Iceman

by Rex Miller

  Far out in the sky over the Valley of Fire some movement caught his eye. He had to shield his eyes to squint, looking through dark lenses and tinted glass at buzzards circling something dead or dying out there. Eichord hoped it wasn't a sign.

  Buckhead Station

  The one flimsy semilead he'd turned up out west had flattened out on him. A former Vice guy, three years retired, had vague memories of this “spectacular pony” who lived with this wheelchair-bound gambler in one of the old plush joints—the Flamingo, he thought. The guy turned out to be hazy on the whole thing—some fuzzy recollection of the guy and his show-bizzy broad. He couldn't be sure of the drawing, he said. Bottom line: el zero.

  Eichord heard a radio or television blaring as he descended into the sublevel of Buckhead Homicide. One of the guys had brought a TV set to work. Not a portable, but a twenty-one-inch set purloined from God-knows-where and squeezed into the back seat of an unmarked ride.

  “Couldn't you get a big screen?"

  “It's Dana's tummy tee vee,” Peletier said, and brought forth some snickers.

  The detectives were watching a dog show for some reason.

  “Peletier,” fat Dana Tuny growled, “you'd hafta pick up forty more IQ points to qualify as a fuckin moron, ya know that."

  “I'm gonna be fuckin a moron inna minute. Jumbo, so gitcher pants down and reach for your ankles."

  “This ain't mine,” Tuny said to Eichord, ignoring Marv Peletier, “the schvatza boosted it in Watts."

  “Welcome back, Jack. Have a nice trip,” Eichord said to himself out loud. “Yes, thanks. A real bummer. Glad you missed me,” he told himself.

  Peletier turned up the volume as the announcer's voice intoned out of the speaker “Ah! Here comes the giant schnauzer. What a gorgeous bitch.” And the entire squad room hooted with catcalls, a room full of twelve-year-olds.

  “I was out wit’ a gorgeous bitch the other night had a giant schnauzer on her,” Tuny said.

  “Ummmm,” Monroe Tucker hummed, walking into the room. Stomping, more than walking. The grunted, monosyllabic humming was a noise he would sometimes make when Dana Tuny did something he found particularly moronic. It meant “fuckin retards.” Monroe was the sort of two-fisted, bad-looking dude if you saw him coming toward you in a wild Afro and a dashiki you'd have to fight the impulse to cross the street.

  Eichord got up and went into the john, regretting it immediately. Some visiting class act had penciled a bit of graffiti on the wall: nightcrawler was here. It set his teeth on edge. There was a night-crawler out there, to be sure.

  Washing his hands and face, he looked up at the aging cop in the mirror and wondered why in the hell he felt so frightened or whatever it was all the time. Frightened wasn't it. Apprehensive?

  When he came back into the squad room, the retards had grown tired of laughing at the dog show and the set was off.

  “Hey,” one of the detectives said to Eichord, “you're the big sleuth around here"—winking as he said it—"so let's see how you do. Ready?"

  Eichord smiled in response.

  “I'll read about him and you tell me who it sounds like. Ready?"

  “Okay.” It was a psychiatric manual.

  “Listen—who am I describing? Bed-wetting, stammering, chronic masturbation, and thumb-sucking all typify immature personality disorders."

  “Christ, that's fat Dana to a damn tee."

  “Sheeeeit! Thass got him down cold, man. Bed-wetting, chronic masturbation, uh, immature cocksucker. Fuckin’ Tuny, man."

  “Come on, gotta bad one,” Brown said, snatching his jacket off a hook, giving them an address as everybody got up in a screech of chairs, telling them the sketchy details as they took the stairs two at a time, all five men hurrying to the parking lot. Two persons down. Gunshot wounds.

  “No big fuckin’ hurry,” Dana wheezed. “They'll stay dead, f'r crissakes."

  Halfway to South Buckhead the call changed from a double homicide to a single homicide and then to a “man believed shot” in the clear.

  “Is this gonna be a cluster fuck?” Dana whined as he drove, Eichord riding in the back seat with Tuny and Tucker. Tuny ‘n Tucker—TNT.

  “Do flies like barbecue?"

  They got on the scene, a fleabag in what was left of Buckhead's old Skid Row, and found a rookie uniform cop getting his ass chewed out by a couple of grizzled old bluebags out of Metro.

