you leave the party. No one in Bogotá has any idea that the first of the Seven Demons is in town or that the former maker of the Pale Peruvian Stallion is here or any of that and that is how we like it so we leave everything in our hotel room and we just fly out again.
Except that we do not because Mozart is in a bar fight so first I go in and I fake arrest her and drag her out and put her in a hire car like she was a prisoner and she spits like a fucking cat and then we drive off to the general approval of a bunch of guys feeling nauseous and ballsmacked and two dancers who are evidently twins and to be honest I completely understand how that kind of shit can happen but now it is very much time to leave because under no circumstances do we wish to attract attention or get held up at the airport.
Giant fucking jet privileges do not apply to Mozart’s flying turd in the same way as they do to Fred’s porno plane.
I do not try to bribe anyone it is a mismatch to offer at this time do not ask me why it is an instinct.
They look at our passports and they look at us and one of them says something about how we’re fucking and we’ve stolen the jet and they all laugh and Mozart says something in gutter Bogotano which implies I have been chemically castrated and they all freeze and then start laughing and we are through and it’s just my imagination that behind us somewhere someone is putting two and two together because we’re on the runway and gone and then it’s just flying time.
“Thanks Mozart.”
“Go to hell Jack.”
“O you’re still an asshole?”
“Fuck you Jack.”
“Soooo I almost forgot I need to go to Iceland on the way home can we detour for like three million one hundred and—”
“Yes five will be fine—”
“So tell me the whole life story thing while we—”
“No—”
“Come on I feel like we bonded—”
“We did not bond you’re an asshole—”
“So’re you—”
“I am a motherfucking LADY—”
…
…
…
“Mozart?”
“It’s fucking Rossini—”
“Iceland is definitely up from here—”
“Which of us knows navigation?”
“I am right now looking at Google Maps though—”
“Fuck you Jack that’s bullshit let me see that—yeah no you’re right hang on—”
“I am?”
“Of course you’re fucking not don’t be absurd.”
Mr. Friday is the not-boss of Poltergeist. He likes fishing and Scandinavian art-house cinema and he has exquisite taste in hair liniment. When he speaks he sounds like Santa Claus if Santa was increasingly concerned about the role of the Global South in the production of cheap plastic Christmas toys. He abhors violence and has strong views on social responsibility and he is totally calm even when his BFF is putting an iron spike in someone’s brain. Be like Mr. Friday. Do not be like the person with the double-vented head parts.
Doc says that I get along with Mr. Friday on some kind of deep psychological level she does not think is rational. Doc says that some aspect of my self-expression speaks to Mr. Friday’s suppressed desires and he responds to my wishes in ways he would normally refuse to contemplate.
I do not think this is true but Doc has charts so it must be that is science.
Mr. Friday stands in front of a smoking hole in the ground, which is evidently his house. I say:
“This was absolutely nothing to do with me Friday hand on heart.”
Mr. Friday looks round.
“O Hallo Mr. Price! I had heard that you were now deceased.”
“I have also heard that but I do not think it is true.”
“Oh ho ho oho yes oh oho.”
(Do not laugh like Mr. Friday. That laugh is just fucking creepy like going to an empty house in a storm and the woman who owns it is entirely hairless and dresses in black net and she says to come in and that’s when you notice she’s had that thing done where they bifurcate your tongue and you can never quite see her feet and when you wake up you find a man-size-shed snake skin on the second bed. Which is completely unfair on Mr. Friday who I think is a genuinely moral person in an imperfect world.)
“Do not worry Mr. Price I know this was not you it is an aspect of our geology here. From time to time there is a movement in the earth and the strata of rock change. Yesterday there was water in my basement that was the wrong kind of water. So I moved my furniture out into the street and went to stay with friends and last night my house exploded.”
“It did.”
“O yes. Superheated steam from the bowels of the planet. It is invigorating. We will build a new house at the end of the road and put my furniture in it. That is Iceland. It is how we do. Oh hoho hohohoh. What can I do for you?”
“I am seeking your wisdom Mr. Friday.”
“I am happy to offer professional help of course.”
“Aw that is very sweet. I miss you guys also.”
“It is a form of words Mr. Price you are not absolutely at the top of our list of preferred customers on account that you are a fissure in the strata of society and also a bad egg.”
“I—wait—a bad egg?”
“Indeed.”
“A bad egg.”
“Yes Mr. Price.”
“O well excuse me the Duchess of Croquet called and I believe she would like her idiom back.”
