Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

  “Did Osterflood leave with you?”

  “No. I left alone.”

  “What was he doing when you left?”

  “He was sleeping on the living room rug.”

  “What was Osterflood’s relation to this girl?”

  “I’d say it was basically masochistic. Sadistic elements too.”

  “You say Osterflood was asleep when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he in good health?”

  “Ah, mm. No. He was overweight, had eaten too much that night. Had digestive problems. Was exhausting himself in acts of atonement.”

  Inspector Putt stared coldly at Dr. Rhinehart and then asked abruptly:

  “Who prepared the drinks for everyone that night?”

  The right side of Rhinehart’s face twitched.

  “The drinks?”

  “Yes, the drinks.”

  “Mr. Osterflood prepared the drinks.”

  “Did you yourself ever mix even yourself a drink?”

  Rhinehart hesitated.

  “No,” he said

  The Inspector continued to stare coldly down at Rhinehart.

  “Did the die tell you to murder Franklin Osterflood that night?”

  Rhinehart made a small noise in his throat and turned his face slowly away to stare at the blank wall to his right. After a while he said quietly, “No.” After a long silence he looked back up at Inspector Putt, whose eyes showed no emotion. Finally, the Inspector pushed a button on the side of his desk and told the detective who came to the door to “bring her in.”

  Gina entered, dressed conservatively in a knee-length skirt, a heavy formless blouse and an ill-fitting jacket.

  “That’s the man,” she said.

  “Sit down,” said the Inspector.

  “That’s him.”

  “Er, hello,” Rhinehart said.

  “He admits it. See, he admits it.”

  “Sit down, Gina,” the detective said.

  “Miss Potrelli to you, fuzz-face.”

  “Please briefly repeat your story of how the evening with Osterflood went,” said the Inspector.

  “This guy and Frank came to my apartment and I gave them both a fuck. This guy served the drinks. Osterflood began to act as if he’d been drugged and was getting woozy and this guy dragged him off.”

  “Dr. Rhinehart?” Inspector Putt said coldly.

  Rhinehart look nervously at Miss Potrelli and then spoke in a low, hesitant voice. “Mr. Osterflood and I paid a social call on Miss Potrelli. He made us all several drinks while we watched television and engaged … engaged in sexual congresses. I left with … with him lying on the floor with a blissful smile on his face. Where is Mr. Osterflood?”

  “He’s dead, damn you,” said Gina.

  “Shuttup,” said the Inspector and then went on quietly: “The body of Frank Osterflood was discovered on November 18 in the East River under the Triborough Bridge. An autopsy has revealed that he’d been dead about two days. He was poisoned with strychnine.” He looked only at Rhinehart. “You or Gina here—one of you—was the last one to see Osterflood alive.”

  “Maybe he just took a midnight swim in the East River and accidentally swallowed some water,” suggested Rhinehart with a nervous smile.

  “The percentage solution of strychnine in the East River,” Inspector Putt replied, “is still at acceptable levels.”

  “But then what happened to him?” asked Dr. Rhinehart.

  “Traces of strychnine have been found on the shelf above Gina’s liquor cabinet and in the rug in front of the TV set.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “You mixed the drinks!” Gina said shrilly.

  “No! I didn’t! Osterflood mixed them.”

  A smile appeared on Putt’s face. Rhinehart scowled. “Maybe a dice decision made him decide to kill himself in retribution for his sins. He showed certain masochistic tendencies.”

  “You mixed the drinks and you left with him,” Gina said again shrilly.

  “Not according to my story, Miss Potrelli. I …”

  “You’re a liar,” she said.

  “There are already four other witnesses who claim that they saw you leave with Osterflood, Rhinehart,” said the detective.

  Rhinehart was hunched down onto the couch and he looked up blankly at the Inspector. After a long silence he said:

  “I left with Osterflood, Inspector.”

  “All right. Where did you go?”

  “They took a tax—” Gina began.

  “Shuttup! Get her out of here.”

  Gina was removed from the room by the detective.

  “We got in a taxi. I got off at the Lexington Avenue subway stop at 125th Street. I needed to relieve myself. Osterflood went on. He was quite drunk and I felt guilty about leaving him with the cabbie but I was drunk too. I found a urinal near …”

  “Why did you lie the first time?”