  “Shit, I'm sorry.” He was just a kid. “I don't know—"

  “Yeah. Tha's right. You don't know,” the older of the officers said sarcastically as he walked away in disgust.

  “Shit—this is just some old wino,” one of the Buckhead guys said.

  “No shit. Brilliant deduction."

  “It was just ... I saw all the blood ... an’ I—” The kid looked like he was about to lose it. The Buckhead detectives were ragging him mercilessly.

  “Hey, boy, if you feel like you're gonna faint, put your head down between your legs and breathe deeply."

  “Yeah. If you feel faint, put your head down between my legs and suck deeply, okay."

  “What happened?” Eichord said to the young cop as he moved away from the body. The ambulance guys were already bagging him.

  “I fucked up,” he said, with a bad redness to his face. “Dude downstairs came runnin’ up an’ ... and shit, I couldn't make sense out of ... And then he says there was a shooting. He thought some ole dude didn't like this old boy got into it with him. Hell, I never even looked for the gunshot wounds ... He said shotgun, and I saw the one body and ... and the blood all over the walls an’ ... and I—"

  “Let's go outside.” Eichord took the young guy out into the open air. “Hell, you'll get used to it. First time is a bitch,” he spoke softly to the rattled cop. “These winos take that last big swig and aspirate blood all over the walls. It looks like a gunshot death, all right. They drink themselves to death down here with depressing regularity,” Eichord said, with grim knowledge of his subject matter. These winos? We winos. Get it right.

  In the car the three cops got trading horror stories. Eichord told them about the crime photos they'd showed him in Vegas. A homosexual murdered his lover. Took a week disposing of the body each time he left the house. Used chain saws, hacksaws, an ax, knives, everything but a damn blender. There wasn't a piece of the victim bigger than a breadbox.

  Tucker spoke up, “You shoulda tole me you was goin to Vegas, man. I coulda got yo white ass STRAIGHT."

  “I didn't know I was goin myself, Monroe."

  “Shit. I RULED that town, bro. Vegas is my kinda town."

  “Yeah?"

  “I got so much white pussy las’ time I was in Vegas—and this ain't no jive—I hadda finally put a whatdya call them things in the store windows?"

  “Vibrators?” Dana said, but they ignored him.

  “MANNEQUINS,” Tucker said after a beat. “Yeah. What I finally did was I got this fuckin MANNEQUIN and put it in the car with me. You know, with a wig and shit on it, to keep them little horny white broads from hasslin’ me every time I pulled up to a stop sign.” He shook his fierce head. “I never saw anything like it."

  “Hmm,” Eichord said, smiling as he watched Dana struggle. It was more than he could stand. He looked at his partner and said, “If you hadda mannequin in the car with you, that'd make TWO dummies in there."

  North Buckhead

  As he knelt at the altar in his sacred sanctuary, the soreness and bitter hate and towering fears have drained from his body. Revenge, so hot and sweet as to coat his tongue at the thought, will cleanse his physical being from the aching, hideous years of immobility. Punishment—swift and violent—the stiffening joy of instant retribution, will purge his soul of the evil thing, and once purged, bankrupt of emotion, he will allow himself to be renewed.

  He breathes in the purity of this room where he so loves to sequester himself. His strength builds here and soon he will move out into the gathering dusk, hard and unstoppable. Burning with desire and the intoxi
cating knowledge of invulnerability.

  He stares at the object in the golden glow of the portrait light, focused in the center of the wall, nestled in its special alcove, his favorite deco icon. Exhaling, he allows himself another deep, shuddering breath of anticipation, and then, with the grace of purity, he stands and moves from this room. Moving with the odd, sliding steps that are just another part of his uniqueness. Totally the master of anything that may cross his deadly path, exuding confidence and the sort of bonhomie you apply like cologne to your persona. Superficial but overpowering.

  In his dark heart he is ten feet tall and fearless, and now he knows that he possesses the magic of the ancients. He has conjured up the force of darkness and it is so remarkably easy: no incantations or amulets or forbidden books are required. The only requisite is that you must immerse yourself in his mandate ... only then, as you carry out the punishment of human scum, will the evil be purged from your soul.

