Primal Fear

by William Diehl

  The strip was convenient to a ramp leading to the main suburban four-lane and had become a popular quick stop for bisexual and homosexual businessmen on their way home from the office, a minute market of young hustlers with something for every taste and desire.

  Goodman swung into the line of two-door Caddys and bottom-of-the-line Mercedes cruising the wretched street while their jittery drivers checked the meat market; nail-studded leather boys, college types in blazers and polo shirts, acned preteens, transvestites, all displaying their wares in a strolling carnival that reached its peak between the hours of six and eight. In a kind of perverse reversal of custom, some even had pimps who flashed obscene pictures of their clients and made front-end deals with the trade.

  “Batman and Robin.” Pimp and hustler. Robin would have to be Alex. But who was Alex?

  The procurers walked down the line of cars, flashing their pictures, making their pitches … “Hey cutie, how ’bout this? Twelve inches all for you.… Catch him while he’s hot, leaving for La La Land next week … Lookit the tongue on my boy, huh? Lookit that red banana …” to which Goodman answered, over and over, “Lookin’ for Batman and Robin…” and finally, after a half hour of degrading interrogation, pay dirt.

  He was a hulking cretin; bald and bullet-headed, diamond stud in one ear; thick, black mustache waxed on the ends; heavy rings flashing from thick fingers; a black leather cape over Neanderthal shoulders; and, of course, a mask—one of those thin black papier-mâché Halloween masks.

  “Batman?”

  “Who else, loverboy?”

  “Lookin’ for Robin.”

  “Yer new, aincha?”

  Goodman sighed. “What do you want, a recommendation?”

  “Sensa humor, huh?” He looked over the battered VW. “I ain’t sure this peanut’s big enough fer two.”

  “Why don’t we give it a try? Dinner’s waiting.”

  Batman’s eyes narrowed behind the slits in the mask. He didn’t like banter.

  “It’s fi’ty, sevenee-five you do him. I ain’t sure you can bear the freight.”

  Goodman held up a hundred-dollar bill in his right hand, holding it over the shotgun seat, away from the window.

  “Wanna bet?”

  Batman’s eyes twinkled. Money talked on B Street.

  “Follow me. Next alley down. You got a heater in this thing?”

  “Who needs a heater?”

  Batman laughed and led the way. Goodman turned down a dark, narrow alleyway between two brick buildings, eased around an overflowing dumpster and past garbage cans bulging with trash, empty bottles and cans and refuse that reeked of maggots.

  Marty, you son of a bitch, you’re gonna pay for this trip.

  Batman waved him deeper into the alley, then held up a hand. Goodman stopped. The big man knocked on a sagging door and a moment later Robin stepped out, squinting into the harsh glare of the headlights.

  “Kill the lights,” said Batman.

  Alex was tall and reed-thin. Dirt-matted blond hair curled down from under a dark pea hat and over the shoulders of a scarred, tan suede jacket. His shoulders were hunched against the cold and his hands were buried in the side pockets of the jacket. The beginnings of a young beard pocked his jaw like tufts of grass. Dull eyes appraised the darkness.

  “We gonna do it in that?” he asked, nodding toward the VW.

  Goodman got out of the car, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

  “We’re not gonna do it at all,” he said. “You’re Alex, aren’t you?”

  “Motherfucker,” Batman growled. The kid turned and bolted toward the door. Batman lunged toward Goodman, a fist the size of a grapefruit cocked by his ear. Goodman blocked the roundhouse punch with his right forearm and stepped in close, smacking him under the chin with the flat of his left hand. The big man was jarred, reeled back against the brick wall. Alex tried to get around Goodman but the ex-fighter lashed out with a leg and swept the skinny kid’s feet from under him. He sprawled facedown on the alley floor.

