Twelve O'Clock Tales Read online

  “Sorry, boyz. But you lost!”

  “You cheated,” the dark-haired one said first. I pulled his net over to the open trunk where Sol hoisted him in, asking if he was comfortable as she injected him with a non-lethal narco. He would be held in reserve for later on.

  Blondie was sputtering and spitting when I reached him. It took a bit more to get him into the recently vacated backseat, but then Sol is a convertible.

  He was injected, and Sol took off, with me back there too.

  “You young guys really have to get off your Vids and read more! Especially read more carefully your car news,” I lectured mildly. “The Twenty Twenty-six Solara is all new! With loads of extras!”

  “You’re not really going to do what you said, right?” Blondie asked, his voice beginning to slur with the injection.

  “A contract’s a contract!” I said and began to remove not the netting, but much of his already road-torn denim.

  Three hours later, when we dropped the two of them off at the Sunnyvale Coastal Cal rail station with paid tickets back home, they were almost fully awake again.

  And an hour later, it was as good a business meeting in Sunnyvale as I’d hoped it would be.

  As we were stepping out of the building the CFO said, “I can drop you off at the airport.”

  “I drove,” I said and pointed to Solara.

  “Isn’t driving kind of old-fashioned?” he asked.

  “It is,” I admitted. “But sometimes I’m an old-fashioned kind of gal. And then, how else can you interact so closely with the local wildlife?”

  Spices of the World

  The little square he had been directed to lay unfashionably northeast of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Ludgate Hill, a forlorn small plaza with an unclipped, irregular common and a few dilapidated wrought-iron benches deeply set in weeds. Row houses glowered on each side, four landings tall and built in the era of the Reform Act, displaying—at least in their exterior detail—that the area had once been populous, and more than likely genteel. Generous oyster shells of water troughs for awaiting carriage horses, arabesques of concrete balustrades cracked here and there and so poorly mended their iron framework showed through, other details of external trim—pilasters and false Doricisms—in pretentious abundance. All had fallen into an inexorable slow disrepair. Only one of the surrounding rows looked recently painted, and that a bilious brown. The other three slabs of buildings peeled coats of fin de siècle canary to reveal previous coats of Prussian blue, questionable lavender, even the original dusky brickwork.

  The minute they arrived at the address David had given, the cab driver called out that he would wait. Doubtless, he sensed as strongly as David that this was hardly the type of neighborhood a well-dressed passenger would wish to remain stranded in. As soon as David stepped out of the Austin Princess and looked about, he couldn’t be certain whether or not he’d imagined quickly hidden stares from behind grimy windows through curtains unironed for a decade. When he turned to the driver for confirmation of what he thought he’d seen, he was met by the indifferent headlines of a lurid daily scandal sheet.

  V.R. Bardash, Spices of the World, was only one of several shops dug into below-street-level openings on the southern—and gloomiest—row of the square, and the only one still open for business. Signs in English, Arabic, and what he took to be Urdu and Pali script declared the place and its wares: “Peppers, Salts, Cumins, Corianders, Gingers, Turmerics, Nutmegs, Cloves, Chilis of All Varieties, Sizes, and Powers” read its enigmatic advertisement, causing David to wonder exactly how many different sorts of ginger and clove actually existed.

  He pushed open one of the filthy, narrow, mullioned doors into a tiny, narrow shop. The single room seemed lighted by two high windows that opened to God only knew where—certainly not onto the streetside, which had been without any apparent venting. In the strong, sharply defined late-afternoon sunlight, the air seemed so filled with particles of dust he immediately began to cough before realizing it wasn’t dust but instead the powdery emanations of hundred of spices that he was breathing: a cacophony of odors so overwhelming as to stop him briefly, his hands still on the door handle, exhaling forcefully to retain a clear head.

