[ 161 ]
Frank props himself up on one elbow, leans over to the bedside table, picks up his pack of Marlboros, & offers a cigarette to Cherry before he taps one out for himself. He flicks a flame from his lighter, drags deep on the smoldering smoke, & lets out a sigh.
“Oh, Poor Baby, you took one Hell of a beating today, didn’t you?” she asks, stroking the tangle of hairs down the center of his chest, running her fingertips ever so gently across the great livid bruise there, & eyeing the cross-hatching of bandages on his limbs where the slugs had plowed shallow furrows in his flesh. “—even though you scragged the bastards…”
“Naw, that was from last night’s fracas,” he says, “but, shit, you don’t know anything about that goddamn mess.”
“You might be surprised to know what I’ve learned via the grapevine, already.”
“No shit? Where?”
“Heh, Stud, you may be a great lay, but you’re also my competition, okay? I don’t divulge my sources, never. Professional ethics & all that shit, but the bottomline is: you blow their cover you blow their value. Forget it. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“By the way, Frank, I’m not sayin’ this to rub it in,” she says, as her hand drifts much lower down the slope of his abdomen, “but that Mr. Macho six-gun self-image very nearly got you blown to fucking Perdition, today, you know that, don’t you?”
“I gotta admit it, Cherry, I’ve never been in a fix like this one. Never. Not outgunned that goddamn bad! Shit, I was, what?… six for two-hundred-fifty…? Shit! Even in friggin’ Nam the odds were never that bad. Never. That’s…uhhh a what? one-to-forty ratio?…no…more like one-to-forty-one-&-a-half, right…?
“If it hadn’t been for you…”
“Look. Frank. I’ve been up against more than my share of these hired killers for the drug mobs & heavy-porn traffickers, yeah, & the outlaw one-percenters, too. These guys play for real, Frank. No second chances here. Not except for your charmed ass… These punks have the money to equip themselves. Shit, have you seen some of their armories? We’re talkin’ ground-to-air missiles. One-shot rocket launchers. Mortars. Assault rifles & submachines up the ass. Hell, I’ve seen biker hideouts tricked out with bunkers sporting friggin’ 30mm Hughes Chain Guns they must’ve stripped off what? Helicopters? Better holster that badass little pea-shooter of yours & get yo-self a gun, Stud, something with maybe twenty-five or thirty rounds—dig?”
“Well, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I think you’re right. It is a war of escalating weaponry, isn’t it?”
“Frank, seriously, it’s too late to turn back. Whoever you pissed off is playin’ for keeps & you’d better get with the program unless you wanna be doin’ pushups under the daisies…
“I mean, you’ve gotta be like the boy scouts, Trooper— be prepared… or be nada. Zero. How the Hell do you think I came through without an extra crease in my crotch, huh, Big Man? My Renegade?— it’s tricked out with bulletproof glass, reinforced doors to resist anything up to heavy armor-piercing. No-blow tires. The whole schmeer. & I tote heat when I’m in a war zone. What’d you think of that Galil of mine, huh? Nice?”
“Yeah. But—”
“But nothin’. Don’t be an ass. You think those skells are gonna give up? FUCK. NO. So you got six. So what? Death is cheap these days, Baby… Every punk is ready to play hitman. So these guys were slants. So? You’re talkin’ the friggin’ opium trade & the big bucks stuff—your basic smokable meth, ice, China White, the whole bag, Frank. Most of your real SOTA lab stuff, your latest designer mindblow, it’s mostly all synthesized over in Hong Kong in their “black labs,” then moved in through a very sophisticated import network. You keep totin’ that Dirty Harry dinosaur popgun & it’s gonna be Obit City for you, Dude…”
“Keeerrriiisssttt, Cherry! You’re startin’ to sound like a naggin’ wife, already…”
[ 162 ]
“Another thing about that added pumpkin is what it hides. In a previous letter, Brittain taunted the police: ‘Hey pig doesn’t it rile you up to have your no(z)e rubed in your booboos?’ Besides the obvious wordplay suggesting ‘rube’ whose meaning is roughly, ‘country bumpkin,’ & is used among carnies as slang for ‘sucker,’ there is the incorrect, ‘z’ spelling of ‘nose,’ & the deliberately childish, ‘booboos.’ & bang, here we have the semantic connection of “pumpkin” & “bumpkin,” as well as ‘BOO!’ with ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ & ‘booboos.’ No accident. I assure you. Okay? Now, using the hint of childish terminologies, the pumpkin hides the skeleton’s ‘pee pee.’ I don’t have to tell you, Lucy, who both Brittain & you know with the initials, ‘P.P.’! Could He have been leaving clues by naming known associates, or ‘KAs’ in the lawman’s lingo? Odd, too. Did you know that ‘pee’ is an obscure word meaning ‘to look with one eye?’ Weird enough for you?
