Lethal Fetish

by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood

  While I ate, he basted the rotating meat and ranted about a Greek Cup match. I judiciously murmured my sympathy with his zealous critique of the officiating and nodded assent to his analysis that his Athens team was surely better than their low-class “eternal rival” from Piraeus. Agreement seemed prudent given that I hadn’t the slightest idea about the sport of soccer and his diatribe was punctuated by waving a large, sharp knife.

  I thanked Mr. Constantanides for lunch and headed to the shop, where I found Larry stocking shelves from a shipment of supplies piled by the garage door. He was deeply engaged in matching contents to packing lists—the sort of paperwork that never put him in a good mood—so I just nodded and he grunted as I headed to my office. I checked the phone book and found no listing for The Passion Place then went down the hall to find Carol.

  Her radio was playing a song with a whispered one-word chorus, “passion,” which seemed like some sort of warning. And the verses about dangerous nights, pitiless lovers, and twisted hearts were an ominous prelude to what I was going to broach with Carol.

  “Hey babe, that song is almost musical,” I said as a greeting.

  “Don’t patronize me, Riley. You appreciate Rod Stewart about as much as I enjoy Beethoven. I’m guessing that you’re being nice because you want something.” The woman was wickedly incisive.

  “Okay, I was going to be delicate but I’ll just come out with it. My investigation of the Linfords has led to a business that might be called The Passion Place, possibly located in the Tenderloin and run by a guy who could be named Mitch.” She looked at me and rubbed her temples. A bad sign.

  “And you figure lesbians know about sex shops because we’re into kinky stuff?”

  “No, that’s not it,” I lied. I imagined that atypical sex involved unconventional techniques, not that I thought about it all that much. “It’s just that you and Anna live in the Castro where there are a few of these businesses, and you know everyone in the neighborhood. So I thought maybe you’d have some inside information.”

  “I’ll let that lame explanation pass because of what’s at stake for all of us.” I smiled weakly. “But for the record, plenty of adventurous straight couples are into experimentation, based on what I’ve been told by several proprietors in the neighborhood.”

  “Okay, might any of the owners also have shops in the Tenderloin?”

  “Doubtful. The influx of Asian immigrants hasn’t been great for business in that part of the city. I’m sure that Vietnamese and Koreans are as kinky as the rest of humanity, but the new arrivals are too busy making ends meet, so to speak, to spend their entertainment dollars on dildos. But I can do you one better than speculating about the Tenderloin.”

  “How so?”

  “A couple blocks from our apartment is a shop called Pleasure Palace, run by a woman named Michelle. And I know that she used to operate in the Tenderloin. Sounds suspiciously similar to what you’re looking for.” She was right. Lane’s story was surely an extemporaneous permutation of the facts, and the near match was too close to be coincidence—even in a city famous for its entrepreneurial lustiness.

  “Alright, we’re onto something. Do you think Pleasure Palace might provide animals for deviants?” I asked. Carol sighed.

  “I’m not sure what constitutes a deviant in your hopelessly heterosexual mind, but I know that Michelle has an impressive up-front inventory of sex aids.”

  “Up front?”

  “Lotions, vibrators, ticklers, cuffs, strap-ons. The usual stuff.” Apparently ‘usual’ had another meaning in this context. “But I’ve also heard that she provides special arrangements for S&M events, safe space for submission fantasies, and regular parties for furries.”

  “Furries? Do tell.” I was beginning to feel like an adolescent coming across his first Playboy.

  “You were asking about animals. Furries find it hot to dress up in animal costumes.” I supposed that ‘hot’ didn’t mean sweating inside a Yogi Bear outfit, which made me wonder why he and Boo-Boo wore ties while otherwise naked.

  “Gotta say that I never busted a perp wearing a teddy bear costume. I did haul in a few hookers who were wearing nothing but teddies under their overcoats, but that’s another thing altogether.”

  Larry strolled into the front office, evidently having picked up on our conversation. “Hey, whatever turns your crank,” he said. “If nobody’s getting hurt, then what the hell.” He had a point, I guess.

