Kirby's Last Circus Page 11

  Kirby twisted to his left. He said, “This is the position you learned in Istanbul?”

  “One of several—you’re really going to enjoy this one.”

  “Uh-huh—who dreamed it up, a couple of contortionists?”

  “It really isn’t all that difficult, once you’ve gotten the hang of it—now, a tad more to my right—no, Kirby, my right, your left!”

  “Well, why don’t you just say ‘your left’ and keep it simple?”

  “My God, do you think that would work? All right—there, that’s it—good, shall we get on with it?”

  “Whatever you say, you’re in charge here.”

  “That’s the spirit, Kirby! Okay, a little higher, then drive!”

  Kirby made the final adjustment, took a deep breath, and lunged, Dixie Benton let out a screech that rattled the window panes. “Jesus Christ, Kirby, I said higher! That was lower!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry, but it’s blacker than hell in here and you’re pointed in the wrong direction and I’m sort of upside down and I think this works out to my higher being your lower.”

  “My lower? That was my bottom! Kirby, I swear to God, if you were just one-quarter as dumb as you pretend to be, I’d put you on a leash!”

  “What do they call this in Istanbul?”

  “‘Screwing,’ I believe.”

  “The position, Dixie—what do they call the position?”

  “I don’t remember—you’ve never seen a Chicago couple like this?”

  “Just once—right after a gravel truck plowed into their motel room—Lord, what a mess!”

  “That’s terrible! The woman and her husband?”

  “The woman and a fencing contractor—her husband was driving the gravel truck.”

  Dixie sighed. “I should have left well enough alone.”

  Kirby said, “Yeah, because we’ll probably need the desk clerk to help get us untangled. Who does this foot belong to?”

  “What foot?”

  “The one that’s stuck in my ear.”

  “Tickle it and we’ll find out.”

  Kirby tickled it and Dixie flinched and giggled. “It’s probably mine.”

  Kirby said, “Okay, but, my God, what if it isn’t?”

  Dixie said, “Kirby, we aren’t doing too well. Let’s take a break.”

  They shared a cigarette and Kirby said, “If the scoreboard hadn’t burned down the other night, there’s just no telling what might have happened in here. That old Richwell chick had a way of getting right down to brass tacks.”

  Dixie’s laugh rustled silkily through the darkness. “Oh, Kirby, you dashing young blade, you!” She ran an exploratory hand southward over his navel.

  Kirby said, “Wait a second, I’d better turn on the light.”

  “I don’t need a light, I’m growing familiar with this terrain.”

  “I know, but I can’t find the damned ashtray.”

  “I tucked it between your legs so I’ll know where it is.”

  “Well, okay, but for Christ’s sake be careful when you put that cigarette out!” They lay quietly for several minutes, Dixie’s head on his shoulder. Then Kirby said, “So, fill me in on this Admiral Doldrum Circus—I don’t want to walk on cold.”

  Dixie rolled onto her belly, supporting her magnificent torso on her elbows. The frolic was gone from her voice. “Walking on cold beats hell out of getting carried off cold, which is why I’m here instead of there! Somebody at that circus wants me dead!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who, but I know why!”

  “All right, why?”

  “I located the transmitter antenna!”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday afternoon! It’s clamped to the big top’s center-pole, cleverly masked by circus banners!”

  “Then why didn’t you call me?”

  “I wanted to get the whole package—the antenna’s on the center-pole, but its lead is buried under all that arena sawdust, and God knows where they’ve hidden their transmitter—it could be a hundred or so yards in any direction, and I couldn’t find it!”

  “They were receiving in Kisarze’s boarded-up house, and they’re transmitting from the circus area, right?”

  “That’s it!”

  “Okay, let’s rustle up the cavalry and arrest the whole fucking kaboodle!”

  “Oh, come on, Kirby, arrest the whole fucking kaboodle on what grounds, for God’s sake? Owning a short-wave radio antenna doesn’t constitute a federal offense! We have to know more before we do more!”

  “How do you know that you’ve been spotted at the circus?”

  “Simple! Yesterday evening, after I’d found the antenna, I heard Rudolpho, the Knife Thrower, bitching about one of his knives being stolen. This morning I found it for him.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Buried to the hilt in my pillow!”

