Lost By The River

by David Moynihan

  It was a day made for people-watching. To the right of me were two skilled seamstresses, bundling a few hundred pounds of flesh into various taut corsets. No customers yet, but I figured that show might get better, given the lack of a changing area. They had a nice pair of dogs who slept cutely by the cash register, though the beer-barrier arrested my compulsive instinct to pet.

  At the far end lay a DJ, whose taste in music was too close to mine for comfort. I have this thing about fitting in. Also, a complete lack of taste in music. Still, a bit of habitual grinding by erstwhile models as they swayed past let me know my internal strip bar discography remained current.

  Two booths down, a man demonstrated his own photos. Amateur female models displayed on a laptop sideshow in various stages of undress and submission. I couldn't make out whether the work was quality or not, but believed his efforts a go, if harmed by the lack of a more visible screen. I thought of telling him video projectors could be had for a song these days, and were easy to use, but let it slide, assuming I'd get a better opportunity for conversation later.

  I checked the door for a bit; saw nothing. Handcuffs slid on with ease, off with greater difficulty, but Houdini I wasn't.

  One set of interest came in a booth directly across. Staffed by a pair of babes, one in T-shirt and jeans, the other in a schoolgirl outfit. They sold goods by the jar. Couldn't see what was in the jars, but the pair had men coming by regularly so I guessed oil, and hoped there'd be demonstrations of their own.

  T-shirt wandered closer, holding a staff with linked chains and, at the base, several rubber heads of chickens. I just looked at her. She glanced back at me, flicked her wrist in a manner that sent the faux poultry crackling, said, “My boss is crazy. One show, he had a regular customer come in, say, ''Scott, I need a cat'o nine chickens.' So he made one. It sold. He made another.”

  I thanked her very kindly for clearing the matter up. She nodded, looked me over once or twice, then marched down the hall, dangling her chickens for all to see. Soon, it was time for a smoke break. It's never really not time for a smoke break, but I had to kill the hunger pangs and keep myself from buying a grilled white meat fillet at the concession stand.

  The salary at my new job wouldn't pay for lunch, anyway.

  Out front, a few were already gathering. I'd spend my hours bonding later. We watched apart from us while a submissive struggled to keep the breeze from sealing his leather mask over his cigarette. As it was, I kept scanning the streets warily, vaguely worried like a first-time pot smoker. The chatter from youngish women, and their friend, heavily dressed in black, amused me.

  “No sucking, no fucking, no flaming,” one was saying. I looked up, startled.

  Her friends were nodding.

  “Yeah, that's what it's gonna be for me. Swear.” She crossed her heart.

  The bait was out there.

  “Flaming?” I asked.

  “Right. Last show, I was there demoing a special. Had sticks all around my nipples. But we couldn't get the sticks to go out. It was so painful. Then I had to visit with my pharmacist. I'd got the prescription, but he—it's a small town, you know. He wondered how that could have happened.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Fell asleep with a cigarette.”

  She whipped off her top and showed me the burns in full glory. For a moment I was stuck without a good reply. “Nice ones,” I said finally.

  “Thank you,” she answered sweetly.

  “Badge of honor,” joined one of our tobacco companions.

  I stubbed out the butt first and headed back inside before a near-irresistible urge to utter “thanks for the mammaries” took over my mouth. On the way in, I wondered if this was bad form, a woman goes to the time to show her breasts; it's an issue, a connection between us. You can't pay too much attention, but I wished I'd had a hat or something to give her. Maybe there was a rulebook somewhere.

  I sat back in my seat at the front booth and guzzled beer, looking to attain perfection in my adopted role, and growling at potential customers for practice. Mentally, I observed the passersby, in my head composing a letter to an etiquette columnist.

  Ansbach emerged, lonely, and sat next to me. I resisted the urge to kick him, much. The booth-boss saw the doc, made assumptions and instantly became more friendly. He opened a beer and passed it to me, then went back to discuss a particularly difficult customer with his spouse. Across and to the right, a blonde appeared, setting up jars of something. Sign appeared: Liquid Latex. The blonde found a brunette friend in a knee-length schoolgirl outfit. Then the pair stripped off their shirts in full view of the crowd.

  I turned away from the duo, saw the Doc had gone full fetal, at my side. Fella needed another rest after the pain of dressing. He smiled too much when I flicked his hand off my right boot with my left heel.

  Before us four middle-aged men walked back and forth, proudly in a line, each wearing an expansion of a little girl's dress in bold pastels, the garments crafted of the finest silk and taffeta. For added effect one carried a lollipop, two a teddy bear. Wondered if there'd been a fight backstage over who had a right to carry the bear today, but there was a bit of resemblance in the bonneted faces, so perhaps they were related.

  With the floorshow departing on a wave and curtsy, gals across emerged with latex smeared on their breasts to look like bells or hanging flowers. The blonde coated herself in silver; it gave a clamshell effect that I dug, figuring she'd add a mermaid tail later, hands and a wand moving above her bare chest, seeming to touch the exposed flesh by fingernail.

  Brunette blew upon her friend's chest repeatedly, making sure the rubber had dried, before the pair returned to their booth for another coat.

