Authors: Joe R. Lansdale
SUNDAY . . . 11:58
p.m.
Thinking back on the blood and her struggles, he had an erection.
He came out of the dark and into the weak glow of the street lamps; lamps long dirty and specked with the splattered ruin of kamikaze bugs. The ankle-length raincoat he had been wearing was now folded over the bloody bayonet and his freshly acquired treasure. The raincoat was tucked tightly beneath his arm. There was nothing hurried about his steps, but then his movements were not lazy either. There was black greasepaint on his face, gloves on his hands and a close-knit cap pulled tightly on his head.
He went to the brown Volkswagen parked at the curb. It had been stolen for two hours and thirty-five minutes. His own car he had left in an all-night parking lot. It was within walking distance of the Jack-In-The-Box where he had, with his ring of keys—the same sort used by professionals for repossessing automobiles—stolen the Volkswagen to use for tonight's job. The first job of many.
He unlocked the Volkswagen, slid inside and started the engine. While the motor idled he used the handkerchief to clean his face. There was a jar of cream he had brought with him to make the task easier that sat on the passenger's seat. From time to time he dipped the corner of the handkerchief into the cream and applied it to his face.
No way could he fool someone into thinking he was black, but at a distance, which was the only way he was going to be seen—little nigger bitch in the alley exceptioned, of course—it was an effective disguise. He had even worked on his walk so that it would appear black. He had once seen a movie called
Cotton Comes To Harlem,
and in that movie a black junkie had identified some masked and gloved men by the way they ran. He had said something like, "I know they was white, man. They ran white."
Well, he could walk black. He put the lid on the cream, folded the blackened handkerchief away in his blue-jean coat pocket, put the Volkswagen in gear and eased away from the curb, headed away from the heart of Houston's nefarious ghetto, The Fifth Ward.
The Fifth Ward. He thought of that, tasted the words on his lips. The Fifth Ward. The words were sweet. Fear defeated, he thought, destroyed like an ant beneath his heel. When he had been in high school all the boys used to say. "If you want to get your guts cut out, just cruise on out to Niggertown and ride up and down Jensen late at night, and one of them woolies will do it for you."
He smiled at the memory. It had been a fear of his childhood, and he had dreamed of defeating it. He was not a man to merely dream anymore—and there was more to it than defeating fear, much more. There was the enjoyment to be gained, enjoyment he had long denied himself, except in dreams, and except for an occasional dog or cat beneath his knife. But that was not enough, not anymore.
Mentally, while walking down the street, while at work, he watched people—especially women, mostly women—and thought how it would be to remove their arms and legs and heads, and how they would look. Little rag dolls pulled apart, liquid, red stuffing, flowing out and away, and he wondered too how it would be to drink their blood, to lap it from the floor with his tongue like a dog. The taste of it and the smell of it had haunted him in his dreams, but tonight, back in that cold, hard alley it hadn't been a dog or a cat, it had been a woman.
He thought again of his childhood fears of The Fifth Ward, said aloud to himself, "If there's going to be any goddamned gut cutting around here, I'll be the one to do it."
God, he almost pounded the steering wheel in delight. It had been wonderful! Much better than his dreams. Much, much, much better. The bayonet a shining arc in the dim street light. The blood, a crimson splatter of draining life, her agonized twistings, her muffled screams trying desperately to penetrate the fabric of her panties. And that had certainly been a good part, putting that razor sharp bayonet against her throat, forcing the panties into her mouth, telling her all the while that his intentions were rape, nothing more. Then when she was gagged, and her arms tied behind her back, he had pulled the blade in a slow arc across her belly, letting it slice deep into her ebony flesh, watching the blood bead like shiny, red pearls pulled up from the black depths.
And then the memory faded a bit.
He would have to work on that part, learn to concentrate and prolong the victim's agony and his pleasure, but he did remember the stench and the sound of her intestines pushing free of her abdomen, swelling out of her belly like coils of rope, and then he had taken her, right there in the alley on cold concrete amidst the smell of blood, intestines, excrement, garbage, urine and cheap wine.
Easy as eating cake. He had just slipped his penis out between the buttons of the raincoat and slammed it to her. Her face, even in dying, had been a beautiful sight. Twisted, disbelieving, the eyes losing their fire, falling away into the distance of her dead mind.
The dead eyes had been fascinating!
When he had finished, he had simply removed the raincoat, folded it inside-out over the bayonet and his little prize, and left the body to the night.
