Pain Killers (22 page)

His rage was only terrifying because I knew history. History was terrifying. Especially when it was still happening.

The ball of shame lodged in my gullet: Was I a collaborator at heart? What would I do to save myself? What I would do to save Tina? If you were a Hungarian Jew in 1943, was it better to get on that train knowing where you were headed? Or was it better not to know what would become of you?

“There are thirty kinds of lightning bolts!” Mengele barked. He raised his hands for emphasis. His palms glowed the same translucent blue as his temples, wafer thin. He combed his long pianist’s fingers through his hair. Not the kind of fingers attached to doll hands. “These people could not tell the difference between the Waffen-SS hat badge and the Iron Cross First Class that Hitler gave to Henry Ford. In your insidious war movies, one moment the SS man will show up in the gold pin of the Norwegian railway fighters. In the next, he’s wearing the death’s-head insignia of the Totenkopf!”

“That like an English muffin?” Movern wanted to know.

“For your information, the Totenkopf were the SS who guarded the camps. This was not, sadly, a prestige position.”

“Does it really matter?” I wondered what Mengele would look like if he blew a gasket.

“Does it matter what’s tattooed on the rump of some performing whore in a Gestapo hat? Yes, it does! This is America! Nazi S&M films may be the only history lesson they ever get. For this reason, it pains me to see the inaccuracy. I saw a piece of pornographic trash where, just before the strapping Gestapo lad favored a hausfrau with his essence, the camera moved in on a close-up of the Himmler Lebensraum Mutter brooch on the soldier’s lapel.
A Mutter brooch!
Bestowed upon racially pure Rhinemaidens for coupling with SS men and giving birth to heroes! It signifies the wearer has borne babies of highest racial purity.
‘Every mother of good blood is a sacred asset of our existence.’
This is a travesty!”

He may have been right. But it didn’t help me any. The only way I was going to confirm his identity was to talk to the born-again hooker. But I needed to keep him on the hook until I could sneak off.

“Did you ever think,” Roscoe asked politely, “back in the day?”

“Did I ever think what?”

I expected Mengele to treat African-Americans like talking dogs. But he was no more contemptuous and sneering than he was to anyone else.

“Did you ever think,” Roscoe asked pleasantly, “that the entire ideology of the Reich was going to be reduced to a bin in porno stores? How does that feel, having your most cherished symbols end up as white trash prison tats? Ol’ Adolf thought the whole world was his bitch. Now who’s wearin’ the red dress?”

Rasta Jim bit the back of his wrist, bobbing up and down. “Oh, shit!”

“Cold,” said Movern.

I wasn’t sure if Mengele would respond. He had a way of making himself still. Learned, I suspected, from years spent staring at lizards in São Paulo, running a coffee plantation. I kept trying to fix him in my mind. To reconcile the well-preserved blond with the Puccini-whistling lady killer who could make a Jewess swoon on her way to the gas.

“No,” he said. “I foresaw defeat, but not degradation.”

Along with the baby-smooth skin and punkish dye job, I noticed that his neck didn’t sag. Maybe he’d lifted his own face. But his left hand rocked from side to side with subtle palsy. Just like Bunker-era Hitler. And occasionally his lips smacked together, seemingly of their own volition, as if they were fed separately.

“Okay, let’s cut the bullshit, Doc. What were you addicted to? That’s all we deal with in here. So what was it?”

“What do you think? A stimulant. Germans invented amphetamines. The very first was called Pervalit.”

Movern shivered. “Y’all Pervy about everything.”

“Would you forget the Germans? The forties are over. Let’s get specific. Where did drugs take you that you never thought you’d go? What was your bottom?”

Mengele raised his chin. He took a sneering chew on his mustache to show the esteem in which he held me and everybody else in the drug class.

“This is it,” he said. “Talking to you. This is worse than the Paraguayan shit shovelers I had to live with in Ascunción. I stayed in some pile of sticks near New Germany, this hellhole founded by Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth and her husband, Bernhard Förster. They thought being Aryan and hating Jews was enough to keep them alive in the jungle. The whole colony starved trying to raise llamas and grow yerba maté. South America is not a place for Aryans! Only impure races can tolerate that kind of sun.”

“Albinos must be gods,” I said.

