Cartoon City

By Ferdia Mac Anna

For a classic urban sass novel, cult hit Cartoon City by Ferdia Mac Anna is hard to beat, with its wild cast of misfits, rebels and Dublin denizens. Anti-hero Myles seeks an out from his journo work. When he falls for the redoubtable Mia, however, he is drawn into the heart of Dublin's underworld with some alarming - and

• Language: English
• Publisher: 451 Editions
• Release date: Oct 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781916297500

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Cartoon City

Ferdia Mac Anna

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Copyright information

Cartoon City

First Edition, 2000 by Headline Review

2nd Edition Published by 451 Editions

www.451Editions.com

© Ferdia Mac Anna 2000, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9162975-0-0

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, digitally reproduced or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding, cover or digital format other than that in which it is published. For permissions and further information, e-mail [e-mail]

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by Sienna Mac Anna

Book design by Cyberscribe.eu

Praise for Cartoon City

"With its truly wild cast of scallywags, posers and postulants, Cartoon City delivers a Dublin of funnier, finer times, where those who had your back could also shoot you in the back, and still manage it with a wide smile and a killer one-liner. One of the funniest books I’ve read that will make you cringe and howl and pine for all those tiny eccentricities we lost when the Celtic Tiger rocked in and ruined it all." – June Caldwell

A contemporary caper that pits ethics and morals against lust and greed – fine ingredients for a good meaty tale ... Rattles along like a skip truck on a steep incline. – Express Magazine

Ferdia Mac Anna has three things that don’t always go together: a brain, a heart, and a sense of humour. – Joe Jackson, Singer-songwriter

Hilarious.— Irish Times

A rollercoaster of a novel that never finds time to draw breath ... killer one-liners. — Irish Independent

If Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker novels had been set in Dublin rather than outer space, they might have read like this. Mac Anna’s laid-back comic style has moments of frantic black farce ... it makes his eccentric crime-comedy-thriller compulsively readable, and very funny.– BUZZ

Cartoon City has all the ingredients of a classic ‘urban noir’ narrative ... Two decades after its first publication, it continues to resonate with a darkness that is, in characteristically Irish fashion, both visible and risible." – Thomas O’Grady

By the same author

Novels

The Last of the High Kings

The Ship Inspector

Memoir

The Rocky Years (Story of an Almost Legend)

The Last of the Bald Heads

As Editor

The Penguin Book of Irish Comic Fiction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dubliner Ferdia Mac Anna started out in music, fronting Rocky De Valera and the Gravediggers in the punk era, and latterly, The Rhythm Kings. His first novel, The Last of the High Kings, was made into a film starring Gabriel Byrne and Jared Leto. His other literary work includes the novel The Ship Inspector, editing The Penguin Book of Irish Comic Writing and a memoir, The Rocky Years. He was producer and script editor on the acclaimed BAFTA-winning BBC/RTE childrens’ drama series, ‘Custer’s Last Stand-Up’ and he lectures in Screenwriting and Television Production at various colleges including IADT The National Film School. His debut feature film, All About Eva, premiered at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in 2014 and his second feature film, Danny Boy, premiered in 2020.

For more information please see:

www.451Editions.com/authors/FerdiaMacAnna

Foreword

Ferdia Mac Anna’s novel Cartoon City (first published in 2000) has all the ingredients of a classic ‘urban noir’ narrative: a naïve protagonist drawn into the dark underbelly of his seemingly benign native city; chancers, grifters and other shady characters lurking around every street corner and at every twist and turn of the plot; violence in overplus; double-crosses galore; a pinch of international flavouring; and a pervasive air of moral ambiguity (at best).  Oh, and of course a femme fatale.

