by Paul Levine
From above me I heard Stephanie's voice. "Don't hurt him, you brutes."
Francis got up cursing and holding his jaw. He must have missed soccer practice because he decided to take a few penalty kicks. He bounced a hard-toed shoe off my temple and three into my ribs before getting tired. Then he slipped something out of his back pocket. Clive was still holding me down, my arms pinned over my head, when they put the plastic handcuffs on me.
"Get the needle, Clive," Francis said.
I hate a needle almost as much as I hate a knife.
My head was a spinning satellite, and through the glare of a thousand suns I saw Clive unlock a drawer and withdraw a syringe and small vial.
"A day without Thorazine is like a day without a funeral," Clarence intoned from across the room.
"Oooh. When he's out, I'll give him a good licking," Stephanie cooed.
My hands were cuffed together, but in front of me, not behind my back. These guys had clearly never seen Miami Vice. Francis was hauling me up by the elbow while Clive approached gingerly with the needle. Clive was still a half-dozen steps away, and I was hunched over, breathing through my mouth, moaning. Playing possum.
Francis relaxed his grip on my elbow. I brought both arms down hard to shake him off, and then, fists together, I swung my arms up and smashed him on the point of his nose with both fists. There was a pop of breaking cartilage, and I was showered with blood, sticky and warm on my face. The punch stood Francis up, wobbled his knees, and he fell over backward.
Clive was impressed. He circled me, brandishing the needle like a switchblade. He feinted and I ducked. He stabbed and I slipped to the side. He aimed high and I dropped to the floor, throwing my shoulder at his knees in a chop block. I rolled into him, my body pinning his left foot to the floor while my shoulder turned his leg sideways. I heard the crack and knew his anterior cruciate ligament was blown into shreds of spaghetti. He hollered and clutched the knee, rolling from side to side. I heard Stephanie screaming.
I struggled to my feet and saw a shadow over my shoulder. I swung at it and it disappeared. I swung again and missed again. Twisting my neck, I saw it once more. It seemed to be attached to me. I turned the other way, and the shadow became the plunger of a syringe. The business end was stuck into my shoulder just behind the blade. Clive must have taken a shot at me as I went for his knees. I hadn't felt it. My hands were still cuffed in front, and I couldn't reach it.
Francis was still on the floor. If he was conscious, he wasn't solving ten-digit logarithms. I tested him with a foot. He groaned but didn't move. I knelt down, fumbled with his belt, and removed a key ring. After seven keys, I still hadn't found the right one, so I said to hell with it. I managed to push a couple of buttons on the wall, and I the door opened with a buzz and a clang.
I bolted into the corridor, possessed of no particularly brilliant ideas. I was handcuffed, panting, covered with blood, and had a needle sticking out of my shoulder. Two men in white coats were walking thirty yards down the corridor. I waved to them with my cuffed hands. One waved back, did a double take, then they started for me. I used the good shoulder to push through some swinging doors and headed up a set of steep metal stairs. I was dizzy and nauseous. I thought I heard shouts behind me as I took the stairs two at a time, my footsteps resounding like distant echoes.
Three flights up, I heard the roar of amplified words that seemed to envelop me. I stopped, my heart pounding in my ears, my vision hazy.
A dignified voice proclaimed: "There are four manners of death..." For a moment, in my wooziness, I envisioned the PA announcer at the Pearly Gates. Have your admission tickets ready. Lassiter, Jacob Lassiter? We have no record of your reservation. I took a deep breath and let an invisible force lead me up the stairs to a peaceful hereafter. I was vaguely aware of a secret pleasure that I hadn't headed toward the basement.
The electronic voice recited: "Accident, suicide, homicide, and natural. Distinguishing them is the first task of the medical examiner."
Wait. I had heard the voice before. The words too. Authoritative, though hardly heavenly.
"If the body has a black eye, is it from a punch, or from a fall after a heart attack?"
I was so sleepy. So ready for rest.
