The Holy Terror

by Wayne Allen Sallee

  “First off: Rizzi, Morisette, you know Contant here.” He then introduced the young cop to the others. Perry Contant had a sandy moustache and wore aviator-style prescription glasses.

  “Loot, these two here are Reve Towne and Evan Shustak, they know a few people at that handicapped hotel on Randolph.” Conover stared at Reve too long while he introduced them, and Rizzi picked up on it.

  “We met them the night before they found the woman’s remains,” Rizzi was blunt. “Just keep your eyes on the C.A.P. forms for awhile, okay, Louisville?”

  He ignored Conover’s glare.

  “Contant, here, and Ben Christopher aren’t directly involved when it comes to the killer’s victims, but they did find the dead rumdum on Salt Street, and we can at least discuss differences and shit like that there.” Daves shifted his butt cheeks. “You guys probably know Petitt here.”

  He waited for the bald-headed, bearded detective to introduce himself. He wore a ten-gallon cowboy hat on his crack house busts, and everybody around the Grand Central District knew him as the Baton Rogue, a play on the town in Louisiana he was raised in.

  “Christopher’s out of town this weekend,” Contant said.

  “Dirty bird’s on one of those Carnival cruises,” Rizzi added.

  “The Love Boat...” Contant sang off-key.

  “You referring to the ship or to Ben?” Rizzi quizzed Contant on his partner’s girth.

  “Guys.” Morisette said softly.

  “Yea, we know,” Rizzi replied. “It’s Christmas and we’re here dealing with another serial killer, so we got to get what laughs we can early on.”

  No one argued that point. Morisette and Mather had their own notepads out, and for all their joking, the others were skimming through the cream-colored folders Daves had circulated.

  “Who’s first?” Daves said the word like a heartbeat.

  “Think he’s gay?” From Morisette.

  “All the victims are men, you mean?” Mather looked up from his notes.

  “And the old woman, well. Mother image.”

  “Good, Al,” Daves said. “Let’s drop names, faces, anything here, okay? Reve and Evan there, feel free.”

  They talked well into the dawn.

  * * *

  From Stalking Sanity With The American Dream:

  His Greatest Adventures by Reve Bega Towne, Annihilation Press, 1997.

  PART THREE: GORY DAYS

  It seems an eternity since that season of horror. The secret season, as one of my professors at the U of I wrote about once, where we all learned something about ourselves. Some of us learned too much. Or learned it too late, at the moment of their doom. Some couldn’t live with the knowledge, and others had no real choice.

  That Christmas night when all the cops got together was incredible. Evan was virtually hyperventilating at the idea of the officers allowing him to air his opinions. Particularly, because he knew both Rizzi and Christopher in 1987, when both had laughed at him during his search for a cat burglar he referred to as The All-Nighter (see his notes entitled SMILE FOR THE WILD)..

  Det. Lt. Daves ran through the list of authorities the C.P.D. had employed on the case. The case should have been referred to as Robert Dolezal—after the first serial victim—but, as the 1982 Quita McLean murder had been bastardized, again by the media, into the Rapid Transit murders, so it was that the folders he passed out simply read, in big block letters, PAINKILLER...

  * * *

  “Nice how the newsies jumped on what you said up on Wabash, Loot.” Shustak whispered to Reve that Rizzi was abbreviating the word lieutenant.

  “Yea, sure.” Daves grunted like there was a golf ball in his throat. “Lotta good it’s done us so far.” He meant it hadn’t made the guy any cockier, giving him a villainous code name.

  “I’m surprised it took tonight’s network circus to bring down the heat from City Hall,” Morisette said without a trace of weariness, his blue Pilot pen poised in his hand.

  “Yea, well.” It was how Daves agreed with someone. “Seems like everybody’s a bit more concerned with the election coming up in February.”

  “Think we’ll have a mayor we can call Junior?” Contant grinned.

  “I don’t get it,” Petitt the displaced Southern rebel said, not knowing about Richard Daley Sr.

  “I’ll explain after this mess is shut down,” Daves said.

  “The election, plus the fact that the victims are, for the most part, homeless.” Rizzi scratched his gut.

  “Bingo,” Daves pulled an imaginary trigger.

