“Uhhh, it’s uhhh, oh. Never mind, that’s for lap dancing.”
“Hey,” Bob said, “I wonder if Bug-Off’s trying to find someone to replace me.” Bob took the want ads and turned to the P’s. He scanned the columns.
“Let’s see,” Bob said, “uhh…Paralegal, Payroll Clerk, PBX Supervisor, Personnel Administrator—”
Bob stopped reading and his eyes grew wide. “Judas H. Jones! Look at this!” Bob poked a finger at the paper, nearly tearing the page in half. He started spinning around gleefully on his bar stool.
Johnny tried to see where Bob was pointing, but the circular motion made it difficult. “Stop spinning and let me see!”
Bob stopped and read aloud, “‘Professional Exterminator needed ASAP. $50K in a weekend! Major pest difficulty. Send resumes to: 251 Kavkastrasse, Zurich 2VA-6P2. Pros only.’”
“Fifty thousand dollars?” Johnny said. “That’s gotta be a misprint! Lemme see.” He reached for the paper, but Bob spun around again, causing Johnny to crash headfirst onto the bar.
Bam! “Owwww.”
Bob’s mind reeled, not only from the beer and from spinning around on his stool, but from the thought of how far $50,000 would go toward making his dream come true. With that much money, he could have two bugs on his truck.
Bob wobbled for a moment. “I think I’m gonna vomit.”
Johnny snatched the paper so he could see the ad for himself. “$50,000! What kinna job do you think it is? Rats? It’s gotta be rats, don’t ya think?”
“Those gotta be some mighty damn big rats for that kinda money,” Bob said.
“Zurich…” Johnny said. “That’s in Sweden, isn’t it?”
“No, jughead, it’s Switzerland.”
“Whoever woudda thought Switzerland had a big rat problem?”
“It’s probably all that Swiss cheese,” Bob said. “There’s probably tons of it just lying around and the rats eat it and that’s probably how they get so damn big.”
“I bet you’re right. Damn! A bunch of giant Swiss-cheese-eating rats. No wonder they’re paying so much. But how come you think they’re advertising here?”
“Well, where else they going to find somebody experienced with rats like that, huh? Nowhere but New York, baby!” Bob was so excited he sounded like Dick Vitale. “And who’s sittin’ here with a big stack of résumés?”
“Fuckinay!” Johnny waved his right hand at Freddie and his left hand at the Polaroid. “Yo Freddie, gimme the camera.”
Freddie slid the camera down the bar, blowing the bowl of beer nuts over the side.
“It’s a good idea to send a photo along with your résumé,” Johnny reasoned as he took aim with the Polaroid. “They like to see who they’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Bob said as he wobbled on his stool and adjusted his red-and-black exterminator cap.
“Uncross your eyes,” Johnny suggested.
Bob straightened out his peepers.
Click! Flash! Whirr…The camera spit out a developing photo of Bob, his besotted eyes narrowed to menacing slits as he tried to focus. He looked either very drunk or very dangerous, depending on how you interpreted it.
Then, despite Johnny’s assistance, Bob inserted the photo and one of his flyers into an envelope. He dipped his tongue into his beer, then he licked the envelope and sealed it. “There. That 50 K’s as good as mine.”
Bob’s eyes then rolled back into his head and he fell off his stool, dead drunk and dreaming of a big fiberglass bug perched triumphantly on his own truck.
Chapter Nine
Louis, the fawning casino host at Monte Carlo and alleged distant cousin of Francois Blanc, the casino’s founder, greeted Klaus with a sweeping bow. A tuxedoed waiter arrived with a Bombay martini, up with a twist, balanced on a silver tray.
Klaus sipped the chilled offering. “Perfect, as always. Thank you, Louis.”
Klaus carried a shiny new briefcase which Louis knew meant Klaus had been paid recently and was there “to relax.” This was good news for the casino, and Louis saw to it that Klaus was treated royally. Klaus handed over the briefcase and Louis headed for the cashier’s office.
