Morris PI

by Dion Baia

  Von Stroheim spoke to Karl in German. “Go fetch Laszlo and get back to the car before you bleed out.” He turned to Maximillian and barked out another command in German. “Go and retrieve our new friend.”

  Maximillian took a few steps but Von Stroheim stopped it, this time speaking in English. “Alive, Maximillian. He is useful to us.”

  Maximillian walked over to Walter. He tried to crawl away but was picked up by the throat. The hand began to squeeze, and after a few moments the ambient sounds began to fade away, and the detective blacked out.

  Chapter 23.5

  ALBERT FISH

  The jail itself was beyond ancient. It reminded Walter of the old medieval castles he’d seen in the picture shows and read about in dime-store novels. Except this was real, right here in the middle of Manhattan. Young and nervous, Walter Morris made his way up a steep cement staircase, following behind an elderly guard. They made their way through the various waiting rooms, past the many checkpoints and multiple guard stations of the stone prison.

  The deeper into the facility they went, the more isolated Walter felt. He was nervous but didn’t let it show. He needed to do this, and since some of the police officials understood why he’d made the request, they hadn’t made too much of a fuss once they’d known his mind was made up.

  He was escorted down a long hallway and told to wait on one side of a holding cell. He was left alone for several moments, but soon the cold steel-riveted door opened on the other side and two guards brought Walter in. The child killer Albert Fish walked into the room handcuffed and shackled. It took a couple of minutes for his chaperones to secure his chains, attaching him to the concrete table and to the bolts on the floor. They sat him down opposite where a young Walter was seated. One guard exited the room while the other stayed to monitor the visit.

  Albert Fish, an elderly, gaunt, and feeble-looking man was covered in a five-o’clock shadow and a thick mustache. He surveyed his surroundings. After examining his leg irons, chains, and handcuffs with interest, he settled his cold and calculating gaze upon his visitor, the young Walter Morris.

  “You really look like him,” Fish said in all seriousness.

  Walter didn’t respond; he wasn’t really sure what to say to that.

  “So you’ve come to find out what I did to your baby brother?”

  Walter wanted to leap over the table and rip his goddamn heart out. He wanted to take the pencil in his pocket that he’d gotten from his job running numbers for Amos Rattler and ram it into Fish’s lifeless eyes. After that, he’d stick it down his throat, or maybe in one of his ears. But, his throat dry, all Walter could do was nod, his words lost somewhere deep within him.

  Fish adjusted in his seat, unconsciously acknowledging his pain from all the various self-inflicted metallic pins, rods and nails he’d inserted into himself over the years that still resided inside him. After shifting to a less painful position, he clasped his hands together and looked Walter directly in the eyes, methodically and expertly reciting his firsthand account.

  “In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the steamer Tacoma, Captain John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco to Hong Kong, China. On arriving, he and two others went ashore and became intoxicated. When they returned, their boat was gone.”

  Every muscle in Walter’s body was tense as he sat and listened to the story.

  “At that time there was great famine in China. Meat of any kind was sold for around one dollar to three dollars a pound. So great was the suffering among the poor that children under the age of twelve were being bartered for food in order to keep others from starving.”

  Walter’s eyes locked with Fish’s, caught in his cold, hard stare.

  “Children under the age of fourteen were not safe to walk the streets. You could go into a shop and ask for meat, and part of a child’s naked body would be brought out for you to choose what kind of cut you wanted. A boy or girl’s behind…,” he grinned, “…is the sweetest part of the body.”

  Walter began to gradually become cognizant of another world. The space around him went from darkness to light as a voice invaded his thoughts, bringing him away from the terrifying stone prison of his childhood, gradually back to consciousness. The voice intensified, becoming more predominant, getting louder and louder.

  Chapter 24

  THE PIANO ROOM

  Walter’s head was draped over to one side, the angle straining his neck and shoulder. In the distance a voice badgered him, calling him back from his unconsciousness. After several minutes of prodding, he started to come around, his eyelids fluttered, and he eventually opened his eyes. It took some time, but he became coherent enough to realize he was no longer outside The Creo Room.

  He felt groggy, as though he was still asleep and this was all just a bad dream. Disorientated, he squeezed his eyes closed and took a deep breath, trying hard to distinguish reality. His head was throbbing with pain, far worse than any hangover he’d ever suffered from. He must have banged it in the car accident.

  The voice from his head came gradually into focus, and Walter recognized Laszlo Strozek’s German accent. “Yes, yes! Wake up, you fool! Hurry. Wake up!” Both men were restrained, their arms bound and ankles tied to their chair.

  Walter was having problems distinguishing the thoughts inside his head from what was going on around him. Even though he was awake, he still periodically saw and heard Albert Fish just as clear as Laszlo next to him.

  A bone-chilling scream ripped through the room from outside the door. It knocked away any remaining cobwebs in Walter’s thoughts and vision. His eyes were wide open. He looked around. This definitely wasn’t The Creo Room. They were in a large, dark, Victorian-style ballroom. It had a small dance floor off to one side and on the other side was a luxurious grand piano. Past that, French doors led out to a veranda. One wall was covered entirely in mirrors, from floor to ceiling, giving the illusion that the space was double its actual size. It was possible they were in some sort of music room or recital hall. It was lit by a single lamp that was situated next to where they sat, making parts of the darkened room fade away into the shadows.

