Pain Killers (13 page)

“Shit be shit,” said Movern sleepily.

“That’s deep,” said Reverend D.

I couldn’t tell if they were mocking or on board. Or killing time until somebody flashed the “throw the junkie Jew over a chair and ride him like Amtrak” sign. I was swimming in quicksand here. I had to sound like I had a game plan.

Mengele squeezed his hands into fists. With what looked like enormous effort, he willed himself calm and, to my surprise, apologized to his detractors. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have waited a long time for the chance to give my testimony. Please…”

He sounded wistful. Almost human. I could think of no more un-savory notion: a human Mengele.

“If you want the world to know who you are,” I asked him, “why didn’t you just announce it?”

“Ah,” he said with a rueful smile. “I was going to, until the police, as you say, delivered that knock on my door. But perhaps…” His voice trailed off, then regained steam, like a train chugging uphill, cresting, then picking up speed on the way down. “Perhaps it is better this way. If I can persuade the staff here, I can persuade the world.”

“I don’t think you’d have to persuade them,” I said. “They’d be more than happy to believe they found you alive, so they could execute you.”

“At my age, execution is redundant. Why shoot a plane out of the sky when it’s already in a nosedive?”

The reverend nodded. “I’ll say it again.
Deep.
”

“You want deep?” Mengele seemed hungry to be understood, to share his passion. “I did not quote you the last line of the Chief Justice Holmes opinion. ‘Three generations of idiots is enough.’ Do you understand what this meant? We, in the Fatherland, needed a scientific way to remove the unfit. And here, in the enlightened USA, twenty-nine states passed laws to sterilize the feeble. You showed us the way! America handed Germany the matches, and Hitler started the fire.”

“Give me a .357, I’ll start a fucking fire,” Cranky bragged, missing the import of Mengele’s pitch.

“I’m sick of all y’all’s bullshit,” Movern complained, to audible assent.

“There you are,” said Mengele, disgusted. “America is sick of it. Meanwhile, America’s enemy, al-Qaeda, sends Down Syndrome victims into the market with remote-controlled bombs on their back. This is
genius
! Why kill the unfit when you could use them as weapons!
That
is true ecology.”

“Yo,” said Movern, “what’s German for ‘shut the fuck up’?”

“Let him finish,” I said.

I knew I was taking an insane amount of time with one old man. That was the trouble with undercover…. When you were closest to success was the very moment you were at risk of appearing the most obvious. My front was shaky to begin with.

“The camps!” Mengele shouted. “At the camps hundreds of thousands, and more, could be cleansed. At Auschwitz, we were able to destroy more than a million germs. This was my chance to contribute. To learn. To achieve greatness.”

He actually raised his face as he said this, in profile, as though posing for a coin. Then he went back to chewing his mustache, sucking the wet hair with bitter satisfaction. “Five decades I have eluded capture. And now, when I want to be found…
Accchh!
”

This was my portal.

“Why do you want to be found now?”

“Why? To claim the honor that is rightly mine!” Spume flew from his mouth. “Wernher von Braun, that whore, ran slave camps and came here because JFK, that priapic, Addison’s-diseased fraud, was more interested in vanity moon shots than the life-and-death struggle to save his own race!

“Because, and this is nature’s cruelest joke, the unworthy populate like maggots. Today, whites have their fertility clinics! Well,
Mengele invented fertility clinics.
Auschwitz was the first! My science as a eugenicist was always striving to increase the good—and eliminate the bad: the dwarves, the androgynes, the deformed, the sickly. Now you have genetic testing. You find the sickly gene—and you eliminate it!”

“Hell yeah!” Cranky nodded and clapped at Mengele’s spiel. I was not sure how thrilled he was to be so enamored of the old-time race killer’s style. “Just like La Eme, man. Hit comes down, they tell you ‘No humans involved.’ That means fuck it, kill everybody, ain’t nobody from the hood, ain’t none of our people. NHI.”

“What is life?” asked Mengele. “Killing the weak to save the strong. If it takes a trial to reveal my accomplishment—get the honor I deserve as a man of science—then so be it! Try me! Try me now!”

There it was. The man did not just want to be caught. He wanted to be lauded. To be—I felt the bulbous visage of Dr. Phil peeping over my shoulder—to be
loved.
Or be Heryet, worshipped.

Mengele’s voice grew higher. “This is America. I deserve a speedy trial! You are violating my rights!”

