Authors: Kim Newman
The door opened, and someone came in from the night. I was expecting death in a uniform, but it was just Frank McHugh, a beef-faced truck driver in a cloth cap. He went into some comedy patter, bouncing lines off Thelma. I could afford to miss that part of the picture, and turned back to Gloria. She had a cigarette – one of mine, I realised – in her mouth, and was waiting, expectantly. She coughed a little.
‘I’m sorry.’
I took my lighter out, and she held my hand again, tighter this time, guiding the flame. She sucked, and the cigarette end glowed.
She gave me my hand back, but let her velveted fingers play with it for a second or two. She smiled, showing off her plump, tight little mouth, and blew a failed smoke ring. She didn’t make a move for the jukebox, but the coins had disappeared.
‘You have an interesting face, mister.’
‘It’s been around.’
‘Yeahhh. Around.’ Her fingers touched my face, feeling for the painful spots. She found them. ‘You look like you’ve had a rough night.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Cops?’
‘Priests. Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald got me drunk and stole my wallet. Then Ingrid Bergman knocked me around, just for the fun of it. I guess I should have paid attention in Sunday school.’
She looked hurt. ‘No need to fun me, mister. I was just concerned.’
She tried very, very hard not to say ‘concoined’ and only just missed.
‘Us night people gotta look out for each other.’
‘Night people?’
‘Yeah. You’re a night person, like me. I can tell. There were two Irish boys in here earlier, in uniform, back from the war.’ She tried hard to remember, and I realised she was a touch drunk. ‘Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. Imagine, two friends with the same name. They had the look you do, the night-person look. I asked them about the war, and they said it was okay, but you could see in their eyes they didn’t mean it. Lots of day people go to the war and come back night people. Like this kid who used to come here – I think I was married to him once – Dick Powell. He started as a day person, and was in all these big spectacular musical shows they used to put on. They don’t do them any more. You know the kind, with thousands of girls dressed as bananas; now, they just put thousands of bananas on one girl. Dick was the dayest person you ever saw, shining hair, big smile, dimples, high tenor voice. Well, the war came, and Dick turned into a night person, got a job as a private cop or a night editor or something. Now he shaves every other evening, carries a gun and doesn’t sing no more. Me, I’ve been a night person longer than I can remember.’
‘How do you get to be a day person?’
‘You don’t. It only works the other way round. You know, like you only grow older. You have to live with it.’ She smiled, slyly this time, and leaned forwards. Her dress shifted a little, exposing an inch or two of cleavage. ‘There are ways night people have a better time, Richard. There are compensations.’
Her eyelashes fluttered, and she stubbed out her cigarette on my empty plate. ‘I live two blocks from here, in a walk-up,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
I looked up at the clock. It was half past two. I looked down at Gloria. She raised one delicately plucked eyebrow. We understood each other. In her walk-up, there would be a bed. Just now, that was the best way to get to me. Money, threats, drugs: they wouldn’t work. A bed, now, that was irresistible. For eight hours’ sleep, I’d knock off God and hang the frame on Jesus.
‘Can I walk you home?’
‘Would you?’ She tossed her head, for the benefit of the hamburger chef. ‘I’d be honoured. You don’t often get to meet a
gentleman
these nights. Not with the war.’
The chef mashed a lump of raw gristle on his stove, and kept it down until it was half charcoal. ‘Good night, Glory,’ he said, flipping the thing over and blacking the other side. She sniffed the air and ignored him.
She took my arm, fingers digging through several layers of clothing, as if reaching for the bone. As we walked towards the doors, she rested her head on my shoulder.
The doors opened and three men came in. Gloria stepped back behind me, recognising them. The youngest, a dead-eyed thug with prematurely white hair, gave a shark smile. ‘Hello, Gloria, going so soon?’
‘Lee… I thought you was playing poker tonight.’
I heard a tremble in her voice, and again had that impending-violence feeling. I recognised these three too. I had seen pictures. White hair was Lee Marvin, twenty-eight arrests, no convictions. He was high up in the syndicate, which tied him in to Truro Daine. The other two were small fish, Jack Elam and Neville Brand, but they could have argued over first and second place in an Ugly Contest. I gathered my presence was breaking up a beautiful picture of Lee and Gloria. Not exactly a wedding photograph, but close.
