The Language of Cannibals

by George C. Chesbro

  Jack Trex was hearing the whole story for the first time; I knew it, so I excused myself with a curt nod and rose from the table as Jay Acton proceeded to fill Jack Trex in on the details of everything that had happened since I’d come to Cairn to ask questions about the death of Michael Burana.

  I got a fresh drink from the bar set up near the house, then made my way around the perimeter of the yard, nodding to one of the four hulking, grim-faced, no-nonsense Secret Service agents who had been assigned as our bodyguards, and who accompanied us even to the bathroom; their birth records and childhood histories had been examined under a microscope. Down by the rickety dock, my brother, resplendent in the tuxedo he had chosen to wear, was holding the hand of his wife, resplendent in the simple cotton dress and sandals she had chosen to wear, as they spoke with a group of Vietnam veterans and Cairn police officers. Mr. Lippitt, his totally bald head gleaming in the bright sunlight of a perfect autumn afternoon, was standing just behind Garth, beaming like a proud parent as he kept patting my brother on the back.

  I had never seen Garth looking so happy—certainly not in the many years that had passed since his poisoning with nitrophenyldienal, and the subtle character changes that had taken place as a result. I dared hope that by marrying the woman of his dreams, Garth would finally escape some of his demons. I knew I was going to sorely miss my brother’s presence on the Frederickson and Frederickson premises, but I couldn’t have been happier for him.

  I paused by the pile of wedding gifts, stared into the haunting depths of Jack Trex’s painting as I reflected on the past six weeks that Garth, Mary, Jay Acton, and I spent in the confines of a safe house in Arlington while the KGB operative was debriefed and the machinery to dismantle the massive KGB penetration of a segment of American society was begun. The operation was code-named Operation Cannibal, after Trex’s painting.

  Edward J. Hendricks had been picked up immediately; under the loving care of a meticulously vetted joint Operation Cannibal team of CIA-DIA-FBI interrogators, Hendricks had broken and provided valuable information leading to others. He hadn’t cared to return to Russia, and in exchange for a promise of false identity—another false identity, as it were—and relocation under the FBI’s Witness Protection Plan, he had agreed to cooperate fully in flushing out the remaining KGB operatives who had penetrated the American right wing.

  There had indeed been a senator, who’d managed to get away, and seven representatives, who hadn’t. With the eager cooperation of every conservative group in the country, birth records and childhood histories of tens of thousands of people belonging to their organizations were being checked; to date, twenty-eight KGB operatives had been uncovered, and the investigation was continuing. It had been decided that it was in everyone’s best interests, and the nation’s, to keep publicity surrounding Operation Cannibal to a minimum, and thus far no news organization had tumbled on to just how massive the conspiracy had been, or how much of American foreign policy for the past thirty years had been secretly manipulated by the Soviets. However, I suspected it was only a matter of time before some enterprising reporter got on to the whole story, and I wondered what the electorate’s reaction would be when it was realized that 90 percent of everything on the ultraconservative agenda for three decades and more had been considered a godsend by the KGB, and had been actively promoted by the Soviets as a way of keeping the United States off balance, politically weak, and internationally discredited.

  Now the Soviet system was crumbling under its own weight, but the collapse owed no thanks to the men who had squandered the lives of countless numbers of people in so many countries, and wasted so much national treasure, pursuing policies of anticommunism that the communists had considered advantageous to them in the long run.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t KGB whisperers who had caught the ears of the people who’d sent America into Vietnam. And, if so, why the Soviets hadn’t heeded the very lesson they’d taught us when the specter of Afghanistan beckoned. Could the OSS-CIA have instituted a similar program of plants in Russia after the war? I doubted it, but the very thought was enough to make my head start hurting all over again.

  “Mongo?”

  I looked up from the painting, was surprised to find my brother standing beside me, an odd, strained, expression on his face; I hadn’t heard him come up. Down by the dock, Mr. Lippitt was engaged in animated conversation with the cops and veterans, but Mary was looking at us.

  “Are you all right, Garth?”

  “I need to talk to you alone.”

  I nodded toward the river, and we walked together across the lawn, down an incline to a pebble beach. I could feel the presence of two Secret Service agents at our backs, but they remained up on the edge of the lawn, out of earshot.

  “I should have asked you before,” Garth continued quietly as he picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the water, startling some ducks. “But I knew you’d be honest, and I guess I was afraid I might not like the answer.”

  “Garth, what the hell are you talking about?”

  He turned to face me, swallowed hard, said, “Do you think I’m healthy enough to be doing this thing?”

  “What?”

