A Tax in Blood

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “Hey, how about you put it on my tab, Gino?” he said to the big man.

  “Hey, how about you carry enough money on you, Marty?”

  “Jesus, you know I’m good for it.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sick and tired of having to chase after you for the money, Marty. We’re squared away, let’s leave it like that.”

  “Jesus Christ, Gino. Give me a break.”

  The girl behind the counter picked up her cigarette, took a drag, rolled her eyes up and sighed.

  “No, you give me a break, Marty. Put something back or just leave the store. I’ve got a business to run here and I’ve got a line behind you already.” The blob slid off the stool, hooked his thumbs under his belt and hoisted his jeans over his gut. I guessed it was supposed to be a menacing gesture, one that showed single-mindedness and sincerity of purpose. The immediate retreat of the jeans from their high-water mark undid all that. I smiled but didn’t laugh.

  “How much short is he?” I asked.

  “Three-forty,” the cashier said. Staring hard at me, she blew a smoke ring out of her mouth. Her black T-shirt read ‘I Am the Class of ’69.’

  “Here, tack it onto this.” I handed her the book. She rang up both of the sales.

  Marty scooped up his comics and said, “Thanks, man, I really appreciate that. Things like this disappear if you don’t get ’em right away. And,” he said looking pointedly at the fat man, “I’m good for it.”

  “No sweat.”

  She gave me back my change and said, “You want a bag for that?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t need one.”

  “Whatever.” She smirked. She took another drag on her cigarette and slowly let out a whole chain of smokey O’s that drifted over Marty’s head. I was impressed. I picked up my book and turned to leave. Marty was already gone. On the way out I saw the girl’s image in the front window. She was still blowing smoke.

  Chapter 28

  Marty was waiting for me outside the store. Leaning up against the wall, he was immersed in his comic book. He looked up as I stepped down beside him.

  “Thanks a lot, man, really, I appreciate it.” His brow furrowed and he turned his face slightly away from me. “How come you did that? I don’t know you.”

  “You’re wondering if I’m trying to pick you up, right?” I assumed the lean right next to him.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he said.

  “But you let me do it anyway?”

  “Yeah, ’cause I wanted the comics. But let me tell you, if you put a hand on me, I’ll tell Gino and he hates fags worse than anything. He’d come out here and squash you.”

  I had a middling urge to wipe the smirk off his face with the sidewalk. “Well, relax. You’re not my type.”

  “You like Mona, huh?”

  “She the girl behind the counter?”

  “Yeah, she’s a real man-eater, know what I mean?” He leered, the same way he had at the girl he’d passed on the street.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do.”

  “Is this firsthand knowledge or just gossip?”

  “Well …”

  “Why don’t I go ask Mona if she remembers you.” I started to push off from the wall.

  “All right, all right. I haven’t had her myself, actually. Just, you know, heard things.”

  I leaned back up against the wall. “To answer your question, I did it because I remember what it’s like to want something real bad and come up a dollar short and a day late. Hell, a valuable comic like that isn’t gonna sit around in his stacks very long. Secondly, Gino said you were good for it and he doesn’t look like one of the Little Sisters of the Poor to me.”

  “No sweat, man. I don’t live too far from here. I can get you the money.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “No. Wait. I’ve got an idea.” He’d started bouncing around on the balls of his feet, like an adrenaline-crazed bantamweight.

  “And that idea is?”

  “I’ve got a couple of passes for the movie up the street. They’re showing The Obliterator. Have you seen it?”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “Want to go? My treat. A ticket’s at least three-fifty, what do you say? Besides, it’s better to see it with somebody.”

  “Sure. Let’s go.” So much for getting a look at his digs. Missing The Obliterator had not been an oversight on my cultural calendar. One more in the seemingly endless series of ‘-ator’ movies. We were probably condemned to endure yet the Incinerator, the Vaccinator, the Castigator, all the way down to the most loathsome of modern villains: the Administrator. Then there’d be a go-round of sequels, prequels, and spin-offs until not a man, woman or child in this country had been spared.

