On The Edge

by Daniel Cleaver

  “It looks like puke,” said Sheldon.

  I took a sip of the honey-based wine and sure enough, it tasted like puke. I tried not to grimace.

  “What say you?” he asked, nodding at the fluid.

  I’d had enough of this and said, “Methinks it tastes of vomit.”

  That ended the conversation thankfully. I looked around for somewhere to sit and despaired at the people dressed in costume and wondered where do you hire such clothing and why? Alternatively, they must have spent their spare time making the outfits, again why?

  I could not understand what sort of lonely, pathetic loser would have the time to sit at home sewing, to then waste a weekend prancing around dressed as a medieval peasant.

  “Hail, stranger, what thou art doing in these parts?”

  Of course, who else?

  Ferdy.

  He was dressed head to foot in medieval finery, a gold doublet, green and yellow knitted pantyhose, orange felt shoes that curled up at the toe, and a three-pointed pink hat complete with bells. I couldn’t help thinking Milo Sanchez would be jealous of the outfit. “Hey, man, how’s it hanging?”

  He grinned at his pals. I recognized one or two of the crime tech nerds. “Spooky, you must get into the spirit of the occasion,” he admonished.

  “Yourself. Screw. Why don’t ya?” I tried and then added, “Methinks. You should.”

  * * *

  Later, after a few more meads (it grows on you after a while) I went to the village section where stalls were selling medieval goods, but at 21st-century prices, mind you. I saw Ferdy haggling over an earthenware cooking pot and sighed. I went to turn the other way when he spotted me. My earlier comment had not dampened his enthusiasm and he was in full medieval flow and beckoned me over. “Sire, what say you? It is most beauteous, is it not?”

  “Nay, it is surely overpriced crap, methinks.” Oh well, at least I tried to enter the spirit.

  The vendor’s face dropped along with Ferdy and his cronies. I strolled along past the tents and flags and headed towards the jousting: might see some blood there. Ferdy paid for his pot and caught up with me. “Where goest thou?”

  “Please speak properly, man, I ain’t a tourist.”

  Nothing fazed him and he continued to smile. “What are you looking for?”

  “Not sure. The blacksmith, I guess.”

  “How come?”

  “I wanna reshoe my horse, why’d ya think?”

  “There is one, but I don’t think he makes horseshoes,” he said, missing the joke. “Mostly tools and suchlike. He’s very good, very accurate.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Swords for sure. They’re most verily prized.”

  “You’re doing it again, man.”

  “Sorry. It just slips out. Swords, daggers.” His face cracked into a grin as he followed my trail of thought. “Right. Ah, medieval instruments of torture.”

  I let Ferdy enter the blacksmith’s and do the talking: this backward-speak made my brain hurt. The sun was high in the sky and it was getting warm. Everywhere smelled of horses and their droppings, the mead made my head buzz. I made a mental note to go back and buy a couple of bottles.

  Ferdy emerged from the blacksmith’s tent and shook his head. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “How do ya know?”

  “He told me he didn’t.”

  “That’s not how it’s done.” I headed for the tent and said, “Watch and learn.” He trotted after me like a lost puppy.

  I entered the musty tent. The heat from the blast furnace was overpowering and I wondered about the safety of flames and the cloth of the tent. The smithy was covered in grime. I couldn’t decide if it was make-up or real, but from the smell of him, he was in character and a Method actor, he hadn’t bathed for at least a week. He eyed me cautiously as I picked up the various items and pondered their use. Even brainbox Ferdy was stumped as he held aloft what could only be described as some sort of metal panties. At the front it looked like a sieve; underneath was a crinkle-cut slot and behind a small, heart-shaped opening. We both put our fingers through at the same time and got stuck.

  “It’s a chastity belt,” the blacksmith informed us, which made the other customers turn and look. We had literality been caught with our hands in the cookie jar. We both blushed like schoolboys and untangled ourselves clumsily, drawing even more attention to ourselves looking like Laurel and Hardy.

