by James Newman
“Shame is about how we feel about ourselves. When we grow up as dirty babies, we attach a lot of shame to ourselves. Do you know what a dirty baby is? No? Well, I’ll tell you. Mother has twelve kids running around the joint. She doesn’t hardly remember your name. You know what it’s like growing up when nobody knows your name? I guess not, sweetie, bet you were on the princess circuit from the moment you pushed your way out of the furry trap. Us dirty babies grow up with shame. We know that we’re no damn good and if anyone says any different we’re learning that there’s somebody who we can find a use for. The con man has no sympathy for the mark. The hustler doesn’t cry for his victims. Those who grow up with shame don’t get to experience guilt. What I plan to do to you will be completely guilt free for me. For you, well, maybe you’ll start up a little shame complex of your own after this episode. Maybe you won’t want to look at that pretty face in the mirror much ever again. Maybe you might take this experience out on someone close to you? I can’t say that I know or even care. That’s the thing with guilt you have to have someplace to view it from.”
Frankie walked over to the window and gazed out across the ocean.
He whistled softly. “Must rock to look at this every morning. This is the kind of place I could be getting used to. Mind if I put on some music?”
Frankie walked over to the stereo and flicked through a number of CD cases, selecting a title and inserting it into the machine he smiled. “Bach. He had seventeen kids or some shit – some of them must have been real DIRTY BABIES. You know what he did? He still found the time to pen genius. I wonder if Bach was a guilt or a shame guy?”
Frankie lowered himself to where Trixie sat slumped on the floor. His hand brushed over her shoulder as he loosened the strap of her tank top, the lettering of which amused him.
UP TO U
THIRTY-FOUR
“YOU ARE a simple random test subject. One of the Fun City bums.”
I thought that there was more to it but didn’t say so. “Do you know who the pushers are? I mean names, addresses?”
“You’re not worth losing more body parts over, Dylan.”
“Sure. And you know what the implant does?”
“I’d say it controls a man. Easy to take a man down that doesn’t fight back, take drugs, or make love.”
“Make love?”
“No, love is the wrong word. Excuse me; there were problems with the program. That was one part of the program we couldn’t figure out. Let’s say invests in the act of commercial or deviant sex. The animal lust reflex has been isolated and its trigger removed. According to the Wujing Zongyao 9th century text, a Chinese herbalist invented gunpowder looking for a longevity serum. In a way, he got it. When Albert Einstein visited Los Alamos to see what the Americans had done with the atom bomb, he broke down and cried. There is no love gene it seems. Many scientists consider it a simple momentary loss of sanity, a form of psychosis, if you will.”
“Have you been implanted?”
“Good heavens, no. You have to be a deviant or die of boredom in my condition. They did something much worse to me. They took away my hands. The kind of routine task you do a thousand times with no problem until one time, slam, looking the other way, a ton of metal crushes your hands. Of course, they made it look like an accident. Paid out an insurance claim. Life without hands isn’t easy. I heard the bones crack and when the machine was lifted back up, they flapped around like the useless appendages that they now are. Helicopter flew me to the hospital and the amputations were performed there. I say performance with the true meaning of the word. You ever felt cold metal sawing through your own bone?”
Told him I hadn’t.
“The nurses were kind, scratched my back. Masturbated me. You ever been whacked of by a nurse in the hospital, Joe? That’s what I love about this city. Love and sexual acts are completely separate, you see. Going for a soapy massage is just the same as going for a haircut. They see no harm in it. And when you have no hands, well, they look at it like a way of earning good karma. I’m the homeless dog at the end of the street deserving of a bowl of sticky rice. I am the blind lottery ticket salesman who sells the most tickets. Here, in the land of frog-scratchers, the no-handed-man is king. Do you follow?”
“I see it. Forget the harmless small talk. Tell me what you need?”
“I have a problem.” The man swallowed a small bottle of Tiger Sweat that Honey poured down his throat. Drink was a cage, a cage I was in and out of, and that cage that lost me a fortune. Birds sang in cages. The ones who were born inside the cage sang loudest. My father had told me he I would amount to nothing and I was almost there. Mother, another story...What do parents do if not transplant shame onto a blank canvas?
“Money, women, or both?” I asked.
THIRTY-FIVE
EYES STUCK together with sleep, Trixie rolled over and sat. The room was empty, her wrists and ankles bound by electrical tape. She rolled over towards the coffee table, and using the roughed edge, she tried to saw through the tape. After several minutes, she concluded that it was useless. The surface was not rough enough to afford any purchase on the tape.
She tried the door.
Locked from the outside.
Her mind was pumping vision after vision but she had a slight grain of resistance, she knew something was wrong, she knew that she had to escape.
The window.
No, it was too high up.
Then she remembered the filing cabinet used to store some of her sketches, it was metal and an inside drawer, the third one from the top had a rough lip to the slide panel.
She made her way over, legs and wrists bound together, she used snake like movements wriggling towards to unit. The drawer she opened with a free finger and began to saw away the tape.
Within a quarter of an hour, both hands were free. Trixie used her free hands to open a kitchen drawer and selected a kitchen knife with a good serrated edge. She cut away the foot bindings.
