by Steve Aylett
‘So next I go up onto the roofgarden - real nice roofgarden - and almost straight away I perceive this big ugly goddamn tortoise lumbering around, draggin’ a piece of lettuce. Well by now I know how the gun startles people and I don’t want to scare the whole neighbourhood, so I put on an oven mitt, pick this tortoise up and throw it over the edge. Right about then the occupants come out on to the roof, see - the wife’s crying, out of gratitude I thought, and carrying that damned dog in both arms like damp laundry. “Don’t think nothin’ of it lady,” I say. “I’m just in it for the cash.”
‘Well the guy of the house proceeds in the activity of rolling up his sleeves and advancing toward me, inexplicably bent on destruction. And since I am now lying on the garden chair in the knowledge of a job well done, I do not have my equipment right to hand and I am caught unawares. Now it is a practice of mine never to punch a man whose face is redder on the outside than mine is on the inside, and so I leapt up and ran as fast as my arms and legs could carry me. When I got to the office and told my employer of these incidents he nearly punched me with his knife and told me right out to never darken his life again. It seems that bad luck will cling to me like a dry fern for the whole of my formless career.’
Well after Tony Endless had finished relating all this to me, I advised him to go home and forget that these fashionable events had ever happened. After all, he wasn’t the first guy to have shot a dog, especially in Beerlight. Tony agreed without enthusiasm and left the bar under a cloud of dejection.
It was four minutes past one the next afternoon when Tony Endless re-entered the Delayed Reaction with a new exuberance.
‘You know my unfortunate social gaffe yesterday morning?’ he said to me, sitting down. ‘The news of it has swept this town like a pestilence and been the catalyst for a most unexpected opportunity. When I got home yesterday after conversing with you, the phone did not stop ringing. It seems there is a great demand for the absence of dogs and the like in certain homes, and here is the man who can provide that absence.’
I was as shocked as I was able.
‘Do you mean to tell me you fully intend to stalk the Beerlight community shooting the life out of housedogs like some low-grade Travis Bickle?’
‘No indeed,’ he laughed. ‘For I have discovered that there is a corresponding demand for the warm presence of such creatures in yet other homes. I can provide both services and be paid twice over. All I need is an answerphone, a landing net, a dogbasket, a flashlight, and housebreaking lessons from someone such as Billy Panacea, burglar extraordinaire, and I’ll be laughing fit to burst.’
And so it was. If anyone wanted to be rid of such mammals and reptiles as they possessed without the authorities or others in the household knowing of this desire, that person would call the Tony Endless Bestial Relocation Service - and under cover of darkness Tony would convey these creatures to those who had contacted him with a wish to care for them. Tony was his own boss. Within a year he had made a fortune, and he nocturnally replaced the pets of the couple on Chain Street - in fact they found such a frenzied menagerie of stepping and winged animals in their home I bet they’re too busy to remember Tony Endless, or even to go out and make a decent living.
HIT
There’s nothing so degrading as being killed by a stranger. It wrecks continuity. Murder should occur among friends, or so went the opinion of Brute Parker who ran the all-night gun shop on the corner of Dive and Ride. So when Terry Tremelo asked him a certain favour, Brute was uncooperative. The target was a total stranger living in Maui, and despite Terry Tremelo’s mafia connections Parker was bound to refuse.
‘Parker,’ said Terry Tremelo, ‘I’ll have you know as well as I do this aint a mob hit - this guy double-crossed me in a bit of business I was working on the side and I want him in lavender at the nearest and dearest opportunity. Do you mean to stand by these unholy principles?’
‘As I would stand by a friend’s grave, Terry Tremelo - I do not know the guy and if I were to ventilate him, my associates would think me reckless and uncouth. And anyway he is in Maui, and I do not care to see so many smiling faces.’
‘Well here’s an idea -’ said Tremelo, ‘- go on over and get to know the guy - tell him you’re on vacation. Then when you’re good pals, air him out. Anyone smiles at you, bust ’em in the nose same as you do here. But listen, my bet is you’ll wanna bury the guy soon as you meet him - even his brain’s got a tan.’
