The Israel Bond Omnibus (35 page)
Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
“Hist!” cried Dr. Nu. “Can you not hear them?”
From far off they heard a drone. One solid sound at first. And then, as it came nearer, they could distinguish individual noises, buzzing, chirping, the crackling of dead leaves under billions of insect feet. Now, there unfolded a black blanket, spreading over the horizon as far as the eye could see. Uncountable hordes of ants, scorpions, tarantulas, crickets, beetles, centipedes... all manner of crawling things... and, hovering above them, their winged cousins in air-borne legions that for an instant blotted out the sun.
“They are coming to me,” Dr. Nu smiled.
“It’s quiet down there,” said Dr. Browndorf. “Something’s fishy.”
Bond put down his field glasses. “No, buggy. Look, Doc.”
The medico put them to his eyes. “My God, bugs! Ugh! Billions ’n’ billions ’n’ —”
“Don’t get panicky, Doc. I’ve a feeling they won’t be coming here after all. Are the boys doing the job?”
“Yes. The cauldrons are lined up by the wall. And one of the boys got a brainstorm. He tore down all the rain spouts, tied them together and formed a sort of pipeline to the kitchen. We’ll get a continual supply of hot water from the hot water taps.”
“Tov m’oad!
And the stuff?”
“They’re opening it and boiling it as fast as they can.”
“Make sure it’s packed as tight as a witch’s tit. Use just enough hot water to make it firm and bouncy. A soggy one won’t go fifty feet.”
“Roger.”
“Don’t ever say that name again,” Bond said savagely. “It’s lost its charm.” Idiot! You had to open your sensual mouth! Now the doc’s looking oddly at you. Can he suspect that M.’s own nephew is a traitor? No, of course not. Nobody knows but you and Sister. And it must stay that way out of respect to the grandest old dame you’ll ever know.
“Oy Oy Seven!”
Bond’s morbid spell was broken by one of the Israeli boys coming up the path, running, in fact, from Baldroi LeFagel who nimbly skipped after him.
“Baldroi, leave the kid alone or I’ll—”
LeFagel said gaily, “Look, it’s all over my hands.” He held them out, revealing a gummy yellow covering. “I’ve been helping those superb young men pack it. I tasted it, incidentally. It’s delicious. Jewish delicacy, no? But then all Jewish delicacies taste delicious. You’re Jewish, aren’t you, Bond?”
Bond sent the little poet spinning with a backhanded cuff. “Get lost, you— or I’ll tan your hide. Uh—sorry, LeFagel.”
“You had to make it a racial issue, right, Whitey?”
The young Israeli, whose name was Neon Zion, said, “We’re ready to roll, Oy Oy Seven. Give us the word.”
They were silent as he approached them, even the nonstop talker, O’Marty.
“Did you knock out a big enough section of the retaining wall?”
“Didn’t have to,” piped up Brother Thelonius. “They did it for us with their last mortar barrage.”
“O.K.,” Bond said hoarsely. “Now we push it.”
“Like hell!” It was A Man Called Peter. “Look, baby, I came up here to go-go, yea-yea-yea, wail, swing, rock. Ain’t nothin’ in this Local 802 union book says I gotta do donkey work.”
“I’ll shove that book down—” Bond made a move toward him.
“Cool it, daddy. You’re looking at a scab.”
Shots skimmed over their heads. “Rifles,” said Bond. “They must be planning to come up now. Doc, give me back the field glasses.”
He adjusted the zoom-in lens. Camp Camp, he saw, was gone! Smothered by the hellish hordes of insects. Their first phalanx was now moving on Spector, Dr. Nu and the Vi Teh Minh men, Russkis and Fidelistas. Dr. Nu bowed formally, bent down to speak to the leaders of the various species.
He saw the Oriental’s mouth agape. My God, the man must be screaming his head off. They’re on him! The yellow is disappearing. He’s turning black... with insects! Now there’s just a blob writhing on the ground.
Sayonara,
Dr. Watts Nu! You and SPECTOR wanted the world to crawl... and now the crawlers have had their revenge.
Spector! Where was he? He’s left his Oriental genius to be gnawed to the bone. He’s fleeing down the mountain. You know damn well what’s on his mind, Bond. The helicopter! A quick flight to EET with all the swag he’s stashed away in the temple and he’s back in business with a newer and more dangerous Society for Promulgating Every Conceivable Type Of Rottenness. You can’t let that happen, Bond.
“Heave to, everybody! Push, push, push; let’s get the ball rolling!”
Sweat rolled from muscles pushed to the bursting point. Men and women grunted, swore, prayed... in vain. Nothing happened.
The hell with it, thought Bond. Smashed, lacerated shoulders or no I’m throwing them to the wheel. He backed off, shouted, “Get out of the way!” and broke into a trot, revved up into a sprint, his head and shoulders hunched up a la a blocking back about to cut down a safety man. And he rammed into the stupendous yellow thing.
Ten tons of matzohball shuddered, rolled over the lip of the precipice!
Down, down, down plummeted the yellow avenger, bouncing from ledge to ledge, gaining incredible speed. It crushed hundreds of thousands of insects with a single bound; then bounced up, up, up in the sky; then down again into the panicking soldiers, strewing them about like tenpins, and down, down, down into the airstrip.
