The Kill Riff by David J. Schow Read Free Book Online Page B

In one fell swoop, our urban centers can be put under martial law. That freezes the country. Without the connection between the cities and the manufacturing locuses, we're pretty goddamn helpless, aren't we? Then we'll just have to wait for our orders."
        During his tour, Lucas had spent several days in Qui Nhon, watching the aluminum capsules full of dead Americans come and go. Waiting for orders. It was not pleasant. The orders were too long in coming.
        "I almost said that was pretty farfetched, Burt. But then I stopped and thought about it. Nuts. But not so nuts."
        "You're dealing here with major-league lunatics. Guys for whom wars are fiscal solutions, manufactured to pull us out of equally manufactured economic 'depressions.' They're locked into the 1940s and can't escape. They hew to this good-guy-versus-bad-guy mentality, and if they point their fingers at their chosen bad guys long enough, with enough propaganda, they'll find they've got a whole country full of unemployed, largely illiterate cannon fodder-people who are just pissed and frustrated and emasculated enough to go for a violent cure-all."
        "I never pegged you as a sociologist."
        "I dropped out of college, remember? By the time the idiots in business administration had their degrees, I had a business."
        "And you were hurting." Burt's dedication had ultimately reversed that snag, however. "Maybe violence is the only solution-sometimes. Not TV violence; not a baseball bat in the face as a responsible editorial reply, not a contest of firepower and escalation. I mean violence as a final, horrible last resort. When no avenue yields satisfaction. When the drones and robots and nine-to-five mannequins lurch through one more day of colorless life by fucking you over."
        "Aha-go bomb the phone company. Bomb the phone company of your choice, that is." Burt laughed. "But who's to judge? Who decides?"
        "You do, when you know it in your heart. Can you buy something as nebulous as that?"
        "Depends. Maybe Rambo knew in his heart that he was right. If so, we're all in deep shit. You're a romantic, Lucas. That's not a slur; Jefferson, Franklin, Adams-those guys were all romantics. Idealists. So what the hell are you, a romantic, doing in the publicity business?"
        They paused, then recited the joke's answer in chorus: "Making a living, boy!" Commercial irony at its finest.
        "Those masonite doors on my office closet?" said Burt. "I always get masonite, so I can continue punching in the doors without breaking my hand when I get angry. I get angry a lot these days. I rarely try to check it anymore. It's a steam valve."
        "It's therapeutic," said Lucas.
        "Fucking-A. Vent thy anger, O mad one ."
        "The shrinks have reversed themselves on that one, too. Now they say venting your anger does no good. That while you do express it by, say, punching your door, you never actually rid yourself of it. Which was what punching the door was supposed to have achieved in the first place. The anger stays with you, always. Kind of like herpes. Once you've got it, you've got it."
        "Are you telling me that you aren't cured?" Were they not friends, Burt would not have pushed it this far. "Do you hold that kind of anger inside? About Kristen, I mean."
        "Sure, I'm still angry. Useless death should anger any sane man. Cory took a ride on a big red roller coaster and fell off. She knew what she was doing, and did it to 'get' me. And it worked. Case closed. Kristen's death was… insane. Five hundred police there, and they were totally impotent. In an evening's entertainment, thirteen people get trampled to death. Thousands are bruised, lacerated, bloodied, their bones broken. The band is called Whip Hand. Yet nobody anticipates the break point between stage violence-which is sanitized, like TV fight scenes-and the real thing. What's the difference between a disaster like that and