by Steve Aylett
‘Never had to.’
‘I can believe it. Look at you, you’re overheated.’
‘I love it.’
Atom had meant for Jed to whistle ‘Mack the Knife’ during the interlude but the argument lasted the full eight minutes it took for Madison to arrive and time passed pleasantly enough. Calm as the dead, Madison entered with a tin soccer ball and placed it on the table.
‘Well, well - smoke and class. That one o’ them cryo buckets? Hope the folds iron out, missy.’ Thermidor laughed until his flunkeys caught on and added their contribution.
‘He doesn’t look like much,’ said Madison to Atom, and the room fell abruptly silent.
‘We’ll just take the barracuda and be on our way Mr Thermidor.’
But standing behind Atom and Drowner was a new arrival in a Luger suit.
Thermidor smiled, without astonishment. ‘The prodigal stooge,’ he said as Harry Fiasco approached the table. ‘Here you walk right back into my life. Just in time for brunch and its bloody aftermath. Harry Harry Harry, you been busier than a fly tryin’ to cover its eyes. Silo.’ Silencer handed Thermidor the .357 and Thermidor raised it at Fiasco. As he clicked back the hammer it sounded like a skeleton’s step in a cathedral. A ketchup tear trailed from his vegetable retina. ‘Tell me it aint so, Harry, that you boosted some valuable squasher and let it fall into the hands o’ this shamus.’
‘That’s a sixpack o’ lies, Mr Thermidor,’ shouted Fiasco. ‘Sure I boosted a brain but I did it for you, it’s safe Mr Thermidor I swear.’
‘I happen to have different information,’ rumbled Thermidor, gunning his ego. Murky motivations clashed in the air like stormfronts.
‘Like the hair, Harry,’ Atom remarked. ‘Got its own passport?’
‘The gumshoe says the brain’s in here.’ Thermidor flicked the gun toward the metal orb.
‘Sure and there’s bees in the TV,’ Fiasco scoffed. ‘Take a look, you don’t believe me.’
‘A man with a gun is in no need of advice, boy,’ stated Thermidor. He was trembling. ‘I’ll make you bleed till you can’t stand the colour clash no more.’
‘The hick’s right, Mr Thermidor,’ said Jed Helms.
‘Lemme speak I’m in the eye of an emotional hurricane here!’ roared Thermidor, blasting the fishtank, which shattered down around Jed as he hunched like a kraken on a medieval map. ‘Outta my way!’ Thermidor fired the deafening Combat again as he approached the orb. ‘I’m upset. Real upset. The goddamn squasher’s in here you’ll be ploughed up in twenty years, Fiasco. If it aint, you Atom, and maybe you too Fiasco, and maybe every goddamn timewastin’ sonofabitch here, are gonna wind up in a sluiceroom!’ He grasped the orb and twisted its halves - the seam clicked. Everything went low res.
Like most flux technology, the Syndication bomb hinged on a cheap but ingenious trick. Rather than actually stripping the subtext from the blast site it converted the wave range into a living Updike novel, the subtext containing information everyone already knew - the end result was a shallow reality in which every move was a statement of the obvious. A bullet dopplered past Atom’s ear but it didn’t tell him anything fresh. Thermidor was going berserk, scaring his boys into drab chaos. All etheric firearms were neutralised by the flat bomb. Atom grabbed Jed and followed Madison out of the chamber. His coat burst from a storeroom like a bat out of hell and attached itself to him as though magnetised. In the car they slammed Jed into a portable circuit cooler and drove off a minute before the cops arrived, cherry lights whirling. No-one was any the wiser.
Shiv waited on the corner of Amp as Kitty walked down Sunday. She’d been to the cop den so he’d had to hold off, but his blade already sang with anticipation.
As Kitty neared the alley mouth Shiv felt heat in his throat, and as she passed he was pulled back into the gloom. An angular, origami figure covered in coat had looped his neck with a wire. ‘You’re choking me.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
Doctor DeCrow, eyes distant as a fishgutter’s, pulled at the snare. Shiv bent sideways like an awkward drunk, supporting himself awhile as though unaware he was dead.
‘The young are too intent to be truly sinister.’
‘Here’s to plain speaking,’ said the Candyman, raising a .38 snub in his chubby hand. ‘And I’ll have you know better than I sir, wherever this bullet goes, the Geneva Convention is void. Come in and shut the door.’
