Fun City Punch (Joe Dylan Crime Noir, #5)

by James Newman

  “It doesn’t take long,” Hale said.

  “I’d rather not deal with them now,” Lucas said. “Please find who did this.”

  “And if he did it to himself?”

  Lucas laughed sadly and dismissed the question with a backhand gesture as if he was swatting away a soft tennis serve. “I wish it were that simple. You will call me, I trust.” He handed over a card. It was a simple card, with the name Lucas and a local cell number.

  “We will call you,” said Hale

  The old man went back into the apartment block.

  The Fun Police did their thing.

  Above, an airplane flew above the hill where letters ten foot tall spelled:

  FUN CITY

  Hale’s eyebrows twitched. “Where do you want me to start, Joe?”

  “Ask around here. Speak to the locals. Get the key from the old man and check his room. Find a pattern to his daily routine. See, if as the old man said, that his pattern had been broken the last few days. Speak to the desk staff. I want information on any guests he had brought over. Female friends, male friends, and even those who are still confused about which side of the fence they are straddling friends. Check if he had any mail. Bribe the PO if need be. I want to know everything about Kurt. A copy of his passport, immigration records, STD clinical background. Was he on over-stay? Suffer from chlamydia? What was his employment status? Credit level? I want the records from his tailor. On which side did he dress? The whole picture, wide and clear, got it?”

  “Got it, and you?”

  “I’m thinking I’ll make a visit to the Gamers.”

  “Waiting for a vision, Nostradamus?”

  “The city is a dangerous animal, to live inside it we have to condition our sensibilities to our host. Things get curious. I met someone last night.”

  “A girl?”

  “Her pitch was to tell me that she was a hermaphrodite.”

  “That’s one hell of a pitch, Joe. Was she?”

  “Nah.”

  Right on cue, a tall figure with long legs wrapped in black leather riding boots and a bra top that wasn’t fit to handle the weight. She smilesd as she caught my eye and I felt that tug you sometime get when you’re hit with a smile rather than a frown, but then she walked closer. The hands were big, fingers long, fingernails painted black. It was a good facsimile of a female, too good maybe, but she had once been a man, of that I was certain. I wondered if that was actually a problem and if so why had I gone with Trixie last night? I wondered if the older you got the less you looked at the physical shape of a companion and the more you looked for, ever yearned for, some kind of soul mate, some connection, some cure for the pain of loneliness. In the end, it didn’t matter if it were a man a woman or a cocker spaniel who you shared the good times and the bad with, as long as it were with someone or something.

  “One thing you can’t deny about these ladyboys,” Hale said snapping me out of the thought and then right back into it. “They got balls.”

  “Well, Trixie didn’t in the end. I wondered why I felt a connection with her. It felt as if we had known each other from before. Stronger impulses vibrated, the way hearts do when far away from home. I once saw a brother and sister, separated at birth, meeting for the first time. The chemistry between them was electric.”

  “The Ying and Yang, mate. Any modern man would need to find out, but I’m guessing you already knew the answer before you decided to discover the truth with your own peepers. A man just knows.”

  “You’ve never been caught out, Hale? Surely there’s been the one moment or two you’ve been caught with your guard down?”

  “First day, I arrived in a city not far from here. Checked into the hotel, dumped me luggage and ended up wandering the city, from street to street, road across road. You know how it is. You have to walk around a town to really find out about it, get your bearings, like. Well, I found a few bars on me travels, sunk a few beers, the sun came down.”

  “Know that feeling. Other people are different from me, and generally, I don’t like them. Until, that is, you discover that they feel different to. You get lost in the cities and find yourself in a lock-down bar at three in the morning.”

  “Sure, but then I realize the hotel key that’s in my back sky rocket, it just has a blank tag on it. No hotel name, nothing. I can’t for the life of me remember the bleedin’ name of the hotel. So I just start walking, panicking a little bit, but walking. Hoping I could just walk past it and remember it, but I don’t remember anything about the place except that they had two large parrots in the lobby.”

