“What do I have to do with this guy?” he asked himself aloud.
He turned on the tap and doused his face with some cold water. He looked back into the mirror.
“I should have killed that motherfucker instead of the meter maids!” he screamed. He paused, quieted down.
“These demons—I’ll never chase them away. I’m doomed. Doomed!”
The water was hot enough to shave now. He squirted some shaving cream from a can of Gillette Foamy for Sensitive Skin and lathered up, using a throwaway Bic razor to shave. He held the razor up and looked at it. Then he looked in the mirror at his reflection.
“Why don’t you just pull this across your neck and fucking get it over with?”
But he knew he wouldn’t kill himself. He was afraid. Scared. Here he was this fearsome killer the whole world shrunk from, and he was afraid of a Bic throwaway razor.
His thoughts turned back to Bricker.
“I want to get caught, don’t you see?” he screamed at himself in the mirror. “I want to stop! But, nooooo... Jake wouldn’t tell anybody... wouldn’t take the tape to the chief. Noooooo.”
He finished shaving, managing just at the end to nick himself on the chin.
“What do I have to do? Kill all the meter maids on South Beach? What do I do then? Start on nurses? No! Nooo! Nooooo!”
After he dressed, Billy went back to the TV and checked all the coverage: CNN, XYZ, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the cable channels.
After the story of Barney Weiner’s arrest broke yesterday, everybody had assigned special teams to dig out all the sordid details that had to exist in what certainly had to be Barney Weiner’s sad and sickening, stomach-turning past life.
Even Sara Succubus on XYZ’s The Morning Show had eased up, and it was all over the news (on all channels) that she was heading to Miami to head up XYZ’s coverage now that Jake Bricker had broken the case wide open.
She wasn’t the only one. Each network had assigned teams to cover the handsome and dashing Detective Sergeant Jake Bricker, who was being compared to a White Knight in Shining Armor.
“Oh, please,” Billy said to the TV, “just go fuck off.”
He wanted to barf.
He switched the set off and went out to his car for the drive over to the WHY-TV studio. First thing up was the usual morning editorial meeting. His news editor, knowing that Billy and Bricker were childhood friends, immediately wanted to capitalize on that relationship.
“Hey, William—want you to set up an in-depth interview with Bricker. We’re gonna do a ‘Dateline’ type profile on the guy. Full half-hour. You and Sara Succubus will interview the cop together later today. Everybody in the world wants to interview this guy, and you went to school with him. Be sure to feed her all the really good questions in advance so she looks good and doesn’t chew my fuckin’ ass off, hear?”
Billy rolled his eyes to heaven.
Oh, God. Here we go!
But there was a lot more going on at the station. Since Sara Succubus was in town to top-line the XYZ Network’s national coverage of the meter maid murders, Billy, the chief investigative reporter for the local affiliate, was now relegated to second banana, and would support Sara. She’d even flown down on a G550 with the chairman of the board of the XYZ Network, General Samuel Czarnoff, a pioneer in the broadcasting industry. (The “general” was an honorary title conferred on him by the Army when the Signal Corps named him a Reserve Major General for his contribution to the “communications industry.”)
Everyone at the station was excited when word got out that Czarnoff had accompanied Sara down to Miami. Czarnoff was so obsessed with the story because The Morning Show’s ratings had soared ever since Sara’s sister became one of the meter maid murderer’s victims. When the general walked through the corridors at WHY-TV, he was met with spontaneous applause, befitting the broadcasting legend that he was.
Billy’s mind wandered. He’d worked with Sara many times before, of course, whenever she was in Miami to cover a big story, and as senior reporter, he was always her backup guy. She would open the story and toss it to him for the mundane details. But she kept her distance. They didn’t socialize. There was no question who was the Star. (And that’s with a capital “S.”)
His mind snapped back into gear as the editorial meeting broke up and he headed out to his office to get his shit together for what looked like would be a very long day.
