Helmet Head (9 page)
CHAPTER 20
Snake Bit
Rolling thunder approached. The boys had noticed Doc’s and Curtis’ absence and had turned around to find them. Seeing Doc’s and Curtis’ bikes by the side of the road they pulled over and headed into the brush.
Wild Bill was the first to step into the clearing, eyes sweeping past the headless corpse and doing a massive double-take.
“Is that our ice?” he asked
“That’s Terrell,” Curtis said with finality.
Chainsaw and Mad Dog entered the clearing and stood as if in awe of an original Robert Williams painting. Mad Dog had a sickly little smile on his face.
“Well did anybody search his saddlebags for the ice?” Wild Bill asked as if lecturing stupid children. Doc and Curtis looked at one another.
Chainsaw strode to the downed cycle and rummaged through the saddlebags throwing out underwear, a box of condoms, a rain parka, energy bars, a copy of
Tits
and a tin of Altoids. The other saddlebag held nothing of interest.
Wild Bill turned back to the corpse which hung from the limb like a ghastly piñata. “It might still be on him. I mean, this is obviously that motherfucker’s work and he doesn’t look like a gangbanger to me. I’m betting he doesn’t give a shit about dope. All he cares about is lopping off heads.”
“Why do you suppose he spared us back at the Klub?” Doc said.
Wild Bill rounded on him. “How the fuck should I know? Maybe he didn’t want to get his ass blown off. There were five of us not counting the cop.”
“Useless as tits on a boar,” Mad Dog brayed. No one laughed.
“You saw what good Fred’s shotgun did,” Doc said. “Seems to me he wasn’t afraid of us. Curtis, you think he was afraid of us?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
Wild Bill snorted in contempt. He ran a fat finger under his nose. “Mad Dog, get your ass up there and cut him down.”
Mad Dog looked at the corpse with disgust, back to Wild Bill and leaped for a low hanging branch from which he swung his legs over, pulled himself up branch by branch until he was adjacent with the corpse’s ankles about ten feet above the ground. He whipped out his balisong with an added fillip and sawed through the shoelaces. The corpse fell to the ground with a dull thud.
Doc looked at Curtis. That was unfortunate. They should have caught the corpse. It brought back unpleasant memories.
Mad Dog hung from a branch like an ape and dropped, springing up with a grin.
Wild Bill pointed with his chin. “Search him.”
Mad Dog’s grin evaporated but he knelt without hesitation and went through the corpse’s vest finding two cell phones and some change. Mad Dog reached across to search Terrell’s left front pants pocket and jerked back screaming, hand trailing a foot long gray/green snake with a moiré pattern.
Mad Dog whipped his arm wildly trying to snap the snake loose to no avail. Its fangs sunk deeply into the meat of Mad Dog’s palm. He danced around swinging his arm.
“FUCK! FUCK! GET IT OFF!”
Sighing, Doc walked over and shoved Mad Dog to the ground. He landed on his seat. Curtis came over and put his hands on Mad Dog’s shoulders. Doc pinned Mad Dog’s hand to the ground, withdrew his Kershaw which opened with a flick and sawed off the serpent’s head. The snake body thrashed for an instant and then was still.
Doc pried the snake’s jaws apart and removed it from Mad Dog’s hand like pins from a cushion. He squeezed the palm to force out more blood. “Suck on it,” he said.
“That’s what I told her,” Chainsaw said.
Mad Dog was crying and snot poured from his nose. “FUCK! AM I GONNA DIE?”
“Eventually,” Curtis said.
“Not likely,” Doc said. “That there’s a grass snake. They don’t usually bite people ‘less you’re stupid enough to put your hand on ’em. Now if that had been a copperhead might be a different story.”
“I feel dizzy,” Mad Dog said.
“Maybe you shouldn’ta drank five beers and snorted all that meth,” Curtis said.
Mad Dog looked set to spit but Wild Bill was within striking distance.
“Quit acting like a little bitch,” Wild Bill said. “Fuckin’ snake bite won’t kill ya.”
“Hell,” Doc said. “Curtis and me used to eat snake in the bush.”
“That’s right,” Curtis said. “You fry them suckers up in a little sesame oil and some mama-san chilies, mmm-mm. Them’s good eatin’.”
Mad Dog hyperventilated. “Shit! Now my pants are wet.”
Doc watched Curtis stifle himself and grinned. Curtis wasn’t a loudmouth like Mad Dog. Never had been. One of the reasons Doc and Curtis got along so well is they could keep each other’s company for hours without saying a word.
“If you’re through crying like a baby,” Wild Bill said, “go on and finish searching the dude.”
