bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2011) — Winter/Spring 2011 // Hiver/Printemps 2011, pp. 45–47
Tuesday, ten in the morning. Our clients were late. Effie was looking for the weather forecast on our Markoni Mudcaster floor model, the one with the speaker grill like a pre-war Studebaker. Still a good radio, even if it does channel Mackenzie King. Effie wasn’t having much luck — all he could find was talk shows and conspiracy rants. He spun the dial, skipping through the static from one station to another. It was like listening to a three-bottle tequila bender.
“I just want you to look at this picture of Elvis Presley, doing the Watusi with… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…John Diefenbaker, at that time Opposition Leader and a man on the very edge of. ..>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…an Icelandic volcano, where a man in full Mountie regalia was arrested today for failing to pronounce the mountain’s name. He was released after identifying himself belonging to corpulent ex-dictator Don Gordo Beluga, last seen… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<….performing a trapeze act high above the chorus line at the Folies Bergére in Paris. The act was inexplicably followed by an Al Jolson clone in blackface singing… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…. [Am a Material Girl”, dedicated to…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…Prime Minister Steffi de Lyre, who called on the Governor General last night to dissolve Parliament and immediately left the nation’s capital for…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…Las Vegas, where his mob has just taken over every casino in town, shouting “If I gotta roll the dice, it might as well be for money.”
Papuan aborigine carrying a large bag of shrunken heads, which were later confiscated by the police and forwarded to… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy Father sent the thank-offering to the Vatican kitchens with instructions to prepare it with a Béchamel sauce and… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…mail it to Silvio Berlusconi, under investigation by Italian prosecutors for alleged improper relations with…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…the starting line-up of Real Madrid. Based on the results of recent games, Coach Mourinho announced, the team’s owners were considering a switch to…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<… synchronized boxing. The inaugural display in Mar del Plata, Argentina, was however interrupted by a woman dressed as a peacock, who announced in fractured Spanish that…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…the Bay is holding a giant sale on all discontinued musical items, including “Greatest
W. Bush, a man to whom is sometimes attributed the phrase, “to the victor belong the…”>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…towels. Also on sale is the extra-large size of Canada’s top laundry detergent, which will turn your daintiest linens into. ..>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…The Untouchables. Sean Connery is Superb as always and Kevin Costner provides a heartfelt performance as… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…80 kilos of spicy garlic sausage. The Agriculture Department yesterday gazetted a regulation that all such contraband would either be incinerated or fed to… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…a paisley armadillo. A biker with just such a mask was sighted on a Harley near El Guapo, Mexico, wearing a red motorcycle jacket with “Born to Pun” cut into the back. In other news, Interpol announced that escaped mega-villain Rialto Sleazewagon had been recaptured in Dhaka while… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…presenting first prize in the annual “World’s least sincere moustache” competition to…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…a man in SCUBA gear juggling tropical fish in an Amazonian-themed water park in Sarasota, Florida. Led away by concerned ichthyologists, four piranhas clamped to his backside, the man turned out to be…>>>*BRZZAP*<<<…UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who convened an emergency General Assembly session this morning to announce that… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…the weather is likely to stay sunny through Thursday, with a probability of thick fog in low-lying… >>>*BRZZAP*<<<…philosophy departments obsessed with deconstructionist semantics.”
“Well,” said Effie, “at least the UN came through with the weather. I think”
My brain was still on spin cycle. I heard a cough. D Essex Mackinaw, the world’s dustiest lawyer, was standing by the window, peering intently at the park across the street. An ornamental pond suddenly dried up. Frogs croaked. He tapped a few more keys on his iPrune and said, “I believe that all the necessary persons are now present.”
I sat down at the head of the table. “You know why we’re here. A killer is loose and the agency was hired by the victim’s lawyers to investigate. We’ve been working on pieces of the puzzle, but I’m going to ask Lieutenant Tennant to make sure we all see the picture on the lid.” I nodded to Lou, who said, “Normally, the force wouldn’t cooperate with a shamus, but the suspects are all fruitbats — and you guys have a specialized reputation…”
“Anyway, what we had was Waxby Chillbone, as close to death’s door as you can get without tripping over the mat. Everyone knew he was going to die soon. He was worth billions, all his heirs had to do was wait. But one of them got greedy. And impatient. And killed the old man just before midnight on New Year’s Eve last year. Walked into his room and pulled out the tubes that were keeping him alive. But left in the brain monitor, which recorded the time of death.”
Hairy Harry January piped up. “So someone is afraid the old geezer changes his will at the last second?” “No,” said Mackinaw. “He was too far gone for that, barely conscious most of the time. No judge would have considered him of sound mind. The problem was something else. Under the laws in effect for calendar 2010, inheritance tax in this province was zero, a one-year fluke in the system left over from the previous administration. From January 1, it has gone back to the usual 55%.”
The radio in the next room spoke up in a prim, fussy voice, “The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.” I shrugged and said, “Great, Mr. King.” The radio replied, “My greatest service is in the many unwise steps I prevent.”
Lou raised an eyebrow. “So the five heirs had a chunky reason to hope the old man didn’t live to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ again. Each one was in the house at the time and there is no hard evidence, no weapon and no inconsistent DNA or prints. Plus all of them vanished that same night. I’m betting on a conspiracy involving the whole bunch, chaos to camouflage the actual killer. But I’m damned if I know where to look.”
