Survival Of The Fittest

59

My eyelids slammed as tight as metal shutters. My mouth tasted metallic. Breathing was difficult, each inhalation a rip in my lungs, and the pain in my head was a scarlet-orange-black thing.

Drowsy, but I hadn't lost consciousness. I tried to open my eyes. Too heavy. I could hear, smell- so much metal- feel, think- feel myself being lifted, pressure at wrists and ankles. Meaning at least two of them… bumpy ride.

Steps- the stairs down to the bedroom.

Lowered onto something soft. Perfumed.

Zena's perfume- Zena's bed.

New pressure bore down. Wrists, ankles, belly. Weight- dry, warm, crushing weight, like a big dog sitting on me.

The snap of clamps; now I couldn't move.

The back of my head was hot and caustic, as if something larval and fanged had hatched inside my skull and was chewing its way out… lesser pain in the crook of my right arm.

Cold sting- an injection.

I tried again to open my eyes. A sliver of light before they collapsed.

Everything okay, because Milo and Daniel knew. Daniel was listening.

Then I wondered: Not a sound had been made since I'd entered the house and said hi to Zena.

Were they assuming Zena'd made good on her promises, the lovemaking beginning spontaneously, silently?

Or were they unable to hear- an equipment malfunction? Those things happened. Space shuttles went down.

Waiting for some kind of signal from me?

My lips wouldn't function.

Rest up, stay calm, regain your strength.

The plan had been for me to open the living-room curtains. Did the fact that I hadn't alarm them?

Where were they?

I needed to say something for the parabolic mike.

Breathing was so hard, my throat a pinpoint- now I did black out.

Up again, no idea how long it had been. Eyes wide open, pupils aching as they expanded to take in the bright light of the bedroom.

The bedroom ceiling, I could see little else.

White ceiling, sparkle-sprayed.

The light from a cheap plastic fixture. White, circular, brass finial in the center, like the nipple of a big, white breast, Zena's breasts so small-

I pressed my head to my chest to see what was holding me down. Leather restraints. Thick, brown hospital restraints; as an intern on the psych wards, I'd wondered what they felt like…

Flashes of color off to the left. I struggled to get a better look, my neck tremoloed with pain that traveled down my spine, as if someone had run a filleting knife down my center.

Say something for the damned mike.

My tongue was a soft, useless pillow, taking up space in the garbage can claiming to be my mouth.

I strained some more, studying the color to my left.

Eyes. White eyes with flat black irises.

Dead eyes- plastic.

Stuffed animals, what seemed to be a mountain of them stacked against the left-hand wall. Behind them, another curtain. Behind it, no doubt, another glass slider.

Teddy bears, a gigantic panda with a lolling head. Disney characters, a killer whale that was probably a souvenir from Sea World, more kapok and felt that I couldn't make out clearly.

Zena's collection… that surprised look. I'd taken it for wide-eyed arousal-

The wire around her neck, gritted with blood, just a twist away from decapitation.

I moved and the restraints compressed my chest and my forearms and my shins.

But I was breathing better.

“Good,” I said.

It came out “Guh.”

Loud enough for the mike to pick up?

I tried to relax. Pace myself. Save the energy for talking.

As I worked myself up for another syllable, a face blocked out the light.

Fingers pinched my left eyelid, lifted it, let it snap as something tickled my nose- bristly, the face so close I couldn't focus.

Then it drew back.

Dirty-blond beard-hairs raking my chin on the way up.

Smelly beard- fermented-food stink- over red skin, dandruff flakes.

A hair-framed mouth breathed on me, hot and sour. A pus pimple nested in the fold between nostril and cheek.

More distance and I saw Wilson Tenney, dressed again in a sweatshirt, this one green and reading ILLINOIS ARTS FESTIVAL.

“He's up.”

“Nice recovery,” said another voice.

“Must be in good shape. The rewards of a virtuous life,” said Tenney. Then his face shifted to the right and vanished, as if moving offstage, and another one, freshly shaved, ruddy, sun-burnished, took its place.

Wes Baker folded his arms across his chest and studied me with mild interest. His eyeglass lenses glinted. He wore a pink button-down shirt, beautifully laundered, sleeves folded up crisply on thick bronze forearms. I couldn't see past the third button.

His right arm held a small hypodermic syringe filled with something clear.

“Potassium chloride?” I said, for the mike, but it didn't come out right.

“Speech will return in a few minutes,” said Baker. “Give yourself a little more time for your central nervous system to bounce back.”

