The Age of Sinatra, page 16
part #2 of Motorman Series
“This can’t be construed as buddying. We have a perfectly legitimate business arrangement.”
“You can’t say I didn’t try to warn you,” the Indianian said. “Here comes the heat.”
The sergeant entered the Arvey Room followed by a squadron of mates and attendants and went from table to table shaking hands and saying, “Please, shake the hand that shook the hand of the late, adorable Michael Ratt.”
But when he stopped at Moldenke’s table, his hand was not extended for shaking. “Is that man ‘buddying’ with you, neut?”
“You think I’d get cozy with a bounder like him?” Melody said. “Not on your life, partner.”
The sergeant nodded toward the Indianians. “Any incriminations from over there?”
One of them offered a synopsis: “We were just sitting here, singing, smoking, drinking, minding our own business, and then those two came along. We smelled that sweet musk neuts give off when they’re in the mood for mating. We could also detect a strange scent coming from him, too. Right away we knew.”
“Are you saying that your every instinct tells you that this pair is contemplating having, or have had, sexual congress?”
“Yessir,” the group chorused.
“Thank you. You’ve performed an important service.” The twisted and waxed tips of the sergeant’s mustache brushed the sides of his nose when he spoke, causing his eyelids to flutter.
Melody found this effect comical and giggled uncontrollably at the very moment the Noctule lifted away from its moorings at a sharp angle. Pitchers of mulce slid from tables and made a slippery mess on the dance floor. The Stinker dancers slipped to the floor one by one with dull, airy thuds and slid around like mud ducks on a frozen lake.
The sergeant spread his feet apart to keep his balance. “So, you find humor in all this, do you? Well, then, with the authority vested in me as chief sergeant on this vessel, I pronounce you man and wife, and, I sentence you both to a lifetime of civil death. Let me see waivers if you have them.”
“I don’t,” Moldenke said.
“Looks like we’re hitched, my darling, all legal and everything,” Melody said.
The sergeant and his entourage returned to their quarters, the Indianians resumed their singing, and the Chatterjees took five.
Moldenke lit a pre-roll and poured himself another mulce.
“Rock and roll,” he said, without joy, “everything’s in balance at last.”
Radio Montfaucon:
Remarkable illuminations were observed in Bum Bay’s northern heavens on Friday and Saturday nights. The bright, diffused white and yellow lights continued through the night and faded at daybreak. President Montfaucon has postulated that the phenomenon may be connected to the onset of another Great Forgetting. He mentioned a similar occurrence back in the foggy last months of Zero Nine, which immediately preceded the disastrous Forgetting of Zero Ten. “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” said the President. “I believe in that principle with all my heart and soul, and it will be the guiding light of my administration.” Reports from New Oleo, Indian Apple, and settlements in the Fertile Crescent tell of the same lights being visible in those places. The President also said, “Let these lights be a warning. Make a list of things to remember. ”
FROM HER CELL the night of Blossom-4, Mrs. Moldenke could see a portion of the rickety, well-used gallows through an oval window in the basement lockup of the Rattery. A sergeant stood idly by as the neuts worked, looking up at a blue moon. Giving thought to her last words, she decided to use the subtitle of her Book of Surprises: “Eventually, Why Not Now?” She passed the night watching a small squad of mulcing neuts braid two ropes, one of which would end her life in the morning. The other rope was for Del Piombo, sentenced by Yerkimer to hang, not for killing the President, but for counterfeiting edible money.
Just after dawn they were taken to the gallows by pedal cart.
“Hurry and hang me,” Piombo said, kicking off his clogs. “I’m ready to take the plunge and these are my last words. Life, death, what’s the difference? Two sawflies on a picket fence. Every now and then they fly up and change places.”
“Good morning, Del,” Mrs. Moldenke said. “I suppose we’ll meet again aboard the Titanic.”
“See you in the bistro.”
The sergeant said, “Come on, then, old girl, step into that little red circle, right next to Piombo. Anything to say? Last words?”
“I did have, but I’ve forgotten them. It doesn’t matter.”
The condemned’s hands were tied securely behind their backs and shrouds placed over their heads. When the sergeant nodded, the hangman pulled the lever and, though both were dropped the prescribed distance and Piombo succumbed very quickly, Mrs. Moldenke’s neck failed to break. She struggled violently for release.
Among the onlookers was Gerald Hilter. Smoking hair, his pocket stuffed with waivers, he wondered how he would couch this story for tomorrow’s edition. Would it be, “Hangings Popular as Montfaucon Takes Office” or, the more succinct, “Moldenke Hanging Badly Botched”?
The sergeant ordered two husky Stinkers to suspend themselves from Mrs. Moldenke’s legs until it was thought she was dead. When she stopped moving, the crowd dispersed and the Stinkers lay down to rest.
David Ohle, The Age of Sinatra
