Pipsqueak Read online

  I stepped over a smashed porcelain poodle lamp. Biker Boy was still breathing, barely, but had stopped moaning or moving. My idea was to try to bind up some of his leaks before calling the cops, so I grabbed a stack of linen commemorative Bicentennial napkins from the floor, took the biker’s hand, and lifted his arm. That’s when I saw another, more dramatic wound near his armpit. Though I couldn’t get a good gander at it through the tear in his T-shirt, it looked very nasty, with meat or something sticking out of it.

  The room suddenly got a little dim and began to twist. I dropped the biker’s arm and braced myself against a bookshelf. Without having much of a chance to be grossed out, I realized I was about to faint and struggled past the bathroom and into the small efficiency dwelling beyond. I sat on a nicely ruffled bed, slapped myself a couple times, and picked up the phone.

  Chalk one up for steering clear of strangers’ driveways.

  Chapter 2

  Back in the dark ages when I was but a lad, back before the felling of rabbit ears in favor of the kudzu of coaxial cables and the gibbous shadows of satellite dishes, TV audiences were limited to a “broadcast area.” Afternoon programming was provided by the three networks airing soaps, soaps, and more soaps. All other after-school programming emanated from cinder-block bunkers dotting the outskirts of town; the independent stations scraped together what they could to tap into the local ad market. In my area, we had Station 10, which ran saggy-scripted B flicks interspersed with an unctuous host pulling postcards and phone numbers for lucky daily winners. The prize: dinner-theater tickets to what had to be the longest-running Brigadoon in North America. Another station, Channel 3, had soap reruns from caveman days when TVs were round. Another was VHF, Public Television Station 22, which due to vagaries of the stratosphere or something couldn’t be tuned in until after my bedtime.

  Though the sun might be shining and the lawns might be freshly mowed invitations to a rousing game of capture the flag, kids’ bicycles in a thirty-mile radius were tossed aside for the rec-room sanctuary offered by Channel 8: The General Buster Show.

  In a word, this homegrown program was a five out of ten on the Captain Kangaroo scale. I think we even knew that back then. But at the same time, I think we were keenly aware that The General Buster Show was broadcast only in our area and, for all its technical and talent shortcomings, it was our show. It helped that we were encouraged to send in artwork and postcards, which eventually got shown or read on TV. In return we got on the mailing list and were kept abreast of local shopping centers where Buster and cast would be making appearances.

  Now, I don’t mean to upset all the General Buster fans out there. Buster put a lot of heart into the show, I’ll grant him that, though he was clearly a middling clown/ventriloquist who didn’t know when to quit. Valiant, too, were the writers, designers, and crew, despite lousy equipment that constantly tripped up their best efforts. There were collapsing sets, klieg fires, and miscued cameras that accidentally showed the puppeteers, or Buster adjusting his gargantuan white muttonchops.

  The premise was a mélange (some might say rip-off) of many contemporary cartoon and kiddie shows. General Buster commanded Blast-Off Air Force Base in some remote location called the North Woods. He wore a red uniform, a cascade of medals, a white gun belt complete with a gold-plated .45, and a white pith helmet with a red parrot named Gussie on top. His retinue was comprised of three puppet pilots: Howlie the Wolf, sidekick Possum, and Pipsqueak the Nutty Nut. The set looked like the inside of a Quonset hut, a painted canvas airfield outside the window. Inside were the Magic File Drawers, the Milkshake Saloon, and Sergeant Desk, who spoke in squeaks that only Buster could understand.

  Each show would open with a bugle sounding retreat over the roar of a jet landing. Buster made his entrance as though he’d just come back from a flight. He’d take off his parachute and greet the live kiddie audience. Gussie the red parrot would then say hello to the kids and hit the General with a lame knock-knock joke. The rest of the cast then popped up in the window and matched wits with General Buster. Without fail, each episode’s suspense centered on Howlie and Possum’s scheme to eat or annihilate Pipsqueak—if only they could: a) get Buster to fall asleep; b) send Buster off to fly a wild-goose-chase mission; or c) prove Pipsqueak was a traitor so that Buster would have to shoot him. The result was usually that: a) Buster woke up in the nick of time (kid audience screaming, “Wake Up!”); b) Buster returned in the nick of time (kid audience screaming, “Come Back!”); or c) Sergeant Desk or the Magic File Drawers would produce evidence clearing Pipsqueak of treason. Howlie and Possum would be sent to the Brig without a milkshake. The End.