  I mustered my dignity as best as I could. “I’m looking for something more exotic.”

  “Oh yes, such as?” he asked, bashing a white-hot piece of metal with a ball-peen hammer, creating flying sparks, making me fear a fire once again.

  “An iron maiden?”

  He chuckled. “Far too big for me.”

  “The rack?”

  “Same problem.”

  “Scold’s bridle? A heretic’s fork?”

  “You know your stuff, stranger,” he said. Even Ferdy turned and looked at me impressed.

  “Wherefore thy needest thou?”

  I looked to Ferdy for a translation.

  “What do you want it for?”

  “I think it’s cool.”

  He translated back. “’Tis most splendid.”

  “I love all this . . .” I waved an arm around his wares looking for inspiration.

  “Medieval,” Ferdy whispered.

  “Medieval . . . crap. However, I decorate my home with the more macabre type of objet d’art.”

  “He hath plenty of money,” Ferdy added helpfully.

  This was the clincher. “I may be able to help,” he chuckled. “For a price of course.”

  I imitated his chuckle and said, “Of course.”

  His furnace burned hot and the metal he held glowed white as he struck it with the precision of a craftsman. “What ye be desiring?”

  “I have an interest in the instruments used for drawing and quartering.”

  His mouth dropped open, as did his hand, and he dropped the white-hot metal onto his foot. He hopped around and then put his foot into the nearby water trough. He clammed up and turned his back on us. Ferdy looked at me as if we’d hit the mark. I’d never seen such a display of guilt.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “That ya made the instruments?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who could make such things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many?”

  “One or two.”

  “Any good?”

  “No way, I’m the best by a mile.”

  “Oh, so ya do make such implements?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yah, ya did.”

  “Oh well, um, you got me there.”

  I did? I glanced at Ferdy who gave a small shrug.

  “I can make them, is what I meant.”

  “Listen up, you’re not in trouble, we just need to know who did ya make ’em for, ya not in trouble.”

  “Okay, I believe you.”

  “Really?” I looked at Ferdy. “That was easy.” I turned back to the smithy. “Have ya made any lately?”

  “I didn’t know that’s what he was going to do with them.”

  “Who?”

  “The Hangman,” he said.

  “Ya know who it is?”

  “I made them for a dealer, who had an interested party. They had to be special, top-quality. He had most of the stuff for real. I made some pieces and had to repair a few of his things – authentically, naturally.”

  “Who the hell deals in such things?”

  I saw the guilt flash across his face.

  CHAPTER 35

  Louis Winston’s Collectables and Curiosities, Hollywood Blvd, CA 90028 – 13:30.

  I left Ferdy at the fayre after giving him the easiest Detective 101 in history and entered the antique shop on the Boardwalk. I gazed at the stock in awe: half was movie props and the other half appeared to be connected to crimes. Machine Gun Kelly’s shoes, Al Cap
one’s custom-made black toilet paper, Bundy’s death row last meal plastic knife and fork. Weird or what? Why would anyone want any of these items?

  “You’d be surprised,” said the owner, gliding from a back room, as he read my mind. At least I hoped he did and I that I hadn’t said that aloud. I have done that before and more frequently when I had forgotten my meds.

  “Whoops,” said Sheldon, “you’ve forgotten to buy your meds again.”

  “Oh man,” chimed in Elvis, “you were meant to pick ’em up yesterday before the car chase.”

  Alright, alright, next stop the drugstore, I’ll pick up my meds.

  “You know what happens when you don’t,” Sheldon scolded.

  The store owner said, “You were thinking who’d want such things, right?” He was a short, dumpy, effeminate man, his face was powdered white; his suit was white, as was his fedora and his feather boa.

  “Who does, then?”

  “The rich, famous.”

  “People with far too much money.”

  “You’d never guess in your wildest dreams who collects such things,” he said with a secretive smirk that I found annoying.

  “Like who?”

