The Quorum (22 page)

‘Welcome to the United States, Mr Yeo,’ said a gorgeous oriental girl at the Immigration desk. ‘May I compliment you on your graphic novel,
Choke Hold.
I’m an enormous admirer of your work.’

‘You pay these people, don’t you?’ Mickey said to Heather, who smiled tolerantly.

Since arriving at Derek Leech’s Twelfth Night half a world away, he had been looked after: gently handed from one superhumanly efficient minion to another, eased past queues of fretting and red-eyed footsoldiers, offered complimentary everything, never for a moment allowed to suffer the tiniest inconvenience. It was as if handmaidens preceded him, scattering rose petals in his path. He could feel them crunch beneath his Doc Martens as he walked under the canopy to the limo.

Settled on a backseat the size of a sofa, relishing the leather-and-sandalwood smell, he paid close attention to Heather’s legs as she folded herself into the facing seat. She wore sheer hose and running shoes, which she slipped off automatically and replaced with a pair of high heels. She gave an order in Spanish and the limo purred off.

From a sleeve in the door, Heather took a selection of periodicals and newspapers and offered them. He declined the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
in favour of yesterday’s
Evening Argus
so he could catch up with Dr Shade. Of all the comics characters he hadn’t written yet, Dr Shade was the one he most wanted to tackle. After glancing at the three striking panels on the inside back page - the guy who crammed detail into that demented space was Mickey’s contemporary hero - he relaxed and enjoyed looking at Heather, who unselfconsciously allowed him his viewing pleasure. Caught smiling in shafts of passing sunlight, she might be wrapped in cellophane, wearing a ‘Present from Derek Leech’ sash.

* * *

The express elevator took them to the Apex Suite, which was one floor above the Presidential Suite and the Royal Suite.

‘Derek resides here himself when in New York,’ Heather explained. ‘He left instructions that your comfort should be a paramount concern.’

Raimundo carried his bags through the panelled entranceway into a penthouse larger than most supermarkets. Heather showed him the rooms, assigning a name and function to each, climaxing with the Sleeping Room, a high-tech grotto with a tinted glass sky-roof. Complimentary floral arrangements were central to each space. A basket of exotic fruits stood on the ten-person dining-table in the Entertainment Room. It was hard to imagine the austere Leech in this place.

In the Reading Room, prepublication copies of spring and summer bestsellers were given prominent shelfspace. A file of synopses gave précis reports of the books, to save the Apex guest the trouble of reading anything longer than three pages. Mickey noticed an American omnibus of Michael’s
Colin Dale
and
Ken Sington
(all references to Torchy the Battery Boy and Sky Ray lollies pruned and replaced by jokes about Howdy Doody and Hershey bars) already in its place with the next from Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Umberto Eco.

Heather retreated to the Office Space while Mickey stepped into the Freshen-Up Room. He splashed scented water on his face and assessed his chin to see if his stubble was stubbly enough to merit a trim. Changing clothes, he chose a Wile E. Coyote T-shirt, which outlined his skinny ribs, and complemented it with his favourite ripped jeans, leather jacket and pointy-toed motorcycle boots.

‘Heartfucker,’ he said to his reflection, passing fingers through the knotty braids sprouting from one side of his half-shaven head.

When he rejoined Heather and Raimundo in the Office Space, which adjoined a spectacular terrace, a fax was churning. It was out that he was in town and requests for interviews, personal appearances and lunch dates were pouring in.

* * *

On Park Avenue and 55th Street, Pyramid Plaza was a slimmer variation on DLE London. Both were Constant Drache buildings. Crowded by neighbouring glass towers, the Plaza was ostentatious enough in its forecourt to establish its primacy as toughest skyscraper on the block. From large gold bowls, twin fountains pumped gushes of black water fifty feet into the air. Whenever Mickey called the place the Coming Building, Americans didn’t get the joke. It was five blocks from the hotel but Raimundo drove them. It did not do to walk.

The forecourt thronged with banner-waving protesters, kept behind barriers by cops. No matter how many times he came to America, Mickey found it hard not to think their policemen were in fancy dress, toy guns on their hips, cool black jackets for show.

The limo rolled up and the door swung open. This was the nearest he’d got to open air since his arrival in the country. It was even colder than London, but drier, fresher, sharper. Laced with vehicle emissions and amphetamines, the atmosphere tasted potent.

