Headhunter (24 page)

Damballah

Thursday, November 4th, 7:45 a.m.

"I don't think he looks well," Monica Macdonald said.

"Who, DeClercq?"

"Yeah."

"I guess the pressure's getting to him," Katherine Spann replied.

Rick Scarlett said: "What do you think he meant when he said to keep an eye peeled today for anything made of ebony. And why does he insist on knowing personally?"

"Beats me. Maybe it's got something to do with his fear of tunnel vision. Keep us all in the dark so we don't overlook a thing."

"Personally," Tipple said, "I thought he went a little overboard on the concept of duty."

"Perhaps," Rusty Lewis said. "But don't you get the feeling that man really means it when he says we have a sacred trust to 'Maintain the Right.' "

"I don't know," the Corporal said slowly. "This whole idea of a sweep is on pretty shaky ground. If we score with one of these guys, the lawyers will have a field day. Mark my words that Charter of Rights is going to make it as hard for us up here as the cops have it in the States."

"Maybe the right he's talking about isn't legal right," Lewis replied. "Maybe it's moral right."

"Anyway," Monica Macdonald said, "DeClercq moved me this morning. I say we get the job done."

"I agree," Lewis said. "He moved me too."

Macdonald opened the door and they both turned up their collars and walked out in the pouring rain. Tipple, Spann, and Scarlett were left standing in the front hall at Headhunter Headquarters.

"May I see those taps again?" Katherine Spann asked. The

Corporal passed the transcripts to her. As the woman leafed through the pages reading them one more time, Scarlett looked out at the rain and asked: "How do you suggest we go about finding Hardy?"

"Don't know," Tipple replied. "I've never seen the guy. He just shows up on the tapes every now and then. Rackstraw's been my quarry, not Hardy."

"Strange no one seems to know the telephone is tapped."

"If you saw the setup, you'd understand why."

Scarlett was silent for a minute. Beyond the door the skies were sodden and gray with the afterbirth of one storm while a new wave of thunderclouds shoved in from the sea. Still the rain came down.

"What about the cousin?" he asked. "Where do we look for him?"

"I think you should leave his studio alone so he doesn't wise to the tap."

"Studio?"

"Yeah, the man is involved in the music business. Runs it under a holding company called Damballah Enterprises Ltd."

"Damballah is the snake god in-voodoo."

"I know. Why don't you try to find him tonight down at the London Calling. That's a club on Pender."

Tipple fished into his pocket and removed a small telephone-pole poster. There were rips in all four corners where staples had once secured it. It read:

Save Yourself For Thursday Night, November 4th, 1982

LIVE IN CONCERT FROM ENGLAND

RAW-T

With Special Guests
VOODOO CHILE

Save Your Soles!

The London Calling Ballroom,

742 West Pender Street.

"Why do you think he'll be there?" Rick Scarlett asked.

"Voodoo Chile's his band," Tipple said in reply.

Katherine Spann had folded the corner on one of the transcript pages. Once she had perused all the rest she turned back to that one. She held it out to Tipple.

"This tap is long distance. Bill. Where's it coming from .'"

"Let's see," Tipple said. He took the transcript from her and read:

Incoming call. Long distance.

Fox: Hey hey.

Operator: I have a collect call from Mr. Wolf. Will you accept the charge?

Fox: Yes I will.

Wolf: It's cooking on the 6th .. . The pot boils over at midnight.

Fox: I'm ready . . . The cous will be down there to see all you.

Wolf: Ah . . . Right ... be seein' the man then.

Fox: Okay, bye for now.

Wolf:
Au revoir.

Finished reading, Tipple looked up and said: "That call's from New Orleans."

The Sweep

8:36 a.m.

They hit the pornographer's first.

Rick Scarlett entered the sex shop on Granville Street close to the Granville Bridge wearing a raincoat over his uniform and with his soaked head bare. The store was already open to catch the early morning crowd—or at least that was the front. Walking swiftly up to the counter the policeman skipped his eyes around the shop, taking in the shelves of skin mags and books all sealed in plastic wrappers, then he leaned forward over a display case of artificial vaginas and Suck-U-Lators and asked for something in rubber.

