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The Chickasaw Gravelpacker
WHIPPING POST
Dick Burns was practicing Louie, Louie on his balalaika when the phone rang.
"Burns?!"
"Boss, listen to this. I just figured out the chord progression to The Immigrant
Song."
"Goddammit Burns! I just got off the phone with Jack Moore at DC homicide. They've
found the House majority whip and it looks like he took a long walk off a short pier.
His wife wants us to nab the maniac who did him in."
"What makes you think it wasn't suicide? According to an ABC news poll, the
Republocrats aren't doing so hot this week, what with Blob Dough getting that new
prosthesis and Newt donating his"
"Shut up, Burns. Once you see what's left of this guy, you'll know it had to
be murder. From the looks of it, I'd say an old friend of yours is in town."
"Christy? Christy Canyon is in town?!? Rat hell. I was going to get those pectoral
implants put in next week."
Burns could hear the boss drum his fingers on the receiver. "Just get to the
goddamn morgue within an hour, Burns. Think you can manage that without killing anybody?"
"Dunno, boss. I've been meaning to grout the bathroom, and I just picked up
some Heironimous Bosch wallpaper that matches my"
The phone went dead. Burns dropped the receiver, picked up his balalaika, hesitantly
plucked his way through an off-key version of Freebird. He gave up, packed a lunch
of boiled eggs and a Velveeta Spamwich and headed downtown. The smell of formaldehyde
always gave him a wicked appetite.
ROCKY ROAD
Burns bought a Clark Bar at the Schwab's drugstore on Connecticut Avenue. He jaywalked
his way downtown in the general direction of police headquarters. Burns flashed his
buzzer at the front desk attendant, signed in, hustled through the metal detector
and a milling crowd of reporters. He shoved through the clammy steel doors of the
city morgue.
He saw a trail of pebbles and white gravel on the tile floor. Burns followed the
trail downstairs to the autopsy room. It ended beneath a stainless steel gurney at
the far end of the white tile autopsy room that stank of LySol and something else.
Something was lying on top of the gurney draped in a painfully starched sheet. It
was not quite as large as beached whale, and almost smelled as good. The boss and
the coroner stood on opposite sides of it, stared at it trying to think of something
to say.
Burns walked over, mumbled, spat chocolate and peanuts, said, "Wotshup, bosh?"
"It's pretty ugly, Burns. Take a poke."
Burns grimaced, extended a well-chewed finger, poked the thing on the gurney. His
finger slammed against something like a pillow case full of granite. Burns closed
his eyes, bowed his head. Slowly, he looked at the boss, Their bloodshot eyes met,
fell back down on the body. Burns and the boss looked at the coroner, nodded, murmured,
"Chickasaw Gravelpacker."
The coroner arched a brow, clucked his tongue. "Excuse me?"
"Phtoo! Lemme tell ya something about this body." Burns spat out the half
chewed candy bar, lit a cigarette, and walked around the body. "The victim was
a caucasian male in his late forties, formerly employed by a Forbes Five Hundred
Madison Avenue ad company. He was found floating face-down in a sewage treatment
facility. His lower intestinal tract contains roughly thirty pounds of white garden
variety gravel. Cause of death was a heart attack."
"How the hell did you know that? Nobody's leaked a thing about this case to
the press yet?"
Burns stopped, squinted at the corpse. He tore the cigarette from his lips, pinched
out the cherry with his thumb and forefinger, placed the butt in his breast pocket.
"It's him. I knew they couldn't kill him. I told the jury those suspects couldn't
have done it, but those yokels wouldn't listen! Those poor slobs the DA sent to the
chair" Burns turned his back to them, stared at his shoes, wept and shook his
head. The now nervous coroner shuffled next to the boss, whispered, "Ummm what
the hell is he talking about?"
"The only case Burns never solved," the boss declared. "It's 1972.
Watergate's in full swing and a homicidal maniac is running around Chickasaw Falls,
Missouri kidnapping corporate executives, tying them up, and ramming gravel up their
well, you can figure out the rest. Our man Burns was the assistant DA on the case."
