Errata: Seventeenth Episode - Cakewalk

The Magic Bordello rang with screams.

Not the usual vibrato shrieks of lust, pain or hatred, nor clench-glottis howls of outrage at the size of the bill – this was terror, and its ugly bowel-loosening grandeur shivered through the whorehouse like a gong strike.

Nessa unhooked her fingers from her nose-ring, opened her eyes. When she looked at me I knew she had it.

‘Where?’ I said.

‘You ain’t going to like it, Chief.’

‘This was never sold as a cakewalk, Ness.’

‘City Hall.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Now I want to scream,’ said Two Blade.

‘Ninetieth floor, if you please,’ Nessa said. Under her snout, a smirk broke out.

I looked at her. ‘What’s the joke?’

‘You think it’s even possible? I mean,’ her smile grew wider, ‘hypothetically, of course.’

Two Blade straightened his tie, thinking. ‘You couldn’t go in through the front doors. Stands to reason. First five storeys are all security measures: DNA swatches, retina scans, psyche sweeps, plus some kind of elaborate gameshow complete with polygraphs, question cards, canned laughter and a lucky wheel – you must’ve caught it on cable, failed contestants dunked in caustic soda then yanked out frothy and gleaming like a bone chandelier. Trip an alarm and it’s bamboo spike pits, laser grids, guards toting bully clubs, the works. Those sadistic bastards ‘ll work a body over with such commitment you could post the remains home in a shoebox. I mean, I love getting mail as much as the next degenerate, but there’s a line.’

‘Is there anything – anything – that could sneak a person through?’ I said.

Teeb shook his head. ‘Can’t rush the place – HexNetted plus all sorts of anti-psionic jiggery pokery built into the walls. Can’t creep in as an impostor – a specialised LimpetMasque might get you past the retina and brain scans, but you’d still fail the DNA test. It’s a cast iron chastity belt, Chief.’

‘But is there another way?’ said Nessa.

I frowned. ‘Thought you said it was on the ninetieth floor?’

‘That’s exactly what I said.’

‘Maybe we could climb the outside of the building?’ suggested Two Blade.

‘Do I look like a mountain goat, Teeb?’ I couldn’t resist a quick glance at the bedside mirror to make sure. ‘And it’s ninety storeys. Give me a moderate flight of stairs and I’m fit to blow a heart chamber. You want we should go into training for six months?’

Nessa tipped her head back and snorted. ‘The door ‘ll have moved by then.’

‘I know that!’

‘Suckers,’ said Two Blade.

‘You want to say that a little louder, pipsqueak?’ Nessa caught him by the lapels and balled a fist big as a leg of ham.

‘Suckers,’ he repeated. ‘You know…’ He jabbed a finger to his cheek, pointing at the pink disc-shaped welts. ‘Things that suck.’ He pursed his lips, pulled a sour face. ‘The power of suction.’

Nessa eyed his boyish chops, her brow going up and down as she checked whether he was trying to be funny. ‘You mean like suction cups?’ she said at last.

Two Blade nodded puppy-style. ‘I mean exactly like suction cups.’ He held up his palms, mimed a pane of glass. ‘You know, for buildings. The scaling of.’

‘You’re a moron.’ She hoisted him by his neck-scruff and pushed. Two Blade travelled backwards across the room, landing supine on the flip-down to the croak of springs. ‘You’d stick out like a bug crossing a TV screen. You’d never make it ten metres before someone picked you off. What you supposed to do if some punk clerk three floors up decides to pour boiling coffee out the window, huh? Take it on the chin and keep trucking? I’m telling you,’ she wheeled round to face the window, ‘you gotta be quick.’ She socked her palm like someone tossing a baseball into a catcher’s mitt. ‘They’ve got a whole lot of plates to keep spinning right now, but all that gives you is a chance. You keep it fast, you get in, out, before anybody notices what the hell you’re doing.’

Two Blade looked up from the bed. ‘Catapult?’

‘You shut your trap, Teeb!’ said Nessa, slamming a hoof against the floorboards. ‘You guys want to do this, we gotta get serious.’

‘What? I’m serious!’ T Blade looked away, then his face seemed to glaze over. He was staring up at the bare light bulb, a drunk, beatific grin smeared across his mush. ‘Gadzooks. I really am serious. Look!’

We followed his gaze. A moth was butting the hot glass, black against the hundred watt glow.

