Murder on the Fly, page 5
part #2 of Riley the Exterminator Mystery Series
“Riley, come join us!” someone hollered from the shade of the oak. I was surprised to see Marcia waving to us. After the lunch and lecture in Washington Square, I didn’t figure she’d be our welcoming committee at The Refuge. But maybe she wasn’t the sort to hang onto grudges.
CHAPTER 6
Larry and I sauntered over to the picnic tables where there were heaping platters of vegetables. Marcia was wearing a pink bikini top and ragged jeans with a wide leather belt. She seemed delighted to see us and gestured to an empty stretch of bench that she’d held for us. Marcia sat down and started to pass the food with unconcealed pride, noting it had all been harvested from The Refuge’s gardens.
We quickly grasped that lunch was going to be meatless (I couldn’t quite figure how leather and suede were acceptable, but maybe it’s moral to wear an animal’s skin but not to eat its muscles). I could see Larry’s dining enthusiasm wane until a topless, if somewhat grubby, girl with long brown hair and a flowing peasant skirt settled next to him. The perky gardener introduced herself as Stargazer which Larry absorbed with an appreciative nod that allowed him to appreciate her small but nicely upturned breasts.
“I’m Larry,” he said. “I saw you spraying something from a bottle in the garden earlier. I thought you folks were into all that natural stuff.”
“Oh, we strive for harmony with Mother Earth. We put a fence around the garden, but we also provide some of our harvest to our furry neighbors each week. The land belonged to the rabbits and ground squirrels long before we arrived. But recently the grasshoppers have begun to consume more than a fair share of the lettuce. To assure that there is enough food for us and the four-legged, we use a compound that was provided by a fully licensed supplier of organic products,” she said.
“Can I see the bottle?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, dashing off to retrieve the presumptive insecticide. Larry seemed to enjoy her spritely return more than the pile of shredded carrots and beets on his plate.
“So,” he said reading the label on the bottle, “it seems the ‘active ingredient’ is sodium lauryl sulfate.” He sniffed the container. “Seems about right,” he judged.
“It won’t harm the bees or the children.” Stargazer took the bottle from him with a reverence that suggested it contained a mystical potion.
“Nope,” Larry said, “and it won’t hurt the grasshoppers either.” She looked confused. “This is the same ingredient in shampoo. That’s why you get that nice sudsy lather when you spray the insects.”
“Let’s say that you’re right. What else should we do?”
“I’d recommend getting the kids to herd your flock of chickens into the garden. They’ll do a number on the grasshoppers, if those birds are anything like the ducks I saw working the rows of spinach and cabbage in ’Nam.” Stargazer look aghast, as did a couple other of the residents who’d been listening in on the conversation. Larry realized his mistake and decided gallantry was the best tactic to keep the half-dressed girl from leaving the table and making lunch a complete disappointment.
“Oh, you thought I was there fighting?” he said with a chuckle. “I was working with an international aid organization to help the people control their pests.”
I’d heard him use this line to extricate himself from similar situations where he didn’t figure that the spoils of victory were worth the price of battle.
He gave me a devilish grin, pleased with his alternative version of having been drafted by the US Army to help the South Vietnamese kill the Vietcong.
You say potayto, I say potahto.
~||~
A scrawny guy with a ridiculously floppy hat and a beard that likely housed this morning’s breakfast along with a family of lice sauntered by our table, looking for a place to sit and dig into the piles of plants. I offered him my seat, having eaten about all of the various roots and shoots I needed, and gestured for Marcia to join me. She shot a furtive glance over to the table where Caskey and Alina were in deep discussion.
We moved away from the crowd, and I sat with my back against the trunk of the tree providing shade for the alfresco diners. Marcia gracefully folded herself into sitting Indian-style, although I don’t think we’re supposed to call it that anymore for some reason having to do with why Carol insists I shouldn’t call her “babe,” which I do just to get her goat, which presumably offends goats. You can’t win.
“You look anxious,” I said.
“We aren’t supposed to separate ourselves from one another when we’re at The Refuge.”
“So, there can’t be any non-conforming nonconformists?” I joked.
