ADVENTURE THE 51st: A PASSAGE TO MONTENEGRO

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read.

Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read.

For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made.

This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…


ADVENTURE THE 51st:
A PASSAGE TO MONTENEGRO

Into the mirror darkly thrust,
a face cautiously emerges,
granite to the enlightenment
untold, guarded -
secretive and silent.

Short, a crop of thick dark hair
perching atop this stoic egg,
yet loose and dangling
before dark, windowless eyes,
displeased by the march of years.

I witnessed nothing then,
so many Godless years,
wanting, unknowing, desiring…but what?
to turn proud nose,
strong chin unbowed.

Until today…as sharp blade to skin,
decapitates virile stubble yet again,
I suddenly burst forth to myself,
fully formed, and quite unbound.

I used to think life was the cruelest joke one human being could bestow on another. In theory and in practice, generalizations aside, there didn’t seem to be any point to it. The daily oblivion of childhood that suddenly was raped by the onset of youth; the mindless quest to make sense of a world I hadn’t helped to create; and finally, coming to that painful realization - that whatever steps I had taken there was an unholy assignation at work against all best laid plans. The fates were somehow stronger then, more determined to have their way with me, however inconvenient the circumstances might otherwise be.

I used to be a cynic. I’m not anymore. Why? I can’t say. I’m tired; that much is for certain. But I don’t care less. In fact, I care more; more than I might have only a few months before; much more than I thought I was capable of.

It’s Monty. He see things differently. He hasn’t been preachy or high minded about it. He hasn’t tried to convert my ideology to his although he’s succeeded in changing the way I see the world…the way I see my place in it. And something more…I’m not ashamed; unafraid to look beyond the mirror and see what the years have brought. I don’t fear what they might bring tomorrow. I’ve lost my fascination with death.

My legs are no longer the measure of manhood. Were they ever all that I ascribed them to be? I cannot say. It doesn’t matter. I only know that I’m a person of substance now, in tune, fit company in my own mind and spirit for the first time in my life.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m still me; still Eddie Mars. I’m not ready to rove the earth a motorized chair, preaching the gospel in sack cloth and ashes, but I understand now the true power of forgiveness and it’s more liberating than I could ever have hoped for.

I see Father Montague regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He comes to me around noon, not asking of my soul, wanting nothing of my mind, but peering into my heart just the same and finding more goodness and light to restore me to myself each time. He always has an answer – though perhaps not the one I’d wish to hear. He respects me enough to forget my feelings and that takes sincerity and guts.

“Do you think I’ll go to hell,” I ask him one afternoon as he pushes me through the garden.

It’s hot, yet neither of us seems to mind. The sun is on my face, but I don’t shield it with large hands or the protective barrier of dark glasses. It feels sincere to stare into the sky and return the gaze – if any - from the man upstairs.

“Perhaps you have been in it for some time,” Father Montague tells me.

“I think I see the exit,” I suggest.

“Perhaps,” Father Montague reasons with a wily grin, “But don’t be too eager. The steps to enlighten also bring us closer to death.”

“And a creator,” I say.

“Only if you believe,” Monty explains.

I’m not sure I like that. It scares me, because I’m not entirely certain I do – believe, that is. Even after all I’ve been through and survived. I don’t know if I can sign up for the full body/mind/spirit botanical wrap and spa treatment in that eternal Garden of Eden beyond the rainbow.

“You do believe?” Monty inquires.

“Oh, yes,” I reluctantly say, the words thick and unconvincing in my throat.

“No, my son,” Monty replies with a small chuckle, “Not yet. But I believe that you can.”

. . .

Two Sundays later I force myself to take up Monty’s challenge. I attended the first mass I’ve been to since I stopped being a choir boy. The sermon’s in Latin and has no meaning for me outside the soothing tonality in Father Montague’s voice – deep baritone majestic vocalizations he uses to spread the good word to his flock. Flock…funny how I used to think of them all as sheep…

Still, I’m fascinated by the paintings overhead; naked baby cherubs sprouting wings from their back, casting playful dispersions on the mere mortals below who sit and contemplate what is never theirs to fully know.

Is there life after death? Why bother? To what purpose? And eternity has such an unfathomable desperation about it. Until this moment in my life I always knew which direction my train was headed. But after the last gasp of air leaves my lungs and I slip the bonds of this careworn frame, what will I leave it for and how will I know the measure of time on the other side?

These are all questions to which Father Montague hasn’t any answers. I find him more cryptic than unsettled by the fact that theology is powerless to suckle my cares away.

“We were not meant to understand,” Father Montague reasons.

“That’s not helpful,” I tell him.

“No,” he admits as he pushes my chair through around a fountain courtyard one lazy summer afternoon.

The rain earlier that morning has left its potent perfume upon the earth and flowers. Filtering sun through dense foliage tickles its way under the woven blanket my nurse tossed across my outstretched legs before we left the hospital.

Everything feels good. In fact, I’ve been aware for some time that I can detect warmth upon these crippled limbs that stubbornly refuse to move.

“I don’t want to know it all,” I lie to Monty, “I’d just like some assurances.”

Father Montague politely smiles as we take our refuge under the shade of a large gnarled tree.

“I don’t think I’d want assurances,” Monty reasons, “An assurance would mean a promise. And, being only a man, and therefore unable to keep my promise to God, I should also lose whatever assurance He made to me.”

“But He forgives us,” I reason.

“He does,” Monty admits, “But he does not forget. We were never meant to understand His will because we misplace our thoughts easily among the mire of this earth. We are occasionally blinded and lost and alone with only our thoughts. What today we value, tomorrow we would surely trade for the next best thing.”

Monty pauses a moment to wipe the streaks of sweat from his large wrinkled brow.

“But let not your heart be troubled, my son,” he adds, “For, we never fall too long, and each time that we do the hand of God is extended to us, to help up from our stumbling, dusting off the clumsiness of our incalculable lack of good sense; reminding how very small in the hollow of this earth we are, yet how very great to be so valued in consideration for that world beyond.”

I’m not sure I feel so valued there yet; knowing full well that I’ve done little to merit such affection and understanding. Still, I seem to rate both these attributes very highly in Monty’s eyes…Dr. Bartelli’s too.

Only a week later, after an absence of some time, Dr. Bartelli comes to my room one rainy afternoon to tell me good news. There is a clinic in Montenegro that would like to perform some highly experimental tests on my spine. Unhampered by the dire red tape that strangles pure research back home, these Balkan physicians have pioneered a preliminary stem cell treatment.

The procedure is hardly foolproof, so I’m told, and not without risk of more extensive damage to my nervous system. In a perfect world, if I am deduced to be a prime candidate, a surgeon will spend almost one full day, cutting into and reattaching the damaged nerve endings inside my spinal chord, injecting a serum that could restore mobility to my lower limbs. It could also leave me paralyzed from the neck down, blind me, cause a stroke or send me to that other world prematurely if infection sets in.

Following this treatment, I will be airlifted to Bled Castle; an elite retreat located in the center of a pristine lake that the locals refer to as an ‘ornament of heaven’. There I shall remain for months, if not a year, convalescing and preparing to walk again.

It’s a tempting offer. It satisfies both my waning ego’s urge to stand on my own two feet once more, but also that sublime desire to shamelessly return to the life that was stolen from me not so very long ago. Why I still should possess these flashing visions of desire for a most base previous existence is beyond me. I cannot help myself. I still daydream of that shabby little apartment on DeLuca Street.

Will I tempt fate? Shall I see if fate is that ethereal spirit of personal conscience readily hypothesized in the Bible or is she more the disfigured hag Shakespeare conjured to mind, bow-legged and stirring the caldron?

“I’m afraid,” I honestly confess to both Dr. Bartelli then and to Father Montague when he comes to visit me later that afternoon.

“As you should be, my son,” Monty replies, “But…in fear there is a heightened sense of awareness. You wish to walk again. For this, no one, least of all Him can fault you. But have you considered where your legs took you when they were well. Not here. You would not have come to us then, my son. You would not have come and we would not have met. Knowing you as I do, I believe that you would have run the farthest from this place. Perhaps, you now have those same thoughts of leaving us again.”

He knows me too well.

“I don’t know,” I lie, “Maybe. Yes. But not to leave what I’ve learned behind. Not to forget what the strength of conviction has meant to me; not to cast off the moments spent into the dust bin of a dead memory. No. I cannot forget a kindness such as yours. I never will. But to walk again…”

My mind is already made up. Monty knows it too. He bows his head a moment, shading his eyes from the sun. We’ll take the Orient Express then; ride all night and all day, and fantasize about ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and ‘what if’; the intangible temptresses who corrupt men in their own vanities; that all they desire might belong to them one day soon…or never again.

THE END?

EDDIE MARS will return in his next adventure:
THE TIME OF ANGELS on Aug. 10th 2009.

@ Nick Zegarac 2009 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 50TH: THE CRIPPLING CONFESSIONAL

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.

Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.

For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made. This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…

ADVENTURE THE 50TH:
THE CRIPPLING CONFESSIONAL

"The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others."

- Solomon Ibn Gabriol

It’s Sunday morning and I am alone. I don’t much mind, having been probed Monday through Friday like a Thanksgiving turkey with enough surgical instruments and electro-cardiogram tape to warrant my own booth at the next freak show passing through town.

But Sunday’s different. At least, here it is. It’s still a religious experience, steeped in the traditions of an unerring faith that seems to even ease the spank of my own paralysis. Funny, I don’t miss the use of my legs as much as I thought I would. I mean, I haven’t had that moment yet where I begin to uncontrollably blubber for the fact that I can’t tie my own laces or run to the 7-11 for another pack of cigarettes.

Of course, I have a cute Sicilian nurse’s aid to thank for the proper care and maintenance of this retired chasse. Sponge baths may not be a luxury but they can be downright satisfying.

Her name’s Maria. She has the classical appeal of a Boteccelli masterpiece. That she’s engaged to an impossibly handsome young stud whose picture she carries around in her skirt pocket and has readily shown me with all of the restrained excitement of a good Catholic girl brought up on enforced piety and the strap is no surprise. Carlo, her beloved, is one lucky man though he probably doesn’t know it. He’s become too used to examples of physical perfection in his midst.

Last Tuesday, Maria wheeled me into a hospital courtyard overlooking the piazza and I was amazed at how many rarified female beauties were milling about; all properly quaffed and smartly dressed so as never to reveal too much. I could retire here a happy guy, only I’ve little to offer any girl but the promise that she’ll have to prop me up in public and lay me down in private.

It’s funny, because on occasion I feel pain in both limbs, something the good doctors tell me is a figment of my imagination; sympathy from the thwarted impulses sent bouncing back and forth from my brain to my legs that keep getting lost somewhere in the equatorial abyss below my belt buckle.

As I lay awake and emotionless, I can hear the bells of an eighteenth century chapel peel madly, beckoning all who believe to the altars of prayer. Me? I never believed. Oh, I have no doubt that there’s a higher power. I mean, I think it’s terribly gauche of atheists to suggest to the rest of us that some bizarre cosmic accident formulated a single planet in this never-ending ether, simply to sustain our sorry ass lives as we know them.

Then again, they probably think me terribly misguided and the biggest hypocrite around; believing, as I do, in a Holier law than my own, yet constantly breaking every commandment without even the slightest bit of remorse. They probably have something there.

I pass the morning like a mild stool, a little light breakfast brought in by an elderly matron with large polite eyes, soft smile and a ‘Bon appetite’ before she leaves the tray behind; a grapefruit, black coffee, some warm cereal and a glass of orange juice.

Around noon, Dr. Bartelli tells me that he has a surprise. I’m moderately intrigued for a moment, but suddenly find myself stirred to slight aggravation at the sight of a priest entering my room. He has the same kindly appeal as the rest of them, but somehow I’m not particularly interested in what he has to say.

I suspect that my discomfort might have something to do with the fact that I don’t much feel like ‘confessing’ to another man – any man. I never understood the placement of private secrets with another creature of this earth simply because we don’t shop for clothes at the same department store. After all, we both piss from the same apparatus into urinals.

“This is Father Montague” Dr. Bartelli explains, “I thought perhaps he might comfort you today.”

“Why?”

My note of apprehension catches both men off guard. I feel naked, as though my disdain for ‘the man’ and not ‘the cloth’ is screaming quotations by Regan from The Exorcist. Father M gets over his sourness first, leaning in to extend his hand. I shake it, reluctantly, and don’t ask him to sit down.

“May I?” he finally asks.

I nod, my gesture stiff and rigid.

“I’ll return in a little while,” Dr. Bartelli explains.

Great!

A few awkward silent moments pass. I turn my head away from Monty to the window sill where a ridiculous dove has been casually pecking into the wooden frame.

“The dove,” Father Montague exclaims quietly, “A symbol of faith.”

I’ve had enough.

“Look,” I say sternly, spinning my head around so fast I almost gives myself whiplash, “I don’t think I want to confess.”

Father Montague shakes his head, raising and waving his aged, crooked index finger quietly in my direction.

“This, I did not come for,” he replies, the creases from his smile creating liquid crevasses across his cheeks and chin.

“Oh,” I pull back.

“Dr. Bartelli is my half brother,” Father Montague explains, “I came to see him and he told me about you.”

“Oh,” I say again, not knowing what else to say.

I feel that an explanation is somehow in order, but don’t quite know where to begin. Monty’s a good mind reader because he avoids all the usual saintly clichés and talks to me on my level.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks.

“In spots,” I admit.

“Can I be of assistance?”

I feel like a heel to ask, but since when has that ever stopped me before.

“Could you maybe fluff my pillows a bit?”

He does, without reservation or even a modest expression of irksomeness that I’m certain he must feel deep down. After all, he’s only a man like me. When he’s finished and I’m propped up to better receive a guest, Monty takes his place on the stool nearest my bed.

“Has your brother told you about my legs?” I ask.

“He said you were in a terrible accident.”

So the priest’s cagey. And clever, I’ll give him that. He says what he wants to and leaves the rest to my baited imagination.

“While, I’m crippled,” I explain, “I’ll never walk again.”

“You must have faith.”

