The Crime Studio (4 page)

The Delayed Reaction Bar on
Valentine Street
was a popular den with the moody and furious. Don Toto the owner and barman specialised in inscrutable, undead snacks, and shakes which were so narcotically corrosive that spillage resulted in convictions for arson. This intense fare left its customers conversing in the crash position. Grandiose lethargy and insane belligerence were the order of the day, and woe betide the silver-haired gran who dared boast of her grief and frailty.

Yet Toto had not always been such a bacchanalian figure. He had been energetic and unsuccessful for years before coming to Beerlight, but after an arrest in
Seattle
for drive-by chuckling he had set upon a fresh life. The family fortune derived from his father’s design patent on Mr Potato Head - this Toto used to acquire the Delayed Reaction on Valentine, though amid the froth-lipped delirium and blistering invective of the bar, he at first displayed a pious and subversive calm. Unlike the denizens of Beerlight, some of whom slashed car tyres with their teeth, Toto was a mild-mannered gentleman possessed of a belief in the common good and a normal hatred of the cops.

The change occurred when Toto read a newspaper article which estimated that crime was taking place at a rate of one crime every four seconds. Toto had always assumed that crime was constant - like ten or twenty per second - and the revelation of these four-second pauses fired his curiosity. Why four seconds? Why intervals of no crime? Like a scientist who agitates atomic particles to observe their behaviour, Toto decided to study crime on a quantum level by creating wild fluctuations in its frequency.

He was in the perfect position to do so. The Reaction was slambang on a line between Brute Parker’s all-night gun shop and the
Deal Street
banks, which were regularly robbed at the point of guns acquired at Brute Parker’s all-night gun shop. The line transected a mile known as the Beretta Triangle and Toto was up to his ears in thugs who exhibited a pop-eyed and bellowing menace. Without provocation the Reaction regulars would batter him with tales of bloody rage and stabbing daggers, and at the drop of a hat would yell in finely-crafted detail what they’d like to do next. A typical exchange would go something like this:

BILLY PANACEA, BURGLAR EXTRAORDINAIRE: I would like to steal everything, Toto. Leave every home on god’s green earth as bare as the truth, for I’ll have you know as well as I do, property is not theft - we are required to pay and pay, and that is sad in the short term and fruitless in the long. Why can we not exist like the startled rabbits of nature?

DON TOTO: Well now Billy, have a care. Go around with that finely-crafted attitude and before you know it you’ll be button-eyed and deceased.

PANACEA: You do not understand, Toto. I would like to steal and steal. Until the world is purified and clean, Toto, picked clean and white like the glossy bones of a buffalo. And there will be no hiding-place for these ultra-monkeys who are not even worthy to clutch the hem of my garment.

TOTO: Simmer down Billy, I have a suggestion.

PANACEA: I tell you I will leap off a rumbling bridge if I do not steal something big within the hour.

TOTO: Well perhaps. And as for bigness my lightweight stick-on friend, I am not unaware of a two-fisted shitpile of a tank just waiting and oh-so-ready for acquisition.

PANACEA: What are the premises?

TOTO: The Magnuson-Kramer Military LaughIn off the Loop Expressway, and in regard to firepower I believe we are discussing a 12.7mm turret gun for the purposes of anti-aircraft mania and two 7.72mm bolt-on items which will cause the ultra-monkeys you mentioned not a little distress.

PANACEA: I’ll be there before you understand it. And as for the getaway it cuts out the middleman, like putting a cigarette directly into a brainfold.

♦ ♦ ♦

Billy burst onto the street drooling like a Hadrosaur, and so did every other crook who exchanged views with Toto. Anyone who entered the bar with even the dimmest notion to misbehave would re-emerge with an ear-shattering scheme to fire indiscriminately among praying nuns or set light to all that is good and free in
America
. There was a gridlock of hoods and bastards heading out for a kick at the legislation. The crimewave rushed up and down the northeast corridor, taking its boisterous toll on
Washington
, Philly and the Chog. Amid the uproar Billy Panacea was arrested for trundling a tank over a mime.

Back at the Reaction, Toto consulted the
Parole Violators Bugle
, which listed recent crime and updated the figures. One crime per three-point-five. He had eliminated a half-second of peace - but he didn’t lie back. Cloistered in the Reaction basement, he studied the evidence and planned his move. At first he had assumed the cop/underworld deal was one of mutual dependence but he soon came to feel that although cops needed criminals, all criminals needed was cash. Yet he realised that this too was wrong when he seeded a rumour that an amnesty was in the offing in return for a week of no crime. It took two days for the needy to realise they couldn’t live off forgiveness and during those two quiet days the cops went from shock to grateful, easy laughter. They had no dependence on crime at all, so long as they were paid to go to the office.

