by Rex Miller
"He told his secretary he'd be back in a few minutes," the cop said to Eichord, "and that was the last thing he ever said to anybody as far as we know.
"There was about a half a pound of plastique under the pay phone. It went off approximately three minutes following this last call. Blew him right in half, took out the front windows, glass fucking everywhere, killed an innocent man —"
"Adios, Jake." another cop said.
Eichord thought about the line in Shakespeare's Henry VI. The one about "Kill all the lawyers." He rewound the tape back a little ways, listening to the cool, well-modulated, soft tones say, "Tell him it's Roy Cohn." It was a distinctive voice. The man speaking barely above a whisper, enunciating with the greatest precision, accentless and bland like an announcer but without the professional smoothness, each syllable distinct from the next. Overprecise. Confident.
"You don't know me and my name won't be important to you," the soft voice said, pronouncing each vowel so precisely.
Jack Eichord reached over and rewound it back again and tried to imagine the man's mouth as it formed the o sounds, "You don't know me and my name won't be important to you —"
"Wrong," said Eichord to the tape.
"Hey, I can tell ya one thing about that voice for sure."
"Yeah?" They looked at the cop who had spoken.
"Jackie Nails it ain't."
The thing about Rita was. Yes, you dirty old man. That WAS the thing about her. And there were other things he liked too. He liked her. He liked — hell, he LOVED the idea of liking a woman. One woman. He was nuts about liking.
It was good to be, as the previous generation had put it, "of an age." He guessed they were of an age, okay. It was an interesting age, too. No doubt about it. Even with the anxieties and the doldrums and the infrequent paranoia, there was that wonderful feeling of being comfortable in your skin that so rarely is gifted on the young. They have other things going for them, sure. But he wouldn't trade places.
Take Rita, and he certainly would. Every chance he got, thanks. She had that class you can't acquire by any shortcut. Money will definitely not buy it. It's more than style, or flair, or good breeding. It's class. Even in her wildest, hottest moments of abandon, he thought her touchingly decorous.
He knew he could talk to her of Casablanca, Sibelius' Valse Triste, Dostoyevski and Diaghilev and Della Street and Vivian Delia Chiesa, and she might know and remember. He could whisper to her of Madame de Beauvoir and Ted de Corsia and Vaughn de Leath and Demosthenes and she'd not lose her marbles. But would she remember Les Damon and Les Tremayne, Brad Runyon and Margot Lane, Olan Soule and Omar the Mystic, Jack Packard and Michael Axford, George W. Trendle and Phillips H. Lord? Would she recall the pussycat on Kilimanjaro, Moxie and Chox,
Chickory-Chick, Stan Getz' Stella? Stella Dallas? Or only Dallas . . . ? He knew, and the flood of knowing engulfed the hard consonants in a stream-of-consciousness distant sharing.
She was his salvation, first of all. The one thing that could elevate him out of the dour, drab, sordid milieu that held him in its more or less permanent grip. Rita could take him out of there in an eye blink. Just the thought of being with her, that long, flashy, red mane of silky-soft hair that framed her pale and angelic beauty, the look of her striding across a room on those killer legs of hers, it was enough to turn him completely around in a New York second. The lady made him crazy. What a fox. He especially liked her mouth and told her so as they moved forward in the moderately long line waiting to see Asphalt Jungle.
"You've got some mouth on you," he whispered to her, "you know that?"
"Yes. A lot of people I know say I've got a real mouth on me."
"Well, that too. But even that turns me on."
"Laundry lists turn you on, Binaca breath, so what else is new?"
"Waiting in lines doesn't turn me on. But I'll do anything to see Marilyn again. You two had something in common, ya know?"
"Oh, sure. I want to list all the things that Marilyn Monroe and I have in common. I'll list them in alphabetical order, okay? We're both women. She spoke English and I speak English. When she was still alive her body temperature was about ninety-eight point six and by coincidence so is mine. Well, that's pretty much the end of the list. We do have a world in common, don't we?"
"I could work on the body-temperature part if you've got a minute."
"You want me to call a cop, mister?"
