Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  The interviewer moves on to a thin, serious looking girl who was dressed as a Bundy girl last night.

  “When you really think about it, this Mr.400 is something we should have expected a long time ago. It’s just like 9/11. In certain ways, you can say that Reap is very volatile. Of course, sooner or later somebody is going to end up turning a gun on somebody else. How could we be surprised? Reapers have all kinds of moral paradigms. They can be unpredictable and sometimes have been known to quite brutally pass judgment on things. Sooner or later, Reap was going to end up passing judgment on itself. It’s inevitable. He’s just Ultra-Reap, more Reap than Reap. He’s everything that we’re about, and he reminds us that we need to stop and shake things up sometimes. His exact moral tenets might not make a whole lot of sense, but it’s free speech. He has every f---ing right to kill for them.”

  Now I feel extremely glad that Jeremy isn’t up to see this, and of course the inevitable “two wrongs don’t make a right” lecture from some expert. Probably the expert I’m meeting today at the House of Pizza. I feel outraged, I feel glad that that this ended up being a big story and I feel glued to it. Maybe in part because I can’t believe and more than that, that on some level at least, it ended up working. Of course, they move onto other witnesses who don’t have a goddamn clue what it was about.

  “That dude’s got some style. He just goes and walks right in and he kills a Bundy winner in front of a whole club full of people. Then to get everybody’s attention again, he shoots the drummer and the bassist from the Aberrations. And if this guy’s that close to nailing four hundred people, he’s definitely cool in my book. Not even Jack would kill a Bundy winner in public. He’s just so Reap! Everybody else looks all Veinte like they can’t spray the red nowhere.”

  Jesus. Poor traumatized kids. They seem so devastated. I wonder if polite society could really feel sorry for any of them. Well, polite society probably does feel sorry for them, but for a whole different reason than that. I wonder how I could have been one of them for so long without hating myself for it. Gotta wonder how I can forgive myself now. How long could I say “I was young and vulnerable”? Seven years ago, when the trial was on, and everything was splitting open, it would have been an excuse. But for so long after following it, I still kept on thinking it was a good idea. That kind of devotion’s not a phase, it’s adopting a lifestyle. My excuse went the way of theirs long ago. If Reap is in fact a damnable offense, then I am damned without a doubt. I’m about to shut it off when I remember that Penny Dreadful was there. A Reap celebrity is here to talk about the first serious assault on Reap. Am I morbid? Yes, I am. I am, after all, Ultra Reap.

  “I am sad to lose my bandmates. Scotty and Razor were nice guys, talented musicians, and close friends to me. But here’s the thing; if killing is right, it’s right, if killing is wrong, then it’s really wrong. We can’t say that because someone we love was killed, then this killing is wrong. Everybody’s loved by somebody; every victim turns somebody else into a victim too. So, if I say that this Mr.400 is a lunatic or some kind of deviant who stands against the things that I believe, then I’m a hypocrite. I’d be like the pigs in Animal Farm saying that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. If this guy did this, he’s one of us or he isn’t. He either has the same rights Godless Jack and Hacksaw Sally have or Godless Jack and Hacksaw Sally don’t have those rights. America is we know it can’t run without equal rights. If somebody wants to use these rights to challenge us, to provoke us to think, or to show us what they perceive to be our folly, we have to let them. There’s no middle ground about this, everybody’s a person, and everybody’s a corpse. That’s what Mr.400’s about, and that’s what Reap’s about. In the end we’re all in the ground and we’re all worm food. There’s no debate. Mr.400 is Reap, and if he’s Reap, he’s one of us, and if he’s one of us, he has the right to kill any one of us, and if somebody gets him, perish the thought, then that guy has the right too. Scotty, Razor, I love you guys. Next album’s for you two, and I’ll belt it out real nice. Yo, Mr.400, if you’re out there watching, I miss my friends and my bandmates but you’re human and I love you. If you’re out there God, take care of Scotty and Razor and Mr.400, k?”

