The Prisoner of Vandam Street

by Kinky Friedman

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” said McGovern, in a state of stoned awe. “Did you see that?”

  “I did, mate,” said Piers. “And I’ll see your Jesus and raise you a Peter.”

  Kent, not one to let a momentary advantage slip away, clapped his hands twice, then advanced upon the Village Irregulars like an avenging angel. He stopped only a few paces away from Brennan, who threw his shoulders back and thrust his chin toward Kent in what seemed a rather half-hearted gesture of defiance.

  “Don’t bow-up on me, son,” said Kent, with all the moral authority of a Texas high school football coach. Brennan, in spite of himself, backed down without a word. And like a Texas high school football coach, Kent proceeded to hand out the assignments.

  “Okay, Mick,” he said, “I want you, with the help of the spotter scope or any other means of your invention, to come up with some solid photographic evidence that this woman and this man across the street actually exist.”

  “But the Kinkstah’s seen both of them,” Ratso pointed out.

  “But some people don’t believe him,” said Kent. “The cops don’t. Even some of his closest friends don’t.”

  “I believe in fairies,” said McGovern, who by this time was very heavily monstered on the wheelchair weed.

  “That’s because you are one, mate,” said Brennan.

  “Fuck you, you poison dwarf!”

  “Sod yourself, Big Chief Funk-nuts!”

  “Ratso’s job,” continued Kent, seemingly oblivious to the bickering, “will be to nurture, care for, and keep a close eye on Kink here, who, I remind you all, is still a very sick cowboy.”

  “He’s always been a very sick cowboy,” said Piers.

  “And McGovern’s always been a very sick Indian,” said Brennan.

  “How would you like me to shove that tripod up your ass?” asked McGovern.

  “Pete’s job is the food—which, by the way, is excellent considering it’s British—and the general upkeep of the physical plant, that being the loft.”

  “I’ll not be cleaning up the cat turds, lad,” said Pete.

  “I’ll clean up the fucking cat turds,” I said. “It’s my cat and my loft and besides, it’s very Gandhilike work.”

  “He’s always been a very sick cowboy,” said Piers.

  “I will, of course, consult regularly with Kink on how the investigation is to be pursued. I think that about wraps it up, gentlemen.”

  “Wait a minute,” said McGovern. “What about me and Piers? What are we? A stoned Indian and a drunken Aussie?”

  “Now that you mention it,” said Kent. “Just kidding, guys. You two have the most important job of all.”

  “Great,” said Ratso.

  “I’m serious,” said Kent. “You’re both big strong specimens and I suspect you can both be quite charming to the opposite sex when you want to be.”

  “That’s true,” said Piers. “At least in my case. What is it exactly that you want McGovern and me to do?”

  “Find the girl,” said Kent, “and bring her to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I did not have a great deal of faith in McGovern’s or Piers’s abilities to locate the woman who called herself Tana Petrich. I had even less faith in their combined abilities to entice her into that spider web known as 199B Vandam Street. If the truth be told, it’s a fairly daunting task to convince any abused woman on the run to come in from the cold. For one thing, they tend not to trust men in general. If they’d started out with this attitude instead of ending up with it, of course, they very likely wouldn’t have been abused women in the first place.

  While I had my doubts about the Village Irregulars’ skills at procuring the woman I’ll call Tana, I had no such qualms about Kent Perkins’s ability to interrogate her. When it came to good cop–bad cop, he was the best good cop in the world. And he wasn’t even a cop. He simply had intuition staked out. He knew people and how to talk to them and how to get the most out of them and how to make them feel relieved and grateful that he’d done so. And he did it all with a comforting Texas drawl, never resorting to violence or strong-arm tactics, never, in fact, even raising his voice.

  Kent’s interrogative methods were not particularly new or especially original. They were a hodgepodge of Sherlock Holmes, Lieutenant Columbo, dime-store psychology, and cowboy zen savvy. More important, they almost always worked. I’d seen Kent interview people in L.A., often after the cops had already unsuccessfully run them through the wringer. On many occasions, his interviews were responsible for breaking the case. I’d seen veteran homicide detectives simply shake their heads in admiration of his skills for penetrating the mortal facade and finding the human truth.

