The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

'˜Oh, do excuse me.'

'˜I followed you,' said Danny, looming a little further away. '˜I got fed up with being walloped by male nurse Cecil so I upped and awayed.'

'˜Feathered wings?' I enquired.

'˜Nah. I tried to figure out what was the least most obvious way of escaping, but then I figured that if I could figure out the least most obvious way, then it couldn't really be the least most obvious, because I'd obviously-'

'˜Frankly, I don't care,' I said. '˜So why did you hit me?'

'˜To save your life, I told you.'

'˜Are you kidding, or what?'

'˜Chief, the humour of that line frankly evades me.'

'˜So sorry, Barry. Please continue, Danny, but keep down wind.'

'˜A while back,' said Danny, '˜I met this mendicant in a pub and he told me a story about hitch-hikers. You see there is a fleet of old VW Campers and they-'

'˜Heard it,' I said.

'˜About how they recycle dispossessed people?'

'˜Heard it.'

'˜Have you heard the similar one about the woman who pretends to be a nurse and hangs around in mental hospitals waiting for patients who are hoping to escape?'

'˜Er, no.'

'˜Well, she takes them in her car off to this house in the middle of nowhere and they go inside and-'

'˜I don't wish to know. Thanks very much for getting me out of there.'

'˜No sweat,' said Danny. '˜You'd have done the same for me.'

'˜That's not altogether true.'

'˜Well you're best out of there, that's for sure.'

'˜Too right.'

'˜I mean, how much could you have taken?'

'˜Of plunging to my death in a mincing machine? Not too much, I should think.'

'˜I'm not talking about a mincing machine. I mean the other thing, her thing.'

'˜Her thing? You mean it's an even worse thing?'

'˜Damn right. According to the story I heard, this woman keeps her victims there for months.'

'˜Months?'

'˜And does it to them again and again and again.'

'˜Does what?'

'˜Screws them. Like sex slaves, makes them have sex with her morning, noon and night.'

'˜Don't hit him, chief.'

'˜You're too late, Barry.' I caught Danny a fine right-hander and sent him into the cartons. '˜You stupid bastard!' I told him.

'˜Look on the bright side, chief.'

'˜What bright side?'

'˜Well, if you'd spent months as a sex slave, you'd never get your case solved, would you?'

'˜No, I reckon you're right.' I climbed wearily to my feet, went over to Danny and gave him a good kicking.

'˜Got that out of your system, chief?'

'˜Yes, Barry. I have.'

'˜Jolly good. So where to next?'

I pointed to the neon sign. '˜What does that say to you?' I asked.

'˜It says EXIT, chief. But then what do I know?'

'˜Wake up, Barry. I'm in Lazlo Woodbine mode here. Knocked on the head at the end of the first chapter. Wake up in an alleyway. Woodbine only worked the four locations, didn't he, so what's next on the list?'

'˜A bar, chief, where you stand around talking a load of old toot. Something you excel at.'

'˜I shall ignore that remark. But a bar it is. And would you care to hazard a guess as to the name of this bar?'

'˜Might it be Fangio's Bar, chief?'

'˜Isn't it always?'

And it always is. Or, at least, was in the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers. Woodbine's best buddy was Fangio the barman. Woodbine always went into Fangio's, talked a lot of toot and met up with a dame in trouble. The significance of this dame's trouble would not be immediately obvious, but it would cleverly dove-tail in with whatever case Woodbine was working on. The dame would inevitably do Laz wrong, but then dames always do, but he'd get her in the end, and she'd help him solve the case. That's the way Woodbine did business, here or there, or elsewhere.

'˜Come on then,' said Barry. '˜Let's get it over with.'

I pushed open the exit door, stepped along a dingy hallway and out into a bar of equal dinginess.

