It doesn’t take us long. By the end of it Ishmael’s sweating like a politician in a whorehouse and I’m down to the stub of my cigar. In front of us is a door in the floor.
‘I should have suspected this,’ I say.
Ishmael opens up the door. Nothing but blackness inside.
‘Say goodnight to the kids, Gracie,’ I mutter, and leap in.
TWENTY
Norman Mailer sits on a comfy chair in front of me, smoking a pipe and muttering to himself. All around us psychedelic colours spin and swirl, a miasma of visual insanity that’s somehow disturbing and comforting at the same time. Sitar music plays softly in the background. Both Ishmael and the old man are gone. It’s just me and Mailer.
‘Goddamn woman burnt the toast again,’ he mutters, jabbing the pipe at me. ‘Listen, boy, and listen well. You’re approaching this case all wrong. You need to think with your fists and not your head. Use the God-given talents you have for kicking the living shade out of these chumps and not thinking your way out of a situation. You understand me, boy?’
‘I understand you’re smoking like an old woman,’ I say, snapping out a cigar and lighting it. ‘This is out of your league, Mailer. You’re washed up. In fact, you’re not even alive.’
‘Not out there,’ he barks, jabbing the pipe towards the psychedelic swirl. He taps his head. ‘But in here, I’m everywhere, and now I’m offering you good advice. Sound advice. Advice which may help you out one day.’
‘Only if it’s a one way ticket to Kieran’s place.’ I puff cigar smoke at him. ‘Now either cut to the chase and give me something I can use or get out of my head.’
‘I’m not in your head, boy,’ he laughs. ‘You’re in mine.’
By this point I’m up and walking. I don’t move from the spot but Mailer recedes into the distance anyway. As time passes he disappears, cackling to himself, and I come up to a standard lamp sitting in the middle of nowhere. The bulb is out.
I know I shouldn’t, but I snap it on anyway.
TWENTY ONE
And I’m back at the side of the road covered in dust and sand and coughing grit out of my lungs.
Ishmael sits nearby, nursing a bruised jaw. The old man stands by him, porcupined out and looking mean as hell, with his eyes fiery red.
‘Kids, play nicely,’ I manage to growl before pulling myself to my feet.
‘Man, I love those colours during the jump,’ says Ishmael, walking over to the side of the road and picking up a rock. ‘What did you see, Joe?’
‘Norman Mailer tried to give me advice,’ I tell him. ‘I think he was stoned.’
‘The old Mailer route.’ Ishmael nods, walking over to the old man. ‘There’s probably a deep message in there somewhere, but I’m damned if I can figure it out.’
‘Where’s the car?’ I look around. Nothing but the long road stretching into infinity—on one side the empty desert and on the other a huge mountain of rock.
Then a tear in the desert opens up and the shark comes barrelling out at top speed, Suzanne behind the wheel. I just have time to leap and roll, swinging up the cannon, before she slews the car to a stop, kicking up dust.
‘Anyone need a ride?’ she asks.
I glance at the tear, catching a glimpse of the city street with the bar and some lonely dame looking out of the window, half her face in shadow, waving me a long goodbye; and then it closes.
‘Damn,’ I mutter. ‘Could have been a killer case.’
‘The temptation didn’t work, Joe,’ says Suzanne. ‘It would have been nothing but a shallow fabric anyway.’ She holds up a bottle of bourbon. ‘But we’ve got the car and the whisky. You want to finish this case?’
‘We’ve got some passengers,’ I tell her, and turn just as Ishmael smacks the old guy over the back of the head and knocks him flat.
‘Never heard of “Help the Aged”, Ahab?’ I ask him, and before anyone can react Ishmael’s got a knife out. He stabs into the old man’s skin, tearing a huge rip down his back.
I whip out the popgun as Ishmael plunges his hands deep into the old man’s back and heaves. A body comes out, covered in blood and grue—dead to everyone but Ishmael. Dougie.
The old man’s skin heals up quick and fast and he gets to his feet.
‘Very impressive.’ I walk to the car and snap open the bottle, hitting a shot back. ‘Care to tell me how?’
