The Mortdecai Trilogy (36 page)

That a lie which all a lie may be met and fought with outright.
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

 

The Grandmother

 

Blucher made a courteous gesture, indicating that he was all ears and was prepared to lend me them unreservedly. I glanced around the office; it was clearly not his own but on loan from some Midas-like business-man, for the walls were bespattered with exceedingly costly graphics by Münch, Braque, Picasso, Léger and all those chaps – beyond the dreams of avarice if that’s the kind of thing one likes; certainly beyond the reach of Blucher’s salary and outside his Agency’s Scale of Office Furnishings. Nevertheless, in Washington most places are bugged, everyone knows that, don’t they? I skated the other heavy package of powder across the frozen black lake of the desk; it landed on his lap with a satisfying thump followed by a manly grunt of discomfort from Col. Blucher.

‘I am prepared to tell all,’ I murmured to him, ‘but not between these walls. I am a survivor, you see, and I have a certificate from my old headmaster to prove it. Let us go for a stroll: a little fresh air will be jolly good for us both.’

He looked at me incuriously, which meant, of course, that he was thinking furiously; I could almost hear his synapses crackling and popping like breakfast cereal. ‘Would the lies he could have his lads
beat out of me be more valuable than the half-truths I was prepared to volunteer?’ was evidently the question which he had fed into his crew-cut nut. He came to the right decision: after all, coming to decisions is what such chaps are paid for – like ‘one who gathers samphire, dreadful trade’.

‘Hey, that’s a great idea, Charlie!’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

In the outer office the two larger ugly chaps were still playing pinochle, but two-handed now because from the open door of the lavatory or bathroom came a rhythmical ‘
Urrgh, urrgh
’ from Elmer. I paused by their table and cleared my throat. Neither of them looked up. ‘Tell Elmer,’ I said in the voice of an overpaid physician, ‘that he should take more exercise and drink less. The only hard thing about him is his liver.’ One ugly chap kept his eyes on his cards (and who shall blame him, because a quick kibitz had shown me that he only needed the last queen to perfect what pinochle-players call a ‘round-house’) but the other slowly raised his eyes to mine and gave me his best and coldest Edward G. Robinson stare – the one that is supposed to make you think of
gats
, concrete overcoats and paving-slabs dropped into the Potomac River with your ankles wired to them. I have seen such looks done better.

‘Well, so long, youse guys,’ I said, courteously using their dialect. Neither of the pinochle-players responded but Elmer said ‘
Urrrghh
’ from the lavatory or bathroom.

The way to take a stroll for fresh air in Washington, DC, is to hail an air-conditioned taxi-cab. This I did. I entered the first which offered itself, drawing a vexed look from Blucher. Well, obviously, he must have thought me too half-smart to take the first cab; it would have been the second which would have been in his pay, which is why I took the first, you see. Goodness, how clever I was in those days – barely a year ago!

The driver squinted at us from his little air-conditioned womb of armoured glass and steel-mesh (being zonked is an occupational hazard which even cab-drivers dislike) and asked us courteously how he could earn the pleasure of being of service to us. Well, what he actually said was ‘Yeah?’ but one could tell that it was a civil ‘yeah’.

‘Just drive around the sights, OK?’ said Blucher. ‘You know, Grant’s tomb, places like that?’

‘And the National Gallery, please,’ I chirped up, ‘in fact, the National Gallery first. Oh, and could you stop at a shop where I could buy a torch?’

‘He means, like a flashlight, from a drug-store,’ explained Blucher. The driver did not even shrug his shoulders; he had been driving idiots around all day, we would not even figure in the bleary reminiscences with which he would regale his wife that night as she bathed his bunions.

‘Do you care to start telling now?’ Blucher asked me. I shot him a glance fraught with caution and cowardice, flicking an eye at the driver. ‘Well, hell, why the National Gallery, hunh?’ I began to feel a little in command of the situation: I can cower with the best but, given a fraction of an edge, I am happier in the dominant rôle.

‘First,’ I said, ‘I wish to go there. Second, I earnestly wish to rinse my eyes out with some good art after seeing those frightful graphics in your office. Third, the NG, that stately pleasure-dome, is probably the only unbugged place in this fair city. Fourth, I have a long-standing appointment with a chap called Giorgio del Castelfranco, who has a picture in the Gallery which I both covet and suspect. OK?’

