The Butterfly Kid

8

MONDAY STARTED poorly enough. I staggered naked and disheveled out of my room at half-past heathen seven to find Sean and Sativa, mutually radiant, fully occupying the living room and wearing nothing but wide grins.

“Groovy,” I complained. “Let’s have an orgy.” Instead I stumbled back into my room to find a bathrobe.

Sativa, I noticed, took this collective nudity in her cool stride, but Sean blushed all over — an impressive sight in so tall a kid — tried with a wholly inadequate hand to salvage his modesty, gulped “Oh wow,” and fled awkwardly to the guest room: a complicated reaction I was quite unable to understand.

Decently robed and less than half awake, I fumbled into Michael’s room and tried to rouse the master planner. This was far too much work to start a morning with, but if I had to get up, I’d be carefully damned if he was going to sleep.

Mike asleep is a fairly charming sight. His mouth is full of his right thumb, his face is round and innocent, and he isn’t saying anything. Nevertheless, I pulled his thumb out of his mouth, shook his head and shoulders fairly roughly, and yelled, “Reveille! Reveille! Out of the sack, soldier!” much more loudly than I liked.

“Gargh!” His eyes flashed open, his jaw snapped shut (which is why I pulled his thumb out first), and he sat up like an overwound automaton.

“Good morning, Michael,” I regretted, dialing his lights to full.

“Morning?”

“Right. Up and at ’em, more or less. Busy day. Get up.”

“Oh yeah. Sure. I’m awake.”

This I rather doubted, but I let it pass. Leaving Mike’s door aggravatingly open, I set my wobbly course back toward my own room, intending to get shaved and dressed, or whatever seemed appropriate.

Sean was back in the living room, his native modesty satisfied by a pair of not quite transparent briefs that were little more than a token gesture. He was grinning a high-grade idiot grin and holding hands with Sativa, who was still wearing mainly Sativa.

“Morning, children,” I begrudged as cheerfully as could be.

“Morning,” they burbled, not looking at me. A shower woke me, shaving reconciled me to being awake, and dressing — inconspicuous loud silks, a paisley scarf, and high suede boots, bright green — pretty well sealed my fate for the day. The whole process carried me through to eight-ten, and I finished by dousing myself in patchouli. Then, I went in search of Mike and breakfast.

Sean and Sativa seemed not to have moved, but he was apparently getting excited.

“Cool it,” I told them. “Mike up yet?”

“Mike? said Sean as though he’d never heard the name, and, “Nuh, uh,” Sativa added, which might easily mean anything.

“Right.” So I returned to Michael’s room and there he was, thumb firmly in mouth, at beautiful peace with the world. I was not pleased.

“Michael!” I yelled in the bosun’s mate voice I picked up in the Navy in my puppy days. Windows rattled gratifyingly. Even Mike went so far as to pull his thumb out of his mouth and mutter something inarticulate and vaguely placating.

“Wake,” I bellowed, “up!” I knew I wasn’t going to be able to speak above a whisper for the rest of the day, but Michael, by God, was going to get up.

He stirred uncomfortably. Sean and Sativa, hand in hand, came in to see what might be happening. “Up! Up! Up!” I screamed frantically.

“Oh,” Sativa said. “I can wake him up.” She dropped Sean’s paw, flowed over to the bed, sat down on it, and put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Sean began to turn a purplish red.

“Michael, poochie,” she whispered in his ear. Michael, poochie? She stuck out her tongue and did something to Mike’s ear with it. I grabbed Sean and held him back.

Mike sat up, opened his eyes slowly and wide, and reached out for Sativa. She, giggling, got off the bed and backed toward the door — truly an inspiring sight. Mike got out of bed and followed her. Sean, still fuming, and I stepped out of the way.

She waited until Mike was half an inch short of touching her, then turned, and, laughing, skipped out into the living room. Michael followed blindly. When he passed through the door, I slammed it shut, released Sean, and said, “Good morning, Michael,” almost as maliciously as he deserved.

Sean and Sativa joined hands again, disillusioning Mike completely. He stood stock-still in the middle of the living room, looked around in marshmallow confusion, then realized with a start that he was both awake and up.