  And how’s this for a little Cold War nostalgia? Buster’s troop had a greater nemesis, simply referred to as “the Enemy.” This thinly guised Slavic empire inspired air-raid drills on the show during which kids at home were supposed to duck and cover.

  And of course, there were low-rent cartoons on the show. Roger Ramjet was the main ingredient, plus a portion of King Leonardo, a dash of Ruff and Reddy, and a pinch of Crusader Rabbit. Clutch Cargo cliff-hangers were the garnish to the show’s end.

  Barring nuclear winter, the show went off every weekday with the not-so-subtle mission of promoting Gutterman’s Taffy Cremes, confections so gooey they peeled from their wrappers like slugs from hot macadam. Every kid I knew found the cremes themselves utterly horrible, as well as the company name, which made us all think of sauerkraut or pickles. But against all odds, the entire cast of General Buster worshipped Gutterman’s Taffy Cremes. Pipsqueak naturally favored Gutterman’s Peanut Butter and Jelly Taffy Cremes, and his dopey likeness even appeared on the package. Predictably, we kids caved in to the pressure of advertising and bought the chews regularly, despite the fact that we made “yechh” faces as we scraped the taffy from our teeth.

  Perhaps the most novel aspect of The General Buster Show was that a taxidermist had made the puppets from real animals, though I think Howlie must have been fashioned from a coyote rather than a wolf. Possum was a stuffed opossum, looking fiendishly like a rat. Terribly un-PC by today’s standards, granted, but this was the dark ages, when a bacon-and-egg breakfast was de rigueur and TV drunks were funny.

  Our happy hero—Pipsqueak—was made from a real squirrel. He was a good-natured goof, who through sheer luck managed not to get killed between the hours of three and four-thirty every weekday afternoon. And for some reason Pipsqueak riveted us kids.

  In many ways, I’d have to say the puppets on The General Buster Show inspired my appreciation for taxidermy, perhaps because the five-and-dime plush replicas of Pipsqueak never did the genuine puppet justice. The closest I ever got to meeting the real Pipsqueak was at the grand opening of a new Buster Brown shoe store. But thanks to my little brother’s penchant for petty crime (he’d siphoned and sold the gas from our car to local go-carters), the parental bus ran late and a sizable herd of kids kept me separated from the Nutty Nut by several hundred feet.

  So when I saw Pipsqueak in that glass case, a flood of boyhood aspirations instantly disarmed me. Was it possible that I could—not just touch, not just manipulate—but be the sole possessor of Pipsqueak? Alas, it was too good to be true.

  Chapter 3

  The local Sussex County papers dubbed it The T3 Murder, and the best efforts of the state police were to no avail in solving the case quickly, although I give them credit for finding Marti Folsom, the actual owner of the little curio shop, in a coat closet at the store. A hook-nosed woman, fifties, with blond beehive hair, she was trussed with duct tape, gagged, and bound by the wrists to the hanger rod. She was very much alive, especially after being unbound. I was still there when they found her, and you haven’t heard such screaming and wailing in all your life. “Thieves! Violated by thieves! What kind of country do we live in where people tape you in a closet! Where are the police? Sleeping in their cars, that’s where they are!” Like that.

  Biker Boy was identified as Tyler Loomis, alias Gut Wrench, former pu
nk-rock devotee, Greenwich Village roustabout, perennial record/poster store employee, and more recently a card-carrying sonopuncturist (that is, an acupuncturist who doesn’t puncture, using tuning forks instead of needles). His activities and association with Cola Woman—presumed murderess—remained a mystery. However, had he not arrived when he did, the cops surmised that Cola Woman might have done me harm.

  As you can imagine, my ordeal with the police was lengthy. I had to go down to the state police barracks. That is to say, they asked me to come down and recite my statement again. Now, you don’t have to go if you’re not under arrest. But the cops have a really annoying way of insinuating that if you have nothing to hide, you’ll go. I don’t know who trains them in this skeezy tactic, but they’re very good at it. It’s as rudimentary—and effective—as saying, “Chicken?”

