Ripper (21 page)

What's the bottom line, Doc?

You have epilepsy. Seizures will be a danger for the rest of your life.

Treatment?

We 're back to four caps of Dilantin a day. They worked for the past year, and should suppress onset in the future. You must avoid alcohol and sleeplessness. And never—I repeat
never—
miss taking your drugs . . .

Vancouver International Airport 

12:22
P.M.

Unlike Albert Fish who pierced himself for kicks, Corke performed the ritual to
master
pain. The first vivid memory he had of early life was his dad pulling the "witch doctor" from his workshop drawer. Young Garret had broken a window and his dad was a Marine, so he'd been court-martialed, found to blame, and stripped below the waist. The "witch doctor" was a black crosshatched rubber strap shaped a little like a beaver's tail. The callused fingers of one hand gripping the nape of his son's neck, the man bent the boy over a wooden sawhorse, warning him, "Flinch and I'll repeat it.

Cry and you get it twice." One smack from the doctor and the lad was bruised for a month.

Garret's dad ran his "quarters" like a boot camp, telling his wife who was tranked all the time, "The boy needs toughening up." This was in the Fifties when there were Commies under the bed, and every house near the Fort flew the Stars and Stripes. Soon "taking the doctor's medicine" was the
boy's
game as he learned to psychologically remove himself from the pain. Jackknifed over the sawhorse, he didn't flinch or blink, priding himself on his stoicism while suffering abuse. His dad became a Commie torturer in East Berlin when he discovered fantasy was the
key
to enduring pain. He shifted the agony he felt from the bite of the doctor's teeth to his dad whom he commando-stalked behind the Iron Curtain.

When Garret was eleven, push came to shove. By then there were rings in the workshop floor to
tie
him over the bench, his dad mimicking a drumroll before each whack. One day the youth raided the shop while his dad was on parade, kidnapping the doctor from the drawer and cremating it in the lane. The plume of black smoke stunk up the Marine base.

"Get in!" his dad ordered, roaring up in the car.

Not a word was spoken as they drove for twenty miles, not until they parked beside a hundred-acre field. "Get out!" his dad ordered.

Father and son marched side by side halfway across the pasture, then a swinging roundhouse slammed Garret's jaw. The next punch clipped his ear before he hit the ground. "Get up!" his dad snarled, in a boxer's stance.

The thrashing Garret took that day "made him into a man," the phrase his dad repeated after every punch. Once the youth was bleeding from his nose, mouth, and ears, his dad said, "When you're ready, I'll be in the car."

The Great Escape.

Steve McQueen.

He hobbled the other way.

And hadn't been home except once, a decade later, to kill his dad.

That was the first "mission" he undertook after Vietnam.

When he was still on drugs before his drug was the Altered State.

The state he was in now.

Thanks to mastering pain.

"Evil," Garret realized, tripping in the desert years ago, is "live" spelled backward. Therefore "evil" is "antilife," and antilife is anything that thwarts who we are. The pivotal change of this century is the wholesale de-individualization of man. This occurred through the insidious medium of TV, which stole unique identity while we were fearing Reds. TV, the viral tit we suck for security.

What is a virus? he asked the LSD. Merely genetic material—DNA or RNA—which invades our cells to undermine who we are. Attached to our unique genetic code, the virus tricks us into reproducing more of its kind through the process we use to replicate our own genes. The sabotaged cells not only fail to perform their function, but are forced to help the invader multiply.

Same with TV.

During the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Garret reasoned, television viruses invaded who we are, colonizing our memory cells until they were filled with billions of mass-market images to the exclusion of unique experience. Now we all share a common memory bank, from the rides of Disneyland to walking on the moon, and ape common role models like Marilyn Monroe and Schwarzenegger. When everyone's thinking is as unique as the latest commercial or McDonald's restaurant, how do you identify who you are? How do you know who's you?

The only way, Garret concluded, is through self-torture and pain.

