The dying detective, p.18
The Dying Detective, page 18
Strangely, Michael and Dahlia were scarcely noticed as they moved through the outer ring of filth and nearly naked and naked natives. Twice in the second and denser ring they were approached menacingly by ragtag gangs. As instructed, Michael held up Doctor’s identity card, and it worked like voodoo. The gang leader’s eyes would bug, and in a frenzy he’d turn and shove his people aside, making way for Dahlia and Michael with a hugely smiling rotten mouth.
Michael presented the magical pass at the inner ring’s most serious security gate. The surly captain of the guards did a lesser double-take at Doctor’s card, which he’d nonetheless swiped with a scanner (officiously proud that he commanded such tech amidst such waste). Michael glanced back and caught him talking excitedly, apparently to himself, though his right index finger pointed behind his ear and he was looking after them in the unfocused way of the tech-distracted. He broke into a horrible grin and barked an order into the foul air. Three soldiers off to the right of the security shack came running to his side to gape after them. The three had been grouped around a young man who now slumped to the ground, his head a bloody mess. Michael edged closer to Dahlia, still holding her upper arm with his right and now slipping his left around her waist.
They proceeded through the inner ring of mud huts and metal corrugated shacks, apparently the home of Port-au-Prince’s middle class. The next gate, dead centre in the ruby wall, would give entry to the old city itself, now a highly desired sanctum.
As they drew nearer the dazzling ruby edifice, heading for the only entrance, Michael could distinguish carrion birds swarming spots where black bodies in various stages of dying and decomposition were fixed to the red wall. Below these dying and dead, in the marginal ground beyond a wide moat, all manner of vicious mongrels fought for whatever bits the monstrous crows let fall, or for the larger pieces of flesh that occasionally dropped. Michael’s attention was drawn to an animal he’d never seen, big as a grizzly but resembling a hyena, and obviously dominant amidst the scrapping canines.
They stepped onto the metal suspended bridge to the old city’s main gate, and three men emerged from a small guardhouse halfway along; the men stood across the path, obviously blocking the way. They were big and black, in ill-fitting tight suits and sporting small yellow bowties. Michael smiled warily, wondering how they’d all fit into the hut, as his mind raced to place them and his hand reached for Doctor’s card. The flanking two came towards them, calmly like they might walk past with a nod. The third, tall as some seven-foot genie, produced a gleaming machete from behind his back. He moved forward, looking only at Dahlia. Michael made to lunge but the other two converged, caught him by the upper-arms in clamping grips, and carried him off backwards, so that as he was removed from the scene he could still watch what was happening to Dahlia.
The blade gleamed and its tip sparkled in the sunlight as it reached the apex of a two-handed overhead backswing, where it paused for a split second—then swooshed in an arc and cut across Dahlia just below the breastbone. She stood staring with her mouth open, shocked of course, but also with something of gaping surprise tinged by disappointment.
For another moment nothing happened.
Then at the top of her swollen belly the cut opened like a bigger mouth; she dropped to her knees and the mouth vomited everything onto the silvery bridge. Everything was mainly a fully formed foetus on a twirled bluish-white cord. It moved, drawing up and kicking out its greasy purple legs like a swimming frog; then drew its knees up tight in the authentic foetal position, showing its tiny scrotal sac like a tumour. But not a sound. And then a dog’s single bark deepened the silence for a spell.
Dahlia’s dying eyes somehow grew wider as the horror struck home. As she fell forwards on top of it, or him, their son, her last breath was a single scream:
“Randome!”
By then Michael was being sped farther backwards, right into a metal pole, where his head bounced hard; he was slammed twice again, and as he passed out he retained sense enough to think how relieved he was to be dying.
