Atom (9 page)

 

Harpoon Specter closed a case of non-shedding lizard skin and stood to secrete his summation. Flea Lonza had a helpless look in his eyes. This was meant to be his show but he felt he'd been dismissed like yesterday's air.

‘We gather here,' said Specter, striding slow, ‘to tell salty tales around the campfire of our spite. To open up a treasure chest of memories while weeping bitter tears of valediction. To make some sense of this force ten error we call our lives.'

The judge, a figure of squashed grey putty, crumpled. ‘God almighty, Specter,' he said, gripping his own face in an effort to recover, ‘break it right down and tell us - what's your argument?'

‘Promise not to laugh?'

‘Modesty's kinda useless if everyone agrees with you, Specter - don't test it.'

‘We're all learning, your honour. There may even be a lesson for us in the roaring pep-rally of circumstantial evidence my learned adversary chooses to term his case. It's to my client's everlasting credit that he hasn't slaughtered the lot of us right here for being this dumb and slow. Biting us if he has to. A competent attorney could establish the shocking facts in two of your Earth minutes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. And I've been tempted to expedite matters by flirting shamelessly with the lot of you - especially you, madam. Yes, you with the big hair. Don't speak, it's not permitted. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm tempted to spurt your tax dollars into the belly of the first juror I see to save my client. But let us not take the short route home. Let us not put this to rest, only to awaken to a breakfast of errata. We must scrape the flies from the headlamps of truth, then switch the fuckers to high beam. Oh, don't get me started on that one.' Specter paused before the jury, seeming to ponder. He closed the curtains on his heart, fastening a button. ‘I'm reminded of the Bible story in which the shepherds couldn't stop laughing. And the angel Abrasaks asked them, “Why are you laughing?” And the shepherd who could pull himself briefly together replied, “As below, so above.” History is replete with working stiffs like you and me being lashed for our humanity by goons with eyes lost in science. Is sin as irreversible as a botched sculpture? Can we steal the remedy? Take a look at Flea Lonza over there, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Look at that front-loading face, incapable of conscious deception. His expression, like that of a man who has just bitten into wax fruit. His ears like air brakes. We've all laughed at Flea's ears at least once. Some of us have joined several such hacking outbursts together to form a volley or “peel” of hilarity. But few would deny they're a godsend to an informant. And make no mistake, that's what he is. A big-eared psycho like his father before him.'

‘Mr Specter,' said the judge, and paused to gather and present his thoughts. ‘You realise, Mr Specter, you're the defence attorney? You're meant to be arguing in the way of innocence regarding your client? What's so exciting about the man's ears?'

‘Well that's the real question isn't it, your honour? Context is everything. Take a dead, dry molecule from an orange, balance it on your finger - utterly useless to one and all. But put it in a box of granola, and it's gold dust. People'll seek it out. And so must you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You have heard my client's apparently sincere opinion that he boosted fruit. The arresting officer was Lung Mussolini, whom we must assume knows what he's doing. You have heard expert testimony that no man could have approached the fruit stall on Posford Street without being visible. We've seen math, sightlines, theory. And a parade of likely perverts with the strutting arrogance to claim they can recall the fashionable events of a day two years ago. Who do they point to? Super Ears over there. Should these contradictions crowd goodness into a cell? If so, let man return to the pockets of the volcano.'

Specter digressed into Nash-Wardial Theft Theory, which calculated the amount stolen as diametric to self-worth in a moral man and diametric to morals in a man of self-worth, concluding that in stealing a single apple Flea had proven himself a man of either high morals or rockbottom self esteem. Either way, he deserved the jury's sympathy. And Specter was swaggering now. ‘Still a young man and you'd have him cross himself while holding a knife. Well, let me tell you the story of another young man. Drove a diesel van and went by the name of Atom. Supported his little son Taff by hauling facts across Our Fair State. That's right, a double-edge like Flea here, set on the crooked path by a shove off the school insignia. Fated to provide Rex Camp with a thousand piece puzzle. Remember the McDougal cop cell assassination? Atom Senior knew who did it but unlike the rest of us, he went to the Daily Denial in the early hours, only to find his appointed rendezvous with a hack a mere rendezvous with death. The lone soul in the office was a government mechanic who immediately pulled a sender and let rip. The gore impact activated the fax machine, transmitting the splash pattern to a programmed number, fixing time, place, trajectory and interpretive psychological demeanour via the blot form. Conspiracy theorists later claimed it showed healthy affection and appropriate respect for the assassin's mother. The assassin panicked, shifted the angle of the fax and bolted. He was about to turn himself in when he heard the fax had gone directly to the White House, so that was the end of that. Or could have been if he hadn't bragged of his good fortune at a party. A concerned citizen overheard him, went to the cops, and was assassinated. Little orphan Atom passed this story on to Flea with its lesson intact. Flea never passed to a hack, he never passed to the brotherhood, knowing that the edge who blabs is inevitably blunted.' Specter leaned forward on the jurors' box. ‘Here are the teeth that forgot to bite - here are the written rights of man.' He fixed the jurors with a significant stare. ‘Don't go down that road, ladies and gentlemen. It'll be cigarettes for supper and a stroll to the mercy seat. And I don't buy that. The only way my client could have approached that applecart is vertically down the face of the wall using some part of his anatomy as suction cups. Needless to say, nobody thought to dust that wall for prints. It's absurd, why should they? Unfortunately for the barnacle-encrusted prosecution, the lack of such evidence leaves the case as we see it today - a construction as lurid and irrational as a stalker's shrine.'

