The Immortal Game

by Mark Coggins

  “Just where do you think you’re going?”

  I looked over the railing to find a middle-aged woman shaped like a bowling pin advancing in my wake. She was wearing a billowy green smock and wide, square-toed pilgrim shoes that clunked loudly as she climbed. The wispy brown hair on her head was lashed to bright orange curlers the way a prisoner is lashed to the rack. Her face was deeply furrowed, and it had enough makeup on it to protect it from re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. It probably hadn’t made the trip more than a half dozen times.

  “I’m visiting Ms. McCulloch,” I said.

  “Looks to me like you’re sneaking in to steal something. Anyway, the McCulloch girl ain’t home.”

  “When do you expect her?”

  “I expect her when I see her. I don’t keep tabs on my tenants.” She waved a hand at me in disgust, then turned to go back down the stairs. “This is getting to be a real frazzle. We’ve had more odd characters running around here since that girl moved in than I have the patience to deal with.”

  “What kind of odd characters?”

  “Characters like you, buster.” She stopped at the bottom and glowered up at me. “Now get your little fanny out of my apartment house or I’m calling the cops.”

  I love it when women give me compliments, but there didn’t seem to be much percentage in arguing with her. I suspected this was a time when burglary tools were going to be more persuasive than impassioned rhetoric. I walked past the landlady, who was still expending a great deal of effort looking tough, and on out the door. When I hit the sidewalk I made a short detour to a liquor store about a block up the street and bought a can of beer and some beef jerky.

  I chewed jerky and swilled beer on the curb in front of the store and then snuck back to my car and pulled around to a spot that was a little less conspicuous. Taking the set of tools I referred to as “mother’s little helpers” from the glove box, I walked back to the apartment building and then climbed the gate at the entrance of the sunken carport that ran the length of the complex. You would have needed a barrel of Bondo to patch all the dents in the autos parked there, but there was plenty of other junk in the stalls besides cars: rusting barbecue grills, exercise equipment, a baby’s crib, stained mattresses, and even a pink toilet commode. I went the length of the carport to the back of the building, where I found an exposed metal stairway leading to fire exits for the second and third floors.

  The lock on the second floor fire escape was a cheap number with a spring bolt, but there was a metal plate covering the place where the bolt met the jamb to prevent anyone from snicking the bolt back with a credit card. I took a short pry bar from my kit and worked one flattened end well under the brass piece that fitted around the doorknob. I gave the bar a sharp jab and the door knob popped off like the cork from a bottle of Cold Duck, bounced once on the rusted metal flooring, and then clattered all the way down the steps to the concrete below. I crammed one end of the pry bar into the exposed latch mechanism and twisted the bar until the bolt pulled back and I could open the door.

  The hallway I stepped into was as dim and empty as a spinster’s mailbox. Ancient wallpaper sloughed from its sides in long, yellowed strips. The carpet-grease-stained and torn-was thinner than the felt from a ghetto pool table. I found Terri McCulloch’s apartment at the far end of the hall on the left, number 221. I knocked softly at the door, and when I got no answer, slipped out a pair of lock picks and bent to the task of tricking open the lock. After a few anxious minutes, the tumblers fell in line. I pulled open the door, stepped inside.

  I was standing in a small studio apartment with a sliding glass door at the back. The door opened out to a terrace with what I imagined was an excellent view of the junky carport area. On my right was a kitchenette, separated from the main room by an island of free standing cabinets. The gray linoleum on the kitchenette floor was buckled in several places, and it curled up entirely where it came to the base of a gas water heater that had been installed freestanding next to the refrigerator in violation of innumerable codes. The kitchen countertops were a pale green Formica and sported a dense pattern of cigarette burns and deep gouges that exposed the dark, greasy wood underneath.

