by Tom Schreck
“Isn’t this guy, Rheinhart, the guy?”
“I don’t think so, Hymie.”
“Son, you have a soft heart-this Rheinhart, he has had it rough, no?”
“Yes.”
“Son, I’ll see what I can do with Claudia, but I don’t know this time.”
I thanked Hymie and I signed off. At this point I didn’t particularly care about the job and I didn’t care about my boxing career. There wasn’t much I gave a shit about, but I didn’t like the thought that Howard was getting screwed. Of all the shit swirling around my toilet of a brain, that was the one piece of shit that just wouldn’t flush.
Sure, I promised Kelley I’d back off, but with all this time on my hands it certainly wouldn’t hurt anything if I poked my head around a little bit. It would give me something to do and it would be a way not to think about everything else. I definitely could use the diversion and I was betting that Howard could use someone-anyone, to look out for him. After all, he asked me for help.
In the meantime my Muslim brother was on my last nerve. I grabbed the leash and tried to get him hooked up but he thought it was an opportunity to practice his open-field running. Again, he was running crazy as dog shit all over the Blue, dying for me to give chase. I’d try to stop and pretend like I wasn’t going to chase him, thinking he would feel guilty and relent to the leash. Apparently guilt wasn’t an emotion that Al struggled with, because when I’d pause he’d stay just out of reach until I took a step toward him and then he’d fake left and go right. Finally, out of frustration, I ran as fast as I could after him and got real close when he shifted direction and ducked under the coffee table.
My shin was actually bleeding and the thin skin over the bone was a dark purplish red. Al crawled out from the table with his tail wagging, ready for his walk just as soon as I stopped hopping around repeating the f-word. I’m man enough to know when I’ve lost.
I lifted Al’s fat ass into the passenger side of the Eldorado and switched tracks on the Blue Hawaii eight-track until “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was cued up. Al curled up, belched, and went to sleep. I drove toward Smitty’s house, not to see him but instead to have Al pick up his scent and follow it to the Y. Smitty was almost never home, except late at night, so I figured I’d let Al nose around, see if he could pick up some Smitty aroma, and see if he could find his way to the gym. I guess in some ways I knew I had to see Smitty and maybe I was setting up a scenario to bump in to him accidentally on purpose.
Al huffed around Smitty’s front lawn, his porch, and settled on a bench where Smitty read. I gave him the “Go find!” command and he was off with his nose working the ground and the pavement like an Electrolux on overdrive. Al kept a steady pace, stopping and raising his nose in the air, pausing to think from time to time, and then getting back to the ground to do his work. He worked the trail for a couple of miles and he was more intense then I’d ever seen him. Trailing was clearly in his blood and it was what he was meant to do, at least in addition to eating and farting.
About a block from the Y, Al stopped, crapped, and then sprinted to the parking lot right to Smitty’s car. He was jumping all over Smitty’s Oldsmobile, happy as could be with me praising him when I heard voices a couple of rows behind me in the parking lot.
“That would be a fitting dog for you. A dog that looks as pathetic as your life.”
It was Harter, the karate guy. I looked up and he was standing there with Mitchell and, of all people, Dr. Abadon. They were standing in front of a shiny black Escalade with gold chrome all over it.
“Maybe floppy-ears would like to play with Seagal,” Mitchell said, and with his remote he lowered the driver’s-side window just a bit. The head of a pit bull emerged with its snarling mouth almost foaming and its teeth barred. Al got behind my legs and whimpered.
“Ha, just like his master!” Harter said. “Hey, nice job at your last fight… loser!”
I was taking it all in and feeling several of the veins in my neck twitch, but I didn’t want to subject Al to any more of this. The whole episode seemed so out of context, especially with Abadon joining these two, that I felt a little off, like something was wrong or something was about to be wrong.
Even though it would have been my nature to get into it with them, I walked away with Al without saying anything. Al’s jubilant mood from the trailing was gone and he looked a bit ashamed.
19
When I didn’t know what else to do with my time, I went to AJ’s. With very little going on in my life, but a lot of things racing through my head, I needed the group therapy that AJ’s offered.
“It’s all based on shittin’ the bed when you’re a kid,” Rocco was saying.
“I thought it was wetting the bed,” TC said.
“Why would shittin’ and pissin’ in the bed make you a serial killer?” Jerry Number One asked.
“How would you like to sleep in a shitty, wet, and uriney bed every night?” Jerry Number Two said.
“That would stink,” TC said. “Hey, doesn’t setting small animals on fire have something to do with it too?”
“It must be a big bed,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I don’t think they have to set the animals on fire. I think those are two separate categories,” Jerry Number One said.
“Separate from what?” TC said. “What if they sleep with an animal that wets the bed? Does it still count if they kill that animal? It could be justified, you know.”
“When I was a kid I had a hamster that slept with me,” Jerry Number Two said.
“So?” Rocco said.
“He caught fire accidentally,” Jerry Number Two said.
“In bed?” TC said.
“Yeah, there was pot involved. He survived though,” Jerry Number Two said.
“How?” Rocco said.
“I pissed all over him,” Jerry Number Two said.
“That’s disgusting,” Jerry Number One said.
