The Night Mayor by Kim Newman Page B

apparelled like the spring. A princess fair, the whiteness of whose skin would shame th’ Arctic snows to a blush, the brightness of whose hair would provoke fabl’d Helen to a fit of the envious humours…’
    ‘Stow it, motormouth,’ she said, smiling sheepishly, ‘and drink your coffee.’ Thelma poured two cups, spilling a bit. I could swear I saw it sizzle as it ate through the varnish. Carradine dropped a few coins – ducats, I think – into the puddle and waved the woman away. She grunted and went back to her pile of glamour magazines. On the cover of
Fortune
, a day person was smiling, displaying star-bright teeth.
    I took a stool next to Carradine, and downed the coffee. One way or another, I had drunk quite a bit this evening, but I didn’t need to powder my nose. None of the places I had been in seemed to have a men’s room anyway. Carradine clapped me around the shoulders.
    ‘We are well met, comrade-in-arms. Long have I combed the vilest quarters of this town on fruitless search for thee. From wharf to palazzo I have quested, ’countering gallants and monstrosities. My trusty sword…’ he tapped his stick ‘…has been gored gules twice its length in wanton combat. O, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast, Kelly, eggs over easy
s’il vous plait
!’
    ‘You’ve been looking for me?’
    ‘Indeed, coz. Thou’rt famed as the slayer of the Devil’s prime minister, Master Quick.’
    ‘Daine.’
    ‘The very same. Would that’t were mine, the hand that separated the tyrant’s head from the residue of his perfidious corse!’
    Thelma gave us both a refill, shaking her head. Kelly produced a plateful of what passed as eggs, and Carradine launched into them with a fork.
    ‘I’m afraid I didn’t kill Daine.’
    ‘No matter. The noble intent was there. That lifts you as hero above the commonality. My fealty always is sworn to thee.’
    ‘Wait a minute. You didn’t like Daine?’
    Carradine spat eloquently.
    ‘I thought he was loved in the city, like a king or something.’
    ‘Garbage wrapped in silk is still garbage and stinks as such, my friend. I’ve long since pledged my sword to any who would help rid this borough of the damned Daine. Some – too few – have tried. Youngman Bogart, for one, Glenn Ford for another. Their heads have decorated pikes for the common cry of curs to snap and growl at.’
    ‘I’ve some bad news for you, John,’ I said. ‘I’ve had time to think now. If Daine really is dead, then someone’s taken his place. Someone probably worse than he was.’
    ‘Say it isn’t so!’
    ‘The City’s in just as bad a shape as it always was, isn’t it? Men like Marvin and Jack Elam are still running the streets. People are still dying in every gutter.’
    ‘What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?’
    ‘There’s a new Night Mayor. There has to be. Claude Rains or Sydney Greenstreet, or one of those fancy-pants villains. They knocked him off and dressed me up for the suit with arrows.’
    There’s small choice in rotten apples. Oh, hydra-headed wrongness that should spring up again redoubled when ’tis smitten down!’
    ‘You said a mouthful.’
    Another big black car cruised past the diner. A door opened and a man in a hat leaned out, one foot on the running board. I had hit the floor before the machine gun went off. The picture-windows shattered, and the bar cracked apart where the bullets went in. Glass and doughnuts rained around me. Carradine wasn’t on the floor, alive or dead. I looked up and saw him clinging to a pipe that ran the length of one wall, high up. His long legs were wrapped round it, and he was clutching at a dangling light fitting. His cloak hung down like a curtain, and I could see streetlamps through the bullet holes in it. There was more gunfire, and containers of sugar and ketchup jumped to pieces on tabletops. The linoleum