by Steve Aylett
Back at the Reaction, Toto consulted the Parole Violators Bugle, which listed recent crime and updated the figures. One crime per three-point-five. He had eliminated a half-second of peace - but he didn’t lie back. Cloistered in the Reaction basement, he studied the evidence and planned his move. At first he had assumed the cop/underworld deal was one of mutual dependence but he soon came to feel that although cops needed criminals, all criminals needed was cash. Yet he realised that this too was wrong when he seeded a rumour that an amnesty was in the offing in return for a week of no crime. It took two days for the needy to realise they couldn’t live off forgiveness and during those two quiet days the cops went from shock to grateful, easy laughter. They had no dependence on crime at all, so long as they were paid to go to the office.
Of course when no amnesty was declared the cops found themselves slaughtered at every turn. When they traced the crime fluctuations to Toto they squirted a squad of plaingarbs into the Reaction who stuck to him like a smacker to a rainpuddle. But by that time Toto was into another cycle of discouraging lawbreakers. A typical exchange would go something like this:
♦ ♦ ♦
PLAINGARB COP: I don’t mind telling you I could simply eat the concept of death and bloody murder. I won’t be deeply happy until this town is a silhouette of smoke and embers. Can’t you just see it my friend?
TOTO: No sirree. Order is important, or else we’ll all be toasted in our own sin.
PLAINGARB: You don’t believe that - just between you and me Toto, don’t you wish something would break the monotony? Like a strangle-fight on a speeding toboggan for instance. Or a sudden lunging with an ornate oriental blade of some kind - I mean you must be interested in something.
TOTO: No-sir. Bucking the rules like there was no tomorrow leads only to despair and the flimsy bridge to barking disaster. Grim caution, my friend.
♦ ♦ ♦
After an hour of this the plaingarb would stick out his chin like the bony snout of a garfish and hide his face against the bartop, snivelling like a child. The cops never got anything solid enough for the perjury room.
The most surprising result was that Toto had become an A-class denizen. He found he could pounce on docile strangers and yell toxic sedition in the streets with the best of them. He awoke to the side-splitting hilarities of creeping suspicion and mob panic and branded the Reaction with his own signature of flamboyant collapse and carefree violence. Toto’s antagonistic, harrowing meals gained notoriety in hospitals everywhere. He no longer messed with the crime figures as he had worked out the nature of the deal - to make a living by infringing on others. And he wouldn’t have to seek the meaning of anything again, through the simple expedient of living in a miasma of gibbering, demented goons.
HARPOON SEASON
Harpoon Specter was a con-man so adept at manipulating reality he could fall out a window and land on the roof - if he could make a few smackers that way. His least successful shenanigan was to tell people unless they gave him what he wanted he’d sit down and break his own legs then roll around shouting in accusational agony. Nobody obliged, partly because what he was threatening was an integral part of the average Beerlight cabaret act. But there was another reason. Because he wore stolen garments and went around demanding money, everyone assumed he was a lawyer. Always mindful of a scam, Specter began to play along. Pretty soon he got a call from Billy Panacea, burglar extraordinaire, who was in the overnight can for stealing almost everything from a house on Peejay Street. A week later Harpoon stood in the perjury room declaiming like an expert. ‘Your honour, a burglar is the same as a door-to-door salesman, except that he wears a mask and arrives at night. My client went out of his way to remain silent during his activities on the night in question - he wore sneakers, avoided ringing the doorbell, even strangled the family dog to keep it from barking. He did everything so as not to arouse the occupants from their well-earned slumber.’
The judge was slow to concur. ‘Mr Specter, are you trying despite all that’s holy to tell me that Billy Panacea - who is widely known for having burgled the denizens of Beerlight beyond all recognition - is in fact a keeper of the peace and a protester against noise pollution?’
‘You can quote me your honour.’
Billy was sentenced to twenty years and Specter’s identity as a lawyer was sealed in reinforced stone.