  “You must be a sound sleeper.”

  “There’s the kicker! Sound sleepers don’t last long in this trade, and I sleep very lightly, but last night it was a much different story! After the evening performance, I had a glass of lemonade at the commissary, and I became so befuddled I could hardly make it to my tent! I didn’t break clear of my stupor until shortly before noon today! You want to take it from there?”

  “Sure, lemonade makes you drowsy.”

  “Drugged lemonade! I walked right into a mickey! They were setting me up, and somebody missed my throat by inches! Kirby, we’re parked on a ton of TNT!”

  “What’s our next move?”

  “Straight to the nearest cemetery if we aren’t mighty damned careful! The circus is short a couple of roustabouts, and tomorrow you’ll attempt to fill one of those vacancies.”

  “And then what?”

  “That’ll be up to you. This isn’t my decision, it came from upstairs, top floor—our project boss at Langley figures that it’s time to give you a free rein. We haven’t been getting the desired results, and he was tremendously impressed with the way you handled Kisarze.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Just one, and you’d better follow it! You’re expected to make a move, but don’t make one until you have one to make! You’ll be up against a crew of killers—to the KGB, human life means considerably less than nothing! If you telegraph your pitch, you’re one dead sonofabitch!”

  “You won’t be coming back to the circus grounds?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll be there, and so will several of our people, but I’ll be in disguise. I’m a wonder with disguises.”

  “What sort of work will I be doing as a roustabout?”

  “That’d be hard to predict—it’s a jack-of-all-trades job. You might drive a tractor, you might help with the elephants, you might work as an assistant on the cannon, you might…”

  “The cannon, did you say?”

  “Yes, the one that blows Zamaroff, the Human Cannonball, across the tent and into a net. Are you handy with tools?”

  “I change my own license plates. Why?”

  “Well, their cotton candy machine is temperamental, and they’ve had considerable difficulty with their steam calliope.”

  “I won’t fool anybody for long.”

  Dixie’s smile was slow and sly. “You don’t intend to, do you, Kirby? You have a plan, you bastard! You know exactly what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it! I’ll bet you’ve already deciphered the ‘SAMD + 23’ thing! Don’t hold out on me!”

  Kirby yawned. He turned on the nightstand lamp and sat up in bed. “All right, Dixie, tomorrow morning I’ll take a shot at hiring out with the circus. I’ll see you around.”

  Dixie grabbed him by the hair of his head, jerking him down to his pillow. She wrapped her arms around his neck, enveloping him in a sweet fog of roses and spice. She said, “Oh, you’re God damned right you’ll see me around—you’ll see me around all night! Now turn that lamp off, and I’ll show you what I learned in Istanbul!”

  Twenty-Five

 
Lacey Dawes took a belt of his brandy, rolling it in his mouth, letting it trickle into his throat, appreciating its gentle burn. He put another match to his frayed cigar butt and said, “Why did you choose that particular moment to send him in—why not earlier, or later?”

  Jayjee shrugged. “Just a hunch, plus a combination of factors. Dixie Benton’s usefulness had been greatly curtailed, I’d stripped Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis of valuable manpower and problems were beginning to stack up back in those areas, I sensed that time was running short, and I knew damned well that Birch Kirby wouldn’t be satisfied with his capture of Kisarze—he’d tasted blood and he’d be straining at the leash, wanting more action—so I shot the wad.”

  Dawes nodded. “And that was when it all began to slide downhill for the Russkies—when Kirby left the Grizzly Gulch No Sox and moved over to the Admiral Doldrum Circus.”

  Jayjee smiled, gesturing to their white-jacketed waiter for another brace of brandies. “No, Lacey, it was probably on the skids when he agreed to tackle the case. Thinking back on it, I believe that he’d done a rough mental sketch of the situation before he reached Grizzly Gulch—he had an analytical mind, the kind that bores directly to the core of a matter without getting hung up in the loose ends—Kirby couldn’t be distracted, razzle-dazzle in the backfield didn’t faze him, he just busted through and knocked the ball carrier on his ass! Oh, Jesus, I’ll bet he was a sonofabitch at a chess board!”