“He ain’t got no wallet, Bill,” Mad Dog said.
“Look around. Maybe he dropped it.”
“He didn’t drop it,” Curtis said. “Terrell kept it chained to his belt like y’all.”
Mad Dog looked again. “Pant loop been ripped out.”
“So he wants the heads and the wallets.”
“He didn’t want Larry’s wallet,” Doc said. “Cop had that when he came in the Klub.”
Chainsaw stared at the headless stump. “What you think was in that helmet bag he was carrying. And now he’s got Terrell’s. What’s he doing with all these heads?”
“Heads, wallets and ice,” Wild Bill said. “Maybe this spook ain’t no spook at all. Maybe he’s one fucking smooth operator.”
Doc barked.
Wild Bill ignored him. “Maybe this is all a front for him taking over the meth trade around here.”
Doc puffed his stogie until it was the brightest thing in the world, clamped in a big grin. “Five minutes ago you were telling us he wasn’t interested in the ice.”
“Yeah?” Mad Dog snarled. “He ain’t no spook! He’s just some fuckin’ jamoke in body armor! Drill him through the helmet see how he survives!”
“Now there’s an idea,” Wild Bill said. “But first we have to find him. Fred said he lived somewhere in the hollow. We keep lookin’ until we find him.”
Curtis shook his head and looked at the ground. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
Wild Bill snucked and ran a finger under his nose. “You and Doc been acting like a couple of blue-haired old ladies since we got down here. My advice to you is to stop whining and grow a set.”
“Man up!” Mad Dog jeered.
Doc’s pupils contracted behind his tinted glasses. He slowly stepped in front of Wild Bill and looked up. “Excuse me?”
Wild Bill breathed stankbreath on Doc. “You heard me.”
“Night comin’ on, tornado weather, we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off.…”
“Exactly,” Chainsaw said.
“BUK BUK BUK!” Mad Dog clucked at Doc.
Wild Bill and Doc stared it down.
“Chill,” Curtis said. “We’re gonna need every hand if we’re gonna beat this thing.”
Wild Bill looked up. “So you in?”
Curtis nodded. Doc mouthed what the fuck.
“We took an oath, Doc. Terrell was a friend of mine.”
“Okay,” Wild Bill announced. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna slow way down and scan both sides of the road. Every time we see a gate or a dirt road we’re gonna stop and check it out. He’s gotta be in the Hollow.”
“Hollow’s nine miles long,” Chainsaw said.
“What else we got to do?” Wild Bill said. “You guys are always braggin’ on how bad you are. Now’s are chance to prove it. Now’s our chance to write the Road Dogs into
his
-store—ee. Let’s go.”
***
CHAPTER 21
Nazis
Fagan showered in Fred’s old rust-stained stall with a chip of soap and a mini shampoo from Best Western. He dried himself with a Harley towel. He went into the bar owner’s bedroom and took a clean T-shirt from Fred’s highboy. It said, “STURGIS, ’96” and showed an Indian chief with an extravagant bonnet riding a chopper through the Black Hills. Fagan looked at himself in the tarnished mirror above the dresser. His short hair looked like a Brillo pad. He had a goose egg that looked like an eggplant emerging above his left eye.
Fagan stood in the doorway and scanned the room as he’d been trained to do.
Sooner or later he would have to go through it searching for any evidence related to Helmet Head. But now was not the proper time. He quietly shut the door and returned to the bar in control of himself. Macy had backed her chair into a corner, sitting with her arms and legs crossed as if trying to take up as little space as possible.
She must have felt it, too, Fagan realized; a crimson tide rising up his neck.
“Does that old pick-up out back run?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where the keys are?”
“Should be behind the bar.”
“Can you find them for me? There’s no reason for us to hang around here.”
Macy got up and went behind the bar. She opened cupboards beneath the bar and rummaged. Fagan heard pots and glasses banging and clinking, shoe boxes filled with junk being shuffled. She stood, opened the cash register with a ding and removed the change tray. She picked the heavy register up by one side and peered underneath.
The bar didn’t even have an electronic credit card scanner. It had one of those old-fashioned slide operators.
She turned around and faced the bar. A series of small drawers ran the length beneath the marble top and above the open shelving holding bottles of liquor. Macy went through them methodically from left to right. Fagan watched her every move, throat dry from the sight of her shifting glutes.
Stop it, he told himself.
How unprofessional can you get? Had he learned nothing from his mistakes?
On a night like this the rule book was out the window. He felt as if he’d left Planet Earth for an unknown dimension. He chuckled.
Macy looked at him in the mirror and smiled. “What?”
The smile transformed her like sun breaking through clouds.