‘How doesn’t matter,’ says Ishmael. ‘At least he’s back.’
‘Used me as a bloody carrier pigeon!’ The old man’s not happy, and his porcupine spikes flex.
‘I hate to break up the party, but I’ve got a job to do.’ I holster the piece and climb behind the wheel of the car. ‘Those who’re coming get in, but don’t expect any special treatment.’
Ishmael drags Dougie in, the old man seconds behind them.
‘How did you find me, toots?’ I ask Sue.
‘Easy,’ she smiles. ‘Just followed the stench of self importance.’
‘Pity the nuns missed,’ I mutter under my breath as I reach for the key.
Ishmael lays a hand on my shoulder. ‘Listen.’
Distant thunder. Deep, booming sounds. The ground vibrates. The bourbon shakes on the dashboard. Sue snaps me a worried frown and looks around. Rocks are tumbling from the mountain. Everything starts to shake big time.
I don’t like this at all. I kick the car into gear and stomp on the gas. The shark peels off, leaving black streaks on the tarmac. A second later a huge mechanical foot—the size of the car—crashes down in front of us.
I slam on the brakes and we slide to a halt. Rearing up before us is a huge robot, at least a hundred feet high.
Ishmael looks like he’s about to give birth, but the old man’s got a smile on his face.
‘Father,’ he whispers.
TWENTY TWO
We’re sitting in the middle of a lab on the top floor of a towering architectural nightmare. The lab is nothing but a steel ball on the top of a jagged steel stem with a staircase inside. Mathematically the place should fall right over, but the old man’s father is a genius. His robot sits outside, silent.
The old man’s father looks thirty. At a push. He’s wearing a lab coat and the sort of expression that makes any sane man worried.
‘It was Kieran who gave me the knowledge to do what I do,’ he tells us, sipping a rum and coke. He’s generous with the liquor, which puts him in my good books. ‘Before I met him I was just a wandering scientist. I’d mix a few chemicals for the locals, knock off a few impossible fireworks—the usual. But then I met Kieran. He gave me the understanding to push myself. He would be a God, but a God would tremble at his might.’
‘Is he kind to animals too?’ The old man’s father shoots me a withering look which has no effect. He holds out his hand.
‘Call me Teffle,’ he says, and then nods to the old man. ‘How did you find my son?’
‘The hard way.’ I take a sip of the whisky. It’s good.
‘That was also Kieran’s idea,’ Teffle continues. ‘A place for everyone. Inside every man there is the capacity for infinite evil and infinite justice. Well, actually that’s not true, but it’s the sort of thing people expect me to say. I don’t know why I bother, really.’
‘Father,’ warns the old man.
Teffle catches himself and nods. ‘Babs is right.’ He smiles at the old man. Everyone else spares him a glance.
‘It’s short for Barbarossa,’ says Babs, but nobody’s convinced.
‘If Kieran’s the height of all wisdom, knowledge, human understanding and all that crap, why the hell does Preston want him iced?’ I need answers.
‘Preston works for the agency, and the agency doesn’t like the competition.’ Teffle’s back on a roll. ‘Preston and Kieran worked as a team in the old days, but Kieran’s knowledge outweighed everyone he came across. Preston was a small man with a smaller mind, whose allusions only stretched to a geopolitical takeover. Kieran’s ideology was much more dangerous. His ideology had
a purpose before mere global politics. He believed in the beauty of chaos. And I’m afraid to say I helped him build his compound.’
‘Why don’t they just nuke him?’ Ishmael finds his voice.
‘Kieran would knock the missiles from the skies and turn them into pixie dust. Or more likely cocaine. He likes the odd snort.’
‘Sounds like a goddamn wizard,’ I say. ‘Is there any way into his compound? Somewhere easy. Somewhere he wouldn’t watch?’
‘Simple,’ smiles Teffle. ‘Just walk through the main door.’ He toasts me with the rum and then knocks it back.
I haul out the cannon and check the shells. Locked and loaded.
‘Okay, Einstein, we need to get there quick and fast. Any machines in your Pandora that can help us?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he says. The door bursts open and the nuns scream in, blazing fury.