Klaus hadn’t always gambled. But in recent years, as the bouts of depression recurred more often, he had discovered something that soothed his sickness. As long as he was gambling he couldn’t brood about what he was beginning to see as his complete failure in life.
Once Klaus made that connection, he began spending more and more time at the famous casinos of the world. Depending on where his work took him, he might be seen playing roulette in San Remo, keno in Havana, or craps in Nassau or Rio, but usually he played baccarat and chemin de fer in Monte Carlo. He said it relaxed him and the money he lost did not matter.
At first he won more than he lost, but he began playing more recklessly and losses soon surpassed winnings. He also began wagering on sporting events; always betting the underdog, the longshot, the one sure to lose. Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, Vietnam in the World Cup, white heavyweights, that sort of thing.
Among those who knew Klaus and who speculated on the reasons for his gambling, there were several theories. The first was rather pedestrian and muddled and went like this: because Klaus’ work was so dangerous and stimulating he had become desensitized to normal recreational excitement and wagering large sums of money was the only way to get a thrill. An ancillary to this theory was because Klaus could not afford to take risks at his job he had to find another way to satisfy that need.
The second theory, held by his more Freudian-leaning friends, was that the destructive aspect of his id had overwhelmed the constructive drives, resulting in a palpable death wish.
He had no wife or family. He had nothing that resembled a hobby and he hated his job. In short, he had little reason to live.
Others speculated that Klaus was starting to feel guilty about all those he had killed and death was the only way to atone. Thus, the theory went, Klaus subconsciously hoped to lose so much money that someday he would not be able to pay those he owed and they would finally come and put him out of his misery.
For his part, Klaus dismissed these theories and others with the customary, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” response.
Whatever his reasons, Klaus simply sipped his martini and headed for the baccarat table.
Chapter Ten
The woman from Time magazine was duly impressed by Bob’s fantastic collection of insects and his library on entomology. The photographer recorded the Bug Room for posterity and possibly for a best-selling coffee table book. There was even the chance that Bob, with his heretofore unimagined natural pest-control concept, would be chosen as Time’s Man of the Year. At least that’s how it went in this particular fantasy.
Bob was in his Bug Room, tinkering with his hybrids and dreaming about the interview with the woman from Time. Surely she’d ask how he became interested in bugs in the first place.
Bob would explain that, like most boys, he was fascinated with spiders, snakes, scorpions, and the other menacing creatures of the animal kingdom. He loved those stories—the urban legends boys repeat endlessly and which never lose the ability to terrify. Like the one about the woman with the beehive hairdo who constantly applied hair spray to her ’do instead of washing it. As that story went, it was only when the woman dropped dead one day for no apparent reason that the coroner looked inside her hair. Inside was a nest of black widow spiders.
Bob also recalled the earwig legend—which probably involved the European Earwig (Forficula auricularia), as it was more common on the East Coast than the ring-legged variety (Euborellia annulipes). This story began late one night, when a female earwig crawled into some luckless man’s ear while he slept. With her demonically curved pincerlike cerci, the earwig mucked through the bitter orange earwax and nibbled her way
around the eardrum, past the semicircular canals and the cochlea, and eventually into the brain where she deposited her thirty eggs. On her way out she became mired in the morass of ear wax and died.
The next day the man went to a physician—presumably ear, nose, and throat—to complain about a pain in his ear. The doctor peered inside, located the offending insect, and removed it. He prescribed something to cut down on the waxy build-up and pronounced that everything would be fine.
Fourteen days later, however, the eggs inside his brain hatched and the thirty offspring began eating their way through the man’s hypothalamus. Screaming in horror and agony he died, blood and bits of brain matter oozing from his ears.
Of course there was no truth to this legend. There was nothing in the literature about earwigs burrowing into the human brain to lay their eggs, but it made for a good story.
Bob’s scientific, interest in bugs began in eighth grade when he was in the library ostensibly doing a book report on Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild as punishment for smart-mouthing his English Lit teacher. However, instead of reading London’s primitivistic canine parable, Bob was flipping through The Common Insects of North America looking at pictures of wasps. It was there that the so-called Tarantula Hawk Wasp (Pepsis mildei) caught his eye.
