Alien Nation #5 - Slag Like Me

by Barry B. Longyear

  Matt felt something within him turn dark and brittle. “Cass,” Matt repeated, his new skin tingling.

  “It was in a dry lake bed east of Barstow. According to the officers who found the body, there’s hardly anything left. He was mostly dissolved in a bath of some kind of acid. Judging from the condition of the head in relation to the deterioration of the rest of the body, Cass’s head was left out of the bath at first.” George’s voice broke. “He was alive when he was placed in that bath, Matt. He was alive and awake.”

  ELLISON ROBB

  Slag Like Me

  If Looks Could Kill

  In Black Like Me, Griffin wrote about “the hate stare,” a look he would receive from “whites” as he walked southern streets in the late fifties masquerading as a “Negro.” The stare was more than a look of disapproval. Rather, it was an exhibition of such extreme abhorrence it was virtually an attempt to kill with one’s eyes.

  Looks such as that are not the thin yields of idle choice, preference, or the mere habits absorbed through a regional upbringing. The roots run much deeper. The person who aims “the hate stare” at someone is looking at an entity that threatens not only existence, but one’s reason for being. Thief of job, home, neighborhood, and nation; defiler of humanity and all that is good; God-killer. The impact of “the hate stare” is quite shattering. The first one that was fired at me was in Santa Monica walking along Ocean Park Boulevard.

  There are few Tencts in Santa Monica, and I suppose there is some weight to the argument that “we” can’t be everywhere. There are still less than a million Newcomers on earth, and since two out of three are mired between L.A. and East L.A., it spreads the rest fairly thin. Nevertheless, there are only a few in Santa Monica, which is why I chose to stroll its streets. I wanted to look at the faces, make eye contact with my fellow beings, and see if I could attract “the hate stare.”

  I began my odyssey on The Promenade, turned up Pico, and made my way down Lincoln, turning onto Ocean Park pleasantly surprised that I had not run into a single shattering look. Mostly what I found was indifference: indifference to me, to everyone else, to the street, to the city, to reality at large, I had the feeling that I could have sprouted tentacles and grown fangs and began snatching little boys and girls off the street and devoured them and no one would have noticed, with the possible exception of the little boys and girls. Perhaps self-absorption is the mark of our age.

  There were a few frowns aimed at me, and although some were disapproving frowns, the majority were the “strange to see one of them in this neighborhood” looks. There were also a few of the upraised eyebrow variation of the “what’s that?” look. The disapproving looks were generally the same sentiment coupled with a “something might be wrong” streak. These were the same faces, looks, and frowns that every human gets on city streets. I was looking forward to writing a column about tolerance in Santa Monica.

  Then I saw it coming from a woman waiting at a bus stop.

  The hate stare.

  She was in her late forties, dressed in slacks, blouse, and sweater. She carried a tote bag containing her shopping scalps of the day. Her face was set with narrowed eyes, black with raw, rabid loathing.

  I was literally knocked back a step. Perhaps those who believe in perceptible auras emanating from living beings are right on the money, because I could feel a physical pressure that smacked my face and reached right info my soul, compelling me to feel worthless and evil about myself. To be honest, it frightened me to such a degree I was ready to tell Marty Fell to stick it. I wanted to pack in the project and go home. I had never before wanted to hide my face in shame, and the feeling bubbled over until it outraged me.

  I walked over to the woman, faced her, and asked, “Was there something you wanted to say to me?”

  “No. There’s nothing I want to say to you.” The look in her eyes, if anything, was more intense.

  “Did I do something to you? Cause you some kind of injury?”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I didn’t do anything to you. You got no right to question me.”

  “I never did anything to you,” I insisted. “Why do you hate me?”

  For the next ten seconds I watched her face erupt in such extreme hatred, tears came to her eyes. All of a sudden I no longer feared her or felt ashamed. Her hatred was a cancer that ate at her heart, mind, and soul. I felt sorry for her and it must have showed in my face. That ripped it. She could not bear to have a Tenctonese pity her.

