He paused, letting the question hang long enough that the audience began to squirm. Then he put a finger to his enormous forehead. “But you see, our government already knows what it is. After all, they invented it. It’s called color television, and they made it to insinuate itself into your brain and create a kind of conscious sleep. Who here has spent a whole day on the couch watching TV? How many kids spend the whole day, the whole night, playing video games? How many neighbors got their eyeballs riveted to that there PC monitor? Who here’s been a potato? C’mon!”
Hands came up all around, and Scuppy nodded. “You just lay there, you just sit there, and the longer you lay there, the harder it is to get up. If that isn’t a trance, gang, I don’t know what is.
“Now, you ask me, ‘Why are they doing this, Scuppy? Why do they want us in front of the TV? What is the purpose of putting an entire planet under a spell?’ Gee, do you think it has anything to do with power, anything to do with money, anything to do with the so-called gross national product? Do you think it has anything to do with increased work hours, less leisure time, stymied labor organization, and an economic boom?” Scuppy’s volume rose, working up to a crescendo, as did the riff from the band. “Do you think that just maybe it has anything to do with commercialism, with everybody wearing ads on their clothing, with hyperconsumerism, with a stock market twice the size it was ten years ago? Do you think it has to do with Internet providers cramming their screens with flickering icons and ads? Do you think it has to do with the shopping mall being the alternate center of everyday life when you leave the TV?! DO YOU THINK . . . it has anything to do with the fact that we are increasingly asked to stare at color monitors all day at work, only to spend our lunch hours on the same monitor playing solitaire, only to come home and tune in our twenty-five-inch Sony Trinitrons or surf the Web?!”
Scuppy’s shout echoed into silence as he scanned the congregation with his pointed finger. No music. The audience was rapt.
“DO YOU THINK?” he shouted, spittle flying from his accusing lips.
The spotlight went out, and the band blared in the darkness for a few moments before the hanging bulbs slowly lit up and the congregation broke into applause. A chant started: “THINK! THINK! THINK!” Scuppy was gone, and ushers started to pass Folgers cans for a collection.
Angie was standing right up against me at this point and squeezed my hand. “That was almost like you when you get going on your Madison Avenue diatribe. Scary, huh?”
I nodded. “Can we go now?”
“Show’s not over, gang,” Checkers reassured us from the podium. “We’re just getting warmed up. I think many of you know who I am. But for those of you who don’t, my name is Doctor Henry Fulham.” A projector screen was set up behind him, and one of the techies who’d been working the spotlight at the back of the room near Angie and me fired up a slide projector. “I am a neurosurgeon, and I was with the United States Army at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. It’s been my privilege, my duty, to serve the Church, to validate the dogma, to testify to what I know to be true about the single greatest conspiracy mankind has ever known. First slide.”
The gang proceeded to be treated to a slide show documenting the history of the pursuit of world domination and the importance of en masse brainwashing techniques to that end. There were slides of Hitler, of Nazi anti-Semitic slogans and pamphlets, of Stalin. The Soviet Union, according to Checkers, was the last big push to try to manually subjugate a population through topical means. That proceeded into a lecture on what little is known about brainwashing, about how the Moonies, Scientologists, and scores of other cults can so easily manipulate people. “Stable, well-adjusted agnostic individuals,” as Checkers said more than once, can in twenty minutes be convinced to abandon their entire life’s possessions and “supplicate their lives before the Bible” simply through a twenty-minute discussion with a recruiter. Repetition, protein deprivation, excessive memorization, were the tools that could reduce the mind to a nonthinking organ. Slides included pictures of mass Moonie weddings, Tom Cruise, John Travolta before a Senate committee, recruiters working campuses, etc. He gave a few anecdotal case histories (with slides of the victims), then hit us with some of his work for the government on epilepsy and mind stimulation through the optic nerve and how 3-D movies were actually the brainchild of the Army. The 3-D glasses have one red lens, one blue, and the Army first devised them in an attempt to study the effects of flashing blue and red on the optic nerve while introducing flash frames of popcorn. We were, of course, treated to some eerie shots of movie-house audiences during the fifties in 3-D shades.
