Bad to the Bone (23 page)

“The prick only laughed. ‘I think I’ll give you a name. I’ll call you the Boo-hoo Girl. You get your real name back when you earn it. That’s assuming you show up for the next session. Personally, I don’t give a shit. In fact, nobody at Hanover House gives a shit.’

“I said, ‘What kind of therapy is this? I come here in pain and you attack me.’

“ ‘It’s called therapy that works. As opposed to therapy that encourages Boo-hoo Bitches to become drug dependent. You wanna know if we care? Look back at your parents. One or both of them was just as depressed as you are. They
gave
you depression as surely as they gave you the color of your eyes. And you can
never
change that simple fact until you stop being a pussy and start acting like a
man
.’

“He waited again, smirking at me. Pushing my buttons. I couldn’t think of anything, so I repeated myself. I said, ‘Do you think I want to be this way? If I didn’t want to change it, I wouldn’t be here.’

“He said, ‘Wanting isn’t enough. Look, I’ll be frank. In my opinion, you’re too old. You should have started twenty years ago. I think what you’ll do is give up on Hanover House and dig up a mainstream shrink with a prescription pad. What
we
do is strip away all your illusions about your wonderful family and how much you love your mommy and daddy. All Hanoverians are family. We don’t support you with drugs. We give you the chance to help yourself through hard work and group effort. That’s assuming you come back, which, as I said, is very unlikely.’

“Stanley, I got myself through it by remembering the child. I kept thinking about Michael Alamare trapped in that hell. We know that Davis Craddock is a killer. We know that he uses violence to control his people. What’s going to happen to the child? Assuming he’s still alive. And what about all the other children? It’s just not right. It’s not right at all. He has to be stopped.”

Moodrow grunted his agreement, then got up, walked to his desk and picked up a legal pad and two pens.

“What’s that for?”

“We’re gonna write a letter.”

Dear Mr. Craddock,

It’s a sad fact of human life that few of us prepare for future events, even when those events are inevitable. For instance, only ten percent of all Americans buy a funeral plot before they pass away. Pity the poor relatives who, lost in grief, have to deal with the financial realities of a proper funeral and a decent burial. We at the Royal Society for the Eradication of the Terminally Undesirable are determined to educate the public about this sad failing. Because, Mr. Craddock, death is inevitable. It comes to all of us and often when we least expect it. We may wake up each morning with a smile on our lips and a song in our hearts. We may spend happy hours in the gymnasium, lowering our weight and our resting pulse rates. Then, despite our best efforts, we drop dead for no good reason at all.

Our American Boy Scouts have a motto: Be Prepared. If little children can understand the necessity to ‘be prepared’ for an unknowable future, how can we, as adults, allow ourselves to live in ignorance?

We at the Royal Society for the Eradication of the Terminally Undesirable, in an attempt to end human delusion, are prepared to make a guaranteed offer. If you mail us a check for $1,000, we will arrange for your burial in a pit on scenic Hart’s Island. Uniformed, respectful prisoners will dig your grave and drop you into it. For a small extra fee (one pack of cigarettes per man), they will each shed a tear and refrain from pissing on your coffin.

Please don’t delay. Mail your check immediately. After all, you may be dead before you have a chance to take advantage of our generous offer. And won’t you feel stupid if that should happen?

They wrote it over three or four times before Betty announced her satisfaction by tossing the pen onto the table. She got up and circled the table to sit in Moodrow’s lap. Without preamble, she began to unbutton his shirt.

“Now, listen up, Stanley. This is what you’re gonna do. And I don’t want any lip. After you get your clothes off, you’re going to undress me. Slowly and carefully. Then you’re going to put your head between my thighs and manipulate my clitoris until I have an orgasm. Then you’re going to take your penis, place it inside my vagina and move it in and out until I have another orgasm. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got it. I got it. But there’s something I feel I should tell you.”

“Like?”

“Like kissing on the lips costs extra.”

“I don’t want you to go back in there.”

They were lying in bed, almost ready to drop off into sleep. Moodrow had long ago accepted the fact that Betty was tough, that she made her own decisions. It was one of the things he liked best about her. Now, however, he was really afraid. Afraid that she had no idea what she was getting into and no idea what to do if her ‘plan’ fell apart.