There it is. The cliché of clichés I knew would come. I want to take my pillows and pummel the priest. I think better of my urge and instead decide to play myself as the dejected invalid.

“Could you please, just not…” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Father Montague replies, “I did not mean to upset you.”

He means it too. I can tell.

“You haven’t,” I explain, “It’s me. I…well…I haven’t exactly been what you would call a model citizen.”

“And what is that?” Monty replies.

I detect a very minute hint of sarcasm.

“You know, padre,” I say with a half smile, “I’ve used up all my worry beads and given plenty of angels a damn good reason to weep. All in all, I’m undeserving, I guess is what I’m trying to say. I don’t belong on the top ten list for salvation.”

Father Montague lowers his head. At first I think he’s preparing to pray. Then, I realize he’s trying to conceal a broad smile that’s stretched across his face. He’s laughing at me.

“You think that’s funny?” I ask him.

“Typical,” he replies, “If you have looked into the heart of others and found nothing there to nourish your own, then perhaps you have merely been keeping the wrong company. You see, our own frailty is that we are ever more likely to assume the vices of others, rather than their virtues. Please. If I have offended you, I apologize.”

“Think nothing of it,” I mutter, “I don’t offend easy. Too much scar tissue. Call it my Teflon coated ego. It hasn’t sought too much from life. As a result I haven’t been quite so deluded not to have found anything in it. Guess I’m a lost cause.”

I suddenly feel like one too; stripped to the raw vein and nerve endings that seem to ache everywhere.

“You are only a man and therefore imperfect,” Father Montague explains, “Like me.”

A priest who only considers himself a guy? I’m intrigued. The only kind of ‘men of faith’ I knew back home were a bunch of social hypocrites; Father DeBeque, who diddled a couple generations of choir boys before being relocated to parts unknown; Father Emile, the one who knocked up and had a kid by Sister Agatha; and Father Richelieu – the Jimmy Swaggart of his people, having sinned with practically every married woman and widow in town. But Monty’s not like them. Or is he?

“I was a boy of thirteen in Milan,” Father Montague explains, “Poor, afraid and quite alone. I stole bread to survive. Then, one day a baker grabbed me by my hand and tried to call for the police. I was young. I was afraid. I stabbed him with his own cutting knife. He bled to death on his own kitchen floor and I went to prison. Then a strange thing happened to me. The widow of the baker came to see me in prison. She said she forgave me my sin. She asked the court for clemency. I served my time until I was nineteen and was then given a choice in life; either a work camp or the monastery. I chose God then and it has made all the difference since.”

I’m suddenly quite humbled by the story. But Monty has no idea who he’s talking to. He killed one man. I can’t even remember how many there have been. So, I decide to set this man straight. I tell him about a few of the men I’ve killed and the women I’ve deflowered and the brutes I’ve taken modest pleasure in beating up along the way. I tell him about the secret society and about being trained as an assassin and accepting both as my lot in life without even a modest nod to the fact that neither was good for me.

“We’re talkin’ double and triple digits here,” I suggest to Monty, “Not that it matters how many, I suppose. One sin is just as wrong as twenty – but if I remember well enough from my Sunday school days with Sister Hebert – two shows a definite unwillingness on my part; that I knew the first one in the cue wasn’t going to improve my chances of coolin’ off upstairs instead of dropping to the hot basement for more practice.”

I explain to Monty that he’s sitting across from a pariah, not the Christ child and that I’ve been around so many blocks, doing so many wrong turns, that I don’t think God would have it in his heart to pencil me in for a harp and some wings in that white fluffy hereafter.

Monty listens to everything I have to say with a grave, though not critical, eye. I keep trying to tell him I doubt the existence of my own soul but I see no expression across that aged face that would mirror my disgust.

“All in all,” I conclude, “my reputation’s shot full a’ holes. Nothing left, you see. Nothing to work with.”

But Monty doesn’t agree.

“Reputation is what others think of us,” Monty suggests, “But true character is what God and the angels know of us. You have character, my son, and that is an eternal.”

I don’t detect a hint of sympathy in Father Montague’s tone – which is not what I’m looking for anyway in this ‘show and tell’. I hate people who tell you how bad they feel for you, only deep down we both know they’re breathing a sigh of relief that your life is more rotten than theirs.

“When God set your feet upon the earth,” Monty begins, “…it was with the understanding that you would not be able to stay the course. If you have been tested and chosen your destiny unwisely, you haven’t failed Him, my son. You’ve merely been shown the error of your way.”

He’s good. I’ll give him that. If not lifted, then I suddenly feel as though a few of my burdens have been lessened.

“That’s good and well,” I offer, “But if I continued to fail?”

“Then perhaps you were not ready to accept His love,” Monty suggests, “There is an old proverb for which I cannot take credit – ‘when the pupil is ready, the master will appear’.”

Oh, those old proverbs! They never fail. I can just imagine a bunch of pious old buggers sitting around a campfire with some freshly distilled monastery wine to help ease them into their cleverness.

It’s odd. I don’t find myself feeling disagreeable any more. It’s not mental exhaustion that takes all the sting and venom out of me either. It’s Monty. He’s impossible to dislike. Everything he says has meaning and weight, although done in such a way so that nothing is fraught with meaning or weightiness besides. He doesn’t make me feel small for my indiscretions. In fact, all in all I feel somewhat better about them.

“How is it that you can find so much goodness in me?” I inquire.

“How is it that you can see so little?” Monty replies.

“You’re a difficult man to argue with, Father Montague,” I reason.

“I hope so,” he tells me with an angelic smile.

THE END…
…not yet.

Eddie Mars will return in his next adventure –
PASSAGE TO MONTENEGRO
on June 15th, 2009.

@Nick Zegarac 2009 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 49TH: THISTLE AND DARKNESS

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.

Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number.

If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made.

This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…

ADVENTURE THE 49TH:
THISTLE and DARKNESS


La Luna

The moon is bright.
She speaks to me.
Swimming on the winged rim of lunar afterbirth,
- a sacrament, most ethereal.
Tempting me higher,
as though by cruel unbound fate,
to draw and suck the breath from my ailing body
Until a last -
in tepid hollow gasps
escapes -
upward,
my eyes fixed upon her dilated curves.
Never to catch that cratered hem,
- voluptuously still,
that magical orb of reflected light.
Solid and firmly mounted
in the eternal blast of mysteries profound,
Godless stratos -
feared, unbound,
dissolving,
beyond a penitent vista.

I hadn’t planned on becoming a corpse. Only, there I was, brittle and stiff like a stick of processed fish; tightly strapped down on a gurney in the back of an ambulance – two soft spoken Brits filling my ailing body with fresh plasma and evenly timed bags of pressurized air; counting down precise increments to the shallow rise and fall of my chest as I slip further from their lifesaving proclivity.

“We’re losing him,” one would say.

“His BP is dropping,” the other would then reply.

Another shot of something or other – hastily burying the tip of a very long needle into the already well established port jutting from my left arm; a few more light amps from the paddles, optimistically placed for maximum effect.

Remarkably, I lay there in a state of total peace; or rather, sat quietly at the side of my own bed, looking down, gently and in silence at the remains of that rigid frozen façade chaining me to earth.

It was over in a matter of moments. The one EMT turned to the other, sighing, “Well, that’s that.”

I am draped in a loose white sheet from horn to hoof – the blood from my wounds soaking through as the two men who had worked so diligently toward my preservation now casually sit back in complacent acceptance of my demise.

“Where should we go tonight for a drink?” the one says.

“You decide,” replies the other, “This pint’s be on me.”

. . .

I don’t remember the next few days. Perhaps ‘days’ is inaccurate to describe the modicum of time spent somewhere between this world and the next. If I dig deep enough, I seem to recall from my present slumber a dark meadow of hemlock, my bare feet scarcely touching a lush, thriving surface of tenderly moist, braided garden patch.

The drive unwound before me like a great orbiting corkscrew with no middle to be reached. As I say, all this comes to me now in fits of very fuzzy, unsustainable recollections that may or may not be true to memory. Certainly, they continue to seem very real to me.

There was a series of great halls ahead, open to the encroachment of nature from all sides. Towering cathedral-like glassless windows were imbedded into fragments of craggy rock and the occasional thistle jealously draped around like a salamander.

The ground beneath has turned to cold stone and uncomfortable small pebbles that occasionally get stuck between my naked toes. I walk the path in pools of stardust occasionally parting from the otherwise velvety blackened sky.

Occasionally, I pass the odd weary traveler also strolling amongst the foliage. We say nothing to one other, nor do I recall having set eye to eye with any of the ghostly visages teasingly concealed just ever so slightly from my view. Their bodies are more real to me somehow; proud and erect or portly or slumped; distinctive in their gate. They all appear to know where they’re going.

Except one man – at least, I recall him to appear as a man – dressed in fine linen and carrying a briefcase from which a series of crumpled papers protruded. There was a definite defect to his walk, as though his left leg were somehow not properly attached from the knee down and, as he moved onward I detected a curious slight hiss and steam coming off the whole of his shape. I thought him terribly lost and tried to intervene, for the way to my own destiny seemed more aligned with the absence of his than in any of the other souls I passed on this road to nowhere.

But when I reached to tap his shoulder, a great wind and violent dust arose from the earth beneath us – choking out reason and snuffing whatever confidence I had stored away for this journey. In the aftermath of this brief and frightening thunder cloud, I beheld that my feet now stood firm on a dusty surface of incredible debris, one foot holding down a loose sheet of business letterhead that might otherwise have been carried off with the stern breeze; as apparently both the man and his briefcase had been. As I knelt to retrieve this paper, I instinctively clutched my heart; for something inside of me suddenly felt isolated, hollowed out and ominously alone. One World Trade Center - printed at the top – was all it said.

. . .

You must understand something before I continue; realize now that none of what I am speaking of seems more than a dream remembered or perhaps nightmares re-visited. I do not see the whole - only pieces as they played out for me and cannot describe the many modules I drifted through or vignettes that seemed to rotate like a carousel of temporary diversions; this great mobile of missing fragments to a life that may or may not have had anything legitimately to do with mine.

I did not see the Virgin Mary, or Jesus or God, nor Buddy Holly or Elvis or even Marilyn Monroe on my travels. I did not unravel the mystery of the Blue Dalia or the Kennedy assassination. There was no great light or the voice of Cecile B. DeMille's burning bush to guide my footsteps; no pitchfork toting devil to leer up at me from beneath the thistle and singe my toes with brimstone.

Once, I think I attempted to speak to another traveler along the road – a girl about sixteen. She passed my way on that endless stretch of indistinguishable time; humming a polite little tune – “Goodbye, little yellow bird…”; the untied stretches of her cotton knit pink housecoat dallying behind her a moment or two as she dragged her feet loosely through the underbrush.

I don’t know why, but I think I chased her – or that is, pursued; quietly at first, then calling her name that, strangely enough, I knew.

“Ramona,” I’d say here and there, somehow not caring if she heard me, “Ramona? Are you deaf?”

But always she passed a little ahead of me into one of those deep and never-ending shadow lands just beyond the horizon of rich life-giving light pools that had begun to be less few and far between.

At last, I made a pact with myself to hide inside the hemlock and await her return. I was sure she would come. And so she did, this time closer and prettier than ever. I reached from my place, feet stepping firm on the ground beneath me this time, and suddenly struck by how charred the ends of her housecoat and collar were.

I felt myself resort to a look of stunned absolution as her head turned ever so slightly from left to right to reveal the caved in surface of her skull; the mat of her richly dark and sweet smelling tresses suddenly giving off an acrid scent of burnt flesh and bone – her angelic features dark and peeling until the skin hung from her apple shaped cheekbones as a scorched mass of brutalized sinew.

Raising an exposed bone from the vacant back flesh of her index finger, she pressed momentarily this thin wicket to the edge of a very brown lip – discolored as though it were a baked apple left too long to cook in its own juices – and blowing me an insinuating kiss of last farewell she suddenly dissolved into ether. That was all, and the last I ever saw of her. I would come to wish that I would never see her again.

. . .

I awoke on a Friday, in a hospital in Trieste, the whiny echo of Giorgio Conte cooing in my ear – “Gne, gne, gne, gne.” A pretty little nurse stood at the foot of my bed, smiling when she realized that my eyes had suddenly opened.

“Buon giorno,” she said.

“I suppose it is,” I reasoned, each word clotting like a thick wad of gauze in my parched throat, then – just to brush up my foreign languages a bit for the local color, “Dove sono?”

Another smile, and a hint of an even more polite and gentile curtsy. “In ospendale.”

“Ringraziamento,” I sputter.

I haven’t the heart or the energy to tell her I’ve already figured that one out for myself.

She’s a goddess; a sort of Florence Nightingale for the Tuscan set, with long dark curls falling neatly beneath her nurse’s cap; a set of full Botticelli inspired breasts pressed tightly against the white tunic and long sleeved navy shirt she wears, with even her collar button neatly pinned into place.

“Sogni d’oro,” she tells me, fluffing my pillow with the most tender of care and subtle attention to every detail.

I’ve rated the quality stay at the ‘Comfort Inn’ of all hospital care; something no HMO back home would have afforded me unless I was a ward of the state. And it’s a good idea too – to sleep. I take my Tuscan savior’s advice and nod off – my one regret that she won’t lay by me and pray for that eternal adventure to begin.

. . .

The human body is a marvel – at least, so I’m daily told by Dr. Bartelli, a stout, bald man of impeccable dress and carriage who comes each day after two in the afternoon to observe my progressive mend on the road to wellness again.

“You’ve made remarkable progress,” he tells me.

And I believe him implicitly. Why shouldn’t I. I don’t feel as bad as I expected to.

“How did I…” I begin.

“You were air lifted from Germany,” Dr. Bartelli explains.

“But how did I get there?” I reason.

“You mean you don’t know?”

I shake my head.

“Amnesia is not uncommon,” the doctor explains, “And probably not permanent.”

“When can I go…” I pause, catching myself in a delusion of self importance.

Where? Where would I go? To whom would I go? Those that would care enough to worry have long been dead and those that have only an interest in my whereabouts will plan to finish the journey I started between thistle and darkness.

