Dr Yes

Funnelling down the jet bridge to the aircraft, passengers in ill-fitting leisurewear and, shudder, loungewear lugged neck pillows, scuffed cabin bags and mewling children onto the plane. After stumbling to their narrow seats, they battled greedily for precious space in the overhead compartments.

 At the Airbus’ pointy end, the aquiline nose of the tall passenger in Seat 1A twitched. James Bond, who unlike the rabble squabbling in steerage had turned left at the cabin door, sniffed the air. The stewed aroma of body odour mingled with duty free cologne samples drifted into First, clashing with his elegant Floris Limes eau de toilette.

Lifting a glass of Glen Goldstein whisky, he drew in the sweet scent of babka with top notes of challah and matzo from the 15-year-old single malt distilled behind a shul on the Isle of Mull.

Through the window he caught a flash of red on Heathrow’s Terminal 5 observation deck. A squint confirmed it was the frisky flight attendant who’d blocked his path earlier as he’d strode towards BA’s Executive Club for a pre-flight vodka-based stiffener.

“Привет красавчик,” she’d murmured before running her fingertips inside his jacket lapels and pausing just above his belt buckle. The winged badge on her scarlet uniform read: Aeroflot. Priding himself on being a global traveller, Bond guessed it was an airline based east of Dover where the local language sounded like someone spitting into a bucket.

“Hello, handsome,” she repeated, her throaty voice sultry and brazen. “I crave your body.” Her hand reached behind him, turned the handle of a door marked Cleaning Supplies and with a shoulder thrust she propelled him into the darkness beyond. The door clicked shut and Bond felt himself being stripped from the waist down.

Just as he was about to ask “What’s in it for me?”, the doorknob rattled, followed by a muffled shout from the terminal’s corridor.

“Быстрый,” hissed the flight attendant, thrusting his clothes into his hands. “Quick!”

He dressed hurriedly in the pitch-black closet. Whispering “another time, another place, сладкий,” the woman opened the door, placed a hand between Bond’s shoulder blades and shoved him past an irate cleaner wielding a threatening mop.

And now there she was again, waving two-handed from the observation deck. Bond twisted in his seat and felt his underwear pinching. Puzzled, he undid his trousers and stared down at a pair of gold silk ladies’ knickers. I must’ve pulled on the wrong panties in the dark, he decided, but at least they aren’t G String style.

Taking a sip of whisky, his mind drifted back 24 hours to M’s office in MI6’s HQ, Thames-side. The briefing had begun with M torching a pipe bowl of Mac Baren’s Scottish Blend tobacco and sending up smoke signals worthy of an Apache. Miss Moneypenny sat on M’s side of the desk, batting away the smoke while taking shorthand.

“… and get her back,” M concluded.

Bond lent forward. “I say, M, could you recap? I lost focus after you said: ‘Good morning.’”

Flipping through her notebook pages, Moneypenny read out: “The Berlin-based Black Spot gang has kidnapped Melania … ahh … ahh …” Allergic to tobacco smoke, she gave a sharp sneeze.

All Bond heard was a surname sounding like “Thump.”

Moneypenny continued: “Britain and America want Melania freed before the Black Spot sell her to the Russians. Her husband has asked the US Government to pick up the ransom tab. The gang works out of the Kitty Kat Klub in Berlin. You’ve been chosen, James, because of your extensive experience in Germany.”

Germany? mused Bond. Really? He vaguely recalled somewhere with over-spiced sausages, boiled pig trotters and fermented cabbage but few locals had bothered to learn English, so he hadn’t asked where he was. As the thought “bone idle foreigners” crossed his mind, the toe of a shoe began to creep up the inside of his leg. He sighed. Moneypenny would have to wait. That afternoon he planned to visit his Savile Row tailors to learn what was sartorially de rigueur in Germany.

Moneypenny stood suddenly, snapped her notebook shut and said: “I’ll book your flight, James.”

The shoe toe continued to sidle up his thigh. Bond glanced across at M who, with a coquettish smile, was running the tip of his tongue around the end of his pipe stem.

Bugger, thought Bond, my upcoming annual performance review is going to be trickier than usual.

 

The thud of the Airbus’ tyres smacking on the tarmac at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport jolted him out of his reverie.

Outside the terminal, he lit a Morland of Grosvenor Street cigarette. An overweight man waddled over. Past his prime – if he’d ever had one – the stranger was dressed in a once-white linen suit with a sauerkraut-flecked club tie holding together a grimy shirt collar.

“Welcome to Berlin, Mr Bond. I am Gregor von Frynn, the British Embassy’s driver.” He gestured at a burgundy Rolls-Royce Phantom II parked at an angle near the kerb.

Nestling into the rear seat, Bond helped himself to a schnapps from a dainty walnut drinks cabinet and addressed the back of von Frynn’s thick neck: “You don’t sound British, old boy.”

von Frynn squirmed. A German national, he’d been Hitler’s PR agent until April ’45 when he took his client aside in the Führerbunker and said: “Adolf, Mein Süßer, what you need here are fresh cut flowers in reception and embroidered throw cushions in the main meeting room. At the moment the ambience doesn’t scream: Winner!” von Frynn had been proved correct.

Gripping the steering wheel, he answered: “I am Northern Irish.”

Bond nodded. He’d guessed as much.

 

The Kitty Kat Klub squatted in Schöneberg, an inner urban area still hyper trendy decades after Christopher Isherwood and Marlene Dietrich went to their rewards. In daylight, the club gave off the cosmopolitan air of a shuttered laundromat. Beneath an unlit neon sign, two bouncers exchanged fist bumps. Bond recognised them: Alex Prance, a ballroom dance instructor who also taught the Kama Sutra to excitable widows on cruise ships, and Tim McGinty, on the run from debt collectors for his penchant for checking into luxury hotels under the name Chris Hemsworth. Both ignored the visitor when he brushed past.

