by EJ Knapp
“That soon?”
“That soon, indeed.”
I called Felice as soon as I got back to my car. She filled me in on what Kayla and the others had learned. It turned out that most of the drivers had heeded the order to shut down their carts. Several had crashed. Several more had seized while their drivers were out writing tickets or on their way to writing them. Overall, though, most had shut down in time to save the engines.
I fed her the information Oliver had given me. I could hear her fingers clicking over the keyboard as I talked. The word was out, she told me. Radio and TV news were on to it but thus far, no one was sure what was going on. The Mangler was being held responsible. A safe enough assumption: It was his kind of thing. And I’d bet money there would be a message on my answering machine when I got home, taking responsibility for this current act.
As I turned up Gratiot Avenue, I noticed the carts that had been there earlier were gone. Towed back to the yard, no doubt. Despite the rain, the crowd on the steps of the admin building was larger. They had signs now, carrying them in one hand while balancing an umbrella in the other. The Mangler’s supporters were a loyal and tolerant bunch.
As expected, there was a message on my answering machine when I got home. It turned out to have nothing to do with the day’s events.
I Wear My Sunglasses At Night
Tuesday saw a return to sunny skies and warm spring breezes. I was thankful for that, considering what the Mangler had planned for me later in the day. I went into the office early as I had several things I needed to do in preparation for the day’s events. Several of the younger reporters congratulated me on the editorial, a fact which pleased me more than I would have expected.
Nothing had come of it yet, which bothered me somewhat. The DPE had turned down yet another request for an interview with Cooper. No big loss there. All I would have elicited from him was another load of PR bull and where would that get me? I was making more progress without their help.
Having skipped breakfast, I decided an early lunch was in order so I straightened up my desk and headed out the door. It was a beautiful day and I was feeling good.
I cut across N. Main and headed for the Coney Island restaurant. I was nearly to the other side when I spotted the Cushman cart bearing down on me. Lunging from its path, I tripped over the curb and fell heavily to my knees. Rolling over, I watched the cart continue on its way up the street, the driver completely unconcerned. I was ready to bolt down the street and turn the little cart over on its back like a turtle, driver and all, when someone spoke to me.
“You okay there, buddy?”
I turned, my face flushed with heat. A large man, his arms crossed over his chest, was leaning against a street light several feet away. The sun glinted off mirrored shades which hid his eyes. A curious, almost feral smile twisted his lips. A line from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions about mirrors being leaks into another universe sprang to mind.
“Fine,” I said, rising to my feet. “I’m just fine.”
“Gotta watch them little suckers,” he said, glancing up the street in the direction the meter maid had gone and then back at me. “I hear tell they’re real vicious in this town.”
I brushed my jeans, probing for tears with my fingers, not taking my eyes off his face.
“Yeah,” I said. “Vicious.”
I took a tentative step, felt my leg wobble. So much for jogging down the street after the cart. The guy pushed himself away from the pole. Instinctively I took a step back, my knee protesting the sudden shift in weight.
“Ice,” he said.
“Pardon me?”
“Need ice on that knee. Ease the swelling.”
“Right,” I said. “Ice.”
He looked away from me, up the street. I followed his gaze. The meter maid who had nearly clipped me had stopped a block away, writing out a ticket. When I looked back at the guy, his arm was raised and his hand formed the shape of a pistol.
“Pow,” he said, his hand rocking back in mimicry of recoil. He looked over at me. “Makes ya wish ya could just pop the little suckers, don’t it?”
I stood very still, saying nothing, watching him.
“You take care now,” he said, smiling. “And remember the ice.”
He turned away and started walking up the street. As he disappeared around a corner, a Buffalo Springfield song started playing in my head. There was definitely something happening here. I could feel that cross-hair itch in the middle of my back.
Thus Spake Darth Vader
I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the near miss or the strange little exchange, but what few people there were around appeared oblivious to it. I tried again to put weight on my leg. It shook a bit but held. After a couple of steps, the pain subsided and I continued on my way to the restaurant, glancing over my shoulder as I went.
I eased through the door of the Coney Island place and limped my way to my booth, back in the area where the waitresses hang out. I heard one of them call out my order before I was across the room. I sat down and pulled out my notebook.
Six three, I wrote. Two forty, maybe fifty. Not fat. I closed my eyes, seeing him again as he leaned against the pole. Forty-something. Late. A thin moustache and thinning hair the color of old pennies. I opened my eyes and stared out the window, expecting to see him staring back at me. The guy had really creeped me out. So much so, I jumped when the waitress set down my dogs and coffee.
“Jumpy, hon?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”
“Need to watch that caffeine. Switch to tea.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks.”
I toyed with my dogs, rearranging the pieces of onion and doodling in the mustard and chili with the tines of my fork. The appetite I’d started out with, gone. I slid the plate aside, glanced out the window again, then began flipping through my notebook, trying to set aside all that had just happened. I found the page where I’d written down the Mangler’s last message verbatim.
