They dragged him across the Club, down the red stairs and out through the gold doors. They threw him into the gutter. He hit the base of a streetlight with his face and felt his lip split.
‘Don’t you ever fucking come back here again,’ the white man said, ‘all right?’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t.’ It was Ade. He must’ve followed them down. ‘This whole place stinks of shit.’
The white man turned. ‘And you,’ he said, levelling a finger. ‘I see your face again, I crush it in the ground.’
Nathan laughed.
Finn walked over. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘I never saw anything like that before,’ Ade said.
‘I saw it in the movies once,’ Larry said.
‘Where’s Lilah?’ Nathan asked.
Nobody knew.
Lilah could’ve saved him, but not any more.
It was time to go home, somebody said.
Colours everywhere. But there was only one colour he could see, and that was red.
Know Your Enemy
Jed stood outside the Central Theatre just east of downtown with a can of ice-cold soda. He was on his lunch-hour from the sound studio. He wore a black singlet, boots, fatigues. His baseball cap said AL’S BLANK TAPES. He took a long pull on the soda and sighed as it slid down. Years ago he used to come here with the Womb Boys. ‘Let’s go down the Central, let’s go look at the dead people.’ Vasco always went on about how important it was. He called it Know Your Enemy. His eyes would flick across the corpses, across the theatre the corpses were in, out to the street the theatre was on, and he’d say, ‘This is what we’re up against,’ and he’d swing his arm so hard he almost dislocated it, ‘all this.’
The Central had pale-blue columns on either side of the entrance and big gilt doors. A white neon strip, like that above a cinema, announced the current attractions. Sometimes it was a famous person. A sports personality, say. Or a movie star. Other times it was an ordinary citizen whose family had paid for the honour. Once he’d imagined that his mother might be displayed here, smothered in make-up and bits of radios. Today it said simply IDENTIFY THE MYSTERY CORPSE. $100 REWARD. Jed peered through the toughened glass. It was a tiny, shrunken old woman. The hill her feet made in the sheet that covered her came only halfway down the coffin. Pathetic, really. Unknown corpses were put on display by the parlours in the hope that someone would recognise them and pay for the funeral. The parlours made a lot of money that way. If a corpse remained unidentified, companies often took pity and stepped in, paying for the funeral themselves. They could call it charity, and charity was tax-deductible. What seemed concerned and altruistic on the surface was in fact exploitative and shabby underneath. This is what we’re up against.
Jed tossed his empty can of soda in the bin. What Vasco had been up against, at any rate. After all, it had been Vasco’s private war. To the other members of the gang, it had been a flirtation with danger, an excuse for violence; it had given them a cause, the semblance of a purpose. Where were they now? Cramps Crenshaw worked in hotel management. PS had joined a record company. Tip had recovered from his overdose and, the last Jed heard, he’d been taken on as an attendant in the aquarium. The Womb Boys had been aborted long ago. The Womb Boys were dead. Long live Moon Beach.
‘Well, well. Ugly as ever.’
The man who’d spoken to Jed had broad shoulders and black, wavy hair. He wore a lightweight camel coat. The face seemed different. Wider. Heavier. The guitar had become a double bass.
The man gestured at the mystery corpse. ‘Thought it was going to be me, did you?’
Jed smiled. ‘How many tattoos’ve you got now, Vasco?’
Vasco unfastened his cuff link and pushed the cuff back up his wrist. Jed saw the base of a gravestone just where a watch would normally be.
‘All the way up?’
Vasco nodded. ‘Both arms.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Jed asked.
‘I’m in the business.’
‘That’s a bit of a turnaround.’
‘Yeah, well. Went to so many funerals, thought I might as well start getting paid for it.’
Jed just stared at him.
Vasco slapped Jed on the shoulder. ‘Joke.’
‘Ha ha.’ But something was making Jed uncomfortable. ‘So you’re in the business,’ he said.
‘Everybody who’s anybody. What about you?’
Jed shrugged. ‘This and that. Bit of work in a sound studio.’
‘Still recording people fucking or’ve you moved on?’ Vasco laughed for both of them. ‘Listen, you want a real job?’
‘What’ve you got in mind?’
Vasco pointed at the long black car idling by the curb. ‘There’s a body in there. Right now it’s nice and cold, but if I don’t get it back to the parlour, it’s going to start getting warm again. You like to come along? We can talk.’
‘Sure.’
Vasco climbed in. Jed followed. There was enough space for half a dozen people in that car. There was a bar. There was air-conditioning. A whisper up your spine. Give me a job this cold. Give me a job with air-conditioning.
He looked round. There was a man sitting in the corner. The man had a shaved head and the long, pale fingers of a surgeon. He wore mirror shades.
‘This is McGowan,’ Vasco said. ‘A colleague.’
McGowan tipped his head back an inch and bared a set of sharp, uneven teeth.
As they drove through midtown, Vasco described the set-up. He worked for one of the directors of the Paradise Corporation which, as Jed probably knew, was the most prestigious funeral parlour in the city. The director’s name was Neville Creed. ‘You may’ve heard of him.’
Jed hadn’t.
‘He’s chief administrator,’ Vasco said. ‘His field’s co-ordination. Efficiency. The way things run.’ He stared out of the window, shook his head. ‘He’s rising so fast, sometimes it seems like there’s no oxygen. He’s going to be the first man to live for ever.’
Jed remembered the word spelled out in silver studs on Vasco’s back: IMMORTAL. ‘I thought it was you who was going to live for ever.’
But Vasco didn’t seem to have heard. ‘He’s going to freeze himself,’ he said. ‘While he’s still alive. It’s the only way, apparently.’
‘You mean, if you want to live for ever, you’ve got to kill yourself first?’
‘You could put it like that.’
‘How will he know when to do it?’
Vasco smiled. ‘He’ll know.’
Jed looked over his shoulder at the rectangular box in the back. ‘Shame he didn’t think of that.’
‘He didn’t have time. It all happened a bit too fast —’
‘Vasco.’ It was McGowan. A warning.
Vasco studied the rings on his left hand. ‘Keep your hair on, McGowan.’ Then he glanced at the man in the corner. ‘Oh sorry. You haven’t got any.’ Vasco turned to Jed. ‘McGowan’s so tough he never uses more than two words —’
‘Shut up, Gorelli.’
‘Well, sometimes,’ Vasco said, ‘on very special occasions, he uses three.’
A hiss from the corner of the car. The sound of brakes being applied to fury.
Then silence.
Efficiency, Jed thought.
He had questions, but he decided to store them for the time being. Your memory’s tape. Record now, play back later.
He stared out of the window. Mangrove West merging with the gritty downtown streets. Pawn shops, sex bars, drugstores. Windows glittering with guns and watches. Cops dressed as dealers. Drunks hardly dressed at all. Kids.
Suddenly he realised what had been making him uncomfortable. He shifted on his seat. ‘Vasco,’ he said, ‘about your brother —’