"Yeah, that was me, alright," Burns yelled, spinning around. "But
this time, I'm gonna nail his ass if I have to kill every gardener in town. You know
how many people we sent to the gas chamber thinking that they were the killer? Eleven,
that's how many. First the milkman, then the postman, then the topless waitress.
No sooner had the executioner dropped the cyanide pellets in the gas chamber then
another gravel-packed body shows up in the sewage plant, bobbing around like some
kind of goddamned, bloated candy apple."
"Easy, Burns," the coroner said, putting a hand on Burns's shoulder. "For
all we know, this could be a copycat killing. Happens all the time. Some loon reads
about a serial killing, thinks he's David Berkowitz and wants to cut a deal with
Oliver Stone for the film rights"
Burns threw off the coroner's hand like it was an albino bat. He let out a sickly
laugh, full of sanguine bile and viscous phlegm. "If only. Lemme tell ya something.
Take some skin and saliva samples from the victim's mouth and nose. Know what you'll
find? Traces of prussic acid, that's what." Burns stooped down, picked up a
couple of rocks, shook them in his fist like dice. "And these rocks? They ain't
no ordinary rocks, Jocko. Fleming's Number Twelve Industrial Grade Rubble. Only one
gravel company in Butte, Montana produced it and the vein went bone dry about the
same time George Wallace got plugged. Only three people know those little nuggets
of info: the Chickasaw County D.A., myself, and the killer."
"Prussic acid?" the bewildered coroner asked.
"You want I should spell it out for you?" Burns screamed, heaving the rocks
across the floor. "The killer sprays it in the victim's face. Induces all the
symptoms of a heart attack! Check the ankles and you'll find swelling and distention.
This guy was strung up with a block and tackle for hours while the killer shoved
fistfuls of of " Burns covered his face with both hands and wept bitterly.
"Hey, Burns," the boss stepped in, "maybe he was just getting the
wrong kind of minerals in his diet."
"I'll be at the 9:30 drinking heavily." Burns groaned, turned to leave.
"Send the widow around whenever she's ready to spill." Burns dragged himself
away like a bullwhipped circus chimp. He paused before the door, stood silent for
a moment. He spun around, approached the corpse, slugged it in the gut.
"Rest easy, Sonny, " Burns sniveled, tears streaming down both cheeks.
"I'll make that gravel-ramming sonovabitch pay for what he did to you! And to
Mona! And to Carlos! I won't sleep 'til I tear that bastard's pancreas out, sauté
it in some garlic and nail it to the fucking wall!"
Burns barged out of the autopsy room, ripping both doors off of their hinges.
THE WOMAN WHO HATED DOGS
Burns always was a sucker for a woman in mourning.
The victim's child bride was sitting on Burns's desk, legs crossed, clad in a black
leather minidress that looked like it had been painted on, a gold lamé blouse,
spike heels that could double as toothpicks and a black mesh veil that stopped just
above her ample lips. She had the kind of lips that said a lot without even moving.
She was mindlessly snapping gum and toying with Burns's collection of Hot Wheels
when he charged into the room.
"You the stiff's wife?"
She nodded, pouting silently and staring at her reflection in her shoes. She looked
young enough to be Burns' granddaughter.
"You mind getting the hell off of my desk?"
She shook her head, smiled, and slowly began raising her skirt and spreading her
legs. Burns got on his hands and knees, barked like a corgi, buried his face in her
fur-fringed fun socket. Damp, pungent vapors ebbed and pulsed through Burns's nose
and mouth. He inhaled the rich steamy scent, felt her small manicured fingers brush
through his receding hairline, draw his stubbled face deeper and deeper as she groaned
and arched her back towards a shivering climax.
The thunder clapped. It started to rain. She screamed, "Mr. Burns! Are you listening
to me?"
Burns opened his eyes. He was seated behind his desk facing Cindy, his new client,
who had her fists on her hips and was giving him Angry Schoolmarm Look #5.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. You were just saying how your husband liked to collect
Depression era salt shakers."