“Hah! No one recognizes greatness!” He stammered, “You—your whole country—would rather die of the diseases I could cure than admit they were wrong in not letting me cure them! I offer myself, now, with all the risks such an action involves. And look! Look—look where they have me! With this,” he sputtered, indicating the class. “With this and this and this and this!” Voice rising, he pointed to Roscoe, who seemed bemused, then, one by one, to half-faced Davey, Movern, Cranky, Reverend D, Rasta Jim and Rincin and back to me.

Done raving, Mengele checked his watch, pulled out a tiny container and removed a brown pill and a large red capsule. “Ha!” he cackled. “What I have in this pill could save a generation from heart disease and diabetes. I have arteries like a fetus. But because of ignorance, you suffer, and I breathe the flatulence of subhumans!” He ate the pill with a flourish. Delusional or not, his performance was riveting. No wonder Zell thought he could make a fortune on the old genocider. His preening self-regard made it impossible not to watch.

“Subhuman flatulence,” I repeated, with nothing in particular to add.

“Look like a motherfucking cold capsule to me. Time-release Contac,” the reverend sneered.

Since the talk with Tina, I was only half-worried whether it was him anymore. But I needed the hooker to make sure. I was more worried about what Zell wanted with him. And why I’d been selected as go-between. I was shy on specifics. But a scenario in which the smart move, all around, was to dispense with him would not have been implausible. God knows, it would have been easy to arrange. Half the men under the San Quentin roof were professional dispensers. Tina was right. I’d jumped in too fast.

There was only one way to find out who was protecting who. I got out of my chair and moved toward Mengele, reaching my hand in my pants like I was pulling a shank out. Before I made two steps Jimbo was on his feet, Cranky had launched himself out of his chair, Rincin had whipped out a blackjack and three members of the extraction team burst in armed with stun shields. They were usually brought in to pry ab seg prisoners out of their cells when they refused to leave for a shower. “Everybody down!” one of them shouted.

The rest of the room dropped. I managed to spin around to the extractors, flashing the pack of gum in my hand, so all six Mengele defenders could see.

“The fuck,” said Rincin, putting his weapon away, then moving in to put six words in my ear. “Nothing happens to the old guy.”

“Sorry,” I said to the room in general.

The extractors raised the front windows on their helmets, uniformly pissed.

“My bad,” I said. “I just wanted to offer the doctor a piece of gum.”

Jim didn’t look too happy either. Rincin seemed to seethe under his grin. I wasn’t surprised about smoking those two out, but Cranky, the La Eme speedster, I didn’t see coming. For all I knew, everybody in the room was UC something. Except for Mengele. And he might have been a fake…

“Okay, excitement’s over,” I said, waiting for the extraction team to clank out. “Let’s get back to work. I want to start with an exercise. Everybody think about what kind of movie their lives would be. A lot of what fuels our drugging and drinking is a need to project a certain image. So, if there was a movie of your life, what would it be?”

“Patch Adams,”
Mengele said at once.

“
Patch Adams
? Really.”

“I love the children, like Patch,” said Mengele. “I have also heard that your Jerry Lewis made a movie based on me.” He sniffed. “‘Der Tag der Clown Weinte.’
The Day the Clown Cried.
” He ran his tongue along his mustache as though tickling himself. “I have done research. Jerry Lewis’s real name was Jerome Levitch. Like me, he is obsessed with childhood disease. Muscular dystrophy. Every year he raises millions. I have research I believe he would find very very hopeful. I imagine he would pay for it.”

Without changing expression, he mimed playing the violin for a moment, then explained himself.

“Sometimes, with
der kinder,
if I knew an experiment was going to be painful, I would play the violin for them. A waltz could be so soothing. I did not use anesthetics. On special days, I dressed like a clown to perform the surgery. A Jew clown from a circus in Budapest showed me how to apply the makeup. Moishe Moishe. He was kind enough to leave it to me when he expired. Of the influenza.”

Suddenly his face went dark. “Thanks to Moishe—and his generous lungs—I found the cure.”

“You a great man!” said Rasta Jim, the white Bob Marley.

Mengele accepted the compliment with a grimace.

“It was not just influenza. I had the cure for cancer too. A vaccine.” He pointed a manicured, slightly palsied finger at me. “When any American dies of cancer, he should blame you for not allowing me to present my cure in this country. They call me evil? What about the people who prevent me from sharing cures—the millions they condemn to die? They are the killers now—who knows how many millions?”