"An autopsy can only tell you so much. You must take as much care at the scene of the crime as in the morgue. Take precise photographs. Measure and diagram the scene. Preserve the evidence, including hair and fibers at the scene. We all remember the Wayne Williams murder trial in Atlanta. Fiber evidence from Williams' car was crucial to the conviction. And, of course, bullets. You have no idea how many times I've seen bullets crushed by a physician's instruments. We even had one assistant ME who would etch his initials onto bullets he removed. That's one way to lose friends in ballistics."
Good old Charlie Riggs, his voice booming over a loudspeaker. He would take care of me. Put me to sleep. Whoops, all his patients were sleeping the big sleep. On stainless steel tables with wooden pillows in a room that could give you—but not them—a cold.
I stumbled through a door, up three more steps onto the skirt of a wooden stage. Heavy purple drapes separated me from my old friend. I peeked through an opening and saw him, a blaze of lights at his feet, an unseen audience beyond.
"A medical examiner must never be surprised. Neither by physical evidence nor human behavior. The medical examiner remains objective, cool, dispassionate, unfazed in the face of horror and..."
I burst through the curtain with my last reserve of strength and collapsed at Charlie's feet. I heard a gasp from beyond the footlights. For some reason, I pictured Gerald Prince playing Julius Caesar.
I looked up at my old friend. "Et tu, Charles?" I asked.
Charlie Riggs looked down at the bloody, sweaty, needle-stuck body at his feet. "Mea culpa," he whispered. "I never should have left you alone here."
I brought myself to my knees, looked up at him, and smiled a peaceful smile. Then I promptly vomited on his genuine L.L. Bean hiking boots.
"Perhaps," I heard him say into the microphone as I rolled free of the mess and rested my face on the cool floorboards, "we should take a five-minute break before the slide show."
CHAPTER 22
Dream a Little Dream
"Do you really feel up to driving?" Pamela Maxson asked. I gave her my steely-eyed confident look. "You're not groggy at all?" I shook my head.
"Why should he be groggy?" Charlie Riggs scoffed. "He slept fourteen hours, then called room service at six a.m. and ordered french fries and a chocolate shake."
"Chips for breakfast." Pam clucked with disapproval.
"With vinegar," Charlie tattled.
We were standing in front of the hotel, waiting for the Land Rover to emerge from the car park. It was a fine summer day in London, which is to say it was dark, wet, and cold. "I'm fine," I said. "A little headache, that's all."
"Better than those poor lads at the hospital," Pam scolded. "Knee surgery for Clive, a broken nose for Francis. I must say, your conduct required some creative explanations to the administrator."
Those two knuckleheads wouldn't listen to me."
"So you created an affray?"
"They were going to lock me up."
"They would have put you in the ward. How long do you think it would have taken to straighten it all out? An hour, two?"
"I wasn't thinking that far ahead."
"At the first provocation, at the first excuse to act out your hostility, you battered those working-class lads who haven't had the benefits you've enjoyed."
I felt my bruised face redden. "Those working-class lads are a couple of thugs."
"Did you enjoy hurting them?"
"Look, lady—"
Charlie stepped between us just as the valet swung the Land Rover under the portico. "Now, now. I see the truce lasted all of one day. Jake, why not let Dr. Maxson drive? She knows the route and..."
I ran a Z-pattern that Jerry Rice would admire and grabbed the keys from the valet. The doo
rman, a tall fellow in a red tunic and a fur hat two feet high, tried to stow our bags, but I grabbed those, too, and tossed them unceremoniously in back. Then I boldly opened the door, slid behind the steering wheel, and slammed the door behind me like a spoiled brat who's fled to his room.
Only I wasn't behind the steering wheel at all. Because the wheel was on the right, and I had gotten in on the left. This wasn't my ancient convertible in the good old U.S. of A. This was a lady psychiatrist's thirty-grand-plus glorified jeep in a country where they talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road. I remembered all the movies where the guy walks into the closet, thinking it's the front door. No wonder they stay inside. There's no graceful way out.