“You’re telling me,” Jerry Number Two said. “You ever smell urine-soaked, burnt hamster?”
“That’s enough to put a guy on a killing spree,” Jerry Number One said.
Kelley was in his position watching a profile on NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Kelley would have watched sex tapes of Golda Meir if it meant drowning out Jerry’s drowning hamster story.
“So, are you picking up educational credits by listening in on the brain trust’s discussion on serial killer forensics?” I said.
“Yeah. But I’m going to need another few beers to rid my mind of the visual of Jerry in bed pissing on that poor, flaming hamster,” Kelley said.
“Has anyone heard from Howard?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’re not going to like this, but I’m going to start looking into this.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it at all. Didn’t we have this talk?”
“Yeah, we did, and it didn’t sit right. Besides that, I ain’t got much going on these days and I’m kind of pissed off.”
“What you talking about?”
“I’m suspended from work and probably getting fired.”
“Isn’t that almost always happening?”
“Yeah, but I don’t like the way the so-called helping profession is throwing Howard in.”
“That’s why you’re pissed off?”
“Partly.”
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with anything else, would it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Be careful,” Kelley said.
We went back to watching the TV in silence, at least silence between the two of us. The Foursome was still jawing.
“I guess you’d have to say that Manson was the best,” Jerry Number One said.
“The best? What makes him the best?” TC said.
“You know, for sheer terror and attention,” Jerry Number One said.
“You know he was in the Beach Boys,” Rocco said. “He started killing people because he got obsessed with that ‘Help Me Rhoda’ son
g. It made him nuts,” he said.
“He did hang out with Brian Wilson and he was definitely nuts,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Whatever happened to that crazy broad that tried to shoot Nixon? Stinky Fromage was her name,” Rocco said.
“Wasn’t she Squeaky Fromme?” TC said.
“I never heard her speak or knew where she was from,” Rocco said.
20
I figured I’d start out by trying to find out as much as I could about Howard’s life. Seeing as though he spent most of his life in prison, it made sense to find out what his time inside was like. I didn’t have many prison staff connections that would’ve known Howard when he was inside, but I sure had plenty of connections of clients who used to be inmates. It was just a matter of heading down to the Hill and seeing who was on the corner.
Jefferson Hill was the old Irish neighborhood where a lot of my family lived generations ago. Today, it was almost entirely black and Latino, with the exception of some old-timers who were too old or stubborn to move. The houses need painting, there was always litter being blown around, and the whole section just seemed dark, like even the sun didn’t want to come around anymore. Even though I’m a very white guy, I could hang on the Hill, partly because of my job but mostly because I was known from the gym. There was something about the fight game that brought down the barriers. I’m not saying boxing never had a racist element, but when baseball and football didn’t allow blacks or Latinos, boxing had champions of those persuasions. Sure, it was harder for them and they didn’t let a black guy fight for the heavyweight title for a long time, but it was still better than the other sports.
I parked the Eldorado near the corner of Steuben and Albany Streets and headed up Albany to see who was around. Up by Craig Street three older black guys were passing around a brown paper bag. I knew two of the guys, Carlisle Jackson and Chipper Poston, because both of them had been to the clinic and had dropped out several times. Both of them were alcoholics and heroin users.
When I walked toward them they instinctively hid the bottle until Chipper recognized me.
“Duff-what’s up?” he said.
“What’s up, Chip?” I said.
“Hey, Duff,” Carlisle said.
Both guys were gray and weathered looking. They were kind of like the jakey-bum version of Laurel and Hardy, with Carlisle at about six foot three and rail thin and Chipper a rounded five foot six. They had run together for the last thirty years, and they were somewhere between fifty and seventy-five. There was no way to figure out how old they were by looking at them.
“Duff, this is Silk, from Brooklyn. He’s Chip’s second cousin,” Carlisle said.
I exchanged silent nods with Silk.
“Duffy, what you coming up here for?” Chipper said.
“I’m curious about something,” I said.
“Curious? You comes to the Hill, you gotta be pretty fuckin’ curious,” Carlisle said.
“You guys were inside when Rheinhart was in, weren’t ya?” I asked.
“Crazy, skinny-ass white boy who killed all them kids? Yeah, we both were,” Chipper said.
“Boy kept his mouth shut and the rest of him buttoned up,” Carlisle said.
“You remember anything about him?” I said.
“Yeah, he was the only motherfucker who didn’t OD in that part of the tier,” Chip said.
“Eight motherfuckers died, another eight all fucked up vegetable-wise in the head. Crazy white boy had death all around his skinny ass,” Carlisle said.
“What was the story?” I asked.
“We was both away from that shit, but the word was one of the hacks was sellin’ some bad acid trip, ’cept it wasn’t regular acid, it was some new shit I never heard of before or since. They called it ‘Blast’ or some shit,” Chipper said.
“Shit was bad and no hack ever got caught. It was all swept under the fuckin’ carpet. Who care if inmates dyin’ anyway?” Carlisle said.
“Why didn’t Howard get into it?”
“Boy was straight-laced, man. He was no hardened criminal. I think the motherfucker flipped for a short period and then went back to be just a skinny-ass white boy,” Chipper said.
