Good to Be God (14 page)

The next evening Gamay and Muscat report.

“Can we stop now?” Gamay enquires.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been waiting outside this shop for two hours.”

Gamay and Muscat have failed to find Cosmo. They have failed to find the cat and are exhausted after a few hours’ work.

I’m angry with myself for taking on two DJs whose inspiration was a wine list. What did I expect?

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“We ain’t kennedying you, but we can’t find him.”

“You can stop anytime you like, but then you’re out.” I have to remind myself that I’m not paying them.

Furious, I take a walk along the beach. I have to make my way round a group of teens discovering illegal beer and going wild, and congratulating themselves on it. Unaware of how unoriginal, how prescribed, how prepaid this all is. It’s so unoriginal it bores me and how, more than disappointment or sorrow at humanity’s antics, it must bore God. All this stuff we find so important, absorbing, exciting and maddening.

The first kiss. The discovery of cheating. The acceleration of the Norton Commando. The struggle to get a decent passport photograph. Marrying your son. Getting your whites really white. Fury at the uselessness of doctors. Rage at unreturned borrowables. The impossibility of overcooking goose. The investigation of sodomy. The return of a long-lost friend. Having to throw out your favourite jacket because it’s more holes than jacket. The pleasure of massacre. Squabbles about whether it’s a beech marten or a pine marten. Kohlrabi or mangelwurzel. The right turning or the left turning. Old song, new throng. Same babble, different rabble.

Later that evening, sweetened by a session on the punchbag, as I make my way down Washington Avenue with the collecting tin, I spy Gamay and Muscat in a crowded café, not looking for Cosmo, but laying siege to an attractive but visibly underage girl and her fat friend.

I’m too tired to be severely disappointed, but… One: don’t get caught. Two: if you’re fifteen and doing a fifteen-year-old, that’s nature; if you’re forty and you’re doing a fifteen-year-old, there’s a decadent, sick grandeur going on; if you’re twenty-one, you’re a dud. Worse, Gamay and Muscat are getting nowhere.

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They haven’t seen me, and I back off. In any real criminal organization, they would be kneecapped, but all I could do would be to rant and, generally, ranting just makes you look ridiculous. I back off. Sometimes it’s better to let others think they’ve had the better of you.

G

I’d given up on Gamay and Muscat. I hadn’t heard from them for days when, reading the
Miami Herald,
I chanced upon a small item about a gunburst in the neighbourhood Mrs Garcia lived in. Two unknown assailants had opened fire on the house of Mr Dag Solomon, 76, a retired tollgate consultant and amateur gun collector. Mr Solomon was quoted: “I’ve had to wait fifty-four years to protect my family, but it was worth it.” Mr Solomon went on to insist he had put thirty-four grouped rounds into the assailants’ vehicle as it fled the scene. Mr Solomon was uninjured and so was his family, as they were visiting relatives in Vermont.

I phone Mrs Garcia. As I feared, Mr Solomon is her neighbour and owner of the offending cat. I offer Mrs Garcia my sympathy.

I had envisioned a trap, a thirty-mile road trip for the cat, or at worst, some poisoned liver. I must learn to be more specific. The cat however is no longer a concern. Mrs Garcia has decided to move out.

Gamay and Muscat, I assume, must be dead or slipping away in an intensive-care unit or penal facility somewhere. I wait all day for the police to turn up and debate whether to mention to Sixto that I may have done a sterling job in attracting the forces of law and order into his multinational cocaine business.

This is the great dilemma about fucking up. Very often, an immediate and frank avowal of disaster will get you some credit 107

TIBOR FISCHER

and lessen the punishment. This is especially true of minor fuck-ups. Just say you’re sorry about forgetting someone’s birthday or an anniversary. Come clean. Be the big man.

However, with bigger fuck-ups, such as getting your wife’s sister pregnant, there’s always the temptation to keep quiet and hope you can euthanize the mishap without any wrath being spilt. It’s a gamble, because if you botch the euthanasia, then the wrath gets wrathier. I don’t sleep at all the next night, but I don’t tell Sixto.

G

The next morning, as I head for the kitchen to make my cup of tea, a dark, broad-shouldered woman is there fixing herself a sandwich.

“Hi, I’m Gulin,” she says with an accent I can’t place and a smile that’s both natural and a little forced. There are also, I notice, two piles of boxes that augur moving in.

