Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon

  “All righd, then, but don’ le’ ’im bite you, man.”

  Slice in drag knows immediately what the two niggers have in mind. Don’t have to be a mind-reader to see that, he jokes to himself. Of course, he could read their jive-ass minds if he wanted. But his brain is still humming from its brief invasion of that cop’s troubled head, in the alley behind Mermaid’s Inn. The link lasted only seconds, but that was long enough to know that the cop was looking for the Beast, & that he had experienced some weird fucking shit in Viet Nam. This Porky Pig cop is haunted by some bad demons. Slice is thinking about the porky’s Devil’s Valley when the hip-hop fudgesickles do their cock-of-the-walk shuffle in his direction.

  “Heyyy heyyy, momma, you be lookin’ for some dark meat?” says KoKo, his knife hand behind his hip.

  “Look like a momma’s boy t’ me—” spits Abdul. His right hand is sporting a pair of shiny brass knuckles.

  In the city distance, sirens wail the cry of the jungle, & Slice pictures flashing blue lights converging on Mermaid’s Inn. A blue light flashes in his brain & he suddenly sees these two jungle bunny crack­heads can help him elude the porky police. “You want to see what I’ve got under my dress? Come on, I’ll give you a free peek—”

  “I know what you got, cocksucker,” says KoKo, “an’ I’m gon’ chop it off.” He presses the release button on his switchblade, & six inches of stainless steel flick out, reflecting red & blue neon from a buzzing beer sign.

  “Oooh, you’re turning me on, Chocolate Man,” Slice says in lisping falsetto.

  “This muthufuckuh’s crazy, man,” Abdul tells KoKo. “Let’s let ’im go. I don’ like this shit.”

  “Chilllll, blooodd, this won’t take long,” says KoKo, his jaw & his mind set.

  Standing in front of the caged window of a darkened pawnshop, Slice begins slowly to lift the hem of his blue dress. “Come on, boys, I’ve got enough for both of you—” As KoKo steps to within arm’s reach of the queer in the blue dress, he holds up his switchblade. “This turn you on—?” Slice bats his false lashes, smiles sweetly, then zips his blade out of the scabbard on his thigh, & rakes it across KoKo’s throat. “This turns me on, you nigger piece of shit!”

  KoKo’s eyes are almost as wide as the gaping gash in his throat. His blood splatters on the sidewalk, sounding like somebody just tossed day-old sludge from a coffee cup, coming down all at once with a sharp splat! KoKo drops his switchblade, & his hands fly to his fatal new tattoo.

  With the precision of a skilled swordsman, Slice lunges with his heavy dagger, & the heart-seeking blade finds its mark in KoKo’s chest.

  When KoKo hits the sidewalk dead, Abdul decides to retreat, turning on the heels of his stolen state-of-the-art running shoes, & hoping to a suddenly significant god that the scientific design of the shoes will give him an extra bounce of speed—just enough to save his life & whisk him away from this maniac in drag.

  But Slice, even in his tight dress, is far too quick for him. He hooks his left arm around Abdul’s throat as he jabs the knife into his back, expertly severing a section of his spinal cord.

  Abdul goes down in the street, thinking he’s been slugged in the back with a fist. When he tries to roll over & get up, he discovers that he can’t move. & he’s praying to that suddenly significant, deaf-eared Allah of Crackhouse Losers, praying to save a soul he’s long-since bartered for a little glass pipeful of Rock…

  Slice grabs Abdul’s ankles & drags him up over the curb, across the sidewalk, & into a narrow alley. The sidewalk rips most of the skin off the left side of his face.

  “I need your clothes,” Slice says, rolling the flopping, flailing crackhead onto his back. “You don’t need them anymore—”

  Abdul tries to speak, to beg for his life, but he can’t make a sound, not even a grunt.

  Slice pulls the dress over his head, then peels off the stuffed bra. He undresses the unmoving man. “Wish I had more time to enjoy your death,” he says, “but the cops will be here soon. You know how it is, I’m sure.” Slice dons Abdul’s sleeveless shirt, & steps into his leather pants. “Not exactly my style, but neither was the dress, so, what the Hell!”

  He kneels over Abdul’s body & says, “Later, blood.”

