by Tom Schreck
There was no barking, so the pit bull probably didn’t take the ride that night. Al was back, sniffing like a mad hound. He went up one side and down the other and then focused his attention on the back gate. He got up on his hind legs and sniffed all over the handle, pulled back, and barked twice. Then he sat at attention staring at the back of the SUV.
I pulled him and he strained his neck, but he wouldn’t leave his position. There was no point in looking in the vehicle because the windows were tinted. I called to him and pulled hard enough to shake him out of his stance, but he continued to resist to the point where I nearly had to drag him. As we walked away, he whimpered.
I knew something was up the second I got to AJ’s. The Foursome weren’t talking and they were riveted to the TV screen. Kelley was there too, but no one paid any attention to me when I walked in. The TV was on MSNBC and they were in a special report.
“… It is a sign of ritualized murder, a thought-out process and one in which the murderer is expressing more confidence. He’s actually thumbing his nose at the authorities trying to apprehend him,” the head profiler said.
“The draining of blood from the bodies, is that a particular sign of something?” the anchor said.
“Draining a human body of blood takes a level of expertise. It takes a particular commitment to totally drain the life out of an individual, if you will, and it also indicates to everyone involved that he has the power to control others.”
“Holy shit,” I heard myself say.
“Two more teenagers. Throats slit, blood drained from them and discarded in a field. This is getting beyond sick,” Kelley said.
“This isn’t Howard. This is something else,” I said.
Kelley didn’t say anything, which told me a lot. All of AJ’s sat in silence for a long time, which gave everything an even more surreal feel. AJ’s and silence just didn’t fit together. When my thinking got back to normal I thought of Billy and got scared.
I borrowed Rocco’s cell phone and called my machine. There was a message from Marcia asking me why I haven’t called and just because we weren’t going out anymore we could still be friends, but that was it-nothing from Billy.
Then I called Jamal. He was never without his cell.
“Jamal.” It was the way he always answered.
“It’s Duff, J. Salami and bacon,” I said.
“ Salaam alaikum… Why you got to fuck with Allah?”
“Sorry. Hey, tonight Al did something really weird.”
“Duff, that all that hound ever do.”
“He sniffed all over this car, jumped up sniffed the handle, barked twice, and then sat at attention. He wouldn’t move.”
“Uh-huh. You remember what I told you Al was trained for?”
“He sniffed explosives.”
“Yeah, but he was trained as part of the Fruit of Islam’s security team.”
“So, what’s that mean-he guarded Al Sharpton’s pomade?”
“Nope-it means the crazy-ass hound knows how to sniff out illegal drugs.”
24
I went in and out of sleep that night, worried about Billy. Sure, he was a goofy and annoying kid, but I didn’t want anything to happen to him. I also didn’t know what to make of Howard, his life in prison, and what if any role this Blast shit had to do with anything. Then there were the karate guys, their drug dealing, and why a God-loving guy like Abadon would hang around with them. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that he trained with them; after all, I’ve boxed with some of society’s real pariahs and enjoyed my time in the gym with them. People are rarely one thing and I do my best to see them that way. Don’t forget, Hitler loved dogs.
Of course, I don’t know if he put up with them barking at five a.m. like I did. Al rousted me out of my restless slumber with his attention to the door. I was hoping it was Billy, but this was a bit on the early side, even for him. Then Allah-King spun around and sat, relieved to know it was the karate kid he was familiar with. I opened the front door and there he was, at attention and looking kind of pale.
“Sir, my apologies for not making practice, sir. No excuses sir, and I will do one hundred pushups as a suitable discipline,” Billy said.
I looked at him closer and what I thought was a pale pallor was really a mess of Clearasil on the whole left side of his face. I stepped off my stoop and walked toward him to get a closer inspection.
Billy dropped into his knuckle-pushup position and began to count out.
“One… two… three…”
“Kid,” I tried to interrupt him at four but he kept on going. “Attention-on your feet!” I tried to give it as much authority as I could.
Billy stood in front of me, hyperventilating from the pushups. I wiped at the Clearasil with my thumb and as a big goop of it came off Billy winced. The whole side of his face was black and blue.
“Who did this to you?” I said, almost to myself.
“It was an accident.”
“Who did this to you!” I returned to my karate command voice.
“Uh, sir…”
I could feel the vein in my neck twitch.
“Who?” I realized I was shouting.
“Jake, my mother’s boyfriend.” A silent tear ran down Billy’s face.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?”
Billy shook his head and more tears came down his face.
“To your mom too?”
Billy nodded and sniffled the accumulating tears back. His cheeks were streaked.
“What does Jake do for work?”
“He works out of town, construction. He’s only around some weekends.”
“Is he in Crawford this week?”
“No, he’ll be back on Friday.”
I took a second to think. Billy had stopped crying and was standing at attention.
“Meet me at the Y tonight at eight, you understand?”
“Sir, yes sir.”
I bowed and dismissed him, and he did his usual run down 9R.
The vein in my neck wouldn’t stop twitching. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to do it, but I was going to make sure that Jake never harmed Billy again.
