“Helluva story Lane,” I said, having settled into the overstuffed chair, marveled at his twisted tale, and thought how much I could’ve used a whiskey even if was 10 am. “Seems that if your ’dirty habit’—as you call it—is filthy enough to motivate a deception that turned into negligent homicide, then it might be time to give therapy a try.” I was dubious that Dr. Chen or any other head-peeper could fix this guy, but throwing a psychological haymaker seemed better than throwing in the towel.
“I’m so tired,” he said, lifting his head. He seemed too drained to bother brushing the straggly hair out of his eyes.
I reached across the coffee table smacked him, hard. His shook his head and glared at me. “Good, you’re mad. That’s better than this despondent bullshit.” I was confident that thumping patients wasn’t among the techniques taught to therapists. Probably should be.
“Here’s the deal pal, you call Dr. Chen by noon or I call Lieutenant Papadopoulos. I can deal with sexual weirdness. Shit, we all have our quirks—including at least a few kinks that fill our fantasies, if not our lives. But I won’t put up with self-pity.” I headed out of the room and paused at the doorway. “I’ll call the shrink after lunch and if she’s not heard from you, then expect your life to get way more screwed up than your little game of six-legged foreplay.”
Back in my truck, I figured that Luis was happy with his fetish, as long as he stuck with soft crush. So there was no point in recommending my favorite shrinkiatrist to him. My real problem was going to be not getting mashed under the tassel-toed, Italian leather loafers awaiting me in the office of Lieutenant Papadopoulos.
CHAPTER 41
The furnishings in the lieutenant’s office were as non-standard issue as his clothing, unless the SFPD had started providing cherry-veneer desks, along with faux-leather chairs and pseudo-Tiffany lamps. Papadopoulos featured a charcoal pinstripe, three-piece suit, his jacket on a hanger (not a hook) behind the desk. The room reeked of cologne, my host being slathered in Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros.
My odiferous knowledge was based on Nina having bought this scent for me on my birthday. She explained that Kouros referred to ancient sculptures of nude Greek youths that she lovingly, but unconvincingly, associated with my own physique. I was willing to bet that Papadopoulos was fully aware of this connection and saw himself as statuesque. The cologne was more like perfume in my book, so I returned to tried-and-true Aqua Velva—a smell that reminded me of my father. But I kept the bottle of Kouros on my dresser to use on special occasions for Nina.
Papadopoulos offered me a cup of coffee from the pot in the grimy squad room outside his ostentatious office. I yearned for Gustaw’s wickedly strong brew, or even Carol’s version, rather than this swill. A heaping spoonful of sugar and a generous shake of chalky creamer covered up the bitterness, sort of like how a bad steak can be made almost edible with some A1 sauce.
“So Lieu, what’s on your mind?” I said, settling into a chair that was far less comfortable than his but figuring that whoever started asking questions was usually in the better position.
Papadopoulos leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desktop. His chair was a couple inches higher than mine. Nice move.
“There was a very strange death last night,” he said. “It was outside our district, but the captain in the Southern Station knew of my interest in the Linford case and figured that maybe there was a connection.”
“Another pair of naked, dead geezers wearing dog collars? Really, this needs to be stopped before the elite of the entire city is wiped out,” I said.
He wasn’t amused. “This morning, the owner of a machine shop near Folsom and Sixth reported finding a body crushed in the metal press. And I suspect you might be able to shed some light on what happened.” That neatly, or messily, explained the blood adhering the kitten’s punch bowl to the floor.
I sipped my coffee, contemplating what evidence I might’ve left behind in the chaos. “Do tell, Lieutenant. Was the corpse a fellow exterminator? To be honest, I find that killing vermin at a reasonable price is far more effective than killing my competitors.”
“Cute, Riley. We don’t know the victim’s identity because his head and hands were pancaked into a quarter-inch slab of meat and bone. There won’t be any usable fingerprints or dental records.”
“Sounds like a terrible, industrial accident. A guy shouldn’t mess with power tools unless he knows what he’s doing,” I said, trying to play dumb. It’s one of my finer skills.
“We don’t think the victim worked at the shop. Some guy showed the owner compromising photographs of himself and exchanged the negatives for the keys and a night’s access to the joint. The place was set up for some sort of spectator event, with rows of folding chairs.”
“Evidently not a safety seminar, eh? But I’m still wondering why you think I know anything about this.” Papadopoulos shook his head and tented his fingers. A corner of his mouth twitched in his version of a smile as he was quite evidently pleased with what he was about to reveal.
“We found a couple of items you might be able explain.”
“Gee Lieu, I’ll do my darnedest,” I said with the most innocent tone I could muster while trying to imagine what he had to link me to the scene.
“A gunshot victim was dumped at San Francisco General’s ER last night. The docs patched up a gaping hole in his shoulder. The guy bolted when a black-and-white rolled up. The nature of the wound was consistent with a Treasury Load, the sort of ammo that an ex-cop with connections to the force might use.”