3
Doctor himself took Michael outside the SENSOAR city wall and showed him the three murderers fixed in cruciform postures. Two of the gang of three were dead already and providing opportunity for much squabbling among the crows and seagulls fighting over such softer tissues as eyeballs, lips, and grossly protruding tongues, while they lasted. The third, the biggest, was living still between the other two, his massive chest rising and falling, his head lifted and lolling occasionally. Below, the mongrels snapped at each other for position, though all gave way to the animal Michael had learned was called a hyboar. At a distance a few vultures hopped about, respecting their pecking order. At a yet more respectful distance sat the inhabitants of the inner ring, taking in Haiti’s number-one spectator sport. But even the snarling hyboar had quieted in the hush that descended when Dr. Randome and Michael appeared.
The dying man too sensed the change. His head moved to midline, where with herculean effort he held it level. His remaining eye opened and he smiled garishly as he recognized Dr. Randome. His mouth displayed a gash of white and black against the red wall. He struggled mightily to form the words that would prove to be his last intelligible:
“Randome, you swore on your mother’s grave! You filthy fucking devil cunt you!”
Dr. Randome sniffed aside: “Well, it’s no Father forgive them et cetera, but it does have a certain rhythm and jouissance.”
Michael spoke unaffectedly: “What did you swear, Doctor?”
“Oh, this and that, my son. But you see, or hear rather, his hatred for the unborn expresses itself in voodoo and misogyny. Too characteristic of this godforsaken island, I daresay.”
Dr. Randome flung out his arms and called up at the killer: “Let all your sickness come out, child! Whether in heaven or another incarnation, you will be a better boy for it! Accept your death as a gift of Free Haiti!”
This time Dahlia’s murderer was able to tear only a weak wail from his lungs, as any expenditure of energy caused the reciprocating adnets to fix his flesh more tightly to the wall, which for good measure administered an electrical shock.
The disturbed cloud of shocked insects resettled. Having been encouraged by the sight of the open mouth’s attractive flesh, the biggest crow grew brave again and led his parliament to the renewed banquet. Something, a good chunk of cheek, dropped to the ground and rolled down the incline in dust fine as flour. The vultures hopped closer but scattered like chickens at a snarl from the hyboar.
Dr. Randome called, “That’s right, Peggy my pet, yours should be the lion’s share!”
Nothing more. The show was over.
Hoots and dying applause accompanied Michael and Dr. Randome’s return to the city proper. Randome acknowledged nothing.
Michael was spending all his time in Doctor’s private apartments, undergoing and recovering from the many physical makeover procedures, exercising alone, honing his skills on the illegal Lucifer. Michael and Dr. Randome did vid together, monitored the Macro together, ate together, and slept together on single beds only a metre apart. Michael saw no other face, heard no other voice. Upon waking each morning he was greeted with the same question: What did you dream, son?
Dr. Randome’s apartments were a shining stainless steel centre in the general filth that constituted even the inner sanctum of Port-au-Prince. Its sealed quarters were supplied with cooled oxygen-enriched air, abundant clean water (even for showering), choice meats and perfect fruits. Dr. Randome himself prepared all their meals, with Michael looking on and occasionally assisting (“Pass me the bok choy, will you please, Michael my boy—why, that’s as good as a poem!”). As they ate, the steel table and surrounding burnished walls reflected smudged versions of themselves like two beings just emerging into life.
At first unspeaking and seeking opportunity to end his own life, a raving Michael had to be fixed by adnets to a stainless steel table in a special room off Dr. Randome’s living quarters. The room was darkly green with plants and humid as a rain forest. There was constant noise as indistinguishable as tinnitus. It resolved into a constant pounding that he’d assumed was only in his head, like drums, not tom-toms, but a drumming like conga accompanying female chanting, which made him dream of old jungle vids. Achieving half-consciousness, he’d thought the walls were on fire, and he retained a memory of Dr. Randome circling the room and swinging a white feathery something, splashing the walls. Blood: he knew its warm tang not only from, but especially from, recent exposure.
Struggle too much and he was shocked by his high-tech barking collar, the adnets. In time the conditioning made Michael so lethargic that Randome was able to dial back the adnets and position the limbs at will. If Michael persisted unmanageable, Randome had only to make the clicking noise with a simple mechanical device and Michael instantly dropped into docility.