* * *

Reynard Eight was downtown playing Tarot Poker with the city’s undesirables and having a super time. A cruel man steered by grim, arbitrary convictions, he had once replaced all the jam in a doughnut batch with insects, then watched as children fell wearing beards of lice, houseflies swarming from their nostrils. His cat, Barabbus, had a small petrol motor grafted to its spine, and shuffled round his quarters back at City Hall coughing smog. He kept miscellaneous skulls in the dumb waiter and would often rise during the wee hours to rebuke them for imagined failures. On his selection to the Council, he had glowered down at the reverential crowd and said: ‘Force-feed a fowl with corn and they will call you a man of great taste. Yet force-feed a man of great taste with corn and they will merely call you foul. Soulless drones of Errata, seek solace in the knowledge that I will spend far too much time eating, drinking and fornicating to oppress you with any real élan. Your supplication sickens me.’

Garibaldi ‘The Nappy’ Figgs sat on the opposite side of the card table, running his rough fingertips across the green baize. ‘Ahum,’ he said. He was called The Nappy because early in his career he’d smothered a debt-welsher with a soiled diaper. Figgs often wished he’d had something less ignominious to hand that squally winter’s evening, like a claw hammer or a tiger skin rug. ‘Yup, okay. I raise you fifty.’ And he tossed a plastic chip big as a hockey puck onto the heap.

The room was made out with walnut panelling and green paisley carpet, a golden ceiling fan churning fag smoke into a portentous spiral. The blinds were drawn and two knuckle-scrapers in pinstripes stood by the bolted door, almost as wide as they were high at seven foot a piece, ears appalling grottos of cartilage that had fused with their shoulders. Below, the Pavlov Casino flashed and jingled like a bank vault seizure but the private suite was silent, walls, floor and ceiling all soundproof. Even fifteen storeys up, you couldn’t be too careful.

Gripping his card fan with long prehensile toes, Chimpy Dolenz pushed his fedora back and scowled. ‘Too rich for my blood. I fold.’ He slammed his cards face down on the table then glanced back at the gaunt, raisin-eyed fellow in a grey flannel suit stood smoking next to the window. ‘Hey Miguel! Pass us one o’ them, uh, them cigars, will ya?’

Miguel the Moneylender rubbed a knuckle through the bristles of his moustache. ‘Sure thing Chimpy.’

Chimpy slouched down in his club chair and held out a hand, while reaching with the other into his top pocket for a lighter.

‘There you go,’ said Miguel.

Chimpy closed his eyes and parked the cigar in the corner of his mouth. On his second attempt to light it he opened his eyes and realised it was a banana.

The suite boomed with laughter. Even the two lunks guarding the door joined in with cretinous guffaws.

Chimpy slung the scythe-shaped fruit to the floor and jumped up in his seat. ‘You assholes!’ He turned and tried to swing for Miguel but the chair overbalanced and pitched him headfirst into the carpet. His peers laughed harder then Chimpy dipped inside his jacket and pulled a blade. ‘Think this is funny, huh? Huh?’ He punctuated each huh with a flashing thrust of the knife.

The heavies began to move towards him, frowning so hard their eyes disappeared. The Nappy waved them down.

‘Easy boys, easy.’ He turned and threw Chimpy a wide grin that was at once conciliatory and admonishing. Few were on a par with Figgs when it came to facial expressions – his head looked like a waxwork rescued from a furnace, one eye resident in a location usually reserved for cheekbones, his nose a purple tumour. The resultant asymmetry was discomfitingly hypnotic; more than once, Figgs had cheated death when would-be assailants had hesitated, lost in the grotesque topography of his countenance. ‘Why don’t you put away the sharp, Chimpy? Miguel’s sorry – he’s cut up as old hell. Look at his face.’

Chimpy turned to look and Miguel stuck his lower lip out, nodding.

‘See?’ Figgs went on. ‘In all my life I never saw a mug so sad. I’ll bet he never gets over it. You want him to live the rest of his days a broken man, Chimpy? Is that what you want?’

Lowering the blade, Chimpy shook his head.

‘Then forgive the guy,’ said Figgs. ‘Grudges ain’t baseball cards. Let go of the past. Let bygones go bye-bye. Whaddya say? Can you bring yourself to forgive him? I really think we’re close to a breakthrough here.’

Chimpy dug a hairy toe into the carpet. ‘Miguel…’

‘Look him in the eyes, Chimpy. Windows on the soul and all that jazz.’

Trembling, Chimpy raised his head. ‘Miguel… Uh…’

‘Come on, Chimpy. Tell him what’s in your heart.’

‘Miguel… I… Uh…’

‘You can do it, Chimpy. This is as much for you as it is for him.’

‘I… Uh… I…’

‘This is your moment, Chimpy.’

‘I…’

‘We’re all rooting for you, Chimpy.’

‘I…’

‘Come on, Chimpy.’

‘GUM AH JAMBY!’ The garbled basso roar had come from one of the heavies, who shuffled and looked embarrassed at his outburst.

