Slob

Jack Eichord—the Cop

You know how to get a nigger out of a tree in Mississippi?"

"How's that?" Eichord dutifully responded to the big cop standing next to him in Curley's, the cop bar where every-body in the 18th Division hung out. The guys off the four-to-midnight tour were coming in, all raunchy and thirsty, and Jack was nursing a Stroh's Light in between two guys from Property Crimes, longtime partners, standing on either side of him. The big one in the leather coat had a silk shirt on that must have cost seventy-five dollars, big, bad Fu Manchu, gold chains, ID bracelets, a miniature Mr. T, and the black one built like a fireplug, another open shirt and lots of chains, the white cop looking at Jack but talking to his partner, jiving around with him like they always did.

"You get a goddamn knife and CUT him down." Everybody at the bar laughed, Eichord laughing politely as he felt a tap on his right arm and turned.

"You know how to tell a plane in the Polack air force?"

"Shit, you dumb cacknacker don't you even know how to tell a joke fer' Chrissakes, it's how do you tell a Polish airplane not how do you tell a plane in the Polack fuckin' air force you wooly-headed Watusi midget."

"Listen, ya' big, smelly chuck piece of dog shit, if it's good enough for ya' Mammy it's good enough for you. Anyway, ya' know how to tell a Polack airplane?" Eichord's smile muscles are still bunched up and he shakes his head in the negative. "It's the one with the hair under its wings!" The black cop just about gets a hernia laughing. Eichord has heard all this stuff a hundred times.

"Ya' know what you call six niggers in a Volkswagen?" the big cop asks the bar.

"A stinkbug!" Everybody roars.

"You know why it takes a hundred lawyers to change a light bulb?" Curley, the bartender, interjects.

"It takes one to put in the bulb, and the other ninety-nine to make sure it gets SCREWED!"

When he first quit drinking Jack wouldn't even walk by a saloon but after he'd stayed off the sauce a few months he realized that was a little absurd. You were either under control or you weren't. It was just that simple. If you could walk into a package store and stare all that Daniel's and I. W. Harper and Seagram's right in the face and walk out with a sixpack, you could do the same thing in a noisy, smoke-filled tavern. The kind of work he was in you had to go into bars frequently, and if you didn't you could miss something here and there. Also, he knew how important it was to appear sociable. And he could go into the drunkest joint in town, sip a couple of Oly Lights or whatever, and enjoy himself, go home and maybe top the night off with a strong cup of instant and hit the sack.

Curley's was typically dark, salty, and noisy. A little heavy on the groupie action, more than he was used to anyway, and the fact that these guys he didn't know from up in Prop Crimes asked him along was an okay sign, the word was getting out that he was all right. He was waiting because Bill Joyce, one of the homicide detectives who'd drawn Sylvia Kasikoff, was going to stop by and have a drink with him.

The 18th Division, they didn't call them precincts in the windy, was a fairly high-crime division that embraced a good part of the downtown Chicago area. The vast Chicagoland Megaplex was divided into areas, those then subdivided into divisions which were led, on paper, by division commanders. Eichord was on loan to the homicide unit in the 18th, a division that shared most of the town with the First. They had explained to him where all the jurisdictional lines were but after so many "Eleventh and State's" shot back and forth like ping-pong balls he tuned out on all of it. He was just starting to remember his way around after a lot of years. The main thing he knew was, it was a lot of city to get lost in.

"Walk south till yer hat floats," the white cop was saying and everybody was laughing at a cop story. Eichord smiled and tried not to look over at the clock.

The Property Crimes dude in the leather coat was in the middle of a slightly loud and rather embarrassing recounting of an amorous adventure in which he'd starred when Bill Joyce came in and motioned toward Jack Eichord. Eichord whispered see-ya'-laters, patted both his drinking partners on their backs, and left a couple of bills and change on the wet bar.

"What's up?"

"Come on." He followed Joyce out to the car. Joyce had the light bar going but no siren. "They caught another one. Over in the First this time."

"Four Ocean Six," the police radio crackled.

"Four Ocean Six responding, over."

"Four Ocean Six, please switch to Tac-two, over."

"Four Ocean Six, switching to Tac-two." He reached over automatically, turning the scanner and switching the setting to Tactical/two for a personal. This would enable the car to transmit and receive a message that you could not monitor on the open channel. He squeezed the handset.

"Four Ocean Six in service, over."

"Jack, is that you over?"

"That's Gomez," Joyce said.

"That's a rog."

"They caught a bad one over here. Same MO as

Sylvia Kasikoff and the others. Female Cauc, mid thirties, ME's just pulling in, gotta' go. Out."

A minute or so passed as they navigated the Chicago streets. The radio spat again.

"Four Ocean Six, what's your twenty over?"

"I'll get it," Bill Joyce said, taking the handset.

