Lethal Fetish

by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood

  Petey gave a deep sigh and a shudder as I circled the Civic Center, paying just enough attention to the streets so I could get us to St. Francis Hospital, which would be the closest emergency room, if needed. At a stoplight I looked over and his eyelids fluttered. I figured he was on his way back to the world. Meanwhile, I turned my attention to Wolfgang Windgassen who was singing the role of Siegfried as gorgeously as any heroic tenor has ever done. Siegfried and Petey had one thing in common—they were orphans whose lives were screwed up by evil men, a dwarf in Siegfried’s case and a snake in Petey’s case.

  Siegfried despises his foster father, but he’s the only person who knows the young man’s parentage. Under pressure, the dwarf explains that he took in the kid’s mother who died in childbirth, leaving the homely gnome with a bawling ward and a broken sword. One thing leads to another, as happens in Wagner’s epic operas, and Siegfried tells his ersatz father to use his blacksmithing skills to repair the sword his mother left behind. Dad lacks the ability to fix the blade but possesses the capacity to fix up a plan to use his adopted son to acquire a magical, gold ring—which is the accursed goal of the entire four opera marathon. Siegfried is a perfect chump, being strong and fearless. Really, the guy had never experienced fear.

  The bombastic music and fantastical plot took me back to the moment when Eunectes stuffed Petey under the metal press and the kid showed no fear. Heroin explained his drug-induced, apparent courage. The glassy-eyed innocence in the minutes before his impending death was haunting. In that moment, it occurred to me that there was another orphan in the machine shop who showed no fear. I headed back to rescue the one left behind.

  ~||~

  I parked in the alley behind the shop and hoped Stefan left the back door unlocked. He had and I went inside, fumbling to find a light switch. Failing in that part of my mission, I relied on the illumination provided by the headlights of my truck reflecting into the darkened space. I made my way along the wall and then down the workbench, banging my shin against an overturned chair. Reaching down, I pushed aside debris and shuffled to the end of the room where the gruesome performance was to have taken place.

  Just as I was thinking about going back to the truck to look for a flashlight, my foot bumped into the rim of a bowl on the floor. I reached inside and felt the soft warmness of the kitten, curled in the bottom. Not sure that the creature would appreciate being snagged in the dark and not wanting to tangle with a frightened stray, I tried to lift the entire bowl which shouldn’t have been much of a challenge. But the damned thing was stuck to the floor and I had to give a hard yank, which almost sent me tumbling backwards. I regained my balance and pushed back through the scattered chairs.

  Once I reached the doorway, I saw what had adhered the bowl to the floor—blackened blood with red clots clung to the bottom. In the dim light, I could see the kitten was looking pitifully upward and didn’t seem at all interested in defending itself. So I set down the bowl, stuffed the creature inside my coat to keep it dry, and dashed to the cab. Petey was reasonably alert and gave a weak smile as I handed him the kitten. On the way to my house, I explained what he’d missed without going into more detail than necessary. Neither he nor the kitten seemed up to handling the depths of human depravity.

  When we were inside, Petey said he was hungry in so many—or so few—words. I went into the kitchen to whip up some sausages and colcannon. While the potatoes and cabbage were boiling, I put on a record of Samuel Barber’s music and showed the kid my insect collection. He stared in rapt wonder at the specimens, which spoke highly of his capacity for curiosity despite his intellectual limitations. My kind of guy.

  Petey asked if he could pin some insects, so I pulled a margarine tub of miscellaneous beetles from the freezer and showed him how and where to insert a pin through the body. While he was busy impaling beetles, I gave Nina a call and conveyed the good news and bad news. The former being that Petey was fine, the latter being that my plan for a tryst was nixed by having the kid safely ensconced at my house. I had the sense that she was more relieved than randy, which was understandable but not a boost to my Irish machismo.

  When the food was ready, I called Petey into the kitchen and set out three plates—two heaping platters on the table for us and a saucer with diced up sausage on the floor for the kitten. It had been slinking along the baseboards in an effort not to be noticed, which was likely how it had lasted this long in the grunge of the city. The waif approached the grub with a mixture of caution and hunger until an empty stomach got the better of him and he pushed his face into the food.

