bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2008), pp. 36–39
It was a sultry afternoon. I was at the office window hoping for air. A guy in a plaid suit sauntered by, pausing only to snatch a lollipop from a baby, snap a blind lady’s cane and push a boy scout into traffic. A pigeon let go above him, but he stopped just in time. As he stood there sneering, a guy carrying a ladder over his shoulder made a sudden turn and clipped Mr. Plaid hard upside the head. He fell over one end of a teeter-totter in the playground. Seconds later, a man big enough to squire a walrus at Roseland slipped on a banana peel and sat down heavily on the other end. Mr. Plaid shot straight into the air and came down head-first in the back of a garbage truck, which took off in a hurry, the pigeon perched on one of his shoes.
The streets are mean all right, but sometimes the system works.
Sometimes …
I hadn’t heard her come in, but she was standing by the door when I turned around. Tall, short blond hair, a model’s figure, blue eyes over a snub nose, a cut on her forehead. Without looking up, Effie asked from the depths of his magazine, “The clue to 14 down is ’thirsty sea-bird’ — four letters ending in P. Any ideas?” The blonde said, “A gulp. It’s like a swallow but bigger.” Then she came over to me. “You must be Shamus Dikk. I’m Melanie Daniels. I need you to find my brother. His name is Jack, maybe you know him?” Effie snorted. Like most Pls, I’m old friends with a certain Jack Daniels, but he wasn’t her brother.
She got down to details. Her brother was using the family fortune to research birds. “He wanted to create a real-life bluebird of happiness,” she explained. “He worked his way up from the wren of apathy to the canary of mild amusement, with a detour to the grackle of morose inanity. Then one day he disappeared.” I tried to look surprised. “The lab was taken over by a strange man in white-face who said his name was Challenger Chaos. He said Jack had gone abroad to look for rare specimens and asked him to step in. I haven’t been allowed in the place since, but I hear it’s full of strange things and I’m worried something bad has happened to Jack. I went back on Friday to demand answers and Chaos wasn’t there, only a man with a pencil-thin moustache named Sleazewagon — the man, not the moustache.” My ears perked up. Sleazewagon’s name was not one you could forget, although everyone tried
“He threw me out. But I have to know what’s going on, Mr. Dikk. Please help my brother.” I agreed, at my usual rates. She gave me the details and a retainer, then got up. Maybe my eyes were going bad, but she seemed to be tading out as she went gracefully through the door, and the fact that she didn’t have to open it should have tipped me off. But some days you have to just follow your gut. Ask Sydney Greenstreet.
Her brother’s place was called Birdland Also. Effie and I dressed as health officials and demanded entry to inspect a phoney avian flu outbreak. Inside, the place was as big as a warehouse, divided by a giant glass wall. The far side was filled with hundreds of birds of all sizes and shapes, making the kind of noise, even through the heavy barrier, that gives band-saws a bad name. I asked to see the boss. A man in the reagent-stained whites of a scientist gave the name Floyd C Manifesto Unimpressed, I gave it back. We pressured him for the whereabouts of Sleazewagon, Dr. Chaos or Jack. He clammed
Just then, sharp explosions rocked the heavy doors on the far wall of the office. Manifesto went pale. “Oh God, they’re loose again,” he whimpered. Effie and I looked at each other and agreed to deal with him later. Waiting for a break in the gunfire, we whipped through the door, split right-left and found ourselves face to face with a flock of heavily armed doves, mounting a coo. Fortunately, they weren’t too bright, and we were able to knock them down with toam from some handy fire extinguishers before they could bring their wing-mounted artillery to bear. We went back into Manifesto’s office. All the fight had gone out of him too.
“Dr. Chaos paid me to help him take over the place,” he explained. “After we got rid of Mr. Daniels, Chaos started to work over the lab’s equipment. Originally, it could only be used to create birds noone had ever heard of before. Once the Doc was finished, he had a thing he called a Birdbath, a big round limestone tub that would change people into birds and back. Then Chaos started to use it. He’d invite people to tour the lab and then push them in and throw the switch.” I asked him, “So what was the point — Money? Revenge? TV rights?”
Manifesto threw up his hands. “I have no idea. We had male models turned into peacocks, religious fundamentalists changed into turkeys, yogic flyers transmuted into cuckoos, management consultants flipped to albatrosses and Cabinet ministers converted to dodos. I ask you – do you see any pattern?” I decided not to go there, but asked, “So what about Sleazewagon?”
He picked at an acid burn in his white coat. “Now that was strange. One day, he just showed up and started trying to talk Dr. Chaos into a partnership, saying that the equipment could be used for better purposes, like money and power. At first, Dr. Chaos looked at him like he was a bug, but then he got this far-away look in his eyes, smiled one of those smiles you really don’t want to see more than once in a lifetime and told Sleazewagon he could have the whole operation for free, that I would tell him how to use it. Sleazewagon clearly smelled a rat — other than himself — but couldn’t turn down an offer like that. Soon he had a real criminal operation going — kidnap victims hidden as geese, crooks who needed a safe house camping out as eagles, rival gangs trapped in flocks like those doves you KO’d.” He shook his head. So did I. This was worse than Sudoku.
