by Nik Cohn
Right behind them, their followers would also clash and then everyone fell off their bikes, and the riderless machines careened around the alley, tyres screaming, mowing down riders at random. In these ways, half of each gang was laid waste but those that remained rose up with chains and brickbats, rocks and knives and bottles, while Johnny himself wore a sharkskin belt, a crucifix and he beat Ace unconscious.
Week by week, victory by victory, he widened out his territory and no gang stood long against him. Finally, in desperation, the beaten riders all formed an alliance, the Shieks and the Ricos and the Tombstones, plus the Skulls from Lincoln County and the Compadres from Savoy, and they invaded the docklands, they laid siege to Heartbreak Hotel.
Johnny Angelo twitched.
Strumming his spangled guitar, he had long beanpole legs and he quivered like a jelly, while a single spotlight shone on him and his followers sat in the dark.
These followers were known as the Mighty Avengers. And Ace hammered on the door, calling them out, but Johnny went on singing and paid no mind.
Then all the gangs joined together and closed in fast, catcalling through the keyhole, throwing firecrackers and, finally, they started to break down the door.
Even so, Johnny wasn’t disturbed. In his own good time, he completed his song, his legs were still and he put down his guitar. He combed his hair, he took off his shades. And he walked to the door and opened it wide, he greeted Ace with a smile.
Very quietly, before Ace had time to react, Johnny gathered him up in both arms and carried him back across the threshold, bearing him as tenderly as a day-old bride. Everything stopped still. Everyone waited for Ace to fight back. But Johnny held him tight and looked deep inside his eyes. And Johnny smiled. And Johnny was gentle. And Ace just lay in his arms not moving.
All the way across the quay, Johnny carried him carefully and then, bending low above the gutter, he let him fall. Then Ace went Plop and Johnny turned away, went back inside Heartbreak Hotel.
Everyone was quiet.
The gangs stood around on the quays, uncertain, and then they got back on their motorbikes, roared off towards their own neighbourhoods, while in Heartbreak Hotel, Johnny Angelo picked up his guitar and his legs began to vibrate.
The Mighty Avengers reigned supreme.
And Johnny went riding by himself, just him and his machine, which he loved. The way that it howled between his thighs, the way that it shuddered, the way that it soared – all these things made him happy and he rode throughout the night, while the Doctor crouched behind his shoulder.
Up in Westmill Boulevard, he passed the barbed-wire fence and he remembered the honeypot, the black slouch hat. And it was true that Catsmeat loved him, that his followers obeyed him and young girls wished to touch him but then, after all, these people were mundanities and the Doctor belonged in a different class, the Doctor was a stylist.
Outside the fence, Johnny stopped and looked up at the Doctor’s window, but no shadow paced the floor, no sound of sniffing reached his ears. Everything was empty.
So Johnny rode by himself.
He was 16 years old. Then he was almost 17 and Ace hid up an alley, the Tombstones ambushed him as he passed.
Nothing changed: at the age of 14, Johnny Angelo was pelted with snowballs and now he was caught in a crossfire of refuse, he was dragged off his bike and held against a wall. Then Ace and all the Tombstones took turns to beat upon him and they didn’t stop hitting until he went limp.
When he opened up his eyes again, he had bruises all over his face, great lumps and abrasions, and his features were all misshapen.
He was ugly.
So he went back to Bogside and he locked himself in his room, where he stayed for a week without moving, hiding until he was flawless like before, and no one could get him to open up, not even Catsmeat.
Even when his wounds were healed and he’d returned to Heartbreak Hotel, he didn’t ride by himself and he didn’t smile. Everywhere that he went, he was protected by an entourage, black leather bodyguards, and he hid behind his shades, he sat in a purple cloud, where he dreamed of the Doctor. And, down in the cellar, deep inside the earth, he planned his revenge.
He didn’t feel safe.
So he led the Mighty Avengers into Crescent Heights and he wiped the Tombstones out.