“…Now inexplicably I feel remorse. Oh very well. Come and we will walk to my new house.”
We walk to Friday’s new house. It is also a hole in the ground but it is not smoking and there are people doing things that look like things that will make a house happen quite soon.
“What do you need Mr. Price?”
“I need to find a programmer. In Switzerland.”
(Obviously you do not list the precise name and address of the programmer of your fortress for exactly this reason but there is a limited number of firms operating in Switzerland who handle this kind of work and programmers are not in general humble monkish types they are programmers and that means they are a kind of artist whose art winkies are so engorged that they require canvases costing millions of euros. Every programmer is waiting for a Great Pyramid.)
Mr. Friday says that he will not help me hurt anyone.
I say that I am not going to hurt the programmer all I want is to have a perfectly nice conversation.
“Why do you want this information Mr. Price?”
“Aw Mr. Friday I wish you would not ask me that or if I would tell you that would have to be you know just between friends.”
“We are not friends Mr. Price.”
“We’re not but all the same man we got history is what. Like deep history.”
“Horrible history.”
“Yeah but Mr. Friday in this world you know sometimes that is the most reassuring kind.”
“…that is both true and appalling.”
“Yeah well I’m an artist now.”
“You are?”
“Yes I am known as Banjo Telemark—”
“O really I have seen your work in—wait that means it has never in fact existed—”
“That is the genius of my ambiguity Mr. Friday—”
“Mr. Price?”
“Yes?”
“You are proposing to crack Die Festung.”
“No I mean that would be entirely no of course not also too Jack Price is deceased I am an artist why do you ask?”
“You are.”
“If I was going to do that, is it something you would be upset about?”
“In fact we do not like them. We believe in freedom, they in perpetuation. We are in fact a revolutionary movement albeit an incremental one they are deeply conservative to the point of stasis. It is an incompatibility. Mr. Eiger and his ilk—”
“Ilk.”
“Yes his ilk. Cornflower men. He and his sort—they appear to be Swiss but they are not like true Swiss who are compassionate in surprising moments and directions. They are the other thing. The closed door and the sneer. The cancer that hides in the body of the Gemeinde there is a similar issue elsewhere even here. When people are afraid they espouse severity. The Cornflower Men make them afraid and then offer them answers.”
“That was real stirring but I am not entirely—”
“They are a little bit Fascists.”
“How little?”
“Quite a lot actually.”
“I’m going to do me things to these guys.”
“…”
“…”
“…It seems I am constantly in the position of helping you because you are pointed at monsters more horrible than yourself. And yet each time I do this you become more…you.”
“Seriously man I have a job I just want to get it done and they are being unreasonable is all like they—Friday they killed Volodya the sniper I mean that guy…”
“He was appalling. He made ham from the dead.”
“Man don’t start with that he absolutely did not it was just ham we had this whole running joke about that it used to make him laugh.”
“You cannot actually believe that.”
“O shit Friday did he really make ham out of—Jesus never mind I just—all I want is to get this job done okay and these guys are putting themselves in my way when I—you know I totally tried to do it the respectable way but there are issues of—”
“You propose to annihilate them.”
“Will you help?”
“Do you promise me that the programmer in question will not be harmed?”
“Yes.”
“…I believe we should define harm.”
“Friday—Friday man I’m not—okay I have been off my game that thing with the lady whose car we stole is well she is not alive and obviously there was the unfortunate business with Mr. Sharkey’s exploding face but—but when—let’s say when I am in control of the environment I do not wish to make people die that is not my thing.”
“You derive no pleasure in random killing for its own sake. That is true.”
“Well so here we are I am asking you as a service to I guess local humankind to help me here so that no one has to get so much as a nosebleed—well I say no one but obviously I’m excluding from that certain un-Swiss fucking Fascists who will probably fall from a great height onto a pointy object or something—”
“Do you also understand the reasonable bounds I require in exchange for this information?”
“No serious physical discomfort or damage no death little or no loss of earnings no serious long-term emotional or psychological trauma.”
“That…is correct.”
“Within the obvious limits like if I don’t know if this person has a shotgun under his bed in some ultra-Swiss thing that I do not know about—”
“Yes of course self-defense is respectable even in a criminal context if not legally understood—”
“Okay.”
“…Okay yes.”
“You people are awesome I am just so grateful.”
“Do not thank me please it makes me feel soiled.”
“You’re an asshole and you’ve given up everything about who you are to do this one dirty thing and I can’t believe you’re helping me. Aw that came out cold man I did not mean that to sound cold.”
