Pulp - Charles Bukowski [59]
I watched two flies fucking, then decided to call Lady Death. I unzipped and waited for her voice.
“Hello.” I heard her voice.
“Ummm…,” I said.
“What? Oh, it’s you Belane. You getting anywhere on the case?”
“Celine is dead, he was born in 1891.”
“I’m aware of the statistics, Belane. Listen, I know that he is alive…somewhere…and the guy in the bookstore could be him. Are you closing in on anything? I want this guy. I want him badly.”
“Ummm…” I said.
“Zip up!”
“Huh?”
“You fool, I said, ‘zip up!’”
“Uh…all right…”
“I want positive proof whether this guy is or isn’t! I’ve told you that I’ve got this crazy mind block on this matter. Barton recommended you, he said you were one of the best.”
“Oh yes, I’m also working for Barton right now, as a matter of fact. Trying to locate a Red Sparrow. What do you think about that?”
“Listen, Belane, you solve this Celine thing and I’ll tell you where the Red Sparrow is.”
“Oh will you, Lady? Oh, I’d do anything for you!”
“Like what, Belane?”
“Well, I’d kill my pet cockroach for you, I’d belt-whip my mother if she was here, I’d…”
“Stop babbling! I’m beginning to think Barton may have given me a bum steer! Well, you better get going! Either solve this Celine thing or I’m coming after you!”
“Hey, wait a minute, Lady!”
The phone was dead in my hand. I placed it back in its cradle. Ow. She had no block of any sort in getting right to me.
I had work to do.
I looked around for a fly to kill.
Then the door swung open and there stood McKelvey and a big stack of subnormal manure. McKelvey looked at me, then nodded toward it.
“This is Tommy.”
Tommy looked at me with his tiny dim eyes.
“Pleased ta meatcha,” he said.
McKelvey grinned a horrible grin.
“Now, Belane, Tommy is here just for one purpose and that purpose is to slowly pound you to bloody henshit. Right, Tommy?”
“Uh huh,” said Tommy.
He looked like he weighed about 380. Well, shave his fur and you might get him down to 365.
I gave him a kindly smile
“Now look, Tommy, you don’t know me, do you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Then why would you want to hurt me?”
“Because Mr. McKelvey told me to.”
“Tommy, if Mr. McKelvey told you to drink your peepee, would you do it?”
“Hey!” said McKelvey, “stop mixing my boy up!”
“Tommy, would you eat your mother’s poo-poo just because Mr. McKelvey told you to eat your mother’s poo-poo?”
“Huh?”
“Shut up, Belane, I’ll do the talking here!”
He turned to Tommy.
“Now, I want you to rip this guy apart like an old newspaper, just tear him to shreds and throw him to the fucking winds, got it?”
“I got it, Mr. McKelvey.”
“Good, then what are you waiting for, the last rose of summer?”
Tommy stepped toward me. I slipped the luger out of the drawer, pointed it towards Tommy’s gross immensity.
“Hold it, Thomas, or you’ll be spouting more red than the jerseys of the Stanford football team!”
“Hey,” said McKelvey, “where’d you get that damned thing?”
“A dick without a gat is like a tomcat with a rubber. Or like a clock without hands.”
“Belane,” said McKelvey, “you talk goofy.”
“I been told. Now tell your boy to back off or I’ll put so much daylight through him that you’ll be able to toss a grapefruit through!”
“Tommy,” said McKelvey, “come on back here and stand in front of me.”
They stood there like that. I had to figure out what to do with them. It wasn’t easy. I’d never won a scholarship to Oxford. I’d slept through biology and I was weak in math. But I had managed to stay alive up until now.
Maybe.
Anyhow, I momentarily held some kind of an ace in some kind of a stacked deck. I had to make a move. Now or never. September was coming. The crows were in council. The sun was bleeding.
“All