  “You know the problems I’ve had since I was poisoned with that spy dust shit. Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Am I well enough to marry and settle down in Cairn, maybe adopt some kids? I guess maybe I’m looking for a little reassurance.”

  Suddenly I felt tears well in my eyes. “Of course you’re well enough, you idiot. Don’t you know you’re the most spiritually healthy person I know, outside of Mom? I’m not certain Cairn is ready for you, but you’re certainly ready for Cairn. Besides, if Mary ever tells me you’re going spooky on her, I’ll be right up here to kick your ass.”

  Garth smiled broadly, and he seemed relieved. “Some people on the town board asked me if I’d be interested in becoming Cairn’s chief of police.”

  “That’s great news, Garth,” I said evenly. “What did you say?”

  “I told them I’d have to confer with you regarding my status with Frederickson and Frederickson.”

  “Ah, well. I managed to carry on for quite a few years without your assistance, dear brother, and I’m sure I can do it again.”

  “That’s funny; I don’t remember you ever being able to manage without my assistance.”

  “I’ll ignore that and continue with what I was going to say. I rather like having you as my partner. We’ve done all right, and you have enough equity in the brownstone and the business so that you shouldn’t have any financial worries if you want to be top cop here—or if you want to do nothing at all except make love and sail all day. On the other hand, Cairn is only an hour away from the city. It isn’t a bad commute, and we could even hook up a computer terminal for you here so that you wouldn’t have to come in to the office every day. What I’m saying is that you have all the options; I want you to do exactly what you want to do, what will make you happiest.”

  Garth nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I just wanted to make sure it was all right with you if we remained partners and I worked out of Cairn.”

  “Done.”

  We walked together back up the incline into Jack Trex’s yard, where my brother’s bride, at everyone’s urging, had borrowed Jay Acton’s guitar and was preparing to give an impromptu concert.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mongo Series

  Not infrequently I am asked how I came up with the idea for a private investigator who is a dwarf. In response to an invitation from Sylvia K. Burack to do a piece for The Writer, the magazine she edits, I attempted to address that question in the following article.

  The Birth of a Series Character

  For most writers of so-called genre fiction the quest is for a successful series character—a man or woman who, already completely brought to life in the writer’s and readers’ minds, leaps into action at the drop of a plot to wend his or her perilous way cleverly through the twists an
d turns of the story to arrive finally, triumphantly, at the solution. Great series characters from mystery and spy fiction immediately spring to mind: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Miss Marple, et al. These characters may simply step on stage to capture the audience’s attention, with no need for the copious program notes of characterization that must usually accompany the debut of a new hero or heroine.

  Almost two decades ago, when I was just beginning to enjoy some success in selling my short stories, I sat down one day to begin my search for a series character. Visions of great (and some not-so-great) detectives waltzed through my head; unfortunately, all of these dancers had already been brought to life by other people. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that I didn’t want just any old character, some guy with the obligatory two fists and two guns who might end up no more than a two-dimensional plot device, a pedestrian problem solver who was but a pale imitation of the giants who had gone before and who were my inspiration. I wanted a character, a detective with modern sensibilities, whom readers might come to care about almost as much as they would the resolution of the mystery itself. Sitting at my desk, surrounded by a multitude of rejection slips, I quickly became not only frustrated, but intimidated. I mean, just who did I think I was?

  It was a time when “handicapped” detectives were in vogue on television: Ironside solved cases from his wheelchair and van; another was Longstreet, a blind detective. Meditating on this, I suddenly found a most mischievous notion scratching, as it were, at the back door of my mind. I was a decidedly minor league manager looking to sign a player who might one day compete in the major leagues. What to do? The answer, of course, was obvious: If I couldn’t hope to create a detective who could reasonably be expected to vie with the giants, then I would create a detective who was unique—a dwarf.

  Believing, as I do, that it’s good for the soul as well as the imagination, I always allow myself exactly one perverse notion a day (whether I need it or not). I’d had my perverse notion, and it was time to think on. What would my detective look like? What kind of gun would he carry, how big would it be, and how many bullets would it hold?

  Scratch, scratch.

  Would his trenchcoat be a London Fog or something bought off a pipe rack? What about women? How many pages would I have to devote in each story to descriptions of his sexual prowess?

  Scratch, scratch.

  The damn dwarf simply refused to go away, and his scratching was growing increasingly persistent. But what was I going to do with a dwarf private detective? Certainly not sell him, since it seemed to me well nigh impossible to make anybody (including me) believe in his existence. Who could take such a character seriously? Who, even in a time of dire need, would hire a dwarf detective? Where would his cases come from? He would literally be struggling to compete in a world of giants.