‘Sure,’ he said with policeman-like innocence, ‘you mean the guy who was Bellini’s pupil in Venice – around about when Columbus was discovering America? Hunh? The guy we jerks call Giorgione?’

‘That would be he,’ I said bitterly. ‘And you can cut out the dialect.’

‘Gosh, I really enjoyed your piece about him in the
Giornale delle Belle Arte
last year; you really made that Berenson guy look a right Charlie – gosh, sorry, Charlie …’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I have been called worse.’ But I sulked all the way to the National Gallery and insisted on paying off the cabbie myself. He examined my tip carefully, interestedly, then handed it back with a charitable sort of look.

Inside the Gallery, I stalked unswervingly past all the lovely art that Lord Duveen had sold to Kress and Widener and fellows like that in the palmy, piping days when Lord Mortdecai (yes, my papa) was peddling piddling pastiches to minor European royalty whose cheques were as good as their word. I halted in an important way in front of the Giorgione and played my torch or flashlight upon it. In a trice a wardress had pounced on me and wrested it out
of my hand, making noises like a she-vulture laying its first egg. I handed her my wallet, open at the place which displays my art-historian credentials, and bade her show it to a curator. She was back in another trice or two, spraying apologies and calling me ‘Dr Mortdecai’ and telling me that I might shine my flashlight at anything. Anything I liked.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ignoring the explicitness. I shone the torch on this part and that of the painting, making art-historical noises such as ‘ah’ and ‘hum’ and ‘oh dear’, while Blucher fretted, shifting from foot to foot.

‘Look, Mr Mortdecai,’ he said at last, ‘would you care to tell me what it is you’re looking for? I mean, we do have to …’ I shot him a patronizing glance over my shoulder.

‘I am looking,’ I said pompously, ‘for the brushwork of the young Titian in or about the year 1510. I do not see it. It occurs to me that I just may have been wrong about this picture.’

‘But gosh,’ he said, ‘it says right here on the tablet that this art-work is by Giorgione …’

‘And it may now continue to say so for the time being,’ I said with more than usual pomposity, tossing the torch or flashlight petulantly into the nearest litter-bin. (In the US of A they call waste-paper baskets ‘newspaper-baskets’, which shows a fine sense of values. I like American realists. American
idealists
, of course, are like all idealists: they are people who kill people.)

‘But here,’ I said, ‘is what we have been waiting for.’ Blucher stared. A titter of thirteen-year-old schoolgirls was swarming into the shrine of art, frantically shepherded by one of those women who are born to be schoolmarms – you know the species well, I’m sure; some of them have quite nice legs but the thick ankles, the slack bust and the calm panic peering from behind the contact-lenses give them away every time. I know a chap who nearly married one of them: he gave me all the field-identification tips. I cannot remember just what it was that Blucher said but, had he been an Englishman he would have said ‘Eh?’

I took his arm and steered him into the formicating mass. The girls tittered, and even
groped
us while their teacher prated, but I, at last, felt safe: there is no directional microphone which can sort out the words of devious Mortdecais from the prattle of pubescence. Blucher twigged, although it was clear that he thought
my precaution a bit far-fetched. (He is – I must be careful not to say ‘was’ – one of those who would be glad to die for the Pentagon’s idea of democracy whereas I am a simple man who believes in the survival of the fittest. Since I have no sons it is clear that the fittest Mordecai to survive is me: I’m sure you see that.)

‘Well,’ he growled into my ear, just loudly enough to overcome the roosting-starlings noise of next year’s gang-bang material, ‘Well, give me the dirt, Mr Mortdecai.’

‘You’re going to think I’m an idiot,’ I began.

He looked at me strangely. ‘I wouldn’t touch a straight line like that to save my soul,’ he said.

I pretended not to have heard. ‘You see, that package of powder, the one I collected from the aircraft; well, I sort of took out a little life insurance. I made up a duplicate package full of baby-powder – how they stared in the drug-store! – and put them both into envelopes and posted them by special delivery to a safe place. When I was satisfied that the chap who contacted me was the right chap I got them out of the safe place and gave one to the chap in question as arranged.’ I wasn’t watching Blucher’s face but I swear I could hear his eyes narrowing. ‘Which package?’ he asked in a narrow-eyed sort of voice.

