A Carnival of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “Lucky he didn’t split those pants when he bowed,” Al said. “They’re mighty tight across the ass.”

  “That would have given you the picture of the week,” I said. “I can see the cutline now. ‘The bottom line on hidden guns.’”

  “How about, ‘Open season on assholes’?”

  “Please, Mr. Jeffrey, this is a family newspaper.”

  Our fortune improved with the next visitor. It was Kitty Catalano, wearing a low-cut, purple dress that clung to every curve of her body and ended well above the middle of her thighs. Her dark hair was flowing around her bare shoulders, and I smelled that aphrodisiacal perfume again as she bent over me and grasped my hand. We almost bumped heads as I struggled up from the chair, and her hand stayed clasped in mine as I introduced her to Martha and Carol.

  “I’m so glad you’re all here,” Kitty said. “Isn’t it a great way to end the Winter Carnival?”

  “It seems almost too great, considering the way the carnival started,” Martha said.

  “You mean poor Lee-Ann?” Kitty said. “I know we’re all still grieving for her, but she’d want us to go on with the show. She was that kind of person.”

  “A real trouper,” I said.

  “She was,” Kitty said. “All the Klondike Kates are. Well, it’s been nice meeting all of you. And, Mitch, remember you can call me any time about any thing.” She finally released my hand and drifted away on those long, long legs.

  “Lady Longlegs seems to be very well acquainted with you,” Martha said when I sat down beside her again.

  “She’s just a news source,” I said.

  “Do all your news sources hold your hand the whole time they’re talking to you?” Martha asked.

  “Only the really hot ones,” I said. “But I always stay cool.”

  At the insistence of Martha and Carol, we danced again, and Martha clung so close that we were almost a single body on the floor. After the waltz, or whatever it was, Al and I went in search of the recently victorious Vulcanus Rex to congratulate him on his triumph over King Boreas. We found him at the bar, hoisting a tall glass of amber liquid with lots of foam on top. The big man looked as imposing unmasked as he had in the helmet and goggles.

  “Ah, my part-time Vulcans,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard easily above the 100-decibel din. “I was hoping that you guys would be here. You did such a good job on that Sunday piece that I was going to hold a knighting ceremony if I saw you. My name is George, by the way. George Griswold. Griswold Plumbing and Heating. You must have seen our sign out on Payne Avenue.” He put down the beer and held out both hands. I grabbed the right one and Al took the left.

  “Thanks for the compliment, but you don’t have to knight us,” I said.

  “Oh, but you deserve knighthood,” he said, letting go of our hands and reclaiming the beer. “Even if you were a pain in the ass with all those questions about where the guys were when that blondie Kate got killed. I’ve got the certificates up in our dressing room. I’ll go get them and we’ll do the ceremony in front of God and everybody here at this party.”

  “Couldn’t you just put them in an envelope and mail them to the paper?” Al asked. “We don’t need all that fuss.”

  “No way,” Griswold roared. “As the reigning Vulcanus Rex, I’m going to do this right.” He lifted the glass, chugged the beer and took off to get the certificates.

  “Should we disappear?” Al asked as we walked back to our table.

  “That would be too rude,” I said. “I think we’re stuck with a public induction into the Fire King’s round table.”

  “This isn’t what I had in mind when I hoped for a hot time here tonight.”

  We explained what was happening to Carol and Martha, and Martha suggested that she and Carol go to the ladies’ room when Vulcan reappeared.

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “This is our day to be a knight, and you two are going to be part of the show.”

  “That’s right,” Al said to Carol. “You married me for better or for worse, and knight and day you are the one.”

  “We’re also married in sickness and in health,” Carol said. “And this is definitely making me ill.”

  I saw Griswold, Vulcanus Rex, bound onto the bandstand with two rolled up pieces of paper in one hand. When the music stopped, he grabbed the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special ceremony to perform at this time,” Griswold said. “We are about to bestow Fire King Knighthood on two honorable gentlemen of the local press. Please come forward, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jeffrey, and bring your lovely ladies with you.”