  “Look how many times Gacy and Ayler were questioned by the force,” Shustak had the nerve to say. “All their victims were gay. Yet when Speck shot his wad, you’ll pardon my French, on eight nursing students from upper class families, boom. He’s picked up the same day and charged. Virtually. And pardon my grammar, too.”

  The men had to smile.

  “We got Gacy on a film receipt that his last victim had.” Contant had been working Uptown a decade back, with Sanford and Leland and Stormin’ Norman. “And Ayler never admitted to dismembering Donnie Bridges, even though he painted over the boy’s blood in his Albany Park apartment.”

  “Guy who won forty million in the Lotto lived on the next block,” Rizzi added. This was true. A block away from a guy suspected in torture killing young boys in three states.

  “I think the Painkiller is a whole new ballgame,” Daves said.

  “What about this acid angle?” Morisette, always looking for more.

  “The guy might work with chemicals Pazdra at County came up with a list of occupations where this kind of... of dissolving agent might be accessible. Bervid, the M.E., said that the anthro they brought in from Indy, that Williamson guy, he came up with a breakdown of the chemicals and trace substances found in the subway and on Wabash.”

  “I met the guy, Loot,” Rizzi said. “Bastard at the Robert Taylor Homes fed his girlfriend’s baby some rat poison and tried to sue the dairy company.”

  “Mother’s milk tastes better,” Conover winked at Mather.

  “Can it, shitbird.” Daves said sharply. “Getting back to it, this acidic substance discolors the metal, but doesn’t eat into it.”

  “Blows the theory about the blowtorch,” Rizzi said.

  “Right,” Daves said. “The metal wasn’t even melted.”

  “You’re pretty quiet, Petitt.” Conover piped up.

  “Just thinking about what we’re dealing with here, is all,” the Southerner drawled.

  “Don’t you mean who?”

  “No, Conover,” Pettit said without sounding sarcastic. “I’m from this side of N’awlins, where they’s still tellin’ stories about the ‘Mormo. Swamp creature. No, sir, Patrolman Conover, I am talking about a what.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment then.

  * * *

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

  25/6 Dec 88 (contd).

  Music from Void’ds is to loud. So many things to register in my mind. Like how po Mather motions with his hands the way a chain smoker does. Conover strokes his face like a shrink. Daves the Lt. is so tired looking that I think of a Civil War Ghost. He is kind to let me write this don.

  TO DATE: 30 sub. questioned?. NO NEED TO LIST. I know the face and the conversation in my head. So long Ago it seems.

  FOR FUTURE USE:::

  when tracking the dreaded Eighth Street Man...)

  The police have consulted biorythym specialists, astrologers, and Darlanne Candel of the Behavoral Science Dept. at NW Univ in Evanston.

  WOMAN named Vida Stonescu called police several times too tell Daves of a boy. She was nurse at Childermas Research where incidentally I went once or twice. Vida S. lives on Augusta and Wolcott. Daves mimicked her saying it “Aw-goose-ta” but without malice, only to ease the grim audience in attend.

  Sd the woman taught boy bad burnned in school fire to walk again. Boy had NIGHTMARES of being CRIPPLED and In A Wheelchair!!!

  Wrapp
ed up with stairwell railings in firer?/Vida cant recall. Morisette (P0) is smart: recalls fire at St. Vitus in’ 1958. Winter Time.

  The boy was saved but many were not.

  * * *

  “She told the story like this,” Daves had said, not wanting to tell them yet why the story had been finally dismissed into the cracker box. “Vida, then in her thirties, worked the rehab at the old hospital at 18th and Paulina. Childermas was one of the county clinics.”

  “I know that place,” Contant said. “Had color-coded lines down the halls, told you where to go. Place smelled like Vaseline.”

  “That was the burn ward you smelled,” Daves continued. “She worked with a Dr. Maclay on the kids brought in from that parochial school fire. Stonescu taught the victims how to use their limbs independently, you know, flex muscles and like that.”

  “You’re thinking that—” Contant said.

  “The killer might have—” Rizzi said.