I heard Tenney's hoarse laugh from behind me.

“Potassium chloride,” I tried again. Clearer, I thought.

Baker said, “You just won't relax, will you? Obviously a striver. From what I've been able to gather, pretty bright, too. It's a shame we never got a chance to discuss issues of substance.”

How about right now? I thought.

I tried to say it. The result was a series of mouse squeaks. Where were Daniel and Milo?

Taping, wanting evidence? But… they'd never let me down…

Baker said, “See how peaceful he looks, Willy? We've created another masterpiece.”

Tenney joined him. He looked angry but Baker was smiling.

I said, “Zena was… artistic.” Almost perfectly clear. “Goya…”

“Someone who appreciates,” said Baker.

“Posed…” Like Irit and Latvinia and-

Tenney said, “Her life was one big pose.”

“No gentle… strangulation?”

Tenney frowned and glanced at Baker.

“Why kill her?” I said. Good, the words were out; my tongue had shrunk to normal size.

Baker rubbed his chin and bent closer. “Why not kill her?”

“She was… a believer-”

He held up a silencing finger. Professorial. I remembered what Milo had said about how he loved to lecture. Keep him talking, get it all on tape.

“She was,” he said, “a receptacle. A condom with limbs.”

Tenney laughed and I saw him pick something out of the corner of his eye and flick it away.

“Zena,” he said, “exited this mortal coil with a bang.” One hand touched his fly.

Baker's expression was that of a weary but tolerant parent. “That was terrible, Willy.” He smiled at me. “This may batter your self-esteem, but she was as sexually discriminating as a fruit fly. Our little barnyard gimcrack.”

He turned to Tenney. “Tell him Zena's motto.”

“Cock-a-doodle-do,” said the bearded man. “Any cock will do.”

“She was a lure,” I said. “For Ponsico, me- others?”

“A lure,” said Baker. “Have you ever gone fly-fishing?”

“No.”

“It's a marvelous pastime. Fresh air, clear water, tying the lures. Unfortunately even the best ones unravel after too many bites.”

“Malcolm Ponsico,” I said. “He lost enthu-”

“He lacked commitment,” said Tenney. “A weak trout, if you will. It soon became clear something smelled fishy.”

“Willy,” said Baker, reprovingly, “as Dr. Alex here can tell you, inveterate and inappropriate punning is a symptom of mood disorder. Isn't that so?”

“Yes.” The word sounded perfect. At least to my ears. My head was clearer- back to normal.

“Feeling better?” said Baker, somehow sensing it.

He flourished the hypodermic, then I heard a metallic clank as he put it down somewhere. The leather restraints were killing the blood flow to my limbs and my body seemed to be disappearing. Or maybe it was the remnants of the drug, pooling in low places.

“What axis?” Tenney asked me. “Depression or mania?”

“Mania,” I said. “And hypomania.”

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard. “I don't like to think of myself as hypo-anything.” Sudden smile. “Maybe hypo-dermic. Because I do have the capacity to get under people's skin.”

He laughed. Baker smiled.

“Perhaps that's why I've been feeling crabby. Or perhaps my moods just shift for the halibut.”

“What a wit,” I said. He reddened and I visualized Raymond Ortiz, snatched in the park bathroom, bloody shoes.

“I wouldn't irritate him,” Baker said, almost maternally. “He doesn't take well to irritation.”

“What did Raymond Ortiz do to irritate him?”

Tenney bared yellow teeth. Baker turned his back on me. “Want to tell him, Willy?”

“Why bother?” said Tenney. “I have no need to clear my sole- petrale, Dover, take your pick. To assuage my admittedly shrimpy conscience by confessing what I did to the stupid little squid. The scales of justice are in equilibrium. No pearls of wisdom. I prefer to clam up.”

Suddenly, his beard loomed above me and his hand was around my neck.

“All right,” he said, spraying spittle. “Since you insist. What the obese little degenerate did was destroy the quality of my life. How? By filthying the bathroom. Inevitably. Inexorably. Every single time he used it, he filthied it. Do you understand?”

He bore down, increasing the pressure on my neck, and I gagged, heard Baker say, “Willy.”

My field of vision grew black around the edges and now I knew something was wrong, Milo would never let it get this far- the fingers loosened. Tenney's eyes were moist, bloodshot.

“The stupid gobbet of scrambled DNA couldn't figure out how to use toilet paper,” he said. “He and all those other limpy, loopy defectoids, day after day.”

