The Prisoner of Vandam Street (11 page)

T
he next morning Ratso brought me coffee, juice, and a few of my medications. He carried them into the bedroom on a tray, like a child might serve breakfast in bed to his mother on mother’s day. There was something so sad, so poignant about this act that it almost made me cry. Ratso never knew his birth mother, and his adoptive mother, Lilyan, was currently in a Florida nursing home. My mother had flown off with the hummingbirds in 1985. If the cat found anything touching about this little scenario of Ratso bringing in the coffee on a tray, she wasn’t showing any of her cards. She merely sat on the pillow next to me, glaring at Ratso as if he were a dog from hell.

“Great news!” said Ratso. “Guess who’s setting up in the kitchen?”

“Martha Stewart?”

“Pete Myers! Myers of Keswick, Kinkstah! Brought about a month’s supply of British gourmet shit! Scones! Those little rolls with sausage in them! A whole side of beef! That hot British mustard you like!”

“I’m not hungry, Ratso.”

“Well, you should be, after that great escape you pulled last night. You weren’t really thinking—running out in the rain like that, were you, Kinkstah?”

“I saw the girl. I saw the girl running. And her face was all bloody.”

“Of course you did. Then apparently you must have passed out in the gutter. That’s where Kent Perkins found you.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“Hold the weddin’, Kinkstah. Kent said you were unconscious from the time he found you until the time he put you to bed. How’d you know about that?”

“I happened to overhear your little war council last night.”

“No one likes an eavesdropper, Kinkstah.”

“I’m not a fucking eavesdropper! It’s my fucking loft!”

“And you’re going to stay the fuck in it from now on until you’re well!”

“We’ll see,” I said, winking broadly to the cat.

The cat, of course, said nothing. But her baleful glare could have withered Ratso’s entire flea market wardrobe. Cats sometimes seem to forget their friends. But they never forget their enemies. And they might just be on to something there.

“Just take it easy, Kinkstah,” said Ratso, in his best psychological, conciliatory tone. “Have some coffee. It’s not good to get too excited in your condition.”

“Fine,” I said. “What’s all the racket in the living room?”

“Kent and Mick are setting up the spottah scope, Pete’s grinding sausage, Piers is taking a shower, and McGovern’s snoring on the couch.”

“Kent and Mick are setting up what?”

“Some dingus Kent brought with him. The spottah scope.”

“Oh. The
spotter
scope.”

“That’s what I said, Kinkstah. The spottah scope.”

“And here’s what I have to say, Ratso. At last, we’ll see.”

It was later that morning when Kent Perkins came into my invalid’s quarters and told me that he thought it might be necessary to attempt to hypnotize me. I didn’t really have any strong religious opposition to the idea and, at this point, anything that might further the investigation was fine with me. Any personal risk or sacrifice would be fine, I told him. Anything for the team.

Kent told me that he appreciated my attitude and that it was just barely possible that this particular rag-tag group of jaded, degenerate individuals might actually turn into a team. Either that, he said, or things were going to turn pretty ugly. Pretty ugly, indeed.

“You know, Kent,” I said, as I shivered under several layers of comforters, “all of us working together on this investigation reminds me of a story our friend Ted Mann told me once. It’s about the famous ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitus.”

“Polyclitus? Never heard of him.”

“Neither had I. Only Ted Mann has heard of him. Anyway, he decided once that he’d create two statues at the same time, one of which he’d let the public watch and—interactively you might say—participate in its construction. The other, however, was a private affair, and he kept it wrapped in tarpaulins, and only worked on it late at night when he was alone.”

“This sounds like a Ted Mann story.”

“Anyway, as Polyclitus was working on the first statue, people would look at it and say: ‘You know, that thigh seems a little too short.’ And Polyclitus would dutifully lengthen the thigh of the statue. And people would say: ‘You know, you don’t have the eyes quite right.’ And Polyclitus would go to work on the statue’s eyes. And so on. Then, late at night, he’d work on the second statue all by himself. At any rate, he finished work on both pieces at about the same time and he took them out to the public square in Athens and mounted them, not sexually, of course, in the square for everybody to see.

