Dreaming of Babylon Read online

  Sergeant Rink was very carefully examining a letter opener.

  He looked up.

  “A sight for sore eyes,” he said.

  “What do you need a letter opener for?” I said, slipping into the genre. “You know that reading isn’t one of your gifts.”

  “Still selling dirty pictures?” he said, smiling. “Tijuana valentines? The ones for dog lovers?”

  “No,” I said. “Too many cops kept asking for samples. They cleaned me out.”

  The private detective business was very slow one time when the Worlds Fair was going on over at Treasure Island in ’40, so I supplemented my income by selling a few “art” photographs to the tourists.

  Sergeant Rink always liked to kid me about them.

  I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I haven’t been proud of, but the worst thing I ever did was getting as poor as I was now.

  “This is a murder weapon,” Rink said, dropping the letter opener on his desk. “It was found in a prostitute’s back early this morning. No clues. Only her body in a doorway and this.”

  “The murderer was confused,” I said. “Somebody should have taken them to a stationery store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.”

  “Oh, boy,” Rink said, shaking his head.

  He picked up the letter opener again.

  He turned it very slowly over in his hand. Watching him play with a murder weapon wasn’t getting me any closer to some bullets for my gun.

  “What do you want?” he said, staring at the letter opener, not bothering to look up at me. “You know the last time I loaned you a buck I said that was it, so what do you want? What can I do for you except give you directions to the Golden Gate Bridge and a few basics on how to jump? When are you going to give up this silly notion of you being a private detective and get a paying job and out of my hair? There’s a war going on. They need everybody. There must be something you can do.”

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “Ah, shit,” he said, finally looking up. He put the letter opener down and reached into his pocket and took out a handful of change. He very carefully selected two quarters, two dimes and a nickel. He put them down on the desk and then pushed them toward me.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Last year you were worth five bucks, then you dropped to one. Now you’re a seventy-five-center. Get a job. For Christ’s sake. There must be something you can do. I know one thing for sure: detective work isn’t it. Not many people want to hire a detective who’s only wearing one sock. You could probably count them on your hand”

  I was hoping that Rink wouldn’t notice that, but of course he had. I was thinking about Babylon in the morning when I got dressed and didn’t notice that I was only wearing one sock until I walked into the Hall of Justice.

  I was going to tell Rink that I didn’t need the seventy-five cents, which of course I did, but what I really wanted was some bullets for my gun.

  I tried to size up the situation.

  I had limited options.

  I could take the seventy-five cents and be ahead of the game or I could say: No, I don’t want the money. What I want is some bullets for my gun.

  If I took the seventy-five cents and then asked him for the bullets, he might really blow his stack. I had to be very careful because as I said earlier: He was one of my friends. You can imagine what the people who didn’t like me were like.

  I looked at the seventy-five cents on his desk.

  Then I remembered a minor criminal I knew who lived in North Beach. As I remembered he had a gun once. Maybe he still had it and I could get some bullets for my gun from him.

  I picked up the seventy-five cents.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Rink sighed.

  “Get your ass out of here,” he said. “The next time I see you I want to be looking at an employed man who’s eager to repay eighty-three dollars and seventy-five cents to his old friend Rink. If I see anything that resembles you the way you are now, I’ll vag you and make sure you get thirty days. Pull yourself together and get the fuck out of here.”

  I left him playing with the letter opener.

  Maybe it would give him an idea for a lead that would solve the case of the murdered prostitute.

  Also, maybe, he could take it and shove it up his ass.

  Adolf Hitler

  I left the Hall of Justice and walked up to North Beach to see if I could get some bullets out of the minor criminal I knew who lived on Telegraph Hill.

  He lived in an apartment on Green Street.

  Just my luck the minor crook wasn’t home. His mother answered the door. I had never met her before but I knew it was his mother because he had talked a lot about her. She took one look at me and said, “He’s gone straight. Go away. He’s a good boy now. Find somebody else to break into places with.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You know what,” she said. “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with guys like you. He goes to church now. Six o’clock Mass.”

  She was a little old Italian lady about sixty. She was wearing a white apron. I think she misunderstood what type of person I was.

  “He’s gone down to join the Army,” she said. “He can, you know. He never got into any real trouble. Just little things. Guys like you made him do it. He’s going to Fight Adolf Hitler. Show that son-of-a-bitch what’s what.”

  Then she started to close the door.

  “Get out of here!” she yelled. “Go join the Army! Make something of yourself! It’s not too late! The recruiting office is open right now! They’ll take you if you haven’t been in the pen!”

  “I don’t think you know who I am. I’m a private—”

  SLAM!

  It was an obvious misunderstanding.

  Amazing.

  She thought I was a crook.

  I’d just come there to borrow a few bullets.

  Mustard

  Still no bullets, and I was getting hungry. The nutrition from the stale doughnut I had cadged from my landlady was rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

  I went into a little Italian delicatessen on Columbus Avenue and got a salami and Swiss cheese sandwich on a French roll with lots of mustard.