  Petey asked me to “play that pretty record” again, so I moved the needle back to the beginning of the LP. We listened to the sweet melancholy of Adagio for Strings and ate wordlessly. In fact, throughout the entire night, the kid had said a total of twenty words: Where am I? (from the shop floor); What happened? (in the truck cab); What’s his name? (in reference to the kitten for which I had no answer); I’m hungry (twice); Can I try? (regarding insect pinning); Play that pretty record again (his longest sentence). Petey offered up three more words, “This is good,” after taking a second helping of my makeshift dinner.

  While I cleaned up, Petey returned to quietly pinning beetles with a poignancy that reflected the somber mood and Latin lyrics of Barber’s “Agnus Dei”: “The Lamb of God; Who took away the sins of the world; Have mercy upon us.” A lamb, indeed. I went out to the living room as the record ended. I was tempted to put on Debussy but decided on Ravel. His Piano Concerto in G Major was a change from Barber, the music being upbeat, playful, and jazzy. And you can’t beat André Cluytens conducting the Paris Symphonic Orchestra with Samson François at the keyboard.

  Petey smiled but said nothing. That was okay with me. People generally talk too much. “Sharing” is overrated and is usually synonymous with whining. The police shrinks were always trying to get us to talk about our experiences after some bad shit went down and this never did any good. Living is hard, killing is necessary. We didn’t write the rules. God did, according to the police chaplain. And he could never explain why the Big Guy was such an asshole in setting up the game.

  Emboldened, the kitten joined us, scrambling onto the kid’s lap and then tried to climb onto the worktable. My firm rap on its nose set him straight—a version of the technique the nuns at St. Teresa’s used to maintain order among their miscreant charges. A ruler to the knuckles provided an effective reminder as to the limits in Sister Mary Leon’s classroom. Soon, the kitten nodded off in my recliner and Petey was fading fast. I led him upstairs and directed him to my bedroom, where he could enjoy a safe night of decent sleep.

  Back downstairs, I went into kitchen, boiled a pot of water, slowly added oatmeal, and turned off the heat. Having taken care of breakfast preparations, I poured a generous dose of eighteen-year-old Jameson, a whiskey older than the kid in my bed. I kept this bottle for special occasions and tonight seemed to qualify. There were loose ends that I’d need to deal with tomorrow, but tonight I could celebrate having kept the world from becoming uglier than it had been this morning. Not a glorious victory, but goodness is primarily a rearguard action.

  I put on Verdi’s Otello, slipped an afghan under the kitten and stretched out in my recliner. Sipping slowly, I listened for “Iago’s Credo,” arguably the darkest aria in all of opera—and Tito Gobi had the baritone to convey the depth of this musical malevolence. Iago was evil personified, manipulating people into committing horrendous acts of betrayal and brutality. But we never learn his fate. In the final act, Otello kills his beloved and faithful Desdemona, then realizes his error and stabs himself—as Iago, the evil puppeteer who is finally revealed for his duplicity, escapes.

  Nodding off, I wondered about Eunectes’s fate. I didn’t so much care, as I was curious. They say that curiosity killed the cat, but at about two in the morning, it was clear that inquisitiveness wasn’t lethal to the kitten, which surely wondered about the unfamiliar comfort to be found on the blanket draping my lap. />
  CHAPTER 40

  In the morning, I deposited my feline lap warmer on the floor, massaged out the stiffness in my neck from a night in the recliner, and headed to the kitchen. While whipping up a batch of my special Irish oatmeal I heard the water running in the bathroom and wondered how long it had been since the Petey had enjoyed a steaming hot shower. I added some milk, Irish butter, and a pinch of salt then reheated the pot that had cooled overnight. The Irish know their oatmeal—and how to make it.

  I like both Flahavan’s Pinhead and Macroom’s oatmeal, which are available through the Green Mafia (my mother and her network of Irish ladies on Potrero Hill). Not having had a recent delivery from the Old Country, this morning I went with McCann’s steel-cut oatmeal which is perfectly acceptable and locally available if you know where to shop. I want nothing to do with the dietary fiber craze for bran flakes, which are the equivalent of dried leaves, nor Grape Nuts, which are twigs and pebbles. A few months ago, Nina convinced me to try these abominations for my health. My view is that culinary masochists don’t live longer by eating lawn clippings for breakfast, it just seems that way.

