William S. Burroughs

by The Place of Dead Roads

  "Drug laws," Anslinger said, "must reflect society's disapproval of the addict." And here is Reverend Braswell in the Denver Post: "Homosexuality is an abomination to God and should never be recognized as a legal human right any more than robbery or murder." We seek a Total Solution to the Shit Problem: Slaughter the shits of the world like cows with the aftosa.

  Some spotters cultivate an inconspicuous appearance and demeanor. They do not provoke aggressive or discourteous behavior. Other spotters will follow. Some will belong to ethnic minorities. Others may be marked by some eccentricity of dress or manner. Some will be obvious gays...reactions of the towns people carefully noted. Then the Shit Slaughter units move in...

  Accidents: Nobody was very much concerned or surprised when Old Man Brink's cabin burned down with him in it...Death by misadventure...

  Dark interior of a filthy cabin...snoring noises from a pile of rags...a youth with MISS ADVENTURE on his T-shirt is revealed as he lights a kerosene lamp. He tosses the lamp into the room.

  "Hellfire, you old fuck."

  Illnesses that can be easily induced: Five cases of typhoid were traced to a church supper and the sheriff got botulism in a segregated restaurant.

  In many cases it is simply necessary to put the shit out of action, to close his store, his restaurant, his hotel, or deprive him of office.

  Here is a town of two thousand people. The spotters have picked a hundred twenty-three hardcore shits. If over a period of several months these shits die, become sick, go insane, go bankrupt, no one in the town thinks anything about it...no apparent relation between disparate incidents...no pattern...

  Kim knows he is perfectly safe so long as he stays in Saint Albans. He also knows he has to move on. He has more important things to do than shoot stock-killing dogs or maybe run some squatter off the land...

  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

  To rust unburnished, not to shine in use...

  A special meeting to reconsider our Mafia policy. Present directives advocate containing the animal in a folkloric ghetto of godfathers, red wine and garlic, and button men wallowing on their filthy mattresses. Let them burn each other's olive oil, throw dead rats into rival pasta vats, and murder each other with impunity. After all, these simple people have a rich folklore. Similar policy was advised by a knowledgeable anthropologist with regard to headshrinking and feud killing among the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador. He recommended that no attempt be made to control or sanction these practices, since their culture would languish without the sustaining incentive of ritual warfare. He concluded his report:

  "They have nothing else to do."

  Now feudin can keep a man occupied a whole rich, satisfying life so he can belch out with his last breath like a fulfilled old Mafioso don:

  "Life is so beautiful!"

  Somebody shrinks his cousin twice removed, time-honored codes determine who is obligated to shrink an equivalent cousin. One old fuck has shrunken down 52 heads. Back to the simple basic things...life in all its rich variety of an old shit house when a man knowed where his ass was. Those were the days, eh? Singing waiters, hit men, wise old dons belching garlic.

  A trembling waiter serves a table of button men from the rival Calamari family. They spit clam spaghetti into his face.

  "That isn't our pasta!"

  They shove wads of pasta down the throats of the terrified uptown diners.

  "Is especialitay from the maison! Wha'sa matter you? Is not nice?"

  They storm into the kitchen overturning caldrons of spaghetti.

  The cook sobs head in hands, "Mia spaghetti! Mia spaghetti!"

  The insult must be avenged a la Siciliana.

  "I'll Santa his Lucia!" growls the offended capo.

  Hit men, impersonating singing waiters, invade the Santa Lucia restaurant. Swaying from side to side like drunken sailors they bellow out "Santa Lucia" as they slop boiling minestrone over the guests and throw spaghetti into the air like streamers.

  The bestial retarded son of the capo beats three Calamari to death with a baseball bat, chasing them through the restaurant, spattering the horrified diners with blood and brains.

  "Life is so beautiful! Why you go home?"

  "SANTA LUCIA!"

  They bow to the empty wrecked restaurant.

  Our policy then, has been to contain the honored society into self-decimating urban concentrations and to head off any legislation designed to make liquor, drugs and gambling illegal, thus opening the door to a flash of gold teeth and an evil belch of garlic.

  But the situation is changing rapidly. Competition with European products makes it increasingly difficult to contain the industrial process. And there is talk of war in Europe. No doubt the prohibitionists will take advantage of the war to force through anti-alcohol legislation.