Delicious.
It had been delicious, and best of all, the smell of death was still with him.
MONDAY . . . 12:02
a.m.
High on wine and ready to piss, looking for the darkness of a back alley to let it go, the black wino known only as Smokey found the first hacked body, and upon seeing it through wine-filmed eyes in the half-light of a bug-swarmed streetlamp, lost not only the wine in his stomach, but the remains of a sardine and cracker meal as well.
At first he thought (wanted to think) he was seeing a mannequin surrounded by garbage. Garbage was a common sight and smell in Smokey's world, and for that matter, so was blood and sudden death. He had narrowly escaped Old Man Death a few times himself. But this was something much worse than a Saturday night knifing or bottle beating. This was mutilation for the sheer joy of it— sickness, not frustration or anger. For the mannequin was no mannequin at all, but what was left of a local poke and hop head, Bella Louise. Even in her present state Smokey recognized her. Not more than an hour ago she had taken his fiver, dropped her pants, and with her hands on another alley wall— not even as well lighted as this one—had let him rut out his passion in a quick succession of bumps and groans.
What Smokey had thought to be strewn garbage was in fact intestines. They had been ripped from the body and tossed about. There was enough of the face left to be recognized. Her nostrils had been slit, her lips removed, and a slash as wide as a finger and twice the depth ran the length of her face, forehead to jaw. Her head was nearly disconnected from her body. It clung to her torso by a thick, bloody hunk of flesh and a whitish fragment of bone. One of her eyes was missing. Her once blue blouse was dark and wet and pulled up beneath her armpits. Her formerly pendulous breasts had been hacked away to leave dark, wet wells. Her belly was split from breast bone to crotch. The pants she had worn (Had they been glitter green? Smokey tried to remember), were nowhere to be seen. There was something white, specked with dark blood, stuffed in her mouth.
The smart thing, thought Smokey—and he would certainly think this later—would be to turn out of the alley and step like hell. Let The Fifth Ward take care of its own. It had in the past, it could in the future. But he couldn't. Bella had been little more to him than two minutes in the dark, but some second sense seemed to tell him that this wasn't any of The Ward's doing. No. This was something altogether different, and as much as he hated the goddamned hassling cops, he was going to patter on down to that wine store he robbed from time to time, find a phone and give The Man a bell.
MONDAY ... 2:38
a.m.
Home: that greasy part of the city stuffed with stink and death. He could afford more. Much more. He had the money, but his apartment was enough. In fact, it was perfect. There was the smell of the street cluttered with garbage and the smell of the old, the sick and the dying. The apartment house was practically an old folks' home due to the cheap rent, mostly inhabited by old, wrinkled women perpetually in flannel nightgowns and fuzzy shoes that looked like dead, dyed rabbits.
Sometimes he wanted to cut those old women.
Do the old bleed as well as the young? He wondered.
Sometimes, he could hardly sleep for wondering. Sometimes he wanted to take his bayonet and go downstairs and take the old woman on the bottom floor and do things to her, the things he had done to the girl in the alley.
But he was too smart for that. He lived by a motto: You don't piss in your own sink, you don't shit on your own rug. You play it cool, close to the chest. The city is full of fruit just there for the plucking. Ripe, young fruit and that which was aged as well.
Someday an old one though. Most certainly. One like his mother. All sass and filthy mouth with wine breath and dark gums full of rotten teeth, eyes full of past sins . . . Yeah, like his old lady.
And when he found her . . . and he would find her . . . Hack! Hack! Hack!
He climbed the stairs with the raincoat tucked securely under his arm. He unlocked his apartment and went into darkness. He went to the dining table without bothering with the light. He knew his apartment well without lights, what little there was to know. The table, two chairs, a writing desk with typewriter and a foldout bed was the bulk of its contents. There was a little kitchenette and a small bathroom with both tub and shower. The floor was ancient wood, dirt-brown and peeling with the heads of nails staring up from the boards like small, flint-grey eyes.
He took off his gloves, laid them on the table. He unwrapped the raincoat on top of them, removed the bayonet from the mounds of flesh there, and put it on the table. He picked up the hacked breasts in both hands and squeezed them like sponges, felt the blood drip onto his fingers and run down his sleeves.
"Now, that's copping a feel," he said aloud.