Initially Randome had stayed with him round the clock, circling the table like some effeminate cowboy patiently taming a mustang, touching Michael repeatedly until his head and eyes followed Randome religiously. For the month it took to gain Michael’s total cooperation, Randome had force-fed him gently, and even bathed him with a cloth and bowl of lukewarm water. Eventually he’d all but eliminated the adnets like loosening a cinch, always inquiring after Michael’s comfort so solicitously. For the final two weeks there’d been no call to suddenly ramp the volume on the voodoo music.
But most effectively, Randome had talked nonstop about Michael’s life, continuing the explanations he’d begun up in the hills, speaking at a clip that would make a vid-jock sound tongue-tied. When Michael could be attentive no longer, Randome had simply talked on for his own amusement, a form of art for art’s sake.
“We are much alike, you and I, Michael, though I could never have achieved what you did at police college—those sharpshooter scores! They will never be approached, unless the envious Chief Ertelle should hack them down. Similarly, if distantly so, I was my high school’s divisional archery champion four years running. They called me Quiver. And of course you were a baseball player nonpareil. The catcher, I believe? A function which is something like that played by a quiver, no? Do you follow me, Michael? … No? No matter, just a flaccid stab at my ever-failing homophobic humour.
“You achieved your greatness, Michael, with everybody, save your dear old dad, secretly conspiring against you. I refer to Chief Ertelle, to Dr. Lieutenant-Colonel Mandrake Bledsoe, to Detective Kevin Beldon, to your stepmother, et d’autres. You are a most amazing man indeed, Michael Mender, an Übermensch from the Übermensches! Your dear father and I were close friends, you know…but let’s leave that topic for another of our little talks.
“What I am saying, son, is that we are much alike in that we two are driven to succeed at the very highest levels. And we are both frustrated continuously on all sides, thwarted by the Detective Beldons and Mandrake’s Hall conspirators wanting to make the world a place where the living child in his mother’s womb is but expendable flesh to be dumped on the road like tuna guts! Your father thought differently, as I believe you have cause to know. And so too do you and I think differently, Michael. But you… Michael? …
Click-click.
Later.
“Do you know, while you napped I was thinking: Michael is your slave name. We must give you a new name, one signifying your new Free Haiti spirit! Because the name, the word, does signify something, you know. If names do not signify meaningfully, why then, pray tell, are there no bambinos christened Judas? As your traitorous stepmother should have been named! … Michael?”
Click-click.
Later. Michael’s head wobbled him awake, and he fought to stay afloat above his roiled unconsciousness. He came fully awake to find Dr. Randome pulling off the last of his few clothes, and talking, of course.
“…You and I were born to serve the higher truth, the capital-T metaphysical signifier itself! The Free-Haiti truth! Yes, we are much alike indeed, Mi… I have my Tontons and you had your tom-toms! Oh, such puns—well, near-puns, to be precise—such language serves well! Your dear old dad himself was no slouch at fashioning a groaner, was he, my son?”
“Free…Haiti?”
“Yes, son, we serve that ultimate truth, which is Free Haiti, the ideal, the reifying Haiti, the Haiti that is ideological spirit made political flesh.”
“Oh.”
Randome squinted at Michael, and satisfied that no sarcasm had been intended, he smiled.
“Therefore and thus: in your service to the ideally signifying something—Free Haiti, the Truth, Randome!—henceforth thou shalt be called…Malachai.”
He’d taken a pewter jug and commenced splashing blood and feathers on the body, starting at the feet and moving up the legs in a swirling motion, then pouring straight up the middle, bisecting the chest and stopping at the face, directly above the nose, and emptying there what was left in the jug, all the while talking:
“The chalice is supposed to contain, or at least to include, the blood of an unborn female, but you and I, Malachai, we venerate life and the unborn far too much for such desecration. Thus I name thee, and henceforth thou shalt be called, Malachai. Malachai, Malachai, Malachai, in service to Free Haiti and Randome!”
