St. Agnes' Eve

by Malachi Stone

  Diaz set the hand aside, half-stood to drop his pants and boxer shorts, then sat back down on the bed, semi-erect with his legs spread. Still watching me, he positioned Carla’s hand, lining himself up with the cylinder her thumb and four fingers made. His breaths came deeper from the diaphragm.

  “There’s her other hand.” He pointed toward the jar. “Give her a try. Carla won’t mind. Hell, she’s always ready for action.”

  I sat and stared at him, too disgusted to move. I’d never been invited to a necrophile circle jerk before. In the near-darkness, Diaz moved the desiccated hand up and down, faster and faster, building to a climax. It looked like a raccoon’s foot or a monkey’s paw, so dwarfed by his inhuman member. I didn’t look away until I heard his breath catch and saw the first tallow candle drops trailing down over rigor mortis fingers. I crystal-gazed into my drink and tried not to hear the drag of one, two, three Kleenex from the box, then fastidious wiping of flesh living and dead. From behind me, men’s restroom sounds of Diaz hiking up his pants, closing his zipper, and fastening his belt.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, plopping Carla’s disembodied hand back into the jar, where it settled to join its mate—two dead fish in an aquarium. I thought I felt an aerosol drop of formalin splash up against my lip and evaporate instantly. He replaced the lid, slid the jar back on its shelf, then sat down facing me again.

  “When I was in ‘Nam,” he began with a faraway look in his eye, “some of us grunts got to like taking trophies, you know? I’m talking buddies of mine, too. Regular home-town guys. Joe High School. Myself, I never much went in for that at the time, but it always stuck in my mind. It was nothing to see a guy out on patrol, some dead whore’s hands dangling from his belt where you’d carry a rabbit’s foot when we were kids, the hands jerking with every step he takes like they was still alive.” He tilted his head and surveyed the jars. “Something about the hands,” he said. “The opposable thumbs. Essence of humanity right there.”

  I swallowed what was left of my drink with a shudder, reached for the bottle, and poured enough for a long story. It was his bottle and his gun.

  “When I showed up at the Salome Spa twenty years ago, the night after I busted Janis for pross, truth be told I was lookin’ to get a little, know what I mean? It was right after Ellen had lost the baby, so she wasn’t letting me even touch her. What can I say? You know how it is. I was all of twenty-seven years old at the time. It had been a problem pregnancy, and my blue balls had been dragging on the carpet so long they were getting a rug burn. See, I figured Janis would be down for anything.” He looked at the brass rail and shook his head. “Man, I didn’t know how right I was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I walked in on her just as she was reactivating the knife on Carla. The way I understand it, they have to kill one of their own with that talisman every twenty years or so. The thing is, the whole scene turned me on so much I got a hard on from watching. I figured, Vietnam, United States, same thing—an accident of geography. Carla was already dead anyway. Might as well take a couple trophies of my own, even if it is a few years late. Janis was in no position to object. Matter of fact, I think the sick bitch even got off on it. Came up with a few tricks I never even thought of, no pun intended.”

  “Such as?”

  “That gag with the holy card, for one thing. Seemed like a great red herring at the time. Funny thing was, it turned out I was the one who got assigned to the homicide. The holy card was all her idea, after she found out how I was willing to switch her prints from the night of the vice bust with Carla’s.”

  He stroked his chin. “I’d given her a lot of breaks during the booking process. She was a real cutie, then and now. I remember she seemed real scared I was going to make her take off that necklace she always wears. So I went ahead and let her keep that, even ROR’d her rather than throw her in a holding cell with all the dykes. Then, after the murder, I was so hot for her I went one step further and switched her prints with Carla’s before filing the pross case, to save her reputation. I guess she kind of liked the idea of walking around wearing a dead woman’s fingerprints.”

  “So how’d Janis let the talisman get away?”

