Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
“Shoot and get it over with.”
“No, my friend. Pick it up and play for me.”
Bond drew himself up with as much dignity as his bloodied frame would permit. He grunted a coarse biological suggestion to his adversary.
The monk chuckled. “For your information, Mr. Bond, I happen to be a pure hermaphrodite who can do and have done countless times precisely what you suggest. But you have forgotten one of the cardinal precepts of a membership in TUSH. A foe is not only to be vanquished but, when possible, humiliated to the nth degree. Pick up the Bernardi, Secret Agent Oy Oy Seven.”
“I refuse. Do your worst.”
He saw the slow rise of the Toppo-Gigio and whispered the
Sh’ma Israel
. It coughed; there was a buzz-saw sound and he paled as the copper Seal Of Bernardi flew off the violin into the seething
ofuro
.
“You bastard! You’ve desecrated a masterpiece.”
“Not at all, Mr. Bond. My perfect shot merely drove the seal off its hinges. However, my next shots will crunch the violin into splinters unless you serenade me with no further delay. Pick it up. Good. Now, in this order I want you play and sing ‘The Horst Wessel Song,’ The Internationale’ and finally the number-one song on the Southeast Asian Hit Parade, ‘The Thoughts of Chairman Mao.’”
Bond positioned the Barnardi against his claret-soaked shoulder. The swine! His captor had chosen three songs calculated to turn the stomach of any Jew: the Brown Shirt hymn and its boast of impaling Jews on knives; the old Communist anthem, mocking him with its reminder of more than three million of his kin entrapped by the Jew-baiting Soviet regime; and the sycophantic paean to the xenophobic old Leninist who threatened to send the hordes of Han rolling over the world.
No matter. If by sating the TUSH-y’s lust for degradation he could preserve a priceless Jewish artifact, then his personal debasement was inconsequential. He launched into the first “request” in guttural Berliner German, letting his defeated gray eyes absorb die indescribable loveliness of the Bernardi for the last time. Where the seal had been were four tiny holes, each housing one of the hinges, and he felt a profound relief. A competent metalsmith could heat the Seal Of Bernardi, pound it back into shape and insert it into the pasta with little or no visible damage. And, of course, the monk, after he’d put the quietus on Bond, would fish into the ofuro to retrieve it. He’d have to, to guarantee the instrument’s authenticity.
Midway through “The Internationale” his body began to shake and he heard the monk snicker: “Fear pervades the invincible Oy Oy Seven?” but he ignored it. He allowed a sickly grin to crease his lips and carefully lowered his eyes to the section of the violin laid bare by the removal of the seal. A definite message carved in elegant curlicues! But in what language? Italian? Latin? No! By thunder, Yiddish!
He was playing and singing about “the final conflict,” his heart thumping intricate paradiddles Max Roach or Buddy Rich never could have duplicated, while he screamed at his brain:
Translate! Translate!
Now he was on the whining Cantonese song, one cylinder of his brain concentrating on the decipherment of the tortuous Yiddish paragraph.
I met you in a commune
Under a Peking moon,
Thanks to the thought of Chairman Mao!
Mine bridder
Yid
—my brother Jew—if at this moment you are held at bay by an anti-Semite...
The poster on the wall
Said in love we’d fall,
Thanks to the thought of Chairman Mao!
... button on the bow...
We filled up jars of night soil,
A task we found divine;
I filled mine with your night soil,
You stuffed your jar with mine!
... exposes a notch into which you may insert the iguana-gut string closest to your right hand, the pressure from which...
We sauntered through the town,
And painted the town brown,
And heard a “well done” cheer from Lin Paio!
... releases from the tip of the bow a steel shaft dipped in a compost of ingredients...
There was gladness in the eye
Of good old Chou En-lai,
And we knew we’d hurt revisionism—and how!
Thanks to the thought,
The blinding thought,
the thought of Chairman...
A good man and a fair man,
The thought … of … Chairman Maaaaaaaaoooo...
oh voh dee o doh!