Ace was sitting in a caff and his gang was all around him. Johnny Angelo threw a smoke bomb through the open doorway. The bomb went Bang and the windows were shattered, glass was everywhere. Dense smoke filled the caff, causing the Tombstones to choke and weep and stumble out in the street, where they were met by the Mighty Avengers.
The Avengers rode motorbikes, carried brickbats, hid flick-knives up their sleeves; the Tombstones were on foot, unarmed and unprepared. Accordingly, the Avengers formed a circle and began to drive the Tombstones backwards, herding them like cattle, pushing them out of Crescent Heights and into Jitney and on through Lincoln County, home of the freaks, to sumptuous St Jude and skidrow Jethro, exotic Savoy and further still, through Bogside and Cajun and Chinatown, until they reached the edge of the river.
Then Ace understood.
Trapped against the water, he began to run backwards and sideways and on, he zigzagged frantically and he crawled, he fluttered like an injured bird. Meanwhile, Johnny sat on his machine and kept on pushing, very calm and methodical, driving him right to the brink. Then he nudged him over the edge.
Again, Ace went Plop.
One by one, like the Gadarene swine, the Tombstones were driven into the waters, where they floundered, and the river was thick and black and putrid, it dragged them down.
Some swam to the other bank. Others were picked up by passing boats. Still others disappeared.
By this means, the city was purged of evil.
Flames
In the place where Johnny lived, the house was full of cats. In the hallways, on the windowsills, up on the roof. Hiding in the closets and sleeping in drawers. Sliding down the banisters, Siamese cats and Persians, marmalades and tabbies. Most of all, black cats. Fat black cats who were blind or scabrous or starving. Black cats who were psychotic and spent all their lives in fighting, gouging and killing.
Each morning, when Johnny woke up, there was a cat curled up at his feet, a cat in each of his shoes. Surrounded, he put on his clothes and went across the street to the caff, picking his way through all the ranks of sleeping or dying cats.
These cats disgusted him.
Inside the caff, he drank Coca Cola and listened to the Coasters. Outside, there were cats sprawled in the gutters and cats in the dustbins and dead cats splayed across the tramlines, lying on their backs with their legs in the air, blood still oozing from their mouths. It was seven o’clock, a very cold morning, and no humans were visible, only cats.
When Johnny went back in the street, the cats began to follow him. Wherever he went, there were cats beneath his feet and mangy cats ahead of him. If he ran, they ran as well; if he sat down and rested, they formed a circle around him, they waited.
Fat black cats: they sat all night outside his door. The smell of their excretions and the smell of their many diseases made Johnny Angelo squirm. Emerging, he threw stones at them and trod on them but they weren’t upset, they merely regrouped and followed him once more.
This was because they loved him.
And it took an old lady across the hall to understand the reason, a woman who believed in the Devil, a woman who bolted her door against Evil each night and slept with a crucifix in her hand. She was 83 years old. Prayer was her existence and her only fear was Hell.
Then one morning she looked out of her window and there was Johnny Angelo in the street below, dressed up in black leather, with his golden quiff piled high and his smile all lopsided, and 50 cats walked behind him, animals that were twisted and scarred in every way imaginable. Creatures that were damned, souls that wer
e lost, they trod on Johnny’s heels.
Disciple of the Devil, Johnny Angelo switched his hips, flicked his ankles out sideways and the pussycats pursued him, mesmerised.
Then the old woman prayed.
At nightfall, Johnny sat on his motorbike and disappeared into the docklands. The cats sat down on his doorstep and licked themselves clean, waiting patiently until he’d return.
He felt trapped by them and abused them, he flattened them with his machine. Still, they loved him.
Cats with no fur and cats with broken limbs: beyond Johnny’s door, they purred so loud that he couldn’t sleep and then he was afraid, he didn’t feel safe.
Cats were everywhere. They slept on his face. They pissed on his three-quarter jacket with the velvet lapels. Even inside the caff, when he stared out the window, they stared right back.
This was persecution and, when the waitress touched him with her breasts, he didn’t look up. Even when he rode away on his motorbike, cats crouched on his shoulder.
