Phelps

Chapter 5 of the science fiction crime thriller Freak

Freak

Chapter Five

Phelps

The old man and his young guide seemed to bob as they tramped up the crumbling asphalt walk, an apparent motion created by the old man’s chronic limp working in conjunction with the boy’s frequent missteps in sinkholes. It was very dark on the Venice Canals. Although freaked-out mallards occasionally hopped singly into bushes on the right, or plunged in manic clusters into the canal to their left, the neighborhood fowl colonies for the most part glumly tolerated the silently rocking figures. The boy was black, the old man a Finn, but in the dark they were devoid of race and nationality.

The boy tugged on the old man’s finger. The old man looked down, his brown old brow furrowed under his blue old watch cap. The boy, nodding urgently, indicated an unimpressive cottage in a jungle of yard. The old man’s eyes narrowed. No bars on the windows, no signs of real security. Only a sagging picket fence choking in weeds. On the rustic mailbox was hand-lettered the name E. ROSE. A painted American Beauty was positioned in the lower right-hand corner, like a signature.

The old man pulled a scruffy old handkerchief from his scruffy old trench coat. Wrapped in the handkerchief was a few dollars in pennies and nickels, bound at the top by a dirty old bit of string. The old man solemnly placed it in the boy’s hand, closed the trembling little fingers over the bundle, and clasped the boy’s hand in both of his. He shut his eyes and nodded, slowly and with gravity, before releasing the boy’s hand. Rolling his eyes, the boy slunk off hugging his treasure to his chest, not daring to look back.

Ivan Phelps wistfully watched the dark figure vanish over a bridge. After a while he turned and looked the property up and down. Without seeming to move, he melted into the high weeds and trees. The limp was gone.

Phelps unlaced his boots and left them in the weeds with his socks. The old man walked barefoot on a path of inlaid bricks, taking long pauses between steps. When he reached the backyard he stopped dead. His eyes ran over the house, finally resting on the wide-open, side-hinged bathroom window.

Phelps removed his trench coat and placed it carefully on the ground. He was now wearing only his dirty old long johns. From under his left arm he gently extracted a filthy torn pillowcase containing an ancient baseball bat, a cheap plastic flashlight, a rusty pair of handcuffs, and a ratty length of rope. The rope, protruding from the pillowcase’s open end, was wound tightly around the outside to prevent the contents from shifting. Phelps stepped very quietly to the window and peered into the bathroom. The house was absolutely dark. For a full minute he didn’t move or breathe. He was feeling the place.

The old man raised the bundle above his head with the utmost slowness and, keeping it perfectly horizontal, carefully guided it through the window. He very gradually turned the bat clockwise, allowed it to dangle, then let the rope pass through his lax fist until the bundle just kissed the bathroom’s tiled floor. He looped the rope’s loose end about the window’s lower hinge.

Ivan Phelps rested his forearms on the sill, testing its strength, and found it satisfactory. He filled his lungs. Throwing all his concentration into his arms and shoulders, he slowly ascended the outer wall like a great pallid lizard, using his toes for balance and coordination. It took a full five minutes for his waist to reach the sill, and by that time his face was purple and his head pounding. But Phelps’s respiration was absolutely steady. He didn’t make a sound. After only a few seconds’ rest, he let his upper body ooze over the sill and into the dark bathroom. Whereas Phelps had used his bare toes as tender feelers on the way up, he now used his fingertips as sensitive probes on the way down. Five more excruciating minutes, and he was examining the floor with his palms. Toe by toe, he walked his feet down the inner wall until his body lay curled in a limp pool.

He did not get to his feet, but gripped each end of the bundle squarely and fully extended his arms. Gently pushing off with his toes, he crossed the floor like a snake. Five silent minutes later he was poised in the bathroom doorway. Holding the bat absolutely horizontal while balancing his entire weight on his sternum, Phelps rolled his bulging eyes left and right. His rib cage felt like it would collapse at any moment, but he would not let the probe dip a centimeter. There was too much at stake. And besides, the old man knew all about pain.

Directly ahead was the living room. To the left, a short hallway and kitchen. Phelps was reading an accurate mental snapshot of the cottage’s interior, based solely on his outside inspection. The only bedroom lay to his right. The snake made a very slow right turn and patiently slithered, all thighs and pectorals, to the open bedroom doorway.

Phelps spent much longer here, letting his eyes adjust to the room. The shades were down; nothing other than the bulkiest objects were discernible. But he smelled prey. Phelps let his own breathing fall in with the naked woman snoring gently beside the dark lump of a man on the bed. When their rhythms were one he became aggressive, ever so slowly ratcheting up the woman’s snores until their compound sawing took subconscious hold of the sleeping man. In just under half an hour all three were practically howling in perfect sync. Phelps began worming across the carpet, sweat falling off his face like bombs. Twenty minutes later he was on his knees beside the bed, still snoring away like crazy. He delicately unraveled the bundle. With his eyes closed, he laid out his tools one by one.

