Smithereens

by Steve Aylett

  SPECTER’S WAY

  When Sam’s apartment was burgled, he called the police. You might ask why he tried such a daredevil stunt. He knew some martial arts but was so slow that in any given fight he reacted to the blows thrown in the previous one. Faced with seven cops, he was punched in the nozzle several times and didn’t recover especially fast.

  He wasted a phone call on his girlfriend. ‘Pam, I got robbed.’

  ‘You’re in jail? I am super fucking angry at you Sam.’

  So it was at least a day later that an autolawyer was provided. Harpoon Specter popped into the office of Police Chief Henry Blince and sat smiling on the corner of his desk. ‘I hear you got my client on a Peter Watts, Chief.’

  ‘A charge of assault is standard procedure after we assault a civvy, Specter.’ Blince’s smile made his cigar rear. ‘Your client’s charged with burglary, assault and going with intent to commit sundry offences. If these symptoms persist - and it costs practically nothing to cure them - he’ll bleed out unattended.’

  ‘Yes. What a disaster it all is.’

  They had a good laugh about that and were still laughing when a gang of troopers dragged Gecko Jeff past the door and Blince hauled his bulk to investigate. The troopers had Jeff against the wall and were mashing his face this way and that so he more resembled the photofit from the burglary. The rat-like Jeff reached up and pushed his nose downward. ‘B-but if you squash my nose like this -’

  ‘Quiet!’ Blince shouted, lumbering over. ‘Pull the cheeks out more, Benny boy! Not like that! Ah, this is gonna be tough.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, I guess we’ll get it in editing. Put him in the cell.’

  ‘You’d pay to synchronise him permanently, Chief?’ asked Specter, who had been looking on.

  ‘Remember old Klepp’s Law, that mass human cruelty doubles every eighteen months? Plastic surgery’s quick and inexpensive these days, Specter.’

  Blince returned to his desk and sat heavily. Anyone on at least nodding acquaintance with gravity would have given him a year to live, but he had more than a decade ahead of him. An artist called Bud Dajo had once made a time-lapse video sequence of cops solving crimes - a strangely flickering officer sat at a desk for what seemed like only a year or two. But the movies included so many subliminal flashes of cops committing crimes of their own the video was banned. Dajo himself died in a voting accident and no one had noticed anything special about him since.

  ‘Your man’s alibi, it’s like a mast on a coffin. If this guy’s a crazed killer - and there is no reason to believe he’s not - he’s out there running on revenge fumes, comes chargin’ out of the gate and beats up a buncha cops, that’s the killin’ jar right there.’

  Specter smiled. ‘He may not see it that way, Henry.’

  ‘He broke my arm and jabbed my eye. I can’t stand for such things, as a rule.’

  ‘You look fine.’

  ‘That’s a pretty flip attitude.’

  ‘Maybe you could stand the exercise. Anyway, I value your comments, Henry, and I don’t want to antagonise you, but I need to know are we gonna prosecute under political laws while not accepting a political defence or under criminal law while accepting a political prosecution?’

  Blince scrutinised his cigar. ‘There are no other options.’

  Sam’s face had long since given up caring what direction it was pointed in. Sat at a table in the yelling cell, he barely acknowledged Gecko Jeff when he was forced into the chair opposite. But similarly snagged in the law’s perplexity ordeal, they had at least that in common. Gecko Jeff showed how he could bulge his eyes in a startling way, and by doing so out of context during conversation, stop everything. Sam talked about how he met his girlfriend. ‘Circumstances conspired to have me acting normal, entirely by accident. And that’s when she saw me.’

  Pretty soon they were laughing about the sign on the wall that said IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE IN JAIL. But Sam became thoughtful, telling Jeff to simmer down. ‘Jeff, listen to me. What are the chances of two people this stupid meeting up?’

  ‘In a world like this...’

  ‘Don’t understand me too quickly - think about it. We could have spent our whole lives eating pasta, jogging, and probably - almost certainly - never have been lucky enough to meet one other being like ourselves. Yet here we are.’

