Pipsqueak Read online

  Like most of the citizenry, I’ll go along with the law as long as it makes common sense and as long as it is enforceable. In New York City, we’ve got only a couple of special cops out there policing almost eight million potential violators of Title 50 and CITES. They’re kinda busy busting folks hustling bins of fresh tiger penises and rhino horns. Chances of their getting around to tracking down that blue-jay feather in your curio case are exactly nil. And I think if you tried to give them a dead hummingbird for a proper government-approved disposal, they’d tell you to give it a flume ride to alligator land.

  Which all brings us to last January, when Angie and I found a dead jay lying peacefully on the snow, waiting to be molested by the next passing house cat. Damn pretty bird too, so I brought it to Dudley for mounting. It’s mainly for our permanent collection, and I can’t see getting in dutch as long as I don’t try to sell it.

  Dudley is fifty-one and looks like a bulldog. Brown and bowlegged, with big forearms, a prominent jaw, and furrowed brow, he is completely oblivious to his canine appearance. Unlike a bulldog, though, his forthright demeanor is mostly attributable to his whiz-kid brain. He made a hell of a foreman when we met at jury duty on a whiplash case eight years ago. But our friendship didn’t really take off until we met again at our next tour of duty. See, since they drag you in to jury duty every so many years, it’s not unusual to see some of the same people caught in the same cycle. This time, we weren’t on the same jury, and it wasn’t taboo to eat lunch together (they’re afraid you’ll gab about the case—a no-no).

  “Best jay mount you’ll ever see, you old rag-picker!” Dudley pointed a thick finger at me from his workbench as I entered the loft. He was at his computer, which was neatly arranged with all its hardware—modems, zip drives, zap drives, what have you—on a rolltop desk. Reclining in an old wooden four-caster I got for him on Park Avenue, his outfit made him look something like a bulldog would as a southern sheriff: red suspenders and matching Dickies khaki work shirt and pants.

  Wainscoting encircled the room, and it was topped with a ledge boasting perhaps fifty domed songbird mounts. Above them, dozens of framed photos and paintings of songbirds crowded out the bare walls.

  “I’ll be the judge of that, Dudley. I have seen a lot of bird mounts in my day.” I put out my hand. Oops: I forgot. He’s a tactilophobe and doesn’t shake hands with anybody. In fact, he tries to avoid touching anything he doesn’t have to. The way he sees it, New York is a hotbed of influenza. Dudley’s paranoia has some validity in fact, once you start to look around at the infectious threat of everyday things—elevator buttons, ATMs, doorknobs, handrails. Whenever possible, Dudley uses his pinky finger to operate ATMs, elbows to push elevator buttons, and he’ll shoulder open whatever doors he can or time his entry with someone else’s exit. Gloves? “They just collect germs,” he says.

  “Voilà!” With a flourish, he whisked a white silk hanky from the blue-jay mount.

  Perched on a birch branch nub, the jay sported an erect crest, his beak parted and his wings partially open. Not like he was about to take flight, rather like he was warding off an approaching rival with bluster and a long chatter.

  I beamed, turning the birch log so as to admire the mount from all sides. “Ve-ry nice indeed. Truly, one of a kind.”

  “And where’s mine, ragpicker?” He tried to fold his arms, but they were too bulky.

  “Voilà!” I put a small black velvet ring box in his paw, and he eagerly snapped it open with the silk handkerchief. “Three-quarter-carat pinkish oval, flanking aquamarine baguettes, platinum setting. Here’s the supply invoice.” Bartered services, the tax cheat’s best friend.

  “I de-clare!” He gasped. “It’s stupendous! I tell you, Carmela is going to go ape!”

  I swallowed a burp of laughter. Only the other day Angie remarked that Carmela was hairy as an ape. “When you going to pop the question?” I thought of adding “You dog, you!” but behaved.

  “This very eve! Today! Maybe right now!”

  “Down, boy!” I heard myself say. “Take her to a candlelit dinner tonight and do it then. Romantic, you know?”

  “Says you. What do you know about it, Romeo? No ring on Angie’s finger.” He squeezed the ring onto his pinky and admired it at arm’s length, alternately giving me a suspicious look.

