Eats to Die For!

by Michael Mallory

  “I don’t think this heap’s got enough gas for that. But get in.”

  I got in and she pulled back onto the highway. All of a sudden I was aware that it was hot. “I’m glad you came along,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you are,” she sneered. “What particular truth are you looking for?”

  Since unloading the details of the case to Bogart had resulted in a depressing thought, I didn’t want to repeat the experience. So I just shrugged.

  Besides, since this was all happening somewhere inside my mind, she must already know.

  All happening somewhere inside my mind.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

  “You just did,” she replied, her cigarette bobbing, its ash falling on her blouse.

  “Right. Well, since you wanted to know what particular truth I’m looking for, here it is. It’s not who killed Louie or who killed Regina or what happened to Ricky. I want to know if I’m crazy. I mean, not just a little wacky, but certifiably, lock-him-up insane. So insane that I imagine phone messages. So insane that I talk to dead actors. So insane that I fall for murderers. Am I really that crazy?”

  “How the hell should I know?” dead actor Ann Savage, playing a murderer, asked in my imagination.

  “Well, because you’re me.”

  She looked over at me, her eyes scanning me up and down. “I may have had some bad mornings, Poindexter, but I never got up looking like you.”

  “What I mean is, you’re in my head. I’m essentially talking to myself.”

  “No, you’re dreaming. There’s a difference.”

  “This is still taking place inside my brain.”

  “’Bout time something did,” she said, turning to smirk at me. “I overhear sometimes, too.”

  Can’t I conjure up anyone who actually likes me, I thought, desperately.

  Then it hit me. “My god, I’m the one who’s always insulting me and insisting I’m a failure,” I said aloud. “It’s me. That’s my problem.”

  “Go collect your kewpie doll, Ace,” she said, with something that almost resembled a smile.

  Then she glanced in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a bigger problem, though.”

  “What?” That was when I heard the siren coming from behind us.

  “They’re onto us. Cops.”

  “You sure it’s us they want?” I asked.

  “You see anyone else on the road? Hang on.” She stomped on the accelerator and the car’s tires practically left the pavement.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed. “You’re going to try to outrun the police?”

  “Got no choice. They know what I’ve got in the trunk.”

  I threw my hands up in the air and began to wonder if I shouldn’t have gone with the Three Stooges after all.

  The siren was getting louder, more insistent. I looked back and saw that the 1940s-style police cruiser was only about four car lengths behind us. I also saw an officer lean out of the passenger window and point a gun at us.

  “Jeez!” I cried as the bullet ricocheted off the side of the car.

  Ann Savage, meanwhile, looked unconcerned, like she had done this before. “Gonna let a little thing like a bullet spook you?” she asked.

  “It can spook me all it wants, I just don’t want it to kill me!”

  The second bullet pinged even closer.

  “You worry too much.”

  “Oh, do I? I’ll have to bring that up at the next Corpses Anonymous meeting!”

  “I think it’s cute the way you get so glib when you’re scared.”

  Swell. I hope she found it just as cute that I got so dead when I was shot.

  A third bullet whizzed by, but it was the fourth one that put an end to the chase. It hit one of the rear tires and blew it out, and immediately the car began to weave uncontrollably.

  Ann tried to bully it back into the lane by wrenching the steering wheel one way, then the other, but it was too late. We were careening off the highway and onto the shoulder.

  Unfortunately, it was the shoulder on the cliff side.

  We went to the edge of the cliff, and then over, plummeting straight down to the water’s edge.

  I had seen such a shot a thousand times in a movie or TV show, but never from the point of view of the front seat!

  I’m dreaming I’m dreaming I’m dreaming I can’t die in a dream I can’t be killed in a dream… My brain was screaming. Or maybe it was me screaming. I couldn’t tell. All I knew is that we hit the water.

  I could feel it on my face…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I could feel the water on my face, which shocked me back to consciousness.

  I opened my eyes and saw someone standing over me, a big, burly guy holding an empty tumbler.

  “Sorry,” he said, in such a way that conveyed he wasn’t sorry in the slightest and, in fact, had enjoyed throwing a glassful of water into my face. And would like to do it again sometime, only with boiling coffee.

  The guy wore a uniform, but it was one I could not place; not quite military, but close, with epaulets on the shoulders of the white, starched shirt. The creases on legs of his black pants could have sliced cheese.

  I shook my head, throwing beads of water off in every direction. “Where am I?” I asked.

  “The place where bad people go,” the guy said.

  I guess that meant I was either in Hell or Washington D.C.

  “Why am I here?”

  “I just told you.”

  “When can I leave?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Okay, fine. How about right now.”

  The guy didn’t smile. He looked like he wasn’t sure how. “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Then how about this? Why not tell me what’s going on. I assume I’ve been kidnapped, but why?”

  “I’m not at the proper adjustment level to give you information,” he said, unlocking the door of whatever holding tank I was in and opening it.