"That was over an hour ago!" Cindy shouted. "My patience is just about
gone, Mr. Burns. Honestly, all you've been doing is sitting there staring off into
space and rhythmically stroking your groin. My husband's murderer is still on the
loose. When are you going to get on the case?"
"Well ma'am. Y'see, tracking a serial killer ain't no candy mountain. You don't
just up and look for him in the phone book. You've got to start slow, like maybe
with a movie, then dinner 'round my place. I could up boil a crockful of oats and
crack open a fresh bottle of T-Bird. Play your cards right and I might even show
you my collection of Colonial American cock rings." Burns elbowed her in the
ribs, purred, "One at a time."
"Honestly, Mr. Burns. I don't even know why I bothered to call you."
"Because I'm the fucking best, that's why!" Burns rose, screaming, beating
his chest with his fists. "And I'm the only one who can find the maniac! I know
how he thinks. I can smell him. I pissed away two years of my life crawling around
Chickasaw Falls on that bastard's tail, and now he's come to me. And do you know
why?"
She shook her head. Burns was shaking like a leaf in force five hurricane. Marble-size
balls of sweat rolled down his forehead, along his nose and flew out of his bellowing
mouth.
"Because it's me he's after! He gets off on the chase! He knows where I am!
He's probably watching me right now!" Burns' beady eyes darted nervously about
the room, under the desk, down Cindy's ample cleavage.
"Frankly, Mr. Burns, I think you're insane. But you docome highly recommended."
Burns quipped, "I also come in gym socks."
"Whaaaa ?"
"Never mind." He sat down, lit a shaky cigarette, hacked. "What was
your husband doing the night he was pack I mean, killed?"
"He went to the store to get some yogurt."
Burns arched an eyebrow. "At 4 a.m.?"
"My husband liked yogurt, Mr. Burns," Cindy said, between clenched teeth.
"I mean, he really liked it. In fact, if it weren't for the yogurt, our marriage
would have ended on my fourteenth birthday. You see, it's the only thing that kept
us together." She couldn't hold back her sobbing. Burns reached into his pocket
and threw a snot and blood encrusted handkerchief at her head. She screamed, batted
it away.
"At first, I was hesitant when I found out what he wanted me to do with the
yogurt," she sniffed, staring at Burns's repulsive hanky. "But after the
first few times, the itching went away and it actually improved my complexion."
"That's fine."
She lit a cigarette, stared at the ceiling. She smiled like a woman who was proud
of how convincingly she's faked an orgasm.
Burns asked, "Did your husband ever have sex with transvestites?"
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Burns shouted, his arms flailing in mock sign language "DID
HE EVER DO IT WITH GUYS IN DRAG?"
"Why, no! How can you say such a thing I"
Burns snatched a business card off of his desk, threw it at the girl's head, said,
"Then maybe you can explain that."
She picked up the card. On it was written, in a heavily stylized font: Mistress Bill's
House of Arousing Punishments and Imported Cheeses, A Dozen She-Males to Serve Your
Needs (B&D, S&M, Foot/Yogurt/Vinyl Fetishism, Mudsports, Cottage Cheese,
Canings, Velveeta Humiliation), All Holes Filled, Visa, MC, Diner's Club. Putting
Them in Their Places Since 1969. As endorsed by the U.S. Dairy Council
Burns went to the minifridge, got himself a pudding pop. The rain was coming down
hard now. "That was found on your husband's body last night. We audited his
Visa accounts. He'd charged over nine thousand dollars to Mistress Bill's establishment.
Looks like your husband had a yen for the curd. It may have cost him his life."
"That lousy bastard!" she cried, crumpling the card. "He told me he
was taking the dog to be spayed!"
"Three times a week?"
"He said it kept growing back! What do I know? I never graduated from high school
and I hate dogs." She folded her arms and frowned. She looked as if she just
received a D-minus on her Johnny Tremane diorama. "Well, Mr. Burns, what do
you make of all this?"