  There was a Tenct man waiting at the bus stop and he gave me such a disapproving look, it visually smacked my knuckles. “Don’t cause trouble,” said the look. “What’s the matter with you? Blend, go along, look down. Do not protest, confront, insist. No slave ever survived through confrontation. Are you crazy?”

  Perhaps I was crazy. The injustice of that look seemed to drive me toward a dangerous edge. Nevertheless, the bus arrived, both the woman and the man got on the bus, the doors closed, and they roared off in a cloud of environmentally approved fumes. There was a coffee shop across the street, and I decided to get a cup of tea and either scribble some notes or call Marty Fell and tell him to roll up the Sunday Times and pound it up his ass.

  As I was waiting for the light to change, a boy of about seven or eight stepped off the curb and into the path of an oncoming Oldsmobile. Instinctively, I grabbed the back of the kid’s electric green tank top and jerked him back to the curb. The whole thing took about a quarter of a second.

  Before looking to see what had snatched him out of the street, the boy saw the near miss with the car. Hence, when he looked at me, his face was frightened and words of gratitude were on his lips. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, mister. I didn’t see any—”

  Despite the fact that I had already released my hold on the boy, a man, presumably the boy’s father, clasped the lad to himself as though to shield him from my touch. I looked into the man’s face and beheld something that struck me quite speechless. It was “the hate stare” with the man’s lips writhing in a grotesque attempt at saying “thank you” that never quite made it to an audible level.

  I nodded and turned away, grateful that my surgical disguise prevented the flush in my face from being visible. I was ready for that cup of tea. The light changed and I lifted my foot to step off the curb when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned and it was the boy’s father. His face was literally warring through a succession of conflicting emotions and there was a five-dollar bill in his hand. “Here,” he said, shaking the bill in the air. “Take it.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, turned away, and tried once more to catch the light.

  He pulled me back and shook the money in my face. “Here! Take it! I want you to take this.” He nodded. “For my boy.”

  “It’s okay,” I repeated. “I was glad to do it.”

  He did not release my shoulder. “Take the money.”

  It was standing before me, a thing I had read about but had never before seen: a sociological Sasquatch. He could not be beholden to a Tenct and still find life livable. He would’ve found his son’s death by Oldsmobile easier to handle. I pulled my shoulder free and said “Forget it” as I stepped into the traffic, now that the light was against me. Again the hand dropped on my shoulder. “Look, I want to pay you for my son.”

  I stepped back on the curb, and I can only imagine the expression on my face as I said, “You think five dollars is enough?” Then his pain and mine did this little dance.

  “What . . . what do you mean, enough?”

  I looked at the boy. “What do you weigh, kid? How much?” The kid didn’t want to play so I turned back to his father. “Say, sixty-five, seventy-five pounds?”

  “So what?”

  “That’s only seven, eight cents a pound. Hell, man, I have to pay at least a buck ninety a pound for ground chuck. Your kid ought to be worth at least that much, and that doesn’t even include sentimental attachment. Round it off, say, and you give me a hundred dollars.”


  “What? I’m not giving you any hundred dollars.”

  “Then, let’s forget about it, okay?” The light changed again and I turned to cross the street. Again the hand dropped on my shoulder. “Look. You take the five dollars! I’m not going home owing a favor to a damned slag!”

  “I’m not taking your money. Goober. So what’re you going to do? Throw your kid back out in the street?”

  For a split second I almost thought he was going to do it, proving this particular point seemed that important to him. Instead, he crumpled up the five dollars and threw it on the sidewalk. Perhaps fifteen or twenty persons walked by before a druggie snatched it up. It just goes to show how bad inflation has gotten. Just before I entered the coffee shop on the other side of the street, I glanced back in time to see the man smacking his son’s backside for being rescued by a rubberhead.

  There’s no point in naming any names here. Who could inflict more pain on that man than he inflicts on himself? What would be the point? It takes a teachable person to learn from pain more than the fact that it hurts.

