The Prisoner of Vandam Street (12 page)

T
he fact that the person you’re trying to help appears to be dead can often take the wind out of an investigation. Sometimes, however, it can have the opposite effect. As for myself, I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, but Kent seemed positively galvanized by the sudden turn of events. He appeared to have become obsessed with the inexplicable fact that the woman I’d spoken to on the previous night had apparently been legally dead for over ten years.

“Now we’ve got ourselves a real investigation,” said Kent, as he paced back and forth, repeatedly slamming his fist into his palm with nervous energy. “Now we’ve got something to sink our teeth into.”

“We do?” said Ratso, sinking his teeth into what was left of my shepherd’s pie.

“Of course,” said Kent ebulliently. “Can’t you see it?”

“Can’t I see what?” said Ratso.

“Ah, my dear Watson,” I said, “your charming naïveté never fails to lend an interesting, if sometimes mildly irritating, feature to an investigation.”

“Come on, Sherlock,” said Ratso, having finished the shepherd’s pie and seamlessly moved on to a hot, open-faced roast beef sandwich, “it’s obvious that the woman’s a scammer of some kind. She’s walking around with a fraudulent driver’s license. My opinion, if you want to hear it—”

“But of course, my dear Watson.”

“My opinion is that this woman isn’t really an abused woman at all.”

“And, pray, what might she be, my dear Watson?”

“She could be a terrorist, Sherlock. Do you recall the case several years back that McGovern wrote up in the
Daily News
and dubbed
The Mile High Club?
”

“Of course, Watson, of course. My powers may be failing but how could even a delirious mind forget an adventure like that?”

“You remember the fake passports you cleverly hid in the cat litter, Sherlock?”

“Who could forget an adventure like that?”

“Well, Sherlock, here’s a mysterious woman with a fake driver’s license. Fake passports. Fake driver’s license. The pattern seems quite clear to me. Something about this woman isn’t very kosher.”

“Something about what you’re eating isn’t very kosher either, Watson.”

“Ah, but I’m not really a practicing Jew, Sherlock.”

“True, Watson, true. Or, quite possibly, you just need a little more practice. At any rate, your aforementioned charming naïveté is beginning to become rather predictable and tiresome. You are decidedly a fixed point in a changing age. Unfortunately, my dear Watson, that fixed point is directly on top of your head.”

“How’s this for an idea? Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Sherlock?”

“Ah, how like you, Watson, to respond emotionally to what, of necessity, must remain a rational approach to our little undertaking. The emotional, warm, human component you invariably bring to a case can only serve to obfuscate matters which could more readily be resolved by the deductive reasoning of a cold, scientific mind. Watson, Watson, Watson. I salute your humanity, however misguided that tragic trait may be.”

“Fuck you, Sherlock! Fuck you and the cocaine syringe you rode in on!”

Kent Perkins, who’d listened to the entire previous mental hospital conversation in a mute state of mild disbelief, now stood up and placed both hands on top of his head in an attitude of mock surrender.

“Where do I go to give up?” he said. “I can’t believe I’m hearing two Jewboys in New York pretending they’re Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, two fictional characters who at the very least were latent homosexuals.”

“What do you mean ‘latent,’ mate?” said Brennan. “We’ve been listenin’ to this poofter rubbish a lot longer than you and, believe me, it doesn’t get better. Way I see it, mate, is Ratso and the Kinkster are right poncey blokes and this whole investigation’s a soddin’ load of cobblers.”

“Now, just a minute, Mick,” said Kent. “I agree with you that Kink and Ratso might do well to drop all this Sherlock-Watson business and give some serious thought to joining the Manhattan Gay Men’s Choir. What I don’t agree with you about is the investigation.”

“Sod the investigation,” said Brennan.

“All my little helpers,” I said, again quoting my father.

“I’m happy to help investigate, mate,” said Brennan. “I just don’t understand exactly what it is we’re tryin’ to investigate.”

“I’m a licensed private investigator,” said Kent, only half-humorously. “Maybe I can help you.”

“No one’s ever been able to help Brennan, mate,” said Piers. “Many men have died trying.”

“And women,” put in Pete Myers.

“Sod off, you flamers,” said Brennan. “I just asked a simple question of the bloke. What is it that all this combined manpower and brain power is supposed to be investigatin’?”

“Patterns,” said Kent. “Ratso was right. There is already a pattern here.”

“They don’t call me Watson for nothing,” said Ratso pridefully.

“Unfortunately,” said Kent, “Ratso has misinterpreted the pattern. He’s put forth the theory that the woman’s false identity on her driver’s license indicates that she’s some kind of con artist or possibly a terrorist, as was the case with the fake identities Kink once discovered on the passports of real terrorists. The pattern I see, however, is quite different. I see the woman as having a form of repetitive behavior quite common among abused women. I think she changed her identity years ago in order to escape from a previous abusive relationship. Now, still operating under her false identity, she finds herself, as so often happens in these cases, right in the middle of another abusive relationship.”