Rincin signaled the jug-eared younger guard, nodding to the spewing Mengele. “Get him out of here. And find out if he’s takin’ his meds….”

And that was that. As mysteriously as Mengele had rolled in, Movern steered his wheelchair back out again.

For a beat or two nobody said anything, then Cranky wondered out loud. “Who that old freak say he is again?”

Reverend D answered. “He say he was an SS man at Auschwitz.”

“SS? Like in Super Sport? They make Chevies in Germany?”

“Cranky,” said the reverend, “ain’t nobody that ignorant.”

“Ignorant, huh? I know one thing, homes, you don’t fuck with Bernstein.”

I’d always wondered what it would be like to teach. Now I really wanted to rush home and get my credentials. Davey, who’d had his head down for a large part of the proceedings, suddenly roused himself.
“I can’t take this violence.”

“I know,” I said, “I don’t like it either. Violence is a trigger for a lot of people.”

I had no idea if this was true but needed to say something to reel things back to within shouting distance of a drug education class. I was two seconds from asking everybody to say what animal they thought they were—a rehab staple—when the door opened again and Rincin came back in, grim faced, and crooked his finger at me.

School was out.

The warden was contemplating his steepled hands when I walked in. He saw me and flipped his fingers forward, aiming the steeple at me.

“Still pointing that thing, huh?”

I could, in my undercover days, pass as drug dealer, seller, hit man, porn purveyor, every breed of sleazebag, including Los Angeles garmento, but the one thing I could not pull off was regular guy. I should have known better than to try.

“Sit,” said the warden. Everything in here was code and signal. He was communicating that he knew something about me I didn’t know he knew. He lifted a cup of tea from a saucer and blew daintily. “Chamomile. Soothes the nerves. Pour you a cup?”

“My nerves are fine, thanks. I can’t even feel them.”

“Ahhhh.”

The warden slurped pleasantly. “I understand you had quite an exciting first day.”

“I didn’t know Bernstein was going to show up. You didn’t give me his file.”

“Uh-huh. I confess, I’ve always been fascinated by UC work. How a man can live a lie. Posing as one thing, doing something else.”

“I guess it’s something you get used to.”

“Is that right? Anything you’d like to tell me, Manuel Rupert?”

I shook my head. But he didn’t move. “This Mengele business, it’s extraordinary,” he said. “It’s like something out of
Reader’s Digest.
”

“I’m just trying to do my job,” I said. “What’s your take?”

“My take? If they really suspected it was him, they’d arrest him. If they’re wrong, let him sue. He’s ninety-seven. But I don’t make the decisions. There’s something else going on.”

“Zell tell you what it was?”

“Zell? I’m not sure—”

I cut him off. “He told me you knew when he hired me. He said you were the only other person in on it. Maybe you can tell me what else you’re in on?”

“I’m not the one with a secret, Rupert.” He picked up a sheet of paper and waggled it. “Don’t forget, we have the results of your UA. We don’t just test for narcotics. You must know that. Anything out of the ordinary triggers a flag. Sure there’s nothing you want to discuss?”

“Could we discuss my living situation? I’m no health nut, but the mold in the trailer sink actually moves.”

“Cute,” said the warden, pressing a button on the desk like an executive in a fifties movie. “Annabel, send Officer Colfax in here. With Officer Rincin.”

The warden savored another sip of herbal tea. “Any problems with your escort?”

“Problems, no. He seems like a great guy.”

The warden regarded me with curiosity. “You know, I walk among deviants and killers all day long. I like to think I’m a reader of men.”

“Oh really?” This was plainly my cue to ask what he read when he read me. Before I had the chance not to, he offered another Deep Thought. “The more a man has to hide, the more it shows.”

“I suppose so,” I said. “Assuming anybody’s paying attention.”

Colfax strode in and stopped before the warden’s desk. “Ah, Colfax,” said the warden. They exchanged sharp salutes, which was unsettling. “And where is Officer Rincin?”

“Present and accounted for,” said Rincin. He walked in dunking the butt of a cruller in a mug that said SAN QUENTIN—WORLD’S GREATEST PANCAKES! He popped the soggy pastry in his mouth, then took his post to the left of Colfax and saluted with his mouth full. The warden sniffed the caffeinated air. “Still drinking coffee, eh, Rincin? Why not just give your prostate an acid bath?”

Rincin made a show of taking another big gulp and smacking his lips.

