by Lee, Edward
Of course, she’s got a point. He quickly put his Camel back in his pocket. “Lighten up, will ya? Jesus. You guys need a vacation.”
Brock and her crew returned to their duties, milling about like surgeons with their intricate tools, their UV lights and anthracene and luminol sulfate. But the scene remained. At one time, Cordesman could’ve looked at something like this and not cared, could’ve been more concerned about a Yankees game. Psychical detachment was mandatory. You didn’t see dead human beings lying there, you saw dead something else. Dead meat, dead matter—nothing you could assign a soul to, or a history. Nothing you could ever conceive of as having once been a baby happily shaking a rattle, having parents who loved them. A bright-eyed infant squalling “ma-ma, da-da,” etc. You had to reduce it to meat or else you’d eat yourself up.
Cordesman wasn’t having too easy a time just now.
It was only glimpses he caught, or flashes in the photographer’s snaps with the Nikon F with motor-drive. But the glimpses sufficed.
Maybe I’m just too old to do it anymore, Cordesman thought. I can’t hack this shit.
“Much of this appears to be self-inflicted,” Brock said, her back to him as she leaned over her Hair & Fibers man.
Cordesman supposed his gulp was an agreement. Two corpses still had knives in their hands—they were too far apart to have done it to each other; no bloodfall could be seen between them. They…gutted themselves. One appeared to have gouged out chunks of his own flesh. Had he died from shock or loss of blood? Had the other one—the bald one—gelded himself and then removed his own organs? It appeared so. Cordesman winced, then averted his eyes when he noted that the bald one’s facial expression was a grinning rictus.
“So what do you make of it, Captain?”
Good question. Cordesman saw more of the scene in strobic visions like a nightmare of jumpcuts: the photographer was “flash-painting” the perimeter—sequential time exposures backed up by specialized electronic flash units.
A flash of truncated innards. A flash of a blood pool so large his belly flip-flopped. The slim one lay procumbent; in the split-second flash of light, Cordesman saw that he’d been burned: his back, buttocks, the backs of his legs, even the bottoms of his feet reduced to crisped char by some unknown heat source. The decedent looked like something taken off a spit, severely overcooked. Yet another flash showed a fourth victim, eyes wide open, their whites turned blood-red. His hair and beard seemed to have been flamed off his head and…
Fuck…
A clipped coat hanger stuck out of his urethra. None of this could Cordesman quite calculate but particularly this fourth victim. What could compel a man to cut himself up like a pork end and then jam a coat hanger up his dick?
“I see you’re not exactly a fountain of theories,” Brock said.
“Oh, what do I make of this?” he finally answered. “It’s fucked up. How’s that for crime-scene analysis? What? A mass-suicide, a cult thing?”
“I wouldn’t think so. These guys are rummies, Captain. Bums, homeless, whatever you want to call them. This old church was obviously their coop. They came in here to party.”
Cordesman turned away from the remnants of this seemingly self-inflicted slaughter fest. “Some party, glad I missed it.” He noted the commonplace signs of a homeless “coop”: excrement, trash, lots of booze bottles like Thunderbird and Mickey’s 40-ouncers—the cheapest stuff. “Wait. Right there, next to the skinny one.” He’d only been able to look for a minute, to the side of the corpse with the roasted back. “A crackpipe.”
Brock nodded. “And?”
“Bad crack. It happens. The Jamakes don’t give a shit if they kill people. Sometimes they use the wrong kind of solvent when they bake the shit into rock. So these rummies all take a hit and—presto—instant psychotic episode.”
“Maybe.” Brock was still hunkered down, her back to Cordesman as she paid very close attention to her technician, who was plucking at the large one’s groinal area with forceps. He wore a hat-light like a miner.
“Look, Jill, I don’t want to sound insensitive but this one’s all yours. I’ll give it to 2nd Squad. These bums got nothing to do with my major gig.”