“You wish to go home?” the doctor asks.

“No hurry, I guess,” I tell him, with no concept of where ‘home’ is.

He speaks very good English, the doctor – much better than my Italian – and spends a great deal of time over the next few days getting to know me as a person, rather than as a patient and from the ground up. I can’t quite say whether it’s my weakened physical state that permitted the loose waggling of my tongue, but I confided a lot of water under my bridge to this man.

We talk of life and women and the importance of establishing families of our own as time begins to betray our tenure on this planet. Only a month earlier, I would have told this same man to take his blarney from the cobblestones of Venice and toss it into the backwoods wading pool of Tammy and the Bachelor. I would have been glib and cocky and so sure that he didn’t know his own soft ass from a bowl of melting gelato.

Only now, it’s all sort of quaint and philosophical, yet stimulating and life affirming. For the first time in a really long while I’m inspired to expect something better for myself. I’m not exactly certain what that may be, but I sure as hell know it’s not what I’ve been getting.

Then the good doctor hits me with the holy of holies when I least expect it – revealing a piece of the puzzle that even I hadn’t counted on.

It seems that I have sustained major nerve damage to my spinal chord in the ‘accident’. Although I can move my legs ever so slightly, the good doctor is realistically doubtful that I’ll ever walk again.


THE END?

Eddie Mars will return in his next adventure – The Crippling Confessional on May 5, 2009.

@Nick Zegarac 2009 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 48TH: IN THE BLEAK, BLEAK WINTER

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:


For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.


Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.


For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made. This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…

ADVENTURE THE 48th:
In The Bleak, Bleak Winter

No one would ever guess it now, but I was a sickly child; pneumonia at eight and a bout of rheumatic fever just before I hit my teens. I was a pasty little lad with about as much curb appeal as road kill. I remember those years only faintly now, perhaps in truth, because I’d rather forget childhood all together and move on to that moment just past puberty when my whole world started coming apart.

Mom bought the farm at thirteen and dad took to the bottle. He was a great guy when he wasn’t pissed out of his mind and blaming me, grandpa, the milkman…anybody and everybody except himself for his own predicament. But when I was fifteen I suddenly sprang up like a weed – a big one – and with enough pent up frustration brought on by puberty to really start something, one way or the other. It wasn’t so easy to take a pot shot at me anymore, no matter the quantity of cheap spirits consumed.

I’m not big on all the psychological mumbo-jumbo parents put their kids through on the road to adulthood. I suppose it helps if you have parents who have grown up first before they start spitting out offspring like the Von Trapp family commune. Oh, well; we take what we have and make the best of it, I suppose. But all that damn nonsense about life giving you lemons and what you’re supposed to do with ‘em once you know you’re never getting the hell out of hell is a lot of hooey!

If you’re in for the citrus crop there’s neither the time, inclination nor know how to do anything but suck on the lemon you’ve been force fed until you’re puckered on a sour stain of eternal regret. That’s just how it is. One in a hundred million will turn their compromised existence into something worth remembering. Maybe one in a million will learn how to erase or at least fabricate a successful façade. But these unfortunates haven’t overcome anything. They’re just the newest social frauds. They know everything about them is a lie, but figure that it doesn’t matter so long as the rest of us believe their myth.

Women are better at making up their past than men. They’re born liars. I observe this carefully as Maryilla and I take a noon day train from London to Derbyshire. I know Sergei’s on board, only he’s disappeared somewhere after the tickets were punched; the invisible man. It suits him.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Maryilla tells me.

“Not awfully,” I say, “Besides, what’s there to say? The friends in my pocket’ll do all the talking once we get there.”

I tap my coat pockets to reassure myself that the switchblade and pistol I’ve managed to smuggle aboard are still with me. A lesser fool would have ditched the knife or just shot himself in the leg with his firearm to get the whole damn mess over with. Guess I’m a masochist. I keep both close to that spot where my heart ought to be but know better than to let rashness overtake in the baggage car.

My answer hasn’t impressed her. In fact, I detect a distinct note of disgust as Maryilla leans back in her seat.

“Why are you so guarded?”

“I find I live longer when others don’t know what I’m thinking,” I confide.

It’s true. That is the reason.

“You’re not alive,” Maryilla mutters, her gaze turned out the window at the flashes of speeding scenery. Then, the clincher - “Neither am I.”

“I’m glad you included yourself among the missing,” I tell her, “I was beginning to get lonely.”

A thin smile materializes from beneath Maryilla’s tight upper lip.

“Life hasn’t been kind,” she suggests in a tone that’s supposed to get me to reveal more than I will.

I don’t fall into her sand trap, but can feel her tiny granules of curiosity swirling around my hips like a dizzying hula hoop full of prodding intrigue.

“Suppose you leave snap analysis at your own back door,” I suggest, “I’m not up for a couch session, doctor. Not unless you’ve managed a fine merlot and some soft canned music to set the mood.”

Maryilla closes her eyes, her long hair falling fresh and abundant across her cheeks as she buries the back of her head in the seat cushion headrest.

“Even then, I’m not sure that you would bite,” she teases.

“Oh, yes I would,” I tell her, without believing it entirely myself, “I’d leave teeth marks to. You’d know it.”

She laughs, her bright pink tongue darting playfully between perfect white teeth.

“Blood sucker,” she whispers, jokingly.

I let her have it – both barrels.

“I thought that was your department.”

. . .

Let it never be said that I can’t kill the mood. Playtime is one thing, but with the company I’ve been keeping playtime is reserved for the chisel and screwdriver set.

Without warning Sergei materializes; his brow, narrow; his scowl deeper than I remember. He’s a block of soulless granite, alright; chiseled from the pillar of hard knocks – the ones that attempted to crush him at an early age, but failed. Sergei hates the world. I can’t say I’m much for it, but in general I don’t wish it ill. I just want it to leave me alone. But Sergei – he truly despises anything that’s had the hand of man on it and that includes Maryilla.

I don’t know why or how, but these two are a curious alliance. I get the vibe that Sergei’d like to push his mistress off a tall mountain or weigh her heavy with a pair of cement Manola Blahniks only he doesn’t dare. It isn’t loyalty or even fear that keeps him in check. The aphrodisiac that keeps this animal on his chain? Don’t know - yet. I only know that Maryilla’s charm escapes me. It always has.

We get off together at Westerfelt Station in the North Country; an impossibly tiny hamlet that probably hasn’t seen any action since the blitz of ’42. The station is at a crossroads that quickly opens to rolling countryside on all four sides. As far as I can make out there’s only a petrol station, a pub and an abattoir to recommend the place. Eat here and get gas doesn’t begin to describe my thoughts.

“What now?” I ask.

“Now we get someone to drive us out to the Montague estate,” reasons Maryilla, “I hope you’ve had time to digest our plan of action.”

In point of fact, I have. I was saving the surprise for our arrival at Jeffrey’s, but I don’t really see the point in not letting this sterile cat out of the bag right now.

“You’re going to kill him,” I inform Maryilla.

I expected her to be thoroughly amused by my suggestion. She isn’t.

“The plan was…” Maryilla begins.

“Plans have changed,” I add, “Besides I’m not going to kill someone I’ve never met. I need at least a first visit to build up that much animosity for my fellow man.”

At this point, Sergei looks as though he might be willing to get a tad frisky with me, so I show them both that I mean what I say by cocking my loaded gat under my coat and slowly shaking my head.

“You’ve already decided on a corpse,” I reason, “But I’m not that particular. Any ‘body’ will do.”

Maryilla and Sergei exchange passing glances. There’s a brief moment of tension between us before she agrees to my terms – or, at least, agrees to placate them until such time as she can stick my knife in me for desertion.

“Then, why have you come all this way?” Maryilla says.

She’s entitled to that much. No, let me rephrase that. She’s not even deserving of that much, but I’m big enough to provide her with the information.

“Curiosity,” I admit.

“You know what they say,” Maryilla replies quickly, “I mean…what it did to the cat?”

I smile, a most pithy retort dripping from my lips.

“Well, maybe they just didn’t have the right pussy on tap.”

. . .

So, I layout the plan as I see it. Since I’ve never met Jeffrey Lynn-Montague, a.k.a. Das Englander, I’ll go along for the ride and use myself as the pass key to get everyone inside the estate. Once in, they’re on their own. If Jeff’s an average shot, then I take the train back to London with Slick and Ugly in tow, collect the Don and hightail it to some higher ground where local law enforcement isn’t so particular about hoodlums living right under their precinct. If, on the other hand, ol’ Jeff is a class ‘A’ marksman and flattens the competition, I’m not above learning a few tips and maybe getting a pass on walking away the winner by default. It’s that simple. Winner takes all.

. . .

We make a pretty out of place trio, piled into the back of a flat open surrey that’s punted through the countryside by a horse at least two years overdue for the glue factory. Our driver rates the same introduction; forty-ish and nattering on about the time Princess Diana asked if the baubles he had hanging off of ‘Ol’ Nellie’ were, in fact, genuine gold.

“Then I says to her Royal Highness…”

And so it goes; on and on and with no perceivable end in sight. The guy’s so one dimensional, paper cutouts have more depth. Still, he was easy to find and didn’t take to accepting too large a payment for this lift on account of he was lugging a few gallons of fresh milk to the Montague estate.

It’s cold. There’s a carpet of fresh fallen snow across most of the landscape that makes for a clean slate pasted against the backdrop of a flat gray sky. Every once in a while the surrey pulls to the left as its front wheels lock in the slush and are dragged crookedly toward the mud, only to jump back in line when they hook into the rough edge of the paved road.

Fifty-two minutes later, and we’re rounding the corner of a high rising hill that gradually gives way to a sprawling country estate.

“Nice work if you can get it,” I mutter at a moment’s lull in our driver’s monologue.

“You thinks so, sir?” our driver replies, “M’ybe. But I says to the Misses just last night that them what has the price of a packet of tea know on whose backside they spread their tissue. And them what has more than a few sheds to hang that tissue in probably know under which ones all them dead bodies is buried.”

I’m inclined to agree with him, particularly as he brings Old Nellie to a stop in front of the gargantuan front façade of an estate, marked VimView. The grounds are a frightful mess of entangled wild bramble and thistle half buried in swollen crests of new fallen snow. Only the house looks as though it’s had some repairs done to maintain it as best the new rich can.

We disembark the surrey. Sergei tips the cabbie. Funny, I thought he’d rather cut the ol’ boy’s head off once we arrived. Oh well, I internally reason, the day’s full of surprises.

I realize the brevity of that afterthought as the front door to VimView opens and an all too familiar face materializes from the home’s blackened interior. It’s Karl Talenburg; immaculately dressed and with more than an ounce of curious twinkle suddenly firing up behind the eye.

I’m no mind reader, but Karl looks particularly pleased with himself, like a fat house cat whose just put his mitts in the catnip and found the bonus of a dead budgie to snack on.

“Tell me,” he asks with that thin grimace stretching to the peripheries of his cheek bones, “What was your first thought…I mean, at that particular moment?”

“Writing a book on near death experience,” I quip.

My smug reply seems to please him. Stands to reason. We’re in the preliminary stages of our cute meet. The love affair’s still on.

“Is there no end to your talents?”
“There is,” I assure him.

“But I’m curious…”
“So was the cat. Remember what happened to him?”

Karl gives out with a polished chuckle. I’m about to take him down memory lane for a nightmare or two.

“I don’t worry about death, Mr. Mars,” Karl admits.
“No, I suppose not,” I agree, “Say, why not Eddie? We’ve known each other long enough.”

“Too long.”

I don’t expect the rather large Lugar Karl whips out from his velvet robe and apparently neither do Sergei or Maryilla. My mistake. I’ve made quite a few on this adventure and this may be my last.

“We meet again, Das Englander,” Maryilla says.

So that’s Das Englander. Karl, Jeffrey Lynn- Montague Talenburg…etcetera and so on. He’s the chameleon, which probably makes Maryilla his angel of death. Just what any of this makes me is wide open to interpretation. If looks could kill, old Karl would already be compost for the spring garden.

“My dear, Maryilla,” Karl reasons, “You are a luxury no man can afford.”

“Though I’m sure more than a handful has tried,” I reason, attempting in vane to break the tension, “What about friendship?”

I hear the click of another gun being cocked behind our backs. Sure enough, the old pudge-pot surrey driver has been workin’ the other side of the rainbow, taking notes from we three Munchkins in the back of his sleigh. I thought it was too easy getting him to commit to this trip in the frigid country for only a few quid and not much pro quo.

“You’re a genuine ripper, mate,” the cabbie tells me.

“And you’ve read too many Daphne Du Maurier novels,” I spit back, “Give it a rest and put your pea shooter where it’ll do the least damage – between your ears.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Karl commands, “All of you. Inside.”

How can such a gracious invitation be refused?

We’re corralled like three head of dim-witted cattle into a great hall with limitless possibilities for the next Halloween spook fest…if any of us lives that long. At one end the gaping mouth of a roaring fire yawns like the gates to hell. I suddenly have this vision of my head bubbling on the spit. It’s not a glamorous afterthought, I’ll grant you, but I’m too afraid to consider how close it might be to my future.

“By all accounts we ought’a be sharing daisies at Greenlawn instead of barbs across a gun,” I suggest to Karl, attempting to trade on my limited past intrigues as his confident, “Seems someone’s been exaggerating the truth.”

“Is that how it seems to you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who do you suspect as the liar?”

“You,” I openly admit, giving him a moment to get nervous before finishing my thought, “Me. Our mutual acquaintance standing here at the threshold of the ‘dearly departed’ club and maybe, just maybe…the man in the moon.”

“Why?” Maryilla interrupts.

I want to tell her shut up. I want to badly. Only I’m not sure I should be turn-coating on her just yet. Instead I just give her one of those looks my father used to give me after coming in late – it’s a look you have to master. Apparently, I haven’t yet.

“My dear,” Karl tells her, his clear cut annunciation hardly taking the edge off, “You are not in a position to question my motives.”

“Maybe not,” I reason, “But I’ll bet she’s been in that position before.”