  From actual previous experience, as well as conversations with Kent at many delicatessens in L.A., I pretty well knew where he was coming from, other than, of course, Azle, Texas. I will endeavor here to give you an encapsulation of his philosophy and methodology, which could well be titled: “Rules of the Road for Interrogating Modern Boys and Girls.” It might give you some idea why, although admittedly he was like a large, friendly fish out of water in New York, I yet maintained such a high degree of confidence in the abilities of Kent Perkins.

  The first rule of Kent’s I suspect he borrowed from Nelson Mandela. That is, the guy who gets mad first loses. It took a great deal to get Kent mad in what we like to call normal life; in interrogation mode, it was virtually impossible. His second rule is to pretend he knows your secret already. He just wants to help you. He doesn’t need information from you. That’s how he always gets information from you. Kent’s third rule of interrogation he likes to call “selling the door.” In other words, as Kent says, “If you want ’em to stay, tell ’em to leave.” It may sound like fairly standard reverse psychology, but before you attempt it, you need to have a finely tuned, intuitive understanding of human nature, or the subject, sure as hell, will bug out for the dugout.

  Kent believes you should use a person’s attitude to maneuver him to confess. This is very similar, he claims, to the way a judo expert uses the momentum of the other person’s punch to throw him to the ground. He also believes in a careful reading of body language. People often scream in body language, he says. You can’t ask a question before the person’s ready to answer, Kent claims. It’s very tough for someone to maintain eye contact when lying. He contends that once the subject tells a lie, he digs in deep and becomes a far more difficult puzzle to decipher. You must stop them before they lie, Kent contends, even if you have to shut them down in midsentence.

  There are secrets, of course, that Kent has not told me. These are things that it might be better for you and me, gentile reader, not to know. Being a private investigator is a dirty job and guys like Kent Perkins and Steve Rambam get to do it. One of the most unnerving, depressing, soul-destroying, downright ugly experiences you can have in life is to maintain eye contact, even for a short period of time, with that horrible tar baby we call the human condition.

  “You know my methods,” Kent told me later that evening. “All I require is an opportunity to interview the girl, Tana, and, if possible, I’d like to meet with her abusive boyfriend or husband as well.”

  “With McGovern and Piers as your chosen procurement agents,” I said, “that’ll probably occur in the year 2047.”

  “You have that much confidence in them?” said Kent facetiously. “Or are you going by the Jewish calendar?”

  “The Jewish calendar has too many holidays. They’d probably never collar these people for you.”

  “Well, I’ll do some research of my own to find out a little more about Tana Petrich. If I can just get her relaxed and comfortable, I may be able to open her up like a can of smoked oysters.”

  “And the guy?”

  “The guy could be a more thorny problem. We’ve got to get him to admit that he’s been abusive and to understand that that behavior is wrong. We have to point out in a very sensitive way that it is a habit he’ll have to break, a disease
he’ll have to be cured of, if he ever hopes to find his own personal happiness. He must acknowledge that morally and spiritually he wants to be a kinder and a gentler person both for his own good and the good of the woman he loves. I’ll also try to get him into some kind of therapy that may include sensitivity training and anger management.”

  “And if all that fails?”

  “We beat him like a redheaded stepchild,” said Kent.

  McGovern, who’d just wandered over from the dumper and caught only the tail end of the conversation, now weighed in with his considerable poundage on the subject at hand. He did not offer a joint this time, however. He only offered an observation.

