Chapter 2
Nick drove. I watched the palm trees and the laundromats drift by through the passenger side window.
Nick liked driving the oxidized beige Dodge two door. Gave him that feeling of slinky anonymity that we all crave in this single-family dwelling culture we all live in. Slinky anonymity-nothing beats it for really efficient plainclothes work....
We didn't set out with high spirits-not after the virtually worthless session with the Ruggles gal. A typical victim, she was far more interested in keeping her dignity than in helping us save our asses by catching her abuser. Hell, you can't really blame the bitch-what if she had hurled a semi-moist beaver in old Shitty Dick's direction? How's she gonna explain them nasty apples to the folks down on the farm?
"Where ya wanna go after we check out the beach, Narsky?"
Nick stared through the smog stained windshield. He expected a response in time. He expected that I'd help feed his fantasies, that I'd play the straight man for his devious intentions. That's one of the occupational hazards of working with a married partner-they always expect their bachelor buddy to lead them into the depravity they crave.
"Oh, I don't know," I yawned, "How 'bout the Sultan's Helmet? Good half-and-half action there."
Nick snorted down a quarter-pound of ripe nuggets, a deep guffaw of heartfelt agreement-he had spent many an hour on the clean linen tables at the Sultan's Helmet, having half a massage with two lovely meat grinders working out his knots for modest wages. For twenty dollars it was possible to hire two pairs of talented palms for an hour of private, sensual squirming-nothing could beat the Sultan's Helmet.
"The old standby, eh Narsky?" he quipped, coming to a stoplight with screeching brakes, "Christ, we gotta find some kind of new action."
He took off when the light turned green. I surmised that he was looking once again for creative inspiration from me, the involuntary bachelor.
"We?" I asked.
"Yeah, we," Pervis said,, briefly giving me a shot of the old hate stare through his shades, "You tryin' to tell me something, Narsky? You trying to say you don't like a little muscular relaxation in the afternoon, that it's all me? That what yer driving at, eh?"
He was a testy devil, and really, I couldn't blame him. After the morning's brutality and humiliations, he deserved a little outcall action. I didn't like having to be the co-conspirator all the time, however. I let it ride.
"Listen, Pervis," I said, trying to bring him to his senses, get his priorities straight, and get him off my case, "how's about we forget the massage parlors, the bars, the cheap hustles this week, and grab this Shitty Dick character? You want to go back to the street on Monday? Milhaud could assign you to the drag squad up in Hollywood as a further punishment too. How'd you like them apples-back in the toilets, entraping queens on trumped up charges? We got work to do, Pervis."
Nick let out a squeal of nasty laughter through his left nostril.
"Catch Shitty Dick, eh?" he said, "What the fuck do you think we've been trying to do for the past six months? You got any ideas Narsky, you just tell 'em to old Nicky boy, I'm all ears."
I didn't have any ideas. Shitty Dick was as slippery as they come. He operated freely and effectively, covering his slimy tracks in a unique style. Shitty Dick never left any evidence, and every eyewitness had the same old story-"All I saw was this giant dickhead, and a pair of hairy wonders hanging below it." Not much to go on, seeing as how that description might easily apply to half the human race.
Every one of Shitty Dick's victims gave us this half ass kind of story. We could never be sure that they were telling the truth, half the truth, or only a tiny piece of the truth. Sometimes, we didn't know for sure that we were really looking for the same attacker in each case. The sole piece of consistent information was the same one we got just this morning from Budgie Ruggles-first in the face, then up the poopchute. I had the typed copy of the Ruggles report on my lap in the car. I read while Nick drove the rest of the way in silence.
The medical examination was the only really interesting part-I knew Budgie's statistics, her age, tit-size, whereabouts, lack of a criminal record. The interns had done their usual thorough job-they carefully marked down the presence of anal bruises, lesions and severely stretched sphincters-Shitty Dick had diameter, that's for sure. As far as length, that was an unknown, but diameter, diameter had been proven beyond a doubt.
The man we sought was thick as a brick.
Shitty Dick had maintained his modus operandi to the tee-there was no visible sign of discharge. This always stumped us. Was the man a towering inferno of frustration and self-denial? Did he risk life and limb with his unwilling partners only to withdraw at the critical juncture and run from the scene with blue balls?
Nick and I had suggested to Milhaud that we take samples of spermy remnant from each victim and have them analyzed at the lab to see if our basic thesis, that all of the anal rapes were carried out by a John Doe called Shitty Dick, was in fact true. Milhaud had bellowed in laughter, and then lashed out at us. He informed us that there were no "spermy remnants" to be found, and that he himself would have had the evidence off airmail to Washington long ago if there had been even a trace of it-the FBI had a sperm file on the entire population that the trace could be compared against. As he politely informed us, there were no traces.
"Budgie's got no bugs on her," I remarked to Nick. He knew what I meant.
"Shitty Dick's got diameter, self-control and a sense of class."
