Page 63 of Lost Souls

“Ain’t this great?” says Big Louie, waving his weapon around enthusiastically. “My kids would so love it.”

“Oh, are they also…?”

“Don’t go there, Noreen,” warns Arnie, before turning to address their potential executioner man to man. “Hey, fella, let the lady go, why don’t ya? She’s got nothing to do with this. And ooh, I just remembered – and I kid younot – it’s my birthday today. Howsabout that? So, it’s this lady’s too. Happy birthday, Noreen.”

“Thank you, Arnie, but it’s not my birthday,” corrects a slightly puzzled Noreen. “Not until December.”

“Huh?” says Arnie.

Big Louie just shrugs thoughtfully, but he can hear Melisande’s voice in his ear, even though she is clearly still on shore, attending to other business.Don’t listen to the lousy schmoozer. You’re being paid to do a job. Friggin’ do it!The hitman nods, berating himself for almost forgetting that the customer, however vindictive and possibly demented, is always right. Very slowly, because he refuses to be rushed, he raises his weapon.

“I’ll make it swift and painless,” he promises.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of lightning seems to set the ark ablaze. This is accompanied almost immediately by deafening claps of thunder that reverberate from every loudspeaker in the craft, cleverly concealed in massive and well-spaced rams’ horns, because the original prototype probably didn’t have a state-of-the-art sound system. Despite it not being three o’clock, the ark slowly begins to pitch and roll. Instinctively the vessel’s three human inhabitants glance out of a small side window. They notice that the stunned entrance-booth attendant has fallen onto his starting lever. And is very slowly and unconsciously pushing it towards maximum tempest.

The animals – even those that have been skilfully crafted in LA workshops – begin to yelp and howl as the awe-inspiring light show, soundscape and highly calibrated motion control all mount in simulated, godlike wrath towards their peaks. The two chimpanzees in thecage beside them are particularly exercised. (The use of real beasts for these purposes had been widely condemned by California’s animal lovers, who came head to head with fundamentalist Christian organisations, with the latter declaring that it was both instructive and authentic and if God hadn’t wanted Noah’s animals to weather the storms at sea, he would have commanded Noah to build a plane.)

“Shit!” says Big Louie, addressing his prospective victims. “Okay, now normally, I let my marks – that’s what we call them, for those of you who’ve never been in a hit before – normally, I let you do the ‘last words’ shtick. It’s corny, but folks say they like it. But time’s getting on and I ain’t a good sailor. So – ladies first.”

Pointing the gun directly at Noreen, who is literally out of her depth, Big Louie roots himself squarely on the rocking terrain and starts to squeeze the trigger.

Without even thinking – perhaps because if he were to think, he’d think twice – Arnie dives sideways, throwing his smallish body right in front of Noreen’s slightly larger and much woollier one. Directly in the path of any intended bullet.

“Run!” screams her saviour, over the apocalyptic din.

Big Louie’s finger is pressing down further and harder.

“Arnie!No!” cries a horrified Noreen, as the hitman fires.

They all three hear the sound as the bullet leaves the gun.

Yet to their surprise, they can alsoseethis same lethal bullet – actuallywatchit – heading dead straight but unusually slowly, compared to what they assume is a bullet’s normal velocity, towards Arnie’s (eternally) exposed chest. Straight and apparently unstoppable, as bullets tend to be. Even the curiously slow ones. Until, at a particularly crucial moment, just millimetres from the intended target, this very same bullet is caught quite deftly in a rather elegant, outstretched hand. A dark and familiar hand, especially to Noreen.

Lyle’s hand.

“Number one with a bullet,” he says. “Ain’t that the truth?” The smile is as sparkling as ever and the linen suit just as uncreased.

“How the hell did you do that?” asks a seriously impressed Big Louie, who is well accustomed to guys catching a bullet but rarely quite like this. “And who the fuckareyou?”

“You don’t want to know,” says Arnie, wondering with some dread, despite his obvious relief, how the smooth-talking Devil with the to-die-for voice is hoping to exact his gratitude.

“He’s a friend of mine,” comes a voice from they know not whither, if we’re going to stay in a biblical vein.

They all spin around wildly until their eyes end up in the monkey cage. Sitting between two monkeys – doingthe old ‘see no, hear no, speak no evil’ trick – is none other than your old friend Ambrose. Or me, as I like to call myself.

Arnie looks baffled. Well, to be honest, everyone looks baffled, but our Mr Garth looks baffled from way back.

“A friend?A FRIEND!” he says, looking from me to Lyle and back to yours truly again. It doesn’t help that Lyle is smiling. Well, hell, we’re both smiling. Arnie still isn’t, but you can’t have everything. “Hey, what gives, you guys?” he demands to know. And seriously, who can blame him? “I got a day to live, maybe less; I got no soul, ’cos of you dipshits; this lady’s got two; I’m going straight to hell on my birthday;and you’re… smiling!”

Noreen and the little chapare just stood stock-still and staring. They might as well have been put together in the same workshop that made these fake animals. God knows what they must be thinking (well, of course, being omniscient…).

Time to leave my cage.

So, I bid goodbye to my fellow primates, who are still rolling around a bit but are clearly used to it, or maybe drugged down to the keester with anti-nausea pills, and take a little stroll through the plate glass. Neatly done, even though I say so myself.

And now I come right up to Lyle.

I try to keep a straight face, by not looking at his ultra-gorgeous one, but I’m sorry, sue me, I just can’t do it. Within seconds, Lyle and I are leaning on each other for support, cracking up like a couple of drunken school kids.