Personal experience of pain is unique. So it's the standard by which we judge authenticity and depth of thought. Conquering pain alters our outlook on life, physically, mentally, and spiritually. The term marathoners use is "hitting the wall." They run until they're exhausted and their bodies cry "Quit!", then on until the pain they feel vanishes in a fog, on until they're no longer aware of their pumping legs and hearts, at which point consciousness escapes from its physical shell.

Garret experimented.

And took escape much farther.

Every rite of passage has four essentials, be believed. It must be physical, painful, bloody, and leave a mark. As a kid he'd learned to shift attention from the doctor's bite, separating what he thought from what he felt, thereby removing consciousness from his mortal flesh. Building on that ability, he passed the toughness test of Watergate's G. Gordon Liddy, holding his finger in a flame until it charred. Soon he could torture his body at will and feel no pain—hanging weights from his nipples, cock, and balls; sleeping on a bed of nails or razor-sharp blades; piercing himself until he bled like a human pincushion; Kavandi-bearing the "Spears of Siva" the East Indian way.

The greater the pain, the greater the escape.

Until one day, tripping induced the Altered State.

Corke was in the desert hooked to the hanging tree, ripped on a volatile mixture of acid and cocaine, escaping, escaping, escaping, his consciousness winging at warp speed, when suddenly he was engulfed by glare and the stench of rotting dead. Along the border of his mind a graveyard steamed, the light beyond beckoning him to the realm where life met death. Where am I? he whispered. The Astral Plane. The voice of God and Satan combined in a hiss. Who am I? The stalker of the realm. Our disciple. The only man
alive.
What are my orders? Fill fifty open graves. He saw the pits yawning at the brink of consciousness. And if I do? You will enter the Light. What's in there? Eternal life.

Forty-one graves filled.

Nine to go.

Mission #42 the killing of DeClercq.

Corke surveyed the Graveyard.

With his mind's eye.

"Next," the customs officer said, calling him forward.

Standing in the Visitors line right of Residents, Corke was in Customs Primary at Vancouver Airport. Summoned, he crossed the mark on the floor that kept aliens back, approaching the woman dressed in blue. The RCMP officer behind wore brown.

"Proof of citizenship, please."

The birth certificate he produced was as phony as his passport.

Wrinkling her nose, the customs agent glanced up. Did she smell the Graveyard, too?

"Customs declaration."

He handed her the card, noting she put more markings on it than those ahead in the line.

Stamping the card, she handed it back, and summoned the next person.

The Mountie behind pointed toward the baggage carousel.

Corke had packed the switchblade in the suitcase he had checked, stuffed in an open pocket on the side. Grabbing the bag from the carousel, he palmed the knife and tucked it up his sleeve.

Sure enough, they stopped him in Customs Secondary.

"Open the bag, sir."

Corke obeyed.

The customs inspector winced like he smelled a fart.

Once the bag was searched, Corke zipped it up, slipping the switchblade back inside.

He held his arms out for a body check.

"That won't be necessary, sir. Welcome to Canada."

Corke cleared Customs.

Stupid Canucks.

12:39
P.M.

Standing out front of the airport in the Arrivals zone, Zinc had a disturbing flash of
deja vu.
The stench he smelled took him back to the lair of the Ghoul, and the Red Serge Ball after the case. There are three kinds of sweat: the sweat of work, the sweat of fear, the sweat of insanity. In the lair and at the ball, he'd encountered the goatish odor of the last kind, which seeps from pores during florid psychosis. He whiffed it now.

Around him were a dozen people waiting for rides. Only one was on the move, approaching a van. The cowboy wore a Stetson and a red-checked shirt, a green down-filled vest with gray Wrangler jeans, and a pair of anaconda boots. He climbed into the van and stored his suitcase at his feet.

"Yoo-hoo, Inspector."

Zinc turned left.

A Yoda-looking woman waved from the window of a cab.

"Miss Franklen, I presume?"

