Conversations With the Crow

by Gregory Douglas

  GD: I have a friend who was a cook at the Ambassador Hotel on the night Bobby was offed and he saw the whole thing. Down in the kitchen . Sudden eruption of people, loud voices,, television lights, jostling, pushing and so on. And this man jumps out and shoots at Kennedy. Screaming, stampeding masses of idiots. He said the main chef, some Swiss, jumped over the steam tables and tackled Sirhan. The autopsy said the fatal shot was fired from about two inches away from the back of Bobby’s head but my friend said Sirhan was shooting at Kennedy with, as he called it, some little popgun and was never closer to Bobby than four to five feet. He was right there and saw the whole thing. Knew nothing about the autopsy and when I told him, he said flat out that the shooter was never, ever, that close to Bobby.

  RTC: I told you Hoover had it done. One of the bodyguards did it. Latrine rumor but then they did Sullivan in because he was threatening to talk. Mistaken for a deer, poor Sullivan was. Some kid shot him right through the head using a telescope rifle. I suppose the telescope didn’t show the red jacket very well. That’s the way it goes. No, your friend was right but that’s another story that will never see the light of day. Good riddance to both of them. And God took care of old Joe the bootlegger. Sat around in a wheelchair in his dignity pants until God decided he needed another janitor up in Heaven and off Joe went. I hope he suffered, the vicious old fuck.

  GD: Such violence Robert.

  RTC: Gregory, you have no idea what a bad person Joe was. I put some of his background into that box I sent you. You read it?

  GD: Read everything. None of that surprised me. I mean none of it. Very Renaissance Italy in nature. Machiavelli said that it was fine for the leader to be hated only so long as he was feared.

  RTC: I’m told you are feared.

  GD: Me? Why I’m a mixture of the Easter Bunny and some of the holier saints in the calendar. Never hurt a man in my life.

  RTC: I said nothing about hurting people. Injured people can identify you.

  GD: Yes, Robert, they can. But I’ve never had that problem.

  RTC: No, I would think not. But you understand why Kennedy had to die, don’t you?

  GD: I can see why you and your friends thought so.

  RTC: Treasonable swine. And Kennedy, I mean Jack, disgraced the office.

  GD: What about Clinton?

  RTC: Seedy, very seedy. Back seat of an old Chevy type.

  GD: He should have kept sheep. Then the Christian right nut fringe wouldn’t get so hysterical over a blowjob or two. Their idea of sex is face to face in bed with your wife, once a year, fully clothed and followed by a good bath and long prayers. God, I would hate to have such freaks as parents. I would either spike their elderberry wine with rat poison or run off and become a shill in a carnival. Which I did, by the way, when I was fourteen.

  RTC: Did your family, Gregory?

  GD: No, ran off and worked in a carnival. Much fun and very instructive.

  RTC: You are always a source of entertainment and surprise. The Kimmel people would have us believe you were suckled by a werewolf but I always defended you. I said it was a vampire.

  GD: Oh the horror of it all. What we have now is a situation wherein the lunatics are running the asylum. And Monica saved her stained dress.

  (Concluded at 10:32 AM CST)

  Conversation No. 85

  Date: Friday, May 30, 1997

  Commenced: I:11 PM CST

  Concluded: 1:35 PM CST

  RTC: Gregory, I’m glad you called. I wanted to warn you about some picture you are supposed to have with Mueller and Harry in it. Does this ring a bell with you?

  GD: Yes it does. A U.S. Signal Corps photo of Harry, Mueller, Beetle Smith and some other type in the Oval Office. Came out of the Truman Library in Missouri some time ago and landed in my mail box. Very clear shot of Mueller, standing on the left of Harry’s desk, Harry in the middle smiling up to the right while he’s looking right at Smith. No question it’s Mueller. Picture is identified, with names, on the reverse and has the Signal Corp stamps, dates and all that.

  RTC: Ah, yes, that explains everything. Do not even admit having this, Gregory or you will have burglars visiting you the next time you go to the movies. They do not know what name Mueller used when he came to this country and until they do, they cannot cleanse the files of any reference to him.

