Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

Donovan, Johnson and Hugo all looked at one another, after which Johnson turned to the Greek and broke the silence by saying, ‘I want to buy all your bears. What’ll you take for them?’
    For of course, that was how the absent Rudi Klapper had meant to arrange for his ransom for Benedict. By ensuring that the right talking bear and the guy with the M.M.A. badge got together.
    I said, ‘Why didn’t the police think of that, then?’
    ‘They didn’t have Grover with them,’ said Johnson. He was still looking at Alexei the Grecian.
    ‘No sale,’ said Alexei. ‘I need them bears to run the stall with. They’ve stopped making them.’
    ‘O.K.’ said Johnson agreeably. He took out his wallet and flipped twenty dollars on to the counter. ‘We won’t take them away. That’s just for letting us pull all their talk-strings.’
    ‘Are you a weirdo?’ asked Alexei. “What good will them bears do with their strings broke? You cats piss off. You’re violating my privacy.’
    In silence Johnson licked off another ten dollar bill. Alexei let it lie. He said, ‘The law says you win them bears by shooting. You win ’em by shooting and you got the law on your side. You try to force me to sell them and I’ll get a patrolman down on your neck and I mean it, man.’
    There were twenty-four bears on that stall. I’d been counting them.
    ‘There is no call to argue,’ said Hugo. ‘We summon the police. It is their business.’
    It was, of course. But meanwhile the Mallard kids had set upon Grover, and Sukey was yelling for sustenance. I said, ‘Suppose you all take the kids off for a feed, and Donovan and I will shoot till you’re finished? It’s worth a try. The police’ll keep us for ever.’
    ‘You’re going to shoot?’ said Alexei. He looked flustered. ‘Two rifles, brother,’ said Donovan. ‘Three,’ said Hugo. ‘You two mommas go feed the family while Daddy goes hunting. There’s a card that says guest of the management.’
    Charlotte took it, and she and Bunty pushed off with the children.
    ‘Three rifles?’ said Alexei cautiously. ‘Four,’ said Johnson stoically. He picked up a bill from the heap and pushed it over the counter. ‘You won’t reconsider?’ Alexei shook his head, and he was probably right. This way he couldn’t lose, anyway.
    Although my back and left arm and elbows have never been quite the same since, I have sterling recollections of that competition.
    We settled down side by side, Donovan and I, and started to shoot. So did Johnson. After a chain of disasters that threatened to shiver his glasses, Johnson dropped regretfully out while Donovan and I, with the occasional black, began winning bears slowly.
    Hugo Panadek watched for two rounds, then took off his long leather tunic, revealing a silk jersey shirt with balloon sleeves over his fine shrink-wrapped gaberdine trousers. He picked up a gun, leaned over, sighted, and killed eighteen rustlers, pausing only to reload in a blur between corpses.
    He received a bear, pulled its cord, and left it to talk while he loaded and fired a fresh volley. ‘My name,’ began the bear,
    ‘is dear old Brownbelly Bruin. Stroke your Lover Bear. Kiss…’
    ‘Jesus,’ said Donovan. ‘You train under John Wayne?’
    Bald head gleaming, Hugo pooped the hood in the butt and dispatched the fifth and the sixth with a flourish. ‘At home,’ he said, ‘we shoot chamois on mountain tops. These are for children.’
    Half an hour from that moment he had ten Brownbelly Bruins beside him. I had four and Donovan five, and around us was the biggest crowd in the Park, with the up-tight faces of all the other stallholders behind them. Johnson did a great job pulling the strings in a kind of canon effect. They all said the same thing: it was the best mass advertisement for love and milk since Cleopatra.
    It was not, however, serving any other purpose whatever. It began to seem depressingly clear that the four of us had outsmarted ourselves. The