Chimpy looked into the Moneylender’s eyes. ‘Miguel, I forgive ya.’

The room exhaled. Chimpy slumped, exhausted.

‘See?’ Figgs cooed. ‘That wasn’t so hard now was it? Why don’t you go fix yourself a drink, eh sport? Celebrate releasing all that pent up resentment.’

Chimpy said nothing but loped over to the drinks cabinet and mixed himself an Ugly Tuesday. On his way back to his seat he picked the banana off the carpet with his foot. When he got to the table he peeled it with easy grace then sat, using his knife to slice it into medallions.

Figgs glanced at Reynard Eight. ‘Your turn I believe, Councillor.’

Reynard took a clay pipe from his mouth, spat smoke like tobacco juice. ‘So it is.’ He returned the stem to between his wooden molars and picked up his cards.

Tarot Poker boasted a happy record of madness and ruined lives. An attempt to yoke the arcane science of Divination to Hell’s favourite pastime, it regularly resulted in fatal brawls, sudden religious awakenings, or floods of tears from all concerned. There were countless variants – Spit at the Vagrant, Wilco’s Choice, and Six-Fingered Abomination amongst the most popular – but its basic form was very simple: having anted up, each player got dealt five cards, face down, from a six-hundred-and-thirty-two strong deck depicting the Errata Tarot’s many subtle inflections. There followed a round of betting – or multiple rounds in the more complex forms – then, if two or more players had equalled the top bet rather than dropping out, a showdown. In the case of a showdown, the winner was decided by comparing the each player’s five-card spread with that of his peers. Whoever had been prophesied the best future took the pot.

The Tarot, claimed the city’s fortune tellers, was as powerful as it was callous, a thermonuclear device in the hands of gurgling toddlers. Perhaps desperate to maintain their monopoly on Divination’s nerve-jangling secrets, they warned that the cards were deterministic and inviolable – that by using the deck in such a reckless way, players were weaving themselves new destinies, gambling with their very fates. Whether bogus or not, the prognosticators’ scowl-faced forecasts only served to ensconce Tarot Poker as the ultimate in high stakes betting, and a top way to relieve boredom. Citizens flocked to it, as if finally returning home.

Reynard plucked a chip from the primary-coloured ramparts of his stash. He began walking it back and forth along his knuckles, fingers working like a carpet loom.

‘You seem a little unsure, Councillor,’ said Figgs, keeping the trash talk on a slow burn.

Reynard snapped his palm shut round the token. ‘Rush and feel the indignity of a wasted trip, tight lungs burning like two bagfuls of sulphur.’ Beneath his tracing paper skin blue arteries flinched to a delinquent pulse, scant evidence of his humanity.

‘Yet hesitation makes grub motels of us all.’ The Nappy lifted a highball glass to his swollen lips and knocked back the electric dregs of his Juicy Chapeau. Immediately Miguel the Moneylender crossed to the drinks cabinet and mixed him a fresh one, glass stirrer dissolving to a smutted nub. Miguel frowned, added more bourbon. ‘Yeah, that first step’s a doozy. Maybe you should fold, land me with the chore of raking up this big chunk of change.’

‘You forget, Mr Figgs, my future spreads before me like a strumpet’s legs.’ He glanced at his cards, peeled open a smile. ‘Your bluster is so many spitwads striking a battleship. I’ve already seen my fate.’

‘And I’ve seen mine, Mr Eight. Guess one of us has misinterpreted.’ Miguel arrived, handed Figgs his drink. Figgs sipped, pulled a squirrel face, then nodded, satisfied. He gestured with his glass towards Reynard. ‘Drink, Councillor? You look like you could use one.’

Reynard sighed, looked to the Moneylender. ‘I don’t suppose you know how to make a Swedenborg Below Decks?’

Miguel cocked his head. ‘Pomegranate schnapps, dark rum, vodka, grape juice, sours – shake well, pour over crushed ice, then add a soda top and whisper a secret to the hissing effeversence.’

‘You forgot the olive.’

‘Whatever you say Mr Eight.’ He returned to the cocktail paraphernalia, a shrug hidden in the meat of his shoulders. ‘One Swedenborg Below Decks coming up.’

‘I didn’t say I wanted one,’ snarled Reynard, ‘I asked if you could make one.’

Miguel stood baffled at the booze cabinet. ‘You don’t want a drink now?’

‘I don’t want a Swedenborg Below Decks. Not one mixed by you, at any rate.’

‘Uh… so can I fix you anything Mr Eight?’

Reynard made a show of stroking the loose flesh collected around his chin. ‘Get me a Templar. No yak milk please, I’m so lactose intolerant it borders on a personal vendetta.’