The van pulled out of the Arrivals zone, heading for Grant McConachie Way and the Arthur Laing Bridge. Both left

and right, soggy fields stretched to the river, Sea Island wedged between the Fraser's North and Middle Arms. Skull was driving. Lyric was in back. Her naked corpse wrapped in a moth-eaten rug. "Shitty weather," Corke said. "Fits my plans." "Where we going?" "To the harbor. Gotta catch a plane." "What do I do with the van?" "Burn it after." "Can't be traced?" "Not to me. Chop-shop job." "Where's the woman?"

"Rug in back. You can hang her from any tree." "Address?"

"Here." Skull passed him a map.

"Where's the kill now?"

"In New York. Back tonight, the papers say."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah. Do it like this."

By chance, the men had met through Corkscrew's ad in
Foreign Legion,
and each had forged his fantasy in a different cauldron, but psychologically Corke and Skull were astral twins. In what drove them to serial murder, they were Doppelgangers. Both men wanted ritual access to the Astral Plane.

Skull handed Corke the last page torn from
Jolly Roger.

. .. the ax hit the cop before he turned. The thick V-blade cleaved his skull like a soft-boiled egg. His arms shot up as if he were a Sunday-morning preacher, all hallelujah and sucking brain. First came the blood, then pink tissue, ballooning around the ax-head like bubble gum. "Take that, fucker!"

His legs did a spastic jig as his ass hit the ground, then his entire body went into convulsions. The steel squeaked on bone when I wrenched it from his skull.

One of his eyes kept blinking like the guy was flirting with me. "Take this, fucker. " I hit him again. This time the ax-blade caved in his face. The cop stopped dancing.

Well, there you have it. So ends the beginning. One

thing you can'/ accuse me of is not playing fair. Other cops will find the bitch and their nosy buddy, so that's why One. Two. Three.

I'm laying out the cards. 

THIS IS AN EXIT . . .

The Tarot cards Skull gave Corke were the three at the end of the book. "Tuck them under his body so they don't blow away."

"I'll need an ax." "Under your seat."

Corke withdrew the hatchet from behind his suitcase. "The carvings in the handle? What do they mean?" "Tau tria delta," the Canadian said:

Crowley's Trunk

Manhattan 

11:59
A.M.

No doubt about it—Santa Claus lives in New York. Walk this street in December, and you'll see ample proof.

With an hour to spare before lunch with Brigid Marsh's editor and biographer at the Russian Tea Room, DeClercq strolled up Fifth Avenue from the Public Library to Central Park. Like the Star of Bethlehem, a giant snowflake above the 57th Street intersection beckoned him. Once the site of mansions owned by the city's wealthy elite—the Vander-bilts, the Astors, the Rockefellers—this was America's most glittering promenade. Saks Fifth Avenue, Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany & Co. (Who could forget Audrey Hepburn emerging from a cab at dawn to stand here in an evening gown window-shopping with a coffee and Danish in hand?) Trump Tower, Bergdorf Goodman, Van Cleef & Arpels. Here people were taller, healthier, less hounded, and better dressed than elsewhere in New York. Each shop window was one-upped by the next: from red Christmas dresses worn by hourglass shrubs, to checkered harlequins juggling emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. "Fifth Avenue," a wit once said, "is a street where a lot of people spend money buying things they don't need in order to impress people they don't like."

Amen.

Grand Army Plaza borders Central Park. Beyond the statue of Abundance in the Pulitzer Fountain, General William Tecumseh Sherman stood mounted guard. Next door was the stately Plaza Hotel, site of DeClercq's most outrageous night in New York. Kate was acting on Broadway in 1966 when she smuggled him into Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. The memory occupied his mind as he crossed Central Park South, then honking horns and squealing brakes yanked him back. Horse-drawn carriages bedecked with tinsel intermingled with cars, and one of the mares had slipped and fallen to the street. DeClercq blocked traffic—the ultimate sin—while he helped it up, prompting several motorists to flip him the bird.