there singing a Beige Kidney standard which listed the surgical assaults all sexes were told they favoured for the female form. She chirped without irony, having undergone every cosmetic procedure on the list. Her body was so media-aligned it barely registered on the retina. She seemed unable to bend. Somewhere was a knot - someday it would give.
Atom entered, reversing the air’s ionic charge. Probability statistics polarised. Trying to detect the girl, he refocused until she fuzzed into view, singing like a lollypop. Even at this bandwidth she was like a flashy ad with no trace of a product. Atom strode between the tables, approaching the stage before the flow of his void coat. He stepped up.
‘Excuse me, ma’am -’
‘- Hey!’
‘- the name’s Atom, I need to ask some questions, in total confidence you understand. You know a guy waves the name Joe Aniseed?’
‘What the hell d’you say you are?’ Up close she was like a phantom, her face airbrush-blurred. ‘Get the hell off my stage.’
‘You involved with the peltman Harry Fiasco?’
‘Ram it up your ass!’
‘Just the facts, ma’am.’
The audience were getting attentive, sensing some sort of activity on stage.
‘I don’t know no Aniseed and I aint seen Harry for weeks or more - hey Sam get this shithead off my stage!’
Sam, stripping a chainsaw in the wings, frowned briefly at a disembodied voice.
The crowd perked up as Kitty, powered only by limelight, stalked petulantly off stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Atom, ‘if you’ll indulge me. I have assigned a musical note to every grade of human lie. Here’s my rendition of the President’s inaugural address.’ And he took out a clarinet.
Dr DeCrow gave cadaverous - except for his mouth, which bulbed and pupped like a monkey’s. Ghoulish as bones in a canvas bag, he stood by a table lamp for the old uplit mask effect. ‘I deem it a thorough success, Mr Candyman - and one that has afforded me a great deal of pleasure.’
‘That’s as may be sir,’ said the fat man in the hotel armchair. ‘What’s now required is that we recover the organ. It cannot be allowed to leave this city.’
‘A simple enough task, after all.’
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, doctor, it’s that simplicity is a blank screen inevitably pelted and abused by the peanut gallery. Now leave by the back way sir - I don’t want Turow barging in here and getting into a state.’
The door banged open and Turow hung in, staggering. ‘I am beginning a nosebleed,’ he cried, then saw DeCrow and stopped. ‘What is he doing here?’
‘Doctor DeCrow was just taking his leave, Mr Turow.’
DeCrow bowed deep. ‘Long life,’ he crackled, and moved off, without straightening up. He moved as fast as tables breed. Passing Joanna at the doorway, he bowed even lower, and left.
‘Why is that creature hanging around?’ asked Turow, shivering. ‘He reminds me of one of those insects that looks dead on the outside.’
‘A compelling metaphor sir - and more fitting than you know. DeCrow is a man so intelligent he can barely walk without an interpreter. In any case we decamp shortly for another hotel. But how went your quest - did the man Atom welcome our offer?’
Dot-eyed, Turow dabbed his forehead with a scented kerchief. ‘Welcome? Our offer was as welcome as a bat in a velcro factory. Atom’s place is a devil’s funhouse - Joanna here claims he was bitten by a dog and I am inclined to believe him. I tell you we were confronted with nothing but tomfoolery. We left in some hurry - my honour insulted, you understand. This feeble-minded idiot thought it would be wise to leave the car and run while it was still on the move.’
The Candyman released a blubbery laugh. ‘Now there’s an idea. To refrain from fulfilment is to let life escape you eh Joanna? Close the door and rest yourself.’
‘And he went off down some side-alley,’ Turow continued, ‘and I have been hunting for him like a parent after a runaway.’ He fell into a chair as Joanna closed the door. ‘I’d half a good mind to leave him, but I ... cannot drive.’
The Candyman consulted a fob-watch, chuckled a little and replaced it in his jacket. ‘Well then. Not a success. But eloquence, like a honeycomb, is gnawed for pleasure, not learning. The details, Mr Turow, elude me.’
‘Details?’ Turow repeated, straining forward, elbows leant on his knees. He seemed to be undergoing some inner struggle. Finally he buried his face in his kerchief and shook his head.
‘Joanna, then - sit down, my boy. And tell me your impression of this man Atom.’
Joanna lumbered forward and settled his huge bulk on to a tiny wooden dining chair. His face opened like a pit in a nimbus cloud.
‘Wiseguy,’ he rumbled.
ATOM’S JOURNAL
Here’s the way I see it. A skeleton with a needle and thread. It lives in a house filled with anchors and flamethrowing equipment. Outside, a threading blizzard. Authority like a scorpion in a monster truck. Exhausted denizens lank as locked boxers. God’s massive shell discarded at the edge of the universe. All that’s missing is a raven with a plan behind its hard eyes.
3 WE’VE BEEN COURTEOUS
‘These words poison my life.’
Eddie Thermidor liked to think of the mob network as a Frankenstein’s monster, more sensitive than its creator. It was, but that wasn’t saying much. Born with a glass eye, he became the sort of driver who was oblivious to anyone coming the other way. Now that he had a snorting stable of chauffeurs this attitude informed his business affairs. No-one had done so much to redeem the use of flamethrowers up close.
He was sat at a heavy marble table in a stone hall. Thermidor’s gang fort was no apartment knock-through like Betty’s midtown - this here was custom-built, the outer walls so thick they took up more groundspace than the inner chambers. Industrial gothic was tempered by Bren Shui, the art of exchanging negative energy with the environment through the correct placement of firearms around the home.
He replaced the receiver, the brittle slam echoing. ‘Sammy Transam on the tumbler,’ he said. ‘Says someone sorta took over the chaos at the Creosote.’
Nada Neck and Shiv were sat on a low couch by the wall. Three creases appeared in Nada Neck’s forehead - one for each nerve impulse. ‘Didn’t Transam used to go round sellin’ insulation in the form of codeine? Perhaps it has turned finally upon him.’
‘So his brain’s flipped like a flounder? I’ll push him off a roof so tall he’ll be dead o’boredom before he hits the sidewalk.’
Shiv examined the set of ratchet knives which rested open on his knees. ‘I take him. Wet one of these here thinnies.’
‘Shiv Shiv Shiv. I’m touched. Hear that Neck? Artist inspired. Flurry
