Stuffed (21 page)

Waldo was still right in front of me, the stupid rubber penguin held out like he was offering me a silver bullet to dispatch the Wolfman.

Dudley continued: “Apparently, these squeaky penguins were sold wherever Flip appeared, and he hated them. When he was a small child in the sideshow, gawkers use to hold out the toys and squeak them at him to try to make him move, to flap his flippers. He hated those squeaky toys and was traumatized by them. To this day, so they say, he’s deathly afraid of squeaky toys. This one in particular.”

“Oh, so now I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” I was fuming at the absurdity. “And instead of a nice sharp stick, a mallet, and a silver cross, I get to slay my monster with a squeaky doggie toy. Terrific.”

Dudley cleared his throat. “Waldo, please leave us alone for a spell.”

I heard Waldo make giant strides to the door, open it, and stomp down the steps. He gave the penguin a few squeaks along the way, probably just to piss me off.

“I don’t like that guy.” I pointed at Dudley. “He can be weird if he wants, but he has to be civil or I’ll clock him one, so help me. I’ve had about all I’m going to take. From anybody!”

That’s when Dudley put a hand on my shoulder. Took a second to register the import of that. I stopped fastening the cooler with the bungee cords and looked up at him.

“Gawth, let me tell you a story. It’s one you need to hear.”

He retook his seat and I took mine, still astounded that he’d touched me.

“This ain’t somethin’ that’s easy to tell. Outlandish as it is, it’s what Waldo tells me he got through his connections. Flip the Penguin Boy isn’t like the rest of us.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t say?”

“What I meant was, beyond his obvious congenital disorders, he has certain talents that set him apart.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes, trying not to visualize it.

“You saw him do it?”

“Yes. He sang just like Belle Beverly.”

“Belle Beverly?”

“Yep.”

“Remarkable.” Dudley looked perplexed. “But that’s not the talent I was referring to. Supposedly, Flip has psychokinetic powers.”

I made a face. “Waldo has been filling you with a load of bunk.”

“Could be.” Dudley nodded. “But why would he come all the way here with the rubber penguin to do so?”

“How did he know about my run-in with Flip, anyway? And even if Flip is psychokinetic, what’s he care?”

“Let us see if we can get to the bottom of that as well. Waldo hears things; he has connections throughout the carnival and sideshow community. Apparently, within that community, it has been widely held that Flip had real powers. Not hokum. As a community, they became wary of him. They honor and revere humbuggery—but fear the genuine. Flip became marginalized. But the sideshow pygmies stayed with him. They revered his mojo.”

“Now, when you say powers, what do you mean? Bending spoons? Moving a marble across a floor by sheer will?”

Dudley looked thoughtful. “He was most noted for an uncanny ability to throw his voice, sometimes over distances that appeared to defy physics as we understand them.”

I reflected on my sideshow visit, how the little girl’s voice came from the trailer. But then Flip was at the top of the hill before me, with a boulder. And, of course, he had Tex convinced he was on the other side of the door when he was actually behind the curtain.

Dudley continued: “What other powers he had I’m not entirely sure. Now, I know what you’re thinking. These carnies are just flying off the handle. Superstitious people. But they are also dyed-in-the-wool skeptics. But all this is beside the point.”

“Fine.” I really didn’t want to continue. “So, please get to the point.”

“Did you ever stop to wonder how and why he was mixed up in this caper? This Big Foot gaff stunt?”

I shrugged. “I assumed even penguin boys are susceptible to avarice.”

“Mm hmm. Could be. But what’s got Waldo and some others worried is that he was there for an entirely different purpose.”

I rolled my hand in the air. “Dudley, please, just tell me.”

“He was there for the kving-kie.”

“Yeah, I know.” I shuddered. “He said that. But there was no wild cow around. I certainly didn’t have one and no idea why he thought I would have it.”

Dudley’s eyes twinkled. “You know much about kving-kie?”

“Just that it’s an extinct—or mythical—wild cow from Southeast Asia. That there are no preserved remains, no taxonomy.”

