Atom. Steve Aylett
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‘Now why don’t I believe you?’
‘Homo-sexial panic?’
And she was gone.
Thermidor pondered a moment. ‘So who’s this Adam Atom guy?’
‘Only guy in the PI modality with a name like that’s Taffy - Taffy Atom.’
‘That’s good, Neck. Whatta we know about him?’
‘Heard he grew a mustache on his stomach,’ hissed Shiv.
‘What about you?’ he asked Nada Neck.
‘Yeah, what he said boss, I heard that too.’
‘Uh-huh. And that’s it eh?’
‘Aint that enough?’
Thermidor leant back and regarded the two. ‘Nada Neck, you are a fine right arm but your philosophy cannot be spoken aloud without lapsing into an Australian accent. Shiv, you are a fine knifeman but you have an interest in knives which leads you into errors of judgment.’
The two shifted on their seat. Shiv would have liked to mention the boss’s weakness for a certain blond bubblehead. This he felt was inappropriate. Shiv considered that he himself was the better match. After all, Kitty was a scalpel addict and he was a blademan. He understood such joys. You haven’t lived till you’ve operated on your own arm.
‘Tell you what,’ Thermidor announced. ‘Shiv - put a tail on Kitty, see if she leads you to the boy Fiasco. Nada Neck - you find me Atom. He knows somethin’ about Vanishin’ Harry, I wanna know. Get outta here.’
‘Shiv will do good work,’ buzzed the knifeman as he and Nada Neck backed out of the room.
‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,’ murmured Thermidor.
Fiasco, Atom. Their bones would pop in a rendering mill before they interfered again with that pure girl.
What was the hook? The strutting, the selfishness, the sarcasm. She was the very phantom of his mother.
Even if the boss thought he was exaggerating, Transam knew what he’d witnessed. He’d got through stripping his chainsaw and that swab baby - the one no one could ever quite see - was stood there trying to get his attention. And looking out, he found there was a stranger on stage wearing this huge black coat and playing a giant flute. And as he played, something began to inflate from the end of the instrument. It was a human head, resembling exactly that of the musician, its lips attached to this end of the flute and facing its twin. Then the body began to tumble from beneath the head like a birthing calf. The feet hit the stage and the form filled out, swaying slow in the ventilation. Then the arms quickly inflated, quivering up into position, and the real guy, the first one, detached and floated out above the audience. The new man, coat and all, had taken over on the flute, and his music bobbed and drifted like the airborne figure. The floating man, uplit and shadowfreaked, was screaming as though terrified, and so was everyone else. The clientele began to fire at the ceiling, at eachother, at the musician on stage. A Barrett 82 whooped off, detaching one of the rubber chandeliers, and by the time it thumped to the deck, everyone had drawn.
The musician reacted weirdly. As the volleys flew, he telescoped the flute and drew his coat all around like Bela Lugosi, sinking behind it and turning his back. It looked like the ammo was disappearing into that coat like pledges into a manifesto. Then when a shell burst the floating man, next thing the whole joint was being showered with confetti, all these louts looking up like it was Christmas, and the stage guy was nowhere.
Every single flake of confetti bore a miniature likeness of the stranger’s face.
4 THE BLACK BURDEN
There was only one venue worse than the Creosote Palace and that was the Delayed Reaction Bar on Valentine Street, a dim pit of cawing rooks, glass dust and layered distortion. Those who asked for a shot and a beer rarely lived to examine the beer. Don Toto the barman sold anarchy symbols made of baked corn - pretzels, he called them. The clientele guzzled drugs laced with gin, world ales, soda and even milk. Some cocktails would cause their heads to swell up so they looked like Newt Gingrich. These unfortunate ones would have to be rounded up and slaughtered like hogs. Behind the bar hung a framed photo of Roni Loveless, the boxer who, ordered to throw a fight, burst through an inner struggle to beat not only his opponent but everyone in the arena and its locality in an outward-blooming explosion of violence against suppressive mediocrity.
Flea Lonza sat under the wind turbine nursing a Sniper’s Delight. An oily corpse in a casual jacket, he shored up his withered senses by smuggling facts and tobacco into America. His ears were just big enough to laugh at. In his capacity as a double edge only one client paid him to give the word to other people - and that client had just sat opposite.
‘You inform on me lately Flea?’
‘When don’t I.’
‘You aint holdin’ out on me are you?’
‘Ever get confused, Atom?’
‘No.’ Atom lit a shock absorber. ‘Smoke?’
Flea flashed his jacket to show a hundred shock boxes like the back room of an old cigar store. ‘Devil need a match?’
‘I’m asking the questions - you recommend my services the last few days?’
‘Yeah. Big guy. Dumb. Took a half hour to select his name. But the little slimeback with him - he did the real talkin’. Asked about Fiasco too - I coulda sent ’em straight to Harry but I put ’em onto you.’
‘Thanks.’ Atom handed over five hundred smackers.
‘This kinda money could get me into trouble Atom.’
Atom drew on his gasper. ‘Don’t knock it. Trouble’ll never leave you, never consider you unworthy of attention. Trouble’s a saint. Your saint, Flea.’
Right away Atom regretted it - what a terrible thing to say to a friend. Why did he have to be smart always? ‘I’m sorry Flea. Here.’ He gave him a pearl-finish photograph of himself sobbing amid a huddle of Emperor penguins. ‘And this.’ He reached into his coat and retrieved something, unfolding it. ‘It’s a clip-on charm filter.’ He fitted the tin bib onto Flea. ‘Now tell me you love me.’
‘I hate you, Atom - I only tolerate you because you pay me and buy me presents.’
‘See? It’s working already. Catch you later, Flea.’ Atom got up and left.
A half minute later a posse of Thermidor’s wrecking crew boomed in, headed by Nada Neck. ‘We don’t want no trouble,’ said Toto the barman, and that cracked everyone up. Toto gave a little bow, grinning as he cleaned a glass.
Nada Neck drew a mufflered M61 Persuader sub and breezed it onto Flea’s forehead as he sat down casual and surveyed the bar. Flea reacted like he’d found a bug in his apple.
‘You gentlemen need a muscle relaxant?’
‘You the local dataroach, right? I think you can help me. Yes, I think so.’
‘Look me in the eye and select a topic, if you can.’
‘Taffy Atom - you’ve met him.’
‘Sure I know Atom but he’s kinda busy. He’s a shadowman.’
‘That this week’s tag for a gumshoe? What’s makin’ him so busy? Remember the gun.’
‘Some guys want him to find Harry Fiasco.’
‘Which guys.’
‘Big dumbster and a lavender seed, don’t know the names.’
‘You don’t know a whole lot of anything do you Roach. That a bib?’
‘You can have it - it’s a charm filter.’
‘Wiseguy, eh?’
‘All