Pipsqueak (10 page)

According to Checkers, the idea of “color flash” mind control was originally intended for troops, but the National Security Agency—“our CIA dedicated to sophisticated electronics”—took over the project, combined it with their color-television project, and rigged the Broadcast Standards Institute to perfect the technique and proper scanning rates to open the mind. The scanning rate, he explained, had an effect on the mind comparable to the repetition used in topical brainwashing, except now you had someone looking at the TV with “a full open mind, bereft of any apprehension or distraction from talking with a stranger, a recruiter.” The entertainment worked as a sort of carrier signal for the color flash.

But this was only the first step. The next was to get as much protein out of the American diet as possible, which the government did by introducing a cornucopia of high-fat, high-carbohydrate snack foods. At the same time, beef, cheese, and eggs were vilified. So were snack foods to a certain extent, but they were so convenient and taste-enhanced that people ate them anyway. Commercials saw to that. Checkers showed charts and graphs of the increase in snack-food consumption since the introduction of the color TV, of insidious partially hydrogenated oils found on every snack label.

And finally he revealed to us the purpose of the color-flash brainwashing: money worship. The Soviets had it all backward, you see. They felt that if they could maintain total control over
supply
, they could completely control the people. In the West, however, we prefer the carrot to the stick. The government controlled
demand
, and that drove the economic engine, made people work harder for less real estate, more consumables. He cited the scarcity of condominiums before the advent of color TV.

“Next week, I’ll go over what organizations are implementing the color-flash program, the size and breadth of the conspiracy. Following that, we have a guest speaker, formerly of the National Institutes of Health, to explain the mechanisms of how nicotine blocks color flash in the brain through dopamine enhancement, which in turn is the impetus for the government’s efforts to abolish smoking. Included will be new information on how attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a side effect of the Broadcast Institute’s experiments, and how the drug Ritalin is being used in lieu of cigarettes to combat these effects. Thank you all, and please give as generously as you can to the Church fund. It goes into rental of this space, for organizing, for getting the word out. Maestro?”

The band struck up a riff, and the congregation all stood up at once. Angie and I weren’t far from the door and slid out pretty quickly. I dropped a buck in the can of a guy next to the door on the way out. And so we were some of the first ones up at Houston Street, where taxis had gathered. Like vultures, it looked like the cabbies had gotten wind of the meetings, and the ones in the know would stop down here at midnight to scavenge fares.

As we zoomed west on Houston Street, Angie cleared her throat. “Well?”

I gave a short laugh. “I’ve got to hand it to them, Angie. It’s compelling, in its way. They’ve really brought a bunch of threads together, and it plays into a swell conspiracy theory.”

“Think any of it is true?”

“Just enough. Going to continue playing solitaire?”

“I mean it, Garth. A conspiracy?”

I smiled, but not with full conviction. “Conspiracy theories are the ultimate in human conceit. Look at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Their task is perfectly simple. They just need a few facts, date of birth, name, address, then a photo. You get assigned a number, so does your car. Now it just becomes a matter of keeping the number straight with the names and vehicle identification numbers. Go to the DMV, what do you find? Chaos, huge lines, confusion.”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“If the government had the wherewithal to perpetrate a complicated conspiracy, you’d think they’d have the wherewithal to make the DMV the pinnacle of efficiency.”

“Some would argue they’re only as efficient as they have to be. What do they care if you have to wait in a long line? It’s not like you won’t wait.”

“Even so, to pull off a conspiracy of this complexity you’d have to get a lot of people buying into the same principle without a religious dogma or beacon of hate to lead them. Hell, get six people together and you spend an hour and a half trying to decide where to go for dinner. And there’s not even any power or money to be shared in that arrangement. Even so, it would have to be for something more than just the love of greenbacks.”

“It is a tall tale.” Angie sighed. “Then again, there seems to be no end to these loopy cults. You know, I was fooling around on the Internet the other day and came up with this Web page for some group that’s convinced there’s a global shadow government. You know who spearheads it? The Boy Scouts of America and their—what was it?—oh, yeah, ‘Occult Symbolism.’ I mean, these guys really think the Scouts are in cahoots with Amway to raise the Dark Lord and enslave the planet!”

“I could see Amway and the UPN network . . .” I grinned.

“But the retros: They have a lot going for them. I mean, they promote smoking and eating beef. Beats grape juice and white bread. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody to have a lot less television and video games in their lives.”

