William S. Burroughs (23 page)

Some spotters
cultivate an inconspicuous appearance and demeanor. They do not
provoke aggressive or discourteous behavior. Other spotters will
follow. Some will belong to ethnic minorities. Others may be
marked by some eccentricity of dress or manner. Some will be obvious
gays
...
reactions of the towns people
carefully noted. Then the Shit Slaughter units move in...

Accidents: Nobody
was very much concerned or surprised when Old Man Brink's cabin
burned down with him in it...Death by misadventure...

Dark interior of a
filthy cabin
...
snoring noises from a pile
of rags
...
a youth with MISS ADVENTURE on
his T-shirt is revealed as he lights a kerosene lamp. He tosses the
lamp into the room.

"Hellfire, you
old fuck."

Illnesses that can
be easily induced: Five cases of typhoid were traced to a church
supper and the sheriff got botulism in a segregated restaurant.

In many cases it is
simply necessary to put the shit out of action, to close his store,
his restaurant, his hotel, or deprive him of office.

Here is a town of
two thousand people. The spotters have picked a hundred twenty-three
hardcore shits. If over a period of several months these shits die,
become sick, go insane, go bankrupt, no one in the town thinks
anything about it
...
no apparent
relation between disparate incidents
...
no
pattern...

Kim knows he is
perfectly safe so long as he stays in Saint Albans. He also
knows he has to move on. He has more important things to do than
shoot stock-killing dogs or maybe run some squatter off the land...

How
dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To
rust unburnished, not to shine in use...

A special meeting to
reconsider our Mafia policy. Present directives advocate
containing the animal in a folkloric ghetto of godfathers, red
wine and garlic, and button men wallowing on their filthy mattresses.
Let them burn each other's olive oil, throw dead rats into rival
pasta vats, and murder each other with impunity. After all,
these simple people have a rich folklore. Similar policy was advised
by a knowledgeable anthropologist with regard to headshrinking
and feud killing among the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador. He recommended
that no attempt be made to control or sanction these practices, since
their culture would languish without the sustaining incentive of
ritual warfare. He concluded his report:

"They have
nothing else to do."

Now feudin can keep
a man occupied a whole rich, satisfying life so he can belch out
with his last breath like a fulfilled old Mafioso don:

"Life is so
beautiful
!"

Somebody shrinks his
cousin twice removed, time-honored codes determine who is obligated
to shrink an equivalent cousin. One old fuck has shrunken down
52
heads. Back to the simple basic things
...
life
in all its rich variety of an old shit house when a man knowed where
his ass was. Those were the days, eh? Singing waiters, hit men, wise
old dons belching garlic.

A trembling waiter
serves a table of button men from the rival Calamari family. They
spit clam spaghetti into his face.

"That isn't our
pasta!"

They shove wads of
pasta down the throats of the terrified uptown diners.

"Is
especialitay from the maison! Wha'sa matter you? Is not nice?"

They storm into the
kitchen overturning caldrons of spaghetti.

The cook sobs head
in hands, "Mia spaghetti! Mia spaghetti!"

The insult must be
avenged a la Siciliana.

"I'll Santa his
Lucia!" growls the offended capo.

Hit men,
impersonating singing waiters, invade the Santa Lucia restaurant.
Swaying from side to side like drunken sailors they bellow out
"Santa Lucia" as they slop boiling minestrone over the
guests and throw spaghetti into the air like streamers.

The bestial retarded
son of the capo beats three Calamari to death with a baseball bat,
chasing them through the restaurant, spattering the horrified
diners with blood and brains.

"Life is so
beautiful! Why you go home?"

"SANTA LUCIA!"

They bow to the
empty wrecked restaurant.

Our policy then, has
been to contain the honored society into self-decimating urban
concentrations and to head off any legislation designed to make
liquor, drugs and gambling illegal, thus opening the door to a flash
of gold teeth and an evil belch of garlic.

But the situation is
changing rapidly. Competition with European products makes it
increasingly difficult to contain the industrial process. And there
is talk of war in Europe. No doubt the prohibitionists will take
advantage of the war to force through anti-alcohol legislation.

The Johnson press
upholds States' Rights and opposes any further encroachment of
Washington bureaucrats. We hope to keep prohibition a state option
and to tie up supply and distribution for the dry states and cut the
Mafia right out of the picture. Since the dry states will be in the
South and Middle West, the Mafia will be operating outside of their
territory. We will teach them to stay on their own side of the fence.

Graywood meets them
at the station and they take a carriage to the Bunker, a former
bank building at Spring and Bowery...The walls are massive, the door
of thick steel. It is an impregnable fortress. Kim's quarters on the
top floor consist of living room, dining room, kitchen, with a
bedroom and bath.

Relaxing over a
drink he is delighted to learn that his enemies are relying on
Mafia talent..."Means they've got no good shootist!"

"Let's go out
and see the town," Graywood says. Bill Anderson has provided a
number of concealable weapons for city wear
...
short-barreled
revolvers, vest-pocket derringers, the new
25
and
380
automatics. Kim's
44
goes into his doctor's satchel with his other instruments.
Better take along the satchel. It may save a life. Councillor
Graywood has one of the new broom-handle Mausers that fits neatly
into a leather briefcase.