In the barroom’s gloom, Bond spotted a small stage. At the mic, a torch singer with the mononym Shahlinee tortured a jazz standard, aided and abetted by backing singers Siouxsie Sioux and a woman whose name, Bond recalled, sounded like one of the more approachable Irish whiskies.

In a side booth, a clutch of gang members played Snap, betting with poker chips fashioned from dead men’s teeth: Johan Detroit, who with the scoundrel sitting beside him, Craig Cravings, ran guns and Prosecco over the Angola-Zambia border; Rick Durry, banned from Las Vegas’ Hotel Bellagio for texting what he called “Rick Pix” to colleagues at a company offsite; and Michelle Carling, heiress to a brewing fortune but whose catchphrase was: “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine.”

Behind the bar stood Martine L’Évitâtę, polishing a beer stein with a grey rag. As Bond approached, she lifted the vessel, spat on the rim and wiped it.

“In a different glass,” began Bond, fighting a gag reflex, “I’ll have two parts bathtub gin, one part apricot brandy, a smoked oyster, stir it with your finger and pour it over ice.”   

Martine poured him a beer.

Lifting the stein to his lips, he sensed two shadowy figures slide alongside him: gang leader Kris Sauvage and his brother, Glenn. Before bolting to Berlin, they’d performed as a drag act – The Swinging Sausage Sisters – at Club Med Timbuktu. Kris still sported a black beauty spot on his right cheek (botty not face). Now they ran the Dark Web mail order service Dr Yes selling adulterated generic medications to anyone with a credit card (legit or stolen).

Before Kris could speak, the club’s front door swung inwards and the Aeroflot flight attendant from Heathrow strutted into the bar pointing a .380 9×18mm Makarov with an integrated silencer. Or, as Bond thought of it, a gun.

 “Ты тщеславный дурак,” she snapped. “I am Olga Kuznetsov, senior investigator in glorious Russia’s FSB security agency. Господин Bond, I traced you via a tracking device sown into the golden underwear’s waistband. Where is Melania?”

A backroom door edged open. Melania stood framed in the doorway, her face frozen by either fear or Botox. In a guttural Slovenian accent, she said: “Put that weapon away. The Black Spotters have been protecting me since I fled my vile husband. I am not defecting to Mother Russia nor staying here in the Fatherland. I have chosen Aunty Albion and, to celebrate, Mr Bond can give me the Full English welcome.”

Jerking her head towards the rear room, she added: “Come, darr-ll-hink. I am in a hurry. I can only spare you a minute.”

“More than enough time,” responded Bond, trailing after her with just one thought: for King and country.

# # #

Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN

 

The Night The Cats Swung By

The bullet-pocked wooden door gave half-hearted resistance, reminding Fox he wasn’t a paying guest. He pushed again with his shoulder. The door surrendered. Staggering under the weight of an equipment-packed satchel and a cardboard suitcase, he found himself standing Goldilocks-like in a spacious, eerily pristine room sizing up five beds lining the far wall.

All singles. Immaculate bedding. Individual side tables. Numbered signs looped over the foot of each bed. He chose the closest to the door.

The November cold embraced the building. A knifing wind was picking up, thrusting a deeper chill through Geilenkirchen, a battle-battered town in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Gear stashed under the bed, shoes off and grey-blue cigarette smoke spiraling towards the vaulted ceiling, he stretched out on the all-white bedding and wondered who was the last health spa guest to part with Reichsmarks for the privilege of being birched after the sauna and plunge pool. Certainly not the Waffen-SS commanders who’d retreated with their men and artillery deeper into the Fatherland as the British XXX Corps – pronounced 30 Cor, Fox reminded himself – came a-hunting.

The moment he flicked ash onto the scrubbed floor, the door creaked. Four men stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the pale, dying light. They took a beat. Synchronised smiles appeared. “Howdy,” said the first man into the room. Tall, straight backed, he advanced on Fox, one hand swinging a saxophone case. “I figure you’re our bunkhouse buddy.”

Fox tilted his head to one side. To him, most Americans sounded the same but this one had a touch of the Hopalong Cassidys.

The four formed a semi-circle at the end of the Englishman’s bed, their USO-issue uniforms seemingly ironed just minutes before. The perks of showbusiness, Fox decided. Once on his feet, his thin civvy-street socks offered little protection from the mortuary-cold floor. The BBC didn’t run to funding a winter wardrobe for its war correspondents.

The newcomers looked like they could handle themselves on either a stage or a battlefield. Although no longer up for the latter, Fox was quietly confident he could switch on a microphone on the former.

“I’m Harry Fox, BBC,” he said, shaking their hands and feeling pressure a little too painful for someone who’d taken three bullets in the Western Desert in ‘42.

No reaction. Fox added: “It’s like CBS and NBC but without deodorant commercials.”

The Americans stared at him as if he’d broken wind. Then, seconds later, came introductions to The Swinging Cats quartet. The tall, assertive man was Samson. To his left Beamer then McMahon and Jackson. Instruments? Respectively saxophone, double bass, drums and – when an undamaged one could be found in war-whipped Europe – piano. Vocals too, added Jackson, removing his garrison side cap and patting his neat, fair hair.

Beamer rested a man-height double bass case against his hip. An oversize case shaped to fit a portable drum kit lay at McMahon’s feet. Piano-less, Jackson’s long fingers twitched, waiting for ivory keys to tinkle or, judging by his ice blue eyes, a throat to choke.