I’ve hit a chord or a nerve or maybe just hammered home the rose-colored truth of the matter – that, at some point, Maryilla and Karl had been lovers.

“You amuse me, Mr. Mars.”

“Then my purpose hasn’t been wasted. You know, I’m nobody’s idea of purity, but on a good day I am forty proof.”

“What are you after?” Karl prods.

I think maybe I’ve struck a blow to counterbalance what only moments before must have appeared as my utter lack of sincerity – bringing an old flame and future assassin to his front door.

“The truth,” I admit, “Oh, theories are alright for suckers. In some cases, down right satisfying. Connect the dots. Fit pieces into a puzzle. Analyze the contents of a Petri dish. Only, roll the dice once too often and you wind up in a rich man’s boudoir starring down the barrel of a not so friendly and pondering secret lists, dead hookers and what you think will happen after the big man upstairs calls you home for his game of cribbage. House rules.”

I’ve softened the mood somewhat.

“I’ll not ask you if you’re afraid of death,” Karl reasons, “I believe I know the answer.”

“Maybe,” I continue, “But to answer your question, ‘not particularly’. Just how my remains will look splashed across the front tabloids may leave me sleepless and haunting this place though.” Then, nodding in the direction of Maryilla and Sergei, “Especially when I’m in with such good company.”

The cabbie laughs out loud. He’s not very good at concealing his feelings – just a fool who thinks a gat in the hand is worth more than a levy of impeccably timed logic. I don’t despise men like him. After all, they’re on the short list of the expendable.

“You’re no fool, Mr. Mars,” Karl tells me.
“Oh, thank you.”
“If you were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I’m listening. Where do we go from here?”

Somehow I’ve managed to win chits from a man who doesn’t usually regard others as part of the same crap game. It’s strange. I don’t know whether I should be flattered or disgusted by the compliment.

“I’ve got half a list that says this whole thing’s been the original goose that gave chase,” I begin, “Only, I manage a slow waddle a lot longer then any of us hoped for. You used me as a fail safe to keep your competition busy. This whole thing started with a man named Hemmingway; a busy guy – buying up half the port side of Louisiana and most of lower Manhattan and doing a whole lot of nothing with both…at least on the surface.”

“You found something?” Maryilla whispers.

“No,” I confess, “I knocked on a lot of front doors…only I didn’t check out too many backrooms. But Sergeant Malory of the 36th District Precinct did. Hemmingway was setting up dummy fronts for the distribution of Red China narcotics. Just like you.”

There’s a moment of deadening silence that I quietly reason could go either way. I’m secretly glad when my margin of error works in my favor and no magic bullets start bouncing off the vaulted ceilings of this mausoleum. There’s no going back now. This is an all or nothing deal and my hand’s yet to be played.

“Hemmingway wasn’t your competition,” I reason to Karl, “He was your contact. But he was out of control. He started skimming off the top. You couldn’t have that. Not when what you wanted was right under his nose.”

“Be careful, Mr. Mars,” Karl warns, lazily redirecting my attentions to his gun, “You’re dangerously close to not being able to see past the tip of your own.”

“Do it,” I call his bluff, “It’d be a favor, letting the whole lot of you in for a heap of grief.”

“How’s that?”

“Sergeant Malory again. He knows what I know. He’s agreed to let me figure things out for myself and that’s bought us both some time. How much sand’s in the hour glass all depends on if I turn up with a couple of holes that God didn’t put there at birth.”

Karl reconsiders his options. I can tell he’s intrigued, only I don’t think he’s buying any of my ‘missing link’ scenario. So I resolve to tie up my loose ends before I become one.

“You fueled the bloodlust between Hemmingway and Don Alverez to get even by planting a small time operator in his midst and then treating the poor dumb bastard as a double agent,” I explain.

“What operator?” Maryilla suddenly interrupts.

“Muzzle it, angel,” I reason with firm conviction, “I wouldn’t like to, but I’ll deck you one in the chops if you crowd me.”

“I suppose you know the name of this ‘operator’?” Karl reasons.

“We both do,” I confess for the benefit of those not up to speed yet, “Frank Brody. I haven’t quite figured out whether it was a double cross or just an out and out swindle. But Brody died just the same. Hemmingway had his body paved under six feet of asphalt on that stretch of dead end where the late Carolyn Trent was supposed to unload me too. One problem; your angel of death became my angel of mercy. She couldn’t bring herself into the killing zone. She didn’t have it in her. But I did. And that left yet another loose end.”

“You’re not making sense,” Maryilla interrupts again.

“That’s twice, angel,” I say, lowering my voice and brow at the same time to connect with that ledge of fear rather than curiosity dangling before her eyes, “Mark me. There won’t be a number three.”

Sergei’s lost. So’s the cabbie. They’re not in our league. If this were Trivia Pursuit, I’d collect their pie pieces and ask them to leave with some cheapo parting gifts and a voucher for the all night buffet at Denny’s. But Karl’s begun to sweat – not profusely, but those thin cultured beads slowly forming at the fringe of his tired widow’s peak.

“You should have been more careful about Frank,” I tell him, “While you were using Tony Menendez as a buffer, dear ol’ Ton’ was getting ready to cut out on you with Hemmingway’s woman. He was also partnered up with Brody. Should’a checked Brody’s pockets more carefully. While you were trying to get the goods on them they already had plenty on you.”

Karl can’t contain his smug superiority any longer. It spreads like a thick fungus, moss-covered grin from ear to ear.

“You haven’t learned much in all these months, have you?” he muses.

“I didn’t realize there’d be a pop quiz at the end of it all,” I reason.

Only I’m the one who’s likely to get popped. Frank Brody was no fool. Arguably, he was an even lesser a dupe than yours truly. And Karl didn’t get rid of an inept accomplice when he had Brody killed. But he did murder his own double agent – the only guy with all the answers to questions it’s taken him this long to figure out on his own. Brody was using that notorious list as bait to nail the whole lot of thieves to a cross. Happy Easter, Karl. Only his eggs weren’t all in one basket.

“The thing I don’t figure is the Don,” I interrupt, “You and he going at it for a prize you already had in your possession seems like an awful waste of your time, and on the night you came to my rescue off the coast of Morocco you tossed caution and evidence to the wind…or waters, as it were. Any way, why kill him, or at least try to, at Heathrow? It can’t be just for looks…that is, how it’ll deflect from the bigger crime for the authorities?”

“You still think this is just about drugs?” Karl reasons, shaking his head with an authoritative disdain for my limited imagination, “This is about power. As for the Don…once we were like brothers.”

“You still are,” I remind him, “Cain and Abel.”

“You fools!” Maryilla hisses from behind.

She’s a game girl with hidden talents, I’ll give her that. While Karl and I have been comparing egos and Johnsons by candlelit, she’s managed to bring out a weapon of her own; a smart looking revolver pointed straight at Karl’s head.

“Drop it, luv!” the surrey driver whispers from behind.

“Go ahead,” Maryilla seethes, her eyes never leaving the delicate indentation mark between Karl’s eyes – the spot she’s taken dead aim at, “Shoot. Sergei!”

Another gun comes out, this one from Sergei’s pocket and casually aimed at the surrey driver’s head.

“Kill me,” Maryilla tempts the surrey driver, “You’ll be killing yourself.”

“Suppose we just forget the roulette and move on to a straight game of spin the bottle,” I quip in a slightly nervous attempt to defuse the situation, “Sober man wins. Drunkard goes home happy but empty handed nonetheless.”

“Define drunk,” Karl replies.

I’ve amused him yet again. It’s true. The cheese does stand alone. I’m the jester here and it’s a part I’m willing to play to walk away from this showdown. I’m not sure I can even spell ‘drunk’ at this point. My mind’s elsewhere – mainly on self preservation.

“How good’s your imagination?” I tease, forcing a reluctant half smile to my cheeks.

“Better than my bourbon,” he admits.

“Drugs are just a sideline,” Maryilla explains, “The real focus is on weapons.”

“I’ll bite,” I reason, my hand slowly sneaking down into my coat pocket, not for my gun but for the switchblade I brought along just in case, “What weapons?”

“In Iraq,” Maryilla hypothesizes, but in a tone that leads me to believe she’s been doing some extracurricular home schooling just for the occasion.

My suspicions get confirmed a moment later as Karl explains.

His consortium had been sneaking biological agents into an underground nuclear facility at the border between Iran and Iraq for nearly a decade. There ought to have been enough toxins amassed by now to decimate a few major cities in the U.S. and Europe, only a few of Osama’s boys became greedy and impatient in the meantime. A botched plan to kill millions in a more traditional way and the whole plan to hold the world hostage with the threat of making at least three quarters of it uninhabitable, while wiping out mass tracks of its population, and everything else officially went to hell. Just where the toxins ended up after troops started marching in remains a mystery to this day.

“Impressive, my dear,” Karl admits.
“My father did not raise fools,” Maryilla tells him, “You used the list as blackmail. Invested the monies from payments made into the Asian drug trade; then liquidated the overhead to build your arsenal in the Middle East.”

“A pity you know so much,” Karl suggests, his brow narrowing as he cocks his trigger, “Because it’s going to cost you.”

Maryilla lets out with a devil-may-care grin of utter satisfaction.

“I’m dead already. I have been for years.”

Maybe she is among the walking dead, I reason to myself as the first shots ring out, only I wasn’t planning on an English funeral.

Out comes my switchblade, quick and slipped into the palm of my hand, taking fair aim and letting Karl have it in his shoulder blade. His grip loosens on the gun but not before he manages to hit Maryilla in the jaw. I catch the back spray from the gaping hole in her cheek. The surrey driver gets it next, from Sergei this time, but not before he pops off a couple of rounds at random. I feel a pinch, but don’t immediately realize I’ve been hit. Reeling in place, I see Karl regain the grip on his piece with his good hand, pointing directly and firing into my chest.

The rest is in slo mo. I feel loose, hot and sweaty. Dizzy, but not so out of it that I can’t find my hand suddenly on the gun in my pocket and out before you can blink an eye. I’m not sure what I’m thinking, but my hand seems to have a life and will of its own. It’s like I’m watching it defend me.

I fire into Karl, hitting him in the throat, before pumping at least four slugs into Sergei – chest wounds mostly, though as I buckle and fold at the knee like a deflated squeeze box I think I catch myself unloading a round or two into the surrey driver’s unconscious body.

It’s only then that I realize I’m starting to cough up blood. I glance downward at myself and notice I’ve a fairly large patch of blood covering my chest. Tearing at the buttons on my shirt, I come across the sight of two puncture wounds just below my breast bone; feel hotter and sweatier than I ought to, as the last gasps of consciousness seep from my body.

THE END…

…not quite, though Eddie Mars will remain on hiatus until April 1, 2009.

Thanks to all for keeping up with this series.

@Nick Zegarac 2009 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 47TH: INVINCIBLE & GODLIKE

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.

Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.

For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made. This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…


ADVENTURE THE 47th: INVINCIBLE & GODLIKE

“Kill one man and you are a murderer.
Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror.
Kill them all and you are a god.”

- Jean Rostand

It’s odd, but I feel as though Maryilla and I leave Harrods under a cloud of suspicion. Outside it’s dark and damp, my two least favorite climate conditions. A light rain/snow mix makes for an even less appealing first meet to discuss business, but we make out alright just a few blocks east, inside a dimly lit local watering hole. It’s packed, mostly with young trend-setters.

You can feel the electricity of somebody else’s old money bouncing million dollar trust funds off the walls, covered in rare photos of famous people and politicos in a sort of “George Washington slept here” pop-u-tard iconography.

Personally, I don’t mind old people with old money. They’ve earned the privilege to be arrogant, though usually, they’re not. What I can’t abide are their heirs, who think nothing of running the gamut with a sense of entitlement that positively reeks of pomposity.

Most of tonight’s crowd fall under what I would classify as the ‘rich dummy’ category; bored youngsters who have no idea of how a dollar is made but who have all become experts on how more than a few ought to be spent without so much as a single common thought or concerted care for those that made them the spoiled rotten idiot class they currently occupy.

“Over here,” Maryilla calls out amidst the crowd.

We squeeze into a two seat booth facing a large window overlooking Piccadilly. Outside Mother Nature is battling over a decision to dump autumn rain or winter ice water over the heads of these mere mortals.

Inside, the cozy warmth of the place has a mild damp stench all but eclipsed by a pair of overly pancake-plastered waitresses desperately trying to conceal their age and the fact that tonight’s crowd has gotten away from them. We’re only in our seats a moment when one of them sails by our table with a half smile and a pair of menus tossed haphazardly down on the table between us.

Another time/another place and I could have taken her around the world on that hard slick surface then and there; teach the gold digger set how it’s done when all you got is already in your pants and it’s enough to get the job done without breaking the bank. I’m pretty sure she’d a liked it too. Only tonight, I’m not in the mood for love or games or even cocktails. There must be something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just getting old.

“Is she dead?” Maryilla suddenly blurts out, leaning across the table and taking my left hand in hers; her eyes locking like a pair of needy children who have lost their parents at the supermarket.

I’m taken aback by her question, but know instinctively who she’s referring to.

“Yes,” I tell her.

She seems suddenly disinterested and doesn’t ask me how it happened or why? Maybe she doesn’t care. But somehow I think she might, so I go on.

“We were in the Himalayas…and they…”

I find myself developing an uncharacteristic paternal instinct and pull back from the urge to continue. After all, this kid’s been out in the world without my concern or my help for practically as long as she’s been born; maybe longer. The Don strikes me as a guy who laid his lineage with a distinct plan of action for the future of his family business.

“And Alverez?” Maryilla inquires.

“On his back at the hospital,” I confirm, “We were sabotaged at Heathrow but he took care of it.”

“And then?”

“Another attempt at the Dorchester yesterday morning.”

Maryilla releases my hand. Her eyes go shark dead as she shakes her head with disdain-soaked disapproval for the model of efficiency behind all this clever destructiveness.

“They don’t give up, do they?”

“Should they?” I reason, “I mean, we’re not. Or haven’t. And why? What’s it all for? I’ve been asking myself almost from the get go and I haven’t come up with too many clever answers to keep me going.”

“And yet you have,” Maryilla reasons.