Fagan hummed the theme to
The Twilight Zone
. “Do do do do … do do do do.”
“Peter Fagan, a sheriff’s deputy in the Southern Illinois,” Macy said in a surprisingly deep baritone, “with no more sense than a tripping gerbil, thinks he’s on the verge of a big meth bust when he is really about to enter the Twilight Zone.…”
They laughed. Macy continued looking. After a few minutes she threw her hands up in despair. “It could be anywhere. Maybe it’s in his shop or his bedroom.”
“I’ll do it,” Fagan said out of long habit. Technically the whole bar was a crime scene and if the room was to be searched he preferred to do it as he’d been taught.
Macy headed for the old sofa in the corner. “I’m going to lie down.”
Fagan eased himself upright feeling the tape tug at him and returned to Fred’s bedroom. There was an unframed poster of a hot chick straddling a chopper on the wall next to a similarly themed calendar, which was stuck on March two years ago. Telling himself he was only searching for the truck keys Fagan went through the clutter atop Fred’s bureau: an overstyled knife, a black leather Harley wallet attached to a chain containing forty-eight dollars in cash and one Citibank credit card. Fred’s license was up to date in Bullard County. A peeling jewelry box held a selection of cheap gaudy biker jewelry: sterling silver skull rings, a couple of earrings. Brass knuckles.
Fagan couldn’t remember if Fred wore earrings. He hadn’t been paying attention. He should have noticed.
Fagan quickly went through the dresser drawers finding women’s lingerie and a snub-nosed .38 in a cigar box with a box of Federal cartridges. Was there anyone at the Kongo Klub who wasn’t packing?
Maybe Macy.
In the bottom drawer beneath neatly folded T-shirts lay an old spiral notebook. Fagan pulled it out and opened it. Fred wrote in block letters like a child.
June 20. Stuck in the fuckin’ ER at Bullard County Med Center. Right leg fucked all to hell. I told the ambulanse peeple I hit a deer cause I tell them the truth they mite try lock me up. I was riding thru Milton’s Hollow 9:30 last night when I saw a big red headlight in my mirror. Before I knew it this freak was rite next to me trying to chop at me with a fucking sword. I knew who it was. I heard them rumors but I never beleeved them. I beleev them now. Helmet Head is real. I hit the ditch to avoyd getting chopped and that’s how I broke my leg. He woulda come back too excep right then a car came by and they phoned the hospital.
That was the only entry. Fagan closed the spiral pad and replaced it in the bottom drawer. He opened the closet and found a complete set of leathers, chaps, vests, blue workshirts, jeans and a collection of boots. Fred had been a surprisingly neat housekeeper for a bachelor. There was a worn gray sports jacket. Fagan methodically went through all the pockets picking up another five bucks in change but nothing of interest.
He sat on the double-sized bed. The night stand held an ashtray, and a stack of magazines:
The Horse
,
Hustler
,
Back Yard Choppers
,
Tits and Ass
and a lone copy of
National Geographic
featuring “Miscellaneous Marsupials Indigenous to Outer Australia.”
Fagan pulled open the drawer. Cigs, matches, Cue-tips, a bottle of K-Y, a baggie of reefer and some Zig-Zag rolling papers. Fagan pulled out the papers. Proof positive Jesus was a head. There he was on every package of Zig-Zags smoking a joint. Fagan sat on the bed and looked around the room, seeing what Fred saw. There was one small north-facing window and a lurid Harley rug made out of some cheap synthetic. A Harley blanket covered the bed. “No Cages,” it said. It was Harley’s latest advertising meme. Fagan laughed. A car was not a cage. It was a vehicle. You could always dive out the open windows. Bikers loved their slogans.
Live to ride, ride to live.
If you can read this the bitch fell off.
Fagan looked under the pillow. He got down on his knees and looked under the bed. Four books were stacked among the dust bunnies. He stretched and fished them out, sitting down on the bed with the books in his lap.
Hitler and the Occult
,
The Occult Roots of Nazism
;
Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazism
, and
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult
. The first book was marked with a torn piece of paper. Fagan opened it to the mark. “The Spear of Destiny.”
As a struggling artist in Vienna, Hitler became obsessed with the Grail legend, Parsifal, and undertook a study of the supernatural powers of the Spear of Destiny, so named because it had been used to pierce Christ’s side as he hung from the cross and was said to have great occult power. Possession of the spear meant the power to rule the world. Its loss meant immediate death. Hitler later said that he learned all he needed to know about ruling modern Germany from this period in his life.
Fagan looked at the bookmark. It was a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 foolscap from an office printer marked “Property Bullard County Library System.”