TWENTY THREE
I’m on the floor and rolling behind the furniture as the bullets tear the place up. Babs gets up, spikes out, and swipes for one of the seven nuns, who are all bearing ugly looking machine guns. Too late. Bullets stitch up his torso and take off his head.
Teffle freezes, eyes bulging with disbelief. Suzanne races for him, firing with one hand, but she’s a second too late and the bullets punch him back against a control panel, which sparks and buzzes.
Ishmael tasers Dougie who springs into life as his brother flops down dead. He jumps up into a martial arts stance I can only guess at and goes hell for fury at the nearest nun. Limbs pop and break and she’s on the floor, a broken rag doll, neck and limbs twisted at impossible angles.
I’m blazing away from behind the nearest chair. Suzanne slides up close to me. ‘Exit!’ she yells, but there isn’t one. Just a phalanx of blazing penguins and a few dead men.
Dougie goes for a second nun, but she rakes his legs with her M16 and he twists and stumbles as his kneecaps explode and he’s out and down, screaming.
They don’t give him or Ishmael time to sort themselves out. Four of them crowd around the brothers and pump round after round into their heads and bodies, literally turning them into twisted mush. It’s not pleasant.
Suzanne sparks off a flare of Uzi fire as I let the cannon talk, and the nearest nun is cut in half and goes down. The others scatter for cover and tumble out of view: nothing in sight but the top of the odd wimple behind a piece of machinery.
A nun pops up and Suzanne lets the Uzi speak, stitching a line of holes across the floor. Then the bolt jams back as it runs out of ammo.
‘Drop ’em,’ shouts the nun.
I nod to Suzanne and take a puff on my cigar. She throws the Uzi across the floor and the nun tentatively peeks over the barrier she’s hiding behind.
‘No funny business,’ the nun mutters, then comes out machine gun first and takes a step towards us. I draw on the cigar, pop the cannon over the chair and put a perfect round hole in the middle of her head. She’s down and out.
The back of the room opens up with blazing gunfire and Suzanne ducks low. I don’t. I’ve been here before.
‘Smoke?’ I offer Suzanne the pack of Havanas and she takes one, lighting up as the gunfire dies to a few isolated shots.
‘Give up now and we won’t harm you,’ someone shouts.
‘I’ve got all night, sister,’ I yell. Something tells me these nuns have more than one dirty habit. You’d trust them like you’d trust a cop.
‘We have orders to take you alive,’ a nun shouts, and jumps up to spray a few bullets at us. ‘This is just a warning.’
‘Maybe you should have negotiated first,’ I yell, and one of the nuns laughs. She’s shushed into silence.
‘Okay, funny man,’ yells the negotiating nun. ‘Last chance.’
‘I don’t die easy, sugar,’ and I reach for more bullets. Except I’m empty. One left in the chamber.
‘Kieran wants to talk!’ yells the negotiating nun.
‘I only work under my conditions, toots.’ And then a familiar voice perks up from behind the nuns.
‘Joe, behave.’ It’s Preston, and he’s standing as tall as day behind the nuns, still wearing his waitress uniform. I guess he likes it.
TWENTY FOUR
‘I don’t get it, Preston,’ I yell. ‘Why the nuns? You always told me you were an atheist.’
‘We all meet strange bedfellows, Joe,’ he shouts back. ‘Now come with me and we’ll make our peace together.’
‘Nice offer but I don’t swing that way, Preston. Now tell the penguins to back off or we’re all in for a long night.’
‘This isn’t a deal situation, Joe.’ Smugly Preston hefts an m16 with a grenade launcher under the barrel. ‘It’s shit or quit.’
‘Why do you need me to get to Kieran? You were practically brothers.’
‘An introduction, Joe.’ Preston wanders over to a piece of bullet-peppered machinery and starts caressing the twisted wires and ruptured metal. ‘We fell out of trust and you were the only person who could bring him back. I need you, Joe.’
‘I don’t get it. Just go with the nuns. They’ll take you straight to him.’
‘For a smart detective you certainly have a slow mind,’ says Preston. ‘They don’t know Kieran. They can’t take me to him. They’re here for the girl.’
