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BLACK HELICOPTERS

EPISODE 17

THURSDAY the SIXTH - 11:11 AM

          Disson's innermost office loomed grossest of all of City Hall’s rotting matryoshka excepting, as Andy vaguely remembered from some ghastly charity brunch, that office of Hizzoner: Mayor Peter Horatio "Pinhead" Potter himself... but, in no way aped what one might have expected from a municipal Permits Bureau sanctum. Rather Andy, and not alone among others, was put in mind of an undertaker's emporium... a darkened establishment where velvet gloves hid knifelike talons; dank, unnatural urges quenched… with difficulty… gloomy deities placated with florid, bloody sacrifices.

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          No electric lamps burned in Permits' funereal realm, not even a candle; drawn blinds allowing only a weak gauze of sunlight tentative admission. Tables and more obscure antique objects of furniture, draped in damasks of dark hues, were laden with metal or ceramic bowls in which crimson and violet blooms palpitated in a desultory breeze wafting in through open windows behind the blinds... waiting, wilting... watching, as several wary flies circled the premises.

          Don Disson was, himself, a short, trim man, expensively clothed in a fawn, silkish suit with French cuffs; light brown hair cropped closely at the sides but rising straight upwards some two or three inches – rather like the kitchen match-headed tonsorial fashion presently among high-ranking alt-righters (or the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un).  Bristles, Andy reckoned, on a witch’s broomstick. A thin pencil moustache enhanced his likeness to one of those confidence men from old black and white noir movies and far too much cologne... masking, in fact, a faint, unhealthy criminal tang to the office and its inhabitant, from whence and whom Andy desired to be gone from the moment he’d entered. Now, however, it was too late.  Disson sat, breathing heavily, eyeing his supplicants... Rael, Marty Lesh, Richard Reid, the glareman, and their attorney, Goldman. Solicitous as any undertaker but with what, Andy remembered Kerry Donovan telling him, was a twenty-mile stare, like one of those Roswell aliens put off his saucer for some nameless and loathsome alien indiscretion, exiled to pass a few millennia among the lower orders.

          Richard Reid turned his head and coughed a wad of yellow phlegm onto the dark, perfumed carpet, but Disson never wavered. So much for the People's Glare!

          The dark, murmuring flowers, however, recoiled – perhaps aroused – and sussurated hungrily in the direction of the gob, seeming to emit tongues of invisible absorptive toxins… poisons that attacked human willpower, affecting each of the supplicants in a different, but subtle manner... Andy could not help wondering whether something from the skid row diner was still attached to his chin.

          Disson leaned forward and waved off Leo's perfunctory greeting. "So... little worms who have bored into our apple of opportunity and mean to spoil this splendid Convention that Mayor Potter has brought here, only to bring some sort of meaning into their spoiled little lives?  And now... enlighten me! I am supposed to hear some sort of a… a demand?"

          "Nothing extraordinary," Goldman said, face neutral but, as Andy noticed, he'd straightened up some, taking offense at the bureaucrat's arrogance. "Simple compliance with the First Amendment which, as you may know, hasn't been repealed yet... despite former Congressman Parnell's noble initiative..."

          "Yes... that," Disson replied with a distasteful shake of his head. "So we were talking about... somewhere for human genome, black ganglords, nuclear nervous nellies and Hong Kong invasion protesters to join hands with derelicts from Jefferson Street and march round and round in their little circles... chanting, singing…"

          "You're chaining the City's disadvantaged to people protesting the CNC," Leo objected, "just like the Catfish says happens in his book!” Touché!  Well, maybe.  “Look, we all know this isn't something any locals wanted, except for the commercial sorts, you know? Ukraine all over again!  People are coming here from all over the country, even the world! Extra buses arrive at the station hourly and planes are packed... given Mr. Tillerman’s alt-alt-right hoodlums and Parnell lining up with President Biden on that new import tariff to work off at least some of the National Debt, sort of, I reckon there'll be five Conk protesters for every delegate. Thousands of 'em! Not a vacant hotel room within twenty miles and, by the way, you can just tell your boss to remember to have all the restaurants and stores be sure to thank him for attracting so much business. This is even bigger than that convention of gastroenterologists Mayor Klum brought here ten years ago..."

          "Those were doctors," Disson cut him off. There was, at once, something vacant and something other present in the Director's eyes which, Andy realized, had flared black as a rodent's within a thin yellow corona... it was impossible to determine whether there were any pupils in that school at all, or whether, on the other hand, they were so dilated they'd overflowed their sockets like rivers in the terrible floods currently ravaging Washington state. "Doctors! Not derelicts... shaking puny little fists, whining at the injustices of life and jealously trying to tear down good men like the Catfish and Austin Tillerman; those were doctors, with money..."