I’m suddenly drawn to the purpose of my own futility. It makes no sense. Except now there’s too big a price on my head that someone else has marked down to ‘clearance.’ I’ll die alright. Someday. But if I have any say in the matter, it’s going to be at one-o-five and in my own damn bed with a good bottle of vintage Scotch on the night table by my side.


Just who are they?” I ask.

One of the dimwitted shot glass jockeys returns with her pad and pencil to take our order.

“I’m not hungry,” I explain.

“I am,” Maryilla admits.

Without hesitation, she orders; linguini for two and a bottle of fairly good wine. Our waitress leaves to fetch our order and a couple of glasses.

“You interest me, Mr. Mars,” Maryilla continues.

The feeling’s mutual, but I’ll never tell.

“I’m glad to see I haven’t lost my touch.”

I scan the room for a few brief moments before suddenly noticing the reflection of a man in his rain soaked trench coat staring at us through the window. I turn to Maryilla to suggest we skip dinner. But when I turn back again, at a moment’s glance, both the man and his reflection have disappeared.

“I’ll be back,” Maryilla suggests, rising from her seat, her scissor legs in clinging nylon effortlessly slipping past the cluttered assortment of crowded tables on her way to the loo.

I decide to telephone the hospital on my cell and check up on the Don’s condition. But there’s no reply and with each passing moment that Maryilla remains indisposed I get more antsy and impatient about wasting my time over a plate of hot noodles.

A few more glances around the place and through the window do not yield any more casual glimpses of the mysterious stranger. I begin to second guess my initial hunch. Maybe he wasn’t looking at us after all. Maybe he was after some other hard case; a jilted lover perhaps, or some married gal pal who’s been sparking his fancy in between luncheons with the man who put a ring on her finger and chairing the PTA. Or maybe he was just reading the half lit menu posted on the outside wall and thinking how overpriced living in London had become.

You know, it’s a terrible thing to leave a man alone with his imagination. Especially living in the kind of conspiracy soup I’ve been subjected to. The possibilities are endless. Then again, wasn’t it Hitchcock who said that just by walking down the street you could see a sadist, a rapist and a murderer?

I get a break from my thoughts. Maryilla returns and the food arrives. Both smell pretty good, but the linguini appeals more to my sense of hunger this time around.

Our waitress is one cold fish. She gives a fairly good Marcel Marceau, all visual exposition without so much as a word, laying flatware and cutlery and then our food with a ‘self-serve’ pepper mill and parmesan cheese dispenser between us, before vanishing into the crowd once more.

After she’s disappeared into the kitchen, I get an immediate directive from Maryilla. Foreplay is over.

“There is a man in Tumbridge,” she begins.

“Good for him,” I wax back while diving into my linguini, “There’s also one sitting across from you right now. Which do you think would rather enjoy your company?”

“His name is Jeffrey Lynn-Montague,” Maryilla continues.

“What’s it to me what his name is?”

“I want you to kill him.”

Even as smooth as it is, the last string of linguini goes down like a lump of dense clay.

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because Lynn-Montague is Das Englander.”

The name’s familiar only I can’t quite place the face. No one can. Das Englander is either a myth or a joke. Either way he doesn’t get my vote of interest any more than Obama did and neither does all this espionage small talk.

“I suggest you concentrate on the food,” I reply, washing down a bit of wine to help the blush sauce along.

“I didn’t come for food,” Maryilla says.

She’s different somehow, as though some miraculous ‘invasion of the body snatchers’ identity conversion took hold in the crapper. I don’t do schizophrenia. I won’t do schizophrenic chicks. Perhaps it was just a difficult stool.

“Then why order dinner?” I suggest.

“Because it’s not quite so obvious,” Maryilla explains.

“It will be if you don’t eat it,” I reason, “Besides, I never make love or war on an empty stomach.”

There’s a long silent pause between us. I return my attentions to my plate with no intension of leaving until I’ve cleared as much away as I can.

A moment later I observe that the knife and fork on Maryilla’s end are busily cutting into her plate of noodles.

She’s good a decisions, or thinks she is and that gives her the air of confidence to carry on as though we’re very much an item. A moment later I feel the slight tap of her shoed toe dig into my calf from under the table as she uncrosses her legs.

“Sorry.”

“Not yet,” I reason, “But the night’s still young.”

We eat in silence – never a good sign, but a more pleasant one than indulging in shop talk on how to commit the perfect murder. After our plates are nearly cleaned, I get the sense that Maryilla’s patience is wearing thin. I decide to throw her a bone.

“Where does Lynn-Montague live?”

Her eyes sparkle to life. Death excites her. Now, that’s kinky.

“On a country estate,” Maryilla whispers.

“Very nice,” I reason with a polite smile, “But don’t country estates grow out here like warts on a toad?”

“We’ll go there tomorrow,” Maryilla explains.

I nearly spill my wine.

“We?”

“I’m going with you.”

Now, this is a wrinkle I didn’t expect and one that I’m not particularly happy about.

“Why?” I ask.

“I have my reasons.”

“Then permit me mine for saying ‘no’,” I add, wiping my lips with the cloth napkin before summoning the waitress over to pay.

Maryilla reaches for the bill first.

“This is my affair,” she tells me, handing a credit card to the waitress who leaves us yet again without uttering a single syllable.

“You’re a fairly bossy girl,” I explain, the twinkle in my eye belying the more direct point of my statement.

“I like to be in control,” admits Maryilla.

“That’s a pity,” I reply, my manner turning instantly cold, “Because I don’t do personal favors. This isn’t request night. If you’re so damn needy for a stiff one, kill Lynn-Montague yourself. No doubt he wouldn’t be the first man you ‘controlled’ that way.”

The waitress returns with Maryilla’s card and the bill requiring her signature. She signs, right on the dotted line; the pressure point of the ballpoint nearly going through the paper. Tense little vixen, isn’t she, I reason to myself. She’s not bad when the balls are in her court, but when the guy gets a mind to sink his own grand slam she folds like a novice rather than a pro. I’ve made my point and it’s a good thing too – because the meal’s at an end and so are my patience.

“Well,” I suggest, reaching for my coat, “I’d like to say it’s been memorable. Maybe it has. I won’t go so far as saying it was a pleasure, because it wasn’t. If you ever get the urge to plug somebody else there’s probably a whole list of career criminals you could choose from to get the job done. Too bad I don’t happen to be one of them. Good night.”

I don’t give Maryilla an opportunity to respond. What for? She’s become a one hit wonder whose tune is tired and played out. If this were American Bandstand I’d have to give her a two because I couldn’t dance to it.

. . .

I return to the hospital at around eleven, well after closing time. There’s something hauntingly unsettled in these semi-darkened corridors; as though all the ghosts of those who died in less than a state of grace or while under the knife have returned to make trouble for the remaining patients still clinging to life.

I slip past the night nurse on duty and into the Don’s room. Only he isn’t there. At first I think I have the wrong room, so I shadow my way into the adjoining wards, careful not to disturb the sleeping patients.

But I accidentally walk in on an elderly woman with oxygen tubes wrapped around her head, attempting to mount her hospital bed in an ill-fitting Johnny shirt with too much gap in back after a bathroom break. Brother, if that doesn’t kill your interest in women in general, nothing will.

“Oh,” the woman calls out, “Young man. Will you help me?”

I don’t want to, but do. After she’s up and tucked beneath the sheets, she thanks me profusely in the kindly and overly appreciative way a fellow human being does when they know they’ve become an obsolete relic to the rest of the world.

“They took me kidney out,” she explains.

“That’s too bad,” I admit.

“Yep,” the woman reasons, “And now I’m constantly running to the shed like a race horse.”

“At least you won the Grand National this time,” I reason, fluffing the old woman’s pillow before slowly backing away and right into the night nurse who has already begun her rounds.

“What are you doing here?!” she asks me, her stern note of amazement coupled with a decidedly hideous visage and an intense scowl that could stop a coal barge.

Where the notion derived that all nurses are sexy is beyond me. This one’s a poster child for the Robert Lewis Stevenson Award for bestiality.

“I just came to check up on an old friend,” I reason.

“Don’t you yell at him,” the old woman chimes in, “He was here to help me back into me bed. Where were you? I rang three times.”

“And here I am,” the nurse reasons in a tone more kindly and professional as she turns her attentions to the patient, leaving her wrath for me in a nearby bedpan, no doubt from whence it will spray up if I don’t get the hell out right now.

I duck into the hallway unnoticed and make my way to the nurse’s station. I’ve only a few moments before Dracula’s daughter returns for a fresh pint – and I don’t mean ‘of Guinness’. I wish I had been born a Catholic. At least then there’d be a crucifix hanging around my neck for protection.

I reach back behind the high counter ledge and pull up the daily log. Only I suddenly realize that according to hospital records the Don was never a guest of this place. I check the previous day’s log. It’s a blank too.

I’m more angry than perplexed and frankly, not amused. My first thought is to haul short fat and ugly on the carpet for some answers. I think better of that idea, particularly as I reach into my left coat pocket for a cigarette and discover a loose slip of paper floating inside that I don’t remember putting there in the first place.

It’s a thin sheet from a memo pad with the name of Harrod’s stenciled in the upper right corner. Hand written in some fairly good penmanship is an address; 1719 Kenton Lane. ‘Oh well’, I reason, tucking the slip back into my pocket, ‘Misery loves…’

. . .

I hail a taxi outside the hospital. The rain’s turned entirely to snow and coming down like a hailstorm of Jerry’s bombs during the blitz. My cabby’s not talkative but he’s damn good at his job. I’ve never felt so many quick maneuvers through heavy traffic without dinging a single bumper. This guy ought to have been driving NASCAR. Eleven city blocks later I find myself at the foot of 1719 Kenton Lane; a cozy townhouse backing onto the picturesque silver meadows of Regent’s Park.

Except for the dim flicker through heavy frosted glass in the front door, the place looks all closed up for the night. The sky and my mood match. They’re both gray.

I ring the bell, expecting a familiar face to open the door. It does, only it’s one that’s less familiar than I thought. In fact, it takes me a few moments to register those dull, but beady eyes. My focus shifts to a nearby coat rack just beyond the front door where a sopping wet trench hangs limp, a small puddle of dirty water collected on the floor below.

The man at the window. Perhaps he’s just come to dinner or merely stepped in from the cold, but it’s him. He gives me a half smile. Strange – but it doesn’t seem sinister. So, I suck in my suspicions and step inside.

It’s a cozy place, probably older than the last century, but done over in contemporary hues and with a woman’s touch. Pale satin striped wallpaper lines the foyer – silvery purple and mint green, complimented by some out of season lilies in a tall vase at the end of a short table. A steep set of stairs rise almost immediately to the second floor, done over in a soft maple finish.

“Expected?” I ask the man at the door.

He nods politely but doesn’t say a word; taking my coat and directing me upstairs. I’m thinking that if this goes on, Beady Eye can make himself the nice ham in a sandwich of two over the hill waitresses who haven’t seen male flesh in well over a decade.

From the second floor landing, my silent guide points to a room at the end of the hall, the door half open, a soft yellowish glow radiating through the slit with all the warmth of a sunny spring morn. Inside, I find what I expect and another surprise to match the one downstairs.

The Don’s lying comfortably asleep in the center of a massive four poster cherry bed, kept warm by a silky periwinkle comforter and some expensive looking shams; kept alive by a drip of something plugged into his left arm. Maryilla is seated at his bedside.

I can’t swear it, but I believe she’s been shedding a few wet ones over the weakened state of her father. A creaky floorboard under my left foot alerts her to my presence. She looks up; her eyes suddenly soulless, her face instantly angular with deep panged lines of bitterness and anger – as though I’ve just parted the curtain on a very steamy shower she had been enjoying in private.

“Hello angel,” I say quietly, “You’re just full of surprises tonight. Murder she wrote and now this hocus-pocus with daddy. Suppose you leave the healing to the professionals. You’re hands weren’t meant to Florence Nightingale.”

She rises like a delectable female serpent, gliding in silent approach across the wooden floor. Funny, how nothing creaks under her feet. When she’s within earshot, Maryilla leans into my space, her lips so close to my ear.

“Outside,” she whispers, exiting the room.

I follow, but only for a few feet. Maryilla closes the door to the Don’s bedroom, folding her hands before an ample bosom in such a way that augments every little detail of that perfect cleavage.

“You follow directions well,” she says.

I don’t go for the distinct tone of condescension in her voice.

“I can read,” I tell her, “But that’s as far as it goes. Besides, you’ve already one lapdog downstairs. How many does the well appointed bitch need?”

“Sergei’s been with me a long time,” Maryilla explains.

“Define long,” I reason, “Or aren’t you the kind that kisses and tells.”

Maryilla smiles. She’s read my inferences all wrong. I haven’t the jealous nature and I’m not into mutts. Where the night takes us from here isn’t open for discussion. I’ve come for answers. I won’t for anything or anyone else.

THE END?

Eddie Mars will return in his next adventure:
The Bleak Bleak Winter
on January 6th, 2009.

@Nick Zegarac 2008 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 46TH: A FOGGY DAY AND NIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.

Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.

For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made. This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…

ADVENTURE THE 46th:
A FOGGY DAY AND NIGHT
IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

“Edward?” I hear a voice call me by my Christian name, “Where are you, Edward?”

It sounds so familiar, so inviting, and yet I can’t place it anywhere in my memory. How strange to be tempted in a dream; to imagine a moment never lived or find yourself as real as the rain, caught in the taste of blood slowly oozing from a split lip.

Who is it? I seem to be asking that question as I wander like a fool, a candle in one hand, through some dark and undistinguished hollow. It’s black, so black. And noiseless. Or am I really there at all.

My mouth is dry. My lips are cracked. I seem to be an old man with one foot on a very slippery precipice leading to the great beyond. Am I dead? If so, I wish this angel of mercy would reveal herself now and not hide in the recesses of my mind’s eye where only her soft turn-of-the-last-century trill beckons, like the methodic pace of a metronome. Tick, tick, tick, tick…

I awaken to an unnerving silence at the Dorchester the next morning. I suppose if I were philosophical I’d define that nothingness simply as my own anguished and hollow soul crying out for validation. Then again, I’m not so introspective or transcendental – at least, not at the dawn’s early light. It takes more than a few stiff ones to get me to the point where my mind runs away with my head.