  Rhinehart didn’t answer.

  “Gina’s witnesses exposed your lie.”

  “That’s true, I …”

  “And you’re lying this time too. No cabbie in the city remembers picking up two big white men in Harlem that evening. You, as a doctor, would have recognized the symptoms of strychnine poisoning as different from simple drunkenness. You, as a doctor, would know precisely how much strychnine to administer. We know Gina and her four witnesses are lying. We know you’re lying. We know Osterflood was murdered at Gina’s and never left there alive.”

  The Inspector looked down on Rhinehart’s bowed head as he might at an insect. Rhinehart seemed to be staring at the floor. The only sound was from some typewriter in the office outside. Slowly Rhinehart lifted his head and looked up at the Inspector.

  “I murdered Osterflood,” he said softly, and, again slowly, he let his face fall into his hands.

  After another moment’s silence Putt said quietly:

  “Go on.”

  “I poisoned him. I poisoned him because the dice told me to.” He looked up abruptly at Putt. “Osterflood was a moral monster. He deserved to die.” Then he let his head fall back into his hands. “I put fifty milligrams of strychnine into a glass of Scotch and gave it to him. He died while I was fucking Gina. It was horrible.”

  When Rhinehart remained silent Putt said quietly, “What happened then?”

  “I pretended to Gina that her whipping had killed him and got her and her friends to dispose of the body.”

  The Inspector walked to the door and called to a detective to bring in a tape recorder. He walked to behind his desk and wordlessly sat down in his chair. Rhinehart remained with his head in his hands, his shoulders occasionally shuddering. A detective brought in a tape recorder, placed it on Putt’s desk and plugged it in.

  “This is Lieutenant Darcy. Testing testing.”

  He played back his voice. It sounded impressive in playback.

  “If you’re ready, Dr. Rhinehart, I’d like to hear you tell me all about it. Set it going, Lieutenant.” There was a click. “What’s your name, Dr. Rhinehart?”

  “My name is Dr. Lucius Rhinehart.”

  “What happened on the evening of November 15th?”

  His head buried in his hands, Rhinehart’s words came out slowly and softly.

  “On the evening of November 15th I had dinner with Mr. Franklin Delano Osterflood. Afterwards we went to an apartment in Harlem where we, where we made love to a girl there. Osterflood was cruel to the girl. He abused her. I knew that in the past he had raped liftle girls, perhaps killed them. He’d also seduced innocent boys… . I have a son. He was a moral … monster. He … he was a disgrace, not only to dicepeople but to all mankind. He seemed to me to deserve to die.” Rhinehart paused again. “Osterflood liked to drink. He drank a lot. That night in mixing the drinks he often watered mine down. I hated him. Gina hated him. She whipped him and whipped him but he seemed to enjoy it. I found the whole thing disgusting so at about ten-thirty I left. Osterflood was sleeping drunkenly and happily on the living room rug.
How he could have been poisoned I haven’t the slightest …”

  “Stop the tape!” Putt shouted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Rhinehart looked up mournfully.

  “About what happened that night.”

  “But five minutes ago you told me you murdered Osterflood.”

  Rhinehart stared sorrowfully up at the Inspector.

  “I never said that.”

  “Is your story now the truth?” Putt snapped.

  Rhinehart hesitated and answered, “No.”

  When the Inspector lifted his hand to his face it was trembling.

  “Rhinehart,” he began. “I … I want to know what happened … on the night of November 15th.”

  Rhinehart cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” He cleared his throat and looked up broodingly at Inspector Putt.

  “On the night of November 15th, Frank Osterflood and I went to an apartment in Harlem where we were engaged to play bridge. While Frank was dealing and I was shuffing, one of the two girls there—Gina Potrelli—whipped us and mixed our drinks …”

  76

  Jake Ecstein was Rhinehart’s dieciple. He came to understand fully the potency of emptiness and the divinity of Chance, the viewpoint that everything exists at random.

  One day Jake, in a mood of sublime emptiness and randomness, was sitting in his office. Flowers began to fall like a gentle rain all about him.

  “We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness and randomness,” the gods whispered to him.

