The White Flamingo

by James A. Newman

  That picture of Christ looked down on him.

  If you did return to the West, Joe figured, it was only as a shadow of your former self. The body going through the motions, yet the soul, the heart, trapped in that jungle.

  The jungle that was known as Fun City.

  He awoke junk sick and made it to the hospital. A taxi. An emergency ward. The doctor saw him for what he was: a drug seeker, but also saw he was in bad shape, and the cash sealed the deal. A nurse administered a heroic dose of morphine and then Joe felt a little better. His stomach began to rumble, reminding him of the days spent without solid nourishment. The doctor wrote a prescription for codeine and Joe figured he could bring himself down gently using the tablets. He ate steak and eggs on the Seventh Road and found the AA meeting.

  He sat in the circle and listened to the stories. Pete, heartbroken and hung-over, had thrown himself from a fourth floor balcony and had landed on the roof of a Honda Jazz. Seeing this as an act of God, he decided to quit the juice and hit the meetings. Another was a biker named Ivan, from some obscure Norwegian motorcycle gang. He had seen more shit than a compost salesman, and was sixteen days clean after spending thirty years drinking around the clock.

  All eyes turned to Joe’s, and he gave It to them:

  “Hello, my name is Joe, and I’m an alcoholic, drug addict, compulsive personality type. I’m also a private asshole.”

  Laughter filled the room. The laughter was kind, like the way grandparents laughed at their grandchild stumbling, attempting to walk on two feet for the first time.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  “Last night my room was filled with ghosts.”

  “Well, we’ve all been there,” a Canadian Christian called Colin smiled. “Haven’t we?”

  All in the room agreed that they had spent the night with ghosts, and whether these phantoms were real or imagined, was a moot point. Each soul in that room had been tortured; haunted by the terrible memory of the hurt and pain that they had caused to those that they loved most. They had all spent nights with ghosts. Everybody had.

  “These were the ghosts of the women that were killed in this city. They spoke to me,” Joe said.

  “What did they say?”

  “Well, one, the transsexual offered me a sexual favor. The rest just kind of mocked me for my inability to find their killer. Another did a striptease, swinging her intestines like a windmill as the final act. It was as real as this table and this chair I am sitting on.”

  “It takes time to recover, Joe. You are still in the transitional stage. These hallucinations will calm down and then disappear entirely the longer you stay clean.”

  The Detective nodded, stood, held hands with the group, and said the serenity prayer. He agreed to change the things he could and accept the things he couldn’t, and confirmed that he did indeed seem to have the ability to know the difference.

  Not for the first time had he made such a promise.

  This time he meant it.

  Maybe.

  FORTY-THREE

  STORM CLOUDS threatened to break open and shower down on the house above the house on the hill. The Detective walked up to the door, stealing a glance at the plastic flamingos. He knocked on the door. It opened immediately as if someone was waiting on the other side for a visitor. She was dressed in a white sarong and purple bohemian blouse, neither garment sufficient to hide the shape of her long slender legs and generous bosom beneath. He noticed for the first time that her neck was extraordinary long and slender like the bird that gave her the moniker.

  “Enter,” she said and turned on her flat heels. Her shoes were the type ballerinas wore in the 1920’s in Paris, between the wars. A time when being an artist was something to be, rather than something to study and pretend to be, while sucking on the trust fund.

  While The Detective followed The Flamingo through the hallway and into the living area, he admired for the second time, the surrealist painting hung on the wall. He figured it would fetch at least five thousand dollars on the open market. “Were you at the show?” he asked, pointing to the painting, a wondrous arrangement of neon lights recreated Fun City, perfectly capturing the intensity and density.

  “I had a boy bid by proxy,” she said as she sat down at the dining table and began to slice a fresh pineapple into chunks.

  “Do you have many boys?”

  “Not nearly enough, dear,” she said while spearing a chunk of pineapple on the tip of a kitchen knife and putting it in her mouth. “Would you like some?”

  “Boys?”

  “No, pineapple.”

  “Thanks.” Joe walked over and took a wooden cocktail stick from a dispenser on the dining table, picked at two chunks of pineapple, popped them into his mouth and chewed. His stomach accepted the sweet acidic taste. His stomach begged for more. He sat opposite her with the table between them, nervously chewing the fruit.

  “Please, help yourself. You look absolutely famished, you poor thing.”

  “Tell me about Mr. Flamingo?”

  “Why?” A sudden icy wall grew around her.

  “I think it might explain why your boy is mixed up. It may help to spring him.”

  “I don’t see how,” she said defensively.

  “Look, in this country a man can be locked up for two years awaiting trial. Trial is not a place where guilt is established and justice served. It is a place where a sentence is handed out. Any background information that I have, will make the process easier for me to grease the wheels, you have to be open with me. I need the facts, Miss Bell.”

  “I still don’t see…”

  “I know that it is difficult.”

  “Well, my ex-husband was big in the city of London, the CEO of an insurance giant. A brokerage firm that I convinced him to sell when the right buyer came along. He was a man driven by anxiety; his work was the thing that kept him moving. When we retired here, he became somewhat distant. I want to say lost…but that is too strong a word.”