“The next one is a piece of cake! The four ‘MOs’ all refer to ways of snuffing a victim. The missing candle, which must be there to transform the pumpkin into a Jack-o-lantern, might be said to have been snuffed. You don’t know this, Lucy, but Brittain’s protegé was a young street urchin, nicknamed ‘Snuff.’ How’s that for following the pattern?
“Now, let’s logic leap to the side of the card with the other skeleton— First off, the positioning of the Death figure is all-important. It was pasted on overlapping the original punchline of the ‘joke’ card—”
The cursor once again darts to the section in question—
‘…But, then, why spoil the game?
&, farther down, toward the lower right-hand corner
Happy
Halloween!’
“Lucy, do you notice how the ‘H’ in ‘Happy’ is juxtaposed just above the ‘a’ in ‘Halloween,’ so that it spells out ‘Ha Ha Ha,’ leading off in three separate directions? It is, of course, part of the original message but most apropos to Brittain’s sense of humor. Okay. The main point of this is the skeleton’s legs are most peculiarly askew— the left femur obscures the letters ‘pp’—hardly a coincidence, ehhh? That’s twin references to my own initials. & I was Brittain’s coworker & confidante.
“See the eye in the ‘vulvate’ knothole, the one circled, lip-like, by the ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ & ‘YOU ARE DOOMED!,’ seems to be staring at the ‘4’ in ‘4-TEEN.’ The curved side of the ‘D’ in ‘DOOMED’ is odd—exaggeratedly bowed, pointing arrowlike to the word ‘BOO!,’ & the strand of spiderweb that the left fingers point to also points at the same word. Okay. Remember how I mentioned the possible mimicking of black dialect on the flipside of the card? Well, how about this? ‘BOO’ is one hype term for ‘heroin.’ & it is of black origination. I think the ‘e’ the skeleton’s right fingers & the tip of the exclamation mark both point to should be added to the ending, forming ‘heroine.’ But which heroine? Lucy, you know the old phrase, ‘which witch is which?’ or is it ‘which which is witch?’ I can never recall. Anyway. My insider knowledge allows me to cheat, here. Remember the four ‘MOs’? They might be said to be forms of rough justice, right? Okay. At the time that the letter was written, Brittain & Snuff were both shacking up in the Haight with this witch, a jailbait chick who went by the name of ‘Justine.’ The word ‘Justice,’ by the way, is suggested also if you consider which letter was out of place in the acrostic— ‘Just S.’ Get it?”
[ 163 ]
“Yes, You Pitiful Bible Fuck,” Maldoror says, His voice leveled, totally in control despite the fact that He is engaged in sodomizing the subject of His verbal humiliation. “For every event of consequence there is some catalyst. Take My own dedication to the destruction of human life, My penchant for the perversion of innocence, for instance. Now. I’m certain you would say, quite pompously, ‘Nothing could warrant such total inhumanity, such single-minded, even obsessive, determination to break every societal taboo, such an onslaught of anarchic devastation.’ But, Truman Fucking Gilmore, you would be wrong. Dead wrong…”
[ 164 ]
“—Tell you what— I’m like
a kid in a toy shop when I walk into a gun dealer’s. When I see the latest thing…well…I just can’t help but pop the bucks for it. Right now that damn Galil’s it. Perfect for what I need. But. I do get tired of some of my toys. I’ve got just the thing you need, Frank—”
“SHIT! F’rget that quip about a ‘naggin’ wife,’ Cherry! Don’t tell me—with that high-pressure spiel, you must’ve worked yer way through P.I. prep school sellin’ Kirby vacuum cleaners, right…”
“Smartass! Talk about high-pressure—” She reaches down, grasping his testicles in a playful & suggestive squeeze. “Mr. Hardguy, I’ve got this 5.56-mm Steyr AUG bullpup—have you seen one? Four interchangeable barrels—squad machine, rifle, carbine, & submachine. It’s a beaut. Four guns in one. Let you have it for, say, seven hundred? Six-hundred-fifty rounds per minute. You’ve seen ’em, haven’t you? Real smooth lines—big molded plastic stock, that huge trigger guard that fits your whole fuckin’ hand. Cutting edge stuff. Futuristic…
“Naw, I’ve seen those goddamn weird lookin’ bastards—goddamn Austrian foreign shit, look like some kid’s Buck Rodgers spark-gun or somethin’, I’d feel like a goddamn geek haulin’ one of those crazy things around.”
