Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (15 page)

“OK! Let’s shoot it again and do it right this time. You think film grows like spaghetti! Do you think at all? Look, I’ll tell you what’ll make you mad enough to shuck off your insincerity like a stripteaser drops her panties! Think of your opponent as me! And I’ve just told you you’re the illegitimate son of a Sicilian!”

That did it. No Italian will admit that Sicilians are real Italians, or so I’ve often been told by them. The North Italians look down upon the South Italians, and both look down on the Sicilian. I don’t know who the Siciliano looks down on. The Maltese, perhaps.

The mob held a brief but spirited discussion. The agent said a few words to the director, something like
“Ah fahng goo
,” and all, including the cameraman, walked off. For a moment, the big midget was speechless, then he shouted, “You’re fired! Discharged for incompetency! Come back, do you hear? Come back or I’ll put barnacles on your gondolas! Oh, my God, why did I ever come to this garlic swamp?”

Yelling, he hurled the camera into the canal and stamped around as if he would leave his footprints in the marble.

“Childish tantrums,” I said to Ralph.

Ralph said, “I know who he is! He’s the famous, or infamous, Cordwainer Bird!”

Immediately I recognized him. Bird was an American, an inhabitant of Los Angeles who had, in recent years, been much in the world’s eyes. Originally, he had been a science-fiction writer, author of works well known in his peculiar genre. These included such strange titles as
I Have No Can and I Must Go, Pane Deity
or
Up Your Window, The Breast That Spouted Cholesterol into the Arteries of the World, The Whining of Whopped Whippets,
and
Dearthbird Stories
.

At the same time, he had managed to rise to the top as a TV and movie writer. But his inability to tolerate tampering with his scripts by the producers, their mothers-in-law and mistresses, directors, actors, and studio floorsweepers had gotten him into trouble. After several incidents in which he almost strangled some powerful producers, he was blackballed in Hollywood.

Simultaneously, he was frustrated in his efforts to impress the literary critics of New York. He wrote several mainstream novels which the “East Coast Literary Mafia”—as he called it—reviled. He became destitute, which was the normal state of most science-fiction writers. But he was a fighter, and he vowed to smash the Manhattan cartel, which existed to encourage native Gothamites whose shoddy works counterfeited emotions and destroyed the imagination of readers. He sold his stately mansion in Sherman Oaks at a loss and hitchhiked to New York. There he engaged in a guerrilla war with the critics and their allies, the publishers, distributors, and truck drivers’ union.

And here he was, Cordwainer Bird, apparently making his own movie.

At that moment he saw us. He stopped, stared, then bounded grinning toward us.

“Wow! What a magnificent dog!” he said to me. “Is it all right to pet him?”

I wasn’t surprised at this request. Many people desire to do this. And Bird’s reputation as an ardent canophile was well known.

“There’s only one person he’s permitted to do so,” I said. “But you can try. He won’t bite, though.”

Bird reached out a hand. I was surprised and, I must admit, somewhat jealous, when Ralph submitted to his stroking.

“Holy Moly!” Bird said. “I think I’m in love! Listen, I don’t want to offend you, but I’d like to buy him! Name your price.”

This was too much for Ralph. He growled and lifted his lip, baring teeth that would have given a hungry leopard second thoughts. The idea of being sold, as if he were just an animal, offended him.

“Hey!” Bird said. “He acts like he knows what I’m saying!” Coaxingly, he said, “Come on, pal. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for anything. Say, what’s his name?”

He thrust out his hand again and stroked Ralph’s ear.

“He’s not for sale,” I said. I tugged at the leash and Ralph trotted on ahead of me. But he kept looking back as if he regretted having to leave.

Suddenly, Bird was in front of me. Before I could resist, he had removed my large dark glasses and ripped off my false mustache.

“Ah, ha!” he said. “I thought so!
Herr Weisstein und der wunderhund,
Ralph von Wau Wau! I might’ve thought another German shepherd could be as big as Ralph. But it was evident he understood every word I spoke. Wow! Weisstein and von Wau Wau!”

“You sure blew it, sweetheart,” Ralph said to me.

I sputtered with indignation. “Really,” I said. “What could I have done? What did I do to give us away? It was your reaction that aroused his suspicions.”

