Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon

  “Let’s check it out,” Frank interrupts this nowhere-land monologue. “I think I’ve heard of Mermaid’s Inn, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where I’ve heard of it.”

  “Okay, Frank. I’m in. But, from what this guy’s told us so far, I think I’m due to take a leak first. & I’d do the same if I were you! &, for God’s sake, if you’ve got to take a dump, better go now—”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, I’d advise you not to drain your lizard in the men’s room, there. Sounds like you could catch incurable VD just by looking at a toilet seat.” Frank laughs as they exit the interrogation room with their handcuffed prisoner in tow.

  “We’re borrowing him, Schuyler,” Rios tells the guard. “We promise to bring him back in one piece…”

  “You can do whatever the fuck you want with that junkie shitface for all I fuckin’ care,” he replies.

  [ 85 ]

  Slice enters Mermaid’s Inn.

  Past the iron-shod door with its fisheye lens.

  No money in his right palm. Instead, the bloody sigil of Baphomet that he carves into his flesh there is his rite & right of passage. (He senses the intricate lines of its configuration with visionary clarity, carving it with the unfailing precision of the true artiste…)

  As on his previous visit, the air is thick with smoke tendrils of cannabis & hashish & opium, the scent of rum & absinthe prickling his expanded senses, the stink of sour sweat & stale blood a far less subtle essence…

  The smell of pain & death & Evil is a tangible thing that fills the head with reeling visions of the Gates of Hell thrown open…

  The air swims with flickering BLUE light

  Sunglasses hide his wide-open eyes; the raincoat hides his erection. He is sure that his cock has grown a good three inches since Blue Devil first invaded his body & began the transformation. Man into God. Stud into superstud. Goddamn, if it grows much more, I’ll have to tie the beast to my leg.

  He is tempted to go downstairs for some bloody recreation in the catacombs, but decides instead to go on up to Professor’s lab. This time it’s business before pleasure, though it is becoming more & more difficult to distinguish between the two. He recognizes Rupert the house dick, & moves through the crowded room, zeroing in on the fat fucking chrome dome son-of-a-bitch.

  “Yo, Rupert,” he says as he approaches the man dressed in familiar plaid pants & blood-spattered tie.

  Rupert’s mouth forms an ‘O’ of surprise, & he reaches a hand inside his coat. Slice catches Rupert’s wrist before the dick can pull his cannon out of his shoulder rig.

  “Let’s go for a ride in the elevator,” Slice says. His voice is a deep rasp. “Be nice & I won’t fuck you up. This time.”

  Rupert uses his key to open the elevator door. Slice pushes him into the box-like compartment, then follows him in.

  “Butchered any kids lately?” Slice inquires, smiling. Rupert shakes his bald head, hoping that’s the answer Slice wants.

  “Why not? A man needs his recreation, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Rupert’s mouth is dry as dust-choked cotton.

  “You know, it’s not easy for me to stand here talking to shit like you. It takes real effort & a lot of fucking energy to stay down here on your scum-sucking level. I know you can’t understand this with your underdeveloped maggot brain, but I am fucking God. Take that any way you can.”

  Slice grins. Rupert notices the splotches on his face.

  “You’re good at that, right, Rupert? Taking shit any way you can? Taking the lives of little cunts you lure in from the street. I know all about you, you fat fuck. All about your snuff flicks, your side business. Well, Rupert, I don’t think you’re worthy of killing all those sweet young cunts—”

  Rupert stares at this man-monster, Slice, a look of total disbelief written in bold print across his newspaper-pale face. “So who the fuck do y’ think you are? Fucking Robin fuckin’ Hood, or Zorro or some shit—?” he snarls under his breath.

  “They’re wasted on a pig like you! You don’t know how to commune with their dying souls. You can’t appreciate that killing is like fucking. Death is the ultimate fuck—”

  The elevator yo-yos to a halt. Rupert is weighing his chances of survival if he goes for his gun. Maybe Slice wants him to go for his piece, maybe that’s why he didn’t disarm him. Or maybe he’s so crazy he’s fearless. The maniac’s running his mouth like a speed freak. The elevator door slides open.