  “Can’t go wrong doing something romantic. Besides, it’s the way they do it in the movies, a reliable touchstone for what women hope men would do if, in fact, men weren’t fundamentally insensitive louts.”

  “Carriage! A carriage ride, maybe? Or the Empire State observation deck!”

  “Corny as all get-out, but probably win you points in the long run.”

  Dudley struggled to get the ring off his pinky. “Now, how come that clever gal of yours never compelled you to bend your knee and look longingly into her eyes?”

  “Marriage? She could just as well propose to me, thank you very much.”

  “Hilarious. Really, Gawth, how come?” He grunted, then smiled in relief as the ring came off.

  “I guess I never felt she—or I—had to be conscripted into marriage in order to commit.”

  “Unusual.” Dudley shuddered the subject away and pointed at the jay. “Now, this mount can be put on a table, like it is now, or hung on the wall. See, I flattened the back and installed a recessed hanger. Wanna cream soda or a Fab Form?”

  “Fab Form?”

  “Health drink.”

  “Right. That stuff from the billboards.”

  “It’s quite tasty! Here.” He snapped open a can, poured me a shot. I gave it a try, suspicious.

  “Bleck. Tastes like Kaopectate and mango juice. Quick, a cream soda to cleanse my palate.”

  “Been ads for it on TV, and I like it.” He waved the Fab Form can at me, opening the fridge for my soda. We toasted the air and took long sips.

  “Dudley, you have an encyclopedic brain. I got a real-life brain teaser for you, something that’s got me puzzled.”

  “Do your worst!”

  “Remember that trouble I ran into out in New Jersey?”

  “TV-squirrel mount, Cola Woman, dead biker, loon full of bugs.”

  “Well, a squirrel puppet,” I corrected.

  “Ah, a squirrel puppet!” His eyes lit up, and he pointed a knowing finger at me. “I can tell you about animal pelt puppets. It’s very interesting, actually. . . .”

  “Well, that’s not what I was going to ask. What I was going to say—”

  He wasn’t listening. “There are some places in Siberia where the natives make puppets from native animals. Lemme see. Is that the Yakuts that make those things, or the Evenk? Anyway, it’s taxidermy, made into puppets. A handicraft. They use them to tell stories to their kids.”

  “Really?” I tried to look interested. Once you uncork Dudley’s brain, it’s tough rebottling the trivia genie. “Yeah, well, what I wanted to know was what you know about the downtown club scene. You see a lot of the club hoppers around here. What kind of club would you see Cola Woman at?”

  Dudley finished his Fab Form on the third gulp. “Retro.” At first, his accent and enunciation made it sound like he said “Jethro.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s not a where, it’s a what. From your colorful if curious description, Cola Woman had an affected old-fashioned look. Retro people dress up like that.”

  “Retro people?”

  “Dress like FDR is still president, hang around swing clubs. Lotta former punks, but they sometimes dally with current punks or rockabillies.”

  “Got it, the swing craze. Rockabillies being . . . ?”

  “You know, people who take rockabilly very seriously. The Sun Records, ‘Yes, sir, Colonel Parker’ look. Giant Dep hair, black leather jackets, cuffed jeans.”

  “Greasers or Elvis impersonators?”

  “Bit of a country twang in it,” he cautioned. “Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Stray Cats, like that. But some are more rudimentary. Some are more hilly-bi
lly.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Then again, many are also into swing, early fifties, and forties jive. Crossovers. Dressing up as a hilly-billy, Cola Woman could be a rockabillette. What makes you think this character frequents a New York club?”

  “Hot tip, don’t know what to make of it. They dress like this just to go to the clubs or . . .”

  “Hard-core ones dress the part full-time. What kind of punk—retro or otherwise—would you be if you didn’t cop the look daily, get the odd looks, define your rebel place in society?”

  No matter what the context, I always find something slightly sinister in the way southerners say the word rebel, or maybe it’s just the way some of them work the word into sentences as if to bait Yankee paranoia.

  “So they don the painted ties, two-tone shoes. Fifties rebels in ties and fedoras? Jitterbugging?”