  Jeff looked blank. Sam grinned.

  ‘I tell you the combined stupidity in this room is ... probably unprecedented. I follow a cult, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jeff gasped.

  ‘There you are. And I’ll bet you play paddle ball, vote Republican automatically, and think Staind are alternative.’

  ‘Ofcourse.’

  ‘You see? Neither of us have ever had a thought of our own.’

  ‘You’re thinking this.’

  ‘This is trash,’ said Sam cheerfully.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘We could eat our own legs. Me and you. Right here.’

  ‘Yes. We could eat our own legs.’

  ‘But first dosing them with poison,’ Sam laughed.

  Jeff giggled with him. ‘And branding them with Nazi insignia!’

  ‘The coroner would be baffled!’

  ‘So would we!’

  Specter entered with a bundle of papers. ‘Now now, what are you morons laughing about? Planning to eat your own legs?’

  The clients’ mirth halted abruptly.

  ‘Seen it all before.’ He seated himself at an adjacent chair and flopped open the case folder. ‘But it does you a certain amount of credit to keep your legs hidden under the table this way. Hell, I’ll bet there’s alot about your legs I don’t know. Me, I’m amazed by my arms. I sometimes have myself woken in the night just to look at them.’ He frowned at the files and spoke absently. ‘But legs? I’ll bet you saw straight away I was the sort of guy who when I left the room you wouldn’t remember how many legs I even had.’ Satisfied at his reading, he became brisk and looked up at them. ‘Now. My plans for your case are so big they’ll have to be formally submitted to the city and everyone will be issued with safety goggles. I’ve already shouted something about the incomplete design of their myths, the first thing that came into my head. I threw a sort of flamboyant tantrum in the corridor, insulted the Chief of Police in several styles hoping to score a hit - and while that was happening I looked around and couldn’t find anyone who disagreed with my opinion. Then I said some things I’m not proud of.’

  ‘Like what.’

  ‘I told Chief Blince that he was using a brain that was several times too small for him, and that humanity created a larger belly for itself because of some misunderstanding about the invention of the wheel.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too bad.’

  ‘Then I set fire to his chin, or tried to. Anyway, I have been instructed by my mind to adopt a particular strategy for you. It’s what I call Sudden Death Advocacy.’

  ‘What does that entail?’ Sam asked.

  Specter sighed. ‘Exactly like it sounds, Mr Cutshaw - as I give forth in the perjury room, you suffer a sudden death - or appear to. I’m going to dose you with a powerful sedative which mimics the symptoms of mortification. For you it’ll be like a night at the opera without the squirming. For me it’ll mean an end to a hopeless case, and we ship you over the border in a crate of apples. That’s how it’s been done for years. Law and justice - keep them at a distance and they look alike.’

  ‘What happens to me?’ asked Gecko Jeff.

  ‘You both appear to die. I’ve taken on both cases - there’s no conflict because according to the records you, Jeff, were doing a different burglary that night over at the Jonsi place.’

  In fact since the Completion, at which everything had been deemed illegal at last, the law was so entirely stacked in the authorities’ favour that any lawyer arguing lawfully could be said to have a conflict. But in this regard Specter would describe a necessary loophole at the end of this very case.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said Sam,
and repeated Specter’s narcolepsy plan precisely word for word, though with a different expression on his face and with certain yelps and screams of intonation that made it clear the plan found no favour in his mind. Jeff concurred, uncertainly mimicking some of the yelps.

  ‘You don’t know what’s good for you,’ Specter urged. ‘The brotherhood are big-picture guys - they’re not much into detail.’

  ‘We just want to be free.’

  ‘As do we all. Yet what strange paths you are taking toward that goal. Well, it’s a bonehead play but you’re the clients.’

  They started with motive or, in Chief Blince’s words, ‘Why he would want to do a thing like that.’