  I like it that way: lots and lots of mustard.

  It put a forty-five-cent dent in my seventy-five cents.

  I was now a thirty-cent private detective.

  The old Italian who made the sandwich for me was very interesting looking. Anyway, I made him look interesting because I started to think about Babylon, and I couldn’t afford to if I was going to earn some money from my first client since October 13, 1941.

  Jesus, what a dry spell!

  That had been a divorce case.

  A three-hundred-pound husband wanted the goods on his three-hundred-pound wife. He thought that she was fooling around and she was: with a three-hundred-pound automobile mechanic. Some case. She used to go down to his garage every Wednesday afternoon and he’d fuck her over the hood of a car. I got some terrific photographs. That was before I had to pawn my camera. You should have seen the expression on their faces when I jumped out from behind a Buick and started snapping away. When he pulled out of her she rolled right over onto the floor and made a sound like an elevator falling on an elephant.

  “Put a little more mustard on it,” I said.

  “You sure likea the mustard,” the old Italian said. “You shoulda ordera plain mustard sandwich.” He laughed when he said that.

  “Maybe your next customer won’t want any,” I said. “He might be a mustard hater. Can’t stand the stuff. Would sooner go to China.”

  “I surea hope so,” he said. “I go outa business. No more sandwiches.”

  The old Italian looked just like Rudolph Valentino if Rudolph Valentino had been an old Italian making sandwiches and complaining about people having too much mustard on their sandwiches.

  What’s wrong with liking mustard?

  I could like six-year-old girls.
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  Bela Lugosi

  I walked back down Columbus Avenue, eating my sandwich and headed toward the morgue. I had remembered another place where I might get some bullets. It was a long shot but everything I did these days was a long shot, starting off when I woke up in the morning. The odds were 50-1 against me taking my morning piss without getting half a bladder on my foot, if you know what I mean.

  I had a friend who worked at the morgue. He kept a gun in his desk. I thought it was sort of strange when I first got to know the guy. I mean, what in the hell do you need a gun for in a place filled with dead bodies? The chances are very slim that Bela Lugosi and some of his friends, like Igor, are going to break into the place and make off with some stiffs to bring back to life.

  One day I asked my friend about the gun.

  He didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

  He was really thinking about it.

  “They brought in this dead ax murderer,” he said, finally. “Who’d been shot by the police after beheading all the participants of a card game that he held every Friday night for twenty years in his basement. He was running around in the street waving his ax when the police pumped eight bullets into him. When the police brought him in here, he sure looked dead to me, but it didn’t quite work out that way. I was putting him in the cooler when suddenly he sat up and tried to chop my head off with his hand. He still thought he had an ax in it. I hit him over the head with an autopsy pan and that quieted him down. He was really dead by the time the police got here after I called them.

  “That caused an embarrassing situation because they didn’t believe me. They thought I’d had a drink or two and imagined the whole thing.

  “ ‘No,’ I said. ‘You guys brought somebody in here who wasn’t dead. I mean, this son-of-a-bitch was still kicking.’

  “Then your friend Rink who was with them said, “Peg-leg, let me ask you a question.’

  “ ‘Sure,’ I said.

  “ ‘And I want you to answer this question as truthfully as you can. OK?’

  “ ‘OK,’ I said. “Shoot.’

  “ ‘Do you see a lot of bullet holes in this bastard?’

  “ ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  “ ‘Is he dead now?’

  “We were all standing around the body. He had so many bullet holes in him that it was ridiculous.

  “ ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  “ ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’

  “ ‘Positive,’ I said.

  “ ‘Positive?’ Rink said.

  “ ‘Positive,’ I said.

  “ ‘Then forget about it,’ he said.

  “ ‘You don’t believe me?’ I said.

  “ ‘We believe you,’ he said. ‘But don’t tell anybody else. I wouldn’t even tell your wife.’

  “ ‘I’m not married,’ I said.

  “ ‘Even a better reason not to.’

  “Then they left.

  “They all took a good long look at me before they left. I got the message but still that son-of-a-bitch had been alive, so I didn’t want to take any more chances with all the dead murderers, bank robbers and maniacs that come in here. You never know when they’re not dead, when they’re just playacting or unconscious or something and they might suddenly attack you, so I got the gun I keep here in the desk. I’m prepared now. The next time: BANG!”

  That’s where I’d borrow the bullets I needed.

  I’d get them from my friend Peg-leg who works at the morgue and keeps a gun around to shoot dead people.

  1934

  Suddenly I remembered that earlier in the day I was supposed to make a phone call but I didn’t have a nickel then, but now I did, thanks to Sergeant Rink, so I stopped at a telephone booth and made the call.

  The person I was supposed to call wasn’t home and the telephone didn’t return my nickel. I hit it a half-a-dozen times with my fist and called it a son-of-a-bitch. That didn’t work either. Then I noticed some mustard on the receiver and I felt a little better.

  I’d have to call again later on and my original seventy-five cents was busy wasting away. This could be very funny if it was a laughing matter.