“Gnurph!” he said in horror. He headed back toward his room, but I fended him off and aimed him toward the john.

“Not today, old buddy,” still rather maliciously. “Communist Plot, baby, remember?”

“Gnurph!” he repeated, but he waddled toward the john.

Midway through breakfast most of us were wide enough awake to lay plans of a sort. Michael, his mouth ringed quaintly with milk, immediately took charge.

“The first thing we should do,” he said, we meaning myself and possibly Sean, “is search Laszlo’s pad. Right?”

“Why?” To me the idea lacked appeal.

“He probably keeps some kind of record,” very patiently, “of the source of those pills, or at least of how many he got and what he did with them. We’ll need that sort of thing for evidence when we go to the FBI. Why do I always have to explain these simple things to you?”

This wasn’t worth an answer, so I poured myself another cup of maté and thought about things for a while. Sean and Sativa — still holding hands and having a hell of a time trying to eat that way — weren’t saying anything, and I doubted that they were hearing much either. She was still wearing mainly herself, which gave the breakfast table an unduly festive air.

“Hey,” I realized, “just how’re we planning to go about searching Laszlo’s pad?” I suspected I already knew.

“Simple.” Mike sniffed in well-bred disgust. “We wait around until he splits and then break in.”

That’s what I thought. “As I recall,” I said sarcastically, “that’s called breaking and entering, and there are laws against it in this town.”

“Oh wow. Since when are you allergic to breaking laws?”

He had a point there, but, “I like to think I’m more or less selective about what laws I break. I mean, well, I like my felonies to be fun.”

“Breaking into Laszlo’s pad and searching it isn’t fun?”

“Hmmm.”

“Besides, it’s your patriotic duty to society. Remember that.”

“Um.”

“And if you find those records, you won’t have to follow Laszlo.”

“How do we do it?”

At quarter of twelve we stationed ourselves in a grubby candy store across the filthy cobbled street from Laszlo’s Avenue A pad. Mike phoned Laszlo, hanging up as soon as he answered.

“Still there,” he told us.

We settled down for a moderately long siege, sipping the worst chocolate egg creams on the Lower East Side. While I tacitly counted my woes (I like chocolate egg creams, generally), Mike taught Sean how to operate the two-way wrist radios we were using on this lark.

“All you have to do,” he said for the third unduly patient time, “is press the blue button and slide it to the right to send, and press the green button and slide it to the left to receive. The little gray button controls the volume: slide it to the right to get louder, to the left to get softer. It’s very simple.”

“Yeah,” Sean whispered. “Man, how old is that chick?”

“What chick?” Mike derailed fairly easily and didn’t like it a bit.

“You know.” Long Texas smile. “Sa-TI-va,” very slowly.

“Oh wow. I don’t know. Twenty-five?”

“Yeah?” Sean’s face looked as dreamy as a custard pie in August.

“Now,” calmly, “about this Radio…”

“ On and on they went, while Laszlo stayed perversely home and I swallowed endless lousy egg creams. The plan was for Michael to follow Laszlo, when and if he left, keeping in touch with us by radio, thus leaving Sean and me free to ransack Laszlo’s pad with little chance of getting caught, an arrangement of which I basically approved. Sean, however, didn’t seem to have much of a gift for wrist radios.

“Blue button,” he said ruefully after a prolonged while; “green button” in bewilderment; “gray button! Hey, man, which is which?”

“What?” Mike looked grievously stricken. “What do you mean?”

“I mean which is which, man? I can’t tell them goddamn buttons apart.”

“What do you mean, you can’t tell them apart?” I’d seldom heard Mike sound so utterly offended.

“I think,” I drawled, interrupting my catalog of sorrows, “I think,” again, “Sean’s trying to tell you something.”

“So tell me, dammit.”

“It strikes me,” prolonging Michael’s agony, “that our young friend’s a trifle color blind. Right, Sean?”

“Yeah,” he confessed, embarrassed. “I got these goofy contact things I’m s’posed to wear, but I don’t like ’em.”

