Duet for the Devil Read online

  “Hold him still,” commands the dick. He is holding a needle & syringe glowing with blue light. “Time for a jolt of Blue Devil.”

  Slice tries to voice a protest but there is a partial vacuum in his lungs from the gut punch. The needle slips into a vein in his left arm & blue light is injected into his bloodstream. The world suddenly tilts on an axis of madness.

  “You ever killed anybody, pal?” The house dick’s voice seems a faraway place & has the crackling, thrashing sound of a tree falling in a lonely forest.

  Slice attempts to answer but his mouth won’t work.

  “No matter. You’re cocked & loaded now. A fine dose of death hunger.”

  Light-headed & queasy, Slice notices a blue luminescence, then realizes he is its source; his skin is glowing with blue light.

  The house dick tells the brutes: “Bring in the girl.”

  An adolescent girl with over-developed breasts is thrown to the floor at Slice’s feet. “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleads.

  The dick releases Slice’s wrists from the manacles.

  “I wanna go home,” the girl sobs. On her bare knees she looks in fear upon the shining blue Devilish face of the man towering over her.

  His eyes eerie & glowing with blue light, Slice clasps his powerful hands around her slender throat, rushing on the feel of soft, fear-sweating flesh, the windpipe crumpling like a discarded milk carton (imagine: the graphics in red, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?,” imprinted on its waxy surface…) in his viselike choke-hold. The necklace of purple bruises glowing like amethysts, imaged through the wired vision of Blue Devil. His head is a skull of cobalt crystal resonating to her vibes of terror, a symphony in blue, scintillating the essence of all blue, an extreme beyond blue, fireworks rainbow of blue exploding through his every cell, shattering his perceptions into a million jagged fragments, each a holographic prism-chord of DEATH IN BLUE…

  He senses her vertebrae snapping like fragile wishbones, & he keys off the childhood memory of strangling a clucking, wildly thrashing hen (his younger sister’s pet), while he brutally violates the stupid creature…

  The scent of death glows in every molecule of air, the pheromones of fear thick in the intermingling of sweat & evacuated body wastes, the final flood of impurities exiting en masse from every pore & orifice, the purging ritual of death…

  The death rattle gurgles from her crushed esophagus…

  Then Slice carves her with his boot knife into a sculpture of mutilated meat.

  [ 14 ]

  Near the Texas-Louisiana border, on a beach in the populous Gulf Intercoastal Waterway region near Houston-Galveston, the badly decomposed corpse of an Hispanic male washes up with the early morning’s incoming tide:

  The soft, dark, silt-like sand burbles with the myriad burrows of long-horned sand fleas, & glistens rosy-golden in the gentle fire of September dawn. White-rumped sandpipers, recently roused, begin their day’s foraging; long, skewer-like bills dart & jab into the oozing grit, dragging forth their tiny, wriggling prey. Flecks of tar cling in clotted smudges to their fragile calipers of claws. Stinging midges swarm in low-flying swirls of pinprick existence.

  Oily crusts of seafoam ridge up around the tide-dragged bulk of rotting human flesh. The shoreward-pounding surf spills its gurgling flood in a phantom rush of wetness up the gentle incline of beach. Runnels of briny water etch fleeting gulleys in the seaward pull of ebbflow. A hungry horde of sideways-scuttling hermit crabs, their turret-like shell-homes swaying & clicking one against the other, pick greedily at the tattered meat of the ocean-ravaged corpse. The dawn breeze is heavy with the scent of salt & decaying organic matter & offshore oil spill. The tide whispers its secret dramas, whispers its rhythm-pulse of life & death in endless ebb & flow…

  [ 15 ]

  Less than an hour later:

  The early morning jogger crests the nearest dune, scattering bursts of the dirt-gritty sand as the soles of his Nikes impact & flex, monotonously impact & flex again & again with neo-mechanistic precision, plunging him down the steep, scrub-choked incline to the narrow strand of petro-chemical-polluted beach. Wired into his Walkman’s rhythms, the hammering pulsebeat of Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire” dictates the measure of his strides in the dreamtime rush of dripping sweat & pistoning muscles. His laboring lungs ache with the pleasant fire of September-chill dawn air…