  Professor Punk jumps to his feet, naked & holding a sword in both hands.

  Rupert goes for his gun. He gains a split-second of surprise as Slice/Pynchon’s mnemonic data banks ID it as a Chinese Type 64 assassination pistol: the bulbous, nose-heavy construction of its barrel with the integral silencer a dead giveaway.

  Real dead.

  Rupert loses his serendipitous split-second lead by fumbling the selector bar in the upper portion of the slide back from extreme left into its right-hand position—disengaging the bolt from the lugs in the breech, opting for blowback semi-auto vs. ultra-silenced…

  Slice slams his elbow back into Rupert’s face, then spins around to snatch the .32 special-chambered out of his fat fist.

  The gun spits three times, close range­

  Three of the .765 X 17mm rimless cartridges hit Rupert’s forehead. The low-velocity loads may trade a bit of ass-kicking for assassination silent, but they sure as fuck pack enough wallop in-tight, ripping open triple black holes in his bulging brow. Their impact smacks him back against the side of the elevator, & the house dick slides to the floor, leaving a blood-slime trail on the thin wall…

  Slice spins around to face Professor Punk, who stands like a statue of a beaten warrior, ready to surrender his sword.

  “Professor…” Slice levels the gun on the naked man’s genitals. “Good to see you.”

  Prof. Punk makes incoherent sounds with his mouth. The sword slips from his hands & clatters to the floor.

  “Get dressed,” Slice commands. “Your frail body disgusts me.”

  He slips into a long lab coat. “What do you want?”

  “More Blue Devil.”

  “You’ve already had more than any of the other human subjects. If you take any more, it could kill you.”

  “Bullshit, Professor. I was born for this stuff. Don’t you realize what’s happening here? What I’ve become? No, of course you don’t. Your mind is almost as weak as your body. I know where the formula came from & it sure as Hell wasn’t your little mind.”

  “Y-Y-Yes, but it could still be fatal if—”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Slice raises his voice. “Load up a syringe & sock it to me.”

  Professor does as he is told. Slice sticks Rupert’s gun into the pocket of his raincoat. Still five shots left…

  “Who would’ve imagined such an evolutionary leap would come from a chemical formula? Yeah, ‘living better through chemistry,’ as the flower-power punks appropriated. But this leap is totally consciousness-expanding— this is a leap from man to God! But I’ve reached a plateau, & I need to continue the transformation—”

  Professor retrieves his last ampule of the secret Li Di 9 serum from its repository in the battered Coldspot fridge, racks up a nearby needle-&-plunger rig, takes Slice’s arm & injects the blue liquid into his vein. “This is the last of the batch,” he says.

  “You will mix up a new batch. Immediately. As long as you are useful to me, I’ll let you live…”

  “I’ll start right away.”

  “Of course you will. How long will it take?”

  “I can have it ready in two days.”

  “I’ll be back. & don’t try any tricks with me. I can probe your mind at will, & I’ll know if you’re up to something.”

  “How well I know,” says Professor, still holding the empty syringe in his bony fingers.

  “Get rid of that pile of shit,” Slice tells him, pointing at Rupert’s body. His blood has pooled on the elevator floor.

  [ 86 ] />
  “Say, Rios, there’s something I’ve been wondering since I was a kid. How in the Hell would you fuck a mermaid…?” asks Frank, in a jovial mood for the first time in days.

  Rios unlocks the passenger door of his Plymouth, then looks across the top of the car at Frank. “Any way you want to, as long as you don’t get finned…”

  “Hah-hah-hah, that’s good,” laughs Frank, “but I’m not sure I could get past the scales & the fish smell.”

  “Heh, fish is fish—” Rios adds, as he opens his car door, &, donning the long tan trench coat that had been folded over the seatback, he retrieves the Luigi Franchi SPAS Model 12 that he keeps secreted beneath the seat.

  Frank whistles admiringly. “Nice!”