He put the meat back on the raincoat, went over and turned on the light. His hands and the light switch were bloody. He would clean them later. He went back to the table, and cradling the hacked breasts in the raincoat, he took his treasure to the rust stained sink, set the package on the drain board. He took a glass from the overhead cabinet, set it beside the raincoat, and then, carefully, he lifted the raincoat, and pinching one corner of the folded vinyl into a sort of funnel, he drained a quarter glass of blood from it. He drank the blood. It seemed like an elixir; cold, congealing, but still liquid. He got a knife out of the utensil drawer and set about slicing up the flesh for frying.
Part One:
The Hunt Begins
It is the enemy whom we do not suspect who is most dangerous.
—Rojas
Crime is common. Logic rare.
Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.
—Sherlock Holmes
What song the Syrens sang,
or what name Achilles assumed,
when he hid himself among women,
although puzzling questions,
are not beyond conjecture.
—Sir Thomas Browne
Clues are the traces of guilt that the criminal leaves behind.
—Theodore Reik
(Myth and Guilt)
MONDAY ... 4
a.m.
His name was Marvin Hanson.
He was black as the pit and ugly as an ape. He was a police lieutenant. Plainclothes. Homicide division. He had short arms and abnormally large hands with fingers as thick as frankfurters. He was five feet, ten inches tall, but due to the width of his shoulders, the thickness of his body, he didn't look a fraction over five feet, seven inches. His closest friends, all three of them, called him Gorilla. Everyone else called him Marvin, Mr. Hanson, or Sir. A few close associates called him simply Hanson. This was none of Hanson's doing. He was just the sort of person that demanded respect; begrudging respect perhaps, but respect, nonetheless.
Right now Hanson was in one of his least cheery moods. A two
a.m
. phone call had rung him out of Rachel's arms, out of hiswarm bed and out into the night. That, he supposed, was part of the price you paid for being a cop. Constant interruption, discomfort and aggravation. Not to mention ulcers, hemorrhoids and bunions.
In spite of his mood, as always, Hanson was an efficient cop, if a bit on the rough side. He was street-wise and back alley mean. He was also surprisingly well-educated, most of it self- acquired. This was a trait that often surprised people. From the looks of him, he seemed like the type to spend his life turning over the big rock and bursting dirt with a shovel.
Hanson had been brought up in The Fifth Ward, but as he was fond of telling his daughter, JoAnna, he had escaped and made of himself what he always wanted to be. A cop.
Sometimes he regretted that decision, regretted being a cop.
Tonight was one of those times. But it was a way of escape. A way out of The Ward, out of the slime and into the mainstream of life.
But maybe he hadn't managed to escape at all. Sure, he no longer lived in that filthy squalor, but his assignments were most often located there. He was from The Ward. He knew The Ward, and therefore, he was the right cop for The Ward. That didn't make him like it any better. Nor did it make The Ward like him any better. He had their grudging respect, but on the other hand, he was still an Uptown, Uncle Tom, Nigger Cop to them. He thought it odd that the blacks complained about the ghetto, wanted out, but when one of their number made it out, he or she was immediately an Uncle Tom. Catch 22.
There were two other men in the hot, smoky room with Hanson. One was his partner; a tall, rawboned, white man with orange-red hair, green eyes and a Howdy Doodie face. Not to mention poorer taste in grey suits than Hanson had. His name was Joe Clark. He had been a plainclothes detective for just over three years. Before that a city cop, and before that a criminology major. Hanson started off being suspicious of criminology majors, and with good reason. Most of them were about as helpful as a plugged revolver. They were good at technical things, like getting fingerprints off paper or analyzing hair and blood, but they couldn't read the truth or a lie in a man's face any better than they could read a blank wall. They all interrogated their prisoners just alike—or nearly all—and that was in a manner that said: Nothing personal, it's just my job. I know society has treated you rough and the world has shit in your face, but see, this is what I do for a living. I'm supposed to ask questions. Nothing personal.
Bullshit!
It was always personal. There were no two sides to this business. There were the good guys and the bad guys. Oh, sometimes you had to get down on their level, but the result was the black hats behind bars and the white hats triumphing. It was as simple as that.
Clark, criminology major or not, was an exception to the rule. He, like Hanson, took it personal. Being a cop was part of his fibre, the sinew of his soul. He wasn't afraid of death or dying. He wasn't afraid of going all the way. Not striving to nail a guilty party, not really caring if he got a confession out of a murderer or not, was like putting a bloody rabbit between a hound's jaws, turning your back and saying ever so politely "Please don't eat the rabbit, Mr. Dog." It just didn't work.