  The Johnson press upholds States' Rights and opposes any further encroachment of Washington bureaucrats. We hope to keep prohibition a state option and to tie up supply and distribution for the dry states and cut the Mafia right out of the picture. Since the dry states will be in the South and Middle West, the Mafia will be operating outside of their territory. We will teach them to stay on their own side of the fence.

  6

  Graywood meets them at the station and they take a carriage to the Bunker, a former bank building at Spring and Bowery...The walls are massive, the door of thick steel. It is an impregnable fortress. Kim's quarters on the top floor consist of living room, dining room, kitchen, with a bedroom and bath.

  Relaxing over a drink he is delighted to learn that his enemies are relying on Mafia talent..."Means they've got no good shootist!"

  "Let's go out and see the town," Graywood says. Bill Anderson has provided a number of concealable weapons for city wear...short-barreled revolvers, vest-pocket derringers, the new 25 and 380 automatics. Kim's 44 goes into his doctor's satchel with his other instruments. Better take along the satchel. It may save a life. Councillor Graywood has one of the new broom-handle Mausers that fits neatly into a leather briefcase.

  Dinner at Luchow's.

  "It's heavy Jew food," Boy complains.

  "It isn't Jew food. It's German food," Kim corrects him.

  "What's different? All Germans is knowned to be Jews because they is spiking with heavy Jew accints."

  Kim nods..."Well that makes sense."

  "Only the Jews and the Chinese knows how to cook a carp," Marbles says.

  "It's true," Boy says. "I eated a pepper carp onct."

  "What's that?"

  "It's a special Jew carp."

  "You think maybe we getting some of this special carp tonight?"

  "Not here," Kim says, "they isn't Jew enough to do it. Later maybe. They is selling it inna street from the carp wagons."

  (This is running code and Kim is saying, They won't try a hit here. On the street, most likely from a car.) "I hear all Yids is short-cocked."

  "It's true. Short and thick."

  (They will be using sawed-off shotguns.)

  The Johnsons go into action and the Families don't know what is hitting them with such deadly precision, such ingenious weapons, and such skill in their use.

  The Popcorn Kid

  A paunchy but powerful Capo with cold, hooded gray eyes sits back from his clam spaghetti. He signs the check and tips the fawning waiter. As the Capo walks out with his two bodyguards the waiter looks after him, and his servile smile becomes a sneer in a flash of gold teeth.

  The guards are a bit belchy and somnolent from the lunch and the wine and the grappa. A jalopy pulls into the curb at a corner ahead of them. A red-haired boy of about eighteen gets out, slamming the door with a violent back kick. The engine coughs and dies. The driver shouts after the boy, "You frigging little son of a bitch."

  "Gee thanks for the ride, Mister."

  The boy walks toward the Capo with a bag of popcorn. He is tossing the popcorn into the air and catching it in his mouth. The driver is still cursing as he tries to start the car. The boy's shirt is
open to the belt. When the boy is within a few feet of the Capo the car backfires. The guards stiffen and then relax. The boy drops his popcorn and clutches his chest and staggers forward.

  "They got me, Capo. I wanna die in your arms."

  The Capo looks at the boy with cold disfavor. He gives an imperceptible signal to his bodyguards meaning, "Teach this smart punk a lesson."

  The guards start forward, hands off their guns, preparing to slap the shit out of the boy. The boy snakes a 9M short-barreled automatic from a holdout holster under his shirt.

  Using both hands and pivoting from the hip, he takes them all with three shots each. The car is making a U-turn in a salvo of covering backfires. The car pulls up and the kid jumps in. The car roars away. It is a jalopy only on the surface, with a souped-up engine.

  "Nice work, kid."

  The boy is sliding a new clip into his automatic. He takes another bag of popcorn from the glove compartment.

  "Kid stuff. When is their fucking thing going to grow up?"

  The man shrugs, busy with driving.

  "I have to do it the hard way. They might at least give me a cyanide pellet gun like the pickle factory's got..."

  The boy catches a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

  "That's kid stuff too. When are they going to grow up, with their sensitive projects and special numbers and shellfish poison..."

