The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (35 page)

Huckleberry Hicks, Endless Lee, and Momo Bibbs were sitting in a “gentlemen’s club” near Red Square, but gentlemen were thin on the ground. Maybe Tuesday nights were gorilla night. The prices were steep, even by clip joint standards, but Endless wasn’t there for the facilities. He dropped a couple of centuries on one of the bouncers to keep the flies away so he could talk business.

“
So, what’s it gonna set ya back?” Huckleberry asked.

“
Oh, about ten cents.”

“
Whaddaya talkin’ about?”

“
I believe that’s about the cost of a nine-mill slug, no?”

“
You mean…”

“
Of course. You don’t think I’m going to pay a king’s ransom for something I can just take, do you? Who’s going to ask questions if another Russian mobster gets himself blown away? You’re going to clip the sonofabitch.”

“
You are shittin’ me, right? You seen the army of fuckin’ goons around the place? The Green Berets couldn’t take Zalupa down in there.”

“
The goons won’t be there. I bought them a ticket to the movies, if you see what I’m saying. I’ve been talking to one of his boys. The word is that Zalupa is losing his grip.”

“
Shit. I’m surprised. I thought you were a fuckin’ bean counter.”

“
I am. But you have to have beans in order to be able to count ’em. Nice guys don’t get the corner Learjet.
Capisce
?”

“
So you got a plan?”

“
Yeah. My plan to pay a batshit loco killer like you to take care of it. All I do is create world-changing technology. Creating stiffs is your area of expertise. Play it any way you figure, Huck. Get ’er done. Just don’t blow your cover. We ain’t done with that yet.”

Huckleberry grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “Consider it done.”

Endless nodded and stood up. “Okay guys, I gotta go. Catch you later.”

He winked and headed out the door. Out of respect for Endless, Momo and Huckleberry waited until he had gone before they ordered a magnum of champagne and four Baltic beauties.

***

Even in his current distracted state, Zalupa could not fail to notice that there was no police car outside his house, no guards at the gate, and all the lights were off. He called Oleg for the fourth time since he left the bridge, but there was still no answer. Any other time he would have waited and called some muscle, but this wasn’t any other time. Fanny was inside.

He pulled his piece and sidled round to the back gate. Behind a column, there was a secret door that only he knew about. He slipped through and moved diagonally across the lawn until he was under the windows of the kitchen. There was a cellar with two wooden doors set at an angle. He unlocked them and slipped through. He felt his way to the bottom of the stairs that led up into the kitchen. He took his shoes off, climbed up to the door, pulled it to take the pressure off, and opened it. He crawled out onto the tiles, rolled to the side, and lay still. He heard nothing.

There was a service hatch that opened into the dining room. Zalupa squeezed through it, then sat back against the wall, waiting to see if anyone was watching the kitchen door. Nothing. He eased across the parquet floor, went through the double door on his belly, and quickly moved to the foot of the stairs. Still there was not a sound. He was conscious of his heart beating fast in his chest, and took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. As he put his foot on the first step, he felt something wet soaking into his sock. He knew it wasn’t water. He rushed the wall, took cover behind the banister, and flicked the switch.

He was momentarily distracted by the fact that the pool of blood, slightly congealed at the edges, but viscous and wrinkled in the middle, formed a remarkably accurate representation of Italy, right down to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. He took the stairs three at a time, and barged, gasping for breath, into the bedroom. It was empty.

Fanny wasn’t there. Nor were her clothes. Nor were the R3 or the Fab 13. Khuy didn’t jump to a conclusion…he leapt to one. He hurled himself full stretch into the gaping void of the dark and undeniable truth that lay before him.

Khuy Zalupa turned out the light, and stood in the darkness hearing the blood rushing through his veins. As he stood there, the tender vines that had grown around his heart withered and died, and the fire that had entered his soul turned to ashes, and an intense, vitriolic hatred swept into his tortured mind, a bubbling bile of evil so vile that he was in that moment transformed into a thing possessed, a foul creature so pent with rage and vengeance that the Devil himself danced with glee, and the person that he had been before he met Fanny Lemming was as a rollicking puppy compared to the man who walked slowly and heavily back down the darkened staircase. In his demented state, he failed to notice that the downstairs lights had been turned off again.