  Dawes said, “Uh-huh—a natural, a guy with a gut feeling for intrigue.”

  “Certainly—all the good ones had that quality—it’s an innate thing, if you ain’t born with it, you ain’t never gonna get it! Well, Kirby’s switch to the circus merely ushered in the final phase of a battle-plan he’d assembled earlier. It placed him in a position where he could come to physical grips with the Soviets. Prior to that, he’d limited himself to capturing Kisarze, and engaging the KGB machinery in a long-range duel of mental gymnastics.”

  Dawes grinned a muddy-brown grin around the stump of his worn-out cigar. “Hey, I can just see it! I’ll bet Kirby roared into that fucking circus like a hurricane into Aunt Dinah’s quilting party!”

  Jayjee shook his head. “Not at all, and that was the beauty of it! He wafted in like a summer breeze, very laid-back, the unobtrusive genius, waiting for the key moment, the precise split-second when he could wrap the entire vicious business into one tidy little package! You should have seen the reports—he blundered around that circus area, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, his fly open, looking for all the world like a rumdum who didn’t know shit from shoe polish, and the Commies sucked it up, hook, line and sinker, never once comprehending the caliber of the operative they were dealing with, never realizing that they were being stalked by chain lightning!”

  “When did he drop this dullard guise?”

  “He didn’t! He stayed with it, even after he’d done the job—he seemed to feel comfortable in it. I suppose he’d perfected it to a point where it’d become part of him—you know, like the cowboy movie actor who rides his horse to a funeral.”

  “Damn! Someone should do a book on this guy!”

  “In due time, someone will, depend on it! The Grizzly Gulch file is sealed to the public and the intricacies of the case haven’t surfaced, but when the lid comes off, eyes will pop! Why, Lacey, when Kirby uncorked his spectacular Grizzly Gulch checkmate, this nation was standing on the rim of unbridled panic! We’d have been totally disorganized, vulnerable to invasion! But for Birch Kirby, we’d be a Russian colony today! If there’s ever a Hall of Fame for unsung American heroes, Kirby has to be the first enshrined!” Jayjee wiped away a sentimental tear as their new brandies arrived.

  The waiter peered at Jayjee. “Is something wrong, sir?”

  Jayjee shook his head. “Not now, Juan—everything’s just dandy.”

  Twenty-Six

  It was a glorious southern Illinois morning, sunny, warm, the vaguest hint of a breeze rippling out of its west, its cobalt skies cloudless, its fields glossy emerald green, its maples black with shrilly gossiping birds. Kirby’s gait was slow, his eyes dark-circled, he’d spent most of the night learning about what went on in the bedrooms of Istanbul, which was plenty. There is no respect quite like that accorded the unknown, and Kirby approached the circus grounds warily, dropping his dilapidated cardboard suitcase on a rise and surveying the twenty-acre clearing a quarter-mile due north of Grizzly Gulch. He saw an enormous peppermint-striped canvas enclosure peaked at both ends and in its middle, surrounded by a dozen or more gray and beige pavilions which served as sideshow shelters, he assumed. To the northwest stood a row of refreshment stands, and beyond these a dense cluster of olive-drab pyramidal tents, probably living quarters for the attraction’s personnel. It was a placid scene, orderly, clean, and Kirby saw no signs of activity.

  He came down the hill, glancing at his watch. It was eight o’clock on the button, and as he approached the foot of the sawdust-strewn midway, a public-address system cut loose with a peak-volume recording of “Anchors Aweigh.” This avalanche of sound was soon interrupted by an agonized skirling squeal, this followed by an authoritative voice booming from the speakers: “Now hear this: sweepers, man your brooms—clean sweepdown, fore and aft! That is all.”

