And I smiled considerably.
The office wasn’t quite how I remembered it. It had been tidied up a bit. And repainted in a colour that I did not know the name of. And the carpet that dared not speak its name had been replaced by one whose name I wouldn’t have listened to even if it had dared to speak it. So it wasn’t quite Lazlo Woodbine’s office. But it was his office. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. And I thought to myself, as one might think-
HOW COOL IS THIS?
I was now, to all intents and purposes and things of that nature generally, Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.
HOW COOL WAS THAT? Well cool.
Although, all right, there were certain things that weren’t all that cool.
The years that were missing out of my life.
The entire horrible Papa Crossbar business.
The fact that I had missed out on fame and fortune with The Sumerian Kynges and hadn’t even got a songwriting credit on the Greatest Hits album.
And that it was I who was, let us say, indirectly responsible for Lazlo Woodbine vanishing into the ether.
I have not, perhaps, printed this list in order of priority. But these things were not cool.
But having this office was.
And so I smiled, somewhat contentedly, which is not to say also smugly, and thought that what I should do now would be to go somewhere and celebrate my good fortune. Back to the Pentecost Hotel, might it be, to take advantage of the barman? No, it was a long walk back. Across the street to Fangio’s Bar, then?
That was a better idea.
The light was now uncertain in the office and I stumbled about a bit, bumping into some things and knocking other things over. But during this stumbling I did come across three things that very much took my interest: a fedora and a trench coat and a trusty Smith & Wesson. Lazlo Woodbine’s spares, I supposed. So I took off my coat and togged up, and tucked the trusty Smith & Wesson into an inside trench-coat pocket. The fedora fitted and I knew I looked cool.
And then I left my office. Locking my door behind me.
And I crossed the street to Fangio’s Bar and pushed open that famous shatter-glass door. And Fangio’s Bar had not changed at all. It was the same woe-begotten dump of a dive, and this I found a comfort. I mooched in with a grin on my chops and hailed the fat-boy barman.
Because there he stood, as large as Life, but slightly less glossy than Vogue. He wore the look of a man who knew just where he was. And also an eyepatch and cutlass.
‘Hello there,’ I said to the fat-boy. ‘And so we meet again.’
‘Arrr, aharr harr,’ went Fangio and he rolled his visible eye.
As I was already somewhat in my cups, I felt I was up to the challenge.
‘Old war wound, is it?’ I asked, approaching the bar counter and hoisting myself onto the bar stool that had formally been Lazlo Woodbine’s favourite and would now be mine. ‘Or is it medieval mouth-music from the mountains of Mongolia?’
‘Well, swab me decks,’ said Fangio. ‘ ’Tis you, so ’tis, so ’tis.’
‘Give me just one clue,’ I asked, ‘and then I can join you in this.’
Fangio sighed and did thumbings. To a sign above the bar:
FANGIO’ S BAR WELCOMES PIRATES (It read)
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see. Pirates.’
‘You see pirates?’ asked Fangio, lifting his eyepatch. ‘Where?’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘What I said was, I see, full stop, pirates.’
‘Right,’ said Fangio. ‘So what will it be, Laz – a tot of rum, a parrot or a flog-around-the-fleet? The last one is a cocktail, before you ask.’
‘I wasn’t going to. But why are you calling me Laz?’
‘The guy from American Heritage drinks in here every day and just popped in for a quick bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that some sucker, I mean, some plucky son of a gun, had purchased the franchise. And you’re wearing Laz’s spare clothes, so it must be you.’
I was impressed by Fangio’s reasoning. But had he just said sucker? I glared pointy daggers at him.
‘Of course, I was thinking of buying it myself,’ Fangio continued, ‘But I couldn’t afford the inflated price. Oh damn.’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Inflated price?’ I said. ‘Franchise,’ I said, also.
‘I read in this month’s copy of Detective Franchises Today magazine that P. P. Penrose was selling franchises worldwide now,’ said Fangio. ‘He started out with one in Brentford, England, and due to its success he started selling them all over the world.’
‘But I bought the office of the real Lazlo Woodbine,’ I said.
‘Which makes you the real Lazlo Woodbine now. Doesn’t it, Laz?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I can pretend to be. And to be honest I did pretend to be, for a while, in England. But neither I, nor anyone else, can ever be the real Lazlo Woodbine. There can only ever be one Lazlo Woodbine.’
‘And so what do you think ever became of the one Lazlo Woodbine? ’ asked Fangio.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Ah.’
‘No,’ said Fangio, ‘it’s “arrr, harr-harr”. The way that Robert Newton did it in the television series of Treasure Island. Newton is the Long John Silver against which all future Long John Silvers must be measured. Measured and found to fall short, in my opinion. Arr-harr. Harr.’
‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘But there will never be another Lazlo Woodbine. ’
‘So what did become of him?’ asked Fangio.
‘A bottle of Bud,’ I said, ‘and a hot pastrami on rye.’
‘Do you want a couple of pieces of eight with that?’
‘No,’ said I. ‘Nor a sunken galleon.’
‘Don’t go refusing my cocktails before you’ve tried them,’ said Fangio. And he actually went off to fetch my bottle of Bud. So things had changed just a little hereabouts.
Fangio returned with a Bosun’s Whistle. A cocktail of his very own formulation, he assured me. So perhaps things hadn’t changed after all.
He did not discuss the matter of immediate payment, so, out of politeness, nor did I. I sipped at my Bosun’s Whistle and picked a bit of seaweed from between my teeth.
‘I’ll bet you can’t identify all the different ingredients in that cocktail, ’ said Fangio.
‘I’ll bet you’d be correct on that,’ I said.
‘How much do you bet?’ Fangio asked.
‘That you are correct and that I cannot identify the ingredients?’
‘Precisely. How much?’
‘Ten dollars?’ I said.
‘You pussy. Arr-harr-harr-harr.’
‘One hundred dollars?’ I suggested.
‘That’s more like it. Shake.’ And Fangio extended a hand across the bar counter. ‘Sucker,’ said Fangio. And chuckling away, as had the man from American Heritage, he stumped off along behind the bar counter upon his newly fitted wooden leg.
Leaving me to ponder one of life’s eternal questions.
Why had I not pressed him further to explain about the pirates?
I viewed the clientele of Fangio’s Bar. None of them were dressed as pirates. Although I did notice two fellows and a lady sporting wooden legs. But that was not necessarily an indication of piratical leanings. Most who know anything about New York in the nineteen-seventies will know that there was a brief fashion for bums. Bums being the American word for tramps. Fanny, apparently, being the American word for bum. The famous bums’ bible, The Autobiography of a Supertramp, which was written in the nineteen-twenties, had been reprinted, and along with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had become the thing to read. And in the final chapter of Supertramp, the author, who is riding-the-rods on an American train, falls off and loses a leg and this caught the reading public’s imagination. And many folk went out and had a single leg amputated. Weird, eh? Of course, that kind of thing would not happen today, because the readers of autobiographies are far too sophisticated. And intelligent. And beautiful. And sexy. And-