“Mal, DON’T!” Snuff begs. “I’ll get that shit from the alley. I can find it, man! Then they can’t—”
“Are you really as stupid as this little bitch of yours? NEVER RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME!” Mal suddenly screams into the terrified girl’s face.
He punches her in the solar plexus. She would scream now despite herself, but her bruised diaphragm is devoid of strength to force it from her lungs. All she can do is mewl & moan with the pain.
He tosses her to the floor, a crumpled heap of refuse to be dealt with later as it pleases Him…
Mal’s voice has returned to its customary monotone, control once more resumed: “No, Snuff, you will not return to the scene of the crime. You will take the stiletto & the .38 Special that you obtained from the blacks & you will take great care to dispose of the witnesses. All of them…”
[ 71 ]
Frank Hawkes feels it as soon as he drives into downtown Miami. It’s the same feeling he used to get in Nam whenever he entered enemy territory. It starts with a tingling in the scalp & a quickening of the pulse, followed by a fist clenching in his gut. This time the feeling is so strong that it reminds him of the way he felt entering Devil’s Fucking Valley.
He pops the cigarette lighter from the dash & fires up another smoke. No flavor. No enjoyment. Just the taste of hot ash burning his tongue. He has been chain-smoking through the last sixty miles—the last leg of his trip into Miami, & the only time he burns a chain of butts is when something has him wired tighter than a steel cable.
Burnside, the VA counselor, would tell him it was the aftereffects of his latest combat flashback; but Frank doesn’t buy that shit at all. Frank knows those things aren’t fucking flashbacks. No way in Hell. Burnside can take his diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder & stuff it up his rear-echelon-motherfucking-ass.
“The war has left you with your own personal demons. The ghosts that you see are the ghosts of your past. It all comes down to guilt. The guilt you feel because a lot of your buddies died over there & you lived. The good news is that you can exorcise your demons by working through your guilt.”
“That’s bullshit, Burnside, those fucking things are real! If you’d been over there with us in Devil’s Fucking Valley, you’d know how real they fucking are.”
That was the way counseling sessions went until finally he broke them off & never went back. Burnside & the VA be damned. The fucking U.S. Government be damned, too, right along with all those ignorant wimps who ever called a Vet a baby-killer. Yeah, the venom is still there, curling like that fist in his belly. If it ever spews forth…
“Fuck it,” Frank says aloud. “Elijah, old pal, I have a feeling we are about to pick up a hot trail.”
His canine companion looks at him with doleful eyes. Frank spots a watering hole & parks in the lot, paved with cement & seashell. He leaves both windows rolled down so Elijah won’t get too hot in the Florida sun. He pours the faithful pooch a dish full of water from his old army canteen, & sets it on the floorboard on the driver’s side.
“Stay here, boy, I won’t be long.”
He enters the cool air of CAPT. JACK’S BLUE LAGOON COCKTAILS & OYSTER BAR, & takes a seat on a sturdy barstool. He orders a Bud from the tap, downs half of it, then goes to the pay phone next to the men’s room. A quarter buys a call to Capt. Lardass Lucas, Miami Homicide.
Frank identifies himself & mentions Clarence Carter’s name.
“Yeah, Carter called me. Said you’d be in touch. I wanted to brief you myself, but I’m tied up with some Internal Affairs bullshit, so one of my men will fill you in. Rios. He’s young but sharp.”
“No problem,” Frank says.
“Carter said I could trust you to keep any pertinent details confidential. You’re an ex-cop, you know how this shit works. C.Y.A. all the way. I’m covering my ass officially by stating that you’re aiding our investigation. By the way, I read your book on serial killers. Damn good, you know your shit.”
“Thanks.”
“So do me a favor, will ya? If you ever write a book on this investigation, don’t refer to me as ‘Lardass Lucas.’ My ass ain’t that big. Oh, yeah, & tell Carter I still got that coon dog. Haw, haw.”
“You got it.”
“Hang on, I’ll get Rios on the line.”
Frank takes another sip of chilled Bud & waits while the phone goes through a series of clicks spaced with dead air. Capt. Jack’s antique juke box kicks in with a Bob Dylan oldie, “It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry,” & Frank gets another little jab from the past—yeah, Viet Nam era, fuckin’ A, naturally.
