Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (30 page)

“Maybe they're willing to deal at last?” said Frank. He had his areas of optimism.

“It could be a joke,” said Bishop Beesley.

She hovered over her keyboard, but nothing came to mind.

“A farewell gig, though,” said Frank. “I thought they'd already done that.” He sniggered.

“Captain Maxwell will be there.” Bishop Beesley waved an important Crunchy. “And we need to raise some cash.”

“We'll make a few contacts.” Frank reached towards the invitation but had his wrist slapped away by Miss Brunner.

“It's another trap,” she said.

“What can they do to us? We've survived everything.”

“Your brother's involved. He's been resurrecting people again. You know what he's like.”

“Everyone who is everyone—or was anyone—will be there. Let's give it a go.” Frank stroked his hand. “Please. My mum'll be there. She works at the venue. He wouldn't hurt our mum.”

Miss Brunner was letting him convince her.

“And I've never seen him live,” said Bishop Beesley. “If live is the right word.”

“It'll be a relaxing night out.” Frank gave a stupid grin. “Well, it'll make a change.”

“It'll make a change,” Miss Brunner agreed. “Do we get to see the film as well?”

“It doesn't say.”

The cryptik made a peculiar peeping noise.

“I think it's laughing,” she said.

“I hope to god this is my last bloody comeback.” Jerry Cornelius bit his mouldering lip and stared at his disintegrated fingers. “There just isn't the energy around now.”

“It's because you've used it all up,” said Captain Maxwell. “Jilly where's the cheque book?”

“They took that as well.”

The Captain began to look in the backs of his desk drawers, as it he hoped to find a little cash. “This is silly.”

“What happened to the money?” asked the Assassin.

“It was won in a dream and lost in a nightmare,” said Jilly. She seemed to be quoting somebody.

“Where did it go?”

“Ask the bloody Official Receiver.”

“Isn't that what he's asking you?”

“Everybody's asking the wrong questions.” Jilly glared at the Assassin. “Leave him alone. Can't you see he hasn't had any sleep in months?”

“That always happens when you try to make a dream come true, doesn't it?”

“I don't need you sitting there, rotting in my last good chair,” said Maxwell. “Have all the invitations gone out, Jilly?”

“I'm not moralising,” said the Assassin defensively, “exactly, I'm speaking from several lifetimes of experience.”

“All gone out,” said Jilly.

“Isn't the dream better than what we've got?”

“Are you Mr Bug?”

“Let's just say I do his tailoring.”

“Where is he?”

“Where he always was. Zurich. Watching telly.”

“I never thought of Switzerland.” Jerry tried to recover a fingernail which had dropped onto the bare boards.

“Few people ever do.”

“It could just be the suit that's in Switzerland.”

“The suit is Mr Bug.” The Captain paused in his search. “I should know, shouldn't I?”

The Assassin drew himself onto unsteady feet. He dusted a little light mould from his black car coat.

“Well, that clears everything up. Thanks. I'll see you at the gig.”

“See you there,” said the Captain. He crossed the room and began to feel in the pockets of a pair of discarded bondage trousers.

The Assassin paused by the door. “Oh, by the way, who really did kill—?”

“Get off,” said Captain Maxwell.

As the Assassin went down the stairs, Jilly came trotting after him. She whispered:

“It was Richard. But the Captain set it up.”

The Assassin had already forgotten the question.

The Concorde loaded on schedule at Margaret Thatcher Airport. “England looks very clean, these days,” said Martin Bormann with some satisfaction. “I always knew there was a chance for her.”

An old robber, disguised as an ex-boxer, said through his balaclava: “A return to proper standards. And about time.”

Mo settled his trilby on his head. “As soon as I see Captain M I'm going to … “

“Give it up,” said Flash. “Just for a bit, eh?”

Martin Bormann was disappointed. “I thought there'd be a crowd waiting for us. Like the Beatles.”

“Crowds need organising,” said Mo, “and the Captain's too busy for that. Besides, he's not managing us any more.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, you can never be absolutely certain.”