          Andy decided he wouldn't take whatever flight Disson was enjoying, even if somebody laid it on him.

          "Let me think. Hmmm!  Is there a place where this sort of negative behavior can be officially countenanced?"

          Disson looked down at his desk, seeming to meditate and affording his petitioners the opportunity to react. But Leo had drummed it into them... no idle talk... and when he looked up, the five of them were still staring (or glaring) at him, awaiting further revelation. It actually seemed to unnerve the little bureaucrat, and now he took out a linen handkerchief, coughed something gray and yellow of his own into it, folded it up and put it in his pocket, then lifting a number of brightly colored brochures from a drawer, handing them to Leo with a careless wave to pass them around. Andy hesitated... the plague might have retreated into the shadows to await another season, but he still didn't want the Permits man's germs any more than he cared for his drugs.  Those rumours on social media about men having sex with apes... they seemed less outlandish now...

          "I think... here!” Disson smiled.  “A setting most admirably reflecting the City's commitment to providing a theatrical, even pastoral, venue for your First Amendment concerns..."

          Richard Reid was first to break rank. "Hey man, this is fuckin' Sylvania Park!"

          "Why so it is!" Disson smiled again. "Have you a problem with this?"

          "Yeah," Andy replied, folding the Chamber of Commerce handout in half, "it's nine miles from downtown. Is this some sort of joke?"

          "The site is within City limits," Disson answered, icily, "well, part of it is. The First Amendment, as I recall, is silent on the issue of hectoring taxpayers to provide any individual facility for the free-of-charge promulgation of offensive views. It does protect the rights of anyone to say anything on private property... I know for a fact that, since baseball season's still a couple of weeks away, the Municipal Stadium would quite comfortably hold three times as many of your people as the Journal believes will be coming to protest the Coalition, and it's only three miles from Masty Hall. I believe the day rate for rock concerts and such is fourteen thousand. thereabouts, but if you were interested in several days, and since it's off-season, and a non-profit enterprise as well, I've discussed this with Mayor Potter and we think we could ask only, oh..." and the Director looked down again, as if thinking or pretending to think, "... twenty five thousand for Saturday and Sunday? Hell, twenty-two... I feel generous today! No? Well the terms for Sylvania Park, which I shall recite presently, are reasonable.  It has the bandshell.  And a gazebo!  End of problem?"

          "Uhh, I'm not sure about process, but... is anybody interested in taking this?" Andy ventured, feeling something heavy and sibilant wafting down into his lungs and spreading through his bones. Those fucking flowers! When nobody had replied, after a decent interval, he said: "No? Well that takes care of that! Now, let's get down to business."

          "We have concluded our business,” the Permits pharaoh lifted an index finger and wiggled it. ‘You have heard the City's proposal. Our only and final proposal," Disson emphasized. "If you intend to conduct yourselves responsibly, see Sylvester and he will provide you with details. If not, you may leave... I suggest those of you who have homes or, more probably, squats or cardboard boxes, crawl back into them and stay off the streets for the next week and, well, watch television.  Or masturbate; do whatever it is you do when not wasting our time. I think you know the way out..."

          And Disson pulled shrouds of paperwork towards him from the far corners of the desk, burying his nose in them like a vampire drawing his old, dark cloak close with the nearness of the dawn.

          "Hey man... don't fuck with us!" Marty said sharply, and Disson looked up with what seemed a prearranged smirk. "This demo starts Saturday, that's the day after tomorrow."

          "If the City can spend forty thousand dollars of the taxpayers’ money for a party for the Conks," Rael appealed, "I think it could afford to be a little bit more generous. We're just concerned about the right of all people to use the Earth. And what about the University?" she asked, as Leo slumped back, slapping his hand to his forehead, then shaking both in a gesture of disassociation.

          Now Disson's undertaker's smile bloomed fully, horribly. "Did I hear something?" he parried, looking round the dark, miasmatic room. "A little rat, scurrying through the woodwork, sniffing for a deal? Ah... the University… well it happens to be the property of the State. We in the City Permits Bureau," he said, talking slowly, as if to a child or an idiot, "have no authority to grant access to State property, although we do reserve the right to prohibit any actions thereon that may be perceived as conducive to terrorism or injurious to our taxpayers. And I do happen to know that their in-house permits officer has taken the day off… he’s a delegate, imagine! You'll have to pursue that avenue up at the Capitol. If you hurry, and maybe break a few speeding regulations along the way," he suggested, making a show of checking his watch... from where Andy sat he could determine that it was one of those smart foreign types, full of tiny pinwheels and antennae, probably hellishly expensive... "you might arrive in time to achieve an appointment."

          "This is amazing, amazing," Andy repeated. "You're deliberately turning what obviously would be a routine, peaceable assembly into a police riot."