  Scratch, scratch.

  No longer able to ignore the noises in my head, I opened the door and let the Perverse Notion into the main parlor where I was trying to work. It seemed there was no way I was going to be able to exorcise this aberration, short of actually trying to write something about him.

  Observing him, I saw that he was indeed a dwarf, but fairly large and powerfully built, as dwarfs go. That seemed to me a good sign. If this guy was going to be a private detective, he would have to be more than competent at his work; he would need extra dimensions, possess special talents that would at least partially compensate for his size.

  Brains never hurt anyone, so he would have to be very smart. Fine. Indeed, I decided that he was not only very smart, but a veritable genius—a professor with a Ph.D. in Criminology, a psychological and spiritual outcast. His name is Dr. Robert Frederickson. Now, where could he live where people wouldn’t be staring at him all the time? New York City, of course.

  So far, so good. The exorcism was proceeding apace.

  Fictional private eyes are always getting into trouble, and they have to be able to handle themselves physically. What would Dr. Robert Frederickson do when the two- and three-hundred-pound bad guys came at him? He had to be able to fight. So he’d need some kind of special physical talent.

  Dwarfs. Circuses. Ah. Dr. Robert Frederickson had spent some time in the circus. (In fact, that was how he had financed his education!) But he hadn’t worked in any sideshow; he’d been a star, a headliner, a gymnast, a tumbler with a spectacular, death-defying act. Right. And he had parlayed his natural physical talents into a black belt in karate. If nothing else, he would certainly have the advantage of surprise. During his circus days he had been billed as “Mongo the Magnificent,” and his friends still call him Mongo.

  Mongo, naturally, tended to overcompensate, to say the least. He had the mind of a titan trapped in the body of a dwarf (I liked that), and that mind was constantly on the prowl, looking for new challenges. Not content with being a dwarf in a circus (albeit a famous one), he became a respected criminology professor; not content with being “just” a professor, he started moonlighting as a private detective.

  But I was still left with the problem of where his cases were to come from. I strongly doubted that any dwarf detective was going to get much walk-in business, so all of his cases were going to have to come from his associates, people who knew him and appreciated just how able he was, friends from his circus days, colleagues at the university where he teaches and, for good measure, from the New York Police Department, where his very big brother, Garth, is a detective, a lieutenant.

  I set about my task, and halfway through the novella that would become “The Drop,” hamming it up, I discovered something that brought me up short: Dr. Frederickson was no joke. A major key to his character, to his drive to compete against all odds, was a quest for dignity and respect from others. He insisted on being taken seriously as a human being, and he was constantly willing to risk his life or suffer possible ridicule and humiliation in order to achieve that goal. Dr. Robert Frederickson, a.k.a. Mongo the Magnificent, was one tough cookie, psychologically and physically, and I found that I liked him very much.

  And I knew then that, regardless of how he was treated by any incredulous editor, I, at least, would afford this most remarkable man the dignity and respect I felt he so richly deserved. I ended by writing “The Drop” as a straight (well, seriously skewed actually, but serious) detective story.

  “The Drop” was rejected. The editor to whom I’d submitted it (he had published many of my other short stories) wrote that sorry, Mongo was just too unbelievable. (Well, of course, he was unbelievable. What the hell did he expect of a dwarf private detective?)

  That should have ended my act of exorcism of the Perverse Notion. Fat chance! On the same day “The Drop” was rejected, I sent it right out again to another editor (after all, Mongo would never have given up so easily), who eventually bought it.

  The next day I sat down and started Mongo on his second adventure. Mongo was no longer the Perverse Notion; I had created a man who intrigued me enormously, a man I liked and respected, a most complex character about whom I wanted to know more and who fired my imagination.

  My Perverse Notion in that second story was to include a bit of dialogue in which Garth tells Mongo, after some particularly spectacular feat, that he’s lucky he’s not a fictional character, because no one would believe him. “High Wire” sold the first time out—to the first editor, and this time he never mentioned a word again about Mongo’s believability. Nine more Mongo novellas followed and were published. In the tenth, “Candala,” it seemed I had sent Mongo out too far beyond the borders defining what a proper detective/mystery story should be, into the dank, murky realms of racial discrimination, self-hate and self-degradation. I couldn’t place “Candala” anywhere, and it went into the darkness of my trunk.

  But Mongo himself remained very much alive. I was still discovering all sorts of things about the Frederickson brothers and the curious psychological and physical worlds they moved in; they needed larger quarters, which could be provided only in a novel.
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