Duet for the Devil Read online

  “This is the House of the Devil.”

  “Here–the one they call the Devil. I offer Him to you, as I offer you to Him. You know why they are so eager for you to eschew Him. Of course you know. It is because they don’t want…(you)…to have power.

  Be smart. Come this way. I can arrange it…”

  —Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo,

  brujo, mayombero, ritual cannibal

  — | — | —

  8.

  SCORPIO

  (water)

  “I am the Devil, & I am here to do the Devil’s work.”

  —Tex Watson, Disciple, Manson Family

  “What about your children? You say there are just a few?

  There are many, many more, coming in the same direction.

  They are running in the streets —& they are coming right at you!”

  —Charles Manson

  — | — | —

  9.

  SAGITTARIUS

  (fire)

  “I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head & they would wiggle & squirm all over the place, & then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife & watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood.”

  “One time I told this woman to give me all her money. She said no. So I cut her & pulled her eyes out.”

  “Hail Satan!”

  —Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker

  — | — | —

  10.

  CAPRICORN

  (earth)

  “My prophesy upon this wasted earth and upon the corrupt creation that squats upon its ruined surface is:

  THOU SHALT KILL.”

  —Robert DeGrimston, Jehovah on War

  — | — | —

  11.

  AQUARIUS

  (air)

  “…I shall

  no longer announce to anyone.

  when I comitt my murders,

  they shall look like routine

  robberies, killings of anger,

  & a few fake accidents, etc.

  The police shall never catch me,

  because I have been too clever

  for them.”

  —The Zodiac

  (excerpt from 7-page diatribe)

  — | — | —

  12.

  PISCES

  (water)

  “Souls of Poets dead and gone,

  What Elysium have ye known,

  Happy field or mossy cavern,

  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

  Have ye tippled drink more fine

  Than mine host’s Canary wine?

  Or are fruits of Paradise

  Sweeter than those dainty pies…”

  “…I have heard that on a day

  Mine host’s sign-board flew away,

  Nobody knew whither, till

  An astrologer’s old quill

  To a sheepskin gave the story,

  Said he saw you in your glory,

  Underneath a new old sign

  Sipping beverage divine,

  And pledging with contented smack

  The Mermaid in the Zodiac…”

  —John Keats

  — | — | —

  Prologue

  the sea is a distant whispering. The sea is an invading rhythm, close as the throbbing pulsebeat of your temples, close as the drumbeat tattoo within your deepest ear, close as the sluicing ebb-flow-ebb, the conspiracy of flesh & clockwork, the tyranny that dictates all of mortal pain & pleasure, the assassin locked within the prison chamber defined by boundaries of bone & blood…

  The sea is the fluid slap of flesh-on-flesh.

  The sea is the taste & scent of sex.

  The sea is the womb of generation.

  The sea is the pulse of power.

  The sea is the life-essence reduced to the abstract.

  The sea is said to be the cruelest, most remorseless jungle.

  The sea is the dissolution, the unbinding, the promise of the omniscient/the omnicorporeal/the omnivorous:

  DEATH.

  It has been said that “DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE FUCK…”

  & each orgasm is but an echo of that final truth:

  — | — | —

  [ 1 ]

  This is the longest night of all. Gateway of the Great Night.

  This is not the first night He shall break the First Commandment of lord yahweh. Not the first night that He shall break that named by canon The Sixth or The Fifth… But it is the first night that He shall serve the Circle of Twelve as the Collector of Souls…

  The hulking shadow of the gun-wielding marauder circles the ’61 Rambler four-door station wagon parked on the chill, still strip of lover’s lane, sidling clockwise, passing by the girl who cowers in the passenger seat, passing the right rear door, halting for one eternal instant, extending His right hand that grips the pistol, a tight yellowish beam of light lances out, momentarily dazzling the eyes of the terrified teenagers, & He squeezes off a single shot, the bullet striking the right rear window slightly low & just off-center, exploding the safety glass in what seems some roaring Hell hail spewing forth from the mouth of Belial. (Hail Belial! Lord of the North!, the chant echoes through the lost, cold corridors of His buzzing brain…).

  He pauses. Scans the desolate stretch of Lake Herman Road. Assures Himself He is alone with His Chosen, here, just off the road, outside the chainlink fence of gate #10, entry to the Benicia Water Pumping Station.

  He circles to the left. Fires a second shot. Penetrating the rear wheel housing. Flushing His prey. There is a fumbling series of clicks as the panicked girl strives to spring the latch. There is a groaning creak of cold metal as she manages to yank the car door open.

  He laughs. Oh, how He laughs with the sheer Joy of the Hunt…

  He closes the distance to the driver’s window with brisk, certain strides. Thrusts His arm through the open window, crushing the cold muzzle of the .22-caliber J.C. Higgins model 80 semi-automatic against trembling flesh, just behind the boy’s left ear.