Finally Pam Maxson came around to my side, opened the door, and showed the barest hint of a smile. Not a supercilious or condescending smile. More of a tolerant one. I got out without pouting and she got in without any help from me. I headed to the other side while Charlie climbed into the back. The doorman watched with as much amusement as they allow and gave me a "very good, sir" when I palmed him a two-quid tip.
I didn't have any trouble the first hundred yards. But hitting second gear brought the clang of metal on metal. "Whoops," I apologized, "not used to shifting with my left hand."
I felt spastic. Kensington Road was no problem until I ran over the curb. Cars coming at me on the right made me pull harder left. The bumper is made to bounce off elephants, so the Rover was fine, and so was the guy whose newspaper kiosk I had flattened, once I gave him a wad of bills.
"Why not let Pamela drive until we're out of the city?" Charlie suggested.
It was two against one, so we switched places again. The rain let up, and the sun peeked out of some low-hanging gray clouds. Pam Maxson said, "There's someplace I want you to see." She wound off the main streets and through a series of turns and kept driving until we pulled into a narrow alley in a part of the city they don't show in the tourist brochures. Abandoned warehouses, empty windows gaping like missing teeth, lined each side. A few delivery trucks drove by, but there was no foot traffic.
"On these very cobblestones," Pam Maxson said, "Jack the Ripper stalked and killed."
"Of course, Whitechapel!" Charlie Riggs was as delighted as a country priest whisked to the Vatican.
Pam stopped, put on the parking brake, and we got out. It was mid-morning, but my mind conjured pictures of foggy nights and gas lit streets. "August thirty-first, 1888," Pam said. "Mary Ann Nicholls. Throat slashed, nearly severing her head. Nine days later, Annie Chapman, stomach slashed, intestines draped round her neck. September thirtieth, Elizabeth Stride, throat slashed and on the same night, Catherine Eddowes, throat slashed, body mutilated. Finally on November ninth, Mary Jane Kelly, throat slashed and body severely mutilated."
"All prostitutes, all slain within a stone's throw of each other," Charlie whispered in reverent tones.
"Then the killings stopped," I said. "Why?"
"There are all sorts of theories, mostly rubbish," Pam said. "The murders have been blamed on everyone from Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Eddy, to Freemasons. Some believe that Montague John Druitt, a failed barrister, was the killer. He ended up floating in the Thames not long after the last killing. Others believe he was a scapegoat, used to cover a scandal involving the royal family."
"In any event," Charlie said, "the killer was never caught and his motives never known."
"But we've come such a long way since then," I said, "with all our psychological profiles and investigative techniques."
"One would think so," Pam said, "but it took five years and thirteen killings before the Yorkshire Ripper was captured."
"A baker's dozen," Charlie said, shaking his head.
We stood, peering into the shell of what Pam said had been a slaughterhouse, the wooden floor stained black from dripping carcasses. "He hired prostitutes, smashed them on the head with a hammer, then stabbed them with a screwdriver. The psychological profile built a picture of a socially incompetent, unattractive loner living in a furnished room. Turned out he was a happily married lorry driver, a decent-looking fellow with a trimmed beard, who lived with his pretty wife in a two-story house with two cars in the garage."
"Go figure," I said.
"The investigation cost four million pounds, the police interviewed three-hundred-thousand persons, and the man was captured only when he was found with a prostitute in a car with stolen license plates."
"It's often that way," Charlie said. "All the computers and all the files go for naught, but then a tiny slip, and the bugger's caught."
We all smiled at Charlie's unintentional rhyme and headed back for the Rover. Pam opened the passenger door for herself and tossed me the keys. "Drive," she said.
***
Somewhere near Oxford on M-40 I finally got the hang of it, easing into a speed lane and letting the Rover purr. That seemed to relax everybody. Charlie fell asleep in the back and Pam stirred a little. "Did you learn anything from my group?" she asked.
"Only to follow the backward elbow strike with a left jab if there's a guy in front of me."
"Other than the fisticuffs."
