He paused, sipped water, dropped his voice by an octave. He was, he said, saddened by the death of Don Hicks. He had always had a sneaking admiration for the man and had regretted quite deeply the duty that had brought him to these shores — namely to arrest him for a crime nearly twenty years old. So in a way it was a relief not to have to do this, and a great relief to be able to write once and for all finis to the Grosswort and Spinks bullion case. He had no reservations at all about adding his condolences to the Colonel’s and offering them to the bereaved family.
Applause.
“Hang on,” I said. My voice squeaked but I was determined. “This won’t do, you know. Don Hicks is alive and well and living in his garden shed—”
“Julia!” Holmes’s voice was like frozen prussic acid, but I ploughed on.
“Those three men were villains, I know, but this time they have been fitted up—”
“Watson!”
“I saw Hicks this morning. Lola, Delores, over there, she brought him his breakfast. In the garden shed. Yesterday I saw his frogman-footprints—”
María Pilar intervened this time: “If no one else will silence that fat scrotum, I shall.” And she came for me with a knife.
I don’t know why she calls me that. I know I wear mannish clothes, but she can’t really believe I’m a man...
On the way back to the airport, Juan driving, my remonstrations with Holmes were again interrupted by a bleep on the radio phone. Juan passed the handset to Holmes.
“It’s for you.”
Holmes listened, then said, “I’ll ask her.”
She turned to me and her eyes, deep violet, dilated by the drugs she often uses at the successful outcome of a case, seemed to penetrate the inner recesses of my soul.
“Julia, the police cannot find the radio transmitter that detonated the bomb, and which you hid for me in the cistern of the upstairs toilet of the villa. Please tell me where it is.”
Defeated, I told her.
A shadow of a smile crossed her lips though not her eyes.
“I imagine that being men they preferred not to look for it there.”
One last footnote. When I got back home I found eight perlagoniums, fully grown, of real magnificence, delivered by a florist who is on the Designer Living Card list, of which more anon in a later tale. The card read ‘Gratefully yours, DH’. They are very lovely and I cherish them. But plants bought ready grown never give the same pleasure as those one has reared from stolen cuttings — do they?
Funny Story
Larry Beinhart
My father is visiting for the holidays. He’s an old man now. I’m not exactly young either. At least not the way they used to measure men. Pushing fifty. Pushing it quite hard actually.
My son is six, pushing seven. At that age you can’t push hard enough. Time flows like treacle, black, sweet, slow, thick and sticky. You can’t move it fast enough. If you charge into it you just get tangled up and slowed down, then you end up having to take a bath.
At my age, when you would give whatever there is to give to slow the metronome down, it seems an enviable state. But try telling that to a kid racing to be a race driver, fireman, policeman, wrestler, Power Ranger, space scientist, karate fighter. Generation upon generation tries to tell their kids that, and each aging parent sounds like a jerk when he does. Even my father did. I don’t mention that however.
David, my son, spills his juice on the rug. His mother, my wife, starts scolding and I go to get paper towels to sop it up. “I told you to be careful of the rug,” she says. “It’s a valuable, very valuable piece. How many times have I told you never to bring drinks on that rug.”
“It’s an old rug,” David says. Which is true.
My father, looks at me with something less than a wink. Possibly a twinkle. As if to say, listen to this, this is how mothers and sons talk, for all time, what a pleasure to hear this.
“The rug was a gift from your grandfather. It’s from the old country, and it’s a very valuable piece.” What a curious expression, the old country. It makes it sound as if we came from one of those rustic peasanty nations that Mercantilism and the Industrial Revolution had more or less bypassed, someplace like Rumania, Albania, Ireland or the Ukraine.
“Is it as old as Grandpop?” David says, awe in his voice, that lets us know that Grandpop is about as old a thing, let alone as old a person, as he can imagine. Grandpop is pretty old, and he looks old, with wrinkles and liver spots and wisps of hair to highlight the baldness of his liver spotted, wrinkly dome. Big veins stand out on his hands and his fingers move stiffly and painfully, arthritic, as well as just old.
“Older,” Grandpop says.
“Did you get it new?” David asks.
It’s a big old rug, 12’ × 18’, a Persian. Handmade, hand knotted, with an intricate pattern. I’ve been told how many knots per square inch, but I’ve forgotten and experts, when they look at it, instantly exclaim things about the pattern and the clan and, most of all, about its probable price. I can’t. I just know it’s the second most valuable thing we own. It’s worth less than the house, but more than the car, a five-year-old Lexus. But, like the good old Persian it is, in a house with a son and a daughter and a dog and a cat and, from time to time, rabbits, gerbils and wounded birds, it looks old and faded and worn and as comfortable as a home.
“No, not really,” Grandpop says.
“Did you get it at like a garage sale, or an auction?” David asks. He’s been to lots and lots of both. We’ve furnished the house, except for the rug and one or two other bits, from garage sales and auctions. This is not to say that it looks like Levittown leftovers. My wife is a woman of terrific taste which she combines with immense ferocity in her search for true value. For her, anything short of getting a $1400 chair for $225 is a furnishing defeat.
“Would you like me to tell you a story about that rug?” Grandpop says.
David looks doubtful. Furniture acquisition stories don’t thrill him. He’s really had his fill of them. When my wife does make a furnishing score she not only brings the item home, she brings the tale of its purchase with it: the days, weeks, months of searching; the revelatory moment of finding; the strategy and tactics of the negotiation and a blow by blow of the bargaining.
“You’ll like it, it’s a funny story,” his grandfather says.
David is not convinced. Then I, like a schmuck, which means jewel in German but means schmuck in English, say, “That’s not a good story for him.”
“Tell me, Grandpop,” David says.
“Pop,” I say. Why I imagine I can still head this off, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t really expect to stop him and I just think it is the responsible, parental thing to try.
“What? The boy shouldn’t know?”
Maybe he shouldn’t. “He’s a little young.”
“Maybe I won’t be here next year to tell him.”
Try to argue with that. But, nonetheless, I did. “You will. I say he’s not ready. If, God forbid, you’re not here, I’ll tell him. When the time comes.”
“Tell me,” David says. Of course. “I want to know.”
“What’s this God forbid stuff,” my father asks me.
“It’s a turn of phrase.”
“It’s superstition,” he says, more fiercely than seems called for.
“OK, it’s superstition. I’m superstitious, I would like you to come back next year and for many years to come.”
“How did you get the rug, Grandpop?”
His grandfather gets out of his chair with creaks and groans and sighs. Not the furniture, the man. And gets down on his knees on the floor. He rolls back a corner of the rug. “Look at this,” he says. “This is fine, fine wool. Strong wool. It wears like iron. Woven by hand, the threads are tied by hand. The dyes they use in this, they’ll last hundreds of years. Today they make millions of everything, carpets, cars, toys, pens, books, chairs, glasses, silverware, they make it fast, they make it cheap. I’m not saying that’s bad, or that the stuff they make is bad. I’m not an old curmudgeon, can’t move with the times, stuck in the past, can’t appreciate progress. I like progress, I like to see everybody, every working man, and woman, with washers and dryers and summer clothes and sports clothes and ski clothes and running shoes, walking shoes, aerobic shoes, tennis shoes, dress shoes, shoes with winking red lights in the heel. Them I like especially.