He’s no Dylan connoisseur, but something strikes him as wrong about the music. Shaw had been into Dylan, HEAVY, before he bought the farm. Bone farm, not “Maggie’s…” he thinks with another wave of sadness rolling over him, echoing the wail of the ghost train’s whistle in the song… He muses for a moment, accesses the organized clutter of a near-eidetic memory, finds the appropriate file in some cobwebbed corner of his brain marked Rock Music: Hard: ’60s & realizes—I don’t think that one from his Highway 61 Revisited album was ever released on 45…? Must be pirate vinyl that Ol’ Capt, Jack, here’s spinnin’… & keys off of another odd connection: Frank’s sure that he remembers Shaw humming the eerie tune as they crossed the fused tangle of iron that had been a bombed-out rail line, & pausing for a moment he’d said, “Yeah, man, can you beeeee-lieve that Bobbie’s original workin’ title for it was ‘The Phantom Engineer’…weird shit, huh…?”
Then a smooth voice comes on the line. “Mr. Hawkes? John Rios. How can I help you?” Even with Dylan’s dog-calling harmonica wailing in the background, Frank catches the confident, business-like tone in the young man’s voice. “I need all the information you have on the coffee house murder. What I really need is a look at the file.”
“When would you like to see it?”
“I can be there in thirty minutes. How’s that?”
“Fine. I’ll be there.”
Frank hangs up, downs the balance of his brew, then goes back out into the hot sun, leaving the coolness of Capt. Jack’s & the sentiments of Dylan’s ’60s.
Twenty-five minutes later, he is shaking hands with Detective Rios of Miami Homicide. Rios is a dark, almost handsome man in his late twenties. Though he speaks with no accent, Frank thinks he has some Cuban blood somewhere in the family tree. “I read Satan and Serial Violence,” Rios says, “& I was intrigued by some of your ideas.”
“Yeah? Maybe we can shoot the shit about it over a beer,” says Frank. “You got the file?”
Rios opens a metal file cabinet, flips through the manila jackets, pulls out the appropriate folder, & hands it to Frank. “I’ll be in the next room if you need me. Got a shit pile of paperwork to do.”
“Thanks,” says Frank. He takes the file to the desk in the far corner of the small room, & sits down. He lights a cigarette as Rios leaves the room. Then opens the file on Mary Gruber. Before he begins reading the typed reports, he turns to the photos of the victim. His stomach does a back flip when he sees the bloody thing hanging from the rope, from a distance looking far more like a battered & hemorrhage-clotted tampon than anything that was ever even vaguely human…
I’ll never drink another Bloody Mary as long as I live.
[ 72 ]
The oily black ocean is a great undulating mass of liquid night, dangerous & vengeful, the deepest mystery of earthbound existence, ever in resistance to the quasi-mystic forces of the moon. Its dark waves lap at Hellraiser’s hull like hungry Stygian tongues. Though the yacht is moored at the deserted marina, it is occupied by a crew of two thugs, hired to guard the provocative body of its owner, Lucy Nation, who is below deck with a bottle of scotch & a gram of Colombian blow.
The thug wearing the navy blue knit cap spears the raw, bloody meat with a footlong hook, holds up the dripping chum for his partner to inspect, & says in a rumbling, salty voice: “If y’ was a shark, could y’ swim away from this?”
&nb
sp; “Looks good to me, man. You know I like my meat real rare.”
“I feel lucky tonight, Pedro. We gon’ get us a big fuckin’ shark. Maybe a Great White motherfucker.”
“Stop runnin’ your mouth & throw it out, Skull,” says Pedro. He calls his companion that because he is never without his skull cap.
Skull tosses the big baited hook into the waves, holding on to the attached ropes. He loops the rope twice around his thick elbow & muscular upper arm, then turns a bottle of beer up to his mouth. He guzzles half the brew, belches, & says, “What y’ spoze th’ queen bitch is doin’ down there?”
“Who knows?” says Pedro. “None of our business what she does. Long as nothin’ happens to her, we get our jack. Who gives a shit what she’s doin. Be fuckin’ herself, all I care.”
Skull lets out another burp, & laughs, “Y’ wanna fuck her, Pedro. Y’ get a big woody evertime y’ come within ten feet of th’ bitch.”