  Hand-in-hand, the four of us marched forward and stepped up onto the platform. The current Vulcan Krewe formed a semi-circle around us and Vulcanus Rex told Al and me to kneel.

  His long, silver sword went first onto my head. “Warren Mitchell, I bestow upon thee the title of Sir Sizzling Storyteller and present you with this certificate of Fire King Knighthood.” He handed me the scroll and I thanked him.

  Next he placed his sword on Al’s head. “Alan Jeffrey, I bestow upon thee the title of Sir Flaming Photographer and present you with this certificate of Fire King Knighthood.” Al took the scroll and thanked him. “You may both rise.”

  We got to our feet amid a crescendo of applause from the crowd, and as we smiled and waved in response we were each treated to a smear of facial grease by two quick-moving members of the Krewe. Carol and Martha were laughing and pointing at the black Vs on our cheeks when they simultaneously received matching decorations.

  We waded through the congratulatory crowd toward our table, receiving quick hand shakes and pats on the back all along the way. As we passed Toni and Esperanza, they grabbed Al and me and kissed us on the unmarked cheeks. We responded by rubbing a bit of grease onto their faces, and they went away giggling like teenagers.

  “I got that shot for posterity,” said a voice on my other side. There stood Daily Dispatch photographer Sylvan “Sully” Romanov with a camera in his hand and a grin on his face. “Don will love seeing you kissing Klondike Kate.”

  “Klondike Kate was kissing me,” I said. “Are you shooting this chaos?”

  “Yup. Me and Corinne Ramey. I’m showing her the ropes.” Corinne was a new reporter who’d joined the staff just in time to get the assignment nobody wanted—covering the Saturday night Winter Carnival events.

  “I hope you got shots of our knighthood ceremony,” Al said.

  “I did,” Sully said. “But Klondike Kate smooching Mitch has much more human interest. I’ll bet Don picks that one over the knighting thing.”

  “Lucky me,” I said.

  “Hey, Sully said you’re of interest to humans,” Al said. “In your case, that’s quite a compliment.”

  “See you around,” Sully said. “I’ve got to corral Corinne and head back to the office so we can get this crap, uh, this historic information, into the Sunday paper. Nighty, night, guys.” And off he went, in search of the roving reporter.

  “Guess that leaves us to record any further historic happenings,” Al said.

  “Guess so,” I said. “Even the TV cameras have bailed out. I’m kind of disappointed that Trish Valentine wasn’t reporting live on our becoming knights of the Fire King’s domain.”

  Four long stem glasses of champagne stood waiting for us on our table, so we clinked them together and my three companions drank theirs while I continued to hold mine high.

  “Mustn’t let yours go to waste,” Al said when he’d finished his. He grabbed my glass and poured it down the hatch.

  “Waste not, want not, Sir Flaming Photographer,” I said.

  “I wasn’t hot for that title, but I’ve been called more inflammatory things than that,” Al said. He picked up his camera and went off to shoot more pictures of the people in the crowd.

  Al had returned, the band had taken a break and the crowd noise had dwindled from a roar to a murmur when Carol said it was time for us to go home. We all stood up, put o
n our hats and coats and started toward the nearest ballroom exit, which had been opened to let some of the heat from the crowd dissipate into the hall.

  I was about to say it had been a perfect evening when the air was rent by a woman’s scream that would have instantly transformed a quart of milk into a carton of cottage cheese.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Shot in the Dark

  The scream came from outside the ballroom, in the direction of the restrooms across the hall. Because we were near an open door, the four of us beat the pell-mell rush of bodies out of the ballroom, and we were in the hall before knots of frantic people clogged all the exits.

  We saw a flash of red disappear through a door beneath a lighted exit sign, and two women wearing Klondike Kate costumes emerge from the ladies room. One of them fell to her knees and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the carpet. The other one knelt beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  A couple of men dressed as members of King Boreas’s royal family dashed out through the exit in pursuit of the red streak. They were followed by a waddling fat man in a tuxedo shouting, “I’ll nail the fucker!” Al and I raced toward the exit while Carol and Martha ran to help the two women on the floor.