  Abdul’s throat sports a big bloody grin…

  [ 97 ]

  “Wha’z goin’ on deah?” The obese black woman mumbles, barely stirring from her position hunched over the tabloid. The sound of the four muffled gunshots pffling behind the closed door of the storeroom finally draws a lazy gaze in that direction. “Joh-neee? Joh-neee? Wha’z y’all doin’ back deah wid alldhat fool racket, boy…?”

  No answer.

  She waits a few more moments, & eventually lowers her bulk from the stool, waddling back to see what that fool is up to.

  As she rounds the corner of the perpendicular leg of the L-shaped counter, Snuff lunges upward from his crouching position, slicing her throat from ear-to-ear with the stolen stiletto. The woman clutches at the gurgling ruin of her neck, & her assailant takes the opportunity to flick the knife closed & pocket it, then picks up the metal baseball bat, smashing her repeatedly in her fat shins until she tumbles into a blubbery heap on the floor. Again & again he raises the bat, crashing it down upon her skull, battering her face to a bloody pulp, splitting her skull open like a burst melon.

  When he has sated his lust for destruction, he wanders back to the storeroom, returning with the pillow. He holds it over her mouth, strangling the last wheezing breaths of life from her blood-filled lungs. Then he forces the gun barrel up tight against the slight depression in the pillow’s surface that marks her mouth. He squeezes off two quick shots, angled slightly upwards, aiming for the roof of her mouth, so the entry pattern of the slugs rip through her brain pan, splattering blood & brains across the walls of the pharmacy.

  Snuff sidles to the front door. Locks it with the key he took from the dead druggist. Tapes a hasty, Magic-Markered sign in the window: “fAmilY EmERgEnCY bE baCK in 2 HouRs.”

  Snuff rifles the drug supply. Using a doubled brown paper sack, he collects the dexies, some percodan, a shitload of valium, & an assortment of other pharmo-goodies. & some of the strychnine, with more than rats in mind. He punches open the register, cleaning the drawer of cash, checking under the drawer & netting almost a dozen twenties & a half-C-note for his extra trouble.

  Snuff bags a fresh supply of hypos & surgical gloves. Then he rips out the phone lines. &, just before exiting, he “accidentally” drops the stiletto, & sprinkles the contents of a small cello packet randomly across the murder scene: hairs torn from the scalp of a young negro male (dead these several months, an “unsolved” from just outside New Orleans… a few stray ashes of cannabis & a bit of nose-dust, just a few false leads, a few “red herrings,” another of Mal’s favorite tricks.

  [ 98 ]

  Dressed in a lightweight grey suit & conservative tie, Rios approaches, a boyish smile splitting his face. “Morning,” he says. “I hope I didn’t scare that fox away.” His eyes follow the movements of Cherry’s supple, near-naked rear.

  “There ought to be a law…” Frank’s voice trails off as he too watches the Olympic Iron woman walk to the other side of the pool.

  “Yeah, though we’d all be arrested.”

  “No doubt.” Frank looks up at the Latino cop. “What’s up, amigo?”

  “Your guy in the dress left a trail of bodies last night.” Rios tells him. “It appears that he killed two black hoods & stole the clothes off one of them. We found his dress but not the wig. He’s one bad hombre.”

  “That? No other leads?” Frank glances across the Caribbean blue of the pool at Cherry, who is stretching out seductively on her reclining chair. The teenage girl is swimming laps like an Ester Williams munchkin.

  “Nothing.” Rios pulls up a deck chair & sits down two feet away from Frank. “The weirdest part of this already weird case—­even with a couple of dozen cruisers & God only knows how much other heat, well, Frank, not
one of Metro-Dade’s finest could pick up so much as a peek of the infamous Inn…

  Rios is speaking in a whisper, his face is pale, & he is obviously unsettled by the strange turn of events. “Frank, did you ever see that horror flick, The House That Disappeared? This whole thing is just totally unreal, man. Spooky.” He seems to wait for the jibe he knows Frank will aim at him. But it never comes.

  “I gotta ask you, Frank. What in the Hell was going on last night? I run into the alley & see you holding your gun to your head. You sure as Hell didn’t learn that move at Quantico!”

  “Did you put that in your report?”