"The worst thing about being close to you is that you don't get to look at you from a distance. I wish you could be with me and across the street at the same time, so I could watch you walk. If I could see you walking down the street right now on those lovely, long legs of yours . . . . " His black eyes were sparkling at her and he was speaking very softly in her ear.
"Well, kindly try to NOT jump on my bones here in the line. Dad is retired, and I'm not at all certain we can count on Winston bailing us out if we were arrested," she whispered, "for creating a public spectacle. After all, this is St. Louis, almost the Bible Belt."
"Is that right?" he whispered back, hotly.
"Also," she said, the tip of her tongue touching his ear for emphasis as she whispered, "if you keep nuzzling me like this we may not get to watch The Asphalt Jungle again, which you've probably only seen roughly twenty-seven times. I don't think I could stand something like this on my conscience."
"If you really don't want to see Marilyn and the gang we can bop on over to East St. Louis right now. There's a little neighborhood art house showing Dick Powell in Cry Danger."
"Oh, my God! Really? Can this be true?" He nodded affirmatively. "Be still, my beating heart. This is too exciting. And who is the leading lady in that one, Lillian Gish? No. Don't tell me. Just say this much. Is it a talkie?"
"Yes. Of course. It's the ultimate trailer-court movie. Seedy and sleazy just the way you like 'em."
"Good." She shook her red mane as if in pain at the thought. "Do we know each other well enough I could ask one small favor?"
"You got it, shweetheart," Bogie said. "Just whishtle."
"After we've been together for a few more months — you know, when we really start to know each other — there's something I'd like to ask you to do for me. It's kind of wild and crazy. And perhaps it isn't something you'd want to do on your own, it's so kinky. But please, keep an open mind about this. Sometime — if I'm good — could we go see a NEW movie? You know, one that's in color? With living actors?"
A long pause while Eichord considered this.
"No. Sorry." He shook his head. "You ask too much."
"Sorry! Oh, my!" She mock-winced to herself. "Bite my tongue."
"I'll take care of that," he said as the line inched forward in the direction of the stale-popcorn smell.
Hell, you never know where you'll find a clue, right?
Spain tried to remember when he'd gone to a doctor for any kind of a checkup. He was getting a feeling that he didn't like. Not every day but quite frequently he'd get this sort of dizzy sensation, this feeling like he was falling. Just the way he felt when he was about to come down with a bad cold. His sinuses were killing him for some reason. The new bed he'd bought for the house didn't feel right. Something was wrong with the mattress. He had a painful ingrown toenail he couldn't seem to do anything about. He went to the bathroom and was reluctant to look at his stool.
It was when he was in back of the small funeral home that he had that odd feeling again. The desire to kill the next person he came in contact with. He correctly analyzed it for the insanity that it was and pushed it back. He wanted a large cardboard box like coffins and refrigerators and things come in, and that is why he was there. It was for the soundproof room he'd built.
Frank Spain had experimented with convex polygons, rhomboidal parallelograms, every imaginable shape. A trapezoidal quadrilateral of two short, matching sides and a slightly longer back seemed ideal. The front of the roof would be for interrogation. The trapezoidal shape played off the weird roofline, allowing him to create a set
of plausible fake walls that appeared to butt against one another. He built them as double walls, eight walls, not four, the hidden inner room — not much more than a walk-in closet — being a double-walled soundproof chamber.
The back of each wall in the office, his L-shaped storage room, and master bedroom were covered in acoustical soundpoofing tiles, which he'd cleared with the landlord long before he made a deal to rent the place.
The small space between each pair of walls was filled with egg crates, or would be as soon as he found his large sheets of cardboard to hold them just so. Then the inner walls were covered in carpet remnants. There are few more effective sound baffles.
There was no cardboard in back of Lane-Freeman's, a small, middle-class funeral establishment. He walked up and tried the back door. Unlocked. He walked in. It was an empty anteroom of some kind. He walked in, turned to the left, and went through a door marked PRIVATE. It was a preparation room. Spain smiled. The feeling was very strong. What if someone who looked a little like Gaetano Ciprioni would suddenly show his ugly face in the door.