  “Well, after we set up the crime scene, Janis and I, she could tell I really needed to get off. Helped me rinse the blood off, then did me right there in the shower room. My first and only time with her or anybody else outside of marriage, I swear.” Surprised by the emotion breaking in his voice, I searched his face for sarcasm, but it was no put-on, only his Catholic guilt over a twenty-year-old infidelity coming to the fore.

  “When we came back, the dagger was gone, with Janis’s bloody fingerprints all over it. So see, that’s when I had to switch Carla’s prints with hers. Then later when I’m investigating the case I find out that little bald-headed quacker’s got the whole thing on videotape, shot through one-way glass on a timer. Turns out he’s a video peeping tom. Now I’m not only hers by the balls, I’m his, too. I’ve been working for him ever since, doing little jobs.”

  “Like Gwendace Fox? Liz always suspected Kokker of that one.”

  He grinned, eyes wide, and held it there. I said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Funny you should mention her name in that context, is all,” he said. “It was Liz Hare who commissioned that little masterpiece herself.”

  “Liz? I don’t believe it. She loved Gwendace. They wanted to have a child together.”

  “Liz wanted to have a child together, but Gwendace would have been the one to carry it, the way they reproduce, and Gwendace wasn’t having any.”

  “What do you mean, the way they reproduce?”

  Diaz’s big head bobbed in my face like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. “You mean you don’t even know that? You’ve been married to one of them for, what, fourteen years? They get all turned on, see, and about the time they get wet, the middle finger of their right hand starts to grow like magic, almost like a bamboo shoot in one of those stop-action nature films. Then when it’s fully-grown she uses it to snake up into her girlfriend’s plumbing and snatch her egg, then implants the egg in herself where one of her own eggs plays role-reversal and acts like a sperm. Voila! Not exactly an immaculate conception, but it’s done the job for them over thousands of years. It’s true what they say: for every holy passion there’s an unholy passion.” Diaz crossed himself. “Only Gwendace didn’t want to play mommy.”

  “Why’d you mention the immaculate conception just now, John? You adding blasphemy to your other sins?”

  “I read somewhere that for every holy thing, the devil sets up an unholy counterfeit. Maybe that’s what this Lilith cult is all about, the reproducing without men, I mean. I don’t know, I never studied theology. And that’s funny, that last thing you said. You gettin’ up on your high horse, talkin’ to me about sins, with two murders under your belt.”

  “Two murders?”

  He gestured to the last two jars on the shelf. “There’s a rubber with your name on it between Cheryl’s fun bags we fished out of a dumpster, and a quantity of gentleman’s goo in the late Juno’s mouth that matches your DNA, thanks to a q-tip and my own nimble fingers. Looks like you got some ‘splaining to do, Counselor. Bobbi Cox’ll make State’s Attorney hag-riding a lawyer like you all the way to death row. I can hear the campaign slogan already: Pull your Peterson out and stick Cox in. Hell, with all the jury appeal you bring to the party, they’ll resurrect the hot seat for you.”

  “What makes you think the DNA’s mine?”

  “Janis helped me fill in the details. I’m not the first detective to ever get help from a psychic.”

  “What else does Janis do for you?”

  “What, you jealous? Yeah, I’m fuckin’ her too. She does that Missourah hoodoo thing where she brings back Ellen. Not imitates her—really brings her back. You know how I said Janis could help me forget Ellen being sick? Well, she does that by helping me remember Ellen when she was still well.�
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  “Why’d you kill Juno?”

  “Because he took it out and showed it to me. A man in my position, he’s gotta command the respect of his peers. Juno jeopardized all that when he got over on me that night at the Sphincter Club. And, as you can plainly see, he don’t have the balls to do that again.”

  “Why Cheryl?”

  “The bitch pissed in my car.” He took up the gun. It hefted as easily in his hand as a socket wrench in a mechanic’s.

  “Drink up. We’re goin clubhoppin’ among the clodhoppers.”