He turned to Baker. “It's a perfect metaphor for what's wrong with society, isn't it, Sarge? They shit on us, we clean up.”

“So you killed him in the bathroom,” I said.

“Where else?”

“And the bloody shoes-”

“Think!” said Tenney. “Think what he did to my shoes!”

I gave the closest thing to a shrug the bonds would allow. On my own- what to do-

“I got tired of stepping in it!” Tenney was shouting now, raining saliva. “They didn't pay me for that!”

His fingers touched my neck again, then he reversed himself suddenly and walked away and I heard footsteps, a door opening and closing.

Alone with Baker.

“My neck hurts,” I said, throwing out another cue, but my faith was dying. “Can these restraints be loosened?”

Baker shook his head. The needle was back in his hand.

“Potassium chloride,” I repeated. “Same as Ponsico.”

Baker didn't answer.

“Raymond's shoes,” I said. “Nothing random, everything had a reason. Irit Carmeli's murder simulated a sex crime. Her mother read you as a sexual aggressor, so the payback had to have sexual overtones. But you needed to differentiate yourself from just another pervert. You and Nolan. He got off on dominating little girls.”

Baker showed me his back again.

“Was Irit mostly Nolan, or both of you? Because I think you shared Nolan's tastes. Young girls- dark girls. Girls like Latvinia. Did you do her yourself or with Tenney's help? Or someone else I haven't had the pleasure of meeting?”

He didn't budge.

“Like Ponsico,” I said, “Nolan lacked the will eventually. More important, he had some sort of conscience, what he did eventually got to him. You sent him to Lehmann but it didn't help. How'd you prevent him from bringing you down?”

No answer.

“The sister,” I said. “You told him what you'd do to her if he destroyed anyone but himself. And if his will had failed again and he didn't eat his gun, you'd have taken care of him?”

His left shoulder twitched. “Think of it as euthanasia. He was suffering from a terminal disease.”

“Which one?”

“Malignant regrets.” I heard him laugh. “Now we'll have to get the sister, anyway. Because you might have educated her.”

“I didn't.”

“Who else knows besides Sturgis?”

“No one.”

“Well,” he said. “We'll see about that… I've always liked North Carolina, the horse country. Spent some time years ago, raising Thoroughbreds.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

He turned around and smiled. “Horses are immensely strong. Horses kick hard.”

“More killing, more fun.”

“You're right about that.”

“So ideology- eugenics- had nothing to do with it.”

He shook his head. “Strip away what passes for motives and motivation, Alex, and the sad truth remains: For the most part, we simply do things because we can.”

“You killed people to prove you were able to get-”

“No, not to prove it. Simply because I could. Same reason you pick your nose when you think no one's watching.”

The silencing finger touched my lips. “How many ants have you stepped on during your lifetime? Millions? Tens of millions? How much time have you spent regretting the fact that you committed ant genocide?”

“Ants and people-”

“It's all tissue, organic material- jumbles of carbon. So simple, until we elevated apes come along and complicate things with superstition. Remove God from the equation and you're left with a reduction as rich and delicious as the finest sauce: It's all tissue, it's all temporary.”

He righted his glasses. “Which is not to say I don't create my own excuses. Everyone does, everyone has a cutoff point. For you, it's ants, perhaps you'd spare a snake. Someone else might not. Others draw the line at vertebrates, mammals with fur, whichever arbitrary criterion defines lovable or cute or sacred.”

He straightened, looked wistful. “You can't really understand unless you travel and expose yourself to different ways of thinking. In Bangkok- a beautiful, putrid, very scary city- I met a man, a master chef, artist with a Chinese cleaver. He was working in a luxury hotel, preparing banquets for tourists and politicians, but before that he ran his own restaurant in a harbor district where tourists never go. His forte was cutting- slicing, cubing, julienning at unbelievable speed. We smoked opium together several times and eventually I gained his trust. He told me he'd trained as a child, working his way up to sharper and sharper knives. Over thirty years he'd cut everything- sea slugs, grasshoppers, shrimp, frogs, snakes, beef, lamb, monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees.”

Smile. “You know the punch line. Under the knife, it all splits apart.”

“Then why even bother picking targets?” I said. “If it's a game, why not just strike randomly?”

“Deconditioning takes time.”

“The troops need a rationale.”

“The troops,” he said, amused.

“So you gave them one: inferior tissue. Your ants.”

“I didn't give anyone anything,” he said. “Deafness is inferior to hearing, retardation is inferior to an adequate intellect, not being able to wipe your own anus is inferior to studying philosophy. There is intrinsic value in cleaning house.”

