Rabbi Berkman almost dropped his saucer.
The Saint cleared his cup from the table, carried it into the kitchen, and called out a request for Vi to summon a taxi.
“I’d borrow your BMW, but I having it riddled with bullet holes might harm the finish,” remarked Simon as he ran water in the sink and made clattering noises with the cutlery.
“Bullet holes?” Rabbi Berkman was still recovering from the syncronicity of Talon’s call for the Saint; Vi was already detailing their address to the cab dispatcher.
Simon excused himself to freshen-up before departing to meet Talon, but paused to make one admittedly unusual request.
“Would you happen to have either duct tape or an ace bandage?”
3
“Judas ain’t.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the Saint.
“Judas ain’t,” repeated the cabbie as the Grey Top taxi turned East on Mercer and headed towards Capitol Hill.
“Judas ain’t what?”
“Judas ain’t diguydigits dibageyes,” explained the driver with conspiratorial glee, “sawyon afer disoaps.”
“You’re absolutely right,” confirmed Simon after searching his memory bank for a neumonic Rosetta Stone to America’s diverse accents and intonations, “I am the Saint, the guy that gets the bad guys. And yes, you saw me on on after ‘the soaps’.”
Temporarily trapped in traffic directly in front of the Seattle Center Arena, Simon witnessed roving packs of denim clad teens and leather jacketed adolescents herding across the street to queue up under a marquee reading “Grand Theft — Conquest of America Tour.”
The driver spoke again, and Simon activated his mental decoder.
“This concert’s a big deal, I guess. Read about it in the paper. You into that stuff?”
The Saint shook his head and laughed.
“No, not at all. Whatever vices I have, being addicted to rock ’n’ roll is not one of them. I do admit, however, to following some of these characters’ more colorful escapades. If my memory serves me well, this particular thieves’ picnic had quite a spread in the newspaper.”
In truth, the only reason Simon Templar scanned the Seattle Times’ Grand Theft profile was because of its adjacency to more important articles about the Saint in Seattle, the premier of ‘The Pirate’, the love life of Emilio Hernandez, and the anticipated international attendees of the Maritime Issues Forum.
“This is Grand Theft’s big comeback tour,” the cabbie said sarcastically as the taxi began to make progress on Mercer, “they’re old enough to have fathered half the audience, and from what I’ve read about ’em, they probably did. They split up several years ago, but Lord knows why.”
Simon studied a gaggle of affluent youths preening, posing, and pretending to do neither as they acted out their pop culture rituals.
“It was probably a combination of interpersonal malaise, managerial condiments, and the group’s digression into out-of-body aerobics,” offered the Saint. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy a ticket if they were giving them away.”
“Naw, me neither,” admitted the driver, “they ain’t my style, but some of those kids would do anything to get in. Jeez,” added the cabbie, pointing to one rather colorful grouping, “these kids today. Just look at ’em.”
The Saint had been looking for some time. A young girl with a heretical haircut paced in front of the Arena wearing only a lightweight denim jacket, tank top, torn jeans, and tattered tennis shoes. Unlike the majority of youngsters crowding the concert’s doors, no caring parent dropped her off with a pre-paid ticket, an extra twenty bucks, and assurances of a safe ride home. Perhaps the frail young teen was not Viola’s Buzzy, but her street-weary aura pierced the crowd’s festive atmosphere like a lighthouse beacon, illuminating Simon Templar’s sense of purpose.
The two men traveled in silence as the cab dipped under the Aurora overpass, and at precisely the intersection of Mercer and Fairview the Saint vowed with iron resolve that Dexter Talon would not escape his justice.
Ernie Steel’s Checkerboard Room, the alcohol serving adjunct to what is best described as a diner rather than a restaurant or cafe, was comprised of two overlapping seating sections: smoking and chain-smoking. Had Simon Templar not long ago abandoned the harmful habit, he would have barely noticed the thick blue haze discoloring the wine-stained backdrop of false front comraderie demonstrated by Detective Dexter Talon.
The Saint had encountered all manner of detectives in his adventurous career, most of whom sought reasons for either his arrest or extradition, and he often derived delight from tweaking their collective noses. Simon did not want to tweak Talon’s nose. Punching his nose, for that matter, would be insufficient punishment for a representative of law and order whom Templar found totally insufferable and blatantly offensive. And while suppressed hostility is almost always perceived, the Saint had long ago perfected the uncanny ability of appearing benignly agreeable to those he thoroughly despised.
“So you’re the famous Simon Templar,” said Talon as if it were a joke.
“Yes, a pleasure to meet you, Detective,” Simon answered as if he meant it, extending his virile grip to Talon’s fleshy palm.
The detective recognized the Saint the moment Simon Templar walked through the door. It would have been difficult not to spot him. He was the only celebrity in Ernie Steel’s, and the singular gentleman in attendance who could, by any amplitude of perception or imagination, be termed elegant, refined, piratically handsome or dangerously picaresque. As the customers’ vocabularies were limited to the recitation of brand name bottled spirits and the mascot nomenclature of collegiate and professional ball teams, none of them would have applied analogous edifying phrases had they considered describing him at all, which they did not.
Talon, to be courteous in our appraisal, rather resembled a rolled boneless ham. His waxy flesh appeared sloppily glued to his rubbery sinews, giving the impression that creational improvisation, either by design or oversight, deprived him of a standard-issue skeletal frame. His adipose abdomen flopped over his waistband while his chin attempted obscuring the knot of his necktie.
“I know all about you, Saint,” said Talon, “and I know you’ve got a thing about detectives.”
“I’m not quite sure, under the circumstances, exactly how you mean that,” Simon said, his face giving a flawless impersonation of a friendly smile as the two sat at Talon’s dark corner table.
“I’ve read about you, even heard your ol’ pal John Fernack of the NYPD go on about ya once at one of our cop conventions back east some years ago. Beer?”
“Sure, the house brand will do,” answered the Saint, and Talon seemed to smirk while his dark little eyes swiveled in their sockets like greased ball-bearings.
“Yeah, right. Here’s the deal, Templar. Listen, we got a problem.”
“We? We’ve only just met, and we have a problem?”
Talon fished into a crumpled pack of short, non-filtered cigarette, pulled one out, lit it, hacked out the first puff, and poked the pack with a stubby forefinger.
“Help yourself if you want one.”
“That’s OK,” said Simon politely, “I’ll just breath yours.”