  I suppose I could have tried to rush him and get past him, but I was never very good at that sort of thing. Besides, now my head was dully aching.

  The bigger truth was, I was disoriented. Maybe this was still part of my dream, but instead of Vera from Detour, this time I was in the company of an unbilled extra.

  No, ’cause your cranium hurts, kid, Bogart said. You don’t feel pain in dreams.

  Swell.

  The guy was out of the room, which gave me an opportunity to inspect it further. It was a regulation prison cell, sized six-by-eight, and came complete with a cot, upon which I had been sprawled prior to being splashed awake, a metal sink and a toilet. The door had a small barred window in it.

  Compounding the suspicion that I was in somebody’s jail was reinforced by the fact that I was no longer wearing my own clothes, but had instead been changed into an orange prison jumpsuit.

  The thing was, I didn’t recall any arrest or booking.

  There was no need to check for my wallet or keys, since they would have been taken by my captors, and I didn’t have to worry about my cell phone, since the police still had it.

  My only options at present were to sit down and try to figure out where I was, or wait until someone of a higher “level” showed up to fill me in. Maybe the most surprising thing about this descent into surrealism was the fact that the prison jumpsuit was really comfortable.

  With nothing better to do, I sat on the cot, leaned back and closed my eyes, and absentmindedly rubbed my chin in a parody of thought.

  And that was when I truly became afraid.

  I rubbed my chin again, then my cheeks, my upper lip and my neck. I had at least two days worth of beard stubble.

  Going to the small window in the door, I started yelling. I kept it up until someone appeared on the other side, not th
e guy who had thrown water on me, but someone older, with more pseudo-military decorations on his pristine white shirt.

  “What do you want?” he asked placidly.

  “How long have I been here?” I demanded.

  “Two days, though transporting you here took an additional day.”

  “And I’ve been unconscious the whole time?”

  “We couldn’t very well have you alert during this process. Someone might have gotten hurt.”

  “Who is we?” I shouted, having a terrible feeling that I already knew.

  “Things will be revealed on an as-needed basis.”

  “At least tell me why I’ve been kidnapped by the Temple of Theotologics,” I said, taking a stab at the truth.

  “Kidnapped by the Temple of Theotologics,” the guy repeated. “That sounds paranoid. Have you been diagnosed as suffering from paranoia?”

  “I’ll bet you have a program to fix that,” I said.

  “Oh, many.”

  “How about murder. Do you have a program to fix murder?”

  The man shook his head. “There you go again. Definitely paranoia. We’ll have to have one of our adjusters come in to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be happy to talk to anyone,” I said. “Ideally someone over your pay grade.”

  “Low self-esteem, too. You have to try and tear someone else down in order to make yourself seem more important? I’d say we’ve gotten you just in time.”

  “Since you’ve brought the subject up, what time is it?”

  The man glanced at his watch and then said, “Five thirty-five. Almost dinner time.”

  “Great. I’ll have a Twin Halo combo.”

  “A what?” The fellow looked genuinely confused.

  “A Twin Halo, from Burger Heaven. The Temple owns Burger Heaven, don’t they? That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, you mean that fast food chain in California?”

  In California?

  Wherever I was it was not in my home state. My daylong transport to this charming prison must have been achieved via airplane. “Is that five thirty-five Pacific time?”

  The man stared at me, an expression of uncertainty playing on this face. “Five thirty-five is all you need to know.”

  “How about you go get one of your superiors, of which I assume there are many. Maybe they can tell me where I am.”

  “You’re a very negative person,” he replied. “You seriously need adjusting.”

  With that he scampered away.

  Okay, so if I wasn’t in California, where was I? A day’s transport, he said. If it was by jet, I could be in Europe, though I can’t imagine how they would have gotten me through customs.

  Where could one build a secret compound within the United States that would be hidden from everybody? My gut told me Colorado, but that might only be because NORAD is situated there.

  I started pacing back and forth, trying to think of how I was going to get out of this one.

  “Hey, Mitch,” I said aloud, “you were in stir. What did you do to pass the time?”

  Told myself stories and tried not to think about how I wasn’t going to get laid for a while, Robert Mitchum’s voice replied in my head. I was able to make up for it later.

  Fine, I’d try to tell myself stories. I started with the story of a tomato walking into a detective’s office, but in the stillness of the cell it did not take long for me to nearly think myself back to sleep.

  Maybe there was still some residual knock-out drug in my system, or maybe I was simply reacting to boredom, like the homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, who are seen sleeping most of the day because they don’t have any reasons to remain conscious.

  I was brought back to alertness by the sound of my cell door being opened.

  Two people entered the room, one a middle-aged fellow in what looked at first glance like a full naval uniform…blue double-breasted blazer with epaulets, white slacks and a captain’s hat…and a woman I recognized immediately: the security guard from the Sherman Oaks Burger Heaven, whom I also thought I had spotted following me in the grocery store. I had not been certain at the time, but now there would seem to be little doubt. She was wearing a similar uniform to the one the man had on.