Yet, thanks to Mac Anna’s distinctive writerly signature, Cartoon City is not ‘merely’ noir.  The author of two previous novels grounded in a less seedy version of Dear Dirty Dublin and environs – The Last of the High Kings (1991) and The Ship Inspector (1994) – Mac Anna displays in Cartoon City not just a true-to-genre interest in atmosphere and plot but also a true-to-life investment in character. That investment gives his protagonist, Myles Sheridan, a complex back story involving the readily recognizable Irish tropes of an eccentric mother who embarrasses him and an absent father who literally haunts him.  To say nothing of an emotionally complicated domestic partner and their young daughter.  Thirty years old and self-consciously lanky (six feet six and half inches tall and, alarmingly, still sporadically growing), Myles suffers from a multi-faceted malaise that permeates every aspect of his life.

Paul Valéry’s thoughts on crime fiction are thus more than à propos to Myles’s descent into Dublin’s underworld: ‘Crime is not limited to the moment of the crime, or even a little before.  Rather, it links up with a long antecedent state of mind, developed at leisure, remote from acts, a sort of idle daydream, an outlet for passing impulses (or a fit of boredom).  Often, too, it comes of a mental habit of reviewing all possibilities and shaping them without discrimination.’  A lowly sub-editor for Dublin’s Evening News looking to make a name for himself as a features writer, Myles welcomes the invitation from an old schoolmate with a thriving criminal enterprise to join him and an accomplice on a ‘gig’ that might spark his moribund journalistic career and, in the process, help to raise his overall self-esteem. The gig itself is botched, but its immediate aftermath leads Myles into the orbit, and soon into the bed, of Mia, a nubile young artist with serious Daddy issues and a penchant for painting portraits of penises she has known. And so the plot thickens . . .

But even as it thickens—adding an impressive portfolio of crimes to Myles’s previously milquetoast resumé—it also refines the nature of Cartoon City relative to the noir tradition. And also, remarkably, relative to the comic tradition. For, notwithstanding all its noir essentials, Cartoon City is saturated with the comic spirit that Ferdia Mac Anna described in his Introduction, as editor, to An Anthology of Irish Comic Writing (1995): ‘Comedy is a way of laughing at the gods, of warding off the blows of cruel fate, of dealing with pain, of laughing in the face of death. As long as the craic is ninety, as the saying goes, then we’re winning—even if we know deep down that it can only be for a short time.’ Yes, Myles Sheridan experiences a catalogue of humiliations, betrayals, and indignities in his personal life, his professional life and his newly adopted criminal life; yet the antic ends he is willing to go to in his pursuit of Mia, his femme fatale, keep the novel from spiraling into the darkest depths of human despair or depravity.

In fact, Myles’s antics—and his seemingly boundless resilience—relieve the darkness, the ‘noir,’ of Cartoon City, locating the novel firmly in the crime fiction sub-genre of the ‘caper’ narrative made vital by writers like Donald E. Westlake and Carl Hiaasen. But it does so with an Irish inflection that Mac Anna coincidentally anticipated in his Introduction to An Anthology of Irish Comic Writing. Recognising that ‘we are at heart a nation of islanders, a magpie race diluted over a millennium by Vikings, Normans, English as well as the recent and continuing Anglo-American onslaught,’ Mac Anna asserted: ‘We may not be as isolated or as self-obsessed as we once were, but we are skilled in subverting foreign influences to our own devices.’ Two decades after its first publication, Cartoon City continues to resonate with a darkness that is, in characteristically Irish fashion, both visible and risible.

Thomas O’Grady

Director, Irish Studies,

University of Massachusetts Boston

September, 2020

Quote

Somatomegalic Epiphyseal Dysfusion Syndrome:

A rare medical condition whereby an adult suddenly begins to grow again. First described by Vladimir Gobowski in Prague, 1912. Credited in English medical literature to Adiref Anna Cam.

Prologue: Pals, Dublin 1999

Hey Goalpost, what’s the weather like up there?

Dez’s voice sneered out of the darkness ahead, causing Myles Sheridan to freeze suddenly in the long grass. He had known him just a few hours and yet somehow Dez had discovered the nickname that had followed Myles since childhood. A name that resurfaced every couple of years like a curse.

