by M T McGuire
****
Big Merv took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His antennae wiggled in annoyance. Frank and Harry irritated him to distraction. It hadn’t always been like that. Back in the good old days, he, Frank, Harry and their driver Hal, had been bank robbers together. Their gang, the Mervinettes, had stuck exclusively to branches of Grongolian banks and came to enjoy the status of folk heroes. When it came to bank robberies you couldn’t get more solid or reliable than Frank and Harry, but in these lean times, when bank robbery was no longer an option, he found they had depressingly little upstairs when it came to the niceties of organising organised crime.
“Where d’you park?”
Harry nodded to a nearby alley where the pristine paintwork of Big Merv’s midnight blue MK II snurd caught the light.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s go.” And he strode off down the street.
Chapter 9
In Ning Dang Po, the capital city of K’Barth, later on that same drizzly night, a group of shadowy figures huddled on a quay by the river Dang. If you’d noticed them, you might have thought trouble was afoot and on this particular evening, you wouldn’t have been wrong.
The Pan of Hamgee stood shivering in the rain, trying not to contemplate his future. He looked up at the sky. The moon was obscured by low clouds from which a thin miasma of pathetic rain fell. It plopped steadily into the Dang and pattered on the umbrellas held by Big Merv, Frank the Knife and Smasher Harry. The Pan waited miserably in their midst trying not to think about the pins and needles in his feet and heaviness of his dripping clothes. He raised his bound hands and slicked his soaking hair from his face, wishing he’d remembered his hat when he’d fled from the Parrot and Screwdriver.
The silent warehouses of the docks towered into the night sky, refining the darkness and hemming him in. In a couple of hours this area would be bustling with people: dockers, office workers, forklift truck drivers, accountants, shipbuilders and sailors, all safe in their allotted roles within society.
They had jobs, families and at the end of each day, homes to go to. He could see them in his mind’s eye, acting out their daily routine in the bright sunlight while he, an invisible outsider, rotted in the harbour below them. He tried to think positively but the mental image of his drowned corpse kept returning to haunt him.
“Shall I cut ’im?” asked Frank.
Arnold The Prophet – wasn’t the concrete enough?
“Nah. Not yet,” said Big Merv glaring at his prisoner with menacing intent.
The Pan of Hamgee tried to meet his eyes in a devil-may-care sort of fashion but he was shivering too much. He told himself that this was because he was soaked to the skin, not because he was absolutely petrified and definitely not because he was standing on the edge of a harbour, up to his knees in a box of quickly drying, quick-drying cement with the prospect of a short, vertical swim in the River Dang.
“You’re a GBI,” lectured Big Merv, “without me you’d survive a couple of weeks at the outside. You’re nothing, d’you hear me? NOTHING. I take you off the streets, give you a job and a roof over your ’ead and how do you repay me?”
That was the trouble with upsetting underworld legends such as Big Merv, they got so wound up. The Pan stood silently in the concrete and watched his life flash across the backs of his closed eyelids. It took a depressingly short time. He had achieved so little. Now he was going to disappear swiftly, anonymously and without trace. No-one would mourn his passing. It was no good panicking, he told himself; death was a universal truth which could not be avoided. He failed to convince himself, and carried on with the trembling.
“Merv, please, can we talk about this?” he whimpered.
“’S nothing to talk about you insignificant little tart. And don’t call him ‘Merv’ call him ‘Sir’,” shouted Smasher Harry, as he whacked The Pan across the backs of his knees with a pickaxe handle. His legs buckled and he sank backwards but Frank the Knife caught him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him upright. Big Merv held up one hand and Smasher Harry, pickaxe handle raised for a second swipe, waited.
“’Arry’s right, what’s to talk about, you little squirt?” he demanded. But, The Pan reasoned to himself, Big Merv must be prepared to talk or he wouldn’t have stopped Smasher Harry from hitting him a second time.