“I'm glad I'm not dead. I'm glad I'm not dead,” mumbled the last of the Musician-Assassins to himself. He had put on his old pierrot suit and had plastered his face with white make-up to hide the worst of the decay. “You've got to think positive.”

He shuffled through the streets of North London. He was lost. He seemed to remember that he had been on his way to some kind of party. Possibly he had missed it during one of his rests. The rain had started. His silk suit began to stick to his skeleton as he turned into Finchley Road.

Everything was getting very hazy.

“Two Rotten Bars, please.” Jilly looked at her own little dolls on display in the foyer. She still thought she should get the bars free, but she paid for them anyway. Alvarez began to sing at her.

“You stop that, Sarge,” Mrs Cornelius came round the corner. “Don't let 'im bovver you, love. 'E wants ter be discovered. Will Captain M be along later?”

“Discovered?”

“Like America.” She laughed heartily so that her goods in her tray bounced beneath her bouncing breasts. “An' all them ovver bleedin' colonies.”

Jilly went inside. She wanted to be sure of a good seat.

They were all beginning to arrive now. Nearly everybody was in some form of fancy dress. Mickey Most, in lugubrious and inappropriate corduroy, Jake Riviera, Tony Howard, Peter Jenner, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Martin Davis. A lot of denim and fur. A lot of vain leather.

Shuffling in and standing in the shadow, the half-collapsed pierrot looked at them going by. It was like a gathering of Mafia dons, old and new. Richard Branson, Michael Dempsey, Miles Copeland: some of them in modifications of demi-monde styles, some in grotesque parodies of dandyism. The Nouveaux Noires arrived, singly or in couples, with their girlfriends.

The pierrot noticed how comfortable they all were. It was probably because not a single punter had been on the invitation list. Some of them complained that they had to pay, but in the main they were not discontented.

Elton John, Rod Stewart, Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard and Barbra Streisand. Bishop Beesley, Miss Brunner, Anne Nightingale. Frank Cornelius didn't notice his brother. He was walking on air. He felt euphoric in the presence of cash. The slightly self-conscious members of the musical press were trying to look like musicians, and as usual were not absolutely certain of their social status: their expressions changing constantly as they tried for an appropriate mode.

They were piling in, drawn by curiosity, greed, a wish not to be left out.

Music publishers, record company executives, the owners of studios; agents and managers.

“What a lot of controllers,” mumbled Jerry vaguely. “What a lot of mortgages.”

Elegant cowboys, smoothed-up Hell's Angels, Beverly Hills punks. Nobody required any hope, only confirmation. They confirmed one another.

The pierrot was reminded of a bunch of burghers going into church.

Mo and Flash wandered in. Mo's trenchcoat was covered in a variety of old food, vomit and semen. He had lost his hat. A bouncer appeared from nowhere. “Sorry, you've got to have invitations.”

Ronnie Biggs and Martin Bormann said in chorus: “It's all right. They're with us.”

“Johnny won't come,” said Mo to no-one in particular. He hadn't noticed the pierrot in the shadows either.

“I've seen this before,” whispered Miss Brunner to Frank as the film came on.

“We've all seen it before,” said someone behind her. “That doesn't mean we can't enjoy it.”

Mo was crawling between the seats, still looking for Captain Maxwell.

He found a tartan knee. “Flash? Wake up.”

“Give him a break,” said Jilly. “Can't you leave him alone for a minute?”

It was standing room only for the old pierrot. He held on tightly to the rail at the back, trying to focus fading eyes.

His mother popped in. “Jerry. Yore lookin' terrible. There's a chap in the foyer. Sez 'e's Mr Bug's bailiff. Is it ther Receivers?”

“They're not playing tonight.”

“El tell 'im.” She disappeared.

“Mum … ” He stretched out his wounded hand. “My wiring's gone … ” But she didn't hear him.

He could only dimly detect the soundtrack now. There was a lot of plummy laughter coming from the seats. The film was reassuring its audience while pretending to shock them; a perfect formula for success.

“It's sure to be a winner,” said Mitzi B, slipping out for a pee.

The pierrot gasped. Everything was going round and round.

Sometime later, as he desperately tried to revive his attention, he saw Sid at last. The operation had been a success. He wasn't absolutely sure by now if Sid was actually on stage or on film. He was singing “My Way” with all his old style.