  “Distracted?”

  “Yes, that is the word, distracted. You are good with words. Do you read?”

  “It has been known.”

  “I like a man who reads.”

  “Did your husband…”

  “What?”

  “Read?”

  “Well, he did before…”

  “…He died?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t know he read. Tell me about how, if it isn’t too painful, your husband’s death affected the child.”

  “Yes, well, Seb was twelve, the worst age for a child to lose his father, don’t you think?”

  “No age is a good age to lose a father, but I guess adolescence is a tough age, Miss Bell.”

  “Yes,” she said standing and moving toward the painting.

  “Now. My next question is a difficult one. And hit me if it hurts.”

  “Go on,” she said. “I feel like we are friends. Distant friends, like we knew each other a long time ago. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. That is why I must choose my words carefully, Miss Bell. I don’t know how else I can put it apart from putting it simply. Was Mr. Bell your son’s real father?” Joe speared the penultimate piece of pineapple and passed it to The White Flamingo who opened her mouth and chewed. Her eyes slowly grappled with the implications of the question. She stood up, he said, “His biological father?”

  The White Flamingo shot him a glance, “What do you mean by that?”

  “Was your ex-husband Sebastian’s real father?”

  “His name is on the birth certificate.”

  “You and I both know that the name on the birth cert doesn’t mean anything, Miss Bell.” Joe helped himself to the last hunk of pineapple. “A woman can write any name she pleases on the cert in this town. The rumor in town is that your son is also the son of a Fun City immigrant. This, if true, shines a whole new complexion on the deal. And this is the kind of information that will help free him. I don’t wish to be crude, but you are hiring me and I n
eed all the cards on the table.”

  “He doesn’t know. You mustn’t tell him,” her hands rose to her eyes, tears began to well.

  “Are you sure about that. The part about him not knowing. My guess is that he found out already and that explains his recent behavior. He is probably too mixed up to talk to you about it. I guess I would be if I were in his shoes. Explains a lot if he had found out. I don’t want to impose, but the angle I see is that your boy is mixed up and such a revelation could cause it.”

  “This is my fault. I have been such a failure,” she sat on the sofa, sobbing.

  “Anyone that has lived a few years has.”

  “But this, I mean, if his father had even bothered to notice,” she stood and paced the room, thinking for a way to release her guilt. Was there somebody else to blame?

  “You think that maybe Mr. Bell knew?”

  “Look,” she stood up and walked to a cabinet, picked up a framed photograph and showed it to The Detective. “The weather was simply glorious that day. We chartered a boat out to catch big game fish, ‘Big Guys’, Mr. Bell used to call them. Can you see the resemblance?”

  Joe looked at father and son in the picture. If there was a resemblance, he couldn’t see it.

  Neither could she.

  “He never spoke about it, and I obviously never brought it up.”

  “And the father?”

  “Haven’t seen him in years?”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “I never told him about Sebastian and he never asked.”

  “A name?”

  “Not now, give me some time to think.”

  “I see,” The Detective stood. “I’m sorry to bring this up. I will leave and hopefully return with better news.”

  “Hurry,” she said. “I worry about him. He is still my flesh and blood.”

  “Sure,” Joe said and headed for the door.

  “Stay for the night, please.”

  “What, here?” Joe looked around the mansion, his arms open.

  “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

  Joe considered his apartment room, downtown, the ghosts, and the picture of Christ. The answer was simple:

  “Yes.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  They hang the fellow that steals the goose

  From the common

  But let the larger villain loose who steals

  The common from the goose.

  FORTY-FIVE

  CHIEF KULT looked at The Detective across the desk the way a lizard watches an insect perched on a thin bamboo shoot. The insect wasn’t worth the effort of flexing out his tensile tongue and snatching it, yet it was worth observing with curiosity. Joe was a difficult problem, yet he was simply a vague presence, an alien pestilence, not to be trusted. Such people rarely lasted in the city.

  “Let the kid go,” the insect said.

  “It is difficult, Mr. Dylan.” Kult fussed at the sleeve of his shirt, removing an invisible piece of dust from the cuff. He opened a rosewood box on the desk and took out a cigar, lit it, without offering one to the Detective.

  “Loss of face?”

  “There are, perhaps, higher consequences that you are not aware of, Mr. Dylan.”

  “Daresay.”

  “This is not as simple as you may think. Say we lock up a little man on the street. The little man is working for a middleman; we climb further up the chain…”

  “And before you know it, you’re arresting yourself, or somebody in the country club, right?”

  “Your humor isn’t lost on me, Mr. Dylan. We have our man and until you have the evidence to convince us otherwise, we may have to keep him here until trial.”

  “There’s been three additional murders, all with exactly the same hallmarks. The killer even leaves a symbol.”

  “Yes. The long-legged duck, the goose... I daresay that even you can see the connection?”

  “All I see is a decoy that you have fallen for hook, line, and sinker. How can Bell be out there killing if he is in here locked up?”

  “He is working as part of a satanic sect. He was the first to kill and the others have followed,” Kult smiled devilishly. “We have our sources. The others are working for him.”

  “The others? How many others do you think there are?”