The man behind the counter was in his late forties, a thick-set balding individual with a fat savage face and wet, sneering lips. His eyes held the look of someone preoccupied with thoughts of sex every waking hour. Scarlett was quite sure that he dreamt about it too. As the cop spoke, the man looked up from a book titled
The Variations of Anal Intercourse
and taking in the raincoat sized him up for a flasher. In that opinion the man was correct.

With a flourish. Rick Scarlett flipped open the outer garment to reveal his uniform beneath.

"Oh shit!" the man behind the counter said, and his eyelids snapped wide like blinds released and flapping over windows. His left hand reached out for a button on the wall, but before the fingers could get there Scarlett seized hold of his wrist.

"No alarm," the cop warned, "or you're in big,
big
trouble."

As the fat man dropped his arm, Katherine Spann came in through the front door. She ran across to where an entrance nave access to the girlie peep-show booths in the rear of the shop and pulled back the curtain. Behind there were six booths lined along one wall. Two sets of men's feet showed below the hinged half-door on one of the cubicles. Beyond the booths was another door set into the wall. The woman tried it and found it locked.

Moving swiftly across the corridor, she braced herself with her back to the opposite wall. Pushing off with both hands, Spann propelled herself across the passageway, raising her right leg to connect with the door just above its lock and handle, her left leg keeping up the momentum. The door burst inward amidst a shower of splinters.

Inside the room two men were sitting on a bench against the left wall. One of the men was a "bomber pilot," his head now up in the clouds and exploding with chemical flak. His body was in a slouch and his jaw hung slackly open, his fingers caressing a pair of little girl's panties. The other man was Kurt Schmidt, who was also the manager of the Silver Screen Theatre. Schmidt's abdomen was still bandaged from where the feminist had slashed it with the razor. As the door crashed in Schmidt was in the process of focusing a 35 mm Pentax camera.

To the left and right of both men, banks of high-powered lights shone down upon a raised dais to the right of the door. Two children now stood on that platform. One was a young girl no more than nine or ten who was dressed in a tiny black lace corset and wearing miniature nylon stockings. Her crotch was bare and her face was painted with the heavy makeup of a whore. The other was a young boy the same age as the girl. He was naked except for a fedora on his head and a plastic Thompson submachine gun in his hands. The boy's genitals had been rouged red.

"Jesus, no!" Schmidt exclaimed as Spann came hurtling into the room. He reacted immediately, wrenching the back of the camera open to expose and ruin the film. Then he turned to run. Reaching out with one hand the woman grabbed him by the arm, but Schmidt jerked free. He swung back his left hand to punch her in the nose just as Rick Scarlett came flying through the door.

It had taken several seconds for the bomber pilot to come out of his haze. He was very stoned and only now beginning to realize that this was a raid. It was as the spaceman was struggling to gain his feet and get up off the bench that Scarlett pulled his .38 and aimed it at Schmidt's head.

"Freeze! Police!" Scarlett yelled.

10:50 a.m.

Macdonald and Lewis were not prepared for the man who answered the door. Dexter Flesch did not look remotely like his mug shot, but then the police picture was over eight years old.

To start with, the Constables were surprised to find that a D. Flesch still resided at the West End apartment address recorded in the police file. In 1974 the man they were now seeking had pleaded guilty to eleven counts of indecent assault on a female. He had served one year in prison with a two-year probation order on release requiring him to see a psychiatrist at least twice a month. The psychiatric condition was because his MO had been a little peculiar.

On May the 10th of 1974, Dexter Flesch—wearing a white smock with a stethoscope around his neck—had entered the gymnasium of a local high school while a class of Grade 12 girls was having Physical Education. The man had flashed a printed College of Physicians and Surgeons card at the instructress and had then taken the woman aside for a
sotto voce
talk. The truth was. Flesch told her, that he had been sent by the School Board to check on an outbreak of . . . well, to put it simply ... of crabs among the graduating class. It seemed that these genital parasites (and here Flesch lowered his voice even more) were emanating from a young lady in this very class. Did the instructress have any idea—all in the
strictest
of confidence, of course—-just who the carrier might be?

