Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat Read online

  Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

  a novel by Andrez Bergen

  Edited by Kristopher Young

  Cover art by Scott Campbell

  Another Sky Press

  Portland, Oregon

  for Cocoa

  and dedicated to Tommy Tuck—the bravest man in the face of the big sleep that I’ve ever met.

  Dear Reader,

  We have compiled several useful Appendices that may enhance your reading of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat. They can be found at the end of this ebook, and are also linked to in this file’s Table of Contents. Since not all ereaders display the Table of Contents, we wanted to make sure you knew about these in case you find them of use. Enjoy!

  The Encyclopedia Tobacciana - Complete personage and media reference guide

  The Tobacco-Stained Glossary - Slang, jargon and foreign word definitions

  Post-Floydian Adventures - Hardboiled recommendations

  fear of that misplaced black cat

  I never really knew the old Melbourne before the Wall, with its sundry pub music, its boutique club glamour, and vaguely dissident art, a not-so-contaminated Yarra River, all-night warehouse rave parties, superlative eateries, and its easy multicultural charm—I was still only a kid then.

  What I really got to know was the xenophobic, rotting hulk of a city it became in the epoch after the shuttering of the place to an outside world on its last legs. Now, the city is divided into a dozen culturally cut-up and socioeconomically distinct districts, you know, each occupied by swarms of police and trigger-thrilled security types, and separated from one another with blockades and fences, along with a shocking case of paranoia. The centre of the city—that’s the Dome—is a play area reserved for the rich. Then there’s the subterranean Hospital zone, but let’s not get into that here.

  Melbourne may look a little worse for wear, a little bombed out even, but it’s nothing compared to the ghastly ruins of the other cities out there. Our city suffers from a chronic case of overpopulation, it’s true, but the rest of the lot are devoid of us riffraff altogether.

  Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about this guy, goes by the name of Floyd Maquina. Now, Floyd was broke and had medical bills to pay to support his ailing spouse, so the government offered him some sort—I don’t know—some sort of a job.

  Anyway, there he was, poor chap, unhappy as a lark, without a cent, and soaked through to the bone.

  This is how the dream unravels in my plagiaristic mind—a preemptive attempt at a spot of streetwise narration plundered from the opening monologue for the 1949 classic, The Third Man, read with either the cynical edge of Carol Reed’s racketeer, or the more inanely optimistic offering from Joseph Cotten’s protagonist in the Americanized version. Your choice. The words are smeared just a bit into a ramshackle riot that attempts (badly, I must say) to correlate with the mood, the alternative locale, and the entirely crap circumstances of the here and now.

  Hell, I don’t know if you’ve ever copped a screening of The Third Man, but if you have it’d put you in solid with me—and would certainly help out with all that descriptive nonsense we otherwise have to indulge in to set the scene hereabouts. Whether or not you’ve seen the flick, or even if you just need a few friendly slaps to remind you, there’s a pivotal scene over an hour into it that perfectly captures my predicament: cue a transient form, a man maybe, skulking in a darkened alcove off the side of a nighttime Viennese plaza. There’s a cat seated at the figure’s feet, preening itself. A light claps on in an overhead window and you get a glimpse of the man’s face, replete with a flirtatious, mocking expression—it’s Orson Welles as the iconic Harry Lime, a character we’ve previously assumed to have been measured up for a concrete kimono. He’s resurrected himself, shades of Lazarus, and—ah, forget it. Who am I kidding?

  I’ve nowhere near the smug self-assurance, let alone panache, of Orson Welles when he takes that first visual splash in The Third Man. I’ve more the personality of his co-star Joseph Cotten’s Holly Martins in my B-movie attempt at an opening reel. Besides, the contemporary location shoot—in Melbourne—isn’t quite as safe, orderly, or classy as Reed’s post-World War II bombed-out Vienna. I apologize for all the confusion—chalk it up to a delusion that should be excised and dumped on the floor of the editing suite to be swept out with the rest of the trash.

