by Len Norman
A few days later, Richard asked his sister-in-law Caroline if she’d be interested in having Harley visit her and her husband in North Carolina.
“Oh Richard, we’d be delighted to have Harley visit us,” she said. “Perhaps this summer?”
“Certainly. Abigail can make all of the arrangements. Just give her a call.”
On the train ride back to North Carolina, Caroline told her husband she wanted time alone with Harley. She thought it important. “I want to get to know him. My poor nephew has lost a brother and his mother took her own life.” If Caroline Benchly only knew.
The Monkey in the Window
1976
Shortly after Victor was off probationary training and allowed to work alone, he was like a kid in a candy store; an entire city was at his disposal.
One night Victor was working the downtown district and things were slow. It was time to find some amusement. The business district was easy work, because after the bars closed he only had to check all the businesses to make sure there were no burglaries or vandalism. Victor never got out of his car to shake the doors to make sure they were locked. His method was quicker. He simply shined the spotlight down the street while looking for broken glass and other signs of tomfoolery.
Gray’s Pet Land was one of three pet stores in Riverside. This particular business was high end; what with the reptiles and other exotic creatures it sold. The customer might opt to purchase a puppy or a kitten at Gray’s Pet Land or lean toward the other possibilities. Things like Burmese pythons and red-tailed boa constrictors sat proudly on display next to the Mexican redleg tarantulas. The newest arrival was a monkey caged in the main window.
The first night of the new detail Victor hit the mother lode. As he was checking doors he drove past the pet store window and surprised the monkey with his spotlight. The monkey was clearly agitated and began to do what monkeys do in such situations...masturbate. Victor was delighted. Who wouldn’t be?
He drove around the block and snuck up on his new friend with the lights off. Victor stopped next to the window and hit the siren for a brief moment and the monkey was far more agitated than the first time. He picked up the pace. Victor squealed with laughter. He simply had to share. He immediately met with the other cops and described his discovery. Before too long they were all going to the pet store and checking things out as boys are want to do. They were so happy to experiment with their new friend-lights off, lights on, siren, or even a horn. The monkey was eager to please one and all.
Within a few days the excitement wore off for many. Riverside’s finest no longer pestered him. The monkey soon learned to hate cops and for some reason he hated Ivan the most. It was rumored that Ivan was the most frequent visitor and even stopped by on his nights off for a show. That poor little guy must’ve been chafed from all of his frenetic exercise and within the month he was no longer in plain view. Before too long the monkey simply vanished. Did someone buy damaged goods? Would the monkey ever be the same after his encounter with Ivan and the other cops? The monkey was forgotten until three years later.
Thaddeus Laperuta was a monumental pain in the ass. He was nuts and annoying and didn’t have a friend in the world except for his monkey, Horacio. Thaddeus adored Horacio and they lived together and would frequently fight and carry on at all hours of the day and night. The neighbors always complained about them and for good reason…Horacio was simply the baddest of the bad. He was ill-mannered and contrary and refused toilet training. During the day Horacio would screech and throw his feces at small children that walked by his house. There were also isolated incidences when he’d throw table lamps and such at the mailman and paperboy. At night things only got worse. Thaddeus drank at night; he drank a lot. Sometimes Horacio joined in on the fun.
Ivan was working with Victor when the calls started coming in from the area where Thaddeus and Horacio lived. The callers reported screaming and glass breaking at that crazy man’s house: The brick house built by the City of Riverside…the brick house they paid for and they wanted something done.
When Ivan and Victor got out of their patrol car things seemed quiet. Three neighbors walked across the street and pointed at the windows, which had all been busted out by Horacio in a simian rage of some sort; small furniture was strewn around the front yard. Ivan spied a horse clock and thought he might take it with him after they sorted out tonight’s mess. The clock was cool and he wondered if it kept the correct time.
Victor asked the neighbors what had transpired. An elderly man who was wearing a bathrobe said, “That monkey is one crazy cocksucker and we want something done and we want it done now! I pay my taxes and I never bought into this shit, those two are ruining the entire neighborhood.”