He looked to me. I said, “We hit the streets hard, Lou. Five taxis came to the Chillbone house for pick-ups between midnight and one. Here is a black-and-white from a security camera across the street, showing the cabs lined up east to west in front of the mansion. Except for one car, the numbers don’t show up, but we found out two more of them. Harry, Easy, Effie, fill us in.”
Hairy Harry started off. “I find cab #1845, the checker model at the west end in the photo, in a rundown part of Hackenbush, engine gone. New Age types already fill it with dirt and plant some funny-looking weeds — of the oregano family, you know what I mean? But I also find three large, half-burnt corks in the glove compartment, which I am thinking is some kind of clue.”
Easy Lee Suede tipped a leather hat and adjusted his denim jacket. “The taxi I was chasin’ turned up at some freakin’ gallery in Pocahontas Falls. The artist dude told me his girlfriend, name of Carmen Obligatta, brought him the cab late that night and told him to get it wrecked, but instead he got wrecked himself and decided to turn it into a statue. Using, like, sledgehammers and a flame-thrower. All I can tell you, man, is the car was originally black. And the dude picked up some scraps of red leather from the back seat before he got down to work. Oh yeah. And I was casing a bar near the Chillbone place when I met this midnight rambler, y’know, a guy that takes walks after dark. And he, like, swears the cabs at both ends of the row had odd numbers, but he can’t remember which ones.”
Effie chimed in, “I ID’ed the woman getting into the silver cab at the east end of the row in the picture. Her name is Terpsichore Friml. And I tracked down the driver of one of the other taxis. In hospital with heavy bruises and a fractured memory. He says he was driving a yellow cab numbered 7764 and he knew the guy who got into the cab west of his as Trash Tempura, the retro-metal anime-rock star.
He also says that the first cab to his east had a number that was the exact average of the numbers of the cars on either side of that cab, one of which was red. But the driver in hospital, twenty minutes after he dropped his fare at the airport, he was taking a leak at an all-night garage when the cab blew up. That’s all he knows.”
Hairy Harry spoke up. “As a tip, that is not so generous. But I have more to say. After I find the checker, I go back to the pawn shop. Some kid brings in a DVD of a movie called Rose-Marie, an oldie about this singer who falls for a cop. Iam not so interested, until he mentions he finds it in a deserted cab in Ptomaine Row. So I hop in my Stutz and we floor it. No big surprise, it being that kind of neighbourhood, the cab is by now somewhat missing. J am leaning on the kid just a little to make sure he does not just make the story up when I am suddenly surrounded on all sides by his gang, not one over four-foot-high or seven years old. Anyway, we make peace and they back the kid’s play. One shows me a calling card the passenger drops when he gets out of the cab. Name of Mclgor Suitlace.”
Lou Tennant grunted, “What kind of dope drops a calling card while fleeing a murder scene?” Mackinaw replied, “Oh, any of the five are quite capable of such an error. Waxby was a very clever man himself, but no judge of others. The four names you have unearthed are indeed four of our suspects — the fifth is Rudolph Regenshirm, a bit of a drip.”
The lieutenant continued, “I have some information to offer too, from our tipsters. A pair of taxis were seen leaving the scene at about the right time, with numbers 5540 and 9817. We figure they were the last two cabs on the east end. The other tip is from a couple of winos, who dossed in the same taxis, which they found behind a rutabaga factory in Outer Innertz. The cars were gone the next day, but the winos had souvenirs — iridescent blue-green feathers smelling of a woman’s perfume from one and blank PADI and NAUI cards from the other.”
No-one had anything to add. I said, “Well, if Effie will read back his notes, I think we can probably work out who was in which car and left what clues.” Effie looked down in panic at the scrawl in front of him, but pulled himself together. In minutes, he had drawn up a chart that put the facts in order. We stared at it. My brain told me I was missing something, maybe a whole lot of somethings. Somethings from that mixed-up morning news. But what?
The radio came on again. “If some countries have too much history, ours has too much geography. Speaking of geography, a killer subject, let me spell it out: E-Y-J-A- F-J-A-L-L-A-J-O-K-U-L-L.” Effie began twitching. Everyone else looked confused. Then I saw the link between the clues and the news. A quick confirmation on the Internet and we had our murderer.
“Boy,” said Effie later. “When Mr. King jumped in with that last weird clue, I nearly had a fit.” The radio piped up, “Conniption if necessary but not necessarily conniption. Has anyone seen Mother, by the way?”
Can you duplicate Shamus and Effie’s feat by naming the killer and the country where he or she is hiding? To choose a winner, bout de papier will draw from a hat containing the names of everyone submitting a correct answer by the deadline of July 12. The prize will be a book autographed by A Aalto. Not necessary to win, but can you also fill in the chart? you say what news items the other four clues relate to?
Free-lance prestidigitator A Aalto continues to pose as a HOM near the Tropic of Cancer, but is likely to change jobs this summer, mere steps ahead of the local authorities. The tax situation on which this puzzle is based actually pertained in the U.S. in 2010. Most of the radio ’s lines are real quotes from Mackenzie King, some slightly warped (hey, its an old radio). Thanks to Graham Harrop for synchronized boxing.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2011) — Winter/Spring 2011 // Hiver/Printemps 2011, pp. 45–47. Read the rest of this issue →