But the next case was a fiery test of Specter’s reserves - when he had the privilege of defending Brute Parker, who ran the all-night gun shop on the corner of Dive and Ride. Parker had had a score to settle with an arms dealer entitled Harry Puption. Harry had sold Parker alot of sub-standard fare so it seemed that Parker had set up a nocturnal meeting with Harry at the Puption warehouse and spilled the beans, blowing out lights, drilling Harry and generally making the kind of rumpus associated with blood-spattering ire. The cops, arriving late from another murder, found Parker on the scene with a smoking gun.
A key prosecution witness was the head of the cop unit who found Parker at the warehouse, and when the case came to law he described that event in finely-crafted detail. ‘We were tidying up the mess at the Hurley murder across town when we got a call about the fashionable events occurring at the Puption warehouse. By the time we entered the premises Harry Puption was dead meat on a stick and on a search of the area we hit paydirt like a goddamn rocket - Brute Parker was standin’ in a state of hyperactivity and foamin’ all at the gob. I knew he was out of ammo as my torso remained in tip-top condition. I attempted to inform him of his farcical rights but at this he became exquisitely violent and stated his intention of breaking every bone in my body, including the dozens of tiny cartilaginous ones in my ears. I restrained him with the help of twelve other officers, all of whom are still miraculously alive and kicking, your honour.’
Unperturbed by the testimony, Harpoon stood and strode casually toward the witness box, almost subliminally fastening the centre button on his stolen suit. He paused and, gesturing mildly to the cop, announced - ‘This man has rabies, your honour.’
‘Rabies?’ yelled the judge, and the perjury room was turbulently adjourned.
When the case was resumed, everybody was tense. The cop had been shot, and this had wasted valuable trial time. Specter brought on a witness to whom he had paid a thousand smackers in memory clearance. ‘Sure, I was there that night,’ said the memory man. ‘I remember it as though it were only as bright as yesterday. Heard undeniable noises in the warehouse and went to investigate. It sure was creepy in there, Mr Specter, and that quality became unsurpassed when I realised I was not alone. Someone was lurking to beat the band just outside my line of vision, and he made his presence not unknown to me by stating out of a clear, beautiful blue sky that he was at that moment wearing hydraulically inflated pants.’
‘And is this monster,’ said Harpoon dramatically, ‘anywhere in this room?’
‘Yes he is,’ said the witness assertively, pointing at the judge. ‘That is the man.’
The judge called a recess.
‘Now just what in the computer age are you trying to do?’ said the judge to Harpoon in the back office. ‘I’ll have you know just as well as I do I’ve never even seen a pair of ... so-called inflatable pants.’
‘Well that’s correct, sir - but only a denizen of the inflatable pant community would know that you yourself were not a denizen.’
‘What does it matter if I’m a denizen or not - get the hell out of my office!’
Back in the perj, the judge stated to the jury that the hydraulic-garment-wearing allegation was nothing but a red lie, and ordered that its mention be struck from the record. The incident had wasted three hours of perjury time - enough for Harpoon to brief Parker on his story. The judge gave a warning: ‘Mr Specter, unless you stick to the shocking facts I’ll need a haul truck to convey my disapproval.’
Brute Parker took the stand like an early Christian saint. The sneers of the prosecutor bounced off him like corn-nuts off a movie screen. ‘Me and Harry go way back
and I was due to meet him and talk in a gentlemanly fashion about a certain line in subguns he had acquired.’
‘And is it not increasingly apparent that you took your own death-dealing submachine with you to this midnight assignation?’
‘It is customary,’ Brute conceded tearfully, ‘in the home-defence business to compare steamers with one’s all-too-mortal friends and acquaintances.’
The prosecution asserted that the rules laid down by the lawmakers were more important than Brute’s gunpride, but Brute expressed the belief that lawmakers and guns were one-and-the-same in that both existed to be shot or hung from his belt. This did not go down well with the jury and the judge was surprised that Harpoon wanted to continue. ‘You don’t have a finely-crafted leg to stand on, Mr Specter.’