“Certainly cut down on the advertising exposure.” I squinted.

“Yes, Sugar Lips.” Angie gave me a pat on the hand. “Fewer ads.”

Chapter 14

O
ur taxi pulled away from us and relit the For Hire sign. Angie and I walked around my black Lincoln parked in front of our digs and approached the doorway to our apartment. We use a side door that accesses all eight apartments in the building, even though there’s a shop entrance into our living room that we haven’t opened in years. It’s not uncommon for a homeless person to curl up to sleep on our front stoop, particularly on windy, cold nights, and we don’t mind so long as they don’t wet the bed. Actually, the more common phantom urinaters are barhoppers. The Barbed Wire, a saloon that used to be around the corner, was a big B&T draw, meaning that “bridge and tunnel” kids from outside Manhattan—Jersey, Queens, etc.—came there to whoop it up in the Big City. I’ve got no problem with that except the B&Ts routinely mistook our stoop for a urinal on their way back to their cars. Don’t ask me why they didn’t use the trough at the Barbed Wire. This became so predictable for a time that I installed a motion detector and strobe light to scare them off. Inspired by Dudley’s tinkerings, I schemed to deconstruct the components of a bug zapper, flatten out the charged grid, and slide it under a rubber mat on the stoop. I guess it would have been a “pud zapper.” But Angie talked me out of that one because I might’ve electrocuted a passing pissing pooch.

Anyway, we didn’t think anything of the person we could see curled up in our front doorway. Until we noted that said form wasn’t dressed in the fashionable oily gray, navy, or brown coat of the indigent. The garb was red, and the outstretched hand had red painted nails. A strung-out transvestite? We drifted over for a closer peek. You have to be careful around sleeping homeless because they sometimes awake quite defensively. And whatever you do, don’t nudge them with your foot or they can get violent—and not without some justification. Vigilante citizens have been known to fall upon the homeless while they sleep, literally kicking them bloody while they’re down. The intended message? Don’t return to sleep in and reduce the property values of our neighborhood.

A closer inspection revealed blood dripping off the stoop. We winced, but such spectacles aren’t completely out of the norm in the Big Apple.

“Oh, my gosh,” Angie gasped.

“Time to call an ambulance,” I said as we backed to the building entrance.

Homeless die every day in New York, right on the street, and sometimes in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. They most often succumb to exposure in the dark, cold months. Huddled next to a building as if asleep, their body temperature draws down and they die quietly. Other times, they are the victims of their vices, isopropyl martinis causing gruesome public episodes of blood vomiting.

“Sure you wanna call an ambulance?” Nicholas had appeared, in a tan and brown suit. He was sitting on the Lincoln’s hood, arms folded, a tweed goblin come to vex me.

“What the— Of course!” Angie shot him a cross look and unlocked the building door.

Nicholas straightened his green bow tie. “Okay.”

Angie turned suddenly. “Oh, my Lord. It’s not—”

“It’s Marti Folsom, and she’s dead.” By his expression, Nicholas might just as well have told us our fridge was on the fritz. “No bullet holes or stab wounds. Blood is coming from her ears and mouth. When the coroner gets through slicing up her brain and liver like so much Boar’s Head, he’ll probably find that it was an overdose. Not that she willingly took the overdose.”

“But that’s impossible. We just saw her . . .”

Nicholas raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“Yeah? Where?”

I held my thoughts, but my eyes betrayed them.

“That’s right, Garth. Someone’s sending you a message. They know where you live, and they don’t want you nosing around the retros looking for Pipsqueak.”

“How long have you been hiding in the shadows here?” Angie asked.

“Not long enough to see who put her there, but long enough that I got here before you. So where did you two go after you left the Gotham Club? I just
happened
to see you there.”

Again I held my thoughts. I learned a long time ago it wasn’t wise to divulge anything while Nicholas was playing games.

“Well, you don’t have to tell me, Garth. But you will have to tell the police. Er, you might want to make your next call to a lawyer.”

My mind raced. Was there any way I could tell the police that I didn’t know this dead person’s name? What were the potential pitfalls? And if I did tell them who she was and that she was the owner of T3, where another murder had happened, might the police suddenly come to suspect that Cola Woman was “invented” by me and Marti? That somehow we’d conspired to kill Tyler Loomis, alias Gut Wrench, and blame it on a mysterious stranger who never existed? All to fake Pipsqueak’s disappearance? But why . . . who . . . what if . . . ?