“…”
“Honestly Friday I really do like you guys and if you like I’ll give you a hug to get you through this weird little moral crisis you’re in but I get the sense that would not help. Right? Am I right? Yeah so maybe hug Mr. Dory and get back to me when you can okay?”
“…”
“…”
“When I talk to you Jack Price I believe I have woken from a coma to find I am living in a locally made experimental film.”
“Ain’t that the world these days my friend.”
“Thanks Rossini that was horrible here is money bye.”
“Did you just call me Rossini?”
“I am an asshat lady but I know the difference between the Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville and you did right by me so yeah I did.”
“…You need me again, you call, that’s fine. But call me Mozart okay?”
“…Sure Mozart I will.”
“Now I’m going to go park my plane in front of your plane again and maybe draw a giant penis on it in ultraviolet paint.”
“O screw you.”
I go before she says in your dreams or some such because Mozart is a nice person and very useful and I cannot have Doc murdering her for loose talk.
Doc still has the same number of pigs. The door has been well behaved. Lucille has been watching it to make sure.
Every hour of every day.
Door vs. Lucille. Lucille vs. door.
Rex says that neither of them has blinked.
Back to Eiger. Back to the job.
“Hi Charlie how’s it going?”
“It’s going boss that I will say.”
“Are you in yet?”
“God LORD boss butt-plug joke much?”
“What?”
“Oh my God never mind yes I am in.”
Charlie vs. the dongle for Eiger’s checking account: first to three falls.
One.
Two.
Three.
This is how truly modern bank robberies happen and it is the best way. You just steal a few cents from every account in the ledger and put it all into a new account, which transfers every month to another external account, which immediately forwards it to one of those banking jurisdictions which do not keep great records and then you spend it. Kids’ stuff.
Or you don’t steal anything because that was never what you were there for in the first place.
There’s one more thing that Hans Eiger does every day. He goes to a tobacco shop. It is not one of the grand ones it is quite small and even a little bit scruffy but even so when you go in there it smells of respectability. It smells of old men keeping secrets and it smells of government. There is a mezuzah on the door frame and a morbidly obese dachshund on a cushion by the till. Hans Eiger does not ever buy anything in the shop but every day he goes in and he inhales one cigar and then nods to this little guy and the little guy nods back.
So this time when Hans Eiger goes out I go in. I figure the little guy for maybe Armenian but when I wish him barev dzez he snorts and says his mama is Beta Israel so we talk coffee. Ethiopian coffee is serious coffee. Weak-ass North American barista brew is like a ballet shoe and Ethiopian coffee is like something handmade in leather for the president of a Russian bank.
We do not talk about Hans Eiger at all and still less do we talk about cigars even although these are some fine fucking cigars and they should be respected by the mouths of beautiful women because that is the best thing that can happen to a cigar. We talk coffee like two old men remembering great sex they once had with girls they wish they’d hung around for and fallen for and I wish Doktor Paul was here because he would love this.
We talk for like two hours and then the little guy says it is time now for me to go and I say thank you yes it is and I buy a cigar. I tell him give me his favorite and I guess that he does. I do not know what it is and he does not tell me. Doc will smoke it sometime Doc loves a good cigar and it is a good cigar.
Doc is beautiful when she smokes a cigar. It is a thing do not judge me.
I do not fuck with Eiger and the cigar shop because he does not buy anything here and that makes me pay attention but also because I like the little guy and his shop and there is no need to break beautiful things just to upset bad people who like them.
I fuck with everything else though because I am petty that way.
First it turns out there has been a fire at Karlsbad House in Doha. This is a thing that happens very occasionally there in the new buildings. They are building very fast and they bring in labor from overseas and it is not always the case that those workers are well treated some of them die on the job and in this case indeed someone evidently died and was lost in the superstructure and his corpse caused a short circuit between two phases and la la. Only one floor was affected and the building suppression systems were excellent and performed above spec.
But now it seems Hans Eiger’s apartment will not be available for his use in the near future. Insurance will cover it of course there will be no—
But well. There you are that is inconvenient.
I do not know who the dead guy was. Rex does not tell me when he gets back. He looks a little haunted. A little more like a Demon than he did. Saul asks me if he is okay.
“Yeah he’s fine.”
“He doesn’t look fine Jack.”
“What are you his mother?”
“Just getting the lie of the land Jack.”
“Rex was just some guy. Lost his brother to criminals. Wanted to do right by his country.”