Spain quickly went over to a metal table next to a sink and picked up a sharp instrument which he held by his side as he walked out of the building. No one had seen him. The feeling passed and he went on to another establishment and found his sheets of cardboard, which he could barely squeeze into the back seat of the large vehicle.
Back in his special home he finished the egg-crate sound block and walled off the make-do baffles with the cardboard, creating both a double dead-chamber and an effective sound-stopper. The center of the small, concealed room was over a deep, drainage ditch that had been the deciding factor in the choice of rentals. What the landlord didn't know was that his new tenant had enclosed a small section of this ditch, now a pit of lye, and sawed through the floor of the home, making the pit accessible from inside the house.
In the past weeks Spain had been collecting makeshift torture tools as the spirit moved him. And in a corner of the small "interrogation room" was a box of shackles, pliers, knives, razors, hooks, picks, pincers, things made to pierce and rip and torment and mutilate and eviscerate. On the back wall there was a shelf of deadly chemicals and in the corner some saws and an oxyacetylene torch.
It was just a very nice, middle-to-upper-middle-class brick three bedroom from the front. Unusual only for the isolated location and the busy roofline. And now Spain's custom interior work. He left the house, flipping on his security system — can't have burglars breaking in — and got in the car.
He dialed his cutout from a pay phone and heard some good news. "Glad you called," she told him. "A Mr. Hitter called twice for you. He said he'd be at this number at the designated time. Just touch base as soon as you could. He wanted me to say it just like that. At the designated time. Just touch base as soon as you could."
"Okay." Spain chuckled warmly. "You make that sound like a code." They both laughed. "He's a character."
"Well, he was explicit about the message. He wanted it just like that, so .... "
"Fine. You did good. He's just an oddball. Thinks his way is the only way, you know." She mmmmed and he ended the call but with the nagging feeling of paranoia he was starting to get careless. The idiot didn't have to make a big production about the fucking time. All that had been prearranged to avoid just that sort of suspicious-sounding bullshit. He'd have to cut his secretary loose soon, or better yet give her more routine, normal work. These weird calls, sending her across to say things to a stranger in a car . . . these were things she might remember. Five thousand dollars cash and the son of a bitch couldn't handle a simple phone message. He dialed a pay telephone impatiently.
"Yeah."
"Is this Mr. Hitter?"
"Okay. I found him. This heeb he uses posted for him and he's hidin' out in a place the family owns out at the lake." He gave Spain an address and directions. "He's got one guy inside, one guy outside. Outside guy is in car. I think the guy inside's a fag." He giggled. "Anyway, that's it. Anything else I can do for ya."
"That's got it. Nice work."
"Call me anytime."
"Will do." Fucking idiot. They broke off.
Spain went back to the house and put on a leather coat, got a hat, some other things. Drove out to Lake St. Charles.
The Park Avenue was sitting about a hundred and fifty yards from the front door. Visible from the house and to passing traffic. It was't ideal but he'd handle it.
He walked up in plain sight, noticing the guy move slightly. Probably had his hand around a piece.
"Yeah," the man in the car grunted, putting a question mark on the end of it.
"Sir, please place both your hands on the steering wheel," he said, letting the leather ID case flop open. A hunk of fancy enamelwork and gold and a well-done laminated photo card flashed into view. "You have the right —"
"Ay, what the fuck is this shit?" the guy said, but bringing his other hand up empty on the wheel. "Who'd —"
"— to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney." He brought the silenced pistol up and shot the man in the temple. A bright fountain of hot, red blood gushed out of the head as he fell to the right. "You have the right to a mortician." Spain kept talking into the car as he slid the piece back in a pocket. "If you wish a mortician but cannot afford one . . . . " He stopped and got back in the car and drove up to the front door. He got out and rang the buzzer.
A thin, pale man with dirty blond hair answered the door. "Yes?"
"Your name?" The shield blinked out again.
"MY name?"
"Yes, sir. State your name please."
"My name is Dorn."