  GD: I beat them to that one, Robert. I had Zachery write off to the Army records center at Springfield and get copies, stamped copies, of the records of four general officers. One of these was Mueller. The three I tossed but I kept Heini’s file. Picture and all. That’s what the violators of deceased prostitutes are after. You told me that they didn’t know the name. What assholes. They run around bleating that I am a liar while under cover, they try to remove any proof that the head of the German Gestapo not only survived the war but lived, and worked, in Washington and even entertained the President of the United States at dinner once.

  RTC: Oh, be very careful with things like that. If the left wingers or the loony Hebrews find out about that, they will wail and raise a terrible fuss. Our press people will have a good deal of extra work with that one. Naturally, they will all lie and Jim will call me up and rant for two hours. If Mr. Bender puts it into one of his books, believe me, his warehouse full of the books will have a tragic fire.

  GD: I should put out the word that some vicious paranoid keeps the pictures in their home and then tip him off that bad people are going to break into his house, murder him and kill his children, or his cat, whichever.

  RTC: You’ve done that sort of thing before, as I recall.

  GD: I have indeed and enjoyed every minute of it. My God, Robert, these people are so stupid they couldn’t find either end of themselves in a dark room. If I had a dollar for every telephone call I got from some obscure professor of history at an academy for the chronically incontinent, telling me how much he enjoyed the Mueller book, asking me if I had any of the documents I mentioned and wondering if he and his friend Bruce can visit me and show me all of their newly discovered Mueller documents. I mean they must think I’m some kind of an idiot. Oh no, I would never let Professor Crotchrott into my house or his friend Bruce either. When you act all pleased and start grilling the fake professor about Mueller, you find out he knows nothing at all about him. Can’t they even brief him properly? I could do a better job dead drunk. I seriously wonder what these pin heads did before they went into government service. I imagine deodorizing dead dogs or changing loaded diapers at a nursing home across the street from the tenement house they reside in, sharing a soaked mattress with two winos and a dead fat woman.

  RTC: (Laughter) Gregory, you are not at all a nice person.

  GD: Oh, I’ve known that for years but oddly enough, people with real character and brains like Mueller and others all seem to like me a good deal. We all have a community of interest I guess. There stand the sheep, huddled in one corner of the pens and there we stand, wondering which one of us jumps the fence first and starts munching. Leg of lamb, throat of lamb, whatever. I guess that’s why I love wolves so much. We have so much in common. I recall once when I wrote an intelligence report that took me an entire weekend to do up right. Some fucking Brigadier read it and threw it into the trash because it didn’t support his feeble-minded theories. I was right, of course, and there was terrible trouble when my thesis was proven right. I was told to keep my mouth shut but I didn’t and eventually he got transferred to Manila where he could watch the natives there eat stewed monkey. Of course we know in their case it’s a clear cut case of cannibalism but what the hell…

  RTC: My God, Gregory, do not speak to me of Filipinos. I had to deal with some of them once and you are dead on. I think monkeys are smarter. I know they are better looking.

  GD: And their females do not have green eye shadow and purple lipstick on their flat pans. Well, enough rude racial remarks for the day. I also have Mueller’s pilot’s license, his Virginia driver’s license, his CIA pass, all expired but all with pictures.

>   RTC: But do not tell Kimmel about these or for a certainty, you would have a black bag job or someone would invite you to lecture in Washington and you would never be heard from again.

  GD: Ah, they would take me out on a small boat, tie an old cash register to my legs, shoot me in the head and toss me into the backwaters of the Potomac. And the alert and highly intelligent local police would call it a certain suicide.

  RTC: You are making cruel references to Paisley[65].

  GD: Actually, I am. Very perceptive. Most suicides do shoot themselves in the back of the head, Robert. I understand he was a bloated rotting mess when they found him. We used to get floaters when I was doing pathology work. They stank so badly and parts kept falling off onto the floor that we would freeze them before cutting them up. Well, my name is not Smith and I will not go to Washington. They can come to see me sometime.