“Heh. It’s your funeral, Frank. Not straight enough for you, huh…?
“Say, wait a minute. How about a fifty-round magazine? How about a three-round burst with an extreme spread of one meter at a range of five hundred meters? & a caseless cartridge that won’t cook-off in a hot chamber?”
“Oh, yeah. That HITP shit? I read about it. ‘High Ignition Temperature Propellant,’ right? Solves the over-heating problem you get with conventional nitrocellulose. Pretty wild stuff, yeah.
“But it’s another goddamn foreign bastard isn’t it? German, right? Heckler & Koch—”
“—G11,” Cherry adds. She notes the sudden spark in his eyes that belies his deprecating comments about ‘foreign’ weapons.
“Nice straight lines,” she kids him, “solid lookin’ son of a bitch, too. The meat of the mechanism is the circular breech block with the chamber bored through it. It revolves around the central axis, & the cartridges feed from the magazine above it. The whole bit’s shrouded by a plastic casing— which forms the butt, pistol grip & low-powered optical sight/carrying handle. The reticules are battery-illuminated for night firing. The barrel & mechanism recoil about an inch inside the casing, which absorbs the kick with buffer springs.”
“Yeah? But how about the ammo?”
“Well, I’ll admit it’s a bit ersatz, but I picked up a full thousand rounds with it, & I haven’t used but a couple of hundred, tops, & I’ve got a contact that can get you all you need, no sweat…”
“How much?”
“Shit, Frank, consider it a present. I just don’t want to see you getting scragged by the next hit squad. You can have it for five hundred with the ammo. Hell, I’m not usin’ the damn thing anyway. I’ve had my fun with it.”
“Fuck it. You got a deal, Lady,” he says, as he rolls over on top of her sleek belly again, insinuating himself within the moist juncture of her thighs.
[ 165 ]
“—& the first, the favored ‘MO’ is ‘FIRE,’ that ablates ‘ICE.’
“Lucy, I could keep spinning His logic thread far longer—”
“Please…don’t you think you’ve bent my ear enough on this—I’ve got business to attend to… What’s your point, Prof?”
“Okay, you’re missing some of the best stuff, but let me get to the crux of the matter. Once I fully analyze the balance of my data, with my insight on His use of Scrabble-type substitution scam, I can create a message fully encoded, that only George Simon Brittain, the Zodiac, can translate!
“One last piece of the puzzle—”
“Prof…” Lucy moans.
“Hold it. I’ve just gotta lay this on you—Zodiac was a movie buff. Remember? Okay. Well, The ‘SECRET PAL’ that begins the message on the card could clue as ‘GEORGE PAL,’ the well-known Hollywood producer— ‘George’ being the ‘SECRET,’ the first name of George Brittain. Six letters each, Another substitution—”
Blue sparks sizzle & crackle above the red-painted dome of Prof’s converted riot helmet. “Lucy. You’ve got to get me out of town. Fast… It’s that goddamned Blue Devil psycho. It’s that fucking fly in the ointment. Li Di 9 went haywire & opened a two-way channel—he’s going to plunder the knowledge I’ve just gained. I know it. The only thing that’s holding his brain-rape at bay is an arcane pseudo-science gadget I’ve rigged up: based on a fusion of alchemical principles & a spinoff on the latest electrical headache suppressors—those crazy looking portable gizmos with the battery packs wired to electrodes held in place by a band around the patient’s skull. Unless you can find me a safe haven outside his effective mindprobe radius—”
He fidgets as he listens to her response.