  “If you want stopping power in a close-range confrontation,” Rios says, “this is one sweet little baby twelve-gauge. Eight-round autoshot. At forty meters, it’ll spread a charge to about nine-hundred mm, & you can slam out a good four rounds per second with fifty-percent more punch than a .32 pistol… Shit, Frank, with standard buckshot loadings, you can put forty-eight pellets per second into a one-meter target… & it’ll take solid slug as well as plastic-walled CS gas containers that’ll range to one-hundred-fifty meters…”

  Rios attaches the short-range shot spreader to the muzzle.

  “Can’t beat this little gadget for shooting fish in a barrel—” Rios quips. “We’ll blow the scales clean off ’em.”

  A minute later they are on their way to Mermaid’s Inn.

  [ 87 ]

  Back aboard Hellraiser—the yacht has been cleaned up, painted & the bullet holes in the walls have been patched up since the slaughter of Pynchon & her worthless security guards— Ms. Nation picks up the phone, & calls Professor Punk.

  “Yeah?” he answers in a tired voice.

  “Professor, you were supposed to call me.”

  “I…I’ve been busy making a new batch of Blue Devil. I lost track of time.”

  “You’ll lose more than that if you aren’t careful,” she says. “Have you had any contact with our quarry?”

  “No. But I’m sure he’ll probe my mind before he shows up.”

  “Well, you know what to do as soon as you finish your work on the formula.”

  “Yes, of course. I just hope to Hell it works.”

  “It has to work, Professor. You do your part, we’ll do ours.”

  “Right.”

  Lucy hangs up the phone & lights a cigarette. She exhales smoke & smiles to herself. The plan calls for Professor to heavily medicate himself with a hypnotic drug to induce deep sleep. Should Slice probe his mind while he is drugged out, Slice will learn nothing from Professor’s conscious mind, & therefore won’t know about the trap set to catch him when he comes for the Blue Devil. What Professor doesn’t know is that Lucy’s men will inject him with extra medication after he is asleep. He will be given so much of the drug that he will be in a light coma. No way Slice can learn anything from a comatose mind.

  [ 88 ]

  Rios parks the Plymouth on a nearly deserted stretch of pavement in the midst of Little Havana. In a maze of razed buildings & tiny shops with iron-barred windows. It could be most any inner city. Except for the distant roar of surf & the scattered silhouettes of palm trees swaying beneath the tropic moon.

  Perhaps it is some odd trick of optics. But tonight the full moon seems to burn with a cold blue nightmare radiance.

  “End of the bus tour, boys,” Rios says. “Welcome to the war zone. From here on out it’s a long hike into Hell…”

  They pass by a few stragglers. A group of bandits barely out of grade school closing a crack deal with some shark-faced Latino pusher. Two parrot-gaudy putas bumping & grinding to a Walkman blaring salsa rhythms, shaking ass at every male who passes by. A ragged wino puking on the pavement of the sidewalk. Teen entrepreneurs from Midnite Auto stripping the wire wheels off a purple-metal-flaked Chevy, while the streetside Casanova within is rockin’ n’ rollin’ the shocks off his lowrider, humping his way into the homestretch with some un-virgin Mary or Maria, a señorita of obviously very easy virtue. (Ergo, both driver & passenger are getting screwed…)

  Mr. Jones doesn’t know what’s happening for sure, but he knows he needs to fix before the cold sweats & cramping hit him. Frank carries his kit like a hidden carrot. The junkie can sniff the promise of sweet oblivion. Great motivation. He hauls ass down the alleyway as fast as his rubber-legged gait can carry him, his balance hampered by the stainless-steel cuffs that clasp his wrists behind his back.