  “You’ll really like it. You won’t believe how many people get killed in this. It’s incredible, and the Obliterator, he’s absolutely awesome. You’ll love it.” I had no idea why he was so sure of this.

  “By the way, my name’s Sam. Samuel T. Miller to be exact, but Sam’s fine.” I stuck out my hand. He shook it.

  “Martin. Martin Gregorio Fernandez. Marty is fine.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  “Likewise.”

  Two blocks later I found myself in line with Marty and another twenty of the Obliterator’s fans. Most of them were young men, eighteen to twenty-two. Celluloid omnivores with cast-iron guts and no taste buds. There were a couple of older guys in suits, here for a fantasy fix before they put a lid on the id. Marty gave in the passes and we went down to the seats. He wanted to sit right under the screen. I got him to compromise at row twelve. Everyone else had spread out throughout the theatre.

  Marty leaned over to me and whispered, “Do you smoke?”

  I said, “No.”

  “I’ve got a couple of joints. Beautiful stuff. You sure you don’t want any?”

  “No, thanks. That’s okay.”

  “No problem. The stuff really mellows me out. I take a couple of hits before the movie starts. It makes it all better. You know, the blood is brighter and everything. And it looks like it’s moving real slow when it comes out. The grass keeps me from getting uptight about it.”

  Wonderful. I’m spending an afternoon in a butcher shop with one of the living dead for a guide. “You smoke often?” I asked, intrigued at how easily he talked about himself to a stranger.

  “Nah, not anymore. I used to smoke all the time. I was uptight all the time. But my shrink taught me self-hypnosis. Now I can turn myself off any time I want to.”

  “Why not do that here, then?”

  “’Cause sometimes I still like the feeling that grass gives me. Like here it makes the movie more real and less real. Like it’s brighter, larger, more of everything. But you don’t really think about what you’re seeing. It’s just like seeing it more or better. I don’t know. I just do it sometimes.”

  “Was it hard to learn to hypnotize yourself?”

  “No, not really. My doctor said I’m real good at it. I guess I’ve been able to do it all along, only I just didn’t know what it was. I just used to space out—in school, everywhere. Used to drive my old man crazy. He’d be talking to me and I’d be somewhere else. Then I’d come back and ask him, ‘What did you say?’ He’d go batshit.”

  “I can imagine. So this is something you think you were just born with?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve always been able to do it. I was always daydreaming. I started to do it more after Ralph died, though.”

  “Who’s Ralph?”

  “Oh, Ralph was my brother.”

  “When did he die?”

  “Long time ago.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “He caught a mortar shell in his foxhole. Blew him all to hell.” Marty pulled out his joint and lit it.

  “How old were you when it happened?”

  “Me, oh, I guess I was six. Ralph was going to be twenty that fall.”

  “I’m sorry, Marty. You must miss him very m
uch.” Marty took another long drag. I looked around and saw that he wasn’t the only one preparing for the Obliterator’s arrival.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Mostly I feel like his death really fucked up my life.”

  “How so?”

  “When Ralph died, my father really lost it. He felt responsible because he was part of the government that sent Ralph over there.”

  “Oh, what did your father do?”

  “Back then he was in the Office for Hispanic Affairs. After that he got a promotion, I guess, into the embassy staff down in Honduras for a while. Nothing really helped. He never got over Ralph’s death. He felt that the government had abandoned the guys they sent over there and he just stopped believing in the government. So he retired. Now he just sits around the house and watches T.V. When I turned eighteen I’d had it. I just had to get out. He was driving me crazy. Nothing I could do was good enough. I mean, I didn’t kill Ralph, did I? I just had to split.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, last summer, maybe six months ago. Right before I got into therapy.”

  “So, has it helped?”

  “Yeah, yeah …” He waved me off and took another hit. “Movie’s gonna start. Hold on to your seat.”