Nick was beginning to build up a kind of affection for his prey. Nothing unusual in police work, not at all, especially when one is dealing with an elusive character, and a character who's very criminal activity has a kind of broad-based, socially acceptable appeal-after all, what difference is there is substance between Shitty Dick and some mythic figure of the Old West who takes what he wants whenever he wants it? What difference in deed but the near invisible barrier between friction and fiction-a thin line.
Nick enjoyed crossing the thin line, and who can blame him? Hell, it is as plain as day that most regular guys don't give a flinging dingle-berry about rape, as long as their own daughters, wives, mothers or cousins aren't directly involved. Most fellows, and most women as well, feel that there is something excruciatingly juicy about the idea of forced sex-if they didn't think so, you wouldn't see bondage and dominance parlors springing up in every suburban shopping center, now would you?
You've got to keep things like this in mind when you're dealing with a shitty character like Shitty Dick. You've got to examine the facts, slim as they might be, to see what connections there might be between the perpetrator and the victim. You're not out to protect the rapist's rights-not at all you've just got to establish certain facts-was there an exposed beaver involved-did the victim have a past history of "inviting attack"-did she answer ads in the local underground paper for "mild B&D, Water sports, and Greek"?
Nick pulled the car into the beach lot and flipped his badge in the attendant's face. The teen twirp guffawed in sycophantic heat.
"You guys on the SWAT team?" he asked.
"Yeah," drawled Nick, "You wanna die kid?"
The teenager thought about it for a while, rubbing his jaw and shuffling his tennis shoes.
"Will I be on TV?" he asked.
"Well," Nick said carefully, "I could have the mobile unit down here in half an hour and blow you away in front of the cameras. How's that grab you?"
The kid went over his options carefully, he had more questions. "How'll you do it?"
"Dum-dum shell in the back of the neck, tear gas grenade up your asshole, tire chains in the interrogation room. Hell, it's up to you, kid."
The kid began to shuffle faster, obviously eager for more detail.
"Can I make a couple of phone calls first, to tell my folks to be watching?"
The kid didn't understand. Nick showed him the ropes.
"Listen, kid, if you wanna die, you wanna die. Don't worry about the rest of the details, the networks are really professional these days. When the mobile unit arrives, they've got the tape cameras with them, the foxy female reporter, and even the candyass liberal to do the after-the-fact commentary. We notify next of kin half an hour before show time. Now do you want to die or not?"
The pressure was on the kid. Would he take the chance? Would he opt for forty-five seconds of superstardom, or would he balk and continue his anonymous grind as a two-dollar an hour parking lot attendant. I went into my goodguy act to help him speed his decision.
"Come here, kid," I said, motioning with my middle finger for him to stick his head in the car window. "Listen kid, what's it worth to you? You wanna sit in your wooden booth all summer long, taking tickets, passing back the spare change, watching the girls turn brown in all the hot spots while you read dirty books and jackoff in the shower? What do you want out of life anyway kid, a safe, boring routine, or some real manly thrills?
Take my advice kid, go apeshit, we'll call in the mobile unit, and you'll be on all three networks tonight at six o'clock. That's an offer you can't refuse, eh?"
The kid was going to refuse. I can tell the type. He started to laugh, as if it was all a big joke, a put on. I drew my revolver and jammed the muzzle into his left nostril and then cocked it.
"Make up your mind, kid."
He balked. The cold steel had brought him back to his senses. The kid wasn't made of the right stuff. He'd spend the rest of his days as a parking attendant. What the hell, I thought, superstar material has always been in short supply.
I put my snubnose .38 back in my vest holster, looked over at Nick and he floored the accelerator. We brodied into the beach lot, leaving the punk gagging in a cloud of burnt rubber and fresh smog.
We trudged the width of the beach in our heavy wingtips, and sat down by the shoreline, where the smelly waves gnawed at the tar spotted sand. The crisp ocean breezes loosened the nicotine parched insides of our nostrils, and soon both of us were rheumy eyed in ecological hypnosis.
"Beats the shit out of the office," I said, staring out at the oil slicks, the three-hulled sailboats heading back into the confines of the Marine, their crews hell-bent on martinis and rim-jobs, the squawking gulls, in feeding frenzy over the Big Mac remnants cast off the sterns of the sailboats.
Nick blew his nose and nodded in agreement.
"Ah, pig shit, Narsky. I'd trade in my gun, my badge, my goddamned wife, anything, just to be able to spend my days down here, a regular beachcomber. Shit, that'd be the life. Picking up on young honeys, inviting them back to the beachfront pad for a little drinky-winky, tearing into their thighs with my teeth. Nothing like stubbly jaws over sunburned teenage thighs for thrills, Narsky. Believe me."
I laughed through my nose at him.
"How the fuck would you know, Pervis? The only thing you've bitten into in years is Charmane's asshole."
Charmane was Nick's wive. I got him where it hurts, buddy-buddy style.
"Fuck you, Narsky, you jerked off ninny. I've had my share of chippies."
I snorted hot mucus again.
"At the Sultan's Helmet. That's a long way from the beach, Pervis, a long way from young stuff."
He looked down into his wingtips, righteously battered about the ego. I didn't want to continue the abuse much longer.
