Atom (11 page)

‘Go tell it to the lard mountain.'

‘I intend to. And about you dispensing alibis up here, about the tank monster and that three-ring circus you call a detective agency.'

‘I don't call it anything.'

‘But you call yourself a detective,' snarled Turow, taking out Atom's business card. ‘Or are you the “defective” Joanna said you were?'

‘Take a swatch,' said Atom. ‘You people came to me.'

Looking at the card, Turow was gaping like an order clown in a drive-through. Thermidor snatched it from him. ‘Defective,' he read. ‘What's the big idea?'

‘The Candyman hired you!' squeaked Turow.

‘Who said I was for hire?'

‘We paid you!'

‘Not me. Tough to see a bulge on Joanna aint it?'

‘You mean ... Joanna kept the money! Joanna!'

‘Where's the galoot?' demanded Thermidor, starting about.

Atom gestured at the open door. Joanna had slipped away like a glacier. Squadcar cherrylights pulsed across the ceiling. Atom laughed low.

‘You're gonna pay for this, Atom,' growled Thermidor, ‘you and all your brain-eatin' friends! You used that modality and you know it!'

‘K-man - gimme that little engine in your pocket.'

Kafka fished the Beretta automatic from his jacket pocket and handed it to Atom.

‘The old graphic equaliser,' Atom said. ‘I took it off DeCrow. But it aint for you people. I'm a fair man.' Atom went to the drinks cabinet, put the gun on the flip-down table and backed away. ‘You and me are an equal distance from the steamer, Doc - about five feet each way, I think. Take it back - I'll try to stop you.'

The ghost of a smile passed through DeCrow. ‘These deceptions are perennial.'

‘You don't need my blessing to think so - why tell me about it?'

‘What is this shit?' roared Thermidor.

‘Keep out!' shouted Atom.

A bony branch whipped from DeCrow's centre to the gun - Atom kicked upward at the fliptable, slamming it on the limb. DeCrow jettisoned the arm, shrieking as he fanned open, dropping his cover and shooting stalks and whiplike wires to the room's corners. Glimpsing a dark gut of wagging flagella and thoracic spoilers, the assembled crew began to scream like infants. DeCrow's face bivalved to hatch a wet black beak.

I am the one who is screaming the loudest, thought Sam ‘Sam' Bleaker, and bolted with the other flunkeys.

Remaining in the room, Madison, Jed and K looked on as Atom retrieved the 62F and kicked aside the ditched palp. ‘Here it is, DeCrow. To adopt your camouflage you had to establish what's normal around here - you never could.'

DeCrow rattled, fiddling feelers and crouching to spring. ‘What are you.'

‘The bluff-caller.'

Atom fired - DeCrow's head blew apart like an artillery shell, leaving a broken bowl drifting smoke. His body collapsed like a clothes rack.

 

The mob were bellowing down the stairwell, punching eachother aside, and exploded onto the street. White light slammed on, halting them. ‘You have the right to remain silent as the grave,' yelled Chief Blince. The crowd surged forward, scrabbling at Blince's sleeves and shouting plaintive yarns.

‘Spandex?' said Blince. Squadlights flared like the coals of hell.

 

Sometimes Blince lay awake nights wondering who he could arrest. Tonight he was almost satisfied. Those morons had thrown themselves at the nets like tuna. It was damn near fantastic.

Maybe it was the extra cheese on his pasta and all but now he was dreaming of a plateau of hopscotch squares under an eye-blue sky. On each horizon was a wooden panel like a pew or jury bench. Atom rose out of the starred centre square. ‘Have you hugged your gun today?'

‘Atom. You gotta be kiddin'.'

‘You'll get a clear description of my motives when you pry it out my cold dead hand.'

Madison was moving around him like smoke. She raised a little injection-moulded gun. Blince chuckled. ‘That a gun or an applicator?' Then it hit him and the scene went high res - behind Atom, Beerlight reared like a rolling cruise ship. ‘Kinda heavy. What's it made of?'

‘Well this'll interest you Henry,' said Atom amicably. He reached way back and plucked a square brick from the city, giving it to Blince. ‘Letters of the law.'

Blince looked at the ivory square with the embossed letter ‘K' and found it opened into a book.

They didn't know him. They allowed their understanding to be repelled by that extrusion of his craft, the spiny carapace. The fiercest added so much scar tissue they no longer knew who they assaulted. At what time are people so reckless with meaning? When only the utterly powerful can risk an act of kindness.

‘Yeah, so what's it all mean?'

‘Means you don't arrest anyone in this dream here.'

‘Why'd I arrest someone in a dream?'

‘Exactly.'

‘You're hoggin' my nightmare, boy. Why not take a trot on the water while you're at it? Think I need this?'

‘No,' said Atom, and flicked a hand at the Beerlight skyline. ‘You need that. Real sad.'

‘Let's go, Taff,' said Maddy. ‘I'm hungry.'

Beerlight started to scramble, blurring behind them. Atom stopped as they turned to go. ‘Hey Henry - behavioural science got a file on me?'

‘Feds maybe, since Fall Street. That's Washington stuff, Atom - they don't forget.'