“I’d call my congressman,” I said, “but he doesn’t even believe in abortion.”

“You joke!” he snarled. “You joke!”

Mengele’s smile was thinner than onion skin. He stood up and placed his hands on my shoulders, letting one finger stray to my throat. It felt bony, fleshless, but made of steel and—this is what made me cringe—
warm.
That Mengele gave off human warmth made being human feel revolting.

He seemed eager to see my horror, so I tried to look bored. Squelched a yawn. Up close, his shirt gave off the scent of lavender. His breath was minty. I could see the white roots showing under his Billy Idol hair.

I shook off his hand and he raised it to my face. “You Americans love to judge. But let me give you a little lollipop called the truth.”

He pretended to hold out a sucker. I role-played, eying his hand with disdain.

“A lollipop? Do I look like a three-year-old who hasn’t eaten in a week? You think conning traumatized pre-pubes makes you powerful? Why don’t you put on a clown nose, see if anybody in here lets you cut their balls out and transplant ape testicles.”

“I operated on plenty of grown men. I am a doctor of medicine.”

“Is it called medicine when you don’t care if they die? Okay, let’s get back to drugs.”

I could have done more to reel the discussion back to recovery. But how often do you get to insult one of the vilest characters on the planet? It was addictive, which felt fairly vile to admit. Reverend D whispered behind his hand to Jim. Once again, natural enemies suspending their enmity to share. Be still my heart.

“Okay,” I said, “who wants to talk about the bad decisions they made on drugs?”

Mengele glared. “You are a rude young man.”

“Feeling slighted, that’s another addict trait. Thank God you’re here, Doctor, you’re better than a textbook.”

Movern had some wisdom he wanted to add. “Soon’s I sniff me some of that ’caine, I used to think people was talkin’ about me. Soon as I sniff me a bit more, I start to feel like they sayin’ bad things.”

“Turd at the center of the universe,” said Davey. “It’s, like, a syndrome.”

Movern sniffed. “Who you callin’ a turd, white boy?”

Rincin ran his finger across his throat. My heart skidded, then I realized he didn’t mean my throat was going to be cut—he meant
time’s up
. At least I hoped so.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “I hope you’re cured and ready to spread your healing insights to others. If not, I’m back here tomorrow.”

Roscoe stood up first. “It’s been real,” he said. I waited for him, or anybody, to say a few words before leaving. As though I’d actually offered some kind of solution for anything. But nobody seemed inclined to share one-on-one. “Okay, guys,” said Rincin, “Officer Colfax will meet you outside.”

I had to get to San Francisco, catch a flight south. But first I needed to speak with Reverend D. During class, I’d managed to keep the lid on my Tina fear. Now it was simmering. “Reverend,” I said brightly, for the benefit of anybody listening in. “I wondered if I could talk to you for a second, about that thing you said.”

“What thing is that?” The reverend wasn’t going to make it easy.

“You know what thing,” I said, turning my back to keep it from Davey, who was lamely pretending to tie his shoe. “What happened to Tina?”

The reverend regarded me with something like curiosity. “If she’s your woman, she’s your business.”

“She was working with you.”

“Yeah, and when she was working, she was my business, but it was strictly business, understand?”

“Look, Reverend, somebody knocked me out, and when I came to, she was gone.”

“Turn your back on a woman,” said the reverend, “the fuck you expect?”

Rincin stood by the door, watching. His smile never wavered.

“Are you saying Tina knocked me out?”

“I’m sayin’ be a man. Ask her your own damn self. If she wanna be found,” he said, not unsympathetically, “you gonna find her.”

“Okay,” I said, “here’s what you do…” The idea dropped out of the sky. Like most junkies, whether or not they still used junk, I fought best on my back. Ass on the griddle. When every day is a zero-sum struggle against bone-shearing pain, creativity becomes an adrenal function. The good old days.

“Tina gets in touch,” I said to the reverend, “tell her I’ll be in L.A. Tell her I’m going to take care of a thing, then go to Zell’s place. Tell her to meet me there.”

The reverend did not look thrilled. But he didn’t blow me off. “Where’s that at, playah?”