  I never realized how strange it is when celebrities are actually mature. I knew that at the end of what she said, she’d be crying, and she is. The mascara drips and it looks like she’s literally crying her eyes out. But it’s not fake. It’s not a celebrity tantrum, not Pastor Tommy Simmons or any of his kind. She believes every word of what she said and what she said isn’t bullshit or dogma or a total joke or anything. I’m so shocked that I don’t even notice that the controversial Mr.400 is behind me on the bed, wide awake. He takes me completely by surprise when he starts speaking, something I don’t expect out of him for a few more hours.

  “That Penny Dreadful seems like she might actually be a pretty cool chick.”

  Which should startle me more: a.) that Jeremy is wide awake out of the blue b.) That Jeremy approves of a speech given by a Reap icon or c.) That he used the words “pretty cool chick”. The whole effect is that of a middle aged Jewish accountant saying “Yo, G that Josef Goebbels is tight!” My confused, bewildered and horrified response is a raised eyebrow and a curled lip. It looks like Elvis finishing up the New York Times Saturday crossword. Jeremy doesn’t react to this at all, but instead gets up, half naked, and walks to the kitchen.

  “Is it too late for pancakes?” he shouts.

  “You can’t think like that,” I shout back, “it’s never too late for pancakes.” I look at the clock and it turns out that it IS too late for pancakes. I’ve been so caught up in all the coverage that I’ve lost track of time. I’m meeting Ian for lunch in ten minutes. Jeans, bra, t shirt in a minute and a half. I’m good. I sigh, remembering how much Jeremy hates Ian. He hates hates hates Ian, it says in his journal. I wonder how to bring this up without slighting him. Will I still be part of this team if I spend time with the enemy? The specific rules of team 400 have not yet been laid down, but I’m pretty sure this is a violation of them. Tail between your legs, pure humility. Don’t let anyone feel betrayed.

  “Jeremy,” I shout into the kitchen, “I’m meeting Ian for lunch. I know that-“

  He comes out of the kitchen, interrupting me with a quick kiss. God that man moves fast. Freak.

  “Okay. Come back with some good gossip, alright?”

  “Okay. Sure. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah,” he answers, “I feel something a lot better than okay, actually.”

  “Powerful? Vindicated?”

  “Satisfied.”

  That’s definitely a new one, but hopefully, we can roll with it. I can only think of few nonsexual circumstances in which satisfied has been a part of Jeremy’s vocabulary, so I’ll take it and feel quite content with it. It’s also good to know that he isn’t infuriated with my rendezvous with an alien-breeding cyborg propagandist or whatever Jeremy thinks he is. My mother always said that “changed man” is an oxymoron, but I believe he’s moving toward stability, good judgment and all those things that are the opposite of the brunt of our task. I have to believe it. I have to believe I can take the place of other voices in his head. I feel good when I get in the car and start off for the House of Pizza. I feel good and useful and important. As if I’d been on the news for something other than being an accessory to murder.

  Ian is at the table in the back that he always insists on being seated at. Every time he needs to have that table. I’ve seen him politely wait for people sitting there to finish their food or the waitress to finish cleaning, but I’ve never seen him sit anywhere else. He refuses to sit in the front because he’s afraid of people seeing him and recognizing him. He refuses to sit in the middle because other guests can overhear his conversation. Yes, there are three other tables in the back, but Ian can’t make use of any of these three. Two of them are next to windows, and he doesn’t like sitting by windows. Maybe it has to do w
ith his privacy issues, maybe he’s somehow afraid for life, I couldn’t say. The third has the initials of an ex-girlfriend carved into it. For these reasons, there is nowhere else you can be graced by the presence of Reap expert and celebrity Ian Sterling. I’m starting to sound like Jeremy sometimes, but he’s not half so bad a guy as Jeremy thinks he is. I wish Jeremy would be able to see where he’s coming from, even if it’s nowhere like where he is. At least he didn’t make a face or look worried or huff or sigh when I told him who I was meeting with, so as I said it could be worse, but Jeremy’s opinion is already sort of seeping in, and I need to fight it off. I don’t feel like looking down on him right now, because Ian for some reason isn’t fashionably late, not to mention he looks like a man who just saw a random psycho shoot half a rock band a few feet away from him. Ah, that explains it. Now Ian gets to look down on Jeremy and think he’s a crackpot. It will be so much less complicated now that the disdain is a two way street.