Dinner at Luchow's.

"It's heavy Jew
food," Boy complains.

"It isn't Jew
food. It's German food," Kim corrects him.

"What's
different? All Germans is knowned to be Jews because they is spiking
with heavy Jew accints."

Kim nods..."Well
that makes sense."

"Only the Jews
and the Chinese knows how to cook a carp," Marbles says.

"It's true,"
Boy says. "I eated a pepper carp onct."

"What's that?"

"It's a special
Jew carp."

"You think
maybe we getting some of this special carp tonight?"

"Not here,"
Kim says, "they isn't Jew enough to do it. Later maybe. They is
selling it inna street from the carp wagons."

(This is running
code and Kim is saying, They won't try a hit here. On the street,
most likely from a car.) "I hear all Yids is short-cocked."

"It's true.
Short and thick."

(They will be using
sawed-off shotguns.)

The Johnsons go into
action and the Families don't know what is hitting them with such
deadly precision, such ingenious weapons, and such skill in their
use.

The Popcorn Kid

A paunchy but
powerful Capo with cold, hooded gray eyes sits back from his clam
spaghetti. He signs the check and tips the fawning waiter. As the
Capo walks out with his two bodyguards the waiter looks after
him, and his servile smile becomes a sneer in a flash of gold
teeth.

The guards are a bit
belchy and somnolent from the lunch and the wine and the grappa. A
jalopy pulls into the curb at a corner ahead of them. A red-haired
boy of about eighteen gets out, slamming the door with a violent back
kick. The engine coughs and dies. The driver shouts after the boy,
"You frigging little son of a bitch."

"Gee thanks for
the ride, Mister."

The boy walks toward
the Capo with a bag of popcorn. He is tossing the popcorn into the
air and catching it in his mouth. The driver is still cursing as he
tries to start the car. The boy's shirt is open to the belt. When the
boy is within a few feet of the Capo the car backfires. The guards
stiffen and then relax. The boy drops his popcorn and clutches his
chest and staggers forward.

"They got me,
Capo. I wanna die in your arms."

The Capo looks at
the boy with cold disfavor. He gives an imperceptible signal to his
bodyguards meaning, "Teach this smart punk a lesson."

The guards start
forward, hands off their guns, preparing to slap the shit out of the
boy. The boy snakes a 9M short-barreled automatic from a holdout
holster under his shirt.

Using both hands and
pivoting from the hip, he takes them all with three shots each. The
car is making a U-turn in a salvo of covering backfires. The car
pulls up and the kid jumps in. The car roars away. It is a jalopy
only on the surface, with a souped-up engine.

"Nice work,
kid."

The boy is sliding a
new clip into his automatic. He takes another bag of popcorn from the
glove compartment.

"Kid stuff.
When is their fucking
thing
going to grow up?"

The man shrugs, busy
with driving.

"I have to do
it the hard way. They might at least give me a cyanide pellet gun
like the pickle factory's got...
"

The boy catches a
handful of popcorn in his mouth.

"That's kid
stuff too. When are
they
going to grow up, with their
sensitive projects and special numbers and shellfish poison...
"

"Don't ask me,
I just work here. All I do is backfire on cue."

The kid looks at
him, his eyes narrowed.

"If you fart,
I'll kill you."

"Relax,
kid...We're all dummies
...
those people out
there...Like rats in a maze...Difference is you and I know it...Yo."
He points a thumb at his chest. "El Mecanico...I can make a car
do anything I want it to do
...
backfire
...
boil
over...I can stall a car by looking at it."

"Yeah."
The boy nodded thoughtfully, crunching popcorn. "Telekinesis...I
read about it in a magazine...Why can't I stop the Capo's heart by
looking at him?"

"You could,
with knowledge and training...have to take it a step at a time
...
you
wanta learn how to use a psychic knife, learn how to use a solid
knife first...There's no substitute for actual combat with your
blood guts and bones on the line...Now I got an intuition about you,
kid...I can see you in a few years on Madison Avenue making twenty
thousand dollars a year...

"I make sixty
thousand now."

"Oh uh
yeah...These old lines from the fifties crop up...So many years in
show biz...What I mean is, I think you're gonna hit the big
time...Those Eyeties was just like targets that pop up on the
shooting range."

The Lemon Kid

The Capo is back
eating his spaghetti with clam sauce. The kid slides through a side
door in a waiter's tuxedo with a filthy towel. As he bustles over to
the Capo's table he pops half a lemon into his mouth.

"Enthoying thor
thinner, thir?" he slobbers. He spits the lemon in the Capo's
face and throws his towel at a bodyguard.

KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW

The Freshest Boy

He pops out in front
of the Capo, a huge rubber cock sticking out of his pants.

"You like beeg
one, Meester?" KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW One Cigarette

He is doing the
Cigarette Song from
Carmen
in a nightclub.

"Si je
t'aime prends garde a toi...
"

He peels off his
falsies and throws them on the Capo's table. Two concealed hand
grenades explode.