Johnny Angelo suffered.
So he bought ten tins of cat meat, one can of paraffin and he mixed them both together. He went downstairs and he scattered the meat all over the street. Seven o’clock in the morning, it was raining and Johnny walked away.
Just like always, the cats pursued him and they ate up all the meat, even fighting among themselves for the choicest paraffin tidbits, and they lay down in the gutters, they licked their chops and composed themselves to sleep.
Then Johnny struck a match.
And when the old woman looked through her window, the street was full of burning cats. Bright red cats that hissed and writhed and crackled, screaming as they perished. 53 cats with flaming mouths.
And black leather Johnny Angelo, smiling benignly on death.
I am the Cobra
Everything was dangerous.
At the age of 17, Johnny Angelo left his back room in Bogside and moved into Heartbreak Hotel, hiding in a small back room with no windows, a room that was dark, dank and airless but very well protected.
Deep inside the earth, he lived like a mole and his bodyguards surrounded him. He slept all day and then he emerged at night, when he strutted and slithered and squirmed, or he plundered through the countryside, soaring off into space, having fun until the dawn.
He was safe. On stage, he wore a velvet suit and purple shoes. Each time that he smiled, someone screamed. Each time that he stuck his guitar in his groin, small girls wept and rushed the stage, stretching out with their hands, but the Avengers barred the way and Johnny wasn’t touched.
Then he stood by himself on a bombsite, the same bombsite in which his bright red suit was buried, and also his fat black cat, and it was a windswept afternoon, and his hair was blown in his eyes, when someone sneaked up behind him, a black girl who smelled of Voodoo.
As soon as she touched him, he turned around: ‘My name is Yolande,’ said the black girl. ‘They call me the Cobra.’
She was very black indeed. She had slow black hands, and lazy black eyes, and smooth black flesh that rippled when she moved. She had a wig on her head, pink bouffant style, and hi-heeled scarlet sneakers. She wore a silver sequined dress, very tight, and she was sleek in all her movements, except in her smile, which was sudden like a serpent.
Touching Johnny Angelo, she came in close and breathed on him, a breath that made him restless. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘I’m busy.’
‘I like you,’ the Cobra replied.
‘Everyone likes me,’ said Johnny.
‘I like you more.’
Stranded on the bombsite, Johnny turned his face against the wind, hunched up his shoulders and he walked down towards the docklands. Then the Cobra walked beside him, schlurping her hips, and there was desolation all around them, shelled-out houses, refuse dumps, corporation dugouts.
The Cobra had eyes like strange sins. ‘I was born in Lincoln County,’ she said. ‘I’ve been travelling all my life.’
Down in the docks, the Mighty Avengers were patrolling the quays, revving up their engines, and Johnny was watching them, very far away. ‘I was 8 years old,’ the Cobra said. ‘I started touring with a medicine show, travelling all over the nation, selling shoeshines and turning somersaults and, later on, I performed an exotic dance with snakes, hence my name of the Cobra.
‘In downtown Decatur, I got married to a man called the Fearless Otto, a sword-swallower. It was my 16th birthday and I wore gardenias in my hair. All through that summer, we worked the riverboat towns, such as Corinth and Sage and San Saul, until I was bored and left him and returned to Lincoln County, where I danced in Claessen’s Follies.
‘When I was 17, I was restless and I went back on the road with a Big Roll band, playing in dives and honky tonks, where I kicked up my legs by gaslight, and then I was married once more, this time to Mister Earl, a gambler, in Paducah.
‘Mister Earl was a card-sharp. Very soon he got shot in a bar-room. Still, I went on travelling by myself, through Carter and Moose Jaw and Santos, El Paso and Sasparillo, until I was picked up in Tracy, arrested for vagrancy and sent to the reformatory, where I stayed for 3 months but then got bored and escaped.
‘And so on, and so forth: I went on the road yet again, criss-crossing the nation, but when I was 19, I was tired and I came back home, where I worked in the market, selling yams, and I was satisfied. I danced each night away. I wasn’t afraid.
