Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

I picked up the Louisville Slugger and took a good grip. It was made of ash, thirty-three inches long, and it was thirty-four ounces of eraser. I could feel the power of it coursing up my arms. I didn’t want to be seen cruising the streets with a baseball bat so I wrapped it in brown paper with one end left open for a quick draw. It wouldn’t quite pass for a french bread but it would have to do. I thought I might have a look-in at Gaby’s Deli and thereabouts. At first I was pretty scared thinking of what would happen when we met but then it came to me that I was just as dangerous as the one I was hunting. Maybe more so.

The bat had been left behind a long time ago by an old boyfriend who was over here for a while, Jerry Benson. He went back to his wife in Poughkeepsie eventually. We used to play softball on Sundays in Hyde Park with some of the Americans he knew. ‘You’re a sucker for those high outside pitches,’ he told me. ‘If you have to reach for the ball you probably won’t get any wood on it and even if you connect you won’t have enough power in your swing.’ OK, Jerry, I thought, I’ll tell her to come at me right over the plate and not too high.

I went slowly down Berwick to Broadwick, pausing every now and then to look around the way they do in cop films. This was a Thursday night, fairly quiet with a little rain. The Blue Posts looked warm and welcoming, a safe haven from the cares of the world. Certainly a peaceful pint in there would be a lot nicer than walking around with a baseball bat. I can’t even remember the last time I was in a pub; I feel more lonely in cosy surroundings, I’m more comfortable drinking alone.

As I headed east on Broadwick towards Wardour Street I had one of those moments when I don’t know who or what I am, don’t know what’s looking out through my eyeholes. I stopped under a street lamp and took my bit of The Heart Sutra out of my shirt pocket. ‘“Here, O Sariputra,”’ I read,

‘Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.’

‘OK?’ I said to myself. ‘Are we straight now?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I answered. ‘Straight is crooked and the very crookedness is straight. Let’s just get it done.’

‘I have a thing for older women,’ said some drunk who came weaving towards me.

‘And I have a thing for creeps,’ I said, easing the bat half-way out of its brown paper. He disappeared.

Very lively night in Wardour Street, lots of people, flashing blue lights, and two fire engines outside the Pizzeria Bar. Past The Intrepid Fox and its rock music, a batwinged gargoyle over the door but not enough rain to make water come out of its mouth.

Down Wardour Street to Old Compton with its melancholy gaiety and The Admiral Duncan where some anti-gay planted a nail bomb a while back. PLAY 2 WIN with nobody looking like a winner. Lion City and Lesbian & Gay Accommodation Outlet. Now that Old Compton Street is famous as a gay centre I think it’s become more of a tourist trap than anything else. Bugbug pedicabs cruising for business. Form and emptiness and Grace Kowalski with a baseball bat. Mamma Mia! still playing at the Prince Edward.

Charing Cross Road then and Cambridge Circus, the Palace Theatre and Les Misérables . By now I wasn’t paying much attention to what I passed and what passed me. I could feel myself getting closer to what was waiting for me, and Charing Cross Road with all its lights and colours became a long darkness where the Leicester Square tube station appeared after a while, then Wyndhams where Dinner was flaunting its reviews. I’d intended to look in at Gaby’s Deli but something was pulling me towards Cecil Court so I went with it and turned left at Café Uno. The paving was glistening under the lamps and the darkness funnelled me forward.

There she was, leaning against the Watkins window and crying. ‘You don’t know,’ she said, ‘you just don’t know.’

I was close enough to smell her toad breath. ‘That’s how it is,’ I said,‘I’m sorry.’When she saw me take the bat out of the brown paper she came at me right over the plate and I took a really good swing. THWOCK! Her head flew off across the court and a jet of blood shot up from her neck. I heard the head bounce off the building opposite as the body went to black-and-white, then flattened out, then vanished with a little sound like the ghost of a belch. I looked for the head but that was gone too. No blood anywhere on the ground. Nothing at all left of J Two. ‘That’s all she wrote,’ I said, and walked home in the rain.

6 February 2004. A Google search came up with an outfit called BayBlast that operates in the Thames Estuary. They have a 6-metre Valiant DR600, that’s a rigid inflatable boat with a 150hp Mercury Optimax engine. We can get a train to Whistable where they’ll pick us up, take us out to Knock John, and have us back in two hours, weather permitting. That should give Irv an exciting ride before he gets scattered.

6 February 2004. Rachael Darling. I still think of her as Rose Harland. I haven’t dreamt about her for a while; maybe she’s at peace although I’m not.

No new bloodless corpses. Still two Justines out there and no leads whatever. Where did they come from? Goodman and Kowalski said I wouldn’t believe their story and of course I didn’t. I can suspend a fair amount of disbelief but I draw the line at vampires made out of magnetised particles. Whoever and wherever they are, they can run and they can hide but sooner or later I’ll catch up with them.

8 February 2004 Artie rang me up and told me about his plans for scattering the ashes but I said let’s not scatter Irv in the winter when it’s all cold and grey and raining, let’s do it in the spring or maybe summer. Irv won’t mind waiting a little.

I’ve got him on a shelf in my studio. Sometimes I hold the biscuit tin in my lap and have a drink while I talk to him. ‘What’s a month or two between friends?’ I say. ‘This is Grace talking to you, Irv. Linger awhile, OK?’

I am grateful to the persons listed below whose good will and cooperation helped me with this story.

The behaviour of Detective Inspector Hunter and other members of the police in this novel is mostly non-regulation. The same applies to the medical examiner, his assistant, and the mortuary technician. In order to ground the extravagances of my fiction in fact I was allowed, through the courtesy of Superintendent Heather Valentine, to visit Hammersmith police station where Inspector Steve Tysoe kindly showed me around and explained custodial procedure. Anthony Berry of Scotland Yard very patiently helped me with police terminology and organisational detail.

Mortuary technician David Webber was my guide at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital mortuary.

Irean Pazook, of Regent Palace Hotel Reception, and Eden Parvus, Security Manager, gave me access to the room where the fictional Ralph Darling stayed.

Carol Lee gave me jewellery-making details.

Brom Hoban instructed me in the process by which Istvan Fallok isolated the video image of Justine Trimble.

Jake Hoban accompanied me on Grace Kowalski’s walk through Soho to the fateful confrontation in Cecil Court.

Gundula Hoban, as always, helped me with all kinds of London detail.

Katherine Greenwood rescued me from a multitude of errors and put in hours well beyond the call of duty.