I had seen enough pain and blood for one night. I saw Thelma clearing the counter of anything breakable. By the door, Frank McHugh comically gulped down the last of his coffee and hurried back to his rig, leaving half a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs on the table. Jack Elam shut the doors behind him and turned the OPEN sign round to CLOSED.
‘Please, boys,’ said the chef, ‘I don’t want no troubles.’
‘No trouble at all, Kelly.’ Marvin grinned.
I made fists in my pockets. He had some poundage on me, and he wasn’t as tired as I was. Plus he’d brought King Kong’s illegitimate children with him. I was going to get beaten to a pulp. Again. It was becoming monotonous.
‘Coffee, Duchess…’
Thelma picked a full jug off the hotplate and brought out some cups. Before she could pour, Lee took the coffee away from her. It bubbled and steamed like corrosive acid. God knows what it would do to the inside of anyone’s stomach. Or the outside of anyone’s face.
‘Who’s the pretty boy, Gloria?’
‘I… I just met him, Lee. He was gonna see me home, protect me. It’s late.’
That had been the wrong thing to say. Marvin’s mouth went thin, and his grip on the handle of the pot got very tight. He flipped the lid open and shut with his thumb. It looked like a hungry carnivorous plant. The coffee smelled like burning oil. It might have been brewed this year, but I doubted it.
‘What’re you going to do, tough guy,’ I asked, ‘steam the paint off a battleship?’
The door swung in again, bumping Jack Elam. A tall, gaunt, cloaked man swept in, long limbs scissoring with his stride.
‘What country, friends, is this?’ he boomed, shaking every piece of crockery in the place. ‘Bring me liquid sustenance, for I have need of thy strongest mocha-java, merchantman…’
Marvin gaped, turning to look at the newcomer. Drunk or crazy, the tall man had made an entrance worthy of Henry Irving. He swept past Neville Brand, sideswiping him with his cape, reaching out with a heavy walking stick.
‘Such is the stuff the dreams of my palate are made on, Kelly, thine is the most potent brew, renowned throughout this fair land.’ The ferrule of his stick touched the glass coffee pot and shattered it. Marvin shrieked like a gutshot coyote as the dark, boiling liquid soaked through the front of his shirt and trousers, staining black his belly, groin and upper thighs. He threw away the useless handle, collapsed on the linoleum and started scrabbling at his clothes with pawlike hands. He let out a torrent of the vilest abuse imaginable.
‘Darn! Heck! You dumb cluck…’
‘A thousand ’pologies,
mon brave.
’ The tall man doffed his floppy hat and bowed low, waving his hand like a courtier. ’Twas but an accident. Certes, my lord, I have the gelt to replace yon coffee pot. Permit me to purchase you all a fresh beverage as a token of my humblement.’
Marvin could hardly stand up. I could imagine his agony. Underneath his suit, he must be glowing like a fresh-cooked lobster. The thought made me feel warm inside. Elam and Brand helped him up. ‘Get me to a doc,’ he gasped. ‘I gotta know. It feels bad, real bad.’
‘You touch my heart, sieur,’ said the tall man, stepping forwards to offer his hand and accidentally standing on Marvin’s toes. ‘Oh, vile, intolerable, not to be endured! What a zany I am! It seems I cannot perform one task aright this eventide.’
‘Why, you… Gloria, help get me to Blair Hospital… I’ll deal with this clown some other time.’
Sheepishly, Gloria crept out from behind me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I gotta go. Thanks, mister. I don’t want trouble. Good night.’ She kissed me on the cheek, and followed the three out to the street. Her stocking seams weren’t straight.
‘Parting is such sweet, sad sorrow, my young friend. Steel your heart, gird up your vitals and content yourself with the company of bold fellows like Kelly and myself…’
The tall man swung his hat up again and latched it onto his head. He had shoulder-length hair and a black Buffalo Bill moustache.
‘John Carradine,’ he said, ‘at your service. They call me the Bard of the Boulevard on cause of my devotion to the immortal works of Master Will Shakespeare. Ho, master greybeard loon,’ he was shouting to Kelly, ‘come fill the cup, or stap me for a whey-faced knave.’
He thumped the counter with a thin, knuckly hand, and Thelma found another coffee pot from somewhere.