  In a car he uses only for these moments he headed without conscious direction toward a run-down suburb of Buckhead, listening to the obsolete voicing of an antique dance band playing from his tape deck. Strange music that he thinks of as reflecting the deco sensibilities; orchestral horn voicings at once hypnotic and soothing, the reed section of long-dead musicians standing behind a tuxedoed maestro as the saxes take him back to another half-century with their ligatures and embouchures and the syncopation of the aggregation tick-tocking back into time. Nicki liked to tease him about his music.

  He could feel her imprint next to him, sense her fragrances in the vehicle, imagine her so slight and womanly, curled up into him as he drove, pressing against him everywhere she could fit her slim body, the beautiful, hot, anorexic bitch, caressing him with thin fingers, whispering heatedly into his ear in her woman's voice.

  He'd told one person about her, long ago. Once. Once, in Nevada, he'd talked to a man about her. Some idiot. Tried to tell this obtuse imbecile how good such a woman could be, how inflaming she was, how beautiful.

  The man had said to him, “That's bullshit! Have you ever SEEN a fucking transvestite? Even these female impersonators in the shows out here—you look at ‘em in the daylight and they look like what they are, men in drag. They don't have a woman's face, for one thing, too much chin ... No, bullshit, there's no such thing as a perfect woman in a transvestite.” But he'd never seen Nicki. She was flawless. Gorgeous. He was reminded of a brunette version of that one in the Warhol movies, and women just don't GET any more beautiful than that. He knew that Nicki took shots, but so what? He loved her exciting looks.

  Nicki would have come with him tonight, but this wasn't her thing. She liked it when they could isolate one like the dumb bitch with the squeezed toes, he'd already forgotten her stupid name, Princess fucking Di, she was in little pieces of worm food now. Long gone. They'd NEVER find that slime.

  She didn't like it when he whacked ‘em and left ‘em, but he'd be goddamned if he'd be bothered with all that nonsense every time he took one down. He was going to slaughter a ton of these cunts, slay a BUNCH of these vile bitches, and leave ‘em lay where they fell. Jeezus, it made him hot to think about sticking them. He flexed his black-gloved fingers on the wheel, feeling the awesome power of his grip.

  How easy it would be for him to fuck a bitch in the mouth and slowly, just as he came, close those steel fingers around her scrawny neck, shut off her air, close down her lifeline, watch her change before his eyes, redden, whiten, blue in patriotic death colors in his mighty, crushing vise, and one of his hands left the wheel as he touched himself.

  The signs he sees now, with what survives of his normality, they remind him of the Dead World. tippet's trading post—1/2 mile, the sign says. Then he sees that tippet's trading post and flea market has gone to seed like the crabgrass that chokes it. The porch is covered with broken air-conditioners, discarded refrigerator parts, empty paint cans. Tricky Nicki would look at a scene like this and tell him to create the covering scenario first—and she'd be right, of course. Some complex, intricate deal that she'd create like she had for Princess Di and that other long-forgotten slime. A thing with letters and postcards handwritten in the slut's goofy, curling scrawl. To be sent to them long after bye-bye time. Little details that could make the difference later in the heat of too close scrutiny. Dolores Detail, he called her. She even packed the cunt's BAG—what a sweet touch that was.

  It was Nicki, he thought, who'd nixed his sending a fake-out letter to the papers, trying to make that slut Gina or Tina or whatever her name was look like a political murder. She'd been wrong on that one, but he'd taken care of it. Fuck with their minds, he would.

  He breathes in the sweet feel of his Dead World. The contents of a long-abandoned apothecary litter the front of the building with pieces of marble facing and remnants of showcases, and even the rusting old-timey malted-milk machines are strewn about. Pieces of disreputable Americana. Bedsprings and headboards. Tabletops. Chair legs. Artifacts of the low-rent dream. Filth-covered impedimenta of his world long gone. The Dead World.

  Part of an amusement park ride says ride sandy for 10 cents, but Sandy is dead and gone. Sandy wore out aeons ago. The gelding had gone for one ride too many. All of this mess is fenced in, inexplicably, and covered in hubcaps.