“When the public saw the first statue, the one he’d permitted them to have a hand in creating, they openly mocked and ridiculed it as an inferior piece of sculpture. But, ah, the second statue, the one he’d done on his own, this they hailed as a masterpiece, as a great transcendental work of art. And they asked Polyclitus, ‘How could it be that one statue was so good and the other was so bad?’ And Polyclitus answered: ‘Because
I
did this one, and
you
did that one.’ ”

“And that’s why,” said Kent, “you’ll never see a statue erected to a committee.”

“That’s also why,” I said, “you’ll never see a penis erected to a committee.”

“Kiiinnnnnk.”

A
nd thus it was, swaddled like the Baby Jesus, with my two disciples, Ratso and McGovern, supporting me in my weakened state, that I was ushered into the living room of the loft later that afternoon and placed rather delicately in a warm chair beside the roaring fire in the fireplace. I hadn’t been in the front room in a while and now I found the place to be humming with activity and kind of homey as well. Pete Myers was busily slicing thin, delicious-looking pieces of rare roast beef. Brennan was assiduously adjusting the tripod of the spotter scope, which now stood like a sentinel at the kitchen window. Kent Perkins was typing some information into his laptop at my desk. Almost as soon as I was placed in the chair, the cat jumped up in my lap and curled up and made herself comfortable there. I hated to say it, but I almost felt like I was at home.

“Well,” said Piers, walking over with a large can of Foster’s in his large hand, “what’s our next amusement?”

“Our next amusement,” said Kent, “is I’m going to attempt to hypnotize Kinky and draw out a little more information about the battered woman he chased down on the street last night.”

“That’s rich,” laughed Brennan. “Some bloke pounds the shite out of her and then she tries to run away and she sees this wild-eyed bloke in a black cowboy hat and red Indian blanket chasin’ after her in the rain.”

“This wild-eyed bloke sitting peacefully by the fire here,” said Kent, “might just unknowingly hold the key to saving that poor woman’s life.”

“Garrison Keillor’s made of cat shit,” I said.

“Holds the key to saving her life?” said Brennan. “Not likely, mate.”

“Give the man a chance, lad,” said Pete Myers, as he arranged the counter into a sumptuous buffet worthy of an English manor house. “The human mind holds secrets within secrets.”

“The only secrets the Kinkstah’s ever kept,” said Ratso, “are the ones he’s forgotten.”

“Those are precisely the ones we’re going to try to find,” said Kent, as he got out from behind the desk and advanced confidently toward the fireplace. “Are you ready, Kink, to do a little bit of time traveling?”

“Orson Welles is made of cat shit,” I said.

“He means H. G. Wells,” said Piers. “He wrote
The Time Machine.
George Orwell wrote
Animal Farm,
which this loft is rapidly coming to resemble.”

“At least he got the ‘Wells’ part right,” said Kent. “Let’s see what else he remembers.”

With that, Kent reached over to the fireplace mantel and smoothly removed the little wooden puppethead. He swung it back and forth a few times like a pendulum, holding the parachute between his thumb and index finger.

“This little black head ought to work,” said Kent. “What’s it here for? Is Kinky trying to start a collection of American Negro memorabilia?”

“That little puppethead,” said Piers pontifically, “is the way most of us ordinary citizens use to enter the building. Those of us, that is, who are not private investigators from Los Angeles. The puppethead is thrown from yon kitchen window, falls in a slight trajectory—”

“Every rock has a trajectory,” I said, quoting my father’s message to the kids at camp each summer. “Don’t throw rocks.”

“—falls in a slight trajectory,” continued Piers, “into the waiting hands of the potential visitor or housepest. You will observe, of course, as a detective, that the key to the building is wedged firmly in the little smiling mouth of the Negro puppethead. The visitor then extracts said key from said mouth, utilizes it to open the doors of the building, legs it up four floors, and, if admitted to this loft, hands it to the particular care-giver in charge, who then replaces it where you found it, upon the mantel of the fireplace.”

“Novel idea,” said Kent.