The warden squirmed in his chair. “Two hundred toxic oils in one bean. Might as well pluck your man gland out with tweezers and rub it with a cheese grater.”

Colfax cleared his throat and the warden dropped the subject. The acned rookie seemed to function as his boss’s manners consultant. “Never mind,” said the warden. “It’s your body. I happen to like my prostate, but that’s me. I have sex. I love my wife.”

Rincin flushed, his smile never wavering. “Well, sir, mine ran off with the plumber. I wanted to put one of those chips in her neck, like vets do for when your dog gets picked up, so you know where it is. Even found a Korean breeder in Mendocino who said he’d do it. But the bitch left before I could make the arrangements.” Colfax ran his finger across his throat and Rincin flushed. “Sorry! Caffeine makes me a Chatty Cathy. Close that door behind you.”

The warden turned to me, and I felt the same panic I used to get in the principal’s office in high school, back when it was still okay to paddle. The warden was like a principal with armed guards and an electric chair.

“Okay, Rupert. Let’s get right to it,” said the warden. “We did your tox screen.”

Rincin smothered a belch unsuccessfully, and the warden glowered. In spite of myself I glanced at Rincin. It was striking how much he resembled your basic D-movie, belly-over-the-belt-buckle prison guard. I had judged him for that central casting brush mustache, those designed-for-menace reflector shades. But now I was jealous. In situations like this, you appreciate the wisdom of fitting in.

“You know,” the warden continued, “San Quentin was one of the first institutions to recognize transgender inmates. Once they have the surgery, they’re moved to a woman’s prison. Until then, we keep them in segregation.”

“That’s why you see some of the inmates with trainer titties,” Rincin added helpfully. “You know, CWDs.” He planted his hands on his chest and waggled his pinkies. “Chicks with dicks. We call ’em ‘mone-o’s.’”

“What’s a mone-o?” I asked, if only to savor my last moments as an equal in the conversation, before they charged me with something.

“Slang for ‘hormones,’ and in my opinion a pretty disgusting term,” said the warden. He leveled a withering glance at the CO. “It’s not obscene, but it’s nasty.”

“I’ve heard worse,” I said, “but I thought you were talking about my UA. Why are you telling me about transgenders?”

At this, Colfax cleared his throat, looking away. Rincin licked his lips and touched a finger to a fresh-bloomed boil on his neck.

“About that UA…” The warden sniffed his chamomile and read his own palms for a while before continuing. “It’s all right, Rupert, we know.”

“Know what?”

“We found the estrogen, son. We found the Dilantin and the Prozac. And we found the naltrexone.”

“Opiate blocker,” Rincin added helpfully. “You’re doing something about the problem, that’s what counts.”

Before I could process that, Colfax chipped in. “Had an uncle took Dilantin. He kept getting fits behind the wheel of his semi. Stuff really helped.”

Rincin grinned a little bigger. “Hey, I got a touch of epilepsy myself. You, me and Julius Caesar, buddy.”

“And, uh, about the other…,” said the warden.

I felt my neck flush. “The other?”

“Female hormones,” the warden whispered discreetly. He put his hand on my wrist and screwed an expression of concern on his face. “It’s okay, Rupert. We understand.”

Had I actually
been
a budding transsexual, I would have been touched. As it was, his compassion was mortifying.

“Busted,” I sighed. “I’m an epileptic pre-op trying to stay off the hard stuff. And I’m depressed.”

“Attaboy,” said the warden. “Always better to be honest.”

I was dying to tell them they were discussing CO Rincin’s blood-work. But I couldn’t. I had to play it out.

“Tell you what I’m
not
depressed about,” I chuckled bravely, “I’m not using the same surgeon who went to work on Davey’s face. I mean, no disrespect, but I can only imagine what he’d do with a sex change. Or do you outsource surgery?”

“They don’t show everything on those prison shows,” Rincin said cryptically.

I waited for elaboration. But the CO decided to chug the rest of his prostate burner. A moment of quiet, then the warden snapped his fingers in my face. Without thinking, I grabbed his hand. “Stop doing that!”

I didn’t realize I was clutching his wrist until I saw him staring at it. When I let go, the warden tipped his chair back against the wall and parked his snakeskin boots on the desk. He licked a drop of chamomile from the side of his mouth and beamed. “Whatever you got going on between your legs, you got balls. I’ll give you that much.”