Bite Club

by Hal Bodner

  To show his support for the environmentalist concerns of his constituents, he issued a proclamation declaring West Hollywood a “Cruelty Free Zone for Our Friends in the Plant Kingdom” and declared the first week in May as West Hollywood’s “Be Kind to Palm Trees Week”, personally tying the first green ribbon around the large King Palm in front of City Hall as the kickoff to a week long, city sanctioned Arboreal Festival every year.

  On his own initiative, startling the rest of the city council and causing Pamela Burman no end of grief, he managed to pass a municipal ordinance, designed to protect the environment, forbidding Styrofoam cups and plates from being sold anywhere within the city limits. The proprietors of West Hollywood’s fast-food restaurants were appalled at Eversleigh’s audacity and immediately besieged Burman’s office with telephone calls. After endless meetings with McDonald’s, Burger King, and El Pollo Loco franchisees, Burman assuaged their outrage by convincing the Chamber of Commerce to extend short term, low-interest loans, guaranteed by the city, to assist the restaurants in their conversion from styrofoam to biodegradable and recyclable cardboard. Almost simultaneously with Burman’s sign of relief at a commercial disaster averted, Eversleigh, while being interviewed by the West Hollywood City Channel, announced proudly that his next proposed municipal ordinance would be one that would criminalize the sale of nonunion grapes “anywhere in our fair city, which is devoted to helping the underprivileged field-worker,” a remark which caused Burman to throw up her hands in disgust as her phones began ringing off the hook with irate calls from the managers of West Hollywood’s thirty or so supermarkets and produce stores.

  For the city’s gay and lesbian population, he denounced a small newspaper stand at Santa Monica and La Brea as homophobic and ordered rainbow flags to be hung along Santa Monica Boulevard; for the Jewish population, he displayed a Star of David prominently in his office window overlooking the boulevard; for the Russian immigrants, he prevailed upon the Fine Arts Board to commission a large modern sculpture for the center of West Hollywood Park, depicting a hunch-backed elderly woman wearing a babushka, stepping from a rowboat onto a multicolored map of America.

  It almost logically followed that Eversleigh was affectionately known as “Uncle Dan” by his constituents and his fellow council-members. In fact, during his campaign every four years, life-size cardboard photographs of Eversleigh, complete with not-so-subtle MGM backgrounds, could be seen popping up in the front windows of many of the shops along Santa Monica Boulevard. The only text on the signs was the word VOTE!; he was well known enough that he needed no identification to ensure voter response.

  Then again, it was well known in the community that Pamela Burman couldn’t stand him. The citizens, wise enough to recognize how lost the city would be without Burman’s skills as city manager nevertheless took great joy in goading her slightly with every reelection of Eversleigh. The ratings on the first cable-televised city council meeting after every election climbed sharply as eager citizens tuned in to the West Hollywood City Channel to watch the sparks fly from Burman’s gray hair when she was confronted with being stuck with Eversleigh for another term.

  Becky stood, nose within inches of Eversleigh’s slammed door, and briefly debated opening it up and shouting “Boo!” into the office in the hopes of reducing him, once again, to helpless terror. She reconsidered, however, figuring she was in enough trouble due to her inability to provide the Sheriff’s Department with any clues to the identity of the murderer, and blew out an audible sigh of frustration before walking steadfastly down the hall to Pamela’s office.

  She knocked, opened the door without waiting for an answer—a cloud of fingerprint powder billowing out of the room—and went in.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” said Clive, as he knelt by Burman’s prostrate form.

  “My god, what happened to her?” Becky asked with concern.

  “She finally calmed down enough to notice what’s going on out there and fainted.”

  “Shit. I don’t think I’ve got anything. Wait a sec.” Becky took a small brown glass vial from her black bag. Opening it, she thrust it under Burman’s nose. Burman’s face wrinkled with distaste and her eyes fluttered open.

  “What the hell is that god-awful smell?” she demanded, “Goddamn it, Clive! I told you to keep the air on!”