He passed a studio where Sara was doing a live interview with FBI Special Agent Louis Lewis. He slipped into the room and stood against a wall.
“Now, let me get this straight, Mr. Lewis.”
“Call me Louis.”
Sara looked at her notes, flustered.
“I am.” She looked off camera to the segment producer. “Aren’t I?”
Lewis gave an inoffensive giggle.
“Oh, sorry, Sara. My first name is Louis. You were calling me by my last name.”
“What’s the difference?”
“My first name is spelled L-O-U-I-S and my last name is L-E-W-I-S, but to make things easier, people call me Louie, L-O-U-I-E, not Louis.”
Sara’s temper was rising. It seemed to Billy like Sara’s dyed orange-blonde hair was getting darker. This was either because her blood was boiling or the lights weren’t just right.
“Whatever. Tell me, Louie, does this meter mister, this Barney Weiner, fit the profile you sketched out to the local authorities when you first arrived?”
“Actually, he fits the profile I laid out to a T.”
Bricker was watching this same interview live from the Deuce, where he’d repaired to get a little R&R and to escape the endless demand for more interviews.
“That is not true, son of a bitch!” Bricker yelled at the TV. “You didn’t tell us shit.”
Lewis prattled on:
“In fact, my profile was so detailed that the local police would have been able to identify Barney Weiner if they’d employed even the simplest interview techniques—techniques I devised in Quantico for the FBI—on their own people, but my understanding is that Chief Ramirez trusted his officers and would not implement the questioning program along the lines I suggested.”
“That is such horse shit,” Bricker grimaced, shooting back half a glass of Ezra Brooks.
“Hey there, Pussy,” yelled Boobs McCoy from the other end of the bar where she was talking to some tranny. “That’s sippin’ whiskey. It’s not for shootin’.”
“Well, bring me another one, Boobs—maybe I’ll get it right the next time,” he winked.
Back in the studio, it was clear Sara Succubus was flummoxed and had met her match: you could see she found it hard to stop Louis Lewis once he got wound up.
“This man—this Barney Weiner—is a man of very complex psychological yearnings and the origins of his schizophrenic reality conjoin in the oddest way and reflect on the existential dilemma facing all mankind. In fact, he—”
Here Sara interrupted, firmly, though with a smile.
“Sorry, Louis Lewis, or Louie Lewis, that is, but my producer will have an existential dilemma if I don’t cut to commercial.” Now she looked directly into the teleprompter. “Did you know that Maximum Strength NoDoz pills are fast acting alertness pills that are as safe as coffee? We’ll be right back after this message.”
In the Deuce, having poured out a double measure of Ezra Brooks, Boobs was going through her sexy two-cube dropping maneuver. She was wearing some kind of very tight Spandex top in bright sunflower yellow, for Christ’s sake, that emphasized her huge nipples.
“You’re sure the big man on campus. Every channel I turn to, you’re on it.”
“I was even on Cambodian TV.”
“Where’s that?”
“Out in the East... somewhere,” Bricker said vaguely with a wave of his hand. “I just needed a break.”
“I’m glad you came home to mama,” Boobs smiled.
I know she wants me. Look at those tits!
Back in the studio, Sara quickly
disentangled herself from the invisible clutches of Louie Lewis by nodding to the segment producer and raising her eyebrow. Her message: get your ass over here, unclip that lavalier mic from this jerk-off’s lapel and get him the fuck outta my sight.
Billy was just leaving Sara’s studio when his news editor popped his head in.
“Ah, William—there you are.”
He wanted to tape a short background piece on Barney Weiner with Sara and Billy, so Billy just went over, said Hi to Sara and sat down while they miked him. Another segment producer came in and put some background material in is hands, which he immediately began to scan.
“Nice flight down, Sara?’
“Oh, great,” she said as she looked over her notes. “Czarnoff has the best caterer of any private plane I’ve ever been on.”
“And you’ve been on a few.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Well, it’s really great to see him again. He hasn’t been down here in a few years.”