‘On the contrary your honour,’ said Specter, standing as Brute stood down, ‘I can explain in just five of your Earth minutes what occurred that night. Let us examine the evidence. My godlike client is well-known to the denizens of Beerlight as a believer in gun karma - a belief which states that if you miss the first time, you pay for the bullets you waste by stealing your victim’s ammunition. Now Mr Parker was found holding a Heckler and Koch MP-5 9mm submachine gun with a thirty round clip. Only seven rounds were found in Harry’s body. Parker was out of ammo when the cops arrived. Of the other twenty-three rounds only two were found on the premises. Where’d the other twenty-one go? And if Parker really missed Harry with two slugs, why didn’t he take two of Harry’s slugs in accordance with his personal philosophy? Harry’s gun was as full as a Pez. There are more holes in the prosecution’s case than in Harry Puption’s riddled face your honour.’
Well the prosecution loudly objected, asking how anyone knew that Parker had started out with a full clip.
‘Nobody goes to a hit with less than a full clip in a thirty round sub, your honour.’
‘Objection denied,’ said the judge, bored.
‘It is clear,’ Specter continued, ‘that my client arrived in all innocence at the gore-hung scene of the crime with only two rounds in his subgun, and on seeing Harry so drastically economised, was quite understandably distressed and let off a salute as is the custom in our fair city when mourning the sudden death of a loved one.’
The judge interrupted. ‘You say Parker loved this guy?’
‘Like a brudder,’ sneered Brute, and within an hour was as free and happy as a lark. Harpoon was raised to the status of a legal demigod, and to his distress other people began stealing his garments.
Now the fact is that Brute had indeed set out with a full clip on the evening in question, intending to use all thirty rounds in the dealing of cod eyes, and the only reason he didn’t take any karma slugs from Harry is he deplored his merchandise. Some reckoned Brute was lucky the cops’ arrival had been delayed by having to clean up the mess at the Hurley murder across town, but Brute didn’t think so. He’d also performed the Hurley murder.
BACK AND TO THE LEFT
In a town where bulletproof underwear is openly on sale, paranoia is regarded not as a mental aberration but as a way of staying ahead of the game. To the denizens of Beerlight the notion that ‘you never know until you try’ is laughable in its lack of foresight. Carl Overchoke was further ahead of this particular game than anybody - in fact he found himself alone. When asked why he was feeling so sorry for himself he answered without deceit that it was a result of looking objectively at his situation. So it was like putting fire to a rocket when Harpoon Specter the lawyer and con-man stopped Carl in the street and whispered to damn well look out - he had it on good authority that Carl was under surveillance. ‘Take care you courageous son of a bitch they’re onto you.’ Specter walked quickly on and filled so full of hilarity he had to duck into an alley to laugh.
Back in the street, Carl hadn’t moved. ‘Holy Christ,’ he muttered to himself, ‘the trash of my existence has finally hit the fan.’
Then he saw some guy down the block reading a newspaper in an obvious attempt to look geometrical. And there was a van, parked across the street - damn thing stood out a mile, plastered with legal licence plates. Carl felt suddenly disorientated, like Robert Southey trying on his first dress. The guys in the van mustn’t know he’d been tipped off - he had to go about in seeming innocence. How do you do that?
For two days he holed up in his bug-encrusted apartment, where the facts of his predicament caused an obscure foreboding - it was like hearing gorillas in the next room.
After the initial shock he ventured out, settling down to the unfamiliar sense that his actions mattered to somebody. He began to see everything in a new context - he felt important. It was like a drug. Knowing that all he did was being recorded and filed, his every move was loaded with significance. He found he appreciated even the little things in life, like boiling an egg. It was like being in a movie. Just a walk down the street was a fiery jamboree of rich sensation.
As he went through his day he imagined the report: ‘Subject bought two cartons milk at deli, bought head of lettuce, three tomatoes, crackers, pure orange - at 22.00 hours proceeded home via Chain Street.’ This was great! He even started varying his routine, incorporating shadowy behaviour to give them something to think about. For the first time in his life, he felt someone cared.