Bob imagined a great spider, the size of a wharf rat with a wingspan of four–to–six feet, all covered with mangy feathers and hair. To Bob’s dismay, he learned the Tarantula Hawk Wasp grew no larger than 1.2 inches. Nevertheless, the drawing showed a savage looking blue-black beast with red wings and antennae and a long curved stinger. The book also described in lurid detail how the female Tarantula Hawk Wasp slowly approached a much larger spider. Somehow the Tarantula Hawk Wasp hypnotized its prey until the malevolent insect buried its stinger deep in the spellbound arachnid and pumped it full of poison. The paralyzed spider was then dragged to a burrow and implanted with an egg. It served as food for the developing wasp larva, eaten from the inside out.
Wow, young Bob thought, this was better than the earwig story! He never dreamed bugs could be this exciting.
Bob stayed at the library late that day, eventually completing a fascinating, if partially fictionalized, report on the Tarantula Hawk Wasp of northern Mexico. He received an A+ and such praise from his teacher that he began his life-long devotion to things Insecta.
This dedication eventually led to a degree in entomology, and for a while Bob entertained the notion of getting his doctorate and becoming a college professor or a researcher investigating the insects’ role as vectors of viral, bacterial, and protozoal diseases. But somewhere along the line he cooled on that idea.
Then one day after reading (though not thoroughly comprehending) William Borroughs’ Naked Lunch, Bob got his idea.
The idea led to his dream and his dream eventually led to his Bug Room where he now sat wiggling in his dilapidated swivel chair, munching a bowl of Lucky Charms while scrutinizing something on the table in front of him. Bob was comfortable, wearing a stained undershirt, his black-and-red exterminator cap, and a pair of boxers decorated with red and black ants which Mary had given him last Christmas.
On the table was a cardboard box with tiny, screen-covered air holes punched in a circle on the top. In bright red letters, the box boldly announced: “ARILUS CRISTATUS (Reduviidae).” It was a batch of Wheel Bugs. They bred well with other Reduviidae, and their trait as voracious predators always passed on to the ensuing generation of hybrids.
Bob had also liked the fact that Wheel Bugs looked as if they were designed by the same Northrop engineers who created the stealth fighter; its exoskeleton hard and angular with overlapping plates of some sort of exotic radar-absorbing carbon fiber material. This was a serious-looking bug.
Between each spoon of marshmallowed cereal Bob glanced alternately at the bugs and an open textbook.
Not far from Bob’s house, a Mercedes limousine with blacked-out windows cruised up Forty-Eighth Street, past New Calvary Cemetery. Marcel and Jean, who had recently arrived from Paris, were in the back of the limousine. Marcel was wearing another extra-large $5,000 suit and a questionable tie. Jean, his fashionable assistant, was less expensively dressed, but at least his tie picked up some of the color from his shirt.
The Mercedes wheeled to the curb and the men looked through the tinted window at Bob’s house. Marcel took in the mise-en-scene. “This is it. A safe house undoubtedly.”
“What else could it be?” Jean asked disdainfully.
Marcel opened the door to get out.
“Be careful,” Jean said as he brushed at some lint that stuck to Marcel’s dark taupe worsted wool slacks. “Remember, we know nothing of this man. For all we know he is one of those psychotic Vietnam veterans.”
Bob was tilting the bowl of spongy cereal toward his mouth when the doorbell rang. The unexpected noise caused him to spill milk down his cheeks. Assuming it was Pratt dropping by to squeeze the blood from his turnip, Bob’s annoyance level doubled. But Bob wasn’t one to duck the landlord, so with a mouth full of green clovers and yellow moons, he went to answer the door.
Marcel shifted nervously as he stood by the door, the wood creaking under his substantial heft. He was startled when the door opened and revealed Bob, still chewing cereal. Bob somehow looked menacing wearing only his boxers, his exterminator cap, a milk mustache, and a pink heart-shaped marshmallow on his cheek.