  The main room had brown carpet and cheap, hard-looking furnishings, none of which would suffer in the least from being shot out of a circus cannon. On the left was a wall bed that folded into a unit made of unfinished particleboard with shelves and nightstands on either side. Across from that were a vinyl sofa and a green metal trunk with a hook rug spread over the top. A 1950’s dinette set made of rolled metal tubing stood between the sofa and the kitchenette. The only thing in the whole place that would have cost more than 25 bucks at a thrift store was a TV/VCR combo sitting on the table.

  There were no pictures, flowers, bric-a-brac, or stacks of Cosmopolitan magazines to give you the least little hint that a woman lived here.

  My idea in coming was to frisk the joint while Terri McCulloch was away, so I went into the kitchenette and searched through all the cabinets, stove, and refrigerator. I found food, pots and pans, and dishes in a variety of patterns-no two of which matched. In the closet in the main room there were dresses, shirts and slacks on hangers, underwear, stockings, scarves and socks in stacked wire baskets, and a good two dozen pairs of shoes. There was also an unlabeled videotape concealed in a hatbox on the top shelf.

  I didn’t think Bishop’s chess program could be stored on videotape, but the fact the tape had been so carefully hidden intrigued me. I put it on the table next to the VCR for later.

  I went to the bathroom and searched it carefully. I took the lid off the toilet tank and peered inside. Water and rusting plumbing peered back at me. I pawed through the stuff in the cabinets and drawers under the sink and in the medicine cabinet above. There seemed to be nothing unusual or important, except that Terri McCulloch had prescriptions for both Valium and Prozac. I looked into the shower stall and searched through the hamper of dirty clothes. Nothing.

  Back in the main room, I pulled down the wall bed and looked under the mattress. Same story. I sat on the edge of the bed and went through the drawers in the nightstands. I found a checkbook, a bank statement, and some bills, but none of them had any transactions for large amounts, either going in or coming out. I also found a loaded .22 automatic wrapped in a cotton cloth-not such a bad idea given the neighborhood, but not exactly standard issue for your happy-go-lucky brunette bimbette. I let the bed up and pulled one of the dinette chairs under the ceiling fixture and stood on the chair to unscrew the piece holding the glass bowl. There were three dead flies and a lot of dust.

  I moved to the sofa and pulled it apart, searching in all the cracks and unzipping the vinyl covers on the cushions to run my hand all the way around inside. This netted me two dimes, an emery board, and an empty foil condom package. I straightened up and looked around the room. The only thing left was the trunk. It was locked, but when I pushed it back from the sofa in preparation to using the pry bar, I found the key lying on the carpet underneath.

  I had hoped that I would find Bishop’s missing software in the apartment, but what I found in the trunk would be better classified as hardware. The first thing I saw was a black leather corset that was designed to come over the hips and tie in the back with a criss-cross of leather straps. Below that was a folded pair of thigh-high leather boots with zippers up the sides, pointy toes, and three-inch stiletto heels. Next came a long, rather stiff riding crop with a thick handle and a broader than typical flap of leather at the end. That covered the dominatrix portion of the collection.

  In the dominee portion, we had leather cuffs for restraining wrists and ankles, complete with D-rings to attach to the set of chains and “spreader bars” piled up at the bottom of the trunk. There were also blindfolds, gags, nipple clamps, a variety of buckling straps and harnesses that I could only guess at the purpose of-and even more puzzling-an item that looked for all the world like a horse’s tail. It was fashioned out of long lengths of horsehair atta
ched to a plastic handle with a bulbous tip.

  I picked it up to examine it more closely. It seemed an unlikely scourge with the soft horsehair and the too awkward handle. Then I remembered Jesse Helms’s outrage at an infamous Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait. As it dawned on me that the picture featured Mapplethorpe with something very similar sticking out of his backside, I dropped the so-called handle like a live grenade and wiped my hand on the nap of the carpet.

  I dumped the rest of the gear back in the trunk, locked it, and put the key and the hook rug back where they had been. I had been in the apartment for a good half-hour and was starting to worry about Terri McCulloch returning, but I had yet to review the videotape. I could take it with me or I could fast forward through it here. Go or stay? I picked up the tape and hefted it in my hand as if its weight would tell me something, and then made the decision to stay. I was reluctant to remove anything from the apartment, and I didn’t figure Terri McCulloch could get me into much trouble if she barged in on me.