Atom and Drowner closed the office door behind them.
Joanna was stood next to the Candyman with a chicaned H&K Terraform Cannon. The flared chrome barrel looked like the silencer off a race hog. Turow was stood against the blinds toying with a silver-handled cane.
‘You sure the cracker can hold that pocket-edition howitzer without firing at memories of his Ma? Room this size we’ll be six feet under.’
‘What’s life without hazard?’
‘Pleasant.’
‘You’re a man of nice judgment sir. There’s more sense in the antler of a snail than in Joanna’s entire frame. More than once it has been necessary to pay him with food meant for dogs. Eh Joanna? But have you considered, Mr Atom, how his somewhat uncoordinated coercion would feel in circumstances of hurried duress?’
‘It has crossed my mind - on skis, as a matter of fact.’
‘Ah that’s wonderful sir, wonderful. But now I must ask Miss Drowner to step forward and place the brain in my trust.’
‘Your truss?’
‘My trust, Mr Atom.’
‘Whatever,’ muttered Madison, walking over with a languid precision and putting the circuit-coolant icebox on the desk. Turow moved forward, eyes bulbing.
‘Keep them covered, Joanna.’ The Candyman placed the Smith & Wesson aside and approached the icebox. ‘And now, Mr Turow,’ he said huskily, ‘after seventeen years!’ He popped the seal, licked his liver lips, and lifted the lid.
Two minutes later they stood in the street gasping with exertion, clothes torn, faces laminated with sweat. Trembling, Joanna curled down a wall onto a doorstep, where he lay like an abandoned newborn. ‘I told you so!’ rasped Turow. ‘Dealing with Atom is like stepping off a mountain edge!’
‘Take heart Mr Turow. We are merely flogging a horse of a different colour.’
‘You!’ Turow spat in spluttering petulance, face flushed. ‘It’s you who bungled it! You and your hiring of Fiasco! He realised how valuable it was! You and your crunchy intrigues will have us tugging udders in Kansas, you - you dunderhead, you - imbecile, you - fat, bloated idiot, you …’ And he broke, blubbering, hands to his face, and turned against the wall.
The Candyman’s jaw sagged. He blinked vacant eyes.
Then he shook himself, tuning back in. And once again he was jovial, his smile a cherub’s.
‘Well. I should never have doubted you Turow. Everybody errs at times, and you may be sure this is as much a blow to me as to your good self. But what do you suggest? That we stand here shedding tears and yelling abuse, or redouble our efforts?’
Turow took his hands from his face but gave him no reply.
‘Regrettably it seems Atom is of such a calibre our negotiations must of necessity be less diplomatic, and irreversible. Something further may follow of this masquerade.’
9 NAPOLEON IN THE DESERT
‘Fiasco!’
There was no getting past it - Henry Blince was a cop as far as the eye could see. Once he had almost been persuaded to sell advertising space on his butt, a near lapse he chose not to remember. Smoking a cigar which seemed to have been carved from an expensive chair, he looked up at the gang fort and considered which rendition of the evidence would prove most damaging for the kid. The more he speculated the more proof he made.
‘You’re bound for the hotseat, Fiasco,’ he yelled through the hailer. ‘It’s funny because it’s true, sparky. Come on down.’
‘Think he’ll surrender, Chief?’ asked Benny the Trooper, squinting up at Blince.
‘If there’s any justice, Benny. Fiasco�
�s breathin’ in breach o’ the law.’
‘Killin’ people and like that, right Chief?’
‘Bet your sweet life and nobody forced him. One time Fiasco did an installation job wearin’ a jacket made o’ parachute silk. Used a mime as a human shield. Made for a better flailing pattern when the bullets hit. Weren’t you there, Benny?’
‘Vacation, Chief. Hawaii.’
‘That where the locals gave you a wreath in advance? Aint that a welcome.’
‘Give ’em to everyone, Chief. They’re a pessimistic culture. Invented surfing.’
‘Hey speakin’ o’ which, do fish ever get the bends, Benny? It’s been naggin’ and naggin’ at my troubled mind - I mean when you consider some live at such depths they aint got any pigmentation.’
‘I guess some o’ them transparent puffers might burst, Chief,’ Benny muttered uncertainly, looking off, ‘ascend fast enough.’