Burns licked the remains of the pudding pop stick, put it in the pile with the others,
shrugged. "Beats the crap out of me. Maybe he was fucking the dog." Burns
stood up, thrust his hands in his pocket and stared out the window at the thin rain
glide down the pebbled glass. D.C. stank; it was about time it got a good bath, even
if it was only pee from God.
Burns drew a little smiley face on the fogged-up window. "I know one thing.
I'll bet a thousand kokus of rice that Mistress Bill knows where your husband's at.
Or at the very least, where I can get a hold of that dog." pulled his .45 from
his desk drawer, rammed in a clip and chambered a round.
Cindy pointed at his crotch, gasped, "Oh! Mr. Burns!"
Burns looked down. His semi-flaccid penis hung out of his trousers in an obscene
arc. He smiled and walked out the door.
THE ENEMA GRRRLZ
Mistress Bill's establishment was situated across the street from Oak Hill Cemetery
in the northernmost section of Georgetown. The place resembled one of the turn of
the century embassy buildings off of Massachusetts Avenue: iron gates, five story
Corinthian pillars at the entrance, bronze nude dancing in the red granite fountain.
Even in the rain, the place looked dirty. Burns splashed up to one of the nudes,
asked her the easiest way in. She hopped out of the fountain, bummed a Chesterfield.
"Well, hon ya gotta have an appointment, see? But tell the butler that Laverne
said you was her guest and that this round was on me. Butcha gotta promise ta come
back and see me some time." She dug a metal elbow into Burns's gut and winked.
"Sure thing, babe," Burns agreed eagerly, stroking the bronze woman's moist
inner thigh. "I never made it with a slab of metal."
Smiling, she shook her polished ass and returned to the fountain. Burns walked through
the front door with a resounding crash. The butler greeted him, offered to brush
off the splinters and paint dust that blanketed Burns's seersucker suit.
"That's OK, hoss," Burns replied, knocking a door hinge off of his shoulder.
"It's only balsawood. The bronze bitch outside said you'd show me around."
Burns flipped out his laminated P.I. badge, flashed it at the butler.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Burns," the butler intoned. "Mistress Bill has been
expecting you."
As the butler escorted him up the spiral staircase, all of Burns's correspondence
school training told him that he was being set up: the talking statue, the ease with
which he walked through the door, the butler without an English accent. Something
was going to happen and it was going to be caked with blood.
The butler led Burns upstairs, opened a mammoth oak door that looked as if it had
been stolen from the Vatican. The butler showed him into the master bedroom. The
walls were draped with black velvet Vermeer prints and tapestries illustrating the
Kama Sutra. The master was bound, gagged, and suspended from the canopy bed with
a block and tackle. Burns recognized him as the Senate Speaker Pro Tempore. He was
dressed as Margeurite Gautier in a flowing ivory gown, diamond tiara, and lace fan
strapped to his wrist. An aria from La Traviatta was blasting on a boombox atop the
Louis XIV sideboard. Next to the bed stood a half empty sack of Fleming's Number
Twelve Grade Industrial Rubble. The master was looking worried. The door slammed
behind Burns.
"So grad jew coored cum tsu hour leetool partee, Meestool Barnzoo."
The dense Cantonese accent could mean only one thing. Behind the canopy emerged an
androgynous oriental wearing a red silk baby-doll nightie, a pink feather boa, high-heeled
clogs, and chopsticks in his hair. He was delicately puffing at a foot-long jade
encrusted crack pipe.
Burns sniffed. "Still wearing Chanel, eh Chinaman?" Burns snapped sarcastically.
"I should have guessed that this was your work. I should have nailed your candy
ass for violating the Mann Act when I had the chance."
"Porhees egschoos my flend, Meestool Speekah. He ees oll tied up. Hee, hee."
"Give yourself up, Chinaman. I can promise you'll get the gas chamber. It'll
be quick and painless."
"So solly, but dooghnut rike eggsehcution. Want to be glate pornstah like Wrong
Tongue Seelvooh. My schnuff feelums weel make me beerrionaire. I can zen affoll to
get opooration to leemove my female genitalia."