  “I saw a lot of that kind of abusive behavior growing up on the South Side of Chicago,” said McGovern. “It was mostly because everybody was so poor and there really wasn’t anything much to do. I remember as a kid, if you woke up on Christmas morning without an erection, you had nothing to play with all day.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Later that same evening I started to feel decidedly “crook,” as Piers or Brennan might say. Ratso would probably say “fucked-up.” I’m not sure what McGovern would say. He and Piers had been on the piss all evening. They’d gone out to the Monkey’s Paw to plot some strategy about how to catch Tana Petrich and deliver her to the loft while avoiding assault and kidnapping charges if possible. When they returned that night I don’t think they even noticed that my condition had deteriorated and, to be fair, I hardly noticed that theirs had as well. For his part, Kent Perkins had been last observed by me, before I’d retired to my sickroom, sitting stalwartly at my desk, tip-tip-tapping away at his little laptop, trying to run down background information on our mystery woman. There was something almost poignant about the big man who’d come all the way from California to sit patiently with his little laptop, working long into the lonely hours of the night to help his shivering, chattering, delirious friend resolve what was most likely a common domestic violence case, the very hardest to ever resolve, the least likely to ever, indeed, have a happy ending. Even as Ratso accompanied me into my bedroom, helped me into bed, pulled the comforters over me, and pulled a chair up for himself, I still had a lingering image in my mind of Kent Perkins, stoically sitting at the desk under the lamplight, ferreting for information and spiritual trivia from the Internet and PallTech, all to get the goods on a woman that only I had seen. He was doing this tedious, unrewarding, very likely futile labor, I knew, only for me. And, like Atticus Finch, I knew he would still be there in the morning.

  So I lay there shivering in bed, watching Ratso eat a huge, cold roast beef sandwich, watching the cat watching Ratso with a visage of pure feline loathing, and wondering why it was so important to me to see this particular, rather singular affair to its conclusion. Was I trying to prove my own sanity? That was always an impossible proposition. Was I trying, as Kent presumably suspected, to “save” this woman? In moments of malarial lucidity, I realized with a thudding finality that it was not possible to save anybody in this life, not even myself. All you could ever hope to do was to lead people to the light, which, like Luke the Drifter, you couldn’t even really see yourself. The malaria helped me in a way. I could watch myself walking on this lost highway of life. I could see that there was no light to see.

  “Thank you for your company, Watson,” I said. “How does it feel to know that there is no light?”

  “There’s always a light, Sherlock,” said Ratso between bites. “It’s waiting there for you at the end of the tunnel.”

  “That is death of which you speak, Watson! You’re with a sick man in a sick room in a sick world and it is death of which you speak!”

  “I missed a hockey game for this?” Ratso rather rhetorically asked the cat.

  The cat, as I believe I told you, hated rhetorical questions. She hated Ratso even more. She was, in fact, so overwhelmed with hatred that, quite perversely, she suddenly chose to ignore Ratso completely. You can always learn something from a cat. If nothing else, you can learn to trust your instincts. If you don’t, you could wind up a caricature of whoever you truly are, like a self-hating Jew driving a Mercedes.

  “Watson,” I said, through chattering teeth, “we know that the Internet is the work of Satan.”

  “Of course we do, Sherlock. Satan or Bill Gates. Same thing.”

  “So why are we allowing our private investigator friend from California to toil long into the dark night of the soul on the Internet to solve this case when we could just walk across the street like normal men in a normal world and knock on the door of the woman’s third-floor apartment?”

  “Because, Sherlock,” said Ratso with what I detected to be a slight degree of irritation, “the woman’s third-floor apartment doesn’t exist.”

  “How do we know, Watson, that it doesn’t exist?”

  “Because the cops have already checked and it doesn’t exist.”

  “Ah, Watson! But what if it’s the cops who don’t exist?”

  “What if it’s this conversation that doesn’t exist?”

  “Watson, Watson, Watson! Your whimsical nature is ever a cause for joy in this unhappy world!”

  Having spoken these words, I was wracked with a ruthless, unforgiving bout of the shaking chills. The affliction was of such intensity and duration as to momentarily cause Ratso to stop eating his sandwich.