  The pistol coughs, & the bullet —a Super X copper-coated long rifle—shatters his skull, splattering blood & brains all over the Rambler’s interior…

  ««—»»

  A newspaper lies open on the heavy oak dining room table. Circled in red ink is the headline:

  PUBLIC OUTRAGE, NO LEADS IN BRUTAL

  OCALA CHILD-SLAYING

  A line in the same red ink veers off into the central gutter, with a huge question mark &, scrawled hastily in bold print, the single word:

  ZODIAC

  Lying atop the facing page is a plain white business-sized envelope bearing a Houston postmark & no return address. It bulges with its unseen contents, straining the typed name & street number ­of the Chicago addressee:

  Warren Franklin Hawkes

  The blue-steel barrel of the 13-round Browning 1935 High Power 9mm looks like the gaping mouth of a Howitzer to the young college students staring up from where they lie submissively on the picnic blanket. Both wondering, this just can’t be happening —why us…? why us…?

  This secluded lakefront beach at the tip of the tiny peninsula, further isolated by two large oak trees, had seemed an idyllic dream spot for a late-September afternoon & evening’s relaxation. A perfect place to share farewells, following their close friendship at Pacific Union College, as the girl prepares for transfer to UC at Riverside where she plans to study music.

  The stocky man looming above them conceals His face behind a bizarre, black executioner’s-style mask with almost-waist-length tabard with a crossed circle stitched in white. Beneath it He wears a blue-black windbreaker & a reddish-black wool shirt.

  His voice is calm & controlled. Even & soft-spoken. “I want your money & your car keys,” He orders.

  “I want your car to go to Mexico.”

  It’s just a robbery, the boy thinks, issuing a muted sigh of relief…

  A syringe & half a dozen ampules filled with a potent new designer drug lie scattered at
op the battered metal tabletop amid the clutter in this cramped “outlaw” lab. The fluid within them pulses with a chill blue light like the rippling ebb/flow essence of deepsea currents from the yawning, phosphorescent depths of some sub-Mindanao Abyss, the very spirit of lurking Leviathan (Hail Leviathan! Lord of the West! its mesmeric patterns seem to whisper on wavelengths of the subliminal…)

  He is well-dressed, in a lightweight wool, navy business suit & black silk shirt. A pair of black plastic-framed, “Clark Kent”-style glasses partially mask His face. They are secured by a sturdy strap of dark elastic (the type that machinists often use).

  He is concealed from the road by a maple thicket, burning with autumnal hues of rust & gold & scarlet.

  He cradles a rifle in His arms. Waiting. For His moment. For the Hunt. Stalking the most dangerous animal of all…

  [ 2 ]

  Truman Gilmore just passed the Kansas-Missouri border less than thirty-five miles back. He’s heading east through Jackson County, Missouri, & making pretty good time. Despite the pitstop to relieve himself & refuel back at that Texaco in Kansas City, MO. Despite the indulgent several minutes that he’d lost in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, peeling out a crisp twenty for his two Big Macs, Super Size Fries & a large coffee “no-cream-extra-sugar-please,” carefully counting every penny of the change back from the youngster in her rust-&-white uniform. Can’t be too careful, he’d thought to himself, even if she does remind me of a sixteen-year-old Sandy Duncan…

  Truman Gilmore’s full-size-safety-&-comfort Olds DELTA 88 Royale Brougham pushes through the cool molecules of late September air with a whooshing slipstream of turbulence stirred in its wake. The Firestone Steel Belts hum reassuringly as they bite their friction-heated treads into the tiny hills & valleys of the tarmac’s rough & pebbly surface. The car is a blur of white as it chews up the ribbon of pitchy pavement between just-passed & going-to, which, today, means Jefferson City, if time allows, looped by way of Marshall, Moberly & Columbia…

  The Goodtime Gospel Hour sings out its organ-piping message of promised redemption, warming Truman’s eager soul like canned rays of the golden-moted sunlight slanting through the gaps in the tree-lined roadway, lifting his spirits on angel wings of Love & Brotherhood & Salvation-for-the-basest-sinner.

  The flimsy cardboard box lies opened on the roadmap-covered front seat cushion. Beside it lies the brown paper bag with its red-&-yellow primaries, still holding a few rapidly cooling, wrinkling, uneaten fries. There are still a few bites of bun & burger in the open box, a few wisps of pale-green shredded iceburg lettuce, perhaps half a dozen stray sesame seeds, stuck to the box with droplets of congealing grease. Perhaps, for just a second, the thought flashes from synapse to synapse, then blinks out of even semi-consciousness & buries itself somewhere deep within the mnemonic storage banks of grey matter housed within the bone-cage of his fully fleshed skull:

  in the inner cities, foraging in dumpsters for their next meal, are starving ten-year-olds who’d sell you their souls or their bodies for that seven-dollar feast you just wolfed down, who’d shove a knife between your ribs for the scraps, you fat-bellied bastard …

  But if the thought occurs to him at all, it never registers. Instead, he focuses on the burning in the pit of his stomach, the unpleasant too-fullness cinched by his slender, white leather belt, the confining tightness of his white, bulging trousers of rayon-blend.