  “Wait.” Daves held up his hand. “This is where the story gets weird, and frankly leaves me leery about the whole thing. Said she saw him out in the courtyard with a dead bird in his hands.” Daves voice deepened, and his chin backed up into his neck, as if he were harboring a fugitive belch.

  “Then the boy looked up to the sky and pushes the bird into his chest.”

  “Messy.” Rizzi said.

  “I don’t get it,” Conover said.

  “No,” Daves said. “Into his chest. No more bird. Nada. Without a trace.”

  “Maybe, this whole thing is crazy, anyways,” Morisette said, “but maybe she saw the kid put the bird in his jacket.”

  “No dice, far as I can tell on that.” Daves said. “Vida said it was summer.”

  “Chicago summers are like Baton Rouge winters,” Petitt pointed out.

  “Still,” Daves replied.

  “You know if she remembers the boy’s name?” Shustak cleared his throat to ask, surprising even Reve.

  “It’s down in the folder, no. Guess it isn’t.” Daves riffled through his own notebook, “Here it is.

  “Haid. Hayes. No, Haid,” He enunciated FRAN-sis MAD-sen HAYed. “Then, after that tale, we had a guy said it was a demon he called Fadeaway Charlie was behind it all.”

  “That’s right up there with that independent North side paper saying that the Painkiller is the Tylenol killer come back,” Rizzi said.

  “Surprised no one’s blamed it on Speck or Heirins,” Contant smiled.

  None of them knowing how close they had come.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The American Dream found the woman’s name in the Ameritech white pages. No one answered the phone when he called. He let it ring ten times, in case she had arthritis or something. He then took the CTA to her building, the Damen Avenue bus dropping him off within blocks of her three-flat, and he stood around outside like a guy getting up the nerve to call a girl on the phone.

  He hoped Reve could dig up something on the St. Vitus fire. In costume, he was secure and sure of himself. Like the Division Street drunks who were sleeping it off or the Washington Square junkies who were getting it on, he was feeling no pain.

  * * *

  From the Patrol Log of The American Dream:

  Tuesday 27 Dec 88. 1130AM next to impossible to find this woman. Hoping Reve for better luck. Slight envy for Vic Tremble him having family at this time of year.

  My only family =

  the family of man

  IN A TIRED CITY!!!

  11:5 am Bus on State. Resting now. Meeting Reve at the Marclinn 12 on the button.

  * * *

  “Had to stop at a Burger King to blow my nose,” The American Dream told Reve. “Couldn’t wait; runny nose, it gets in your cowl. In the summer you smell everyone’s sweat. In the winter, you smell your own snot.”

  The two sat in the lobby of the Marclinn, and Reve was wondering for the hundredth time if she was fascinated by Evan Shustak simply because she wanted to write about him one day.

  “Couple things, Ev,” she touched his arm lightly.

  “Had no luck at all finding that woman,” he said.

  “That’s okay, listen. I went to the lib—no, I want to say this first. I ran into Slappy Vander Putten on the corner. He said some of the guys have been talking about moving out, maybe going back to the South side.”

  “Perhaps they are thinking that the Painkiller is a cowardly white man and would be too scared to attack someone on South Drexel Boulevard.”

  “I think what he means, Evan, is that the killer is using The Loop as a means of convenience. People caught up in workday rituals who could care less about saving someone, or seeing something, if it means missing their train.”

  “They just don’t see it,” The American Dream said. “The world is in a state of constant change. My uniform will be my shroud as the next generation builds from my bones.”

  “Cool down, Evan. Let me finish.”

  “Sure, Reve. Sorry.” He came short of hanging his head.

  “Slappy also told me that Vic came up with the same ideas you had on decoys.”

  “Victor is back downtown?”

  ‘“No, this was a few days ago or something. Slappy said that Mike was still out of it on Christmas morning.”

  “You know,” The American Dream said, looking off into space for a moment. “I could get in touch with Ben Murdy. He has friends with polio. He’ll know where we can pick up some used chairs.”

  “Think Vic will go along?”

  “We both had the same idea, right?”

  “Yea.” Reve never gave any thought that Shustak was talking about the two men going out on decoy without telling the police. She was more excited about what she told him next.

  “Listen, this is what I found at the library.” She beamed as she pulled a sheaf of photocopies out of her bag. “Check this out. It’s from LIFE magazine, the week after.”