Now Brute could not see any argument against this, especially with Terry offering twenty thousand smackers up front, so he left El Henry in charge of the store and headed out. He took a modified Remington automatic which he took apart and mailed ahead in gift wrapping, carrying only the barrel onto the plane disguised as an extra broad stick of spaghetti.
The target’s name was Luke Amble - Brute located him at a bar and was about to start a conversation when Luke ordered a round for everyone and began letting off firecrackers. Then everyone went down to the beach and proceeded in the activity of eating coconuts and Luke Amble, laughing fit to burst, opened ten crates of beer. Luke Amble balanced a barbecue spike on his nose while doing a limbo, then took a load of people out to teach them to waterski. Now it was a great surprise to Brute Parker to find himself among the people being taught this skill, and an even greater surprise to find he was getting a blast out of it. Looking down he found he was wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He could ski-jump better than anyone off the ramps. In fact Brute was in his element among these characters, and a figure of great popularity. Over the next three days he and Luke were inseparable and at one point set fire to the pants of a priest, staggering off in a rictus of hilarity. Luke Amble was a nice guy who was generous to everyone.
One day the two were sipping tequilas at the beach bar and Brute Parker addressed Luke Amble like this: ‘I have certainly enjoyed this visit to Maui, Luke Amble. You have taught me to ski on the water and I had always believed that the only use for such a fluid was in the flushing away of my throat-knife on the arrival of the cops. Why I can even view the scenery in sunlight without wanting to barf. Luke Amble, you are a friend of mine if ever there was one. But Luke, I have a fiery confession. Terry Tremelo has paid me twenty thousand smackers to shoot you in the face until dead.’
Now at this Luke Amble poured his tequila into the wrong orifice he was so surprised, and began begging for mercy, weeping in the shade of the pineapples. And he soon began to yammer about Terry’s bit of business on the side and how Terry was laundering the mob’s money until it was practically his own, and how Luke had ceased to help him on realising to whom the money rightly belonged. For this Terry wanted Luke aired out, and to top it all Luke described Terry as such a shyster as to be almost from Texas.
‘Well Luke,’ stated Brute Parker, ‘do not trouble yourself on account of my bloody mission. I find that you have done so much for me that I am a changed man - in fact I may have changed by as much as eight percent, and that’s good enough for me. I promise that your face and body will remain intact, as an appalling gesture of my esteem.’
Luke Amble was most relieved at this turn of events, not to mention in clinical shock - but Parker was nagged by a detail. ‘My old friend Terry Tremelo has paid me to do a job,’ he said, ‘and I’ll have you know as well as I do my Remington is expecting to be let out for some exercise.’
Well it happened that the mob didn’t mind when Terry Tremelo was found drilled full of beans from a Remington automatic as they had it from Brute Parker he’d been doing a little business on the side, and if there’s one thing the mob deplore, it’s an abuse of friendship.
SENTIMENT
Billy Panacea, burglar extraordinaire, was regarded by the denizens of Beerlight as a young man of enterprise. There were few souls below the age of thirty who would choose such a traditional, specialised and thankless profession, especially without a gun. And because he looked so benign Billy got away with alot early on - the first time he was arrested with an overnight bag of burgled
goods he was fined for opening a door with an expired loyalty card.
It was Billy’s belief that there are some things that don’t exist in retail reality - they exist in the reality of stealing or being stolen. All it takes is a little personality. For him, cracking wasn’t a challenge but a physical form of sarcasm. He told me that doors were invented to let people in and out, and that as long as doors were included in the design of safes, vaults and houses, they would continue to serve this purpose.
However, there was one safe Billy had never been able to penetrate. This safe had originally been acquired by Dane Eliot, an old hand who it seemed had bungled the job and carried the safe away in the hope of blowing it later. Dane was as savage as a dog and had gotten so angry during the course of the burglary that he killed his partner, severing the guy’s head and leaving a mess on the premises. Billy Panacea intercepted the safe just after Dane’s arrest and it was now his habit to tinker with it between crimes, trying out a new gizmo or explosive on each occasion. Billy did not want the box on display at his place in case he should have critical visitors and so I myself agreed to keep it in my yard.
