The Israel Bond Omnibus (7 page)

Now it was her turn to be stung. She bit her marvelously red, full lips. “Your seamy little allegory wasn’t lost on me, Mr. Bond. I’ve heard the same old tired insults before from other alleged ‘men’ who can’t make the grade with me, so they hurl smutty charges. No, Mr. Bond, I don’t let men into my life—or anything else. I’m smarter than any man I’ve ever met, stronger than most, and in that one little childish pastime you deride—marbles—I can best any man I’ve ever known.” She tensed defiantly. “Care for that game, Mr. Bond?”

His eyes gleamed. “What’s in it for me if I win, Poontang?”

“Win? WIN?” She exploded into helpless, thigh-whacking laughter, the first Bond had ever seen on that sullen face. My, she’s homely when she laughs.

“Win? You stupid, prideful bastard! I’ll show you who’s really got balls at this table, Bond. I have. Right in my hand. The neatest shooters you ever saw smack a marble on its ass and send it flying!”

Bond looked into her eyes, deviltry dancing in his own. “Let’s say the impossible is possible, Poontang. And I win. What’s in it for me?”

She stood up regally, extended those staggeringly desirable mounds to within an inch of his twitching lips. “Yes ... they’re yours! Yours! And everything else that goes with ’em! Gladly! But you’ll never outshoot me, buster. And to make it interesting for me, I’ll relieve you of some of your long green. Shall we say twenty bucks for each captured marble?”

“So, Her Nibs digs mibs, eh?”

“That’s the size of it, lover boy. I’m throwing the gauntlet right in your craggy, cruelly handsome face and I hope to hell it drives your blackheads clear through your cheeks!”

He spoke. The charm was gone from his voice now, she noticed. Good! She’d made the goodlooking bastard shook up.

“You’re on, Poontang. Marbles it is. Noon tomorrow, any place on the hotel grounds you want. But I’d make it far from the main building, though. I don’t want the folks to be upset by your screams when I ...” He could hold back the sound of his gritting teeth no longer. In his passion a wisdom molar crumbled into chalk.

“Brave words, buster. But you’re on. Tomorrow—noon.”

His nerves raw from the tension he had undergone ever since the whole chaotic skein of events had started to unravel in Miami Beach, Bond gulped down one of Mother Margolies’ favorite relaxants—M & M, Manischewitz & Miltown. It would ease him into a peaceful late afternoon catnap from which he would emerge refreshed and ready for the grim tasks ahead. He stripped down to his Fruit of the Loom spun Egyptian cotton shorts (you had to hand it to the warmongering bastards; they
did
grow splendid cotton), lit up his 198th Raleigh of the day (I’ve smoked enough for a clip of .45s at least, he exulted) and lay on his bed. A little soothing music, perhaps, to hasten the advent of sweet slumber. He switched on the radio.

“... moving right up on the chart, teens and queens, is No. 1,892, Vinnie Vee Vermin and the Vandals and their big ...”

Without even thinking, his muscular arm swept up the radio and hurled it out the window. It landed 18 floors below on a patio table where boniface Schuyler Kahn, his Estrellita and their guests, Lennie and Sali Heller of Roseola, Michigan, sat, scattering four hands of Jewish pinochle. Kahn shrugged: “That’s the 35th radio to come flying down this week. Lay you 13 to 1 whoever threw it was listening to Rockin’ Robby Robbins.”

Bond’s eyes were closing now, but there was one more chore. “Operator—get me Milton Bond in Trenton, New Jersey. Area code 609, IMport 7-8898.”

He waited. “Milt? Your Israeli brother. Listen, Milt, I’m practically asleep, but I need a favor damned fast. Look through my old things in the attic, the junk I stored before I went to Eretz in ‘48. Still got it? Good. Now, I must have these things no later than noon tomorrow. Got a pencil?” His voice droned a list. “That’s the whole schmear. Fly ’em up to the Kahn-Tiki Hotel, Loch Sheldrake, in your Piper Cub. Leave ‘em at the desk. Love to Lottie and the kinderlach. I’m so damn sleepy I ...”

The receiver fell from jellyfish-weak fingers. Bond was out cold.

Cold.

He was cold. Shivering, freezing cold.