  “I’m fifteen minutes late, right?” I ask, worried about Ian showing up on time for anything.

  “Only five, actually.” His denim jacket is placed on the seat next to him. The circles under his eyes look like badly applied makeup instead of what I know they actually are. I search his face for signs of what might be wrong in spite of already knowing quite well what it is.

  “I caught the news.” I don’t feel like talking about it, and I don’t know if he will either, but it somehow seems polite to acknowledge the so-called tragedy. It’s rude to ignore when something bad happens to a friend, even if for you it was something good. He nods gravely and takes a sip of his iced tea. Then he puts his forehead in his hands as if he’s praying for the strength to cry in public or the strength not to cry in public. I don’t want to hear him cry, I’m not sure that I can muster the kind of respect it takes to put energy like that out there. He’s distraught, I’m sympathetic and I really hope that’s where we’ll leave things. I hope that this lunch can be pleasant somehow.

  “Did you ever see something that makes you feel like you’re going to hell just for watching it?” I should hesitate, but I don’t, I can’t. I feel it far too strongly.

  “Yes.”

  “When it was all over, I went home and cried. I don’t think I’ve stopped for more than twenty minutes at a time. It’s like that time’s just for catching my breath. But I think I’ll be fine through lunch, I like these lunches, Cass.”

  He feels faded and skeletal, awestruck, traumatized and maybe even gone for good. I wonder if Jeremy killed more of Reap than he thought he did during the raid. I wonder how big a part of Reap Ian is or will be. I wonder if he’ll come back from wherever it is this whole affair’s left his head. This is the face of a victim, a dead man, someone whose way of life might have been taken from him. If it’s not a good way of life, is it okay to take it away?

  “I couldn’t understand it all, Cass, how I could witness something so huge and beautiful. I wish you’d been there to see it all. The blood, the terror, the excitement. We had thought at first that it was only art when the PA came on and he killed Wayne Pfenninger. But art can’t be that amazing. That was the statement when the bassist and the drummer went down. No more rhythm. It had stopped cold, stagnated. It was fate that brought down Buddy Holly. He couldn’t feel the honest-to-god pulse of life that Elvis and Roy Orbison would get at. This Mr.400 reached into the sky and yanked down that plane, dashing it against the ground. This Mr.400 took culture into his own hands. I haven’t witnessed anything this big since I made a fake press badge and watched them bring Jack into the courtroom. I’ve never been frightened at le Couteau before, but I should have known. Reap is tragedy. Danger is everywhere. Even in the womb children die. That’s what it was. In the safest place…”

  I feel lucky when the waitress interrupts Ian’s mortified and worshipful rant.

  “What’ll you have?”

  Normally he would have been incensed, but not today. He doesn’t mind in the least that he was interrupted smack of the middle of some insane twelve hour epiphany. Ian’s a man who believes in “the sanctity of the word” (as he often puts it), but his epiphany isn’t being relished nor are the words of his rants and the thoughts behind the words. Amazing how a man, especially a man like Ian, can be defeated and ecstatic at the same time. He’s completely still before ordering. He pauses for too long. Should I feel miserable for making an old friend so sick?

  “Two slices of pepperoni, ham, sausage, bacon and meatball. I think you should put some garlic on that too. Green peppers, that’s it. And…”

  “The works you mean?”

  “Are there onions on the works?”

  She looks at him like he just asked her what number came between three and five.

  “Yeah, naturally.”

  “No onions. Everything else then, unless you put pineapple on it. Two slices of the works with no onions. Make it three actually. And a coffee.”

  I get the feeling that I’m watching a man’s nerves try to reconnect themselves. Life is getting harder and harder to process. I reflexively say “I’ll have the same,” not even thinking about what he’s ordered.

  “We have a six-slice pizza,” says the waitress.

  “We’re fine with the slices,” Ian answers curtly, and the girl walks off, wondering exactly how much of what we’ve been smoking.

