The Space Noir Bar by Michael Marino (readict books .TXT) 📖

Gillis for Norma Desmond’s dead monkey.

“Now, we must toast our unique alliance and discuss matters of the falcon and Mary Asteroid. Faberge, please, the Cassini wine. I’ve been saving it for just such an occasion.”

Glasses filled, we toasted our host “To the Falcon” Glasses clinked and kept a wary eye on Narco and Faberge. I didn’t trust either of them, and ime would prove I was right on the money with my assessment. Narco was no fool..he was fat, yes, but not a fool. He would also prove to be deadly as we would soon find out as competitors also  in search of the Falcon would drop like flies on a flophouse floor!

Chapter Eighteen - In The Crosshairs of the Kill Zone

Narco Marx was, is and always will be one of those  perennial preposterously pompous planetary psychos of the first star magnitude. As bright as Sirius...as infinite as the universe...and more dangerous than an Amish sex fiend on Viagra during Rumspringa Break.

 

As the Nebulon liquor continued its unimpeded flow in torrential typhoon torrents  I reminded myself that Narco never gave anything without expecting something more in return on the scales of balance in unbalanced return. He wanted the falcon more than a hooker wants to get paid and move on to the next mattress. His conviviality hardly masked his subterranean intentions. Asrini, Maddie and I, none of us strangers to the old out of nowhere double cross were on our guard.

 

I especially, as it didn’t take much booze anymore to slow my reaction time when responding to an action that required  calling on my trigger finger for assistance when backed into a corner before ending up as a bullet riddled cadaver on a stainless steel slab at the coroners.

 

“You will forgive my abruptness if we dispense with any more small talk s can get down to business,” Narco declared and snapped his fingers he pointed with a practiced flourish to a small wooden box on a table in the shadows in the corner for the fabulous Faberge to fetch. The perfect trained dog to serve his master. The box, was held carefully, almost reverently with much ceremony and when opened and it’s contents of Robotian ganja offered to us, his guests, I guessed we were guests. but, just easily we could already have been his prisoners. I wasn’t quite sure at that point.

 

Robotian ganja was a potent and powerful smoke highly coveted throughout the galaxy, and the combination of Nebulon drink and the strain of Robotian Dead Head Panama Red grown in great quantities could send you into orbit around Robotia’s twin Cheech and Chong moons where the killer weed was sown and grown.

 

I was no stranger to galactic drug use. For years I was hopped up on amphetamines from Alpha Draconis, Robotian weed, Martian mescaline and Retropolin LSD.

 

Great triumphant trumpets heralded my as yet unknown literary emergence from a cocoon of anonymity, at least in my own mind. The weed and LSD created the images I clearly wanted to plaster to the blank pages of my writing journal, spray can graffiti on an alley wall, while the high octane speed created an amphetamine anthology that to his day I cannot understand when I read my old journals. It wasn’t the drugs fault...alone. I had a chip on my shoulder, and did not have any literary muscle to exercise or flex yet. A writer has a voice, mine was unsure of itself at the time, and the drugs didn’t make the interpretation any clearer. In effect, I was speaking in tongues, numb tongues I might add..I was not a loud voice in the wilderness...I was  a comfortably numb space mime!

 

Soon I added opium, morphine and hashish to the volatile confusion of psychedelic fusion. Now in Retropolin retrospect I could make sense of it all and it was no longer a blurred and scattered jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces. It was actually beginning to take shape and form so now, overly  confident, I put the galactic pedal to the alloy metal to increase the  intake of pills and anything else I could get my hands on, uppers, downers, (Darvon a favorite) benzedrine, dexedrine, mescaline, LSD, marijuana, opium, morphine, and strangely...booze..

I was a human  yo yo on a short fuse string, ready to burst into flames any minute. To counteract the uppers, a shot of heroin, to corral the heroin, more uppers. Eventually I was back down to a reasonable level of weed and speed, and damned if alcohol didn’t enter the spotlight center stage always fueled by speed weed as I now referred to my laced reefer.

 

A juncture had been reached as  a new frontier began to unfold. Narco as it turns out was our new guide and his was evident as he laid out the best laid plans of mice and men on the table.