  I put the tape into the VCR and punched the play button. A grainy picture came on that showed a darkened concrete room with plywood on the floor. Hanging on the walls were a variety of switches, paddles, riding crops, and nasty looking whips. These were just window dressing for the main attraction. In the center of the room, suspended from the ceiling by four heavy chains, was a solid disk of polished wood about eight feet in diameter and about three inches thick. Lying naked, spread-eagle on the disk-hands and feet fastened to the suspending chains and pale butt facing the camera-was a lanky young man with frizzy hair. Although his face was out of view, I guessed it was Bishop even before I recognized his voice from the cries he made.

  He had plenty of reason to make noise, too. Sitting next to Bishop, with her legs dangling casually off to one side, was a woman in a black leather corset wielding a birch rod. While she held Bishop with a firm hand to the small of the back, she applied sharp, stinging blows up and down his buttocks. Terri McCulloch looked just like her picture-except the picture I had didn’t feature the tattoo above her left breast and the metal rings that pierced each of her nipples.

  I was leaning into the television monitor, trying to make out exactly what the tattoo was when the sound of someone putting key to lock at the apartment door registered over Bishop’s little aria. With no time to think of anything better, I powered off the TV, bounded over to the sliding glass door and let myself out onto the terrace. Crouching off to one side, I peered through the glass and watched as the apartment door swung open to reveal the dumpy landlady. She made a ponderous tour of the room, stopping once to rifle the nightstand drawers I had searched earlier, and again to examine the TV/VCR combo. She put her hand to the back of it like she was checking to see if it had been running, and then stood for a long moment with her arms akimbo, head swiveling side to side on her thick neck like a tank rotating its turret. My pulse rocketed when her gaze settled on the terrace door.

  I watched just long enough to see her waddling my way, and pressed myself into the near corner where the terrace railing met the side of the building. The glass door slid open and the landlady’s roller-encrusted head emerged over the threshold. I held my breath, willing myself invisible. But instead of looking around the terrace, the landlady hawked loudly, chewed thoughtfully on the results, and then launched a prodigious loogie clear over the back railing into the carport. Accompanied by another throat-clearing growl, her head retracted into the apartment. The glass door slid closed.

  I released my breath and squinted through the glass. The landlady trundled across the room and straight out the door without stopping. I reached for the handle of the door and tugged at it, afraid she had locked me out. It opened easily enough, so I ducked back inside and powered on the VCR long enough to eject the videotape. I put the tape under my arm and went out the door and down the fire escape as I had come. My visit had given me plenty to think about, but it was already five-thirty and time to get back to the city for my appointment with the Mephisto receptionist.

  THE STIGMATA

  THERE ARE A LOT OF VICTORIAN HOUSES in San Francisco with bay windows, steep-gabled dormers, cornices, and ornate plasterwork. Restored in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of the houses were given super-colorful paint jobs, inspiring the term “painted ladies” and the publication of innumerable coffee-table books. Although it had all the right architectural features, I could tell immediately that the Victorian on the corner of Ninth and Harrison that housed The Stigmata had not made the grade for the coffee-table books. It was painted jet black, from the tip of its highest cupola to the steps of the portico that covered the entrance-windows included.

  I went up the black steps and through the swinging door at the top. There was a tall, sallow-looking character sitting just inside on a stool, reading a paperback book and smoking a cigarette made with harsh, Turkish tobacco. I loitered a moment, expecting a greeting or a request to pay a cover charge, until he glanced up at me and said with asperity, “What are you waiting for-a royal summons? Loosen your tie and go on in. There’s no cover until the first show at eight.”

