The agents remembered their experience with Robert Pearson, former aide to Hassan i Sabbah X, and jumped to a conclusion. "That crazy church drove them all nuts and made them think they were white people." Alas, a little checking refuted this easy assumption. Most of the loonies Bridge had visited had no previous connection with the Cult of the Black Mother at all…
Things were coming to a head.
THREE MINUTES, FORTY SECONDS
That which exists is allowed.
–john lilly, The Center of the Cyclone
When Murphy came out the front door, Ed Goldfarb, in the bushes, shot him twice with Mendoza's police special.
Murphy, thrown back against the door, was reaching into his shoulder holster, his mouth open, still alive.
The two shots hung in the empty mountain air, echoing.
Thomas Esposito fired at Murphy and missed as Murphy's hand slowly and steadily came up, firing at Goldfarb.
Goldfarb fell back, hit.
The echoes still rolled across the hills.
"Mama, Mama," Goldfarb said, rolling around, holding his stomach. He was weeping.
The third man, Juan Ybarra, ran from the bushes to Murphy.
Murphy was trying to raise the gun again. He was looking at Ybarra and trying to point the gun. His eyes were totally mad and would not focus anymore.
Esposito was trying to shoot at Murphy again, with Ybarra in the way. He had an erection and his hands shook.
Goldfarb continued to weep.
The shots were still echoing.
Birds were rising from the trees, flapping their wings noisily, twittering with anxiety. A crow cawed angrily.
Murphy's gun hand dropped. His mad eyes went empty.
"Mama!" Goldfarb screamed. "I'm sorry!"
Esposito and Ybarra ran lithely down the hill.
"Mama," Goldfarb wept. "Not me. Please. I'm sorry."
The birds swept down the hill, flapping.
A black Mustang came up the hill. Esposito and Ybarra leapt out, and ran around to the back, and opened the trunk compartment.
"Not me, please," Goldfarb was protesting.
Esposito and Ybarra lifted Detective Mendoza, gagged with adhesive tape, out of the trunk and carried him onto the lawn. He was dazed but his eyes were aware and frightened.
Esposito ran over to Murphy and took his gun. Standing there, he fired twice into Mendoza's head. He put the gun back in Murphy's hand.
Ybarra tore the adhesive tape off Mendoza's mouth. It came away bloodstained.
Goldfarb stopped crying and was still.
Ybarra retched, almost puked, caught himself. He stood white-faced, breathing hard.
Esposito picked up Murphy's package, a brown paper bag. He opened it, found a box within, raised the lid. He inserted a finger and tasted.
"The Jew," he said.
Ybarra looked at him, shaking.
"Get on the stick," Esposito said. "We can't leave the Jew; he doesn't fit."
Ybarra stood looking at him. "Come out of it," Esposito said. "Help me with the Jew."
They carried Goldfarb into the back of the car.
They drove off.
Starhawk landed lightly on the lawn, running as he alighted. He ran into the house and to the bedroom. He found what he expected in the closet, another box, and tasted it. He ran softly, on the balls of his feet, back outside. He leapt, caught the roof, and pulled himself upward. He disappeared into the trees.
The two dead men sprawled on the lawn.
Birds began to return.
Elapsed time since Murphy had come out the door was three minutes and forty seconds.
THE SEA! THE SEA!
Rolypolyboys tell lasses.
–simon moon,
"hawkfullest conventions ever"
The loudroaring sea was calling. The moon was full, the Gentry were active, the howl of the wind was as mournful as a 1950s poem. Markoff Chaney, unable to sleep, sat up in his YMCA bed and hatched mischief.
Through leaflets nailed on walls around Orange County, he had managed to create a Committee to Nuke the Whales, something that appealed to a lot of rich-wingers purely and simply on the grounds that it would make the eco-nuts and liberals scream. The Committee was an outstanding success; after only a year it had forty-two members. This was enough, together with such an outrageous cause, to get maximum media attention-Chaney was aware that anything, however small, can get the eye of the media if it's repulsive enough-and the eco-nuts and liberals were screaming.
Good; but now for something equally abominable on the other side.
Chaney contemplated the Radical Lesbians wistfully. He felt like Voltaire contemplating God; if the Radical Lesbians hadn't existed, he would have had to invent them. But what could he offer along those lines to balance the Committee to Nuke the Whales? The Child Molest-ers' Liberation Front? That couldn't begin to compete with "Figs" Newton's Necrophile Liberation Front. The Council of Armed Cocaine Abusers? Nobody would believe it…
The midget suddenly remembered the Council of Armed Rabbis he had used in his letter to Dr. Frank Dashwood of Orgasm Research. He had meant to follow up on that. Gaining access to heavily guarded nuclear plants to tamper with the coolant systems had kept him so busy lately that he had almost forgotten the damnable Dashwood and his shitheel statistics.
Chaney was awake most of the night planning a campaign to bring quantum wobble into Dashwood's charts and graphs.
When he finally slept his tiny body curled into the orgonomic spiral and he looked as innocent as a schoolboy.
He awoke in the morning full of piss and vinegar.
The sea! The sea! Waving their long green hair, the sea hags were calling him. Finding a dark-lit bar, he ducked into the phone booth, attached his Blue Box equipment, and soon had a Washington operator convinced he was a White House official on important business.
"This is a call from the White House," the operator told the secretary at Orgasm Research. "The President is waiting on another line. He wishes to talk to Dr. Dashwood at once."
"I-I'll put you through at once," said Ms. Karrige, quite awed and flustered. The midget listened in glee as the phone rang.
"F-F-Frank Dashwood," came the doctor's voice, rather breathlessly.
"This is Ezra Pound of the Fair Play for Bad Ass Committee," the midget said, shifting his story now that he had the victim on the line. "Your name has been given to us as a leader of the scientific community, and, quite frankly, we are looking for all the distinguished support we can get for our next full-page ad in the Sunday News-Times-Post. I assume you're aware of the plight of Bad Ass," he said significantly, bluffing, of course (but with some assurance, since every place in the world had some plight or other by 1984).
"Oh, yes, of course," Dr. Dashwood said evasively. "Why don't you send me your literature and I'll give it a careful reading."
"Doctor," the midget said sternly, "if you were living in Bad Ass, wouldn't you want action now?"
"Well, undoubtedly, but if you'll just send me your literature…"
("Oh, Ace, darling, darling," a female voice near the phone said distinctly.)
There was a startled pause; the midget deliberately let it drag out until the doctor spoke again.
"Er, mark the envelope to my personal attention. You can be sure that the Bad Ass crisis has been very much on my mind. Terrible, simply terrible. But ah now I must be back to my business-"
("Fuck my cunt, Ace! Oh, fuck my cunt!")
"Doctor," the midget said sternly, "are you fornicating while you're talking to me? Is that your answer, sir, to the desperate people of Bad Ass?"
("Now, now!!!" the voice screeched. "Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus NOW!!!!!!!!")
Beautiful, the midget thought; I couldn't have called at a better time. "Dr. Dashwood," he said stiffly, "I don't think you are really the sort who will add stature to the Fair Play for Bad Ass Committee." He hung up jarringly.