The Crime Studio (11 page)

One night while having a nightmare I found that I was being chased by the wrong monster. I was scrabbling up a steep embankment when I happened to glance back and realised I’d never seen this thing before. It obviously saw me at the same moment, as it stopped shrieking and lowered its claws, squinting at me. Well, after our initial embarrassment we got to talking at a nearby saloon, which was full of inverted staircases and vats of dough.

‘I am most surprised to see you in the tangled forest tonight,’ said the creature, who told me his name was Ramone. ‘I am usually charged with the duty of chasing Brute Parker who owns the all-night gun shop on the corner of Dive and Ride. He is a most desperate character. He weeps aloud when I chase him, and begs for mercy. And what’s more, he wears pink and yellow pyjamas, and it is not a pretty sight.’

At this point I needed the bathroom and asked the monster to excuse me, but afterwards, this being a dream, I couldn’t for the life of me find my way back to the bar.

Bright and early the next morning I don’t know what I was thinking - maybe I was still half asleep - but without consulting Bleach or the Bible I went over to Parker’s all-night gun shop to brag of my knowledge. ‘Parker,’ I said, entering grandly, ‘you’re a mockery and a sham.’

Parker looked up from a back issue of
Throat-Knife
, taking in the information I had imparted. ‘What did you just say,’ he rumbled, frowning. Parker frowned differently from other people because, he said, he kept his forehead at a lower temperature.

‘I said you’re a sobbing sham and yes a fraud - pretending to be a bastard. Ramone has told me all about it.’

‘Ramone. Who the fuck is Ramone.’

‘The freak who interrupts your sleep every night,’ I announced with breezy confidence. ‘The monster who pursues you through the forest even as you wear pink and yellow pyjamas, you hypocrite.’

‘What.’

‘Begging for mercy. Weeping to beat the band. And I bet you dreamt of a totally new mutant last night - am I right you faker?’

Parker folded his magazine neatly and placed it aside. He stood and walked slowly around the counter, placed his hands on either side of my head and began with all his strength to exert pressure inward. He began to shudder and flush red as I had seen Rutger Hauer do while crushing someone’s head in
Blade Runner
- I found myself wondering why this was, and whether the look could be reproduced without the effort and expense of crushing a head. The whole scene fuzzed into black and white, and I was next aware of Parker speaking to me. He had placed my head in the store vice and was slowly winding the handle. ‘Do you want to know what I really dreamt about last night, clown.’ All I could see was the vice-metal and table edge as Brute related his dream. In the dream he stumbled through the jeering alleys of
Jerusalem
under the weight of a GE antipersonnel bazooka which he carried like a yoke. All the Delayed Reaction regulars were there throwing stones and beercans. Even Brute could perceive the symbolic parallels and was filled with the Christlike dread of becoming an institution unrelated to his beliefs. He would rather have died, but knew this wouldn’t make any difference. Beginning to rage, he struggled at the ropes which bound him to the GE gun. He got one hand free enough to squeeze the trigger, blowing a hole in the crowd to his left. His laughter merged with the screams of onlookers as he wheeled about and fired indiscriminately into them. The dream ended here because, Brute explained, dreams always end before you kill the last person.

I gasped something about it being a sex thing. I could feel my skull beginning to splinter and at this most crucial of moments a customer chugged into the gun shop. As Brute went to serve him I fumbled for the handle and loosened the grip enough to release my head and stagger upright. I had a poison headache, but at least it was portable; I stumbled groaning through the store, knocking everything over in a blind bid for the cops. Citizens with a downer on the cops are always the first to run to them when danger erupts - especially in places where citizens are not allowed by law to own firearms for personal protection. Elsewhere they are numbered among the erupters. Running, I thanked my lucky stars I was only the victim.

Before I could change my mind I was in a back room at the cop den, tied to a chair. A cop regarded me, his face a mask of disapproval. He said he didn’t like my kind and I was filled with the delirious expectation that he would identify me as a common species - that there were others like myself. I controlled my excitement, but he seemed to sense it - his gaze wavered uncertainly.

Before either of us could speak a door opened and Chief of the Cops Henry Blince entered with difficulty. ‘This the clown, Benny?’ he said, gesturing at me with a cigar, and I plaintively explained what had happened at Parker’s. The part about Ramone made them shout with incredulous laughter. Bleach had told me that reality was fiction in another shape and I told them this, but it only made them laugh all the more. Benny was having to turn round and kick at the wall, and Blince cried. At least I was making an impression. Then they sniggered something about provocation. Growing indignant, I related Bleach’s theory that there is a parallel universe containing a Beerlight in which the cops behave impeccably and that next to that is a third in which they are only human. Benny ran out abruptly with a hand to his mouth, having laughed so much he had coughed something up. Blince intercepted his tears with both fists and gasped at me to stop. He went outside to collect Benny, and after more distant, reverberating hilarity they re-entered, wiping their eyes.

‘I like you, you goddamn astro-monkey,’ Blince told me, chortling, and proceeded to relate how essential it was I assassinate Brute Parker in order to avoid arrest and imprisonment for whatever they could stand in the perjury room. They couldn’t be involved and it was common knowledge me and Parker were at throat-punching odds. All the cops would do was carry out a legitimate blaze-raid on Parker’s premises during a lunch break. Finding his store and home a scorched silhouette, Parker would storm unarmed toward the cop den, during which storming I would economise his breathing with an Uzi 9mm, right there in the street. Blince said it was time I repaid my debt to society.

They left me in an overnight cell with Parker’s file. Tomorrow was the day. The file said that Brute had spent his early childhood among priests who taught him that it was necessary to suffer to obtain happiness, and wishing to bestow such happiness upon those same priests, Brute had tortured them beyond all recognition. Today no such goodwill existed in his heart. Mistaking it for a burglar, he had shot his guardian angel. Brute went about the dealing of cod eyes with a rage which was commendable when compared with the desultory violence exhibited by the mob and cops. I once asked him why he was so unhappy and he looked into the horizon and said, ‘Instinct.’

That night my nightmare was back to normal. Flagging him down and stopping everything, I asked my usual monster what had happened to Ramone. He lit a cigarette and said he’d never heard of the guy, but that last night he’d found himself in some place like
Jerusalem
. ‘Look what I found there.’ And he showed me a handful of sand and 7.62mm slugs.

The next day there’s a grey funnel of smoke above the Beretta Triangle. I stand on Sunday Street with a cop Uzi semiauto under a black full-length, leaning against the wall. Parker marching calm up the street toward me. I stand away from the wall. Brute looking beyond me. I draw the semiautomatic. Brute doesn’t flinch or slow, though he sees the gun. I hand it to him as he passes and continues on to the den. I walk home. Several controlled, emphatic shots ring out as I round up Bleach, load the car and drive.

I remember Chief Blince’s remark about repaying my debt to society. I don’t believe in revenge.

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... Beerlight books in chronological order of events:

THE CRIME STUDIO

Some stories in TOXICOLOGY

ATOM

One story in SMITHEREENS

SLAUGHTERMATIC

NOVAHEAD