Necrophenia by Robert Rankin

Author:Robert Rankin [Rankin, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: thriller, Fiction, General, Adventure, Science Fiction, Humorous, Humorous Stories, End of the world
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2009-01-20T16:36:10+00:00

I ordered that bottle and by three of the clock that ticks out the afternoon it was delivered to us, along with a bar tab that I signed on my client’s behalf and a kitten that I petted gently and returned to Fange. Who placed it in a cardboard box to be mailed to our boys in ’ Nam.

I filled glasses and toasts were exchanged.

‘I have a black eye,’ said my client, rising unsteadily from the floor and viewing this in the mirror behind the bar.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.

Fangio excused himself from a crowd of Jimbos who had recently entered the bar and returned himself to my company.

‘What very big women,’ he said. ‘And such deep voices. And they smell a bit iffy, too.’

I noticed my client glance over his shoulder.

‘Are you okay, buddy?’ I asked him.

‘Jimbos,’ said my client. ‘I told you about them. At The Green Carnation Club. I think they might be undead.’

‘But you can’t tell for sure because you’re not on the drug, right?’

‘Right,’ said the guy. ‘And that wasn’t funny, what you said earlier. You weren’t in the green room at The Stones in the Park gig. I would have seen you.’

‘But you did,’ I told him. ‘I was in disguise.’

‘As what?’

‘As whom. As Marianne Faithfull.’

‘I think I’m drunk,’ said the guy. ‘I don’t believe you actually said that.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Just keep telling yourself I didn’t.’

‘And add I must pay Fangio’s bar tab,’ said Fangio. ‘And, a little while later, when we’re all very drunk, you can sing us a song, also.’

‘I don’t want to,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sitting around here for hours now, drinking and lying on the floor unconscious also, although I don’t remember how that happened. And I’m beginning to believe that Mr Woodbine here is just treading water, as it were, because he is being paid by the hour.’

Things went suddenly quiet in the bar. And outside the sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance. Same sun. Different dog.

Fangio broke the sudden quiet. ‘Out of my bar,’ cried he.

‘Out?’ said the guy.

‘Out indeed. Coming in here with your beguiling gypsy ways, disguised as a Swiss abortionist. I can stand just so much and then no more. Like Popeye. And he’s a sailor!’

‘But I’m the client,’ said the guy. ‘If you chuck me out then Mr Woodbine won’t have a case to work on. And I won’t come back and pay my bar tab.’

‘You fiend in human form,’ quoth Fangio. ‘Are there any Cosa Nostra in the bar? I must have this man killed.’

‘Let’s all stop there,’ I said, as ever the voice of reason. ‘We have all had something to drink and Mr Tyler, being a Brit, cannot be expected to either hold his drink or enjoy the benefits of the American dental system.’

‘What?’ asked the guy.

‘And I,’ I said, ‘feel that I am perched upon the threshold of a major breakthrough in the case. I am only moments away from

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