Mo crawled up and began to tug at the pierrot's suit. Bits of it tore away in his hand. “This is where I came in.”

He crawled on, towards the exit.

The volume rose higher and higher. There were a few murmurs of complaint.

The pierrot felt a shade better. He managed an appreciative groan.

The song ended.

Gunfire began to sound in the auditorium.

The pierrot sank to the dirty floor with a happy grunt. “It worked, after all. We did it, Sid.”

The hall became filled with the sounds of terror. Blood and bits of flesh flew everywhere. The audience was tearing itself to pieces as it tried to escape.

Eventually there was silence. A dark screen. A vacuum. An avenged ghost.

Mrs Cornelius opened the doors. She had an expression of resigned disgust on her face. “'Oo the bloody 'ell do they expect ter clear up this fuckin' mess, then?”

“Jimi?” said Alvarez behind her.

He began to sing again.

Ladbroke Grove, 1980

Marrakesh, 1988

Benjamin Whitmer

Derrick Kreiger hasn't dreamed since his heart was rewired in Vietnam. Not once. It's like the pacemaker's electrical current has driven his unconscious mind from the subterranean to the surface, like a crank phone and a lead wire will do to catfish. And Derrick's pretty sure it's not him alone. Not when he remembers the scalpings, the overdoses, and the jungle fraggings in the war. Nor has Derrick allowed himself anything like normal sleep since he returned from the war. He settles for nothing less than the complete obliteration of his mind, conscious and unconscious. And he excludes no chemical in that pursuit.

Now he awakes with a jolt. His entire body clenching, fingers curling. He's laid out on the back seat of his car, and outside he can hear frantic footsteps, metal on metal, glass smashing, screams. He can't be sure it isn't a dream, after all, and a dream of the one thing he annihilates his dreams to avoid. He puts his cheek against the back of the seat and inches his face upward until he can just peek what's happening.

Over-The-Rhine. Cincinnati's blackest and poorest ghetto, just up from the central business district. Rioters whirl in and out of the main body in clusters, cells, breaking through the smoke into Derrick's vision, and then gone again, agitating against each other with a relentless ferocity that makes him wonder they don't combust. The smoke drifts. Three junkies kicking the glass out of the front window of a drug store. The smoke drifts. A gang of teenagers turn over a Cadillac. The smoke drifts.

Breathe, Derrick thinks. Not one of 'em knows you're here.

Then the smoke drifts again, and a little black girl, maybe twelve years old, materializes right in front of the passenger window. Her teeth slash out of her face in a wicked, firelit grin. “Over here,” she calls back into the smoke.

Derrick stumbles out onto the sidewalk on the other side of the car from her. He wobbles in his cowboy boots, his lungs clutching in the smoke. The street tilts, his vision threatens to black out.

“The peckerwood's scared,” she cackles, and Derrick thinks about giving her the palm of his hand. But then the smoke drifts, and out of it steps the biggest and ugliest black man Derrick's ever seen.

“Does your mama know you're out walking your gorilla?” Derrick says.

“My mama's doing five to ten on a trafficking charge.” She's wearing a pretty little pink dress, the hem charred by one of the riot fires. “This is my brother. He hasn't said it yet, but he thinks you're a pig.”

“He ain't as dumb as he looks.” Derrick pulls his badge. “This is my license to shoot niggers when they riot. Even smart-mouth little bitches like you.”

“Your crackerjack badge don't scare me, honky,” the little girl says. She chucks her baby chin at her brother. “Stomp his ass.”

“Your call,” Derrick says. He reaches back to his belt holster where his gun should be, a grin starting.

The holster's empty.

Derrick tries to hold the grin but it's impossible. But the man moving towards him, he starts a grin of his own.

“Well, shit,” Derrick says. Then he spins to the right and runs like hell. He runs straight into a cloud of smoke, out again. A pack of five rioters appear in the clearing. They've got a half-naked woman trapped between them, shoving her back and forth. She's screamed until she has no voice left, her mouth still gaping with the effort, blood running in rivulets down her face.