The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (18 page)

“
I haf call to say goodbye, my friend.”

“
Goodbye. Where ya fucken goin’?”

“
Mary Rose haf die. Yesterday. I vil go vit her.”

“
Now hold yer fucken ’orses there, mate. What the fuck are ya goin’ on about?”

“
Oh, Wally. I am very old now. I haf had long life. Maybe I am tired now,
ja
? It is time for me to go.”

“
Hold up, ya nong. Don’t be goin’ and doin’ anythin’ fucken daft. I’m as ancient as Ayers fucken Rock, but I’m still ’evin the craic. There’s loads left to fucken live for, mate.”

“
For you, maybe, Wally. I am not you. Mary Rose haf gone. I am alone and old, and every day is hard,
ja
. It is time. I haf live long, and gud, but I do not wish to live anymore.”

“’
Ere, now, you just fucken lissen ter me, mate. I reckon…”

“
You haf been gud friend, Wally. Goodbye.”

The phone went dead.

“
Shit me fucken britches. The silly old bastard. I gotta do somethin’. I gotta stop the old fucker.”

“
Strewth, Wal,” Stavros said when Wally walked back into the bar. “Ya look a bit shook up.”

“
Crack us a bladdy tube, Stav, will ya? And sent one a the billy lids to fetch Wombat Jimmy. I gotta go.”

“
Go where, Wal?”

“
Fucken Norway.”

***

She was going to be playing Russian roulette, with a real Russian, but Fanny believed that fear was her ally. Only not
her
fear: everyone else’s. Khuy Zalupa was so absolutely confident of his ability to inspire terror, the thought that anyone might attempt to enter his lair—the dark trembling miasma of cold sweat dread that he surrounded himself with—and steal one of his prized possessions was beyond conception. Under different circumstances, she might have been right.

Zalupa took the standard precautions as a matter of course, but the sophisticated state-of-the-art high-tech detection devices that were usually employed were absent. No motion sensors, no infrared cameras, no lasers. No touch-sensitive weight-reactive pads, no bulletproof glass, no two-way mirrors, no cockroach-fart-sensitive microphones, no GPS-embedded devices. Only high walls, locked doors, a safe that a five-year-old girl wearing boxing gloves could crack—and the knowledge of a sure, slow, and exquisitely painful demise if you got caught—protected the Fab 13.

Oh, and Oleg and Bolshoi. Bolshoi was no kind of ballerina you would want to dance with. Bolshoi was a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Caucasian sheepdog, with a shaven head and a swastika tattooed on his skull. He could rip the liver out of a Siberian timberwolf and wound-fuck it to death before breakfast. He feared no one and nothing except for Oleg. He loved no one and nothing except for Oleg. He was a perpetually cocked weapon, a coiled spring that only Oleg could release. It was the moment Bolshoi lived for, when Oleg said, “Bolshoi,
davai
,” and he could hurl himself into a joyous blood frenzy of dismemberment.

Oleg himself was no oil painting. He was never much to look at to begin with, but after a rival gang took a carpet knife to his face in a Ukraine jailhouse turf dispute, he ended up with a face that looked like a mandrill’s ass. He loved working for Khuy Zalupa. He was unique in that he did not hate or fear him, and Khuy knew and valued this. Plus, working for Zalupa gave Oleg access to a lifestyle that he would not otherwise have enjoyed. Nice clothes, good food, the company of beautiful women. And all he had to do for it was kill anybody that Khuy told him to, in whatever fashion Khuy told him to do it. Piece of cake! Oleg was a dyed-in-the-wool stone killer, a skilled and fearless fighter, and a crocodile-level survivor.

Anyone who had spent as much time in the gulags as Oleg had to be. Even Zalupa himself, while not exactly afraid of Oleg, knew enough about the man’s capacity for incendiary acts of violence to mind his manners when around him. It wasn’t that he was especially big or muscular. He was constructed like a Mongol composite bow, all tendon and sinew and bone, immensely powerful but light and maneuverable.

So that was all that Fanny had to worry about: a homicidal institutionalized psycho and a dog that made Cerberus look like Lassie. Muscle and fang against guile and style. No contest! As a writer, Fanny detested clichés, but unfortunately the expression “to case the joint” is virtually unimprovable, so Fanny had to concede that step one was to case the joint. Casing the joint meant first getting close to Zalupa, and gaining his trust and his friendship. It meant getting an invitation to the troll’s cave. That meant going into the heart of darkness and bearding the dragon in his lair. But even dragons are suckers for a thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six genuine European-made racing chassis topped by a face to complicate the Judgment of Paris and a cunt that could suck a volleyball through the barrel of a Sherman tank. Plus, she had her invitation to the ball: Benjamin’s egg.

Khuy Zalupa was in the back room of The Mama Mambo, surrounded by his hangers-on. They were drinking Stolichnaya and smoking Lord Lundi’s homegrown Voodoo Cloud, and watching Bolshoi disembowel a succession of pit bulls and Rottweilers. The only one that had given him any trouble at all was a South African Boerboel, which had managed to draw blood before Bolshoi ripped its head off. Khuy was twenty grand to the good, one over the eight, and in high spirits. He spoke in what was, for him, a jocular tone as he roughly pushed the girl off his lap and to the floor.

“
Lundi. You iz lying white nigger. This girl no can be virgin. One. No blood. Two. Pussy like drive Skoda through Red Square. Fetch new one.”

Lord Lundi smiled and bowed a gracious bow, and went to do as he was bidden. Even evil, deathless sons of bitches know when they are out of their depth. As he stepped out of the back room and into the steamy jungle heat of the dance floor he bumped into a lady. He felt his chest rebound from the remarkably resilient breasts. The lady’s drink crashed to the floor.