Of course when no amnesty was declared the cops found themselves slaughtered at every turn. When they traced the crime fluctuations to Toto they squirted a squad of plaingarbs into the Reaction who stuck to him like a smacker to a rainpuddle. But by that time Toto was into another cycle of discouraging lawbreakers. A typical exchange would go something like this:

♦ ♦ ♦

PLAINGARB COP: I don’t mind telling you I could simply eat the concept of death and bloody murder. I won’t be deeply happy until this town is a silhouette of smoke and embers. Can’t you just see it my friend?

TOTO: No sirree. Order is important, or else we’ll all be toasted in our own sin.

PLAINGARB: You don’t believe that - just between you and me Toto, don’t you wish something would break the monotony? Like a strangle-fight on a speeding toboggan for instance. Or a sudden lunging with an ornate oriental blade of some kind - I mean you must be interested in something.

TOTO: No-sir. Bucking the rules like there was no tomorrow leads only to despair and the flimsy bridge to barking disaster. Grim caution, my friend.

♦ ♦ ♦

After an hour of this the plaingarb would stick out his chin like the bony snout of a garfish and hide his face against the bartop, snivelling like a child. The cops never got anything solid enough for the perjury room.

The most surprising result was that Toto had become an A-class denizen. He found he could pounce on docile strangers and yell toxic sedition in the streets with the best of them. He awoke to the side-splitting hilarities of creeping suspicion and mob panic and branded the Reaction with his own signature of flamboyant collapse and carefree violence. Toto’s antagonistic, harrowing meals gained notoriety in hospitals everywhere. He no longer messed with the crime figures as he had worked out the nature of the deal - to make a living by infringing on others. And he wouldn’t have to seek the meaning of anything again, through the simple expedient of living in a miasma of gibbering, demented goons.

Harpoon Specter was a con-man so adept at manipulating reality he could fall out a window and land on the roof - if he could make a few smackers that way. His least successful shenanigan was to tell people unless they gave him what he wanted he’d sit down and break his own legs then roll around shouting in accusational agony. Nobody obliged, partly because what he was threatening was an integral part of the average Beerlight cabaret act. But there was another reason. Because he wore stolen garments and went around demanding money, everyone assumed he was a lawyer. Always mindful of a scam, Specter began to play along. Pretty soon he got a call from Billy Panacea, burglar extraordinaire, who was in the overnight can for stealing almost everything from a house on
Peejay Street
. A week later Harpoon stood in the perjury room declaiming like an expert. ‘Your honour, a burglar is the same as a door-to-door salesman, except that he wears a mask and arrives at night. My client went out of his way to remain silent during his activities on the night in question - he wore sneakers, avoided ringing the doorbell, even strangled the family dog to keep it from barking. He did everything so as not to arouse the occupants from their well-earned slumber.’

The judge was slow to concur. ‘Mr Specter, are you trying despite all that’s holy to tell me that Billy Panacea - who is widely known for having burgled the denizens of Beerlight beyond all recognition - is in fact a keeper of the peace and a protester against
noise
pollution?’

‘You can quote me your honour.’

Billy was sentenced to twenty years and Specter’s identity as a lawyer was sealed in reinforced stone.

But the next case was a fiery test of Specter’s reserves - when he had the privilege of defending Brute Parker, who ran the all-night gun shop on the corner of Dive and Ride. Parker had had a score to settle with an arms dealer entitled Harry Puption. Harry had sold Parker alot of sub-standard fare so it seemed that Parker had set up a nocturnal meeting with Harry at the Puption warehouse and spilled the beans, blowing out lights, drilling Harry and generally making the kind of rumpus associated with blood-spattering ire. The cops, arriving late from another murder, found Parker on the scene with a smoking gun.

A key prosecution witness was the head of the cop unit who found Parker at the warehouse, and when the case came to law he described that event in finely-crafted detail. ‘We were tidying up the mess at the Hurley murder across town when we got a call about the fashionable events occurring at the Puption warehouse. By the time we entered the premises Harry Puption was dead meat on a stick and on a search of the area we hit paydirt like a goddamn rocket - Brute Parker was standin’ in a state of hyperactivity and foamin’ all at the gob. I knew he was out of ammo as my torso remained in tip-top condition. I attempted to inform him of his farcical rights but at this he became exquisitely violent and stated his intention of breaking every bone in my body, including the dozens of tiny cartilaginous ones in my ears. I restrained him with the help of twelve other officers, all of whom are still miraculously alive and kicking, your honour.’