  “Parrots?”

  “Yeah. Big blue and yellow things.”

  “Macaws?”

  “Whatever. So I’m walking around and every time I see a hotel, I walk in and look for the bleedin’ birds.”

  “That’s tough.”

  “It gets worse. I’ve been at it so long now the sun is starting to come UP. It is like five in the morning. I’ve lost all will to live and then I see this figure approach.”

  “Your ladyboy of destiny?”

  “Well I knew there was something kinda WRONG with her, but I didn’t know it was a GEEZER. What could I do? I was at my wits end. So I told her about the hotel and the walking and bleedin’ birds in the lobby. She walked and I followed until we arrived at the hotel with the birds in the lobby. She remembered the birds. She had been there before.”

  “Saved by the macaws?”

  “No, it was more the parrots that helped me... Anyways she follows me up to the room and I try to say goodbye, thanks for your help and everything but now our paths must uncross, if you know what I mean.”

  “But she insisted in coming in?”

  “Certainly did, like, my first night in town. What could I do? She asked to massage me and I thought what the hell, maybe women in this part of the world naturally have more body hair. What do I know? Right? So she flips me over, and you can guess the rest.”

  “So she escorted you home and gave you a happy ending?”

  “What could I do? When in Rome do as the Romans do, mate.”

  I let that story burn into my memory before asking. “Are you still shacking with the dominatrix, Hale?”

  “She gave me the boot.”

  “Leather?”

  “Sure, but since then I’ve been single and enjoying it. None of those long clingy break-ups with a Dom. When the Doms kick you out, they kick you out good and proper. I’m a Fun City geezer. Say the word and I’m gone, mate.”

  “Stay lucky, Hale.”

  “Always, mate.”

  With that we separated, me moving towards Main Street and him back along the beach.

  I had a case to work on.

  Search and you shall see.

  On Main Street, ordered a coffee from a café that served also as an art gallery displaying blood red expressionist oils framed in elaborate gold leaf. Sat on a green leather wingback and leafed through a stack of magazines.

  Looking through a copy of Rolling Stone the penny dropped. Looked at the photograph.

  Les Inrockuptibles

  Then it hit me.

  Kurt was a major pop star.

  In France.

  THIRTEEN

  JACK WINCED as the nurse poured alcohol over the open wound. Inside the Eye laboratory, he sat on the hospital bed and considered his options. His mind worked fast. The loss of his hands was liberating. Thousands of ideas sprung at him at once, all with an equal level of significance. Of course, he could have artificial hands designed, but a more interesting idea overshadowed this. “Keep the nerve endings active. Build an apparatus that accommodates a human being of my size and shape. I want to be hooked up to the program. I want to see and control the city. I want to live inside the Eye, control it, and become one with it. Can our engineers run with this? Am I making any sense to anybody but myself?”

  “Of course,” a rat-faced assistant replied. “I will have the prototype developed in good time. Will put the logistics team on this. Brin
g in some of the scientists.”

  “This needs to be seen as an opportunity.”

  “And Jimmy?”

  “Hunt him down and bring him in. I’ll work on the Punch program for him.”

  “And Dylan?”

  “We have the agent onto him, right?”

  “Seems to be a hiccup there.”

  “How?”

  “She’s gone AWOL, hasn’t filed a report.”

  “Dylan we wait for. His investigation into the French kid will bring him under the city. In the meantime, put another female agent onto him. Make some recordings and bring me the machine. Wait, I have a name for this machine. We shall call it the TRUST MACHINE.”

  “The Trust Machine?”

  “Yes, light me a cigar.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  FOURTEEN

  “IT WAS FUN. T.”

  Scrawled on the hotel mirror in blood red lipstick.

  I took her vermillion words for it.

  Took off my hat and counted to

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Suddenly, the street smelled like a good idea.

  Played pool with a one-armed woman and lost some credits and self-respect in the tunnel.