Miguel’s head disappeared into the suite’s palatial refrigerator. ‘Uh… we got unsweetened soya.’

‘That’ll do.’ In a single fluid motion Reynard slapped his chip on top of a stack then swept his entire hoard into the central mountain. ‘I’m going all in.’

Chimpy spluttered, thumped his windpipe, then spat up a load of part-masticated banana mush into his palm.

Figgs’ stare hardened. ‘Saucy as a ketchup factory, Councillor. I never knew the like.’ He scanned his cards. ‘Ahum. I guess I should feel chastened, huh?’

‘You’re at liberty, Mr Figgs, to feel whatever the creeping fuck you like.’

‘Well that’s a relief.’ He took a gulp of cocktail and his lips spazzed.

Chimpy’s gaze ping-ponged between the two players. Miguel brought Reynard his drink in a frothing martini glass then retreated to the window, sparking up a drab cigarillo. The two bodyguards waited blank as gargoyles.

Figgs wiped a line of perspiration from his top lip. ‘Lady Luck, huh? I never did understand women.’

‘Ya gonna see him, Nap?’ said Chimpy, clutching the arms of his chair.

‘Can it, Chimpy. I can’t hear myself cogitate.’ Figgs stared at his drink and the surface rippled like a snare skin. He squinted. A second later it happened again. He looked up. ‘Hey – am I nuts or did anybody else just feel something weird?’

‘Hardly mutually exclusive propositions,’ Reynard sneered, his smile widening to an oaken grin.

A tremor passed through the suite. Chips clattered off the pile and Miguel jerked away from the wall he was leaning against as if he’d been goosed.

Chimpy Dolenz was up in his seat, hopping from foot to foot. ‘Holy moley what in the name o’ Jenkins was that?’

It came again, stronger; glassware chattered and the lights fritzed. At this, the lunkheads roused, slow golems stirred into life. Unsure of how to react to an abstract threat, they cast about, perturbed.

Reynard was housecat sanguine. ‘Is there a problem?’

Figgs squinted at him. ‘You got anything to do with this, Councillor?’

The room hiccupped. Chips sloughed from the card table in a rattling cascade. Reynard’s Templar slopped over the rim and began eating into the baize.

Reynard raised his tufted eyebrows. ‘Tarot Poker is rife with occupational hazards. Surely that’s part of the fun.’ He took a sup of cocktail, wiped away a pale glistening ‘tache. ‘So, Mr Figgs – are you in, or do I take the pot?’

‘Now just wait a second.’

A crystal decanter fell from the shelves, Chimpy letting out a little howl as it shattered. Figgs stood, shoved his chair back.

He turned to the Moneylender, who was cowering inside his suit. ‘Miguel! Open the blind! I wanna see what the risen hell’s going down out there.’

Miguel took a step towards the window and the room boomed like a bunker. He staggered, steadied himself against the wall, glassware smashing in a high-pitched chorus.

‘Sweet potato! Figgs!’ Miguel’s knees flexed beneath him like they were built from taffy. ‘Aww Jenkins Figgs, I don’t wanna die!’

‘Open the goddamn blind!’

The suite shook again. Miguel lunged, knocked the catch aside; the blind wrapped itself like a scroll. All eyes turned to the window.

A single, saurian pupil stared back, big as the whole pane.

Chimpy Dolenz did a whimsical little half-pirouette then toppled, smacking his bonce against the card table. Reynard Eight’s cocktail upended, soaking the Councillor’s groin. The neckless heavies braced for a fight. Garibaldi Figgs pressed his cards to his chest, mouthing some kind of oath. The people watched themselves in the black hemisphere, mirrored, tiny.

The eye blinked. Folks held their breath, and the frail tik-a-tik-a-tik-a-tak of the ceiling fan’s loose bracket grew and grew till it was the realest thing in the world. Time stretched. The eye blinked again. Then it swept away.

There was smoke and streetfires in the space it left. The room juddered as the monster moved away, and the gamblers juddered speechless with it. Chimpy lay prone on the carpet, his arms at ten to midnight.

At last, Reynard got to his feet. He pulled a fawn handkerchief from his inside pocket and began dabbing at his sodden crotch.

‘Well,’ he huffed, ‘that really is the giddy limit. Would you look what that beast did to the front of my trousers?’

Slumped at the foot of the window, Miguel scowled reproachfully. ‘You should see what it did to the back of mine.’

As the reverberations subsided, Figgs snuck a glance at his hand. Amidst the rococo illustrations, a giant lizard’s eye stared out at him, and next to it, a wizened head on a pike, its lungless scream edged with wooden teeth.