Clark was a good partner. Both Hanson and Clark were deeply hurt by the wholesale corruption associated with The Houston Police Department. Hurt most because most of it had proven true. It was rampant and blatant. But he and Clark tried. They got rough occasionally; more often they threatened violence—not exactly legal, true, but very effective. The mere sight of Hanson's massive paws clenching and unclenching was enough to make a person feel very confessional.
The third man in the room, Smokey, was twisting his faded, blue baseball cap in his hands as if it were something alive he was trying to strangle. He was sitting in a hardback chair, slightly slumped forward, legs spread defensively. He looked up at Hanson with rheumy eyes; milky swirls crowding blue, a white man's eyes in a black man's face.
34
"I knowed I'd been better off to let that 'ho lay," Smokey said.
Hanson, standing, hovering over Smokey like The Sword of Damocles, said, "Nobody's hasslin' you. Start over."
"Man," Smokey whined, "I done told you."
A little less patient than before, Hanson said, "Start over. I've known your sorry ass all my life, Smokey. You ain't worth a damn and you know it, I know it, and anyone that's ever heard you run your mouth long as five minutes knows it. But I don't think you killed Bella. That take a load off your mind?"
"But I look good for it, don't I, Cap'n?"
"That's lieutenant, not captain. And no. You don't look good for it. If you'd cut that gal like Higgins says she was cut, you'd have ..."
"You ain't seen her?" Smokey interrupted.
Hanson shook his head. "I was assigned to this case, instant like. A phone call and Higgins says the Captain wants me on this one. So I'm on it. That's all I know. Higgins said it was messy. Okay, Smokey? All your questions answered? I'm supposed to ask the questions here. Got me?"
Smokey nodded.
Hanson took a bulky King Edward from his coat pocket, fired the cigar with a paper match and sucked smoke, blew it out his nostrils lazily. "Like I said, it doesn't look like you did it, but ..." Hanson paused and made a production of puffing his cigar.
"But what?" Smokey asked dryly.
Hanson leaned down close to Smokey's face, smelled the rotten teeth and stale wine breath.
"You could be made to look good for it. I
mean if you don't give us all you know, and give it straight, it could really start to look bad for you, Smokey. Beal bad. Savvy? Now let's run through this one more time, and you answer my questions straight and don't try to con me, 'cause you ain't got the good sense to con me . . . and don't think them rubber hose days are completely behind us. You've heard what happens to folks that want to get smart with us. Haven't you, Smokey?"
"Yeah, I heard."
Clark could just manage not to laugh. It was a cruel trick for Hanson to play on the old man, but it was one that would garner immediate results. Because, unfortunately, the Houston Police Department had a reputation for following up threats.
"You understand what I'm saying?" Hanson asked Smokey.
"I get your drift."
"You're going to tell it straight?"
"I'm going to tell it straight, Mr. Hanson."
"That's nice. I thought you were," Hanson said standing upright, removing the King Edward from his mouth and holding it cupped in his huge, bear-like paw. "I never thought differently. Not for a minute. Not for a second." Hanson turned to Clark, said, "Turn on the tape recorder, Joe."
"Ready?" Clark asked Smokey. It was one of the three words he had said during the entire interrogation. The other two words had been, "Sit down."
Smokey nodded that he was ready. He gave the twisted ball cap a breather, put it on his knee and looked down at it like he had just discovered it perched there.
Clark turned the recorder on.
Hanson said, "State your name, please."
"Smokey."
"Your full name, please."
"Clarence Montgomery. My daddy gave me that name Smokey and that's what folks call me mostly."
"Tonight you claim to have found a body. A woman you knew named Bella Louise Rob- bins. Could you tell us where that occurred?"
"I don't claim nuthin'," Smokey said. "I did find fella all cut up..."
"Could you tell us where?" Hanson interjected.
"Hell, Mr. Hanson, you know where."
To Clark, Hanson said: "Will you turn off the tape recorder, please."
Clark turned off the tape recorder.
Smokey fearfully stretched his thick lips over his rotten teeth, said, "I fucked up, didn't I?"
Hanson nodded his head slowly. "You fucked up. Just answer the questions when I ask them. Make it short and sweet like. Like you're telling somebody that hasn't ever heard it before. You got that?"
Smokey nodded.
"I said, have you got that?"
"I've got it."
"I don't want to have to cut off the recorder again and explain it over."
"No sir."