Ivan overheard what the man said to Victor and he walked up to him and said, “Excuse me sir, did you say that you pay taxes?”
“Fucking A.”
“Well, I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re exactly the man I wanted to speak with.”
“About what?”
Ivan grinned at him and said, “You pay my wages?”
“Yes, I do!”
Ivan got close enough so the man could smell his appalling breath and replied, “You must be the cheap sonofabitch that won’t give policemen a raise. Get the hell out of here before I arrest you for being disorderly.”
Ivan turned to the other witnesses and said, “You two have anything to say?” They both scurried back to their houses. Right about then a couple more police cars pulled up and Quentin and Calvin walked up to Ivan just as gunshots fired off and all hell broke loose.
Both shots were aimed at Horacio, and Thaddeus was the trigger man. The first shot took out the nineteen-inch portable television set, and the second one shattered the six-foot-long aquarium. The living room was littered with broken glass, water, and tropical fish.
Horacio was enraged because he cut his foot on aquarium glass. He bared his teeth and shrieked at Thaddeus. Horacio picked up a flour canister from the kitchen counter and threw it at Thaddeus. The canister missed him but struck Quentin in the head just as he led the charge through the door. It knocked him out immediately, and Ivan tripped over him and landed on several fish. There was flour everywhere.
Thaddeus was nuts but not stupid. Even in his drunken state he managed to pitch the gun in the hallway and yell, “Thank God you arrived. Horacio tried to kill me, he found my pistol and shot at me, shot at me twice! Arrest him!”
Victor and Calvin were in the house as well. Calvin was screaming into his portable radio, “Officer Down! Officer Down.” He got on one knee to check Quentin, and Horacio threw a small vase at Calvin and struck him right between the eyes. Calvin pulled out his service revolver and shot at Horacio, but the shot went wide and took the right ear lobe off Thaddeus.
About the time Quentin was coming around, Horacio crapped on the dining room table and began throwing his feces at everyone. He was running around the house like a whirling dervish and throwing shit everywhere. Not just shit. His shit. Monkey shit. One only needed to take a quick gander to realize just how badly Horacio needed more fiber in his diet.
Horacio was baring his teeth and screeching. Thaddeus said, “Horacio, stop it right now. Come to daddy and behave immediately, or else!”
Victor would later tell his cohorts that Horacio cut a striking figure. His fingernails and toenails were painted in a lovely peach lacquer. He was wearing a sailor boy outfit that Thaddeus had purchased at the Saint Vincent DePaul’s recycle store around the corner. The Goodwill Store had a finer selection of children’s clothing, but he preferred to shop around the block and support a Riverside south end business. The sailor’s hat was kept in place by an elastic strap.
Horacio ran into the hallway and picked up the pistol with one hand and pointed at Thaddeus with the other. “I think the monkey’s trying to tell us Thaddeus did the shooting,” Victor opined.
Ambulances and other policeman were arriving. Ivan roared, “I’m gonna get that monkey and t
each him a lesson.”
Horacio launched himself in Ivan’s direction and Ivan had time to mutter, “Holy shit…anchors away my boy,” before he slipped on a couple of fish and fell on his ass. Ivan’s hat landed upside down and his drawn weapon spun under a couch. He rolled over, not unlike a beached whale and that’s when Horacio saw an opening. He jumped on Ivan’s leg and sunk his teeth into his ass as deep as he could.
“Get that bastard away from me. Oh my God it hurts, won’t someone help me?” Ivan was trying to grab the monkey from hell but couldn’t reach him. Every time he got close, Horacio would let go and bite Ivan’s other cheek.
“Batter up,” Quentin yelled and swung his nightstick at Horacio but he ducked just in time and the nightstick caught Ivan right in the nuts. He rolled over and immediately vomited while Quentin was already thinking up lies. Who would have thought that a monkey could kick that hard?