  “So, which of you is the adjuster?” I asked.

  “An adjustment session cannot be conducted here,” the man said. “It requires a special room with special equipment.” Then, turning to the woman, he asked: “Is this the man, Marta?”

  After a second’s hesitation, she said, “Yes, that’s him.”

  “You are certain, beyond any doubt?”

  “I am indeed the man she met in the Burger Heaven,” I said. “Now that we have established that, I have a few dozen more questions of my own.”

  “You would swear in a court of law that this is the man who raped you?” the guy in the uniform went on.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?” I shouted. “Raped her? That’s bull!”

  “You’d swear in court?” he asked again.

  “If I had to, yes,” Marta replied.

  “Very well, you may go.”

  The woman exited the room, but the man remained.

  “Listen, Colonel Klink,” I said, “I don’t know what you think you are trying to pull here, but I never touched that woman! Good god, even if I had she probably could have killed me!”

  “Gordon’s judgment was right,” he replied with a smirk. “Low self-esteem.”

  I assumed Gordon was the first one who showed up in the cell, though I also sensed that bit of information was going to do me precious little good.

  “So what’s the plan? Are you going to charge me with low self-esteem in the first degree? Or just this trumped-up rape charge?”

  “We aren’t charging you with anything,” he said. “We are not a court of law.”

  “Just a jail.”

  “A facility.”

  “I don’t know what country you think we’re in, but you can’t just abduct someone and hold them in a private jail. There are things called laws.”

  “Funny you should mention country. The Temple of Theotologics is a global entity. We acknowledge that there are countries, but we don’t recognize their authority.”

  Crazy as a bedbug, the voice of Peter Lorre wheezed inside my head, and I had to agree.

  “Well, the people outside this facility might.”

  His smirk widened as he reached behind him to open the cell door and stepped backwards through it, then closed it again. Looking through the barred window, he said: “They haven’t yet.”

  Then he was gone.

  How in heaven’s name had I gotten myself into this mess? Why was I so dangerous to the Temple of Theotologics?

  Cause you know where the bodies are buried, Charles McGraw told me, his sandpaper voice abrading my throbbing head.

  But I didn’t! I didn’t even know if they’d been buried yet!

  Okay, kid, how about this? the more comforting voice of Humphrey Bogart chimed in. They think you found the evidence.

  Louie’s notes? But I hadn’t found them.

  But they think you did, which is good and bad. Bad because you’re here, but good because as long as they think you’ve got the stuff and are holding out on them, they’ll keep you alive.

  “So I need to carry on a bluff?” I asked aloud.

  You got a better idea? And stop talking out loud, kid. This place is probably bugged, too.

  That was a good point.

  Okay, fine; I’d bluff and see where it got me, because like Bogie had pointed out, I didn’t have a better idea.

  Or any idea, for that matter. But what would I tell them? The fact that my clothes were removed while I was unconscious means they must have searched all my pockets, so if I were carrying a flash drive they would have found it.r />
  I didn’t want to think about where else they might have checked while I was in forced dreamland. So what did that leave as options? I could claim to have found the stick and mailed it to Zareh Zarian at the Independent Journal, stating that at this very moment he was publishing the information and reporting confirming Louie’s disappearance to the police.

  But if that were the case, there would be no reason for them to keep me alive. They could dispose of me and then go after Zarian.

  All right, Fabrication B: I found the stick and hid it. By now, I would imagine, my office, if not my apartment as well, has been completely turned upside-down from a search, and they would have found nothing.

  So the hiding place has to be off the premises. A safety-deposit box? Maybe.

  But then I could be tortured until I gave up its location, which I would have to make up, because no such safety-deposit box existed.

  While that sounded pretty extreme, even for someone with a weekend pass to Kafkaland, I had to anticipate every eventuality, no matter how unreal it sounded. “Flash drive…flash drive…” I muttered, then remembered Bogie’s admonishment not to speak aloud.

  No, that one was okay, kid, he chimed in. If they are listening, you’ve just got them to pay attention.

  That assumption was borne out one long, boring hour later—or maybe it was only fifteen minutes, it was hard to tell—when Colonel Klink came back to the window.

  “Good news, Mr. Beauchamp,” he said. “You have been granted a shower.” He unlocked the door and held it open. “Follow me.”

  Stepping out into the hallway, I looked both ways and quickly realized there was no use in attempting to make a run for it. Uniformed guards were stationed at both ends.

  I followed the man past what appeared to be two other cells before turning a corner and heading down another corridor, which terminated in a large, open shower room, the kind one might find in a public gym.

  “You no longer need to wear the orange,” Klink said. “Some clothes have been placed on the bench for you. I hope they fit. There is also an electric shaver, should you wish to neaten yourself up a bit.”

  “Um, no one’s going to watch this, are they?”

  “What a depraved notion. Are you some kind of kink as well as paranoiac, Mr. Beauchamp?”