Cities of the Red Night (23 page)

Silver spots boil in front of my eyes. I am standing in the empty ruined courtyard hundreds of years from now, a sad ghostly visitant in a dead city, smell of nothing and nobody there.

The boys are flickering shadows of memory, evoking bodies that have long since turned to dust. I am calling, calling without a throat, without a tongue, calling across the centuries:
“Paco … Joselito … Enrique.”

SCREEN PLAY / PART ONE

It is on the second floor. A brass plaque: “Blum & Krup.” A metal door. A bell. I ring. A cold-eyed young Jew opens the door a crack.

“Yes? You are client or salesman?”

“Neither.” I hand him my card. He closes the door and goes away. He comes back.

“Mr. Blum and Mr. Krup will see you now.”

He ushers me into an office decorated in the worst German taste with pictures of youths and maidens swimming with swans in northern lakes, the carpets up to my ankles. There, behind a huge desk, are Blum and Krup. A vaudeville team. Blum is Austrian and Jewish, Krup is Prussian and German.

Krup bows stiffly without getting up. “Krup von Nordenholz.”

Blum bustles out from behind the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Snide. I am the master here. Have a cigar.”

“No thanks.”

“Well, we will have some fun at least. We will have an orgy.” He goes back to his chair on the other side of the desk and sits there watching me through cigar smoke.

“And why have you not come here sooner, Herr Snide?” asks Krup in a cold dry voice.

“Oh well, there's a lot of legwork in this business…” I say vaguely.

“Ja und Assenwerke.”
(Yes and asswork.)

“We want that you stop with the monkey business and do some real business, Mr. Snide.”

“We are not a charitable institution.”

“We do not finance ass fuckings.”

“Now just a minute, Blum and Krup. I wasn't aware that you were my clients.”

Krup emits a short cold bray of laughter.

Blum takes the cigar out of his mouth and points the butt across the table at my chest. “And who did you think was your million-dollar client?”

“A green bitch synthesized from cabbage?”

“Well, if you are my client, what am I expected to do exactly?”

Krup whinnies like a cynical horse.

“You are to recover certain rare books now in the possession of a certain Countess,” Blum says.

“I am not even sure I would know these books if I saw them.”

“You have seen samples.”

“I am not sure the samples correspond in any way to the alleged books I am retained to recover.”

“You think you have been deceived?”

“Not ‘think.'
Know.
”

The room is so quiet you can hear the long gray cone of Blum's cigar fall into an ashtray. Finally he speaks. “And suppose we could tell you exactly where the books are?”

“So they are in someone's private bank vault surrounded by guards and computerized alarm systems? I am supposed to sneak in there and carry out a carton of books slung over my shoulder in a rare tapestry, stamps and first editions in all my pockets, industrial diamonds up my ass in a finger stall, a sapphire big as a hen's egg in my mouth? Is that what I am expected to do?”

Blum laughs loud and long while Krup looks sourly at his nails. “No, Mr. Snide. This is not what you are expected to do. There is a group of well-armed partisans operating in an adjacent area, who will occupy the Countess's stronghold. You will have only to go in after them and secure the books. There will be an outcry against the partisans who have so savagely butchered a rich foreign sow.… Then stories will filter out about the Countess and her laboratories, and there'll be something in it for everybody. The CIA, the partisans, the Russians, the Chinese … we will have some fun at least. Might start a little Vietnam down here.”

“Well,” I say. “You have to take a broad general view of things.”

“We prefer a very specific view, Mr. Snide,” says Krup looking at a heavy gold pocket watch. “Be here at this time Thursday and we will talk further. Meanwhile, I would strongly advise you to avoid other commitments.”

“And bring your assistants and the books what you got,” adds Blum.

*   *   *

When Jim and I go to see Blum and Krup on Thursday, we take along the books the Iguanas have given me. Krup looks the books over, snorting from time to time, and as he finishes leafing through each one, he slides it down the table to Blum.