  Ahead was a curtained doorway. I stepped through into a large room that probably began life as the house’s front parlor. Now there was a long oak bar along the back wall, with the requisite mirror behind. Across from the bar, nestled in the space in front of a large bay window, was a tiny stage with a pair of microphones on stands. Spread out between the bar and the stage were a dozen or so cocktail tables. The floor was a dull and grimy oak parquet, and the walls had oak wainscoting with old-timey damask rose wallpaper above that. Owing to the blacked-out windows, light in the place was scarce: most of it came from a heavy crystal chandelier in the center of the room and a couple of brass fixtures behind the bar. I counted eight people at the bar and the cocktail tables-all of them men. But then, I had long since figured it was that kind of place.

  The men were dressed in everything from business suits to jeans to bicycle shorts. All of them had short hair, a few had closely trimmed beards or goatees, and most of them looked better “put together” than the typical straight guy you’d find in a sports bar after work. The exception to that was the fellow in the far corner table who was wearing some sort of goofy space goggles and a single metallic glove. Michael Jackson he was not.

  I didn’t see Chris Duckworth among the patrons so I went up to the bar and sat down to order a drink. I thought the bartender owed a lot to “Mr. Clean” of liquid detergent fame, but I opted not to mention it to him. He had a muscular build, a closely shaved balding head, and he was wearing a tight tee shirt with the sleeves partially rolled up. There was a gold hoop earring in his right ear. I ordered a draft beer and was congratulating myself on what a great job I was doing of not acting ill-at-ease when the bartender came back with the beer and a cardboard drink coaster, and said, “Top or bottom?”

  “What?” I sputtered.

  “Guess you haven’t been here before, have you?” said the bartender. “I’m talking about the beer mat. See, one side says ‘top’ and the other says ‘bottom.’ It’s just a little game we play. So, which side do you want up?”

  “Ah, top. Definitely top.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” said the bartender, and went away smiling. I drank some of my beer and lit one of the half dozen cigarettes I permitted myself a day. Fifteen minutes went by. An old Broadway show tune started playing over the speaker system in soft tones. More men came in-none of them Chris Duckworth-and the bartender got a lot busier. I was trying to decide between calling it quits and ordering another beer when I felt a warm hand touch my shoulder and squeeze it gently. I looked across to the bar mirror and saw myself flanked by two of the wildest looking drag queens I’d ever set eyes on.

  The one with his hand on my shoulder was tall, thin, and black with a flowing platinum wig, pink lipstick and nails, and a sequined pink mini-skirt with enough padding in the chest region to pass the federal bumper crash test. On the other side was a Latin bombshell with a tower of henn
a-colored hair piled high, a backless green chiffon gown, false eyelashes so long they affected weather patterns when he batted them, and an outrageous makeup job-complete with beauty mark-that Earl Scheib would’ve been hard pressed to match for $29.95.

  The blonde reached around me and tapped my drink coaster with an inch-long pink fingernail. “Well Mr. Top Man, how about buying a working girl a little drink?”

  I looked from one to the other and said, “You boys are as cute as a couple of flocked Christmas trees. I’ll spring for all the tap water you can drink-at the other end of the bar.”

  The redhead wriggled his hips. “Oh,” he said breathlessly. “We’d just love it if your spring was sprung. Is there a lot of tension?”

  “Let me be real clear. I take mine with two X-chromosomes. Now buzz off.”

  The blonde threw his head back and laughed. Turning to the back of the room, he yelled, “Hey Chris, teasing your friend isn’t half as much fun as you said it would be.”

  I looked back to see the guy with the space goggles slip them off and walk up to the bar. It was Chris Duckworth. “Hope you enjoyed yourself,” I said when he came up.

  “To tell the truth, we wanted you to run screaming from the place, or at least have a spasm of some sort.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “That’s okay. Meet Solome and Giselle. They’re putting on a show later this evening.” Solome and Giselle both proffered a hand like the Pope holding out his ring to be kissed, and I shook each in turn. After ordering another round of drinks, Chris Duckworth and I went back to his table and sat down. The goggles and glove he had been wearing were sitting on top of the table, as well as an odd looking metal board with two wires coming out of the side.

  “So what’s with the Flash Gordon get-up?” I asked.