According to Checkers, the idea of “color flash” mind control was originally intended for troops, but the National Security Agency—“our CIA dedicated to sophisticated electronics”—took over the project, combined it with their color-television project, and rigged the Broadcast Standards Institute to perfect the technique and proper scanning rates to open the mind. The scanning rate, he explained, had an effect on the mind comparable to the repetition used in topical brainwashing, except now you had someone looking at the TV with “a full open mind, bereft of any apprehension or distraction from talking with a stranger, a recruiter.” The entertainment worked as a sort of carrier signal for the color flash.
But this was only the first step. The next was to get as much protein out of the American diet as possible, which the government did by introducing a cornucopia of high-fat, high-carbohydrate snack foods. At the same time, beef, cheese, and eggs were vilified. So were snack foods to a certain extent, but they were so convenient and taste-enhanced that people ate them anyway. Commercials saw to that. Checkers showed charts and graphs of the increase in snack-food consumption since the introduction of the color TV, of insidious partially hydrogenated oils found on every snack label.
And finally he revealed to us the purpose of the color-flash brainwashing: money worship. The Soviets had it all backward, you see. They felt that if they could maintain total control over supply, they could completely control the people. In the West, however, we prefer the carrot to the stick. The government controlled demand, and that drove the economic engine, made people work harder for less real estate, more consumables. He cited the scarcity of condominiums before the advent of color TV.
“Next week, I’ll go over what organizations are implementing the color-flash program, the size and breadth of the conspiracy. Following that, we have a guest speaker, formerly of the National Institutes of Health, to explain the mechanisms of how nicotine blocks color flash in the brain through dopamine enhancement, which in turn is the impetus for the government’s efforts to abolish smoking. Included will be new information on how attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a side effect of the Broadcast Institute’s experiments, and how the drug Ritalin is being used in lieu of cigarettes to combat these effects. Thank you all, and please give as generously as you can to the Church fund. It goes into rental of this space, for organizing, for getting the word out. Maestro?”
The band struck up a riff, and the congregation all stood up at once. Angie and I weren’t far from the door and slid out pretty quickly. I dropped a buck in the can of a guy next to the door on the way out. And so we were some of the first ones up at Houston Street, where taxis had gathered. Like vultures, it looked like the cabbies had gotten wind of the meetings, and the ones in the know would stop down here at midnight to scavenge fares.
As we zoomed west on Houston Street, Angie cleared her throat. “Well?”
I gave a short laugh. “I’ve got to hand it to them, Angie. It’s compelling, in its way. They’ve really brought a bunch of threads together, and it plays into a swell conspiracy theory.”
“Think any of it is true?”
“Just enough. Going to continue playing solitaire?”
“I mean it, Garth. A conspiracy?”
I smiled, but not with full conviction. “Conspiracy theories are the ultimate in human conceit. Look at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Their
task is perfectly simple. They just need a few facts, date of birth, name, address, then a photo. You get assigned a number, so does your car. Now it just becomes a matter of keeping the number straight with the names and vehicle identification numbers. Go to the DMV, what do you find? Chaos, huge lines, confusion.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
“If the government had the wherewithal to perpetrate a complicated conspiracy, you’d think they’d have the wherewithal to make the DMV the pinnacle of efficiency.”
“Some would argue they’re only as efficient as they have to be. What do they care if you have to wait in a long line? It’s not like you won’t wait.”
“Even so, to pull off a conspiracy of this complexity you’d have to get a lot of people buying into the same principle without a religious dogma or beacon of hate to lead them. Hell, get six people together and you spend an hour and a half trying to decide where to go for dinner. And there’s not even any power or money to be shared in that arrangement. Even so, it would have to be for something more than just the love of greenbacks.”