“Mr. Snide, where are the books you are now making?” asks Krup.

“Books? Me? I'm just a private eye, not a writer.”

“You come to make with us the crookery,” snaps Blum, “we break you in your neck. Hans! Willi! Rudi! Heinrich!
Herein!
”

Four characters come in with silencered P-38s, like in an old Gestapo movie.

“And now, your assistant will get the books while you and your
Lustknabe
remain here. Hans and Heinrich will go with him to make sure he does not so lose himself.”

Hans and Heinrich step behind Jim. “Keep six feet in front of us at all times.” They file out.

In half an hour Jim is back with the books. B & K spread them out on the table and both of them stand up and look at them like generals studying a battle plan.

Finally Krup nods. “
Ach ja.
With these I think it is enough.”

Blum turns to me, almost jovial now, rubbing his hands. “Well, you and your assistant and the boy, you are ready to leave,
hein
?”

“Leave? Where to?”

“That you will see.”

Hans, Rudi, Willi, and Heinrich march us up some stairs onto a roof and into a waiting helicopter. The pilot has a blank cold thuggish face and he is wearing a 45 in a shoulder holster. He looks American. The guards strap us into our seats and blindfold us and we take off. The flight lasts about an hour.

Then we are herded out and into another plane, a prop job. Dakota, probably. About three hours this time, and we set down on water. They take off our blindfolds and we now have a different pilot. He looks English and has a beard.

The pilot turns around and smiles. “Well, chaps, here we are.”

They untie us and we get out on a jetty. It is on a small lake, just big enough to set the plane down. Around the lake I see Quonset huts and in an open space something that looks like an oil rig. A barbed-wire fence surrounds the area with gun towers. There are enough armed guards around for a small army.

In front of a Quonset hut several men are talking. One comes forward to greet us: it is that CIA punk Pierson.

“Well, Snide,” he says. “Welcome aboard.”

“Well, Pierson,” I say. “If you can't lick them join them.”

“That's right. How about some chow?”

“That would be just fine.”

He leads the way into a Quonset that serves as a dining room. There are long tables and tin plates and a number of men eating. Some of them look like construction workers, others like technicians.

My attention is drawn to a table of about thirty youths. They are the best-looking boys I have ever seen at one time, and all of them are ideal specimens of white Anglo-Saxon youth.

“Our genetic pool,” Pierson explains.

A fat mess sergeant slops some fish and rice and stewed apricots on our plates and fills tin cups with cold tea.

“Army-style here,” says Pierson.

After we finish eating, he lights a cigarette and grins at me through the smoke.

“Well, I guess you are wondering what this is all about.”

“Yeah.”

“Come along to my digs and I'll explain. Some of it, at least.”

I know quite a bit already. Much more than I want him to think I know. And I know that the less he tells me the better chance I have of getting out of here alive. I've already seen that the oil rig is a rocket-launching pad. Things are falling into place.

He leads the way to a small prefab. He turns to Jim and Kiki: “Why don't you two look around? Do some fishing. You can get tackle at the PX. The lake is stocked with largemouth bass … You'll do well here.…”

I nod to Jim and he walks away with Kiki. Pierson unlocks the door and we go in. A cot, a card table, some chairs, a few books. He motions me to a chair, sits down and looks at me. “You saw the launching pad?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think it will be used for?”

“To launch something, obviously.”

“Obviously. A space capsule that will also be a communications satellite.”

I am beginning to understand what they are planning to communicate.

“Now, just suppose an atom bomb should fall on New York City. Who would be blamed for that?”

“The Commies.”

“Right. And suppose a mysterious plague broke out attacking the white race, while the yellow, black, and brown seemed to be mysteriously immune? Who would be blamed for that?”

“Yellow black brown. Yellow especially.”

“Right. So we would then be justified in using any biologic and/or chemical weapons in retaliation, would we not?”

“You would do it justified or not. But the plague might well decimate the white race … destroy them as a genetic entity.”