“Mm hmm. Well, there’s a little more to it. This diminutive wild cow had horns. Horns that supposedly empowered the possessor with strong psychokinetic powers. Ancient Asian armies and warriors used to take them into battle, as the story goes. They were so prized that the animal became scarce and then extinct. The horns slowly dwindled in the melee of war until all had been trampled into battlefields. There were none left. Supposedly.”

I stood, frustrated. “Dudley, don’t you see that this guy Waldo is a kook and this is a load of crap?”

“Did you have a horn?”

“No. All I had was the crow.”

“Could it have been inside the crow?”

I shook my head. “No way, it was mostly destroyed by that point. Look, if Flip is truly telekinetic, or psychokinetic—”

“Same thing.”

“Fine. Then what did he need with the horn?”

“It’s widely believed that those with telekinetic powers are drawn to other people and objects with the same power. Even over great distances. The power can be multiplied. He sensed the kving-kie when Partridge brought it back from Korea, and he used those other carnies to get at it. To get into Partridge’s house.”

“He could just as well have read about it in the papers. It was widely published that Partridge was after the kving-kie.”

“Point taken.”

“And what would be the purpose of having telekinetic powers, anyway?” I flapped my arms. “So you don’t have to get up and get a cup of coffee? Just have it pour itself and float over to you?”

Dudley looked at the floor. “The power is consuming; it promotes megalomania. You can only imagine how a severely deformed person might like the upper hand over ‘normal’ people. Instead of beneath, he’s now above.”

A sardonic smile flashed across my face. “Upper flipper, in his case.”

Dudley just looked at the floor and sucked his cheek.

“Look, none of this matters.” I was pacing now. “He’s dead, okay? He fell out a window.”

“Hmm.”

I stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hmm means
hmm.”

“Not when you say it like that, it doesn’t.” I pointed at him. “He is dead, isn’t he? I mean, he must be. He fell over a hundred feet into the Maine surf. Rocks, crashing waves. You know something, don’t you?”

“They didn’t find the body, did they?”

I sat back down with a groan. “No, they didn’t find the body.”

“Look, Gawth, what Waldo wants to know is that Flip did not get the kving-kie. I don’t know anything about whether Flip is alive or dead. But if Waldo is concerned, that means Waldo thinks Flip is still alive. He might be in a position to know.”

“I know, he’s got his ear to the ground in Gibsville.”

“Gibtown.”

“Whatever. But that could all be rumor. What’s Waldo’s stake in this, anyway?”

“He considers himself more or less at the top of the sideshow hierarchy. Believe it or not, he sees himself as the nexus between the show-people world and the ‘normal’ world. An interlocutor. The show people fear something bad will happen if Flip gets hold of the kving-kie. They are concerned enough that Waldo is investigating the matter on their behalf.”

“I’m telling you, nobody could survive that fall. Even the Penguin Boy.”

“Unless . . . unless he was able to somehow change the course of his fall . . .”

“Sure, the Flying Nun effect, with his flippers.” I waved my arms in the air for comic relief but got none. My gut was in a knot. “I know what you’re suggesting, Dudley, and it’s utter nonsense.”

“Who has the crow now?”

“New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. An agent named Renard is having it tested.”

“Well, it’s good, then, that you don’t have it.”

“Believe me, if I did, I’d throw it right into the river.”

Dudley gave me a level look. “Did . . . did the crow impart any special . . . feelings? When you held it, I mean.”

He saw me turn a shade whiter, and leaned back. “You want to tell me about it?”

“No, I don’t. I was just scared out of my wits, that’s all there was to it.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t start with that, Dudley!” I was shouting now.

“I’m sorry, it’s merely an affectation, I assure you. Gawth, please sit.” He gave me a curious look. “I daresay you’re getting overly stimulated.”

Now I felt he was patronizing me.

“That tears it.” I grabbed the hand truck and wheeled it to the door. “Reggie and I are outta here.”

He came to the door of the garret and watched me go without another word.