‘Your honour,' said the prosecution, bolting up. ‘I request a continuance.'

The judge looked like a guy in a headache commercial. ‘The trial is over, counsellor.'

Specter raised his hand. ‘I wasn't finished, your honour.'

 

 

‘Taff,' said Jed Helms, sculling his deep body in the office tank. ‘I think I had a dream.'

He blinked his lantern-eyed head, light blotches rippling over jet barbs and silver pain cells.

‘The office, the trap, the whole city was flooded with water. I could go anywhere - I was free.'

Atom was leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, watching the ceiling fan. ‘Maddy says maybe you're overcompensating for your short kill range.'

‘Maybe. I know Maddy's still workin' on them waterproof cigars, a bigger tank and all. But since this caper with the headberries, the fort and that dip in the hot tub with Cherry and Linda, I got me a broader swatch.'

‘You ate dip? Well, that's all over now. I got rid of the crap axis, everyone owns their own problems. We got downtime. I ever tell you about my dad?'

‘A million times.'

The desk light flashed, and a moment later a guy swanned in who seemed to have died but continued to move out of sheer malice. Sleek and shiny as a beetle (Atom wondered if he'd rot down as fast), he goggled in a perfunctory way at the principal objects in the room and commenced to rasp a tubercular protest over the prow of a Beretta 92F.

‘Do you know what you've done?'

‘Tell me - I've forgotten.'

‘You had in your grasp one of the keys to the survival of our intelligence, and you - you give it to the President?'

‘It's like that sometimes.'

‘Like what exactly? Anyone near gets flipped into negative, is that it? The sheer sit-up-and-watch stupidity of your actions, your unbridled arrogance, these mental wedgies you use for communication, this empty place with one office, that lurid lobby? You're naked! Are you mad?'

‘Isn't it terribly expensive?' Atom tapped a shock from a packet and lit it up. ‘I oughta install a revolving door in here, number of people come in to lay down their stuff from in back of a snub.'

‘What I have to say is too important to relate with my gun sheathed.'

‘So shoot, if you can.'

‘To be dared is to be shown the poverty of the darer's vision.'

Atom saw the gun shivering. This desiccated ghoul had been knocked sideways but his eyes were flat with malevolence. It was like being watched by something you just put in the garbage.

‘While we perch here fronting off, that cryo hamper's heading outta town. Because I didn't like any part of it,' Atom added before DeCrow could ask, and stabbed out his shock on the desk. ‘Get you and the gent, swappin' noggins like baseball cards - is that any way for grown men to behave?'

‘You bloody fool,' hissed DeCrow. ‘The brain in the freezerbox isn't Kafka's. I performed surgery before that hayseed Fiasco thought to steal it. Kafka's brain is in the Candyman's head.'

‘What?'

‘Yes,' DeCrow gloated. ‘Who's naked now? Think of it Atom - after such extended suspension it was vital to get blood through that brain. And who would think to look for it there? This was the first phase of the operation. The second was to fuse part of the Candyman's mind back into the cranium, and finally to fit the body with a chitinous carapace. Turow knew nothing of this.'

‘And before you could do it, Fiasco boosted the Candyman's skull tackle, thinking he was stealing the bonce he'd taken earlier from the Brain Facility. So how did the gent lumber and chortle with his brain in a station stash box?'

‘The freezercase is wired with a wet cerebral interface, its signal microwaved to a receptor in the Candyman's spine. The system was temporary, Atom, and the signal finite. When the Candyman's brain leaves Our Fair State, the brain now residing dormant in his skull will take over. Now do you see what you've done you complacent maniac?'

‘A choice between some buggy-thinkin' patrician decked out like a bunker tank or a thin man in a slob's body, it's jake with me. The gent cut loose didn't he? Likely suspected you were planning to take his body and K's qoph as soon as you were sure K was in the pink. And when the gent left the hotel you'd been usin', the handle on him was the brain in that cryo box. You really dropped the ball on this one didn't you? You've been lurchin' round town followin' every lead as inconspicuous as a pig in a minefield - all for your precious chiggers.'