‘What’s she done?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ says Preston. I look at Suzanne and she looks back, and there’s guilt in her eyes. Deep guilt. Whatever she’s done, it’s not pretty.
‘Let the girl go and we can talk.’ I make sure the single bullet is in the chamber and ready myself.
‘We need you, Joe,’ says Preston, and I’m up on my feet with the gun to my head and my arm round the girl’s neck.
‘One shot and I’m history,’ I tell him. He smiles patronisingly, then whips up the M16 and shoots before I can do anything. The bullet takes Suzanne dead centre of the heart and knocks her down. She’s gone before she hits the floor. I swing the gun round and blast off the shot, but Preston’s already moved. He chokes a laugh, but I made the heel sweat.
‘Now let’s negotiate like real men,’ says Preston, gesturing to a chair. I chew the stem of the cheroot and feel in my pocket. The watch the monk gave me.
I look down at the body. I’ve no idea if this is right or wrong, if this is the time to use it, but I don’t have a choice. It’s either hell or high water.
‘Adios, creep,’ I growl, and press the button on the top of the watch.
It’s Hell.
TWENTY FIVE
Literally Hell. Fire, brimstone—the lot. A jagged landscape of the hellspawn stretching out into infinity in every direction—towering fireballs reaching to the endless, black sky.
I’m on a road that curves off in either direction. And there’s no sign of Suzanne. Bad news. I glance at the watch. It’s stopped. I click it again, it starts ticking, and for a second I’m back in the lab with the bodies and the nuns and Preston looking confused.
‘Wait,’ he shouts, but I click the button again and I’m back in Hell.
A black carriage made of bone, lead by two screaming banshees, approaches, the demonic, horned figure at the reins urging the skeletal horses onwards. The demon pulls up. All horns and jagged, stone teeth.
‘Shut up!’ it screams at the banshees, and they fall silent.
‘Long time, Chronos,’ I say, sparking up a stoogie from the flaming fingertip the demon offers. ‘How’s it hanging?’
Chronos points to a jagged tree in the distance, writhing with the souls of suicide victims. He lets out a throaty chuckle. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure, Joe?’ The voice sounds like broken glass.
‘Looking for a corpse. Suzanne something, killed a few minutes ago. I need a favour.’
‘What are you willing to bargain with, Joe?’ hisses Chronos, leering down.
‘Me not kicking your ragged ass all over this place,’ I tell him. And he knows I mean it.
‘Not my jurisdiction,’ he says, straightening up. ‘Try
a man called Chicago who lives in Despair, first city of Hell.’
‘You taking me there?’
‘Only if you’re a corpse.’ And with that he’s off, banshees wailing away, disappearing into the fire. I puff my cigar and take a look at the citadel in the distance, all black steel and blood. It’s going to be a long walk.
TWENTY SIX
The problem with Hell is the environment. It’s always uphill. You try turning downhill and you’re walking uphill again. It’s not painful—it’s just a drag. Something you can do without.
The first place I come across is a fast food joint. Weathered, empty grey faces peer out from the inside. Anyone behind the counter has already had their soul sucked out of them by the time they get there. When they pay their penance this is where they end up. But I am hungry for information.
I walk in and look for the freshest body. A truck driver with a huge shard of glass bisecting his head.
‘You compos mentis?’ I ask the corpse, and he looks at me, confused for a moment, then nods.
‘Who’s running the show around here now?’ I ask him.
‘Well, ever since they privatised it things have gone downhill.’ He picks at the grey slab of meat in front of him. The meat turns around and blinks a single eyeball at him, before crawling off the table and making a break for it. ‘It’s not the place it used to be.’
‘You look fresh. How do you know?’
‘I hear things,’ the body mutters. ‘Want to hear some music?’ And he grabs the shard of glass and starts sawing it back and forth, the glass grating on bone. Obviously a fortnight short of a week.
‘Anyone else in here got a mind of their own?’ I yell, looking around.
‘I have.’ A single voice pops up. Some guy in a raincoat and trilby smoking a cigarette in the shadows in the far corner. I walk over.
Joe Fury and the Hard Death Page 3