“Shit, man, you the one sniffs her panties when she’s in the fuckin’ shower.”
“Har arrhh arrhh,” laughs Skull. “Y’ think she wants yr tight ass, don’t y’, amigo. Har harhh.”
“Shut your yap. You’ll scare the fuckin’ sharks away.”
Skull drains his bottle of beer, takes it by the neck & slings it out into the ocean’s swells. He pauses momentarily, listening to its hollow, glassy splash as it plunges into the brine, then bobs surfaceward amidst a gurgling rush of bubbles…
Yeah. No message in this one…just an emptied void serving as a sort of caesura or a simple exercise in tonal breath control, a prepunctuation for his words-to-follow: “Y’ can believe this. That woman is a maneater. I’m talkin’ cold-blooded. Y’ dip yr stick into that cooze, y’ll draw back a bloody nub. She’s fuckin’ Jaws, man!”
“You a sick motherfucker, Skull,” Pedro tells him. “You oughtta go back to your wrestlin’ scam, you know?” Pedro cups his hands around his mouth. “& in this corner, wearin’ the shit-stained trunks, the sickest hulkin’ fuck in the world…”
“That ain’t funny, y’ little spic. One more crack like that, I’ll shove yr fuckin’ head so far up yr ass—”
“Shhh. Somebody’s comin’.” Skull pulls a .357 from the holster at the small of his thick back & squints at the shape coming down the dock. Pedro now has a flashlight in one hand, a .45 in the other.
As the shadowy figure approaches Hellraiser, Pedro whispers, “Be cool,” & flicks on the light. The harsh yellowish circle of illumination thrusts into the darkness, punching a sharp hole of blinding intensity through the murky wall of near-invisibility, betraying the fluid glistening of the long, black leather jacket, the soulless stare of matte-black wraparounds, the dark bristle-brush ruff of punk-savvy close-cropped hair… Pynchon shields his eyes from the flashlight’s beam, holding up his right hand in a sort of greeting.
“Good evening, Mr. Pynchon,” says Pedro, flicking off the light. “We weren’t expecting you tonight.”
“How’s it goin’?” says Skull, wondering if that was blood he got a glimpse of on Pynchon’s shirt just before the light was turned off.
Pynchon boards the yacht without a word.
Skull begins to feel uneasy. Somethin’ ain’t right, he thinks.
“I’ll call down & let Ms. Nation know you’re here,” Pedro says, holstering his .45 & reaching for the cellular phone.
Skull keeps his eyes glued on Pynchon’s shadowy form. Still holding his .357, he uncoils the rope from his left arm & drops it to the deck.
The rope seems to hiss through Skull’s fingers as it slithers to the floor, thudding slightly as the loose end impacts with the deck. The only other sounds are the sloshing rhythm of the waves against the hull & the barely audible buzz of the just-lifted receiver…
“Hey, Skull, secure that rope, you’re gonna lose—”
Pynchon reaches inside his jacket, & comes out with a silenced 9mm Zombie.
Skull brings up the muzzle of his own .357.
ffftt. Pynchon’s Zombie spits—
A dark spot appears in the dead center of Skull’s forehead. He flops limply to the deck, hitting with a wet thump like a palate-hooked grouper, brain-bashed to still its frenzied thrashings…
Pedro draws his .45, but two rounds hit him in the throat, ripping fist-sized bursts of flesh from his neck, all but tearing his skull from his shoulders, his head connected only by stray strands of nerve & tendon & the shattered links of vertebrae, like some obscene parody of one of those red glistening candy-apples-on-a-stick…
His still-living brain expends its last few precious seconds worth of oxygen in the futile exercise of commanding fingers to raise the mouthpiece of the cordless phone to his blood-bubbling lips…
Neither coherent words nor the scream of soul-splitting angst that shrieks silently for release will form… He makes a gurgling sound. Then falls overboard.
