Night of the Avenging Blowfish

by John Welter

  Seethingly,

  L. D. Krite, President Animad

  I put the letter on Doltmeer’s desk.

  “Seethingly?” I wondered.

  “He does seem pissed,” Doltmeer said.

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Waste him?”

  “Oh, good God. Have you been watching gangster movies again?” Doltmeer said.

  “Let me waste him. I like being wasteful.”

  “What I want you to do is go talk to him. Find out if he’s dangerous. I want you and Yamato to investigate Mr. or Ms. Krite, learn everything you can, see if Animad is an organization to be reckoned with and if the consequences he mentions are an actionable threat to the president or anyone else. And remember …”

  “What?”

  “You started this.”

  YAMATO AND I found the Animad Institute on the second floor of a decaying old building above the business offices of Psychic Madame de Bollix. Yamato had lost his car keys that morning and he wanted to ask Madame de Bollix where they were. I told him I didn’t think the occult forces of the universe had a serious interest in his car keys, and even if they did, the occult forces weren’t to be trusted, although, after we interviewed L. D. Krite, Yamato and I could briefly visit Madame de Bollix if he wanted to waste his money that way.

  A young woman, maybe in her twenties, with stunning red hair worn in the washerwoman style and almost overwhelmingly pretty green eyes, let us into the Animad office and seemed only a little upset when we showed her our Service IDs and explained why we were there. I could tell by the way Yamato stared at her and looked away and stared again that he probably wanted to date this woman, who in fact was L. D. Krite. It was odd, and reminded me of how much I loved Natelle, that in the midst of our deliberate and coldly precise reality, it suddenly didn’t matter anymore to Yamato that he was a government agent searching for any vague or incipient threats to the president, and now he was just Yamato, looking at a woman he might want. Which part of reality was more real? The part you wanted most.

  While I was starting to ask L. D. Krite about the letter to the president, Yamato looked at her and said, “Not very many women wear their hair that way. It looks nice on you.”

  “Thank you,” L. D. Krite said uneasily.

  “We’re just curious,” I said, holding a copy of her letter, “about a few of the remarks in here, such as ‘Action is called for and will be forthcoming.’”

  “I like animals. I have a collie,” Yamato said, smiling boyishly and with stark hope at L. D. Krite.

  “Really? Male or female?” L. D. Krite said, smiling more warmly.

  “Female. Her name is Honker, because when I first got her as a puppy and I was driving her home, she stood up in my lap and kept accidentally honking the horn.”

  Yamato and L. D. Krite laughed about that.

  “While I’m sure the president doesn’t agree with the ‘cruel insanity of transforming sentient creatures into lunch-box sandwiches,’” I said, abruptly reading from the letter again, “what we’re curious to know is what you meant by suggesting there might be ‘dramatic consequences’ if …”

  “I have a cat named Bonk,” L. D. Krite said happily to Yamato, ignoring me. “When she was a kitten, she constantly bonked her little head on furniture and things in the house, so I named her Bonk.” She and Yamato laughed again. I wondered if they were going to fall in love and, as a covenant of their love, kill the president together.

  “Do you have a pet?” L. D. Krite asked me.

  I was going to say I had a Spamster. It annoyed me a little that she could write a vaguely threatening letter to the president and then act as if she were a darling woman with a lovely cat named Bonk. And there was that son of a bitch Yamato, almost joyously smiling at her and probably having pointless fantasies about love and copulation with a woman we might ultimately arrest. Jesus Christ.

  “No. No, I don’t have a pet. I hate to digress to the reason we actually came here, but we really do need to discuss this letter a little bit.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m going to kill the president?” L. D. Krite said brazenly.

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Yamato said.

  Oh God. Now Yamato was defending her. This wasn’t working.

  “I’m not here to accuse you of anything,” I said politely.

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re a carnivore, like all the rest,” she said in an accusing way. “Are you here to arrest me? Harass me? Intimidate me? Because I’m getting all this on tape,” she said, nodding her head toward a small tape recorder in front of her on her desk.

  “We’re being taped? Well, I might as well say something worth taping,” I said, and began quoting a fragment of a poem I’d learned in college:

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

  Thus mellow’ to that tender light

  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  L. D. Krite seemed confused and didn’t know what to say.

  “That was Lord Byron,” I said. “Maybe Lord Byron will sound good on tape. Anyway, we have no intention of harassing you. Could you please tell us what you mean in your letter when you say ‘action is forthcoming and there will be dramatic consequences if …’”?

  “Animad has hundreds of members in Washington alone,” L. D. Krite said. “It would be relatively easy to stage a large protest at the White House.”

  “And that’s certainly your right,” Yamato said defensively.

  “May we see your membership list?” I asked.

  “Do you have a warrant?” L. D. Krite said.

  “Noooo, no, no, no,” Yamato said in a cheerful and calming tone, not like an agent doing a good job, but like a cooing prospective lover. He was pissing me off.

  “I know you’re just the obedient henchmen of the White House,” L.D. Krite said.

  “Henchmen?” I said. “What’s a hench?”