“The Infamous Multi-Precinct Red Female Hair Case, huh? No time for dead rummies, is that it, Captain?”
Cordesman smirked. “That’s right, that’s my major case right now, and I ain’t gonna take time away from it for this gross-out clusterfuck.” Besides, the smell was killing him. Don’t they have ventilators for things like this? “So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go back to the squadroom and smoke a couple of cigarettes. Later.”
“Got it,” the H&F tech said, slipping his Allis/Miltex evidence forceps from a custody bag.
“How many total?” Brock asked him.
“Six, ma’am. Let me check the others. I’ll bet we pluck a bunch.”
“Do it,” Brock ordered.
“What, uh, what’s that?” Cordesman asked, peering over through a helpless curiosity.
Brock brought several of the tiny plastic evidence bags over, each imprinted with a CHAIN OF CUSTODY INDEX label.
“Looks like this is the same thing, Captain.”
“What?”
Brock held up the flap of bags, waving them. “Of course I’ll run the scale counts and blood-type of the hair-root cells back at the shop, but I can tell you already they’re all the same.”
“What are all what the same?” He liked Jill, but she could really get on his nerves sometimes. Like most women. “What’s in the ev-bags?”
“Hairfall, Captain. Pubic hair.”
Cordesman’s gaze closed, bringing wrinkles to the corners of his eyes. “What color? Not r—”
“Red, Captain. We got red hairs all over these 64s.”
(iii)
Locke couldn’t quite recall but hadn’t Lethe said something about a small get-together when they’d spoken on the phone yesterday? No matter, Locke guessed it was better this way, just a little…well, weird.
Like a lot of things around here.
Lethe faced Locke from one end of a twenty-foot-long Georgian Revival dining table, pure veneered mahogany with satinwood bandings and scrolled brass footcaps. There was no table cloth, a fact which stirred a little trepidation in Locke. Don’t spill any Potage a’ Saint Germaine! The stark white dining room’s high ceiling carried their voices. Locke was stunned, first by the table settings and overall appointment of the room, and next by the menu. “It’s a pity you don’t speak French, Mr. Locke. Such a rich language not to mention a rich cuisine. I like things rich.”
The driver entered; Locke did a double-take. This has got to be some kind of a joke. I really feel sorry for this guy. The driver had lost the cap and driving accouterments, and replaced them with traditional butler’s garb. The black cutaway coat, the bow tie and white pleated shirt, morning trousers and, of course, white gloves. He carried in an odd pear-shaped bottle of wine with a desiccated label.
“Since this is such a special occasion for me,” Lethe announced, “I’ve summoned one of my best bottles. A brisk Conde Dontatien Burgundy. It was de Sade’s favorite, and as I’m sure you can imagine, I paid quite a price for this particular bottle which was corked in 1814—the year of de Sade’s death.”
But it was not this shocking tidbit that gave Locke cause to turn a brow. He noticed, as the wine was poured, that the driver was wearing a black-satin eye-mask tied behind his head by a silver string.
“But one of my many indulgences, Mr. Locke,” Lethe exclaimed. “The bal masque of the end of the Bourbon reign serves to amplify the mood, don’t you think?”
“Uh, yes, sure,” Locke blathered. It’s your party, buddy. The driver poured a thick, amarelle-colored wine into a porcelain goblet. It tasted strong, tart—rich. Don’t chug it, you asshole! Locke tried to warn himself. This shit’s probably a thousand bucks a sip.
“Even our utensils are French,” Lethe informed him, “from the Limoges workshops, contemporary Romanes
que, popular amongst the nobility of the 1300s.” This was not silverware but goldware. I’m eating with a seven-hundred-year-old fork, Locke realized. I’m impressed!
Lethe had announced each course in French, and was kind enough to translate, which all made Locke feel stupid. “Salade Verte avec Courtes de Roquefort.” A simple salad was placed before him. “That’s Green Salad with Roquefort Toasts.”