  Batman grabbed a piece of pipe from a garbage can and swung it back with both hands. Before he could complete his swing, Goodman charged him and hit him under the nose with a vicious left jab, then another and another. The big man’s head snapped with each blow as he reeled backwards, trying to block the punches. Then Goodman feinted with his right, stepped in and sent him sprawling with a vicious left uppercut. Batman flew backward, knocking over a garbage can, and fell flat on his back among the debris. Blood spurted from his shattered nose. Whimpering, he rolled over on his side, holding his face with both hands to stem the blood.

  “M’ nose,” he cried. “Yuh broke m’ nose.”

  “You stand up again and I’ll break both your goddamn kneecaps,” Goodman growled.

  He heard a crash behind him and saw Alex duck into the building. Goodman followed, darting through the door and crouching just inside. It was dark as a dungeon except here and there where light filtered through broken windows and fissures in the walls. The first floor was a mélange of disrepair. Goodman was suddenly back in Vietnam, hunched in a dark jungle of broken-out walls, fallen joists and collapsed ceilings. He reverted back to his old training, squatting still as a statue, his ears keen for the slightest sound, his eyes scrutinizing the grim interior for signs of movement. He waited patiently. Two or three minutes passed and he heard a board creak to his left. His muscles tensed. Then he saw vague movement in a streak of light. Alex was moving stealthily through the ruined interior. He followed quietly, keeping to the shadows and closing the distance between him and his quarry. The boy suddenly saw him and bolted. Goodman charged behind him, snatched up a shattered two-by-four and skimmed it backhand toward the dodging figure. The board hit Alex behind the knees and he staggered and plunged forward through a plaster-and-plywood wall section and fell facedown in a billowing nimbus of dust. Goodman leaped through the hole, grabbed Alex by the collar, dragged him to his feet and slammed him against the brick exterior wall. The kid’s breath shushed out of him like wind rushing out of a punctured balloon. The kid stared wide-eyed at him, his eyes darting around the dismal space. Goodman grabbed the one remaining earring.

  “Chill out, you little bastard, or I’ll rip your other ear off,” he snarled. He reached into his pocket, took out the earring he had torn from the boy’s ear at Aaron’s stander and held it in his palm in a sliver of light.

  “No!” the kid squealed.

  “We’re going to have a talk,” Goodman said. “Or we’re going to dance. Capish, Boy Wonder?”

  “Please don’t hurt me,” the boy whined.

  Goodman jabbed a forefinger in his chest. “What were you after in Aaron’s stander?” he demanded.

  “Uh, uh … I thought, y’know … maybe he had a … a radio or sumpin’ hid out…”

  Goodman tugged on the earring and the boy’s face squinched up in pain.

  “How’d you know I was there?”

  “I live there. The first stander on the right. I heard you talking to the old crock when you come in. I figured maybe you knew sumpin’ so I followed you down there.”

  “What? What did you figure I knew?”

  “You know … maybe Aaron told you he had sumpin’ stashed.”

  “Bullshit.” He pulled harder on the earring.

  “Owww … hey, I…”

  “Try again?”

  “You don’t know jack shit, man,” Robin whined. “You ain’t even a cop.”

  “I’ll tell you what I do know. I know your name’s Alex and I know I got one of your earrings and I’m about to take the other one.”

  He pulled on the earring and Robin’s earlobe stretched a half inch. The kid screamed.

  “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me,” he begged.

  “Then get level with me.”

  “He had some books …”

  Goodman pulled harder.

  “Ow! God, please, man …”

  “One more lie and I take off the ear.”

  “It w
as a television tape!” he cried.

  “Of what?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Just answer my question, what was on the tape?”

  “It was a show!”

  “What kind of show?”

  “Altar boy shit.”

  “What do you mean, altar boy shit?”

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  Goodman leaned very close to him, pulled hard on the earring and held it. The boy writhed with pain. “You got one more answer, Alex.”

  “Porn,” he yelled.

  Goodman snapped back with surprise. He eased off the ear slightly. “Porn?” he said.

  “Yeah. A fuck tape.”

  Goodman let go of the earring and leaned back, staring at Alex.

  The boy was breathing heavily. “An altar boy special.”

  Goodman could hardly suppress his shock. “Keep talking,” he said.