  Anyway, I wasn’t hungry, any more.

  Got to keep looking at the bright side.

  Can’t let it get to me.

  If it really gets to me I start thinking about Babylon and then it only gets worse because I’d sooner think about Babylon than anything else and when I start thinking about Babylon I can’t do anything but think about Babylon and my whole life falls to pieces.

  Anyway, that’s what it’s been doing for the last eight years, ever since 1934, which was when I started thinking about Babylon.

  The Blonde

  When I walked into the morgue just behind the Hall of Justice on Merchant Street, a young woman was walking out crying. She was wearing a fur coat. She looked like a very fancy dame. She had short blonde hair, a long nose and a mouth that looked so good that my lips started aching.

  I hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time. It’s hard to find people to kiss when you haven’t got any money in your pocket and you’re as big a fuckup as I am.

  I hadn’t kissed anybody since the day before Pearl Harbor. That was Mabel. I’ll go into my love life later on when nothing else is happening. I mean, absolutely nothing: zero.

  The blonde looked at me as she came down the stairs. She looked at me as if she knew me but she didn’t say anything. She just continued crying.

  I looked over my shoulder to see if there was somebody else behind me that she might be looking at, but I was the only person going into the morgue, so it had to be me. That was strange.

  I turned around and watched her walk away.

  She stopped at the curb and a chauffeur-driven 16-cylinder black Cadillac LaSalle limousine pulled up beside her and she got in. The car seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t there and then it was there. She was staring out the window at me as the car drove away.

  Her chauffeur was a very large and mean-looking gent. He had a Jack Dempsey-type face and a huge neck. He looked as if he’d get a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance. Afterwards you could take her home in a gallon jar.

  As the limousine drove away he turned and gave me a big smile as if we shared a secret: old buddies or something. I’d never seen him before.

  “Eye”

  I found my morgue pal Peg-leg back in the autopsy room staring at the dead breasts of a lady corpse lying on a stone table, obviously waiting to get her very own autopsy. You only get one in this world.

  He was thoroughly engrossed in staring at her tits.

  She was a good-looking woman but she was dead.

  “Aren’t you a little old for that?” I said.

  “Oh, ‘Eye,’ ” Peg-leg said. “Haven’t you starved to death yet? I’ve been waiting to get your body.”

  Peg-leg always called me “Eye.” That was short for private eye.

  “My luck‘s changing,” I said. “I got a client.”

  “That’s funny,” Peg-leg said. “I read the paper this morning and I didn’t see anything about any inmates escaping from the local asylums. Why did the person choose you? They’ve got real detectives in San Francisco. They’re in the phone book.”

  I looked at Peg-leg and then at the corpse of the young woman. She had been very beautiful in life. Dead, she looked dead.

  “I think if I’d come in here a few minutes from now, you’d be humping your girlfriend there,” I said. “You ought to try a live one sometime. You don’t catch a cold everytime you fuck them.”

  Peg-leg smiled and continued admiring the dead broad.

  “A perfect body,” he said, sighing. “The only flaw is a five-inch-deep hole in her back. Somebody stuck a letter opener in her. A real shame.”

  “She was stabbed with a letter opener?” I asked. That rang a bell but I couldn’t place it. Somehow it was familiar.

  “Yeah, she was a lady of the night. They found her in a
doorway. What a waste of talent.”

  “Have you ever gone to bed with a living woman?” I said. “What would your mother think if she knew you were doing things like this?”

  “My mother doesn’t think. She’s still living with my father. What do you want, ‘Eye?’ You know your credit isn’t any good but if you want a place to sleep, there’s an empty bunk downstairs in cold storage, waiting for you, or I can tuck you in up here.” He motioned his head toward an eerie-looking refrigerator built into the wall that had enough space for four dead bodies.

  Most of the bodies were kept downstairs in “cold storage,” but they kept a few special ones in the autopsy room.

  “Thanks, but I don’t want any perverts staring at me while I’m sleeping.”

  “How about some coffee, then?” Peg-leg asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We went over to his desk that was in the corner of the autopsy room. He had a hot plate on the desk. We poured ourselves some coffee from a pot and sat down.

  “OK, ‘Eye,’ spill it. You didn’t come down here because you wanted to pay back the fifty bucks you borrowed from me. Right? Right,” he answered himself.

  I took a sip of coffee. It tasted like he got it out of the asshole of one of his corpse friends. I was going to say that but I changed my mind.

  “I need some bullets,” I said.

  “Oh, boy,” Peg-leg said. “Repeat that.”

  “I’ve got a case, a client, cash money, but the job requires that I pack a piece.”

  “You carry a gun?” he said. “Isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

  “I was in the war,” I said. “I was a soldier. I got wounded. I’m a hero.”

  “Bullshit! You fought for those fucking Communists in Spain and got shot in the ass. It serves you right, too. How did you get shot in the ass?”

  I returned the conversation to its original subject. I didn’t have all day to spend with this joker.