Outside, it was still a gorgeous, sunny day.

Inside, the storm clouds were gathering.

Chapter 22

W
hat to do? Well, you know the mood I was in. PO’d, to put it mildly. I was tired of being pushed around, emotionally or otherwise. And I didn’t have to take it from my friends or from oddballs like Waldo. I wanted my life back. Nice, predictable, day-to-day. I didn’t want to hear or think about any psychokinetic freaks. I was back home, in New York City. Safe. Safe.

Like many a distressed male of the species, there was the notion that I should go to the corner bar and get seriously hammered. That’s not something I do, mainly because I don’t particularly like getting more than a three-drink buzz. Not that I didn’t back when, college days and all that. The reasons are myriad, but among the demons beyond four drinks are a) drink five, b) drink six, c) confessional impulses, d) orneriness, e) hypersentimentality, f) hangovers. Last time I got seriously drunk was over ten years earlier, on my birthday, and in a pique of amorous devotion to Angie, I started to carve her name into my arm with the end of a comb. You can still faintly see the A on my right forearm.

Drinking was the wrong thing to do. Angie was upset, and I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t somehow my fault. I was soon to make a decision about the job that I would regret. No matter which direction I went on that one, I was terrified, both of my dreams and the possibility that Flip was out there somewhere. Jim Kim, he was out there too. My friend Dudley—even he was dragging me back into this. But perhaps even more disturbing was that there was something else out there, something that was pulling me back into the sinister cauldron of fire, flaming heads of taxidermy laughing. As I walked block by block toward home, looking for strength and determination around each corner, I only found self-pity lurking.

I slapped myself and gritted my teeth. What I needed to do was get hold of myself. Work—that’s what I needed. Back to work, with lotsa coffee. Make some calls, rustle up some sales, some rentals. That would give me direction, the kind of purpose and escape that comes with the work-a-day whirl.

That’s when a gray Crown Victoria screeched to a halt next to me. It was Walker. He got out of the car, face red and bloated like a giant tomato.

“Look, Walker, you had no right to handcuff me—”

He shoved me up against a shop window and it came seriously close to shattering.

“That’s it, Carson. You are going down. You hear me? DOWN. Nobody does that to me.”

“So you’re going to arrest me? What charge?”

“Arrest?” He snorted, like a buffalo about to charge. “We’re way beyond that now.”

I thought his bloodshot eyes would burst, and for a moment I thought seriously about kicking him in the shin before he gave me a wallop. But that would have been the excuse he needed to arrest me and then probably have me “fall down the stairs, accidental-like” at the precinct. Psycho. Yet another one.

So I did nothing, just stared right back at him, and when he realized I wasn’t going to move or do anything, he got back into his car and roared off.

An hour later I was under a full head of steam. At a place called Tiki Bob’s Zombie Hut.

There’d been a small revival of tiki bars in New York—quaffing umbrella drinks from coconut shells under a thatched roof amid porcelain idols and blowfish lamps was on the upswing. Tiki Bob’s on Eighth Avenue fit the basic kitschy Trader Vic’s mold, replete with low blue and orange lighting, a loop tape playing waves, and lots of potted palms.

The late-lunch crowd was dispersing when I got there and ordered my first Suffering Bastard. Sure, I could have had a Mai Tai, Fog Cutter, Navy Grog, or Bob’s signature Zombie, but an SB fit my mood and improved it almost immediately. To effect that change so quickly . . . well, it was plain that drinking was the thing to do. My mood needed a lot of improving.

I had myself a swell little pupu platter for lunch. For the uninitiated, these are served in large, compartmentalized wooden bowls with a small cauldron in the center that burns a pink, flammable jelly. In the compartments are savory appetizers such as chicken wings, teriyaki sticks, roast pork ribs, batter-dipped shrimp, and dumplings. Just the thing for someone downing a continuing succession of SBs.