Same as it is down there, Myles said, disappointed that he couldn’t think of a better reply.

Six foot six inches tall since the age of thirteen, Myles had attracted a lot of nicknames – the Lighthouse, the Crane, the Moving Lamppost, the Eiffel Tower. For some reason, perhaps because he was skinny, Goalpost was the one that had endured, and the one he most hated. It was as though he was branded.

The worst thing was that a couple of weeks ago he had started growing again. And this morning, when he had checked himself with the tape measure, he discovered that he had grown yet another quarter of an inch. Now, at thirty years of age, he stood six foot six and a half inches tall. There was no telling where this thing was going to stop.

The last thing Myles needed was to be teased about his height by a teenage scumbag. Dez was small, wiry and hyperactive, with lively blue eyes and a face like a demented leprechaun. Despite his youth, Dez came across as the sort who would relish the chance of a scrap with a tall guy. The first and most important lesson a tall guy learned was to steer clear of fights with guys small enough to loaf you in the balls.

As Dez sniggered from the darkness ahead, Myles felt an urge to turn around and walk back down the hill. After all, if this young scumbag was just going to take the piss…

Just then he felt a strong hand on his shoulder and Pat’s familiar, soft voice said calmly, Relax the head. Your man’s been eating too much red meat.

Did you tell him?

Pat squeezed Myles’s shoulder. Not at all man, I would never do a thing like that to a pal.

Pat was just under six feet tall, big boned and chunky, with hands like shovels. Even in the pale orange light from the streetlights, Myles could see Pat’s deep-set gentle brown eyes twinkling at him. After so many years it felt oddly normal and uplifting to be on a dark hill at night with Pat. Like boys out for mischief.

Sticks and stones man. Rise above it, you know what I mean?

Pat swished past, leaving behind a pungent blast of aftershave. Myles’ shoulder felt as though it had been clamped briefly and then freed. He heard frantic whispering from up ahead.

I know he’s a guest, Dez hissed. What I’m saying is who in their right mind takes a bleeding ‘guest’ along on a gig?

Let it go, Pat said firmly. He’s a mate and he’s here because I want him here. Right?

I’ve spoke my bit. Now I’m saying nothing. See this mouth, it’s bleeding zipped tight.

Good.

You won’t hear one single solitary word out of this mouth for the rest of the night, right? Dez continued.

Proper order.

I’m a professional, that’s why.

Fair enough.

This mouth is bleeding professional too, in fact it’s –

Then shut your professional mouth and come on, Pat said.

Ahead, Myles heard feet swishing through wet grass. He walked on, treading carefully lest he skidded.

Once, when he was thirteen, Myles had been cornered in the school toilets by a bunch of sixth years who were angry at him for being taller than them. They told Myles that his growth hormones were out of control. Then they turned him upside down, inserted his head in the toilet bowl and flushed the handle repeatedly to shrink Myles back to normal size. It’s for your own good, their leader had explained.

Upside down and dripping, Myles had observed Pat stroll in and lean casually against the wall. What’s the story, lads? Pat inquired in a soft voice, as though breaking the noses of a bunch of sixth years would be a pleasant break from classroom routine. After a few face-saving smart comments, Myles had been placed right-way up again and the older guys drifted away like smoke. When Myles had thanked Pat for saving him, Pat had just shrugged. I was kind of wondering, he had said, if maybe you could give me a bit of a hand with the algebra.

From them on Pat had dubbed Myles Big M. Pat became Big P. Big P protected Big M from asssholes while Big M helped Big P with homework. They had stayed best friends throughout school. The only rupture between them occurred when Big P got off with Big M’s first girlfriend behind the bicycle shed at a school ceilidh. The rupture lasted a week, until Pat apologised to Myles and broke it off with the girl as a renewal of friendship. After that, the bond between the tough guy and the tall guy had grown stronger in a way that neither could explain.