"C'mon, Chinaman, it's not your fault you're a hermaphrodite. Gimme those tapes
of you packing gravel and we can get you some help. Promise. Honest injun."
The Chinaman cackeled like a sodomized chicken. "No dice, Meestool Barnzoo,"
the Chinaman replied. "Jew rook rike jew coold choose some minerah supprements."
Burns was halfway to his gun when he felt the familiar slam of a sap against the
back of his skull.
THE YELLOW PERIL REDUX
Burns woke up spread-eagled with his slacks around his ankles. He was manacled
face down on an operating table, his butt pointing at the whirring overhead fan.
Burns's head felt like ripe melon that's been backed over by a midsize domestic pickup
truck. He'd had Saturday morning hangovers that were worse. He felt alright, like
a severed penis. Burns glanced behind and cringed. The butler was seated behind the
control panel of a machine that looked like a cross between a combine harvester and
a steam cleaner. A twenty-foot long transparent tube packed with gravel was aimed
at Burns's ass. The butler turned the key and the machine roared to life, belching
smoke and diesel. A conveyer belt shoveled gravel into a compression chamber. The
Chinaman giggled hysterically as he toked deeply on his crack pipe and loaded a cassette
into the video camera.
"Goodoobye, Meestool Barnzoo. Eet hwas tso nice tsoo finaree meechoo. Jore death
hweel plovide me with maaahch money to get sexchange."
"Guess again, Chinaman," Burns snickered, pointing with his chin. "Take
a gander."
The Chinaman spun around, stared angrily down the cool blue steel barrel of Cindy's
.48 Winchester Magnum. The butler went for his gat. Cindy spun on her heel, turned
to the butler, fired. The echoing blast tore a ragged hole in the butler's forehead
the size of a Fosters can. His brains splashed the rear of the control booth like
a something from Pollack's "meat period." The recoil threw Cindy against
the wall, knocking her unconscious. The butler's nearly decapitated corpse slumped
over the gravelpacker's control panel, slamming the manacle release switch. Burns
rooled off of the table just as the first burst of steaming gravel shot out of the
machine. Burns yanked up his pants and lunged after the Chinaman.
"Give it up, Chinaman! I can still get you a temp job opening for the bearded
lady!"
"No thinkee so, Meestool Barnzoo! I weel see hyor glavel-packed colpse hung
on my wall, light next to Jimmy Hoffa!"
Burns dashed for the exit, cutting the Chinaman off. The hermaphrodite turned, ran
back towards the operating table. Burns took a flying Buddhist jump kick, his foot
landing squarely on the back of hermaphrodite's neck. The Chinaman was thrown forward
onto the gravel-littered table, his long feminine legs falling into the manacles.
They snapped shut just as a second blast of steaming gravel shot into the Chinaman's
nether regions. The hapless she-male howled like someone who'd just had some hot
gravel shot into their nether regions.
The boss burst through the front door with a dozen of D.C.'s finest, guns drawn.
Burns climbed into the control cabin, pushed the butler's smoldering corpse aside,
yanked the plug. The boss hollered, "You alright, Burns?"
Burns nodded, climbed out of the cabin, zipped up his fly, stared down at the hermaphrodite's
bloated, rock-filled carcass.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Check the girl." Burns picked up the Chinaman's crack
pipe, grabbed his dick and took a farewell toke. "So long, you sorry sonovabitch.
I'll think of you whenever I rake my rock garden."
"What the hell is going on here, Burns?" the boss shouted. "The girl
called us up, said she'd tailed you here and was gonna need some backup."
"Check upstairs in the main bedroom," Burns grunted. "You'll find
the speaker pro tem and a stack of videotapes. My spidey sense is telling me they'll
show the Chinaman reaming all of the Chickasaw Fall victims."
The boss motioned to the cops to go upstairs. Burns walked over to the video camera,
switched it off and yanked out the tape. The shaken girl began to regain consciousness.
Burns walked up to her, waved the tape under her nose.
"You up for a movie?"
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