  “They prefer lindy hop to the word jitterbug. The point is, purple mohawks were crazy, but everybody got used to them and the shock value went pfft. Now dinner jackets, tie clips, hair cut high over the ears, and white sox get the reaction. Let’s not forget the stray zoot suit. Retro is the next big thing, Gawth. Where you been? They’re in Gap ads, even.”

  “I’m a newspaper, magazine kind of guy. TV ads got too noisy.” I sat on the edge of the table. “So, where do you find these retro clubs?”

  “Remember Vito Anthony Guido?”

  “Could anybody forget a name like that?”

  On the second tour of jury duty, Dudley and I palled around during lunch breaks with Vito, who as it turned out was one of Dudley’s glass-eye craftsmen. Sure, chickadee eyes may be all the same to you, but to Dudley, there is glass and then there are diamonds. When confronted with taxidermy, people stare at the eyes first. If the eyes aren’t sized right or aren’t set correctly, that lifelike effect isn’t achieved. Conversely, eyes that have depth and sparkle reinforce the illusion of life.

  It’s all custom stuff, passed on to Vito as a hobby from his dad, a former Venetian glassworker, though the prosthetic human eyes are what brought his family renown. He’s a horn player on the side. After duty one night, Dudley and I went to hear him play cornet with a jazz band at 10th Avenue Grill.

  “I’m still in touch with Guido. Mostly through his band’s mailings. I stop in on him now and then. He plays in both a swing band and a rockabilly band.”

  “I find it hard to believe Vito is a retro.” We used to kid him about his trademark moth-eaten sweaters.

  “Naw. Career musicians are adaptable. They play the music that sells. Bet you didn’t know he plays a trumpet at the Renaissance festival in Tuxedo, upstate, every year. Doesn’t mean he goes around wearing a codpiece to the feed store.”

  “He playing anytime soon?”

  “Tomorrow night at the Buckboard Bar, a rockabilly venue. But lemme get something straight here, Gawth. You have a mind to have Vito hound-dog Cola Woman?”

  “Sort of.”

  Dudley crushed his health-drink can like so much plush toy. “May I ask why?”

  I made a face, thinking.

  “You want that squirrel, now, don’t you?” he said.

  I purposely ignored his last statement and snapped my fingers. “I know. We’ll celebrate your engagement at the Buckboard, couples, the four of us.”

  His pug face wrinkled up into a smile, and he barked a laugh. “Gawth, like you say. What I like about you? Always something crazy going on up underneath that wild blond hair.”

  Chapter 9

  When I think back on Dudley’s “crazy” comment, I have to concur. What in the hell was I thinking? And ultimately I come back to the same answer: I fancied I might still have a shot at owning Pipsqueak. I mean, there he was in that shop, and had I skipped a leisurely Scranton breakfast, I might have arrived there before Cola Woman and bought him. At the time of the T3 incident, I tried to ask Marti Folsom, the shop owner who’d been locked in the closet, how much she would have sold him for had he not been stolen. But my tactless approach was for naught. She was beside herself, alternating weepy hysteria with reproach for the police. I couldn’t get an answer.

  So at this stage of the game you’d think I’d have had all the warning signs I needed to steer clear of Pipsqueak. Alas, I’m not without my foibles.

  Pipsqueak represented a certain magic, a time of life back when the most important thing in your life was today. The Nutty Nut epitomized my youth. There’s a special appreciation you acquire for those feckless days of youth as you approach midlife and the long, slow slide. You know, the slide to a time when the most important thing in any given day is a good bowel movement. Yeah, okay, I’m a half year shy of forty-six and the more deeply middle-aged scoff. But there’s a noticeable deterioration from ten years back that probably (gads, let’s hope not) won’t be as profound in the next ten years. Gone are the days when I could eat jalapeños, for example. So long to dependable, nightlong slumber. Bye-bye to hair-free nostrils and ears. Hello, allergies, two-pint hangovers, lower-back pain, and a size-36 waist.