Fox’s still smoking cigarette held a teetering column of ash. Turning, he opened his bedside table drawer and found a Bible in German, a packet of condoms and an ashtray. “God, sex and tobacco. Hard to fault the Krauts’ priorities.”

The four musicians stood, blank-faced. A moment later, Beamer spoke: “Ah, the famous English sense of humour we’ve heard so much about.”

Samson moved first, choosing the bed next to Fox. The others stepped forward to claim the remaining beds.

Heaving his feet back onto the covers, Fox rested against the pillows: “Planning to rehearse before tomorrow’s concert? Perhaps I could record …”

The Americans froze. Another beat passed. Samson bent to tighten a boot lace. “Sure thing. But first we’re gonna get some chow.”

Fox tried another icebreaker. “I’ve been invited to MC your event. I’m imagining a touch of Benny Goodman, a sprinkling of Louis Armstrong?”

The room got colder. McMahon pointed a drum stick at him. “A Jew and a jungle boy? We play untainted music – Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby.”

“You’re not spooked by their Italian and Irish backgrounds?”

“Races you can trust.”

Samson cut the conversation off by offering Fox a cigarette. Chesterfields. The Englishman’s hand shot out, plucked one from its soft packet and nodded a thanks. The Americans lit up using Zippos. Fox scratched a Vesta match.

Blowing smoke at Fox, Samson looked wary. “Why’s a reporter getting into showbiz?”

“I’m here to interview the general in command. But I’ve been given time off to recover from bouncing around in trucks all the way from the Channel to the Rhine. Jerry really buggered those Froggy roads.”

Jackson cleared his throat. “’Buggered’ as in ‘sodomised’?”

“Wrecked.”

“The English language. It’s what separates us.”

“And,” said Fox, having taken the long route round to answering Samson’s question, “your concert for British troops will be a jolly sidebar to the general’s piece: American jazz quartet takes time out from entertaining its own troops to play for our men near the frontline. I’ll also interview you and …”

“Grub time,” snapped Samson, slapping his palm against his thigh.

In tight formation the four strode for the door. Fox gave them 10 minutes before tramping through dirty slush to a large mess tent close to where XXX Corps were bivouacked. He wasn’t planning to complain about the walk. He and the other outsiders had been assigned digs in the impeccable health spa while Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks and his men made do with an abandoned church and rows of pup tents.

Sitting at a makeshift mess table, Fox tried to identify chunks of meat submerged in thin gravy. Lamb, he decided charitably. A few feet away, the Americans sat with their tin plates wiped clean. They glanced at Fox, offering uniform smiles.

The buzz of conversation in the tent died as General Horrocks followed by an aide-de-camp pushed through the canvas flaps. They crossed to a small table close to the Americans. Four Jack-in-the-Boxes shot up, shoulders back, salutes crisp.

Horrocks returned the salutes and was about to drop into a folding chair when Samson moved swiftly towards him. Fox caught snatches of the conversation. The Americans had bought gifts from Major General Bolling of the US 84th Division. Samson tapped the side of his nose, presumably indicating the presents were potable, then offered to deliver the presents to Horrocks and put on a preview show for the commander and his aides.

Eyes twinkling, Horrocks invited the Americans to stay after their performance and share the gifts. Shaking his head, Samson explained the men had to rehearse later that evening: “Sorry … we’ll have to skedaddle.” A private joke, judging by the feu de joie of smirks from his countrymen.

Horrocks complimented their diligence. Dining resumed across the tent. Fox’s plate lay untouched. He’d skedaddled.

 

Standing in the shadows, Fox angled his wristwatch towards the soft light coming from Horrocks’ headquarters in the church. Eight pip emma. Carrying their instrument cases and two whiskey bottles, the musicians halted at the foot of the church steps.

Samson hissed at his fellow players. As one, the men swooped down to their cases, snapped open locks and snatched out weapons. Barrels gleamed in the church light. Fox, unarmed, pressed against a wall. In his stomach, he felt the familiar clench of pre-battle fear. This time it wouldn’t be his battle. There were metallic clacks as the men racked cocking handles then, side-by-side, charged up the steps.

Through the open doors Fox heard frantic click, clicking as firing mechanisms struck only frigid air. Couldn’t fight anymore, indeed, but he knew how to empty submachine gun magazines. Shouts. Although he didn’t speak German, he imagined the quartet’s outbursts were likely to be coarse, perhaps even blasphemous, and certainly unacceptable in polite society.

In the church vestibule, the four attackers crouched on their knees, hands behind their heads, fingers laced. Heavily-armed, red-capped military police, their blancoed Sam Brown belts reflecting the candlelight, encircled the men.

Horrocks appeared as Fox entered. “Splendid job,” said the general. “If you hadn’t gone over to the other side, I’d …”

“Actually, sir, I’m with the BBC.”

“Just teasing. I was about to say I’d award you a medal. Now …” the tip of his boot nudged Samson’s leg “… we have to find out what happened to the real Yank musicians.” The German ignored the prodding. Horrocks turned back to Fox. “And what tipped you off these treacherous blighters were German assassins?”

“Aside from the bigotry, it was hard to imagine jazz musicians turning down a free drink.”

--------------------------------------------

Historical footnote: December 1944. A month after The Cats had swung by – fictionally. In the Battle of the Bulge, elements of which took place in the Geilenkirchen sector, the Waffen-SS launched Adolf Hitler’s brainchild, Operation Greif. The plan: German soldiers disguised in captured US and British army uniforms and using Allied vehicles would infiltrate behind enemy lines to create confusion and wreak havoc. The operation failed.