“It is a tall tale.” Angie sighed. “Then again, there seems to be no end to these loopy cults. You know, I was fooling around on the Internet the other day and came up with this Web page for some group that’s convinced there’s a global shadow government. You know who spearheads it? The Boy Scouts of America and their—what was it?—oh, yeah, ‘Occult Symbolism.’ I mean, these guys really think the Scouts are in cahoots with Amway to raise the Dark Lord and enslave the planet!”
“I could see Amway and the UPN network . . .” I grinned.
“But the retros: They have a lot going for them. I mean, they promote smoking and eating beef. Beats grape juice and white bread. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody to have a lot less television and video games in their lives.”
“Certainly cut down on the advertising exposure.” I squinted.
“Yes, Sugar Lips.” Angie gave me a pat on the hand. “Fewer ads.”
Chapter 14
Our taxi pulled away from us and relit the For Hire sign. Angie and I walked around my black Lincoln parked in front of our digs and approached the doorway to our apartment. We use a side door that accesses all eight apartments in the building, even though there’s a shop entrance into our living room that we haven’t opened in years. It’s not uncommon for a homeless person to curl up to sleep on our front stoop, particularly on windy, cold nights, and we don’t mind so long as they don’t wet the bed. Actually, the more common phantom urinaters are barhoppers. The Barbed Wire, a saloon that used to be around the corner, was a big B&T draw, meaning that “bridge and tunnel” kids from outside Manhattan—Jersey, Queens, etc.—came there to whoop it up in the Big City. I’ve got no problem with that except the B&Ts routinely mistook our stoop for a urinal on their way back to their cars. Don’t ask me why they didn’t use the trough at the Barbed Wire. This became so predictable for a time that I installed a motion detector and strobe light to scare them off. Inspired by Dudley’s tinkerings, I schemed to deconstruct the components of a bug zapper, flatten out the charged grid, and slide it under a rubber mat on the stoop. I guess it would have been a “pud zapper.” But Angie talked me out of that one because I might’ve electrocuted a passing pissing pooch.
Anyway, we didn’t think anything of the person we could see curled up in our front doorway. Until we noted that said form wasn’t dressed in the fashionable oily gray, navy, or brown coat of the indigent. The garb was red, and the outstretched hand had red painted nails. A strung-out transvestite? We drifted over for a closer peek. You have to be careful around sleeping homeless because they sometimes awake quite defensively. And whatever you do, don’t nudge them with your foot or they can get violent—and not without some justification. Vigilante citizens have been known to fall upon the homeless while they sleep, literally kicking them bloody while they’re down. The intended message? Don’t return to sleep in and reduce the property values of our neighborhood.
A closer inspection revealed blood dripping off the stoop. We winced, but such spectacles aren’t completely out of the norm in the Big Apple.
“Oh, my gosh,” Angie gasped.
“Time to call an ambulance,” I said as we backed to the building entrance.
Homeless die every day in New York, right on the street, and sometimes in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. They most often succumb to exposure in the dark, cold months. Huddled next to a building as if asleep, their body temperature draws down and they die quietly. Other times, they are the victims of their vices, isopropyl martinis causing gruesome public episodes of blood vomiting.
“Sure you wanna call an ambulance?” Nicholas had appeared, in a tan and brown suit. He was sitting on the Lincoln’s hood, arms folded, a tweed goblin come to vex me.
“What the— Of course!” Angie shot him a cross look and unlocked the building door.
Nicholas straightened his green bow tie. “Okay.”
Angie turned suddenly. “Oh, my Lord. It’s not—”
“It’s Marti Folsom, and she’s dead.” By his expression, Nicholas might just as well have told us our fridge was on the fritz. “No bullet holes or stab wounds. Blood is coming from her ears and mouth. When the coroner gets through slicing up her brain and liver like so much Boar’s Head, he’ll probably find that it was an overdose. Not that she willingly took the overdose.”