  “We’d go to this place on Prairie, it was this old building the church owned and he had it set up with the bed and all and we’d do it and he’d direct. Like Hollywood, y’know? Do this, do that. He’d say who’d go first. Sometimes we’d all do it, sometimes just one. Then whenever he got steamed up, he’d turn off the machine and go at it himself.”

  “Who’s he?” Goodman asked.

  The boy’s smile was twisted. “Who else?” he said. “The bishop.”

  “Bishop Rushman?”

  “Yeah. The Saint himself. Called it gettin’ rid of the devil. Ain’t that a crock?”

  Goodman was incredulous. “And you were one of the altar boys?”

  “Yeah. Me, Aaron, Billy and Peter.”

  “Just four of you?”

  “You don’t think we were the first ones, do you? You can bet there were others before us—but ain’t nobody gonna admit it. You think anybody’s gonna admit that? Shit, who’d believe us anyway?”

  “Why would Aaron want the tape?”

  “Because his girl was on it, man.”

  “Linda?”

  “Sure. She was the bird.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Goodman’s head was spinning. “There were four of you, the bishop, and one girl?”

  “That’s the way it went.”

  “And you were all at the bishop’s the night he was killed?”

  Fear crept into Alex’s eyes. “We didn’t have no meeting that night, man. We broke up like a month ago.”

  “It’s in the bishop’s date book.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that. Maybe he was gettin’ together a new group. Look, first Aaron and Linda took a hike. Then I quit, okay? Then Peter and Billy Jordan split town about two weeks ago. Right after that, Linda bagged Aaron and took off. Maybe it was a new bunch, y’know. Shit, maybe Aaron was recruitin’ for the old bastard.”

  And Maggie was going to be the next “mascot.” My God!

  “So you didn’t know for sure whether Aaron had the tape?”

  “All I know, the last time I seen Aaron, which was a week or so ago, he said he was goin’ up to the bishop’s pad and snatch the tape because he was worried about Linda bein’ on it.”

  “There was only one tape?”

  “Yeah. We’d do it and then the next meeting, he’d show the tape and we’d all get off on it.” He sneered. “The bishop was big on gettin’ rid of the devil. Then he’d erase the tape.”

  “So you never had a meeting after that last time? Never actually saw that tape?”

  “That’s right. Aaron moved in with Linda right after that and I figured fuck it, long ’s I was into that shit I might as well get paid for it.”

  “You’re going to have to testify to all this at Aaron’s trial, you know.”

  . “Bullshit, man. You think I’m gonna tell anybody that? I’ll say I don’t know shit. Nobody’s gonna admit that. You think Linda or Billy or Peter’s gonna own up? Think a-fuckin’-gain.”

  “It could save Aaron’s life.”

  “I don’t owe Aaron shit. Smart little asshole, always thought he was better’n the rest of us.”

  “We’ll find somebody who will and you’ll get pegged anyway.”

  “Yeah? What’re you gonna do, put a fuckin’ ad in the paper? You got no last names, no hometowns. You can’t prove shit without the tape, and anyways, the bishop ain’t in the show. It was Billy Jordan, Peter and Linda that last time, and they’re long gone.”

  “Why would Aaron do that to the bishop? I mean chop him up like that?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Did he have a bad temper?”

  “Not exactly. He had a razor strap and if we couldn’t get it up, he’d whack us one, tell us the devil had his hand on us.”

  “I was talking about Aaron.”

  “Oh, I thought you meant His Excellency,” he said, and shrugged. “Wasn’t any worse ’n anybody else. Shit, he was teacher’s pet. Him and the bishop was tight as a fist. Maybe the old man got himself a new boy, pissed Aaron off.”

  “Enough to stab him seventy-seven times?”

  “Holy shit!”

  “And cut off his dick and stuff it in his mouth?”

  “Holy shit! I didn’t think he was that weird.”

  “Well, how the hell weird was he?”

  “Y’know, quotin’ shit all the time, actin’ like some kind of genius. He always knew everything.”