Horacio spied Ivan’s hat and headed that way, screeching like all of hell’s demons had just been given work release. Horacio masturbated into the hat; unfortunately for Ivan there were no witnesses to that display of affection. Horacio shrieked one last time and ran out the front door and into the night.
Thaddeus was bleeding like a stuck pig and Quentin was ready to face the relief pitcher. With Horacio out of the game, Quentin went to work on Thaddeus, hitting him in the kneecap with his “Louisville” department-issued slugger and said, “Take that…you monkey-loving prick!” Thaddeus went down for the last time and Quentin handcuffed him.
The other cops were inside the house and Thaddeus was screaming police brutality. Calvin shouted, “The shooter was a monkey. I saw it with my own eyes. The monkey actually shot that moron that’s rightfully under arrest. I’ll be damn…if I wouldn’t have seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”
Victor chimed in, “Yeah, what Calvin just described? I saw it as well.” Calvin looked at Victor and smiled.
They carried Thaddeus out of the house on a stretcher and into the ambulance. He was able to piss the doctor off at the hospital to the point of his being treated without anything for pain.
Ivan and Victor were stuck with the arrest and paperwork, which meant Victor would be very busy. The inside of the house was totally ravaged, and as Victor was looking for weapons and possible contraband, Ivan was in the front yard. He picked up the horse clock and admired it as the next door neighbor asked him what had happened.
Ivan said, “I guess the monkey shot Thaddeus and assaulted the police.” He walked to the patrol car and placed the horse clock in the backseat as he absently rubbed his lower regions. He turned back to the neighbor. “The monkey’s on the loose. Be careful.”
The neighbor said, “I don’t guess I ever liked that monkey, he was always causing trouble. If I were Thaddeus I would’ve gotten rid of him a long time ago. He bought that monkey at Gray’s Pet Land, but they went out of business and Thaddeus couldn’t get a refund.”
Ivan was too worn out to make the connection. He just wanted to go home and clean up his new horse clock and see how it looked on his bedroom dresser. He went back inside the house and picked up his hat and put it on his large head. His ass hurt, but he was too proud to go to the hospital and have it looked at…how would it appear? They might think the monkey bested him. His balls ached as well. At least he had the horse clock. There was that.
Ivan and Victor walked out of the house. The Sergeant pulled up and rolled the window down. “Officer Klemm, put your hat on, a good police officer always wears his hat. You should follow Ivan’s worthy example, see how he wears his hat?”
Victor said, “I do Sergeant. I will try to be more like Ivan.”
“See that you do officer. We need more good men like Ivan. You two return to the station. Captain Eberhart has a few questions about this monkey.”
By the time they walked into the police station the sticky substance inside Ivan’s hat had already begun to dry. Hours later, when he got home it was completely dry, and when he took his hat off the substance in the hat and on his head was barely noticeable. He put the horse clock on his dresser and it looked pretty good to him. He undressed and got in bed and read a comic book until he fell asleep. He dreamt of Godzilla and other things as well, he remembered some of the dream but not the part about that hateful monkey. For the most part, sleep for Ivan was usually a fantasy slumber.
Thaddeus eventually pled guilty to reduced charges and was evicted from public housing. He never saw Horacio again. Ivan’s wounds finally healed and he did shower, but never thought about having his hat dry cleaned.
Stinky Mama
1979
Reg was in a foul mood, a very foul mood indeed. It was July 2, and while he should’ve been enjoying the warm summer morning he was already pissed at the Lieutenant. He’d been assigned the only vehicle in the entire Riverside Police Department fleet of patrol cars that had no air conditioning. It came with air straight from the factory, but Reg was convinced the police command had decided to not have it fixed. He believed they conspired to assign that particular vehicle to anyone who was in the department penalty box. That accolade currently belonged to him—he hadn’t written a traffic ticket in six months.
So there he sat, in a patrol car with no air conditioning and the shade tree wasn’t exactly his idea of beating the heat. In two days he’d be expected to pull double shifts for the Fourth of July fireworks, a party that was three days long. The weather report called for temperatures in the mid-nineties for the rest of the week.
