She finally asked, “What was his name?”
“You were his friend,” the white cop said suspiciously “and you don’t know his name?”
“Just his first name — Corey.”
“Dimas. Card in his wallet says Corey Dimas.”
She nodded to herself. His voice echoed back from the core of the night, his whispered message, and now she understood. He probably couldn’t trust his handwriting to leave a note, if he could write at all anymore.
“Can I make a call?” she asked them.
“Guess so. Who to?”
“Next of kin.”
She tried the phone but it was dead, just like the electricity. So she had to go back to the bedroom to get the cell phone in her handbag. She returned to the living room, sighed deeply, and punched information while the two men watched her.
She slumped down on the sofa, got the number she needed from information. Her mind went blank for a moment before she remembered to punch in the number. She let her head rest against the pillow, succumbing now to a terrible fatigue as the call went through, a stray thought surfacing, slowly becoming tangible: She wondered if her landlord allowed dogs.
The Mankiller of Poojeegai
by Walter Satterthwait
Everybody wants to know about the Mankiller. “Tell us about the Mankiller, tell us about the Mankiller!” Sometimes I wonder — what is it with you people? Haven’t you got anything better to do? Haven’t you got lives?
Okay, fine. The Mankiller. Don’t forget to put your donations in the hat.
It happened back in the Old Days. Looking back on those times, it seems that the sun was always shining in a bright blue, cloudless sky, that the grass was always swaying in a warm, sweet gentle breeze. That life was always just about perfect.
Which is ridiculous, of course. Things seem that way now because Memory is a better storyteller than even an old pro like me. It deliberately forgets a few items, items like cave bears and saber-toothed tigers and pestilence, and it polishes up everything that’s left until it’s all gleaming and shiny. And if that’s not storytelling, I don’t know what is.
Right. The Mankiller.
I was in the cave, pounding acorns, which was my share of the division of labor, or part of it. I also gathered the acorns, and when the flour was ready, I rolled the dough and I baked the bread. Ursula, my wife, ate the bread. That was her share.
I was just finishing up when Ursula came sauntering into the cave.
“Marta wants to see you,” she said.
Inside me, I could feel my heart dislodge itself from the walls of my chest, getting ready to sink. “See me about what?” I asked.
“How should I know? Make sure you clean off before you go.”
She was a beautiful woman, Ursula, with the most impressive eyebrow ridge I’ve ever seen, one that ran from ear to ear over her deeply set dark brown eyes, like a ledge. Occasionally, I still dream about that lovely brow of hers. But as a person, she was sometimes a bit difficult.
I stood up and I brushed flour from my arms. “Marta didn’t say?”
“No. But one of those smelly Outlanders was with her. And so was your friend Berthold.”
My heart sank.
“You’ve got flour on your chin,” said Ursula.
Within fifty feet of Marta’s cave, I could smell the stench of Outlander.
We didn’t socialize much with the Outlanders back then. This was partly because we had some fairly strong cultural taboos against mingling with strangers — and the Outlanders were nothing if not strange — but mostly because, to put it delicately, they stank. It was a vile smell, something like cumin, but darker and stronger and more penetrating, the smell of a cumin that had grown moldy and rotten. Over the years, they’ve grown a little less rank. Or maybe, like all my other organs, my nose is coming up short these days.
Inside the cave, Marta was sitting on her ceremonial throne, wearing the ceremonial lion skin over her shoulders. Gunnar, her consort, was sitting on one of the rocks in front of her, and Berthold the Meadmaster was sitting on another with that damned leather sack of his resting between his legs. A third rock was taken up by the Outlander, who was dressed in standard Outlandish garb: a pair of leather pants and a red plaid shirt. Around his wrist he wore a bracelet of black pearls. The Outlanders were big on jewelry.
Here in the Royal Chamber, the stench was a lot stronger. Gunnar, I noticed, was sniffling. He was a sensitive lad.
I nodded to Marta. “Greetings, Most Slender of Queens.”
“Greetings, Doder, Son of Watt. I believe that you know Bob, the leader of the Outlanders.”
I nodded to him. “Greetings, Bob.”
“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s happening?”
Although his use of The Language was a bit peculiar, Bob spoke it surprisingly well. I’ve heard people say that the Outlanders are stupid. From my own personal experience, this simply isn’t true. They do look odd, I admit, with those slippery bodies and those pathetic tufts of hair sprouting from their tiny heads. And they do possess a few bizarre habits, like worshiping thunder gods and wearing clothes. And they do, of course, stink. But I’ve never had any doubts about their intelligence. They’re the ones, after all, who invented the bow and arrow — definitely a big improvement, huntingwise, over trying to sweet talk a mammoth into leaping off a cliff. All in all, they’re very clever fellows.
“And naturally,” said Marta, “you know Gunnar.”
“Greetings, Doder,” said Gunnar, who coughed slightly. His eyes were watering. But so, by then, were mine. Reek was wafting from Bob like gas from a swamp.
“Greetings, Gunnar,” I said.
“And Berthold is an old friend,” she said.
That was an exaggeration, but I nodded. “Berthold,” I said.
From his rock, Berthold smiled one of his cryptic smiles.
“Berthold,” said Marta, “has need of your assistance.”
“In what way, Your Awesomeness?”
“There has been a tragedy among the Outlanders.” She turned to Bob. “Please explain to Doder.”
“The Mankiller of Poojeegai,” he explained.
“What’s a Poojeegai?” I asked him.
“That’s the name of the village, man. Our village.”
I hadn’t known their name for the village. We always referred to it as The Sink of Stinks. “And what’s this mankiller?” I asked him.
“That’s what we call it, man. It’s a lion. It kills people. It’s killed three of us already. You remember Tammy?”
“Yes.” Tammy was one of their females.
“She was the first. That was last week. Over the weekend, it killed Wally the Water Bearer. And then yesterday, man, it got Art the Archer. A friend of his, Lou, went in to get him this morning, and poor Art was scattered all over the living room.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “What’s a living room?”
“That’s the part of the house where we mostly hang out. It’s just off the kitchen usually, where we do all the cooking. You know about cooking, right?”
“Of course I know about cooking.”
“Anyway, that’s where Art was scattered all over.”
“Terrible. But how does Berthold fit into all this?”
“Berthold’s going to help us stalk the thing.”
I turned to the Meadmaster. “That’s very generous of you, Berthold.” I turned to Marta. “Your Suppleness, I’m afraid that this time I won’t be able to assist Berthold.”
“And why is that?”
“I’m allergic to cats. Big cats, little cats, any kind of cat. I get hives.”
“You need have no fear,” she said, a remark that always strikes me, no matter who makes it, as monumentally shortsighted. “The Great Mother will protect you.” Marta was the Great Mother’s local representative.