  The sour-&-sulfur stench of a fart wheezes & wriggles in the mountainous divide of flesh crushed into the creme-velour of cushion sagging beneath his two-hundred-fifty-plus pounds of bulk.

  Truman belches softly into the cupping palm of his left hand. Then says, “Excuse me—” in rote, to no one but himself.

  Interstate 70 hums with traffic, just a few miles to the south. The Missouri River snakes on, washing the banks of its plodding course, perhaps ten miles to the north of where the shiny white Olds slices through the cool, mid-afternoon, September air. U.S. 24 follows the curve of the river…but Truman swears after all these years this route is a shortcut.

  Two-lane blacktop slips by beneath his tires.

  & the waterlogged body of an axe-split farmer snags on a river-jutting branch, & the current of the Missouri tugs it slowly in to shore, its carrion scent drawing a swarm of swirling gnats, & larger, hungry horseflies.

  The Blue Coral Wax-rubbed paintjob of the big Olds gleams white as stripped bone in the slanting sunlight.

  The stacked cardboard boxes packed with as-yet-unsold copies of The Revised New Testament weigh the backseat cushions heavily, bowing beneath the weight of The Word…

  A young girl seems to step from nowhere onto the ribbon of otherwise-deserted roadway up ahead, into the path of the speeding DELTA 88—

  In the scant instants while he brakes, Truman identifies her as: young (twelve? thirteen?), white, obviously in trouble. The gingham dress she wears seems disheveled, her long black hair wildly mussed, her feet bare despite the crispness of the air. She waves her arms above her head in the universal gesture signaling distress, a plea for help—

  The Goodtime Gospel Hour swells out its message of redemption…

  Truman pulls the Olds to a careful stop along the shoulder. Steps from the opened car door. & into the crosshairs of the scope pointing at him from among the nearby thicket of flame-leafed maples, crimson with the autumn’s early chill.

  The sunlight glints momentarily on the polished lens of the rifle’s scope. Perhaps a trained commando might detect its inadvertent warning. But Truman is no commando—only a middle-aged, pot-bellied, Bible salesman.

  & the finger that gently squeezes the trigger is a finger wise in the ways of bringing death. There is no hint of uncertainty. No tremor of mercy in its skillful, even artistic, touch.

  The rifle is a varmint-shooter, a Winchester Model 70, chambered for .220 Swift. It had belonged to the farmer floating even now in the river. But there has been a transfer of ownership in the interim, albeit without official documentation, & therefore virtually untraceable to its current possessor—

  A sharp crack rings out. & echoes.

  The shot scores expertly. But it is far from a killing blow. That would have been far too easy… Instead, Truman senses his legs buckling beneath the bullet’s impact, before his brain even registers the sound, let alone signals the bright flash of pain that sears his flesh as his right kneecap is shattered.

  The Bible salesman folds. He lies on his back, moaning & whimpering his pain & terror. He cannot hear the distant whisper of the sliding bolt, the brazen click of the spent shell ejecting, nor can he sense the precise realigning of the crosshairs. The second sharp crack registers only as a pop in his pain-fogged brain. His body jerks as his left kneecap is blown all to Hell.

  “Ohhh! Jeeezusss!” he wails.

  But, instead of a savior, a shadow falls across his writhing body, bringing a far darker promise…

  It is the shadow of the young girl straddling his body, squatting to examine his bloodstained pants legs, the terror etched into the features of his face, to draw out his fear-scent into her flaring nostrils.

  Truman is beyond noticing. Beyond caring. But if he did, he would notice that she wears no underwear beneath her gingham dress, her young privates lewdly exposed as she squats over him.

  He hears the click of a switchblade flashing from its black plastic casing, traced with coiling dragons in gold. He feels the tip slice into his groin, expertly probing, feels the new pain sear his abdomen.

  He hears the hiss of evacuating fluids. Feels the soaking heat of wetness splash upon his thighs & belly. Sees it steaming in the cool September air. Hears it splatter on the pavement. Smells the scent of her urine. Feels it burn like vinegar in the shrieking rawness of his wounds…

  [ 3 ]

  Strands of barbed wire—some rusted, some still wickedly bright like glistening metallic thorns—are blocked precisely onto the variously textured backgrounds of distressed oak-framed plaques. This collection of jagged, brutal memorabilia
dominates the walls of the spacious apartment.

  The walls themselves are painted in a muted beige-buff blend that the color chart had labeled, “Desert Sand.” Both hue & name had struck immediate chords of resonance in Frank’s mind, appealing on levels conscious & subconscious to his perceptions of rugged masculinity.