“No. It’s empirical. No proven scientific theory seems to apply. I can only take a SWAG based on the apparent exponential increases his power seems to demonstrate: he’s acting as an ‘energy vampire,’ absorbing the dissipated energy of each victim whose life he takes. At the rate he’s slaying, I’d better relocate at least a couple of states away. At least until your men can locate him & put him down. With extreme prejudice.”
[ 166 ]
The confines of the motel bathroom echo to the slap & squelch of flesh-on-flesh of flesh-in-flesh sheathed.
“I was born of mortal flesh, even as were you. My father was a seaman. In that, I find the root of cosmic humor. A seaman. A semen. When I first learned the word I was astounded for weeks at its subtle shades of suggested meaning. George Nicholas Brittain was the rogue who sired Me. My damn dam was a madam of very easy virtue. A tart. A slut. A whore. To be quite plain. Mr. Semen I never knew. He departed in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Never to reestablish spousal relations with Mother Whore, Mary, or as Grandmum always called her, ‘Mary the Magdalene.’ Hence, I was stunned by the connection when first I saw The Gospel of Mary the Magdalene nestled there among her shelves of texts.
“Ah. To get to the point. I only lived with My mother ’til the age of four. But I was a most precocious child. Due to My genius. I remember much, so much of what transpired. My memory has served Me well, but, alas & alack, the flipside of this metaphoric coin has much tormented Me with suffering enough for an hundred lives.
“Mother had quite a weakness for men in uniform. As many as were willing to pay her. Not to say she was averse to fucking other men. No. She was a round-heeled pro. But it was this special trade she sought to service. Military men. Bus drivers. Service station attendants. Utilities workers. Civil servants of every rank & classification. Firemen. Yes. & cops. Pigs. & pig-fuckers. They paid. She laid. I even saw her take it out in trade.
“She was of that majority who believe the kiddies know nothing of what they see or hear. That treat all kiddies as if deaf & blind. She carried out her liaisons in the same room with Me. Yes. After all, I was only a child. & we had but one bedroom in the hovel we inhabited. She earned much. But it went, alas, for Demon Rum. Or whatever she could swill. Pig Bitch. I suppose I must have been two or three when I first remember watching her suck & fuck her endless string of ‘Uncles,’ her johns. I was terrified at first by her screams, feigned or otherwise. But it wasn’t long before I began to comprehend some link between this obvious distress & the men’s spewing curses & moans of pleasure. Some of them were certainly rough trade. Their things all looked like monstrous sausages to Me—some pale white; some like bologna meat; some dark as pepperonis; some mottled & speckled like those great greasy dago links they dangle in their stinking, crowded delis. The first time I saw her sucking some guy off, I thought he was strangling her with a bratwurst or something. I beat at his naked thighs & buttocks trying in vain to save My slut of a mother.
“The bastard laughed & beat Me senseless. Just for good measure.
“When I awoke, I cried until I felt My eyes would burst.
“Yes. In her dru
nken state, she took in a good deal of rough trade who preferred to beat her black-&-blue before ‘taking her down’ & fucking her. Some used their fists. Others favored belts. ‘Different strokes for different folks,’ as they say. I soon learned that blood & pleasure are inextricable…”
[ 167 ]
“Hang on a minute, Cherry, let me up for air!” Frank groans, “Shit! I didn’t realize how late it’s gettin’ already… I’ve got a call I have to—”
“There’s a phone right here, Studmuffins. By the bed. Or don’t you remember…? You’re not gettin’ away from me that easy!”
“Yeah. Right. But this one’s private. As in ‘eye.’ I’ve got my sources, too, y’ know…” Frank’s slipping into his trousers even as he speaks, tugging on a T-shirt, & heading out the door, barefoot. “I’ll be right back, Ms. Hotpants, just gonna use the pay phone, don’t panic…”
[ 168 ]
“I want the son of a bitch out of this town. I want him out of my face. & I want it yesterday. Now, you get the brass off their fat collective ass & give the dick a one-way ticket out of town. Pronto. He’s getting too nosey. He’s getting too close to my sweet little thing, here. Comprendé?”
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