  “Ahhh, now that would be telling.” He flicked his boa dramatically and tapped the side of his nose as if it was the secret of the universe. Like I cared about what celebrity collected criminals’ toilet paper. Like I give a damn. All right, maybe I was a little bit curious. I made myself look interested and rich.

  He weighed me up and down. His reptilian eyes made me shudder.

  “The blacksmith sent me,” I said.

  One eyebrow jumped, like Mr. Spock’s. He made a decision. “The real curiosities are out back.” We went through to a small room, mostly stuffed animals, monkeys posed smoking cigars, a pig standing upright, dressed in a white suit, boa, and hat, same as the owner but possibly taller. A sign around its neck said, ‘not for sale’. As if. Strangest was the cross-dressing grizzly bear. Only in Hollywood. Somehow it took its power away. The thought of meeting a grizzly wearing a tutu made it seem soft and cuddly.

  More disturbing was the Nazi paraphernalia. I thought trading in Nazi stuff was illegal. A lens from Himmler’s spectacles, Goebbels’s nail file, and I noticed Hitler’s bathtub and found myself pondering on this. I just couldn’t picture a megalomaniac taking the time to bathe.

  One wall was given over to Hollywood stars’ undergarments and lingerie. He caught me staring. “I wished I’d gotten Elvis’s underpants,” he sighed. “They were used. They were up for sale a few years back. I got the dates wrong. I missed the auction by a day.” I tried to feign interest. “They were gigantic Y-fronts and stained.”

  “I never wore Y-fronts!” Elvis said indignantly.

  “Can you imagine?” said the owner.

  “Kill him, kill him!”

  I could smell the evil coming off this diminutive person in waves. God knows what happened to him, to turn him into the purveyor of such repellent articles. To be the go-between, for an inanimate object whose dubious association with a horrible death could give it value to other sick individuals who would want to own it as some sort of talisman, to relish the evil within, giving them a sense of what? Power? Did it make them horny? Who knew? In addition, this stunted dwarf was happy to peddle the garbage to them, hooking up sickos with Nazi junk; he really was a menace to society, pandering to its basest members, while making a tidy fortune into the bargain. I wondered how much he’d made from the medieval torture equipment. Still, I’d have to play nicely for a while longer to see where it might lead. The midget looked me up and down, weighing me up, deciding whether he would test me further. I tried to look like a sick individual who was interested in the perverse. It worked.

  “Would sir be interested in something stronger?”

  “Sir would.”

  He ushered me through the locked door. My mouth gaped open: it was like Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory. The shelves were stacked with Mason jars of formaldehyde containing various stages of baby growth, from fetus to almost full term. Worse were deformities, the two-headed baby, four-legged baby, and co-joined twins. Then I saw more Nazi stuff: he pointed towards one of the infamous skin lampshades. “Look, you can see hair,” said the owner in wonder as he fondled it. I wanted to shoot him then and there, right between the eyes. I had a vivid image of his head exploding, brain matter splattering his ghoulish display.

  “What tickles sir’s fancy?”

  “Come again?”

  “What interests you most?”

  “Death. Instruments of death.”

  “Ahhh,” he simpered. “I have a piece of the rope from von Ribbentrop’s hanging.” I must have looked puzzled. “From the Nazi war crimes? Nuremberg?” he prompted.

  I nodded. “I was thinking older?”

  He scratched his chin. “A catch from the guillotine that killed the King of France?”

  “More vicious?” I asked.

  He tapped his chin and then remembered an item. “The sword reportedly from Anne Boleyn’s execution?” Even I didn’t believe that one. It must’ve shown. “Well, I don’t have any providence on that piece. What is it you wish?”

  “Torture implements.”

  His face turned white. Whiter. If that was even possible. “I, um, don’t think I can help you. Good day, sir.”

  “What’s got ya so jumpy?”

  “Just leave my establishment. Now.”

  “You’re not scared of the Hangman, are ya?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This conversation never happened. If you’re from a law enforcement agency, you did not reveal yourself and are here on false pretenses.”

  “This is what I think: ya brokered the deal between the blacksmith and the Hangman and I think ya know who it is.”