“Look where that gets you.”
“Right?”
“There’s an issue around group cohesion when a given component of the group is allowed to feel disconnected and—”
“What are you like the most heavily armed shrink north and west of the Atlas mountains here?”
“I am a commando it is the skill set—”
“I really do not feature Marine Force Recon talking group dynamics in the Humvee—”
“That is because you are an effete criminal snob with no working knowledge of the complexity of—”
“And you’re a hairless ape with a cannon fixation—”
“I have seen you looking at my guns you want guns as big as—”
“Compensating for—”
(Zzzzzipp.)
“Good Lord Saul what am I supposed to do with that?”
“I am married I am just making a—”
“Why am I seeing all of the team junk this week—”
“WOW Saul that is your actual—”
“Charlie why are you here—”
“Should I also—”
“LUCILLE?”
ZZZZii-
“O GOOD GOD NO—”
“No seriously boss should I show everyone my crime vagina now is that a thing we are—”
“Price why is there dick everywhere NO CHARLIE that will not be necessary also those words I HAVE SAID—”
“Doc can we go away somewhere please to an island and never meet any of these people again?”
“After that I will be seeing all of them every time I close my eyes what is WRONG with—”
“Hi what’d I miss?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Hi Rex.”
“Hi Rex.”
“Hi Rex.”
“Nuffim Rex hi Rex.”
“Uh. Okay. Well gosh Saul has a very impressive penis.”
“…”
“…”
(ZZZiiip.)
“That is very kind of you Rex and in no way connected with what I am going to say now which is that we are going to go and get wurst as men do there is a Schnellimbiß that I know. There we shall sit and take the air and drink beer.”
“O okay Saul that is nice I guess.”
Saul takes Rex to get wurst he says it is good for broken hearts. Doc gives me the face that says I am basically landfill with biohazards please get my shit together.
I tell her I have a name and I see her smile.
I put on my Banjo and give an interview to a Spanish newspaper about Ambiguitionism. I claim not to know anything about it. I claim to be a wanted terrorist and murderer. I say that I am here to rob Eiger’s bank.
The interviewer thinks this is excellent content but it wants some visuals so I take him into the pig barn and show him the X8 and he photographs it exploding a pigskin in the shape of a pig full of what he assumes is not actually a pig.
It is a pig.
Doc is not happy about this because now she has only seven pigs but you can buy pigs on the Internet and anyway it’s not like we need more than one pig. I am an evolutionary pressure is all, we will end up with the smartest pig for our job and that is the pig that we want.
I watch Hans Eiger go to his garage but his car will not start. There was a strange noise in the engine in his drive home yesterday. Now the key turns and nothing happens.
I watch him call Magnus Lindemann and find out that Magnus is not at home.
Hans Eiger takes a taxi to pick up his suit, which is not ready. He is very sensible about it. It is the sort of thing happens and he understands commerce.
He is standing in the street when someone from the Karlsbad calls to let him know about the fire. Hans Eiger is not happy now and he is almost terse. Then he takes a deep breath and I can see him master himself. He finishes the call and sighs and decides to go for coffee.
He sits and drinks a coffee. It is not his practice to drink coffee at this hour but he does it anyway and he has a little schnapps in it to make it fertig.
He calls his daughter to tell her about his day. Erna tells him she is thinking of moving to Australia.
Hans Eiger does not respond well to Erna and she hangs up on him.
He goes to lunch.
In East Germany it was called Zersetzung: biodegradation. Those assholes would destroy your whole life in little tiny ways before you realized you were under attack. Some people never realized at all. They just died in the gutter thinking the universe was a horror.
That would actually be fun. I could take years over this. Make it a project.
But it wouldn’t rob the bank and you have to have certain standards.
“Boss I have him.”
“Eiger?”
“No not him: Mr. Client. Your man Leclerc.”
“…Tell me all Charlie.”
I am doing the thing where you steeple your hands with your fingertips on your forehead like they are containing your intellect and your rage. I am just trying it out because it’s a villain thing. I quite like it although I have this urge to futz around with the corners of my eyes because they feel like they have grit in them and I could just poke it out and get rid of it and then go back to my steepling. That is not like sticking a fucking paper clip in your ear it is perfectly safe although if you do it after a commercial flight you will catch something because Doc tells me the primary route of infection on aircraft is surface to hand to eye. Anyway the steepling maybe doesn’t work for me but I am trying it.
It’s going to freak the shit out of Charlie so there’s that.