Sixto explains to me that Gulin is a friend of his sister who lives in LA, but who had to leave. He is not thrilled by having another lodger. “My sister…” he fizzles, making strangling gestures.

“Does she know… about your business?” I ask.

“No,” says Sixto. “My sister doesn’t even know. But Gulin has more to worry about than I do. If she’d stayed in LA she’d be dead.”

In the garden, we can see the builders reappearing with new windows. Even at a distance of thirty feet we can see that the new windows don’t match. Sixto opens the window. “You’re not thinking of putting those windows in?” The builders look at the windows as if for the first time and make an exhibition 108

GOOD TO BE GOD

of surprise at the lack of match. They give exaggerated sighs and retreat.

Then I see the cat. It’s black with white paws. I dislike cats.

They scratch, smell and make me sneeze. But this cat is wise. It keeps its distance and makes no attempt to be pally. Sixto does some more strangling.

When I get to the Hierophant’s office, the phone rings and to my surprise it’s Gamay.

“We got him,” he announces. I consider asking about the cat and the thirty-four grouped rounds, but then I realize I don’t care.

“Eight,” I say, referring to our prearranged interview spot. I get there early, excited by my fruitful machinations. At half-past eight, there’s no sign of Gamay and Muscat. I restrain myself from phoning them. When you’re kidnapping: time, traffic, whatever.

Just after nine they show up. “You’re late,” I say, not that bothered, but discipline for the disciples is important.

“We’re early,” says Gamay. “You said nine.” I could explode, but maybe I did say nine, although I have more faith in my recollection than Gamay’s. I will be taping my conversations from now on. The DJs have new transport; I assume the sharp-shooter trashed their barmonster.

“We ain’t kennedying you, it’s been hellacious these few days,”

continues Gamay. Naturally, I’m not in the least bit interested in Gamay’s whingeing about how hard his existence is. I’m reworking my sermon to Cosmo, delivered in my position as the fear-driver who will inform Cosmo this is his last warning, that if he doesn’t leave town he’ll be fed to the gators. A brimstoning that will cut Cosmo out of the picture. One prayer answered, courtesy of Tyndale.

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I strike a solemn pose and signal them to open up the trunk of the car where Cosmo has been stashed. They do my bidding.

A head rears up.

“Well,” I say to Gamay. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“You want me to use your name, Tyndale?”

“Why not?”

“Tyndale – Cosmo. Uh, Cosmo – Tyndale.”

“This is not Cosmo,” I say.

“I’m not Cosmo,” says the Head. The Head doesn’t resemble Cosmo, but is remarkably composed for the victim of an abduction, more than composed in fact, quite mean. “I told them I’m not Cosmo.”

Gamay and Muscat gawk at each other as if they’ve been swindled. Then each thinks about blaming the other, but they haven’t got enough time to concoct a story.

“I’ve no idea how this happened,” says Gamay. I have some idea, but explaining to Gamay and Muscat that if a goldfish could move the pieces, it would beat them at chess, won’t improve anything.

“We really wanted to get Cosmo,’ says Muscat.

“We wanted Cosmo bad,” says Gamay. “I guess, I guess… we won’t be joining the organization today. Muscat, man you’re really disgracing us.”

“Me?”

“You’re just not good enough.”

“Excuse us,” I say to the Head as I close the trunk as courteously and gently as possible in the circumstances. I inform Gamay and Muscat, just in case they had any doubts, they are a long way from getting on the payroll.

“Tyndale, we’re going to have a chilli-off,” insists Gamay. “I’ll show you who’s the bad man here.” He produces a small jar and then fishes out a long green chilli and swallows it. He flinches 110

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slightly, but is composed. Muscat takes a chilli and, imitating Gamay’s gung-ho style, bites hard.

Without warning, Muscat collapses, and lies on the ground mewing faintly and crying. It’s undeniable there is something undignified about a man crying, and it takes him ten minutes to pull himself together.

“Let me hear it,” says Gamay. “Who’s badder?”

“You’re badder than me,” hoarses Muscat.

Gamay may be badder than Muscat (not such an achievement), but I sense he’s cheating. Although he’s stupid, he has aspirations to slyness. Somehow he’s picked out a milder chilli or one that’s been treated to lose its edge. You can see things as you get older, although I can’t say that being able to see that one dumbo is conning another dumbo about eating chillies is a wisdom that will get me anywhere.