  The key to Irish oatmeal, in addition to using toasted grain and dipping each spoonful into a bowl of cream, is topping the porridge with soft brown sugar which includes the molasses that is often removed for reasons that elude me. I shared a wordless breakfast with Petey, then grabbed a shower while he had a heaping bowl of seconds and played with the kitten.

  We—meaning Petey and I, the feline remaining at the house and enjoying a saucer of cream—headed to St. Teresa’s. Nina was ecstatic to see the kid was hale and hearty, and Petey said more in the first two minutes with Tommy and Karsa than he’d spoken to me in the last twelve hours. He regaled my brother with having pinned beetles, and Tommy affirmed the immense good fortune at having been provided with such a special opportunity. Petey proceeded to tell Karsa all about the kitten which elicited a curiously raised eyebrow from Nina. I just shrugged, which seemed the best explanation. There was no talk of last night, drugs, metal presses, sensuous women, or gun shots.

  “So, it’s over?” Nina asked, stepping away from the chatter of the man-child trio.

  “Not quite. I still have to figure out how I’m going to play this with Lieutenant Papadopoulos once I learn what Stefan decided to do with Eunectes.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said, “nor am I sure that I want to. But maybe you can give me enough of a picture so I can help Petey in the coming days, while allowing me to plead ignorance should the police pay a visit.”

  I provided a general outline of what happened last night without self-incriminating detail. I skipped over as many sordid particulars as possible while keeping the account coherent and relevant to Nina’s caretaking.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, borrowing my mother’s most extreme expression of disbelief. “They were going to crush him in a machine press? And what about the kitten?”

  “The little guy was a teaser during the warm-up act. So, I came home with two orphans. I was hoping you might look after both of them.” Again Nina gave me the one eyebrow, which I knew meant trouble. “I’ll try to keep Petey out of the story I tell the cops,” I said. “If I play it well, Papadopoulos will close the case and move on to the next lurid investigation.”

  Petey’s prognosis on the streets was grim, but better if he could avoid cops and perverts—and get support from St. Teresa’s. He was a loose end that was likely to fray in the future, but at least for the moment he was chattering away with his buddies.

  “And if not?” Nina asked.

  “I get booked for attempted murder by San Francisco’s finest, Goat Hill Extermination’s reputation gets trashed, a crush mistress gets charged with god-knows-what to please a sanctimonious prosecutor, and ... I could go on.”

  “Don’t. All I need to know is that Petey is safe. All you need to know is that I am not going to adopt a kitten. And ...”

  “And?”

  “I know you’ll do the right thing. Or the best you can do,” she gave my hand a soft squeeze. Nina understood that the world doesn’t provide many opportunities for uncomplicated goodness. Usually, it’s a matter of minimizing bad shit.

  “And I know one more thing,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was eavesdropping. I leaned closer. “I know that if I don’t get you into the sack soon, I’m going to become a nun and join Saint Teresa in a life of mystical prayer and womanly frustration.” She gave me a lingering, moist kiss.

  ~||~

  I swung by a Walgreens to get cat litter, a litter box, and a few tins of chow. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the kitten, but I didn’t want it making a mess or starving in the meantime. Stopping by my house, I set out a food bowl and the litter box while musing that I could just dump the former into the latter and cut out the middle man, or creature in this case. The smell of tuna brought the houseguest mewing into the kitchen. Having taken care of my new charge, I headed to the shop.

  My crew had already exchanged stories of last night, so I gathered everyone together and filled in the gaps. Dennis had dumped Redbug at the emergency room for patching and Larry had taken Courtney to Carol’s house for safekeeping. Carol had given Courtney a soft bed, hot breakfast, and two hundred bucks—the latter courtesy of Goat Hill Extermination’s petty cash lockbox which was now nearly empty. I was going to fuss, but thought better of second-guessing the woman who kept the books and hosted a traumatized vagrant overnight without complaint.

  “I got here late,” she explained, “because I picked up Courtney’s sister and took the two of them to the bus station. They’re on their way to Los Angeles where they have a distant relative and a shot at something better.”

  This loose end was about as likely to have a happy resolution as Petey. But at least LA is warmer in the winter than up here, and a relative couldn’t be more abusive than Eunectes was. That second part wasn’t true but I was going with it anyway. The little lies we tell ourselves make the world tolerable.

  “So what’s the story with Stefan and Eunectes?” Larry asked, leaning against Carol’s desk. “The little dude was looking like he’d wig out.”

