King Death

by Nik Cohn

  ‘What happened next?’ asked Seaton.

  ‘I was trapped.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I was cut off from everything that I knew, all the places I belonged. My life was spent in yachts, limousines and casinos, when I was created to stand on street corners. Nothing felt natural, I could not relax. Before a month had passed, I knew I must either escape or perish. So in the end, to scare the Cuban off, I told him the truth, that I was not really a bodyguard and my true vocation was Death.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘He was thrilled.’

  ‘He was?’

  ‘He drooled,’ said the performer. ‘No man could have feared Death more, yet he blushed bright pink with pleasure, his lips began to tremble and he could not stop asking questions.’

  ‘How come he felt so free?’

  ‘Because I had won his trust, just like you said. Because I was his servant and he knew that I would not harm him. So all his curiosity and pent-up hunger could spill out unrestrained. From that moment on, he never stopped pestering me for reminiscences and demonstrations. Soon he even began to give me contracts, to practise on his friends and associates. If I had not escaped in time, up and over his garden wall at midnight, he would have used me up entirely.’

  Inside a baronial banquet hall, seated in two small pools of light, they dined at opposite ends of an interminable table. Eddie worked his way through three large helpings of ham hocks, collards and grits and did not speak again until he was replete. On the screens, guns blazed, blood flowed. The professional sipped Dr Pepper, and Seaton kept on taking snapshots.

  On the first stroke of midnight, Eddie pushed aside his plate and got to his feet, ready for his bed. ‘So you see,’ he said, wiping the grease from his lips, ‘when you speak about Death, everything depends on the subject’s point of view. So long as he thinks of her as his enemy, she is the greatest monster that exists. But if he is persuaded that she is on his side, that her only purpose is to serve him, all his terrors disappear and he rushes to embrace her, as his very best friend and ally.’

  ‘His protector,’ said Seaton.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the performer. ‘His guardian angel.’

  J Jones Dickerson, a grey man with a grey suit and a tight grey mouth, sucked jujubes and sat behind a large grey desk in a large grey office, secure beyond bullet-proof doors.

  For the past fifteen years, he had been Commander in Chief at the American Bureau of Control. In this capacity, he was served by a host of agents, an all-embracing network of spies and lawmen. No one in the entire country, so it seemed, could meet or act without his knowledge, and his powers were almost limitless.

  Now Seaton stood before him, all dimples, and smiled directly into his dead grey eyes. ‘I bring you a story so bizarre,’ said the Englishman, ‘I am almost ashamed to tell you.’

  ‘Well?’ said J Jones Dickerson.

  ‘About a month ago, I was relaxing at my home, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, when a young man knocked on my door. He was a stranger but he seemed polite and clean, he had the sweetest smile, and I liked him at first sight.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he wanted my advice. So I asked him in for tea and cucumber sandwiches, and he told me that he dealt in Death. Apparently, he was blessed with a God-given genius, a miraculous gift for every form of elimination. But he was not a criminal, and he shrank from squandering his abilities in evil. On the contrary, he was a law-abiding American, patriotic to a degree, and his one great ambition was to serve his native land.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The only trouble was, he did not know where to start. He was just a kid off the streets, green and friendless, and though he believed that he possessed a sacred destiny, he felt helpless to pursue it. Therefore, he had come to me, to seek my help and guidance.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I will be frank with you. At first, when he told me this tale, I was inclined to scoff. I thought that he must be some crank or practical jokester, and I sniffed at his claims of genius. Still, he had such honest eyes, his smile was so pure and dazzling, and I did not wish to seem ungracious. So I asked him to give me a demonstration. And he did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I was thunderstruck,’ said Seaton. ‘Everything that he had claimed was justified, a hundred times over. In all my life, I was never so moved or mesmerised by any performer before.’

  J Jones Dickerson yawned.

