Linger Awhile by Russell Hoban Page B

tongue half-way down my throat. She tasted like my high-school friend Barbara-Ann Hopper only ten times worse. Oh my God, I thought – a toad-sucker in London! Then she was trying to bite my neck but I got loose and backed away as fast as I could. Everything was going round and round with the ground sometimes tilting up and sometimes down while out of the corner of my eye I saw some great big hopping thing coming after me. I sprinted down Cecil Court, dodged through the traffic in St Martin’s Lane with the thing close behind, made a sharp right towards the Coliseum, then left and left again and so on trying to lose it but when I reached the lab it was still hot on my heels. Once I got inside I phoned the police while the hopping thing did its best to come through the wall. Scared? I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind so I just kind of closed one eye and farted and hoped for better times. It took about an hour and a whole lot of black coffee before the thing left off thumping and squelching and went back to wherever it lives.
    When PC Plod got to Cecil Court Miss Tweedle-O-Twill was long gone but her friend was still there. He was dead to the world all right, stone dead with all the blood sucked out of him.

31
Medical Examiner Harrison Burke
    31 January 2004. When Wilbur had drunk nine or ten cups of black coffee and was more or less back to normal we looked at the lab report on Walter Dixon. Wilbur, who’s from Tennessee, said, ‘I don’t need this report to tell me that what we got here is a toad-sucker,’
    ‘A what?’ I said.
    His answer was part of a poem:
    How about them toad-suckers,
Ain’t they clods?
Sittin’ there suckin’
Them green toady-frogs.
    ‘Toad-suckers,’ I said. ‘Have you ever seen one before this?’
    ‘I dated one when I was in high school,’ he said: ‘Barbara-Ann Hopper. She hung out with a crowd of older boys and they used to kid her about her name. They said she ought to try tripping with one of herrelatives. So she did and she liked the effect. She said that sucking those little warty ones made her horny.’
    ‘Did you ever try it, Wilbur?’ I asked him.
    ‘No, but I tried
her
shortly after she had one.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘I didn’t care for the taste but I’d rate her eleven out of ten for the rest of it.’
    ‘Bufotoxin,’ I read from the report. ‘Walter Dixon’s saliva shows traces of bufotoxin. Where would a toad-sucker find a toad in London? You can get frog’s legs in a French restaurant but as far as I know there’s no pub where you can step up to the bar and ask for a little warty guy. You know of any?’
    ‘No, I don’t,’ said Wilbur, ‘but that woman who snogged me sure as hell had a toad connection.’
    ‘A toad pusher?’ I said. ‘You never know – London seems to be full of surprises these days.’

32
Detective Inspector Hunter
    31 January 2004. When I saw the body I rang Burke on my mobile. ‘Istvan Fallok’s on his way to you,’ I said. ‘Running on empty.’
    ‘Fallok!’ said Burke. ‘I’d heard about Cecil Court from Wilbur but I didn’t know who the victim was. He’s still shaking from the bufotoxin snogging and the great big hopping thing.’
    ‘I’ll be over as soon as I finish with the crime scene,’ I said. ‘Don’t go away.’
    ‘I’m not going anywhere. Wilbur just went out for a six-pack.’
    ‘This one’s really hitting you hard, is it.’
    ‘Definitely worth getting out of bed for. See you.’
    When I got to the lab I went through the door marked NO ENTRY – PROTECTIVE CLOTHING MUST BE WORN IN THIS AREA and walked into the post-mortem smell which is partly butcher shop, partly fecal matter, and partly Hycolin disinfectant. Burke and Wilbur in their blue lab gowns, plastic aprons and wellies were standing by a white dissecting tableon which lay Istvan Fallok, being considerably more open than when last we spoke, in fact he no longer had any secrets whatever. Except, of course, the identity of his killer.
    I