  “You want to play again?” She asked.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It was fun.”

  Into the Red Zone and past women wearing tiny shorts, sitting hunched over tablets, cell phones, playing cryptic games. These Games were both real and artificial. Good businesswomen were known as Gamers and created a life intertwined between an internal universe of applications that offered their own reward systems such as cyber gifts and points used for discounts in shopping malls, hair salons, and exchanged for seats in cinema theaters. They also branched out and played the game of garnering sympathy from the Western Lands. Men who sent credits for promises of future liaisons or pictures of the Gamers in various natural poses were known as Sponsors. The Gamers’ lives, a version of escapism, or maybe not, perhaps to be online was as real as being off line. The Gamers were perhaps the bridge between the labyrinthine Red Night Zone and the men that pursued them. They flittered between fantasy and reality and were careful when choosing a live customer. They naturally preferred Japanese and South Koreans who often paid cash to look but not touch, and who likewise appeared to frequent a world of artificial reality since the technological and cultural revolution took ahold of their Eastern Cities.

  There is always a special one. She is rude, hateful, makes false promises, but in her heart, she is strong. She knows what she wants, and brother, she knows how to get it. She plays those from the Western Lands and likewise plays the Japanese and the Chinese, with eyes and lies she feigns joy and pain for capital gain. Kelly had switched from a dancer to a Gamer and the switch had done her well. The loss of money or the potential loss of status in the hotel lobby is her biggest fear, but it is this fear that keeps her moving forward hoping to one day snare the ultimate dream of reincarnation into the blissful retired princess up in the hills. One moment she displays a diamond like deposition, sharp, precious, the next, a bird of exquisite prey, talons sharpened for the heart as she plunges osprey-like down to the pool of uninitiated pond-life washed up on the shores of Fun City. She flickers between these guises with effortless expertise.

  Her name is Kelly, and in another world, another time, we outwitted a serial killer.

  When it hits, it hits, and there’s no explaining it.

  She sauntered up wearing fishnet tights and high-heels.

  A tank top that read:

  PLAYGIRL

  Innocent face, flawless skin, and a well-built yet petite figure, the mystery as to why the western male flocked to Fun City easily solved with one look at Kelly’s bright white teeth; teeth that she wasn’t proud of, one tooth was slightly twisted. I liked her that way. Certain women can set alight a fire that will never be snubbed out. We can leave them, they can leave us, yet something remains, burning, smoldering, a forever lasting ember. It matters not the way they look or the way that they conduct their lives. Once the candle is lit, it burns until the rain of cynicism falls upon it, yet, even then, the flame will reignite given the right conditions. That was the trouble with love. It was a thing that didn’t belong here. A thing that the wise had given up on years ago yet the ghost of a possibility dwelt within the foolish and the pure. Most were defensive, wary of attack, like stray dogs in the night that snarled when petted knowing full well that those who stroked were often those who bit or needed biting. She held her hand over her mouth while she playfully slapped my cheek.

  “Kelly, you look hungry.”

  “So do you,” she smiled.

  “I know a place, French, La Buchan,” I half smiled, “not far from here.”

  Nobody seemed to know if whether the Red Night Zone grew around the La Buchan or if the restaurant had squeezed itself into the zone. In the center of Happy Street, there it stood, darkly lit inside, six tables and a bar. I opened the door and caught the waitress looking Kelly over with vague resentment. I fixed her glare and raised two fingers. She led us to the table. Menus arrived written by chalk on a blackboard. La duck orange for me and the salmon for her, a carafe of vin ordinaire to share and warm bread complementary. I picked at a piece of bread and handed her the basket. “It is like a different world in here.”

  “I was here one time, with a customer, he was a large pig of a man, a huge belly and he snored at night, and do you know what he sounded like? When he was sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you know when I was younger, my uncle owned a pig farm and we used to spend summers there. You know how they kill the pigs,” she lowered her face towards mine; “you know how they do it?”

