The guests are becoming impatient. "Pop Pop Pop," they scream.
Lights go on in a little alcove and there is the double gallows. It's a hologram and it makes you queasy to look at it floating there in stagnant rotten air like a solid mirage you can almost drink out of and almost smell. The star is a dummy called Whitey because he cost as much as the white shark in Jaws. A door opens on the gallows and Whitey is led in by a red demon as the clients caper around the gallows, standing on tiptoe and twisting their heads to one side and making clicking sounds with their tongues.
Now Whitey stands with the noose around his neck, pelvis tilted forward, cock almost hard, pupils pinpointed. The platform falls and he hangs there ejaculating and a blaze of light flashes out his eyes.
"A Flasher! A Flasher!" The clients throw up their arms and wriggle their hips forward ecstatically, bathing in the flash, pushing each other aside, wallowing about in heaps.
The gallows disappears. In an old silent film 1920s guests are jumping into a swimming pool.
"Come along to our digs, old sport," says Rubble Blood Pu. "This place is getting vulgar."
Pu leads the way through an area of vacant lots, rubble, and half-demolished buildings overgrown with weeds, scrub, and vines.
"Here we are."
He stops in front of a three-story building. The two lower floors are torn down to the girders and concrete stairs lead to the third floor. Pu unlocks a heavy door.
The third floor is furnished in Moroccan style with rugs and cushions and low tables. Five of the kraut kids, all naked, are smoking hash. One gets up and does a belly dance while the others, at the four points of the compass, roll on their backs, legs in the air, clapping with their feet as they sing.
They wear no clothes
And they dance up on their toes
And the dance they do
Is enough to kill a Jew
Rubble Blood Pu and Captain Strobe are both very slender, with small aristocratic genitals, and they manage to look elegantly attired and perfectly poised when naked. A boy with long flaxen hair and flaring ears, naked except for a helmet, brings a tray of mint tea.
Pu shows Jim how to hold the glass by top and bottom so as not to burn his hand.... "Come along and I'll show you around the house."
The kraut kids trail along, laughing and goosing each other.
"And here is the gallows room ... all modern and convenient, as you can see ... our subjects wear hanging helmets ... show him, Igor."
Igor walks up grinning. The helmet extends around the neck and down to the collarbone, glares around the ears, and covers the shaven scalp.
"You see there are wires for brain waves to be recorded over here; throat mikes in the helmet ... and this." He holds up a little ring of transparent elastic. "Always tailormade, of course ... and these magnetic tingle disks for the nipples. And the noose, scented with the subject's special smells—you know, his dirty underwear and jacked-off-in handkerchiefs. We've always been vampires, old sport.... It's in the family." He takes a last look around. "The best that money can buy ... still it's a bit confining, old sport—if you know what I mean. All in the mind, you know...."
The room behind him turns into Gatsby's booklined study.
*
"One of your dizzy spells?"
Hans takes my arm. The boys have sated themselves for the moment. They are sitting around, shoulder to shoulder, passing cannabis cigarettes.
"Cuidado, hombre."
A boy brushes a spark from his naked thigh ...soft distant voices in the warm dusk. We are walking back through the stale air of Panama that eddies around our bodies and settles behind us. No fresh breezes stir here. The city is like a closed room, full of stale flowers and stagnant water.
"And no, old sport, there is someone I want you to meet ... better nip in here first." He opens the door into a luxurious bathroom. "See you in the drawing room."
When Jim gets up to the drawing room, he sees a red-haired girl looking like Jerry's twin sister, dressed in red silk pajamas. The kraut kids sprawl in front of her, jacking off like she is a pinup.
Audrey looks at his wristwatch. He is on patrol with Cupid Mount Etna. Time to hit the street.
We are coordinated
the guard is manifold
Kelly, Clinch Todd, Hans, and myself proceed now to the garrison to review the captured soldiers. Massive walls with four gun towers surround a courtyard along which living quarters are ranged. Hans and I, flanked by ten partisans carrying razor-sharp machetes, step into the courtyard while Kelley, Todd, and Jon remain in the wardroom behind the bars.
"Tenshun!" They understand that in any language.
The soldiers shamble into a ragged line. Dirty, unshaven, frightened, they would seem to pose no threat. I walk slowly up and down, looking at each face in turn. A sorry lot for the most part, stupid and brutal, many of them showing the ravages of drink and disease. But two faces do stand out: a think hawk-faced youth with piercing gray eyes who meets my regard steadily, and a pimply boy with red hair who gives me an ingratiating smile.
"How many of you can read?"
The hawk-faced youth and two others raise their hands. A fourth raises his hand halfway.
"Well, can you read or can't you?"
"Well, yes sir, but it takes me some time."
"You'll have plenty of that." I point to the Articles. "I want those of you who can read to read what is written there. I want you to read it carefully. Then I want you to explain what is written there to those who can't read. Is that clear?"
The hawk-faced youth nods with a slight smile.
"I'll be back later to see if what is written there has been read and understood."
We then proceed to the house where the women are held, to be greeted by a chorus of shrewish complaints. No one will talk to them or tell them what had happened to their sons, husbands, and brothers. They have been denied medical attention and prevented from going to Mass.
I apologize smoothly for the temporary inconvenience and assure them that their husbands, son, and brothers are safe and being well cared for. I tell them that I am a qualified physician, and that if any of them are suffering from any pains or illnesses I will be glad to receive them one by one in a room I have set up as my office. I have also brought a priest who will hear confession, grant absolutions, or perform any other priestly offices of which they are in need. The "priest" is none other than Half-Hanged Kelley, his hemp marks covered by a clerical collar.
One by one, they troop into my office complaining of headaches, backaches, toothaches, chills and fever, shingles, flatulence, cramps, palpitations, catarrhs, varicose veins, fainting spells, neuralgia, and other ailments difficult to classify. To each I give a draft containing four grams of opium, with instructions to repeat the dose if their trouble returns, which of course it will at the end of eight hours when the opium wears off. Needless to say, Kelley is also kept busy by the pious señoras.
Returning to the garrison, I call the soldiers to attention. I walk down the line directing the three readers and the half-reader to stand forward. I then pick out six more, looking for faces and bodies that are reasonably well favored or show some signs of adaptability, intelligence, and good character. These ten being brought to the wardroom, I ask if they have read the Articles or had the Articles explained to them.