No – more than likely I finally drifted into that deep coma-like REM that ought to have overtaken me immediately after my bath, but didn’t come for me until sometime around five a.m. Perhaps it was the realization that I was bedding down for the night with a guy who didn’t think twice about performing homemade tracheotomies – not exactly conducive to my slumber.

True, the Don hadn’t tried that trick on me…yet. But I wasn’t about to let him try either. That’s why I slept with the sharp metal letter opener I found inside the roll top writing desk under my pillow. If I was going to safe then he sure as hell was the one to be sorry.

As it happened, the Don slept like a baby with a blow torch. It was still ‘lights out’ and on his stomach for the happy hole maker, more beat than beaten and making sounds like a plumber’s van on cobblestone.

Returning the opener to its rightful spot, and feeling somewhat ridiculous about taking it in the first place, I decided to lather up for a quick shave. Half way through this daily ritual, with the subtle sound of a key turning in the front lock, I wished I had kept it at my side.

“Yes?” I call out, cream faced, as though I were a pug-ugly frothing over some fattish chorus girl from the West End follies, “Who is it?”

I’m greeted by a Teutonic valet who is just as surprised to see me come around the corner dipped in foam from ear to chin as I am to catch a glimpse of his chest full of shiny gold buttons – each meticulously polished so that I can see my reflection multiplied.

“Oh…I beg your pardon, sir,” he tells me, “…I was wondering what you might like for breakfast?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of room service taking such a concerted interest in hotel guests. Then again, it’s one of the few times I’ve ever stayed at a hotel where they don’t rent the rooms by the hour.

“How did you know we were up?” I ask my attentive servant.

He looks like something out of an Alan Mowbray movie where the butler; crisp and impeccable - the very model of ‘English service’.

“The rooms are equipped with motion sensors that alert us when to come up and make inquiries,” the valet informs, “All special guests of the hotel are attended to in this manner.”

“Really?” I say with a hint of curiosity, “…and all this time I thought an Englishman was never attended to at breakfast.”

The valet stiffens his resolve for a moment.

“Are you English, sir?” he asks.

“Not in so many words,” I shoot back.

“Well, there you are then…” the valet concurs, “Besides, even if you were, we wouldn’t hold it against you.”

There’s something too slippery about his barb, too glycerin in his smile that I don’t like. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but if I could, I know I’d have to amputate at the knuckle.

“Oh,” I say, letting my nerves relax, “Well, I don’t know exactly what I want. I mean, I haven’t seen the menu yet. Any recommendations?”

“Black coffee and fresh figs are a specialty,” the valet suggests as I suddenly drip a big wad of cream from my chin onto the pristine carpet at my bare feet.

“Damn!”

“Allow me, sir,” the valet continues, removing a small bottle of what appears to be stain remover from his vest pocket and then a clean hanky from his pants pocket.

Be prepared! Good motto. And this guy means it too. I observe as he tidies up the creamy dollop curdling on the carpet, but feel more of the same getting ready to drop off my cheeks. I hurry back into the washroom to finish the job and hear the sound of the valet’s light quick heels hit the tile floor close behind a few moments later.

“About those figs,” I say, toweling off, “I’m not exactly a fig sort’a guy. I mean I left my leaf at home. Besides, pancakes were always more my style. You know what I mean?”

“Very good, sir,” the valet agrees, “…and for the other gentleman?”

“Better give him the figs,” I reply, “He’s made for ‘em. But give me thirty or so before you haul all that up. I want to run down to the lobby for a pack of luckies.”

“Luckies, sir?”

I’ve confused him with my lingo.

“You boys over here call ‘em ‘fags’,” I clarify, “Only I’ve never been comfortable smokin’ by that brand.”

“We also call them cigarettes,” the valet corrects with a coy grin, “We’re very progressive at the Dorchester.”

Another condescension that strikes a sudden sour chord I don’t much feel like sweetening.

“Well, suppose you progress to the kitchen for those figs and flapjacks and come back when I tell you.”

“Yes sir.”

And just like that, he’s gone, I’d say with a puff of smoke and a smell of sulfur, only I know he’ll be back and soon enough.

. . .

As I pass the Don’s room I take a peek inside. He’s still out cold.

I dress quickly and then swing by our private terrace, throwing open the French doors to breathe in a thick morning dew. Looking over the balcony, there’s a haze clinging to everything just a few floors below; the street quietly veiled by a nondescript stubborn fog that refuses to burn off. London…what can I tell you?

Actually, I haven’t had a cigarette in six years. No need to tell Mr. Fancy Pants that. I just wanted to run downstairs for a copy of the morning paper and read what else they’re saying about the murder at Heathrow.

My descent by elevator is interrupted on the sixth floor with the boarding of a happy couple obviously on their honeymoon.

She’s generic beauty – firm in all the right places but with the meter running on just how many good years are left. The flounce and bow tucked just under her chin is stiffly perfect.

He’s typical runway masculinity; square jaw and shoulders, a thick shock of pomade-slathered hair atop a strong forehead and that ‘I’m too sexy – and I know it’ cock of the walk mentality that says ‘the world is definitely mine!’

Apart, they belong in a Sears catalogue advertising cheap clothes made in China. Together, they’re flirtatiously insufferable and heavily tinted by the charged afterglow of morning sex.

Eyeing me a moment with minor curiosity, the woman turns to her beloved and informs him that the stain of her lipstick is still lightly smudged across his cheek. He raises his hand to wipe it off, but at the last minute she beats him to it with a Kleenex pulled from her purse; slowly caressing his cheek with her index and middle fingers and looking as though she could take him once more around the world in this cramped space – if only it were not for the annoying stranger standing by.

When the doors open onto the lobby I have to excuse myself to get past them.

“Sorry, mate,” the Rugby stud explains, getting out of my way.

I don’t reply but hear a distinct sigh and giggle from Cutsy-girl as the doors close behind me. I’m happy to be rid of them and I suppose the feeling is mutual. I have better things to do and they have each other.

Inside the lobby I notice a few more valets milling about, their chests of glistening silver casting sparkled high beams like Cleeg lights at a Hollywood premiere.

“Excuse me,” I ask a rather officious stuffed shirt working behind the front desk; his few strands of lengthy hair slicked back across his bald pate with enough grease to catch a few flies – if they’re even permitted inside the hotel.

“Where’s the closet news stand?”

“Across the street, sir,” I’m told, “But we can get whatever you wish.”

“That’s all right,” I reply, “I’d rather get a little exercise while I’m at it.”

“Very good, sir.”

Exiting the Dorchester, I cross the street to a small cluttered shop with a rather gaudy marquee marked ‘McFaddin’s.’ I take notice of the continued silence outside – sleepily interrupted by the faint, yet steadily increasing sounds of morning traffic. As it turns out McFaddin’s is a rather elaborate emporium of local and world newspapers. Somewhere between the cluttered discount bargain bin cast offs of Spice Girls and Charlotte Church CDs and cheaply reproduced ‘everything’ related to the Royals, I catch a glimpse of a massive wall of flesh poured into plaid from knickers to noggin and coming towards me.

“Help you today, sir?”

It talks, with a head the size of a basketball and lips that look as though they were caught in a bear trap.

“Morning paper,” I say.

“This way, sir.”

Here’s a guy – mid-sixties, Hitchcock build - who looks as though he’s spent his entire life behind the counter – and happily so, without a care or thought for bettering his station. He’s a spry old bugger too, hopping up a couple of steps and getting behind the counter, bending for fresh copy from an as yet untouched bundle resting on a shelf near the floor.

The Daily Mirror catches my eye first; an appropriately garish color shot of a body being wheeled out on a stretcher with a twin pair of bobbies flanking it in a vane attempt to block the view of blood soaking through the thin coroner’s cover sheet. The headline reads, ‘Headless at Heathrow.’ God bless the yellow journalist. He keeps everything just real enough for the masses to buy his lies.

“It’s a right old shame what some people will do to other people what’s on vacation,” the shop keeper tells me.

“How do you know he was on vacation?” I ask.

“I read the story inside,” the keeper replies while making change, “Seems he was a bloke of means from New Guinea and here on a bit of business with the British consulate…but I don’t think so.”

I’m intrigued.

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

The keeper points to the picture on The Mirror’s front cover, directing my attention to the victim’s two feet sticking out from under the sheet.

“Look at ‘em soles,” he tells me.

I do and they look fairly worn and scuffed.

“You don’t tell me that some millionaire businessman ain’t got what’s in his head for the price of a good pair of dress shoes,” the keeper explains, “Them’s the shoes of a workin’ man like me-self. And if I had ta guess, them’s also the shoes of a local place not too far of Tuttingham Court Ro’ where you and I can get just as good. I think I got me a pair at home just like ‘em. New Guinea, my old lady’s fanny!”

“You should have been a detective,” I suggest.

The old bugger smiles as though I’ve just made him an honorary of Scotland Yard.

“I had me daydreams same as everybody else, I did,” he tells me, “You can’t live on ‘em but you also can’t live without ‘em. Remember that, next time you feels as though the world’s been takin’ you for granted.”

I tell him that I will. It reminds me of an old proverb my Wisconsin grandmother used to say; If you want to see how the other half lives go to a great house and have yourself a good look around at the riches you’ll never own. But if you want real hospitality and a good home-cooked meal, invite yourself to the peasants’ hovel for the afternoon. They won’t have much to offer you but they’ll share everything they can just to make sure you don’t leave the place hungry.

McFaddin’s has filled me up with curiosity, even before my breakfast’s arrived inside the ‘great house.’

As I stroll back towards the hotel I take notice of my two elevator companions exiting the Dorchester. His hair isn’t quite as tidy as I remember. In fact, it’s been distinctly mussed. The starch in her flounce has gone out too and the bow’s missing. Only the afterglow on both from the neck up has intensified. Looks like I got off at just the right floor. Where they ‘got off’ is open for discussion.

The Dorchester’s doorman leans in to open the door of a waiting taxi for this gushing duo. He has the same chest of silver buttons – a hotel trademark. Only now I’m suddenly aware of a detail I didn’t even pick up on the first time around; silver buttons. Silver buttons! The valet that entered our room this morning was wearing a chest full of gold!

I run the rest of the way, bursting into the hotel lobby and attracting the attention of just about every staffer and guest inside as I dart toward the first available elevator. Going up doesn’t seem nearly as fast as going down and with each passing second I want to get out and ride the pulleys myself.

I find the door to our suite ajar and explode into the room with all the clumsy tenacity of an incompetent clod attempting to put his pants on after he’s just realized the parents of the high school girl he’s been diddling in their upstairs bedroom have come home.

I can smell the scent of fresh coffee and pancakes from the Don’s bedroom, grab an iron from the fireplace for self defense and rush inside to discover him on the floor and gasping for air. He’s been poisoned with breakfast.

I reach for the phone on the nightstand but suddenly realize I’m not alone in the room. The valet lunges at me from a corner I forgot to check. We wrestle for the iron in my hand.

Though he looks double my years he’s strong for his age and not as easily warded off by the few light taps I give him. He knocks me back into the French doors leading to the terrace. I trip on the raised patio cobblestone and tumble; lying on my back, iron being forced down and across my throat. The valet straddles me for leverage, but I remember a maneuver I learned in Dubai, a trick kick that topples him off to my side.

He reaches for a nearby planter and then a deck chair, tossing both in my direction with haphazard fear. I dodge, then attack with the fire iron firmly in tow. This time I get him good; first in the shoulder, then the head. He reels backward toward the balcony’s edge, dizziness overtaking him at the last moment.

I’m too late to grab hold of those shiny gold buttons and pull him back from the brink. Over he goes, screaming loudly and attracting the attention of just about every living soul within two blocks vicinity. His body snaps like a plastic Mattel toy on the roof of a waiting cab at street level.

I hurry back to the Don’s room - he’s still alive - and telephone hotel security and then an ambulance. For the first time since I’ve known him, the Don looks helpless. He gazes up with longing; like a little lost puppy I once saved from the dogcatcher when I was just eleven.

“It’ll be alright,” I whisper into his ear, raising the Don’s head off the floor with a pillow and stroking the few clammy beads of sweat that have collected across his brow.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I’m certainly going to pretend like I know what I’m talking about – for his sake as well as mine.

“It’ll be alright.”

. . .

It isn’t. Not entirely, anyway. Hotel security arrives first. The look of terror in their eyes is matched by that of the pomade goon from the front lobby who’s hoping to hell all this won’t debut in tomorrow’s Daily Mirror.

Everything moves with lightening speed.

“He’s been poisoned!” I say.

Two paramedics pump the Don full of something with a needle that looks more like a javelin. I watch as the Don’s body winces slightly – too weak to convulse or even flinch. Then comes Scotland Yard; officious and restraining and full of questions about the strange dried blood stain on the couch in our living area.

“A cut on the hand,” I explain.

Number One Detective coolly nods, then suddenly seizes both my hands in his, flipping palms up, then palms down. I pull away – not impressed by the strong arm tactics.

“Care to revise that explanation?” I’m asked.

“Not mine, you idiot,” I spit back, “My pal whose just been carted downtown with a quart of cyanide in his belly.”

We go a few verbal rounds, the detective and I. Why the Don? Why poison? Why the valet with the unhealthy shade of rouge, splayed on a westbound to nowhere.

“I was attacked,” I explain as the burly detective jots down notes in his pad.

“Why?”

That’s a popular question of his, but I don’t have any of the hit parade answers he’s looking for.

“You tell me.”

I’m ‘asked’ relatively nicely to come down to Scotland Yard. I suppose I better, to deflect from the Don and his wounds and see if I can’t think of some plausible fiction to square it all away for the bobbies – at least until I can do as much for myself.

. . .