  “It’s amyl,” Becky replied, replacing the cap and tightening it.

  “Poppers?” Burman said in disbelief. “You gave me poppers? At my age, you could give me a heart attack!”

  “Look, Pamela,” said Becky testily, “I don’t carry smelling salts. One of the boys left it in the ladies room at the morgue. You don’t like it? You can just pass the hell out again. I had to sit in traffic all the goddamned way from the office and I am not in a good mood. Both of you can just cut the crap and let me do my job. Now, where’s that fucking head?”

  Clive and Burman both blinked in astonishment at Becky’s uncharacteristic outburst. Clive pointed wordlessly.

  Becky squatted by the sweater-covered lump and, after taking out her tape recorder and turning it on, put on her gloves. She gingerly removed the sweater and placed it in a large, clear plastic bag.

  She whistled long and low and, taking a breath, began to speak into the recorder.

  “September 29. Preliminary coroner’s report. Dr. Rebecca O’Brien. City Hall.”

  “You’re gonna do a protocol here?” Clive was aghast.

  “I’m not sitting in traffic for an hour to drive two blocks back to the office,” Becky replied impatiently.

  “I’m gonna throw up if she takes out a scalpel,” Burman snarled.

  “Or a Hershey bar,” Clive agreed.

  Becky ignored them, leaned back on her heels, and thought for a moment.

  “The subject is male, Caucasian, late twenties. The head has been severed from the neck column just below the chin at about the seventh vertebra. The location of the rest of the body is currently unknown. There appears to be no bruising of the cranium or of the face. The head appears to have been...” Becky swallowed several times before continuing, “…torn from the spinal column. There are no initial indications of any sharp instrument being used. The...” She stopped and turned off the recorder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Becky turned to Clive, sighing in disgust. “I’m gonna have to take this back to the lab after all. It’s too strange. I want to run some tests and I don’t have enough equipment here.”

  “No blood?” Clive inquired, cringing slightly.

  Becky nodded.

  “Did I hear you say torn from the neck?”

  Becky nodded again. She turned to Burman. “You’d better have the city staff start raiding the refrigerators. We’re gonna need ice.”

  Two of the deputies rushed to comply as Burman turned pale at the coroner’s words. Clive, as an African-American, couldn’t quite match her pallor, but he gave it his best shot.

  Burman’s voice was quiet, scared. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Clive. “But it’s really starting to get to me too. Can you stand to look at this for a minute?”

  Burman apprehensively joined Clive as the three of them squatted on the floor next to the disembodied head.

  “Are the photos done?” Becky asked. “I don’t need to ask whether it’s been dusted.” On Clive’s affirmative nod she reached out and gently turned the grisly object so she could examine its other side.

  “Do you notice anything weird?” asked Becky.

  Burman looked at her and dryly commented, “You mean other than that goddamn thing obviously didn’t walk in here?”

  Clive thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened with realization. “There’s no trauma!”

  “At least none we can see,” Becky said. Burman looked confused.

  “Heads just don’t fall off bodies,” Becky explained. “Something’s got to take them off. You see here?” She pointed. “The edges are jagged. I can’t be sure, but it doesn�
��t look like the killer used any kind of knife or ax.”

  “Even with a knife, we’re talking about someone who’s very strong, aren’t we?” Clive asked.

  “That’s right. But in this case it looks like it’s been pulled, torn off.”

  “So?”

  “There’s no injury to the face or skull. You know how hard it is to do something like this? It’s almost impossible without leaving some signs of what caused it. Obvious signs.”

  “You mean like paint from a car or something?” Burman asked.

  “Right. Or windshield glass in the wound. But a car accident would have crushed the skull or at least damaged the vertebrae.”

  “What about some kind of heavy machinery?” Clive asked.

