The Night Mayor by Kim Newman Page A

wasn’t as tired as I was. Plus he’d brought King Kong’s illegitimate children with him. I was going to get beaten to a pulp. Again. It was becoming monotonous.
    ‘Coffee, Duchess…’
    Thelma picked a full jug off the hotplate and brought out some cups. Before she could pour, Lee took the coffee away from her. It bubbled and steamed like corrosive acid. God knows what it would do to the inside of anyone’s stomach. Or the outside of anyone’s face.
    ‘Who’s the pretty boy, Gloria?’
    ‘I… I just met him, Lee. He was gonna see me home, protect me. It’s late.’
    That had been the wrong thing to say. Marvin’s mouth went thin, and his grip on the handle of the pot got very tight. He flipped the lid open and shut with his thumb. It looked like a hungry carnivorous plant. The coffee smelled like burning oil. It might have been brewed this year, but I doubted it.
    ‘What’re you going to do, tough guy,’ I asked, ‘steam the paint off a battleship?’
    The door swung in again, bumping Jack Elam. A tall, gaunt, cloaked man swept in, long limbs scissoring with his stride.
    ‘What country, friends, is this?’ he boomed, shaking every piece of crockery in the place. ‘Bring me liquid sustenance, for I have need of thy strongest mocha-java, merchantman…’
    Marvin gaped, turning to look at the newcomer. Drunk or crazy, the tall man had made an entrance worthy of Henry Irving. He swept past Neville Brand, sideswiping him with his cape, reaching out with a heavy walking stick.
    ‘Such is the stuff the dreams of my palate are made on, Kelly, thine is the most potent brew, renowned throughout this fair land.’ The ferrule of his stick touched the glass coffee pot and shattered it. Marvin shrieked like a gutshot coyote as the dark, boiling liquid soaked through the front of his shirt and trousers, staining black his belly, groin and upper thighs. He threw away the useless handle, collapsed on the linoleum and started scrabbling at his clothes with pawlike hands. He let out a torrent of the vilest abuse imaginable.
    ‘Darn! Heck! You dumb cluck…’
    ‘A thousand ’pologies,
mon brave.
’ The tall man doffed his floppy hat and bowed low, waving his hand like a courtier. ’Twas but an accident. Certes, my lord, I have the gelt to replace yon coffee pot. Permit me to purchase you all a fresh beverage as a token of my humblement.’
    Marvin could hardly stand up. I could imagine his agony. Underneath his suit, he must be glowing like a fresh-cooked lobster. The thought made me feel warm inside. Elam and Brand helped him up. ‘Get me to a doc,’ he gasped. ‘I gotta know. It feels bad, real bad.’
    ‘You touch my heart, sieur,’ said the tall man, stepping forwards to offer his hand and accidentally standing on Marvin’s toes. ‘Oh, vile, intolerable, not to be endured! What a zany I am! It seems I cannot perform one task aright this eventide.’
    ‘Why, you… Gloria, help get me to Blair Hospital… I’ll deal with this clown some other time.’
    Sheepishly, Gloria crept out from behind me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I gotta go. Thanks, mister. I don’t want trouble. Good night.’ She kissed me on the cheek, and followed the three out to the street. Her stocking seams weren’t straight.
    ‘Parting is such sweet, sad sorrow, my young friend. Steel your heart, gird up your vitals and content yourself with the company of bold fellows like Kelly and myself…’
    The tall man swung his hat up again and latched it onto his head. He had shoulder-length hair and a black Buffalo Bill moustache.
    ‘John Carradine,’ he said, ‘at your service. They call me the Bard of the Boulevard on cause of my devotion to the immortal works of Master Will Shakespeare. Ho, master greybeard loon,’ he was shouting to Kelly, ‘come fill the cup, or stap me for a whey-faced knave.’
    He thumped the counter with a thin, knuckly hand, and Thelma found another coffee pot from somewhere.
    ‘See, where she comes