Death by Haggis

Chapter Four The Malingering Shadow

When Barlow came to, she was gone, taking her leg and her garter belt with her. She probably couldn't take the heat, he thought. It was hard to find a woman who could stand up to a man who passed out nearly every three hours. Hell, it was hard to find any kind of woman these days who wasn't a drunk, a looney, or a down and out movie star. He thought for a moment of his mother, who was all of the above, and who really did love him, although she had that "smack your head with this big fish" habit that kept him out of school for weeks at a time.

It was clear that Jane hadn't told him the whole story, and that Cadwalleder was up to something more than just "check out my etchings." But should he wait until she was ready to talk or should he use his powers of persusasion?

He went back to the Comfo-Lounger, sat down, picked up his trusty pipe and absentmindedly stuck it in his mouth. It was half inch PVC and tasted like crap on a bun, but if you puckered up your lips and blew on it like it was a trumpet, it could make some pretty cool sounds. In the olden days he had brought it on dates but experience had failed to provide any shred of positive reinforcement for this practice and now he was likely to forget it two times out of ten.

Just then there was a knock on the door. He opened it. It was Johnny Snitch. "Sam, I've got the drop on the sweetcheeks. A double sawbuck and you're in like Flint."

While Barlow worked on ripping through two George Washingtons with a steak knife, Johnny ensconced himself in the battered iron-frame chair like a bag of sand that'd fallen off a Long Island trolley. Barlow handed him the four chunks of what had been dollar bills, and Johnny bent forward, hands on knees, squinting. "First of all, she ain't no sweetcheeks. She's as phony as a dancing clam in a bowl of spuds. Her real name is Cynthia Elmsford Hamchester—yeah, the Hamchesters. Her daddy's worth ten million easy, and she ain't from Cleveland either."

Johnny tried to pocket the four little dollar-pieces, but they fell to the floor since his shirt pocket was on the inside. It took him four tries, and Barlow thought that if brains were sour mash, Johnny couldn't make a suppository for a constipated pygmy. "She's from East Orange. And she's no ten-bit floozy either—she's got a twenty per cent share of Hamchester Electronics and controlling ownership of half the shoe-shine stands in Iowa. And here's the real kicker. She's got an identical twin sister named Jane!"

Barlow was used to dealing with Johnny. Johnny had had a rough life. He'd been a snitch since kindergarten and it had landed him a lot of broken noses and a very paranoid attitude toward reality. He was a guy who was offended by the selfishness of humanity and offended by the fact that most people resented someone who pointed it out. The first time he told the kindergarten teacher that little Ernie had stuffed toilet paper into the toilet, she had just said, "Well, I'm glad you told me but you know, Johnny, nobody likes a snitch." He'd been bright once, intelligent and on the ball, but his passion for revealing the dirty truth at all costs had alienated him from most of humanity, and in his isolation his brain had taken a left turn at Poughkeepsie and had never recovered.

"Johnny, let me ask you a question."

"Sure, boss."

"What the hell is a sweetchecks?"

"Uhh, I dunno. It sounded good. I think it's some kinda organ meat."

"Well, anyway, you did good, Johnny. I know because I found out all this stuff last week, so you can give me back three and a half of those sawed up bucks. The thing is, is, is that Jane is the twin sister named Jane and Cynthia is the other sister of the Jane who we know correctly as Jane, not Cynthia. I put in a call to this Cynthia babe at her shoe shine headquarters in Iowa City and, trust me, she is like an ice cube made outa Tabasco sauce. She was only moderately nasty until I mentioned Jane and then she acted like I'd dropped a weasel down her blouse. And believe me, I know what that's like."