  She looked at me suspiciously, with distaste, and said, “You must think I’m awfully stupid if you think I’ll just passively tell you any plans we might have.”

  “Well, you don’t have to tell us. But we could easily have a dozen or more agents following you night and day, tapping your phones, investigating everyone you know, and learning how often you brush your teeth every day. It’d just be easier if you talk to us now.”

  Yamato frowned worriedly, as if I were upsetting his girlfriend.

  “Are you threat-ening me?” L. D. Krite asked in a slightly hostile tone. “I’m an American citizen. You have no right to harass me for political reasons.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If you have no interest in talking, we’ll leave.”

  As I walked toward the door, Yamato said, “I’m really sorry if we unintentionally sounded threatening. We were just making a routine inquiry.”

  Dickhead. Why don’t you kiss her goodbye?

  Downstairs in front of the psychic’s office, Yamato smiled at me and said, “She seems like a nice woman.”

  “You fucking idiot,” I said. “You know we’re going to have to investigate her.”

  “She’s so pretty,” Yamato said wistfully.

  “And you eat meat. She eats plants, like a sea cow.”

  “You could almost see her nipples through her blouse.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to include that in our report.”

  “It’s easy for you to be indifferent. You have a girlfriend, sort of,” Yamato said, referring to the occasional times he knew I’d been with Natelle. Actually this hurt, because it wasn’t certain that I had Natelle in any sense, and just as she was leaving Gabriel, she could just as easily leave me.

  “That’s right. I have a sort-of-girlfriend, which is the same thing as having nothing. But you? I don’t think you should date women who threaten the president. You should only date women who threaten the vice-president.”

  “We
ll. I guess I have to resort to cold professionalism and find out where she lives and stare in her bedroom window with a telephoto lens.”

  “A matter of national security?” I asked.

  Yamato ignored that. “Should we go see Madame de Bollix and find out where my car keys are?”

  “Maybe we should ask her if L. D. Krite’s going to attack the president.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Yamato said, walking toward the psychic’s door.

  “We can’t do that, you asshole.”

  “Sure we can. We just won’t tell anybody,” Yamato said, opening the door and walking through several layers of stringed glass beads hanging over the doorway to what I regarded as an ostentatiously dark and eerie office that smelled like incense and fried pork. On an impulse, I followed him. The clinking and jingling and clanging metal things on the strings we walked through alerted Madame de Bollix of our presence; I whispered to Yamato: “If she was really a psychic, she wouldn’t need noise to know we were here. She’d predict our arrival.”

  Madame de Bollix came through another series of hanging glass beads at the back of the room and walked up to the circular wooden table with folding chairs around it. She wore a maroon skirt that went down to her ankles and a black, puffy blouse. In the semi-light of the room—lighted by a single stained-glass lamp hanging a few feet over the table—I saw that she wore a pale orange bandana on her head, like a pirate. She looked to be in her forties and wore lipstick as dark as dried blood. Her bosom, slightly sagging, seemed weighed down by a dozen or more silver and gold necklaces with various peculiar and unrecognizable “things” hanging in a tangled clump, almost as if someone had been trying to capture her by throwing necklaces at her, like lariats, but she had gotten away. She pointed to the table with her left hand, revealing maybe half a dozen rings, and five or six bracelets, on her left wrist alone.

  “Sit,” she said.

  Yamato and I sat. Madame de Bollix sat across from us with her hands in her lap and gave us a somber, aristocratic smile, as if pleased with something wholly unrelated to us.

  Yamato didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Then it was Madame de Bollix’s turn not to say anything. I wondered if there was a secret rule for proceeding that none of us knew.

  Madame de Bollix lifted her arms onto the table, and she was wearing so many metal bracelets of different thicknesses and shapes that she clanked, just by clasping her fingers together. It looked like she was walking by a jewelry box when it exploded. She stared at Yamato and me with a vague kind of curiosity.

  “Are you here for a reason, or did you just wish to sit?” she said.

  “I thought you might be able to help us,” Yamato said respectfully. “But I’ve never been to a psychic before. How do I know you’re a real psychic?”

  “Well, you don’t,” Madame de Bollix said in what sounded like some kind of European accent that could’ve been either real or fake. “You look at the sign on the window and what does it say?”

  “It says ‘Psychic,’” Yamato said.

  “Then you must assume that I’m a psychic or that I have the wrong sign up. Which do you assume?”

  “I assume you’re a psychic.”

  “Very well. And how may I help you? Are you interested in the future? Do you wish to speak with the dead?”

  “No. I have two problems. I need to find my car keys, and I need to know if anyone plans to harm the president of the United States,” Yamato said.

  “Twenty-two-fifty,” Madame de Bollix said.

  “What’s that—a code?”

  “My price. Simple consultations are twenty-two-fifty. You pay me now.”

  Yamato pulled his wallet from his pants and handed Madame de Bollix a twenty and three ones. She put the money in a blue leather pouch suspended from her waist by a strap. Then she closed her eyes and was quiet. This was all she did, as if closing her eyes and being quiet was occult.