‘That’s the
trouble
,’ I wailed convincingly, ‘I don’t
know
. You see, I marked them “A” and “B” – respectively – but when it came to the crunch I simply couldn’t remember which was “A”. Nor, if it comes to that, which was “B”.’ We fell silent. The schoolmarm was droning on usefully about Palma Vecchio although the picture she was discussing was clearly labelled Palma Giovane. It didn’t matter: no one was listening. The nymphets were ganging up on us quite terrifyingly, I began to realize what hell it must be to be a pop-singer. Blucher had one hand pressed to his jacket, where the shoulder-holster lives, another on the zip of his trousers or pants.

‘The awful thing is,’ I went on, ‘that the original package, as I think you pointed out, may well only have been tooth-powder in the first place, so there is a fair chance that my er contact …’

‘Mr Lee,’ he interjected helpfully.

‘Or Ree,’ I agreed, ‘is going to be very very cross with me and that you too are going to suspect that I have not played a straight bat.’

‘Yes,’ he said. That was all he said.

The teacher moved on to another work of some choice and master spirit, shooting hateful glances at us and a few despairing ones at her pupils. We followed. I murmured into Blucher’s ear almost all of what Mr Ree had told me. He turned and stared.

‘And you
believe
that?’ he asked in an incredulous voice.

‘Well, it fits all the facts so far,’ I said, swatting behind me at a gently-nurtured teenager who was being
impertinent
to me with an electrical vibrator, ‘but if you have a more plausible scenario I shall be delighted to hear it.’ He thought, then started – nay leapt into the air as though a great insight had come to him.

‘An insight?’ I asked in my polite voice.

‘No, a schoolgirl. Let’s please get to hell out of this place, please,
please
? I never knew that schoolgirls could be like this, did you?’

‘Well, yes, I did; but then I read dirty books, you see, Colonel.’

There’s nothing in a remark like that for chaps like Blucher. He boggled a moment then reiterated his request that we should get out. I fell in with his wishes. We got. We also took a taxi-cab – I let him choose it this time – to an eating-place where they solds us things to eat which tasted like dead policemen on toast. Blucher, clearly, was musing as he ingested his share of the garbage (the coffee in such places is often good; drink lots of it with your food; it’s hell on the ulcers but it takes away the taste). I, too, was musing as frantically as a man can muse, for it was evident to my trained mind that the Blind Fury with the Abhorrèd Shears was sharpening them up for a snip at the Mortdecai life-span. I say again that I am not especially afraid of death, for the best authorities tell us that it is no more painful and undignified than birth, but I do feel that I’d like to have a say in the when and where and how. Particularly the ‘how’.

‘Blucher,’ I said, pushing away my tepid and scarcely-touched platter, ‘Blucher, it seems to me that there are few, if any, chaps with an interest in keeping me alive. I
wish
to stay alive, for reasons which I shall not trouble you with at present. Your suggestions would be welcome.’ He turned his face to me, gave one last chew at whatever was in his mouth and looked at me gravely. There was a trickle of greasy gravy on his chin.

‘There is a trickle of greasy gravy on your chin,’ I murmured. He wiped it off. ‘What was that again?’ he asked.

‘I said,’ I said, ‘that it would be nice to stay alive and could you perhaps give me a few ideas.’ This time he looked blank, then almost friendly. He turned to the short-order cook or assistant-poisoner and called for more coffee and a toothpick. Then he turned back to me. His face was now benign – I’d never have dreamed that he could command so many expressions in so short a time. ‘You know, Mr Mortdecai, I like you, I really do. We could use a few hundred guys like you in this country.’ With that, he reached out and kneaded my shoulder in a brotherly sort of a way. His hand was large and hard but I did not wince nor cry aloud.

‘About the staying-alive thing … ?’ I asked. His face went grave again and he shook his head slowly and compassionately.

‘No way,’ he said.

Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood …

 

Hands All Round

 

I am not one to whimper, for I have found that it does one no good. I did not even wet myself, although the provocation was intense. I lit a nonchalant cigarette, using only four matches and only slightly burning my valuable Sulka necktie. Blucher, clearly impressed by my British
sang-froid
, offered a sturdy word or two of comfort.

‘Until I contact the Controller of my Agency,’ he said, ‘I have no orders to, uh, effect termination on you. Like I said, I kind of like you. I’d say you had maybe eighty or ninety minutes before any such orders reach me. Until then, you can reckon that anyone shooting at you is on the side of the bamboo-shoot and water-chestnut princes.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said, rising.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

Outside on the pavement I felt curiously naked; I had never before felt so keen a desire for a pair of blue spectacles, a false nose and a large ginger beard, but it was now too late to regret such elementary precautions. A courteous cab sped me to the airport in something less than a hundred years. By the time I had retrieved my suitcase and booked into a London flight my hair had, I was sure, whitened noticeably around the roots.

So far as I could see there was not a single Chinese person on the aircraft. It was not until just before take-off that Mr Lee and a young compatriot boarded. Neither of them looked at me. If it comes to that, I didn’t look at them after the first time, I glared straight ahead like a driver who has been stopped for speeding and doesn’t much want the policeman to get a sniff of his breath.

I offered myself all sorts of explanations. They can’t have known that I’d be on that particular flight, could they? Could they? Or perhaps Johanna had asked them to be my bodyguard, how about that? Perhaps Mr Lee took that flight every day or perhaps he was hastening back to Soho for the Chinese New Year, his bag stuffed with goodies for his grandchildren. He was clearly the kind of chap who would have any number of grandchildren, all of whom he would dote on. Perhaps it wasn’t Mr Lee at all: it is well known that all these chaps look alike. My fevered imagination fantasized away until we were thoroughly airborne and the Captain’s voice came crackling out of the public address system with the usual wonderfully sincere wishes for an enjoyable flight. ‘Ha ha,’ I said bitterly, drawing a nasty look from the obviously teetotal lady sitting next to me. The loudspeaker went on to tell us that we would be cruising at large numbers of thousands of feet (aircraft drivers are the last bastion against metrication) and that our air-speed would be an immense number of mph. I felt like complaining at this excessive speed for I was in no great hurry to reach the end of the journey – it is better to travel hopelessly than to arrive.

When the stewardess arrived to take our orders for drinks my neighbour asked for a glass of iced water; I confirmed her worst suspicions by ordering two large brandies, one bottle of dry ginger ale and no ice. I was proud to note that there was scarcely a quaver in my voice. When the wench brought the life-giving potations I heard myself asking her whether she happened to know the date of Chinese New Year’s Day.

‘Why, no sir, I guess I don’t, I’m sorry. But hey, there’s two Chinese gentlemen sitting right there in front; just let me finish with the drinks and I’ll go ask them.’

‘No no no no,’ I squeaked, ‘I wouldn’t dream of –’

‘It’s no trouble, sir. You’re very welcome.’

Soon I saw her leaning over the seats of the two Chinese gentlemen, brightly pointing back to where I sat quaking. They did not look around. She tripped back and said, ‘You’re out of luck, sir, they say it was three weeks ago. Oh, and they said they were real sorry you missed out.’

‘Thank you. How kind.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Officious bitch. I unfolded my
Times
with studied nonchalance, laid it on my briefcase and applied myself to the crossword. I am not one who completes this crossword while his breakfast egg boils to medium-soft but on a good day a medium-hard puzzle lies stricken at my feet in half an hour or so. This was one of the other days. I readily solved ‘One who uses public transport – a target, exterminated (9,6)’ and wrote in ‘passenger pigeon’ with a hollow laugh, but after that I seemed unable to concentrate. I blamed this on my briefcase, which did not seem to be affording the usual flat surface. Indeed, it did not seem to be flat at all. I gave it a petulant palpation: sure enough, there seemed to be a fat, cylindrical bulge lying diagonally inside it. Distraught as I was, I was nevertheless certain that I owned no object of that shape and dimensions, or, if I did, it certainly could not be in my briefcase. I undid the catch of the flap and had a cautious grope inside; sure enough, my questing fingers found a stiff cardboard cylinder, measuring some eighteen inches in length and four niches in diameter. I closed the flap and – quaking now as I had never quaked before – reached for the unexpended portion of the brandy. It dashed past my uvula, tonsils, larynx and pharynx without touching the sides. Then I lay back in my reclining seat, regulated my breathing and applied myself to frenzied thought. A bomb or similar anti-Mortdecai device? Surely not: Mr Lee was on that very aircraft. Moreover, the metal-detectors of the security men at the airport would have detected anything of the kind. A monstrous tube of Smarties’ chocolate beans from a well-wisher? But I could think of no well-wisher.