Unperturbed by the testimony, Harpoon stood and strode casually toward the witness box, almost subliminally fastening the centre button on his stolen suit. He paused and, gesturing mildly to the cop, announced - ‘This man has rabies, your honour.’

‘
Rabies
?’ yelled the judge, and the perjury room was turbulently adjourned.

When the case was resumed, everybody was tense. The cop had been shot, and this had wasted valuable trial time. Specter brought on a witness to whom he had paid a thousand smackers in memory clearance. ‘Sure, I was there that night,’ said the memory man. ‘I remember it as though it were only as bright as yesterday. Heard undeniable noises in the warehouse and went to investigate. It sure was creepy in there, Mr Specter, and that quality became unsurpassed when I realised I was not alone. Someone was lurking to beat the band just outside my line of vision, and he made his presence not unknown to me by stating out of a clear, beautiful blue sky that he was at that moment wearing hydraulically inflated pants.’

‘And is this monster,’ said Harpoon dramatically, ‘
anywhere
in this room?’

‘Yes he is,’ said the witness assertively, pointing at the judge. ‘That is the man.’

The judge called a recess.

‘Now just what in the computer age are you trying to do?’ said the judge to Harpoon in the back office. ‘I’ll have you know just as well as I do I’ve never even seen a pair of ... so-called inflatable pants.’

‘Well that’s correct, sir - but only a denizen of the inflatable pant community would know that you yourself were not a denizen.’

‘What does it matter if I’m a
denizen
or not - get the hell out of my office!’

Back in the perj, the judge stated to the jury that the hydraulic-garment-wearing allegation was nothing but a red lie, and ordered that its mention be struck from the record. The incident had wasted three hours of perjury time - enough for Harpoon to brief Parker on his story. The judge gave a warning: ‘Mr Specter, unless you stick to the shocking facts I’ll need a haul truck to convey my disapproval.’

Brute Parker took the stand like an early Christian saint. The sneers of the prosecutor bounced off him like corn-nuts off a movie screen. ‘Me and Harry go way back and I was due to meet him and talk in a gentlemanly fashion about a certain line in subguns he had acquired.’

‘And is it not increasingly apparent that you took your own death-dealing submachine with you to this
midnight
assignation?’

‘It is customary,’ Brute conceded tearfully, ‘in the home-defence business to compare steamers with one’s all-too-mortal friends and acquaintances.’

The prosecution asserted that the rules laid down by the lawmakers were more important than Brute’s gunpride, but Brute expressed the belief that lawmakers and guns were one-and-the-same in that both existed to be shot or hung from his belt. This did not go down well with the jury and the judge was surprised that Harpoon wanted to continue. ‘You don’t have a finely-crafted leg to stand on, Mr Specter.’

‘On the contrary your honour,’ said Specter, standing as Brute stood down, ‘I can explain in just five of your Earth minutes what occurred that night. Let us examine the evidence. My godlike client is well-known to the denizens of Beerlight as a believer in gun karma - a belief which states that if you miss the first time, you pay for the bullets you waste by stealing your victim’s ammunition. Now Mr Parker was found holding a Heckler and Koch MP-5 9mm submachine gun with a thirty round clip. Only seven rounds were found in Harry’s body. Parker was out of ammo when the cops arrived. Of the other twenty-three rounds only two were found on the premises. Where’d the other twenty-one go? And if Parker really missed Harry with two slugs, why didn’t he take two of Harry’s slugs in accordance with his personal philosophy? Harry’s gun was as full as a Pez. There are more holes in the prosecution’s case than in Harry Puption’s riddled face your honour.’

Well the prosecution loudly objected, asking how anyone knew that Parker had started out with a full clip.

‘Nobody goes to a hit with less than a full clip in a thirty round sub, your honour.’

‘Objection denied,’ said the judge, bored.

‘It is clear,’ Specter continued, ‘that my client arrived in all innocence at the gore-hung scene of the crime with only two rounds in his subgun, and on seeing Harry so drastically economised, was quite understandably distressed and let off a salute as is the custom in our fair city when mourning the sudden death of a loved one.’

The judge interrupted. ‘You say Parker loved this guy?’

‘Like a brudder,’ sneered Brute, and within an hour was as free and happy as a lark. Harpoon was raised to the status of a legal demigod, and to his distress other people began stealing
his
garments.

Now the fact is that Brute had indeed set out with a full clip on the evening in question, intending to use all thirty rounds in the dealing of cod eyes, and the only reason he didn’t take any karma slugs from Harry is he deplored his merchandise. Some reckoned Brute was lucky the cops’ arrival had been delayed by having to clean up the mess at the Hurley murder across town, but Brute didn’t think so. He’d also performed the Hurley murder.