  ‘According to the Chief’s note in your file, “We tortured him but he refused to comment.” This alibi of yours is hideously run down, Sam. Jeff’s, on the other hand, is comedy gold. Maybe you could swap, and he’ll take a percentage of the margin. Which course of exhaustion do you favour?’

  ‘I’m a chef. I only sporadically renew contact with reality.’

  ‘I defended a waiter once. He told me “My job is to take your order, put it together and then give it to you in a container from which it cannot escape.” Trapdoor to his feet, he was still refusing to repent. I’m of a positive mind, Sam. Rather than being baffled at your behaviour, I prefer to think of your motivations as rich in mystery. Let’s say you were somewhat indignant upon finding that the crime had already commenced prior to your arrival.’

  ‘That certainly shows a lack of regard.’

  ‘He catches on fast, this one. We’re making progress. Jeff, let’s take a playful romp through this alibi of yours. The getaway. I see you changed cars during the chase - into exactly the same kind of car and even the same colour. What was the point of that? And looking at the item list here, a rabbit with ears like chainsaw covers - why did you steal the bunny rabbit?’

  ‘The sun was in my eyes - check the layout of the Jonsi house, there’s a window right over the bureau.’

  ‘If I can establish the sun’s angle at that time ...’ Specter trailed off into silence.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Facts. We don’t even mention them if we can help it. They don’t match the ambience during trial - you’ll see what I mean. The judge is basically a modified wardrobe and a domed forehead stuffed with god knows what. Not to mention a nose that wouldn’t disgrace a demon of the underworld.’ Specter stopped for a reaction. He was never really prepared for how uninterested people were to hear this.

  ‘But I was never at Sam’s house,’ said Jeff.

  ‘Facts, facts! Maybe you self-sabotaged? Maybe your needs are evolving? Being a resilient man, you broke into someone else’s premises for prayer and reflection. Which I know you can do. And that was your first mistake. The greater distance between combatants, the more legal it is. Look at surgical strike missiles. Unfortunately you and the cops were right amongst eachother. You’re in the soup, both of you.’ He gave them a look of doom, then snapped out of it. ‘But we mustn’t think that way. Let’s get some coffee on and go back over this a little. We got a lot of things that don’t add up, but let’s have a go.’

  Four hours later Sam and Jeff were in a trance of despair. Specter stood cheerfully and packed away the files. ‘Now I need you to think about visual presentation in court. Long earrings frame the face. And Sam, it imposes no strain on my credulity to believe that your head is made of cork. But if that’s the biggest thing you’ve got to worry about, you’re alright. If they point a gun or some sort of spear at you, change the subject. This forlorn and undermined thing you’re doing won’t play, however. Trial’s tomorrow. I was loyally dismayed, I assure you. There’s a vogue for dismay right now so it went down well. There’s more to representing a client than winning a case.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘In the empty space where a nightmare is stalling, when a dream fails to conceive, this court is back in session.’

  ‘Guess how I’ve been distorted today,’ Specter whispered aside to his clients, but was suddenly called to sum up.

  He stood, unbuttoned his jacket, strode a little, buttoned it again.

