“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” Joe says. “But roughly, if I had to guess, 2 a.m. the day after tomorrow, and then run like hell.”
XVII
Back on track;
the Old Campaigners;
the Chairman declines to assist a wanted felon.
Back in the brewery basement, Joe stares down a long, wide gallery at a row of mannequins wearing army-surplus and thrift-shop clothes, posed in a variety of aggressive stances. Bald, blind enemies. Behind and beside them, boxes, boards and water barrels protect the brick. Mathew gave his stolen space over to practice; this was where he brought his boys before a caper to sharpen up, and the dim yellow electric bulbs they installed—running, of course, on pilfered current—are still hanging from the ceiling.
By now, if he is honest, he had assumed he would have a plan: a bold, deranged plan, both cunning and explosive, which would outwit and outgun the Opium Khan’s soldiers and get them into Sharrow House. He had daydreamed himself coming up through the drains with an army, descending from the tower with the Fifth Floor Men, stepping from behind a curtain to reveal that he had bribed the butler.
Instead, he has nothing. A blueprint which exposes only strength; a promise of assistance with something which isn’t really a big problem; a gun, a girl, and a lawyer.
In the semi-dark, he grins. That last part, at least, is completely authentic gangstery.
He opens the trombone case and looks at the gun. Shiny, oiled metal gleams up at him. He waits for revelation, but doesn’t feel it. The gun is, after all, just a gun; an outdated, inaccurate piece of battlefield weaponry beloved of bootleggers in the United States during Prohibition time. And to be honest, it’s more a prop than a piece of ordnance. There are—there were even in Mathew’s day—better guns; lighter, faster, deadlier guns.
He unpacks it, lets his hands assemble the pieces. Click, twist, clunk. Rudimentary. Obvious. Not crude, just simple. In fact, it’s an elegant thing, in its way. He pantomimes: You’ll never take me alive, copper!
Less funny than it might be.
More carefully, he lifts the gun to his shoulder, selects the single-shot option and aims down the gallery. He breathes out, relaxes the tension in his body and then prepares to receive the impacts which will follow. Looking along the barrel, he keeps both eyes open, captures a mannequin in the V of the rear sight. He aims for the body, having no delusions of competence. He lets himself feel the moment. Young Joe, after all, wanted this more than anything else, in the world, ever, and somehow was never permitted.
He pulls the trigger.
The noise is stunning. A jet of flame spears out from the muzzle and the butt slams against his body. The shot whines away into the dark. Gritting his teeth, he fires five more times, having some notion that six is a marksman’s number, and walks down to look at the damage.
There is none. The mannequins are unscathed. Behind them, his bullets have splintered boards and chipped stone.
He stares at the gun in his hands, and wonders if he will cry. Instead, he walks back to his stool and sits, smelling pointless gun smoke.
He has no idea what to do. This was supposed to lift him up. Instead, it has smashed him, at this late date and with the fate of the world apparently hanging in the balance.
So he sits, and stares at nothing.
“Need some help?” Polly Cradle asks.
She has come in very quietly, and now she touches Joe lightly on one shoulder. Her finger turns him towards her, and a soft kiss brushes his lips. In his gut, a flicker of angry bear: I will keep this woman safe. I will bite anyone who is unkind to her.
The bear, at least, has no doubts.
She grins at him, as if hearing the inner growl, and squirms onto his lap.
“So, come on. What are you doing?”
“Looking for Mathew,” he confesses.
She nods. “But he’s not here?”
“No.”
“Why Mathew?”
“Because this is his kind of thing.”
She stares at him, and then, very precisely, blows a raspberry into his face. “Rubbish!”
“What?”
“I said, rubbish. Utter nincompoopery. What… gah!” Words fail her. “Joe. You don’t need to look for Mathew. You’re you. His son. But, mostly, you. And you are good at this! Look at the last few weeks and tell me I’m wrong.”
He is about to do so, but she points one finger sharply at his eye. Independent supervillain in my own right. Yes. That surely includes collegial respect.
“Good,” Polly Cradle says. “Now. Show me the gun.”
When he does, she laughs.
“You fire it the way you want to fire it, Joe,” Polly Cradle says, when she can speak again, “not the way you think you should. Bollocks to should. Say it with me.”
“Bollocks to should,” Joe intones dutifully, and she makes him say it over and over with her, until the sense of transgression lifts him up again. Being the new unafraid Joe is wonderful, but it’s also like a slippery log: he can walk along it for a while, but in the pauses he loses his footing and falls off. Momentum is important, and practice. And it’s easier in opposition, too, in the face of someone who can be delighted or appalled. He finds himself feeding off the audience.
Polly grins at him, feral, from the shadows to one side. Motions to the gun: go ahead.
Joe sets himself, plants his feet wide, switches the Thompson to full-auto mode, feels the coat on his shoulders and the excitement of the child he was. This is the gun. That gun. Dad’s gun! The strictly forbidden un-toy, the tool of a gangster’s trade.
A mad grin tugs at his mouth; not the mild nostalgia of his first effort but a kind of deranged glee. He lets it show his teeth, then pulls the trigger as if launching an ocean liner.
The gun howls and jerks, sending ripples of shock through his arms and chest. He wrestles it, fights to hold it down, keeps his finger clamped on the trigger. You don’t see a gangster squeezing off rounds like a miser. Hell, no. You see him hosing the enemy with hot lead, doing property damage, making a point. A gangster is not a sniper. He is profligate, needless, heedless. He is mad as a shaved cat.
He ends up almost leaning on the gun as if it were a small, wiry demon trying to get out of a box. He fires off the whole drum, and realises he is laughing outright, a deranged, terrified or terrifying cackle. Finally, the roar stops, the beast is still, and the damage is prodigious. He stares down the range, through wisps of smoke and dust.
The mannequins are in pieces. Chunks and strands of them are strewn all over, splattered into the wall behind. The wall itself is peppered and speckled with impacts, the boards and barrels stacked against it to absorb the ricochets are so much kindling. There are little fires and charred holes everywhere. He picks his way through the devastation, stares at what he has made. And once again, he understands.
“Wow,” Polly murmurs.
Joe Spork grabs her up and kisses her soundly, triumphant. “You’re a genius.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You are. Because I get it. I get it now. This is what it’s all about. The stricture of the gun.”
She smiles. “Tell me.”
He grins. “Imagine this: suppose you had some other gun and I had that thing. Right? And on the count of three, we’re both going to start firing. Really, you ought to win. You’ll be faster and more accurate, and you can duck and weave, you’ll take me apart. Right? How do you feel about it?”