Billy was trying to make it look like he was on speaking terms with General Czarnoff, but of course he wasn’t.
“Yes,” Sara said in her low purring growl, not putting him too much on the spot, “he was such good company on the way down.”
The thing that struck Billy as particularly odd was that on-camera Sara had one voice (a sweet little girl’s high-pitched voice, full of wonder and excitement, as if she were experiencing the news story she was telling you with the same astonishment as you the viewer were), whereas off-camera, her voice went down about as many octaves as a human voice could go down (where it became more of a deep growl of the sort you expect to come from a hungry werewolf).
They got their cue and went to tape.
“I’m Sara Succubus, along with William Willoughby, the chief investigative reporter for the XYZ owned and operated affiliate in Miami, WHY-TV.”
“Glad to be with you, Sara.”
Back in the Deuce, Bricker watched as the two reporters, both at the top of their game, worked the story.
“The accused meter maid murderer Barney Weiner has denied any connection with the murders that have stunned the nation and created a ripple effect as copycat murders circle the globe and shock the world. You knew the man, didn’t you, William?”
“I ran into him a couple of times, but he seemed like a mild mannered kind of fellow.”
“What was your team able to find out about his background, William?”
“About what you’d expect. He lived alone. Most meter maids and meter misters live alone, of course, because so few of them are married or even have active sex lives. My contacts with the police tell me they’ve already discovered massive amounts of porn on Weiner’s home computer.”
“Which he uses to compensate for the active sex life he doesn’t have, yes?”
To Bricker at the Deuce, it sounded like Sara was describing herself, not Smarney Weiner, but that had to be another story he’d ask Billy-Boy about later.
“What were we able to learn about his background, William? What about his family?” Sara was asking Billy on the TV.
“You go, Billy-Boy!” Bricker cheered from the Deuce.
“Hey, keep it down over there,” yelled Boobs, not meaning it.
“Oh, suck it, Boobs, you know you wanna.”
Just then, a husky voice bellowed from the doorway.
“She touch yo scrawny dick and I beat da shit outta her, you hear me, Bricky-Wicky.” Everybody turned to see Rwanda Tutsi-Hutu stride through the door like she owned the place. “An’ after I whoop her fat ass, I break a brick ovah yo head and smash yo balls wit it, you hear me?”
But she said it with a smile, as Boobs raced around the bar to give her girlfriend a great big hug.
“You wanna drink, honey?” gushed Boobs.
“What-chu tink I come here fo, pussy? Damn straight I wanna drink. It’s my lunch hour.”
Rwanda sat on the stool next to Bricker, her mammoth frame almost swallowing the stool. Bricker for a moment—just a moment—tried to imagine Rwanda riding a bicycle.
“So, big man hidin’ from the press?”
“That’s right, Rwanda.”
Boobs brought Rwanda a triple Sambuca and then ruined it by pouring Coke into it. Bricker inwardly shuddered.
“What we watchin’?”
“We’re watchin’ Billy-Boy.”
Billy was answering.
“We were able to locate some family, but they wouldn’t comment. As you know from the briefing papers we put together, Sara, most meter maids—and meter misters like Barney—don’t have much family. They go into the PMS Force really to find the tight-knit family unit that society has denied them. In fact, most families will not even admit they have a meter maid in the family unit. There’re even cases where families have been known to move to other towns to avoid the stigma of having a meter maid in the family.”
There was a pause. Everybody in the studio, and everybody watching TV, including Jake Bricker and now Boobs McCoy and Rwanda Tutsi-Hutu, were suddenly aware and palpably reminded that Sara’s sister Sammy had been a meter maid and had died a terrible death at the hands of the meter maid murderer. In fact, everybody seemed aware of it... except William Willoughby, who read from his notes until he noticed the silence and then gasped for air, immediately shocked by what he’d said.
The pause continued as a tear slowly developed at the corner of Sara’s eye.
Everybody was transfixed, mesmerized for this moment of silence. Billy interrupted it.