“You guys ever try ‘Blast’?” I asked.
“No man, shit came and went fast. I heard it was fuckin’ crazy shit-like meth and acid and dust times ten all at once,” Chipper said. “I’m a down head. I ain’t lookin’ for no fuckin’ Ferris wheel ride,” Carlisle said.
We kicked around some small talk and I let them know how they could get a hold of me if they needed me. With guys like this you didn’t come on too strong about getting help, but I always wanted them to know where they could find me if they had to.
I thanked the guys, gave them a ten, and headed back to the Eldorado. On the way back to the Moody Blue, I threw in the On Stage eight-track and listened to Elvis do “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.” I was thinking about Howard’s shoes and how his whole life he’d been stepping in shit with those shoes, and probably how the one time he fought back against it in his life it was the biggest mistake he ever made. I also wondered why he wasn’t getting high in prison. I knew if I ever had to live that life I would have done anything and everything to alter my consciousness away from the reality.
It felt to me like the “Blast” overdoses had something to do with something, but that just might have been my mind’s way of making something fit. It could just as easily have been one of the many fucked-up events that had occurred during Howard’s thirty-year stint in our culture’s hellhole. Elvis had moved on to “Sweet Caroline” as I was pulling up to the Blue when I saw Billy chucking his throwing stars into my oak tree. He sprang to attention as I pulled in.
“Sir!” he said.
“Hey, Bill,” I said, returning his bow with just a slight nod.
“Sir-I am anxious to resume training, sir.”
“Yeah, well Billy, uh, I haven’t felt like going to the gym much.”
“Sir, I will train anywhere.”
“Okay, Billy, but I’ve been a little fucked up lately, so I’m not sure how good I’ll be as a teacher.”
“Sir?”
“Uh… it’s just… well… never mind.”
Billy looked at me with his eyes wide open and his head tilted. It’s the same look Al gives me when I take away a shoe he’s been chewing on. I figured it would be easier to just give Billy a half-hour workout than to try to explain it to him.
“All right, Billy. C’mere,” I said. He sprang up, ran over to me, came to attention, and bowed.
“WASABIIII!” Billy screamed, snapping his fist down into a ready position.
For the next half hour I worked him on throwing good punches and pretended it was a special karate technique when in reality it was fundamental boxing. I’m not entirely sure why, but I made him drill his recoil every time he threw a punch, and I did it so much I could tell that even Billy was getting bored with it. To me, it was like some sadomasochistic medieval mantra I was doing to punish myself because I had misplaced my hair suit. I kept with it though, like it was an infected itch that I should’ve stopped scratching a long time ago.
After I dismissed Billy, Al greeted me at the door with a jump toward the nuts that I was able to dodge. He did two 360s and then lay down on the floor and farted. I wasn’t sure how to take that as a greeting, but with the way things had been going I didn’t feel like interpreting it.
I hit the machine and there was a message from Marcia.
“Hi Duff, it’s me.” She sounded full of energy, which wasn’t like her at all. “I’ve been doing a lot of work with my therapist, and she says that I need to have some closure. So I wanted to let you know we won’t be getting back together. I just needed to say that.”
Well, I’m glad she’s making progress.
You know you’re getting to a fairly low point in your life when even the women you don’t really like much are breaking up with you. Actually, Marcia had already dumped me and this call was to make
sure I really got it. If nothing else, therapy was teaching her to be thorough.
Something told me to turn on the TV, and when I did I wasn’t surprised to see that all the local stations were in special-report mode. There were shots of crime-scene tape, what looked like forensic teams, and guys in windbreakers that said “FBI” on the back. In the middle of the camera shot was a large gray bag, what I guessed was a body bag. The reporter was having a very official conversation with the anchors back in the studio.
“Liz, do the authorities have any idea of the whereabouts of Howard Rheinhart?” Lance Justin of Channel 10 asked his live, local, late-breaking correspondent.
“Lance, they do not, but I have an unconfirmed source that Rheinhart’s blood was found at the scene,” Liz Priest said.
“There have been suggestions that this murder was more gruesome than the others. Can you tell us anything about that?”
“Yes, Lance, though I’d like to warn our viewers that some of the details I’m about to share are quite disturbing. This victim, a still-unidentified teenage female, had several fingers removed and inserted in other parts of her body. There were also strange puncture wounds up and down her sides as if she was being drained of blood, Lance.”
They continued the banter back and forth, saying essentially the same things over and over. This was getting crazy weird, and to have it so close to me gave me a queasy feeling like I had woken up in an alternate universe.
I actually felt sick.
21
With the latest murder I had this feeling that I needed to pick up my pace and stop spinning my wheels. It seemed like every day I didn’t find Howard put some high-school kid at risk. This whole thing felt like a puzzle, and the only thing that seemed to make sense to me was to pick one of the pieces and start seeing where it might fit.
I’d never heard of this Blast and I’ve been working with street addicts for a long time. Sometimes drugs come and go but more often drugs get new names, or slightly different versions of them appear mixed with something new that alters the high. I met some guys once who combined Benadryl with some prescription narcotic, and they said it was their best high ever.