I chose to look at my suspension as a semi-retirement. One of my heroes, the fictional Travis McGee from John D. MacDonald’s pulp novels, used to say he was taking his retirement on the installment plan. He also lived on a 110-foot houseboat and had endless chicks and a best friend who was an economist. I lived in a 27-foot Airstream, got dumped regularly by women in therapy, and my best friend was a short-legged, long-eared slobber machine. Me and Travis had a lot in common.
I poured some coffee and flipped to MSNBC. They were doing their daily update on the “Crawford Slayer,” which they did every day regardless of whether there was new information. The former FBI profiler was talking via satellite to the blonde, very attractive, but not very intelligent anchor.
“With the second and third victim’s toxicology reports indicating drug use, is the evidence now pointing to cult involvement?” the blonde asked.
“We’re talking about a repeat serial killer, and we often see feelings of grandeur and delusions of almost godlike qualities. I think it’s a very real possibility that these killings, especially with their gruesome characteristics, and now drug use, could be pointing to cult involvement,” the profiler said.
“Does the evidence point to Rheinhart as the cult leader, and what role do drugs play in a cult leadership?”
“Drugs become addicting or at least pleasurable, and cult leaders use them as a way to control followers. The ritualistic slayings further indicate that the murders mean something to the killer.”
“How so?”
“The decapitation, the writing with blood, and the draining of blood demonstrate anger and a complete dehumanization of the victim. The fact that the high-school students met such a dramatic end may suggest that they were involved in the cult but lost the approval of the leader. That, or he no longer had any use for them.”
The prett
y head continued with more of the same nonsense banter that I just couldn’t buy. First of all, I don’t think I ever met anyone who was less of a leader than Howard. He was a painfully shy loner who freaked out for a few days thirty years ago-this Hannibal Lecter shit just seemed like bullshit to me. The fact that high-school kids had drugs in their system just didn’t seem at all like news to me. I would’ve been shocked if a cross section of high-school kids didn’t have drugs in their system.
The question I wanted answered was where was Howard and why was his blood spilled in the park. Who was he afraid of and why would they want to get him?
25
With a bit of forceful prying on Billy, I found out his mom’s BF was Jake Sofco. And with Kelley’s help, I found out he’s a two-time felon with a history of assault, DWI, and drug dealing. With even more pressure on Billy, I learned that Jake hangs out at a roadhouse called the Insideout just past the Crawford county line. He’d get primed there and show up at Billy’s mom’s apartment and start terrorizing them.
Not having enough to do is probably dangerous for me. My mind isn’t a place I should head into on my own, but that’s exactly where I found myself, thinking all week that this man had to be stopped and I was the one to do it. Billy let me know that Jake drove a red Chevy pickup with rusted fenders and a gun rack, so I figured if I just hung out at the Insideout on a Friday afternoon, eventually Jake would show up.
On Friday afternoon, I got to the parking lot around four o’clock, brought a box of eight-tracks, a six-pack of Schlitz, and Rudy’s cell phone. The Schlitz would make doing what I had to do easier, the eight-tracks would get me psyched, and the cell phone was just in case I needed to call Kelley.
Elvis was singing the “Where Could I Go But to the Lord/I’m Saved” medley, and I was looking down at my fourth empty when I saw the red truck pull in. Both sets of knuckles went white around the steering wheel and my neck began to spasm. Jake was a big boy with a mop of curly hair, a fat face, and a layer of hard fat that pushed out his flannel shirt just over his belt. He had the build of a pretty good Division III football guard, ten years out of the game. He could’ve been Michael Strahan and it wouldn’t have mattered tonight.
I slammed the door to the Eldorado and headed toward the entrance. The gravel kicked up as I walked, and I became aware that both my hands were balled into fists. I thought of Billy, a goofy-ass kid without a dad, and what it would be like for him to watch his mom get slapped around. Sofco couldn’t get beat up enough.
I got within ten feet of the door and I found myself stopped in my tracks. My neck was twitching all over the place, but there was an invisible force keeping me from moving forward. My rage was there but I couldn’t move.
I went back to the Eldorado and opened another beer. I held the cold can to my forehead and wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I was shaking.
I called Monique, who I knew would still be in the office late on a Friday afternoon. I gave her the background on Billy and Sofco.
“Let it go,” she said.
“I can’t let it happen again,” I said.
“That’s not for you to decide.” Her voice remained in the same gentle but forceful tone. “This is a dynamic that will go on despite any beating you give this man, Duffy. There needs to be a change of permanence for Billy and his mom to make a difference,” she said.
“I want so much to hurt this man.”
“Is that about you or helping the Cramers?”
She was right. She always was.
I headed to the Hill to take care of some business that I would need to do to get this project done. There was a creep whose reputation I knew from the gym named “the Caretaker,” who the street kids talked about. He was really kind of a street broker who dealt in situations more than product, but if you needed something he either had it or knew where to get it. The rumors were that he did enough dealing to make a living but that he was obsessively careful not to rise above law enforcement’s radar screen.