There must have been a reason why Ning Dang Po’s biggest underworld boss would take him under his wing. Big Merv had collared him trying to steal his wallet and instead of thumping the living daylights out of him, he’d offered him a job. Since he caught The Pan in the act, it was doubtful he appreciated his pickpocketing skills. It dawned on him that if he could only work out what Big Merv had seen in him, preferably within the next thirty seconds, he might be able to talk his way out of this. Otherwise he’d be too dead to care.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” Big Merv asked him. “I owned five blocks of flats in this city and now, thanks to you, you snivelling little twonk, it’s four.”
“It was an accident—” began The Pan.
“Yeh?”
“YES. Please, you have to believe me. It was a mistake. The candle fell on the carpet. I tried to put it out but I couldn’t see ... the smoke ... I threw the chips on it instead of the peas. I’ll pay for the damage.”
“How much?” The Pan cleared his throat. “Yeh. Thought so,” said Big Merv without giving him time to answer. His eyes flickered sideways at Smasher Harry and the pickaxe handle made contact with a dull thud.
“Please—ooof! I can’t pay you yet Mer—yowch!—Sir. I don’t have any cash. I’m not solvent, but I promise I will pay you, soon,” The Pan gibbered. “I mean it—I swear I will pay you the instant I get a job.”
Big Merv raised his hand again and once more, Smasher Harry stopped. There was a short silence during which, The Pan assumed, he was appraising the chances of a Government Blacklisted Individual finding gainful employment. Not likely to happen. He would have to wait a long time for his money.
“Don’t listen to him,” sneered Frank the Knife who, doubtless didn’t want all the efforts he had expended constructing a nice wooden box – dovetail joints those corners were – and mixing the concrete, to come to nothing.
“No, please do listen to me,” begged The Pan, “try to see me as an investment. You let me go and when I’m a high-flying multi-million-earning businessman, I’ll pay you back a hundredfold. There’s no point in killing me now. You won’t even get the price of this box.”
He glanced downwards at Frank’s handiwork. You could make a tidy profit if you made it a lid, painted it and sold it on in the market but Frank was a henchman, not a craftsman, and putting his talents to legal use wouldn’t occur to him.
“I have nothing worth selling,” The Pan added with a shrug, “except my wheels.” And the only reason he still had those was because he had been living in them for several months now. “They’re all I have left.” He put his hand in his pocket, which was difficult when it was so tightly tied to the other one, and pulled out a keyring with a bunch of keys on it. “Here ... take them,” he said, miserably holding it aloft.
“You can keep ’em.” That figured. Merv already owned a dark blue MK II snurd. It was the best of the best, the stuff of folklore when The Pan was a kid. Big Merv wasn’t going to want a new set of wheels, especially not The Pan’s. Dumb to offer. The silence lengthened and no-one said anything. Beside him, Frank and Harry waited, mutely, for orders. Big Merv stood looking at him, his antennae waving to and fro. Did that mean ...? Yep.
Thinking. Definitely. But was that good news? Maybe. He seemed to be weighing the situation carefully.
Chapter 10
Big Merv was indeed thinking, and his thoughts went like this.
Staff had a short shelf life in the world of organised crime, and by rights The Pan of Hamgee’s should have been shorter than most. So, what Big Merv couldn’t understand was how somebody so perennially cack-handed continued to evade capture. It had to be a rar
e talent; the burning question was, could he use it? Deep in the dark recesses of his brain a tiny light came on and the germ of an idea began to form.
The Pan was a smart cookie.
Too smart.
It was a waste to chuck a mind like that in the river – he was only a lad and all – but you had to make sacrifices these days. It was hard enough keeping one step ahead of the government without employing the kind of person you constantly needed to outwit. Best drop the little toerag in the Dang and get home. He tried to put the memories from his mind of the glory days, before the Resistance had got a real hold, when he, Frank, Harry and their driver, Hal, had been proper, respectable criminals and had earned an honest living from bank robberies.
Chapter 11
Things were looking bleak for The Pan.
“Spare my life, please,” he begged.
“No,” said Big Merv, “you’ve had your chance and you blew it. Do you know how much your little caper has cost me?”