# # #

Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN

 

The Ketamine Konnection

Crossing Il Capri’s threshold from Las Vegas’ Gates of Hell heat into the cryogenic aircon of the casino hotel was one small step for Raymond Halliday, one giant stagger for the South of the Border-born bellhop toting three leather suitcases bound with buckled straps.

Cap askew, forehead damp, the porter wheezed: “Señor, the bags … now they come with wheels.”

Turning slowly, Halliday seemed surprised not at this insight into modern luggage but that a minion could or, indeed, should speak. Satisfied the staffer had nothing further to add, Halliday swung back towards reception, checked in and was waiting at the elevator before the bellboy had made it halfway across Il Capri’s expansive foyer.

Tuesday the 9^th. A quarter of 11. Seventy-five minutes until the production conference. Time to shower, punish the mini bar and rinse out with Listerine Cool Mint breath freshener, roughly in that order.

The mini bar was better stocked than he’d anticipated. If he’d bothered to check his Longines DolceVita watch when he finally reached the hotel’s conference room, he’d have noticed he was late. No matter. Most of the seats encircling a large lozenge-shaped table were empty. In the movie industry, timeliness was for apparatchiks. Real players operated by their own internal “screw you” clocks. 

Eventually there was enough above and below the line film crew present to tackle the most important agenda item: lunch. By 1, the executive producers and principal cast members still hadn’t arrived. “At least the workers are here,” began the production manager.

Only Halliday didn’t laugh. With his back to the room, he was working the buffet again, forking remnants of Maine lobster onto his plate. The manager cantered through the production schedule. The producer, one eye on Halliday who had graduated to spearing shrimp and scooping oysters, touched on budgets.

Director James Snide held up a hand. “When Raymond has finished prepping for the End Times, perhaps we can get to the script changes.”

Halliday heard only the final words. As a scriptwriter, they were two he loathed, along with “early deadline” and “budget restraints”. Plus there were elements within the script he couldn’t alter. Not unless he fancied sharing his Coco-Mat king-size bed in his fountain-view room on Level 20 with a horse’s head. If there was a single word which encapsulated any gangster’s approach to business failure it would be “unsentimental”.

Snide’s assistant stabbed at a MacBook Air’s keyboard and the movie’s title popped onto a wide screen on the far wall: The Ketamine Konnection.

 “I’m thinking of changing ‘ketamine’ to something more marketing friendly,” said Snide. He paused for effect. Halliday, with a gobbet of shellfish part way to his mouth, also paused when his anal sphincter suddenly clenched. Was dope being cut from the movie? He pictured that horse’s head with a risus sardonicus grin resting on his bedroom pillow.

Snide continued: “How’s this sound – The Special K Konnection? After all, Special K is a street name for ketamine.”

Halliday’s sphincter relaxed. But not too much. As a screenplay hack he could live with that minor change. As a man with debts to pay to Sláinte, L'Chaim and Gānbēi (sadly, as he’d discovered, not a reputable, broad-church New York loan firm) he was just happy to live. “Love it,” he said a little too loudly.

Dudley Duncan the Prop Master, a louche young man in white linen, hurriedly seconded Halliday’s support and gave Snide a kiss-ass smile: “So clever of you to have the plot revolve something other than stolen old school drugs such as coke, ice or horse.”

Again with the horse? Halliday suppressed a shudder. “It was my idea.” He swiveled to address the room. “Ketamine is the dope du jour. It was Matthew Perry from Friends’ mellow hallucinogen of choice when he hopped into his hot tub for the last time. It might also make the user feel disconnected and not in control. Or as I like to think of it: Tuesday.”

He gestured at the assistant who flicked onto the screen photos showing a bulky khaki kitbag packed with small plastic sachets containing white powder. The little bags had been consolidated into larger glassine ones. “I calculate that at $100 per gram, the prop K will appear to be worth around $12 mill. Street value, that is.”

“Nothing to sniff at,” said Duncan.

To match the movie’s new title, the script needed to be tinkered with. Halliday dutifully made notes then stared out the floor-to-ceiling window at the forced gaiety of the Las Vegas skyline. The plot remained unchanged: two divorcees on a cross-America road trip in a pink Corvette convertible pick up a handsome hitchhiker lugging a kitbag. He’s stolen ketamine from the Mob. The women, in turn, steal it from him. Neither the hitchhiker nor his former colleagues in crime are happy. The women flee.

Up next on the agenda: the DP blocked out the following day’s shoot capturing the divorcees exchanging a drug parcel after they’ve slo-moed towards the camera, seemingly floating on the quivering heat of the desert sand. No shortage of the latter around Las Vegas. It was a one hour 50 drive to the planned Death Valley location. A 2^nd unit director was already setting up just off the CA-190. “Look ethereal,” had been Snide’s directive during rehearsals.

 

Wednesday the 10^th. To Halliday it felt like pre-dawn. The bedside clock insisted it was 0805. He finished dressing and wondered for the second time in 15 minutes if lighting a cigarette would set off an alarm. Perhaps he could wrap the room’s smoke sniffer thingee in a hand towel. A soft knock on the door. Through the spy hole, Halliday saw enough fresh linen to flag who the visitor was. Duncan was shouldering a canvas kitbag.

“Heavy?” asked Halliday.

Duncan ignored the question. “It went well, thanks to me.” He heaved the bag onto Halliday’s rumpled bed. “What better way to disguise real dope than transport it in plain sight as a movie prop? A few busybodies questioned the two identical bags. I said we needed a backup if the first got damaged.”

“And where’s the dummy dope in the second bag?”

“In the trunk of the Corvette. Our leading ladies are taking it for a spin to the location site this morning. As you insisted, the real thing has a green tag sown on the bottom, the prop has a brown tag.”