“Tell me all, Charlie. Tell me all.”
“Ooooh show-and-tell!”
Sometimes the villain thing is harder than you’d think.
Here is Hans Eiger as a strapping young soldier and here is his brother in arms François something or other we do not know because this was in the fucking stone age before the Internet. The guy is Belgian and he went and joined the Legion with an eye to sidestepping some past mistakes and when he was discharged he took a French passport in the name of François Leclerc, which is somewhat like being a French John Smith. While he was in the Legion, though, Frankie made friends with (picture) a bunch of nice guys including (picture) Hans Eiger and they were you know soldiers together and then after they were soldiers of fortune maybe a little bit and it is unkindly suggested (picture) they were running heroin from Iran through Kosovo and up into Europe with the assistance of assorted fuckwads (picture picture short clip) and these fuckwads were of a Nazi persuasion (arrest photos) that is to say new Fascists with an ethnic beef (riot burning cars men shouting at tiny brown kids on a bus) and old Nazi blood looking to capitalize on the fanboys (New York Times profile seriously motherfuckers you’re WHAT now) in order to rise again, and the criminal element among these guys just love to deal heroin from Mesopotamia into their own countries because they are so motherfucking patriotic. They do this with maximal violence because it is not about money with them although they like money it is about power and specifically the power to fuckwad as much as possible like this toxic masculinity we hear so much about these days that is entirely their jam.
“Boss I am right there with you but their failure to model a more positive manhood to the youth is not our primary concern here—”
“I know Charlie but completeness and detail are important in a holistic criminal environment—”
“I haz much details here it are: they are dicks. With tattoos.”
Charlie is full of true facts.
(Slideshow. Some of the dicks with tattoos have tattoos on their dicks and this cannot possibly be pleasing to the old guys like: what is Fascism coming to, millennial Nazis have no standards they probably eat avocados like the Socialists and then where are we and la la la.)
All the same here is Frankie Leclerc being a fuckwad at a demo in Greece and here is Frankie palling it up with those NATO guys who went to jail for drugs and here is Frankie with the Brothers of the White—I don’t know I’m saying maybe Roosters?—the art is awful—anyway they are a motorcycle gang. And here is Frankie with the Count von Badfuckyourself and the Count is known to be the new man in respectable far-right politics in Mitteleuropa and here he is with Bishop Hatlikepeniskirchen who totally reaches out to the poors and understands why they do not like the Africa coming to these green shores of the northern Med that is just good economic sense and entirely compatible with the Christianism and pretty soon I would like to vomit in a bucket please.
And here is Frankie with a bunch of metal suitcases flying out of Bogotá on a Moldovan emergency medical courier passport and here is our dear friend Hans Eiger hugging him at Basel airport and welcoming the great man to Switzerland and Hans Eiger is a good Swiss and this is after all a medical emergency so it would be rude to overcook the security discussion that would just be inappropriate.
One billion in emeralds from a conflict zone moved through Colombia into the Kircheisen Festung.
Mr. Client lied to me.
He also told me the truth.
Moohoohaha.
Here is my truth: Frankie Leclerc is a very bad drug dealer. That is to say that he is a bad man which I do not care about but also very bad at dealing drugs. You can tell because there are so many arrest records and outstanding warrants and such for his people. You can tell because in this dog-eat-dog world of Internets and dark websites and that Frankie is using conventional analog methods and guess what his overheads must suck bigly. Bribes and lawyers and hits and such yes. Frankie is not clearing anything like the kind of money in those cases so Frankie…Frankie has backers and backers are a thing they are an issue they are like investors shareholders they expect results and a guy like Frankie…he does not like someone jogging his arm. So now we begin to see what Hans Eiger and Frankie might have in common now they are all growed up and serious men. Hans needs to advertise and Frankie needs to get out from under and what might they achieve together?
But Hans Eiger cannot be hanging around with men like Frankie Leclerc surely because Frankie is a bad guy there is paper there is a trail and somewhere there is a file and a dozen of those alarmingly competent Eurocops like—
Oh.
Ohhhh yeah.
So now that I know all about his friend I get my Banjo on again and I go and have lunch with Hans Eiger.
There is only one place in the city where Hans Eiger will eat lunch it is called the Hirschen. He eats there every day at the same table. He never books. He just comes at exactly the same time and he eats the same thing.
I do not sit at Hans Eiger’s table.
I sit at the table opposite.
I order the salmon.
Hans Eiger absolutely hates salmon. He cannot stand the smell of it.