‘A week ago, however, I was walking at random and I saw you ride past on your motorbike, a black monster on a black machine, with all your followers fanned out in formation behind you, and you were smiling all lopsided, your hair was blown back in a plume.
‘Right then, I went back to the market and dismantled my stall, scattering yams all over the street, and I packed up my belongings and put on my soulful dress, my pink bouffant wig, and started walking. For 6 days, I’ve tracked you down. Now I’ve found you.’
The Cobra was black, she smelled of Voodoo. Each time that she smiled, her teeth flashed very white and her black eyes were scary. Johnny was made uneasy. ‘What is it you want?’ he said. ‘I’m pressed for time.’
‘I am 20 years old, I’m restless,’ she said. ‘Let me take you on a journey.’
Johnny didn’t answer. He kept on walking still and, when they came in sight of Heartbreak Hotel, he stopped and stretched his hand out across the docklands, as if to draw it up in his palm. ‘I own this,’ he said. ‘All of this is mine.’
High on the hillside, they stood close together, Johnny and the Cobra, and the Cobra kept smiling, and Johnny turned away. ‘I’m safe here,’ he said.
‘No, you’re not,’ said the Cobra, and she squeezed him softly, she was spooked. ‘Not here. Not any place.’
She was ruining everything. Down inside the cellar, Johnny Angelo combed his hair and he was surrounded by Mighty Avengers, young men who smelled of axle grease. ‘These are my disciples. They follow me everywhere,’ Johnny said, but the Cobra didn’t stop smiling, her teeth flashed white in the purple gloom. Then Johnny bit his lip, said nothing and he hid in his room without windows.
Still the Cobra pursued him. Deep down in the dungeon, she turned out the light and her eyes glowed red in the dark. Sleek black cat, she purred and she smelled of incense, sickly sweet, and Johnny felt drowsy, as though he’d been drugged. He couldn’t move, he could not speak. He had no wish to struggle and he slid down in a dream, where he murmured, while the Cobra swallowed him whole.
Candyfloss Pink
Johnny Angelo was sleeping. Then he was awake. Then he was halfway between the two, he was drifting and he travelled with the Cobra.
Every time that he opened his eyes, she was bending over him and smiling. She carried gris-gris in her breast, she touched him with her fingertips. She had smooth black flesh that rippled, so that Johnny was powerless against her, and she smiled a smile like sudden death.
Everything was made like a dream, exotic and strange and, on Chase Street, which was nothing in particular, the Cobra took him through bars and burlesques and bordellos, clip joints and casinos, opium dens, cockroach hotels and freak shows and funfairs. A thousand neon lights lit up the pavements. Millionaires smoked fat cigars. Derelicts lay dying in the gutters. Champagne corks beat a tattoo on the ceilings but the shadows smelled of sewerage. Inside every man’s pocket, a turnip watch lay snug and warm.
Standing on the corner, Johnny was jostled by big-time gamblers, by dudes and politicians, bankers and movie stars, dope fiends, acrobats and assassins and, everywhere that he looked, money was changing hands.
Love for sale: inside each mansion, there were gilded mirrors and chandeliers, white bearskin rugs, and music played very loudly, and rockets flew high above the houses and burst in multi-coloured stars, and all the colours were bright, orange and silver and pink, scarlet and midnight blue.
In his lifetime, Johnny Angelo had seen nothing like this, such glitter and extravagance, and he tried to hang back. But the Cobra drew him on, she licked inside his ear. ‘Do you like it?’ she said. ‘Is it fun?’
‘It’s not real,’ said Johnny.
‘That’s correct,’ said the Cobra. ‘It isn’t.’
Yen-pox woman, her wig was like candyfloss, pink and sticky to the touch, and she smelled very strong of voodoo, which made Johnny sigh, and she sucked him in like toothpaste.
Strutting up front in her red sequined dress, she took his hand and led him through all the districts of the city, Savoy and Jitney and Crescent Heights, St Jude and the Shanty Canrush.
