Desolation Road

50

Anyone presenting a Concordat card to either of the proprietors of the Mandella and Das Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was entitled to eat freely of the wonderland of cooking sausages, grilling kebabs, chickpea fritters frying merrily in the deep fryer and assorted bhajis, samosas, pakoras and tiddyhoppers. This was a gesture of filial solidarity on the part of the Mandella half of the Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium; it was having a ruinous effect on the enterprise’s profitability, but the Mandella half knew the Das half had sackfuls of golden dollars salted away from his days, now sadly remembered, as town handyman, freebooter, goondah and bum which would bide the emporium over the Concordat crisis.

The Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was of remarkable, even unique, construction. The front half came from an aged riksha which had laid for three years behind Ed’s Shed, the back half was adapted from a disused ’lighter galley augmented with fold-down bar seats, piped music, gaily coloured paper lanterns, and a plethora of holy icons, medals, and paper prayer tickets. Each morning before the first light touched his window the Das half of the partnership would kick the riksha half of the emporium into asthmatic life and drive the ungaintly contraption down the narrow alleys, dodging chickens, goats, llamas, children, trucks until he found a good place to park. Almost invariably this was across the street from the Pentecost Sisters’ General Merchandise Store so that Rajandra Das could smile charmingly to them when they came to open the store at eight minutes of eight and they, in turn, could invite him in for mint tea at the hottest time of the day. By the time the Mandella half of the partnership arrived (the half with the needle-sharp business acumen, the genetic bequest of his rationalist father) there would be sausages frying and biggins of mint tea or coffee venting perfume into the air and a line as long as a free breakfast clutching their Concordat cards.

On the 66th day of the strike Rajandra Das was wrapping a sausage as long as his forearm to hand to a striker whose face he recognized vaguely when he froze in mid-wrap.

“R. D.,” said the Mandella half. “What you seen?”

Rajandra Das automatically handed the sausage to the striker.

“It’s him.”

“Him?” Kaan Mandella looked but saw only a dark-haired middle-aged man watching from the end of the street.

“He had the gall to come back, after what he did….” Kaan Mandella looked again but the figure was gone.

“Who was he?”

Rajandra Das did not say but he maintained a vengeful tightness all day that was most uncharacteristic. When the Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was safely parked for the night, Rajandra Das paid a call on Mr. Jericho.

“He’s back,” he said, and when Mr. Jericho learned who was back, he sent Rajandra Das to gather up all the Founder Members, with the exception of Dominic Frontera, and while Rajandra Das was gathering up all the Founder Members he went to the drawer where he kept his needle-pistol and took it out of its silk wrapping.

At twenty forty-five Mikal Margolis, chief of security for the Desolation Road project, was going to have a bath in his managerial apartment. The preliminary undercover survey of Desolation Road was complete, the Company could move against Concordat at any time and crush it, it had been a hard day and a long hot bath was what he needed. He opened the door and saw the pointing end of an antique bone-handled needle-pistol.

“Don’t slam the door,” said a voice he had forgotten. “I can shoot you dead through it if I have to. Now, please come with me.”

As Mikal Margolis was redressing, Mr. Jericho noticed the Company uniform.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, at least there’s something you don’t know. Chief of Project Security, no less.”

Mr. Jericho said nothing but added a further crime to the charge-sheet in his mind. He led his prisoner by sideways and byways to the perimeter wire. A thread of pure electric tension connected the nose of the needle-pistol to the nape of Mikal Margolis’s neck.

“Under here,” said Mr. Jericho, indicating an open culvert hatch Mikal Margolis had not even known existed.

“How did you find me?” asked the prisoner as the two men splashed through the sewage of Steeltown.

“Damantine disciplines, though that won’t mean anything to you.”

But it did, and Mikal Margolis suddenly knew a lot about Mr. Jericho. And he also knew that for all his Freelancer-trained senses, he could not escape from his captor. So he let him lead him out of Steeltown and into Desolation Road.

The kangaroo court was convened in Rajandra Das’s storeroom amid crates of chick peas donated to Concordat by the Association of Meridian Street Traders. Looking around him, Mikal Margolis recognized the Mandellas, the Gallacelli brothers, the Stalins, Genevieve Tenebrae holding the globe containing her husband’s ghost, even the Blue Mountains father and daughter were there. He shivered. It was like being tried by a parliament of ghosts. Then he saw Persis Tatterdemalion.

“Persis, what is this? Tell me.” She looked away from him. Mr. Jericho read a formal charge. He then asked the defendant how he pleaded.

“Tell me, is Mother dead then?” the defendant asked.

“She is,” said Rael Mandella Sr.

“That’s good. I would not have liked for her to see this.”

“What is your plea?” asked Mr. Jericho.

“Guilty as charged.”

And all the jurors agreed. All of them. Even Persis. Even the ghost.

“You know what to do then,” said Mr. Jericho, and for the first time Mikal Margolis saw the rope. As he was led up to the makeshift scaffold (a pair of store step-ladders), he felt neither rage nor hatred but only an overwhelming sense of disgust that the man who had taken on the Bethlehem Ares Corporation and won them to him should meet such an ignominious end. The noose was placed over his neck.

“Don’t you feel any remorse at all?” asked Genevieve Tenebrae, a twisted, pale thing, a hermetic troglodyte. “Don’t you feel anything for poor Gaston?”

Poor Gaston, was it? Philandering bum.

“I was a kid then,” he said. “Crazy, mixed up. These things happen.” He looked at Persis Tatterdemalion and held out his hands. “Look, Persis. No trembling now.” The vigilantes bound those steady hands and then argued over what consignatory words to use over the condemned’s soul. Mikal Margolis wavered at the top of the step-ladders and felt his fury grow. He could not accept that he must die so stupidly.

“Have you quite finished?” he shouted.

“Yes, thank you,” said Mr. Jericho. “Drop him.”

Rajandra Das kicked the step-ladder from under Mikal Margolis. Mikal Margolis felt a fist of iron try to tear his head from his body, then there was a snap (-My neck, my neck!)… and he thumped onto the straw.

“Goddamn cheap rope!” someone shouted. Mikal Margolis rolled into a stand and charged head down at the lightswitch. The room was plunged into blackness and shouting just as one of Mr. Jericho’s needles took the skin off his cheek. Mikal Margolis blundered out into the street and zigzagged chicken-fashion toward the wire gates of Steeltown.

“Help, help, murder!” he roared. Security men piled out of their portable cabins and menaced the street with their gun muzzles. Mr. Jericho, taking careful aim with his needle-pistol, put his weapon up.

“Out of range. Sorry. Too much cover.”

“The bastard got away!” wept Genevieve Tenebrae.

“Second time!” said Rajandra Das, watching the guards swing wide the gates to admit the escapee.

“There won’t be a third either,” said Mr. Jericho. No one was quite sure what he meant.