There’s not much difference between an interrogation room at Scotland Yard and the ones I’m used to back home – except that this one’s cleaner, newer and more comforting in a strange way. No high key ‘where were you on the night of the fifth’ lighting or ‘good cop/bad cop’ routines to make the tap dance palpably obnoxious. Even the chair I’m asked to sit in is cushioned and fairly comfortable. I could take a nap in it if I weren’t so charged up like a battery with only one transistor.

Burly Dick takes his seat at one end of a rather smartly laid out desk, removing a pad of paper and a tape recorder before beginning with more questioning.

“Now then, what is your name?”

“What’s yours?” I fire back.

“I am Det. Richard Burlingame,” he tells me.

“I’m Det. Eddy Mars,” I reason, adding to detour to the fact that my practice is private, “…from the good ol’ U.S. of ‘A’.”

I seem to have garnered instant respect with that one line. Det. Burlingame reaches across the desk and shakes my hand.

“How do you do?”

“I’ve been better,” I admit.

“Yes,” Burlingame agrees, “…and who is the other man in your room?”

“A friend. Is he going to be all right?”

Burlingame nods.

“I spoke to the hospital before coming in here to talk to you,” he explains, “Arsenic but not enough to kill. It’s a good thing he didn’t finish breakfast or it might have finished him.”

There’s a slight pause and then an awkward segue.

“Oh,” Burlingame adds, “how about you? Would you like some coffee?”

“I’ve sort’a lost my appetite,” I reason.

Burlingame twitches a clumsy half smile, as though he sympathizes, before resuming his interrogation.

“Are you here on a case?”

“No.”

“And who was the man you threw from the balcony at the Dorchester?”

I hate interrogations. They’re full of loaded questions to which – nine times out of ten – the accused doesn’t even know the answer.

“You tell me,” I reason, “A guy breaks into our suite with enough poison to kill a small pony. Then he takes a poker, a potted plant and a lawn chair to my head before jack knifing to his big finish. If he’s Dorchester staff, I’d say they need better employee pre-screening and if he’s not, I’d like to know how an imposter gained that much high level security access to their kitchen and key room.”

“Are you thinking of suing?” Burlingame asks with a slight note of concern.

“No,” I shoot back, “I’m thinking of applying for his job and the employee discount on poisoned figs.”

There’s a big sigh from Burlingame. He’s tired of me already and I haven’t even warmed up yet.

“No one knows who he is,” Burlingame informs me, “He had no identification on his person and none of the hotel staff remember seeing him before today. But this sort of thing does not happen at the Dorchester!”

“No,” I add, “Only in Heathrow men’s rooms.”

I’ve insulted English law and propriety and my slum prudery comes back on me ten fold.

“We’re decidedly different, Mr. Mars,” Det. Burlingame tells me. “As an Englishman, I am appalled by the murder at Heathrow and will do my utmost to uncover the identity of the killer. However, if I had to make a blind deduction, I’d say that the body at Heathrow tends to fit in rather nicely with what you Americans treasure as your Wild West mentality.”

“I didn’t kill your vic’” I say, knowing too well who did.

“No one is suggesting that you did,” Burlingame explains, “But you are, at the very least and in some way responsible for the death of an unarmed man at the Dorchester Hotel. Now, we can debate the extent to which English law will deal with your actions all day long. However, if you want to see your friend at the hospital before close of business today, then I would suggest you cooperate as much as possible now or I will detain you indefinitely.”

He has me over a barrel and I know it. Okay, so we’ll play by Queensbury Rules. Yikes and tally-ho…but with all the good and juicy bits quietly left in the mushroom patch out back.

. . .

I get to the hospital around five p.m. By then I’ve had all I want of Burlingame and English law and psychotic nobodies popping out of pancakes Barbara like Mary Poppins on crack.

I’m tired. I’m hungry and I’m not in a very good mood. Great starters – all three!

The nurse at the front desk, a portly ol’ broad shaped like a half deflated football, looks me over for good measure. I’ll bet she hasn’t seen a real man since Churchill left office.

“I get that a lot, angel,” I say, giving her the same roving eye she’s offering me until I suddenly realize that her left one just lazes about like a poor-fitting aggie.

…must be glass. I try and stop myself from wondering what sort of bloke poked her for fun on a Saturday night and then just poked her till she lost it, but it’s too late. I’ve painted a mental portrait of an act nobody should have to envision without a few stiff ones to back it up.

“What room?” the old rum pot asks, apparently oblivious to my insinuations.

“The one where they brought in the guy from the Dorchester earlier today,” I tell her.

Her dead eye points toward the ceiling while the other searches for a room number in the admission’s log.

“Six-nineteen,” she tells me, leaning over her desk and pointing down the hall, “Through those doors and to your left.”

. . .

I find the Don groggy; in and out like a Chinese light bulb that should have been made in Taiwan. He’s been pumped full of something to keep him happy, or rather to keep the staff happy. I shake him gently and he comes to, slowly realizing who I am and where we are.

“You must go to Harrods,” he mutters, his speech thick and slow.

“Thanks,” I reply, thinking the stuff’s clearly gone to his head, “But their White Sale is over and it’s too early to start my Christmas shopping.”

In an instant, the Don’s body convulses – angular gyrations and unnatural twists of the neck that remind me of something out of The Exorcist. His arms burst forth from under the carefully tucked bed sheet, grabbing me by my lapels.

“Listen!” he sputters, half gurgle/half hiss, “Listen to me!”

“Okay!” I say, prying the Don’s hands free and slowly lowering him back into his pillow.

“Harrods,” the Don mutters, “Lower floor, past the mezzanine. Maryilla Vega. Maryilla Vega.”

The Don fades out, his wrinkled brow a creviced fortress of clammy beaded sweat, his mouth loosely gaping in crooked repose as his body goes limp.

. . .

I hate the medical profession. They call it a science but actually it’s an experiment and we’re the lab rats. They try a remedy and if it doesn’t work they keep on trying until they get it right – or wrong and you’re stuck with a toe tag and unexplained ‘cause of death’ that gets quietly swept under the rug. Along the way, they screw with your meds, vitals and livelihood and in the end there’s no guarantee that what they offer you is anything better than what you’d find in a cupboard of ‘Ma Winchell’s’ Home Remedies.

“Say, what the hell did you give my friend in there?” I ask the glassy-eyed gal at the nurse’s desk.

“A mild sedative,” she tells me.

“Mild, my ass!” I shoot back, “He’s out of his head – and not by choice.”

“If it’s what the doctor prescribed…” she begins.

I’ve had enough.

“If that’s what the doctor prescribed,” I interrupt, “then I want a second opinion and the name of the college that quack graduated from. My pal has a flesh wound; not stage four mesothelioma.”

“You’ll have to take that up with his physician,” the nurse replies curtly.

“And don’t think I won’t” I tell her, “Only I’m going out, but when I get back my friend had better be lucid enough to count to ten and get the same number twice or baby, I’ll strap you down with a bit of the same until both your eyes are pointing in the same direction!”

I leave her to her duties – such as they are – and to contemplate the pluses and minuses of that experiment.

. . .

It’s raining – again - still. Doesn’t it ever do anything else around here? Dumb question. Guess not.

I tuck the collar of my trench up and around my ears to block out the chill of early evening air and make my way to Harrods. Even if I knew where I was going, which I don’t, it isn’t hard to find – an elegant ancient structure cheapened by the millions of electric lights outlining its front façade. Commerce meets culture. I don’t have to tell you which one won.

Inside, stately elegance meets a bizarre mishmash of commercialism run amuck. There’s a cozy other worldly, other timely feel to the place. You could spend days tooling around its tight, immaculate corridors and never hit the same corner twice.

I can’t say much for the staff. I wander for a good twenty minutes through a dense crowd before some sales girl catches my eye.

“May I be of some assistance, sir?” she asks, her Hindi accent soft and beguiling.

Another time, another place and she could have done more than assist. She could have partaken. But now I haven’t the time or even the inclination. Actually, strike that last part. I’m always inclined.

“Maryilla Vega,” I say, observing as one thick brown brow rising with great curiosity.

“Whom shall I say is calling?” the girl replies.

“A friend.”

I’m not exactly certain that’s true, but I’m sure I’ll find out in short order.

“One moment, please,” the girl says, backing slowly into the crowd, “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I won’t, angel,” I tell her, leaning back on a display case and waiting for what comes next.

The ‘what’ is actually a ‘who’ – a tall, gaunt Asian gent bumped out in his businessman’s finery with a lot of shoulder pad.

At first I don’t think he’s for me, but as his head rises about the crowd like a balloon, it’s continued trajectory matches my own. I realize he’s someone who’s taken an interest in my inquiry.

“May I be of some assistance?”

Same old question.

“Not unless you’ve eaten Maryilla Vega for breakfast and are ready to puke her out for me right now.”

I’ll say this for the guy. He can take an insult without so much as a ripple of criticism showing.

“I’m afraid…” he begins.

“No,” I interrupt, “I’m afraid I don’t have time for games. Now it’s alright if you want to play ‘guess who I am?’ until Easter, only the fella who sent me here isn’t doing so hot inside his hospital room right now. He came here to see Maryilla Vega and that’s exactly who I’ve come to see on his behalf. Either you produce her like the Jolly Rancher – with kisses – or just get the hell out of my way. Because time is of the essence and it’s running out!”

“Will the Don survive?”

Well, good for him. He has the same playbook and isn’t afraid to run through the roster.

“That remains to be seen,” I reply.

I’m summoned with a polite hand to follow my lanky guide down a couple flights of stairs, past the memorial placard and framed photo tribute to Dodi and Princess Di, around a few more corners to a small mahogany door marked ‘Staff Only.’

A light tap on the door and a very deep female voice calls from within – “Come in.”

The door swings open and inside I find the last person I ever expected to see again – Migrya Alverez. Or is it?

When last I recall, some happy-go-stupid was stuffing her bullet pierced corpse into a furnace. I suppose I wear my general shock and surprise too freely.

“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Maryilla tells me.

Her voice is different; like a Bacall knock-off with more timber than enticement.

“Maybe,” I explain.

I pause. No sense in letting the others in on what appears to be our shared little secret.

Maryilla waves my guide away and without turning I can hear his steps softly retreat on the tile floor and then the door slowly close behind me.

After gesturing for me to take a chair, Maryilla leans back into the soft leather recliner behind her desk, rubbing a pair of supple nylon legs that extend into eternity like a very enticing cricket about to sing me a sonnet.

She doesn’t miss a trick and she knows it. Two years earlier and I might have been dumb enough to buy what she’s selling. Only her stock’s gone just as low as the rest of ‘em – but especially for me. I’m not the same forgiving jackass I was.

“How are you on your feet?” Maryilla asks, reaching to the left and back of her to a portable CD player with two small speakers poised in opposite directions.

“Oh, I don’t know. Pretty good, I suppose,” I say, “But you’re slipping.”

Maryilla raises a curious, but playful brow.

“And how’s that?”

“Don’t you wanna know how I am, off of ‘em?”

Maryilla smiles.

“At last,” she declares, rather loudly and pronounced, her soft index finger reaching for the play button on the CD player, “A man who understands English!”

“Oh, I speak in tongues,” I tell her, “Forked and otherwise.”

With that bit of double entendre the play button is clicked. The room suddenly fills with a rather heavy bass noise that drowns out any other ambience in the room. It’s like a Stone’s rock concert in here. I can’t get no satisfaction!

Maryilla leans across her desk, her mood suddenly changed from tease to tense.

“Follow me,” she says, without the slightest hint of sexual ennui.

I’m glad. Another notch I don’t need, but I just might be able to add this Brit to my butterfly collection.

THE END…

…not quite. Eddie Mars will return on Dec. 1, 2008 in his next adventure.
@Nick Zegarac 2008 (all rights reserved).

ADVENTURE THE 45TH: DAS ENGLANDER

DISCLAIMER for the first time reader:

For those unfamiliar with the posting structure of a blog: postings appear in the order they are made by their author, not necessarily in the order that would most benefit an ongoing series such as the one you are about to read. Since the purpose of this blog is to be an ongoing thriller, simply removing the previous chapter to alleviate confusion is not an option – since no one coming to the series after the first chapter had been removed would be able to follow the story line.

Therefore, if you scroll down or visit the archives in future months, you will be able to read this continuing drama in the manner and order it was intended to be read. For this reason and purpose each subsequent adventure in the ‘Eddie Mars’ serial will be marked by a number. If you follow these numbers marked at the top of each chapter in their numeric order - eg ‘Adventure the 1st’ - you will be able to follow this continuing saga.

For those savvy to the blog world – this disclaimer may seem redundant, and for that no apology is made. This disclaimer is meant to better acquaint new readers in how the entries in this blog will be posted and how best to follow the series from this point on. And now…


ADVENTURE THE 45TH:
DAS ENGLANDER

In the last disastrous days of WWII when the Allied invasion turned the once picturesque city of Berlin into a stockpile of burning rubble, a high ranking Nazi official named Herr Otto Von Kritchzog managed to slip through the Allied blockades set up around the city. It was a mystery to the Allies how Kritchzog could have so completely vanished without a trace. The Nazi infrastructure that might have secured his safe passage only a few months before had been virtually dismantled and the city itself was awash in American and British forces who knew the old Nazi spy’s likeness all too well.

In particular, the blow of defeat immediately following Kritchzog’s disappearance was personally felt by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton who, in the years before the conflict had met Kritchzog socially at a banquet given in London in 1938 and, at which time Kirtchzog had practically guaranteed Patton and a consulate of world powers that Adolph Hitler had no interest in invading any country on the European map.

An American of valor and military distinction, but above all else, a soldier to whom ego and integrity were equally balanced and highly personal hallmarks, Patton was not a man who took being openly lied to sitting down. Following Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Patton made it his life’s work to track down Kritchzog - who had by war’s end acquired the dubious moniker of ‘Das Englander’ – and bring him to justice. A footnote in Patton’s near forgotten memoirs even suggests that he had possibly caught up to ‘Das Englander’ in Tunisia while on his campaign there, but that the wily German spy had once again managed a quiet escape, this time disguised as one of many moving autonomously in a caravan of refugees.