Marcia gave a wan smile.
“Sorry,” I said, “that wasn’t nice.”
“I should be the one apologizing,” she said.
“How so?”
“I was pretty rude yesterday when you’d been kind enough to provide Dennis and me with a nice lunch.” She leaned forward as if we could be heard over the cacophony of lunch conversations, undomesticated children, the occasional bleating goat, and some aging flower child singing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which was a barely tolerable song twenty years ago—about the last time the gal had tuned her guitar. “I guess I was overcompensating.”
My expression evidently revealed my lack of understanding of pop psychology.
“You know, being defensive about something when you’re actually unsure of it. Riley, this place is beginning to creep me out.”
“Dennis and you aren’t really residents, so do the rules apply? Can’t you talk to anyone you want?”
“When we’re here, we abide by the same rules as the full-timers. Caskey and Alina would like it if everyone lived in the commune. But the group needs money from ‘outside’ and we tithe to The Refuge.”
“If the ‘guides’ are making you uncomfortable, why keep coming?”
“It wasn’t like this last year. Everything sort of changed when Alina joined the commune in the fall.”
“How so?”
“Well, she quickly teamed up with Caskey. He seemed enchanted by her.”
I could see why, she exuded an exotic—and darkly erotic—sense of power. “They make a very charismatic pair, eh?”
“Absolutely. By this spring, things got so much more secretive. And serious. We used to play and sing all the time.”
“Seems like some of you still do.” The singer was now asking how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry. I figured that the answer was two, or maybe just one, but I didn’t offer my insight.
“Not like before. We don’t make decisions collectively anymore. Now there are orders from the guides.”
“Such as?”
“Such as building the shed.” She looked across the gardens to the structure we’d been told was none of our business. It was hardly a shed. In fact, it was the most sturdy structure on the entire place, even though that wasn’t saying all that much.
“I guess Dennis and you were major donors, eh?”
“We don’t contribute that much. I’m not sure where all the money came from, but the project was obsessively important to Caskey and Alina. They spend a lot of time in the shed. And that’s okay with me because when they’re out of sight it feels more like the old days.”
When I looked back from the shed to Marcia, Caskey caught my eye. He stood up alongside Alina, pointed to the two of us, and gestured for us to come. It was clearly a command, not an invitation. I was not amused. We walked over to a table occupied by the two leaders, where Alina flashed Marcia a searing look.
Caskey called over two other residents and issued his orders. “This afternoon, you’ll work with Marcia to clean out the latrines behind the tent village.”
There was no doubt about this being punishment for Marcia’s misbehavior in having talked with me. The trio of shit-diggers headed past the gardens, where Larry was showing the children how to stalk grasshoppers and feed them to the assembled chickens. He might intimidate other adults, but kids saw through his crusty exterior and muscular interior—and they adored him. Larry, along with his gaggle of Oliver Twistian urchins and their greedy poultry, was having a grand time. The grasshoppers, less so.
~||~
“What did your inspection of the living quarters reveal, Mr. Riley?” Caskey asked.
“It looks like there are probably bed bugs in every building and tent. And if they’re not under every mattress, then they’ll be there soon,” I answered.
“What course of action would you advise?” he asked. Before I could reply, Alina interjected.
“He will advocate spraying the poisons of the US military industrial complex. What will it be this time? Surely some variation on one of the nerve gases. And when people are dizzy and trembling, you’ll blame the insects for spreading disease rather than admitting you spread toxins.”
“Look lady, I didn’t figure I was coming up here to score a major contract. It was a favor to Dennis and Marcia. Even if I apply a treatment, I’m betting I’ll be paid in baskets of beans, bottles of goat milk and cartons of eggs rather than cash.” I didn’t tell her bed bugs don’t carry diseases, as I was confident Alina had no interest in facts.
“Remember, Alina, forbear to judge for we are sinners all,” Caskey said in a dramatic voice. Larry looked at me. I shrugged and Caskey continued: “It’s true the white man has subjugated brown people for centuries, but we should give Mr. Riley a chance. Perhaps he has an organic product he could provide.” Alina sneered and gestured with mock submissiveness for me to continue.