So I ended up wearing the radio, though Mike’s generally reluctant to entrust me with electronic gear, being of the odd opinion that every communications gadget I touch falls apart instantly, which has only happened a few times and was never quite my fault.

And still we waited, sipping flat egg creams, telling Sean imaginative tales about Sativa, drawing progressively unfriendly looks from the Puerto Rican counterman and his fat wife or whatever, and cursing Laszlo fluently. None of us was particularly happy, and the day showed signs of becoming interminable and drab.

Laszlo finally left home at half-past two. Mike gave him the traditional half block lead and then slipped out after him, first making sure my radio was on. He doubted I could safely turn it on myself. Fine roommate.

Half a tepid egg cream later my left wrist said, “KRD 429B, mobile unit one, to KRD 429B, mobile unit two. Come in mobile unit two.”

“That’s Michael,” I explained to Sean and the suddenly downright hostile counterman.

“KRD 429B, mobile unit two,” I told my left wrist as Sean and I scuttled out just before the counterman could scuttle us, “to KRD 429B, mobile unit one. Hello there. Do we really need this KRD garbage?”

“You have to,” Mike’s voice said tinnily. “The UNCC may be monitering.”

“Groovy. Considering what we’re up to, I don’t want to be that easy to identify. Are you there?”

My radio crackled thoughtfully for a bit, then, “Right.”

“Great. What’s happening?”

“He’s trying to flag a cab. No, he’s got one. It’s cool to begin the exercise, understand?”

“Robert.”

“Robert?”

“You know, Yes.”

“Roger!”

“I thought that was some kind of British vice.”

“I’ve got a cab. I’ll follow him. You get to work.”

“Roger?”

“Right. Keep in touch.”

Sean and I played truck dodge from one curb to the other, leaping about inconspicuously, and ended up in the aromatic downstairs hall of the hyper-substandard brick antiquity that Laszlo Scott infested. Sean wanted to read the archaic obscenities on the walls, but I hustled him along upstairs. My main ambition was to get this whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

Laszlo’s den, third grimy floor front, sported a shiny metal door with five count them five locks of elaborately different kinds. The homemade universal key Mike’d issued me opened all of them but one, which turned out to be neither locked nor working. I began to feel a treacherous sense of confidence rising within me.

I slowly pushed the door open. It didn’t creak. This bothered me. Laszlo’s door by rights should creak. I stood there wondering about that, and Sean pushed past me into the pad.

Nothing happened to Sean, so I shrugged and followed him in. “Hello there,” I told my wrist before I even bothered to look around. “Are you there?”

“What’s happening?”

“Contact, smooth and easy. Where are you?”

“Third and 28th Street headed north.”

“Groovy. Keep in touch.”

Then I looked around. It wasn’t exactly the kind of pad I’d expected Laszlo to have, but it was obviously Laszlo’s kind of pad. The internal walls had all been torn down, not quite neatly, making the pad one huge and thickly littered room, in the midst of which stood Sean looking shocked. I got the impression he wasn’t used to dirt.

The walls were whitewashed, mostly, and decorated with Laszloish slogans in gaudy colors, like: Art is Fredom; The Cretor is The Onley True God; The Futur Belongs too the Poet — the rest being unprintable, just as poorly spelled, and pretty dull.

The windows were covered over with colored tissue paper pasted directly on the panes — the standard poor man’s stained-glass effect — which was covered over in turn by a few years’ geological accumulation of good old city filth. The light that found its way through these barriers was dim and resigned, unable to give a damn, precisely what Laszlo’s litter needed. Complete darkness would’ve been even better, aesthetically, but might’ve had some practical drawbacks.

“Well, Sean, this is a New York poet’s pad. How do you like it?”

“You mean he lives here?”

“That’s what he calls it. There’s his bed.”

It was over in the farthest, darkest corner of the mess, a bare and superannuated mattress on the floor, torn and filthy with historic dirt, surrounded by discarded bottles, beer cans, chocolate milk cartons, creme-filled cupcake wrappers, sandwich bags, used tissues, mummified corned beef sandwiches, obsolete stockings, assorted dingy female undergarments, badly used torn comic books — the enduring moldy record of Laszlo’s Village life. The place smelled of mature cat box, too, though there seemed to be no cat.