“There is more to come. DPE must be stopped! Be at the corner of River Avenue and Market tomorrow, 12:30 sharp. Use your powers of observation well.”
I read further into my notes. There had been traffic sounds, a horn, the sound of a diesel truck winding up through the gears. My caller had been at a phone booth, probably near the freeway from the steady drone of cars in the background. And something else: Something about the voice. It was different but I couldn’t say how. It was more a feeling than something I could back up with fact.
I reread the message. Cryptic as always. Few words. Even less real information. No mention of Harrison, but I hadn’t expected there would be. The ‘more to come’ part was obvious. This sucker, whoever he, or she, might be, wasn’t going to stop trashing parking meters anytime soon. But what was he trying to accomplish?
I leaned back, rubbed my chin and noticed I needed a shave. Could HL be right? Was the Meter Mangler a product of my original article? Was there some sort of vendetta going on, some irate auto owner given one too many tickets? Car booted? Towed? There have certainly been times when I’ve considered taking out a few meters, trashing one of those little carts the meter maids drive around in. Like now. Namely, the one which had almost run me over. I looked out the window again. One of the little blue and white Cushman carts zoomed by. I wondered if it was the same one that had nearly clipped me.
I looked back at my notes. The last part of the message drew a blank. Stopped from what? Writing tickets? Sure, they were over-zealous to a fault, but writing parking tickets is what they did. It was the whole point of their existence. I had a feeling, though, that writing tickets was not Darth’s main beef.
There was something going on and he was feeding it to me one small piece at a time. Did he have the whole picture himself or was he barely one step ahead of me? And what was going to happen at 12:30? The Mangler had never struck in daytime. Powers of observation, he said. What is it he wants me to see?
“You’re not gi
ving me much here, Darth baby,” I said to myself.
“You know,” came a voice, “talking to one’s self is the first sign of insanity.”
I looked up. Jaz was standing next to my table looking very smart in a white blouse, short white skirt and a blazer that matched the color of her newly-tinted hair; a deep shade of blue, like Chinese forget-me-nots.
“Au contraire,” I said. “Answering yourself and believing that your answer is the only correct one is the first sign. I was neither asking nor answering, just stating.”
She sat down at the booth, laying her leather briefcase at the far end of the table. Those dark circles still ringed her eyes and her brow was furrowed. I considered asking what was wrong but decided against it. There were still too many unknowns between us and I wasn’t sure how she would react to my concern. That and I was still cranky over my near miss in the street.
“You dyed your hair again,” I said instead.
Ignoring me, she said, “Who’s Garth?”
“Darth,” I corrected, a little exasperated. “As in Darth Vader.”
She laughed. “Darth Vader? What now, Teller? You channeling the Dark Side in search of a story?”
“Ha ha, funny,” I said. “The Mangler, or whoever it is that’s calling me, uses a voice synthesizer. It sounds a lot like Darth Vader.”
“Oh. So he called again?”
“Last night,” I said, reaching for my plate. “You want something to eat?”
“Too early for me,” she said. “What did he have to say?”
I sliced through a dog and lifted the fork to my mouth. Chewing slowly, I considered my answer. I hadn’t held anything back from Jaz thus far. I couldn’t think of a reason why I should. She worked for the DPE after all and was as anxious as me to figure out what was going on. For different reasons, perhaps. But still ...
“What if I told you I thought Darth might be a woman,” I said, cutting through another piece of dog. That brought an unexpected response. She laughed. It seemed a nervous laugh.
“A woman? Why would you think that?”
“Call it a hunch,” I said, thinking about what Skeeter had told me and the parting observation from the print shop guy. And, there was also that nagging fact that Jaz had known the body in the parking lot was Harrison’s.
“I can’t imagine a woman destroying parking meters,” she said.
“One can’t imagine a woman being a serial killer, yet look at Aileen Wuornos down in Florida. Parking meters seem pale by comparison.”
“Serial killing nasty old men is one thing,” she said. “Serial killing parking meters is entirely different.” She smiled to let me know she was joking.
“Is it?”
“I sure hope so. So what did he, or she, if you will, have to say?”
I stared at her for a long moment, deciding to relent. “Not much really, as always. Told me there was more to come, as if I didn’t already suspect that. Mentioned, again, that the DPE must be stopped but, again, neglected to mention from what.”
She paused a long moment, as if waiting for me to continue, then said, “What do you think it is? What they have to be stopped from, I mean.”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t told her the last part of the message.
“Do you think you’ll get one?”
“By and by,” I said.
As she started to slide out the booth, I stopped her with a question.
“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”
“What?”
“The perfume. What’s it called?”
She smiled, a genuine one this time, and shook her head.
“You’re a weird one, Teller. Do you know that?”
“I’ve been accused of worse things than being weird.”
“I’ll bet you have. It’s not a perfume. It’s a mixture of scented oils, lavender and strawberry. I mix it myself. Why?”
“I don’t know. No reason really. Other than I just like the smell of it.”
She shook her head again, stuck out her tongue at me and left.