She went to the bathroom and checked her reflection. Her mouth was dry and her face was red. She considered taking a shower – no, too risky – if she could just make it to room 303 at Dylan’s hotel. She quickly changed tops and headed towards the door, twisted the handle, and was out on the landing, the heat blasted at her, the ways of the apartment seemed to breathe the colors swirling like a Van Gogh painting. She took the stairs and panted when she reached the ground level. She saw a motorbike taxi and began to call it over when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. She spun around to see the rat blowing a palm full of Devil’s Breath into her face before waving his fingers in front of her eyes like evil itself.
THIRTY-SIX
BY THE beach, locals sat on the wall discussing the passing tourist crowd with evil, cynical tongues sneering like disgruntled art critics picking apart the banality of a popular song. A body-builder wearing nothing but tiny shorts, beach shoes, and a maze of tattoos strutted along the Beach Road, head moving back and forward like a steroid cockerel. Across the road and into Happy Street, Hawaiian shirts stitched from bright gaudy cloth with florescent pineapples and floral patterns, necklaces and wrist chains of soft yellow gold. Open toed sandals, leather, rubber, plastics, deck shoes and Nike Air Max. There were women in tight cocktail dresses and three-inch heels, fish net stockings and blood red lipstick. There were men in business suits with walking sticks and glasses. There was all this – but most of all, there was that continual shuffling, that toing and froing, chattering, chuckling, that rolling and lapping of this wave of humanity as it bottle-necked through the narrow streets before the torrent filtered off into the glittering pools of after hour neon descent.
Crossed over and double backed along Main Street, past the jazz bar, through the tunnel, past the Very Special People bar, past the Star Bar. The streets that Kurt navigated the nights leading up into the big jump and up towards the CBD, the floor reception pointed towards the elevator and I rose up into the FC sky.
Brett was heading for the elevator as I was heading
out of it. He frowned for a moment and then he composed himself and smiled, “Joe, I have some tapes for you. I say tapes, it is so old fashioned of me. I have a disc...”
“Footage from the Chinese?”
“Exactly, but I’m afraid I can’t let you take it, company policy. Follow me.” He swished back in the direction to which he came and opened a door that led to a screening room, pressed some switches, a large screen TV lit up. He slid in the disk and played with a remote. “You can buzz down to security if you need anything. I’m afraid I have a dinner meeting.” He made a vague gesture and then he exited the room. “Lord knows when these were shot. You will have to work your way back from recent footage, they’ve left it rolling since they left. Next time, you will have to repay me in full,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
I let the machine roll.
The camera pans side to side of Happy Street, black and white, slowly, scopes out the wave of tourists and regulars, a few street workers that I recognize, some minor drug dealers and shoe shine kids, beggars and urchins. I take out the photograph of Kurt and finding some adhesive tape, I post it next to the screen. I imagine Kurt walking, talking, dancing, I imagine him playing guitar and talking with his Grandmother, I imagine him in Fun City. Picture him there and then adjust the disc to double speed and watch the night accelerate. The street speeds up with mind spinning accuracy, beer bellied tourists come in and out of shot in seconds, rolling, as they do, from bar to bar. Long limbed transsexuals moved with rubber limbs like predatory moths as the night, having no other choice, wore on.
I caught a glimpse of Kelly, and then she disappeared through a red velvet curtained doorway into an exclusive member’s only club. Heart tugs and then The Rat blew powder into the face of a passing woman. I hit the pause, rewound, focused in, the woman’s name was Trixie.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SEVENTEEN FLOORS up.
Didn’t knock, didn’t ring the bell, and didn’t make a telephone call first.
Oh, no.
I smashed the fucking door in.
The Rat was sitting at a table flicking through a copy of International Historic. Next to him lay a syringe. Trixie was on the floor, her hands tied with electrical tape, her mouth taped shut. Conscious, trying to free her wrists, her eyes widened.
The Rat was trying to formulate words but the words wouldn’t form. Walked to him and held his left arm down to the table, and with my free hand, took the loaded syringe from his right mitt and gave him the whole load in one hit. His eyes rolled back as he slumped back into the chair. I removed the Omega from his wrist and put it back onto my wrist.
Father would be proud.
“Did you have to kill him?”
“Probably not, but I owed him credit.”
“Well, he can’t stay here.”
“Okay, let me think of something, you get cleaned up. Did he hurt you?”
She remained silent, I took her by the shoulders, said it again. “Did he touch you?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said timidly. “I just need the bathroom right now.”
She trotted off and I checked the Rat’s pulse. He was dead aright, not cold, but he would be soon. Like most junkies and rats, he was light in weight and I figured I could get him to the elevator and out onto the street. Before doing so, I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen. I laid The Rat on his back and poured the rest of the bottle down his throat making sure that plenty of the liquid splashed over his shirt and chest. Carried him to the elevator and took the ride down. Nobody passed, not even a night watchman out at the desk out front. For once, the gods were smiling. Walked him like walking a drunk home from the bar, arms propping him up. One block east and hailed an FC taxi. Bundled The Rat in the back and gave him the directions to a dive in the Darkside of town, a house that used be lived in by Slim Jim, who also took the night train in a much more glorious fashion. The driver didn’t look impressed until a double credit changed his expression to one of delight.