  Stan Simpson breaks pace—abruptly. He nearly stumbles over the sodden hump of sprawling, sea-dragged corpse. The sight & the stench of corrupted flesh shrieks through his perceptions. His legs cramp from the suddenness of his ceased exertions. No cool-down to restore his body to its proper biorhythms…

  His stomach cramps painfully, rejecting violently its half-digested contents: a Cuisinart-blend of OJ, Gatorade, spirulina powder, egg yolks, sliced banana, & four ounces of Almond-Date Granola in acidophilus…

  [ 16 ]

  September sunlight slants from low on the eastern horizon, throwing the deep shadows of the dunes across the sparse strip of beach like a cloak of blue-grey flung upon the sand. Long human shadows saunter down the scrub-dotted incline of beach, approaching from the north. Boots kick up tiny, staccato bursts of dingy sand.

  The shadows pause. Gesture. Stoop.

  “Christ Jeee-Zusss! They drug us all the way out here—”

  “For some fuckin’ Spic floater—”

  “Ain’t they got anything better for us t’ do than help mop up th’ risin’ tide of brown scum—?”

  “Now, shhhh-itt, Virgil, y’ don’t wanna sound like y’ ain’t culturally aware, do y’…?”

  The tan & khaki fabric of their still-crisp uniforms flutters slightly in the salt-etched breeze.

  “Sum-bitch stinks!” The image of the sea-ravaged corpse flashes in the wire-framed reflection of mirrorshades. “Fly bait—”

  The dark swarm of stinging midges has thickened as the beach warms. Larger flies buzz angrily like the far-off, hinted echo of phantom chainsaws…

  “Looks t’ me like The Smuggler’s Blues done claimed another casualty.”

  “Could be Banana-polit-linked… This hack job looks t’ me like it has th’ earmarks—”

  “Heh! that wz pretty good, Virgil, considering—”

  The fingertip of the shadow brushes the severed outline demarcating the obscenity of absence, & the hollow pits of ear holes, openly exposed.

  The two Galveston County Deputies kneel, examining the body more closely.

  “Yeah. & they took off all ten fingers, nice & clean,” says the taller, leaner of the two, poking at the hands of the corpse with his nightstick to show off the neatly-severed stumps to his partner.

  “Whacked off his cock, too, while they were at it, & stuffed the fuckin’ thing in th’ Spic’s mouth, Bill…”

  “Ain’t nothin’ special about that, typical way they do their politicos—”

  “& dopers. If this dude double-crossed someone connected, or maybe threatened t’ rat ’em—”

  “Looks like somebody thought they were an artist.”

  The two stare at the white-lipped gashes sliced into the man’s chest:

  7734

  “Some kinda gang thing, y’ think?” questions Virgil.

  “Have t’ wait for th’ fuckin’ coroner on this one,” says Bill. “Be interesting t’ know if he bled t’ death or choked on his own cock—”

  [ 17 ]

  Snuff dips the tiny spoon into his stash of nose candy, deftly pouring twin lines of white powder onto the mirror’s gleaming surface, forming it precisely with the gold fire of the razor’s edge. He inserts the tip of the fluted straw into first one nostril, then the other, snorting deeply, reveling in the riprush of his indulgence…

  His daughter, Juliette, is only thirteen. But the sea-blue Hell of her eyes flashes with a wanton madness that shrieks of fathomless sins, of depravities wriggling their whorish lusts at the darkest netherpit of backbrain…

  Since the age of five she has been trained as a beast of prey. Blooded early
. She hungers for the scent of fear, of pain & suffering. She is casual. Insolent. In her dealing out of death… A cardshark who ten-times-out-of-ten can upturn The Horseman or The Blasted Tower as she wants, cutting her Tarot of the Doomed with fluid grace & so-disarming innocence…

  …Snuff can see her as she eagerly slices off the Mexican’s cock & ball sacs as he lies on the gently rocking deck of his sailboat, the man squealing & spasming like a live-butchered hog… The girl, bareassed naked, having played out her part of the captive runaway, bartered to this lecherous & affluent Hispanic, this real estate broker (who, through his ad in the “PERSONAL” column of a Galveston swingin’ singles-only newspaper, cautiously suggested what he really sought…), by the pair of sleazy pimps that Maldoror & her father seemed typecast for…

  …The girl, alone with the stranger & below deck in the cabin, so seemingly innocent & helpless, as the man, Jorge, had torn off her clothes, exposing her girlish charms to his shark-hungry eyes & clawing, lewdly exploring fingers… The girl giggled fiendishly as her father kicked the man savagely at the base of his skull, stunning him, crushing him against her naked body as Snuff throttled him to near-senselessness, then tugged his khaki-colored shorts down around his hairy thighs & raped the Mexican anally while he gasped & moaned, face-downwards, atop the young girl’s soft, white, quivering belly…

  The throbbing serpent of veins & gristle rears its ugly, mushrooming head within the confines of Snuff’s tight Levi’s, at the remembrance of their unspeakable crimes of passion…

  [ 18 ]

  “OCALA

  3/4 MILE”

  the warning road sign reads.

  Frank Hawkes eases the gunmetal silver Stingray into the extreme right-hand lane.

  His EXIT sign flashes its notice in bold white-on-green, & Frank’s left hand-tooled lizardskin Tony Lama gently depresses the clutch pedal. The polish of the desert tan boot is GI-reg, lighter-candled, glossy. The pressure on the clutch is precise, syncing perfectly with the downward gearing of the stick shift & the succession of smoothly-executed taps on the brake pedal with his right foot—a pro at Daytona couldn’t slow for the slope of the turnoff ramp with cleaner moves…

  Yeah. But this is North Central Florida. Thoroughbred country. From his past experience, Frank recalls the profusion of stables & practice tracks, the rich emerald verdure of fields & turf.

  He’s been this route before. What was it—sixteen? seventeen…? years ago that the brutal, assassin-style gunshot murders of the handcuffed & helpless elderly couple in their antique store had drawn his attention. But it had been a false lead in his relentless search, tracking the bloodtrail of seemingly unrelated homicides that he knew to be the work of a single “family” of serial slayers. The close-range pistol killings of the popular, neighborly couple had been a cruel & senseless termination. Unnecessary in the context of the robbery that netted the perps over half a million dollars worth of “hot” one-of-a-kind collectors’ items, tainted with blood & damn hard to fence, considering… It had been a gut feeling that the true motive might have been the thrill of the kill. A weird prickling of the nape hairs when he’d read the printout of an NCIC alert. He’d known full well that some of the “signatures” of his quarry had been absent. Perhaps, in part, it had been the relative proximity of the lakes encircling the region. Or just strained nerves, eagerly seeking some clue to pick up the broken links of the chain of crimes that he’d spent every spare moment, & more, connecting from their earliest manifestations in the publicity-hungry bravado of a San Francisco-area urban terrorist gone subterranean, no longer needful of the headline splash of media hype detailing his every bloody exploit, zig-zagging again & again the length & breadth of the U.S. in a webwork of death & torture­—

  For over thirty years Frank has pursued the elusive phantom of his own personal “Great White Whale”—

  The High Priest of Sudden Sadistic Slaying, gathering a veritable army of slave souls to serve Him in Paradi(c)e, a depraved genius paranoically meticulous in His every action, glorying in the secret knowledge that He is without doubt the Sultan of Serial Killers, His “family” of murderers having taken more lives than all other multiple slayers in American history, North & South, combined…

  His personal tally of kills pales the lurid exploits of Pedro Lopez, “the Monster of the Andes,” with his three hundred-plus child murders, & the infamous claims of Henry Lee Lucas & Ottis Toole (later recanted…) by a ratio of nearly two-to-one…

  Only he knows the exact sum total of His kills. Each murder engraved in photographic detail in the black Hell of His perverted, seething intellect & some sick souvenir saved from each for future reminiscence…answering the arcane needs of His obsession.

  For Frank, his own obsession is to bring this sadistic maniac to justice—­swift & final.