  We’d just gone out the door and felt the shock of the outside air when we heard a muffled bang, followed by a man shouting, “Oh, shit! Oh, my god! Oh, son of a bitch!” Hobbling toward us in the dim light of the alley was the fat man in the tux. He was supported on each side by a Boreas royal family member.

  Al opened the door for the trio, and we followed them in. The fat man was Sean Fitzpatrick, who was moaning in pain between curse words. In his right hand, he clutched the small pistol he’d shown us at the Daily Dispatch.

  A dark-red stain was spreading across the top of his right shoe.

  “My god, Tex, did you shoot yourself in the foot?” Al asked.

  “Oh, Christ, it hurts like a son of a bitch,” Fitzpatrick said. “Somebody call 911.”

  “What the hell were you doing?” I asked.

  “I was gonna plug the bastard that ran out the door, but the damn gun went off before I got it out of my leg holster.” Someone dragged up a chair from the ballroom and he plopped onto it.

  “You were carrying a gun hidden in a leg holster in the ballroom?” I asked.

  “I was gonna have a press conference Monday and say how easy I got it in and how harmless it was,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was a subtle way of provin’ my point.”

  “Subtle?” Al said. “That was about as subtle as a fart during the silent prayer.”

  “Has anybody called 911?” Fitzpatrick wailed.

  “They’ve been called. You’d better get that shoe off,” said one of the Boreas court members who had helped Fitzpatrick after the shot.

  Fitzpatrick tried to bend down, but his belly got in the way so he couldn’t reach his foot. The other Boreas court member knelt, pulled his white costume gloves from his pocket, put them on and went to work untying the bloody shoe. When he finished, he looked up at Sean and said, “We’d have caught that guy if you hadn’t shot yourself.”

  More people crowded around the wounded warrior, so Al and I turned our attention to the woman we’d seen fall to the floor. By this time, she also had been helped onto a chair, but she was near hysteria as a circle of women tried to calm her. When she raised her head to speak to one of her comforters, I saw that it was Toni Erickson.

  Martha saw us and stepped away from the circle, which included Esperanza, Angela Rinaldi, and two others in Klondike Kate attire.

  “Did she say what happened?” I asked.

  “She keeps saying that a Vulcan tried to kill her,” Martha said. “She’s so upset that we can’t get any more than that.”

  “That was the red we saw go out the back door,” Al said. “How’d she get away from him?”

  “I don’t know,” Martha said. “The Klondike Kate in the yellow dress was with her. Maybe she helped. I’ll see if she’ll come over and talk to you guys.”

  After a brief, low-volume conversation, the Kate in the yellow dress detached herself from the circle and came to us. “Are you the reporter I talked to about Lee-Ann?” she asked in a booming tenor voice. I said I was, and she said her name was Hillary Howard. Big surprise.

  “What happened in the ladies’ room?” I asked.

  “I was in a stall, you know, doing my thing, when I heard a scuffle out by the sinks,” she said. “I quick pulled everything together and stepped out. There was Toni and a Vulcan. He had something around her neck and she was fighting and trying to tear it off. I yelled at the guy and picked up the first thing I saw, which was one of those metal boxes the hand towels are in, and bopped him on the head with it. He let go of Toni and ran out. I started to chase him, but Toni was half strangled and scared out of her mind, so I had to help her.”

  “Did you see the Vulcan’s face?” I asked.

  “No, I couldn’t see anything,” Hillary said. “He was wearing his helmet and goggles and greasepaint.”

  “Looks like she’s calmed down some,” Al said. “She knows you, Mitch. Maybe you can talk to her.”

  I approached Toni, who sat quietly with her head down, and knelt in front of her. “Toni, it’s Mitch from the paper,” I said in a stage whisper. “You know, the guy you’ve been talking to.”