  While waiting for the artistry, I sat and soaked in the wisdom of crowds.

  One who shared my need to gawk worked in the custodial sciences. Guy wandered past a booth several down from me, whose chief product was some kind of generator, advertised by a naked brunette strapped into a chair and feeling the buzz of electricity. Her hair and other parts could seen from a distance, standing on end.

  The janitor kept circling for repeat glimpses of the same performance, pushing his trash can, neglecting all debris on the floor.

  He finally split, so I enjoyed the crowd.

  “It's not the outfit; it's the woman in the outfit,” said one guy next to me. Vendor blissful, husband anxious, wife leery.

  Two exhibitors, vets from the piercings and tattoos, described home care as they walked past.

  “She's trying to find a lesbian lawn service.”

  “Sounds good, can you afford the pretty ones or the hairy ones?”

  “The hairy ones.”

  A third lady made sales jokes her signature line, but the novelty wore thin on me after the fifth time I heard it.

  “Visa or Master Card?

  “I like 'Masters Card' better. But we also take cash and checks with ID.”

  Highlights of the day were over. And there's just so much enthusiasm one can drum up for revealing outfits that contain flesh in need of concealment. I finished the local paper quickly, then the other one, then the third. It wasn't even two o'clock. Even the beer got on my nerves after a while. It was free, but the kind of name import that loads up on preservatives to keep an “authentic taste.” Stuff gives ordinary people a major headache after half a dose, and three was about what I could take. Not wanting to waste batteries playing games on my phone in case somebody called, I finally dug into my pack and pulled the special must-read papers Irene had dumped on me.

  They were web clippings, from sites like unknowncountry.com:

  Since January of 2004, more than twenty scientists are known to have died in accidents, under suspicious circumstances, or been murdered.

  Tom Thorne and Beth Williams, prominent experts on chronic wasting disease, were killed on December 29, 2004, in a road accident.

  In November, the former head of the Infectious Diseases Unit of the National Institute of Allergies
and Infectious Diseases died in Mexico, with no cause of death given.

  In October, Matthew Allison was killed by an explosion in his car, either due to a bomb or a self-induced explosion. He had degrees in microbiology and biotechnology but was not apparently involved in the field when he died.

  In August, Dr. John Clark, an expert in animal science who developed the techniques that led to the creation of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, was found hanged in his home.

  In July, Dr. John Badwey, a biochemist at Harvard Medical School, developed a pneumonia that could not be diagnosed and died.

  In June, Dr. John Mullen, a McDonnell Douglas nuclear scientist on contract to Boeing, was killed by a massive dose of arsenic. Also in June, Dallas county's chief epidemiologist, Dr. Assefa Tulu, died of a hemmorhagic stroke, believed to be an accidental death.

  Dr. Eugene Mallove, an alternative energy expert and cold fusion researcher, was beaten to death in May near his home. He had just published a letter stating that it was only a matter of months before the world would see a free energy device.

  I stopped for a second. Cold Fusion? That crap? Sheesh. Didn't even make a good movie.

  Also in May, the body of senior programming analyst William T. McGuire, was found in three suitcases in and around the Chesapeake Bay. His murder remains unsolved, and no motive has been uncovered. He was an adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

  In March, Louisiana State University emeritus professor of microbiology Dr. Vadake Srinivasan died in an auto accident apparently caused by a stroke.

  In January of 2004, Dr. Michael Patrick Kiley, an expert on Mad Cow and Ebola died of unexpected heart failure, and Dr. Robert Shope, a virus expert died of lung transplant complications.

  In October of 2003, another LSU professor, West Nile researcher Michael Perich, died in a single-vehicle car accident.

  In July of 2003, British biological weapons expert David Kelly died after allegedly slashing his own wrists while walking near his home. He was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior adviser on biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq.

  Dr. Leland Rickman, an expert on infectious diseases and consultant on bioterrorism at the University of California at San Diego died during a visit to Lesotho.

  The list is a long one, and it goes on. Since 2001, there have been 47 such deaths reported outside of Iraq, and reputedly numerous scientists in Iraq who worked on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs have been assassinated.

  Some other dude, Steve Quayle, took it upon himself to sort the deaths further.

  List of Murdered Scientists

  May 27, 2002

  #1 Dr. David Schwartz... murdered at home..

  #2 Dr. Benito Que... dead in the street...

  #3 Dr. Set Van Nguyen... dead in airlock refrigerator.

  #4 Dr. Don Wiley... vanished.. car abandoned...

  #5 Dr. Vladimer Pasechnik... Dead near his home. ..... Feb. 2002...

  #6 Dr. Ian Langford... Russian.. beaten to death in his home...

  #7 Dr. V. Korshunov... Russian... head bashed in...

  #8 Dr A. Bushlinski... Russian... murdered..

  #9 Dr. I. Glebov.. Russian... Bandit attack....

  Also reported that in plane from Israel to Russia 4 or 5 microbiologists were aboard.. The plane that crashed in the sea near Russia.. that was brought down by missile.. Their names not published.. (that I know of )....

  What did these scientists know that was so important that they had to be silenced..????