  On his desk, there was a framed photograph of his wife and children, at which he stared unseeingly. His hands lay slackly in his lap, grey on grey, and nothing moved but his jaws, which never ceased to suck. ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘Experience has taught me caution; I did not betray my excitement. Instead, I arranged to go with him into the San Fernando Valley, where he had some contracts to fulfil, and watch him under actual combat conditions, live and with the chips down.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He surpassed himself. Truly, he seemed superhuman. Speed, imagination, versatility, nerve – you name it, he possessed it, and he appeared to be infallible. By the time I had witnessed him in three separate performances, under three separate circumstances, using three separate techniques, I had no hesitation in judging that this young man, scarcely more than a boy, was absolutely and indisputably the greatest exponent of his art that the world has ever known.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So I signed him to a five-year contract and vowed that he would have the chance he dreamed of, to serve and fight for Right. But when I got down to brass tacks and drew up our plan of campaign, I saw that we were faced with the gravest obstacles. Convention was all against us; so was the law and the full weight of the Establishment. Therefore, to have any hope of success, we had to secure some help.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What we needed was a guardian. Someone of wisdom and experience, compassion and great influence, who would appreciate our purpose and sympathise with our difficulties, and who would take us under his wing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Naturally, I thought of you.’

  J Jones Dickerson sighed.

  His office was surrounded by guards. They were hiding behind the walls, lurking in the corridors, peeping through the peepholes. Underneath J Jones Dickerson’s desk there was a button and, if he pressed it, they would all come running. For a moment, his forefinger itched and hovered. Then it drew back again, and he helped himself to another jujube. ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘I thought perhaps that the young man’s dream might touch you and you would consent to be his friend.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because both of you love your country, and both of you know that she is menaced by alien elements, dedicated to treason and disruption. Fanatics and conspirators, weirdos, dope fiends and perverts – Un-Americans, in a nutshell, who will not rest satisfied until they have brought her to her knees.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And doubtless this is a situation that grieves you sore, and you would rejoice to see such elements crushed. But that is easier said than done. Unfortunately, it is not possible to destroy the offenders out of hand, as they deserve, for the majority have only broken the spirit, not the letter, of the law. So your hands are tied with red tape and the Bureau is forced to stand by, impotent, while everything that it loves best is defiled and dragged down in the mire.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘But what if a private citizen arose, unhampered by bureaucracy, and decided to take matters into his own hands? What if he sought out these cankers and cancelled them, and America was purged of her poisons? Would you take offence? Would you call him a murderer and try to stop him? Or would you simply call him Providence?’

  ‘And?’ said J Jones Dickerson.

  ‘And smile on him,’ said Seaton.

  The Englishman stood by the window and looked down i
nto the street. Directly underneath, thirty-one floors below, a uniformed guard stood stiffly to attention. If Seaton had possessed a jujube, he could have spat it out and watched it fall, straight and true, eight hundred feet on to the centre of the guard’s crew-cut scalp, splitting him in two. But he had no jujubes, not of his own, and J Jones Dickerson did not give him one.

  Behind his grey desk, the Commander doodled blank faces on his blotting pad and suddenly, for no reason he could think of, he saw himself running down an alley, aged eight, throwing stones through darkened windows. ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘Naturally, any support that you might give us would be tacit, the Bureau would never be mentioned by name and there would be no question of payment,’ Seaton said. ‘As far as the young man himself is concerned, idealist and dreamer that he is, the labour would be its own reward and any other fee would demean him.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But just conceivably, if we gave you satisfaction, you would not scorn to act as our fairy godmother. Your generosity and brotherhood might be stirred, and you would honour us with something more precious than all the gold in Fort Knox.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Protection.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just that – you might grant us shelter, so that we wouldn’t be plagued by snoopers or interfering lawmen, who did not understand the sanctity of our mission and treated us like criminals.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then the young man would be free to follow his destiny unimpaired, and every one of us would reap the benefits – you, me, the Bureau and, most of all, America herself.’