  Before we headed out again in the hearse, he handcuffed my right wrist to the frame of the shotgun seat. He kept his left hand low on the wheel, resting in his lap. With his other hand he trained the gun on me, about where the wheelchair pad would eventually rest against my lower back if he happened to fire.

  I have a tendency to blubber when my life’s at stake. “Don’t frame me, John. Don’t do this. I’ll never tell anybody your secret if you’ll never tell mine. It’ll be kind of a Mexican stand-off.”

  His gun didn’t move a millimeter. “My family’s Cuban,” was all he said.

  “But why are you doing this? I thought we were friends. What can you possibly have against me?”

  “You fucked my girlfriend,” he replied. “And once you’re out of the way, maybe your wife’ll wanna be my other girlfriend.”

  “John, I’m begging you. Don’t turn me in.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yeah, I mean it. I got a better idea. Once we get to the Sphincter Club, I’ll amputate your cock and balls and leave you to bleed to death in the hearse. It solves a lot more problems. Hell, without too much effort I can probably rig it to look like Ramses’ work. You’re in debt up to your ass anyway. Maybe you used him for a loan shark and then stiffed him on the payments. I’ll get a promotion if I can nail a force of nature like Ramses.”

  We were out of town, hurtling along at ambulance speed on the familiar route to the Sphincter Club, when he spotted the outline of the talisman.

  “What’s that giant killer you got in your pants there?” he asked. “Wouldn’t be a dagger, by any chance, now would it?”

  My mind raced. With my left hand could I get the knife out in time to cut him and escape? I struggled to plunge my hand behind my belt. Found the hilt of the dagger. Pulled. It hung up on my clothing. Pulled again, harder this time. The wad of cloth gave way. I raised the dagger over my head. Saw the flash of the blade. Cut the air wildly, searching for Diaz’s gun hand. Cringing for the shot when I missed, then missed again. Playing mongoose to my cobra, he swerved all over the road, throwing us both around inside the hearse. My right shoulder jammed up against the door, sending a white-hot shiver of pain through me, but still I went for him with the knife.

  Letting go of the wheel but not the revolver, he lunged at me and did some scissoring point-counterpoint trick with his forearms against my wrist. A split-second later my grip sprang open. The dagger flew end-over-end and landed on the floor between his feet where I couldn’t reach it.

  The action seemed to have invigorated him. All cops are adrenaline junkies.

  “Anybody for a little game of mumbledy-peg?” he called out cheerfully, steadying the wheel with his shooting hand, reaching over with the other to pop his seat belt so he could lean down and grab the knife. A moment later he was cradling it in his wheel hand as he drove, the gun again pointed in my direction.

  “You know what?” he said. “With this doo-dah in my possession I got the whole world by the tit. Janis wants it; so does Kokker. Both of them’ll do anything to get it, too. That puts me right in the middle of a bidding war, don’t it?”

  We rode in silence. I thought I recognized the outline of an abandoned grain elevator. We were probably within a mile of the club by now.

  “This knife’ll come in handy, too,” he gloated. “I can use it to chop your nuts off in the parking lot, then leave ‘em on the front seat of Ramses’ Cad. Advancement in rank sure to follow. Maybe they’ll even ask me to do the eulogy.” He affected a tremolo falsetto. “Ricky Galeer was not only a fine attorney, he was also...my friend.”

  The falsetto turned into a scream. At first I thought it was part of the act. Then I caught sight of the black snake nestled between Diaz’s thighs, its head poised as if to strike. Samael, awakened from reptilian slumber, trying to cozy up and make friends.

  It looked to me like Diaz was trying to climb back over the driver’s seat to where the guest of honor rides. The wheel spun free. With an earsplitting squeal of careening tires, the hearse headed for the shoulder and down a steep ditch where it slammed into a concrete culvert.

  No air bags in this baby. Diaz’s head flew into the windshield and cracked it, leaving a lovely snowflake pattern that was probably unique in all the world, then thumped the dashboard. The divot in his forehead made him seem kind of peaceful reclining there. His stentorous breathing reverberated through his bloodied nose. It looked like Diaz would be taking a long winter’s nap.