“We would have the fever sperm stocks. We could rebuild the white race to our specifications, after we…”

The table of thirty boys flashed in front of my eyes. “Pretty neat. And you want me to write the scenario.”

“That's it. You've written enough already to get the ball rolling.”

“What about the Countess de Gulpa? How does she figure in this?”

“Ah, the Countess. She doesn't figure. She is not nearly as important as you may have thought. She would hardly go along with destroying the blacks and browns, because she makes her money out of them. She still thinks in terms of money.”

“Her laboratories?”

“Not much we could use. Certain lines of specialized experimentation … interesting, perhaps. She has, for example, succeeded in reanimating headless men. These she gives to her friends as love slaves. They are fed through the rectum. I don't see any practical applications. We had thought of using her in scandals to discredit the rank-and-file CIA … but that won't be necessary now.”

“I daresay you could wipe her out with rockets from here.”

“Easily. Or we could use biologic weapons.”

“The Black Fever?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the radio. “In fact, I could give the order right now.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“You will finish the scenario. Your assistant will do the illustrations.”

“And then?”

“You have been promised a million dollars to find the books. You have found them. Of course, money will mean nothing once this thing breaks, but we will see to it that you live comfortably. After all, we have no motive to eliminate you … we may need your services in the future. We're not bad guys really.…”

*   *   *

How nice will these nice guys be once they get what they want from me? If I am allowed to live at all it will certainly be as a prisoner.

I am trying to stall Blum with a sick number called
Naked Newgate
about a handsome young highwayman and the sheriff's daughter. Blum isn't buying it.

“Any thousand-dollar-a-week Hollywood hack could write such a piece of shit.”

Then Pierson asks me over for a drink and a “little chat.” It sounds ominous.

“Oh uh by the way … Blum isn't exactly happy about the screenplay.”

“Nize baby, et up all the screenplay.”

He looks at me sharply.

“What's that, Snide?”

“It's a joke. Fitzgerald in Hollywood.”

“Oh,” he says, a bit intimidated by the reference to Fitzgerald … perhaps something he should know about … He clears his throat.

“Blum says he wants something he calls
art.
He knows it when he sees it and he isn't seeing it now.”

“What I like is
culture!
What I like is
art
!” I screech in the tones of a crazed Jewish matron.

He gives me a long blank sour look.

“More jokes, Snide?”

“I'll give him what he wants. I'm staging a little theater production tomorrow …
very artistic.
”

“This had better be good, Snide.”

*   *   *

A slim blond youth in elegant nineteenth-century clothes stands on a scaffold. A black hood, laced with gold threads, is drawn over his head.

RUBBLE BLOOD PU

(
END OF PART I
)

Stuck in dead smallpox nights of the last century. This satined ass in yellow light.

(Yellow-flecked storm waves … palm trees … wide strip of sand … a corduroy road … I don't remember hitting … I really don't think so … the truck shadow … trees tasting cement … green dark water.)

“Good English soldier of fortune, sir. Work for you, yes no?”

Spelling years whisper the lake heavy red sweater, trash cans in yellow light. The sigh of a harmonica flags in the sad golden wash of the sunset singing fish luminous sky fresh smell of damp violets. Man smell of dirty clothes red faces breath thick on tarnished mirrors.

Sunset, train whistles. I am on the train with Waring. Red clay roads and flint chips glitter in the setting sun.

Pilots the plane across time into a waiting taxi, steep stone street, boy with erection yellow pimples turn-of-the-century lips parted … red hair freckles a ladder.

A young face floats in front of his eyes. The lips, twisted in a smile of ambiguous sexual invitation, move in silent words that stir and ache in his throat with a taste of blood and metallic sweetness. He feels the dizzy death weakness breathing through his teeth, his breath ice cold.

The boy in front of him lights up inside, a blaze of light out at his eyes in a flash as Audrey feels the floor drop out from under him. He is falling, the face floating down with him, then a blinding flash blots out the room and the waiting faces.