Pain Killers (19 page)

“So,” I said, “are you gonna keep me on the hook or tell me what we’re talking about?” I hate other people’s secrets.

“If I told you,” he said, “I’d be bound by law to take myself out on sight. Nobody touches him till I get the word.”

“So what are you saying? He gets a pass? Maybe I don’t want to be a collaborator.”

“Keep it down, Manuel.”

“Who all knows that Jo—”

He put his finger to his lips. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

We did the manly eye-lock thing, then conversation proceeded. “Who all knows?” I continued, my voice reasonably low.

“Theoretically, just you, me, the warden and Mr. Zell. But as you may have noticed, the Man Who Would Be Mengele is dead set on spreading the news. You know what they say, no secrets in prison.” He waggled a finger at my chest. “So, the cross-dressing. I don’t get it.”

“You mean my transgender hormone regimen? Give me a break. Do I look like a guy who wants tits?”

“That’s not a subject I’m comfortable with, Rupert. I hope you can understand that. Whatever sewer world you live in, I respect you for signing on, but I don’t need to know about your personal life.”

“If you were FBI, you would know you’re not the only one working undercover.”

“I did your urinalysis, buddy.”

“That a hobby, or they teach that at Quantico?”

“You have a degenerate nature. That’s not your fault. It’s genetics.”

“Too late to sterilize my mother,” I said. “She had a hysterectomy. Plus she’s dead.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him I stole someone else’s urine. I just didn’t want to out Rincin. I didn’t know my compulsively grinning chaperone very well. And I wasn’t sure I liked him. But I still didn’t want to rat him out as a tranny if I didn’t have to.

Jimmy lost interest in my fertile urine and changed the subject.

“Look at this!” He sifted through the canteen food on the table. Sniffed the mushy apple up and wrinkled his nose. “God knows what this is preserved with. One thing Nazis never get credit for is health food. Hitler tried to get everybody off meat and dairy. I’ve seen pictures of his dinner. Looks just like what we used to get back home.”

“Where’s that? The Ruhr Valley?”

“Bountiful, Utah.”

“FBI, right. You’re Mormon.”

“And say what you will about Mormons, we eat fresh. We eat organic. You look like you could stand a little health food yourself.”

“Show me where I can get organic lard, and I’m in.”

“Very funny. I’m not saying I like anything else about them. But they did practically discover whole grains. Soybeans, too. They used to call them ‘Nazi beans.’ Hitler knew his protein.”

“White Bob, or Jimmy, or whatever your name is, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. But Josef Mengele wasn’t Gregor Mendel. He didn’t torture beans.”

“My point exactly. Don’t tar the good people. The horticulturalists. The whole grains advocates. That’s all I’m saying. America does plenty of things in our name you probably don’t like.”

“Pretty risqué opinion. You sure you’re FBI?”

“Affirmative. And as such I like to know what kind of American I’m talking to. I happen to love my country. That does not change the fact that the Nazis outlawed lead in toothpaste tubes fifty years before America. I’m not saying ignore the bad, I’m saying look at the good. World War Two, American housewives were busy dyeing margarine yellow. Meanwhile, Reich scientists discovered butter-yellow coloring was carcinogenic. IG Farben was the number-one manufacturer of food dyes—and they agreed to stop producing. They put purity before profit.”

“Why not? They probably got back what they lost in dye jobs with what they saved using slave labor.”

Jimmy flinched like I’d slapped him—and he wanted to slap me back. Good. I was beyond fatigued. I reeked. If my liver’d had a mouth and telephone access it would have called a lawyer already.

“You’re just a fed with a sinsemilla haircut,” I said.

If he wanted to throw down, maybe I could hit him with a chair. If not, at least it would be over fast. I tensed, letting him know I was ready.

Naturally, I’d misread the situation.

“What are you, crazy?” His whisper was high pitched. “You think I’m gonna start anything in the visiting room? You need to calm down, man. I’m not saying the Nazis weren’t monsters. I’m saying the fact that they were monsters doesn’t cancel the fact that they were early vegetarians. Bad food and chemicals were outlawed. Hitler was obsessed with cancer. He even forbade coffee. He thought caffeine was poison.”

“He didn’t need it. His doctor shot him up with amphetamines. Stuck a needle in his ass every morning.”