  J Jones Dickerson allowed his eyes to close, imagining, and he saw himself in a high-school boys’ room, scrawling rude words on the walls. His mouth ceased to suck, his tongue slipped out between his grey lips. ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘There is nothing more,’ said Seaton. ‘Our future lies in your hands.’

  For a few seconds, the Commander was perfectly still. Then his eyelids trembled and he fumbled inside his trouser pocket. The Englishman was standing very close beside him, making him sweat, and he pulled out a half-emptied packet of candies. ‘What do you say?’ said Seaton.

  ‘Have a jujube,’ replied J Jones Dickerson.

  In Tierra de Ensueños, Eddie shut himself away in a small, dark box room in the attic, where he stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The radio played Dancing in the Dark and he found an old gilt mirror in a cupboard, so cracked and scarred that it rendered him almost invisible, a faintest phantasmal shadow. Nightingales and whippoorwills sang sweetly in the eaves, and he passed his nights in calm self-contemplation, pursuing his own mirage.

  Every morning, from nine to twelve, he trained in Manny Kaplan’s gym downtown. A man in a black uniform, with a shiny peaked cap and red frogging on his shoulders, drove him down the hill in a limousine, disappearing into the smog, and Seaton came along as well, just for the ride.

  The gymnasium was high and clear, an empty white gallery, as impersonal as an abattoir. It smelled of embrocation and abstinence, a stale sour scent that stung the eyes and dried out the throat, like chlorine. Entering, Eddie would remove his hat and coat, rub the soles of his shiny boots with resin, spit into his black leather palms, jog and shuffle on the spot. Sometimes he went so far as to strip off his gloves or loosen his belt a notch. Beyond that he would not go, however, for every form of nakedness, even his own, repelled him.

  Seaton had hired him a personal trainer, a crabbed old scarface named Mantequilla Wickham, thirty years a veteran, revered throughout the industry, though he was holed and gouged like a crater of the moon. In spats and fedora, with his back against the wall, his hands might be a trifle shaky these days, his joints a hint arthritic, but his eyes were still remorseless, his mouth a vice, and what he did not know about Death only a corpse could have told.

  Mantequilla did not speak but spat out his instructions, like tiny plugs of tobacco, through a hole in his lower lip. Rapping time on the floor with a silver-topped cane, he was merciless; and Eddie skipped rope, vaulted over wooden horses, drove himself through round after round of press-ups, trunk curls, abdominal stretches. Medicine balls were hurled into his flanks and belly, ropes cut his hands, dust choked him. His clean white shirt and tight black vest were soaked in sweat, and his eyes filled with blood.

  The doors were locked, tarpaulins placed over the windows, every crack and chink of light extinguished, until the performer was cloaked in total darkness, so profound that he could not even make out the glint of his own crucifix. A projector whirred, a shadow ran across a doorway, and he whirled and fired and fired again. Phantom knives flew at his back and he flung himself sideways, backward, flat on his face. His feet hissed and scuffed on the canvas, iron weights crashed down from the ceiling. Mantequilla spat, and he was trapped and bound by lassos. Images cornered and crushed him, he blazed from the hip and they were gone. A crystal ball crashed into his face, he shattered it in a hundred fragments. Mantequilla spat and Eddie was motionless. He stood in pitch blackness, waiting.

  Beneath the gymnasium windows, there was a Mexicali street market. The sidewalks spilled over with watermelons and ripe avocados, tacos stalls, hot tamales. Fat women scrimmaged for bargains, and skinny young dudes, with greased-back hair and pencil moustaches, pared their nails with switchblades. Seaton waited at the corner, in the back of the long black limousine, and watched through smoked-glass windows.

  At the sound of gunfire, nobody screamed and nobody ran. A gaggle of small children, playing touch football with an iceberg lettuce, paused for a moment to look up at the blacked-out windows and moved off round the corner. The women paid and picked up their baskets, the stallholders turned away, the dudes slouched off into basements. Curtains were drawn, radios stopped playing and doors slammed far away. Eddie whirled and fired and fired again, and the block was deserted.