"Sir, we have a search warrant to inspect these premises in relation to a federal investigation." He was moving past the man as he spoke, "Well, just one minute here .... And he shot the man in the face moving quickly into the room even before the man dropped, holding the piece on Kriegal, a nice firm double-handed hold like in the movies.
"Blue," he said, "you're under arrest, asswipe. And here come d' judge." He laughed, feeling good for the first time all day.
And then he saw the pictures on the walls.
He thought for a moment it was a hallucination. Those weren't really pictures of little kids in each other's arms and in the embraces and oh my God in the embraces of adults and in the positions and in the savage postures and in the bound and screaming punishments and in the awful, ah, the vileness of it, in the commission of obscene acts frozen by a camera, professionally mounted and matted and framed under glass.
He whispered to the stocky, balding man seated on the long sofa, "I'd like to slice that filthy head off and shit down your neck hole, you —" He really couldn't think of anything foul enough to call him. He'd run out of words. He moved forward and kicked the man in the stomach, being very careful, kicking him as precisely as he could so as not to allow his emotions to run unchecked. He knew if he let loose now it'd all be over in thirty seconds, and that would be a shame. That would defeat everything he'd been working for. The whole point was to make the scum crawl. To drag their tortures out and turn some of the suffering back around in their direction.
The one picture of the two little girls kept nagging at him, and against his judgment he let himself steal another glance at it. One little child about nine, ten years old, doing something to another one. The one on the receiving end reminded him of Tiff in a favorite scrapbook shot, and just for a few seconds his rage bubbled over beyond the rim of control and he kicked Blue Kriegal about twenty times as hard as he could. He had to get him out of there or he'd waste him. Spain didn't even bind his hands. He had such disdain for him he just went out and popped the trunk, came back and rolled the unconscious body onto a small throw rug and dragged Kriegal out past the body of his slain companion, and unceremoniously horsed the dead-weight into the car.
William Kriegal awoke in darkness and in intense pain and fright, but then the trauma took him under and he woke up much later with that choking sensation you get from smelling s
alts, but when he tried to pull his face away from the gagging spirits he could not move.
"Aaaaaaaaaa, pleeeeease," he begged the man snarling into his face.
"Good morning. Did you sleep well?" He capped the small bottle.
"Jesus, buddy, I'll give you anything please don't —"
"Blue, Blue, BLUE, shut your asshole a second. My name is Frank Spain. Did you ever hear of me?" he asked pleasantly.
"Uh —" The man's brain was going a mile a minute. Where the fuck was he and how was he going to get out of this one?
"You're not feeling so hot, right?"
"Huh uh." He felt like he was going to go under again.
The man said, "I'm going to give you something to make you feel better, okay? My name's Frank Spain. But you can call me Mr. Spanhower. Say, Hello, Mr. Spanhower."
"'Lo, Mr. Spanhower."
"Good."
"Please, Mr. Span —"
"Now, Blue. See what I've got for you. Vitamins," he said brightly. "This'll put some lead in your pencil." Kriegal flinched when he saw the hypodermic needle.
"Oh, hey — Blue, don't sweat this. This is just something to get you feeling in the pink again." He shot a minute amount of fluid into the air, "Don't want to shoot an air bubble into your bloodstream and kill you, for heaven's sake." Spain deftly found a vein in Kriegal's meaty arm and plunged the spike in.
"Mmmm." The man made an involuntary fear noise as Spain depressed the syringe.
"Yes. I understand. Blue. Nothing is quite as potent as tetrodotoxin. Especially this little mix. Hot as the Orinoco Basin, baby. Quirky as a Shuar poultice. Heavy-duty as voooooooodooooooooooooo," he said, playing with the man.
"Please, listen mister, I don't know how come you're doin this, but I got over two hundred thousand in a —"
Spain shut him up by simply shoving his palm over the man's mouth. "Hmm-ummm. No talking. Just take it easy. You're going to need all your strength. Don't guess you're hip to brugmansia? Datura? Zombie's cucumber? Jeez, Blue, what am I going to do with you? Ain't you gotcher ethnobotani-cal, ophiological shit together? Well? Speak up, man. Cat got your tongue?"