  So you go, kidding yourself that if you do, the whole thing will pass by like a sun shower. They act all chummy, give you coffee, chitchat about sports, and sit you down in the room with the glass wall, behind which stands a platoon of assistant district attorneys and other animal behaviorists ready to judge your performance. One thing they knew for sure was that whoever did the crime had to be there to do it, and I was there.

  Yeah, well, I know from past experiences with the law—and just from reading the papers—that the innocent can royally botch such interviews, inviting unwarranted suspicion and time in the jug. They want a statement at the precinct, fine, but the right thing to do is get a lawyer, if only to keep you from having an anxiety attack. Sure, the cops will give you the “Chicken?” treatment again, but give them a “Pound sand!” smile and drop a dime on your barrister.

  It helps, of course, if you’ve got one to call. I didn’t. But a New Jersey friend, Bob Martinez, recently sued his garbage collectors and was therefore tight with his lawyer. Dammit—he wasn’t in, so I left a message and hung up. I noted someone standing behind me.

  “Waiting for the phone?” I frowned.

  “Go ahead,” he smiled. A shortish brown man, he had a leathery complexion, high cheekbones, silver hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a bolo tie. Large features and button eyes betrayed a kindly spirit. I guessed him to be Native American.

  “Thanks.” I started punching the two dozen digits for my calling card and a line home to Angie, when the man behind me tapped my elbow.

  “Sorry to bother you, but I couldn’t help but overhear. You looking for a lawyer?”

  “Yup. You know one?”

  He smiled again, and I looked at his shoes. I’ve got a theory about how to size up people’s characters. It’s all in the smile. And the shoes. I liked the beneficent smile. Who wouldn’t? I followed his bowed legs down to the shoes: suede cowboy boots, the lived-in kind, not the line-dancing kind.

  “I’m an attorney,” he said almost bashfully. “Not in Jersey. In New York. But did I hear right? You just want someone to sit in on your statement?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I can advise you, you know. It’s not like you’re going before the Court.” His voice was soothing, but deep and soothing, like the distant hum of a lawn mower on a summer day.

  Yikes, would this be convenient or what? “How much?”

  “You from New York? The City?”

  I nodded, expecting that his price had just jumped.

  A slow shrug worked up his body and spilled over his shoulders. After a slow blink, he said, “It’s a freebie. Maybe in the city you’ll need a lawyer sometime.” He handed over a card, which read: Roger Elk, Attorney, 115 East 23rd St., Suite 403, N.Y., N.Y.

  “I couldn’t ask you to take time out to—”

  He waved away my objections and led me by the elbow away from the phone. “I’m only here to report that someone backed into my car in a parking lot. And, you know, once in a while you have to commit random acts of kindness. I may have read that on a bumper sticker, but it’s true.”

  “Well, this would be really, really good of you, Mr. Elk, really.”

  He winced. “Call me Roger, er . . . ?”

  “Carson. Garth Carson.”

  “So, Garth Carson, tell me what happened and then let’s talk to the police together, hmmm?”

  My lucky day.

  Chapter 4

  While my profession as taxidermy broker doesn’t seem the obvious fulcrum on which crimes would pivot, it has nonetheless happened twice in my past. Those episodes were both the result of my tangles with black marketeers who deal in such items as bear gallbladders, gorilla remains, and rare Asian wild bovids.

  With Roger Elk’s help, I managed to stay out of the hoosegow this time, proving once again that the best thing about advancing years is wisdom. Okay, so I’m only forty-five and a half, but it feels (and is) a quantum advance over thirty-five and a half.

  I’m not some kind of intrepid paladin or do-gooder, and I do my best to avoid trouble. But I keep being drawn into the designs of some inexorable fate. The T3 murder of Tyler Loomis was a third strike, a blow to the law of averages, a less-than-subtle suggestion that Garth Carson is jinxed. What were the chances that stopping at a Podunk shop would turn so perilous? By the same token, and after much reflection, I did an admirable job trying to convince myself that the chances of ever running into such a calamitous situation again were astronomical.