Sean clearly didn’t believe a word of this. “You say this cat’s a Poet, man?”

“That’s the general idea, baby. A genuine twentieth-century bard.”

“Oh yeah?” Sean was learning fast.

“Hey!” my left wrist suddenly demanded. “What’s happening?”

“We’re inside,” I assured him, while Sean, tiptoeing fastidiously, touching whatever he thought he had to as little as possible and wiping his fingers nervously on his Levi’s afterwards, more or less began to search the pad. The litter was six inches thick on the average, deeper in drifts, and the task before us had a lean and hopeless look.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mike insisted.

“Talking to you,” I said reasonably enough. “What’s happening?”

“We’re in Grand Central. Subject’s waiting for someone under the clock. Looks worried.”

“Great. Keep up the good work, fellah.” Sean had found a chartreuse desk minus a drawer or two, and was cheerfully ransacking it, emptying it onto the floor, creating an additional mess Laszlo was unlikely to notice.

“Are you, ah, proceeding with the exercise?” Poor Mike.

“With great viguh, sir, in spite of all but insurmountable obstacles.”

“Results?”

“Ambiguous.”

“Oh? Well, ah, keep in touch.”

“Later,” That done, I joined the hunt.

Sean and I in record time formulated a neat set of ground rules for the search. Nothing on the floor, we agreed, was worth considering; anything carefully stashed anywhere was. That made our job 90 percent easier. Another rule prohibited putting things back where we found them, which would just be wasted time and needless charity. Working thus, we went through Laszlo’s midden with a gap-toothed rake.

It took an hour or so, during which Mike called frequently to report that Laszlo hadn’t done anything yet and ask us what we’d found.

I was getting dragged by the mess, my tiny respect for Laszlo was clear gone, when Sean yelled from the bathroom, “Hey, what’s this?”

And Mike tinned, “Chester, are you there?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” to Mike and, “Hold it,” to Sean.

“He’s gone!” Mike shrilled, buzzing the speaker.

“Where’d he go?”

“Dunno.” The fidelity was poor, but good enough to carry the embarrassed tone of Michael’s voice.

“You lost him?” Considering Mike, this was hard to believe.

“There was this ChicK, you understand?”

“Chick?”

“Yeah. She asked me for a light, and when I turned around again, he was gone.”

“Oh. A ChicK.” I thought it over, then, “Pretty?”

“Wow!”

“Figures. Well, we’ll cut out like now, okay?”

“You better.” Pause. “Oh, find anything?”

“Not particularly. Agent 002’s got something in the John, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Hmm. Right. Anyhow, get out as fast as you can. He may be heading back, you know. See you at the pad.”

“Roger. Keep in touch.”

Well. That was interesting, I supposed. “What’ve you got?” I yelled at Sean.

“C’mere an’ see. I cain’t tell.”

Laszlo’s john couldn’t surprise me anymore, not after the rest of the pad, but it certainly was unusual. Yeah, unusual. It looked like a cross between an explosion in a pharmacy and a condemned abattoir, just what I expected but more than I could take. Nevertheless, I took it. I’m a dedicated man now and then.

Sean was standing in the middle of all this, skitterishly shying away from anything. He was holding a medium-size brown paper sack, well-filled, over his head.

“What seems to be the matter here?”

“Dig.” He handed me the bag. It was full of crushed, dry green leaves. For a moment I felt a thrill course through me, but then I remembered Laszlo’s slimy practices.

“It’s probably oregano,” I regretted.

“Don’t smell like it,” he offered.

He was right. “Step into my office,” I suggested, and we moved back into the big room.

“I happen to have with me,” I said, pulling my trusty little pipe from my pocket, “an extremely sensitive testing device.”

“Groovy,” my faithful assistant exclaimed.

I dipped up a pipeful of Laszlo’s unknown green stuff, lit it, and inhaled deeply. “Nope,” I said after a while, “it’s not oregano.”

“What is it?”

I dropped my voice to a solemn whisper and said, “Marijuana, baby. Loathsome Laszlo’s private stash.”