‘Well you’re a regular suppository o’ wisdom, Benny, lemme ask you somethin’ else. If we had to hit this premises full on, would you enter by the gate or the roof?’
‘I aint too keen to hit the mob with this triage ammo, Chief.’ Benny had just been issued with an Ithaca intel with no more recoil than an arcade gun.
‘You’ll shoot it and like it, trooper boy. The shinin’ truth is, Thermidor aint likely to give up his goon. Got some kinda code, a choice blend o’ fact and fiction. Made his bones with Korova by machine-gunnin’ four hundred Elvis impersonators from a municipal tower. Shots and slurred obscenities. Rex Camp was just startin’ out as the coroner and he had his hands full. Excess o’ hair gel caused an explosion in the furnace. That shootin’ and the attendant emotional baggage earned everyone’s respect. While we stand here booted and shootered, Thermidor’s probably laughin’ in the light of an orgy lamp.’
‘So why we here, Chief?’
‘Cause we’re cops, Benny. Sittin’ pretty in the carbon cycle. And it keeps the red wings of our hearts a-flappin’.’
‘There’s Fiasco, Chief.’
A crack in the armoured gate boomed shut behind Harry Fiasco as he walked forward with his hands raised.
‘You’re under arrest for scatterin’ brains across the public highway like crabs headin’ for the spawnin’ beach,’ stated Blince as he drew near. ‘You’ve achieved a capital crime.’
‘Thankyou Mr Blince.’
‘Read him his whatsername rights, Benny.’
‘“Miranda”, Chief.’
‘What you call yourself off-duty’s a matter for a higher authority than mine, trooper boy.’
ATOM’S JOURNAL
I can’t help thinking about bleak-featured panthers, hamsters with puffy cheeks, loggerhead turtles rocking on the ocean. A sad subway captain, tentacles furred like thistles. A cat - the kind that looks like a cigar’s exploded in its face. A city father knocked incredulous in a storm drain. Bees can’t hear, but they seem to know when to scramble.
Turow was coming apart like a soaked loaf. Walking up Valentine in pants with a street value of five dollars, he was taken back to another street in Tangier, which he’d trodden in those same pants. A merchant had even attempted to sell him a dress and an argument had ensued in the course of which the merchant, though struggling through a foreign language, had made it explicitly clear that Turow did not possess enough guts to stink in death. Turow had been gasping with indignation when the Candyman made his first appearance.
‘I couldn’t help but overhear your dispute with this scoundrel sir. Only an irredeemable opportunist would attempt to sell a dress to a man of your obvious integrity.’
‘What do you know about it?’
‘A great deal, sir, and I mean that in every possible sense. Objects of true and lasting value go often undetected among these marketeers - unless rescued by the likes of you and I. Candyman’s the name, sir, and I’ll have you know better than I do I admire a man sir who knows how to talk about admiring a man who admires a man who admires a man …’
The memory burbled into nonsense as Turow entered the Delayed Reaction Bar. He was thirsting for clarity - for fixity of purpose.
‘What’s it gonna be then?’ asked the barman. ‘Whitecoat? Yellowbird? Mighty Wurlitzer?’
‘Do you know how to make a Treadmill Existence?’
‘Sure. Eats? Look like you’re on your last knees.’
Turow regarded a steaming plate on the bartop bearing a large crustacean of perhaps extraterrestrial origin - the pungency rising from it fogged all hope of a dialogue. Turow brought a scented kerchief to his mouth. ‘If you’ll pardon me for saying so, this particular dish raises more questions than it answers.’
‘I call that “Schulz’s Last Escape”. Hey which reminds me, heard the news? Fiasco fries with the fishes.’
‘What,’ said Turow, as though slowly awaking.
‘Fiasco’s bein’ measured for an urn. UnAmerican proclivities.’
Turow was querulous. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Just heard.’ Toto started the blender. ‘Ten million stories in the armoured city. Weren’t you in here the other day askin’ Flea about Fiasco?’
‘Atom!’ Turow whispered emphatically. ‘That sick timewaster will have me siphoning fuel in sub-zero temperatures.’ And he placed his face upon the bartop until a pool of tears had darkened the surface.