‘We’re Queer, We’re Faggots, We Don’t Wanna Be Treated as Maggots,’ demonstrators chanted. hitler was straight read a placard. Mildly interested, he asked what the fuss was about. Heather explained, gays were picketing because Pyramid Pictures was filming
Pink Swastika,
a bestseller based on the diaries of a homosexual SS officer. The book had been serialised in a Derek Leech paper, the
Sunday Argus.

Heather walked past the pickets, ignoring them as she would a pan-handling bum or a fire hydrant. A young man with a Queer Nation badge gave pink triangle armbands to people who went into the building. Mickey accepted his and shoved it into his white buckskins.

‘Nice jacket,’ the protester commented.

Grinning, he entered the foyer of the Plaza. More demonstrators waited among man-sized potted plants. Three women in black leotards and whiteface squatted in a makeshift teepee by the elevator bank, wailing like grieving Apache widows.

Heather made it known to the ice-queen at reception that Mickey Yeo had arrived. She issued a non-transferable security cardkey and gave him a four-digit entrance code which, combined with the card, would gain him access to all but the silver-marked security areas. His number was 1812. ‘Like the war,’ the receptionist explained.

‘What’s that about, Heth?’ he asked Heather, nodding to the squaws.

‘WoFBReIGN.’

‘Yer wot?’

‘Women For Better Representation In Graphic Narrative. A feminist pressure group.’

He peered again at the women. They all looked like Kathy Bates.

‘It’s a vigil,’ Heather explained. ‘They’ve been there since Amazon Queen died. They say they’ll fast until she’s brought back.’

He chuckled and, after seriously thinking about it, decided
not
to tell them who he was.

‘How did they get in?’

‘They have a court order declaring this a public place and upholding their right of lawful assembly. So long as they don’t obstruct anyone, they can’t be moved.’

‘You have a wonderful country.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, as if she were the ambassador delegated to accept compliments.

* * *

Heather escorted him to the ninth floor, the offices of Zenith Comics. She waited in the reception area while Mickey had his meeting.

Two years ago, Timmy Chin had been a nineteen-year-old with the third largest collection of comics in the States; now, with a $500 haircut and a baggy tropical suit, he was vice-president in charge of editorial direction. He had control over the billion-dollar ZC list but, from the red-faced embarrassment he demonstrated when faced with Heather, Mickey assumed Timmy had never met a girl.

They sat in the corner office. Behind Timmy’s desk-space was a picture window with a priceless view. Framed in a cabinet were equally priceless comics from the thirties and forties. Also under glass was a two-sheet for the 1946 Republic serial
Adventures of the Streak,
with Clayton Moore. There was no memorabilia from the camp 1966-67
Amazon Queen
show, which ZC purists despised but Mickey still remembered fondly, if only for Mary Ann Mobley’s thighs.

On the desk were the proofs of the next book in Mickey’s quality format mini-series,
The Nevergone Void.
The first of the limited-run cross-over title had seen the death of Amazon Queen. Malevolent forces tampering with the ancient past had undone the heroine’s fifty-year career sucking her entire history into non-existence. Next up was Mr Mystery, a once-popular occult detective, who was due to be unmasked as the secret collaborator of the Nevergone Conspirators.

‘On Book One, we’ve had our biggest sales ever in this format,’ Timmy told him. ‘Biggest profits ever period. I’ve been on
Entertainment Tonight
and
Sally Jessie Raphael.’

Timmy was less bubbling, his voice a lot less squeaky than usual. He was almost solemn. He was a fanboy first. The vicepresident didn’t understand the medium had to outgrow steroid cases in tights if it was to hit the twenty-first century on an equal footing with real books. The best way to get all the superslobs out of the way was something apocalyptic.

‘This has been coming since that comic there,’ Mickey said, pointing to a framed
Dazzling Duo Stories
Issue Number One (June, 1948). ‘The Streak and Amazon Queen Together! America’s Mightiest Heroes Versus the Red Menace!’ ‘When Zack Briscow drew that, the ZC Universe was founded. Before, you just had a fuckpile of characters in their own series. When they bumped into each other, it became an epic. And epics have to have a big finish.’