  “I’m not a fan of anyone telling consenting adults what they can do, but there have to be some limits. Right?” I was becoming increasingly, uncomfortably uncertain about what was normal.

  “I guess so, but I wouldn’t want the Moral Majority writing the rules,” he said. “In any case, I might be able to help with your investigation, boss. My network of vets is tapped into happenings of all sorts if you get my drift.”

  “They’d know who might be providing animals to sex shops?”

  “I wouldn’t come out and ask ’em. Some of the guys in my Wednesday group are into kinky stuff. Mostly bondage from what I can tell. But if there’s anything warped going down in 415, they might know about it. I’ll see what’s up with them tonight.”

  “Sounds promising,” I said, appreciating the hip allusion to San Francisco’s area code. “In the meantime, I’ll stop by the Pleasure Palace and see what I can learn.”

  “Probably more than you can imagine,” Carol purred and gave me a lewd smile.

  ~||~

  The Castro’s leading sex shop featured fake stonework, gilded chandeliers and red velvet to suggest the interior of a palace. As an ex-cop with a short but memorable stint on the vice squad, I know people get off in various ways. However, scanning the inventory while listening to Ravel’s “Bolero” playing softly in the background and catching whiffs of lavender and musk raised some questions: why would the color of a condom matter, just what is the G-spot, and should good sex require batteries?

  In contemplating the array of devices, I was reminded of a dinner at the home of a family from Delhi whose high-end flower shop had been infested with, ironically, Indian meal moths. The caterpillars were having a heyday in the dried arrangements despite the Kumars’ enthusiastic spraying of insecticides. I could’ve advised an expensive fumigation, but instead I had them turn down the temperature in their walk-in cooler and freeze all of the dried plants for a week. This meant some logistical inconvenience as there was nowhere to keep fresh flowers but they saved a bundle compared to fumigation.

  To express their gratitude, I was included in a dinner party of their business associates. We had all served ourselves from an array of dishes, including a heaping platter of chicken parts slathered in curry sauce. I’d picked up a fork and knife to cut the meat from the bone, in accord with fine dining etiquette. Mr. Kumar gestured discretely for me to wait and announced to the gathering: “My friends, eating is like sex.” There were embarrassed smiles as he continued. “One should never allow an implement to come between you and the one you love.” With that, he picked up a chicken leg, took a hearty bite, and licked his fingers. We all followed suit and joined the culinary orgy.

  My marveling at the “triple-action diving dolphin” while contemplating whether Mr. Kumar’s advice applied to whatever the hell this thing did for couples was broken by a provocative question. “How may I help you?”

  The sultry voice came from a woman who had a good six inches and twenty-five pounds on me. She had piercing blue eyes, tight golden curls, and assertively unfettered breasts under a peasant blouse, carelessly untied at the throat. This had to be Michelle—like a blending of the most sensual elements of the Norse and the gypsies into a sexually intimidating presence.

  “I was thinking that perhaps we might help each other.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Our business interests might be complementary,” I explained to move the conversation from flirtatious to financial.

  “How so?”

  “Let’s just say that I can provide you with unusual inventory for
discerning customers.” She flicked her head toward the back of the store where a heavy black curtain covered the doorway to a small office with a steel desk, mismatched filing cabinets, a buzzing fluorescent light fixture and absolutely nothing to suggest the nature of her business. Michelle gestured for me to take a battered, wooden chair. She settled into an office chair with well-worn upholstery and lit a cigarette.

  “You’re neither slick nor bumbling enough to be a vice cop, so who are you and what do you have?” she asked.

  “I go by Riley. I understand from one of your customers that you are a discrete retailer of animals for people with particular desires.” She gave a subtle nod and took a drag on her cigarette, so I continued. “In my line of work as an exterminator, I come across creatures that might interest your customers.”

  “I have suppliers,” she said. “Most requests from zoophiles involve warm creatures that can’t be readily obtained from pet stores or at least not repeatedly without raising questions. Why would I need you?”

  “Because I understand the world of six- and eight-legged animals. And you understand the world of unconventional appetites.”