  She looked up into my eyes. Her cheeks were wet with tears and the spot of grease she’d acquired when she kissed me had become a black streak down the right side of her face. Her eyes were rimmed in red and open a little too far.

  “A Vulcan,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Tell me what happened,” I whispered.

  “I was washing my hands at the sink and I saw this red thing in the mirror coming up behind me. He must have been hiding in a stall. I tried to turn around and fight him, but he got something around my throat and pulled it tight. I got my hand loose and hit him in the nuts like you’re supposed to do but it didn’t seem to hurt him. He must have been wearing a cup or something, I don’t know. Then I tried to pull the thing off my throat because I couldn’t breathe and, thank God, Hillary came out of the stall and hit him with the towel holder and he ran out and I screamed and the next thing I knew I was on the floor in the hall. Did he get away?”

  “He did, so far,” I said. “The police are on the way to look for him.”

  “Why would some Vulcan try to kill me?”

  “Could have been the same one who killed Lee-Ann.”

  “You think he’s some kind of crazy, trying to kill all us Klondike Kates?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I felt a tap on the shoulder, and looked up to see a middle-aged man leaning over me.

  “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’d like to look at the woman who was attacked.”

  “Sure,” I said to him. To Toni I said, “You take it easy now. There’s a doctor here to see you.”

  I rose and saw two EMTs and a couple of cops attending to Sean Fitzpatrick. One male EMT was on his knees removing Fitzpatrick’s blood-soaked sock. The female EMT was trying to take his pulse while he continued to moan in pain. One of the cops had taken the pistol out of Fitzpatrick’s hand and was bagging it in plastic. The other was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Lucky Tex was wearing the holster down low,” Al said. “If he’d had it up on his hip he might have shot off something vital.”

  “Oh, thanks for painting that picture,” I said. “Now I’ll think of that every time he greets me with ‘how’re they hangin’.’”

  “This kind of screws up our theory about Lee-Ann’s murder, doesn’t it?” Al said.

  “You’re right. Unless the missing Mr. St. Claire flew back from New York today, he can’t be the Klondike Kate killer.”

  “So why’d he run away?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Quarantined

  The hall was suddenly swarming with policemen, both uniformed and plain
clothed. One of the suits was yelling through a bullhorn, ordering everyone who wasn’t a doctor or an EMT to return to the ballroom and find a seat. “Nobody leaves this hotel until we tell you to,” he said.

  Al had shot pictures of the activity around Fitzpatrick and Toni, and I wanted to get to the office and write a story. We made a move toward the door through which the villainous Vulcan had fled, but we were stopped by Detective Mike Reilly, who was a self-important martinet and not one of our favorite officers.

  “I might have known you two would be right in the thick of any incident,” Reilly said. “Get your butts back into the ballroom right now.”

  “We’ve got a story to write and photos to process,” I said. “We’ve got less than an hour until deadline.”

  “And I’ve got a shit load of witnesses to talk to, including you,” Reilly said. “Are you gonna cooperate or do I have to cuff you?”

  We cooperated. Al couldn’t transmit his pix because we didn’t have access to a computer, but I found a reasonably quiet corner and called the desk on my cell phone. I explained to Gordon Holmberg, the Sunday city editor, that I had a great story about an attempted murder and Al had pix of the intended victim, but we were stuck in the ballroom until further notice. “I can dictate the story to somebody,” I said. “And maybe somebody can come over here, slip in and get Al’s camera.”

  Holmberg said he’d send a courier for the camera and switch me to a reporter for my story. Newspapers used to have skilled rewrite editors who could be trusted to handle a story on the phone. However, rewriters have gone the way of the dodo bird, so I found myself talking to Corinne Ramey, who became very upset that she’d left before the action. I calmed her down and dictated a report on the attempted strangulation, complete with commas, periods, and paragraph breaks. You can’t be too careful when you’re dealing with a kid just out of journalism school.