I know, right?
But dude, that’s what I’m saying here. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, okay? If there’s talent like that in the world, you can just forget goddamn sniper rifles and remote-triggered explosive devices, fucking MQ-9 Reaper drones and 007 umbrellas that inject deadly ricin micro-doses. You can forget Vladimir Putin and his fancy-ass radioactive fucking aerosolized polonium-210. Dude, you can forget all that shit. You can kiss it goodbye, because if my friend Harry the Horse knows of what he speaks, well, it’s a new damn ball of wax, ain’t it? It’s the dawn of a new day, and we stand at the threshold of a veritable golden age of executive action and extreme prejudice. That’s what I’m saying, dig?
If the hounds do their bidding? Shit.
What a fantastic death abyss, indeed.
But, like the fox said to the mama chicken, it all comes down, of course, to who you’re gonna believe.
Jesus, just lookit the time, will you . . .
14.: Strangers When We Meet (High & Dry)
(Atlanta, January 9, 2011)
And here is the long night before three Georgia cops find a dead shark hanging in an abandoned warehouse, and, just like almost every single time before, the Signalman and Ellison Nicodemo didn’t actually plan on sex. But tomorrow Albany’s trap at the High Museum of Art is scheduled to be sprung, and, as they say, tensions are high and any port in a storm and so on. After their flight touched down at Dobbins ARB, after the drive into the city from Marietta to the Kirkwood safehouse, there was a perfunctory, picked-over meal from some local burger joint called Zesto, grease and ketchup and French fries. When they’d eaten, she disappeared into the bathroom for fifteen minutes, while he finished off the bottle of J&B that he’d been nursing since they left New York that morning. And then, as if by some silent consent, they ended up together in the squeaky little bed, the Signalman clumsy and halting as always, a little too drunk to fuck, Ellison a breathless flurry of desperation and violent intensity. He tasted of Scotch and she tasted of fast-food onions and apprehension. When she tried to slip his left middle finger up her ass, the Signalman hesitated, and he’ll have bruises to show for it in the morning. Ellison comes first, just like almost every single time before, and just like always she comes quiet as the tomb. No rowdy, boisterous orgasms for Ellison Nicodemo, Secret Weapon X in Dreamland’s arsenal of super-classified toys and covert gadgetry, just gritted teeth and the sudden shudder of her narrow hips. Then, without a word, she climbs off him and goes to the bathroom to take a piss and a quick hot shower and to fix, leaving the Signalman alone to burp the worm for himself if he wants closure.
He doesn’t bother. Instead, he gets up, pulls on his boxers and a mostly clean T-shirt, then cracks the seal on a fresh bottle of J&B. He switches on the lamp beside the bed and reads a few pages from a week-old issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, waiting to see if she’s coming back, not expecting that she will. She has her own room, after all.
But she does come back, and now, half an hour later, Ellison is sitting naked near the foot of the bed, her back pressed against the wall, legs crossed in a sloppy half-lotus position. Her hair is wet and slicked back from her face. She’s smoking her Chesterfield and staring at the wide olive-green blackboard that takes up almost an entire side of the room. Some joker’s scrawled MR. SPOCK SAYS RELAX in hot pink chalk. Despite her drooping eyelids, Ellison isn’t quite nodding, isn’t quite so fucked up that she’s entirely beyond the capacity for casual conversation, so long as they stay in the shallow end of the pool. She points at the graffiti with her cigarette and asks, “Did this used to be a school or what?”
“Yeah,” the Signalman replies, sipping his Scotch from a paper cup and watching her. “From 1922 until about ten years back, when it closed up and we bought the place. Remind me in the morning, and I’ll show you where there’s a map of the whole entire United States painted on the asphalt in the parking lot. Every state’s done up in a different color.”
“Okay, I’ll remind you,” she says, knowing full well that she won’t.
“Anyway, I figure resource management will hang on to this dump a few more years, then it’ll be sold off for condominiums or some shit. Urban pioneering. Gentrification.” The way he says gentrification, it’s the sort of tone someone else might reserve for a word like leprosy. He finishes his drink and pours another. “You doing okay over there, kiddo?”
In preference to a yea or nay, and only slurring slightly, Ellison asks him, “You really think she’s gonna show tomorrow? You think she’s really gonna fall for this?”
The Signalman shrugs and rubs his eyes. “The big brains behind the yellow door seem to think so. Me, I’m gonna stick to my usual wait-and-fucking-see approach. If she doesn’t, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. There are exigency protocols. If she does show, though, you’re gonna be ready, right? You and Mr. White Fang?”
“I had a dream last night,” Ellison tells him, leaving the question unanswered.
“Oh yeah? Anything I should be worried about?”
“I had a dream about a flood,” she replies. “I had
