakespeare once wrote that ‘all the world is an alleyway and every man and every woman, a private eye’. And he wasn’t talking slash-sleeved turkey for once. And so I perused my situation, fingering the bulge of my trusty Smith & Wesson as I did so, because in my game an alleyway can spell trouble. And one must always remain alert.
But enough of this gay badinage.
I dipped my hand into my trench coat, drew out the trusty Smith & Wesson, turned upon my toes, adopted the position and let off two rounds straight and true. Two bullets spent and two men hit the dust.
One had been crouching upon one of those cast-iron fire escapes with the retractable bottom sections; the other, half-hidden behind a trashcan. Both had sniper rifles and both of these had been trained on me.
Moving with more stealth than a Vatican pimp and more elan than a Lotus, I made my way to the guy who now adorned a trashcan, turned him over with the polished toe of my classic Oxford brogue, taking great care to avoid any trouser cuff/blood contamination, and viewed my erstwhile assassin.
‘God dammit,’ I said, in a manner that would soon find favour with the villains of dubbed kung fu movies. ‘I’ve plugged me a dame.’ And although dames do do me wrong, I always feel a little pang of something whenever I have to torture vital information from one, or gun one down in an alleyway.
‘Ah! But hey.’ And I perused a wig piece. Not a dame at all, but a guy done up as one. A Jimbo. I went through the cross-dressing SOB’s pockets to check for any ID.
And at that moment the kid who was my client came out of the rear door of Fangio’s and all but hurled when he saw the blood and the body.
‘Oh my God,’ he wailed. ‘You’ve shot a woman. Oh my God.’
‘Be grateful, kid,’ I told him. ‘I spied them out as soon as I came to consciousness again. I sent you to get tissues to keep you out of the crossfire.’
‘Really?’
‘Certainly did. And to get these beer stains off my trench coat. And this ain’t no woman – it’s a Jimbo.’
The kid was looking paler than Typhoid Mary’s Triumph Herald, which was a whiter shade of green.
‘A Jimbo?’ he said. ‘One of them?’
‘Could be, kid.’ I emptied the last of the cadaver’s pockets. ‘No ID. And the body’s as cold as an Eskimo’s love bite on the Feast of Saint Stephen. Ah now, what is this?’ And I drew into the alleyway’s light what looked to be a cardboard skull. ‘What do you make of that?’ I asked the kid.
The kid shrugged and said he didn’t know.
‘Top-class shrugging,’ I said, because praise never costs and kindness comes even cheaper. ‘This is a membership card to a very exclusive club. And if there isn’t another of these membership cards in the pocket of the other dead boy up there-’ and I gestured with aplomb towards the cast-iron fire escape ‘-then I’ll be a Crowleyian cowboy at a Rosicrucian rodeo. Which I ain’t.’
‘Another body?’ went the kid.
‘Do try to keep up,’ I told him. ‘This is a turning point in the case.’
‘How so?’
I displayed the card. ‘The membership card of a most exclusive club. Perhaps the most exclusive club in New York City – Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery.’
‘Voodoo?’ said my client, the kid. With justifiable awe.
‘Voodoo,’ I affirmed. ‘And the way this case is shaping up, it could involve almost any god in the voodoo pantheon – Loco, the god of the forests; Papa Legba, benevolent guardian of the gates; Damballa Oueddo, the wisest and most powerful, whose spirit is the serpent; Maitresse Ezilee, the blessed Virgin, or Ogoun Badagris, the bloody dreadful.’
‘Mr Woodbine,’ said the kid (my client) with just a smidgen more awe, ‘you certainly know your voodoo pantheon.’
‘Kid,’ I told him, ‘in my job, knowing your voodoo pantheon can mean the difference between breaking the ice in the governor’s black carriage and breaking wind in a gargler’s back passage. And the distinction ain’t too subtle. If you know what I mean and I’m pretty damn sure that you do.’
‘I am coming to recognise certain patterns,’ said the kid. ‘I suppose you’d like me to swarm up the wall and fetch down the club membership card from the pocket of the other stiff.’
‘You’re catching on fast, kid,’ I told him. Because charm never dates and time and tide wait for Norse men. ‘And give me those tissues before you do, so I can save what I can of this trench coat.’
Now, a bar is a bar is a bar, as an alley’s an alley’s an alley.
And Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery was, though a club, a bar by any other name. And as I do bars as part of my four-location format, the kid and I presumably flashed the membership cards that we had availed ourselves of and now found ourselves inside.
I remembered this place when it had been The Pink Camel’s Foot, an all-night topiary joint where landscape gardeners who were down on their uppers would congregate, hoping to hook up with new clients, or just to shoot the breeze with fellow artistes and swap some landscaping yarns. Those were the days, I told myself. But thankfully they were over.
The decor was of that subtle persuasion that says so much while presenting so little. There had clearly been some degree of graveyard looting involved. You just can’t get hold of that many human skulls simply by asking around. And although most morgue attendants will pretty much let you have the run of the place for a couple of Bacardi and Cokes, they don’t like to part with the heads of their stiffs because too many questions get asked.
There was a lot of red velvet all around and about and young dames in high heels and sou’westers mingled with the clientele, giving weather-forecast updates and offering love for sale.
I spied the look of bafflement on the kid’s face. ‘Something troubling you, kid?’ I asked of him.
‘The weather girls,’ said my client. ‘What is their relevance here?’
‘Aha,’ I said in reply. ‘You’ve touched upon a salient detail. You will of course be aware that God takes no direct action in the affairs of Man. He is like Switzerland, neutral. Even when the most hideous atrocities are being committed, God will not intervene.’
The kid did noddings of an agreeable nature.
‘But He does intervene in the ways of Man in a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way. God has control of the weather. You will note that you cannot insure your property against earthquake or flood, because these things are referred to on the insurance forms as Acts of God. I got involved in a case involving a Mr Godalming once and I learned all about this stuff. God is in charge of the weather, and through the weather He controls the future of Mankind.’
‘And you know this?’
And I nodded. ‘And this is a voodoo bar, where practitioners of voodoo congregate. And if they wish to invoke a particular voodoo god to achieve a particular end, they are going to need regular meteorological updates so that they don’t mess around with God’s overall purpose. It is never good to contradict God, especially if you know what He has in mind. God doesn’t take kindly to that sort of behaviour. And although He remains out of human affairs, do you really think that the folk who get struck by lightning do so through sheer coincidence?’
The kid made a face of some surprise. ‘Are you telling me that it might be possible to divine the overall purpose of God by studying weather forecasts?’
‘It is a reasonable proposition.’
The kid did further shruggings. And then, it appeared, the barman caught his eye. The barman was a beery guy in typical barman’s duds. And but for his blacky-dyed head with the white skull painted upon it, you might have had him down as any other barman, in all of the bars, in all of the world, and so forth. And suchlike. And so on.
‘I recognise that barman,’ said the kid.
And I perused the barman and did, likewise, recognise him.
‘Fangio,’ I hailed the barman. And took myself up to the bar.
The kid followed, but he didn’t look keen.
‘What is your problem?’ I asked him.
‘Well,’ said the kid, ‘if Fangio’s here too, then you’re going to talk the toot again. And I was really hoping that you’d be getting on with the case, because I have to leave New York tomorrow to head off to Woodstock. Our New