“But that’s impossible. We just saw her . . .”
Nicholas raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“Yeah? Where?”
I held my thoughts, but my eyes betrayed them.
“That’s right, Garth. Someone’s sending you a message. They know where you live, and they don’t want you nosing around the retros looking for Pipsqueak.”
“How long have you been hiding in the shadows here?” Angie asked.
“Not long enough to see who put her there, but long enough that I got here before you. So where did you two go after you left the Gotham Club? I just happened to see you there.”
Again I held my thoughts. I learned a long time ago it wasn’t wise to divulge anything while Nicholas was playing games.
“Well, you don’t have to tell me, Garth. But you will have to tell the police. Er, you might want to make your next call to a lawyer.”
My mind raced. Was there any way I could tell the police that I didn’t know this dead person’s name? What were the potential pitfalls? And if I did tell them who she was and that she was the owner of T3, where another murder had happened, might the police suddenly come to suspect that Cola Woman was “invented” by me and Marti? That somehow we’d conspired to kill Tyler Loomis, alias Gut Wrench, and blame it on a mysterious stranger who never existed? All to fake Pipsqueak’s disappearance? But why . . . who . . . what if . . . ?
“Okay, brother-in-law: Just what are you doing here?”
“Sister-in-law Angie! I’m flattered that Garth told you about his little brother. I can see it all now. Christmas cards, Thanksgiving dinner. Hey, that’s right. I don’t have any plans for Easter!”
“Look, buster,” Angie began, a finger of warning in his face, “I know you and Garth have some bad blood, but save that game for him. I’m a clean slate, and as far as I’m concerned you’re family. And where I come from, family gets the benefit of the doubt, always, so I’m extending that to you.” Angie poked his shoulder. “Don’t bite my hand, Nicholas.”
My brother displayed uncharacteristic contrition, real or not.
“Sorry, Angie, you’re right.” He held his hands up as if her finger were a gun barrel. “I’ll cool it.”
“That’s better. Now I’m going to call the police.”
“Think it through first,” Nicholas advised. “Marti’s dead, which means a lot of strange thoughts are going to go through the cops’ heads when they get here and learn of Garth’s connection to her. They don’t cotton to coincidences. Garth’s peripheral involvement in two murders means they’re going to suspect him of complicity. Somebody did t
his to keep you two from playing bloodhound. If I were you, I’d tell the cops only the bare facts and wait to flesh it out in the presence of your attorney. I’m not sure you even want to get into the whole retro thing, if you can help it, much less that you think this has to do with a goofy puppet. Let them figure that out for themselves, if they can. Oops—looks like somebody already called the fuzz.”
Flashing lights came down the block.
Nicholas started off on foot toward the West Side Highway but gave some parting advice.
“And whatever you do, don’t offer to identify the body. Let the cops ask you to, and hope they don’t.” The ambulance and police car arrived simultaneously with Nicholas’s disappearance around the corner.
Chapter 15
Sometimes I wish I could visit myself in the past and slap that Garth around. This stupid Pipsqueak thing was getting way, way out of hand, even as I had feared it might.
Two detectives showed up moments before the photographer. One was a wan white guy with black-frame glasses, a cratered, waxy complexion, and neatly pressed suit. To my eye, he’d have made a dandy embalmer. The other was a pudgy man of undetermined race. That is, he probably could have filled any or all of the Equal Employment Opportunity categories at the NYPD: sloe-eyed, short frizzy hair, thick black mustache, bright blue eyes, and skin that probably took a tan well. He handed me his card and asked questions; the Embalmer didn’t. After getting our names, address, and phone number, Detective Tsilzer asked only six questions.
“When did you find her?”
“Just now, about ten minutes ago.”
“Did you or anyone else touch or move her in any way from the way you found her?”
“No. We found her just like that.”
“Who else was around when you discovered the body?”
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