  “Sherlock!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

  “Do I look strange, Watson? By the way, those were Robert Louis Stevenson’s last words to his wife just before he died. It was in his kitchen in Samoa. He didn’t, of course, call his wife Watson. That would’ve never done. Now would it, Watson? However, the question remains: ‘Do I look strange, Watson?’ ”

  “You don’t look too strange, Sherlock. You’re acting a bit strange, but I think that’s normal behavior for the course of the disease. Are you comfortable, Sherlock?”

  “I make a living.”

  “Look, Sherlock. I want to talk to you about this investigation you and Kent are getting everybody involved in. I think it’s good for you to be doing something while your doctor has confined you to the loft. Taking on a case like this may actually be therapeutic for you. It’s certainly healthier for you than in the old days when all you used to do was hang around the loft taking cocaine and playing chess with the cat.”

  “What’s wrong with taking cocaine and playing chess with the cat? She’s a very conservative player, of course. Quite finicky. Sometimes she takes nine lives to make a move. The temperaments of cats are simply not well suited for chess, Watson, I’m afraid. Just as the temperaments of people are not well suited for living together in peace. I’m not criticizing the cat’s game, mind you. She’s a cautious player and a bad sport sometimes but if you don’t pay attention she’ll pounce on you every time. She could polish her end-game a bit. But really, Watson, so could we all.”

  “Fuck a bunch of cats and fuck a bunch of chess, Sherlock. All I’m saying is that while a bit of intellectual exercise may be therapeutic for you, an investigation of this nature may be harmful all around. It appears to be a common domestic abuse situation which even I, Watson, can diagnose. You’ve got Kent Perkins out there trying to prove to the world that California is the crime-solving capital of the universe. You’ve got Mick Brennan right now trying to focus that ridiculous spottah scope on an apartment that may not even be there. You’ve got Pete Myers taking time off from Myers of Keswick to feed what reminds me vaguely of the cast of Bonanza. Good sandwiches, of course. You’ve got Piers and McGovern attempting to work a supposed rescue mission that they probably couldn’t even perform if they were sober. It’s a fucking disaster, Sherlock. They’re all just humoring you because you’re ill. But just remember what your own chosen Dr. Watson tells you! It’s a domestic violence case! It will end the way they always do! The man and the woman involved will end up loving each other and living happily ever after and they’ll both wind up hating you!”

  “Not as much as I hate
you, Watson.”

  “I know you don’t mean it. You’re just delirious, Sherlock.”

  “Right.”

  “The question remains. Why have you become obsessed with what is in reality a common circumstance of domestic violence?”

  “Is it common, Watson? I think not. Malaria has caused me, or shall we say permitted me, to see reality in such a manner as never before. Watson, I tell you, I have not lost my powers of observation! Far from it, my dear friend! My powers have been honed to a degree of spiritual sharpness previously unknown in the foggy bathroom mirrors of men! A common circumstance of domestic violence! Ha! Ha! Ha! I’m afraid not, Watson! These are deep waters, indeed, Watson, as I’m sure our private investigator friend shall soon confirm.”

  It was a shot in the dark, of course. I knew Kent would undoubtedly come up with some background on Tana Petrich whether indeed she was alive or dead. Though the Internet existed, as far as I was concerned, to decide who was everybody’s favorite Star Trek captain and to connect a short, fat, fifty-eight-year-old pedophile from New Jersey who was pretending to be a tall, young Norwegian chap with a vice cop in Omaha who was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old girl in San Diego, it was nonetheless not without some degree of functionality. I also knew that once Kent found some shard of peripheral information, he wouldn’t be keeping it himself. And he realized I was a sick person in a sick room in a sick world and I wouldn’t be popping out to check on him every five minutes. So it stood to reason he’d be making an appearance fairly shortly in my bedroom to announce some tissue of horseshit proclaiming his own abilities and the vital importance of the Internet. Therefore, it wasn’t that much of a stretch that he’d soon be confirming my “deep waters, Watson” scenario. What was remarkable was that Kent’s entrance occurred almost perfectly on cue.