‘See, where she comes apparelled like the spring. A princess fair, the whiteness of whose skin would shame th’ Arctic snows to a blush, the brightness of whose hair would provoke fabl’d Helen to a fit of the envious humours…’
‘Stow it, motormouth,’ she said, smiling sheepishly, ‘and drink your coffee.’ Thelma poured two cups, spilling a bit. I could swear I saw it sizzle as it ate through the varnish. Carradine dropped a few coins – ducats, I think – into the puddle and waved the woman away. She grunted and went back to her pile of glamour magazines. On the cover of
Fortune
, a day person was smiling, displaying star-bright teeth.
I took a stool next to Carradine, and downed the coffee. One way or another, I had drunk quite a bit this evening, but I didn’t need to powder my nose. None of the places I had been in seemed to have a men’s room anyway. Carradine clapped me around the shoulders.
‘We are well met, comrade-in-arms. Long have I combed the vilest quarters of this town on fruitless search for thee. From wharf to palazzo I have quested, ’countering gallants and monstrosities. My trusty sword…’ he tapped his stick ‘…has been gored gules twice its length in wanton combat. O, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast, Kelly, eggs over easy
s’il vous plait
!’
‘You’ve been looking for me?’
‘Indeed, coz. Thou’rt famed as the slayer of the Devil’s prime minister, Master Quick.’
‘Daine.’
‘The very same. Would that’t were mine, the hand that separated the tyrant’s head from the residue of his perfidious corse!’
Thelma gave us both a refill, shaking her head. Kelly produced a plateful of what passed as eggs, and Carradine launched into them with a fork.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t kill Daine.’
‘No matter. The noble intent was there. That lifts you as hero above the commonality. My fealty always is sworn to thee.’
‘Wait a minute. You didn’t like Daine?’
Carradine spat eloquently.
‘I thought he was loved in the city, like a king or something.’
‘Garbage wrapped in silk is still garbage and stinks as such, my friend. I’ve long since pledged my sword to any who would help rid this borough of the damned Daine. Some – too few – have tried. Youngman Bogart, for one, Glenn Ford for another. Their heads have decorated pikes for the common cry of curs to snap and growl at.’
‘I’ve some bad news for you, John,’ I said. ‘I’ve had time to think now. If Daine really is dead, then someone’s taken his place. Someone probably worse than he was.’
‘Say it isn’t so!’
‘The City’s in just as bad a shape as it always was, isn’t it? Men like Marvin and Jack Elam are still running the streets. People are still dying in every gutter.’
‘What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?’
‘There’s a new Night Mayor. There has to be. Claude Rains or Sydney Greenstreet, or one of those fancy-pants villains. They knocked him off and dressed me up for the suit with arrows.’
There’s small choice in rotten apples. Oh, hydra-headed wrongness that should spring up again redoubled when ’tis smitten down!’
‘You said a mouthful.’
Another big black car cruised past the diner. A door opened and a man in a hat leaned out, one foot on the running board. I had hit the floor before the machine gun went off. The picture-windows shattered, and the bar cracked apart where the bullets went in. Glass and doughnuts rained around me. Carradine wasn’t on the floor, alive or dead. I looked up and saw him clinging to a pipe that ran the length of one wall, high up. His long legs were wrapped round it, and he was clutching at a dangling light fitting. His cloak hung down like a curtain, and I could see streetlamps through the bullet holes in it. There was more gunfire, and containers of sugar and ketchup jumped to pieces on tabletops. The linoleum ruptured, and something heavy landed on the back of my head.
Darkness wrapped around me like an anaconda. I gave in to it.
A
fter the Tunney fiasco, they weren’t doing anything without putting it through the full committee structure. In Trefusis’s office, the governor presided over a round-table discussion, with Dr Groome, Juliet, a silent official from the Department of Conscription, and an apparently lifeless andrew head to represent Yggdrasil. Tunney had just slipped into his Richie Quick projection and gone indream expecting a swiftkick runaround the cliché track with a preordained victory at the end. Since he was no longer responding even to the encephalo beacons lodged in his unconscious, Trefusis wasn’t ready to inject Susan without a full run-down of how she intended to melsh with Daine’s Dream. With a certain creepy deference to the impassive head on its platter, the governor opened the meeting by onswitching a tridvid record and passing the conch to Dr Groome.
The clinician, clearly out of her depth with the arts but still determined to do her best, had prepared a selection of vid snips from Daine’s source flatties.