  “Right.” I wanted to induce a trance state in myself. In it, Samantha and I would be on a Caribbean island. We would have a beach all to ourselves. Just us and the rum and mangoes and snorkels and no clothes. It just wouldn’t come to me. Instead I got ninety minutes of high-tech mayhem. Spurting torsos, exploding cars and shattering glass were presented with an irritating voice-over monologue about the lonely quest of the Obliterator. As far as I could tell, the movie ended because they’d blown up every prop and killed every extra in California. A trailer promised that we hadn’t seen the end of the Obliterator. Oh, joy!

  The lights came on. Marty shook his head. “Wow. Incredible. Just awesome.”

  “I’ll say.”

  We filed out of the theatre. On the sidewalk we shook hands.

  “Thanks for the movie. I enjoyed talking with you,” I said.

  “You gotta go?” This kid had kicked puppy written all over him.

  “Well, I don’t have to. I just figured we were square. You know.” I started to turn away. I was playing the kid’s hunger for all it was worth. I turned back and said, “There is something I wanted to ask you about.”

  “Sure. Great. Hey, whatever.” He brightened up immediately.

  “Let’s find a pizza place. That okay?”

  “Sure.”

  A half block down on M Street we found one. I ordered a large pizza with mushrooms and sausage, and two beers. We took the beers back to a table. The pizza would take fifteen minutes, they said. At the table, I sipped my beer.

  “What I wanted to talk to you about is your therapist.”

  Marty put his beer down and looked at me warily.

  “No, no. I don’t want to talk to you about your therapy. I know that’s very personal, private stuff. It’s just that I’d been thinking of getting into therapy myself. I just seem to be having problems with the women I’m meeting these days. I wonder if you think this guy is any good. Whether he could help me? Or if he even had time to see anyone new. I mean, shrinks in this town are real busy.”

  “Oh, Dr. G is great. He’s really helped me a lot.”

  “How did you find him? The Yellow Pages?”

  “Naw. I had to go get an evaluation from a psychiatrist. It was a condition of my vocational rehab program. I’d bagged school, see, and I didn’t have a job, and my old man was ready to toss my ass out of the house. So I went to voc. rehab. to see about getting some job training and placement. They said I had to go down and see a shrink. Shit, what a drag, but it was that or hit the streets, so I went. Anyway, I saw this guy Dr. Bronstein or something. He was a real jerk. Anyway, next thing I hear, a couple of days later Dr. G. gives me a call. He tells me that he’s part of a research program that N.I.H. or someone is running. He’ll see me for free. He even got D.V.R. to put me up in an apartment of my own. An independent living program, I think he called it.”

  “That’s fascinating. Can you tell me what the research is?”

  “I’m not real sure. He said that part of the study would be ruined if you knew what the purpose was. But I’ll be told at the end of the study. He showed me a folder full of graphs and gobbledygook. Something about ‘Self-Control and Hypnosis in Young Adults.’”

  “How long has the study been going on?”

  “I’ve been seeing Dr. G. for about six months now.”

  “How often do you go to see him?”

  “Three times a week at first. Now twice a week.”

  “Do you know how many subjects there are in the study?”

  “No. Dr. G. has told me that I’ve shown the best response in teaching myself hypnosis. We’re all supposed to get together at the end to be debriefed, you know.”

  “So Dr. G. is a good guy. Pretty easy to talk to, is he?”

  “Oh yeah. He’s real laid back. You feel like you could tell him anything. Sometimes it’s like you want to tell him everything. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.” Do I ever. “Okay. You’ve sold me on him. Where is his office? Is it nearby?”

  “Yeah. His office is over on 38th Street. It’s in the basement of his house.”

  “This hypnosis stuff, I mean, is it like you see on television? You know, spinning watches and making people bark like dogs?”

  “No. No. It’s nothing like that. I thought it was like that too when I first went. But it’s real different. He calls that stuff stage hypnosis. That’s for cheap tricks, he says. This is clinical hypnosis, he calls it.”

  “I have to admit, it’d be a little scary letting somebody take over your mind like that. You’d have to really trust him.” I shook my head in doubt.

  “No, it’s not like that. It’s not like somebody taking over your mind. It’s like you want to give up control, and so if somebody else has it for a while that’s okay because you gave it to them. You could take it back if you wanted to. You just don’t want to. That’s all.”