          Disson lay his papers down. "Peaceable? Our police think otherwise. Threats have been made to public officials, including myself... you, Mister Morrison, I believe you are associated with a certain shelter in which felons, some of whom are undocumented aliens, parolees and mentally unsound persons, have been known to congregate. You may disguise your voice, but we know that terrorist calls have been traced, by the National Security Agency, to the pay telephone in that shelter… a pay telephone!  How Twentieth Century!  The FBI and Homeland Security have been called in to assess the danger from outside agitators... envious terrorists who can’t even afford burner cellphones intent on disrupting the CNC convention to draw attention to themselves.  Or loot stores, like in California, or as they did in that place somewhere around St. Louis.  We have this sewn up," the Director hissed, winding his fingers together into a church and steeple, "even with UNAPIS, through INTERPOL  If Mister Goldman wishes to pursue legal action after the fact, whether here or with the U.N. up in New York, or even The Hague, for all I care, that is, of course, his right."

          "Funny... how terrorists have been calling you from the Sanctuary when the phone's been turned off since January," Andy wondered aloud. "But you're right to be worried about crazies, so easy to set off. Just throw a few hundred gas 'n club-happy cops in, plus another bunch of spooks nobody knows who nobody's working for... Chicago, man, remember? Kyev?  Was all that shit the result of people storming the convention... no, it was them just being there, and somebody with an agenda better served by having a riot than not. There's plenty of space in the Plaza opposite Masty Hall... easy to monitor, it's done all over the country, it’s not like we’re storming the Capitol, or convention..." he tailed off.

          Disson's malodorous flowers seemed to drinking his very words down, entrapping them in a black... or, perhaps, deep purple or indigo hole.  Violet?  Suddenly Andy felt the beginnings of a migraine.

          "Crazies!" the Director commiserated, lifting his head so every petitioner could have a good view into his eyes, the destination of all their appeals. He folded his hands, lay them flat on the desktop, the jewels on his many rings shimmering in murky light. "We've been negotiating with the Capitol for years for more beds for the mentally disturbed in the Regional Hospital, here; that and... as Jack Parnell advocates... more flexibility in the law regarding involuntary commitments." His hands, separating, migrated to either end of the desk, which he grasped, now, as if intending to lift it bodily and hurl it at the visitors. "You speak of crazies when it is you... you! who've... assaulted me!"

          And, with all the vapor from the flowers exploding from the Director's eyes like a tin can shoved into a microwave, Disson gripped the desk, smashed his face down hard, three times, then glared up at them again through a mask of angry bruises and a bloody nose, probably broken. He repeated this act once more for emphasis, making a bloody mess of his mouth and blackening one of the demented eyes, then actually did push the desk over... flopping and rolling on the carpet; the screaming bureaucrat writhing in convulsions, kicking over several of the tables and their fleurs du mal…

          Rancid water, aswarm with wriggling little creatures, spattered Andy as Disson screamed and moaned, like the centerpiece of a berserker’s Christmas diorama in which blood, petals and official papers floating down from the ceiling had taken the place of artificial snow.

          "Help!" he shrieked, voice ratcheting up into a falsetto. "Help!... Sylvester, call Security! I'm being assassinated!"

          Assassinated?  What a fuckin’ ego! wondered Andy, but only for a moment as the Director rose to his knees, lunged into the chairs containing his visitors and rammed his head into Goldman's midsection, tackling the lawyer viciously and wrestling with him on the dampened, boogered carpet as Sylvester poked his head through the door, gasped and retreated.

          "Now just you... wait!... you wait!" Disson gurgled through the foam of blood and spittle cascading over his lips. Pushing away from Goldman, he hurled himself backwards into another tower of creepy flora, tumbling as three City Hall policemen charged in, guns drawn.

          "He's acting!" Andy thought to say, but bit his tongue, not making a move for his shirt was soaked, and though it was only water from Disson's flowerpots, the police had no way of knowing that it wasn’t blood.

          "They're murdering me!" Disson wailed, scrunching backwards under the drapes and towards a corner like some wet, tan insect, overturned and sprayed, writhing off on its back to die.

          "Freeze!" one of the cops ordered, drawing and covering the stunned petitioners.

          "You have the right to remain silent," one of the other cops began reciting tediously. "You have the right to speak..."

          "Can it, Chuck!" said the first, still waving his gun around, much too excitedly for Andy's liking. "We stopped having to read that shit last month! Remember?"

          Disson, reaching his corner, drew his knees up towards his battered face, as though to melt back into the wall, or the womb. "Help me!" he blubbered, lifting a bloody, bejeweled finger, pointing... "Them! They're the madmen from those telephone calls, the terrorists! They’ve assaulted me!"

 

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