"I'm not sure. Clarence was highly manipulative. The Fireman seemed dangerous, or at least wanted to appear that way. Ken was inscrutable, and Stephanie was—as the kids used to say—a trip."
"It may be," Pam said, watching the roadside fly by, "that you don't have enough information yet about your killer."
"I've got everything the cops have put together."
"But they have only two victims. You may need..."
She stopped, both of us realizing the horror when bodies become data, mere input for the computerized profile, grist for the thesis and the government grant.
"There will be more deaths, won't there?" I asked.
"Yes, if the first two, or either of them, was a motiveless murder. If a psychopath is about."
I heard Charlie snoring in the backseat. I turned and saw him curled contentedly in the fetal position, his mackinaw under his head for a pillow. Probably dreaming of a historic autopsy where he found a rare poison in the pancreas.
I opened a window and let the crisp air fill the Rover. I had sore ribs and an angry red knot was blossoming on my temple, but it was turning into a fine day in the English countryside. I turned and looked at the beautiful woman sitting next to me. I wondered why I misfired with her at every opportunity. She seemed genuinely peeved about my conduct at the hospital.
I decided to confess. "I was scared."
She looked at me skeptically.
"In the hospital with four lunatic killers and your two minimum-wage goons."
"There was no reason to be frightened of the group. They only kill women, you know."
"And their reasons for killing women?"
"Answering that question is my life's work. But we're talking about you. What frightened you?"
"Confinement, I guess. Claustrophobia, maybe. Not being able to come and go. Having hands laid on me. Plus the fear of getting knocked around by a couple of guys who know how to inflict pain without leaving scars."
"I see." She bit her lower lip and seemed to ponder my case. She was staring straight out the windshield, or windscreen, as she called it when we stopped for petrol, but she was thinking about me. I liked the attention. But I didn't know if she was interested in the big lummox as a person or merely an interesting case study. Freud had his Rat Man; maybe Maxson wanted her Macho Man. "I wonder," she said delicately, "if you are using claustrophobia in a colloquial sense or if you have a true phobia, an anxiety far out of proportion to its danger."
"I don't know," I admitted.
"As for Clive and Francis, with your background as a footballer, you can certainly handle yourself, as you proved."
I passed a double trailer in fifth gear and looked straight ahead. "But I was afraid, even then."
"Afraid, playing your game?"
I nodded.
"Afraid of what? Losing?"
"Th
e pain, both physical and emotional. Getting hurt, getting embarrassed. I was always one step from getting cut."
"Cut?"
"Fired, canned, let out to pasture."
I politely allowed a Jaguar to take me on the right side. Pam seemed to be mulling over the contradictions of the ex-linebacker admitting his weaknesses. She inched closer in the seat. Maybe she liked me better this way, two hundred twenty-five pounds of neuroses. "What caused these fears?" she asked.
I shrugged.
"We could find out, you know."
"You mean analysis."
She nodded happily. "Let's call it a preliminary inquiry concerning your mental health."
"Fire when ready."
"Did you like playing your game?"
"The game...the game is stupid!" I stopped short. I'd never said that before, never even thought it, not consciously at least. Then I wondered if there is a subconscious. Or was I becoming a radical psychojock?
"What makes it stupid?" she asked.
I kept my eyes on the road. "Let's start with the uniform."
"Those knickers and plastic hats."
I nodded. "And the game itself, smashing into each other at full speed, pushing an odd-shaped ball a hundred yards, back and forth, according to a set of arbitrary rules. Only one forward pass per down, can't touch a receiver when the ball's in the air, offensive line can't hold but they all do. Viewed objectively, it's a pretty stupid game and a pretty stupid way to make a living."
Her eyes brightened. "But the smashing was a release of hostility like steam from a kettle. Or is there another reason you chose a profession certain to cause you anxiety and conflict? That's a classic counter-phobic attitude, you know, taking pleasure in precisely the activity that arouses anxiety. And when you derive satisfaction from triumphing over the anxiety, it's just a manifestation of a manic defense."