“In truth, Mr. Bond, I have never heard it sung so well, not even by the Red Guard Tabernacle Choir. You missed your calling, my friend. Had you chosen the profession of a music hall minstrel you would have enjoyed a long, venerable life. Goodbye, Secret Agent Oy Oy Seven.”
The pudgy gun hand pointed the Toppio-Gigio straight at the heart of Israel Bond.
But the drawn iguana-gut string had twanged its Nashville Sound, propelling the bow-turned-arrow from the violin-turned-bow. Deep into the right cheek of Aw Gee Minh burrowed the discolored tip of the steel shaft. The bow swayed back and forth, a maddened pendulum of death. In creepy fascination Bond saw the moon face change from yellow to a revolting purple as the still lethal venom on the shaft tip—a mixture of bizarre elements like belladarvi, hemlock paste and warlock droppings found only in that infamous region of Italy known as the Borgia Belt—diffused through the capillaries.
Aw Gee Minh’s body was a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon suddenly deflated. The knees turned to rubber, caved in and he fell ponderously on his moon face.
“The poison was in the violin,” jibed Bond. “Isn’t that enough to drive you... cuckoo?”
The black vortex had him helpless in its grasp now and he surrendered to the inexorable tides. As he slumped against the massage table his last recollections were of his Jewish brother who’d sent him a message of salvation across the centuries; his feeble jest, “Saved by an SOB!” and the popeyed Japan Air Lines purser charging into the compartment....
During a blessed spell of unconsciousness Israel Bond found time to reflect upon the decision that was sending him winging to the exotic Far Eastern land where, the cognoscenti will tell you, the cherry blossoms best around the age of fourteen.
2 The Historical Verity
A month before, Israel Bond, at the wheel of a 1967 Nader, the world’s safest sports car (it was constructed of panels of Campfire marshmallows, which upon impact would fluff up into spongy billows to cushion the driver), turned off the Strip into the driveway of Fabulous Las Vegas’ newest, gaudiest address, Caesars Palace, that twenty-five-million-dollar Roman orgy with crap tables. He guided the Nader under each of the thirteen spewing fountains to gain a free car wash, then squealed to a halt at the entrance, where two collections of statuary quickly established the resort’s classical motif:
The Rape of the Sabine Women
and
The Sabine Women Seen Consulting with Alan Dershowitz and Melvin Belli.
“Salve!”
chirped a bellhop in a centurion’s uniform, who proceeded to unload Bond’s Ventura-Condoli luggage.
“Lesbia est puella,”
Bond countered, drawing upon his storehouse of Catullan maxims.
“Well, that’s
de rerum natura
, I guess,” the bellhop conceded and ushered Bond to Caesars Palace’s preferred suite for big spenders, the Maximus Rabinowus. Waiting within, as the coded cable from Jerusalem had told him she would be, was M.’s new secretary, Lobsang Rampapport, a Tibetan who’d made a recent conversion to Judaism, her luscious, lipogenic limbs revealed by a spangled Vestal Virgin minitoga.
“We shall beat our spears into pruning hooks,” the girl said self-consciously, pausing to allow Bond to complete the countersign.
“And our prunes into compote,” Bond retorted. He made the bellhop’s eyes bulge with a crisp two-hundred-salazar tip and two center-aisle tickets to
Cabaret
and shooed him out. “So you’re M.’s new right arm? And you’re all excited about this espionage crap, the passwords and such. Kid, get out of this lousy racket before you end up like Lilah Tov.” His voice cracked on the adored name of the beauteous brunette who’d died so horribly in the Queen caper.
Lobsang’s mouth tightened and he knew his warning had sunk in. Two of her eyes remained steadfast and clear, but her third eye wept copiously in memory of her predecessor.
In the days that followed, a legend was born along the Vegas Strip about a dark, cruelly handsome man whose grey eyes sought something on the horizon beyond the ken of mortal men... a man ferried from casino to casino in a Caesars Palace VIP golden chariot pulled by six haughty Arabian steeds and driven by a dashing charioteer named Ben Hur-Owitz... a man whose wanton gambling reduced the high-stakes exploits of Nick the Greek to Little League size.