"If I have to cut off the recorder again, I send Joe out for the rubber hoses and a pair of wire pliers."
"Wire pliers. What for? What's the pliers for?"
"You don't want to know. Gonna do it right?"
Smokey nodded.
"What?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah what?"
"I'm gonna do it right."
"Turn it on, Joe."
Clark clicked the recorder into service again. Smokey gave his story, straight this time, brief and without interrupting the flow of the tape. When he was finished they let him go. They could have held him, but saw no reason to. Smokey had been little help, other than turning in the body in the first place, and Hanson admitted to Clark that that surprised him.
"Why do you think he turned it in?" Clark asked.
Hanson shook his head. "Don't really know, but I got this feeling."
"Alright, Sherlock. What's the feeling?" Joe shook out a Kool and lit it with a Bic lighter.
"It's just a feeling."
"Yeah."
"No evidence for it."
"Tell me. You and I have talked about cop feelings before. We put some stock in them, right?"
Hanson blew out some smoke. "Yeah right."
"Right now, tell me quick, gut reaction. Why did he do it? Why did he come in when normally he wouldn't have?"
Hanson put his hip into the long table that the tape recorder was perched on, puffed his cigar until his head was swarmed in grey smoke.
"I think he turned it in," Hanson said, "because he senses something. Something that you get from living on the street. You heard how he described the body. He was almost ill. I know for a fact that Smokey's seen quite a few stabbings and cuttings. Even done one or two minor surgeries himself. He was scared because it wasn't, in his mind, or mine either, for that matter,the work of a spontaneous killer."
"I'll agree with that," Joe said.
"It was premeditated and done for pleasure. Smokey said Bella looked like a butchered hog, only messy. It was deliberate mutilation, if his description was accurate."
"Lot of folks in The Ward are like that. Hell, Gorilla, you of all people know that."
"Mean, yes. I'll buy that. But this is something else. If Smokey's right, if it's as he says, I'm afraid we just might have something nasty on our hands."
"Something like a black Skidrow Slasher?"
"Maybe. Not many of you honkeys are going to cruise around The Ward after midnight, not unless you're selling a little white powder that some of the folks down there think they have to have to get up in the morning."
"Maybe it's a pusher that done it, disguised the killing to make it look like a nut murder. That's an angle. Bella could've been pushing drugs on the side, I mean her record shows that she's been picked up as a user before, nothing concrete in the eyes of the law, but you and I know. That's an angle, too. A pusher could have done it and covered his tracks. Or Bella could have been pushin' and someone decided they didn't need to pay for it, so they took it and did Bella in. Whataya think?"
"Maybe."
"But you don't think so, do you?"
"Not really."
"What do you think?"
"Don't know yet."
"Come on, Gorilla. What do you think?"
"I think it might be a good idea to start by seeing the body."
"Oh cheery," Clark said. "Let's go."
*
The morgue is open twenty-four hours a day.
There is always someone on duty. It doesn't close for holidays. Not Christmas, not good ole George Washington's Birthday. It is the palace of death and examination. It is more constant than the city. It always has customers. They drop by at all hours of the night, most often arriving in white wagons with blue and red lights.
Tonight the morgue has a new customer. This customer is allowed special privileges. The head of The Houston Medical Examiner's Office is called from his sleep.
There has been a terrible death, they tell him, an unusual death, and tonight, as soon as possible, he must make a preliminary examination of the body, and tomorrow after he has rested (and don't sleep too long), he is to perform a detailed autopsy. The autopsy is not to find the cause of death, that is obvious, but to determine if the murderer has inadvertently left behind clues to his identity: blood not matching the type of the victim; skin beneath the victim's fingernails; pubic hairs; seminal fluid and the like. Not an overly complicated job. A job many at the morgue could perform. But in a case like this, a suspected "nut murder," the authorities want the best, and Doc Warren is the best.
Doc Warren arrives, slips into his work clothes: white smock over-lapped by green plastic bib-apron. With the assistance of a long, lean, similarly-dressed attendant, he rolls out the body for a look. The refrigerated air from the storage compartment spits its cold at the pair. They slide the body onto the rolling table with professional ease. The white sheet covering the body is stained with splotches of red. The pair hardly notice.
They wheel the body to one of the metal autopsy tables in the room that Warren affectionately calls "the slicing room," and even after all these years, Doc Warren once again bumps his head on the specimen scale that hangs at the head of the table, says his now classic line, "I'm gonna remember that one of these days."