 

I felt my jaw tighten as he began his discourse.  “We all have a vested interest in the recovery of the falcon. I have my own reasons which I’m sure you suspect. Asrini, yes, I have your sister, and can assure you, for the moment she is quite safe and unharmed.  Maddie, you and I will have to cooperate and perhaps cut a deal to join forces you and I share an addiction for power and neither of us is a child.  As for you Mr. Yucatan, you have been drawn into a dangerous situation and I am afraid there is no escaping it.”

 

He was right of course and all the more reason I wanted to  cold cock the sonofabitch and erase the smirk from his face.

 

Narco had a way of laying his cards on the table that brought out the animal killer instinct and desire in a person to leap across the room and take his fat neck in your hands and squeeze until breathing stopped..on his part.

 

“The Com-Reds have been following all of you since you left Retropolis. Toho Intel knows you’re here, and in fact are tossing your hotel rooms at this very moment so it behooves us all to band together and find the falcon before they do. You might begin your quest in the Labian Ghetto, the Kotex Vortex and look for the Rabbit. Once you find the rabbit, I surmise you will also find the falcon. I am not as uh, mobile as the three of you so I will make this one time  offer...find the falcon, bring it to me and I will not turn Mary Asteroid over to the Eroti-bot Project...I will partner with you Maddie which will also ensure your safety from being vaporized by your former Com-Red comrades and, ah yes, Mr Yucatan you, Asrini and Mary Asteroid will be given safe passage back to Retropolis, accompanied by my men who are quite handy with weapons,and you Sir, will take with you a hefty sum of space bucks in your pocket to keep you supplied in your various vices until the sun explodes!” He laughed with such largess that I thought he would explode or implode before the Retropolin sun did.

 

Narc was good. I had t give him a silent standing ovation. I felt he had a secret dossier on me that peered into the recesses of my soul, my past and my weaknesses..in fact he knew the right buttons to push on everyone in the room. My willingness to face dangerous situations while stoned, Asrini’s love for her sister and Maddies lust for power and he played us like a finely tuned keyboard, using  our individual weaknesses to set us up for the mission and quite possibly...the kill zone!

Chapter 19- Robotian Revolution and the Kotex Vortex

 

The first place to begin any search  for  stolen merchandise or evidence at a crime scene is in plain sight. The Falcon was too well known to have been smuggled off the planet while  avoiding detection by a vigilant and well trained Intel organization. Especially one as advanced and thorough  as the one in place by the Robotian Toho network. Even the slithering servile Faberge couldn’t escape its detection, and he was an expert at deception and pulling off a feminine haute couture look without batting an elongated eyelash. Even I, a burger and brewski man had to admit his Banana Flambeau was out of this world.

 

The hiding in plain sight theory was backed by Narco  and we were off to find the falcon, the wonderful falcon of an odd Oz.  The weekend  began with  great buckets full of galactic anticipation found only in the adrenalin rush of a Saturday night falcon fever. If Narco didn’t have the damn falcon in his possession, who the hell did? What other players would benefit most from its capture, and more importantly  had the means and the balls to pull it off? Narco, Asrini and Maddie could only think of one local group with enough chutzpah to score the bird. The all female Labia Hill Gang. Asrini and Maddie all knew more about this espionage stuff than I did and both Asrini and Maddie had quite a set of invisible balls themselves.

 

Labeled gangsters by the Toho reactionary Supreme Council... the Labias were not mobsters. They were worse. They were revolutionaries! The so-called “underground” whose uprising by half completed cyborg Amazon women against forced complete  “erotiobotizatian” was put down with great force by the machine machismo of the full robot mecha-army at Tohos disposal. The half robotic cyborgs were no match and the rebellion, far from over, merely went underground to continue the fight.

 

Lucky me, instead of a carnal pleasure carnival cruise with two sexually exciting and talented human Retropolin dames I was instead  going on a journey to the center of Robtia’s revolution which was still smoldering  in the streets in small pockets of resistance. The resistance movement was minimal at best and the Labias were outgunned at every turn.

 

We left Narcos penthouse with two of his gunsels in tow whose task it was to make sure we didn’t run out on the job..we all had reason enough not to,  but such is the thinking of a suspicious criminal mind. Fortunately I had managed to talk Narco into returning our guns..I was not about to fight Tohos, Com-Reds and Revolutionary Labias without firepower. Asrini and Maddie also had their weapons returned and both were highly trained in the school of one-shot one -kill arts. We traveled to a neighborhood at the far east side of the