The idea is that you warm up the treats over the cauldron. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer my food sans the piquant
je ne sais quoi
of Sterno. You never know with flammables—ingesting pink jelly-infused food and drinking Suffering Bastards could result in spontaneous gastric combustion. As if SBs weren’t combustible enough. I kept my glass a safe distance from the pupu platter’s cauldron.

There was only the barmaid Tommy and me and an old man with a magnifying glass and a racing form way down at the end. But I was fine being alone with strangers who knew nothing of Partridge, nothing of white crows, nothing of police, DAs, Bret Fletcher, Walker, Waldo, and all the rest. And Tommy is a pro behind the bar. A pal. Angie and I come in there often enough that she knows us. And she also knows when a guy needs a snootful, whatever the reason. And what’s wrong with that, for Pete’s sake? You know, you get all worked up about a burning mansion and these crazies . . . but that’s over. Life is too short to spend worrying all the time—and Tommy agrees.

So when Jim Kim sat down next to me, I laughed. SB came up my nose, which was sure to stem any possible sinus infections for a while.

“Tommy, an SB for my friend,” I said, wiping my nose with my sleeve.

Kim looked around warily. “So good to see you, Garth. Miss? I’d just like a light beer.”

“Oh no you don’t.” I gripped his forearm. “I’m buying, and you’ll have a Suffering Bastard. When was the last time you had an SB? They’re . . . well, they’re fantabulous is what they are.”

Kim smiled politely. “Garth, we need to talk.”

“Nooo. I knew you’d come and want to talk. Sooner or later. Sooner suits me fine. And I knew . . . I knew you’d want to talk about what
you
want to talk about. Can’t we, for a change, talk about what I want to talk about?”

Kim looked around again, probably thinking he’d made a mistake in trying to talk to me while I was indulging at Tiki Bob’s Zombie Hut. But he resigned himself and patiently leaned an elbow on the bar, his attention focused squarely on me.

“Okay, Garth, what do you want to talk about?”

“Not so fast! Not so fast!” Tommy set an SB in front of him and walked off. “First, we have to toast.”

Kim sniffed suspiciously at his drink. “To what?”

“To Don Ho!”

“Don Ho?”

I leaned back.

“You know, ‘Tiny Bubbles’? Reggie here wants to toast to Don Ho.”

Reggie was propped up on the stool next to me, his head unwrapped, a lei around his neck and a cocktail umbrella in his beak. An SB was parked in front of him. Condensation beaded all over his feathers as he began to defrost. His feet were still wearing their bubble-wrap booties.

Kim actually betrayed a look of dismay, and I couldn’t have been happier. Finally, I had him at some kind of disadvantage. Had someone
—anyone—
else at a disadvantage. And his unctuous fear-mongering was useless on me in my inebriated glow.

But he recovered quickly, too soon for my taste. Leaning in, he clinked his tiki mug with Reggie’s and then mine.

“To Mr. Ho,” he said, raising his glass.

“To ‘Tiny Bubbles’!” I raised my glass and slurped.

“Now can we talk about what I want to talk about?”

“Oh no.” I waved a finger. “When you buy the drink, then you get to talk.”

He motioned to Tommy, but I held up my hand. “Doesn’t work like that. Can’t order . . . order another round until you finish yours. C’mon, loosen up, Jimmy.”

Kim squinted with forbearance, but he did as instructed, while I talked.

“You know, Jimmy, it’s a funny ol’ world. Everybody runnin’ around . . . and for what? Life’s too short. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He nodded. “And sometimes, lives get shorter unexpectedly.”

“S’what I mean.” I thumped the bar. “Get hit by a bus, and where are you? Right, Reggie?” I clinked glasses with the penguin. “Reggie here? Was in the beak of health. I mean
peak.
But beak works too, doesn’t it? Then one day . . . one day Reggie—by accident, mind you—swallows a pen.” I thumped the bar again. “Now look at him. Dead as an igloo. Never knew what hit him.”

“A lesson for us all.” Kim drained his glass and waved Tommy over.

Kim clinked a fresh glass with Reggie and then with me. “To Scott of the Antarctic!”