“Never mind that.” He spoke to Bird. “For Pete’s sakes, be a pal and give him his glasses and mustache. We’re on a case!”

Bird smote his forehead with his hand. “Holy Jumping Moses! You’re right! I am a dummy.”

Unfortunately, the hand with which he struck his forehead was holding the mustache. It stuck to it when his hand came away. He handed me the glasses and then started to look around. “Where’d it go?”

I ripped it off his skin and replaced it with trembling hands. “By now all of Venice must be on to us,” I said.

He looked quickly around. “No, nobody’s looking this way. You’re okay. So far. Listen, I don’t want to horn in if I’m not welcome. But I’ve been looking for some real excitement. Life has been an emotional downhill slide since I cleaned out the New York establishment. I’d like to be dealt in this. I have certain talents which you could use. And it’d be a great honor to work with the great von Wau Wau. I’d do it for nothing, too. But don’t tell my agent I said so.”

“The best thing you could do for us would be to swear to keep silent about us,” I said frostily.

I spoke to Ralph. “Isn’t that so?”

“My dear fellow,” Ralph said. “It
isn’t
so. We’re up against a great criminal, the deadliest biped in Europe. I’ve studied Mr. Bird’s exploits in New York, and I believe we could use him with great advantage to our mission.”

I was struck dumb with astonishment. Ralph had always said he wouldn’t dream of taking in another partner. He had enough to do to put up with me. Of course, he was jesting when he spoke so disparagingly of me. But though he liked me, perhaps—dare I say—even loved me, he resented having to depend upon a human. As he once said, “Weisstein, you are my hands.” Of course, he had to spoil it by adding, “And all thumbs, alas!”

But there was some sense in what he said. We could use a man of Cordwainer Bird’s caliber. By which I mean that, though he looked like he was a BB gun, he shot a .44 Magnum. Besides, if he got mad at us, he could expose us. And that might be fatal.

At an outdoor restaurant we outlined to him our mission over a bottle of
soave
and a plate of
baccala
. Bird, however, refused the wine. He neither smoked nor drank, he said. He didn’t seem to like it that Ralph lapped up the wine from the platter by my feet, but he said nothing.

“Bend an ear, buddy,” Ralph said. “You’re in the midst of shooting a flicker. You’ll have to forget about that now. Can you stand the expense, all that money tied up?”

“No sweat,” Bird said. “I’m backing and producing this myself. I’ll show those Hollywood phonies a thing or two. I wrote the script myself, too. It was originally titled
Deaf in Venice.
But I decided on a more eye-catching title. I’m great on that, you know. How about
Ever Since I Met Her in Venice, I’ve Had Trouble with My He-ness?”

“You’ll need a wide screen,” I said.

At that moment, we heard a blare of trumpets and a banging of drums. Everybody got up from their tables and ran to the crowd pouring out of the hotels and streets. I called to a man hurrying by, and he said,
“Il Doge Dandolo!”

We stood up and looked out across the Canale di San Marco. A boat had appeared from around the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. I recognized it at once, having seen it many times on TV. It was magnificent, coated with gold, propelled by sixty oarsmen, an exact replica of a late medieval barque. On a platform in the stern stood some people dressed, like the oarsmen, in twelfth-century Venetian costumes. After a while, we could see the Doge himself. He sat in a wheelchair, an extraordinarily large one, also coated with gold. It was said to be self-propelled with a steam engine fueled by a small atomic reactor. As the barque stopped by the
riva,
a gang of flunkies from the Danieli Hotel ran out and placed an ornately carved gangplank onto the boat.

Ralph said, “Watch for Saugpumpe, amigo. I’ll nose around and try to pick up the scents of Giftlippen and Smigma.”

I released the leash and he trotted over to the crowd cheering on the quay. Bird left on his task, a rather distasteful one. He had to dive down into the stinking waters and recover his camera. Ralph had said that he could pose as a TV-news cameraman. He could take pictures which we could study later, hoping to identify our quarry in the crowds. Also, posing as a newsman, he could be seen everywhere without arousing suspicion.

I remained on my chair to observe both the crowd and the hotel entrance. I had difficulty not keeping my attention strictly on Dandolo. He was a huge man with a disproportionately large head. His features were exactly those of the late Doge whose reincarnation he claimed to be. They were immobile, waxy, their deadness the result of the landslide which had buried him for three days. He could, however, move his lips and jaws. He always wore fur gloves, reportedly to conceal hideous scars. A tigerskin robe covered his legs.

