The Creep (22 page)

You pick up the Daily News for the complete scoop and the headlines there tell you more or less the same thing: STATE POLICE MASSACRE NINETY-ONE IN CENTRAL PARK. REINFORCEMENTS CALLED IN.

And finally, because when something big breaks you always buy all the papers that count, you grab the
New York Post
for the latest
on the situation. CENTRA
L
PARK
MASSACRE: HUNDREDS KILLED, MILLIONS HOMELESS, BLOOD AND SHIT ALL OVER THE PLACE, TANKS CALLED IN!

Penn Station 3
am. Four police officers move in for the kill. It's time to move all the passengers sitting in one seating section so the cleaners can get in. Half the people are asleep.

Two officers bang their night-sticks to get attention.

"All of you who have tickets for trains move to the other seating area. This section is now closed. Anyone who doesn't have
tickets,
now is the time to move on."

Bishman had inadvertently nodded off while visualizing the Central Park massacre. Sometimes when the mind is done in by booze and drugs, the subconscious mind works a whole lot better.

"Wake up!" growled the officer, kicking Bishman's foot. "If you have
a ticket move
over to the other side. If you don't have a ticket for the train it's time to move on." The leather-gloved police officer banged his night stick on the wall and for a moment Bishman thought he saw a German Gestapo officer complete with helmet, jackboots and leather gloves. He thought,
when they say 'Never again,' you can't be sure they really mean it.

Just at that precise moment one of the police officers raised his arm in the air and pointed to the departures timetable. It looked as though he was saluting,
Heil Hitler
. Bishman was convinced.

How would they ship a hundred thousand homeless out of New York? Maybe in Greyhound buses, their windows blackened. Maybe they'll use some freight trains and ship them out from Penn Station direct, Warsaw to Treblinka fashion. The Gypsies were the first to go in Poland, about one and half million of them, and only then did they start on the Jews. In Poland
they did it by o
ffering food, showers and work,
just what the homeless in New York need!

"It's that time again, gentlemen.
Time to move on."
Two more officers started banging their night-sticks on the wall and eyes started popping open and people started to pick up their worldly possessions in plastic bags and move to the other seating area.

Bishman moved to the other seating area and sat put. He blended in with his corduroy trousers, white sweatshirt and sneakers. He could have been a
commuter, or he could have been a street person. He blended in real good. To all intents and purposes he was invisible. He was a chameleon. In actual fact he was more like a trap-door spider waiting for the right moment to come along before he sprung on his prey. The way the evening was going, it wasn't going to be too long:

Harvey noted and numbered the session. As in many cases he had an intuition that something exciting would come out of this episode. He wondered how many days or weeks it would be before Bishman mentally clicked back into the story, if indeed at all. He waited with ba
it
ed breath,
knowing
and
hoping
that some action would come.

At Bishman's request, Harvey dropped him off in Pacific Palisades by a derelict building that was covered in brightly colored graffiti, including: FUN SUCKS, I HATE FUN
...
DRY HUMP FOR PEACE
...
NEVER PLAY LEAPFROG WITH A UNICORN
...
MARY POPPINS IS A JUNKIE
...
SUCKS SYNTAX
and NO GRAFFITI HERE. Harvey swung his Rolls Royce around and when he looked in his rear-view mirror, Bishman had gone.

"This is one of the main secrets of making a really good curry. I pr
omised I'd show you, didn't I?
Can you pass me the champagne?" Harvey poured some corn oil into a large cooking pan.

"You're not going to put champagne in there as well, are you?" Anita giggled.

"No, I just want to top up my drink." Harvey carried on chopping up two large onions, stopping momentarily to sharpen a knife which was far too large for the job but looked ever so macho. The onions never made Harvey's
eyes water. But when he'd finished chopping them, he had to go to the bathroom, and caught his helmet in the zip. Now that made his eyes water!

Harvey took a long draught of pink champagne and hooked a tasty strawberry out with his tongue. "You see, you
mustn’t
be frightened of the onions or garlic - two large onions and
two large garlic, not just a clove of garlic
. You'll never get anywhere like that."

Harvey finished chopping the onions and garlic and threw them into the hot oil, stirring them until they were half brown.

"Now here's the real secret for really good curry. Plenty of curry powder, three heaped tablespoons for flavor. You see the heat is not in the curry powder, that's just the spices, the flavor.
To get the heat you put some of this in." Harvey gingerly sprinkled in a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper into the pot.

"I know you may not like it too hot. On my own I usually put in two tea-spoonfuls or more. Burns like
hell,
brings you out in a sweat. According to Lance Weil, it actually alters your state of consciousness." Harvey laughed as he stirred up the mix in the bottom of the pan. The curry powder quickly absorbed all the oil and the mix was now good and dry.