  “But I haven’t written or said anything about emptiness and randomness,” said Jake.

  “You have not spoken or written of emptiness or randomness, but your sitting there expresses them,” responded the gods. “This is the true emptiness and randomness.” And blossoms showered at an even faster rate all about Jake and his office.

  But Jake Ecstein frowned.

  “All that may be very true,” he said, “but who’s going to clean up this mess.”

  —from The Book of the Die

  77

  A week after my interview with him, Inspector Putt announced to any-one who was interested that new evidence (undisclosed) indicated conclusively that Osterflood must have committed suicide probably. Privately, he informed friends and informers that it was clear he couldn’t possibly get a conviction against either Gina or me. Gina wouldn’t have murdered Osterflood so premeditatedly in her own apartment with another white man present, and strychnine, he noted, is not the usual mode of murder of “abused Harlem whores.” Moreover, her four witnesses, while obviously they were lying, nevertheless would raise a shadow of doubt in the minds of a few radlib jurors.

  Dr. Rhinehart would be impossible to convict because no jury, radlib or one hundred and ten percent American, could be expected to understand Rhinehart’s motivation. The Inspector admitted he himself wasn’t certain he understood it. “He did it because the dice told him to,” the D.A. would proclaim and the defense attorneys would lead the general laughter which would follow. The world was changing too rapidly for the typical juror, no matter how American, to keep up. Moreover, even Inspector Putt was beginning to doubt that Rhinehart had done it, for, though he was certainly capable of murder, Rhinehart, if the Die had told him to do it, would clearly not have done such a debauched, confused, messy, unaesthetic, incompetent job of it.

  Nevertheless, Inspector Putt had called me for one last confrontation and had concluded a long lecture with the ringing words.

  “Someday, Rhinehart, the law is going to catch up with you. Someday the furies are going to come home to roost. Someday the sins you are committing in the name of your dice games are going to be taken out of the bank. Someday, you will learn, crime, even in the United States, does not pay.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I said. “But is there any hurry?”

  So my dicelife went on. I gave the Die one chance in six that I do everything in my power to bring Osterflood back to life again, but the option lost out to another one-in-six shot: that I spend three days in mourning for Frank, and that I compose a few prayers and parables for the occasion.

  On January 1, 1971, I had my third annual Fate Day to determine my long-range role for the year. The Die was given the options that (1) sometime that year I marry Linda Reichman, Terry Tracy, Miss Reingold, or a woman chosen at random (I felt that if I couldn’t make a go of a dicemarriage with someone, then the nuclear family might be in danger); (2) I give up the dice for the year and begin an entirely new career of some sort (this no longer frightening option was inspired by Fuigi Arishi’s article I had read that day on “The Withering Away of the Die”); (3) I “begin revolutionary activity against the established clods of the world, my purpose being to expose hypocrisy and injustice, shame the unjust, awaken and arouse the oppressed and, in general, to wage an unending war against crime: namely, to smash society as radically as I am trying to smash society in me” (I’d read a month before an article about Eric Cannon and Arturo Jones and their underground revolutionary group and the memory that day made me feel radical; I wasn’t sure what my words meant that I do, but the ring of them made me sit proud on the living room rug where I was preparing to cast the dice); (4) I work during the year on books and articles and novels and stories about whatever the Die dictated, completing at least the equivalent of two books (I resented the bum job of publicity work that was being done for our Dice Centers and the DICELIFE Foundation and vaguely pictured myself coming to the rescue); (5) I continue my multiple activities in promoting diceliving throughout the world, the nature of my contribution to be determined by the Die (it’s what I most felt like doing: Linda and Jake and Fred and Lil were all sporadically part of our diceteam, and the dicelife without other dicepeople is often lonely); and (6) I spend the whole year limiting my options to the duration of one day only, so that, indeed (to quote the inspired rhetoric of my ‘71 Fate Day), “each day’s dawning bring a new birth, while others ignore it and grow old.” (This last option fascinated me since I always find long-range options something of a drag: they tend to make me too patterned, even if it is the pattern of the Die.)