  Instantly, men in blue coveralls left tents to swarm over the area, “Anchors Aweigh” resumed, and Kirby plodded on until he came to what appeared to be an administration tent, roped off and buttressed by several neatly lettered black-on-white signs. One sign read BRIDGE, another RESTRICTED TERRITORY, another OFFICERS’ COUNTRY, and a fourth ASK NOT WHAT THIS CIRCUS CAN DO FOR YOU, ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR THIS CIRCUS! A man stood in the tent’s entrance, arms folded, observing Kirby’s approach with obvious interest. He was a tall fellow, slim as a reed, straight as a ramrod, silver-haired, wild gray-eyed, tight-lipped, firm-jawed, and he was clad in a severely-tailored, sharply pressed United States Naval uniform, the jacket of which was ablaze with several rows of multi-colored ribbons, and when the morning sun struck the gold braid on his visored cap, Kirby was forced to throw up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. The man seemed to interpret this as a salute, and he returned it perfunctorily, in the manner common to those long-accustomed to lofty positions in the upper echelons of the military establishment. He studied Kirby up and down, and growled, “Avast, lubber.”

  Kirby stepped back, speechless for the long moment required to take in the various accoutrements of the fellow’s uniform, the additional yards of gold braid on his epaulets and sleeves, the stars, the bars, the sashes, and the like, eventually finding his voice to say, “Uhh-h-h-h, I’m looking for Admiral Doldrum, sir.”

  “Pray be advised that you stand in the presence of the Admiral! State your mission!”

  Kirby snapped to attention. “I’m looking for a berth, sir.”

  “Well, come to the point, man! What sort of berth?”

  “Just about anything would do—I’m a bit down on my luck, sir.”

  “Your last cruise?”

  “My last what, sir?”

  “Your last duty—have you ever shipped with a circus?”

  “I did a few weeks with Cook Brothers, sir, before it went kaput, sir.”

  Admiral Doldrum nodded curtly. “Yes, there were those unfortunate matters concerning Jeannette, the Shark Woman. You knew Jeannette?”

  “Just to see her—we weren’t on intimate terms, sir.”

  “Jeannette was quite a drawing card, I understand.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, quite a drawing card indeed, sir!”

  Admiral Doldrum took a small gold braid-bound notebook from a pocket, opened it, studied it for a few moments, and said, “Affirmative! This roster indicates that we can use an Able-bodied Roustabout Third Class. They will be the customary thirty day probationary period, you understand.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Admiral Doldrum gestured Kirby into his headquarters tent and administered a lengthy oath of service. He followed this ritual with a twenty min
ute lecture having to do with harmony aboard ship and the need for pulling together in dangerous waters, stressing the one for all and all for one outlook, the sacrifice of the individual for the common cause. Kirby stood at attention, deciding that the Admiral was overwrought. The harangue continued, Admiral Doldrum getting into the subjects of willingness, cheerful punctuality, and the setting of good examples. He advised Kirby that the singing of bawdy songs and the making of suggestive and obscene gestures amounted to intolerable bilge, and that insubordination was a court-martial offense, punishable by being drummed out of the fleet. He went on and on, waving his arms like a windmill in a cyclone, his wild gray eyes growing wilder, while Kirby endeavored to keep a straight face. Overwrought, hell, Admiral Doldrum was lighter than a cork. At the close of the verbal barrage, Kirby saluted and said, “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Not quite, sailor! Zip up your fly!”

  Kirby backed from the tent, tired and confused, the tinny blast of “Anchors Aweigh” cascading around him, wondering if he might have blundered into some sort of time warp, and missing Tizzie Bonkowski like all get-out.

  Twenty-Seven

  In the late afternoon of that day, a pack of evil-looking black clouds ambushed the sun and with the resulting sudden half-light there came a coolness. Kirby had been assigned to a tent at the far end of the livingquarters sector, and his tentmate was Goolenkranz, the Authentic Transylvanian Vampire Boy, a lanky, outgoing fellow of no more than twenty years, who spoke softly with a thick middle-European accent. Goolenkranz had shiny, smooth-combed black hair, piercing dark eyes, a huge, high-bridged nose, and a slow, strange smile made even stranger by his canine teeth which were a full half-inch longer than those possessed by the average canine. He was really from Transylvania, he claimed, not Geneva, Illinois, as Kirby had first suspected, and in the course of their early conversation, he mentioned that his previous tentmate had been a juggler from Waco, Texas, who’d died just a week earlier, succumbing to a lingering disease diagnosed as a hitherto unheard-of form of anemia.