I only saw him once but I remembered him. He was a black man but he had that weird condition that Michael Jackson claims to have where patches of his skin become almost bleached white. Three-quarters of his face were blotched white and his kinky hair, which he wore tight to his scalp, was reddish. Strangely enough, he dressed like a preppy even though he did all his dealing deep in the ’hood.
He had an office of sorts in the back room of a place that sold DJ tapes, and I knew enough about how it worked to know that I had to ask up front and give my name to get an audience with the Caretaker. I did just that with the black kid with the ridiculously baggy white jeans up front who did his best to look disinterested as he called on the phone. With a real economy of words and a head gesture he directed me to the back of the store to a curtain. I went back beyond the curtain to see the Caretaker.
He was wearing one of those pink golf shirts with the guy riding the horse on it and a pair of neatly pressed khakis. Loafers with no socks filled out the outfit that made as much sense on this individual as Nell Carter in a thong.
“How can I help you… Duffy… right? You’re the fighter,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s me. I need a gun and some heroin,” I said.
“Hmmm… The devil’s right hand for the pug and some of the white vacation…”
“I have something difficult to do and I’m going to need some help.”
“Yes, apparently you do. How big of an army would you like?” The Bond-villain-speak was getting on my nerves.
“Army?”
“Caliber?”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I hate guns.”
He rummaged through his desk and handed me a handgun.
“Tres ocho por Senor. Now for the whiteness, I’m hoping you’re not looking for volume. The Sky Pilot has not landed this week.”
“Sky Pilot?”
“My… uh… distributor. He’s somewhat not of this earth.”
“Yeah, a couple of bags would be fine.”
I gave the Caretaker what he asked for and didn’t hang around for small talk. I had shit to do and frankly, the guy creeped me out with his looks, what he did, and his affected James Bond speak. I kept waiting for Dr. No and Pussy Galore to come around the corner and offer me a martini before they forced me into some sort of diabolical death machine. Still, you couldn’t accuse the Caretaker of being your run-of-the-mill ordinary Crawford citizen.
I made a quick trip to AJ’s to get help from the guys and as usual, if the favor involved free drinks, they were up for it. I led them all out to the Insideout and they knew their job and they knew it well. When it came to getting bombed, no one, and I mean no one, did a finer job than the brain trust.
I sat in the parking lot with another Schlitz and felt uneasy in the presence of the gun. Having a few bags of heroin on me didn’t sit quite right either but I was definitely going to need it. Elvis was halfway through “How Great Thou Art” and I was finishing off the six-pack. I got out of the Eldorado and went over to the red pickup.
Sofco may have been a real asshole, but his timing was impeccable. He came out of the bar just as I was through and he passed me as I walked back to the Cadillac. He was staggering a bit-two hours with the Fearsome Foursome on a mission would do that to anyone. I started up the Eldorado after I made the call and let Sofco get a fifteen-minute start on me. Hopefully, that’s all it would take.
I eased out of the parking lot and headed down Route 55, which headed toward Crawford and the side of town Billy lived on. The twitch in my neck let me know that Sofco wasn’t going to make it there tonight.
I was only driving for about ten minutes when I saw the flashing lights and the Crawford police cruiser. The number on the back of the car, 9261TS, told me it was officer Mike Kelley. The handcuffed Sofco told me he blew the wrong numbers into the breathalyzer. And the fact that officer Kelley was looking in the glove box told me that Billy and his mom would be safe tonight.
You see, two-time felons, guilty
of DWI, with an illegal handgun and heroin in their possession don’t make bail.
26
Al must’ve sensed the twitching in my neck and my elevated blood pressure because he went extra nuts when I came through the door. I got him his sustenance and cracked open another can of sustenance for myself.
My hands were shaking and I wasn’t sure if it was my flirtation with the underworld, the illegal shit I did that could’ve caused me a world of trouble, or the fact that I just set up a man to go to prison for a long time. It might have been that stuff or it might have been the fact that I didn’t get to beat the shit out of Sofco.
Or it might have had more to do with me being away from the gym. Since I took up karate at age eleven, I haven’t gone two weeks without sparring or fighting someone. I’ve had a handful of street scraps, not very many, but I always had the outlet between the ropes. My self-imposed avoidance of the gym left me with a gap, and that gap was sending adrenaline, anger, or Schlitz-induced rage through my veins. Maybe it was all much simpler. Maybe I just wanted to beat the shit out of a bad guy.
Al calmed down and I went through the mail. Six credit card companies were offering me their business, there was the cable bill and a solicitation from the Polish American Club, and there was a letter from the office, which I opened. It read:
This is to provide you with written notification from Jewish Unified Services that we intend to terminate your employment on September 2. You will have until that time to appeal this termination.
It was signed by the Michelin Woman, and it finally seemed like she had won. The hardest part for me to accept was the fact that I had made it easy for her. Sure, I could appeal, but that was a futile formality that would just serve to further embarrass and demean me, and that was a pleasure I didn’t want to give Claudia.