By war’s end, Patton had good reason to believe that the first place Kritchzog would return to was the last place any Allied Solider would think to look – Germany. And so, Patton petitioned Eisenhower to return – presumably in disgrace - to the Fatherland in pursuit of Krtichzog. It was even rumored that Kritchzog had been responsible for the catastrophic car wreck on Dec. 9, 1945 in Mannheim that would have left Patton a quadriplegic had he not died at the Army Hospital shortly thereafter.

As a matter of public record, few outside of a select military black ops brigade made up of U.S., British and Russian soldiers knew that Kritchzog had belonged to Hitler’s inner circle. Kritchzog’s specialty for the Nazis had been running secret communications between Germany to and from Hitler’s many external contacts around the world – the nearest centralized hotbed of activity then located in Buenos Aires. There, Hitler was rumored to have sent his embezzled millions funneled by Kritchzog into hidden bank accounts; the aged loot from all the discarded Jewish gentry he had casually exiled to murderous death camps back home.

Apart from Hitler, only Kritchzog had immediate access to these secret funds. Not even the Allies knew about it and by the time British Central Intelligence cracked the code that reveled monies squared away, both the monies and the bank that had housed them had vanished into thin air.

The official story from Buenos Aires was that an electrical fire caused by faulty overhead fluorescent ballasts in the vault room had triggered a four alarm blaze that leveled the First International Trade Bank to a pile of smoldering ruins. But had the Nazi loot still been locked inside at the time the fire broke out? Conventional wisdom suggested as much since, in the carefully monitored years and later decades following the fire, no large sums of money resurfaced either in Buenos Aires or anywhere else in the world.

However, in the summer of 1959 a self made Greek shipping magnet named Ari Chaykestopolis began spending lavishly on the expansion of his international fleet. Within three years the line had tripled in size. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about this economic growth on the surface.

The post war years had been particularly lucrative for Chaykestopolis’s shipping company. What was rather curious, at least so retired British naval intelligence officer Gen. Lloyd Allen was to discover after he began poking around for some answers, was that no one in Greece could recall where or what Chaykestopolis had been up to prior to the outbreak of WWII.

When questioned by Allen in a casual setting, Chaykestopolis told of an impoverished illegitimate birth to a woman who had died of starvation in the hills, and, of his own days as a nameless urchin begging for crusts of bread in the streets of Athens. Malnourished and in poor health, in Athens Ari was discovered, so the legend went, by a kind and wealthy gentleman, Anatol Chaykestopolis. Anatol adopted the boy after the tragic death of his own son and reared him as his own. It was colorful folklore. But was it really the truth? Or was Ari Chaykestopolis really Das Englander in disguise?

Allen was presumably getting close to finding out through his own research and connections with the ‘right people’ when his body was discovered in a shallow pool of water near the coast. The cause of death by the Athens coroner was presumed as a drunken slip and fall off some ‘regrettably’ rocky terrain, even though an autopsy performed four hours later in England, and at the strenuous insistence of Allen’s widow, Margurita could not confirm that a drop of alcohol had actually been consumed by her late husband before his ‘fall’.

Evidently, Margurita seemed to know the purpose for her husband’s extended trip to Greece. She also knew that Allen had been in contact with Ari Chaykestopolis. This was a great curiosity to the Scotland Yard police who questioned her motives for the hasty second autopsy on her husband, since Margurita had not accompanied him, but rather had stayed behind in England - presumably to look after her sick mother. Whatever the truth behind Allen’s mysterious death, the inquest was laid to rest a scant three weeks later when Margurita was ‘accidentally’ run down on a street in Piccadilly.

With no leads to go on, the British consulate appointed a special investigator to make the journey to Greece. However, upon his arrival in Athens, this individual was promptly informed that Ari Chaykestopolis had quietly died of a heart attack only a few days before – his body laid to rest in the family crypt in Cyprus.

Indeed, when the investigator arrived in Cyprus he found a newly sealed casket inside the stately mausoleum built to house Ari’s remains; only an exhumation of the body produced a badly decomposed and much older gentleman lying inside. Nevertheless, Ari’s half brother, Peter and his wife Gina both insisted that the body in the crypt was that of Ari himself.

In the days before DNA evidence could conclusively make the proper identification, the British investigator was forced to accept Peter and Gina’s story and go back to England empty handed. Not long afterward, Chaykestopolis’ shipping empire was sold to a Turkish conglomerate – its base of operations in Greece quickly and quietly sold off and dismantled.

Three years later, an aged British investor named Gabriel McDonough began a rather meteoric rise to fame as one of the country’s foremost record producers. McDonough quickly signed unknown artists like Petula Clark, Tom Jones and The Beatles to his record label and shortly thereafter inundated the U.S. pop charts with what later became known as ‘The British Invasion.’ This time it was famed U.S. newspaper gossip columnist Hedda Hopper who declared in a December 1965 interview for Britain’s Spin Magazine that for certain she had made an acquaintance of McDonough even though McDonough casually denied ever having met the gossip maven before. “Though the name escapes me,” Hopper added to the Spin interviewer, “I never forget a face.”

If Hopper’s memory seemed to fail her just at that moment, she need only have reached back to 1943 and a lavish summer party her employer William Randolph Hearst had given at his famed San Simeon ranch; a ritual inaugural to quietly celebrate the demise of Hollywood’s wunderkind, Orson Welles.

At that party, Hopper had danced with a suave, much younger incarnation of the man Britain’s Daily Mirror had currently christened their ‘man of the year’ – only then he had been known to her simply as ‘Otto’ – a dashing rake of German/Romanian extraction or something like that, who had been relatively faithless in accepting Hopper’s loud professed assurances that with America’s involvement the Allied Forces would, in fact, win the war.

Hopper’s fervent insistence at knowing McDonough was something of a curiosity for the Spin interviewer who had intended to make another contact of Hopper early the following New Year. Unfortunately, in February 1966 the unusually healthy and resilient Hopper managed to contract a virulent strain of double pneumonia that claimed her life. Hopper’s persistence at knowing McDonough was quietly forgotten for a year and entirely overshadowed by an even more bizarre scandal that occurred in late November that same year.

Rumors had leaked to the press that the Queen was seriously considering McDonough for a knighthood. His lavish spending had invigorated the British economy and placed many a struggling local artist at the forefront of the international music scene – thanks to his savvy record producing and promotional machinery. Furthermore, McDonough’s generous philanthropy at home and his dedication to restoration and beautification projects in and around London had made all the papers. In fact, McDonough was supposed to attend a lavish New Year’s gala given in his honor at the Savoy by close friend and Harrod’s department store owner Mohamed al-Fayed.

Unhappy chance for al-Fayed, that his guest of honor never arrived at the party. Although the doorman at the Dorchester Hotel later confirmed that McDonough’s limousine had left with McDonough inside it and on time, what became of both the man, his car and chauffeur between these two relatively close points of destination was a mystery that, in the days that immediately followed, remained open to wild speculation, innuendo and rumor.

The Daily Mirror suggested without any basis in fact that McDonough had been a KGB spy – an erroneous claim even despite the fact that Russian Premiere Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had received a package from McDonough wishing him hearty birthday salutations. The package contained a phonograph with a supply of replacement needles and virtually every hit single McDonough had produced as a Christmas gift in 1964.

An eye witness, a gripper working the wharf, claimed that a man answering to the name ‘Mac’ had frantically arrived at the pier near Lester in a tuxedo and had demanded usage of his tug. After paying the gripper nearly one hundred pounds, the man and the tug vanished into the heavy night fog. Neither were seen or heard from again. But perhaps the most shocking speculation of them all came from lowly prostitute, Josephine Clember, working the seedy byways of Piccadilly.

Clember claimed that McDonough had been a regular customer of hers who had “stopped off for a quick one” en route to the New Year’s Eve gala. Just where McDonough went afterward was not for Clember to say, and apparently not for her to even suggest since she telephoned Scotland Yard some three weeks later in a whispered hush to suggest that McDonough had returned and was “resting up” in her boudoir after “a bit of the malarkey.”

The police, frantic for a lead on McDonough’s disappearance, arrived at Clember’s shabby flat only to awaken a man two feet shorter than McDonough who had six children and a slew of outstanding payments at virtually every brothel in the city. That man was promptly arrested before later being returned to his wife.

Das Englander had once again disappeared.

“So,” I say to the Don as we get ready to set down in London, “We’re looking for a ghost?”

“A man,” the Don corrects as he buttons his shirt collar.

“A man who behaves like a ghost,” I add, refusing to be one upped. “Maybe we find this vapor and pump him full of concrete or Maalox?”

The Don looks at me curiously.

“I don’t understand,” he confesses.

“Well,” I suggest, “Let’s just say enough of either and he’ll end up leaving a fairly obvious trail wherever he goes.”

I lean back in my seat as the stewardess comes by to inform us to fasten our belts. We’re approaching Heathrow. Come to think of it, we had little trouble crossing the U.S./Canadian border in Windsor, thanks to the Don’s contact with a pair of nameless thugs who had enough high clearance to get in and out of the Manoogian Mansion unnoticed and supply us with a pair of pretty convincing phony I.D.’s.

“You’ve some friends,” I say to the Don, tapping my breast pocket to make sure ‘my’ passport is still there.

“The world belongs to those who know how to spend their money wisely,” the Don tells me, grinning from ear to ear as he taps his own breast pocket.

“Yeah,” I agree, “I know what’s better. I just can’t afford it.”

. . .

It’s raining in London – big surprise; foggy and miserable and full of that thick night air that gets way deep inside you like a floatation device that’ll collapse a lung or two. I retrieve our bags – also supplied by the boys in Detroit – and hail a taxi while the Don takes care of a few minor details.

I don’t claim to be intuitive but I get the distinct feeling I’m being watched. Casually, I pretend not to look around; wander past the newsstand; catching glimpses of my reflection in the glass partitions and then the sliding exit doors. There don’t seem to be any interesting characters slinking around the scenery. Maybe, it’s just me – too eager to get in touch with my feminine side.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask the Don, who comes at me, overcoat slung across one hand and slightly stumbling from the general direction of the Men’s Room, looking as though he’s only half finished.

There are a few tiny beads of sweat on his brow but I don’t give it much thought. Besides, maybe he just doesn’t get enough fiber.

It’s only after we’re in our taxi and hurrying toward the Dorchester Hotel that the Don taps me with his foot, slowly uncovering the hand under his coat to reveal a fairly bloody mess and a couple of deep gashes about his wrist. I want to say something, but his eyes tell me to keep my mouth shut.

“Oh driver,” I say to youthful Pakistani giving us a lift, “Where can I stop off for a pint? I mean after I leave pops at the hotel?”

“The Dorchester has a bar,” he informs me.

“Yeah, I know,” I reply, “Only what if I want the whole bottle.”

“That too can be arranged, sir,” I’m told.

It’s no good. I’m already being too obvious. So, when the cabby pulls into the Dorchester’s main drive, I quickly get out, help the Don to his feet, pay the tab with some loose change and tote the bags myself through the front doors and into the lobby.

I sign the register. We’re shown by a portly valet to something called the Oliver Messel Suite. Apparently, only the very best people have stayed here; everyone from Noel Coward to Sylvester Stallone. I wonder how the hell we managed to rate it.
As we’re riding up the lift, I get the fifty-cent tour but could care less whether Elizabeth Taylor’s tuckus sat on the porcelain bowl before mine or Marlene gave herself a pink champagne bubble bath in the alabaster washroom. But it goes on and on and finally I interrupt the self-appointed rum-pot as the lift doors part and we’re shown to a grand and lavish suite of rooms that really make you ‘feel’ like you’re in England.

“So, are we all alone up here?” I ask as I fumble around for a tip.

By now, the Don’s looking more ashen than pumpkin and I really just want to get him inside a pour some bourbon or anything else alcoholic on that wound before deciding what next to do.

“Yes sir,” I’m told, “But there’s also an Audley, Terrace and Harlequin suite.”

I shove a crisp one between the fingers of this helpful chap before closing the door practically on his heels.

The Don looks relieved – or half dead…I can’t decide. He slumps into the loveseat, his bloody hand leaving a thick brown stain across the gold fabric. I find a wet bar in an anteroom with my pick of hairs of the dog that should bite me; pop the top off a fresh bottle of Jack and grab an ultra cushy white linen towel on my way back to the main sitting room. The Don look pale…real pale.

I liven the color in his cheeks as I pour the booze into the towel and wrap it firmly about his hand. He grimaces.

“Here,” I offer, tipping the bottle slightly as I press it to his lips.

He’s grateful and drinks like a Shriner for a few seconds.

“Hey,” I say, moving the bottle away, “I need you with it to tell me what we’re in for.”

“We’ve been followed,” the Don explains, “I was at a urinal when a man approached at my side. He smiled and asked me for the time.”

“So far, sounds par for the course of a high class gay hooker looking for a fresh john,” I say.

The Don smiles; the color returning to the rest of him.

“Except that this one knew me by name,” he tells me.

“Then we can’t stay here,” I suggest, admittedly hesitant to surrender such luxury even though I’ve yet to grow accustom to it.

“We can,” the Don mutters, “I’ve taken care of things.”

He doesn’t say much else and he suddenly starts to look weary again. I open the towel and get a good gander. Not as bad as I thought. A few gashes to be sure and a lot of blood’s been lost, but nothing that’ll require stitches, and a good thing that too. I wouldn’t know where to take him or how to explain it without calling half of Scotland Yard to our attention. Come to think of it, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

After I put the Don to bed I decide to take a swim in the moat that’s masquerading as our bathtub. There’s a flat panel T.V. on the wall opposite and a remote on the edge of the tub. As I sink my short n’ curlies into a bay of hot water and turn on the jets to massage my tense lower back I catch a glimpse of the eleven o’clock newscast.

They’ve found the body of some poor mutilated schmuck inside a men’s room at Heathrow. No I.D. but his throat’s been slashed. Taken care of things, indeed. I’m not only living the high life with a rich benefactor but I’ve just moved in with a murderer.

THE END…

Not until the fat lady sings!

EDDIE MARS WILL RETURN OCT. 30th 2008
in his next great adventure:

A Foggy Day and Night In The Middle Of Nowhere.

@ Nick Zegarac 2008 (all rights reserved).