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Rants!
D.C. "Dick" Makes the Streets Safe from "Dumb-ocracy"
(By Veronica Spiegel, Exclusive to the Washington Star)
Part Two: Bound and Gagged in DC: A Day in the Life of a D.C. Dick
The office is mall, spartan, lit from without by the warm midday sun. Sunlight streams
in through floor to ceiling windows, forming patterns that sparkle on the immaculate
marble tile. The scent of PineSol lingers in the air like a hesitant memory of cool
forests, the shade of dense foliage broken by shafts of summer light. The silence
is deafening, silence like a pause after the final breath of life has escaped.
That's the office next door to Burns. His office is cluttered, stinky, and inhabited
by a one-eyed Maine cooncat with a broken leg and a jeweled eyepatch. The erstwhile
cat toys with a discarded piece of Dominos pizza that's been on the floor so long
it has left a wedge-shaped pattern on the scabrous carpet. "I'll have that,"
he shouts, snatching the slab of coagulated grease out from under the cat. "My
personal trainer recommended more 'fermented proteins.' All the rage among the cocktail
nation set, that and those stinking fucking cigars. Know what that shit's about?
Suburban white folk trying to posess the Black Man's penis. You can take that to
Halifax! Word!"
Burns heartily tears a mouthful of pie as he relates the story behind his most recent
case. A guru in the voluntary simplicity movement was found dead in his Sterling,
Va. estate. The victim's lifepartner, a forty-somethingish computer programmer, hired
Burns to find the killer. "Strange case, this one. Sloppy, too. The clown behind
it tried to make it look like a breaking and entering but did a piss-poor job of
it. That's what got me thinking that this was a contract hit. CIA's been slacking off on
their retirement options for contract agents. First they dropped the Keogh plan,
then profit sharing, then the timeshare condos. When they started charging for coffee;
that was the last straw. Most of the decent hitmen threw their lot in with the Southland
Corporation, Nordyne Defense Dynamics, and Archer-Daniel Midlands. CIA was stuck
scraping the bottom of the barrel, hiring ex-Stazi and Ukrainian immigrants pretending
to be retired KGB."
Burns lights an Old Gold, flips through a Josie and the Pussycats comic book as he
continues. "I chased a few leads to Time Warner, industry lobbyists. The usual
suspects. Zip. I headed over to the client's house empty handed. That's when I found
him." Burns stopped at an unusually funny pannel in the comic and laughs uncontrollably
for several minutes, gasping, "Shaggy! That fuckhead!" After he mixes himself
a Bacardi and coffee, he continues. "Yeah, what a goddamned mess. The programmer--whose
name I can't divulge for obvious reasons,let's just call him "Stubby"--
he was lying face down in front of the projection tv in a pool of blood. I flipped
him over. Nearly heaved my oysters on that one. The guy's dick was missing. It looked
like it had just exploded, but there was no sign of powder residue. No flammables.
Nothing. The guy's dick just blew up."
Exploding genitals? Corporate hitmen? Timeshare condos? Some would claim that these
are the products of a deranged imagination, and they would be right. Except for the
few documented cases of combusting gentials.
"It's called necrotizing priapism," quips World Health Organization representative
Tina Yothers. "We don't like to advertise it, so as not to cause unwarranted
panic, but the incident involving Mr. [DELETED] in Virginia is the fourth documented
case this year. It's an understandably rare malady, a genetic deviation of necrotizing
fascitis. When it was first isolated in 1996, some wags in the virology labs dubbed
it John Wayne Bobbits Disease. The bacillus is transported through the victim's bloodstream
where it collects in the erectile membrane at the core of the penis. Over a twenty-four
hour incubation period, the bacteria transforms the oxygen rich blood and decayed
tissue to methane gas. If the patient is unlucky enough to become sexually aroused...well,
lets just say he'd be advised to 'just say no.'"
"Yothers is a hired gun," snaps Todd Hackman, investigative journalist
for the Washington Star. "She gets a check from CIA every other week. Every
third week, she collects one from Ma Bell. You tell me that's a coincidence."