“Hey, man, what a gas! Let’s cop it.”

“You want to steal Laszlo’s grass?” The idea had an appalling charm.

“Why not, man?”

“Well — he’d notice. Mike doesn’t want him to know we’ve been here.”

“Oh, man, like you know bards can’t count.”

Years ago, before we knew what Laszlo was, I’d innocently paid him twenty bucks for prime spaghetti seasoning, so, “Okay, but leave some for Laszlo,” there being a kind of honor in every minority group.

“Right.”

And so we split, Sean carrying our share of Laszlo’s treasure. I closed the metal door silently, carefully relocking all five locks, and we started to tiptoe down the stairs.

Halfway down we stopped dead. There was a strange noise below us, a familiar strange noise, an absolutely Laszlo kind of noise.

“Trapped!” I cursed.

We turned and tiptoed double time back up the stairs, past Laszlo’s pad and two flights farther, all the way up to the door to the roof, which was locked from the other side.

“Yeah,” Sean whispered while I swore inventively, “trapped.” Meanwhile Laszlo loudly climbed the stairs below us. He seemed to consider each step a personal offense, and kept it no secret. He wasn’t a happy Laszlo, not at all.

He reached his landing and the Laszlo noise abated. Then there were crisp metallic noises, four sets of them: the Bard of MacDougal Street unlocking his door. This developed into a furious muffled rattling, punctuated by spurts of amateurish profanity. The rattling grew louder, and there were vigorous percussive sounds most likely made by kicking.

Under cover of this racket Sean whispered, “Hey, man, did you do something to that other lock?”

Clatter bang.

“Other lock?”

“You know, man. They was five locks, only one of ’em didn’t work. Remember?”

Thunderbash clamorbang cuss!

“Oh Christ,” I admitted. “You’re right.”

“You locked it?”

“I locked it.”

Sean and I huddled at the top of the stairs, waiting. It didn’t seem likely that Laszlo’d come upstairs and find us, but considering Laszlo, that wasn’t much security. I became acutely conscious of the rustling paper bag in Sean’s hand. That could take some explanation. It might be easier just to slug him, but Mike wouldn’t approve. Too inelegant, he’d say. Too crude.

Suddenly Laszlo fell silent, except for a thin low mutter that was probably his detailed opinion of the situation. Sean and I held our breaths. Laszlo’s muttering grew louder, and there were footsteps approaching. Complications threatened to set in.

Laszlo climbed up two flights, to the landing half a flight below where we were huddled in the insufficient darkness. He stopped before a door in plain sight of us, stood fuming for a moment, then rapped abstract invectives on the door.

Sean and I were paralyzed. This was clearly a situation out of which no good could come. All Laszlo had to do was turn around and we’d be had. He was bound to wonder why we were lurking around his pad, and we could count on him to think the worst — especially since he’d be right.

He rapped again. No answer.

“Why me?” he wondered bitterly. “What have I done? Why do these things have to happen to me?”

I could’ve told him, but it didn’t seem wise.

“It’s a plot, that’s what it is. They’re out to get me, that damn Anderson and all his stinkin’ crew. I know what’s going on here. Oh yeah, I know where it’s at, baby.” Louder rapping. “I’ll show them bastards.” Further rapping.

I felt better already, but, “Hello there,” said the wrist radio into one of Laszlo’s silences: transistorized instant traitor I squelched the gadget before it could say any more, but too late.

“Who’s there?” Laszlo panicked in anger, revolving like a paranoid top. “Who said that?”

Sweating foolishly, I pretended to be invisible. Doubtless Sean played some such desperate game as well.

Laszlo stopped twirling, his silly-putty nose aimed straight at us. “All right,” he snapped in a scared falsetto, “I see you. Come down here. Come on.”

“Okay,” whispered something in me that was half stubbornness and half humiliation, “I’ve been caught by Laszlo Scott, fair and square, but I’ll be damned if I’ll cooperate. If he wants me, let him come and get me.” So I sat rock-still and didn’t make a sound. Being pretty much stuck behind me, Sean had no choice but to do the same.

“Quit stalling,” Laszlo said with less conviction than before. “Come on down here.”