He smiled in his sleep. The smell of salty fish permeated his dream. Lox? Loxfinger? Herring? Yes, a
gooten shtickel
pickled herring, the way his mother used to make it back in Trenton, his birthplace in 1930. Momma! His warm-hearted, crafty, typical Jewish mother, who had dreamed of a profitable career for him in medicine. “Study hard, learn,” she had said in her careworn way. “Someday, son, you’ll be a famous abortionist with a big practice and a country clubber in Stockholm.” She was smiling at him now in this loveliest of dreams. Hello, momma. I miss you.

How she had saved and scrimped for the education that had never panned out due to his wild, adventurous streak. At the butcher’s she had insisted on buying the cheapest cut of bone. He could remember her even now, hiding a nickel here, a dime there, a quarter there, a cunning smile on her face. All for him! And after she had died, they had searched into all her little hiding places and found a total of forty cents. Momma, I miss you.

He knew he was dreaming, but, ah, it was divine! There was his poppa, olav hashalom, tearing up herring on his
Daily Forvartz
, handing the kiddies the choicest tidbits. My, that fish smells good. So strong, so near it might just as well be on my bed.

The cold salty fish is moving over my body, he smiled. I’m in a Catskill hotel and a cold slimy fish is crawling over me!

Crawling?

Fish don’t crawl!

He sprang into consciousness—something wet, cold, slimy, furry, impossibly huge was advancing on his body. Something was—Gottenu! The pain! Something with a fetid, fishy breath had sunk its teeth into his shoulder—the bad one.

Two red eyes were glowing in the darkened room, part of something enormous that was crushing him, mashing his ribs, his chest. Pinned to the bed like a butterfly on a card, he stared into the enraged face of a polar bear!

Bond screamed, unashamedly. He tried reaching for the mezuzah with a hand already puffing up horribly from the mashing. Gone! The bear’s claw had ripped the chain from his neck. Blood from the reopened shoulder wound raced lava-like down his body.

He was virtually on the verge of fainting. The swollen hand was all that remained to combat this one-ton terror from the top of the world. Its growl sent chills down his bruised spine. He could imagine the not-so-stupid Mr. Jew next door in 1817, his ear pressed to the wall, laughing gleefully at each of Bond’s screams. No, Mr. Achmed Jew was not the dumb bunny he had thought him to be. While he, Bond, had talked a good game, Mr. Jew had acted! Somehow managing to smuggle his murderous Arctic aide into the Kahn-Tiki.

Only the thought of that cackling anti-Semite bastard next door kept Bond going. A rage, every bit as towering as the polar bear’s, swept over him. His mashed fingers found a shoe under the bed, touched a spring in the heel. A knife sprang out. Now it was in Bond’s demoniacal clutch, driving down toward the bear’s exposed neck. No! Wait! Stop! He knew from the extra-light feel of the knife and its dull edge that it was a milchig (dairy) knife. Sacrilege! To kill a meat creature with a dairy knife. He dropped it, felt for the mate to the shoe, found its spring and drove the flayschig (meat) knife again and again into his adversary. Blood—the bear’s now—was gushing out like an oil strike from an oversexed Icelandic volcano. With one tormented roar, the bear rolled over Bond again, inflicting more indescribable pain, then fell ponderously to the floor. It would lurk no more in the Kahn-Tiki Hotel.

He had met his greatest challenge—and won.

Gottenu! What pain! Pain! Pain! Tension! Tension! Tension! He would give the world for one Excedrin now!

Gingerly he felt for the phone. He had to make sure this terrible thing was indeed premeditated. In his heart he knew it was, but his Double Oy training dictated total surety. He heard the polite voice of the friendly desk clerk he’d talked to previously.

Though his body screamed in a million agonized places, he forced himself to make his voice as dignified as possible. “Bond, 1818. Tell me ... uh ... have there ever been any ... uh ... polar bears inside this hotel before? As guests, visitors, in any capacity at all?”

“Definitely not, Mr. Bond!” The clerk sounded highly insulted. “A polar bear in the Kahn-Tiki? Never, sir! We only get a family crowd.”

“Thank you,” said a thoughtful Bond. He hung up. Then there
was
a score to settle!