“Piers Akerman’s made of cat shit,” I said.

“That’s why I made him my number-two man,” said Kent. “Okay, Kink, let’s get started. Now I learned the technique I will be employing from one of the greatest hypnotists in the world, John Kappas, who also happened to be married to a friend of mine and Ruthie’s, Florence Henderson.”

“What?” said McGovern. “Say again? He was married to Skitch Henderson?”

“No, McGovern,” said Ratso. “Florence Nightingale was married to Hollywood Henderson.”

“Is John Kappas alive or dead?” asked Piers.

“He’s dead,” said Kent.

“He was swinging a gold watch back and forth,” said Brennan, “and he hit himself in the forehead.”

“Can we get on with this now?” said Kent. “I finally understand what it’s like to be Florence Henderson. You guys are worse than the
Brady Bunch.
”

“You and Florence Henderson have something else in common,” said Brennan, who’d been drinking. “You’re both bloody cunts.”

“The Von Trapp Family Singers are made of cat shit,” I said.

“Block out everything,” said Kent. “Watch this puppethead. I’m going to count down from ten to one and you’re going to get very, very sleepy.”

I watched Kent Perkins slowly swinging the little puppethead back and forth in an arc in front of my face. I watched the puppethead. The cat watched the puppethead. We both started to become very, very sleepy. It’s a funny thing about hypnosis, but whether you believe in it or not, a puppethead in the right hands always seems to do the trick.

“Ten,” said Kent Perkins. “Nine…eight…seven…six…your eyelids are getting heavy, very, very heavy.”

I no longer knew about the cat, but my own eyelids were getting very, very heavy. The puppethead kept swinging back and forth like some kind of cosmic cradle, rocking to and fro with the inexorable certainty of the tides and the seasons, back and forth like love and hate and death and life itself and I saw Robert Louis Stevenson drowning on a shipwrecked vessel flying the Jolly Roger and I saw Edgar Allan Poe dying in a gutter or maybe I didn’t see anything at all.

“Five,” said Kent, “four, three, two, one. I could make him jack off like a monkey right now. Okay, Kink. Now you’re back in the loft standing right over there by the kitchen window. It’s dark on the street. It’s late at night. You’re all alone here in the loft and you look down at the street. Now tell me what you see.”

“Garbage trucks,” I said. “Just garbage trucks.”

“Are the garbage trucks picking up garbage?”

“No. They’re sleeping.”

“Okay. Do you see anything else?”

“I see a homeless man.”

“You see a homeless man. What is the homeless man doing?”

“The homeless man is urinating on a lamppost. The urine looks beautiful and translucent in the lamplight.”

“Okay. Do you see anything else on the street?”

“I see a dog. A stray dog. He looks lost and lonely and sad and brave and beautiful. The cat also sees the dog. The cat doesn’t like the dog. But I like the dog. I think the dog may contain a piece of the spirit of Jesus Christ.”

“Okay. Do you see anything else?”

“I see an empty street and an empty sidewalk and an empty life.”

“You see an empty life? Is it your life?”

“Maybe it’s mine. Maybe it’s everybody else’s. I don’t know yet.”

“When you find out, be sure and tell me.”

“I will.”

“Okay. It’s dark and you and the cat are still standing by the window looking down into the street. Is it still empty?”

“Yes. It’s still—no! There’s a woman running down the middle of the street. It’s starting to rain but she’s not running from the rain. She’s running
to
the rain.”

“Have you ever seen this woman before?”

“Yes.”

“Where have you seen her?”

“In the lighted window across the street.”

“When did you first see her?”

“A long time ago. Two weeks ago.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was standing in the light. He came in and beat her. I called the cops. They came and investigated and said there was no apartment on that floor and nobody’d seen or heard anything.”

“But you did?”

“I saw him beat her.”

“And you saw him another time?”

“Yes. He was standing in the light with a gun.”

“And what did you do?”

“I called Piers out of the rain-room but by the time he got to the window everything was dark in the building across the street. He didn’t believe me.”