Marcel stepped back, frightened. A standoff ensued as they eyed one another.
In the Mercedes, Jean recoiled in horror at the poly-cotton blend of Bob’s boxers.
Finally, Marcel’s trembling hand pulled something from the manila folder he held. He looked at Bob. “Robert Dillon?” he inquired, Frenchly.
Bob squinted at the bright sunlight, producing a Clint Eastwood effect. He spoke warily. “Uh, yeah.” He burped a milky white burp.
“The professional…exterminator?”
“That’s right.” Bob wiped the milk on the back of his hand.
“May I come in?” Marcel asked. He was apprehensive and slightly disgusted.
Bob looked at the fat man in the shiny suit. “Uh, you a bill collector?”
Marcel shifted on his feet while glancing about. “No, we recently received your, uh, how shall I say…your resume?” Bob saw that the stranger was clutching the skull-and-crossbones flyer he had designed.
“Huh?” Bob was confused. He had mailed his flyer to several real estate outfits hoping to interest one of them in his idea. He also wanted to fulfill his promise to Mary that he would seek work. But all those companies had told him to piss off with his idiotic bug idea, or words to that effect. But still, here was someone on his front stoop waving a copy of the flyer.
“So, uh, you’re interested in my new method?” Bob asked.
Marcel looked around nervously. “Yes, that’s right. May I come in?”
“Yes, please.” Bob stepped aside and gestured Marcel in. As he closed the door, Bob noticed the large Mercedes parked at the curb. It was an unusual sight. The only other German car Bob had ever seen in his neighborhood was a beat-up 1969 Volkswagen Bug.
Bob joined Marcel in the living room. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Call me Marcel.” He scanned the living room. The interior looked to him the way he imagined a lower-middle-class American home should look, and he felt a professional urge to comment. “This is a very thorough cover,” he said as he gestured toward the room.
Bob had no idea what Marcel meant, but not wanting to get off on the wrong foot with a potential client, he thanked him and offered him a seat. Someone had actually responded to his flyer! Talk about complete surprise. This was fantastic! If things like this kept dropping out of the clear blue sky, Bob would have that truck with the bug on top of it in no time.
Marcel settled deep into the sofa and poked around at the d
og-cared magazines on the coffee table as he spoke. “Obviously, we received your response to our advertisement in the paper.” Marcel paused to see if Bob would pick up the ball and run with it. This was an extremely touchy situation, Marcel having no idea what sort of killer Bob might be.
As Marcel worried, Bob wondered why Europeans stressed the second syllable in the word, pronouncing it ad-VERT-isment instead of ad-ver-TISE-ment. He also wondered what adVERT-is-ment Marcel was talking about.
Then it came to him. That drunken night at Freddie’s and the ad in the New York Times.
“Oh!” Bob blurted. “You must be the Swiss guy with the rat problem!”
“The rat problem?” Marcel said.
“No? Oh, that’s right, I just assumed it was rats. It could just as easily be roaches, couldn’t it? Pests in general, doesn’t matter, I can handle it.”
“Yes,” Marcel said, “it is indeed a pest I need your assistance with.”
“Yeah, it’s funny. You know, I don’t even remember why I assumed it was rats in the first place. Truth is, I don’t remember much from that night, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway, now I remember your ad. I guess the French accent threw me off, but I suppose it makes sense that you’ve got one, I mean France is pretty close to Switzerland, isn’t it?”
Marcel had expected Bob to be cautious. After all, Bob was a professional killer and had to be sure he wasn’t dealing with the authorities. So he was speaking cryptically.
“Yes, the countries border one another,” Marcel said slyly.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place. My method is thoroughly researched,” Bob lied. “I think you’ll be very impressed. In fact, let me show you something.”
Bob jumped up and ran to the Bug Room. He rooted through the documents piled on his work desk before grabbing a single sheet of paper. He returned to the living room and handed the paper to Marcel.
“This is the only one I could find to show you, it’s kind of a mess back there, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m talking about,” Bob said.
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