"Let's look for some clues, Pervis. Let's get our asses in gear."
We stood up, and began to walk along the beach. Not five yards from where we had hunkered in the sand, we found a fresh Trojan, used, of course.
"Look, Narsky, a scumbag," Nick said, pointing with a nicotine stained finger.
"Whaddaya want to do with it, Nick? Suck it?"
Pervis snarled at me, livid with rage and with glee from having found a clue, a first lead, a sign, a symbol of recent debauchery.
"Come on, Narsky," he said in a low-pitched nasal whine. "We'll bring it back to the station and give it to Milhaud. It'll make him happy. It's something, for Christsake. At least it tangible, its at the scene of the crime, maybe its got some shit stains on it. Hell, it could be what we've been waiting for."
It was pathetic. I left Pervis standing there, guarding the precious evidence and trundled back across the sand to the car to get a Baggie. This is what we were paid to do. Gather the evidence. Milhaud couldn't complain. It would shut him up for a while at least. But in the end, Christ, it was a pathetic piece of evidence. Whose scumbag was it? We'd have to show it to Budgie Ruggles after Milhaud had sniffed at it, and then it would go to the crime lab. Twenty-four hours would pass, and we'd get the one page report. "Nada."
How can you link a single scumbag to a series of brutal anal rapes? How can you get a fix on the perpetrator, the notorious Shitty Dick from a piece of punctured evidence? No way. I opened the glove compartment, got a Baggie and a tissue, and trundled back to where Pervis stood over the evidence. He stooped, pinched, and sealed the Baggie, and we both huffed and puffed back to the car.
"Let's get out of here," Pervis said, gunning the motor in that certain style which always meant he was hot for the Sultan's Helmet and the harem of hand job houris who awaited him there.
"We're off to see the Sultan," I sang in an infantile voice, and Pervis broke up laughing.
"Damn straight, Narsky, it's part of our fringe benefits."
We took the freeway back, and made the mandatory rights and lefts which took us to the Sultan's sleazy joint. Wanda met us at the door.
"Any luck today boys?" she asked, in her mellow, cum lubricated voice. She knew we were hot on the trail of Shitty Dick, and she knew that we hadn't had a clue in the six months we had been working on it.
"Oh," I yawned, reaching out to pinch Wanda's clit from the rear, "Yes and no. We found a scumbag down at the beach today, but it was hours after our man had split the scene."
Wanda nodded. We all walked inside into the plush red velvet womb of the waiting room. Wanda wasted no time once we were safely inside.
"What'll it be, fellas? The usual?"
Pervis was up for it. I wasn't.
"I'll have a half-and-half, Wanda, with Terri and Nadja," Pervis belched. Wanda winked at him, pressed some buttons on the wall, and then rotated in my direction.
"And you, Steviepooh?" she asked, giving me a nice shot of tongue over chin and upper lip.
I gave it no thought at all. I wasn't in the mood. All I could think of was coming into work on Monday and being marched out to some smelly intersection downtown to swelter all day long as the bus drivers screeched at me and the scrape racers flipped me the finger.
"I'll just wait in the bar, Wanda."
She wrinkled up her nose at me in disdain, grabbed ahold of Pervis's crotch bulge and led him into the private rooms in the back. I marched out of the waiting room and went into the Flying Carpet bar and ordered a triple vodka martini with an olive.
The Dodgers were on the tube on the color TV suspended above the bar. Nothing worse than the Dodgers on an already dull day. The chick behind the bar was a topless Chicana, about eighteen. I decided to play brute with her.
"Aren't you kinda young to be working behind a bar, honey?" I asked, pulling out my badge as I spoke. She went into a flurry of confusion, grabbing her purse and opening it, to draw out her wallet, with all the phony ID a cop could want, including her alien visa, her pictures of the family, the home town in Lower Chingata, the chickens moulting in the background of the faded Polaroid black and whites. It was more depressing than the Dodgers. I motioned for her to take it away from my sight, to spare me the agony.
I polished off the martini in three gulps and pushed the glass across the bar, right between her tits, and she stirred up another drink. I nodded at her, and sipped at the refill.
It would be a good twenty minutes before Nick Pervis had achieved his form of satori in the back. I had to keep myself under control. No point in coming back to the station with a hangover at three in the afternoon, not with an important interrogation of Budgie Ruggles coming up.
I sat there, watching the tube, waiting for Pervis. It was lonely. It was dull. It wasn't helping me on the case, and it was wasting precious time as far as I was concerned. Hell, Shitty Dick wasn't wasting his precious time in a massage parlor bar. He was out there, somewhere, lining up his sights on some tight, anal virgin. While Pervis and I stumbled around, always one step behind, passive, like rats in a Skinner box, Dr. Dick was chuckling and getting ready to make his next move.
Little did I know that he was planning a coup de grace at that moment. Little did anyone know just how clever and devious our foe really was, how hip he was to our mystification, our lack of solid evidence. Little did any of us know how sharp and ruthless he was, how at that very moment, he was playing us for fools, socking it to none other than Charmane Pervis, right in Nick's own castle, right in his own marital sack.