Briscow (a legendary drunk and lecher) left all sorts of logistical problems for his successors. Aside from the truism that heroes from World War Two would be in their eighties if they aged properly, there had been so many interconnecting strands it was now impossible to come up with a plot not strangled with fifty years’ worth of labyrinthine backstory. Under pressure from the anti-comics hysterics of the fifties, the Streak and Amazon Queen even got married and settled into tedious respectability for a while. In a pre
-Dallas
stroke, someone rubbed out that by writing off two years of three separate comics as a wish-fulfilment dream on the part of incipiently domestic Amy McQueen, whod otherwise never be able to get her superindependent hero to the altar. That characters introduced in the dream turned up years later in the real continuity was something no one ever sorted out. Sucking the overbearing virago out of ever having lived was as good a way as any of dealing with narrative tangles.

‘There’s been flak,’ Timmy said. ‘The fan press have crucified us.’

This had started with an accountant pondering sales graphs. Comics were like soap operas: weddings or deaths were always boosts. Noticing a projected long-term decline, even if it didn’t hit red for fifteen years, a canny bean counter calculated that an ultimate series of weddings and deaths would trigger a burst of sales (taking into account bagged variant collector’s editions, trading cards, hardback reprints and attendant mechandising) which would replace long-term decline with a massive gulp of earnings followed by a clean slate.

‘For the next-but-one book, I’m bringing back Sergeant Grit and the Gorilla Guerillas. They’ve not been seen since ’Nam, so they’re probably lazing on a beach in Mexico, whiskery old apes with huge beerguts, enormous mental problems and big Harley-Davidsons. Grit was indicted for a Zippo raid. The Nevergone Crisis is a big enough shake-up to get them back in action...’

He wanted to include every character in the ZC Universe, no matter how discontinued or ridiculous, in
The Nevergone Void.
Not just majors like Amazon Queen and the Streak, but all the heroes from all the decades: Teensy Teen, the Shrinking Cheerleader; Lance Lake P.I.; Captain Tomorrow, the Time Tornado; Lynxman; Blubber Boy; Morakk the Barbarian Champion; the Vindicator. And all the villains: Max Multiple, Circe, the Creech, Dead Thing, Mr Bones, Atomic Woman, Boss Bozworth, Headhunter. By the last page of Book Ten, Coastal City would be littered with costumed corpses. The hero of
The Nevergone Void
was Cary Trenton, the Streak’s secret identity. Stripped of his powers and his memory, he would end up as the nebbish the world always thought he was. But he’d be alive, defiantly ordinary while all the superendowed show-offs went down in flames.

Timmy liked the Grit idea. He always liked it when a character nobody else remembered came out of retirement.

‘Today, Grit would be picketed by animal rights bores,’ Mickey said, thinking aloud. ‘Tinkering with gorilla brains to make supersoldiers ain’t eco-amicable.’

The bean counter had written a memo, and the memo had passed up the corporate pyramid. Ultimately, Mickey assumed, it had been brought to the desk of Derek Leech. Maybe this was the first time Leech realised he owned ZC, having picked the company up as pocket change during a corporate ceasefire agreement. Weighing the memo, Leech would make an instant decision and, discovering who Timmy Chin was, communicate his wish that a course of action be implemented. It was probable that Leech himself suggested Mickey Yeo as Hit Man.

It was hard not to think of
The Nevergone Void
as hack stuff, though he was aware of its historical importance. After this, Mickey wanted to do something serious. He had outlined a graphic novel about a rock singer’s mental collapse. That was the project he was saving his arm for.

At the end of the meeting, Timmy tidied the proofs and scripts into a neat package and returned them.

* * *

Heather and Timmy took Mickey up to the fourteenth floor, where a luncheon reception was held in his honour. Comics creators bobbed between the canapes and wine, tongue-tied in his presence. Cardboard tombstones marked ‘Amy McQueen’ decorated the walls; at $5.99 apiece, the souvenirs had netted nearly $20,000 additional profit. Everyone in the room admired his work, but Mickey sensed a certain suspicion floating around.

After
The Nevergone Void,
all bets were off. The bread-and-butter heroes would be out of business and their titles wound up. ZC would have to start again. Exciting projects were in the offing but Mickey guessed a lot of these time-servers, men in early middle-age who’d devoted whole lives to the Vindicator or Dead Thing, would be scrabbling for jobs as commercial artists.