  He pulled a small revolver and pointed it at me with a shaky hand. I slowly raised my hands, and said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  CHAPTER 36

  MF Movie Props Storage Facility, Wilshire Boulevard, CA 90010 – 13:31.

  The Hangman prowled around the new venue that was going to be the house of carnage. A building that would one day feature regularly in re-enactment programs about infamous murders: it would become a shrine. Goths would sit outside writing poetry and odder fans would tie cryptic messages onto the surrounding fence. It will become more famous than the house up in the Hills where the Manson gang slaughtered many people, and more famous than John Wayne Gacy’s or Jeffrey Dahmer’s home because this was going to be the site of a double event. The Hangman’s new premises were in fact the murder site of the first victim, Sharron, the convenience store assistant, just in a different part of the building. The Hangman was back in the movie prop storage facility. The cops had finished with it and, typically, had left it unguarded, more fool them. How they would kick themselves when they realized too late where the execution was taking place. How the press would slate them for their inefficiency and the sleazy politicians wouldn’t miss a chance to kick the cops when they were down. Even an armchair detective knew that it was common for a criminal to return to the scene of a crime, you would have thought they would have left someone on guard. The building owners had installed a minimum wage rent-a-cop to patrol the vicinity, a cursory inspection of the exterior to ward off souvenir hunters and the Hangman’s followers. Yes: the Hangman had a fan base. Kill a couple of people in spectacular fashion and suddenly you’re the flavor of the month, having songs written about you, fan clubs formed, you could even buy a T-shirt. Go figure. However, the rent-a-cop was nowhere to be seen, giving up his patrolling hours ago to sit in the watchman’s hut reading a graphic novel about a coming plague.

  The Hangman admired the town square movie set complete with the gallows front and center. It appeared to be a cobbled European town square set during the Second World War. There was a horse trough, as well as some storefronts, including bakers, butchers, and grocers, with a display of realistic plastic fruit in baskets outside. Best of all
was the stone castle wall complete with parapets on top, arrow loops, narrow vertical slits from which arrows would have been fired, and a portcullis. The Hangman had arranged stage lights around and had fired up an atmospheric smoke machine and run through the sequence of lights, using a hand-controlled device to light the flaming torches either side of the castle gateway and another to illuminate the stores, the castle and lastly, dramatically, the gallows up on a rickety wooden platform. The Hangman arranged his black cotton executioner’s hood, sat in front of the video camera, and through the voice changer spoke to the camera. “Good evening, fellow torture devotees. From the numbers you tune in to watch my events I gather that they are popular and we are building to a crescendo. We’ve had torture, hangings, cannibalism and a hanging, drawing and quartering, which drew a crowd of over a million. Tonight is going to be even more spectacular: tonight I’m doing it all. We’ll start with torture, then a hanging, drawing and quartering and pausing during that operation to experiment with some cannibalism, possibly, the sweetmeats: these I will feed to my victim. A person who deserves this more than anyone, my nemesis, the person tasked with capturing me, will be my next victim. I will lure him here. His fate is sealed, he will be unable to resist and I am so confident of this that I will torture and execute him live tonight from 9 pm, Pacific Time Zone. So, credit cards out and start dialing because this will be capped at one million viewers, don’t delay.”

  The Hangman used the remote control to switch off the camera and then extinguish the lights and the flames on the castle wall.

  Louis Winston’s Collectables and Curiosities, Hollywood Blvd, CA 90028 – 13:32.

  The revolver was so old I doubted it would work. It was pearl-handled – what else? His hand shook as he pointed it at me. I put my finger at the end of the barrel. “Stop that!” he said in alarm. “What are you doing?”

  “If you shoot,” I said, “it’ll explode, killing us both.” He looked uncertain. “Didn’t ya ever watch the Road Runner as a kid?” I asked.

  “Sure, but would that really happen?”

  “Are ya willing to take the chance? ’Coz I am!” I said, giving him my best wild-eyed leer.