Yes, the instructress had told Flesch, there were one or two girls who she suspected of having hinges on their heels.

"Then let's take a look," Dexter Flesch had said.

The man had set up a temporary clinic in the Phys. Ed. teacher's office and had asked that the girls be brought to him one at a time, starting with the most promiscuous, in order that he might examine them to isolate the carrier. The instructress had been more than pleased to oblige.

It was unfortunate, however, that the cause of personal hygiene was not to prevail that day. For as luck would have it the school nurse had come down to the gym to fill out a report on an injury incurred that morning during an earlier class. She found Dexter Flesch lowering the gym shorts of his twelfth victim.

In a way Flesch was lucky. A few more seconds and by gum he might have been subsequently facing a twelfth count

That was eight years ago. The D. Flesch who answered the door today was a very different man. On seeing him Lewis looked at Macdonald and Macdonald looked right back. Neither one of the cops was prepared for this.
It's a mixed up world,
Rusty Lewis thought.

"Yes," Flesch said in a voice as soft as corn silk. "What is it you want?"

"We'd like to talk to Dexter Flesch," Monica Macdonald said, frowning.

The person who stood before them in the open doorway had eyes like a cat and every few seconds he licked the lips of his feral mouth like a kitten licking cream. His hair was red, exploding from his head to cascade down about his shoulders in ringlets of fire. The makeup that covered his features was almost a work of art. In a rough estimate, Monica Macdonald calculated that it would have taken him over two hours to apply.

The man's figure was a perfect hourglass and he knew just how to show it off. He wore a black French push-up peek-a-boo bra over his small pert breasts and a black sheer blouse over that. The suit that encased the rest of his frame was sewn from white linen, definitely hand-tailored. His nails were red; his boots were snakeskin; his only jewelry was two gold hoop earrings and a bracelet of gold fashioned to look like a snake that twisted around his left arm. To be honest with himself, Rusty Lewis thought that this man was perhaps the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. The only female who even came close was a lawyer by the name of Lorelei Ashe who had once made a complete fool out of Lewis in the witness stand. But Ashe didn't have these eyes.

Please God, don't give me a hard-on,
Lewis thought with a smile.

Flesch said: "I'm afraid that Dexter is no more. He's gone away forever."

"Where has he gone?" Monica Macdonald asked.

"Just gone," Flesch said with a vacant fly-away wave of one hand.

"Which are you, Miss Flesch?" the woman asked softly. "Transvestite or transsexual?"

The man who was now a woman gave her a sloe look. "I've had the nip and tuck," he said.

"Do you mind if we come in?" Rusty Lewis asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'm just on my way to work and I'm late already."

"Where do you work? What do you do?" Macdonald asked.

"I teach women makeup art at a modeling studio. I transform frumpy housewives. Now if you'll please excuse me?"

"Miss Flesch, I'm afraid we can't. We're with the Squad investigating the Headhunter killings," Lewis said.

Flesch blinked. "I-I don't understand," he said. "What has that to do with me?"

"Can you account for your whereabouts in the last three weeks?" Monica Macdonald asked.

"My what! My what! You think I . . . You're crazy, sister!"

"I'm not your sister. Miss Flesch. And I want a straight answer. Where have you been for the last ..."

Suddenly the cat-eyes widened as Flesch took one step back and tried to slam the apartment door. Lewis stuck out his foot in time to prevent it closing. With one hand he pushed the door back open sharply.

"You . . . you . . . you .
. .
PIGS
!" Flesch screamed shrilly, his voice turning very high-pitched.

"Take it easy," Macdonald said. "Don't let . . ."

"STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU. . . YOU FUCKING PIGS!"
Now
there was a hysterical look growing in the transsexual's eyes.
"JUST WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE. CALLING ME . . . ME! ... A RAPIST!"

"Nobody called you a rapist!" Lewis said, raising his own voice.

"LEAVE ME ALONE! JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!"

"Calm down!" ordered Lewis, but before either Constable could make a move to restrain him, Flesch whirled on his spiked heels and leapt up on a glass table in the entrance hall of the apartment. The tiny sole on one of the heels must have worn away for an abrupt sound of metal scraping glass took a shred from Macdonald's nerves. Then her momentary shudder turned to awe as Flesch wrenched his belt free and dropped both slacks and panties.

Monica Macdonald found it hard to believe that here she was, standing in this man's residence, confronting this woman who was the man they sought, her eyes now staring at a set of female genitalia as anatomically perfect as any of the vulvas that she had seen bared on all those strip-show stages.

"
DON'T YOU COPS UNDERSTAND! CAN'T YOU FUCKERS SEE!
"
Flesch shrieked, his face turning purple with rage,
"I'M NOT A RAPIST! I'M A LESBIAN!"

Then the outburst was over. Without another word Flesch crumpled down onto the glass surface of the table and rolled onto the floor. Then he started to weep.

A few minutes later Monica Macdonald took hold of his arm and gently helped him to his feet. By then the art of makeup on Flesch's face was streaked and smeared and running.

12:20 p.m.

The call for assistance was clocked in at just after noon. Scarlett and Spann were a mile away, having just come out of a dilapidated two-story walkup on East Broadway where they had failed to find a six-time convicted pederast. They caught the squeal on their patrol car radio the second they climbed in. Less than fifteen minutes later they were at the scene.

When their car had skidded to a stop on the rain-drenched pavement, Monica Macdonald left a doorway and came running through the storm up to the driver's side. Scarlett rolled down the window and a wet spray blew in.

"There might be a rumble," the woman said. "We're waiting on Rabidowski."

"Where's the clubhouse?" Scarlett asked.

"Around the corner and down a block. Rusty's got it covered."

"How did it come down?" As Scarlett spoke Katherine Spann drew her .38 from its Sam Browne and checked the action. She snapped the cylinder shut with a sharp flick of her wrist.

Monica Macdonald said: "We were looking for a biker by the name of Whip O'Brian. Guy's out here from Alberta. Back home in Edmonton he strikes the colors of The Barbarians, but lately Special E says he's been riding bike with the Iron Skulls. He's got connections through a brother."

"He's got a record?" Spann asked.

"O'Brian did seven, five, and one a few years back in Calgary for rape, buggery and bestiality. The guy's a speed freak. Some woman ripped him on an amphetamine deal so he got even by attacking both her and her invalid brother. The two of them had a dog. Believe me, this man's dangerous. He's not all there."

"Is he inside the clubhouse?"

"Yep, with about ten other bikers. Maybe more. Rusty and I were casing the place when this group of guys on hogs came blasting out of the rain. They had a woman with them and they dragged her inside. She didn't look happy at all. Word from Special E is that the Skulls are taking strikers. I peg her for a mama to be used in the initiation."

"A gang bang?" Scarlett asked.

"That's my bet," Monica said. "Today. Right now."

"Damn. Where's Rabidowski?"

Just as he spoke a police van came wheeling out of the rain. The Mad Dog was at the wheel. As three large men with Remington pump shotguns and semi-automatic rifles climbed out from the back of the vehicle, Spann noticed a V of steel welded to the front bumper. It looked like a battering ram.

Rabidowski rolled down the window. "Who can give directions?"

"I can," Macdonald said.

"Okay, you and Scarlett come with me. Spann, you take these guys in the cruiser and follow right behind. The moment I take down the door everyone goes in. Got it? Let's
roll."

As Katherine Spann took the driver's seat, one ERT man climbed in front with her and the other two took the back, each one jamming his door open with a metal flashlight. The rear doors of a cruiser cannot be opened from inside.