"Hey, Gomer, we'll be there in about five, six minutes." He gave him the location. "Is Lou there yet?" he got an affirm and signed off saying, "We'll see ya' in a couple of minutes kay." They were there and Eichord found himself getting out at the crime scene, following Bill Joyce and a feeling of troubling premonitions that hit him the moment they got out of the car.

Sylvia Kasikoff was what they called the whole serial murder package but Sylvia Kasikoff herself had been a young, good-looking housewife from Downer's Grove, found on one of the few fields left within a short drive of where they were right now. She'd been found rolled up in a blanket and the killer had not taken the heart. She'd been tied to the others by the semen traces in her mouth. One of the other heart murders had been a matchup on the semen in the mouth, vaginal, and anal orifices, and that victim had also been found with neck broken. It looked like the perpetrator was on a roll now and back in business.

Eichord could feel or imagined he could feel the presence of death before they walked through the police line and around to the back. Joyce spoke to a couple of uniformed patrol officers who told them where Arlen was. A crime scene will sometimes give off a strong aura, particularly a type of homicide or messy suicide. Or perhaps you're only expecting the hideous and the frightening and all the lights and grim faces and black humor just creates an atmosphere conducive to those kinds of thoughts and feelings. But real or imagined, Jack sensed or felt something strong.

"Hey, amigos," Vernon Arlen said.

"Lou."

"Got a Jane Doe," the lieutenant told them, gesturing at a metal container where a photographer was popping flashes, "maybe thirty-five, nude, mutilated, heart missing. Bag lady found the body when she was going through the trash dumpster. ME says semen, and all the rest of it. Slashed down the front the usual way. Blood all over inside the box but none outside. Perp might have killed her somewhere and wrapped her in plastic or a rug or whatever and dumped her in and taken the heart inside, which would explain the blood there and nowhere else." He opened a plastic-encased map of the downtown area and pointed as Bill Joyce moved in closer.

"We're about here—and we'll all work out in a straight line. Bill, you and Jack can take the alley on down that way if you will and just take it on straight out that way when we get done here. Probably won't find anything but we'll give it a shot and then meet back at the office." They were walking over to the dumpster.

"Anything from the bag lady?" Eichord saw an old, disheveled-looking woman slumped over by one of the units.

"Zip. Forget it. Worthless," he said, turning to Eichord. "Have a go but she's just a schizzy old whackadoo. You won't get much." "Right."

"Showtime, folks," the lieutenant said, and they looked down into the horror of the dumpster.

"Jesus Christ."

"You get something like this, man, it can just paralyze a town. I've seen it happen once before here, like Atlanta, L.A., Boston, New York—it just terrorizes everybody. I want to make damn sure the papers and the TV don't turn this thing into another Jack the Ripper. Missing hearts, they get anything to run with, it'll be worse than fuckin' Dracula." He nodded agreement and looked at the mutilated Jane Doe.

The old bag woman was moaning now and Jack Eichord was tired of looking into the dumpster and he started walking over to where she was slumped up against one of the radio units, realizing he'd been holding his breath and taking in a big gulp of oxygen.

One of the young patrol cops was looking like he was just about to lose it and Eichord said quietly, "How you makin' it, pardner?"

"Awright," the young uniform cop mumbled and turned and heaved up nothing into the weeds. Eichord fought to pull his mind back to the matters at hand, as there wasn't much that could make him sick but one of the exceptions was listening to somebody else tossing their dinner.

He concentrated on what to ask the bag lady as he came up and said softly, "Ma'am?"

She turned and said something that sounded like,

"Govayesell."

"Ma'am, ya' doing okay?" he repeated.

"Go for yourself." Then he realized she was saying go fuck yourself.

"I'm sorry. I know this must have been—"

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm." A sharp keening noise was coming out of her. He reached over instinctively and patted her gently and she twisted around and looked at him, but she stopped making the keening noise.

"You gonna' be okay, ma'am?"

"God chose me to be a beekeeper." Or at least that's what it sounded like. He asked her to repeat it and she said something else.

"People don't know what it's like. He sends me all the signals and I have to deal with it handle it somethings some time some time some people and then and then and I and some sometimes some people and it gets and it is—"

She sagged a little and very gently he said, "God speaks through you, does he?"

"Yes, that's correct Mr. Police Person Man. God speaks through me does her yes that's is one hundred percent." She looked at him more closely, perhaps to see if he was making fun of her or teasing in some way.

"I've heard about that," he said, "it must be a big responsibility to carry around with you." She said nothing. Lowered her head again. "When someone does this kind of thing," he went on softly, "we want to find out who did it and stop them before they hurt someone else. That's why I need to know if you saw anything before—"

"I have eels and snakes in my hair and electrical energy voltage that runs up and down my arms and back into here and then that's we that's the that's how someway you see that they are here and that's and then and so I and can and what happens is you get it all mixed up and backward."