The steam blows from my table over his because that is why I chose this table.
I can see him hating it but it would be remarkably inappropriate in almost every way for him to object so he can’t.
I eat my salmon. It is excellent. I make little noises.
Omnomnom.
Hans Eiger sits under the stuffed badger and the crossed wooden skis and he eats schnitzel. It is reputedly the second best schnitzel in the world but only because the Kronenhalle in Zürich always and forever holds the top slot and you cannot go to the Kronenhalle every day from Bern and still get anything done with your morning.
Hans Eiger eats his schnitzel and smells my salmon and I look at him and I say:
“O hai! It is me Banjo! You are Hans Eiger I claim my five dollars!”
“Excuse me?”
“It is a joke a very old one hi! We met at the art thing with Herr Doktor Doktor Paul how are you?”
“To be honest Herr—”
“Banjo Telemark—”
“Yes of course Herr Telemark I am having a difficult day and I wish to repose—is that how it is said?—to repose myself and consider and so forth—”
“O I totally understand I am right now making art—hey listen—hey actually can we talk I want to rob your bank—”
“What?”
“Obviously not for real! I would not tell you that. That would be insane.”
“Obviously.”
“I want to rob your bank—like conceptually—like I want to bring in bulldozers and so on—real actual physical bulldozers that you would never ever allow like American monster machines that Chinese thing they use that lays like a half-mile bridge in a day that kind of—and have fireworks for demolitions and music like ‘The Imperial March’—and maybe performance artists in swimsuits eating fire and someone dressed as a bear because you know Bern—”
“I do not think it is appropriate to the reputation of my bank—”
“BULLDOZERS how cool would that be and also maybe actors in commando outfits and we could have pink paintball and—”
“Inappropriate—”
“BULLDOZERS—”
“NO—”
People are noticing our little chat now and Hans Eiger does not want that because Banjo Telemark is not someone he wants to be seen talking to. Banjo is harshing his Swissness buzz.
“I get that but I think you’re wrong like how cool is a bank that is so fucking confident that it allows an artwork about—like we would have a giant inflatable Dillinger—”
“Please speak in a more measured—anyway no—”
“You could kill it! Shoot it with a cannon! You have just seen off a robbery it is like the gossip of the whole town—”
“…What gossip?”
“I am Banjo Telemark Herr Eiger I am connected up the wazoo I know you just shot some motherfucker with a cannon from your battlements and that is exactly what I am talking about—”
“No Herr Telemark—”
“No?”
“No absolutely not where would you hear such a—”
“I hear all things Herr Eiger I am special that way—”
“That is slanderous in the extreme you would do well not to repeat it to a third party it is a disgrace actually—”
“But it would not be un-Swiss sir not at all—”
“To discharge a firearm in a public place—”
“Completely safely you are a crack shot—”
“Against an unsuspecting adversary—”
“A wanted murderer—”
“You sound quite enthusiastic Herr Telemark perhaps you should do this—”
“O do you think so they do say art is violence and mine possesses a unique—”
Something is bugging me and I cannot think what it is like a familiar something like a flavor in the air like a coffee I have drunk like perfume and I am almost there I almost get it before the thing happens but I don’t and—
And that is when a voice says:
“JACK?!”
Hans Eiger’s face goes cold and flat as his mountain.
Back in the day when all I wanted was to put my foot on the face of the whole wide world of coffee—before I was called the Cardinal but after I cut tight around the Sandberg Benin Cartel and dry-gulched those fuckers so that we got rich and they got the other thing and people were starting to pay attention—back then, I was stabled with a guy called Ronald Platt because every straight razor needs a strop.
There is a whole subclass of execs in the world who are there so that they can get fucked when the house burns down and you know what they say: if you do not know who that person is in your company then that person is you. But I never had time to fuck Ronnie up for my transgressions because of the Hamburg Flamingo Incident.
There was this bar like a rooftop bar in Hamburg. This was in the ’90s so no one thought it was weird that it was themed tastefully on The Perfumed Garden, which is a fifteenth-century book on fucking written by a guy named Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi. These days it is tolerably unlikely that a bar in a European nation would theme itself on an Arabic sex manual because you know there’s just a whiff of something a little culturally insensitive there plus also the world’s relationship with the, you know, Mysteries of Exotic Islam have shifted since Mike and the Mechanics had a hit with “Seeing Is Believing.” But back then even a decade later it was absolutely supercool to have German university students dressed as genies and houris and cheeky mujahideen and what all the fuck else prancing around bringing hookah pipes and affogato to the finance community. Do not ask me how the fuck that was okay I am not a hospitality person I do not even like people.