  “No. It was too goddamn crazy. I didn’t want Lardass Lucas on my ass, chewing me out for not finding out what the Hell it meant. I got in enough hot water for uhhhhh…losing our prisoner, Mr. Junkie Jones, ex-hophead! Yeah, & for not making you go to the hospital.”

  “Thanks, Pal,” says Frank, tossing his second butt over the fence & onto the sand. “For now, this is between you & me. I’m not the most stable ex-cop you’ll ever meet, but I’m not nuts. I swear. What happened to me last night will sound crazy as Hell, but I promise you, it really fucking happened. The guy in the alley somehow came into my mind. He commanded me to put the gun to my head. I would’ve pulled the trigger if you hadn’t interrupted him. Believe, me, amigo, if it wasn’t for you, I’d’ve been dead meat. I was mindfucked…”

  Squinting in the sunlight’s glare off the pool & the sand, Rios remains silent.

  “That’s not all,” Frank continues. “While the bastard was inside my head, he was reading me like a fucking book, learning everything about me. He said right out loud ‘Devil’s Valley.’”

  “What the Hell is Devil’s Valley?”

  “The name of a Hell hole where I had a bad experience in Nam. Where I got these scars—” He holds up his hand, bends his arm to show Rios his damaged elbow, “& where I got the St. Michael’s Medallion & lost a shitload of buddies. It was number one bad scene of my T.O.D.”

  Rios stares blankly, not knowing quite what to say.

  “Anyway, amigo, that psycho was reading my mind.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t just some kind of flashback or something, maybe…? Or maybe a stressed-out imagination…? I don’t mean to pry, Frank, but are you sleeping okay?”

  “Positive. I know what I heard—there’s nothing wrong with my hearing.” Frank lowers his voice & confides, “It’s like he was probing me for weaknesses, like a mental recon. & he found one: Devil’s Fucking Valley.”

  “Maybe it was hypnosis?”

  “No. It was something a Hell of a lot more powerful than hypnosis. But it wasn’t just a one-way street. While our minds were…joined, I learned some things about him, too, but it was all jumbled, like… I don’t know…like he was dominating me but some of the stuff in his mind sort of leaked over into mine.”

  “So what did you learn about him?”

  “Unfortunately, for the most part, the images were too surreal, too confused or maybe just encoded & illogical for me to fully grasp—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, he thinks he’s some sort of God or something. A superior being who loves to kill… who lives to kill. For a second or two, everything went blue. I got flashes of some of his victims, One of them was Mary Gruber hanging on a rope.”

  “What do you mean, everything was blue?” Rios brushes a buzzing horsefly off his pants leg.

  “Like I was seeing with his eyes, like everything he sees has this weird blue tint—like a movie filmed through a blue filter, you know what I mean?” Frank pulls another cigarette from the pack. His hands tremble. “I tell you, Rios, this guy ain’t human. He’s…more than human. & whatever he is, he’s powerful as all Hell…”

  “You’re right, Frank. It does sound crazy.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Rios stares into the blank mirrors of Frank’s aviator’s glasses, trying to read the secrets that lurk behind them. “I know you’re not nuts. It’s just too incredible. Not just the part with this mind-fucking psycho killer. No, Frank, it’s this whole weird freaking scam—I mean, we’re talking an entire, multi-leveled tavern & all of its inhabitants… just… just… disappearing like smoke in the wind… Can you imagine Lardass Lucas’ reaction to this story?”

  “Goddamn, Rios, that’s why I said this is just between you & me.” Frank’s voice rises in anger, then he immediately looks around to see if anyone else is looking at him.

  He lowers his voice & keeps his anger in check. “I’m telling you all this because I believe it’s the truth. & because your investigation is hamstrung. All right? You have your information now. What you choose to do with it, ain’t my problem.”

  “Heh, take it easy, Frank! I appreciate your taking me into your confidence. It’s just that I don’t know what the Hell to do with it. Do you know this guy’s name? Do you have anything that would help me get a line on him?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s all so jumbled in my mind…” Frank has a faraway look in his eyes, but Rios can only read the blank, blinding stare of sunlight flashing off the convex mirrors of his glasses.

  “Well, if you’re able to sort it out, let me know.” Rios reaches out & puts a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Won’t be okay until that motherfucker is put away.”

  “You think he’ll come after you now?”

  Frank shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I got the feeling that I was about as important to him as a fucking ant on the sidewalk. I don’t believe he’d go out of his way to step on me.”