  “Did it disturb him? That Linda was making it with the other guys?”

  “I don’t think so. I always figured he kind of got off on it. Hey, we all did once we got used to it.”

  “Jesus!” said Goodman, half aloud. “When did this all start?” he asked.

  “Almost two years ago.”

  “The girl couldn’t have been more than …”

  “She just turned fourteen,” Alex said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “And the rest of you?”

  “Aaron was seventeen. Me and Peter was fifteen. I think Billy Jordan was the oldest. Eighteen maybe. He’s a big guy, has a huge wacker—a nine-incher—I guess that’s why the old man kept him around, even when he was twenty.”

  “What makes you think you weren’t the first ones?”

  “Hey, the old bishop knew what he was doing, man …” He lowered his eyes suddenly. “Uh… that first time with us, that wasn’t the first time for him.”

  So intent was Goodman on his conversation with Alex, he did not hear Batman until he was twelve feet away. He spun around to see the hulking figure advancing toward him grasping a four-foot slab of wood like a baseball bat over one brutal shoulder. Instead of backing off, Goodman charged into him. The big man made the same mistake he had made the first time. He swung the weapon too late. Goodman moved inside the arc, knocked his arm askew and, shifting sideways, slammed his foot into Batman’s kneecap. The big man roared like a wounded lion. The slab spun away into the darkness, and without thinking, Goodman threw a hard right straight to his jaw. Pain streaked all the way to Goodman’s shoulder. The big man grunted, fell straight backward, hit the floor and lay spread-eagled.

  “You never learn, do you?” he said to the fallen pimp.

  He heard sounds behind him and whirled in time to see Alex—a fleeting figure—dashing through shards of light as he ran to the rear of the building and crashed through a door. Goodman did not follow him. He had other things on his mind.

  Half an hour later, an angry but excited Goodman was in a phone booth, checking the yellow pages. He found an electronics store on Plains Avenue, drove by it and bought a fresh videotape. When he got back in the car, he tore the cellophane wrapper off, reached behind him and slipped the tape under his belt in the back, pulling his sweater down over it. Then he went back to Lakeview and headed toward the Cathedral.

  The cop at the door to the bishop’s apartment had moved an overstuffed chair from the living room and was slouched in it with one leg over the armrest, reading a paperback book.

  “Hey,” Goodman said. “I came to check the premises. Here’s my ticket.” He held up
the subpoena. The cop stared at it.

  “A little late, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. Guess we both got bad hours, huh? The D.A. finished in here?”

  “How the hell would I know? And who are you?”

  Goodman took out his wallet and flipped it open to his license.

  “Goodman,” he said. “P.I. I’m with the defense.”

  The cop looked at him with disdain. “You must have a bad time sleepin’ nights,” he said. “They shoulda blew the little bastard away when they found him, save everybody a lotta trouble.”

  “In the church?” Goodman answered innocently.

  “You know what I mean, wiseguy. Figger of speech,” he said as he reluctantly cut the paper seal with a pocket knife and unlocked the door.

  “Sure. What the hell, I’m just a workin’ stiff like you, right? Everybody’s gotta make a living.”

  “Why don’t you become a dogcatcher?” the cop said nastily.

  Goodman bristled but his voice remained cheery. “Same reason you’re not out there freezin’ your stonies on the bricks, ’stead of sitting in an easy chair, reading and mooching off the Church.”

  “Okay, wiseguy, raise ’em, I gotta pat you down.”

  Goodman raised his hands. The cop started under his armpits and did a cursory frisk. He didn’t even touch Goodman’s back. When the cop was finished, Goodman entered the room. It smelled of old incense, Pine Sol and stale air. The cop started in behind him and Goodman stopped.

  “I won’t need any help,” he said. The procedure permitted him to conduct his search alone.

  “You don’t take nothin’, you don’t move nothin’, you don’t leave nothin’,” the cop snapped.

  “Right.”

  “We’ll just leave the door open,” the cop said.