The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(103)

‘Well, just sit there with two drinks, dear; the person who’s coming to see you will give you a lovely dinner, I promise.’

‘Oh, very well,’ I said, as I have so often said before. Another revolt quelled, another outpost surrendered. Why do nations pay great salaries to Generals when women can do the job just as well without even using an army? I decided on a spot of toothbrushing – as well as the drink, of course, not instead of.

‘Why, why, why Mortdecai?’ I asked myself as I burnished the teeth still extant (my initials are, in fact, C.S.v.C. Mortdecai, but let it pass, let it pass), ‘why are you suffering these slings and arrows?’

The answer was simple, for the question was merely rhetorical: suffer these slings and arrows or lose my end of the life-death trade-in I had agreed to with Blucher. I have no particular objection to death as such; it pays all bills and lays on others the chore of hiding the pornograms, the illegal firearms, the incriminating letters: all these things become of little importance when you have six feet of sod o’er you. On the other hand – I distinctly remember saying ‘on the other hand’ gravely to my toothbrush as I rinsed it – on the other hand, d’you see, death was not something I was actually craving just then. For one thing, I was not in a state of grace and, more to the point, I was burning with desire for revenge upon the perfidious Johanna who had played that horrid prank with the quartz-decay capsule implant. (On the ’plane I had thought of asking the stewardess to listen to my vesiculae seminales and tell me if she could hear anything ticking, but once again my command of French had failed me. In any case, it is possible that she might have thought it an odd request.)

‘Heigh-ho!’ I thought, then trotted briefly down to the hotel’s drug-store where I made a purchase or two. I don’t think they had ever before been asked for half a kilo of baby-powder. I also bought some stout envelopes and stamps. Lots of stamps. A brief trip back to my room, another to the post office and soon I was relaxing in an arm-chair, my jet-lag symptoms reacting well to the treatment I was pouring into them but my hunger unabated. Only such a man of iron as I could have resisted the temptation to ring for a sandwich or two but I placed my trust in Johanna: if she says there is a good dinner in the offing, then the offing is what the said dinner is in.

Not that I didn’t feel a twinge of trepidation as I awaited my host. By the time the door-bell rang I had arranged the odds in my mind: seven to three said a Mafioso with padded shoulders who would frisk me before treating me to spaghetti oi vongole plus deep-fried baby zucchini with the flowers still attached and lots of fried piperoni on the side, while ten would get you seven that it would be a slinky she-sadist who would frisk me only with contemptuous eyes before making me take her to Sardi’s or somewhere like that and buy her pheasant under glass – the most boring grocery in the world.

I was wrong, not for the first time. Who oozed into my suite when I answered the bell was none other than the portly Chinese gentleman upon whose lap I had roosted for a while in the Boeing 747.

‘Harrow,’ he said civilly. I glanced at his tie.

‘Surely you mean Clifton? Oh, yes, sorry, I see; harro to you, too. Have a drink?’

‘Thankyou, no. I bereave you are hungry? Come.’

I came. Went, rather.

You will hardly be surprised to learn that it was a Chinese meal with which I was regaled, but in a Chinese restaurant of no common sort, nor of the nastiness I would have expected from my first impressions of Chicago – a city which seemed intent upon finding how low a lowest common denominator can be. (I hasten to say that some of my best friends may well be Chicagoans – without actually advertising the fact – but have you ever snuffed the scent of the Chicago River as it slides greasily under the nine bridges in the centre of the Windy City? Alligators have been known to flee, holding perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses. As for the carrion gusts from Lake Michigan itself, ‘Faugh!’ is too mild a word by half.)

This restaurant, as I was saying before I caught ecology, was not one of those where oafs stir three or four dishes together and eat the resultant mess with chips and soy sauce, while the waiters watch inscrutably, thinking their own thoughts. No, it was one of those rare ones which has no menu – people just bring you a succession of tiny dishes of nameless things to be eaten one at a time and without soy sauce. I tried not to disappoint these dedicated waiters and gifted cooks; tried, too, to earn a reputation for being the fastest chopstick in the Northern Mid-West.

My host’s name proved to be either Ree or Lee: my uncertainty about this is perfectly genuine. At Oxford we had a Korean professor who trilled his name unmistakably as ‘Ree’ but insisted on writing ‘Lee’. He saw no anomaly in this.

As we dabbled in the finger-bowls, my courteous host murmured courteously that he bereaved I had a package for him. I dabbled thoughtfully.

‘That may well be,’ I said guardedly, ‘or, perhaps, not. What?’

He gazed at me civilly. I replied with equal civility.

‘You see, I have no instructions about lashing out samples of toothpowder or dentifrice to one and all, however delectable the dinner they give.’

‘Mr Mortdecai,’ he said heavily, or as heavily as chaps like that can, ‘you are surely experienced enough to know that in this particurar rine of business it is not considered porite, or even safe, to pray, ah, sirry buggers. We have, you understand, certain resources, ah?’