Bond’s glasses picked up Nochum Spector, a briefcase in his hand, looking up in horror. Then Spector fell to his knees and began to pray. Too late for that now, you little bastard! The matzohball bounced and came down upon him. Bond saw Nochum and the helicopter disappear under the yellow avalanche. There was a rumble, the sound of magma loosening the bowels of the earth. The matzohball careened into the Temple of Hate. A pillar toppled; then another. The minarets at the roofs corners cracked, fell into the lot. And with a roar the Temple of Hate collapsed into a pile of green debris. Under it were the shattered body and dreams of Nochum Spector, Dr. Nu’s IPECAC and the Will Chiller, insatiable Herbie and the Malaysian death vine, plus assorted bigots from every land. Bond, a Raleigh in his lips, had a strange feeling that only Lawrence Talbot got out in time.
“Kinderlach.”
He grinned shyly at his flock, who fixed worshipful eyes upon him. “You can never be sure about dice, but when you roll a matzohball you’ve got a natural winner!”
18 It’s All Over But The Shooting
Merriment reigned in Our Lady of the Eastern Order... and bravado. Now that the ordeal had rolled away like the matzohball, each one cited his own part in the fantastic, bolt-from-the-blue scheme that had destroyed the archvillains and their Communist cadres.
“If it hadn’t been for the good old Rock of Ages Records’ caravan, you never woulda had the man power to put together that Jewish yo-yo,” boasted O’Marty, deep in his cups.
“How about my participation? If it hadn’t been for my artistic touches, O’Marty, you sweet Irish bitch, that ball would not have been so round and firm and fully packed,” snipped back Baldroi LeFagel, shallow in
his
cups, a black lace Mansfield bra.
“You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” said Sister Sweetcakes. “We should all thank our dear Lord for sending us the Samson who destroyed the temple of the Philistines... Israel Bond.”
“Amen,” they chorused, and fell silent.
The “Samson” leaned against the wall near the precipice, his eyes still glued upon the holocaust below. The matzohball was beginning to come apart under the torrid midday sun. He thought of Nochum. M. must never know her beloved nephew had been the culprit. He would tell her that Rotten Roger Colfax was a Russian all along and that the traitor business was literally a Red herring to cause doubt and suspicion among the M 33 and 1/3 team. He rehearsed his speech for the tenth time: “You would have been proud of the heroic way he met his Lord in that terrible jungle, Mother.”
“Talking to yourself, Mr. Bond?”
“Hello, dear Sister. Come to say good-bye?”
“Yes, Mr. Bond. But let’s make that au revoir. I hate good-byes. I know our paths will cross again someday. Now I must go back into the convent and make that long-playing record for Marty. I have asked that the proceeds be set aside for the creation of a Boys’ Town on El Tiparillo. Indeed, my brother Baldroi has evinced interest in helping me operate it.”
He would, Bond thought.
“Until our paths converge, I want you to have this little token of my esteem and... uh... affection. Please take this, Mr. Bond.”
In the palm of his hand was a mirror framed in a lovely coral rectangle. “It is exquisite, as you are, Sister.”
“Whenever you look into it, Mr. Bond, you will see my favorite person in all the world.” A rose of a blush surfaced on her cheeks. She pressed his hand against her heart. Then she turned and walked slowly back to the convent. She stood at the door, waved and was gone from his sight.
“Adieu, Sister Sweetcakes,” he whispered. “May the Bluebird of Happiness bring you Jan Peerce.”
He looked into the mirror and saw her (and his) favorite person in all the world. And—someone else! An evil animal whose demented grin bared a golden treasure trove.
Torquemada LaBonza! The “Man With the Golden Gums!” The “Silent One!” No misnomer there. He had not even been aware of the man’s approach. Good Lord! LaBonza must have been taught that soundless walk by a Mohican. He glanced at LaBonza’s feet. Moccasins. And written in beaded script on each toe, “Property of Uncas.”
Israel Bond, you egotistical fool! While you were basking in the plaudits of your admirers back at OLEO, thinking you’d pulled off another successful conclusion, you forgot all about the world’s most feared assassin, LaBonza, whose victims die in an insane fit of laughter. Why?
He was to know immediately.
The voice of Torquemada LaBonza came out of that Midas mouth:
“Eh-h-h... what’s up, doc? I’ll tell you, doc. Your hands, doc. Eh-h-h, that’s ’cause I got this silencer against your backbone, doc.”
Bond began to laugh and laugh and laugh. It poured out of him like the blood from any of his wounds. LaBonza, angered, spun him around with his left hand and raked Bond’s cheek with his gun sight, reopening the old gash.
Still Bond laughed, though the cheek smarted terribly. He could not help it, no matter what.
Torquemada LaBonza’s voice was an exact carbon of Bugs Bunny’s!
19 Flash In The Pan
“LaBonza, I can’t help it. Nobody could. How in the world did you ever get a voice like that?”
No answer. For a moment Bond thought his query had drawn a Mel Blanc.
Then LaBonza spoke. “I—uh—guess it don’t matter now, doc, ’cause I’m gonna kill you anyway and bring that hot-shot mezuzah of yours back to KGB. Pretty humiliatin’, ain’t it, doc? The Israeli superman is brought down by a cwazy wabbit, eh, doc?”
Though convulsed by simultaneous mirth and fear, Bond nevertheless managed to get the story.
His father was an impressionist, LaBonza pointed out, but made a meager living at it. There were many Cagney-Robinson-Cooper-Grant imitators working the cheap theatre circuit and the father was ruefully aware he had blown his talent on a surfeited market. However, LaBonza added, his father adored the cartoon characters in those delightful shorts one saw accompanying every movie in the ’30’s and ’40’s. No one was specializing in these imitations and so, almost from birth, he took Torquemada to the movies three times a week, hoping to leave the boy with a profitable legacy.