  Rios stands. “Thanks for the information. If anything new comes up, give me a call. Lardass has a pile of paperwork for me today, so I’ll be riding my desk.”

  “Oh, yeah. By the way, say ‘Thanks!’ to that buddy of yours…what was his name… Clarke? …in Maintenance? Anyway, he did a Helluva job fixing my fax & cellular.”

  “I’ll pass it along. He said it was nothing really, he couldn’t find anything physically wrong with it. Just one of those weird glitches you get sometimes with electronics. Something answering to unexplainable ripples in the realm of the sub-or hyper-physical, the deux ex machina, the god or ghost in the machine…”

  “Rios, I think you’ve been overdosing on sci-fi! You’re starting to sound like some mad scientist out of a sci-fi movie…”

  “Sorry, Frank, guess this spooky shit’s getting to me, too.”

  “Rios? There’s one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This guy is not Zodiac. Don’t ask me how I know, ’cause I can’t fucking explain it. I just know. I guess like old Elijah, I know the scent of my quarry, & this is another Beast entirely…” Rios nods, glances one last time at Miss Olympic Iron, then walks to his car.

  [ 99 ]

  Keeping to the shadows as he traverses the seedier sections of the city, Slice stops by an overflowing dumpster near a liquor store, & he tosses the blonde wig into the heap of refuse. A police patrol car glides by, & he ducks behind the dumpster till the cruiser disappears around the next corner. Then he resumes his southerly trek to his rented hovel.

  An intense itching begins in his groin, quickly spreading up his belly & chest. His first thought is that the stolen clothes are infested with lice; but when his face begins to itch, he decides that his itching is unrelated to the dead nigger’s clothes. He scratches his jaw with his long, ragged nails. But the scratching provides no relief to his Job-like torment. His failure to reach Professor Punk & the Li Di 9 is forgotten for the moment—he can think of nothing but the terrible itch crawling over every inch of his skin, now, like ants or termites burrowing into his hyper-sensitive flesh.

  The streetlights are ringed with blue haloes, & the windowglass of storefronts is rippling with blue illumination, & the blue aura seems to cause his eyeballs to itch.

  Slice suddenly realizes that there is one part of his body that is not tormented by
this itching: the small of his back where the blood-soaked cotton of the nigger’s shirt is cool & damp & soothing against his skin.

  He ducks into the next alley, pulls off the shirt & rubs the bloody cloth against his face. The itching stops where the blood-damp material touches his skin. Then he removes the shirt from his face the itching once again attacks his flesh. I’m itching for blood…

  [ 100 ]

  Snuff drops the cordite-reeking .38 Police Special into a nearby dumpster, then makes a swift but orderly retreat to the parked T-Bird, hotwires it to rumbling life, & throws it into reverse, tromping down on the gas as he does so. The big red bomb rattles backward down the alley, kicking up litter in its hasty exit. Snuff deliberately sideswipes the brick wall lining the cramped corridor, the sheet metal screeching, sparking a miniature blaze of shooting stars, as paint scrapes & metal shavings pare away from the left fender & door panel…

  Leaving evidence of its hasty exit on both wall & auto.

  [ 101 ]

  Frank takes a long drag on his smoke, his bruised chest filling with pain as it expands. Having unburdened himself to Rios, he feels only a little relief. The truly frightening vision he somehow received from the mindfucker remains unspoken. It came as he was holding the muzzle of his .44 to his temple. & it haunts him—terrifies him—now as much as it did last night. The vision is worse than anything he saw in Devil’s Valley. & it is eating away at his sanity. Frank has never been a very religious man, & he has never viewed the Bible as much more than poetic history. But what he saw in the mindfucker’s psyche makes sense only in a biblical frame of reference—but there is more, so much more to the complexities of this flash-viewed apocalypse than the pitiful limits of any one philosophy—possibly even that any score of philosophies—can encompass in their religious rationale. He saw—& still sees the haunting after-image like an acid flashback—the awesome figure of the Anti-Christ (for want of a better catch-phrase concept…) transfixed upon the monstrous, towering figure of the Redeemer, suffering even as He had suffered, & in that very crucible of suffering transformed into The Great Beast who shall bring about the reign of Satan & the end of this world as we have known it…