Reg hated Riverside’s annual Fourth of July extravaganza, and he hated overtime. It was said that Riverside had the fourth-largest fireworks display in the entire Midwest. Riverside took its fireworks serious and with that the entire police department was expected to pull double shifts all three nights.
The crowds were huge and everyone simply had to be in the thick of things; nestled in the park along the river for the one hour of euphoria. The city fathers loved the Fourth of July fireworks because it brought all manner of people from all over the state and all walks of life to Riverside where they would spend their money. Of course, once the display was over they all expected to be home in five minutes and with that the traffic accidents, drinking, fighting, and sassing the policing would soon begin.
Reg was ensconced in an already-overheated patrol car and hell-bent on reading a few more pages of his book when the dispatcher called. A neighbor dispute was in progress and when Reg heard the address his head began to throb. The caller was complaining about Stinky Mama. She was a crazy old bird that kids loved to taunt. Her real name was Cora Engerer and she was at least eighty years old and weighed less than a hundred pounds. She had a two-inch razor-sharp nail on her baby finger and claimed the nail was used to clean fish. Cora was as feisty and energetic as she was crazy.
She owned or sheltered cats. At least fifty cats, but neighborhood folklore had that number in the hundreds. Of course, anyone would begin to stink when they lived with dozens of cats, and Cora was no exception. To make matters worse, she had somehow decided Victor Hugo was her kindred spirit. When she discovered the connection the real Victor Hugo had with cats her fate was sealed.
Three years earlier her cat Victor Hugo was still alive and Cora loved that cat, more than she’d loved anything in her sorry existence. She found him lying in the gutter. He’d been struck by a car and his hind legs were ruined; the driver had run over the both of them.
Cora nursed the little critter back to health as well anyone could, and she took him everywhere with her. She improvised a long piece of rope and tied it around her waist, and the other end was rigged to a special cat harness that secured him for his daily walks. He would painfully moan as they sauntered about, but Cora assured everyone that he was just purring because he was a good kitty.
When Victor Hugo finally died of natural causes, Cora was not to be denied. She kept him around and in many ways he became a talisman for her. Every night she’d place him in her chest freezer and take him b
ack out in the morning for the next wonderful day. She would walk him and give him his favorite catnip toys to play with in the front yard. Most days he didn’t smell too bad except in the summer after dinner when he began to thaw out. There were other times she’d forget to tuck him into the chest freezer at night. When that happened the next morning was ghastly, he’d be thawed out and by lunchtime the flies would pay him a visit. Summers were the worst and the house reeked. Cora was no admirer of air conditioning or even fans.
One day a small child asked her why she had so many cats. She replied with a Victor Hugo quote, “God made the cat so that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger.” The little girl ran home screaming and crying. She didn’t want to be eaten by a tiger.
When her parents called the police, the officer met Cora on her front porch. She said, “Everyone has noticed the taste that cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, do come in!” It was just another Victor Hugo quote, which did nothing to endear herself to the officer. He hurried her back into the house and told her, “If I have to come back here today I’ll get rid of each and every one of your cats. This place smells like shit.” Cora slammed the door in his face and that was that.
Before long Cora was officially known as Stinky Mama. Everyone called her that but she didn’t mind. By then her entire house was filled with cats and Victor Hugo memorabilia. There were dozens of Victor Hugo coffee mugs, drinking glasses and dishes, there were Victor Hugo calendars and Victor Hugo clothes all over the house. They all had one thing in common: Victor Hugo and cats.
The house stunk to high heaven and Stinky Mama didn’t mind one bit. To her it was delightful. She even secretly called all of her cats Victor Hugo. When Reg was given the call to her house she was officially one of Riverside’s top-ten crazies.
Reg pulled up to the house and got out of the car. Several children were riding their bikes on the sidewalk and the parents were visibly upset. Stinky Mama was already giving Reg the stink eye; he gave her a dirty look to even things up a bit as the parents waved him over.