“I have to go, Stanley.” It was the reply he expected.

“Are you scared?”

“I’m not scared. What I am is pissed off.”

“That’s what bothers me.” He turned onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. “A question: if you’re so sure that Craddock is a killer and that Michael Alamare is in grave danger, why aren’t you afraid for yourself? You
should
be afraid.”

“How’s he going to know? I’m just another wimpy cunt to them. Another potential slave. They’re trying to drive me away, not lure me in.”

“Craddock’s paranoid. And there’s very few applicants these days. I know he’s got some way of checking on the ones who stick around.”

“Stanley, I
have
to go.”

“You’re not qualified.” Moodrow knew he was taking the wrong tack, but he couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “What is it they say? Anyone who tries to be their own lawyer has a fool for a client? You’re trying to be your own cop and you don’t know the first thing about it.”

“I’m going back, Stanley. I have to.”

from
The Autobiography of Davis Craddock

G
RACE UNDER PRESSURE. PERSEVERANCE
in the face of adversity. Eventual TRIUMPH despite all the unexpected obstacles this bastard of a universe can throw at me. That’s the ticket, right? That’s the proper attitude for get-going tough guys. Right? And then there’s Wendell the Wonderful.

When Flo Alamare went down, I hoped I’d fall apart. I freely confess to this last desperate grab at normalcy. Flo had been my consort for years. My chosen favorite. If, on learning of her demise, I had descended into grief it would have proven what Marilyn had always insisted. It would have proven that a feeling human being still lived at the core of my utterly perverse psyche.

I accept this ‘hope’ as a lesson. Because what I felt was, first of all, nothing. Then minor annoyance. Then anger as the ramifications of whatever shithead thing she did to poison herself began to manifest themselves.

I suppose I should be grateful that Marcy found Flo and the van before the police did, but Marcy, instead of bringing Flo back to Hanover House, dumped the paralyzed bitch in a vacant lot.

Once the body was found, the arch-cunt of Manhattan, Mama Alamare, got into the act. She brought in the police and when they gave up, hired the fat detective to bust my chops.

The fat detective won’t play by the rules. Not that I have any rules. And not that I won’t enjoy playing with the fat detective. But the truth is that I only need a month. At most.

Flo’s body should never have been found. Who would have noticed her disappearance? My poochies? I would have had no trouble convincing my poochies that Flo simply took off. Most poochies, when the time comes, sever their relationship with Hanover House by flight.

Flo’s disappearance would have been yesterday’s news within a few weeks. Marcy would have stepped into Flo’s role and life would have gone on.

Marcy was Flo’s lover. That’s the
real
reason why she didn’t bring Flo back to me. After all, Flo was still alive and Marcy knew what would happen to Flo if I got my hands on her. I
have
my hands on Marcy and Marcy will pay.

Because the reality is that I only need one month to complete my project
.

The fat detective writes me funny letters. He makes his intentions clear. He’s going to get me. How? By sending his bitch into Hanover House.

I underestimated him. I admit it.
Everything
I did was wrong. I should have, with all due courtesy, passed him to one of my asshole administrators. Poochies unto death, one and all, they would have told him exactly what we told the cops.

Or better, yet, I might have played the outraged victim. First the DA’s office. Then the IRA. Then Connie Alamare’s obnoxious lawyers. Then the fat detective.

How much could I be expected to bear? Especially since my only concern has been to forge a path to the future. To ease the suffering of a psychologically burdened humanity.

I should have given the fat detective to my attorney. I should have begun an action against Connie Alamare, accusing her of harassment. I should have…

Two can play the game of underestimation. I’ve been screening all new clients for months. What I feared most was some undercover narc sniffing out the connection between Deeny Washington and Hanover House. All it would take is a street snitch running into Marcy and Deeny Washington and recognizing Marcy as a Hanoverian. Or a loving relative come to rescue an enslaved sibling. Or a big fat detective sending his fat girlfriend to find a little bastard who isn’t a little bastard, but my own rather repulsive flesh and blood. Which is why he’s alive. Even Marcy would turn against me if I dropped my first born (an obnoxious little rat, by the way) into the East River.

