Don’t Point that Thing at me

Yet now I wake in such decrepitude

As I had slidden down and fallen afar,

Past even the presence of my former self,

Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,

Till I am found away from my own world,

Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound,

Along with unborn people in strange lands . .

A Death in the Desert

It was Sunday but you’d never have thought so by what was going on when I got to Little Rock, Arkansas. Some sort of protest was going on and, as usual, short-haired chaps in dark blue were boredly biffing longhaired chaps in pale blue jeans, who were calling them pigs and throwing stones and things. All very sad. As a Russian said a hundred years ago, these people believe that they are the doctors of society, whereas in fact they are only the disease. Traffic was at a standstill and, several cars ahead of me, I could see the blue Buick, bogged down in a sea of long hair and flourishing riot sticks.

I killed the engine and mused. Why the devil would Krampf go to the expense and trouble of escorting across half a continent a motor car which no one in his senses would attempt to steal – and escorting it in so curiously oblique a way? Setting aside the strong possibility that he was barmy, I decided that he must have told someone about the extra piece of canvas which ought to be secreted about the car – that made him pretty barmy of course – and was now regretting it. Worse, he might be playing some deeper and more convoluted game, which would be consistent with his unscripted letter to the almost royal Chum. He could scarcely have guessed at the little murder job which Martland had entrusted to me but he might well have come to consider me, for other reasons, as sort of redundant and a threat to his security. ‘The heart is deceitful about all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?’ cries Jeremiah XVII:9 and as you know, Jeremiah XVII:9 was a chap with great insight into these matters, as well as being a little barmy himself.

My little private store of worries and ass puckerings was much augmented by all this; I found myself pining for Jock’s strong right arm and brass-garnished bunch of fives. The plot was thickening in a marked manner; if I could not soon lay hold of a spoon with which to stir it, there was a distinct danger that it might stick to the bottom. My bottom, probably. And then where would the Hon. C. Mortdecai be? There was a dusty answer to that one.

The traffic moved on after everyone concerned had been thoroughly biffed and bashed and screamed at and I didn’t spot the Buick again until just after the Shawnee crossing of the North Canadian River, where I glimpsed it lurking down a side road. I stopped at the next petrol station (they call it gas there, I wonder why?) hoping to give the driver a good eyeballing as he passed.

What I saw made me gape and gibber like a housewife choosing Daz on the television; two or three seconds later I was twenty miles down the road, sitting on a motel bed and sucking in whisky until I could think straight. It was the same car – at least it bore the same number plates – but overnight it had lost a deep dent in a fender and acquired a suit of whitewall tires and another radio antenna. The driver had lost a few stones and become a thin, dyspeptic cove with a mouth like the slot in a piggy-bank. In short, it was not the same car at all. The implications were unclear but one thing stood out like Priapus: there was no way in which this could be a change for the better. Someone was devoting a good deal of time and trouble and expense to the affairs of C. Mortdecai and it certainly wasn’t the Distressed Gentlefolk’s Aid Society. A stupid man might not have been too frightened but I was not stupid enough for that. A really bright chap, on the other hand, would have dumped everything and run for home with all speed, but I was not really bright, either.

Not too near the centre I found a solid, sober sort of hotel which looked as though it would not knowingly harbour the more obvious kind of barbouze or assassin. I drove into the underground garage and waited until the night attendant had exhausted his stock of admiring ‘shee-its’, then I told him that the Rolls was entered in an RR Concours d’Elégance in Los Angeles the following week and that a hated rival would stop at nothing to impede my progress or the car’s chances of success.

‘What would you do,’ I asked him hypothetically ‘if a stranger offered you money to let him sit in the car for five minutes while you went away and sat in your office?’

‘Well, Sir,’ he said, ‘I guess I’d jest wave this little old wrench at him and tell him to haul his ass out of here, then I’d ring the desk upstairs and then in the morning I’d kind of tell you how much money he’d offered me, see what I mean, Sir.’

‘I do indeed. You are clearly a capital fellow. Even if nothing happens I shall assume, in the morning, that you refused let us say five, ah, bucks, what?’

‘Thank you, Sir.’

I went up in the lift or elevator and started work on the desk clerk. He was a well-scrubbed, snotty little chap in one of those suits only desk clerks can buy – or would want – and his breath smelled of something unwholesome and probably illegal. He studied my luggage like a pawnbroker before he peevishly admitted that he did have a vacant room with bath, but he thawed fast when he saw my diplomatic passport and the five-dollar bill I had carelessly left inside it. He was just sliding the money towards him when I trapped it with a well-shaped forefinger. I leaned over the counter and lowered my voice.

‘No one but you and I knows that I am here tonight. Do you follow me?’

He nodded, both our fingers still on the money.

‘Consequently, anyone telephoning me will be trying to locate me. Are you still following?’

‘Now, none of my friends could possibly be trying to get in touch with me here and my enemies are members of a political party which is dedicated to the overthrow of the United States. So what will you do if somebody calls me?’

‘Call the cops?’

I winced with unfeigned chagrin.

‘No no NO,’ I said. ‘By no means the cops. Why do you think I’m in Oklahoma City?’

That really fetched him. Awe stole into his juicy eyes and his lips parted with a tiny plop.

‘You mean, just call you? Sir?’ he said at last.

‘Right,’ I said, and released the five dollars. He stared at me until I was inside the lift. I felt reasonably secure – desk clerks all over the world have two talents: selling information and knowing when not to sell information. These simple skills spell survival to them.

My room was large, well-proportioned and pleasant but the air conditioning made tiresome noises at random intervals. I asked room service for a selection of their best sandwiches, a bottle of branch water, a good drinking glass and the house detective. They all arrived together. I took pains to befriend the detective, who was an awkward, seven-foot youth with a shoulder holster which creaked noisily when he sat down. I gave him Scotch whisky and a load of old moody similar to that which the desk clerk had gobbled. He was a serious boy and asked for my credentials; they impressed him considerably and he promised to keep a special eye on my floor that night.

When he had gone, five dollars later, I inspected my sandwiches with moody pleasure; there was great store of them, on two sorts of bread and filled with all manner of good things: I did my best with them, drank some more Scotch and got into bed, feeling that I had secured myself as best I could.

She came through in a mere twenty minutes, shrieking and honking with rage at being awakened and swearing by strange gods. I could hear her vile little poodle Pisse-Partout in the background, adding his soprano yelps to the din; it made me quite homesick.

I soothed her with a few well chosen words and she soon got it into her head that this was a matter of some seriousness. I told her that, at all costs, Jock must be at the Rancho de los Siete Dolores by Tuesday and that she must see to it. She promised. The problem of getting an American visa in a few hours is nothing to a woman like her: she once got a private audience of the Pope just by knocking on the door and saying she was expected; they say he very nearly gave her a contract to redo the Sistine Chapel.

Knowing that Jock would be there to meet me eased my worst fears, it only remained now to get there without leaving any bloodstains in my spoor.

I sank into an uneasy slumber interspersed, curiously, with erotic dreams.

11