There was that sudden clenching feeling – again. “No,” cut in Halliday. “The actual K is stashed in the bag with the brown tag, the dummy is green.”

On cue, the room phone chirped beside the clock. Snatching up the receiver, Halliday heard the Concierge announce that Messrs Sláinte, L'Chaim and Gānbēi were waiting for him in a limousine outside the hotel’s entrance. He looked at Duncan. The two men chorused an obscenity. Approximately 78 seconds later, they tumbled out of the lift into the hotel’s car park, scrambled into Duncan’s rented Jeep and, after torching the rubber on its tyres, were catapulted onto The Strip.

After a moment, a black stretch limo squealed out of Il Capri’s semi-circular driveway, sliced into the boulevard’s traffic, took a hard right, then a left, then another right; all the time keeping the Jeep in sight.

That quiet, sunlit morning, the corner of West Bonneville Ave and South Grand Central Parkway was blessed with the presence of a black and white patrol SUV. With their vehicle parked far enough onto the kerb to allow traffic to flow, deputy sheriffs Kellaway and Branston tried to, firstly, avoid spilling just-bought coffee on their crisp beige uniforms and, secondly, avoid any work.

Kellaway spotted the Corvette a moment before his second sip. Two scarf-wearing woman in the front seat squealed with laughter as their hot pink car fishtailed through the intersection. Within a heartbeat, it was rear-ended by a Jeep which, while still hovering several inches off the ground, was T-boned by a stretch limo. Melded together by momentum and twisted metal, the three vehicles spun in a choreographed swirl before slamming into the black and white’s hood. Scalding coffee seeped into the deputies’ crotches.

A kit bag, hurled into the middle of the intersection by the impact, lay ripped open. Hundreds of plastic sachets spilled white powder onto the asphalt.

Branston was first out of the patrol car, one hand on his holstered weapon, the other covering his sodden fly. He reached the passenger side of the Jeep as Halliday slowly lowered the cracked window.

The scriptwriter smiled: “Officer, I can explain everything.”

# # #

Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN

Dial 1300-687-337 for MURDER

It’s so hard to find a good murderer these days. The new flush of wet workers lacks the sense of commitment we established killers bring to an undervalued industry. Sure, if you’re casting around for someone to bump off a rich relative who’s taking far too long to go to his and your reward, you could pop a Help Wanted advert on 4Chan. A few hours later you’d have a queue of would-be villains at your front door, many wearing vintage ice hockey goalie masks, plus an uninvited squad from Five-O. That’s the trouble with cops, they’ve also got Internet access.

All I’m trying to do is earn a dishonest living. I don’t charge GST and if my business had a LinkedIn account I’m confident its posts would be peppered with Likes. My own dislikes include dark operators who drift into my life, rain on my parade and then imagine they can simply drift out. For example …

St. James Infirmary Blues began playing. It’s a ringtone not to everyone’s taste but I rather like it. The caller ID read: “Unknown.”

“Palmer’s Process Servers,” I said. “You name ‘em, we nail ‘em.”

The caller was near traffic. I could hear it rushing by. There was an intake of breath. “Hello?” The female voice was quizzical. “I thought you’d be a man.”

“Not the last time I looked. Jilly Palmer speaking.”

“I’m told you do more than serve legal papers.”

“Let’s see. A stranger cold calls me, making an accusation. I’d guess you’re planning to set me up.”

“No. I’m planning to ask you to kill my husband.”

She had my full attention.

“I’m in Bayswater Road,” she said. “Let’s meet at Madame Fifi’s Palais de Hop. I’ll be wearing …”

Then came an unpleasant, hoarse noise. Choking. “Bitch,” said a muffled male voice in the background. Silence. Seconds ticked away.

From my Springfield Avenue apartment, it took me and my violin case a few minutes to reach the public phone she’d obviously called from. The hanging handset was dangling above the footpath, still swaying. There was no sign any of Kings Cross’s passing after-dinner crowd gave a hoot. Under the awning outside Madame Fifi’s, a CCTV camera pointed towards the nightclub’s front door and in the general direction of the payphone.

Inside the club, a tall gorilla in a one-size-too-small suit blocked my path to the owner’s office. “I want to check your CCTV,” I told him.

“Bugger off, sweetheart,” said the gorilla.

“I wasn’t asking permission.”

He made a sudden move towards me then his body convulsed and he lurched backwards, bursting through the door behind him and flopping at the feet of an only slightly surprised Madame Fifi. Lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of an old one, she glanced down at the man and across at my bright yellow cattle prod. My open violin case was in my other hand.

“I need to see tonight’s CCTV recordings.”

“Since you asked so nicely, Jilly,” Fifi said, skirting the prone body and reaching up to a bank of monitors set into a wall.

I poured us drinks from her liquor cabinet before watching the action on the main screen. Two men wearing hoodies jumped from a pale van, ran to a slim, blonde woman in a lamé dress making a phone call and tossed a bag over her head. Hey presto. The woman and the van vanished.

Fifi knew them. “Stone cold killers.” And the lady? Caroline Lamb, wife of Richard “Baa” Lamb, entrepreneurial drug dealer - picture Uber Eats except with crack and hillbilly heroin delivered to your quivering hands.

I’d never spotted the wife before but, over the past few months, I’d seen Baa flitting in and out of a Victoria Street terrace.

Now the thing about a lock picking kit is that it doesn’t always work and it can make scratchy sounds like a mouse with mischief in mind. There I was on my knees on the scruffy house’s doormat, jiggling a wafer pick in the lock. Failure. Then the door swung open.