Upon graduation, Pat had gone to England to work on sites, earn money and sleep with tons of women. Myles had stayed home, tried college and ended up a sub-editor on the Evening News. They kept in touch sporadically. A few years previously, contact ceased altogether.

Until last Friday, when the phone rang on Myles’ desk as he was subbing a brought-in article on how to put the zest back into lovemaking. The receptionist informed him that a Mr. Big P was downstairs to see him. After nearly ten years, Pat had grown broader and tougher and now sported a beard that made him look like a mature Kris Kristofferson. Are you bored, man? Pat had inquired. Want to come on a gig next week?

Now the Tough Guy was protecting the Tall Guy again. Only this time from Dez, a seventeen-year-old leprechaun. Myles moved forward, taking precise steps, careful not to rest his entire weight on either foot lest he go tumbling into wet blackness. A cool breeze washed over his face and gently flapped his jacket collar. The initial rush of annoyance at Dez was giving way to a feeling of relief. In truth, he was glad of the diversion. Before this he had been feeling panicky, wondering if he was out of his mind to be tramping through the long grass on a hill on the north side. He recalled Dez’s elfin face, bright with jealousy in the pub earlier after Pat had informed him that Myles would be accompanying them. Might as well bring women and six packs and throw a party, he had snorted.

Be positive, Myles told himself. This story will make your career. No more being a scullery-maid of journalism. No more subbing pieces, laying out pages and correcting copy written by people who hadn’t the literary skills of a badger. Think about the three hundred quid plus expenses that Migraine McGann, the features editor at the Daily News, had promised him if the story made an interesting colour piece. Crime is big stuff, Migraine had drawled when Myles had run the idea past him. This is your big chance to become a features ace. Gimme a thousand words first thing next Friday morning.

Myles followed Pat and Dez up to the top of the hill, where the glow of streetlights sat like an orange fringe. Below, a long, sleek container truck gleamed under the lights like a shiny new dinky toy waiting to be played with.

In a few moments Pat and Dez would walk down the hill to liberate the truck and drive it to a location somewhere in the inner city. Once there, the cargo of smuggled cigarettes would be unloaded and transferred to other vehicles to be distributed and sold on the streets later. The cigarettes were dirty anyway, Pat had explained. It wasn’t as though they were really stealing. Instead, they were simply redistributing somebody’s illegal profits. It’s dead simple. Officially the cigarettes don’t exist; therefore the crime doesn’t exist either.

Now Myles eased forward to stand alongside Pat on a narrow, slippery ridge overlooking the street. Pat turned to him, smiled, and removed a small pair of binoculars from his pocket. He scanned the area for a few moments. Satisfied, he handed the binoculars to Myles. Myles experienced a pang of delight, as though he had just been made a member of an outlaw gang. Being here with Pat was more exciting than squatting on a barstool in his mother’s pub, larruping pints and whiskeys and staring at the soccer on TV until his eyes boiled. More stimulating than getting out of his cranium in The Nerve nightclub and shifting some wagon who had a face like a roadmap. Better than being at home.

Looking through Pat’s binoculars at the street below, Myles became exhilarated; it was just like the moment at a rock concert when the lights come up on your favourite band and the guitarist strikes a power chord. He checked out rows of identikit houses with their eyelids shut, then panned along lines of gleaming cars. Finally, he focused on the truck, which glowed like a beacon. Not even a cat stirred. He handed the glasses back to Pat. He imagined his late dad, Big Paddy’s wide face scowling in disapproval. But then, Big Paddy had never approved of anything Myles did. Except when Myles had fathered a child with his on-again off-again girlfriend, Lucy. Big Paddy thought that was hilarious.

Well, what do you think? Pat asked him quietly.

A bit like robbing an orchard, Myles replied. Except the apples are already packed, he added, and immediately felt foolish.

What did I tell you? Dez said. Goalpoast thinks we’re doing an orchard.