  (OR, what CURE could they have come up with to what's about to be DELIBERATELY RELEASED??)

  Another scary article, reprinted from somewhere:

  Mysterious Deaths of Microbiologists

  December 20, 2001

  The Very Mysterious Deaths Of Five Microbiologists

  By Ian Gurney

  www.caspro.com

  Posted by: SPKY

  It is a story worthy of a major conspiracy theory, the script for a Mel Gibson “Who dunnit?” action movie, or a blueprint for a contrived and unbelievable episode of “The X Files”. Except the facts surrounding this story are just that. Facts. The Truth. Five eminent microbiologists, leaders in their particular field of scientific research, either dead or missing in the last eight weeks, and a bizarre connection between one of the dead scientists and the mystery surrounding the death by Anthrax inhalation of a sixty one year old female hospital worker in New York. Sounds far fetched? Read on.

  Over the past few weeks several world-acclaimed scientific researchers specializing in infectious diseases and biological agents such as Anthrax, as well as DNA sequencing, have been found dead or have gone missing.

  First, on November 12th, was Dr. Benito Que, a cell biologist working on infectious diseases like HIV, who was found dead outside his laboratory at the Miami Medical School. Police say his death was possibly the result of a mugging. The Miami Herald reported that:

  “The incident, whatever it may have been, occurred on Monday afternoon as the scientist left his job at University of Miami's School of Medicine. He headed for his car, a white Ford Explorer parked on Northwest 10th Avenue. The word among his friends is that four men armed with a baseball bat attacked him at his car.”

  On November 16th, within of week of Dr. Que's assault, Dr. Don C Wiley, one of the United States foremost infectious disease researchers was declared missing. Bill Poovey, a journalist with Associated Press wrote:

  “His rental car was found with a full tank of petrol and the keys in the ignition. His disappearance looked like a suicide, but according to colleagues and Dr. Wiley's family, the Harvard Scientist associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute would NEVER commit suicide. Associates who attended the St. Jude's Children Research Advisory Dinner with Dr. Wiley, just hours before he disappeared, said that he was in good spirits and NOT depressed. He was last seen at the banquet at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis the night he vanished. Those who saw him last say he showed no signs of a man contemplating his own death.”

  Wiley left the hotel around midnight. The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found.

  Now Memphis police are exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder.

  “We began this investigation as a missing person investigation,” said Walter Crews of the Memphis Police Department. “From there it went to a more criminal bent.”

  Dr. Wiley was an expert on how the human immune system fights off infections and had recently investigated such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza.

  From the United States, the story moves to England. On November 23rd, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a former microbiologist for Biopreparat, the Soviet biological-weapons production facility was found dead. The Times was the only newspaper to provide an obituary for Dr. Pasechnik, and said:

  “The defection to Britain in 1989 of Vladimir Pasechnik revealed to the West for the first time the colossal scale of the Soviet Union's clandestine biological warfare programme. His revelations about the scale of the Soviet Union's production of such biological agents as anthrax, plague, tularaemia and smallpox provided an inside account of one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War. After his defection he worked for ten years at the U.K. Department of Health's Centre for Applied Microbiology Research before forming his own company, Regma Biotechnics, to work on therapies for cancer, neurological diseases, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In the last few weeks of his life he had put his research on anthrax at the disposal of the Government, in the light of the threat from bioterrorism.”

  Back to the United States, and on December 10th, Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was found murdered in Leesberg, Virginia. Dr. Schwartz was a well-known DNA sequencing researcher. He founded the Virginia Biotechnology Association where he worked on DNA sequencing for 15 ye
ars...

  Went on to cite the Washington Post.

  Page after page like that, different websites, an alternative weekly or two. Wasn't the usual internet conspiracy where the same “facts” got repeated almost verbatim. Some dead professors showed up regularly, others rarely, and a number of the “deaths” were clearly accidental, or at least what you'd expect given old age. Too much there, though. I'd need to research the folks who blew up the conspiracists, but didn't have time for it, even without cold fusion. Nor did I care overmuch, as it didn't really affect me.

  I looked again at the Doc near me. Resolved to keep a closer eye on him. That meant no more cigarette breaks. I snarled at the thought. A voice behind me laughed.

  “Keep it surly,” she said. It was my employer, or his wife. Anyway the brains of the operation.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, 'Keep it surly.' You're really driving sales for us.”

  “Oh, I am?”

  “Yeah. In fact, I've got two cellphones, and three room keys to pass along, plus some invites.” She handed me the loot. “One of them goes with this phone,” she added. Sorting the items in my outstretched palm. “She said she wouldn't come by unless you called and gave the OK.”

  “To her room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That happen a lot?”

  “Nope.”

  “When's the vending part end?”

  “Two more hours. But don't you go getting happy on me now.”

  “Two hours? Wouldn't think of it.”

  I sipped another beer. The taste angered me enough to fulfill my secondary role.

  The Doc remained in his fetal position near my boots. I looked down, saw him gurgling happily, elements of saliva forming small bubbles in his mouth. For a moment I thought he'd had another attack, but noticed he could look below the tablecloth and observer myriad varieties of foot and wheelwear passing by.

  Somehow the clock hands moved.