As the reporter who broke the story of the NIH suppression of the Bobbit's disease
research, Hackman has first-hand knowledge of biological warfare and its murky
ties to the intelligence community. "If you ask me, Burns is going to get burned
on this one. I've been writing an extensive expos* on necrotizing priapism called,
'The Day the Dicks Died.' It's got everything: CIA, NSA, the Rand Corporation. Hell,
even Microsoft is in on this thing. I've been getting the usual harrassing phonecalls.
I've had my porchlight shot out so many times, I replaced it with a clay pipe."
But what about the bacteria? How is it tied to the death of Burns' client? "Beats
the crap out of me, hon," Hackman retorts, packing his Samsonite luggage for
a long-overdue vacation to the Seychelles. "But if he had any sense, Burns would
drop this case like,...well, like an exploding dick. That's all I've got to say."
And then he was gone.
Todd Hackman's plane was shot down over the Timor Sea by fighter planes of the Indonesian
Defense Force. His death was labeled an accident, a victim of "friendly fire."
Representatives of the Indonesian diplomatic mission in D.C. could not explain how
a single engine Piper Cub could be mistaken for an East Timorese bomber squadron. All of
Hackman's manuscripts, interview tapes and research materials were reported missing
by his landlady, who in turn, applied for and was granted Indonesian citizenship.
Her current whereabouts are unknown.
In the middle of this tangled web of intrigue stands a lone figure and his cat. Dick
Burns takes it all in stride. "I've watched presidents die, sister," he
barks, grinning intently and rolling a cigarette between thumb and forefinger. "I
come from sturdy stock. You couldn't ruffle my momma's feathers if you hit her with
a brick." But how can one man match the forces of the intelligence community,
organized crime and multinational corporations? Burns kicks back in his chair and
philosophizes at the setting sun. "You people wouldn't believe the things I've
seen. Starships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in
the dark by the Tannhauser Gate. Now all these things will be lost in time, like
tears in rain. Time to eat." [Next Week, Part Three: Tastee Burgers. Testicles.
Just a coincidence?]
Part One: American Lunatic
The red numbers on the digital clock blink three a.m. He rolls out of bed, turns
on his computer, and immediately starts to play with himself. "That I should
wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at," he mumbles to himself, "I
am not what I am." Another cryptic work day for Dick Burns has begun.
If that sounds like the script to a bad porno movie, it is. Richard "Dick"
Burns, Private Detective, ex-pornstar and "creative consultant" to multinational
corporations, the Sultan of Brunei, and anyone with a buck, lives off a few hours
of sleep each day, several pots of coffee, and enough cigarettes to merit an engraved
plaque from Philip Morris.
"I do my best work in the dark," quips the thirty-something detective from
behind his Foster Grants, as he chainsmokes a Chesterfield from behind the keyboard
of his BeBox. "Besides, the Internet's a clogged toilet between noon and midnight.
Every gee with a 14.4 and a hard-on is downloading snuff clips. I'm just trying to
pay the rent. Straight-UP."
Burns is that unique brand of ex-federal employee: the former intelligence agent
turned private detective. His latest assignment with McDonalds-Douglas involves running
background checks on performers in the latest sick trend in pornography, the "geek
flick." This revolting form of smut involves all manner of midgets, the morbidly
obese, parasitic twins, redundant limbs, burn victims, and the recently deceased.
"Hey, they signed release forms before they went shale diving, so it's legal,"
Burns proclaims vehemently. "I looked it up, see? Besides, people are sick of
seeing pontoon-perfect jiggle queens. They wanna see how Harry and Harriet Homeowner
make the beast with two backs." He adds, "In a wheelchair."
Burns' stilted speech (a curious amalgam of Chandlerisms, 1930s underworld banter,
and vicious obscenities) is understandable considering how he's spent most of his
adult life. A native Washingtonian, Dick Burns spent his childhood in the neighboring
suburbs of Prince George's County ("Worst dealers you could imagine. Couldn't
get themselves arrested. We had to drive to Anacostia to get decent loveboat.")
After a string of aimless desk jobs, he finally broke into show business the hard
way. "I was skimming the want ads in the back of Juggs magazine when I spotted
a casting call for an 'art' movie being shot in a Dupont Circle basement with a bunch
of butch dykes and a border collie. Man, was that a mistake! I woke up naked in Highlandtown
and had to hitch hike home with a hubcap taped to my ass. But at least I had something
to stick in my portfolio. By DC standards, that's pretty damn good. It was almost
as bad as temping for Booz-Allen & Hamilton."