  “What I understand,” she said, taking a long pull on the cigarette and crushing it into an ashtray from the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas according to the futuristic, gold lettering, “is that you are not here to wholesale cockroaches and flies. What are you after?” Those icy blue eyes had me nailed. Being on the other side of an interrogation was unpleasant so I opted for honesty, more or less.

  “It’s convoluted, but the bottom line is that my company is being drawn into a situation that, if the word gets out, could be disastrous for business. We didn’t do anything wrong, but you know how the press loves a salacious story.”

  “Don’t I ever. Hint at anything other than vanilla sex between a husband and wife and reporters get a hard-on faster than with any lotion I stock.” She gave a throaty laugh. “So where does my shop come in—and how can I make sure it stays out of your ‘situation,’ as you call it?”

  “I think you recently provided an individual with some lice which he used for purposes that may well garner the attention of the police.”

  “Thank you for leaving out names. My business requires anonymity. But I do recall this unusual request.”

  “A frequent buyer?”

  She hesitated. I hadn’t asked for a name, but had probed into a sensitive area when it came to the privacy of her clientele. “I’d rather not say.” An awkward deflection can reveal as much as an agile answer. Lane Linford hadn’t been sent by ‘a friend’; he was a regular.

  “I can tell you that my supplier of cold-blooded accessories is more accustomed to orders for tarantulas and earthworms than lice.” I wasn’t sure of the fate of these other creatures, but I was sure I didn’t want to know.

  “But he came through?”

  “Yes, we filled the order. Tell me how the cops are involved.”

  “The lice ended up at the scene of two deaths. They were supposed to be the kind you’d find on humans, but your supplier evidently found it easier to acquire them from poultry than people. However, the customer didn’t specify his purposes so the mistake was understandable.”

  “And traceable?”

  “I managed to find you, although I’m smarter than most cops.”

  “That’s not saying much. But what do you want from me? An apology for providing the wrong beasties?”

  “I was hoping to get a clearer sense of what happened leading up to the deaths. And I have, but I’d also appreciate talking with your supplier, to fill in another piece of the puzzle.”

  “As I said before, discretion is everything. I provide customers with anything they desire, other than names.” I thanked her and gave her a business card. She looked it over.

  “Goat Hill, eh? I have a wealthy customer who occasionally seeks a goat. Maybe I’ll get in touch sometime,” she leered.

  I left, found a pay phone on the corner and called Papadopoulos to let him know that I was following some twisted leads without providing him with details. He expressed his appreciation with being updated and said he could give me some time to pursue the case as long as I flew below radar and kept him informed. In his words, he had more pressing investigations than, “a couple of rich, old perverts who offed themselves.”

  I hung up and wiped my hands on the front of my faded jeans, wondering whose hands had last held the receiver—and what they’d touched just before that.

  CHAPTER 12

  After inspecting a couple of apartment buildings that the guys had treated last week, I was ready to call it a day. I parked behind the shop and headed to our hump-day watering hole. The slate-gray clouds hid the upper floors of downtown office buildings and a fine rain blurred the waning, afternoon light. Like a soggy blanket, the moisture drew the smells of the bay up into Potrero Hill. The salty, sulfurous funk of ocean currents laced with rotting kelp plus the diesel vapors of cargo ships blending with the effluvium of fishing boats created eau d’San Francisco.

  As I came into O’Donnell’s Pub, the smells became yeasty and the cold drizzle was replaced by a feeling like the warm comfort of old slippers. I exchanged greetings with Brian, the pub’s owner, weeknight bartender, and Tommy’s godfather. Then I caught the eye of his wife in the kitchen behind the brass-railed bar. Cynthia came out, pushed an errant lock of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear, and gave me a big kiss on the cheek.

  “It’s a wetting rain out there,” she said, pulling the towel from her apron to wipe my face.

  “I’d say rotten on its way to pissing,” offered Brian. The Irish know their rain.

  “How about a serving of your shepherd’s pie to warm my gullet?” I asked.

