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scheme to fire indiscriminately among praying nuns or set light to all that is good and free in America . There was a gridlock of hoods and bastards heading out for a kick at the legislation. The crimewave rushed up and down the northeast corridor, taking its boisterous toll on Washington , Philly and the Chog. Amid the uproar Billy Panacea was arrested for trundling a tank over a mime.
    Back at the Reaction, Toto consulted the Parole Violators Bugle , which listed recent crime and updated the figures. One crime per three-point-five. He had eliminated a half-second of peace - but he didn’t lie back. Cloistered in the Reaction basement, he studied the evidence and planned his move. At first he had assumed the cop/underworld deal was one of mutual dependence but he soon came to feel that although cops needed criminals, all criminals needed was cash. Yet he realised that this too was wrong when he seeded a rumour that an amnesty was in the offing in return for a week of no crime. It took two days for the needy to realise they couldn’t live off forgiveness and during those two quiet days the cops went from shock to grateful, easy laughter. They had no dependence on crime at all, so long as they were paid to go to the office.
    Of course when no amnesty was declared the cops found themselves slaughtered at every turn. When they traced the crime fluctuations to Toto they squirted a squad of plaingarbs into the Reaction who stuck to him like a smacker to a rainpuddle. But by that time Toto was into another cycle of discouraging lawbreakers. A typical exchange would go something like this:
    ♦ ♦ ♦
    PLAINGARB COP: I don’t mind telling you I could simply eat the concept of death and bloody murder. I won’t be deeply happy until this town is a silhouette of smoke and embers. Can’t you just see it my friend?
    TOTO: No sirree. Order is important, or else we’ll all be toasted in our own sin.
    PLAINGARB: You don’t believe that - just between you and me Toto, don’t you wish something would break the monotony? Like a strangle-fight on a speeding toboggan for instance. Or a sudden lunging with an ornate oriental blade of some kind - I mean you must be interested in something.
    TOTO: No-sir. Bucking the rules like there was no tomorrow leads only to despair and the flimsy bridge to barking disaster. Grim caution, my friend.
    ♦ ♦ ♦
    After an hour of this the plaingarb would stick out his chin like the bony snout of a garfish and hide his face against the bartop, snivelling like a child. The cops never got anything solid enough for the perjury room.
    The most surprising result was that Toto had become an A-class denizen. He found he could pounce on docile strangers and yell toxic sedition in the streets with the best of them. He awoke to the side-splitting hilarities of creeping suspicion and mob panic and branded the Reaction with his own signature of flamboyant collapse and carefree violence. Toto’s antagonistic, harrowing meals gained notoriety in hospitals everywhere. He no longer messed with the crime figures as he had worked out the nature of the deal - to make a living by infringing on others. And he wouldn’t have to seek the meaning of anything again, through the simple expedient of living in a miasma of gibbering, demented goons.

HARPOON SEASON
    Harpoon Specter was a con-man so adept at manipulating reality he could fall out a window and land on the roof - if he could make a few smackers that way. His least successful shenanigan was to tell people unless they gave him what he wanted he’d sit down and break his own legs then roll around shouting in accusational agony. Nobody obliged, partly because what he was threatening was an integral part of the average Beerlight cabaret act. But there was another reason. Because he wore stolen garments and went around demanding money, everyone assumed he was a lawyer. Always mindful of a scam, Specter began to play along. Pretty soon he got a call from Billy