The Dirty Duck Read Free Page B

I—” Melrose was not sure he wanted to know all about it.
    â€œCome on, come on,” motioned Harvey Schoenberg, as if they were about to miss a bus. “The Dirty Duck’s just across the street. Or the Black Swan, whichever. How come it’s got two names?”
    â€œThe Black Swan section is their restaurant, I believe.”
    Schoenberg looked over his shoulder at the river. “Where do they get the swans? Just for fun I checked them out and ran a little program on them to see which time of day was the least likely for them to crowd up at the bank for crumbs. The Ishi figured it all out for me.”
    Melrose was not quite sure from which end to approach this information. “I suppose they get the swans from a swannery.”
    â€œNo kidding. Kind of like a chicken farm, or something?”
    The Black Swan was just ahead. Melrose felt the need of a drink. “Not exactly.” He gazed up at the bright blue sky and wondered if he had a touch of sun-madness. “What,” he asked, “is an Ishi?”
    â€œIshikabi. This little baby. Japanese, converted by yours very truly.”
    Harvey Schoenberg was clearly on a nickname basis with everything in the world, including his computer.
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    Sun-madness relieved by a drink of Old Peculier, Melrose waited—not without trepidation—for Harvey Schoenberg to sort it all out. The Ishi sat on a chair near Harvey, making a third at their party. The front of the case had been lifted to display a small screen and a keyboard. There were a couple of slots for some disks, and on the green screen pulsed a tiny white square. The Ishi’s heartbeat, apparently. It throbbed so rapidly there that Melrose was sure it and Harvey were both raring to go.
    â€œWho Killed Marlowe?” said Harvey Schoenberg.
    â€œWell, no one is quite certain what hap—”
    But Harvey was shaking his head so hard his bow tie bobbed, and he adjusted it. “No, no. That’s the name of my book: Who Killed Marlowe?”
    â€œReally?” Melrose cleared his throat.
    â€œNow,”—Harvey leaned over his folded arms across the small table so that his nose was not all that far from Melrose’s own—“tell me what you know about Kit Marlowe.”
    Melrose thought for a moment. “Kit, that is, Christopher,”—Melrose hadn’t quite Harvey’s genius for nestling up to strangers—“Marlowe died in a tavern brawl, as I remember, drinking in a pub in Southwark—”
    â€œDeptford.”
    â€œAh, yes, Deptford—when there was some sort of disagreement and Marlowe was stabbed by accident. Well, something like that,” ended Melrose, seeing a sort of piratical smile on Schoenberg’s face.
    â€œGo on.”
    Melrose shrugged. “With what? That’s all I know.”
    â€œI mean about the rest of his life. The plays and so forth.”
    â€œI was under the impression you weren’t interested in the literary aspect.”
    â€œI’m not, not like the eggheads who keep fooling around with the bard’s stuff, trying to show that guys like Bacon wrote Shakespeare. But Marlowe’s relationship with Shakespeare, now that’s something else.”
    â€œI don’t think Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were all that friendly. Marlowe’s reputation was pretty well established when Shakespeare came along. He’d already got Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus on the boards and was thought to be perhaps the best playwright in England. Then there was something about his politics. Marlowe was an agent, a sort of spy . . .”
    As Melrose’s recitation continued, Harvey sat there nodding away energetically, like the teacher waiting for the idiot-student to complete his rote-learning so the tutor could jump in and correct it.
    â€œTamburlaine was written while Marlowe was still a student at Cambridge, or at least part of