"Now you add the potatoes which should be nearly cooked. Even if they're not, they'll finish off in here." Harvey added a pan
full of small new potatoes complete with the water they were cooking in, as well as a tin of peas, a tin of red beans and the flesh he'd cut from four chicken breasts.

"Now this is the important thing."

"What's that?" enquired Anita, thinking she must be missing some great gourmet secret.

"This!" Harvey topped up the two champagne glasses and plopped in more strawberries.

They laughed and cleared up the mess they'd made. In truth, Harvey made the mess, Anita cleared it up.

"I found out Bob makes money in other ways than panhandling."

"What?" Anita wondered what on earth Harvey was talking about now, her mind still on chicken curry.

"You know, the other day, we were discussing how Bob sustains himself through
panhandling. That's what I'm talking about. He's sold his blood and semen too, you know, for money. He's also done a little drug dealing. A long time ago he even made love to a girl who had no tits for money."

"No tits?" said Anita, squeezing her breasts flat with her hands.

"That's right, this girl had had a mastectomy and no-one would touch her, so her girlfriend paid Bob for giving her one. I think it's incredible. The things this guy comes out with under hypnosis are outrageous." Harvey laughed and stirred the curry.

"I think what's even more incredible is that someone goes to a sperm bank thinking they're getting an Einstein, a Mozart or a Shakespeare and really they getting a Bob Bishman or a Son of Sam." Anita grinned. Well, grimaced actually.

"I reckon he's a lot
more clever
than he lets on. He told me when he was at school he had to talk about Aristotle and Plato. He told them Aristotle was known as the Greek Tycoon, a shipping magnate, and Plato was a character from Disney, a dog with big floppy ears. You've got to be pretty smart to come out with an answer like that. I also found out that he spent time in England to get out of the Vietnam
war
. A lot of his buddies, although they were alkies and drug
gies, still got passed with an
A
1
fitness record and got sent to Vietnam, regardless.

"Bob didn't take that chance. He went to England and spent seven years there. He never really talks about
it,
he just mentioned it under
hypnosis. He intimates he spent time at Findhorn, which is a retreat in Scotland, but he's never actually mentioned the name. If he has spent time there, it would explain why he's got such a lot of esoteric knowledge. He also knows one hell of a lot about firearms and explosives and because he has a lot of time on his hands he spends a lot of time in libraries, wherever he is in the country. I think his favorite book is
The Anarchist's Cookbook,
he's really quite a character," said Harvey as he stirred the curry and continued with a mouth full of strawberries.

"Regressions are truly strange and they affect different people in different ways. Most of what's coming out under hypnosis is stuff that he's perpetrated here in the States over the past seven years." Anita knew better than to ask,
"What stuff?"
She'd learnt that when Harvey wanted to talk about certain things or divulge certain information he would. But he didn't like being quizzed, particularly about Bishman.

Harvey opened up a little more. "It looks as though his life runs in seven-year cycles. From seven to fourteen he was badly abused; from fourteen to twenty-one he was into booze, drugs and sex in a big way; from twenty-one to twenty-eight he tried awfully hard to put himself back together again in England - detox, seminars, mental institutions, group therapy, frontal lobotomy, electric shock treatment, various medications, just about everything you can think of. The last seven years he spent traversing the States. He's been in Los Angeles over a year now,
seems to have settled down a lot. I'm glad you find his case as interesting as I do."

Harvey lifted up his champagne glass as if to say "Antibodies", which is exactly what he said.

They both collapsed in each other arms laughing and had a quickie on the strength of it.

"I smell that curry!" Harvey lifted the lid and added more water but not before he gently popped a small piece of chicken curry into Anita's mouth for her to taste.
She "mmmmed."

"I've got to put up rice and lentils. Lucky I'm organized, isn't it?" He turned on the self-igniting gas under the rice and lentils.

Anita laid the table in the dining-room with solid silver cutlery and set the table off with long red candles in solid silver candlestick holders and a beautiful flower arrangement she'd made from some delicate little yellow flowers she didn't know the name of. Harvey tipped out the rice and let the lentils cook a little longer while he fried a dozen
poppadoms until
they were crispy brown. When they were ready he dished up the lentils. He popped the cork from another bottle of champagne and took it through to the dining-room along with a bottle of mango chutney.

When they finished the most scrumptious chicken curry of all time, they cleared the dining table and Harvey laid Anita on it. Then they had each other for dessert!

Harvey was always delighted when Bishman would pick up from a previous regression. This is exactly how he put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. When this happened he felt he was making progress. Other than that he was getting bored with some of the sickening filth and rantings and ravings that Bishman was producing.