  So, quickly pull back to a wide shot of the street in an attempt to resuscitate this narrative. Keep it simple—no out-of-focus fade-ins like they employed in the old black-and-whites, or the Salvador Dalí bender in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Simply diffuse the colour and crinkle-cut the edges of the frame as heavy rain begins to fall. Someone—that’s me—is leaning against a wall on some second-rate street. Cut to my aged, scuffed, and soaked-through shoe, then pan to where our absent film noir cat is supposed to be. Damn. There’s not, it seems, an available tabby or tortoiseshell to be found anywhere within this dream.

  Mind you, this all backed by the crackle of a single-channel soundtrack: maybe some guy twanging away on a zither, or a shamisen. Or wait, perhaps Irving Berlin could rise from the grave to conduct a bunch of dusted-down tuxedos and cocktail-dressed dames. I could go still more self-consciously future schlock here like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle did back in the 1970s, say something into a mic, splice ‘n’ loop the tape, sprinkle in some of my dad’s tortured guitar strumming from when I was little, and then have the sheer audacity to call it this dream’s musical score.

  Now that we have that sorted, jump cut, in godawfully hopeful Jean-Luc Godard style, to my own perspective. This is where it all starts, really, with this recurring dream—and I wish to blazes the truth had more pizzazz.

  As it turns out, the dream is, in fact, a bit of a self-deluding nightmare. For starters, let me tell you that the torrential rain is drip, drip, dripping on my head through a hole in the overhead awning and it’s bloody annoying.

  I prop up a Hylax plastic-sheathed newspaper above me in a futile attempt to fend off the spray. These days nobody’s quite sure what extra bonuses this filthy downpour will impart upon the recipient. At least the paper makes for a better brolly than it did reading material—its printed content is guaranteed only to depress me more than I presently am, which is a coup of some standing.

  The climate reminds me of that segment in the Ray Bradbury anthology, The Illustrated Man, when the astronauts land on Venus and are driven suicidal by the incessant rain. Again, I’m talking up the 1969 movie by Jack Smight, starring Rod Steiger and Robert Drivas—not Bradbury’s actual tome. In case you’re not so bright and haven’t nutted this out yet, I’m a movie buff way more than a book-toting literature aficionado. I’ll try to keep down the references, but who am I kidding?

  Don’t go thinking that I’m out here in this dismal weather by choice. I told you it’s my job, though I could argue that it’s my prison sentence. I’ll be doing this for the rest of my working life, however long or (more likely) abridged that stretch might happen to be.

  The assignment I was employed to undertake this day was deceptively simple—unearth, tail, then rustle-up and knuckle-down on somebody I hadn’t even seen yet, let alone been introduced to. Fuck misgivings. Screw conscience. I slink back into the shadows of the doorway, still feeling like a faux Harry Lime.

  I look up towards the meagre strip of sky hiding between the towering buildings, crisscrossed power lines, and bundled cables. It’s a drab stew of burnt umber, grotesque pink, and ill-looking beige, where once it would’ve been a more vivid combination of red and orange at this time of evening, especially in summer. Maybe it was the thick pall of polluted drizzle that diffused its intensity, and maybe the sky really was the s
ame as it used to be way, way up there. Yeah, right. Whatever. Gene Kelly and his trusted umbrella wouldn’t be caught dead in this place.

  I flick my gaze back down to the deserted road spread out before me. Vienna this most certainly is not. I scan the area, from the starting block that is a half-obliterated sign on the door beside me that reads 15 Stiftgasse, then out onto the street itself, searching amidst rusted industrial waste containers, the stripped-down shells of ransacked cars, boarded-up shop fronts, and tottering, derelict housing set back from the twisted corpses of long-dead elm trees that line each side of the wide street.

  I could make this much simpler: deposit the conscience in a locker somewhere, go get a lobotomy and do the job in ignorant bliss. But, on the plus side, at least it’s still pretty early on in the evening. Once I finish Activities here there’s a whole night ahead in which to uncover and covet bliss—head home, drink a shit-load to tank myself further into oblivion, pop a few back-up pills—blue ones, of course, not the red—and collapse in a pile on the couch.