  I fumbled on his belt for the handcuff keys, found them, and released my right wrist. The dagger had slipped under the driver’s seat. I fished the wad of black linen from my pant leg, carefully re-wrapped the dagger, and jammed it in my pocket this time, switching my wallet to my back pocket to make room. Then I had another thought. Slipping my hand into Diaz’s pocket—waiting for the bell to ring on him like some Fagin’s mannequin—I retrieved his wallet and badge, throwing the money on the seat next to him. Then did what I should have done first: easily loosened his grip on the revolver, jacked the bullets out of the cylinder, and scattered the ammo on the ground. I threw the empty weapon as far as I could into a frozen cornfield. The hissing sound coming from the hearse’s radiator told me Diaz wasn’t going anywhere without a tow truck. The front end was smashed up worse than most of our injury clients’ vehicles.

  At last I knew—all those people had been faking when they kept telling me their necks hurt after an accident. Or maybe it was the pharmacoepia dissolved in my ninety-proof bloodstream that had protected me like a Saint Christopher’s medal and was now easing the pain. I set out on foot for the lot where I’d left my car after Diaz had pulled me over. From there I drove to the Sphinx Lounge and used the pay phone outside. There were some hot numbers carved into the wall; I ignored them and called 911 instead.

  “You’ve got some outstanding felony warrants on a guy named Arthur Tremayne Jr.,” I said. “If you hurry you can find him passed out in a black hearse that wrecked in a ditch about a mile south of the Sphinx Lounge, along that county road that runs by there.”

  Before I made it back to town, two northbound cruisers screamed past, red emergency lights sweeping the night. Good citizen that I am, I obligingly pulled off onto the shoulder. Anything for law enforcement.

  I stopped my car at a Belleville convenience store pay phone, called 911 again, and asked the operator an anonymous riddle: “What has eight hands but only two pricks?” Before she could hang up, I told her, “John Diaz.” I spelled it for her, gave her his home address, then added, “Better get an ambulance over there quick. He’s lying behind the wet bar in his basement, stabbed and bleeding to death. If they break the door down, maybe they can still save him.”

  I could only hope that Belleville’s finest would respond to the ambulance call and that they wouldn’t miss the jars of evidence in plain sight above the bar. The case would stall forever in court while lawyers argued about probable cause, anonymous tipsters, and exigent circumstances, but at least Diaz wouldn’t be doing any more killing for a while.

  What to expect at home? Peripatetic cross-examination or livid silence intense enough to fill the hair and the nerve with static electricity? Maybe I was making too much of Diane’s outburst—when she was in her courses she had a temper, but her periods usually came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Perhaps it was only that time of the month. Either way, I was ready for a deadly homecoming.


  The dagger. Was it in such demand because of the strange powers it held, or merely for what everybody seemed to believe about it? Did it really work miracles, or had Mad used it as a cheap stage prop, palming a squib or two of vampire blood for the big finish? The lights were bad enough in that club for her to have pulled it off. And what about Diane? I’d always feared the day her psychic powers would kick in and betray my infidelities, Sisterhood or no Sisterhood. Somehow Diaz held the key to it all in his twisted mind. Would the killings finally end with his arrest?

  My car cornered badly, then pulled to the right. Even though it was a busy thoroughfare, I parked and got out to check. Right front flat, probably from the broken glass. I popped the trunk. It had been twenty years since I’d last changed a tire, but the Triple A card had run out and it was too late to call anyone.

  I spun the big wing nut free and heisted out the spare. A red gift bag fell out of the well behind it. I’d forgotten all about Sandra’s present; it was still right where I had left it. A VHS tape labeled Diane Pulls the Train and another, smaller tape—Betamax, probably—marked only Salome Spa: February 5, 1988. Without touching either one, I placed the bag with both tapes in the front seat before I set about changing the flat.