  “Many. Once the Bellboy starts ringing, we will reel them in. We can’t have him open up to us if he is back out on the street. Do you follow the logic?”

  “I can see it,” The Detective said. “I see it, but it smells bad. This is the work of one man. One man and it isn’t Bell. There will be one more killing and then it will stop,” Joe’s hands formed a steeple and then a dome above the desk.

  “Explain, please, enlighten me.”

  The Detective told Kult the story of Jack the Ripper, while Kult sat and smoked his cigar, stopping occasionally to flick the grey cone of ash into a large mother of pearl ashtray that sat on his desk. Now and again, he raised an eyebrow impressed with the Detective’s knowledge of criminal history, even if it were history from across the other side of the world. A place the natives of Fun City liked to borrow ideas from, import concepts, gimmicks, and manufacture hybrids that they could call their own. Of course, the city had seen its own serial killer in the past, a Chinese immigrant who claimed the lives of several children and ate their livers. Adults used the story to make children behave themselves at nighttime; the city’s favorite bedtime story was the story of Si Oui, the child-killing maniac. The Ripper was tame in comparison. Prostitutes were not held as pillars of a society that was carefully structured to make those that had nothing feel like nothing, and those that had it all bulge with self-importance.

  Joe finished with, “Looking at these maps, we can pinpoint the position of the final event.” He unfolded the map onto the desk and placed it next to an old map of London with the murders marked out in symmetrical patterns. Kult, offended that his workspace was being used so blatantly, rose from his chair and paced the office. Joe continued, “All we have to do is wait. Have two or three officers rent out a room opposite and when he arrives, we pounce.”

  “How can we spot him?”

  “He wears a disguise. A hat and wig, a medicine bag.”

  “He dresses like Jack the Ripper?”

  “Like the media image of Jack the Ripper. The real killer, back in the time of the original Whitechapel murders, would have dressed down.”

  “I’ll talk to my men,” Kult stubbed out his cigar to indicate that Joe’s allotted time allowance had run out. He waved a hand at the maps. “Take these with you.”

  “And if we capture him, you will release the boy?”

  “I cannot promise that, but it will greatly increase his chances of being released if the killer confesses to the murder of Tammy Yu.”

  The Detective stood, shook Kult’s hand across the desk, and then walked out of the station and onto the road. A sudden wind, and then a crack of thunder, yet the monsoon was months away.

  A motorbike screamed past him on the sidewalk, and then another, the passenger held out an arm that knocked the Detective to the floor. The two bikes screeched to a stop. The riders dismounted, wearing helmets, they approached Joe and began to kick. He rolled into the fetal position and rode the blows. They were not the kind of blows designed to kill, more to hurt, and humiliate. The Boys in Brown were undercover. Subtlety wasn’t their strongest card.

  It was Kult’s way of saying mind your own.

  FORTY-SIX

  THE WHITE Flamingo buzzed on the door to Taylor’s room.

  She waited outside. The door opened. The same eyes and that pronounced nose. She remembered the hotel, the dance, the drinks, and the morning.

  “He is your son.”

  “Who?”

  “Sebastian.”

  Taylor collapsed into the chair. He ached for a cigarette. A drink. Anything. “How do you know?”

  “A woman knows.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Took him on as his own. He never kne
w, or if he did, he didn’t say anything. It would have broken his heart to tell him.”

  “It would have broken your bank balance too.”

  “Bastard.” The Flamingo threw a glass across the room. It hit a wall, smashed. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “So why did you?”

  “I need closure. All of us do at some point.”

  Taylor didn’t argue. He sat staring at the wall speechless.

  “Well, aren’t you going to do something?” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Get him out of there.”

  “And then what?”

  “Speak to him.”

  “As what?”

  “As a shrink.”

  “Not as a father?”

  “No.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  News of the World, London, 7 October, 1888

  …cool, cautious, confident, cunning, and daring, being previously familiar with the murder sites on which he had checked out the police beat times, and that the need to change police beat times is essential, as it is a friendly arrangement for burglars and assassins. Nobody noticed him, the reason being that the two neighborhoods are so thickly populated, especially about midnight on a Saturday, and every man and woman, being intent upon either their market purchases or the last drop at the closing public houses, as to be regardless of anything else.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  TAYLOR’S HAND shook as he twisted the door handle. He made it to the elevator and rode it down to the ground floor, he had to go out, he needed paper, ink, and he needed to keep working. He also needed to see life or whatever Fun City’s version of it was. The sun shot down on him like an angry insult. His mind did somersaults as he flagged down a taxi and got inside. He took it to the beach bar and drank five stiff ones. Then he walked into town, his legs led him into a go-go, open during the day. Before he knew it, he was negotiating the purchase of a wrap of cocaine from a Nigerian pimp who was sitting in one corner smoking a cigarette. He made it into the toilet cubicle, opened the lottery-ticket packet, cut up a line using a maxed credit card, and then mapped out two long fat ones on the toilet tank and hoovered them up the right and the left nostril. It burned the back of his nostril and formed a delicious chemical glob of snot that ran down the back of his throat, numbing the esophagus in its wake.