  Only Seaton was left. Snug inside the limousine, nestling in Turkish tapestry cushions, he consulted Wisden on Victor Trumper, for the golden summer of 1902. Stray cats prowled among the stalls, papers flapped idly in the gutters. Promptly at noon, the man in the black uniform brought out egg and tomato sandwiches, Dundee cake and jasmine tea in a thermos. Then Seaton lay back like a plump pink cat, purring. Nothing moved in the market and the only sound was gunfire.

  Mort Mossbacher was Programme Director at HBLF, the number one network in the nation, and had collaborated with Seaton in all of the Englishman’s most successful images. Inside the medium, he was a mogul second to none, and his subordinates called him The Man. Yet he suffered severely from haemorrhoids and often cried out in his sleep, his toupee blew off in high winds and there was almost always a gap of white, hairless shin to be seen between his socks and his trouser cuffs.

  Throughout their long association, Seaton had never once invited him inside the mansion gates. But now Mossbacher suddenly received a summons, and he found himself in a velvet viewing theatre, high among the minarets.

  Resplendent in a white tuxedo, Seaton smoked a fat cigar and quaffed champagne from a silver goblet, and he put his arm around Mort Mossbacher’s shoulders. ‘I have a new performer. I believe you’re going to like him,’ Seaton said.

  ‘What is his angle?’

  ‘Watch, and I will show you.’

  A screen was projected on to the ceiling, the lights were dimmed. Seaton clapped his hands, and Eddie was revealed in medium close-up, silhouetted in left profile, dark and brooding against a pale dawn sky.

  The performer stood motionless in a swamp of seaweed, while the waters lapped at his shiny black boots, and he faced out towards the horizon. The shore was cold and grey and desolate. Then Seaton clapped his hands again and immediately the water turned bright blue, the sand became mellow gold. Sunlight sparkled on the waves and, as the first rays caught his face, awakening him, Eddie began to turn his head towards the cameras, until he was gazing di
rectly into the lens. His eyes seemed to fill the entire screen.

  He started walking, coming straight towards the viewers. His face was absolutely still and his eyes never blinked. Shaded by the angle of his hat brim, they were both tender and unreachable, and he almost smiled.

  Mort Mossbacher began to sweat. His heart burned and he reached inside his pocket, in search of a yellow pill. But before he could find one, Eddie had produced a gun and shot him lovingly through the centre of his forehead, an illusion so vivid that he actually seemed to feel the bullet rip through his skull, his blood spurt, all his life drain away.

  He slumped back in his seat and went limp. Once again, Seaton clapped his hands, and Eddie put away his smoking gun, turned his back, returned to the water’s edge. The sunshine was extinguished, the shore grew bleak again. Silhouetted in left profile, dark and brooding, Eddie faced out towards the horizon.

  The screen went blank, the lights were rekindled. Seaton poured himself another glass of champagne, and Mort Mossbacher did not move. Eyes closed, mouth open, his arms hung loosely by his sides. For almost a minute, there was silence. Then the Englishman struck a match. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s got something,’ replied the Director faintly.

  ‘That is the understatement of the century,’ Seaton cried. ‘I have been showing this same sequence to my families and let me tell you, the response has been absolutely electric. They have been dumbstruck, staggered, spellbound. In all the years that they have lived here, I don’t believe that I have ever seen them so stirred by any new image before.’

  ‘He certainly has impact.’

  ‘Impact? He’s magic. In my opinion, he possesses the very greatest gift that any artist can ever be blessed with.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Sensation,’ said the Englishman. ‘He has the power to make people feel.’

  Three weeks passed, and every day followed an identical pattern. In the mornings, Mantequilla spat in the dark and Eddie fired from the hip; in the afternoons, the performer posed for the cameras; and at night, alone in his attic bedroom, he sat motionless in front of the mirror. Meanwhile, Seaton went strolling through his gardens with J Jones Dickerson and Mort Mossbacher, their heads bent close in consultation.