“New Utopia,” I said, fighting to speak clearly, calmly. Was anyone listening? “Survival of the fittest.”

He shook his head again, Mr. Scoutmaster showing a dull scout how to tie a complex knot for the fiftieth time. “Spare me the sloppy compassion. Without the fittest there will be no survival. Retardates don't discover cures for diseases. Spastics don't steer jumbo jets. Too many of the unfit, and we'll all be enduring, not living. The way Willy was forced to endure that bathroom.”

He removed his glasses, cleaned them with a tissue. The house was silent.

“A nice mix,” I said. “Pop philosophy and sadistic fun.”

“Fun is good,” he said. “What else do we have to show for our time on this planet?”

He raised the syringe again. No help coming, but play for time, time was all I had.

“Melvin Myers,” I said. “A blind man trying to live a normal life. What was his sin? Learning something about Lehmann while fooling with the computers? Embezzlement? Shunting grant money to New Utopia?”

Big smile. “Ah, the irony,” he said. “Money allocated for the inferior finally used productively. Myers, that place- pathetic.”

“Myers was intelligent.”

“It's all the same.”

“Damaged tissue.”

“Spoiled meat can be gussied up and sautÉed, but it remains unfit for consumption. The blind don't lead the blind. The blind get led around like barnyard animals.”

He aimed the needle at the ceiling, squirting liquid. A toilet flushed. Footsteps, again.

I heard Tenney's voice. “Whew, no more Mexican for me.”

Baker tapped the syringe.

No rescue.

Daniel, Milo- how could you abandon me?

My body started to shake. “You can't hope to-”

“Hope has nothing to do with it,” said Baker. “What you know amounts to supposition but no evidence. The same goes for Sturgis. The game needs to end. Here's a true test of your belief system: Is there an afterlife? Now you'll find out. Or”- he smiled-“you won't.”

“DVLL. You're the new devils?”

The needle caught ceiling light, sparking white.

His mouth tightened. Irritated. “How many foreign languages do you speak?”

“Some Spanish. I learned a little Latin in school.”

“I speak eleven,” he said.

“All that travel.”

“Travel enriches.”

“What language is DVLL?”

“German,” he said. “Nothing like the Goths when it comes to matters of principle. The crispness, none of that useless Gallic lassitude.”

Zena's comments about French. Parroting her guru.

The needle lowered.

“So what does it mean?” I said.

No answer. He'd turned grave, almost sad.

Daniel, Milo… the limits of friendship… just another delusion…

“Potassium chloride?” I tried for the third time. “Freelance executioner. At least the state offers sedation.”

Tenney said, “The state offers a last meal and prayers and a blindfold because the state's game is insincerity- pretending to be humane.”

He laughed very loudly. “The state actually takes the time to sterilize the injection site with alcohol. Protecting against what? The state is an ass.”

“Don't worry,” said Baker. “Your heart will explode, it won't take long.”

“Dust to dust, carbon to carbon.”

“Clever. Too bad we never got a chance to spend more quality time together.”

“Executed,” I said, barely able to restrain the scream that kept growing within me. “What's my crime?”

“Oh, Alex,” he said. “I'm so disappointed in you. You still don't understand.”

“Understand what?”

A sad shake of his head. “There are no crimes, only errors.”

“Then why'd you become a cop?”

The needle lowered a bit. “Because police work offers so much opportunity.”

“For power.”

“No, power's for politicians. What law enforcement offers is choice. Possibilities. Order and disorder, crime and punishment. Playing the rules like a card hustler.”

“When to fold, when to draw,” I said. Stall, stretch every second, don't look at the needle. Robin- “Who to arrest, who to let go.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Fun.”

“Who gets to live,” I said, “who doesn't. How many others have you killed?”

“I stopped counting long ago. Because it doesn't matter. That's the point, Alex: Everything is matter and nothing matters.”

“Then why bother to kill me?”

“Because I want to.”

“Because you can.”

He came closer. “Not a single one of them was missed… no impact, nothing changed. It made me realize what I should have known years before: Sensation is all. One passes the time in the least onerous way possible. I like to clean house.”

“A sweeper,” I said, and when he didn't answer: “The elite takes out the trash.”

“There are no elites. Just those with fewer impediments. Willy and I will end up worm-food like everyone else.”

“Smarter worms, though,” said Tenney. He grinned at me. “See you for chess in hell. You supply the board.”

“Sensation is all,” I said to Baker.