I say '˜of equal dinginess', but this doesn't quite paint the poodle. This bar was drab. Which is to say, it was lacklustre. Here was a cheerless bar, uncomforting and uncongenial. A dismal bar, lugubrious, funereal and dull. A bar that was gloomy and sombre, long-faced and woebegone. A bilious bar. A tearful tap-room. A doleful dive. A pulch- '˜Turn it in,' said Fangio. '˜I've just had the place decorated.'

I copped a glance at the fat boy. There he stood behind the counter, large as lard and smiling dike a dead cat on the road to Hell. Fangio was girthsome, which is to say- '˜I said, turn it in.'

'˜I'm sorry, Fange,' I said. '˜I was just thinking out loud.'

'˜Well if it's a running gag, then it's a shitter.'

Oh how we laughed.

Although I don't remember why.

Fangio called me over to the bar and I sat right down before it. '˜New stools,' I said, as I comfied myself.

'˜I bought them in a job lot,' said the fat boy.

And we laughed again.

And then we stopped.

'˜The humour of that is quite lost on me,' said Fangio.

I took off my fedora and twiddled with the brim. '˜I think it's word association and toilet humour,' I explained. '˜You said 'њshitter'ќ, I said 'њstools'ќ, you said 'њjob'ќ, as in 'њjobbie'ќ, and then we both laughed again.'

'˜What a pair of characters we are,' said Fangio.

And this was true. We were.

'˜So,' said Fangio, once we'd both stopped laughing and he'd served me with a shot of Bourbon and a plate of Twiglets. '˜Now we've put the stools behind us, as it were, let's turn our attention to the chairs; what do you think?'

I viewed. Fangio's chairs. '˜Disproportionately large,' I said. '˜Where did you buy them?'

'˜At Big Chairs R Us.'

'˜And these were the biggest they had?'

'˜These were the smallest.'

'˜I see,' I said. But I didn't.

'˜I can see you see,' said Fange. But I don't think he did.

We laughed again, just to be on the safe side, and I tucked into my Twiglets.

'˜So,' said the fat boy, '˜any luck with the case?'

'˜It's not a case,' I told him. '˜It's a handbag.'

'˜A handbag?' Fange whistled. '˜All I hear today is 'њa handbag'ќ, 'њa handbag'ќ.'

'˜Do you?'

'˜Yes, indeed I do. Take this morning, for instance. I'm standing here behind the bar minding my own business when this bloke walks in. Ordinary bloke, smart suit and tie, polished shoes, but something odd about his head.'

'˜His head?'

'˜Tiny,' said Fange. '˜He's got a tiny head, about the size of an orange.'

'˜You're making this up.'

'˜I swear I'm not. Well, the bloke orders a beer, but he can see I'm staring at him and he says 'њGo on, ask me, then,'ќ and I say 'њAsk what?'ќ and he says 'њAbout my head.'ќ And I say, 'њI had no intention of asking you.'ќ And he says, 'њWell, I'll tell you anyway,'ќ and he does.

'˜'њI wasn't always like this,'ќ says the bloke, pointing to his tiny head. 'њOnce I was chief petty officer '˜on The Mary Grey, a pleasure cruiser out of San Francisco. I've always been one for the women, you '˜see, and a job like that was right up my street. Smart uniform and plenty of unattached females looking for love. I was at it morning, noon and night, it was marvellous.'ќ'˜

'˜Bastard,' I said.

'˜Quite so,' said Fangio. '˜'њWell,'ќ the bloke continued, 'њwe were several days out of Frisco on this particular voyage and I was enjoying the attentions of a particularly well-endowed young woman who liked to get it on in the lifeboat. And one night we were bonking away and she kicked out unexpectedly and I got tipped over the side. The ship went on without me and I was left all alone drifting in the sea. I thought I was a goner, I can tell you, but I kept afloat somehow. I drifted in and out of consciousness and then I saw a bloke go rowing by using a swordfish saw for a paddle, but he didn't hear my cries for help. After what seemed like days I was finally washed up on a desert island.