  Of course, in the back of my mind, obtuse reasoning nurtured fresh doubt. Based strictly on the law of averages, auto insurance rates should go down after you have an accident, not up. I mean, if you have an accident once in ten years, it stands to reason that you probably won’t have another one for about ten years. If the universe is merely an entropy chowder, with no kismet chunks lurking in it, then the insurers should actually be raising their rates for those who’ve never had an accident because they’re obviously due for one. As I stare into my own bowl of soup, I suspect Mutual of Omaha must have a special insight into the cosmos that they’re not sharing.

  Anyway, it was months after T3, late October in New York, and the time when street trees take their turn to rob the citizenry of fall colors. Sorry, pal: green to brown, no fancy stuff.

  On this particular October evening, Angie had her back to me, hunched over her jeweler’s bench in the cubicle across the room. She was annealing some titanium earring components. The strap to her goggles fanned her sassy blond hair, and flickers from her torch popped like blue flashbulbs. As a professional jeweler, Angie does piecework at home for various manufacturers, gem setters, and art jewelers. Her current order was for the latter, a hoity-toity bauble involving rose diamonds and brown biwa pearls that to my discerning eye were dead ringers for Raisinets.

  At my own workstation, I was putting my head into a lion’s mouth. Well, practically. My forehead rested against Fred’s nose while I made final adjustments to a newly installed tongue. I not only collect taxidermy but also spend a good deal of time restoring stuff acquired on the cheap. Fred (so named for the sidekick in the Super Chicken cartoons) has been in the family since I was a kid, a venerable member of Grandpa Carson’s trophy collection who wasn’t earning his keep. To rent my stuff for photo shoots, stage productions, TV, and the movies, a piece has to be presentable. My lion Fred is one of the early full-body “lunge” mounts, his hind feet planted on a wheeled base, his front paws extended and bristling with claws. Fred was mounted by a renowned British taxidermist in the fifties but suffered from shrinkage in the lip area, as many cat mounts do over time. Also, the phalanx folds on his claws were flaking and most of his whiskers were gone. It was time to update his choppers, resculpt his lips, cut back those cuticles, plant new whiskers, and darken his eyeliner.

  “Anyway, Peter is being completely asinine about this thing for Madeline.” Peter was a jewelry auteur and working for him always made her a little batty. “He drove the pearl suppliers bananas over matching pairs. He keeps bringing them back, wanting to look at the ones he saw the day before. ‘No, not those, those other ones. You know the ones I mean.’ And of course, they don’t, and nei
ther do I. Peter actually had me pop some pearls out and try to return damaged mabes. And I’ve shaped, reshaped, and de-shaped enough titanium settings to build a nose cone for an Atlas rocket! Yoo-hoo, Peter! I’m being paid by the piece, not the hour! Idjit.”

  Angie’s default expression most often centers on a smile, though I’ll grant you, she isn’t always happy. I’d venture to say her smile just has a lot more versatility than most people’s. Put a hard squint with it, and she’s turning mordant. With one eye almost closed you’ve got chagrin. Forehead wrinkled: the smile of incredulity. Lopsided: tenderhearted. Eyes closed, breathing deeply, a gentle curve to her lips? Angie sleeping.

  “One heck of a purple Atlas nose cone, though,” I said, trying to lighten her mood. Anodizing titanium brings out some stunning colors.

  “A blue nose cone that he can shove up his”—her left eye tweaked closed—“nose.”

  While facially expressive, Angie is one of those rare types who can’t bring themselves to make a lewd or untoward remark. And she won’t tolerate it from others either. A plumber came one day to clear a drain, and every other word from his mouth had four letters, most beginning with F and rhyming with truck. Angie shamed him into editing his language, and without his copious though limited modifiers, he was effectively a mute. It’s not like Angie’s a prig. She’s just principled and more than a little intrepid, a combination I find endearing and companionable.

  “I assume you’ll charge him not just for the final piece but how many times you made it.”

  “Doubtful.” She squinted. “He gives me the vaguest of direction, drawings done on cupcake liners, and expects me to read his mind. I try to call, to talk, to discuss it further, to show him some sketches, but he’s too bleepin’ busy planning his spiritual Khmer ‘liftoff’ trip to Angkor Wat. Then I bring him the piece by his deadline and he says I did it all wrong. I won’t even start about how long it takes to get a check out of Peter.”