  Laszlo was still trying to get Walter to focus when the terrifyingly loud screaming started again. From the sounds of it, someone was being violently tortured. The noise was muffled, which led him to believe the victim was in another part of the house.

  Walter wasn’t sure if he had suffered a concussion, but when he heard Albert Fish’s voice again, it disturbed him.

  “John stayed in the Far East for so long that he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to New York he stole two boys, ages seven and eleven. Took them to his home and stripped them naked. Tied them up in a closet and burned everything they had on. Day and night he spanked them—tortured them—to make their meat nice and tender.”

  “Wha…What did you just say to me, Laszlo?” Walter asked, trying to steady his breathing.

  “At last! I said wake up, you imbecile.”

  “Did you not just hear that voice?”

  “Of course I heard it, you fool, the screaming is what awakened me!” Laszlo shot back.

  “No, I meant the…the other voice.”

  “What? Pull yourself together, man.” Laszlo used his head to gesture to the shut double doors several feet away. “Do you hear that? That is what’s real!”

  As if on cue, more gut-wrenching screams came from beyond the door. Outside, lightning brightened up the sky, occasionally illuminating the walls and areas of the wooden dance floor.

  “You need to wake up!” Laszlo yelled.

  “Yeah….” Walter turned to look at Laszlo. The piano player was covered in sweat, as though he’d just dunked his entire head into a bucket of water.

  “I have to get out of here. You did this to me! You have to help me! Explain it to them, tell them I have nothing to do with you, that I told you nothing.”
r />   “What are you on about?” Walter tried to move his arms. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Listen to me, you fool!” Another flash of lightning exploded from outside and Laszlo paused. He continued talking in a deliberately calmer tone. “You have to help me, or we are both dead.” He peered up at the ceiling, an expression of terror on his face. “They’re here. The totten core are here….” He stared at Walter, who had stopped struggling due to the level of intensity coming from Laszlo. “They are in this very house.”

  “Who?” Walter asked quietly.

  “The dead core, death core. I didn’t believe the rumors until tonight.”

  Walter felt nauseous. The room was spinning and he could hear Albert Fish’s voice again, as he had many years before.

  “John killed the eleven-year-old boy first because he had the most meat on him. Every part of his body was eaten…except for the head, bones, and guts. He roasted him in the oven—or fried him. The little boy was next, he went the same way. At the time, I was living at 409 East One Hundredth Street, and he would frequently tell me how good human flesh tasted, so I made up my mind to try it.”

  Walter forced his eyes to completely open to help decipher his reality. His side was on fire and he was pretty sure he had a concussion by how his head was feeling. Plus he still couldn’t shake this dream he was having, even though he was wide awake.

  The screaming continued from somewhere inside the house.

  “Where the hell are we?” he asked.

  “At the Hayden Estate, I suspect. Jesus, man, get to your senses…shnell!”

  Walter shook his head, hoping to somehow clear his mind. “Um…” He exhaled slowly and deliberately. “Where’s…where’s Hayden?”

  Laszlo motioned to the barbaric screaming coming from outside the room. “Well, that’s what woke me up.”

  “What’s going on here, Laszlo? These guys don’t die when you put them down.”

  Laszlo narrowed his eyes and stared coldly at Walter. “You’re so goddamn naive. Haven’t you listened to anything I have said?”

  The screaming abruptly stopped. For a moment there was an uncomfortable silence, all except for the distant thunder and the raindrops that had started to beat against the glass.

  Walter heard Albert Fish so clearly he could have been standing in the same room.

  “On Sunday, June the third, 1927, I called on your building—408 East Sixteenth Street. I was painting a vacant flat. That’s when I saw him…your brother. He sat on my lap and we shared a coke. I decided right there and then to eat him.”

  He gulped and looked around. Laszlo wasn’t hearing his delusions, or even looking at him.

  “What about Caldonia? Where is she, Laszlo?”

  “I—”

  They heard footsteps, then a key being inserted into the lock of the large double doors. They opened and Hans Von Stroheim entered the room, followed by Maximillian. He looked the two prisoners over and approached Laszlo, whom he started questioning in German. Whatever he was asking, Laszlo strongly denied. After a few moments of a very heated discussion, Stroheim stepped back with a look of pure disgust on his face. Laszlo began to plead with him.

  “Quiet!” Stroheim yelled. “Your actions have made you worse than a Jew…a Bolshevik Jew at that! You are not to speak until you are spoken to.” Laszlo looked absolutely horrified, his body slumping in defeat.

  Stroheim turned his attention to Walter. “Well, sir… Haven’t you been a clever little mouse?” Von Stroheim smiled at the detective.

  Walter spat blood onto the floor. “It wasn’t very hard. If you read Chester Gould you could probably figure it out.” He looked up at Stroheim, who hadn’t gotten the reference. “You used Laszlo there to help you kidnap Caldonia, to get leverage on Hayden, right? You wanna borrow some money from him, is that it?”