The masked driver appeared and reappeared as if on some premonitory demand. When Locke finished each dish, the guy was there, uninspired mug and all, a smug robot. Locke wondered if the guy’s name was James or Hollingsworth. What followed were Haricots Verts a la Vapeur (steamed green beans), and Poulet au Vinaigre a l’Estragon (braised chicken with vinegar and tarragon).
Locke ate in considerable awkwardness. The finest meal he’d ever consumed—more than likely—in his life, not to mention eating it with gold utensils that were three times older than the nation, and, lastly, wine that probably cost mid five figures. A good spread, he thought, but why am I here? This weird palace? The masked driver? And Lethe himself about to lay ten grand on him for writing a single edition book of poetry?
Lethe’s fine salt-and-pepper hair shined in the chandelier light. He ate daintily but with a strange voraciousness, sucking each chicken bone of every fiber of its marinated meat. At one point—crunch—he even cracked a thigh bone with his teeth, then picked out the marrow with what appeared to be a diamond stickpin. “A bit of elaboration is in order, I suppose,” he said. He’d only sipped half his first glass of wine, while Locke was on his third. “The obvious elaboration of my home’s exterior. I’m afraid I’m security minded, and I’ve always believed in the power of appearances.”
At last Locke could comment on something. “Oh, I get it. If the house looks like a dump on the outside, burglars will be less likely to think there’s anything good inside—” But then Locke bit his tongue. Dick! “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Lethe laughed. “Your honesty—your verity, Mr. Locke—is what I like about you, aside from your poetry, of course. But the mansion does look like a ‘dump’ on the outside, for precisely the reason you hinted upon. But, I must add, if the appearances don’t suffice, I’ve a top-notch alarm system.”
Locke nodded. “Of course,” and then he felt tongue-tied again. How did one make dinner conversation with such a host? “Oh, I forgot to ask. When we arrived, there were some other people coming in, a painter, I believe?”
“Yes, Martin, a post-neo abstractionist you might call him.” Lethe dipped his fingers into a dish of lemon water, then flicked them dry. “He’s been up before; I’ve commissioned him to do some work for me. An odd one, and a trifle wild, which you could probably surmise by his cast of current girlfriends.”
Locke remembered the pierced, mohawked character and pair of…tramps. He wondered why Lethe hadn’t invited them to dinner as he had Locke.
“You’ll have a chance to see his work later if you wish,” Lethe went on. “Personally, I don’t like the man’s company—it’s his painting that interests me. As they say, the work is the thing.”
Locke’s thoughts seemed to yawn. The work is the thing… Lethe referred to this painter—this post-neo abstractionist, whatever that meant—with an edge bordering on disrespect, yet was paying nonetheless for the man’s work. I wonder what Lethe thinks of me. Not as a poet but as a person… Just another creative hack? A work-for-hire?
Locke wasn’t sure but he didn’t think so.
“Martin’s art examines one theme and one theme only. I suppose that’s why I admire him; he will not divert from his focus.”
“What’s the theme?” Locke asked.
“Terror.”
Terror? “That sounds interesting, but…how do you paint that?”
“With the power of the muse, of course,” Lethe returned.
Locke tried hard not to appear bored. He stole a quick glance high to the left; on the wall hung a tarnished coat-of-arms: a viper being pecked at by a sparrow. “What’s that up there?”
“The family seal of the so-called White Prince, John Hunyadi, the Count of Timisoara and the governor-general and regent of Hungary. And speaking of painters, the Prince was quite creative in his manner of dealing with Turk spies lurking about in his court. He would drain them of their blood and order the palace artisans to paint pictures with it. Then he would dispatch the canvases to Sultan Murad II, his arch enemy. And behind you—”
Locke glanced around to see a stained, glass hookah.