  Tall, mostly bare, sagging wooden shelves on either wall dominated the shop. About halfway down their great height and centrally placed as though to spotlight them, three or four small, cellophane-wrapped packages huddled together, their garishly printed boxfronts and indecipherable writing declaring them unquestionably of Eastern provenance, if in no way explicating their contents. Two long, sagging deal counters fronted the shelves, extending virtually from front to back of the shop. These were less sparsely laden, with small sacks, their hempen edges rolled back to reveal brown lengths of vanilla beans, knobs of mahogany-colored cloves, baby cannonballs of nutmeg and allspice, twisted tiny tan mannequins of ginger root, and long yellow strips of dried papaya and other fruit, unrecognizable to David in this form. The extremely limited floor space was reduced to a single, nearly impassable aisle leading to a discolored paisley curtain, which no doubt opened upon an office or living quarters. Knee-high rucksacks of other spices—among them giant balls of green peppers, but most of them unknown to David and more than a little otherworldly in shape and hue—crowded about his legs, more or less tripping him into immobility by threatening to spill over with each step he took attempting to brush past.

  In the fortnight since the letter from Lahore arrived with its urgent request from the Mazudrah family, David had been all over London and several of its more squalid suburbs attempting to locate his old friend—and failing most emphatically. Something indefinable besides the actual contents of the fractured English of the communication had suggested that Rajinder was in serious trouble, political trouble perhaps, something to do with Sikhs and sects and bombs and assassinations half a world away. How this could be, David wasn’t certain. Although he hadn’t seen Raji in almost four years, surely the clever, overintelligent philosopher who could minutely dissect Kant and Wittgenstein, who derided nationalism as “the folly of the senses in our century,” couldn’t have changed so utterly? Could he?

  So far, David’s quest had not answered that question satisfactorily. On the debit side, there had been that slender, red-nosed, whining barrister, Monica something-or-other, who gushed close to an hour about Raji’s work with the Ealing factory workers, only to admit she hadn’t seen or heard from him in months. Not to mention that arthritically deformed, garrulous railway man in East Grinstead with whom Raji had boarded as recently as six months ago, and who’d insisted to David that there was “no wog born good as the lad,” despite his intimations that Raji’s bedsitter had also been a meeting place once a week of several unsavory types. “They told me they were studying the niceties of the Mahabharata, whatever that is,” the old railway pensioner had said. “But some of them toffs didn’t look like they read more than the pony listings, if you get my drift.”

  On the plus side, David would have to place Mrs. Arrowhead, an aging, pincushion-shaped secretary of the United Baptist Mission to the heathen, where Raji had worked almost two years. She’d been unstinting in her praise of young Mazudrah—“Such a good example to the neighboring West Indians he was. Liked his tea strong, always a sign of a God-fearing man. After he came to us, we had no more break-ins or vandalisms.” Mrs. Arrowhead said she’d been delighted when Raji took the post in the bursar’s office at Brighton College, even though it meant the mission losing him. Ian McQuith, head bursar at the seaside institution, had nothing but praise for the young man, insisting that without Raji’s help they would never have reorganized their past decade of files. Yet even McQuith had wondered aloud over some of the more “sinister types—actors and suchlike” at the college in whose company Raji was often to be found. And Mrs. Arrowhead had insinuated that she hadn’t ever discovered the methods whereby Mazudrah had intimidated the local toughs from harassing the Mission.

  A checkered recent past, David had to admit, quite diffe
rent than what he’d expected of his brilliant pal. And now, all leads to Rajinder’s whereabouts seemed to have ended as though he’d evaporated into the sky, as the prophet Elijah was said to have done, taken up in a chariot of fire. David had thought to hire a private investigator. But if for some reason—good or otherwise—Raji was in hiding, a stranger’s inquiries would send him even deeper into hiding. Whereas word of David looking for him ought to be far less threatening. Even so, the search had been long enough and sufficiently fruitless that he’d fallen back to this address, the first one Raji had ever had in England. Should this fail, David would have to concede defeat and write back to Lahore with the bad news.

  Although he’d jangled the shop bell as he’d entered, no one had responded. David cautiously stepped back and once more roughly rang the bell, peering into the dusty corners to see if any object reacted.

  He’d just decided the shop was abandoned when the paisley curtain was furled back an inch from one lower edge and a large pair of frightened dark eyes looked out at him so briefly that he’d scarcely gotten over his surprise when the face was gone again.