Israel Bond... Israel Bond... Israel Bond...
His name was whispered at the Desert Inn, where he smashed the bank at
la guerre
;
[69]
by the dealer at the Flamingo, who quailed at Bond’s icy calm: “You’ve just picked the Old Maid from my hand, old chap. You’re done...” which meant a loss to the house of seventy-eight million dollars; and at the Thunderbird, where he fired a sizzling twelve-under-par 62 on the miniature golf course to humble the resident pro, Slammin’ Sammy Schneid, who boggled at Bond’s incredible curling birdie putt through the treacherous maze of Pepsi-Cola cans on the sixteenth green.
On a fateful Sunday night at Caesars Palace, fourteen distinguished men in Savile Row suitings of Phil Harris tweed clustered outside Bond’s suite. They were the distraught owners of the Strip’s major hotels and they’d been stung for a collective loss of seven hundred million dollars.
“Gentlemen.” Mr. Tropicana opened the discussion. “This Bond guy has racked us up but good. What’s to be done about it?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Sands. “I had my spotters watching Bond on the hidden TV over the Old Maid table. The son of a bitch plays like a maniac, like there’s no tomorrow, but he’s honest. Funny thing... every so often he looks off into space and mumbles, ‘Sarah, Sarah!’ over and over.”
“Wonder where he got his original jackroll?” asked Mr. Aladdin. “He couldn’t have run up seven hundred mil that fast without big front money. And I hear through the grapevine that he’s even rejected an invitation to dine with Howard Hughes.”
“I can answer that,” put in Mr. Caesars Palace, inhaling his White Owl. “Before he came to Caesars Palace he’d made a killing on the market. When the Tall Texan at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue gave a certain type of dessert his enthusiastic Good Whitehousekeeping Seal of Approval at a widely covered press conference, Bond, who’d been tipped that the endorsement was coming, moved fast, got his people at the Dreyfus Fund to corner fifty thousand shares of Minute Tapioca and came out five million smackers ahead.”
“Who is he anyway?” said Mr. Sahara.
“He’s allegedly a public relations man for Mother Margolies’ Activated Old World Chicken Soup, the brand served in our Noshorium,” said Mr. Caesars Palace. “But I got some friends in a hush-hush bureau in DC. to check him out. The PR job is a cover. He’s really Israeli Secret Agent Oy Oy Seven.”
“I don’t give a damn who he is,” scowled Mr. Tropicana. “Question is do we take our losses and get scourged by our respective stockholders or try to recoup by challenging him at Monopoly? I personally favor going for broke.”
A fervent chorus of “Me, too” cinched the decision for Mr. Caesars Palace. “OK, gents.” He stuck a finger into the buzzer. The door opened and Lobsang Rampapport, sleek and self-assured, bade them enter.
“Mr. Bond knows why you are here, sirs. The Monopoly board is set up; the deeds have been waxed with Esquire neutral shoe polish; the houses and hotels given fresh coats of Sherwin-Williams paint. However, he insists upon two preconditions.”
“Which are?” said a suspicious Mr. Dunes.
“First, he wants to use the silver doggie as his mover. He has loved the little doggie since childhood.”
“Now, wait a damn minute!” roared the reddening Mr. Flamingo. “He’s got one helluva nerve! I, too, always use the little doggie. I love the little doggie and—”
With an annoyed sigh Mr. Caesars Palace trod heavily on the point of Mr. Flamingo’s Corfam brogue. “Agreed. Bond uses the doggie. But I get the race car, huh, fellas?” In deference to his role as host boniface, the other hotelmen nodded their sullen assent. “And the second precondition?”
Lobsang exhaled a contrail of Raleigh smoke. “He demands that the game be representational; that is to say, the hotels on the board will represent actual Fabulous Las Vegas real estate. In short, your hotels, sirs.”