I raised my glass. “To Scott of the Attic! Hey, lookit this . . .”

I pulled out my wallet and peered into it with one eye. I removed a folded piece of paper and handed it to him. “Read that.”

His eyes fluttered.
“WANT MY WHITE CROW BACK . . .”

“Nah, not that one,
the other one.”

Kim cleared his throat.
“MOOSE HEAD FOR SALE: MUST GO. YOU HAUL. NORTHEAST U.S.”

“You know what that is?”

He waited.

“That, m’friend, is a fifty-dollar moose head. I always wanted a fifty-dollar moose head, a moose head that somebody just wanted to get rid of. Y’understand? What I’m sayin’ is that me, a dealer, waits his whole life for something like this to come along. . . .”

“It doesn’t say it’s fifty dollars.” He handed the paper back.

“Ah, but I called. She said it’s fifty dollars.”

“So did you buy it?”

“That’s the rub, Jimmy. I spoke with her twice, and she doesn’t know where she lives. You think I’m kidding? Here . . .” I handed the paper back. “You call her. This woman doesn’t know where she lives, so even though she wants to sell me a moose head for fifty dollars, she can’t because I can’t find her to take it off her hands. You see where I’m going with this?”

Tommy slid two more SBs in front of us and put a hand on my forearm. “Last one, Garth. Your pal Reggie is already cut off, and I gotta send you home while you can still stand.”

I frowned, briefly, but was beyond being perturbed by anything.

“So you see where I’m going with this?”

Kim just looked at me in his mildly interested, insouciant way.

“Okay, lemme spell it out. I’m this close . . .” I held up my thumb and forefinger, like I was holding an invisible pebble. “Comes around only once inna lifetime, a fifty-dollar moose head. It’s an opportunity, y’see? Like a job offer. Either you take it or you don’t, but it won’t be back again.”

“So, I guess it’s my turn?”

I shrugged. “Do your worst, Jimmy.”

“Did you know Agent Renard is missing?”

I shrugged.

“He took the remnants of the crow and vanished.”

I shrugged.

“You now know what this was all about, don’t you, Garth?”

I shrugged.

“Not exactly fair, is it? When it was your turn to talk, we talked. Now that it’s my turn, you won’t talk.”

“Look, Jimmy.” I put my arm around his shoulder. “I have nothing left to say about any of that. It’s out of my hands, see?”

“I know you
wish
that were so. But it doesn’t
make
it so. You used the power of the kving-kie. That means you can locate it. You have a connection.”

I sort of burped and laughed at the same time. “You guys are nuts, you know that? I never saw the magic cow, I never saw the magic cow’s horn—”

“You used your mind to push Flip out the window.”

“Ha.”

“Ha?”

“S’what I said:
ha.
He was blown out. Boom, swish, plop! Snap, crackle, pop!”

“Now let me show
you
something.” Kim pulled a piece of folded paper from his pocket and handed it to me. A sense of déjà vu rippled through the lipid pool of SBs in my brain as I unfolded the paper and saw a photocopy of an old Korean manuscript. In the center of the Korean writing was a picture of what looked like a stick, pointed at one end, slightly corkscrewed. Even in that state I recognized it. This was the same thing Smiler had shown me two years before. Even in that state, I realized this probably meant Kim worked for Smiler.

I handed it back to him.

“That’s a gallbladder.”

“It’s a horn.” He handed it back to me, and I squinted at the illustration.

“Okay, it’s a horn.” I shrugged for about the hundredth time.

“A kving-kie horn.”

“A cow horn? It’s all bumpy an’ irregular, like a friggin’ stick.”

“Exactly.” Kim took the page back again, patting me on the shoulder. “Look, Garth, I have to run. You think about what we talked about, okay? I’ll be in touch.” He stood and turned to go.

Then Kim paused and leaned in to the penguin.

“Nice to meet you, Reggie. I like your shoes.”

He left.

I couldn’t have been there much longer. But I’m not entirely sure.