“Piers didn’t believe you? The others didn’t believe you? The cops didn’t believe you? Nobody believed you really believed you actually saw anything? That about right?”

“That’s right. Nobody believed me.”

“I believed you, Kink. I believed you saw what you said you saw.”

“I—I hoped you would.”

“Now you’re back at the window last night and you see the woman running like crazy through the rain. What do you do?”

“I go out after her.”

“Why?”

“I want to help her. She’s wearing a nice blue dress and it’s raining.”

“You go out in the street in the rain against your doctor’s orders?”

“Fuck Dr. Skinnipipi and the nurse he rode in on.”

“That’s the spirit! Now, you see the woman running. Can you see the man as well?”

“Yes. He’s hurt her again and he’s pacing back and forth in his window.”

“Yet you leave him there and you go after the woman? Why?”

“I want to save her.”

“So you go out into the cold and rainy night and you pursue this strange, frightened creature, and finally you catch up to her. What happened then?”

“She said, ‘Taxi!.’ She said, ‘What do you want?’ She said, ‘Why are you following me?’ ”

“And what did you say to her?”

“I said, ‘I saw you. I saw you in the window.’ I said, ‘Let me help you.’ ”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Go away! Everything’s fine. I don’t need your help.’ ”

“That’s what every abused woman in the world who needs help says at first. Did you do anything then?”

“Yes. I—I grabbed her purse when she wouldn’t tell me her name. I wanted to find her name. When I saw her crying there in the rain she reminded me so much of another girl. A girl I used to know. She was surrounded by everything Warren Zevon hated: guns, money, and lawyers, and she was surrounded by everything Warren Zevon loved: drugs, dreams, and lost angels, and she left messages sometimes on my answering machine that she loved me and she was crying and I couldn’t reach her across the California night. She was the love of my life and she died alone and I couldn’t save her.”

“Kacey,” said Kent Perkins.

“Kacey,” said Piers Akerman knowingly, his voice booming through the cosmos like a somber echo of Kent’s.

I was crying now. I could feel the tears on my face. This did not bother me. In fact, it seemed to comfort me. I did not try to wipe away the stream of tears. They felt so natural and right. Like the rain on your face. Like wearing a sad necklace from yesterday.

“So you were trying to save
this
woman?” said Kent. “Well, maybe you have. Did you find her driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“What name did you see on that driver’s license?”

“Tana Petrich.”

“Spell that, please.”

“T-a-n-a P-e-t-r-i-c-h.”

“Okay. That ought to do it. Now I’m going to count to three and then snap my fingers. When I snap my fingers you’re not going to remember any of this. You’re going to be relaxed, refreshed, and you’re going to feel great. A rather unusual Kinky condition, I might add. Okay. Here we go. One. Two. Three!”

Then Kent Perkins snapped his fingers. Almost before I knew it, I was feeling relaxed, refreshed, and, well, great. Kent pulled another chair up to the desk and Pete Myers brought me a hot and delicious shepherd’s pie. As I ate, Kent kicked his computer into overdrive.

“I’m running the name Tana Petrich through peoplefinder.net,” he said, laboring like a giant ant over the little laptop. “Peoplefinder.net’s a nationwide service available to PIs. It merges data bases so that even if you’ve only ordered a pizza, you may have left a trail for us to follow.”

“Makes you proud to be an American,” said Brennan.

“How would you know, lad?” said Pete Myers.

“One thing it does do,” said Kent. “It helps you find Tana Petrich in about forty-five seconds.”

Kent wasn’t off by much. I’d barely gotten my second forkful of shepherd’s pie between my choppers when I heard him shouting with excitement.

“We’ve found the girl!” he ejaculated. “Here she is!”

Ratso, Piers, Brennan, and Pete Myers suddenly gravitated to the desk and began eagerly gazing over Kent’s and my shoulders at the little screen. Only McGovern remained snoring away on the couch. Maybe he had the right idea after all.

“One little problem,” said Kent. “There’s a death claim issued against her name in 1991. A death certificate. This person’s been dead for ten years.”

“Hmmmmm,” said Piers. “What’s our next amusement?”