“I told you. It was a mistake. If it takes the rest of my life I’ll pay you back.”
“Then you’ll have to pay up quick, you ain’t got much life left.”
“Please, you can’t do this. You’re honourable. You’re a Swamp Thing.” An abrupt silence fell.
“I’m what?” asked Big Merv quietly.
“You’re a ...”
What The Pan had wanted to say was that Big Merv, as a Swamp Thing, belonged to a species which, as well as having a reputation for being brave and honourable, was somewhat depleted in numbers and was also regarded as unsophisticated and looked down upon in some metropolitan circles. And he wanted to tell Big Merv that as a Hamgeean, even a human one, so was he. Then there was Big Merv’s colour. Swamp Things are bright green and clammy, with antennae and eyes that match their skin – felt tip green. Big Merv, though born of Swamp Thing parents and bestowed with green eyes, slime and antennae was, by some accident of genetics, orange instead of green. His unique complexion made many Swamp Things look down on him, too. An outcast, among a nation of outcasts. There had to be some common ground with a blacklisted Hamgeean even if it was only small.
Right now though, Big Merv was angry and his look suggested that one more word and he would wave Frank and Harry to one side and chuck The Pan in the Dang himself. Perhaps playing the species card wouldn’t be very clever at this point.
“Please, you know I didn’t mean to do it. I promise I won’t let you down again, you know you can trust me. Give me one more chance!”
“No, if I let you go, you’ll disappear before I can say ‘short swim’ which, you little git, is what you’re about to have.” He turned his back and began to walk away. That’s the trouble with telling the truth, The Pan thought bitterly; if it’s too ludicrous people think you’re taking the mickey. He felt his face turning a shade whiter.
“No, wait!” he wailed at Big Merv’s receding form. “You can’t, it hasn’t hardened, I might escape.” Smasher Harry and Frank the Knife lifted up the box and began to edge towards the side of the quay. “Merv! Please! Don’t leave me! I can get you the money. I can get you the money!” he screamed. Merv turned and nodded at his colleagues who put the box down.
“Tell me how and make it quick, you plank,” he said.
The Pan wiped what could have been rain or cold sweat (he wasn’t sure) from his face with shaking hands. He was keenly aware he would only get one shot at this and he didn’t want to mess it up.
“Don’t you miss the times when you used to rob, you know, banks and things?”
Big Merv glared at him. This was brazen cheek and therefore, risky. What The Pan didn’t know was that it was exactly how to get to Big Merv, which was why he was on the brink of losing his temper. The time had been when people were born knowing the name of Big Merv, and The Pan was one of them. The Big Thing and his gang had been the most famous bank robbers in K’Barth. Not that there was a shred of proof it was them, of course, but they denied it with a special type of gangster irony which was almost more believable than a straight admission. For Merv, being a loan shark and running protection rackets wasn’t the same. It was like suddenly having to play the part of King John when you had been Robin Hood. Being a bank robber was dangerous, thrilling and more to the point, glamorous. Everyone wanted to hear the details afterwards – particularly, stunningly attractive females (but with gratifyingly relaxed morals about inter-species liaisons) who wouldn’t ordinarily have looked at a green Swamp Thing twice, let alone an orange one.
Big Merv ached to return to the excitement and champagne lifestyle of his old existence. He hated the Grongles, hated the Resistance, but most of all, at this moment, he hated The Pan of Hamgee for highlighting his situation.
“Robbing the banks ain’t the problem,” sighed Merv.
The gang would still be in business if the Resistance hadn’t nicked every decent getaway driver in K’Barth. Neither Merv, Frank nor Harry could handle a getaway vehicle well enough for robbery. Since the Grongolian hordes had set up a police state, the underworld had felt the squeeze like everyone else – especially in the market for contract killers or escape men. The Resistance snaffled them all, and if you trained one up, the Resistance snaffled him too.
“It ain’t like old times,” he said and Frank and Harry nodded.
“Nah,” they said.