  ‘I look about me,’ he began, ‘and what do I see. Wood panelling: the decor of resignation. These two doomed men I represent. A jury, for all the world like goblins who have toddled out of chubby houses. You, your honour, as creepy as a dead man’s glasses. And your wife - a creature you apparently met while ice fishing. I have no objection whatever to this little comedy. But the lives of two men are at stake. We have heard that on the night in question they accomplished theft, assault, grand larceny and murder. Let us think about that afternoon, those of us who are capable. Flushed cauls hung on like jellyfish and cells went off in coffins. Ecclesiastical profiteers adjourned to pray to the creature styling itself god at the time. And Gecko Jeff, this living ingot of pugnacity over here, vaulted the balcony of the Jonsi house, for a burglary he carried out at his own expense. In case it didn’t work out, he hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. You may retort, this guy had a top-notch idea for a burglary and no right to keep it to himself. And so he didn’t. Witnesses said the thief “oozed self-confidence”. And so he did. He was as happy as a dog on a Ferris wheel. Shortly thereafter, Sam Cutshaw - this man - instigated a brawl with the police by calling them on the phone and having nothing to pay them upon arrival, because he had been robbed. Ears are silent - the ultimate irony. Yes, they were arrogant. Yes, the robbery took a nasty left turn. And Gecko Jeff denied it all - yet his account was not a lie but a “re-imagining” of the event. I don’t want to be drawn into an argument about the guilt or innocence of these boys or a determination of the facts. Let us not suffer unnecessary complications. The time for an objective account of these crimes, and who should be punished for them, is still far in the future. But look at them as they sit here. Lives built on a bedrock of setbacks and exasperation, they measure distance in barstools. Offer them a chicken wing and they’d bite it out of your hand so fast it’d blow the hat off a picture of Our Lord. Sneaky, ashen and without insight, refuge from causes of anguish, redeemed by nothing, they sit awaiting - what? Even the most casual survey of their faces reveals the strain and sadness of the innocent. Yet the police claim that they and their murderous ways have caused delay after expensive delay. No, nothing about this adds up atall. And since the Completion we’re beyond measuring fine tolerances. I’ve consulted the book of transient reproaches -’

  ‘He means the law,’ explained the judge wearily.

  ‘You seem determined to have no curiosity on the matter, your honour. Watch out! You know why? This microfossil of a principle you live by - perhaps it’s better than nothing, perhaps not. But even you will be erased, along with your sky-high game scores. It’s a pretty tough dollar in this town. In fact you have to print them yourselves eh, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? We expect ourselves, like our illusions of justice, to be arrested now and again for a very short while - only to return to our cotton-wool fantasies of hope. Laws - the common folk have been able to further their growth, but have no real part in them. Before the Completion, some of the fresher laws were recourses minted in panic or floundering embarrassment. They at least had a human feel. Now, with everything illegal, the city’s flat, like soda with the lid left off. A world clinically de-aquefied of meaning. Philosophers whose names would mean nothing to you have asserted through the ages that god has fashioned a world detailed enough for everyone to find something to object to. Perhaps the time truly will come when the universe is packed solid with flags.’

  Saying this, he appeared to modify the air in front of him with an arcane motion of his hands.

  ‘And now you’ll want to know my conclusions. I thought up the wildest schemes and the most crystalline for pulling the wool over your eyes. I decided, in proportion to my understanding of events, to reframe the confrontation as a kind of offputting dance or shabby flirtation. I’m as surprised as you are. Human beings a
re eccentric among the apes but commonplace among demons. If we blow the dust and snot from antiquity’s archives we see that the ancients had already reached this conclusion and moved on to less obvious affairs. We shop; we laminate nature for ease of enjoyment. These men acted while the balance of their minds was disturbed - that is, during that long moment between birth and death. There is every reason to suppose that my assertions won’t be believed. But this here is different from the relationships that we finish without solving. No butterfingered departure this time. Capital punishment - execution - is the kindest thing, as who would want to live in a world where people, even the innocent, are executed? So there it is: a defence as entertaining as it is informative. And I hate you all.’

  Specter sat down. He leaned aside to whisper to his clients. ‘Time to throw a rope over a pipe.’

  Jeff sat insensible.

  ‘That’s it?’ asked Sam, dazed. ‘But...’

  And he had to force his way through the palpable postmodern fog that existed in every court room. His mouth rebelled but he stated it clearly. It physically hurt.

  ‘But ... I’m the victim. And they beat the hell out of me.’

  Specter seemed not to hear. But he spoke, without looking at him. ‘There is another law.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘The oldest.’

  ‘Will it help us?’

  ‘Thermodynamics. Whereby those who enforce the law cannot possibly be acting against it.’

  Specter stood and addressed the room. ‘Nothing further.’