Cities of the Red Night

'Here we are.'

He stops in front of a three-story building. The two lower floors are torn down to the girders and concrete stairs lead to the third floor. Pu unlocks a heavy door.

The third floor is furnished in Moroccan style with rugs and cushions and low tables. Five of the kraut kids, all naked, are smoking hash. One gets up and does a belly dance while the others, at the four points of the compass, roll on their backs, legs in the air, clapping with their feet as they sing.

They wear no clothes

And they dance up on their toes

And the dance they do

Is enough to kill a Jew

Rubble Blood Pu and Captain Strobe are both very slender, with small aristocratic genitals, and they manage to look elegantly attired and perfectly poised when naked. A boy with long flaxen hair and flaring ears, naked except for a helmet, brings a tray of mint tea.

Pu shows Jim how to hold the glass by top and bottom so as not to burn his hand.... 'Come along and I'll show you around the house.'

The kraut kids trail along, laughing and goosing each other.

'And here is the gallows room ... all modern and convenient, as you can see ... our subjects wear hanging helmets ... show him, Igor.'

Igor walks up grinning. The helmet extends around the neck and down to the collarbone, glares around the ears, and covers the shaven scalp.

'You see there are wires for brain waves to be recorded over here; throat mikes in the helmet ... and this.' He holds up a little ring of transparent elastic. 'Always tailormade, of course ... and these magnetic tingle disks for the nipples. And the noose, scented with the subject's special smells—you know, his dirty underwear and jacked-off-in handkerchiefs. We've always been vampires, old sport.... It's in the family.' He takes a last look around. 'The best that money can buy ... still it's a bit confining, old sport—if you know what I mean. All in the mind, you know....'

The room behind him turns into Gatsby's booklined study.

*

'One of your dizzy spells?'

Hans takes my arm. The boys have sated themselves for the moment. They are sitting around, shoulder to shoulder, passing cannabis cigarettes.

'Cuidado, hombre.'

A boy brushes a spark from his naked thigh ...soft distant voices in the warm dusk. We are walking back through the stale air of Panama that eddies around our bodies and settles behind us. No fresh breezes stir here. The city is like a closed room, full of stale flowers and stagnant water.

'And no, old sport, there is someone I want you to meet ... better nip in here first.' He opens the door into a luxurious bathroom. 'See you in the drawing room.'

When Jim gets up to the drawing room, he sees a red-haired girl looking like Jerry's twin sister, dressed in red silk pajamas. The kraut kids sprawl in front of her, jacking off like she is a pinup.

Audrey looks at his wristwatch. He is on patrol with Cupid Mount Etna. Time to hit the street.

We are coordinated

the guard is manifold

Kelly, Clinch Todd, Hans, and myself proceed now to the garrison to review the captured soldiers. Massive walls with four gun towers surround a courtyard along which living quarters are ranged. Hans and I, flanked by ten partisans carrying razor-sharp machetes, step into the courtyard while Kelley, Todd, and Jon remain in the wardroom behind the bars.

'Tenshun!' They understand that in any language.

The soldiers shamble into a ragged line. Dirty, unshaven, frightened, they would seem to pose no threat. I walk slowly up and down, looking at each face in turn. A sorry lot for the most part, stupid and brutal, many of them showing the ravages of drink and disease. But two faces do stand out: