‘Yeah,’ said Wally, evidently ignoring the comparison with difficulty. ‘And I’m not likely to get it up if you don’t give me some foreplay.’
‘Foreplay? You think a woman’s got to do the foreplay? You’ve got the wrong woman if you think that. You’re the one supposed to do the foreplay. Like with the tongue and all.’
‘Sweet fuck!’ said Uncle Wally. ‘At your age you want me playing the old mouth-organ? Like whale blowing in reverse? Shit. This is no time to be making cracks like that.’
‘Well, it isn’t the time to be asking me to go down on you either.’
‘I wasn’t talking about going down. Last time you did that must have been around the time of the Watergate hearings.’
‘Tasted like it too,’ said Auntie Joan. After more argument she agreed to lie back and pretend Wally was Arnold Schwarzenegger on barbiturates, something that slowed him up.
‘Only thing slowing me up is finding the thing,’ said Wally. ‘Like going down Oak Creek Canyon on a wet night and no flashlight. You sure you still got a pussy? That surgeon didn’t do a total when you had that hysterectomy?’
In the end he found what he had been looking for. Or thought he had. Auntie Joan put him right.
‘Asshole!’ she shrieked. ‘Jesus, are you insane trying to brown-ass me? Oh no, you don’t, Wally Immelmann. I’m fucked if you’re going to sodomise me. You want to do that with someone, find yourself a guy who likes it that way. I sure as shit don’t.’
‘Sodomise? I wasn’t trying to sodomise you,’ said Wally, genuinely outraged. ‘We been married all these years, thirty years, thirty goddam years, I ever tried to sodomise you?’
‘Yes,’ said Auntie Joan bitterly. ‘Yes, you have and don’t I know it. Dr Cohen says it’s–’
‘Dr Cohen? You been telling Dr Cohen I’ve been sodomising you? I’m not hearing this. I can’t be!’ Wally yelled. ‘Telling Dr Cohen…Jesus.’
‘I didn’t need to tell him. He’s got eyes in his head. He could see for himself and he was disgusted. He says it’s against the law. And he’s right.’
Wally was no longer interested in humping. He was sitting bolt upright in the doublewide.
‘Against the law? That’s bullshit. If it’s against the law how come gays are doing it all the time and we got an epidemic of Aids?’
‘Not that law. The Law of God. Dr Cohen says it’s there in the Bible. ‘Thou shalt not–”
‘The Bible? What’s Dr Cohen know about the Bible? That New Jersey kike think the Jews wrote the Bible, for Chrissake? He’s got to be crazy.’
‘Wally dear, who else?’ said Auntie Joan, seizing the initiative now that Wally was off her and into a morass of ignorance. ‘Who else wrote the Bible?’
‘What you mean, who else? Genesis did, and Joshua and Jonah. Guys like that. That’s who wrote the Bible.’
‘You’re forgetting Moses,’ said Auntie Joan smugly. ‘Like in Dr Moses Cohen. Jews, Wally dear. Jews. The Bible was written by Jews. Hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Jesus,’ said Wally Immelmann.
‘Him too. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All Jews, Wally, and that’s the gospel.’
Wally slumped down on to the bed. ‘Sure, sure I know all that,’ he said with a whimper. ‘And you have to go and tell Dr Cohen I make a habit of sodomising you. You’ve got to be crazy and I mean out of your head altogether. Clinically.’
‘I tell you I didn’t tell him. He could see for himself when I went for my cervical and he was disgusted. You should have heard what he said about men who did that sort of thing. Had me take a blood test.’
‘Don’t tell me!’ yelled Wally and of course she did. At length and in the most explicit detail while he kept interrupting her with threats of what he was going to do to her. Like divorce her and he knew some guys who would fix her for good.
‘Big deal!’ Auntie Joan shouted back. ‘You think I haven’t got myself insurance? Dr Cohen gave me the name of a lawyer, a real good one, and I’ve seen him. You make one move against me, Wally Immelmann, and you’re going to see what dope I’ve sworn on you. You wouldn’t believe it.’
Wally said he couldn’t believe a wife would do a thing like that, betraying her husband to a fucking doctor and a lawyer. They continued shouting until he was exhausted and lay back in bed wondering what he was going to do. One thing was certain. He was going to have to change his doctor and go to Dr Lesky. It was the last thing he wanted to do. Dr Lesky believed in abortion. It wouldn’t look good going to a doctor like Dr Lesky and being the Deacon of the Church of the Living Lord. Living Lorders didn’t go to abortionists and he wasn’t going to that clinic for blacks and down-and-outs. You got more diseases there than cures. Even the doctors contracted them. Like Immelmann Enterprises going on welfare. Wally lay in the darkness and tried to think how to get round Dr Cohen. Being a Deacon and having it thought he was a sodomist wasn’t going to do him any good in Wilma at all.
What the Drug Enforcement Agents had been installing in the Starfighter Mansion wasn’t doing him any good either.
‘We’ve put double bugs in every room and that way when he scans he finds one but he misses the other. That’s only activated when we want it on so the scanner won’t pick it up first time. He won’t scan twice because he’ll have found the first one and they never check again,’ the electronic device expert told the meeting. ‘And the way we know when to turn the number 2s on is we’ve got video cameras so small they make a fly’s eye look big. No way you can spot them. They show us who’s there and the audios pick up every word. If this guy is running any racket we’ll get the proof. The only way he can talk in private is outside in the open air and even then he can’t be too sure. Could be behind a shirt button, any place. So we’ve got his vehicular transportation all tapped and his house so tight we can tell if he washes behind his ears or been circumcised. Only thing puzzling me is why we’re going to all this trouble with this guy. I mean, this is Mafia equipment we’ve installed and this has got to be small beer.’
‘Could be very big,’ Palowski said. ‘Our information from Poland is that this stuff is a new super high-grade designer from a Russian laboratory. No need to grow it and it’s a thousand times more addictive than crack. Street value into gigabucks and as easy to make as speed. Easier. Which could explain why Sol is missing. Lose a sample like that and you lose your life. Which is almost certainly what’s happened to him. Now, Sheriff Stallard says Immelmann Enterprises is diversifying into pharmaceuticals. That’s the rumour he’s heard. Some German firm is interested in investing with him and they’ve been investing in Russia too. That’s why the interest in Washington. My guess is this could be a subversion gambit. Militarily the Russians are out of the game but if they can infiltrate a designer drug of this calibre they don’t need a war to win.’
‘That guy is paranoid, I swear to God. He’s got Russkies on the brain,’ the electronics expert said afterwards.
It was an opinion shared by Sheriff Stallard when Baxter reported that the Starfighter Mansion had been wired for S&S like sight and sound.
‘You mean when Wally Immelmann…when Mrs Immelmann goes to the bathroom some guy’s going to be filming her on the can? I don’t believe it. And I sure as hell don’t want to see any footage of her taking a slash.’
‘It gets worse…’
‘Worse? Nothing could be worse than Joanie…Where’s the fucking camera? And don’t tell me they’re shooting from below. I’ll throw up.’