Billy told me the safe was made of high-security armour. He tried using a core drill, which caved in the side-wall and made Billy nervous; a torch, which did nothing; and even some old-fashioned slow-burn acid. Finally he hit it with an 84mm round from an AT8 anti-tank gun while I was eating breakfast. I ran out to the yard in great alarm to find Billy crouching in front of the blasted-open safe. Clearly visible in the safe was a guy’s head which was sadly not accompanied by a body.
‘Billy you twisted son of a bitch,’ I yelled, ‘how dare you secrete a severed head in my yard, even if it is surrounded by high-security armour. Get it out of here on the double or I’ll be sick.’
‘This safe was hermetically sealed –’ Billy marvelled, ‘- the head is in tip-top condition and has not decomposed in the slightest.’
‘What does it matter the condition of the head,’ I shouted. ‘You cannot have a severed head unclaimed in Beerlight.’
‘This head is not unclaimed,’ laughed Billy. ‘This is the head of Dane Eliot’s partner in crime, whom Dane decapitated the night the safe was removed from the premises. It is a fact of the matter that nobody ever found this item and that nobody could identify the corpse without it. Dane is gonna love us.’
I had my doubts about this notion but Billy Panacea insisted we slam the head in the refrigerator and pay a visit to Dane in the state pen. Dane was pleased to see us until we mentioned the item in the safe, at which he took a drag on the wrong end of his cigarette and commenced in the activity of sneering through the grill of the visitors’ barrier. ‘Billy,’ he said to Billy, ‘I have been concerned about the location of that safe since the cops picked me up - I should have known a young gun like you would acquire it. Armour-piercing shells eh Billy? You could not use that on a premises in the dark hours.’
‘How did you open the safe that night, Dane?’ Billy asked him. ‘And why did you use it to stash the bonce?’
‘I will not tell you how I opened that box,’ laughed Dane, ‘for in six years I will get out of here and you and I will be in competition. But I wound down my partner that evening because he had given me info on the contents of the safe - cash and other trinkets beyond our imagining he said. And when I opened it, there were no contents whatever. I became emotional and my partner’s head got a little loose - so I stashed it in the safe and drove it to the basement on Hole Street. And here I am doing only ten years. It is lucky Captain Orlok retired from the force just before then or I would be doing twenty.’
‘Did this Captain Orlok have a downer on you?’ I asked.
‘No indeed,’ said Dane in a mysterious manner. ‘Some people is stupid, is all.’
‘Some people might say you are not a bulging genius for being here in the state pen,’ remarked Billy Panacea, and Dane became indignant.
‘I have more brains than you, Billy Panacea, so-called burglar extraordinaire, who cannot open a box without the aid of a howitzer. I have outsmarted the cops because I am right in one unholy respect - they could not identify the body without the head. There is no end of denizens of Beerlight with Chairman Mao tattooed on their chest.’ Dane laughed. ‘Anyhow, the item you found is surely rotted beyond recognition by now.’
‘On the contrary,’ announced Billy Panacea, ‘it is as fresh as a babe and I recognise the face upon it as though it were yesterday. In fact I intend to name names to the authorities in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
At this Dane spat out his gasper and began to cough like a theatregoer, looking fearfully aside at the prison guards. ‘Keep your relentless voice down Billy Panacea.’
‘I will if you tell me how you opened that box so quiet,’ said Billy.
Dane thought about it. ‘You have me over a barrel and through a glass darkly, Billy Panacea. Gimme a pen and tell that clown to look the other way.’
Well I was aggrieved at being referred to as a clown, and in consequence decided to peek at what Dane was writing down. But he wasn’t writing anything down - he was breaking off the end of the pen in a particular manner and handing it back to Billy. ‘This will take you into any safe in the country before you can say Saint Peter. Now get out of here Billy and keep your shapeless mouth shut.’