Walked back up to Trixie’s apartment block and rode the elevator up to the seventeenth floor and rung the bell. She answered with a baseball bat in her hand. “Let’s get a drink,” I said before remembering that I couldn’t.
“There’s something inside my head,” she said.
“You too?”
“They got you?”
“Yes, but, I think it is temporary. You know about The Resistance. They live beneath the City. I need access to their underground world. I need a way in.”
Trixie closed the door and joined me on the outside. “I think I know just the two men who can help us,” she said. “They’re freaks, but well connected.”
“Cake Hole?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m a frigging detective, Honey. Only thing I don’t know is where they are living.”
“I got it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you worked for the Eye?”
“It didn’t seem the best time. I’ve left that all behind.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
TRIXIE RANG the bell.
A back alley connecting the back bars of Beach Road to The Darkside.
A hatch slid open and a pair of eyes looked in on us. “Trixie, honey, where you been?”
“Tied up by a Rat, Cakehole. How’s your week been?”
“Intense, intense, Honey. Are you alone? I smell heat.”
“I have a friend.”
“It’s okay. We’ve met,” I said walking into the field of vision. “Dylan, Joe Dylan.”
The door crept open slightly. “Hey, the private dick, did you find out what gave with the French kid?”
The door opened wider and we walked in.
“Working on it. How are you up there, High Tower?”
High Tower grunted and the twins turned and walked downstairs into the bowels of their dwelling.
“I need to go underground.”
“Don’t we all, Honey. There is often a way.”
“The sewers?” I said walking into their dwelling. It was a slum ground floor apartment with bullfighter posters on the wall, a floor lava lamp, a narrow sofa and a coffee table. “Can you get us inside?”
Cake Hole pointed towards a bookcase, High Tower walked over as his twin grabbed a large hardback notebook. “One of The Resistance left this in the bar. I wouldn’t call it stealing...”
High Tower sat on the floor and his twin laid the book on the coffee table and opened it. “Here, is like a map. Kinda sketchy, but if you see here, this is The Beach, and over there, is the Dark Side. If you line it up, you come to the pool, and behind The Theater Bizarre, it has to be here. Somebody here may be able to explain the journey in more detail. I believe you two have met. HT, open the hatch.”
The twins walked through the living area and towards a large framed painting of the city. High Tower lifted the painting from the wall to reveal a wooden hatch. “This used to be the old city ice works. Nobody goes back here. Well, apart from somebody we picked up at the bar last night.” The sound of wood on metal as the latch fell and the hatch opened. Inside a dim light, a man, laid down on his side. His shoulder bandaged; his arm in cast.
“Been looking for you,” Jimmy said, smiling. He moved towards the opening and once out, stood shakily on his legs.
“I thought you were dead, man. The city issued a death certificate.”
“The city does a lot of things, Joe.”
“I searched.”
“I went underground.”
“Let’s sit down,” Cake Hole said. “Talk about this.”
“I’m going down...”
“I’m going with you,” Trixie smiled.
“I can do it alone, be less conspicuous. You wait here.”
“Never gonna happen, Dylan.”
“That’s where I can help,” Jimmy said. “Pass me that map. You see right here is where you go down. Beneath the city, there are tunnels, like a rabbit warr
en. Or maybe more like a rat’s nest.”
“I hate rats.”
“You see The Resistance members who accomplish the most missions are known as Fast Rats. They accomplish smash and grab missions. Taking supplies from the Eye.”
“The Eye?”
“The Eye’s brain is down there, man. All the controls of the City are down under the city.”
“Is this true?” I turned to Trixie.
“I was taken by underground shuttle from the CBD, one stop in and one stop out. From there we were guided to an office. That was all. I have no idea about the network.”
“Right, so let’s get this straight. The Eye is the brain of the city, every piece of surveillance, every recorded conversation and video is kept down there.”
“Hard drives the size of a house,” Jimmy said.
“All the information is there, Joe,” Trixie said. “This is where the Punch is performed. Think of it as the conditioning center.”
“They would also have laboratories down there. The capability to remove this implant?”
“What?” Jimmy’s eyes rose.
“They got me. They also got the French kid I was working on.”
“Kurt?”
“You knew him?”
“We were like brothers. Look, Joe, if you go down there, don’t mention the implant. The Resistance encouraged Kurt to go back overground when they found about it.”
“Why?”
“They assumed a tracking device would be installed.”
“Why would the city need a tracking device? They know everything that is going on up here.”
“Yes, up here, but not down there,” Trixie said. “Once you go into the tunnels the Eye loses you.”
“Why don’t they blow the whole thing up?”
“They can’t. It’s connected up too delicately. Think of the Eye as the pupil and The Resistance tunnels as the optic nerves. Kill one and the other one dies.”
“But if we can find a way to destroy the records, remove the implant.”
“This is where I could come in useful,” she said. “I have access codes to some of the files. I am still authorized to issue low security level commands.”