Once, a quick shoot-out would have taught the Resistance not to steal the talent from someone else’s patch. Now, they were not an organisation Big Merv was equipped to confront. Those in the Resistance were hard, well-trained, fanatically devoted to their cause and best avoided by anyone who valued their life or their kneecaps.
Chapter 12
The Pan realised he had touched a raw nerve when Big Merv grabbed him by the collar, pulling him as close as his cemented ankles would allow, and glared into his eyes.
“You wanna know if I miss robbing banks?” he snarled, “whadda you think?” His breathing was shallow and his blood pressure almost visibly rising.
“Mmm. I think,” The Pan swallowed hard, “that you probably do.” He wondered if he should have played the species card after all. The way the conversation was going right now, it might have been safer.
“Yeh? Well you’re wrong. I’ve outgrown all that,” said Big Merv, but to The Pan the words sounded hollow. “I extort money, it’s safer and I can guarantee my returns. And, officially, sonny, I ain’t ever robbed no-one.”
The Pan pressed on, “I understand and I appreciate what you say about extortion, but wouldn’t robbing ...”
The bright green eyes burned with pent-up anger which was firmly directed at him. Ah. He started again.
“What I’m trying to say is, wouldn’t ... not robbing banks—the way you used to—be more profitable?” Yes. That was better. “Wouldn’t you get more cash for less expenditure? Then there’s the status,” said The Pan, warming to his theme. “It’s no life for a criminal of your stature, standing on the edge of a nasty wet river at all hours of the day and night,” he glanced upwards at the steadily descending drizzle, “and in all weathers, tipping people in. You’ll probably catch pneumonia.”
Big Merv let go of him and The Pan watched him carefully. His antennae tied themselves into a reef knot – a sign of intense concentration. Good. They drooped forwards a little, still knotted and untied themselves as he spoke.
“’S not the water, I like a bit of rain. Reminds me of home,” he said wistfully. “’S always warm in the swamp though.” The antennae waved back and forth. He looked cold and miserable and ready to concede that The Pan was right. There was silence.
Please, please, Arnold let him give me a chance, thought The Pan. Big Merv’s antennae continued to knot and unknot themselves.
“Fair enough, son,” he said eventually. “I reckon you’ve proved you’re smart. So ... if you’ve got somethin’ to say, ’s about time you said it.”
The Pan took a deep breath.
“OK. Not to imply that you ever did, or would but ... what if you
wanted to start robbing banks again?” Merv raised his arm. “Please, don’t hit me, yet.” To his relief, Big Merv demurred. “Look, purely hypothetically—”
“Hypo what?”
“I mean, just for the sake of argument,” said The Pan swiftly, “say you wanted to rob a bank. What’s to stop you?”
“Don’t gimme that cobblers.” Big Merv grabbed him by the collar again and put his face so close their noses were almost touching, “You know why, you tart. The same reason no-one else does.” His antennae straightened themselves, pointing upwards – a bad sign. He was losing patience. Time to hurry this up.
“I would guess you need a getaway driver,” said The Pan, surprising himself with the calmness of his voice.
“’S right.”
“So why not me? I can drive. Spare my life now and I’ll drive for the next five years; for free.” He was painfully aware that his fear was making him speak faster and faster, that ‘free’ was not going to work and that rather than five years he had meant to say two. “Alright, not quite free, but all it will cost you is the rent on a room for me,” he gabbled. “And a small allowance for food. You’ll recoup the cost of the flats in weeks.”
Having made his case, The Pan shut his eyes and waited for the icy embrace of the river.
It didn’t come. Big Merv didn’t snatch the pickaxe handle from Harry and hit him either. He merely relinquished his grip on his collar, looked him up and down and scratched his head.
A deathly hush fell.
Only the hissing of the rain as it landed in the harbour broke the silence. The Pan prayed that Merv was thinking about what he had said rather than how loud a splash he could make by throwing a Hamgeean and a box of cement into a river. The moment seemed to stretch to interminable minutes, while nobody spoke. In the face of Big Merv’s continuing silence The Pan feared that his time had, in all probability, come. There was a splot as he tried to kneel in the semi-hardened concrete.