It wasn’t long before people began to notice a change in Carl Overchoke. He had become a voluble, self-assured presence. He came into the Delayed Reaction Bar and ordered highgrade for a certain selection of people - different people each night - according to a covert pattern known only to himself. Everybody there began exercising strenuous efforts to understand this pattern. When asked, he would smile and tap the side of his nose. He acquired a huge, heavy coat and cut a much more significant and noticeable figure in the street nowadays. Nobody knew where he went home. And he made more mysterious phonecalls than the devil himself. People wanted to know what he was into, and pretty soon he began taking select personalities aside and telling them in confidence that if they weren’t careful they’d die with a velocity that would surprise everyone. The shit was coming down, he said, for real. He’d stop strangers in the street and say ‘It’s on’ out of the corner of his mouth. He’d rearrange merchandise in a particular manner and then wink significantly at the cashier. Even the lawyer and con-man Harpoon Specter began to regard him with a new and cautious respect. Carl knew something, and everyone but Carl was talking about it.
It was Carl’s very lack of curiosity that made him the bullseye of cop attention. Even Chief of the Cops Henry Blince, who for years had been passing himself off as a biped, noticed that there was alot more going on in the way of conspiracy and funny hand-signals these days. And on investigating Carl he found him busier than a bastard in a rainforest. It was well known that the denizens of Beerlight passed the time of day in the pursuit of relentless deviance and paused only to gnaw at a snared dove or burn the mayor in effigy. Morals were flung like bails into the inferno of the city’s cheerful and inexpensive pastimes. All this was harmless and traditional but Carl was clearly the calm centre of a more insidious storm. When Blince asked a regular of the Delayed Reaction to repeat what Carl had been saying, the guy spoke florid, whooping nonsense in a hoarse voice full of good humour and illegal sedation. When recorded and played in reverse, he seemed to be saying, ‘The best things in life are gratuitous, gentlemen.’
This was too big for Blince’s men, who after years of undiluted mayhem had become almost undergraduate with misery. He called in the feds, who set up a sprawling and decorous surveillance network with the express aim of catching Carl with his mouth in the pie. Within a week they had gathered incriminating evidence the implications of which stretched beyond the human range. Contacts, names, beverages - everything was recorded as Carl wove a web of intrigue through the city, making signals and remarks which everyone professed to understand. From the first recorded day, he was stating right out that he was under surveillance - how he knew this the feds couldn’t begin to guess. He spoke into phone
s without dialling, so that anyone in the nation with the right equipment could pick up the message and remain untraceable. State of the art. In a swoop on the Delayed Reaction the feds arrested Carl and dragged him out backwards so that if he tripped he would appear to be struggling and they could hit or shoot him with impunity. But Carl was in a state of bliss - the fiery release which accompanied the final reconciliation of thought and reality. This was all the evidence he needed. He lay back and let the public disorder wash over him.
People ran after the armoured van as it took Carl away - but they couldn’t keep up. They’d never find out the secrets he had always been on the brink of whispering, or experience the festive revolt he had had up his sleeve. Were the case ever heard in the perjury room, Carl would have only said that the prosecution were out to get him.
I thought I saw him a year later in O’Hara Park - he told me he’d decided to shave his beard.
‘But you haven’t got a beard,’ I said. ‘You’ve never had one.’
He regarded me with a strange smile. ‘Now you know why.’
NO MORE SORRY
Charlie Hiatus found himself on the corner of Ride and Crane at a loss as to who he was. He hadn’t any memory of his life and affairs - all he knew was that he was a denizen of Beerlight. He looked up. The sky was as blank as his mind.
Charlie sauntered up Ride Street, looking at the traffic. Someone unrolled a window especially to tell him he was an asshole who should die in flames if there were any justice. Charlie thanked him - already he was filling in the gaps in his knowledge. ‘But there isn’t any justice,’ the driver added with a yell and accelerated away. Charlie thanked him again and made a note of it with cheery optimism. He strolled on, blessedly possessed of an innocence denied those with any memory of their behaviour.