  Becky sat back on her heels, tapping her teeth thoughtfully with the edge of her cassette recorder. “Maybe. But I’d still expect to see some bruising and there’s none. A large animal might have done it. Something like a grizzly bear with a neatness fetish or something. A bear would have the strength, but again, the tear’s too clean.”

  “Great! I can just imagine what Ed Larsen’s gonna do with a press release about some fucking bear tearing off a head and wrapping it up like a frigging present.” Burman fumed, silently for a minute, thinking. “I got it,” she said. “We’ll tell ’em it was a car accident.”

  “Be reasonable, Pam,” Clive said. “Becky just told you. No paint. No glass. Nada.”

  “Goddamn it, Clive!” Burman shouted. “The press doesn’t have to know everything. Larsen doesn’t give a shit about details if he’s got a chance to rake me over the coals. We coulda found the front bumper of a 1963 Cadillac sticking out from between the fucking thing’s front teeth for all he cares!”

  “How are you gonna explain how it wound up in your office?” Becky asked irritably.

  “I dunno!” Burman yelled, throwing her hands up into the air. “Maybe it bounced in!”

  Becky ignored the city manager’s hysterics and turned back to Clive. “Look, even if the victim’s head had gotten caught in something somewhere and it was the body that was pulled off, we’d still have some signs on the skull, abraded skin, for example.”

  “All right, already! I give up!” Burman slumped into her chair. “So you tell me. What’s the answer?”

  “Well,” said Becky, slowly, “don’t quote me on this, but a human being, a very, very strong weightlifter maybe, like on the caliber of Superman, might, just might, be able to do this without a car, a machine, or a bear, for that matter.”

  “With what then?” Burman asked, still not getting it.

  Becky looked surprised that Pamela didn’t understand. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. With his bare hands.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was very late Friday night, and Becky was frustrated. Her level of frustration could more or less be measured by the increase in her dietary consumption of sugars, animal fats, and heavy creams. Her office desk was littered with the remains of her most recent meal. The wrappers from two Fatburgers were crumpled up next to several empty bottles of Yoo-hoo. She’d also demolished two of the three chocolate cupcakes she’d bought in the Pavilions supermarket bakery. Considering biting into the sole surviving cupcake, she realized with astonishment that she had no appetite for it. She swept the refuse into the wastebasket and carefully wrapped the cupcake in plastic, dropping it into her desk drawer to save for later. This done, she collapsed forward on her desk, head sunk into her arms in exhausted bafflement.

  She’d completed her preliminary autopsy report several hours earlier, while it was still daylight, only to have her worst fears confirmed; the victim’s head had apparently been ripped from his body, very quickly, by someone, or something, of enormous strength. In addition, from her analysis of what little blood remained in the cranium, she had discovered a series of unusual antibodies the likes of which she’d never seen before. She’d faxed the results of her preliminary blood tests to a friend at UCLA and was told that either she’d made a mistake or her samples had been contaminated.

  She was also puzzled by the condition of the victim’s mouth. Apparently by brute strength, every tooth had been removed from the skull. In some spots, the roof of the mouth had been severely lacerated and deeply gouged. Both the reason and the mechanism of the mutilations remained a mystery.

  The identity of the body also puzzled her. Without the teeth or the rest of the body, it would be difficult to determine. All she could say with certainty was that the victim had been male, young, attractive, and in reasonably good physical shape judging from the remains of the musculature in the neck. From the highlighted hair of the corpse and the pierced left ear, she’d also be willing to bet a bucket of Popeyes fried chicken against a month of Jenny Craig that the young man had been gay. Very few straight men would wear a single pink triangle-shaped earring.

  She’d tried to get Clive on the telephone at about four-thirty, but he was still involved in the aftermath of the City Hall riot and could spare only enough time to tell her that, thus far, there were no clear fingerprints on the package or its wrapping. The sheriffs had made only one arrest, for lewd conduct, when one of the drag queens had squatted behind a bush next to the City Hall parking lot, lifting her skirt to answer a call of nature and relieved herself onto the boots of a deputy who had hidden in the bushes to sneak in a cigarette while on duty.