Lundi went into a pantomime routine that Marcel Marceau would have been proud of. He raised his hands to his face, and then into the air above his head as he mimed being mortified by the accident and overwhelmed by Fanny’s beauty at the same time. It was a pretty good show. If he hadn’t selected “evil bloodsucking creep” as a profession he might have given it a decent shot in showbiz.

“
Mon dieu
!” he sleazed. “Are you ’urt? Are you injured? Do you ’ave ze stains on ze dress? Ah must replace your drink, immediately.”

Fanny gave him a smile that nearly melted the gold plate off his shades. “Why, thank you, kind sir. You are most gracious. I am perfectly fine. I’ll have a zombie.”

Lord Lundi gestured in the general direction of the back of the room, and, seemingly from nowhere, a waiter appeared with a bright orange zombie on a silver tray.

“
Voilà, mademoiselle
,” Lundi said, going into his Mack Sennett routine again.

Fanny gazed at him for a second, the faintest shadow of a doubt flitting across her mind like a bat across the moon.

“
How did you do that?” she said.

“
Do what, my pearl?”

“
The drink. The zombie. You didn’t speak, but the waiter knew what to bring.”

Lundi playacted the twirling of a mustache, even though he didn’t have one. “Ze ways of the South are bound in mystery, my angel. There are sings of which we must not speak. You must allow us to ’ave our little secrets,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Fanny smiled again and inclined her head graciously, which took a couple more carats off the value of Lundi’s shades.

“
Please excuse me for one moment,” Lundi said. “Ah must attend to ze needs of ma guests. Ah will be right back.”

Fanny sipped her drink as she watched him disappear into the brightness of the room. The deal with the drink had been a good trick. So what was the angle? Was it just some cheap hocus pocus parlor trick that Lord Lundi liked to lay on the tourists, or had they been watching her, and if so, why? Maybe it was just the surroundings that were making her feel paranoid. What could they possibly know about her plans, and how? She sipped the drink again, carefully. It seemed okay. In her line of work, you learned how to recognize a Mickey Finn. If she was being watched she couldn’t very well spill another drink. She decided to take a chance. She was getting close, and she didn’t want to risk blowing it. She took a deep suck through the straw. If it was a Mickey, it was the most delicious one she had ever tasted, but definitely a little shy on the chloral hydrate. Well, that was okay. She had plenty in her purse for everyone.

Lundi came back with a pretty white girl in tow. The girl was obviously petrified. This was no time to be letting her maternal instincts get the better of her. Fanny ignored the girl’s appealing stare, and said to Lord Lundi, “I’m looking for Khuy Zalupa.”

If there was any change of expression on Lundi’s cold fish face, it was lost in the shadows and in the lights reflected in the sunglasses. “Why?”

“
That’s between him and me. He’s expecting me. Tell him Fanny Lemming is here, and I have something for him.”

Lundi leaned close. The shades came close to her eyes. She could see her own dim reflection. She held her ground. “Now would be a good time, boy.”

Lundi grabbed the girl by the wrist and roughly dragged her though the door.

Fanny calculated that she would not have to wait more than two minutes. She did not have to wait more than one minute. The door opened and Lundi beckoned her.

It took all of her skills as an actress to disguise the shock that she felt at what she saw. She felt a tremor of trepidation run down her spine, and a sudden unwonted lack of confidence in herself. Was this one roll of the dice too many? She steeled her mind and cast off her doubts.

“
Hey, boys,” she said, smiling brightly. “Mind if I join the party? Things are a little dull out there.”

“
Be guest. Have seat. Don’t mind dead dogs. How iz drink?”

“
Wonderful. I’d like another, please.”

She watched Zalupa give Lundi a dismissive nod, and Lundi beckoned a waiter. She felt again that slight flicker of uncertainty. She came to the Big Easy a lot. It was impossible to do that and not know about Lord Lundi’s reputation. But he was obviously scared shitless of Zalupa. She began to wonder if she shouldn’t reconsider, then she angrily drove the idea out of her mind. The hell with it. She looked at Zalupa. What was there to be so worried about? Okay, so he was the most hideous man she had ever laid her eyes upon, he had some kind of tattooed Mongol warlord with a face like an underdone hamburger sitting next to him, he was surrounded by dead dogs, and the most feared man in Louisiana was afraid of him—but apart from that, what was the big deal?

She smiled and raised her glass. “Cheers.”

Zalupa raised his own brimming glass of vodka and downed it, seemingly without effect, as if it were a glass of milk. Nobody else moved. Fanny suddenly realized how quiet it had become. She also noticed that she could not hear the music from outside. The room was soundproofed. Zalupa barked something in Russian, and suddenly everyone got up to leave, except for Oleg. And Bolshoi. Lundi went as well, taking the girl with him. It was her turn to ignore Fanny’s appealing stare. The music blared briefly as the people left, and then abruptly stopped as the door closed with a soft hiss.

Fanny wasn’t nervous now. She was scared. She was trying very hard not to show it, but Zalupa was a connoisseur. He could smell it, as well as Bolshoi.

“
You bring egg?”

“
Sure,” she said.

Fanny made to open her purse. Oleg moved in and grabbed it. She started to stand but he shoved her roughly and she fell back.

“
I know you,” Zalupa said abruptly.

“
Do you?” she said, looking at Oleg. He pulled the egg out of the purse and tossed it to Zalupa. He caught it and held it up to the light and gazed at it. It glistened. As striking in its beauty and perfection as was Zalupa in his ugliness and malformation. As scared as she was, Fanny could not help but notice the contrast.