Consumed now with vulgar curiosity and death-wish, I opened the bag again and drew out the cylinder. It was light. It was made of cardboard and looked exactly like the cylinders in which people store and dispatch prints and drawings, things like that. I raised one end to my eye and, pointing it at the window or porthole, peered through it. I found myself gazing at the left-hand unit of the bust of my teetotal neighbour. She cuffed it aside and made a noise like an expiring soda-water syphon. I think I said ‘Whoops!’ but I cannot be sure.

Nothing seemed to be in the cylinder except a roll of heavy paper so I inserted a couple of fingers, gave a skilful twirl and extracted it like a well-buttered
escargot
. Unrolled, it seemed to be a good colour-reproduction of a Rouault gouache painting; closer inspection proved it be a clever
copy
in gouache, all done by hand. I say ‘copy’ because the original happens to be a rather famous Rouault called
Après-midi d’un Clown
and it is in the Peggy Guggenheim collection or one of those places. It really was beautifully executed, more like a forgery than a copy, for the copyist had laid it down on a jaconet backing and had even added a
cachet de vente
, a couple of collectors’ marks and a museum reference number. I tut-tutted or tsk-tsked a bit, because it had been rolled the wrong way, with the paint side inside, a practice which any art-dealer knows better than. My portly she-neighbour was making her soda-syphon noises again and I realized that the painting was perhaps a little
explicit
: in Rouault’s day, you see, clowns seemed to spend their
après-midis
in the most bizarre fashion. (For my part, I have never taken much interest in modern art; I feel that it is a subject which calls for a good deal less research.) As I rolled up the gouache and twiddled it back into the cylinder a scrap of paper fell out of the opposite end. It was typewritten and said
YOU MAY WELL FIND THIS USEFUL AT HEATHROW
. I tore the scrap of paper into as many pieces as it had room for, musing anguishedly the while. I mean, it is not often that copies of famous Rouault gouaches creep unobserved into your briefcase and it is still rarer to be told that they will prove useful at airports. I would have liked to go to the lavatory but that would have meant passing Mr Lee and his friend and, on the way back, they might have
looked
at me. I was in no shape to cope with that sort of thing. I took the coward’s way out, I stabbed the appropriate bell-push and asked the stewardess for ‘some more
of that ginger ale and, yes, perhaps a spot more of that brandy’. My neighbour – I shall always think of her as Carrie Nation – whispered to the stewardess urgently. The stewardess looked at me puzzledly. I looked at the stewardess smilingly but I fancy the smile came out as more of a lopsided leer, really. In a few moments Carrie Nation had been moved to another seat and, more to the point, my brandy had been delivered at the pit-head.

I supped, mused, supped again. Nothing made sense. I made another attack on the virtue of the crossword; it was by the compiler who always tries to work in the word ‘tedding’ – I suspect Adrian Bell – so I had no difficulty with ‘Currying favour with Tory bandleader; making hay while the sun never sets’, but the rest defeated me. I gave myself up to thoughts about survival, staying alive, things like that. One good result of this thought or thinking was engendered by the fact that the airport security people with their metal-detectors had not detected the Rouault copy in my briefcase but had pin-pointed my silver pocket-flask in a trice. This had to mean that the two Chinese gentlemen could scarcely be carrying anything more lethal than a cardboard dagger. Their gats, shivs and other bits of mayhem equipment must be in their suitcases, in the hold of the aircraft. Clearly, then, when I arrived at Heathrow, London, all I had to do was
not
to wait for my own suitcase to creak out of the constipated luggage-delivery system but to abandon it, flee through Customs with nothing but my briefcase and take a speedy taxi to Walthamstow or some other improbable place where I might have a friend. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentlemen would be fretting and fuming at the luggage-carousel, impatient for their murder-tackle to appear.