Baker put down the needle again, unbuttoned his shirt, and spread the placket.

His chest was tan, hairless, a grotesque plane of ravaged flesh.

Scores of scars, some threadlike, others raised and welted.

He displayed himself proudly, rebuttoned. “I thought of myself as a blank canvas, decided to draw. Please don't talk to me about mercy.”

“At least tell me about DVLL.”

“Oh, that,” he said, dismissively. “Just a quotation from Herr Shickelgruber. Pure mediocrity, that one, those sickening watercolors, but he did have a way with a phrase.”

“Mein Kampf?” I said.

He got very close. Sweet breath, soap-and-water skin. How did he tolerate Tenney?

“ “Die vernichtung lebensunwerten Leben,' ” he said. “ “Lives not worth living.' Which applies, I'm afraid, to yours.”

Tenney moved in and held my right hand down, elbow to the mattress. Oh, Milo, the bastard is right, nothing matters in the end, nothing's fair- fingertips drummed the crook of my arm, raising a vein.

Baker lifted the syringe.

“Happy heart attack,” he said.

Robin- Mom- go out with style, don't scream, don't scream- I prepared for the jab, nervous system crashing, alarm bells jingling-

Nothing.

Baker straightened. Perturbed.

Still the jingling.

The doorbell.

“Shit,” said Tenney.

“Go see who it is, Willy, and be careful.”

Clang. The needle disappeared and in its place Baker held a machine pistol- black, banana-shaped handle, rectangular body, nasty little barrel.

He looked around the room.

The bell rang again. Stopped. Three knocks. More bell.

I heard Tenney's rapid climb up the stairs.

Voices.

Tenney's, the other high-pitched.

A woman?

Her voice, Tenney's, hers.

“No,” I heard Tenney say, “you've got the wrong-”

Baker moved toward the door, pistol held high.

The woman's voice again, irate.

“I'm telling you,” said Tenney, “that this-”

Then, a low, muffled stutter that could only be one thing. More footsteps, racing, as Baker pointed the machine pistol at the door, ready.

Thunder behind him- breaking glass, a glass roar- from behind the curtains, then a flute arpeggio of tinkling shards as the curtains parted and men burst in shooting.

More stutter, much louder.

Baker never had a chance to see them. His pink shirtback sucked up crimson and the rear of his head dissolved in a red-brown mist.

The front of his head followed, facial features blanketed in red oil and white jelly, the substructure disintegrating, features losing integrity, turning to port wine. Melting. A wax figure melting.

His chest exploded and soft things flew out, plunking wetly against the wall.

One of the shooters ran to me. Young, sharp-featured, black hair. One of the guards I'd seen at the consulate. Behind him, a big, heavy, white-haired black man in navy blue sweats. Older, at least sixty. He glanced at Baker's body, then at me.

The young, hawk-faced man began undoing my restraints, only to be yanked away.

By Milo, disheveled, wet-eyed, sweating, breathing hard.

“Sir,” said the young man, Milo's big hand still on his arm.

“Get lost! Do your job and I'll do mine.”

The young man hesitated for a second, then left. Milo freed me. “Oh, Alex, such a fuckup, such a goddamn idiotic fuckup, I'm so- oh, man, we almost lost you- it really went bad- never again, never fucking again!”

“You always were one for drama,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said. “Just shut up and rest- man, I am so sorry, I will never let you talk me-”

“Shut up yourself.”

He lifted me.

He carried me past Baker, lying in a broth of gore, crossed the white room, now candy-striped, bits of brain and bone a free-form collage. Out to the stairs. Tenney's corpse was sprawled on top.

“Up we go.” His breathing was too hard, too fast. I felt strong enough to walk and told him so.

“No way.”

“I'm okay, put me down.”

“All right, but we've got to get the hell out of here. Be careful not to trip over that piece of shit.”

A woman came into view at the top of the stairs. Very short, heavyset. Rosy cheeks, bulbous nose.

Irina Budzhyshyn, proprietress of the Hermes Language School. Small pistol in her hand, nothing fancy.

In her Russian accent, she said, “No one else in the house. Get him out of here and then we bring in the cleanup crew.”

A man appeared behind her, in black. Late twenties but already bald on top with a brown mustache and goatee.

He was breathing hard, too. Everyone was.

“I've got transport,” he said in a thick voice. Not acknowledging me, though we'd met.

The landlord at Irina's building- what name had he used? Laurel. Phil Laurel. As in Hardy.

Everyone's a comedian.