  C H A P T E R 1 7

  IT MADE MATT think of the Miadi gang execution three years before. Old man Miadi’s two ambitious sons attempted to dissolve their father in acid. The Miadi boys, however, hadn’t gotten their gold stars in chemistry, and there was a lot left of Daddy. The two sons hadn’t been any better at finding lawyers than they’d been at chemistry and were currently housed along lethal row at the new facility at Tujunga. To get them there, however, Matt had needed to see the father’s remains. The images of the corpse had never left the shadows of his memory.

  The air in the autopsy theater felt corrupt enough to stain anything it touched. Matt’s lungs felt raw. The lump on the slab had been barely recognizable as a primate, much less a human. The lower extremities were completely missing, while from the empty frame of the remaining ribs hung the tail of the few remaining vertebrae, rounded and pitted by the action of the acid. On the shoulders, neck, and skull the epidermis and a considerable portion of the underlying muscle tissue had been eaten away, leaving the skull looking like an incompetent anatomy student’s cadaver at semester’s end. Although the teeth could be seen amid the white foam that had bubbled through the gaps in the cheek muscles, the tissue of the lips and nose was mostly intact. The acrid, rusty smell of blood and acid hung in Matt’s nostrils long after they had left the horror behind, making the air in the staff lounge seem close and filthy.

  They all stood, no one really feeling comfortable with sitting down or touching anything. George Francisco kept staring at Matt, fascinated still at the transformation in his partner’s appearance, though he had found no opportunity to comment upon it.

  The assistant pathologist, Arthur Rivers, looked ill, his face edged with Newcomer gray. Chief Pathologist Kim Nishida pushed her glasses up and perched them on top of her head, revealing almond eyes capped with a frown. “The body was fed feet first into a bathtub filled with concentrated hydrochloric acid. Enough of the scalp was eaten away to expose the miniature video recorder, which is missing. The remaining Realskin tissue around the mouth and nose indicates the use of some sort of mask, perhaps a respirator, that protected somewhat that portion of the lower face—”

  “Why?” asked George.

  “Why the mask?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Nishida thought for a moment and looked at Matt. “The fumes from that amount and concentration of acid would kill a human after a moment or two if he breathed them in. If the objective was to cause the deceased the maximum amount of pain, as the evidence would suggest, there would have to be some way for him to breathe. A respirator of some kind would be a possible explanation.”

  “Sweet Celine,” muttered George.

  “Wouldn’t there be something left of the respirator? Some parts?” asked Matt.

  “It looks as though the mask was removed before the head and upper body were dropped into the bath. We’re fortunate that the porcelain coating on the tub was shattered in one place allowing the acid to eat through the metal and drain out. If the mask had been thrown in, the medical examiner would’ve found something. Whoever did this took the mask.”

  “The site was cleaned up, as well,” said George. “No prints, no tracks.”

  Matt closed his eyes and swallowed. The stench in the autopsy bay had been a twisting rope of repugnance: the lung-searing stink of acid, the heavy smell of blood; and . . . there was something else. “Kim, what in the hell was that sickly sweet lemon peppermint rot stink in there? I thought it was going to make me puke.”

  “Maalox. It was in the corpse’s mouth. The officers on the scene poured it in to protect what was left of the teeth. One of the cops had an acid stomach. The other one had some high school chemistry. Lucky she did, too.”

  “And that thing in there is what’s left of Micky Cass?”

  Nishida nodded. “We’ve had his dental records on file since he was reported missing. Everything that’s left matches. I’m satisfied it’s Micky Cass.”

  “Except that Micky Cass was a pseudonym,” interrupted George.

  “Let me put it this way, then, George. I’m satisfied that the teeth in that thing in there are the same as those appearing in the X rays provided by Micky Cass’s dentist. The blood type is the same and the lips and nose are covered with the remains of a Realskin surface, which is consistent with the operation he had to disguise himself as a Tenctonese.” She glanced at Matt.