“You’re missing the point. Nobody’s perfect. Hitler was all about getting rid of the toxins. That’s what the camps were for, too! The man even outlawed Coca-Cola.”

“No wonder we went to war. America could live with death camps. But Hitler should have known, you don’t fuck with Coca-Cola.”

“He didn’t.”

“You just said—”

“What? You don’t think corporations can hide? The Third Reich served Fanta. Orange. Fanta was a subsidiary of Coca-Cola. But it was hush-hush. The stuff’s still popular in Europe and Brazil.”

“Why are we talking,” I said, “when you should be arresting a mass mutilator? Is this some kind of test? I need to make some notes for class.”

I started to get up. He hooked his leg in my chair so it wouldn’t budge. “What now?” I asked him.

“Nothing’s black and white,” he said, ignoring my question. “You heard of Operation Paperclip? We accepted Nazi scientists if they had something we wanted. Why do you think you never hear about the Japanese Mengeles? Because there weren’t any? Guess again. Look up Colonel Ishi—but not on a full stomach. MacArthur signed away the pursuit of all charges in return for American scientists getting his research. Nice and quiet. No Nuremberg.”

“Why not?”

“We punished the people we couldn’t use.”

“And now you think Mengele’s useful?”

“I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to hang. But without his early work on caloric intake we might not have your low-carb diets today.”

“We’re back to death camp diet tips? Are you
insane
?”

“Okay, forget carbohydrates. Hitler outlawed tobacco in the thirties. Are you saying that makes not smoking a bad idea? Read your George Bernard Shaw. ‘Ideas aren’t responsible for the people who embrace them.’”

“They teach that at BYU?”

“I don’t know, I went to Yale. Mormons can get educated, you know.”

“You and Mitt Romney.”

“The man on the gay wedding cake. Just ’cause he’s one of ours doesn’t mean we like him. Speaking of Yale, that’s where I met your ex.”

“You know Tina?”

“Knew. Not a lot of Yalies make it to where
she
ended up, huh?”

“She doesn’t talk about that part of her life.”

“Marvin was this guy who used to sell ex in New Haven. I couldn’t believe she married him. She beats all the odds. Gets a scholarship from Nowheresville and what does she do?”

“She never told me any of this.”

“Right. I guess when you met her she was pretty far down the road.”

“Not a conversation I want to have right now. Can we,” I suggested, “restrict the conversation to you not nailing Mengele when you had the chance?”

Jimmy the Rasta ignored the question and pushed the small mountain of canteen snacks my way. “Have some Cheez Doodles or something. It looks weird if we don’t eat.”

I’d been waiting for the right moment. I shoved a handful of popcorn in my mouth and talked around it. “I still don’t believe you’re undercover.”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe. All I want is for you to tell me how you came to have a relationship with Harry Zell.”

The table beside us filled up with an extended Latino family. Four scrubbed-up boys stood in line to show their report cards to Dad. “I don’t have a relationship,” I said, “I have an arrangement. He hired me, with minor coercion, to do a job.”

“So you’re working for him?”

“Boy, you don’t miss anything.”

“Please, Mr. Rupert. Do you know what Zell does? I know you did your private-eye-school skip trace.”

“I could have done more.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Zell got a scrub. And I mean the best you can get. Government documents, Google, any kind of paper—all scrubbed. That takes juice and money.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You can pay to have yourself un-look-up-able? Why not just a fake name?”

“’Cause then people could look up your fake name?”

He had me there. But I still wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know, man. That scrub thing…It sounds like an urban legend.”

“That’s what they want you to think, friend.” It was hard to place the expression on my snack partner’s face. “All you really need to know is this: Harry Zell saw the train coming. The man’s a visionary.”

“What’d he do?”

“What did he do? The man invented prison reality shows. He knew prison was the new porn. He got rights to go in before he even sold the idea for
Lockup
to MSNBC, or
Inside
on the NGC.”

“What’s that?”

“National Geographic Channel. You know, they’re not stuffy anymore. No more bare tribal breasts in the African village. Now they show prison gang docs. That’s way more NGC. And every inch of footage is shot, syndicated, supplied and owned by Zell. Zell knew. He was like Bob Hope buying up the San Fernando Valley when all people could see were orange groves. Well, before Zell, all people saw when they looked at prison was…prison. Not Zell. He looked, and he saw the future. He was buying up prime real estate in ten B.C.”