  “Like I said, you must really trust this guy.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do. He’s done more for me in the last six months than the whole rest of my life combined. I really owe him a lot.”

  “Can I use your name when I call, you know, tell him who referred me?”

  “Sure. No problem. I’ll tell him to expect a call from you when I see him tomorrow.”

  “Oh, does he usually have weekend hours? That would be real convenient for me.”

  “No. This is the first time. He says I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Something really big and important, so he wants to see me tomorrow. We had a session today. It was very intense, very intense.”

  “Well, I hope it goes well for you.”

  Our pizza arrived and we went at it like piranhas at a picnic. Less than ten minutes later there wasn’t much more than a splotch of tomato sauce to identify what had been there. I wiped my mouth, finished my beer and pushed my chair back. Marty looked up.

  “You gotta go?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I gotta go. One of those women I’ve been having trouble with.” I shrugged my shoulders and held my hands out, palms up. Unspoken, we shared the age-old lament, What’s a guy to do? You can’t live with ’em, you can’t live without ’em. Marty and I shook hands and I left the pizza parlor.

  I hiked up M Street and across the Francis Scott Key Bridge into Arlington. In 1847 the land that is now Arlington County retroceded from the Federal District back to Virginia. One reason for the move was Southern displeasure with federal control of the port city of Alexandria. This was a tiny harbinger of the rift that the Potomac would demarcate only fourteen years later. These days, Arlington and Fairfax counties and Alexandria are the bedroom communities for that same federal government. Richmond views this area as a fat federal tumor that has erupted in their midst and one that isn’t very Southe
rn or very Virginian at all.

  I caught the orange line subway in Rosslyn and rode back under the river to Farragut West. From there I walked back to my car. Thirty minutes later I pulled up to my house. Inside, I emptied out my duffel bag. There were no messages with my answering service. I called Arnie and got no answer. Then I called Josh Walters and promised him that I’d be bringing by some work first thing tomorrow.

  Sitting in my recliner I took a couple of laps around the “vast wasteland,” now cable-enhanced to almost a hundred varieties of white noise. I turned the set off and stuck the Swimming Pool Q’s into the cassette player. Anne Richmond Boston’s voice, as supple and sinuous as a python, coiled itself around and over the guitar lines as she sang “I don’t think there’ll be a new road through.” Getting the news from her almost broke my heart. I sat for a while and tried to imagine what was going to come pouring out through the breakthrough in Marty Fernandez’s mind. I fell asleep in that chair with the question still unanswered. For a change, I slept through whatever dreams I had.

  Chapter 29

  When I awoke, I was still in the same chair. A long hot shower helped get the kinks out. I shaved for the first time in a few days, and did so very carefully. The newspaper was running the bomber photo on page two. Page one had the first droolings from the Hand of Allah group. I skimmed the paper as I set up the coffee and scrambled a couple of eggs. When I’d eaten I called Arnie. There was still no answer.

  I repacked my duffel for today’s surveillance and got ready to sit on Dr. Gutierrez. This would probably be the end of the road for this case. On Monday, Nate would be down at the center with Marta, requesting access to her husband’s file. Maybe the photos would jog a memory at the hotel. Maybe a typewriter match could be made with the one in his office. If those came through maybe I could force Nate or the police to do the kind of background check that might put Gutierrez and Donnelly cheek by jowl and yield a plausible motive. Even with all those things, the M.O. for this one was a pip. Donnelly was dead because Gutierrez had played on and amplified his vulnerability and confusion and got him to kill himself.

  I stopped for a moment and wondered why I was bothering to pursue this. For starters, I felt I owed it to Truman Whitney. I had put him and his career on the hook. The least I could do was run down every possibility of getting him off. But there was another reason. Gutierrez had whipped me. We had crossed wills in that soundproofed room of his and he had won. He had chased me into a corner and I had run for my life at the end. I wanted another shot at him. I’m a terrible loser. And I had this feeling that Marty Fernandez’s breakthrough wouldn’t bring him any peace at all.