  His killer's eyes see a carousel horse on the other side of the porch. It has faded paint and a frozen expression of “let me out of here.” Whoa, Trigger, he whispers. He checks out all the neighbors. Barbara's Putt-Putt is closed for repairs. Del-Ray's Ceramics. His kind of place.

  Next door he sees a sign that proclaims antiques and below that cut glass on peeling white wood. Discards and junk everywhere. Part of a gas globe and a forty-year-old Pepsi machine that would be worth a few dollars if it wasn't already a solid lump of crudencrusted rust. All of it the same all-pervasive, isochronous reddish-brown.

  He is drawn toward the door. Leaving the vehicle on auto-pilot, manipulating himself into the chair for the benefit of passersby. Cheating a little, though, from the car to the chair, and at the small step up to the porch that led to her inviting establishment. Smiling now as he sees the woman alone, tending her lonesome domain there in the light of 30s chandeliers. A cat scurries away.

  “Howdy,” she calls out. Bright, too red hair from the “beauty parlor"—what a fucking misnomer THAT is. A pleasant face smiling through crow's feet. An attractive woman, he thinks. He likes the way she holds herself, the look of her shoulders and chest.

  “Hi. Beautiful night!” He smiles his magical smile. He could almost read the sound of MMM that some of them make when he smiles at them. Many women were struck by his handsomeness and, for wont of a better word, his unusual dash. He had that thing some men have. Verve. Elan. A thing of style, he supposed. It just HOSED the bitches.

  Then there was the business with the chair. They wondered when they saw this great-looking guy—what he would be like as a lover. It intrigued them. Challenged the bitches. Brought out their maternal instincts, he supposed. He knew how to use this. Play to it from the second eye contact was established. Manipulate them from jump street.

  “You have a great place,” he said, smiling, staring at her chest, his eyes sparkling with instant desire, moving forward in the chair.

  She smiled back. “Thank you. Can I help you with anything in particular?” She thought she recognized the man in the wheelchair, but she couldn't place him.

  “I collect everything, honey,” he said with familiarity. “Absolutely everything."

  “Well, we've got a lot of that,” she said expansively, gesturing around the cluttered shop.

  “You sure do.” He stared at her, moving closer.

  “Do you collect glass?"

  “I collect everything imaginable. Deco, Greco, baroque, rococo, neoclassical, renaissance, post-modernist, Pre-Columbian, Mayan, Aztec, Peruvian, Schmucker's—"

  She laughed. “Well, just look around...” She was forty-something.

  “Thanks. I'm lookin'.” He thought of his Mommy.
spotting her old oily, black-bladed fan. She had a rotating fan like that, which blew dusty curtains over a silver, pressed-wood nouveau frame of deceased Texas relatives. It sat beside their peach-colored Fada that once played the Pillsbury White Crust Dough Boys and the Cliquot Club eskimos, and the late-night dance remotes from Amarillo. A crackling Fada sitting on a white wooden shelf beside a sink, where a perennial drip had worn a Rorschach into the porcelain. Was this too red redhead somebody's mommy, too?

  “Just beautiful,” he purred from the chair.

  “Thank you.” She thought he was so good-looking.

  “I could just look around here all night,” he said, still staring at her, speaking so intimately to this middle-aged, suspicious stranger.

  She blushed prettily and touched some stray orange-red strands, and a giggle escaped. “Oh,” she began to say, something something.

  He neither knew nor cared. If someone came in the door behind him now, he would take them too. Ace them right out. Adrenals on Overdrive, wanting to make it with her, hot in his wanting, longing to show this cunt what he had in his pants, coming on now in a blindingly fast rush of cum-heat and death wish, flying out of the chair at her suddenly, smashing the awful thing across her field of vision and into her left temple, driving a steel needle-sharp spike deep into her ear, penetrating her with his heat and his power as she dropped in her tracks, a scream caught in her throat as he struck once more, her brain winking out as she caught something that sounded like “you fucking cunts” in a flaming red blur of pain and sudden death, hearing only the crash of agony as she dropped where she stood, struck by his lightning.

  Unmindful of door locks or passersby or anything beyond the all-consuming urgency, the gush of his rage shooting through his loins as he emptied himself in a violent tremble of ecstasy and madness and bitter hatred and remembered pleasures, made all the sweeter by his taste for vengeance and the rush of his newly regained power.