“Ten B.C.?”

“Ten years before cable.”

“So it sounds like he did great. I still don’t get why he had to go full scrub, or whatever you called it. Not that I don’t think you’re completely bullshitting me to begin with. What was his beef with Mengele?”

“Mengele wanted to go public, supposedly. The old man wanted the honor due him before he croaked.”

“Thinks he got a raw deal?”

“Victim of circumstance. He’s got this Wernher von Braun fixation.”

“So I gathered.”

“Mind you,” said the undercover agent, “I can’t say as I blame him. Von Braun builds V-2s in slave camps. Ends up palling around with Jack Kennedy like a couple of playboy kings. JFK was more concerned with getting to the moon than breeding pure-blooded Aryans. So what if Wernher developed the V-2 and aimed them at London? Ever hear that Ray Charles song from the fifties? ‘Shoulda been me—with that real fine chick. Shoulda been me—eatin’ ice cream and cake.’ That’s Mengele. He was ahead of his time.”

“I didn’t have you pegged as an R&B fan.”

“What can I tell you? I had you pegged as a guy with no pegs. But I’m trusting you with this. Now give
me
something.”

“Give you what? I still don’t get how Zell loses if Mengele’s brought in. It’s fucking surreal that you even have to
think
about nailing a mass murderer. Lots of guys pretend to be Vietnam vets. Desert Stormers. They want part of the glory. The German doctor’s too old for those. So he comes here to play out his senior years as a big shot. Hey, he could do worse than Dr. Mengele.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? Maybe he wanted a Nazi marquee name. Or not.”

“The point is, assuming, for the moment, that Mengele is Mengele, Zell’s going to lose money if he gets arrested now.”

“Why? No, don’t tell me—he’s doing a reality show with Mengele?”

“Not exactly. Zell wants exclusive rights to the capture.”

“Why does law enforcement care what Zell wants? Why do
you
care?”

Rasta Jim did not honor that with a response. His very nonanswer declared the obvious: Mengele was a death celebrity not even countless A&E
Biography
reruns could diminish. Figure it out.

The guy I still thought of as White Bob Marley sighed and tore open a box of Cracker Jacks. “You know, they take the prizes out ahead of time. No prizes in the joint.”

“Why? ’Cause they think felons don’t deserve prizes?”

“There’s that. Lot of them are plastic is the main thing. Cons can melt ’em, sharpen them on the concrete floor. Pretty soon your little blue X-Man’s melted down to a two-inch aorta poker.”

“Fuck the Cracker Jacks. Answer the question. So the government doesn’t want to arrest Mengele? Is that what you’re saying? We’re back to what Zell has on them?”

“Somebody went to night school.”

“You gonna tell me what it is? Or are we going to sit here until I OD on hydrogenated fats and prove the Nazis were right about whole foods?”

“I’ll give you a hint. San Quentin gets a lot of money from Big Pharma.”

“They perform experiments on prisoners?”

He gave in, unwrapped a pack of peanut butter crackers and tucked one in his mouth. “I’m just sayin’. And who knows more about human experiments?” He twisted his topmost dread, the one that stuck straight up like the top of a Christmas tree, minus the star. “From what I hear it’s been going on since, like, World War One. But of course that’s just a rumor. Completely unsubstantiated. Wink-wink snicker-snicker.”

“I’ve heard stuff like that,” I said. “I read this book,
Acres of Skin,
about the perfume tests doctors did on inmates at Holmesberg State Prison, in Pennsylvania. They used to put chemicals under their skin. They showed pictures. After a while the poor bastards had backs like checkerboards. Went on for years.”

“You read a book, huh? You’re not half-dumb for a small-town cop with questionable taste in women and substance abuse issues.”

“Should I even bother to ask why you know so much?”

“You should be asking how. The small-town stuff’s in your file. The substance abuse, I’m looking at your pupils. You ever think of wearing shades?”

“I was hoping Mengele could dye my eyes.”

“Yeah, green really shows the load,” he said. “It’s all in the pupils. And buddy, I gotta say, you’re more pinned than a Baby Doc voodoo doll.”

“In that case, you know where I have to go.”

“Rehab?”

“Close. I have to go teach a drug class, remember? Where I believe I’ll be seeing you. Maybe together, we can lick this thing.”