“A well-connected ex-cop, along with a few thousand other people, including the Secret Service, Customs officers, highway patrol, active cops, retired cops, the wives and kids of cops, range rats, and brass-scrounging reloaders from every walk of life.”
“Thou doth protest too much, but let me continue,” he said. I wouldn’t have given Papadopoulos credit for being able to paraphrase Shakespeare since the Bard wasn’t Greek. Maybe the lieutenant was slightly deeper than his smarmy facade indicated. Probably not. “The victim in the metal press had a pair of vice grips locked onto his balls.”
Stefan had both determination and a sense of poetic justice. The little guy must’ve wrestled Eunectes’s unconscious body up onto the metal press, as I’m sure the bigger man wouldn’t have been cooperative if awake. But then what? My bet was that he lowered the press just enough to pin Eunectes in place and waited for him to regain consciousness. The vice grips would have provided Stefan with satisfaction only if his wife’s killer had been alert enough to experience a version of crushing that was surely less stimulating than his fantasy. I might’ve felt a twinge of sympathy for Eunectes except his fate was exactly what he planned for Petey, although without sedation. Of course, I didn’t really know what happened and never would, which was fine with me.
“Let’s see, vice grips are probably found in the garages of about ninety percent of San Franciscans. If that’s all—” Papadopoulos raised his hand to stop me.
“I’ve saved the best for last. But you probably knew that, since I suspect you were there or nearby. There was a punch bowl of crickets on the floor and an empty one near the back door.” He paused and reclined in his chair, clearly satisfied with himself. “Now then, let’s see you do a little more math. How many citizens of our fair city are connected with odd deaths, sexual depravity, and insect weirdness? I can think of exactly one.”
He didn’t really have anything on me—a flattened corpse, vice grips, and a batch of crickets. This flimsy, however bizarre, circumstantial evidence wasn’t sufficient to put me at the scene. But Papadopoulos had been decent enough to give me time to extricate my business from the Linford deaths and scandal-hungry reporters. This was my chance to shape the story—but I had to give him something that would work in the worlds of police and politics.
“Here’s what I know. To begin, the Linfords’ deaths were a tragic accident caused by their delusions of being infested.” The lieutenant grunted his doubt, but
I continued. “Although their grandson, Lane, can’t be implicated, in the course of my investigation I discovered that he was tangled in another mess. Lane starred in videos showing him doing some very nasty things.”
“Porn? That scrawny-assed punk?” Papadopoulos said.
“Takes all kinds to make this deviant world go ’round. I don’t know who the filmmaker was—”
“Hold on. You don’t know or you won’t give me the porn producer’s name?”
“Don’t know,” I lied, having also left out the blackmail element and skipped over the whole Marcia and Stefan angle, since the cops hadn’t determined her death to be suspicious.
“You’re full of shit, but please continue,” he said, pulling a pad of paper from a desk drawer and a silver pen from his shirt pocket to take notes.
“The kid’s information led me to a group of perverts who get off watching women crush insects underfoot.”
“That’s even sicker than you could invent, Riley. Continue.”
“So this guy in the crush club was getting nervous about where things were heading—”
“I don’t suppose you caught his name either.”
“They used aliases to protect themselves against infiltrators, having gotten the message that the assistant DA has a hard-on to round up anyone not using Biblically approved methods of intercourse.”
“Okay, but this story had better start getting useful,” he said, clicking the button on his pen.
“We’re nearly there. Turns out that a charismatic leader calling himself ‘Eunectes’ seduced the group into taking on a more realistic and extreme fantasy. You see, when insects get mashed, the men are imaging themselves underfoot because they crave domination by women.” Papadopoulos resumed taking notes.
“Shit, I could’ve given them my ex-wife’s address,” he said while neatly printing on the legal pad.
“They might’ve taken you up on that because they needed a crush mistress who would go the extra mile.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning a woman to stomp on mice, at first.”
“At first?”
“Right, and then building to the ultimate—crushing a man.”
“How do you know this?”
“I worked myself into the group.”
“Let’s back up. I gather they found a crush mistress. And I’m going to guess you didn’t catch her name or she also had an alias,” he said. I shrugged.
“Sorry Lieu, I’m out of practice when it comes to police procedures. I’m just a lowly spray jockey following a grimy trail to make sure Goat Hill Extermination isn’t dragged into the gutter when this story breaks.”
“And so, you figure Eunectes and his gang of deviants were at the machine shop last night?” He rubbed his chiseled chin. “That explains the folding chairs, the bowl of crickets, and the body in the metal press. But this whole story is just a little too convenient, a little too neat.”
“How so?”
“It explains everything and nothing. In particular, your inability to come up with any names that would allow me to check your account of last night makes me pretty damned sure you’re withholding evidence. And we’ve been over what a charge of obstructing justice means. I believe this interview is over—at least until I convince the DA to charge you with a felony or ...” Papadopoulos pushed back from his desk and then paused for a moment.
