The altar is set up for an Egyptian rite timed for sunset, which is in ten minutes. It is a slab of white marble about three feet square. We mark out the cardinal points. A hyacinth in a pot for earth: North. A red candle for fire: South. An alabaster bowl of water for water: East. A glyph in gold on white parchment for air: West. We then put up the glyphs for the rite, in gold on white parchment, on the west wall, since this is the sundown rite and we are facing west. Also we place on the altar a bowl of water, a bowl of milk, an incense burner, some rose essence, and a sprig of mint.
All set, we strip down to sky clothes and we are both stiff before we can get our clothes off. I pick up an ivory wand and draw a circle around our bodies while we both intone translations of the rite, reading from the glyphs on the wall.
"Let the Shining Ones not have power over me." Jim reads it like the Catholic litany and we are both laughing.
"I have purified myself."
We dip water from the bowl and touch our foreheads.
"I have anointed myself with the unguents."
We dip the special ointment out of an alabaster jar, touching foreheads, insides of the wrists, and the base of the spine, since the rite will have a sexual climax.
"I bring to you perfume and incense."
We add more incense, a few drops of rose oil, and a pinch of benzoin to the burner.
We pay homage to the four cardinal points as we invoke Set instead of Khentamentiu, since this is in some sense a black ritual. It is now exactly the hour of sunset, and we pay homage to Tem, since, Ra, in his setting, takes that name. We make lustrations with water and milk to the cardinal points, dipping a mint sprig into the bowls as we invoke the shining elementals. It is time now for the ritual climax, in which the gods possess our bodies and the magical incantation is projected in the moment of orgasm and visualized as an outpouring of liquid gold.
"My phallus is that of Amsu."
I bend over and Jim rubs the ointment up my ass and slides his cock in. A roaring sound in my ears as pictures and tapes swirl in my brain. Shadowy figures rise beyond the candlelight: the goddess Ix Tab, patroness of those who hang themselves ... a vista of gallows and burning cities from Bosch ... Set ... Osiris ... smell of the sea ... Jerry hanging naked from the beam. A sweet rotten red musky metal smell swirls round our bodies palpable as a haze, and as I start to ejaculate, the room gets lighter. At first I think the candles have flared up and then I see Jerry standing there naked, his body radiating light. There is a skeleton grin on his face, which fades to the enigmatic smile on the statues of archaic Greek youths and then he changes into Dimitri, with a quizzical amused expression.
So we send the Shining Ones home and go to bed.
"Why do you thing the head was cut off?" asks Jim.
"Obvious reason: to obscure the cause of death in case the body was found. But they didn't figure on the body being found. There was some special purpose they had in mind, to use both the head and the body." Drawings of transplanted monkey heads flash in front of my eyes.
"Where do you think the head is now?"
"In New York."
Horse hattock
to ride to ride
Next day when we got to the office there was a telegram from Dimitri:
HAVE SUSPECT IN CUSTODY WHO WITNESSED DEATH OF JERRY GREEN STOP WIRE IF WISH TO INTERVIEW SUSPECT
We took the next plane to Athens and checked into the Hilton. Dimitri sent a car for us.
Jim was a bit stiff when they shook hands in Dimitri's air-conditioned office ... wall-to-wall blue carpet, a desk, leather-covered chairs, a picture of the Parthenon on the wall, everything neat and impersonal as a room in the Hilton.
Dimitri raised one eyebrow. "I infer you disapprove of our politics, Mr. Brady. For myself I disapprove of any politics. Please understand that I stand to gain nothing from this investigation. My political superiors want the whole thing dropped ... a few degenerate foreigners ... it's bad for the tourist business."
Jim blushed sulkily and looked at his shoes and turned one foot sideways.
"What about this witness you got?" I asked.
Dimitri leaned back in his chair behind the desk and put the tips of his fingers together. "Ah yes—Adam North, the perfect witness. Survived his perfection because he was in custody. On the morning that the Green boy was killed, September eighteenth, young North was arrested with a quarter-ounce of heroin in his possession. When I saw the laboratory report I ordered him placed in isolation. The heroin he had been buying from street pushers was about ten percent. This was almost one hundred percent. It would have killed him in a matter of seconds."
"Well, if they would kill him to shut him up about something, why let him know about it in the first place?" Jim asked.
"A searching question. You see, he was a sort of camera from which a film could be withdrawn and developed. But first the bare bones, later the meat. Adam North had been approached by someone fitting"—Dimitri glanced at me—"your description of Marty Blum, and offered a quarter-ounce of heroin plus a thousand-dollar bonus to be paid in two installments to witness a magical ritual involving a simulated execution. He was suspicious."
Dimitri turned on a tape recorder. "Why me?" said a stupid surly young voice. It went on.
"Sot his character from a comic strip says I am a perfect. 'A perfect what?' I ask him. 'A perfect witness,' he tells me. He has five C-notes in his hand , 'Well, all right,' I say. 'But there is a condition,' he says. 'You must promise to refrain from heroin or any other drug for three days prior to the ceremony. You have to be in a pure condition.' 'Promise on my scout's honor,' I told him and he lays the bread on me. 'But one more thing,' he says. He gives me a color picture of a kid with red hair who looks sorta like me. 'This is the subject. You will concentrate on this picture for the next three days.' So I tell him 'Sure' and split. And would you believe it, with five hundred cools in my pocket I can't score for shit nowhere no way. So when the chauffeur comes to pick me up in a Daimler I am sick as a dog."
Dimitri shuts off the tape recorder. "He was driven to a villa outside Athens where he witnessed a bizarre ceremony culminating in the hanging of the Green boy. Back in Athens he was given the quarter-ounce of heroin. He was on his way back to his girl friend's apartment when the arrest was made."
"It still doesn't make any sense," Jim said. "They drag him in as a witness, God knows why, then knock him to shut him up."
"They did not intend to shut him up. They intended to open him and extract the film. Adam North was a perfect witness. He is Jerry's age, born on the same day, and resembles him enough to be a twin brother. You are acquainted with the symptoms of heroin withdrawal ... the painful intensity of impressions, light fever, spontaneous orgasms ... a sensitized film. And a heroin overdose is the easiest of deaths, so the pictures registered on the sensitized withdrawal film come off without distortion in a heroin O.D."
"I see," said Jim.
"It's all here on the tape, but I think you would like to see this boy. He is, I should tell you, retarded."
As we are going down in the elevator, Dimitri continued. "There is reason to suspect a latent psychosis, masked by his addiction."
"Is he receiving any medication?" I asked.
"Yes—methadone, orally. I don't want his disorder to surface here."
"You mean that he could become a public charge?" I asked.
"More than that—he could become a sanitary hazard."
We saw Adam North in one of the interrogation rooms, under fluorescent lights. A table, a tape recorder, four chairs. He was a handsome blond kid with green eyes. The resemblance to Jerry was remarkable. However, while Jerry was described as very bright and quick, this boy had a slack, vacuous, stupid look about him, sleepy and sullen like a lizard resentfully aroused from hibernation. Dimitri explained that we were investigators hired by Jerry's family, and we had a few questions. The boy looked down at the table in front of him and said nothing.