It being Hamburg there had to be a twist and the twist was that there were flamingos wandering around and if a flamingo stood on your table the house bought you champagne and the houris made a huge fuss about the whole thing.
Well enough but your flamingos for some reason don’t like to stand on tables especially they do not stand on tables covered in ashtrays and bottles of Cristal. It turns out that flamingos despite being associated with excess because they are pink they are real homebody types they do not appreciate bad smells or strong liquor and in fact these flamingos were depressed. They were becoming agitated and I think we can safely say even if Ronnie Platt hadn’t’ve come along they’d still have shut the place pretty soon. There is nothing sadder than drinking champagne with four dozen silent flamingos standing around in the grip of an existential crisis.
But Ronnie man Ronnie. Ronnie was a generous asshole and he could feel the sorrow and he figured to fix it. Ronnie figured that the flamingos were sad because they were captive and the night after I told the head of Lindo-Michaelsen to kiss my ring if he thought I was buying his crappy fauxlombian—I could smell the deceit on the fucking paperwork and I left him holding that warehouse full of shit and Jeni Sutton called me the Cardinal—the night after we were in the Garden. Ronnie was not real rational on account of having actually washed himself in vodka on the advice of some Swedish naturopath. He looked at one particular flamingo and it looked at him and some kind of thing passed between them like brotherhood and Ronnie shouted:
“FREEDOM!”
And he picked it up and he ran.
Ran like the wind.
To the edge of the building and launched this flamingo into the air so it would you know like have an advantage. The whole thing was just beautiful and there was actual background music which was a Pashtun cover of “Take My Breath Away.”
But of course it was all not great because the flamingos were clipped to keep them on the roof. Ronnie stood there with this deep connection burning in his face and he and the bird made eye contact and there was certainty and complicity between them and the bird spread its wings and Ronnie shouted FREEDOM! again.
And the bird fell seventeen floors and landed on a school bus.
No one died but you know the whole thing was not popular in general.
And obviously when I say no one I do not include the flamingo, which definitely for real died, along with Ronnie’s career.
So this is the face on the kindhearted total lack of intellect who grabs me in a hug and shouts my name right there at the top of his voice and of course he does not say Banjo.
He says Jack.
Eiger is listening now.
“HI JACK OMIGOD JACK PRICE? MAN IT’S MEEEE RONNIE FLAMINGO MAN HOW AREEEE YOUUUU?”
When Ronnie talks is the moment when everyone else pauses for breath so his whole thing his whole too-loud thing goes out like an air-raid warning? Nope. Because that is how it is when your world turns to one hundred percent asshole and you have stood there too.
Now you can see in my face I want to kill him. That is actually the danger with being a Demon is that every problem starts to look like the kind of problem where that is the best answer. Leaking faucet? Kill the plumber. Traffic on I-9? Kill the other drivers. Like that guy’s car? Easy he won’t need it. Network cancels your favorite show? Well sure how many of them gotta go before the rest get the fucking message that the world needs more Dichen Lachman not less?
Quite a few actually, as it happens, which surprised me, but never mind that right now.
“OMIGOD JACK SOO COOOOOLLLLL WOW MAN NICE THREADS HEY IT’S ME FLAMINGO RIGHT RONNIE FLAMINGO JAAAAACK EHEY RIGHT HAMBURG AM I RIGHT?”
Kill this asshole it would be
oh
so
easy.
But probably not ludic.
I am Banjo Telemark. Banjo Telemark the artist who lives for confusion and bewilderment and this right here is found fucking art it is Banjo gold disc. It is immortality.
I say:
“OOOOOOMIGOD FRIDA KAHLO I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN!”
And I kiss Ronnie Flamingo on the mouth.
With tongues because hell it’s Frida fucking Kahlo.
The staff at the Hirschen are totally relaxed about sexual orientation but they do not like shouting or artists or public tongues that is not their jam.
They sit me down and they kind of hoosh Ronnie away like hoosh hoosh back to his own table.
Eiger says: “Jack?”
I say: “Man I have no idea what that was about. That guy thinks he knows me.”
Eiger says: “And he is wrong.”
“Of course he is.”
“I think it would be best if you left now Herr Price.”
“Price, what Price? I am Telemark. Man I have just no idea who this Price guy—wait is that the guy you totally shot in the face?”