  “Never thought about it. With electric shock?”

  “No, they take the knife,” she picks up the dinner knife to demonstrate. “It’s like this knife but much, much longer. They take the knife and one man holds the pig with his arms, holds the animal down so that it doesn’t wriggle and you know what the other man does?”

  “No.”

  “He takes this long knife and he pushes it deep into the pig’s throat and the pig makes this noise. You want to hear what it sounds like?”

  “Sure.”

  Kelly makes a noise, quiet at first, but then the volume rises and now she is bawling like that pig. The waitress looks over at us. The chef pokes his head through the service hatch. I nod slowly. “Yeah, that’s how my French boyfriend sounded while he was sleeping. He couldn’t have a wife with his pig noises and now he is probably dead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He drank, like you do, Joe, but he was fat too. Where do you put it all?”

  “Mostly, I put it away. How do you feel about the Gamers, Kelly?”

  “What you mean? Do I like them?”

  “Do you know them?”

  “Some. I used to be into that scene, but it is technical and just too distant. I like to look a customer in the face, see if he is ready or not.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah, ready for the taking.”

  “You don’t feel guilty?”

  “What’s guilt?

  “It is a sort of like shame, but it doesn’t matter.”

  The duck arrived first, a medley of stewed vegetables, mashed potato. Salmon followed; a pinkish steak with a light white wine sauce. The wine was dry. Silence entertained us as we ate slowly watching a businessman squeeze through the doorway and seat himself in front of a table and on a chair that creaked under his weight. “That’s not him is it?”

  “Who?”

  “Your French snorer?”

  “No, that’s somebody else.”

  “And how about this guy? also French?” I took out the photograph of Kurt and handed it to her.

  “Wow, he’s kind of cute.”

  “He was gaming?”

  “Not sure. He’s not one of my clients, but there’s so many who play the life-enhancer games. I can check?
”

  “Yes, do that. He was a singer.”

  “What songs did he sing?”

  “French ones. You haven’t seen him before? Look, you know, once you told me you were the perfect liar, Kelly. I told you that when a person doesn’t tell the truth you can tell it in their eyes.”

  “Yes, ‘eyes don’t lie,’ you said.”

  “Right, so with this Kurt, I need the truth. Looks like he killed himself. He was a musician, played guitar and sang.”

  “I may have seen him before but I can’t remember it. Sorry, I cannot help you much.”

  We ate in silence and I thought about the City. Many of the visitors came to Fun City and attached themselves to the indigenous females without the necessary language and cultural skills. Male and female sat and ate in silence all across the town. Some played with their life-enhancer accounts and some played with their food. The credit system was one way of monitoring the relationships between local and international visitor. All credits had to be explained and direct payments to those who were not in employment by the payee were considered suspect. To this end restaurants and shops, spas and salons flourished under the new administration as the city-dwellers found other ways to pay each other. The Punch administrators knew the citizens spending habits and used this information against them. Some citizens created false spending trails to keep the bloodhounds from the scent of their true expenditure. We paid the bill and stepped out into a cool blue night, sounds of piano jazz and blues guitars, smells of foods cooking in the street, the vibrant hum of rapid loud conversation engulfed the night.

  I took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Tell me what you find out about the French kid, it’s important.”

  Kelly nodded and lifted her left foot back, looked into my eyes and smiled. “I think about Jimmy, sometimes,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “He died for what he believed in.”

  “Very few people do,” I said, and it was true. Men went to wars they didn’t believe in because the television and the women who got to stay at home told them it was the right thing to do. Men spent the best years of their lives doing what they didn’t believe in and were slowly drained of life in nursing homes run by bitter faced care-workers who simply looked at a different clock – somehow their hours mattered more than those of the dying. Man strived to buy automobile and refrigerator and wear clothes that made him feel more like the hero he felt he always should have been. Jimmy was young enough to die in the heat of battle and few men have the chance to die a noble death on their own conditions. Yet, few men should have to.