‘Not while they're alive. Washington's got three years. Pentagon's got five. Beerlight's got ten. You got ten, Henry. Tops. Wake up now.'

The alarm rang like a cigarette burn.

 

‘So Flea, you stole that apple?'

‘Maybe,' muttered Flea, uncomfortable. He nursed a glowing glass of Chile Mars 96.

‘Flea,' said Madison, sat on the corner of Atom's desk, ‘that lighter you sold me damn near took my head off. Now why don't I trust you?'

‘I don't know, I'm conflicted,' said Flea. ‘Got carried away with the publicity. Told Specter I climbed the wall near the applecart using my ears as suction cups.'

‘But to ascend you'd have to take one ear from the surface and turn your head a hundred and eighty degrees to attach the other one - you'd fall right away.'

‘That's what the judge said during his charge to the jury. Okay, maybe I didn't think it through. I forgot people can be identified by an earprint - the cops tested the wall.'

‘Didn't find anything eh?' asked Atom.

‘They found hundreds of earprints but none of 'em were mine. Specter was real mad.'

‘Well, the cops want a barbecue, Flea.' Atom lit Maddy's shock absorber. ‘You don't carry enough weight to flip a slide door. Why'd you lay this down?'

‘The Twins put a bee in my head about not bein' a perp. I wanted to prove somethin'. Turns out they'd already left town - gone to Washington.'

‘Their kinda felony's arterial, Flea - quantum innovation. You aint that kinda cross-grained mark. Why should you be?'

‘So I guess Fiasco's gonna buzz again,' said Madison. ‘Come on, Taff, let's get to the beach.'

Atom and Drowner carried Jed's tank through the waiting room. The floor-to-ceiling wall painting was now a lurid menagerie of bleak-featured panthers, ants, scorpions, skeletons, string-trailing brains like man-o'-war jellyfish, deaf bees, giant rabbits and blissed-out turtles. The tucked coral of gowny seas, peace and ocean draping through wrecked fibres. Here was an owl with a face like an intake fan, there a city father lying helpless as a flipped bug. Children tapped at earthquake lids. A raven watched it all, allowing its consequence as elsewhere a landscape thrived. Green water meadows. Scattering rain. A field sprouting a whole new colour, part head and part heart.

 

Kitty had a makeover. She returned to Vogue and ran the gamut, following every tip. By the end, her few remnants of character had been utterly extinguished. There was nothing in the mirror.

A half hour later, ten thousand dollars simply disappeared from the register at the Chain Bank. An hour after that, a guard fell abruptly unconscious in the uptown den. Another one went to help and slammed suddenly to the floor. A ring of keys lifted off his belt, drifted toward a cell door and jangled in place - the door swung.

Sitting calm on a bunk, Harry Fiasco looked up without surprise. His face brightened into a smile.

 

Madison sunbathed like a photograph. Atom lay reading Investigations of a Dog as Tamagotchi Bloodbath played on the radio. The author had complained of the brightening weather and Atom had set him up in one of the new burrow homes off the old subway. ‘Live long,' K had said, ‘and may all admire you for stubbornly maintaining such a hideous mistake.'

‘There's just a thousand things I don't understand,' said Jed Helms, sticking his face out of the tank, ‘but the main one is, how did you know DeCrow was a human brain in a bug's body, and not the other way around?'

Atom lowered the book, squinting aside. ‘Well the Candyman suggested he'd performed one or other of those operations, but DeCrow emanated spite of a rare purity - something only god or humanity can achieve. The brain had to be human, and the body that of a chigger. Funny when you realise an itch is an insect. And I never credited Joanna. That kinda luck's as rare as a hog's hesitation. They still aint found him.'

‘I ... I guess I'm ready, Atom,' said Jed.

Madison stirred, and exchanged a look with Atom. They stood up and lifted the tank, carrying it the little way to the waves. ‘Knock 'em dead,' said Atom.

They decanted Jed into the rolling surf. ‘It's cold,' he said, turning pale. ‘Wow, it's big.' And he wagged his tail, slowly moving away without a backward glance.

‘Sweet dreams, Jed,' said Madison.

‘How long will he last?'

‘I don't know.'

They returned to the beach blankets, dropping down. Atom put on his shades - the sky turned the colour of gasoline. Something was missing - a link.

He waited, patient as time. The Tamagotchi track ended and Perky Gumbubble started yammering. ‘We're privileged to welcome the President of the United States. Mr President, over the past few days your actions have caused massive speculation. It seems you've undergone a fundamental change of image. After controversial incidents with dogs, lizards, squid, snakes and a defenceless manatee called Ramone, is this a deliberate overhaul? And have you been instrumental in the escalation of the nuclear program?'

A blubbery laugh bubbled over the airwaves. ‘That I am, sir, that I am. I admire a man sir who admires a man sir who admires a man sir, that I do sir.'

For a while the sea and seagulls clamoured in their ears. Then Atom smiled thoughtfully. ‘I guess the Twins had the right idea.'

‘Haven't been to DC in a while. We welcome?'

Atom stood, squinting towards the car. ‘Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.'

Madison joined him, smirking like a shark. ‘What if they can.'

They started to walk. ‘Fuck 'em anyway.'

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