  RTC: Would you welcome them with open arms, Gregory?

  GD: No, loaded ones, Robert.

  (Concluded at 1:35 PM CST)

  Conversation No. 86

  Date: Monday, June 2, 1997

  Commenced: 8:30 AM CST

  Concluded: 8:50 AM CST

  RTC: Hello, Gregory. Up and at ‘em today?

  GD: I wish. I should have stayed in bed today. Some days I get up at six and work through fourteen hours almost without stopping and the next day, I have a hard time reading the paper. Well you play the hand you get dealt. Some bonehead called me last night with the thrilling news that Vulva Press was interested in the Mueller story and wanted to do a book on me. Isn’t that thrilling? Another asshole emerges from the sewer.

  RTC: Oh, yes, I know about some of this. The Company is terrified about this Mueller business. If he is linked with us, we will have the wrath of Judea down upon us. You know, Gregory, I am filled up to the top with the Jews wailing and gnashing their teeth over matters that no one else gives a fuck about. Of course we used the Gestapo and other nasty people after the war. They didn’t object then but now they do. After all, we are not sensitive to their needs.

  GD: Oh, Jesus, spare me. Every cunt I have ever lived with starts moaning about her needs. Like I care about her needs. The only thing I care about is what she has between her legs and one gets tired of the same old stories. ‘Give me this,’ ‘give me that,’ ‘you don’t love me because if you did, you’d let my 800 pound brother come and stay with us when he gets out of the home.’

  RTC: (Laughter) Well, I thank God I don’t have to put up with that.

  GD: No, and neither do I. When I get tired of the increasingly looser love canal, I get a hold of them like a bowling ball and escort them out of my apartment, along with the sleazy clothes, the pictures of spastic relatives and all the little pieces of lower middle class crap they carry around with them like hermit crabs. They make latex devices that you can fill with warm water that pass very well and you don’t have to put up with some dumb slut putting your expensive shaving cream all over her legs and then trying to shave with your once functioning electric razor and don’t laugh, one did this. One time, I came home from work, tired as hell and my little miss whiner asked me, when I was in the head, if I wanted beans for dinner. Yes, I told her, beans would be fine. Ten minutes later a large explosion from the other side of the door, followed by screaming. Outside with my pants around my ankles, what do I see? Rubber-thighs had put a can of beans on the gas but, brilliant as she was, she never bothered to open it first and dump the contents into a pan. The beans were now all over the kitchen walls and ceiling. I made her clean the kitchen with her toothbrush and sat there watching her. Jesus, what a stupid troll. We went to the store and she bought about ten TV dinners. Back home she started screaming that she had been ripped off. It seems that the picture on the top of the box showed a plate and knife and fork. She could not find them inside the box. I pointed out to her that it said ‘serving suggestion’ under the picture but she didn’t get that either. Oh no, that’s isn’t the end of that one, Robert. About ten minutes later, the apartment filled with smoke. What had she done? Why, she put the TV dinner into the oven at 350 degrees without bothering to take it out of the box.

  RTC: Gregory, wherever did you find her?

  GD: Down at the city garbage dump fighting with the rats over chicken parts.

  RTC: (Laughter)

  GD: Well, that one went her way, in tears. I swore I would buy a sheep but of course I found another one. This one loved to get into the bathroom about five minutes before I took my shower to go to work. On the weekend when I didn’t work, the lazy cunt never got up before noon but when I absolutely had to shower and shave, she always got there first and whined when I told her to get out. Robert, it is by the grace of God that I never killed one of them. I know the perfect revenge on these rampant whiners, Robert, but civility makes me hesitate to mention it to you.

  RTC: Try me.

  GD: That’s what the chubby one said one night out by the pool when I was taking out my trash. Take trash out one trip and bring it back on the return. Anyway, for the perfect revenge Robert, always make them sleep on the wet spot.

  RTC: (Laughter) You can be exceedingly crude sometimes, Gregory, and yet ten minutes later, very civil and correct. You’ve been married twice?