  Activities can take place at any hour and I have to be ready (oh yeah, and did I mention willing?) with my professional Seeker accoutrement and a glimmering brushed-teeth smile, to clock-on immediately and get down to it with my nose to the ground, blood hounding around grimy, rain-blasted city streets, avoiding the lousy elements—watching, waiting, sniffing, sniffling, yawning, and procrastinating profusely.

  They had me over a barrel the moment my wife got sick—which, in light of recent world events, meant forced Relocation to a Hospital for her and a force-fed diet of excessive medical bills for me. That’s when they sullied my doorstep with a wad of brochures in hand and dazzled me with medico-speak, nattering on about the blue ribbon care of something called the ‘Level A package’, while inferring the worst about basic coverage—it was all a pill easy enough to swallow, given the grim rumours circulating about what Hospitalization actually entailed.

  They got me wound up in knots and all uptight, right where the pricks wanted me I guess, and then they snapped the bear trap—told me that the only chance Veronica had to qualify for, and for me to be able to afford, Level A treatment would be for me to accept their offer of employment. Turns out they were Seeker Branch reps and were recruiting me because of my experience as a private investigator (I don’t know why—I was a hack—but that’s a long story for another day and another book). They framed it all up as an offer I couldn’t refuse—the promises that Veronica would get the best treatment possible intercut with vague threats about my own possible Relocation should I decide to bow out on their generosity.

  That’s pretty much how the buggers snare you—by cutting out all the other choices. And once you cave in and sign on that dotted line, you’re in for keeps. Or else. It was all a sham, too, because nowadays I’m dead certain she gets the same ‘treatment’ everyone else gets, but I didn’t know that then. I was desperate and I clutched at straws, just like the bastards knew I would. At least they made a big fat cash deposit into my bank account on a fortnightly basis and sent me a cute floral-pattern pay receipt via internal mail.

  If the profession itself wasn’t enough to do your head in, there were the humdrum technical details in the job description guaranteed to bore you senseless—if they didn’t have such a disturbing undercurrent.

  The “preferred methods of performance” were set out in our own private beige-coloured bible—the Guide to Deviant Apprehension & Containment—in nice, orderly fashion from Procedure (1) through to Procedure (28)(e).

  The guide was slim enough to slip in our pants pocket, though it was filled chock-a-block with small type. There are a whole bunch of other Procedures and Amendments listed in the Guide beyond (28)(e)—it’s just that it got tossed somewhere in my apartment and I never made an effort to finish reading the thing.

  My own duties, in those first twenty-eight procedures, were unsavoury enough—I didn’t need to know more. Four recurrent words best captured its spirit: Seek, Locate, Apprehend, and Contain, along with a fifth oft-appearing declaration that I did my best to forget—Terminate—always accompanied by the bracketed disclaimer, ‘[if necessary]’.

  You’ve just gotta love that chilly, mechanical, yet viciously formal approach.

  She—the subject of my Activities—was probably somewhere nearby, though Branch wasn’t always spot on with the details. The briefing material for said Activities was brevity at its best—I knew there was a female Dev, and they’d given me an approximate time and place to find her, but zip else.

  I hadn’t really thought it over before, but it could be downright frustrating to some to go through this routine, get drenched, and exhale hours of your life—only to find out it’s a blow-over. Me? I preferred when I got to return to Branch empty-handed. It’s not easy to keep tabs on a person in this trash heap of a city, but an Activities would rarely take place unless they were seventy-odd percent sure. Meaning, I could expect to get off easy thirty percent of the time. I pray to an empty mead-hall of Norse gods that this particular Dev has the smarts to stay hidden—at least until my own Activities session is over. Then it’ll be somebody else’s problem.

  I eyeball the rows of blackened, twisted, somewhat greasy-looking elm stumps and wonder why the local council hasn’t ripped them up yet. Leaving them here proffers up only another dismal reminder of that better yesterday I mentioned somewhere else. More appropriate if they were razed and disposed of, like the other organic waste in this increasingly stagnant urban shit-hole.