  "Don't ask me, I just work here. All I do is backfire on cue."

  The kid looks at him, his eyes narrowed.

  "If you fart, I'll kill you."

  "Relax, kid...We're all dummies...those people out there...Like rats in a maze...Difference is you and I know it...Yo." He points a thumb at his chest. "El Mecanico...I can make a car do anything I want it to do...backfire...boil over...I can stall a car by looking at it."

  "Yeah." The boy nodded thoughtfully, crunching popcorn. "Telekinesis...I read about it in a magazine...Why can't I stop the Capo's heart by looking at him?"

  "You could, with knowledge and training...have to take it a step at a time...you wanta learn how to use a psychic knife, learn how to use a solid knife first...There's no substitute for actual combat with your blood guts and bones on the line...Now I got an intuition about you, kid...I can see you in a few years on Madison Avenue making twenty thousand dollars a year...

  "I make sixty thousand now."

  "Oh uh yeah...These old lines from the fifties crop up...So many years in show biz...What I mean is, I think you're gonna hit the big time...Those Eyeties was just like targets that pop up on the shooting range."

  The Lemon Kid

  The Capo is back eating his spaghetti with clam sauce. The kid slides through a side door in a waiter's tuxedo with a filthy towel. As he bustles over to the Capo's table he pops half a lemon into his mouth.

  "Enthoying thor thinner, thir?" he slobbers. He spits the lemon in the Capo's face and throws his towel at a bodyguard.

  KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW

  The Freshest Boy

  He pops out in front of the Capo, a huge rubber cock sticking out of his pants.

  "You like beeg one, Meester?" KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW One Cigarette

  He is doing the Cigarette Song from Carmen in a nightclub.

  "Si je t'aime prends garde a toi..."

  He peels off his falsies and throws them on the Capo's table. Two concealed hand grenades explode.

  KAPOW KAPOW

  The Mafia proved no match for the expert assassins of the Johnson Family, all adept at disguise...A delivery boy, an old derelict, a solid businessman type with a briefcase, a doctor, a street cleaner...The Mafia never recovered from the blow. They had come to the promised land. And suddenly the promised land hit back hard. They were forced into legitimate business or confined their depredations to the Italian community.

  7

  NYC circa 1910...Concrete evidence of survival after death and reincarnation has given a new perspective to assassination. There are ethical brokers who will only take on a case after careful inspection of the karma involved and selection of the victim's future parents. In some cases death may even potentiate the power of an enemy who can now operate through a number of carefully prepared receptacles. In such cases the manner of death must neutralize the target.

  Strangulation and hanging are considered the most certain insurance against posthumous vengeance. The Seminole Indians fear death by hanging above everything since they believe the soul of the hanged man cannot leave the body. There are practitioners for every price and every purpose.

  Licensed assassins are the new elite. Here one sits, in a Rajah's palace, having his toenails manicured while a boy mans the ceiling fan.

  "I'm doing my Lord Alabaster number this week."

  He changes residences constantly. Next week it may be a French chateau, or a townhouse in Mayfair. He is leafing through offers. He only takes certain cases. He's very exclusive.

  "A Mrs. Norton to see you, sir."

  "Tell her to go away. She wants me to kill her husband, and it's just too tiresome. Oh, and tell her she can donate her two million to cancer research. She's got the Bad Disease, and she's got it bad, in case she doesn't know..."

  Like all top assassins, he is an M.D. You have to know just where everything is, the veins and arteries and nerve centers, so you can place a bullet or a knife-thrust to sever the portal vein or the femoral artery. It can make the difference between a clean hit and a disgraceful recovery.

  Needless to say, young agents are trained courtesans, graduates of accredited Sex Institutes, and many assignments are Mata Haris; "hairies," we call them.

  "Oh God, not another KGB colonel, like an uncouth bear all covered with black hair..." He sweeps the slip languidly to the floor. Rejection slips stir around his feet like dead leaves.

  "The Israelis, ugh, and the Arabs, ugher...too starved an argument for my sword."

  He selects a cheap white envelope addressed in pencil, and extracts a sheet of yellow lined paper:

  Dear Mister Kim: A year ago two cops kicked me in the crotch. I am now N.G. as a result. I want to off these bastards. I got a thousand dollars saved up. I know it isn't much but I hope you will help me. Yours truly, Tom Jones.