That’s enough, Pat said sharply. No talking while we’re working. Keep it clean till we’re off the scene, right?

They moved forward quietly. Dez led the way down the hill, followed by Pat then Myles.

Myles considered leaving Dez out of the article altogether. Perhaps he’d refer to him throughout as The Leprechaun. He decided to call Pat Black Pat. It sounded mysterious and romantic, like a storybook pirate or a wild west outlaw. Definitely more intriguing than Big P.

Halfway down the hill Myles’ foot hit something soft and he wobbled forward slowly like a reluctant ice skater. He slid past Pat and Dez so gradually and lugubriously that he would have had time to shake both their hands and exchange tearful goodbyes.

Pat reached for him but missed. Dez glared at him as though this type of stupid behaviour was exactly what he had expected of Myles all along. Myles himself hit a bump and soared into space with the effortless grace of a champion ski jumper in a slow-motion replay. For an instant he hung in the yellow beams of the streetlights, before plunging, ears ringing and arms flapping like shirt inside a tumble dryer. He closed his eyes momentarily and when he opened them it seemed as though he was falling upwards. He had already died, he thought. This was how it felt to be hurtling towards the hereafter. How serene it was. How at peace he suddenly felt.

Then he smacked into wet grass, the impact knocking the breath out of him. Lying on his back panting up at the dark, he felt a sensation of wetness flooding his body, as though a water hose had doused him. He wiggled his fingers and toes. Moved an arm. Raised a leg. Nothing felt broken. He saw a sneering headline in the Evening News: Goalpost Falls Off A Hill.

Immediately a curious sense of disappointment flowed through him, as though his body secretly yearned to keep on plunging through space.

Hey man, you OK? Pat said.

I’m grand, Myles croaked. No sweat.

There was a shuffling sound and then Pat and Dez towered over him. Pat looked concerned. Dez’s tiny face leered at him.

Hey Goalpost, enjoy your trip? he said.

1: Outlaws

Dingo’s Auto-Parts was a car graveyard. Fenders, radiators, windscreen frames and rear axles, as well as other bits of motors, lay about the yard as though tossed there by an explosion.

As Pat turned the truck into the yard, the beams from the headlights played across a rusted, wheel-less Mercedes that was propped on breezeblocks alongside a funeral mound of old tyres. The khaki-coloured turret of a light tank sat by the far wall like a mute overseer of destruction.

One great thing about this place, Pat said, Never any problem with parking.

He negotiated a way through the debris and drove around to the back, where he pulled up alongside a pair of large doors covered in graffiti. Then he cut the engine. Silence poured in on them. There were no stars in the sky. It was as if a vast black curtain had been pulled over the place.

After Myles’s fall down the hillside, being driven away in the cab of a stolen truck had seemed an anti-climax. They had passed no other cars on the road, seen no sign of police, pedestrians or motorcyclists, and noted scarcely a light on in any of the houses. Instead, rows of streetlights stood stiffly to attention like an honour guard. The city’s population had gone away for the night.

The only glitch in Myles’s relaxed state was the sensation of spreading dampness on the seat beneath him. He felt like a child who had wet himself and was afraid to say anything. Pat was still being friendly to him, but perhaps only out of sympathy. Dez ignored him. The trick now was to act as though nothing untoward had occurred. If you put your mind to it you can do anything, Big Paddy, had drummed into him. Myles recalled his favourite motto: Never let the bastards see you cry. Too many of them would only enjoy it. Big Paddy had loved to strut around the pub in his captain’s uniform sprouting these and various other insights. He had been large, loud and brimful of his own wisdom up until the moment he died. He saw everything coming, Myles’s mother, Stella, said after the funeral. Except the grenade that blew him to bits.

For a moment Myles saw his father’s shagged-out face in the rear-view mirror. Big Paddy curled his lip at his son, Don’t be a long, lean, lanky layabout all your life. Myles turned away and looked out of the window at the rusted hulks.