“We can provide something along those lines,” I said, knowing that everything in the warehouse—other than some sulfur candles, a drum of diatomaceous earth, and some leftover jugs of lead and copper arsenate from my father’s inventory—was “organic,” in that the chemistry was based on carbon. And the bottle of rotenone—an insecticide extracted from plants and therefore “organic” to most people—was more dangerous than the jug of malathion. Sure, I was being deceptive, but if I told them what needed to be done they would’ve let the poor kids suffer in the ever-so-natural conditions of a nightly bloodletting.
“And we can fairly compensate you,” Caskey said. “Of course, we prefer to barter rather than become dependent on the hegemonic control of capital through money imprinted with the portraits of genocidal leaders.” I wasn’t entirely sure what he was babbling about, but I was absolutely confident it meant I wouldn’t get paid.
“Uh, fine,” I said, “I’ll come up sometime next week, if that’s okay with you.”
“We’re here all of the time,” he said.
“Yes,” Alina added, “we don’t depend on the auto industry or support the oil refineries.” I wondered if she’d walked to California from Guatemala, but I knew better than to ask.
~||~
On the drive back, I turned on the radio and KDFC was playing Haydn’s Harpsichord Concerto in D Major, the best thing about it being that the strings drown out the harpsichord for the most part. At least it wasn’t one of those Baroque harpsichord solos. Thank god the piano came along. Even so, Larry evidently figured conversation was preferable to classical music.
“Creepy place,” he said.
“The Refuge?” I asked.
“Yeah. Reminds me of that weirdo cult up in Oregon I read about in Life magazine.”
“Well, maybe not that messed up.”
“Okay, Caskey and Alina aren’t quite the Rajeesh or whatever he calls himself, and they’re not planning to take over Berkeley. But they exert some sort of control over the wannabe hippies living up there.”
“Those two have some pretty big-time charisma, eh?” I turned down the radio, given the conversation was becoming more interesting.
“Seems so. He has that whole wise Indian shtick working for him. And she’s a smokin’ mix of bodacious and mean,” Larry said.
“Rebels with a cause, maybe?”
“Can’t figure the cause, except it involves being angry about shit. I don’t doubt folks have been screwed. No fun being black in ’Nam, as I remember things. Not that being a white baby killer back in the States is a great gig either.” Larry rolled down the window which made it harder to hear but the old Ford didn’t have a working air conditioner.
“If they wanna hide up in the hills, call their place The Refuge, and be a bunch of escapees from the world of rich SOBs, that’s fine with me,” he said while resting his elbow on the open window frame. “But I’m not sure that’s the end of their story.”
“Whatever they’re up to, it’s not fair to drag the kids into it.”
“How so?”
“The adults can decide to live with vermin in the name of natural purity, but between bed bugs and head lice, the kids spend as much time scratching as playing,” I said, scratching the back of my neck in memory of the scruffy urchins. “I’ll tell Dennis to grab some of that DDT powder from the pail in the back corner of the warehouse. We need to get rid of that stuff anyway. He can dust the beds and kids next time he’s up there.”
“They won’t let that stuff touch their pristine commune, Riley.”
“Well, not if they know what it is. I told ’em we’d use something organic. And DDT is an organochlorine. Given the condition of the rug rats, the adults have lost their right to decide what’s best.”
“That stuff was banned.”
“Well, technically, but there are exemptions for public health. It’s sort of a gray area. The government can approve its use, so I’m just figuring a government of the people includes me.”
Larry gave a wry grin and shook his head. “So it’ll work and be safe and all that?”
“Hell yes. We’re not dusting eagle eggs, just some mattresses. One good dose should do the trick and won’t hurt anyone without six legs. My dad told me that in World War II, a typhus outbreak in Italy would’ve decimated our troops if we hadn’t powdered the whole civilian populace with DDT. He had a pal who’d been one of five hundred guys assigned to dusting duty. Altogether, they could delouse something like a hundred thousand people a day.”
“I didn’t know your old man was in Italy.”
“He wasn’t. He was blanketing the tropical islands with DDT to wipe out the mosquitos and give the grunts a chance to battle the Japs rather than malaria.”