That very night Billy paid a nocturnal visit to a premises he’d had his eye on, and the customised pen worked like a fish. When Billy came by the next morning to dispose of the head he was as happy as a dog in a sidecar. As we weighted the item and dropped it into the bay I asked Billy to whom it rightly belonged.
‘It is the noggin of none other than Captain Orlok,’ laughed Billy. ‘That safe resided at the cop den, and Captain Orlok must have told Dane what it contained the day he left the force. The contents were in fact the various articles I myself acquired at the age of twenty on my very first nocturnal job, and which were found on my person by Captain Orlok himself. This is why the box has such sentimental value. The goods must have been returned to their original owner before Dane got there - but finding Captain Orlok himself in the box is worth all my efforts. I remember he stood up for my character in court. I would recognise that dumb expression anywhere.’
TURNAROUND
It was more than trouble Tudor Garris got into when he emptied Kicker Charlie’s casino on Valentine Street. If you win more than once at paynose you’re either cheating or lucky, and both these conditions are frowned upon by the management. In fact the management frown all the way to their fists, and any big win is signified by the sound of skulls breaking like crockery. It was while idly watching one lucky player plunge through the trashcans behind Kicker’s casino that an idea kissed the mind of Tudor Garris. Just because you’re a fool doesn’t mean you’re a loser.
There was a saying at Kicker’s paynose table - ‘Round and round and round it goes, and where it stops, only Kicker knows.’ There was more machinery in Kicker’s paynose table than in the history of the US space programme. With every spin of the wheel the national grid experienced a power drain. Depressives flocked to the table in the hope of catching a buzz. Serious players wore grounding boots. On one occasion the wheel wouldn’t move because Kicker had forgotten to plug it in. Innovative bookies such as Lou Shallow took odds on whether players would die from cranial fractures or electrocution. The source-adjustable industrial magnet housed under the wheel was so powerful that bridgework, belts, daggers and handguns were yanked from the convulsing players and later sold back to them at prices which could only be seen in their entirety by means of a compound eye.
It was desolately clear to everyone that Kicker was the key, since he decided the winning digit. Some bet on Kicker’s house number. For two months Tudor Garris went only 23 and 10, working a system based on the birthday of Kicker’s mother. The gambler Sammy Vale, who owed Kicker a thousand smackers, rigged Kicker’s house with subliminal speakers which repeated the number 25 over and over, but rather than induce Kicker to punch this
number on the wheel, this elaborate system induced Kicker to punch Sammy Vale 25 times on the nose. Some said the spin never landed on 36 because Kicker couldn’t count that far.
Tudor Garris finally paid a visit to his pal Ben Rictus at the power plant. The power company paid Ben barely enough to keep him in codeine, and Ben had a mordantly expensive project to pursue. Garris struck a deal with Ben Rictus whereby Ben would send a power surge into Kicker Charlie’s at the height of the evening’s regret, and in return Garris would pay Ben Rictus ten thousand smackers to blow on whatever.
Now that night was as busy as ever what with gambling being illegal in Beerlight and in the back room Kicker was rubbing his hands together at such a blur he nearly discovered fire. Everything was going fine until a maniacal burst of electricity seared through the paynose wheel and the players found themselves looking wild-haired into the turbo of a jet engine - chips scattered like leaves, alcohol hailed and all but Tudor Garris fervently believed that Judgment Day had visited Kicker Charlie’s. The paynose ball had left the wheel at a speed immeasurable to the human eye. A beverage crashed through a one-way mirror and revealed operators frantically punching controls like Oz’s curtain puppeteer. Everyone bolted, hiding under tables and repeating mantras normally reserved for moments of gunfire exchange. Kicker burst out of the back room and surged across the casino floor like a mime walking against the wind. Clambering onto the table, he filled out like a balloon, upward aircourses billowing his suit as he gestured with a cigar that was flaring like a firecracker.