  “Aren’t you going to light a candle or something?” Yamato asked.

  “I’m the psychic. Not you. Be quiet,” she said.

  I whispered to Yamato: “She owes you fifty cents.”

  Yamato whispered: “Shut up.”

  “Stop whispering. I need silence. I need no distractions,” she said, although outside you could hear rap music coming from a boom box. Possibly rap music didn’t interfere with the occult, but whispering did.

  Madame de Bollix remained silent, with her eyes closed, without any movement or obvious results, for at least a minute.

  “I think she’s in a transcendent state,” Yamato whispered.

  “Taking a nap,” I whispered.

  “Your keys are innnnn,” Madame de Bollix said suddenly, “the sink. The kitchen sink,” she said, raising her hands to her temples, her battery of bracelets clinking and clunking down to her forearms.

  “What about the president?” Yamato asked.

  “He wouldn’t be in the sink,” I said.

  Madame de Bollix’s head swayed slightly from side to side, as if sloshing visions around in her head, and she said, “This is difficult. I see forms unclearly.”

  “That’s because her eyes are closed,” I whispered.

  “I see …”

  “Darkness, until she opens her eyes,” I whispered. Yamato scowled at me.

  “… the White House. And inside the White House, I see …”

  “White people.”

  “Shut up!” Yamato whispered.

  “… great disorder.”

  “Well, that’s true, regardless of who’s president.”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?”

  “The disorder is caused by …”

  “Anyone who’s elected.”

  “… animals. I see animals,” Madame de Bollix said, tilting her head back, as if sloshing the visions to the back of her skull.

  “Wild animals?” Yamato asked. “What kind? Pigs? Goats? Dogs?”

  “Lobbyists?” I said.

  Madame de Bollix sighed loudly and leaned her head forward, slowly opening her eyes and staring at Yamato and me with a kind of grim confusion. “I don’t understand the vision,” she said.

  “Why? What’d you see?” Yamato said nervously.

  “All of the animals,” she said, “are in cans.”

  ANYONE COULD have dressed up like an old woman from the nineteenth century, put on six pounds of jewelry and lipstick the color of dried blood, and, by following the news, predicted trouble in the White House with canned animals. To discredit the old fraud, Yamato and I drove to his apartment and looked in the kitchen sink.

  “My keys!” Yamato said, lifting the keys from the sink and holding them in front of me. “Do you realize what this means?”

  “I don’t want to realize what it means,” I said.

  “She really is a psychic!”

  “Maybe she is, but I’d rather not care.”

  “But what if she’s …”

  “Don’t say it. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t c-a-r-e if she’s a psychic. We’re not going to use a goddamn psychic in the Secret Service.”

  “But what if she’s right about the president?”

  “All right. Fine. You go up to Doltmeer and say ‘We’ve got to listen to a psychic’s prediction of trouble in the White House because she found my car keys in the sink for me.’”

  “Well, you can’t just ignore her,” Yamato insisted.

  “Yes, I can. I’m ignoring her right now.”

  “But why can’t we use the paranormal in investigations?”

  “Because it’s not normal.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “But if she really is a psychic, like we both believe she is, then she could easily be right about something bad happening in the White House.”

  “Something bad always happens in the White House. That’s why we have presidents: to screw up all our lives at once, so we don’t have to do it individually.”

  “But damn it, Doyle, sh
e found my car keys!”

  “Well, that’s just wonderful. Let’s go to the White House now and say, ‘Everyone evacuate the White House! Dutch found his car keys!’ “

  “You’re forgetting one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The president has an astrologer.”

  “So?”

  “That means he already believes in the paranormal.”

  “Of course he does. That’s why he believes that raising taxes on the poor will give them more money, because they’ll be inspired to look for new jobs that aren’t there to pay the new taxes on the income they don’t have. That’s paranormal.”

  “But if the president already accepts astrology, I don’t see why he wouldn’t accept the advice of a psychic.”

  “She didn’t give any advice.”

  “Well, no, but she said she saw canned animals.”

  “And anyone who reads the papers or watches TV would know that.”

  “But we don’t think she’s a fraud. She found my keys.”

  “Dutch, I don’t care if the president makes all his crucial decisions based on a fucking Ouija board. We’re not going to let him know the Secret Service thinks a psychic has correctly predicted a cataclysm of canned mammals.”

  “All right. Fine,” Yamato said irritably.

  “And what were you doing flirting with L. D. Krite?” I finally said.

  “My personal life is none of your business,” Yamato said curtly. “She’s pretty. I’m attracted to her.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t flirt with the suspects.”

  Yamato looked at me with a slightly mournful expression and said, “Sometimes suspects are the only women I meet.”

  “I know. I know,” I said sympathetically. “But what if you started dating her and you had to arrest her?”

  “I won’t date her,” he said in a wistful tone. “I’m an omnivore and she’s an herbivore. I’m the wrong kind of vore.”

  “Yeah,” I said as we walked away to continue our investigation. “Also, she probably doesn’t believe in oral sex, since she wouldn’t want meat in her mouth.”