How lucidly one thinks, to be sure, when one has taken just a suspicion of brandy more than one should. I folded my hands smugly across that part of the torso which lies a little south of the liver and had a little zizz. When I awoke, the smugness was still there; I seized the
Times
crossword, gave it a masterful glare and had it whining for mercy in twenty minutes.

I have always sneered in a well-bred way at those idiots who, as soon as the aircraft’s engines have been switched off, stand up, clutching their brats and other hand-luggage for quite ten minutes until the surly cabin-crew deign to open the doors, but
on this occasion I was well to the fore and sped down the ramp far ahead of the field. Had this been Newmarket, a casual observer equipped with field-glasses and a stop-watch would have hastened to the nearest telephone and had a chat with his bookie.

Ignoring all signs telling people where they might wait for their luggage I galloped straight to the Customs Area and towards the blessed sign which said TAXIS, waving my innocent briefcase at the customs chap. He crooked an authoritative finger at me; I skidded to a halt. ‘Nothing to declare, officer,’ I cried merrily, ‘just the old briefcase full of the old paper-work, eh? Mustn’t detain you, sure you’re a busy man yourself –-’

‘Open it,’ he said. ‘Sir.’

‘Certainly, certainly, certainly,’ I quipped, ‘but do be quick, there’s a good chap, or all the taxis will be taken. Nothing in there, I assure you.’

Every once in a while I encounter people who don’t like me. This customs chap was one of those. He dwelt upon every least object in the briefcase as though he were an aged
courreur
pawing over his collection of pubic hairs. He left the cardboard cylinder to the last. ‘What’s this then, sir?’ he asked.

‘A picture or painting,’ I said impatiently, glancing ever and again at the baggage-hall where my fellow-travellers (if I may coin a phrase) awaited their luggage. ‘A mere copy. No Commercial Value and Not For Re-sale.’

‘Reelly,’ he said. ‘Let’s just have a look, please.’ Fretfully, I extracted and unrolled the said art-work. ‘There,’ I said, ‘it’s the
Après-midi d’un Clown
by Rouault. It’s in the Guggenheim or one of those places.’

‘The Weltschmerzer Foundation?’ he prompted.

‘That’s it, that’s it; jolly good. It’s in the Weltschmerzer, of course. Chicago.’

‘Oh no it’s not, sir.’

‘?’

‘It
was
there until last Wensdee; then some villains bust into the place, got away with a million quidsworth of this old rubbish.’

My mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, miming those soundless ‘oh’s’ that goldfish make when they want their water changed. I was spared the effort of saying something useful by a civil cough which seemed to come from behind my left shoulder.
A glance in that direction showed me a large, civil chap wearing a mackintosh or raincoat. A rapid swivel of some 270 degrees showed a similar chap, wearing a benign look, behind my right shoulder.

Permit me to digress for a moment. Every sound, professional team of thieves has a ‘brain’ who plans the villainy; a ‘manager’ who puts up the working capital; a ‘fence’ who will buy and sell the loot before it is even separated from its owners; a ‘toolman’ who knows how to neutralize burglar-alarm systems and to open locks, be they ever so sophisticated; a ‘peterman’ who can use a thermic lance on a safe or perhaps inject a fluid ounce of liquid explosive and detonate it with no more noise than a sparrow farting in its sleep; a ‘hooligan’ – regrettably – who will, at need, hit inquisitive passers-by with an iron bar; a ‘bent’ night-watchman or security-firm employee who is prepared to be concussed for £500 and a small percentage of the take; and – this is the chap you
didn’t
know about – a ‘lighthouse’. Your ‘lighthouse’ takes no active part in the actual breaking-and-entering; he simply strolls about with his hands in his pockets. He has but one simple, God-given skill: he can recognize ‘fuzz’, ‘filth’, ‘Old Bill’ or any other form of copper, however plainly-clothed, at two hundred metres on a dark night. No one – least of all the ‘lighthouse’ himself – knows how he does it, but there it is. There are only three reliable ones in the whole of London and they are paid the same as the hooligan.