“As I’ve told you on innumerable occasions, Watson,” I said, “we are all creatures of narrow habit.”

“Speaking of habit,” said McGovern, who’d finally arisen from the couch and now was firing up a large joint and offering it to Kent. “Try some of this.”

“What is it?” said Kent.

“Wheelchair weed,” said McGovern.

“I’ll pass,” said Kent. “I’ve got to keep a clear head.”

“I’ll try a little of that, mate,” said Piers. “I’m second in command.”

Piers took the joint, inhaled deeply several times, then handed the joint to Brennan. Brennan inhaled so deeply he just about sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Then he passed the huge doobie to Ratso, who took a dutiful little pull and handed it over to Pete Myers. I don’t know what Myers did with it because Kent was now gripping me by the shoulders and forcing me to look directly into his righteously ticked-off countenance.

“
These
are the guys I’m supposed to work with?” he shouted, rather rhetorically, I thought. “
This
is the team I’m supposed to assemble?”

I glanced over at the Village Irregulars. McGovern was firing up another joint. Brennan and Piers were slugging down the Guinness again. Ratso, hardly partaking of either of these vices, was nonetheless following a pattern true to the way of his people. He was eating.

“All my little helpers,” I said.

Suddenly Kent was standing in the middle of the loft, practically shaking with a fervor that seemed to me very similar to that of a charismatic evangelist preacher. The lesbian dance class in the loft above, which had been particularly brutal all afternoon, now seemed to be thundering on the roof in almost a tribal groove, a heathen counterpoint to Kent’s religiosity. Kent raised both arms dramatically and looked toward the heavens. Amazingly, the lesbian dance class fell silent.

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” said McGovern, in a state of stoned awe. “Did you see that?”

“I did, mate,” said Piers. “And I’ll see your Jesus and raise you a Peter.”

Kent, not one to let a momentary advantage slip away, clapped his hands twice, then advanced upon the Village Irregulars like an avenging angel. He stopped only a few paces away from Brennan, who threw his shoulders back and thrust his chin toward Kent in what seemed a rather half-hearted gesture of defiance.

“Don’t bow-up on me, son,” said Kent, with all the moral authority of a Texas high school football coach. Brennan, in spite of himself, backed down without a word. And like a Texas high school football coach, Kent proceeded to hand out the assignments.

“Okay, Mick,” he said, “I want you, with the help of the spotter scope or any other means of your invention, to come up with some solid photographic evidence that this woman and this man across the street actually exist.”

“But the Kinkstah’s seen both of them,” Ratso pointed out.

“But some people don’t believe him,” said Kent. “The cops don’t. Even some of his closest friends don’t.”

“I believe in fairies,” said McGovern, who by this time was very heavily monstered on the wheelchair weed.

“That’s because you are one, mate,” said Brennan.

“Fuck you, you poison dwarf!”

“Sod yourself, Big Chief Funk-nuts!”

“Ratso’s job,” continued Kent, seemingly oblivious to the bickering, “will be to nurture, care for, and keep a close eye on Kink here, who, I remind you all, is still a very sick cowboy.”

“He’s always been a very sick cowboy,” said Piers.

“And McGovern’s always been a very sick Indian,” said Brennan.

“How would you like me to shove that tripod up your ass?” asked McGovern.

“Pete’s job is the food—which, by the way, is excellent considering it’s British—and the general upkeep of the physical plant, that being the loft.”

“I’ll not be cleaning up the cat turds, lad,” said Pete.

“I’ll clean up the fucking cat turds,” I said. “It’s my cat and my loft and besides, it’s very Gandhilike work.”

“He’s always been a very sick cowboy,” said Piers.

“I will, of course, consult regularly with Kink on how the investigation is to be pursued. I think that about wraps it up, gentlemen.”

“Wait a minute,” said McGovern. “What about me and Piers? What are we? A stoned Indian and a drunken Aussie?”

“Now that you mention it,” said Kent. “Just kidding, guys. You two have the most important job of all.”

“Great,” said Ratso.

“I’m serious,” said Kent. “You’re both big strong specimens and I suspect you can both be quite charming to the opposite sex when you want to be.”

“That’s true,” said Piers. “At least in my case. What is it exactly that you want McGovern and me to do?”

“Find the girl,” said Kent, “and bring her to me.”

I
did not have a great deal of faith in McGovern’s or Piers’s abilities to locate the woman who called herself Tana Petrich. I had even less faith in their combined abilities to entice her into that spider web known as 199B Vandam Street. If the truth be told, it’s a fairly daunting task to convince any abused woman on the run to come in from the cold. For one thing, they tend not to trust men in general. If they’d started out with this attitude instead of ending up with it, of course, they very likely wouldn’t have been abused women in the first place.