  GD: God, won’t you let me forget? Fine looking women, Robert, but always the whining demands. If I like to visit a library every Saturday, whine because they want me to take them to see their obese Mother or their Uncle Einar in the nursing home. Fine. I take them and suffer the smells of urine and body odor. I change my library visits to Sunday. Oh, then the whining starts about why they now want to visit Uncle Einar and listen to him talk with long dead relatives on Sunday, not Saturday. What do I do? I tell them to bend over and I will drive them home. God, more weeping and so on. What most women need is not a huge zucchini but a leather belt applied to the buttocks five times a day. And ten times a day on Sunday because God wants it. Jesus, all I really want is peace and quiet and some reasonable order without having to listen to non-stop bitching, whining, demanding and terrible atrocities in the kitchen, bathroom and dining room. And I can do without the soap operas on television that go on until I have thought about tossing the set out of the window. Along, of course, with my tender and loving roommate. Ah, but why make you jealous by hearing of my tender moments?

  RTC: Well, you don’t have to invite them in, do you?

  GD: Point taken. No, I do not. But one does like company but Jesus, the price I have had to pay for it. Believe me, dogs are much better friends. I would rather deal with the occasional mess on the floor than five pounds of hair jammed into the bathtub drain or a nice sanitary napkin in the sink. I mean a used one. For dead babies in the toilet, I call the police. And the idiot cousins or brothers who just got out of quod because of some incident in a gay bar with a 700 pound transvestite and their pimp. Peace and quiet, Robert, peace and quiet. I can well understand why some people commit murder but it really isn’t worth it. Out the door, holding them like a bowling ball, out with the clothes and everything else, wash the hands carefully with Lysol, turn off the fucking soap operas and get a good night’s sleep. Oh well, a consummation devoutly to be wished, Robert. This has been such an elevated conversation. Next time, I ought to regale you about my bowel habits. On the other hand, I can discuss my friend Eric Hoffer’s writings with you.

  RTC: That might be much more interesting but I take no offense with your letting off steam, Gregory. At least you don’t run amok in the streets with an UZI.

  GD: No, I prefer a white man’s gun, Robert, not an UZI.

  (Concluded at 8:50 AM CST)

  Conversation No. 87

  Date: Sunday, June 15, 1997

  Commenced: 11:20 AM CST

  Concluded: 11:45 AM CST

  GD: Well, and a happy Father’s Day to you, Robert, although you aren’t my father.

  RTC: Yes, Greg and his people will be coming by later but we have time for a little chat. If they come, I’ll have to get off but people are always abo
ut an hour late these days.

  GD: You must be lucky. People tell me they will call me back in a few minutes but it takes about a week. Of course the usual apologies about dinosaurs trampling around in their petunia beds or the sad fact that Grandmamma was attacked by a rabid lemur while in church. Otherwise, they would have gotten back to me sooner. I always tell them that this or that important person wanted to talk with them and I am so sorry they missed them or that I had found a buyer for their house but he got another place in the meantime. People are so rude these days. If you promise them something, you’d better come through but if they promise you something, forget about it. Unless, of course, it suits them to do something. And I get swamped by wrong numbers and often by bill collectors. I love to mess with their tiny minds. If some old lady calls at two in the morning, looking for Maudy Mae, I tell them, in sadness, that Maudy passed last night and the viewing will be tomorrow. Or other such like. When bill collectors call for me, I put on a Slavic accent and tell them that this is a new phone number and I don’t know who they are talking about.

  RTC: (Laughter) You are such a creative trouble-maker, Gregory.

  GD: Well, they have it coming. Or telling some man who calls for Alice that she is up with a customer and I’ll have her call him back when she’s done.

  RTC: (Laughter) Nasty.

  GD: Oh, yes, but I do enjoy my fun. I don’t initiate bothering people but they had best not bother me.

  RTC: Your antics must amuse the people who listen in on you.

  GD: Yes, that’s no surprise. Do they listen to you, Robert?