  “Is that all I mean to you, Riley?” Cynthia teased, giving me a playful shove. She headed back into the kitchen and Brian handed me a pitcher of Anchor Porter with a luscious head. It was nearly as good as the black stuff—Guinness—although I could get a knuckle supper if I shared this view with my countrymen.

  “Your crew is two pitchers ahead of you,” he said, gesturing to our traditional table where Dennis, Larry, Carol, and her girlfriend, Anna, were sitting along with Nina. I liked it when girlfriends joined our midweek gathering. “They can sure put it away when the boss is paying.”

  “That’s the Wednesday deal,” I said and he nodded approvingly.

  Atop the battered oak table were a couple plates of potato skins—a culinary innovation that convinced people to pay for vegetable peels. But I had to admit that with sour cream and chives, the damn things were addictive.

  Dennis was arguing that the Golden State Warriors had made a disastrous mistake trading Robert Parish for Joe Berry Carroll. And based on the game playing on the television at the end of the bar, Dennis had a point. Getting beaten by the Cleveland Cavaliers was about as bad as it could get.

  “Sorry to interrupt a good tirade,” I said, setting the pitcher in the middle of the table.

  “You d’boss,” Dennis said.

  “And d’sugar daddy of suds,” Larry added as Carol blew me a kiss.

  “Enough of that,” Nina said, “you’re going to puff up his ego.” She leaned over and gave me a sympathetic kiss which afforded a surreptitious glimpse of her cleavage. Or maybe not so stealthy, as she gave me one of those “behave yourself” looks and I shrugged without remorse. Her brown-and-tan plaid flannel shirt with the first two buttons undone combined with the Guinness-colored corduroys to just about beg me to stretch out on her couch and fall asleep on her lap. At least that’s the message I was getting. As it turned out, it wasn’t the message being sent.

  “Now with the adulation out of the way,” I said, “does anyone have anything that would help with the Linford mess?”

  “That’s why Carol brought me along. Well, that and free beer,” Anna said. She was a big, healthy Swede, the kind of woman who would have made six months of darkness in northern Europe tolerable for a man—if only she’d been straight.

&
nbsp; “What’s the poop?” I asked. Larry rolled his eyes and Dennis shook his head at my lack of 80s jargon.

  “Carol sort of filled me in. So, I asked around Haight Ashbury, where everyone knows something about herbalism.” Anna worked at a New Age store that sold crystals, incense, Tarot cards and anything else that hip nitwits wanted in order to deceive themselves and dupe their friends. But she had something valuable—connections to folks who retailed plant extracts, tinctures, and my favorite, homeopathic elixirs which were little bottles of water that had one part per gazillion of some chemical. I’d thought about going into homeopathic insecticides. Hell, a drop of malathion would produce a tank car of marketable product, nobody could ever claim they’d been accidentally poisoned, and when the stuff didn’t work I’d just blame the customer—or maybe the vermin—for lacking faith in magical treatments.

  “And what did you discover?” I asked.

  “HerbalVitae is the Bay area’s largest wholesaler. They have competitors, but the Linfords are, or were, adapting rapidly. Last fall, the company came out with the hottest new herbal aphrodisiac.”

  “The best Afro-disiac plant is planting these Afro lips on a woman,” Dennis said, puckering for the table just as Cynthia arrived with my shepherd’s pie. She looked inquisitively at me.

  “Don’t ask,” I said and gestured for Anna to continue as Cynthia walked back to the bar shaking her head.

  “The rumor is that it’s a blend of ginseng, ginkgo, some West Africa tree bark, and horny goat weed.”

  “You’re shitting us,” said Larry. “Horny goat weed? As in a weed that makes goats wanna screw?”

  “It’s named for the shape of the flowers, not its effect on livestock,” Anna said dismissively, although I was right there with Larry.

  “Just askin’,” he said.

  “The point is that HerbalVitae was doing fine,” I said in an effort to get the conversation back on track. That meant Lane Linford’s claim of fostering his grandparents’ delusions as a way to allow him to save the family business was bogus. I couldn’t guess his true motive, although I remembered Dr. Chen’s warning that people hide their disorders—so maybe Lane was as screwed up as his elders.