Cities of the Red Night

CIA ... but that won't be necessary now.

'I daresay you could wipe her out with rockets from here.'

'Easily. Or we could use biologic weapons.'

'The Black Fever?'

'Yes.' He pointed to the radio. 'In fact, I could give the order right now.'

'So what do you want from me?'

'You will finish the scenario. Your assistant will do the illustrations.'

'And then?'

'You have been promised a million dollars to find the books. You have found them. Of course, money will mean nothing once this thing breaks, but we will see to it that you live comfortably. After all, we have no motive to eliminate you ... we may need your services in the future. We're not bad guys really....'

How nice will these guys be once they get what they want from me? If I am allowed to live at all it will certainly be as a prisoner.

I am trying to stall Blum with a slick number called Naked Newgate about a handsome young highwayman and the sheriff's daughter. Blum isn't buying it.

'Any thousand-dollar-a-week Hollywood hack could write such a piece of shit.'

Then Pierson asks me over for a drink and a 'little chat.' It sound ominous.

'Oh uh by the way ... Blum isn't exactly happy about the screenplay.'

'Nize baby, et up all the screenplay.'

He looks at me sharply.

'What's that, Snide?'

'It's a joke. Fitzgerald in Hollywood.'

'Oh,' he says, a bit intimidated by the reference to Fitzgerald ... perhaps something he should know about ... He clears his throat.

'Blum says he wants something he calls art. He knows it when he sees it and he isn't seeing it now.'

'What I like is culture! What I like is art!' I screech in the tones of a crazed Jewish matron.

He gives me a long blank sour look.

'More jokes, Snide?'

'I'll give him what he wants. I'm staging a little theater production tomorrow ... very artistic.'

'This had better be good, Snide.'

A slim blond youth in elegant nineteenth-century clothes stands on a scaffold. A black hood, laced with gold threads, is drawn over his head.

RUBBLE BLOOD PU

(END OF PART I)

Stuck in dead smallpox nights of last century. This satined ass in yellow light.

(Yellow-flecked storm waves ... palm trees ... wide strip of sand ... a corduroy road ... I don't remember hitting ... I really don't think so ... the truck shadow ... trees tasting cement ... green dark water.)

'Good English soldier of fortune, sir. Work for you, yes no?'

Spelling years whisper the lake heavy red sweater, trash cans in yellow light. The sigh of harmonica flags in the sad golden wash of the sunset singing fish luminous sky fresh smell of damp violets. Man smell of dirty clothes red faces breath thick on tarnished mirrors.