  For Frank, the System he once served has failed miserably as a workable solution in stopping this reign of bloodshed & terror.

  For Frank, today, at least one loop in his lifeline has come full circle. It was his AWOL to this very spot that was given as the official reason for his termination from the Bureau. & all for a red herring. For “gross insubordination & dereliction of duty.”

  But if it hadn’t been that incident, it would have been another. He was a marked man for his decidedly eccentric viewpoints­.

  But, what the Hell, as the saying goes:

  “LIFE’S A BITCH & THEN YOU DIE…”

  [ 19 ]

  As the man called Slice—his lapis lazuli brain languishing in the bluesy afterglow of his inspired work on the killing floor—leaves Mermaid’s Inn, Professor takes the private elevator to the small “lab” over the snuff parlor.

  He sits at the compact computer keyboard, turns on the juice & keys in the four-digit command code: “7734.” The video monitor flashes through each color of the programmed spectrum, finally locking on an intense sapphire blue. Then he inserts the sterile needle into the last good vein in his left arm & sets the IV drip of glowing blue liquid at ten drops per minute…

  Feeling the first-stage euphoria of blue rush, he plugs the tiny jack on the end of a matte black cable into the dermal patch on the back of his neck.

  Twenty drips later he has created a new psychic profile:

  “Codename Slice.”

  He punches the “Homing” code, hits “ENTER” & leans back in his chair like a kid getting set for a roller-coaster ride.

  The monitor’s screen suddenly displays a kaleidoscopic dance of every conceivable shade of blue. His brain begins humming an electronic symphony of bluenotes, his penis pops out of his pants, thick veins pulsing with blue hunger, & his mind is catapulted

  (stage two) into the computermind, running the circuitry in milliseconds & shooting off into blue ether… searching… homing…

  (stage three) MINDLINK:

  Waterfront. Salt-spray wind. Bootheels beating blue funk tattoos on the misty street. Dark alley deathrattle from dying drunk. DUI. Dying Under the Influence. Beyond the yellow glow of streetlamps darkness breaks into a mosaic of soft blue. Yellow, dented taxi turns corner & noses along waterfront. Hail the taxi with your stiff dick, look at the driver with murder in your eyes, silencing him before his lips have a chance to move, slide into the backseat & give him the address that came to you from nowhere (?), & check to see that your bootknife is still in place, snuggled coldly against your ankle like a steel kiss tempered with deathhunger & ready for action. Taxi stinks of dried puke, stale tobacco smoke, aged-on-upholstery booze, cheap cologne & pungent body odor filtered through dirty clothing. The Hispanic driver is rapping about baseball, basketball & pussy, watching you in the rearview mirror. Though he tries to hide it, you smell his fear. He is going on about John Dillinger’s dick when the taxi arrives at the address you gave him.

  “Pull into that alley,” you tell him.

  After a long moment’s hesitation, he drives into the dark alley formed by the tenement building & a liquor store. He starts babbling in Spanish, something abo
ut money, you think, & your hand drops to the handle of your bootknife. With a whisper of steel on leather the knife comes out, & with your left hand you grab a handful of his curly, greased hair, yank his head back, & bring the blade around swiftly & slice his Adam’s apple. He makes a wheezing, gagging sound as you force the blade deeper & rake it across his throat. Warm liquid sprays your hand & wrist. His head comes further back over the driver’s seatback & you feel the blade make contact with vertebrae in his neck. His entire body shudders. You cream in your jeans & withdraw the knife. Leaning back in your seat & closing your eyes to the blue haze, you flavor the bloodsmell. The scent of copper.

  “A penny for your thoughts…” you quip to the corpse, giggling in stoned elation at your free-associating, gallows humor…

  You get out of the car, open the driver’s door, expose the dead man’s blood-wet chest, & carve “7734” into the flesh of his abdomen.

  You reach down in the jingling depths of your pants pocket, draw out two pennies in spare change, & lay the twin disks of grimed & battered coinage meticulously across the whites of his gaping, deathblind eyes…

  “Buy yourself a ride with the Boatman, chump,” you say to the cabbie, his internal meter reading: “PERMANENTLY EXPIRED.”