  “Hello? Anyone here?” he called out. “Mr. Bardash?”

  The curtains ballooned out a bit before a small stout figure stepped out and made a sketch of a salaam: the owner of the dark eyes—or rather of a remarkable pair of pistachio-colored eyes, large eyes, childlike eyes.

  “Good afternoon, Sahib!” the man’s voice fluted in a ridiculously high register for an adult. “Can I be of assistance to you in your purchase of many spices?”

  “I was looking for Mr. Bardash, Mr. V.R. Bardash,” David said, watching the turbanned, rotund little man pick his way toward him easily enough through what had recently seemed impossible-to-get-around paths of overflowing sacks.

  “Deceased!” the man chirped, joyful as a robin at daybreak.

  Before David could react, the man moved deftly behind a nearby counter and smilingly sung out, “I am Mr. V.R. Bardash’s nephew, R.J. Bardash. Perhaps you will not be too unforgiving if I offer to assist you in your selection of spice purchases, taking the place of my distinguished uncle. I cannot pretend to his vast knowledge of each and every variety, alas,” he twittered merrily, “for I have not personally journeyed to all of the many spice islands in the several hemispheres whence they derive.” He all but sparkled as he added, “Yet I will attempt my greatest endeavors.”

  “Actually, I’m not looking for any spices.”

  “Not looking for any spices.” Bardash giggled, as though David were clearly making a joke.

  “Fascinating as they seem to be,” David conceded. “I’m actually looking for a person.”

  “Fascinating indeed are spices.” Bardash twinkled. “This, for example. I wonder, can you tell me what it is?” He held a longish well-dried-out gourd, slightly bent in the middle and speckled brown against a more general ecru color.

  “Why no, I’m afraid not.”

  “Neither can I.” He sniggered. “It has been in this shop for years. Since I was a boy. Mr. V.R. Bardash knew what it was. But he would not tell. Even as he lay breathing his last, I pleaded, ‘Uncle, esteemed uncle, I beg you, tell me what the object is, in what it consists, what it contains.’ He would not tell. I thought perhaps inside.” Bardash shook the gourd and something did seem to rattle within. “Ought I chop it open, do you recommend?” he sang out in countertenor, making a machete-like motion with his tiny fist. “Or is it better to leave it as it arrived, unchopped?”

  He seemed to hesitate, as though David could answer him. In fact, David was about to say yes, by all means, chop it open to see what’s within, when the shop owner interrupted.

  “Yet…if I chop it open, I may not be able to sell it. And who knows if what is within will then go quickly to rot. But perhaps one day some distinguished person like yourself will step into this ship, see the object, and cry out, ‘Aha! There! That’—whatever its name will prove to be—‘that is exactly what I’ve been searching for!’” Bardash’s eyes glittered in merriment and potential profit. “And then I will know what it is, and I will still be able to sell it. Don’t you think?”

  Unable to follow the little man well enough to know what to think, never mind how to answer, David merely said, “Perhaps you have a point there. I was asking about Mr. Mazudrah. An old friend of mine. I believe he used to lodge with your uncle. At least this was the name and address he gave. Mr. Rajinder Mazudrah?”

  “Then again,” Bardash giggled, “what if no one does eventually come into the shop to identify the object. What then? Eh? It is possible, you will admit. Even likely, given the fact that as yet no one has come in to identify its properties or better still, to purchase it.”

  David was beginning to feel as though some test were being proposed to him, a code whose secret he did not know. Once more he was about to say yes, that by all means Bardash ought to chop open the blasted thing, when the diminutive, round spice merchant wagged a doubly beringed index finger at him.

  “What then? I’ll tell you! Then I will still have the ambiguous pleasure of possessing a mystery. There is much pleasure in possessing a mystery, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, of course there is,” David assented, relieved he’d not fallen into the trap. “Very wise of you indeed. Now, about Mr. Mazudrah? You know him?”

  “The name is not entirely unfamiliar.”