He wasn’t wearing a hoodie this time but I recognised him. No excuse immediately came to mind, so I smiled up at him, unclipped the violin case lid and sent 5,000 volts through his testicles. Jaw clamped shut, he rose half a metre off the hall floor and pitched forward onto the mat.

At the end of the hallway, light spilled out of a room to the right. Baa and his other contract hit man had seen too many Halloween-style serial killer movies. They stood either side of a bed wearing operating gowns, rubber gloves and thin-lipped smiles. Baa held a mini chainsaw, his new buddy gripped a flensing knife. Strapped to the bed lay a squirming Caroline Lamb, unready for the coming slaughter.

It was the sidekick who saw me first. “Who the hell …?”

Baa turned. “Get the bitch!”

“That’s the second time tonight I’ve heard that word,” I said. “I really don’t like it.”

Knife pointing at my throat, the wannabe killer lunged. “Bitc…”

Ideally I should have opened the window first. As his flying body shattered the window frame, exploding glass made a racket that could be heard in Penrith. He landed on the street kerb and even from that distance I could see his crutch was smoking. Note to self: perhaps lower the prod’s voltage.

Baa raised his chainsaw. “There’s room on that bed for two.”

“You’ve cost me money and wasted my time,” I said. “The first is a nuisance, the second unforgiveable.”

Before I stepped towards him, I closed the door.

 # # #

Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN

 

Anchors Aweigh

Behind the ragged circle of men on the wharf, two large almost rusted-through anchors leant against a stone wall. In front of the group, the Port of Fremantle was abustle. A flock of barges ferried Australian soldiers to stately troop carriers waiting on Gage Roads, a stretch of white-capped deep water off the mouth of the port. A destroyer tailed by a light cruiser, both with White Ensigns snapping in the afternoon sea breeze, nosed out through the north and south moles to act as shepherds for the converted ocean liners and their live cargo. Sprouting at the moles’ tips, anti-aircraft batteries pointed their barrels at the empty sky.

In the harbour, American, British and Free Dutch depot ships, with broods of submarines tethered to their sides, lined the southern wharf.

On that crisp day in the winter of ’42, Fremantle – tucked far away from the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway – was a safe refuge. Unless you happened to be a bookie’s runner.

The five men gathered on the wharf ignored the naval traffic and distant troop ships. They stared down at a bloated body with a yard-long, glistening anchor chained around the corpse’s ankles. Water seeping from the victim’s loud checked jacket and powder blue trousers puddled on the wide wooden planks.

Only Kent and a well-groomed man at his side had taken off their hats.

The medical examiner, with a slight tremor shaking his skeletal frame, stroked what chin he had. Kent looked up and asked: “Was he alive or dead when he hit the water?”

“Too early to say,” replied the doctor, his battered Gladstone bag open at his feet. “But, either way, I can’t imagine he was happy about it.”

A snort of laughter came from the doctor’s left. Police Inspector Patrick O’Halloran of Fremantle’s Finest was amused. At O’Halloran’s shoulder, Lumpers Union organiser Johnno Johnson was less so.

 “Stop pissing around and get this bloke outta here,” he snapped at the doctor. “My men want to get back to work.” A dozen yards away, the expressions on lounging wharf labourers gave lie to the claim.

 “Right-o,” nodded O’Halloran. “We’ve seen enough. Bag the body.”

 As Johnson raised a beefy arm towards the wharfies, the smoothie at Kent’s side held up a hand. Manicured fingernails caught the light. “One moment.” There was a pause for effect. “If those navy divers scoping hulls for limpet mines hadn’t spotted my man, would he have been found?”

 Martin Terrence Leary, bookmaker to all of Perth and nicknamed (except to his face) “M.T” because that’s what your wallet was like after laying a bet with him, didn’t wait for an answer. Tugging at Kent’s coat sleeve, Leary moved away.

 “That’s why I’ve hired you,” he said softly. “Look at them – a quack who hasn’t drawn a sober breath since the Depression, a copper whose laziness is only exceeded by his greed, and an empire-building union thug.”

 “Johnston’s Popeye anchor tattoo is quite intimidating.”

 Leary allowed himself a tight smiled before steering Kent towards the road. “Bobby Mahoney went missing five nights ago while taking bets in pubs and along the wharves. The Dutch are tightwads but the Yanks, Poms and our boys are mad punters.”

 “What’s left to bet on?”

 “The AIF turned Ascot racecourse into one giant campsite but there’re still the country trots, the interstate doggies and, frankly, anything’s fair game … well, fair-ish.”

 “A rival bookie?”

 “Any competitors are either careful or dead.”

 Leary drew a 4 x 6 glossy from inside his suitcoat. The natty Bobby smiled into the camera lens. “I hope you don’t mind me paying cash. Putting a private investigator’s bill through my accounts seems unnecessary.” The photograph and a plain, bulky envelope slipped into Kent’s hand.

 A few steps later they stood by Leary’s Bentley 8 Litre, the rear door held open by a pin-neat chauffeur. “Find Bobby’s killer or killers and there’s a bonus,” said the bookmaker.

 “And then I turn them in to O’Halloran?”

 “I’ll save you the trouble. Meanwhile … a lift?”

 Kent angled his wristwatch away from the sunlight. “I’m on the clock. I’ll start now.”

 

Visting pub after pub wasn’t an issue. Visiting and drinking ponies of shandy seemed against nature but Kent kept sipping, kept asking questions. In his pocket, the envelope lay like a talisman. Just one phone call and his luck had changed. Maybe. Shaking heads and bugger-offs strengthened the “maybe”. Either the bar flies were scared to admit seeing Bobby or they had other motives. Telling the truth wasn’t an option.