“Okay,
brother-in-law:
Just what are you doing here?”

“Sister-in-law Angie! I’m flattered that Garth told you about his little brother. I can see it all now. Christmas cards, Thanksgiving dinner. Hey, that’s right. I don’t have any plans for Easter!”

“Look, buster,” Angie began, a finger of warning in his face, “I know you and Garth have some bad blood, but save that game for him. I’m a clean slate, and as far as I’m concerned you’re family. And where I come from, family gets the benefit of the doubt, always, so I’m extending that to you.” Angie poked his shoulder. “Don’t bite my hand, Nicholas.”

My brother displayed uncharacteristic contrition, real or not.

“Sorry, Angie, you’re right.” He held his hands up as if her finger were a gun barrel. “I’ll cool it.”

“That’s better. Now I’m going to call the police.”

“Think it through first,” Nicholas advised. “Marti’s dead, which means a lot of strange thoughts are going to go through the cops’ heads when they get here and learn of Garth’s connection to her. They don’t cotton to coincidences. Garth’s peripheral involvement in two murders means they’re going to suspect him of complicity. Somebody did this to keep you two from playing bloodhound. If I were you, I’d tell the cops only the bare facts and wait to flesh it out in the presence of your attorney. I’m not sure you even want to get into the whole retro thing, if you can help it, much less that you think this has to do with a goofy puppet. Let them figure that out for themselves, if they can. Oops—looks like somebody already called the fuzz.”

Flashing lights came down the block.

Nicholas started off on foot toward the West Side Highway but gave some parting advice.

“And whatever you do, don’t offer to identify the body. Let the cops ask you to, and hope they don’t.” The ambulance and police car arrived simultaneously with Nicholas’s disappearance around the corner.

Chapter 15

S
ometimes I wish I could visit myself in the past and slap that Garth around. This stupid Pipsqueak thing was getting way, way out of hand, even as I had feared it might.

Two detectives showed up moments before the photographer. One was a wan white guy with black-frame glasses, a cratered, waxy complexion, and neatly pressed suit. To my eye, he’d have made a dandy embalmer. The other was a pudgy man of undetermined race. That is, he probably could have filled any or all of the Equal Employment Opportunity categories at the NYPD: sloe-eyed, short frizzy hair, thick black mustache, bright blue eyes, and skin that probably took a tan well. He handed me his card and asked questions; the Embalmer didn’t. After getting our names, address, and phone number, Detective Tsilzer asked only six questions.

“When did you find her?”

“Just now, about ten minutes ago.”

“Did you or anyone else touch or move her in any way from the way you found her?”

“No. We found her just like that.”

“Who else was around when you discovered the body?”

“Nobody. Well . . .”

“Well?”

“Well, my brother was here. Nicholas Palihnic. But—”

“Where can we get in touch with him?”

I pulled out my wallet. “This is his card.” Tsilzer tucked it in the back of his notebook without so much as scanning the name. He turned toward Angie.

“Do you have anything to add?”

“No.” Angie shook her head.

“Awright, that’ll do it for now.” He smiled politely at us, looking from one to the other, in a way that might have meant “Have a good night” or “I’ll find out more from you two later.” Doubtless, Tsilzer intended it that way.

I guess we don’t get the Good Citizenship decal for our window for this kind of mildly evasive behavior in the face of the fact that someone may have just been murdered. But as a garden-variety cynic, I have a fundamental distrust of those with the power to subjugate me. As a denizen of New York City, where the police are constantly out to impound or summons your car, distrust of the cops is endemic. And did I mention the hidden cameras? The police have taken to video surveillance of the citizenry at large, you know, for our own good. There are actually cameras installed at certain stoplights that take a photo of you running a yellow signal. Suspicion breeds suspicion. Some may prefer to see this as government mothering, but to my eye they’re setting themselves up as zookeepers. Which by elimination makes me one of the caged animals. In the parlance of our times, “I’m not comfortable with that.”

It might be different if I had any reason to believe that the NYPD had half the savvy of
Hawaii Five-0.
I’d put my life in Steve McGarrett’s hands any day.

The whole dog-and-pony show folded up and was off our front stoop in a little under an hour. The NYPD have had lots of practice and are good at this sort of detail.

When they were gone, I called Dudley. He was a little put off by our Gotham Club disappearance until I outlined our predicament.