  “Rajinder Mazudrah is his full name. Or at least, all of his names he provided us with.” David felt suddenly on uncertain ground. Had Raji another name? A middle name? Or more than one? Had it been a kindness, a courtesy on his part, to merely give out the usual Occidental two names, instead of a string of them as he might have in his country? And what if there were some honorary title he’d also possessed, all unknown to David, who, having failed to provide it to this man now, was in fact insulting Raji or offending both countrymen?

  Only slightly daunted by these new questions, David decided to go on. “Mr. Mazudrah used to work as a tailor for my father before he went to university in Manchester. Mr. Wechsler. Of Wechsler’s Fine Haberdashery on Regent Street? Say four years ago?”

  “An estimable business, haberdashery,” was Bardash’s cryptic response.

  “We were friends, Raji and I,” David tried. It was possible this fellow thought David was a constable or government copper in plain clothes, and that Raji was in some sort of official trouble. “He used to board with your uncle, he told us. Or at least at this address. He gave my father this address.”

  “Alas!” He seemed genuinely affected. “I myself did not reside here with Mr. V.R. Bardash four years ago. But upon a neighboring square. With my cousin, Mr. L.S. Bardash.”

  “I see. I must find Mr. Mazudrah. It’s a matter of some importance.”

  “I think not,” Bardash chirruped happily.

  “You think not what? That he’s here?”

  “Oh, you are an amusing gentleman. Who could be here but myself?”

  “Naturally, I didn’t mean to imply that you were hiding him.”

  “Most amusing gentleman.” Bardash tittered into his tiny, fat fist.

  “You do know of whom I’m speaking?” David felt he had to ask.

  “Yes, surely, I do. Mr. Rajinder Mazudrah, who used to live with my uncle some four years ago or so, or nearby, who used to work for your father, Mr. Wechsler, of Wechsler’s Fine Haberdashery upon Regent Street.”

  “Good,” David concluded, somewhat relieved, until he realized that the spice vendor hadn’t told him anything about Mazudrah that he, David, hadn’t already a minute past just told Bardash. “Perhaps, perhaps I ought describe him?”

  The large pistachio-hued eyes twinkled in merry agreement.

  “Well, first of all,” David began, “Raji was, well, somewhere between yourself and myself.”

  “That cannot be,” Bardash sputtered, “for then we would see him!”

  “I meant, of course, in height!” David clarified. Was it language or intelligence that was at issue between
them? “In height,” he repeated, “he was neither short, like yourself, nor tall, like myself.” Equally inane: Such a description might signify any of a million men in London. “Lightly complected, he was,” David went on, a bit more unsteadily, “like yourself. Or rather, not so olive-complected as yourself. Yet not so ruddily complected as myself.”

  “Yes? Yes?” Bardash urged, all ears.

  “Well, I don’t know what else.” What else indeed. That in age, Mazudrah was somewhere between the two of them, as he appeared to be in ethnicity, and… “You are certain you know the man of whom I speak?” he again asked.

  “With such a description, how could I not?”

  “Then, perhaps, you could tell me where Mr. Mazudrah might be. It’s rather urgent that I see him.”

  “I think not,” the little man sang out.

  “You think not because you don’t know? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I wonder,” Bardash held up a small brown knob of a thing, “if you can perhaps tell me what this object is?”

  “You’re saying you don’t know where he is? Or that you do know and you won’t tell me?”

  “Neither, Sahib.” He seemed offended now. “I clearly said neither of the two.”

  “But you clearly said, ‘I think not.’”

  “Indeed, Sahib. And did you take that to mean that I know of Mazudrah’s whereabouts and yet will not tell you?”

  As David no longer knew what he’d meant, he merely gaped at the Asian, who once more picked up the small brown object.

  “It is perhaps somewhat like this object,” Bardash mused, his voice restored to its more usual chirruping manner. “I beg you, hazard a guess what it might be?”

  Indifferently, David said, “I haven’t a clue.”

  “A Jerusalem ar-ti-choke!” He tittered. “So many things we may not know because they have in some manner changed. And how should you know a dried ar-ti-choke when you come upon one? No, believe me, Sahib, it is far better to possess a mystery. Even an ambiguous mystery. Far more valuable,” he trilled.