"If you saw the setup, you'd understand why."
Scarlett was silent for a minute. Beyond the door the skies were sodden and gray with the afterbirth of one storm while a new wave of thunderclouds shoved in from the sea. Still the rain came down.
"What about the cousin?" he asked. "Where do we look for him?"
"I think you should leave his studio alone so he doesn't wise to the tap."
"Studio?"
"Yeah, the man is involved in the music business. Runs it under a holding company called Damballah Enterprises Ltd."
"Damballah is the snake god in-voodoo."
"I know. Why don't you try to find him tonight down at the London Calling. That's a club on Pender."
Tipple fished into his pocket and removed a small telephone-pole poster. There were rips in all four corners where staples had once secured it. It read:
Save Yourself For Thursday Night, November 4th, 1982
LIVE IN CONCERT FROM ENGLAND
RAW-T
With Special Guests VOODOO CHILE
Save Your Soles!
The London Calling Ballroom,
742 West Pender Street.
"Why do you think he'll be there?" Rick Scarlett asked.
"Voodoo Chile's his band," Tipple said in reply.
Katherine Spann had folded the corner on one of the transcript pages. Once she had perused all the rest she turned back to that one. She held it out to Tipple.
"This tap is long distance. Bill. Where's it coming from.'"
"Let's see," Tipple said. He took the transcript from her and read:
Incoming call. Long distance.
Fox: Hey hey.
Operator: I have a collect call from Mr. Wolf. Will you accept the charge?
Fox: Yes I will.
Wolf: It's cooking on the 6th.. The pot boils over at midnight.
Fox: I'm ready… The cous will be down there to see all you.
Wolf: Ah… Right… be seein' the man then.
Fox: Okay, bye for now.
Wolf: Au revoir.
Finished reading, Tipple looked up and said: "That call's from New Orleans."
The Sweep
8:36 a.m.
They hit the pornographer's first.
Rick Scarlett entered the sex shop on Granville Street close to the Granville Bridge wearing a raincoat over his uniform and with his soaked head bare. The store was already open to catch the early morning crowd — or at least that was the front. Walking swiftly up to the counter the policeman skipped his eyes around the shop, taking in the shelves of skin mags and books all sealed in plastic wrappers, then he leaned forward over a display case of artificial vaginas and Suck-U-Lators and asked for something in rubber.
The man behind the counter was in his late forties, a thick-set balding individual with a fat savage face and wet, sneering lips. His eyes held the look of someone preoccupied with thoughts of sex every waking hour. Scarlett was quite sure that he dreamt about it too. As the cop spoke, the man looked up from a book titled The Variations of Anal Intercourse and taking in the raincoat sized him up for a flasher. In that opinion the man was correct.
With a flourish. Rick Scarlett flipped open the outer garment to reveal his uniform beneath.
"Oh shit!" the man behind the counter said, and his eyelids snapped wide like blinds released and flapping over windows. His left hand reached out for a button on the wall, but before the fingers could get there Scarlett seized hold of his wrist.
"No alarm," the cop warned, "or you're in big, big trouble."
As the fat man dropped his arm, Katherine Spann came in through the front door. She ran across to where an entrance nave access to the girlie peep-show booths in the rear of the shop and pulled back the curtain. Behind there were six booths lined along one wall. Two sets of men's feet showed below the hinged half-door on one of the cubicles. Beyond the booths was another door set into the wall. The woman tried it and found it locked.
Moving swiftly across the corridor, she braced herself with her back to the opposite wall. Pushing off with both hands, Spann propelled herself across the passageway, raising her right leg to connect with the door just above its lock and handle, her left leg keeping up the momentum. The door burst inward amidst a shower of splinters.
Inside the room two men were sitting on a bench against the left wall. One of the men was a "bomber pilot," his head now up in the clouds and exploding with chemical flak. His body was in a slouch and his jaw hung slackly open, his fingers caressing a pair of little girl's panties. The other man was Kurt Schmidt, who was also the manager of the Silver Screen Theatre. Schmidt's abdomen was still bandaged from where the feminist had slashed it with the razor. As the door crashed in Schmidt was in the process of focusing a 35 mm Pentax camera.
To the left and right of both men, banks of high-powered lights shone down upon a raised dais to the right of the door. Two children now stood on that platform. One was a young girl no more than nine or ten who was dressed in a tiny black lace corset and wearing miniature nylon stockings. Her crotch was bare and her face was painted with the heavy makeup of a whore. The other was a young boy the same age as the girl. He was naked except for a fedora on his head and a plastic Thompson submachine gun in his hands. The boy's genitals had been rouged red.
"Jesus, no!" Schmidt exclaimed as Spann came hurtling into the room. He reacted immediately, wrenching the back of the camera open to expose and ruin the film. Then he turned to run. Reaching out with one hand the woman grabbed him by the arm, but Schmidt jerked free. He swung back his left hand to punch her in the nose just as Rick Scarlett came flying through the door.
It had taken several seconds for the bomber pilot to come out of his haze. He was very stoned and only now beginning to realize that this was a raid. It was as the spaceman was struggling to gain his feet and get up off the bench that Scarlett pulled his.38 and aimed it at Schmidt's head.
"Freeze! Police!" Scarlett yelled.
10:50 a.m.
Macdonald and Lewis were not prepared for the man who answered the door. Dexter Flesch did not look remotely like his mug shot, but then the police picture was over eight years old.
To start with, the Constables were surprised to find that a D. Flesch still resided at the West End apartment address recorded in the police file. In 1974 the man they were now seeking had pleaded guilty to eleven counts of indecent assault on a female. He had served one year in prison with a two-year probation order on release requiring him to see a psychiatrist at least twice a month. The psychiatric condition was because his MO had been a little peculiar.
On May the 10th of 1974, Dexter Flesch — wearing a white smock with a stethoscope around his neck — had entered the gymnasium of a local high school while a class of Grade 12 girls was having Physical Education. The man had flashed a printed College of Physicians and Surgeons card at the instructress and had then taken the woman aside for a sotto voce talk. The truth was. Flesch told her, that he had been sent by the School Board to check on an outbreak of… well, to put it simply… of crabs among the graduating class. It seemed that these genital parasites (and here Flesch lowered his voice even more) were emanating from a young lady in this very class. Did the instructress have any idea — all in the strictest of confidence, of course — just who the carrier might be?
Yes, the instructress had told Flesch, there were one or two girls who she suspected of having hinges on their heels.
"Then let's take a look," Dexter Flesch had said.