  That got an even bigger grin from Von Stroheim, on a face that didn’t look like it smiled very often. “You Americans make me laugh. You wear your ignorance as if it were a badge to be proud of. So unaffected by the outside world.” He smirked. “You do know that the world is at war? Or does your American naiveté make you oblivious to that as well? Does being a Yank hinder your intelligence?”

  Walter smiled politely. “Well, Stroheim…that’s your name, right? What actually even brings you to the Big Apple? The pizza? ’Cause an hour north of here, New Haven has the best pizza. Or are you part of the Operation Overcast thing?”

  Von Stroheim’s eye twitched, the smile fading from his face. His eyes hardened. He bent down at the waist, his tall, thin frame like a crooked tree. “You smug little insect,” Stroheim hissed. “You all live your sheltered and pathetic little lives here in this utopia, which you’ve been brainwashed into believing really exists,” he said with a level of disgust and contempt. “You haven’t seen a war on your homeland in almost one hundred years; your land hasn’t been invaded or plundered by a foreign army in almost double that time!”

  He straightened up and glared down at Walter, tied to the chair. “How your people forget the horrors of this world. You think you are so tough…ha!” He pointed at him. “You wouldn’t have lasted two days in the KZ. All of this American ‘bravado;’ men like you would have been broken in a day.”

  Stroheim raised his hand, and using his thumb and index finger, he mimicked the shape of a handgun, pointing it at Walter’s temple. “I have personally killed thousands of men like you.” He let that sink in. “Men who lived in a fantasy world filled with such delusions. Men, women, children…understand?” He lowered his hand and held them both behind his back. “So do not think your attitude gives you the upper hand or in some way intimidates me.” He exhaled loudly. “Ah,” he said while shaking his head, “the KZ would have taken away all the disillusionment you possess!”

  He closed his eyes and calmed his temper and chuckled to himself. “If you’d have even made it past the ‘selection’ process.” Stroheim opened his eyes back up and glared into the darkness at the far corner of the room.

  “What do you think, Herr Doctor? Would he have passed your selection?”

  A figure could be seen standing in the far corner, his outline barely visible. As if on cue, there was a crash of thunder from outside and with the delayed flash of lighting, the figure’s silhouette became much more predominant. Along with the realization that this person had been in the room with them this entire time, even prior to Stroheim’s arrival, observing and listening to everything they were saying.

  “Well, Herr Oberscharführer, he might have indeed gone to the left.” The man took his first steps out of the shadows, moving toward the other side of the room.

  As he crossed the shiny dance floor, another flash of lightning made the man visible again. He had dark-brown hair and was dressed entirely in white, with the exception of a green hospital-style apron that was covered in coagulated blood. His gloves matched the apron, also bloodstained. On his forehead he wore a small head mirror, something surgeons would use to reflect light. He had both hands clasped together in front of him while he watched the scene with a look of pure fascination.

  Laszlo’s worst fears were confirmed when he saw the man’s face and recognized Doctor Josef Mengele. He unconsciously let out a gasp and started to weep.

  As the doctor approached, he unclasped his hands and there was a terrible ripping sound as the sticky blood on either glove tore apart like two pieces of tape. He continued over to the double doors and knocked lightly over his shoulder. They opened simultaneously and a solemn-looking male nurse entered the room, rolling a small medical cart with two square cases positioned on the top shelf. On the bottom shelf was a large bowl of steaming hot water and a stack of neatly folded white towels.

  Mengele removed his blood-stained gloves and threw them onto the floor, then lifted up his arms for the nurse to untie his apron and remove it.

  An older man, who was bal
d and had a slight limp, entered next. He was carrying a briefcase and was dressed in a white medical gown. He was followed closely behind by Karl, who was heavily bandaged about the face and neck. It wore a thick metal brace to support its head and a new pair of goggles to cover its eyes. Finally, three young men hurried in, all dressed in matching gray trench coats and dark gray hats. They each carried grease guns and wore black bandannas that covered the lower half of their face. Two placed themselves by the double doors and the third moved over to the French doors that led outside.

  Von Stroheim’s stare hadn’t deviated, he continued looking right into the eyes of Walter and Laszlo to gauge their reactions.

  “Because of our timetable, Mister Morris,” he said, “I must introduce you to my colleague who will be able to maximize our time here with you…Doctor Josef Mengele.”

  The two conversed in German as the doctor nodded and motioned to his assistant, the bald man. The assistant opened the first case on the cart. Several knives of various sizes were on the top rack, and under that, an assortment of tools and horrendous-looking medical apparatus. The second case concealed a small black device. On one side was a silver crank and next to that, a tiny silver button. Connected to the other side were five long wires that each had pads at the end. And at the edge of those pads were tiny metal claws.

  The meticulous unpacking had Walter and Laszlo’s utmost attention. The piano player’s eves dropping got him even more despondent.

  Von Stroheim finished his discussion with Mengele, who was nodding. “I understand,” he replied in English.

  “I am sorry, Herr Doctor, we do have a strict schedule to keep.”

  Laszlo’s body trembled in fear, but he looked up with determination as he cleared his throat and spoke calmly, “Herr Von Stroheim—”