When he’d finished, Dr. Randome stood facing the wall, one hand propping himself till his breathing normalized. He’d then hosed off the body with a warm saline solution and released the last of what had become but token adnets.
“Arise! Rise, my son!”
And Michael had arisen Malachai.
4
Malachai continued to depend exclusively on Dr. Randome, whose whims could make him laugh maniacally as he never had as Michael, or cry like a baby (ditto). He was as overjoyed as a boy with a garden snake when Dr. Randome let him hold the old-fashioned bottles from the Panoglaz humidor like a trophy case. Randome hovered like an anxious mom encouraging a toddler’s limited independence, explaining the effects of the pretty liquids.
“Of course there have been advances in the technique of poisoning, but no THANA-U gas delivers the aesthetic reward of the aqua tofana,” he said, retrieving the bottled blue liquid from Malachai’s relaxed hold. “And one would be hard pressed indeed to show that the desired end—I refer to death, my son—can be achieved more instantaneously even by a burst from your Lucifer.
“Here, too,” placing an antique vial of amber dust in Malachai’s hand, which Randome supported with his fingers, “la poudre de succession, from the Latin pulverem. Administered by educated hands, over time it brings on the symptoms of a wasting disease as yet undiagnosed by any atomic SENSOARSCAN, let alone a primitive MRI. But the performance—the execution, if you will—is everything, requiring a delicacy of touch that makes your homeopathic medicine man look like he’s bulldozing carfentanyl down a druggie’s throat. By way of illustration, I observe that soon a certain monk on the U.S. West Coast will be finding his old bones to ache more than is their wont, inexplicably so, in prelude to his swansong.”
“Detective Kevin Beldon?”
“No, son, not Kevin Beldon. Not yet anyway.
“But these lovely elixirs are only two of the numerous potions passed down from the Romans of the Decadence, to the Borgias, to LaBoissin of the court of Louis Quatorze, to Great-great-great-great Grandmammy Waziri Bashiru. She who was expelled from Sicily in the eighteenth century, and who eventually passed the essences and their secrets on to the best of her Haitian bastards, who were convinced, so to speak, to return them to their rightful owner—c’est moi!”
Malachai reached to remove the stopper and a frantic Randome clicked his clicker once and froze him. He tightly pinched the vial and returned it to the vacant place among the colourful others, shut the case and fingered the security pad.
Resting his forehead against the adjacent wall, Randome sighed heavily and a cloud pulsed briefly on the stainless steel surface. He pulled back a few inches and whispered to that Randome head like a misty moon: “Cash flow first, Doctor. Then Beldon.” It was just as well to remind himself.
“Malachai,” he said, and Malachai was alert. “Initiative is a good thing, my son, but all in good time.”
The period just prior to Malachai’s departure for Santa Barbara called for some of Dr. Randome’s trickiest manoeuvres. He needed to eradicate the subject’s remaining sentimental attachment to Father and Mother (adoptive and step-), to secure his fealty exclusively to himself. This operation was necessary for Malachai’s independence in the field while yet maintaining him remotely controllable. To that end, to cinch this deepest conditioning, Randome had reserved two key pieces of information.
At their last supper together he sat at the head of the long steel dining table with Malachai close on his right hand, per usual. They were eating lightly, feasting on fresh fruit—cool crisp apples, tart kiwi and musty mango—imported illegally from a Russian biosphere, firm cheeses produced within a clean area of the inner city, fresh-baked baguette still warm to the touch, sparkling water, and a light white wine whose very bouquet was energizing.
“…But Malachai, the natural state of the universe is death, is nothing. Whatever else the Big Bang was, it was a quirk, a cosmic fart from whatever Nubian demi-goddess there be, and its nebulous clusters, its galaxies, stars, our own sun, the great globe itself, are exceptions in the ideal state of black infinity. In the context of eternity, the sun is but a suicidal fire, merely a self-immolating spark-out. And our glorious globe? Not worth a mention in this context.”