We didn’t move. Presently Laszlo said something commonplace and foul and stomped ungracefully away. We heard his cloddish feet descend two flights; we heard him rattling his door again; we heard him clomp the rest of the way downstairs to the ground floor, and we heard him slam the front door, hopefully behind him.

Still we did not move. Very gradually we realized that somehow Laszlo hadn’t really seen us after all. This was very strange, for Sean was wearing a white shirt and the stairwell wasn’t really all that dark.

But we didn’t hang around to work it out. As soon as we understood that Laszlo’d actually split for someplace, we tiptoed cautiously but swiftly down the stairs. (I was getting sick of all this tiptoeing. My green suede boots weren’t made for it, and my feet were starting to hurt.)

At the street door, Sean — -whom Laszlo conveniently didn’t know — poked his head outside to reconnoiter, keeping his left hand and Laszlo’s verdant treasure safely out of sight.

“It’s cool,” he announced, and out we went, looking so exactly nonchalant and casual we were almost invisible to ourselves.

We got home five minutes after Mike, and Sean instantly abandoned himself to Sativa again while I tried to explain to the irate M. T. Bear why I hadn’t responded to his last radio signal, why it took us so long to get home, and why we found nothing more significant than the bulging paper bag. Mike liked his plots to work the way he meant them to.

“Apparently,” he said when he’d digested my report, “Laszlo missed his connection at Grand Central.”

“He wasn’t very happy,” I agreed.

“So you’ll have to start tailing him tomorrow.”

“Oh.” That again.

But the time had become five o’clock, and we felt justified in calling it a day. This left us gloriously free until the morning, because it was Monday night, the Village sabbath, and all the entertainment coffeehouses were closed, and nothing, praise God, was happening. We could all use a little nothing happening. So we settled down to sample Laszlo’s grass.

An hour or something later we all nobly admitted that just this once we had to admire Laszlo’s taste. We were all absurdly pacified.

“Man,” I drawled for all of us, “I’m stoned. All I want to do now is move as little as possible. Wow.”

“Oh yeah,” Sativa languidly remembered, “I forgot.”

“That’s cool,” Mike said. “What’d you forget?”

“She can’t recall,” Sean answered, but:

“Oh no,” she corrected. “Somebody called. While you were away. I’ll remember in a… oh yeah, Harriet called.”

The rest of us groaned. We dearly loved Harriet, but only in conservative doses and never on the phone. She could burn up an hour saying good morning.

“What,” I queried bravely, “did she want?”

“It’s her anniversary. She and Gary the Frog have been living together for seventeen and a half weeks Tonight. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Better him than me,” said Mike. “Better her than me, too, come to think of it.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet. And they’re having a party tonight to celebrate.”

“Forewarned,” I uttered, “is forestalled.”

“Right,” Sativa gleamed. “And we’re all going.”

That produced the finest stunned silence our pad had heard since Mike’s third-last mistress announced that she was pregnant. (It turned out that she wasn’t pregnant at all, and that Mike didn’t do it anyway, but for a while there our atmosphere was very oddly charged.)

I recovered first. “A,” I insisted, “I do not go to parties. Ever.”

“But…”

“B. If I did go to parties, I still wouldn’t go to parties where Gary the Frog and Harriet were likely to appear.”

“But, Chester…”

“C. I didn’t accept the invitation, wouldn’t’ve accepted the invitation, and didn’t authorize you — sweet little songbird though you may be — to accept it for me.”

“But I promised!”

“D. I’ve had a hard day and I want to rest.”

“You and Michael are the guests of honor.”

“E. What with one thing and another, I can barely move at best and have no eyes for that crosstown hike to Harriet’s seventh-story loft.”

“We can take a taxi.”

“And F, I do not go to parties. Ever.”

“You said that before.”

“It’s still true, and it goes for Mike and Sean, too. Right?”

“Right!”

“But I gave Harriet my word…”

“Sorry about that, love. You’re free to join the gruesome orgy if you wish, but the rest of us aren’t leaving this house, and that, my sweet, is where it’s at.”

It’s kind of refreshing, now and then, to exercise authority in your own home.