  “I don’t how to write about this,” he tells me. I don’t blame him. Christ, I wouldn’t know either. I don’t what to say. I just hope that he’ll talk himself through this and reach some sort of logical conclusion. I think it’s a matter of waiting. I suddenly remember what Jeremy said about trying to get some information off of him. It appears to be crumbling. He’s about as coherent as Lud and as emotionally present as Inscrutability Jones. I suppose he might to try taking his own life, or turning things around and acting like he’s seeking canonization. Maybe he will do both. Maybe he will end up wallowing in excess, since after all this man who found something dirty about two slices of cheese pizza on a Saturday afternoon is about to consume half a barnyard. Maybe Jeremy will get his wish and I’ll come home with the words of a dead, fat beatified Ian. Some recon. My heart sinks when I realize that there might not be enough sense in Ian for a word of sense. I don’t feel like playing spy.

  “I feel a bit like Jack London,” he says, “excited that mankind might be returning to nature, striking up some kind of bargain. Hoping that maybe more than those few with the brains to think what I think already will have the brains to get together and start to make everything at least a bit better. ”

  What do I say to that? “It’s huge.”

  I find myself really wondering whether Ian is ready to know everything. How can you get the notion of rebelling against something but not know what the rebellion’s about or that it’s against things you stand for and even proliferate? Reap is tragedy, that’s true. The tragedy of a rapture that nobody will participate in, an unattended apocalypse. When the greatest authority on a subject in existence fails to sense that it’s coming apart at the seams and failing to function as a part of society, that’s a very bad sign. Perhaps even a sign of imminent destruction. He seems at some level to like what’s happening; it’s just a shame that he doesn’t understand it at all. The difference between shaking something up in order to make it more risqué and violent and seeking to destroy it for the common good is just about completely lost to him. The more he speaks, the more ignorant he seems and the more scared for him I get.

  The slices of pizza are massive, yet barely visible beneath a jungle of green peppers and several heaps of meat. Ian doesn’t seem deterred in the least. I want to warn him that it might be a bad idea to introduce his stomach to this food before he has any others. Looking at the man across from me’s state of mind; I’m pretty damn sure he hasn’t indulged in a healthy breakfast. It also occurs to me that this isn’t the time for meddling, so I take a big, oily, juicy, crunchy, over-stimulating bite. The first of what will probably be around thirty. But, it might not be suc
h awful fare for the intent of returning vital signs to an utter carcass of a man. I watch Ian devastate the first slice in three or four bites, being rid of it in only a matter of seconds. Sauce and grease are all over his chin, making him look like a cross between a three year old and an extremely sloppy vampire.

  In the middle of his second slice (which this time he eats like his typically fastidious self with a fork and knife) his cell phone rings. He stares at it like I’ve never seen him stare at it before, like it’s just started talking and has told him that the pants he’s wearing make his ass look too big. It takes him four rings to pick it up, and even when he does so, he looks genuinely confused by it. His hello takes a long time, but after it comes out, he’s fine. He heaves a sigh and makes a face when he finds out who’s on the other end of the line.

  “What have you got, Hausmann? I’m at lunch relaxing following one of the most intense nights of my life, so unless Hacksaw Sally was spotted at the Vatican fucking the I-80 Roadflare in the ass with a poolcue, I’m really going to have to sit it out. Fucking context, Hausmann. Last night was huge. Its width in cultural scope is equal to the width of your fat ass. Well, maybe not as big as your fat ass, but damn close. I think you’ve most likely got two things: jack and shit. But, if I don’t take your tip, Miranda will get it. So, tragically, I’m gonna have to give you the time of day or lose my place in line. So give it to me, Hausmann, you’ve got ten minutes.”

  Nice to see the old Ian emerging. Put him in the same room with Walter Hausmann and you’re bound to see his blood start to boil. I don’t blame him. Hausmann’s a fat, greasy, lecherous pig who constantly smells like stale cum and Jim Bean. He’s less fun than prom night diarrhea. Of course, Hausmann’s a film school prodigy, a crime scene and snuff film cinematographer whose eye and instincts stack up with anybody else in his circles, and whose nose for trouble and gossip make him a necessary evil at most good parties. When you’re on the phone with Walter Hausmann, you’re pretty much obligated to yell at, jerk around and all around shake down important information from the guy so that the prospect of small talk doesn’t come about.