There was a long pause. “Pretty harsh either way,” Larry concluded.
KDFC started playing Lou Harrison’s Elegiac Symphony. I explained to Larry that the composer was a fellow San Franciscan, to which Larry expressed wonder that anyone still living wrote classical music. Most people figure that symphonies were all written at least a century ago. Evidently impressed, Larry settled into the seat. The early afternoon traffic allowed me to make good time over the bridge.
While Larry dozed, I contemplated the uncomfortable connection between Harrison’s musical lament and the body of Anna’s brother lying in the morgue. I was not looking forward to the rest of the day. Even when I was a detective on the force, attending autopsies was down there with scooping a floater out of the bay or processing an arson scene involving some crispy critter.
CHAPTER 7
The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office has all the warmth of a soulless public hospital, with concrete walls encasing institution-green tiled hallways illuminated by glaring, buzzing fluorescent fixtures. I filled out the visitor’s log and nodded to the lady at the desk who was about as animated as the bodies in cold storage. On the chalkboard schedule behind her desk, I saw, “Mancuso/Machalek” listed at 2:00 in Room 4. She frowned at the bag I had tucked under my arm but didn’t seem to have the interest or energy to object to my brisk walk down the hall.
I entered the autopsy room and found Malcolm Machalek adjusting the lights over a stainless steel table on which the mortal remains of Anna’s cousin were resting. The grizzled curmudgeon with a two-day beard looked like an aging circus bear in baggy green scrubs.
“Ah, my favorite ex-cop,” he said as the door swung closed behind me. “Welcome to my surgical theater. I assume your admission ticket is carefully cradled in your arms.”
“Yes, Malcolm,” I said, pulling the bottle of Jameson from the bag and setting it beside the sink.
“Please Riley, a little decorum. I am, after all, a medical doctor and this is a government facility serving the good people of our fair city.”
“My deepest apologies, Doctor Machalek,” I said with sarcastic deference, putting the bottle back in the bag and setting it on a desk that apparently served as a dumping ground for official forms, unopened mail, half-empty coffee cups, an overflowing ashtray, and crumpled sandwich wrappers.
“I’m ready to begin, if you’ll just hit the ‘start’ button,” he said nodding to a state-of-the-art stereo system on a shelf over the desk. Machalek had season’s tickets to the San Francisco Opera which, along with the years I’d depended on his expertise while I’d been a detective on the force, provided the foundation for something between collegiality and friendship.
The overture to Bizet’s Carmen filled the room, along with the gut-churning smells of the coroner’s chemicals veiled in the reek of rotting flesh. As Machalek sliced open the body with a Y-shaped incision, a meaty scent combined with the rancid aroma of viscera arose, which mixed with the dizzying vapors of formaldehyde awaiting snippets of selected organs.
My lunch stayed in place, although Mancuso’s didn’t. His last meal was scooped into a kidney-shaped metal bowl to reveal a partially digested mass of fibrous material and masticated seeds. It looked more like the guy had been a deer foraging in the hills than a cop staking out a drug operation.
The good doctor sung along with the toreador’s aria, using the rib cutters to punctuate the 4/4 tempo. He then grunted an order for me to fast forward the music to 845 on the tape counter. The man knew his Carmen and belted out his version of Plácido Domingo’s duet with José Van Dam in romantic rivalry.
When he moved to Mancuso’s head and began to probe the blackened, puckered crater in his temple, I nabbed some of the maggots that tumbled from the wound. There was a mess of blow fly larvae along with a few dozen flesh fly young’uns. In death, Mancuso had rounded up the usual insectan suspects—except the age of the maggots wasn’t right. The body was past the bloat stage and well into decomposition, as evident from the snatches of hair Machalek inadvertently pulled out when he was turning the head to begin the process of peeling the scalp and sawing off the top of the skull. So the decay looked to be two weeks in the making, but the creamy white, writhing larvae were consistent with their mothers having dropped off their brood about five days ago. The timing of the fly feast can get altered when dinner is inside a vehicle as with Mancuso, but not to this extent—in my experience.