  A sad giggle escaped from Matt’s lips. “I’m sorry,” he said as he held out a hand. “It’s just now we’ll never find out if Cass was male or female.”

  “It depends on your definition,” said Nishida. “Cass’s blood shows that either he’s female or perhaps undergoing hormone therapy in preparation for a sex change operation. Perhaps he was a hermaphrodite. There are many degrees of in between. However, if I had to bet the barn on it, from the bone structure I’d say he came into the world male. Maybe. Probably. Possibly. I’ve seen plenty of exceptions cross my table. Male. Maybe.”

  “Hell, anybody can flip a coin,” said Matt. He shook his head and tried to get his mind to focus. “There’s something flapping loose here. This stuff, concentrated hydrochloric acid. I remember it from chem class. HCl. Mrs. Yates, our chem teacher, used to treat that little bottle like it was nitro. To fill up a bathtub would take a hell of a lot. It would also take some pretty specialized equipment to get it there in the center of that dry lake and then put it into the tub. In other words, somebody went to one hell of a lot of trouble to kill Micky Cass in this particular way. Why?”

  He looked at George and his partner was looking at the assistant pathologist. Dr. Rivers allowed his gaze to fall upon Matt. “If you took a Tenctonese and dipped him into salt—”

  “Salt water,” completed Matt. “I saw it happen once. It acts just like a very corrosive acid. You’re saying someone wanted to give Micky Cass the full Newcomer experience?”

  “I can see the Ahvin Rivak or some other purist fanatic group doing something like this,” said Dr. Rivers. “You were right about something else, sergeant.”

  “What?”

  “It took whoever did this a considerable amount of trouble to do it in the middle of that dry lake.”

  “What’s your point?”

  The pathologist looked toward George. “Whoever did this knew how to handle HCl. What I don’t know is why they’d perform this act in a place where it was bound to be discovered and done in such a fashion that they made certain there would be enough left behind to make an identification.”

  “Are you saying that it was intentional?”

  “I’m saying it’s very likely,” answered Rivers. “The medical examiner’s report as well as the investigating officer’s report suggest that the portion of the tub where the acid ate through, the porcelain was shattered by a small-caliber bullet. Pieces of the slug and bits of porcelain were found on the ground near the point where the acid drained from the tub. The shot was enough to kno
ck the porcelain coating off both sides of the impact point without puncturing the metal. Once the acid ate through the metal, the tub drained. If it’s not deliberate, it’s a fortuitous circumstance indeed.”

  To Matt it was very clear why the perps had done what they had done and in this particular manner. It wouldn’t be much of an object lesson if no one ever knew about it. It was a message to anyone who might dare to follow in Micky Cass’s footsteps.

  C H A P T E R 1 8

  OUTSIDE IN THE parking lot Matt leaned against his car, his arms folded, his head down. George stood facing him. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

  “Sorry? What about?”

  “Micky Cass. I know how much he meant to you. I’m sorry we didn’t find him in time.”

  “In time,” Matt repeated, his voice low and menacing. “I wonder if he even had any kind of chance. I can already hear the cops and the Tencts cheering.”

  “Not all the police officers are cheering, Matt. Dobbs is working hard to help, and so is the captain. So am I. Murder is still murder, Matt. Not all of the Newcomers are cheering.”

  “Sorry.” Matt looked off into the distance and fought to keep the tears from his eyes. With an effort he returned his gaze to George. “A good person—a very brave person—is in there, dead, eaten away, unrecognizable, tortured to death. The really sad thing is that the very ones he fought for and died for will probably be relieved at his death. No more probes into police racism and brutality, no more Tencts embarrassed by Ellison Robb rubbing Goober’s nose in the racist mess, no more corporations or government agencies scrambling to cover up the stink in their personnel departments. Rubberhead Robb is dead; everybody is off the hook. And when nobody really wants to find the killer, nobody is going to find the killer. Isn’t that how it goes, George?”

  “I want to find the killer, Matt.”

  Sikes glanced around suggestively. “That’s more than we can say for the feds. Where’s Iniko?”