  Hawkes & Rios follow, trailing cautiously just a few steps to his rear. The butt of the Luigi Franchi is slung from a strap beneath the concealment of Rios’ trenchcoat. He holds his stubby-barreled Smith & Wesson outthrust in a two-handed, combat-ready stance. Frank carries his razor-honed survival knife in his right hand, & the weight of his “Dirty Harry Special” holstered against his heart is a constant reassurance if real stopping power is required. They stumble onward through the seemingly endless rat warren of littered alleys, the occasional echoing clang of a bumped trashcan or the clatter of a kicked bottle or tin can breaking the tense silence. The stench of rotting garbage & human waste is thick as steaming menudo in the day-heat & humidity still bleeding from the potholed asphalt.

  A sudden furtive movement in the shadows, & Rios swings into a frozen shooting stance, his index finger quivering on the trigger.

  “Steady,” Frank whispers, his own free left swiftly forcing Rios’ gunhand groundward—it’s only some starving little street kid scrounging supper from a dumpster…

  [ 89 ]

  Professor Punk puts the tray containing six vials of Li Di 9 into the small refrigerator & says, “All right, motherfucker, come & get your six-pack of Blue Devil.”

  (Of course, his speech is rhetoric, as the motherfucker to whom this is addressed is not yet present.)

  He rolls up the sleeve of his lab coat & shoots himself up with the hypnotic drug, just as Lucy Nation told him to do. He is very tired, his neck & back ache, & he welcomes the chance for uninterrupted sleep.

  He isn’t sure that the sleep medication can prevent the maniac from probing his mind; but at least he feels confident that Lucy Nation’s hit men won’t allow Slice to get to him.

  Slice expects the Blue Devil to be ready tomorrow, so he’ll probably attempt the probe tonight— What will he think if he can’t get into my mind? Will he think he is losing his power?

  Professor feels the relaxing rush of the hypnotic wash over him, & he walks over to the cot & lies down.

  Staring at the ceiling, he thinks of the succubus & his penis rises to a semi-erect state. Sleep creeps over him, & his mind becomes a reflecting pool of black light.

  A big man in a flowered shirt & white slacks enters the lab, bends over the sleeping Professor, & injects a full syringe of the hypnotic into Professor’s vein.

  “Sweet dreams, asshole,” the man whispers.

  [ 90 ]

  The alley seems an endless black path through Limbo, trapped somewhere just between the world of everyday events with its rational roots in predictable phenomena answering to the Laws of Physics & the Hellworld of Tartarus, that vast place of gloom & eternal torments…

  It reminds Frank, also, of that second thrust ordered by the brass at GHQ—the second thrust doing night recon deep into the too-lush tunnel of jungle trail that encroaching wall of vines & verdure scanned in the visionary glow-patterns of infrared…

  “Shit!” Rios curses, “I’ve got some really bad vibes, why in the fuck did we forget to suit up with Kevlar Second Chances—”

  Getting my mythologies mixed up, Frank thinks, trying valiantly to calm the jitters, seeking to banish that memory in a complex mantra of useless data— “Limbo” is a concept of the Roman Catholic faith, the word itself Teutonic, meaning “border” or “the place between” or something…

  “I dunno, man, like I ain’t really sure,” Jones says, “but I got this feelin’—”

  But Rios i
s the first to confirm a sighting—just ahead, a fisheye lens leaking the barest beam of feeble blue illumination into the pitch-black of the alley.

  Just as Frank muses, the Greeks had it all quite different—yeah, according to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, first we’d’ve spent a thousand years in Elysium as shades, then headed back to earth to inhabit other bodies, after chugaluggin’ a round from the River Lethe to wipe out all our former memories…

  Rios unlocks the handcuffs from the junkie’s wrists, & hands him a flash roll of bills to wave. Jones snatches the cash in his tremor twitching left hand, & raises the open palm of his right up before the thin ray of quick-strobing wan blue light…

  or face the dread Judge Rhadamanthus, if we were counted among the guilty…

  The Demon Sigil of Baphomet glows in delicate purple traceries upon the junkie’s outthrust palm.

  Rios quickly holsters his Distinguished Combat Magnum. “How d’ya like that—” he whispers to Frank, “the old ballroom blacklight stamp bit—wonder if they’ve got Grateful Dead posters hangin’ for decor…?”