 Lunchtime. Day Two. One more phone call. As he started to climb the stairs to his Mouat Street office, he heard muffled ringing. The office’s locked door delayed him then, panting, he snatched up the receiver. “Hello” came out in a gasp.

A woman’s smoky voice asked: “Louis Kent?”

Another gasp.

“Is everything alright?”

“Asthma,” he lied.

“It should keep you from shooting Japs out of palm trees in the Pacific.”

“There’s that,” agreed Kent.

“My name’s Polly. I hear you’re the private dick who’s been asking about Bobby Mahoney.”

Normally, Kent would’ve chafed at the Yankie slang but her emphasis on the second part of the job description gave her a free pass.

 At two, he edged down narrow stairs into the Twin Anchors, an underground bar off High Street. In a far corner, a handful of US navy personnel with gob caps askew, lit Chesterfields, drank whisky and played poker around a small table. In another corner, three lance corporals from the Australian 9^th Division rolled their own, drank Swan Lager and sized up the Americans. A mix of nationalities and uniforms lined the bar.

 At the staircase end of the bar, Kent’s caller perched on a stool. Polly patted the stool beside her. Kent felt himself picking up his pace. He imagined cartoon-like steam hissing from ears.

 She ordered, he paid. They paced their drinks as she explained she’d overheard two boozy customers – the bar’s not hers – skiting about making easy money deep-sixing a bookie. Stretching across to straighten Kent’s tie, she whispered: “Details cost cash.”

 He nodded, she continued. “I gather Bobby saw Johnno Johnson and some of his blokes meeting Yank sailors in a cargo shed on Friday night. There were crates of bourbon, cartons of cigarettes.”

 “Smuggling?”

 “Darl, it’s unlikely they were donating to the war effort.”

 “Bobby was a low-level runner. Why would he care?”

 “This isn’t about fags or grog. It’s about who was there with Johnno.” Polly flicked her hair towards the mirror behind the bar. “I’ll go freshen up. You can think about how much the mystery person’s name is worth.”

 Only 70 percent of the customers watched her walk through the rear door towards The Ladies. The other 30 percent were playing poker.

 Turning away, Kent squinted at the mirror. He and his reflection agreed he was getting too old to hunt killers. After 15 minutes, he eased himself off the stool. With Polly there wasn’t that much freshening up needed. Pushing open the rear door he felt it strike something solid. Something solid in high heels. Polly lay on the scuffed carpet, convulsing. On his knees beside her, Kent heard a grunted: “… ran.”

 “Which way did he run?” An empty question. “I’ll call for …” he began. Her face tilted down, eyes finally shut.

 

Leaning forward, Leary lifted a Dunhill lighter towards Kent’s cigarette. There was an almost imperceptible shake of excitement in the bookmaker’s hand. “Great progress,” he said.

Crammed into Kent’s office and sitting on straight back chairs, the pair were close enough to play pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake. With his free hand, Leary briefly tapped Kent’s knee as an admonishment. “But you still don’t know who killed your informant or where the murderer ran off to.”

 Kent shook his head. “Friday night. Johnston is doing a smuggling deal with some Yanks. Obviously not the first. Bobby blunders by. No need for anyone to panic – someone in the bookie business isn’t going to snitch. But maybe there’s no need to tell the police. What if a cop is already there … with his hand out? So, it could be ‘ran’ not as in ‘run’ but as in ‘O’Halloran’.”

Leary lit his own cigarette and exhaled at the ceiling. “Police Inspector Patrick O’Halloran. Literally a greedy pig.”

“You indicated he was as bent as a nine bob note.”

Leary pushed back his chair as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. “Mr Kent, I owe you a bonus. It’ll be here by six.”

“You’re not planning anything rash, I hope.”

“Dear, dear, no. But, on the subject of rashes, let’s just say there’s an itch I need scratch.”

 # # #

Copyright 2023 GREG FLYNN

The Ghost Writer

Leather soles on polished marble. As I clip clopped towards the hotel’s reception, the two desk clerks – over-groomed males with practiced front-of-house smiles – looked up. Eye sweeps took in my small suitcase and tailored linen jacket. Tusting and Huntsman respectively. Perfectly acceptable appeared to be their joint decision but my kit wouldn’t stop them running a credit check after I eventually ascended in the metalwork lift to my room. That week, Nice was hosting a particularly unsavoury crowd: literary folk.

Suitcase sitting by my right ankle, I rested my hands on the white and gold desktop. “Graham Browne. With an ‘e’ – the surname not the Christian. I have a reservation.”

“Welcome back, Mr Browne,” they chorused.

“Back?” My surprise unsettled them.

Correcting a guest was presumably découragé but the taller of the two receptionists took his career in his hands and a deep breath before saying: “En effet, Monsieur Browne. You were with us in February. Four nights. We have upgraded you to the same room.”

“Impossible. I’ve never stayed at Le Negresco.”

An awkward moment’s silence was guillotined by the shorter receptionist. “Je suis désolé. No doubt an error on our part.” 

The high room looked across Promenade des Anglais to the late afternoon’s silver sea. I looked across the room. Blue, beige, black, pink. In terms of interior design, there was a lot going on. Difficult to forget.

Unpacking my suitcase, I dropped the formal invitation I’d received to Le Festival du Livre de Nice 1975 onto an ornate side table and chose the nearest of three closets to hang up my jacket. The invitation specified lounge suits to be worn for the book fair’s opening night but surely authors weren’t meant to dress like auditors?

The telephone’s clanging startled me. I picked it off its cradle and my publisher immediately added to the alarm. His usual Hooray Henry honking was gone. Brief pleasantries over, he gave a dry cough. “Graham, I’ve just arrived at the hotel. Can we catch up for a quick drink at, say, five-ish? There’s the rather delicate matter of that advance I need to discuss. You’ve missed the deadline.”