  The American Dream looked down at the Dec. 15, 1958 issue of the tabloid magazine. A black and white photograph dominated the page. A fireman cradling a boy in his arms.

  The boy could have been alive or dead. His hair was almost completely burned away. The fireman looked like a medic in a war, his face twisted in pain.

  The caption read: His face twisted in grief, Fireman Thomas Schmidt, himself the father of two, carries Francis Haid, age 9, from the still-burning fire.

  Francis Haid.

  CHICAGO SCHOOL FIRE TAKES 98 LIVES

  ANGUISH THE NATION SHARES

  Francis Haid.

  The American Dream hurriedly told Reve, like a stoolie blurting out a confession before the brass knuckles are swung, about what he had seen on Christmas Eve. The man at the Tooker Place apartment, the exchanged glances, the conversation with the newswoman.

  “I’ve seen his face around State Street, too.” He added.

  Reve would remember later how she was thinking things were going too fast when Rizzi and Morisette came through the front doors.

  “Figured we’d see one of you here,” Rizzi did the talking. “We got a call from D.D. Latent prints on that wheelchair out by the Opera House.”

  “Matched through Army records,” Morisette finished. “Reve, Evan. The prints matched those of Michael Surles.”

  * * *

  They all felt the dead space in their bones. Twenty minutes had passed when Victor Tremulis stormed through the doors. Mike Surfer’s name was on every radio newsbreak by now.

  “...can’t believe.. .wouldn’t KNOW THE MAN WASN’T AROUND FOR CHRIST SAKES!” Shouting like a psycho on a bank heist.

  “Vic,” Reve ran up to touch his shoulders. “No one noticed he was gone. Everybody here was thinking he was in his room, like he had been for two weeks. Didn’t answer the door when he was in there.”

  “Had been.”

  “What?”

  “Had been for two weeks.” Tremulis backed away from her. “Reve, Mike Surfer’s dead. The Painkiller got him.”

  Reve winced.

  No one talk
ed. No one shot pool. Etch and Szasz and Karl sat on the couch like those three monkeys that saw, heard, and spoke no evil. Colin Nutman wiped imaginary dust from the front desk.

  * * *

  The three of them sat in Loudon’s Dog Days, drinking large Cokes. Tremulis had just told the others that, since there was no body, maybe Mike Surfer wasn’t dead.

  “We talked to Morisette,” Reve said. “Said as far as he knew from the preliminaries in Forensics, none of that acid compound was found.” He pulled the dog-eared C.A.P. report from his pocket after Tremulis gave him a questioning look.

  “What…what if Mike just wanted to be left alone and went off by himself?” Reve knew there was no chance of that.

  “He wasn’t going to crawl, that’s for sure.” A teenager behind him was playing a Walkman too loud and he wanted to tell her to turn the fucking thing down because he’d never have the satisfaction of seeing her go deaf at an early age.

  “Mike’s dead, Reve.” The American Dream said. “We know it and he knows it.”

  Tremulis wanted to ask him if, when he said he, did he mean the Painkiller, or Mike Surfer.

  Reve was thinking that Evan had meant that God knew that Mike Surfer was dead.

  They were both right...

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Father Dennis finished reciting his breviary and walked out to the pulpit. None of the other Franciscans spoke to him much these days, not even the newest of the flock, Father Gary. Even Gary—ah! his innocence, like a freshman in college, eager to believe chapter-for-worse that Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter were the two finest pieces of literature written past, present, and future.

  They all knew his heart wasn’t in it anymore. His mannerisms, his comparisons, well, may God help him. No exclamation point, just a half-hearted attempt at a period. His breviary lacked soul.

  And the silence disturbed him. Silence in the pews, because people were staying off the streets. The people who needed the church for shelter, that is. Father Dennis fully expected each winter’s headlines to be brimming—sometimes sensational, most times as filler—with items about frozen carcasses, vagrants who allowed alcohol to thin their blood a bit too much. Vagrants who then found themselves dead, with the police finding them propped up like bookends on Grant Park benches. He also thought about bag ladies at St. Anthony’s, praying that only half their blackened fingers need be amputated.