The one thing I cannot risk is a recent association of that petrified corpse, Flo Alamare, with Hanover House. All those little holes in her arm would undeniably tie Hanover House (and, of course, yours truly) to the world of drugs.

Because I only need one month. One month to manufacture two hundred pounds of PURE, dismantle the lab and hide the drug in a dozen locations in as many states.

Another month to sell it off? Two months? As of this writing, Wendell the Wonderful has orders for sixty-five pounds of PURE. He also tells me that his clients are very, very curious about PURE’s origins.

As a matter of routine, I’ve been having new clients followed to their homes (or to the local precinct, in the case of a narc; or to a hotel, in the case of a relative; or to a fat detective’s apartment, in the case of Betty Haluka) for the last six months.

We have few applicants these days. Over the last year or so, our publicity has gone from bad to worse. Unlike the Moonies, we have never recruited street people. My poochies are educated and our techniques deliberately confrontational.

In prior years, our initial free seminar brought out dozens of applicants. These days we rarely get more than four or five and very few of those return for therapy. Fewer still come back for the second therapy session.

The fat detective pays. The fat detective finds me amusing. As of this writing, I have no way to put my hands on the fat detective’s flesh. But I
will
put my hands on the flesh of his bitch. I will
own
the flesh of his fat bitch and the vehicle of her enslavement will be PURE.

T
HE UNIFORMED DOORMAN STANDING
guard at the entrance to Connie Alamare’s Sutton Place apartment building snorted derisively when Moodrow stepped into the lobby on his second visit.

“You are no cop,” he said decisively. “You have not arrested bitch. Bitch is still residing here. What you are wanting?”

“Don’t bust my balls.”

Moodrow was in no mood to be reasonable. If talking to his client on the phone was thoroughly unpleasant, a face-to-face visit was like preparing yourself for a raid on a well-defended crack house. Not that he could have avoided it. He needed a signature and signatures cannot be gotten over the phone. Even though homicide-by-poisoning is extremely rare in New York, suicide-by-poisoning is common and the medical examiner gets the job of determining exactly which poison was used. Whenever the medical examiner’s own lab tests come up negative, he farms the work out to Toxilab, Inc., an independent specialty house in Queens. Moodrow planned to pick up the blood and urine stored at the Bronx hospital that had first treated Flo Alamare and deliver it to Toxilab. He was certain both that Flo had been poisoned and that the Bronx doctors who’d declared her a stroke victim were not going to help him prove it.

Not surprisingly, the doctors at Bronx Municipal had refused to release the fluids without a notarized request from the next of kin. Moodrow had gotten Connie Alamare to call the toxicology department at the hospital, but procedure being procedure, especially in city-run institutions, the department head, Dr. Federico Benari, had refused to budge.

“You have not to arrested her,” the doorman insisted.

“Sorry to disappoint you. Wanna get on the intercom and ‘announce my presence’? I’m in a hurry.”

“Why such hurry just for getting ass kicked?”

“It’s like going to the dentist, pal. Dragging it out only makes it hurt more.”

The doorman burst out laughing. “You are with me okay. She is definitely great bitch of New York. On other day it is pouring rain and she calls down for cab. How can I get cab in rain? For fifteen minutes she scream in face. In my country such woman is beaten unmercifully.”

“You don’t have cops in your country?”

“Is no crime to beat great bitch of New York.”

Moodrow, bored, nodded at the phone. “Just announce me. I’m going up.”

“Okay, but I can already hear drill going bzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Despite his bravado, Moodrow felt his heart quicken as he stepped out of the elevator. Dealing with Connie Alamare’s mouth, he quickly decided, was worse than preparing yourself to raid a well-defended crack house. It was like being taken prisoner by the Inquisition.

When the door was opened by Connie’s mother, Moodrow let out a tiny groan of anticipation which the woman, quite correctly, took for abject terror.

“Eh,” Maria Corrello almost shouted. “It’s the
struma
. Whatta you come for,
struma
, another check? My daughter hasn’t thrown away enough money?”