‘Bugs shall prevail amid blowing embers, Mr Atom. As idiots prevail in this cauldron of malice and -'

‘You're right at home, Doc - except for the unexpected. You can't handle that. You're the conformist from the black lagoon. Bet you didn't imagine the crime string knotting up this way when you coded it. You bore the hell outta me.'

‘This bullet will.'

The door banged open behind DeCrow and the Candyman lolled in, slurring. ‘I should have known it sir,' he said, trying to focus on Atom. ‘You've drawn the true venom here. Did you know that he practices on himself. Great globules in the alleys sir, I could give you chapter and verse on his depravity ...'

No longer cheerful and impervious, he drifted off momentarily, glancing about as if unsure of it all.

‘You on line, Candyman?' asked Atom.

‘... in this rolling disaster you call the world. A refusal defines you amid moving cruelty. Full marks sir ...' He toppled against the wall and slid heavily to the floor, his voice fluttering feebly. ‘... a premature breaking-off of methodical procedure ... and under the scene, ants swarm like electrons ... no more torture ... why continue ...' He looked up real pathetic, his veering accent a weakened whine. Maybe time and neglect had done its work on his mind, but K's first clear statement was ‘I never cribbed from Gogol.' His spirit was spiked with poison. ‘Any more than Schulz cribbed from me.'

‘See that?' barked DeCrow, pointing with the gun.

‘Why you so bent outta shape - you got what you want aint you? Right there. Hey, K, Brod really did a number on your will didn't he? You'll be glad to hear he's dead.'

‘This really is America,' K muttered, standing unsteadily.

‘How's it feel?'

‘Like it was built last week.'

‘Yeah. You been aware of stuff while the gent was at the wheel?'

‘Mostly. The bone of another man's forehead blocks my way. And I'm fat - I can't disappear.'

‘Guess it musta been real frustratin',' said Jed from the tank, ‘bein' able to look out on the world but not act in or affect it.'

Kafka gave him a look of bafflement and dawning contempt.

‘K's a rowing machine, Jed,' said Atom.

‘He sounds like a girl,' Jed observed.

‘What in hell is this?' gasped DeCrow, peering into the tank. ‘Did you build this yourself? Is it sentient? A hybrid?'

‘See why I wanted to conclude this, Jed?'

‘You're right, it stinks.'

‘Wanna go fishing?'

They were still laughing about that when the phone rang. ‘Excuse me, fellas,' said Atom and flipped the tumbler. ‘Yeah, Maddy.'

‘Thermidor thinks he's kidnapped me,' she told him.

‘Where are you?'

‘Candyman's room at the Bird.'

‘How'd he find the lab?'

‘He didn't - I was visiting Flea at the pen, they got me in the lot.'

‘Deployed anything?'

‘Didn't want to bloody my pants, Taff. Come on over.'

 

‘Knew if we hung around Atom's place we'd swatch Houdini's husk. Sawyer's skeleton clicks like a boiler dial.' Long estranged from his own skeleton, Blince was damning in his assessment of others'. The stakeout had borne fruit.

‘D'you make Atom for Sawyer's breaker or like that? System went down, Chief - the cuffs popped.'

‘Maybe, maybe not. Need arms like twigs to slip 'em but Sawyer's a freak. Those cuffs were closed when the lights came up, Benny. So was the goddamn door, and Sawyer took a powder. Then he winds up here brownbaggin' some kinda snub - same one the cabby described maybe. Where'd it go between times? He swallow it? Real convenient.'

Only their heads extended above the patrol car's doughnut level. They were like drowning giants pelted with lifebelts.

‘Ever notice you never see Jesus and Oliver Hardy in the same room? I the first to suspect somethin' here?'

‘Usually are, Chief. Who was the arbuckle went in after?'

‘Seen it all before - Atom's a catalyst. Doesn't change. Maybe I'll respect that.'

‘Respect it for why?'

‘For why's a kamikaze pilot wear a goddamn helmet? I don't make predictions, Benny, and I never will.'

‘So what's the real story with Atom.'

‘Got into some noble scrape and went away burdened with gifts he had to wield with honour, what I heard.'

‘Someone's comin' out, Chief.'

Three figures emerged from Atom's brownstone. A cloaked cadaver cradling its gored face, followed by a naked Atom and the fat gent carrying a fishtank between them. In the tank's gloom rocked a giant mouth with a tail. Atom's voice carried to the cop car. ‘Self-surgery eh, Professor? Real fashionable. Remember, Jed, chew at least ten times. Right, K?'

‘Well now, bless my soul,' Blince rumbled. ‘Looka that, Benny. Don't let anyone tell you idealism's dead.'