Devil In A Blue Mercedes
I watched her cross the street and disappear around the corner of the City Administration building. She wasn’t hard to follow, the bright blue hair and all. The scent of her lingered in the air around me and my heart was still tripping over itself from the tongue gesture.
Jaz and the Mangler one and the same? The Mangler had been described as tall and willowy. Jaz was tall, several inches taller than me. And, I suppose, one could view her as being willowy. The clincher, though, was her knowing it had been Harrison’s body in the parking lot. And lying about how she’d come by that information.
With a deep sigh, I finished my last dog and drained my coffee, tucking that thought away for later. I had a lot to do and didn’t want to be late for it.
I looked at the clock over the cash register to check the time. I don’t carry a watch of any kind. The time on my cell phone is off by several hours, still at the default setting it had when I bought the thing. I know it can be changed but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how. I thought the advent of electronics was supposed to make life easier. Just seems like more incomprehensible manuals to read through to me.
As I hurried out the restaurant, I slid to an abrupt stop at the curb to look both ways for Cushman carts. Didn’t see a single one nor the guy from the lamppost. I cut across the street and into the newspaper garage to pick up my car. There were a couple of things I needed before my rendezvous at Market and River and if I was quick about it, I could arrive early and be properly set up for whatever show Darth had in mind to present.
Market Street intersects River Avenue at the outer fringe of the downtown area, a quarter mile beyond the park. A bit of a walk, if you don’t want to take the downtown shuttle, but the parking’s cheap; twenty-five cents an hour on a two hour meter, and enforcement was over at 1:00p.m. so the afternoon was free.
The DPE was trying to quash that. Bring the cost up to a dollar on a one-hour meter and extend the enforcement time to 6:00 p.m. I’d written an article about it a month back. Harrison had been leading the charge against it, backed up by a small, grassroots organization, the same bunch that had been handing out leaflets at the Monorail station. The plan was on the back burner for the time being but everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the changes were introduced.
Since I had no idea what was going down, I decided that being on foot would give me more flexibility so I returned the car to the garage, hopped the shuttle, and was settled in at a bus shelter on Market well before the appointed time. I had my iPod in my lap and a pair of opera glasses I’d borrowed from a friend in my shirt pocket.
Annie Lennox was singing about the coming rain when one of the little Cushman carts pulled up. I shut off the iPod and watched as the driver climbed out. With the outfits they wore, it was hard to distinguish gender. They all look like a cross between the Gestapo and the Keystone Cops.
A surreptitious pull on the crotch and a quick scratch of the nether regions convinced me the driver was male. With the adjustments made, he began moving along the line of cars. At each one he would peer through the windshield and scribble something on the clipboard he held. It took me a moment to realize he was jotting down the vehicle identification numbers. What he wasn’t doing was writing out tickets and he wasn’t likely to get much of a chance to. I had checked the route myself before settling in. All but a few of the meters were due to expire well after the 1:00 p.m. cutoff time and I had popped quarters in those myself.
As I watched him make his way along, a half dozen people arrived, got in their cars, and drove away. Several flipped the bird at the meter maid’s back. I used the opera glasses to note their license plate numbers and wrote them down in my notebook.
It was nearly 1:30 p.m. when the meter maid went back to his cart. He stepped inside, closed the door and sat there, busying himself with something I couldn’t see. An hour passed. I was about to leave, totally
confused as to why I had come in the first place, when he emerged from his cart, looked around cautiously and walked over to a trash container. He scanned the area again, slower this time, and then dropped something into the container. Hitching up his pants, he returned to his cart and drove off.
What the hell was that about, I wondered? I sat there another fifteen minutes, waiting to see if he would return. I was about to get up to investigate when a dark blue Mercedes rolled to a stop across the street from the bus stop. It sat there for a long moment, wisps of blue smoke trailing from the exhaust. Finally, the tinted driver’s window rolled down, revealing my friend from earlier in the day.
“Resting that knee, I see,” he said.
“Yeah, something like that.” My heart began to race.
He looked up and down the street and back at me.
“What? They too cheap at that paper of yours to give you a car?”
At the paper? So, he knew who I was. “I have a car. It’s, uh, in the shop so I’m bussing it.”
“Nasty things, busses. Germs everywhere. Make ya sick. Or worse.” I think he smiled but I couldn’t tell for sure. “You should get some ice on that knee,” he said.
“Yeah. I’ll do that.”
“You take care.”
The window rolled up and a moment later the Mercedes disappeared around the corner. I noted the tag number but had a feeling it wasn’t going to be of any help. First an SUV and now a Mercedes. Was my new-found friend the driver of both?
I waited another fifteen minutes to see if he’d come back and then hustled over to the trash container and peeked inside. The stench that close was awful, the interior of the container dim. As my eyes adjusted, I could just make out a dozen or more crumpled cans and plastic water bottles; several Styrofoam food containers; all leaking; a copy of today’s paper.
And a pile of parking tickets sitting on top of it all.