  Time to quit stalling, which is what I’m really doing here, and get on with it. The fact is that once it’s over I can go home—and have a nice cold one, or three. The newspaper is starting to come apart in my hands—in spite of the plastic that had formerly sheathed it. Acid rain. I toss the rag behind me, then lean forward from the alcove and enter the biting, bitter-tasting downpour.

  There’s a bent and rusted old sign that reads ‘Bush Street’. It’s suspended beneath the one streetlight that still works—albeit blinking in a way that’d be unhealthy for any epileptics in the neighbourhood. I glance behind me, my hands over my eyes to shield them as much as I can from the spray, but it still stings. I’m wondering how long my hair will last. The Stetson I’m sporting, which I bought only the week before, is already threadbare.

  It could be that the target client was sweating me out inside one of the condemned stores here—and I mean, literally, sweating, as it’s so fucking humid right now—or, alternatively, hiding down one of these narrow alleyways along with all the other flotsam and jetsam, crap, garbage, refuse, and what not. Maybe, just maybe, she was wading through the flooded storm-drains beneath my feet. A death wish, sure, but it’d been done once before that I’d heard about.

  And that’s when I see her, or at least see someone that fits the description. More importantly, she sees me, and immediately turns around. I tear off down the street towards her, but the camera starts to pull back, and I’m trying to stay in focus. That’s when the rather knotty dream ends, this time around.

  mi casa, your blanca

  ‘In House’ was touted as an integral part of Seeker Branch’s training, yet somewhat ironically it didn’t take place at the Branch at all, but instead was out-sourced to the Department of Education. We Seekers simply referred to the process as the ‘Test’—a tag dreamed up by some well-meaning soul, though I don’t think it sufficiently captured the bleak nature of what it entailed. Most of us loathed the Test, and even more than that, were terrified of it.

  They ran the operation in a monstrous, red brick warehouse located in the Docklands area that was a leftover from the city’s industrial days in the nineteenth century. The building had been refitted with mirrored windows but was otherwise innocuous. It had no signage, so if you weren’t an employee of the Department—or a Seeker—you’d never know what the place was meant to be. But if you’d noticed the windows and studied the people slinking in and out, and you’d seen enough Cold War era flicks, your imagination might run riot—K
GB training facility, MI6 secret base of operations, CIA doss-house. It had that kind of vibe.

  The Test was one of those underscored requirements in the Seeker duty statement, and I’d already copped it a dozen or so times, once every three months starting with the day I was hired. Of all the junk discipline they dished up at Seeker Branch, the Test was considered by management to be the most important and no excuse in the world was worthy enough to weasel out of it. Believe me, I’d tried everything to go on the lam.

  Before the Test, they always followed the same procedure. A week beforehand, an internal mail envelope would be shoved under my nose containing a reminder notice tucked in alongside that pretty pay-slip I’ve mentioned. Then, I’d be bleeped with a memo on my Mitt-Mate 1187 Hand PC about twenty-four hours in advance. All that was missing was that classic John Williams theme music before every attack in Jaws.

  Seeker Branch was too tight to offer a cab voucher, and I didn’t own a boiler, so I always had to catch public transport to the venue. This was a blessing in disguise—you’d never, ever want to drive yourself away straight after. It was worse than getting an eye exam in that regard.

  When you arrived at the building you were manhandled as you passed through an array of over-zealous security checks. After registering with reception, you were likely to hang loose for hours in the world’s most boring waiting room, forced to wade through the same bloody inane magazine articles you’d flicked through every other go-round, only each time they were in a more tattered, dog-eared—or quite possibly dog-eaten—condition.

  And I don’t know if it was because of the dodgy air-con or the tension in there, but you always ended up with a dry, scratchy throat that made it feel like you were swallowing sandpaper. I’d always suggest on their stupid feedback sheet that they at least install a water cooler. I was getting desperate—the last time I’d scrawled my demands in ALL CAPS and underlined them repeatedly.