  Then there’s the dealer’s natural competitiveness, the need to score. What a coup that would have been! I mean, I see a dirty old buggy loon in a store window, reluctantly investigate, and discover the find of a lifetime, a piece with a history, like a penguin mount that belonged to Admiral Byrd or the pelts worn by terriers in Attack of the Giant Shrews. Or were those beat-down rugs? Nutty as it sounds, other devout collectors—whether of stamps, Barbies, or striptease highball glasses—find there’s something special about a storied piece. In the fine-art world, they call it provenance. Yeah, I know Pipsqueak ain’t exactly Mr. Ed. But the only mildly famous piece I have is a crow that used to be in a wax-museum display accompanied by the paraffin likeness of Alfred Hitchcock.

  What if Marti had sold me Pipsqueak for sixty bucks? The knees go wobbly at the thought.

  But what chance did I have of getting Pipsqueak once the Grease desperadoes had absconded with him? Well, I kidded myself that I might be able to at least locate him, call the cops, stand witness against Cola Woman, and then Marti would give me Pipsqueak in gratitude for nabbing the hooligans. Then there’s the matter of Nicholas, who says it belongs to someone else, though he might (almost certainly) be lying. Then why does he want it? I mean, how much is a puppet from a lousy local sixties cartoon show really worth? A couple thousand? Why did Cola Woman kill a biker just to steal Pipsqueak?

  I figured it couldn’t hurt just to see where Pipsqueak had been all these years since General Buster. I couldn’t even recall when he went off the air.

  So rather than go directly home, I headed to the Broadcast History Center. Angie and I’d gone to an event there a few months before. I walked from Dudley’s over to Avenue of the Americas and the A train, the no-nonsense subway that bypasses lesser stations and puts you uptown but fast. Twenty minutes after stepping on the train, I was face-to-face with a skinny young woman with hideous black-framed glasses, bright green dress, and matching three-inch rubber clogs. She looked like a giant starving frog, one that happened to work the sleek but elegant front desk at the BHC.

  I told Frog Girl what I wanted, she had me fill in a little card, and I was soon seated at a computer terminal in a research cubicle. Now, I don’t own a computer, or a PC, whatever. I still organize my life with 3x5 cards and file drawers. I suppose I could bar-code all my taxidermy and scan them prior to renting, but that would be pretty elaborate for a couple of pieces a week. I’m one of those who still use phone calls and postcards rather than e-mail or personalized annual desktop-published newsletters. Oh, I could do my taxes in twelve-point-five minutes and play the markets with my expendable income. Sounds great, but until I bank my first million, I’ll just have to squander the full two hours that it takes now to do my finances on a calculator. Dudley says I’m a technophobe, but mostly I’m just not that interested in gadgetry or enhancing my day-to-day infrastructure with Internet providers, modems, and flashy screen savers. My car doesn’t “think” about the brak
es locking, ignition timing, or fuel mixtures, and my limited intellect does the navigation without benefit of orbital transponders. Viva Thoreau: Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

  Angie, on the other hand, has a computer, and she’s beginning to fall prey to its wiles. How can I tell? Not normally much of a cardplayer, she’s now a solitaire junkie. (The phenomenon seems pandemic: Computer solitaire has replaced baseball as the national pastime.)

  Cro-Magnon though I am, an encounter with the museum terminal did not spook me back to my cave. It was very similar to the ones in libraries that are perfectly simple, helpful machines. User-friendly, if you insist. And yes, I still go to the library to check out books, though I’ll admit that whale seems doubly harpooned by Web crawling and superstore book lounges.

  I filled in the Subject blank on the screen and depressed the Enter key. The following jumped onto my screen:

  The General Buster Show aired from September 1964 to June 1972 with almost 2,000 episodes broadcast locally. While at its inception the hosted “cartoon show” format was already well established by others, the show’s creator and star player, Lew Bookerman, was the only one to base his show on Cold War themes that by today’s standards seem quite dark. Bookerman’s show was largely entertainment rather than educational, with some morality themes. Each show promoted a “duck and cover” segment, and playful treatments of espionage and treason were common elements. Puppets were a common element in children’s programming of the day, but General Buster’s puppets had the distinction of being made from real animal fur by Mr. Bookerman himself.