“There’s a bad wind in the valley, Gawth. You need protection! You git yourself down here first thing tomorrow. I’ve got something in the personal-security department, something experimental. Just the thing.”

“Experimental? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You could be a test pilot.”

The words
test pilot
, as inflected by a southern accent, have the most ominous ring. I see smoke rising from the distant high desert, heat-shimmering images of ambulances racing to a crash site where I’ve plowed into the ground at Mach 1.

“I don’t think so.”

“For Angie’s sake, Gawth!”

“Look, I’m beat. Can we talk about that tomorrow?”

“Dudley’s gonna get you wired one way or the other!”

“Sure, sure. Hey, Dudley, lemme ask you this. This business with the color television as, you know, a mind-control thing.”

There was an uncharacteristic silence on the other end.

“Dudley?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think about the color-TV thing? Is it possible?”

“M-maybe. I really wouldn’t know.” Ordinarily, there wasn’t anything on which Dudley would decline to opine, especially in the technology field. Except, of course, the particulars of his electronic devices. Or any of the “unmentionable” agencies he used to work for. Had I touched on something about which he knew a great deal but “couldn’t talk about”?

“I see. Well, let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, perhaps we will talk tomorrow,” he said woodenly, and hung up.

The door buzzer sounded. Angie paused mid-pour from a jug of mountain Chablis and bit her lip.

“Should we get it?”

I went over to the squawk box. “Who is it?”

“KGB, eh?”

“Otto?”

“KGB, Garv.”

I buzzed in the runt, and he burst into the room. He always shouldered the front door like there were a couple of Cossacks holding it shut from the inside.

“My friends, vhat you do? KGB, they here, I know I see.” He took Angie by the chin. “You lookink, eh? Yan-gie, she good? I dunno. I very ’fraid my friends, maybe
pizdyets
.” You don’t want to know what
pizdyets
means precisely, but let’s just say it’s akin to the less vulgar
kaput
.

“Lego my chin!” Angie swatted his hand away. “We’re okay, Otto, relax.”

“Not okay. I know. I lookink, I see voman, red dress, and she not lookink, Garv!” He wagged his head morosely. “Voman dead! Not good.”

“Not looking,” I agreed, retrieving a beer from the fridge.

Angie flopped onto an overstuffed armchair. “Not looking,” Angie agreed. “What are we going to do, Garth? They know where we live! And the police are going to come back. They’re going to find out about Marti. Did you see Tsilzer’s smile?”

Otto got excited again. “KGB smile? Oh! Oh, this very bad, KGB him to smile you!”

“Otto, cool it,” I managed not to shout. “Let’s remain calm. We can always call them, ask them about who the victim was, and then say, ‘Who? Why, we know her!’ And so on. I mean, we didn’t get a look at her. We only have Nicholas’s word that it’s Marti. We’re on solid ground.” I wondered briefly if there was any possibility Nicholas was fibbing. For what reason? There was no telling.

“They’re going to talk to Nicholas. What if his story—”

“We stuck to his story, remember? We made sure we didn’t get a look at the body, we didn’t offer any information. Besides, it was Nicholas who actually saw that it was Marti, not us. We didn’t touch her.”

“Eetz good. Garv no voman touch to dead.” Otto mumbled from where he sat cross-legged on the floor.

“But you’re right,” I continued. “We should probably just spill the Marti thing, tell them everything, let them work it out. Or not. But we’ve got to steer our way out of this.”

“Garth, what if this warning means that we shouldn’t tell the police anything either?”

“Well, you’d think they’d have sent a more explicit message if—” My eye suddenly caught the red blinking light of my answering machine. I went over and pressed the Replay button. It burbled like an angry gerbil, beeped, and played. There was just the ambient sound of a public pay phone, maybe in a bar. After a moment, a muffled nasal voice spoke slowly.

“Little Miss Muffet. Sat on a tuffet. Along came a spider. She called the cops. The spider bit her. Little Miss Muffet died. The spider didn’t have to bite nobody else.” That was it.

“Who Muffet, Garv, tell to me?”

“Woman on the steps, Otto.” Angie and I shared a moment of dread. “I guess that answers your question, Angie. Now what’ll we do?”

The phone rang and I let the machine pick up. “Yes, I’m calling for Mr. Garth Carson?” It sounded like a phone solicitation. But at 2:00
A
.
M
.? “We’re calling on behalf of St. Michael’s Hospital. Your brother, Nicholas, has been admitted, and we need to talk with you just as soon as possible.”