“Advance? Deadline?” My visit to Nice was becoming a string of one-word queries.

“We paid you on time, Graham, and … err … now we’d like the first three chapters of that new novel you promised.”

Rather than begin a stream of “what, what?” I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the phone in my hand. Yoram Housman’s voice squawked through the earpiece. I’d stopped listening.

It was happening again. Somewhere in the world, someone with the high-end tastes of the Shah of Persia and the spending habits of Elizabeth Taylor was impersonating me. It’d been three years since the other “Graham Browne” last hijacked my identity and swanned from the Hotel Nacional De Cuba to the Colony Room Club in London, running up bills and running out on women. Digging through the leather compendium I’d stashed in my suitcase, I found an ageing, creased Le Monde newspaper clipping mailed to me via my agent by the irate manager of Paris’s La Tour d'Argent restaurant. The headline in the entertainment pages read: “Auteur célèbre dans une bagarre au restaurant”. The accompanying story claimed I’d thrown a punch at a waiter after he’d smiled at my “date”. A flashbulb-lit black and white photograph captured a man baring a vague resemblance to me being given the bum’s rush by waitstaff while a peroxide blonde in stockinged feet beat their backs with her high heeled shoes. La Tour d'Argent’s manager had demanded payment for two damaged chairs and the unpaid tab. I’d pleaded that not only had I never visited his overpriced restaurant, I was at home on Cap d’Antibes at the time.

Other documents in the compendium included a paternity suit notice from a woman in Monte Carlo and a letter of demand from a Kentucky horse breeder.

Then, suddenly, my doppelganger had disappeared. Hopefully dead or in jail. But now …

A few minutes after 5 o’clock, I walked into Le Negresco’s bar with its walnut woodwork and, thanks to diligent Côte d'Azur tanning, its walnut-coloured guests. Housman appeared to have two drinks’ head start. I chose Ricard Pastis de Marseille, he stayed with The Macallan. He accepted a cigarette and then clinked glasses before he started banging on again about the advance and the late manuscript. Apparently, I’d phoned him four months’ earlier with my plans for a new book and a request for a “little something to tide me over”. In cash. I’d then met with Housman’s junior partner Rosemary in a Soho bar I’d chosen, signed the book deal, slipped the envelope of cash into my pocket and, finally, patted her knee and suggested dinner. As I’d recall, said Housman, she’d slapped my hand away.

No, I said. I did not recall the slap. In my 10 years with his publishing firm I’d never taken an advance in cash nor met Rosemary. I reminded Hausman of the mystery man of 1972. At the time I’d tagged him: “The Ghost Writer”.

Housman didn’t have the advantage of a Riviera tan to stop him turning pale. He lifted his whisky glass and tugged at his shirt collar. “I did think it strange. But authors are rather offbeat. Shall we call the police?”

I rattled the ice in my glass before taking another sip. “Not yet. You and I can outwit the fake Mr Browne. For example, what’s on 15 May?”

Housman, with no ice to shake around, emptied his glass. “That’s the day you’re to be French kissed by the new Mayor of Antibes.”

“He refers to it as being awarded the Keys to the City for my sterling work promoting the area in my novels. Those Keys aren’t simply symbolic. Not only can I go anywhere, I can do almost anything. Carte blanche. It’s an irresistible lure for the impostor to get involved in some way.”

Before Housman could order another round, I outlined how his firm’s public relations department should beat the publicity drum to preview the event in the UK and French press.

 

15 May. The hook had been threaded through the bait. By now, the counterfeit Mr Browne would be swimming towards me to be caught, scaled and filleted.

Sitting in an arched doorway in my relatively modest villa in Cap D’Antibes, I could see the Alpes-Maritime peaks in the distance. Smoke trailing from a Disque Bleu gave them a hazy, dreamy look. Forty-five minutes to the ceremony. Easy. It was a less than 20-minute drive to the event location on the marina below the towering Fort Carré.

Cigarette smoke still hung over the empty chair as I calmly walked out the front door. On the pebbled driveway my two-tone Citroën 2CV sat at a jaunty angle. Two flat tyres on the right-hand side. An Opinel knife’s wooden handle jutted from the rear tyre. Merde. It took me 60 seconds to reach the villa’s phone and another 30 before I realised the line had been cut.

Standing at my front gates, I looked around. My nearest neighbour was holidaying in Tahiti and, on the quiet backroad, there was zero chance of a flagging down an available taxi. Panama hat jammed in place, I headed towards a bus stop half a kilometre away. Thoughtfully, the local Council had set up regular services to shuttle the Cap’s villas’ support staff from the town’s centre to their workplaces and back again. The bus took 35 long minutes to arrive.

Clambering off at a stop just 200 metres from the podium, I started what, for me, was a sprint. For others, simply striding. A crowd of well-dressed people was moving en masse towards me. Was I going in the right direction? Merde - encore une fois. The event had finished.

Two gendarmes began officiously herding the departing throng off the wide boardwalk by the waterfront to allow a large black Peugeot with pennants flying from both sides of the bonnet to ease its way past.

Exhausted, I stood trying to catch my breath as the car drew up alongside me. In the back seat sat the Mayor and a man who looked distressingly familiar. There was a Panama hat on his lap. The window slid down. The Ghost Writer produced an apologetic smile. “We’d offer you a lift, old boy, but we’re off to paint the town red … and white and blue. À tout à l'heure.”

Before the window rose, he blew me a kiss.

 # # #

Copyright 2023 GREG FLYNN