While I had my doubts about the Village Irregulars’ skills at procuring the woman I’ll call Tana, I had no such qualms about Kent Perkins’s ability to interrogate her. When it came to good cop–bad cop, he was the best good cop in the world. And he wasn’t even a cop. He simply had intuition staked out. He knew people and how to talk to them and how to get the most out of them and how to make them feel relieved and grateful that he’d done so. And he did it all with a comforting Texas drawl, never resorting to violence or strong-arm tactics, never, in fact, even raising his voice.

Kent’s interrogative methods were not particularly new or especially original. They were a hodgepodge of Sherlock Holmes, Lieutenant Columbo, dime-store psychology, and cowboy zen savvy. More important, they almost always worked. I’d seen Kent interview people in L.A., often after the cops had already unsuccessfully run them through the wringer. On many occasions, his interviews were responsible for breaking the case. I’d seen veteran homicide detectives simply shake their heads in admiration of his skills for penetrating the mortal facade and finding the human truth.

From actual previous experience, as well as conversations with Kent at many delicatessens in L.A., I pretty well knew where he was coming from, other than, of course, Azle, Texas. I will endeavor here to give you an encapsulation of his philosophy and methodology, which could well be titled: “Rules of the Road for Interrogating Modern Boys and Girls.” It might give you some idea why, although admittedly he was like a large, friendly fish out of water in New York, I yet maintained such a high degree of confidence in the abilities of Kent Perkins.

The first rule of Kent’s I suspect he borrowed from Nelson Mandela. That is, the guy who gets mad first loses. It took a great deal to get Kent mad in what we like to call normal life; in interrogation mode, it was virtually impossible. His second rule is to pretend he knows your secret already. He just wants to help you. He doesn’t need information from you. That’s how he always gets information from you. Kent’s third rule of interrogation he likes to call “selling the door.” In other words, as Kent says, “If you want ’em to stay, tell ’em to leave.” It may sound like fairly standard reverse psychology, but before you attempt it, you need to have a finely tuned, intuitive understanding of human nature, or the subject, sure as hell, will bug out for the dugout.

Kent believes you should use a person’s attitude to maneuver him to confess. This is very similar, he claims, to the way a judo expert uses the momentum of the other person’s punch to throw him to the ground. He also believes in a careful reading of body language. People often scream in body language, he says. You can’t ask a question before the person’s ready to answer, Kent claims. It’s very tough for someone to maintain eye contact when lying. He contends that once the subject tells a lie, he digs in deep and becomes a far more difficult puzzle to decipher. You must stop them before they lie, Kent contends, even if you have to shut them down in midsentence.

There are secrets, of course, that Kent has not told me. These are things that it might be better for you and me, gentile reader, not to know. Being a private investigator is a dirty job and guys like Kent Perkins and Steve Rambam get to do it. One of the most unnerving, depressing, soul-destroying, downright ugly experiences you can have in life is to maintain eye contact, even for a short period of time, with that horrible tar baby we call the human condition.

“You know my methods,” Kent told me later that evening. “All I require is an opportunity to interview the girl, Tana, and, if possible, I’d like to meet with her abusive boyfriend or husband as well.”

“With McGovern and Piers as your chosen procurement agents,” I said, “that’ll probably occur in the year 2047.”

“You have that much confidence in them?” said Kent facetiously. “Or are you going by the Jewish calendar?”

“The Jewish calendar has too many holidays. They’d probably never collar these people for you.”

“Well, I’ll do some research of my own to find out a little more about Tana Petrich. If I can just get her relaxed and comfortable, I may be able to open her up like a can of smoked oysters.”

“And the guy?”

“The guy could be a more thorny problem. We’ve got to get him to admit that he’s been abusive and to understand that that behavior is wrong. We have to point out in a very sensitive way that it is a habit he’ll have to break, a disease he’ll have to be cured of, if he ever hopes to find his own personal happiness. He must acknowledge that morally and spiritually he wants to be a kinder and a gentler person both for his own good and the good of the woman he loves. I’ll also try to get him into some kind of therapy that may include sensitivity training and anger management.”

“And if all that fails?”

“We beat him like a redheaded stepchild,” said Kent.

McGovern, who’d just wandered over from the dumper and caught only the tail end of the conversation, now weighed in with his considerable poundage on the subject at hand. He did not offer a joint this time, however. He only offered an observation.

“I saw a lot of that kind of abusive behavior growing up on the South Side of Chicago,” said McGovern. “It was mostly because everybody was so poor and there really wasn’t anything much to do. I remember as a kid, if you woke up on Christmas morning without an erection, you had nothing to play with all day.”