Effie asked the sensible question. “So where is everyone?” Manifesto looked up and said, “The VIP pens in the main lab, along with two special projects of the Doc’s. He converted Jack when he wouldn’t go along, Sleazewagon took Chaos by surprise and dumped him in the bath in turn, and I tossed Sleazewagon in last night because I just couldn’t take it any more. I used to be a respectable scientist.” Just then a small wingless bird scurried in through a door left ajar in the confusion. Rushing up to Manifesto, it stabbed him in the shin with a sharp beak tipped with a noxious-looking stain.” “Et tu, kiwi?” said the scientist, as he collapsed and quickly expired.
Effie and I searched the place. On the top floor, we found a lab containing a big cage of raptors, a row of individual birdcages and what had to be the Birdbath. “Great,” I said. “Who’s who and how do we get them back?” Effie handed me an envelope from a small table near the controls. I was surprised to see my name on it, but inside was only Dr. Chaos’ business card, clipped to instructions for operating the equipment and the following puzzle.
You will see five different birds in the five individual cages numbered 1-5 from left to right. Each cage has a card with a false first name and surname (indicated by “Mr.”) on it. These false names differ from the real names of the converted men, which are given in the clues below. Each cage also has a poster from a bird-themed film and a poster of a star from one of the same five movies; in three cages the film and star posters match, in the other two they do not.
1. The La Cages aux Folles poster and the poster of
Jeremy Irons are in cages with numbers adding
up to 8.
2. Mr. Nuff, Charles and the chicken are in 3 adjacent
cages, in that order.
3. Cage #1 has a poster of Jack Nicholson.
4. Ruben’s cage is directly between Max’s and #3,
which holds Gaston LeLouche.
5. The Ugo Tognazzi poster is in an odd-numbered cage.
6. The pigeon is in the cage
with the Maltese Falcon poster.
7. The loon and Mr. Beauregard are at opposite ends of
the row.
8. The 3 cages with Morton, Challenger Chaos and
the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest posters are
not adjacent.
9. William is Jack Sparrow and Rialto Sleazewagon is
in cage #4.
10. Mr. Parker, the jay, is in the cage with the poster
from The Birds.
11. Jack Daniels and Mr. Maltravers are in the cages with
the Humphrey Bogart and Rod Taylor posters, not
necessarily in that order.
12. Mr. Storkfeather is in the second cage to
the left of the one holding the raven and
the Swann in Love poster.
Effie solved the puzzle while I worked out the instructions. Happily, they were Linux, not MS-based. The first person we converted was Jack, who fell over himself with gratitude for the rescue, anger at what the others had done with his lab and confusion at my mention of his sister. “Tippi? But she died years ago, an accident on a movie set. You must have confused her with someone else.” I held my peace and hoped Effie had not tried to cash her cheque.
Next we converted Sleazewagon. Pleased at the chance to brag, he confirmed Manifesto’s story in detail and added that he had also been the pigeon who offed Mr. Plaid (“a villain, yes of course, but so smalltime, the man had no class, he devalued the brand identity of evil”) after escaping and tailing Melanie to my office. Having said so, he squirmed out of Effie’s grasp and fooled us by running for the Birdbath rather than the door, pulling a lever on the console on his way. Before we could do anything, he was a pigeon streaking out an open skylight.
There was a flash from the row of cages and a tall slender man in a tuxedo and white-face appeared in a puff of smoke. “Glad you worked out my message, boys. As a demi-god, I could have handled Sleazewagon by myself, but I always prefer to create the conditions for chaos and then see where you mortals take things. I however don’t think we should let Rialto slip away.”
I’d heard of deus ex machina endings, but this was ridiculous. Chaos walked over to the raptors and coaxed a fierce-looking falcon onto his wrist. Moving to the skylight, he launched the bird with a gentle word. We watched as it rose high above the desperately fleeing pigeon. The falcon hung motionless, then plummeted and stuck, a puff of gray feathers betraying the impact. The hunter flew regally back to drop the smaller bird, still struggling feebly, at the demi-god’s feet. As Effie tossed it into the Birdbath, I asked, “Great, but how did you know the falcon had been trained to bring back its prey alive?’ “I didn’t,” came the reply, with a look that left me thinking how much I needed a drink.
Effie came up with a bound Sleazewagon as Chaos evaporated into the night. “What about the others?” I asked.. “One is changed back,” he reported, “but the other one convinced me he preferred to stay a bird, so left Willie Nuff a loon.”
Can you duplicate Effie’s feat by identifying which birds in which cages were Jack Daniels, Dr. Chaos and Sleazewagon? bout de papier will draw from all correct entries received by June 30, 2008, and the winner will get a book signed by A Aalto. Not necessary for your entry, but can you also fill in the table? How did Melanie Daniels get that cut on her forehead? And what was special about the name on Jack Daniel’s cage?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2008), pp. 36–39. Read the rest of this issue →