Dez scratched his nose. How long do you want to give it?

Pat squinted at his watch, If nobody shows in five minutes, we vamoose.

It had been ridiculously easy. They had simply walked across the road and taken the truck. Just like that. The ease with which the crime had been accomplished gave Myles an angle for his article: Crime Pays – and that’s why people do it. He wondered if the Thought Police at the Evening News would let that one through.

Migraine would publish any article that would sell newspapers. Myles wondered what was in it for Pat. Pat must have a plan. Even in school, Pat liked being notorious. Maybe he just wanted to be a superstar gangster.

What are you smiling about? Pat’s face was amused as well as intrigued.

This is cool, Myles said. "It’ll make a great piece.

It’s not over yet, Dez said, indicating the far side of the yard where a dirty white transit van was nosing around the corner with its lights off. They watched the van glide over to where they were parked and pull in alongside. Following it was Pat’s Volvo estate, also with its lights off.

A long-haired hippy in his thirties with a scraggly beard and a hook nose got out. The hippy nodded in the direction of the truck’s cab.

The skull on that, Dez said. If he’d a nose like that on the other side of his head, he’d make a great pickaxe.

Pat opened the door and got out, followed by Dez and Myles.

How’s it going Alvin?

Depends on what you’ve got for me.

Only the very best, as usual, Pat said.

Myles looked around. No signs of an ambush. But then it wouldn’t be much of an ambush if you could spot it. He tried to blank his mind of all thoughts, which he hoped would give him a cool, inscrutable expression. He followed the others to the back door of the truck. Two other men had appeared. They stood alongside Alvin, shining flashlights. The one who had driven Pat’s Volvo, a surly looking weasel, glared at Myles as though he couldn’t believe anyone could be that tall. As Pat and Dez opened the back doors, Alvin’s men illuminated piles of neatly stacked boxes.

Pat climbed up and lifted down a large cardboard box. Alvin placed it on the ground, ripped off the top and began examining a carton of cigarettes. Pat handed another large box to Myles. Myles took the box from Pat and held it, unsure what to do.

Now he was an accessory, Myles thought. His fingerprints were on the box.

Pat was about to jump down when a sudden rustling came from inside the truck. An overhead light buzzed into brightness and there was movement behind the stack of boxes. The weasel quickly reached into his inside pocket. Everybody froze as a wild-haired man with a bare chest and black underpants emerged blinking into the light. Black underpants shielded his eyes to squint at them. A young blonde woman appeared alongside him, clutching a sleeping bag to her bare shoulders.

Myles let go of the cardboard box. It hit the ground with a thud, spilling cigarette cartons. Everyone turned to stare at him.

Sorry, he said.

Everyone dismissed him and turned back to the occupants of the truck.

Howaryis, Black Underpants said politely. Do you mind if I ask yis what yis think yis are doing with my truck?

After that, things became heated.

Alvin adjusted his collar and picked a bit of fluff off his shoulder. This has nothing to do with me, he said, before walking away, taking his men with him.

I know where you live, Black Underpants shouted after him.

I’ll move, Alvin shouted back.

Yeah, well you won’t be able to move far enough. I’ve got pals.

Black Underpants turned to Pat, Dez and Myles. My pals will take a dim view of this hijacking, he said.

He’s right, the blonde woman assured everyone. He has absolutely stacks of pals.

Pat spread his hands, like a pastor giving absolution.

I’d hate you to think of it as a hijacking. Think of it as a misunderstanding, he said.

Black Underpants looked hard at him. I can find out where you live, he said. He swept his hands out to include the other two. I can find out where all of yis live.

Youse better listen to him, the blonde nodded. He has done a lot of work on himself.

Shut your jaws, you silly wagon, Dez said.

Pat stepped closer as the truck driver braced as though about to launch himself at Dez.

I’m sure we can work this out between ourselves, he said.

Are you starting with me? the