The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(100)
‘Goodness, no; you chaps all look the same to … I mean, no, I have a terrible head for figures, that’s to say faces or …’
He shifted the big pistol to his right hand and slammed me with it again. Now I really did need a dentist. He had not, in fact, rendered me unconscious but I decided to be so for all practical purposes. I let my head loll. He did not hit me again.
Through half-closed eyes I watched the three mackintoshed persons take off the clothes of the unconscious Dr Lo. He was a well-nourished dentist, as dentists go. One of the nasties took something out of his coat-pocket and threw the cardboard outer wrapping over his shoulder. It landed at my feet: the brand-name was ‘Bull-Stik’ – one of those terrifying new cyanoacrylic adhesives for which there is no known solvent. If you get it on your fingers, don’t touch them, it will mean surgery. One of the three men spread it all over the seat of the dentist’s chair and sat the naked Dr Lo down upon it, legs well apart. Then they played other pranks with the stuff which you will not wish to read about and which I would gladly forget. To tell the truth, I passed out in good earnest. Delayed shock, that sort of thing.
When I came to my senses I found my mouth full of little hard, pebbly scraps which I spat out onto my hand. Well, yes, assorted fillings, of course.
The three mackintosh-men had left so I tottered over to where Dr Lo was sitting. His eyes were more or less open.
‘Police?’ I asked. He made no sign. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to have an ambulance and they’ll call the police anyway; it will look odd if we don’t call them straightaway.’
He nodded his head slowly and carefully, as though he had just come to realize that he was a very old man. He was, in fact, in his forties – or had been that morning. I, too, felt that I had aged.
‘First,’ I said (I couldn’t talk very well because of the damage to my teeth; he couldn’t talk at all for reasons which will occur to you), ‘first, what have you got for me that I must take away?’ His head rotated slowly and his gaze fastened on the wall beside the door. I went over to the wall. ‘This?’ I asked, pointing to a rather bad scroll painting. He shook his head. I pointed in turn to several framed diplomas designed to reassure the customer that Lo Fang Hi was licensed to yank teeth within reason. He went on shaking his head and staring mutely at the wall. There was nothing else on the wall except some fly-dirt and a vulgar toothpaste-advertisement featuring a foot-high Mr Toothpaste Tube with arms and legs, surrounded by a score or so of actual tubes of the said dentifrice. That is to say, it had once been surrounded by such tubes but these were now scattered on the floor, each one burst open and squeezed-out by the nasties. I prised Mr T. Tube himself off the wall. He was filled with a fine white powder.
I have no idea what heroin and cocaine are supposed to taste like, so I didn’t do the fingertip-tasting thing that they do on television if you’re still awake at that time of the night, but I had little doubt about its not being baby-powder.
I was never a star pupil at mental arithmetic but a quick and terrified calculation taught me that I had become the proud but shy possessor of something more than half a kilogramme of highly illegal white powder. Say, eighty thousand pounds in Amsterdam. More to the point, say fifty years in nick. I cannot say that I was much gratified; I am as fond of eighty thousand pounds as the next man – for I am not haughty like my brother – but I do prefer to have it quietly dumped for me in the Union des Banques Suisses, rather than carrying it around in an improbable toothpaste-tube full of prison-sentences.
Dr Lo started to make alarming noises. I have always been a charitable man but this was the first time that I had ever blown a Chinese dentist’s nose for him. He could not, of course, breathe through his mouth. Then I telephoned for an ambulance and policemen and scrammed, for I am a survivor.
Back at the hotel I telephone Johanna – did you know that you can dial London from China? – and told her, guardedly that all was not well with her toothsome friend and that her husband, too, had known better days. She told me to get some change, walk down the street to a telephone kiosk and ring again. This I did, for I am ever anxious to please. Soon we were in touch again, on a wonderfully clear line.
‘It’s really easy, Charlie dear,’ she said when I had unrolled the tapestry of my dismay. ‘Do you have a pencil or pen?’
‘Of course I have,’ I snapped ‘but what the hell –’
‘Then write this down. Secrete the uh dentifrice about your person. Take an early flight tomorrow from Hong Kong to Delhi. Then Delhi to Paris. Then take Air France Flight ZZ 690 to J.F. Kennedy Airport, New York. Can you spell that? OK. Now, in flight, go to the toilet – sorry, dear, I’ll never get used to saying “lavatory” – and unscrew the inspection plate behind the pan. Hide the stuff in there. At Kennedy, walk through customs and book on Flight ZZ 887 to Chicago: this is the same aircraft but it’s now a domestic flight – no customs, get it? In flight, retrieve the dentifrice. Call me from Chicago and I’ll tell you what to do next. OK?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘How do you mean, “no”, dear?’
‘I mean, sort of “no”. It means, no, I won’t do it. I have seen a film about San Quentin penitentiary and I hate every stone of it. I shall not do it. I shall flush that stuff down what you call the toilet as soon as I get back to the hotel. Please do not try to persuade me for my mind is made up.’