***

Monsoon was delirious. And not in the ecstatic sense. No gypsy women in flimsy skirts danced in circles around the campfire that was his brain, with the intoxicating scent of their pudendas wafting into his dilated nostrils. But there was most definitely a giant that stood on the hillside and pissed under the moonlight, and the shining river thereby formed was the sweat that flowed from him and soaked the rough sheets of the cot where Yevgeny had laid him. The soup and bread that that kind man had given him lay untouched on the crude floor. He was beset by lurid dreams and visions but yet he knew not if he were awake or asleep, and although the putative existence of genetic memory was a concept lost on Monsoon Parker, to whom the only meaningful form of memory would be the sequence of a slug of cards dropped by a bent dealer at the Nugget on Friday night, whether in quickness or in slumber he could not deny the apparent and vivid reality of the images that paraded beneath his flickering eyelids, in which he walked down a black tunnel and heard an explosion and smelled smoke and looked behind and a huge bullet loomed out of the darkness and he tried to run but the bullet got closer and closer and he closed his eyes but nothing happened. He opened his eyes again, and saw a beautiful Asian lady and a handsome black man, walking hand in hand down a lane filled with paper lanterns and cherry blossoms, and the air smelled of smoke and sesame oil, and he ran after them shouting “Mama” and “Papa” but they did not stop or turn around, and he could not keep up with them, and he started to cry, but then a huge frightening whooshing sound came, and he looked up and saw a helicopter, and hard men stared down at him, but their stares were not unfriendly and one of them reached down and so Monsoon held out his hand and took a hold of the other’s, and he suddenly realized why he felt so heavy, because he carried a full pack and ammo and his boots were wet and the webbing was gone from his helmet so that it sat cold and hard upon his head. He looked around at the other men, and they were laughing and smiling, and there was loud music playing, and he heard “Woolly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, and he was happy, and safe, and among men who knew what to do, no matter what, and as the helicopter rose into the air, the sun shone on his dog tag and he took it in his hand and read the engraved words by the bright light reflected from the silver and they read “Captain Philip Parker,” and he smiled and was happy, but then some evil wasps buzzed up from the ground with blinding speed and stung him in the chest and he fell out of the door of the chopper and he tumbled toward the ground, but as he did so, he started to laugh because he suddenly realized it was all a dream, a silly shitheel nonsense dream about things and people who had nothing to do with him, and that Monsoon Parker would wake up and be okay and all the bullshit would go away, and he would not have to cry as he fell because he loved people he had never loved or knew people that had never known, because they had not known or loved him, because if they did the stupid motherfuckers would not have gotten themselves killed for nothing and left him alone in a hard and friendless world, and so he laughed because he knew it was all a big bullshit dream and he laughed as he watched the beautiful and true images from the real world parade before his eyes and Cool Hand Luke filled an inside straight against the Cincinnati Kid, and Lauren Bacall kissed him and told him all he had to do was whistle and Humphrey Bogart punched him in the mouth and told him not to get smart and he stood in the dusty street and reached for his iron but Rooster Cogburn was too fast for him and filled him full of lead and he lay there gasping in the hot sand staring up at the blinding sun but he did not blink and it was only then that Monsoon Parker understood that he was not dreaming, and he knew then that he was dying.

***

Crispin’s eyelids started to flutter, as if he had an eyelash in his eye or he was giving an impromptu performance of the Mikado. He assumed an imperious facial expression and snapped his fingers in the direction of the maître d’. They say that looks can speak volumes, and the maître d’s contained a whole tome at least, but Crispin must have forgotten his reading glasses.

“
Hey. You,” he said, “tell this peasant with the fiddle to play some proper Russian music.”

“
I think you’ll find that Prokofiev was a Russian, sir.” The maître d’s voice had the frost of a Siberian winter in it, and the way he pronounced the word
sir
, he may as well have said “you fat twat.”

“
Don’t you get uppity with me, boy. I’ll have you know I’m a professional musician. I want to hear one of those Cossack songs. Like in
Taras Bulbous
.”

“
I believe sir means
Taras Bulba
.”

“
Sir knows perfectly well what he means.”

The maître d’ smiled. His eyes glinted. “But of course, sir,” he said, nodding to the violinist.

Asia was away with the faeries, but still sober enough to see what was coming. She went to the bar to pay the bill, while Crispin went to the bathroom to clean up after he had slipped face-first into the cheese trolley while trying to do the Ukrainian Hopak dance and slathered brie and gorgonzola all over his kisser and matted Roquefort into the fur of his new hat. She caught the attention of the maître d’.

“
I’m so sorry about my friend,” she said. “He’s not usually like this. He had a bad experience a while back, and it affects him sometimes.”

“
That is quite all right, madam. I understand perfectly,” he replied in a tone of voice just a shade too pleasant, which Asia was a little too tipsy to pick up on.

Crispin scraped the cheese out of the fur of his coat with serviette, as best he could, and washed his face and hands. A valet tried to brush him off, but Crispin brushed him off.

While Crispin was looking in the mirror, the door was forcibly bumped open, and a man in a wheelchair propelled himself into the washroom. He was wearing a red headscarf, tied gypsy-style, and a fur pelisse over his shoulders, and dark glasses with big pear-drop lenses. He was heavily bearded, with a pendant walrus mustache. The beard was Barbary black, but the long hair that fell from under the bandana was polar bear white. Crispin stared, despite himself.

The valet seemed to know the man. He rushed over and helped him to stand, and assisted him to walk to the urinal. The man could walk, but he moved in a strange, robotic kind of way as if it pained him to do so. As he relieved himself, the man looked up and caught sight of Crispin staring at his reflection. There was something about the man’s movement that was spiderlike and mesmeric. Crispin wanted to avert his eyes, but he couldn’t. The man slowly raised his hand to his face and took hold of the corners of his mustache, like an old silent movie villain. He lifted the hair. Crispin cried out and rushed from the bathroom.

He hurried to the table and sat down heavily, and was about to speak when the maître d’ came over carrying a tray with two glasses on it, filled with a rose-colored liqueur.

“
We didn’t order this,” Crispin said archly.

“
This is a little gift, for our esteemed guests, sir.
La spécialité de la maison.
The specialty of the house.”

“
Oh,” Crispin said, somewhat mollified.

The maître d’ stood watching over them with a vulpine smile, so they felt compelled to drink down the concoction. He bowed politely as he collected the glasses and walked away.

“
Asia, you’ll never guess what I just saw in the bathroom,” Crispin blurted out once the maître d’ had left.