“Both
Guernica
and the 1934 drawing conceal references to a mystical battle between Picasso and Hitler in connection with the Spear of Destiny. This hidden pictorial narrative, set in the context of Wagner’s opera
Parsifal
, reveals some uncanny associations with events in Hitler’s life and with his quest to dominate Europe.
“On 12th March 1938, the day Hitler annexed Austria, he arrived in Vienna a conquering hero. He first port of call was to the Hofmuseum where he took possession of the Spear, which he immediately sent to Nuremberg, the spiritual capital of Nazi Germany.
“At 2.10 on 30th April, 1943, during the final days of the war, after considerable bombing of Nuremberg, the Spear fell into the hands of the American 7th Army under General Patton. Later that day, in fulfillment of the legend, Hitler committed suicide.” (http://web.org.uk/picasso/spear.html)
Fagan closed the book.
Fagan sat there with the weight of the books on his lap. The weight of history. Old books by the look of them. Two had Dewey Decimal markings on the spine.
He had checked
Hitler and the Occult
out of the library when he was a kid. He and Josh. It had nothing to do with his Jewish upbringing. It came from someplace outside and deep within, a wellspring of self-loathing and creeping sociopathy.
His parent’s heroes were scholars and crusaders. The Rabbi marched with Jesse Jackson. He had a black-and-white photo of a mob scene in New York; himself circled in red felt-tipped marker about three persons from the Reverend. RFK, Rabbi Hillel, Elie Wiesel, Sandy Koufax, Mark Spitz, Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, any Jew in the arts, sciences, academia or professional sports. Especially sports. Jewish sports heroes were few and far between. Kirk Douglas, Joseph Wiseman and Frank Sinatra. The Rabbi especially loved Sinatra for his efforts to break down social barriers by insisting that Sammy Davis, Jr. be part of the Rat Pack. And God love Sammy Davis, Jr.
Many an evening the Rabbi and Esther spent listening to Sinatra on the stereo, sometimes slow-dancing to Fagan’s acute embarrassment. They particularly liked “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
Fagan had a basement bedroom in the modest blond brick ranch style on Morton Blvd. The house always smelled of his father’s aftershave and boiled cabbage, a big hit in Esther’s kitchen. That and Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks. “Jews don’t know from fresh fish,” the rabbi explained.
Fagan’s basement room was finished in faux knotty pine covered with the objects of his desire: Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley, Kawasaki, The Creature From the Black Lagoon. He had to keep the hard stuff hidden, not that the Rabbi and Esther ever looked too closely. That was a good lesson for the civilized—not to look too closely.
He had his own bathroom.
His model shelf contained Frankenstein, Dracula, Alien, the Wolfman. He’d scratch built his own pit and pendulum out of balsa wood and razors. His little torture devices included a scale-model gurney with a Barbie doll strapped down, hair shaved, the mad scientist standing over her with a miniature chainsaw. He made the mad scientist out of the ever popular bulging-eyed “troll” doll. Inspired by Josh he’d started his own comic collection. He had his own TV and VCR. He kept his stroke books and porn films in a box behind the furnace. He’d left it all behind when he’d enlisted. These were objects of fascination for the depraved and adolescent, not adults.
When Fagan returned from his deployment the models and pornography were gone. He and his father never commented on them. He’d attended enough of the Rabbi’s lectures to know the litany. He’d seen
Triumph of the Will
,
Night and Fog
, and the Nuremberg Rally. He’d seen
Judgment at Nuremberg
and
Schindler’s List
.
He looked at the books. Just an old biker’s imagination? Bikers loved Nazi paraphernalia, although it had become more subdued of late as even bikers realized the impact of really bad publicity. Fagan’s stomach growled reminding him he hadn’t eaten in six hours. It sounded like voices from another room. He picked the books up and returned to the bar, walked over to where Macy lay on the sofa and set the books on a bar chair.
“Have you seen these?”
Macy sat up, picked them up one by one and stared in astonishment. “No. I stayed out of his room. What’s he saying? That that thing is some kind of Nazi monster?” She started shaking. “What if it comes back?”
Fagan sat next to her and put his arm around her. “He’s not coming back. And I don’t believe in ghosts or freaky supernatural shit. He’s just a man in body armor. A homicidal maniac.”
Macy shrugged him off and put a little distance between them. Fagan flushed with shame.
What was he thinking?
“That goose egg is nasty. I’ll get you some ice.”
“Stay. I’ll get it.”
Macy stood. “No. You stay. You look like you’re about to drop. I’ll be back in a jif.”
Fagan watched her sashay behind the bar and cursed himself for his thoughts.
***