‘Yeah the Atman’s a dark horse,’ Toto continued, oblivious as he cleaned a glass. ‘P.I. modality. Father used to be the cook at the mayor’s fort uptown. Even at that time the mayor was not brimming with the spice, I’ll tell ya. If he had a self-renewing penny he’d spend it at the barber’s. Any bastard here has more imagination in his lapels than the moron I’m describing. Public deplored him and moved on from broad hints to blazing gunfire. Atom’s old man was one of the mayor’s most side-on enemies. Young man then ofcourse. Back-thwacking popularity. Soul rare as a double coconut. Ethics and edgy fortitude. Youth in the modern style. Felt a thousand years tired rather than a thousand years wise - constant pain alters a man’s priorities, as you’ll know. And what dumbfounded him most was that the office of mayor seemed always to be snagged by a fool resembling a drumfish in a big scarf, you know? So he decided to kill the mayor and take his place. “I know some of the fraudulent generalities required,” he thought. “All I need is a clean shirt and a set of eyes that close without appearing to.”’
Way behind Turow the bar’s darkness shifted like an orchestra pit of giant insects.
‘Transparent lids,’ muttered someone. ‘Like an owl.’
‘I guess, Hammy. So the cook knew he’d be suspected if he poisoned the mayor and therefore decided to shove him off the balcony during a speech. The mayor had the sense to realise he was in danger but lacked the rich imagination to avert it, choosing his duty over his rights. And we all know the difference between a right and a duty?’
‘You certainly don’t expect me to comment,’ said Turow from the crash position.
‘A right is something we want to do and for which we receive no thanks,’ continued the barman, ‘while a duty is something we don’t want to do and for which we receive no thanks. The mayor went out to gurn at the masses and, as one does on these occasions, the cook pushed the drab official into the crowd, where he was crushed like a walnut in a franking machine. The cook was elected to mayor and hailed the heavens with his laughter.’
Don Toto stopped cleaning the glass a moment, frowning into the middle distance, then continued.
‘However, the townspeople began to blather about a weird scuttling creature they were glimpsing and Atom’s Pa - now the mayor - suffered a gnarly fear. Putting together certain facts he realised that just before the murder, the mayor had burnt an advance denunciation of the cook into the carapace of a landcrab which the cook had left fully alive on a platter, like how the French leave lobsters lying around the place sniggering and so on for hours before toasting them, you know. The mayor had then set it loose.’
‘Excuse me, did I hear you correctly?’ Tur
ow said drowsily, looking up with dawning and tortured amazement. ‘You say that certain facts led him to think all this? A landcrab? Which facts led him, or I might add you, to believe this fable?’
‘Not least the mayor’s bellowed remark to the cook that he knew he was trying to poison him, the mayor’s subsequent meddling with a butane torch, and the fact that the crab was missing after the murder. In fact probably the mayor believed the crab itself contained poison and would therefore provide proof positive when it was captured.’
‘But ofcourse. How could I have been so foolish.’
‘So there was a giant landcrab skittering through the black alleys,’ Toto resumed, ‘scrawled with damning evidence. Thoughts of the beast haunted the new mayor’s every instant. Okay so finally he went mad, the pleasure of which was so intense that everyone remarked upon his improved spirits. To escape the anticipated trial he resolved to oblong himself, so that when the crustacean was finally snared, his own death would be blamed on the new cook, a guy of whom he was rightly suspicious. In the event the new cook ventilated him anyway and made it appear to be suicide, taking his place as mayor.’
‘Unless I am sadly mistaken, the hero of your story is now dead.’ Turow fumbled in his jacket for a cigarette.
‘By now rumours were circulating that the alley crab had some profound message on its back, okay? But even in those days the cops avoided anything likely to imperil their ignorance. The beast was bigger than ever, and at people’s approach it’d rear up, brandishing fully its serrated claws. Despite the creature’s habit of scuttling sideways the curious few were bent on a head-on confrontation and so the message on its back remained unseen by those to whom it would mean a damn. The truth’s generally left alone - like the samurai-faced crabs of the Inland Sea which fishermen throw back for fear of bad luck, the descendants of this one, scrawled with the truth, inherited the shell-pattern through natural selection and bear it to this day.’
There was a static-filled silence. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Turow said at last, the Egyptian cigarette dangling dead fom the dry lower lip of his gob. ‘Have you perhaps misplaced your reason? “Inherited the shell-pattern”?’