“The tiburons will feast on taco meat tonight…” the words whisper in the canyons of Pynchon’s Blue-buzzing backbrain. Not trusting his own shredded tongue. A silent offering. To no one but the wild, dark demigods of sea & night…or perhaps—
…the moon burns silver, suddenly peeping through tattered shrouds of cloud curtain, the pox-scarred corpse-rind of her face leering Evilly…the moon burns red…for the faltering span of a split-second, the moon burns blue provoking the perverse…the phosphor-phantom of a blue witch writhes seductively, undulating to the rhythms of the surf, dancing the Seven Veils (Nnnohhh! these are the Six Veils of the Beast…) across the surface of the waves…
Pynchon slips the Zombie back into his shoulder holster, & heads belowdeck to Lucy Nation’s plush quarters.
[ 73 ]
Maldoror motions to the helpless teenager tied to the bed, & says, “Juliette, get off your clothes & take a quick shower. Then you & Heather, here, can entertain Me while Snuff is busy setting aright the mess you’ve made.”
[ 74 ]
7734
Frank stares at the number he has written on a cocktail napkin, trying to fathom its numerical significance.
“It probably means something to no one but the killer,” says Detective Rios, who sits across the table from Frank, sipping beer through the foamy suds atop his frosty mug. “We even had a numerologist run it down; but she came up with nothing that made any sense to our investigation. Just a lot of mumbo jumbo, New Age bullshit.”
“But it has to be significant, after—”
“Wait, Frank! Hold it a sec—” Rios stares down at the inverted series of numbers, facing away from him & toward Frank. Viewed from this perspective, the rough scrawl, 7734, suddenly betrays another meaning: hELL…
“Ohhhh, Keee-rissst! It’s so fucking simple, it’s pathetic, Frank! It’s the proverbial forest you can’t see for the trees…”
“What—?” Frank stares at Rios blankly.
“Hell, Frank, Hell! That’s what this crazy killer’s signature says. Just plain ‘Hell!’” He pauses for a moment, then adds: “It’s like some stupid kids’ graffiti or something…”
“Hell?” Frank asks. “But what the fuck does he mean by it—?”
“I dunno, Frank. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but then we’re dealing with some kind of lunatic, aren’t we…?”
“Look, you’ve got four murder victims with this number carved into ’em—”
“Actually, there’s five now, we pulled in what appears to be a related through NCIC—”
“Okay, let’s run ’em through from the top—there’s the Cuban cab driver, the couple butchered in their bed, & Mary Gruber, a.k.a. Phaedra Flame…”
“Yeah, & the new one we netted through an NCIC cross-ref of similar crimes. It wasn’t even in the jacket yet. I had just passed it along to Lucas— Sorry! Our stiff in this case was an Hispanic real estate broker. Houston resident. Very successful. Body washed up on the beach. Some jogger, a guy by the name of ‘Stan Simpson,’ nearly tripped over the corpse. Two Galveston County Sheriff’s Deputies were the first on the scen
e—” Rios notes Frank’s suddenly upturned eyebrow. “Heh, I know what you’re thinkin’. But it doesn’t look as though the local yokels bungled it. Even though he was Hispanic—”
“Yeah, guess I don’t have to read you the act on that one… Texas’ finest aren’t exactly noted for Equal Opportunity enforcement…”
“Gotta give ’em credit, they managed to keep a clean scene from everything I’ve gathered.”
“Fine & dandy. But as if you haven’t gathered already, I’m no fan of Lone Star justice…or the goddamn state for that matter, even if some super-secret outfit outta Dallas does pay the bills for my investigations…”
“Yeah? I was wondering—”
“How I paid my bills? But you were too polite to ask. Thanks, Rios, you’re okay in my book. In any case, the whole setup’s pretty weird. Hush hush. I’ve tried to double back & run a scan on who the Hell my ‘employer’ is, but it’s a seemingly hopeless web of cash payments of blinds & double-blinds & remail services & dummy corporations. I have ’em figured as some hothead splinter group of Fundamentalists, secretly funding this ‘knight in shining armor’ as a latter-day St. Michael, battling the specter of The Beast…”
Frank reaches absentmindedly into his shirt front, drawing out an oversized golden medallion on a chain, fingering the religious motif embossed on its surface. A vagrant ray of light from the spots above the stage strikes the winged warrior upon it just right, & the surface seems to blaze with the flame of righteous retribution, burning in defiance of The Darkness… “—but I’m afraid I lost my wings & halo a long way back,” Frank adds.
Duet for the Devil Page 16