  Pamela Burman was, for once in her career, subdued and had refused to comment to the press —amazing the reporters by passing up what seemed the perfect opportunity to revile them. Daniel Eversleigh, however, had quickly taken the opportunity to call a press conference on the step of city hall commending the rioters for their “citizens’ involvement and concern in the face of the devastating crime wave which has recently swept our fair city.” Oblivious to the fact that the rioters had long since gone home and that traffic had been clear for more than three hours, he’d urged the eleven reporters, the members of the Activists League still remaining in the parking lot, and a solitary puzzled homeless woman to “control their baser instincts and cease the wanton destruction of public property” and proceeded to pose for press photographs amidst the wreckage of the reception area while tenderly holding a cocker spaniel.

  Becky desperately wanted to talk to Chris, hoping he’d managed to come up with some ideas. She’d left two messages on his machine and was waiting for his call. She briefly debated stopping by his apartment and inviting him to dinner, but frankly she was too fatigued from the days’ events to do anything but go home to her own bed.

  Making a mental note to stop at Chris’s first thing in the morning, she tidied up her desk, locked the office and, exhausted, trudged out to her car.

  At about the same time Becky O’Brien reached home, Hercule Legrande arrived at Sylvia’s apartment building in New York, accompanied by three limousines that discharged more than a dozen members of his pack. Sylvia was bewildered by the interminable introductions of children, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, and cousins. She already knew Hercule’s immediate family, of course, but could only fix in her mind the names of three or four others, wisely choosing to be able to identify at least the elders of the pack.

  She’d asked two friends to accompany her to the meeting: Clarence Chou, a young Asian vampire who was a history professor at NYU and a perky vampire named Sally Perkins who had been the motivating force behind her long-deceased husband’s career as British diplomat during the last century. She’d considered attending alone but knew that the werewolves would consider it a sign of weakness if she didn’t show up without at least a small token “pack” of her own.

  Thus, with three vampires and close to twenty wolves, the room was crowded. The bridge tables had been folded up and shoved against a far wall; the chairs, accustomed to the Slim-Fasted fannies of mesdames Goldberg, Horowitz, Greenspan, and Schwartz, now creaked alarmingly under the werewolves’ heavier weight. The faint musky scent of so many lycanthropes in such close quarters was making Sylv
ia vaguely ill and their constant shifting in their seats as they vainly tried to settle in served only to increase her discomfort. After much fidgeting, several of the younger members of the pack simply curled up on the floor, making the rest of the evening rather awkward at times as the vampires had to remember to keep stepping over them to avoid tripping.

  The meeting started off on the wrong note. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Hercule granted his eldest son, Jacques’s father, the honor of “marking territory” via a process well known to anyone familiar with the habits of man’s best friend.

  “My God!” whispered Clarence to Sylvia. “What is he doing to the carpet?”

  Sylvia blanched as she whispered back, “Please. I’m trying not to think about the cleaning bill,” and she backed away from the activity of Hercule’s oldest son to avoid having her Prada shoes irreparably spoiled.

  Sylvia had taken extreme care in dressing for her company so as not to offend their sensitive mores. Lupine social customs were entirely too complicated for Sylvia’s taste, but she nevertheless did her best. She wore a plain black silk floor-length dress that she’d purchased years ago, tried on once, instantly hated for its drabness, and shoved to the back of the closet. It had been designed by Coco Chanel herself and had cost a small fortune.

  The dress was open at the neck so that her throat would be bare; the rest of her body, from wrists to ankles, was demurely covered. She’d cautioned Sally and Clarence against wearing anything with a high collar; the werewolves would take a covered throat as a sign of defensiveness. She told Sally to forget about sporting a short skirt, as was her custom; their guests would feel the sight of so much bare flesh was obscene. While the werewolves invariably went naked in the privacy of their dens, the easier to change forms, the nudity of outsiders was considered indecent.