The wheelchair and its occupant rolled off the platform and down the gangplank. He was surrounded by his retainers and the hurrahing crowd, but I got up on my chair to get a good view. Before I remembered that I was supposed to be blind and hastily got down, I saw him clearly. By his side was his chief assistant and valet, Bruto Brutini, a small bespectacled man, prim-faced, bald and bearded.

He carried an ornately chased golden bowl full of shelled walnuts and pecans. Dandolo dropped his hands into this and threw a dozen at a time into his mouth. His addiction to nuts was well known.

Presently, the
riva
was almost deserted, the crowd having collected around the hotel entrance. Ralph came back and allowed me to leash him again. “Order another bottle of
soave
,” he said, his tongue hanging out. “That was dry work.”

“Any luck?”

“No, damn it. For one thing, both Dandolo and Smigma were too heavily perfumed. It overrode every other odor in the crowd. I wonder why they used perfume instead of taking a bath. Perhaps it’s because that’s what the old doges did. Dandolo is said to be a stickler for authenticity.”

Cordwainer Bird rose out of the water, shoved the camera onto the stone, and walked dripping to us. He looked excited; his robin’s-egg blue eyes shone.

“You aren’t going to believe this. But I was under the barque when it came in.”

“You bumped your head?” I said.

He stared. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“A wish fulfillment,” Ralph said, staring at me. I blushed. There was no fooling him. He knew that I was jealous, though I had tried not to show any sign of such an unworthy feeling. He claimed that he could smell emotions in humans, that they caused a subtle change of body odor. He would have made a great psychiatrist, not only because of his olfactory and emotional sensitivity and high intellect. People have no hesitancy in revealing all to a dog.

“Oh?” Bird said. “Listen, you guys, I did bump my head, but not on the bottom of the barque. I rammed it into metal six feet below the barque! Curved metal!”

“What was it?” I said.

“Hell, man, it was a submarine!”

I gasped, and Ralph whined.

“Yeah, there’s a tiny submarine attached to the bottom of the barque!”

“Donnerwetter!”
Ralph said, reverting in his surprise to his native tongue. Then, “Of course, what a blockhead I am! All the clues were in front of my nose, and I failed to smell them! How humiliating!”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“The Doge Dandolo is Giftlippen!”

“However did you deduce that?”

“You mean
infer,
not deduce, don’t you?” he said. “How often must I point out the difference? Actually, to be exact, I
gathered.
Check your Webster’s.”

“For crying out loud!” Bird said. “This is no time for lexical lessons! What’s going on?”

“I had thought that Giftlippen would be here because of the Venice Uplift Fund millions,” Ralph said. “But I erred again in underestimating that archvillain. He created the fund in order to steal it. But I’m sure that’s part of a much bigger rip-off. Exactly what, I don’t as yet know.”

“But... the clues?” I said.

“It’s too early to tell you. Besides, I think I also know the true identity of Giftlippen. It’s only a theory, you understand. I prefer not to say anything about it until theory has become fact. But we may proceed on my premise that Dandolo is indeed Giftlippen, who is... never mind that now.”

“If this is true,” I said, “we must inform the Venetian police.”

Simultaneously, Ralph said, “Don’t be a sap, pal,” and Bird said, “You’re out of your gourd.”

“One, the police would claim the reward,” Ralph said. “And we need the money badly. Two, Giftlippen has a habit of bribing a strategically situated policeman or official to tip him off. Sometimes, he even plants one of his own men in a high place long before he pulls a job. The Venetian fuzz may be safe, but we can’t take a chance.”

“We’ll give the big cheese our own
shazam!”
Bird cried.

Bird, I found out later, often reverted in moments of intense excitement to the speech he’d picked up from the comic books he’d read when a youth. Hence, his sometimes old-fashioned and often obscure phrases.

(For the benefit of my German readers, I’ll explain that
shazam
was a word endemic in, I believe, the Captain Marvel comic books. Uttered by the captain and his juvenile partner, Billy Batson, it gave them superman powers. The American audience will have no trouble recognizing it. Neither will the French, who take comics seriously and even grant Ph.D. degrees for theses on this subject.)