  “Mental,” Dennis said, shaking his head. “That scrappy honky be juiced on revenge.”

  “I don’t know, but I have a suspicion that it wasn’t a pretty ending,” I said.

  “My guess is that Riley is going to find out soon enough,” said Carol. “When I got in this morning there were already three messages on the machine from Lieutenant Papadopoulos. Each one became less polite or, I should say, more rude. The first two were requests, the last one was an order for Riley to meet him at Central District Station at ten thirty or he’d send a black-and-white to take you in for questioning.”

  “Good luck boss, we gotta’ bounce,” said Larry draining his Styrofoam cup and heading to the warehouse.

  “We be battling bad guys by night and bad bugs by day. Regular super heroes, Larry and me,” said Dennis with a grin. “Be sure to have a wicked good time with your homey in blue,” he added, following Larry to the back. Then he stopped and turned, “Riley, you know I appreciate you doin’ all this, bein’ as I sorta got things started.”

  “Shut up and get to work,” I said. Dennis flashed me a grin and headed down the hall with his trademark saunter. I headed to the Linford estate.

  ~||~

  “I’ve seen the videotape,” I began. Lane Linford’s defiant gaze dropped to the Oriental rug. “Since last Wednesday, your trail of blackmail led to a woman dying in agony, a kid nearly crushed to death, a pervert being shot, and a pool of blood that will undoubtedly lead to a very unpleasant scene.” I leaned forward from my overstuffed leather chair by the fireplace in the Linfords’ opulent study.

  The heat felt good given the chill wind of the morning which was supposedly ushering in sunny weather for the first time in weeks. I was dubious since weathermen lie with the same frequency as deviants and criminals. Lane had
abandoned his affected clothing for a track suit and running shoes. I doubted he’d taken up exercise, but perhaps jogging relieved stress. I can’t see any other plausible reason for this fad.

  “And will the trail lead back to me?” he asked, rolling his head to produce that infernal crunching of neck vertebrae.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’ll keep you out of this sordid tale under one condition.” I wasn’t absolutely sure that I could protect him, but what I was about to propose was for his own good, whatever Papadopoulos had ginned up for me later this morning.

  “Get help. I have the name of a psychologist.” I plucked one of Dr. Chen’s embossed business cards from my shirt pocket and put it on the polished coffee table.

  I continued as he fingered the card. “She’s very good and doesn’t judge. If you’ll contact her, I’ll do everything in my power to keep your name out of the police report.” That much was true. The other truth was that I was in over my head in terms of crazy. Lane wasn’t an axe murderer or a deranged rapist, either of which I would have been more than willing to turn over to the cops. He was a sicko who’d more-or-less accidentally offed his grandparents to avoid public humiliation. Let Dr. Chen decide whether to call in the police. That’s why shrinks get the big bucks.

  “It’s no use, Riley.”

  “You’re miserable. And you’re a sitting duck for the next person who wants to convert your shame into cash.” He took a deep breath and hung his head. I waited. The ticking of a grandfather clock and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds. At least this room didn’t have one of those gas log gimmicks that were about as convincing as inflatable sex dolls.

  Lane Linford started talking. I don’t know why he decided to confide in me rather than waiting to spill his guts to Dr. Chen. Maybe because I wasn’t charging a Jackson an hour to murmur “uh huh” or perhaps he wanted to practice on a guy before telling his story to a woman. In any case, he described how he’d been shy in elementary school, never wanting to play “rough games” with the other boys. His father had been a tyrant and his mother had been tender but unable to stand up to her domineering husband. Lane had kept an ant farm and liked the feel of insects crawling on his thighs. When he was in fifth grade, the gardener’s son, a boy about Lane’s age, would take him into the tool shed and they’d rub against each other. One day, Lane’s father caught them and beat the other boy bloody. Only the gardener’s arrival with a pruning hook upon hearing the screams saved his kid. After that, Lane didn’t have any close friends and in adolescence he struggled to relate to girls. So he expanded his collection of creatures and began masturbating while the insects wandered over his genitals. However, after every episode with his pals he felt disgusted but powerless to resist. He tried to learn about his condition by reading psychology journals—and that’s where he got idea of how to use his grandparents’ delusions to gain access to the money needed to pay off Michelle.