  Like famous doctors, Kim takes charity cases: "Pack up, William, we are going to Chicago."

  In addition to charity cases, we are also expected to do unsolicited and unpaid C.W.: Community Work. It's our contribution to the health and welfare of the global community. For example, the poisonous creepers who put razor blades, needles, and ground glass into Halloween fruit and candy.

  "Let me have a look at that apple."

  A man is trying to edge away. He finds his way blocked, two fingers hooked over his belt, a knife pressing against his stomach.

  "What is this...?" Boy turns the apple in his hands. He takes out a knife and makes a quick incision: a needle glints in dim streetlight. Boy turns to the traitor and raises an eyebrow.

  "Now look, I found the apple, see?"

  Boy hands him the apple: "Eat it."

  "Now look, you can't—I got rights!" A knife presses against the side of his throat.

  "Eat it while you still have a throat to swallow with."

  We took care of about twenty that Halloween, one way or another, going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it.

  And a certain anonymous letter required expert attention. When a four-year-old boy was attacked and nearly killed by guard dogs, some vile animal lover wrote to the boy's mother, protesting the destruction of the fucking dogs: "It wasn't the dogs' fault. The boy should die soon. I hope he will."

  We talked to the mother and got the letter and took it to our graphologist: "Elderly woman...recent coronary...check hospitals, narrow it down." We find a blighted area of semidetached houses with scraggly little vegetable gardens, five dogs outside; this must be the place.

  "Did you write this letter, Mrs. Murphy?"

  "Who are you men, anyway?"

  "And who were you, Mrs. Murphy?"

  SPUT...
a dart with organic cyanide compound, almost odorless. They found her two days later, most of her face eaten off by the dogs. (Wasn't the dogs' fault...hungry, you know.)

  We go through the newspapers, looking for C.W. cases and tossing them back and forth: "Oh yes, that's me..."

  For such louts as the Mafiosi, assassination is simply a means of expanding or consolidating territorial rights. The people they kill are very much like themselves: rivals in the same line of business, with the same stupid criminal outlook. Lucky Luciano said, about people who work for a living: "Crumbs. Strictly crumbs!"

  It is related that Cherry Nose Gio, rescued from drowning, spit in the lifeguard's face: "Crumb! Worka fora living."

  The Johnsons kill to rid the spaceship Earth of malefactors who are sabotaging our space program. It's like you see somebody knocking holes in the bottom of the lifeboat and shitting in the water supply.

  Kim sets up an institute to study various so-called psychic or paranormal processes, to clarify the mechanisms involved, and to discover where possible practical applications.

  The phenomenon of phantom sexual partners was of particular interest to him since he had experienced some extremely vivid encounters. He surmised that such occurrences are much more frequent than is generally supposed: people are reluctant to discuss the matter for fear of being thought insane, as they were reluctant to make such an admission in the Middle Ages for fear of the Inquisition. He knew that the succubi and incubi of medieval legend were actual beings and he felt sure that these creatures were still in operation. Surveys proved him right. Once people could be brought to talk about it, many instances emerged. One woman, after the death of her husband, continued to receive uh conjugal visits, which were fully satisfying, and he gave her some very good advice on investments. The evil reputation of phantom partners probably derived largely from Christian prejudice, but Kim surmised that these creatures were of many varieties and some were malignant, others harmless or beneficial. He observed that some were seemingly dead people, others living people known to the uh visitor, in other cases unknown. He checked where possible to find out if at the time of such visitations the uh beneficiary was aware of the encounter. In some cases not at all. In others partially aware. Quite frequently the visitor reported an itchy or restless feeling at the time. In a few cases the visit was quite conscious. He concluded that the phenomenon was related to astral projection but not identical with it since astral projection was usually not sexual or tactile. He decided to call these beings by the general name of "familiars," which is a term usually restricted to animals. They were certainly familiar and, like animal familiars, attempted to establish a relationship with a human host. His studies and personal encounters convinced him that these familiars were semicorporeal. They could be both visible and tactile. They also had the power to appear and disappear. Rather like amphibians who had to surface from time to time.