Burns' debut in "The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Your Mama," while fleeting,
was nonetheless noticed by big names in the "fluff snuff" business. Soon
he was getting offers to do "monkey movies" from several porn studios in
LA, so he packed up his harmonica and, according to him, "hopped the Burlington
Northern for SoCal." There, he ran into a young John Holmes who, at that time,
was just beginning his meteoric rise in the adult film business. "I met Johnny
while temping for ManPower in a secondhand furniture store. He needed the money to
pay off some gambling debts. I found him poking the boss's daughter in the supply
cabinet. Before I knew it, we were smoking crank and doing a three-way number all
over daddy's paperwork. We lost the job, of course, but the girl was dating John
Raremy at the time. He hooked us up with our first 35mm loop."
"I don't know any 'Burns'," Raremey claimed in a press release. "And
anybody that tells you different is a goddamn liar!" A former pornstar and current
CEO of Livid Interactive of Rockville, Md., Raremy refused to speak with this reporter.
In a fax from his lawyer, Raremy denies any knowledge of Burns' activities on behalf
of the CIA, FEMA, or Disney. When shown the fax over brunch at La Colene, a tony
northwest DC eatery, Burns could only chuckle and pick his nose. "Same old Porcupine.
One minute he's begging me to save his hairy ass from some hired mafia goons, next
minute, I don't merit a minute steak at the Tastee Diner. Hey, are you going to eat
that?"
Burns motions to his lunchmate, an attractive leggy blonde amputee named Jejune.
Smiling, she licks the stalk of celery from stem to stern and places it between her
teeth, pointed at Burns' head. She and Burns chew on either end, their lips meeting
in a moist exchange of fluid. An average luncheon with Dick Burns.
Eating with Dick Burns is not unlike sharing a twelve-course fistfight with a heavily
sedated delusional paranoid. "Pass me the suet," spits Burns, his mouth
a churning, dripping maw of steak tartare, salmon roe, and Dove Bars."The boy
needs MEAT!" Startled patrons at neighboring tables stare in horror as Burns
gnaws on a gristly thigh bone, washing it down with the opaque contents of the Perrier
flower vase. "Fuck are YOU looking at, faggot?" he screams at a balding
man in plaid and expensive sneakers. "And shut that kid of yours up, or I'll
eat that, too!" A pregnant woman in a muu-muu summons the maitre 'd, who in
turn, calls the police who escort our party to the sidewalk. This is the third restaurant
that Burns has been thrown out of this morning.
It's a little past ten thirty.
While sitting on the curb, Burns recounts his early days as a "janitor"
for the CIA. "Back when I was in front of the camera getting fucked in the ass,
I started noticing these Men in Black types hanging around on the set, playing pinocle,
jerking off and stuff like that. After a few Beamishes at the local bar, they 'fessed
up. They were conract agents working for the government. 'Wouldn't say what agency,
though. 'The ones with the letters in the name,' they'd say, and smile. Investors,
they said they was. You figure, you get a black budget from Congress of a couple
mil, you ain't gonna blow your wad on some weapons system that's got a 'best if used
by' date that's worse than a box of Cheerios. You're gonna invest it and clock your
ducats back threefold. Plus it gave them a foot in. They'd bring around some Kuwaiti
sheik's nephew who was really into Sue Bee or Connie Cream and wanted the private
show with all the trimmings. So who are we to say no to a couple mil and a chance
to make a client nation happy? That's when I figured out that you can make a helluva
lot more money wrapping yourself in the flag and playing pimp as opposed to taking
it in the caboose. Plus, the tax loopholes are bigger. Hey, are you gonna eat that?"
Thus began Burns' sojourn into the murky world of international intrigue; a strange
journey that would take him from the smoke-filled panda dens of Macao to the smoke-filled
aardvark dens of Madagascar and, eventually, to the smoke-filled fiscal conservative
dens of Capitol Hill. What he found there was more sickening than anything he'd encountered
at the Hot Shoppes breakfast bar.
More...
[Chimp!] [Rants!] [Murder!]