“Your speculations are unwelcome Mr.—”
“Banjo—”
“As you say.”
I say: “So man I feel like I have upset your equilibrium man but Hans—baby—I really want to rob your bank call me it will be great.”
And I go back and I eat my lunch and then I pay and I leave.
I pay for Hans Eiger’s lunch too which is a nice gesture and also too it means he won’t find out for another few hours that someone has broken into his day-to-day bank account and stolen thirty-one thousand francs and his bank are saying it is all his fault for setting his password to P4SSW0Rd.
If that was actually his password that would entirely be his fault that is a shitty password.
His password was some crawling alphanumeric horror no sane human being could remember but once Charlie has your bank’s dongle and an idea how the whole thing works that is not really much help.
Hans Eiger will check out Ronnie Flamingo and he will find out that there really was such a guy and that he knew Jack Price. But then he will also find out that Jack Price was not then known as Jack Price and then he will find out that Ronnie Flamingo died in Gozo in ’06 before Jack ever went by Jack.
I do not know what the fuck a dazzling urbanite like Ronnie Flamingo was doing in Gozo I am guessing it is not a good story.
Gozo is the island next door to Malta which is where Banjo Telemark is from.
The guy who just got Frida Kahlo’d is an actor I flew in who now includes on his résumé the information that he worked four years ago on a live project by the famous Ambiguitionist artist Banjo Govinder Telemark.
Eiger will find all of this out.
And it will drive him batshit.
It is totally ambiguous. Banjo Telemark is an actual prankster. A known international bullshit merchant who specializes in fucking with you in the name of art and that is precisely the kind of art Hans Eiger particularly hates. Art should be painted on canvas and have ballet dancers or squares of red and yellow and blue that is just what is right.
All this means I am obviously not Jack Price even if Hans Eiger and Evil Hansel did not kill Jack Price last week, which demonstrably they did. I am some hairy asshole bullshitting my way into the art scene to make money and get laid and right now I am bullshitting Hans Eiger because he hosts the festival. It is obvious.
And yet he knows in his bones he knows it in every fucking crag of his craggy fucking mountain face that I am Jack Price and now he has to kill me again. He just knows it because of course he does he’s not a fucking idiot.
Now that he has thought it he cannot ignore it and at the same time he knows he fucking knows that my whole jam the whole entire thing that Banjo Telemark does—Banjo’s entire bullshit—is the creation of ambiguity and if there is one thing Hans Eiger fucking hates it is ambiguity and now Mr. The Art Of Ambiguous is fucking with him and he cannot he absolutely cannot fucking overreact right now because if—oh God if—if this is a demented fucking art-house prank and he goes for it and he somehow gets Candid Camera’d firing a long gun at a chortling anarchist reject with gold teeth—then o God—o God all that reputational zing and boom he has just murdered his way to will burn up like mist on a summer day and—and—and—
Soon he will also find out that all around the world men and women called Jack Price are committing crimes because there is money to be made in doing so and he will know that this is something the Demons have done because Jack Price is dead and they want to hide that fact.
Or I did it to make him think that.
Does that mean Banjo IS Jack Price or that Banjo is part of some conspiracy BY Jack Price or that Banjo has tapped into the Pricegeist or or or—
But the thing about Banjo is Banjo is this obvious tremendous try-hard asshole. Banjo is in Hans Eiger’s face. In the macro Hans Eiger needs to be strategic and wise and he can do that but in the micro—
In the micro he has to beat Banjo Telemark.
He has to beat Banjo so that the river of the world can resume its course.
And the only way he can possibly do that is by playing Banjo back at his own game. Roll with the joke. Be funny. Funny is not his natural home but he can be funny of course he can be funny fucking otters do it on the Internet all the time. Cats climb on Roombas how fucking hard can it be for a man like him?
He can roll with the joke.
This will make perfect sense to him it will seem like a message from God. Because right now the whole world is fucking with Hans Eiger and there is nothing he wants to do more than fuck it right back. It is like a dare. It is everything he is.
Security. Strength. Certainty.
He is going to make two mistakes right now. The first one is actually not a mistake it is a sensible thing to do but this is my oeuvre. He is going to phone a friend.
That is fine and dandy. It will hurt him in the end because I am a fucking artiste but that is not his fault that is me. But the second…oh Mr. Eiger oh in his soul he knows it is wrong and yet he cannot but do it anyway.
He is going to let me put bulldozers on his mountain.
Not today.
Probably not tomorrow.
But soon and for the rest of his life.