"Yes." He nodded at what she had just said as if it made perfect sense. "I know what you mean. And then when somebody does something awful the police have to stop them. You know?"

"Uh-huh. I know." She nodded sagely. They were having a real good discussion. She cocked her head at Eichord.

"I haven't seen you around here before. Do you live here?"

"No. I live a long ways away."

"I live a long ways away too. I live on a planet beyond the moon and on the other side of the stars and God speaks his wisdom through my electric tongue and I know you don't live around here because I have never seen you before and I know how to remember who I have seen before and who I have not and you I have not and so that is how I know you have not. So, there, and there, and—" He interrupted her with his soft, soothing tones and all the while gentling her, calming her down. "So you knew you hadn't seen me around before. You knew I was a stranger around here, didn't you?"

"Yes, that's right." She smiled, revealing blood in her mouth.

"Ma'am, you've got some blood there in your mouth, did you cut yourself?" he asked solicitously.

"Huh?"

"Your mouth. Have you hurt your mouth?"

"Uh. I—" She dabbed a filthy rag at her mouth. saw blood on it and laughed and said, "I have bad gums. My teeth are real good, it's my gums that are bad and sometimes I hurt there and uh—so—" She trailed off.

"You knew I was a stranger around here. You must know everybody around here."

"I know everybody around here."

"If somebody was messing around over there"—he pointed toward the dumpster where a team were working with a body bag—"and you'd never seen them around here before you'd know it, wouldn't you?"

"Uh-huh."

"And I'll bet you could even describe them," he whispered to her softly.

"I can describe them easy, and I speak in the many tongues so that he can fast know the way that what can come of being in the part where I can see something and then they come and take it back and I don't and I will never can be able to see that I wasn't and— "

"It's okay," he said, realizing he was going to get nothing from the poor old lady, and he took a small card out and a pen and began writing numbers on it as he spoke to her. "I'd like to give you something, and I want you to do something for me if you will."

"You want to give me a present?" She brightened.

"This card has my telephone number at work and at home. Please keep this. It is very important"—he was speaking very slowly and carefully, hoping he could hold her attention—"that you call me if you remember seeing anyone around here tonight you have never seen before. Someone who might have done the bad thing to that woman. Someone strong. Will you think about that for me?"

"I have electrical energy currents that plug into my eyes and it hurts so I cannot receive signals from the moon unless they are sent where that I can and so you will see and come up and come around and come out and— " She rocked back and forth and held the card he had handed her. He had to leave with Joyce who was finishing a conversation with the lieutenant, and he thanked the old woman who didn't look up. But as he was walking away she said something that sounded like "You" or "Yoo-hoo" and he turned and she said, "Good-bye Mr. Police Boy." And he smiled and waved at her.

He and Joyce started working their way up the alley or down the alley, whichever it was, and he saw about a dozen others fanning out in teams, patrol guys, half a dozen clothes including two homicide dicks from the 18th, Gomez and Riordan, whom he'd met. Eichord could hear somebody, maybe the young uniform cop, with the dry heaves and he could feel his stomach rumble in spite of himself and he fought to keep the bile from coming up in his throat. He swallowed and concentrated on the make-work at hand.

Someone was both sick and very powerful. To be able to rip human beings apart like that. There'd been a couple with the rib cages totally torn loose. And he remembered the dead farmer they'd found in the pickup across the road from where they'd found the body of the Kasikoff woman. He was a huge, muscular brawler, had a rap sheet even, former bouncer, ex-marine, had a rep for liking to throw a few hands. The killer had taken him effortlessly. Perhaps he'd been an eyewitness to the Sylvia Kasikoff murder and the killer had wasted him to protect himself. But who had he killed first, the woman or the man in the pickup. And why the two together. And were the two of them, the farmer, who was named Avery Johnson he remembered, and the woman— were they connected in some fashion? A boyfriend of the married woman perhaps? All kinds of possibilities to exhaust.

After giving up a couple of hours later and they were dragging back through the alley toward their vehicle, something moved in the shadows against the wall and Joyce tapped Eichord and pointed as the bag lady came out of the shadows, moving toward Eichord out of the darkness, the wheels of her cart rattling toward him.

For just a second or so he imagined she was coming up to him to tell him she remembered seeing a big strong weight-lifter or bodybuilder type and he was going to solve this just like on TV and she came up to him in the light where he and Joyce were standing and smiled pleasantly and confided to him in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Marjorie has snakes and eels nesting in her hair and the current and electricity from the hair comes down and shoots through her hair and into her body and she cannot see what they want because so much planning and decisions all at once and then you don't know where to do or go to next because there is so much happening inside and how can you explain or understand that so much is coming through the air from the moon at night or when energy signals and they never stop so you forget sometimes."