“Oh, Sara, I didn’t realize—”
She held up her hand.
“It’s all right, William. It’s true. What you say is true. We had a meter maid in my family. My sister Samantha. And not only that, my mother was a meter maid, too. Serena. And, the truth be told, I left Miami out of shame—shame that I was related to such despicable people. So I left to find my way in the world, moving north to a little obscure town on the Jersey shore where I got a job as a TV reporter. From there, I worked my way up. The truth is, I abandoned them to the lives they chose.”
“Sara,” Billy reached out and touched her shoulder. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“It’s all right, William. I have to learn to live with myself.”
Billy looked into the camera.
“We’ll be right back after a message from Jiffy Lube. With over two thousand locations to serve you, Jiffy Lube guarantees the $19.95 oil change you drove in for will miraculously rise to over $100 after they get your hood open and have a look around.”
Back at the Deuce, there was stunned silence.
“Wow!” murmured Bricker. “Who’d ever think Sara Succubus would break down like that?”
“So sensitive,” said Boobs.
“Billy tells me she’s about as sensitive as Xena the Warrior Princess, but it sure looked real, didn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” grunted Rwanda.
When they went back to the studio after the Jiffy Lube commercial, they cut to Bob Blunt, the main anchor at WHY-TV News.
“We have breaking news... the White House just announced that President Quince is aboard Air Force One as we speak en route to Miami to meet with Governor Ken Kudzue and Mayor Johnny Germane of Miami Beach. It appears the president wants to personally thank the man who single-handedly captured the meter maid murderer, Detective Sergeant Jake Bricker.” Everybody in the Deuce looked at Jake with open mouths. “We’ve been trying to find Detective Bricker, but we haven’t been able to reach him for comment.”
Rwanda snorted: “’Dat be cuz his fuckin’ phone off.”
Bricker, also slack-jawed, reached into his pocket and confirmed that he had indeed turned his phone off.
Back in the studio, Billy’s news editor cornered Sara and Billy in the corridor.
“We just got that breaking news, so you Sara, backed up by William here, will lead our coverage of the president’s visit, so you better make your way over to Scilly Hall.”
“Right,” growled Sara. “Let’s go p
rep for it, William.”
The first thing Bricker did was turn on his cell phone. As the device loaded, he saw there’d been dozens of calls.
He didn’t even look to see who they were from, but called Chief Ramirez right away.
He got through to the girl filling in while Rwanda was at lunch, and she put him through to Ramirez right away. He hit the “mute” button on the remote.
“Bricker... the fuck are you, asshole?”
Again, that word. Always that word. Didn’t anybody ever think about a guy’s self-esteem?
“I was changing batteries on my phone and forgot to put the new one in.” He glanced at Rwanda, who rolled her eyes. “Sorry, Chief. Uh, you need me?”
“Yeah... I need you for three things. First, I want to grind you a new asshole. Second, I want to put you up for a brain transplant, ‘cause there’s something obviously wrong with the one you have. Third, I want you to drag your butt over here so you can meet the president.”
“The president?” he tried to sound surprised.
“Yes, the president. He... oh, never mind. Just get your ass to my office now!”
Bricker looked at the others gathering around him.
“I better go.”
Sara and Billy were on the air minutes before the president’s chopper arrived at Scilly Hall. The press conference took place at the temporary outside press area constructed because the press room in Scilly Hall just wasn’t big enough to accommodate the huge numbers of press from all over the world.
The White House Press Corps was unloading from chartered buses and the international press corps already in Miami covering the story gathered around as well.
Sara Succubus led it off.
“This is Sara Succubus at Scilly Hall in Miami Beach, awaiting the president’s arrival. I’m joined by William Willoughby, chief investigative reporter for Channel 69, WHY-TV, the XYZ Network affiliate here in Miami, as well as Mariana Morningstar, chief foreign correspondent for the Australian National News Service.”
The Meter Maid Murders Page 19