I instruct them to turn out their pockets; I take their forty-two dollars and sixty cents and give them to the Head, and tell the DJs to drop the Head off somewhere out of the way, but where he’ll have a good chance of getting a taxi.

Back home, I’ve just fallen asleep when Gamay phones me.

“Tyndale, I just wanted to say… that Muscat… that Muscat…

I told that ’tard it was the wrong guy. Tyndale?”

“Yes?”

“If you want to me to uh… you know… to solve the Muscat problem, solve it, you know, like solve it finally, just give me the word, man.”

“Gamay, don’t ever phone me again.”

I’ve just got back to sleep when the phones rings again. It’s Muscat.

“Tyndale, man, I just wanted to say… that ’tard Gamay…

that fuckin ’tard, he’s always holding me back. I just wanted 111

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to say I’m on board. I’m a hundred and fifty fuckin’ per cent on board. I’m in this all the way… you know, if you want to make an example of Gamay, you can count on me a hundred and fifty per cent. Two hundred per cent.”

“Three hundred per cent?”

“Three hundred and ten, man, I ain’t kennedying you.”

“Muscat, don’t ever phone me again.” This time I make sure my phone is off.

G

Two days later, I come down to the kitchen to make some holy breakfast when I find the builders gathered around the television watching a sitcom. They are drinking what looks very much like Sixto’s beer.

I say nothing, but pick up a copy of the
Miami Herald
lying by the phone to read.

“Hey,” shouts one of the builders, “I’m reading that.” The impossibility of his reading a folded paper, two feet above and ten feet behind his eyes occurs to me. But in the mornings I prefer to be left alone, so I withdraw to my room.

When I leave at lunchtime, the builders are listening to some of Sixto’s compas collection. An hour later when I return they’re gone, and as I hydrate myself, I flick through the paper and notice a not-so-small item about the Mayor of Miami Beach’s son being abducted. Unsportingly, the taxi fare isn’t reported.

So, when Gamay phones up later and assures me they now have Cosmo (“we checked his ID”) I’m very tempted to say forget it. But, barely visible, ahead of me, is the glimmer of success. Be unidirectional.

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My car won’t start. I call Gamay and Muscat repeatedly, but only get voicemail.

When the taxi drops me off at the new interview site (“Are you sure you want to be left here?”) after a comically expensive ride, there is no sign of Gamay and Muscat. If I’d driven, I would have driven off by the time they roll in, an hour and a half late, claiming they couldn’t find the turning. I’m very tired and dissatisfied.

To my great surprise, they extricate Cosmo from the trunk.

He’s even handcuffed. Something’s wrong I think. We’re in a dark, isolated, I don’t know…
unused
part of Florida and Cosmo is on all fours in front of me, handcuffed. It’s exactly how I wanted it. Cosmo is shaken, but seems emboldened by the sight of me.

“You,” he says, “you can’t do this.” A little humiliation is in order. Recalling another anecdote of my Iraqi neighbour I order the DJs to urinate on Cosmo. Muscat can’t go with everyone watching, and although Gamay manages a trickle, Cosmo keeps rolling out of range. If you fail, you always have the tactic of pretending you haven’t, so I carry on with the admonition.

“Cosmo, you should go. You can go where you want, but you have to leave Florida.” I then pull out the Hierophant’s .22. The drawback with the .22 is that it’s small and looks as if it came from a packet of cereal or a teenage girl’s handbag. Professional killers apparently are very fond of the .22, but I doubt Cosmo knows that.

“This is a holy gun,” I say, remixing the Hierophant’s shtick.

“The .22 is the choice of the godly, because it punishes the wrongdoer, but doesn’t, like a .44, go through the wrongdoer, three walls, a gardener and then kill a child on a bike half a mile away.”

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Our eyes meet and Cosmo sneers: “You won’t shoot me.” This is the trouble with religion in the present day. Too many wishy-washy pencil-necked hand-clasping do-gooding over-forgiving softies have given the cloth a limp image. Nevertheless I’m astonished by Cosmo’s front. If someone’s gone to the trouble of threatening you, it’s plain bad manners not to act threatened.

In his position, even if I didn’t take the threat seriously, I’d just say, sure whatever you want, and then, once de-handcuffed and de-waylaid, forget all about it.