ANARCHY REIGNED around the bar, with Albertine’s relatives invading Lou’s territory to make their own drinks and gathering in knots of three and four to sing the bits and pieces of old songs that they found almost unforgettable. Lou threw in the towel. He also untied his apron, came out from behind the bar, and said to me, “Come for a walk with me, Peter. I got a little business proposition for you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
He elbowed his way back behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of cognac and two snifters, and elbowed his way back to me.
“Let’s go down to the dock,” he said.
We did. It was a pleasant night, warmer than it ought to have been, still, with half a moon. We sat at the end of the dock with our legs dangling, and Lou poured each of us a puddle of cognac. He raised his glass to me and said, “Three days in advance, happy birthday, Peter.”
“Good luck, Lou,” I said.
He snorted. “Lou?” he said, as if he doubted that I’d meant to say it. “You mean you really haven’t figured out who I am?”
“No. Cedric R. Abbot. ‘Call me Lou.’ That’s not who you are?”
Laughing, he said, “Yes and no. See if this helps.” He looked at me and he grinned his bizarre grin, and he said, “File that under Brilliant Disguises, okay, Bob?”
In the moonlight the truth gleamed.
“You’re Baldy the Dummy!” I said.
“Not quite,” he said, shaking his head, “not unless I’m crazier than I think, but you’re close.”
“If you’re not Baldy the Dummy — ”
“Yeah?” he said, in a voice I’d known for years.
“My God, you’re Bob Balducci.”
Laughing: “You got it, kid.”
“But who’s Cedric R. Abbot?”
“That’s me. Balducci is my stage name.”
“Your radio name.”
“Yeah. My radio name, and my radio voice.”
“And Baldy?”
“Bob is the voice of Baldy, and Bob controls Baldy, despite what may seem to be the case when you tune in at night.”
He shifted into Bob’s voice and said, “For three decades now, more than three decades now, I’ve been playing second banana to that dummy. But I’m calling it quits. In a couple of days, Baldy is going to learn one of the little truths about life, namely that it’s the ventriloquist who controls the dummy, and not the other way around.”
In his everyday voice he said, “I wanted to ask you how you would feel about writing the memoirs of Baldy the Dummy.”
“I think that among ghostwriters it is generally accepted as truth that dummies and dead people make the very best clients,” I said.
[to be continued]
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