“Or?”
“Or maybe I should just detain you right now as a material witness.” He reached to the small of his back and pulled out a pair of handcuffs with dramatic flourish. “I figure you were at the murder scene and can explain the vice grips along with providing names. Once my officers make some high profile arrests, you take the stand in a few weeks and then get back to chasing the vermin you’re licensed to pursue.”
Here was my moment of truth, or more accurately my culminating moment of deception. If I could sell this chapter of my story, I might wriggle free.
“I wasn’t there, but my guess is something went wrong in their plan. Somebody got angry, maybe betrayed. Mad enough to pull a gun. We might never get that part figured out.” Papadopoulos started to get up. “Hang on. The case comes together if I’m right about one element of the crime scene.
The lieutenant sat back down. “Go ahead, but this had better be good and fast.”
“I’m betting that something else went very wrong for Eunectes.” Papadopoulos put the cuffs on his desk blotter and lifted one eyebrow. He took the bait and I set the hook. “Was the body in the press around six foot three, a hundred and eighty pounds, and dressed in black?”
Papadopoulos opened a file folder on his desk and scanned the contents. “According to the preliminary report, the victim was wearing black. We’ll have to wait for the ME to get a height and weight. Why?”
“Eunectes always wore black, and I’ll bet the autopsy comes back with my numbers. It looks like one or more of his followers turned on their leader and he ended up as the main act of the evening.”
“So what am I supposed to do with your story?” Papadopoulos asked, fingering the chrome-plated cuffs and staring menacingly at me.
“Simple Lieu. You close the case on the Linfords as the accidental poisoning of a nice old couple who were struggling with mental illness and tell the press their heartbroken grandson wants to mourn in private. And then you tell Assistant District Attorney Grant Roberts that you cracked the case of a sex operation which involved torturing animals for shocking purposes and culminated in the well-deserved death of the ringleader whose identity is being investigated but may not be ascertained due to the condition of the body. It’s even better than the high-profile arrests you were hoping to make.
“At the press conference, you say that while the police are continuing to pursue the other participants in the secret society, we can be sure that the sicko leading this sexually depraved group has been stopped. Roberts then goes to the podium and announces that the good people of San Francisco can rest easy knowing this criminal activity has been thwarted and its immoral adherents are on the run. The headline reads: District Attorney Announces Major Bust of Pervert Ring.”
I leaned back and waited. Papadopoulos slowly shook his head. I waited. He gave a deep sigh. I waited some more. He looked pained and then resigned.
“You’re full of shit, Riley. But this just might work. I get to quietly close one case and publicly close another.” He paused to stroke his chin and put the other pieces into place. For my part, I was smart enough not to interrupt by noting that I got to keep Goat Hill Extermination out of the whole story.
“The perverts get back to exploiting one another and not endangering the public,” he continued, “unless the citizenry includes bugs and rodents. And the political payoff is that Roberts gets a victory in his holy war and moves onto the next threat to the moral fabric of society.”
“I’m guessing that he has you waging a crusade against cleavage?”
“Almost,” he sighed, the tension in the room dissolving. “There’s a ‘serial exhibitionist’ who’s been exposing himself to tourists on Pier 39.”
“You have to admire a flasher with the confidence to show his goods when it’s fifty degrees and raining.”
“Get the hell out of my office before I change my mind about running with your story,” he said. I could swear that Papadopoulos flashed an actual smile.
~||~
On the way back to my house, the sun broke through and blue sky began to replace the blanket of gray. The forecast had been right—the temperature was rising noticeably. I called Dr. Chen while rummaging through the refrigerator in search of lunch fixings. She told me that, “a certain individual called and made an appointment based on your recommendation.” So Lane was headed into the kooky carnival of psychotherapy. At least he had the money to pay for the fun house, carousel ride, and sideshow. I thanked the doctor and silently wished her patient well.
As I was contemplating the possibilities of rewarming leftover colcannon, Nina knocked on the fron
t door. Her hair was pulled into a pony tail and she had on a Giants sweatshirt worn to a cottony softness and a pair of loose, khaki shorts. She took my hand and led me to her rusting Datsun hatchback, explaining that she’d convinced Gwen to take over at the daycare. In the backseat was a picnic basket atop a raggedly quilt that we used for beach excursions. Nina started the engine while I clicked on the radio and tuned it to KDFC.
The station was playing Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. The composer included detailed instructions but left much to the artistry of the conductor, particularly the pace. Bernstein liked it slow which felt right to me. The key to the whole thing is controlling the instrumental softness at the end of the fourth movement. The music must be exceptionally quiet before bursting into an explosion of two hundred singers, along with eleven French horns and two timpani drums. The Resurrection Symphony is among the most powerful, glorious and memorable finales in all of classical music.
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