  But the Die, testing me, tumbled down a “four”: that I work during the year on various writing projects. Two subsequent dice decisions soon determined that I was to complete sometime during the year “an autobiography of exactly 160,000 words” (so I’ve had this stupid thing barging in on my days most of the year) and that I work on other Die-selected work when appropriate (namely when the Die and I felt like it).

  Of course writing is hardly a full-time job and I continued randomly seeing my friends, working sporadically with Dice Centers and dicegroups, occasionally lecturing, whimsically playing occasional new roles, occasionally practicing my dice exercises, and generally leading a very enjoyable, repetitious, consistently inconsistent random sporadic unpredictable dicelife.

  Then, naturally, Chance intervened.

  78

  We know from tapes made on recording devices hidden by agents of the IRS, FBI, SS and AAPP in the apartment of H. J. Wipple, the fuzzy-minded, deluded financier whose millions have helped Rhinehart’s various diseased schemes, exactly what transpired during the meeting of the Cube of Trustees of the DICELIFE Foundation on March 24, 1971. Much of it is not relevant to Rhinehart’s subsequent desperate efforts to escape the law, but a report is valuable as an indication of the sick structures and values being developed by him and his followers.

  Meetings of the Cube of Trustees occur, as we understand it, often monthly in randomly selected appropriate and inappropriate spots throughout the world usually. This one had been scheduled primarily to prepare for Rhinehart’s appearance the next week before the Executive Committee of the Psychiatrists Association of New York (PANY), where a hearing was being held prior to condemning him. The charges against him were simple: his theories of dice therapy were ridiculous and the practice incompetent, unethical, and “of doubtful medical value�
��; his Dice Centers were outrageous parodies of respectable therapeutic clinics and violated every known principle of ethics and psychotherapy; his personal life had become a public disgrace. The Psychiatrists Association of New York should dissociate itself from him and publicly condemn all he was coming to stand for. He should be expelled from PANY and a letter should be sent to the president of the AMA and to the New York State Medical Association urging that he be forbidden to practice medicine or psychotherapy anywhere in the United States, and that all others who use his methods should be similarly forbidden to practice.

  The DICELIFE Foundation Cube meeting was held in Wipple’s living room, which contains an overstuffed Victorian couch, an oriental desk with a French Provincial chair, two Danish-modern chairs, an upholstered Navy surplus raft, a large boulder, and a ten-foot area of white sand on one side of the early American fireplace. The living room is thus furnished in styles ranging from early neolithic to what J. E. has joshingly called Fire Island eternal. It is recorded that Wipple claims that everything was chosen by the Die. It seems probable.

  Present that afternoon were Wipple, an essentially conservative man whose keen capitalist mind has somehow been poisoned by the atmosphere of dicepeople; Mrs. Lillian Rhinehart, who had recently passed the New York State Bar Examination despite allegedly casting a die to choose answers to several of the multiple-choice questions; Dr. Jacob Ecstein, the deeply compromised associate of many of Rhinehart’s ventures, who is reportedly acting in an increasingly eccentric and irresponsible manner (he is up for a Special Condemnation fron the AAPP); Linda Reichman, Rhinehart’s sporadic mistress and incorrigible whore; and two hippies, Joseph Fineman and his wife, Faye, both active dice theorists. Attendance varies at these meetings, since apparently trustees determine whether they will attend by consulting their dice.

  These people had all gathered at Wipple’s by two P.M. and were sprawled around the living room in various forms of disarray: Mrs. Fineman, Miss. Reichman and Rhinehart on the couch, Ecstein and Joe Fineman sitting in the sand, Mrs. Rhinehart leaning up against the boulder and Mr. Wipple sitting at his oriental desk in his French Provincial chair. The discussion began with a long speech by Mr. Wipple urging everyone to help Dr. Rhinehart with his defense before the Psychiatrists Association the following week. He stated that if Dr. Rhinehart were condemned and expelled by PANY the pressures to close down the remaining Dice Centers would probably double; young doctors practicing dice therapy would feel pressure to abandon the dice or risk similar expulsion; new therapists would be harder to recruit. Rhinehart himself would probably have his appearance on the Religion for Our Time Program canceled. If Rhinehart were condemned and expelled by PANY it might signal the beginning of the end of diceliving and thus the darkening of men’s hopes throughout the world.