“Supposedly the same apparatus with which Coleridge smoked opium while he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Though he publicly excused his drug use as therapy for his rheumatism, to his friends such as Kant and Wordsworth, he confessed that the ‘sweet succor of the poppy is the poet’s only true path to the muse.’”
“I think I’ll stick to alcohol,” Locke awkwardly jested.
“But who was it that said ‘all true art must fail’? Blake? Poe? It’s interesting how many masters produced their finest work while they seemed to deliberately demolish their lives with spirits or drugs.”
“And debauchery, too,” Locke added without knowing quite what would spur such a comment. “You mentioned de Sade earlier. What do you think of him?”
“A petty fool and lunatic who spent most of his life in prison,” Lethe replied with a queer interest. “It’s most regrettable that he didn’t spend all of his life incarcerated—then he would’ve been able to write more.”
“So you like his writing, then.”
“Not what he wrote but how he wrote it. As a poet—a word mechanic such as yourself—I’m sure you follow me.”
“He was a prose-master who wasted his talent on smut,” Locke prattled. “Some of the finest prose I’ve ever read, but—”
“No genuine creative vision to implement that talent.” Lethe set down a splintered chicken bone. “Wasting a talent strikes me as the greatest of all crimes.”
An odd point of view, but Locke had a notion now that Lethe was an odd man. He could even appreciate the subjectivity of the statement. “Except for, like, murderers and stuff, you mean.”
“Oh, not necessarily. Take a killer like a Gacy or a Bundy or a Lucas. I don’t think you can disagree, these were pre-eminent serial-killers. They utilized their ‘talents’—if you will—to the furthest extremities of their creativity. Yes or no?”
Locke’s face widened. “Well, yes, I guess you’re right. But—”
“Who cares if they were evil—I mean, at least in the context of your mentioning it. That’s not what we’re talking about. Certainly, most will concur—they were madmen who are served well by execution, but…ideally, from their points of view, they did what they did because they felt compelled too, correct? And they did it with alacrity, with zeal, and with passion. They killed, Mr. Locke, with the same fortitude that you write. Yes, or no?”
Locke was duped. “Well…”
“A difficult task, my asking you to compare your own creative mechanics to those of heinous killers. But I think it’s all the same in a way.” Lethe sipped more wine, and when he saw that Locke’s goblet was empty, a quick jerk of his glance brought the masked driver out to pour more.
“Really, Mr. Lethe. This wine is great, but I don’t want to scarf it all. It’s your best stuff.”
Lethe threw his head back and chuckled. “Drink! It’s not my best ‘stuff’ by any means. We’ll drink that next, to celebrate.”
Celebrate? “Celebrate what?” Locke asked.
“Why, our arrangement, of course.” Lethe got up and walked to the other end of the table. The driver appeared at his side as if by magic; then the white-gloved hand passed an envelop to Lethe who then passed the envelope to Locke.
The envelope contained $10,000 in cash.
“To celebrate our deal,” Lethe continued, “and the honor I will receive in having my favorite poet write a book for me.”
(iv)
Encryptions. Puzzles. Sometimes you know that the
piece will fit even before you really look at it. You know it even before you press it down into gap in the jigsaw. I should have known—that’s what this is all about. It doesn’t matter that they’re ancient and almost timeless.
These ciphers of the human soul…
What drives the salmon upstream to their death? What leads the lemmings over the bluff? Instinct or foreknowledge? Or does one mean the same as the other. Old and young, black and white, life and death. Life is death, for death’s products give life. Except, of course, when that death just keeps walking, keeps changing and growing. Into what, only time will tell.
The only universal element is love. The only true human gift, the only thing that sets us apart from the chaos of cosmic soup. That’s why life never let me go.
The poet is the piece. I knew that if I’d consumed him in the dead church, it would’ve been no different from eating air. He’s poison to my being, a dinner plate piled high with something spoiled.
But to my equal, he is a bowl of chocolate-dipped cherries, an oven-baked, sugary creme custard on the verge of being spooned out of its crust.