Phelps now became a hunched statue; the pillowcase dangling from his left hand, the bat gripped in his right. The long plastic flashlight was clamped in his teeth, its lens directed at the black figure almost under his nose. Inch by inch, he raised his left hand until its index finger lay poised on the flashlight’s power switch.

Phelps spent less than a second verifying the sleeping man’s identity. He switched the flashlight on and off, carefully removed it from his mouth, and set it between his knees. Guided only by that brief look, he yanked the pillowcase over Vilenov’s head and brought the bat down with all his force.

The woman sat up screaming bloody murder. Ignoring her, Phelps pulled the rope tight around Vilenov’s neck and savagely knotted it at the back. He flipped his limp prisoner over and slapped on the cuffs, all the while speaking patiently to the woman shrieking almost in his lap:

“Ye’ll be hollerin a whole lot less, ma’am, an ye’ll be thankin me, ye will, soon as ye learn what I’m doin is fer yer own sake.” He hauled Vilenov onto the floor with a crash. “I do apologize, ma’am, I surely do. But this is one fish what won’t be gettin away.” Phelps knelt, grabbed Vilenov by a wrist and ankle and threw him over his shoulder. “Kindly jus set yerself back down to sleep now, ma’am. Yer worries are over.”

* * *

Phelps’s capture of The Houdini Rapist made him an instant celebrity. He used the reward to buy the inboard of his dreams, made a few more bucks in a whirlwind of awkward talk show appearances, and vanished from the harbor late one lovely summer evening. He was never heard from again.

The public’s attention soon shifted from Helga Scarboro’s obscene strutting to the fascinating riddle of Nicolas Vilenov. But the eagerly anticipated smutty confession was not forthcoming: Phelps had walloped him so hard he could barely mumble. The first few days were a nightmare of tests and interviews, of clamoring reporters and six o’clock feedings. Nelson Prentis rose to the occasion with both humor and sobriety, providing the barking press liberal tosses of quality sound bites--all to the effect that Nicolas Vilenov, a physically-and mentally incapacitated prisoner, would remain a prisoner.

Much was made of Vilenov’s cracked skull.

Those believing his escape was achieved through some weird paranormal ability warned that Phelps’s blow might have only phased him. Opposing this view, a rational faction voiced profound sympathy for Vilenov as scapegoat and victim of the system. Members of the former camp were labeled “Hysterics” by the latter. The Hysterics, in turn, labeled their detractors “Enablers.” A running shouting match grew uglier by the day.

Nicolas Vilenov was maintained in special confinement at Western State Hospital, where brain specialists confirmed what was apparent to all: temporal lobe damage had left him weak as a kitten. His manacles were removed. Everyone agreed that Vilenov, shattered and under continuous observation, would not be pulling off his now-famous vanishing act any time soon.

There were basic and exclusive tests. Blood and urine, EKG, ECG, neuro-monitoring stress-and-sleep. Vilenov was shocked and graphed, sampled and scoped, pricked, scraped, tapped and palpated. They picked his mind until he wanted to scream. It was all filmed and digitally saved, extensively analyzed and exhaustively reviewed. Results were always in the normal range. But the tests were kept coming, if only to mollify the public during those furious first days. On the third day, when many Hysterics were peaking, a wooden Nicolas Vilenov was wheeled outside for a news conference, a heavy bandage wound round his head. His mouth gaped, his chin grazed his chest in a permanent nod. And, most important, his eyes were glazed and distant, unable to focus on any proffered object. It was a pathetic appearance.

But it turned the tide for Vilenov-watchers, and made Hysterics look like a bunch of pitiless bashers. The moment those soulless cameras lingered on that broken gaze, the public’s initially ambivalent outcry became a howling plea to spare man from man. Umbrageous Enablers took center stage, while Hysterics could only peep from the wings with half-baked charges of a state-orchestrated appearance by a Vilenov look-alike.

The Enablers (a tag they hated at least as much as the Hysterics hated theirs) took to the streets exhorting individual civil rights, and overnight mustered an Internet mob that swarmed the medical center for a 24/7 candlelight vigil. Like all well-meaning liberals, Enablers clung to the ideal of a generic decent American whose Constitutional rights were even more important than the system that had bled profusely for those rights. It didn’t matter that Vilenov was a particularly nasty customer without national identity, accused of being an all-around predator and serial rapist. He was, to Enablers, the presumed-innocent victim of a society still in denial of its hoods and sheets.

But Hysterics, buttressed by a surprisingly robust and vocal Moral Majority, utilized every opportunity to pose bravely with cowering wives and children, verbally smiting Enablers and Don’t Knows alike, until both siding with Vilenov and indifference were synonymous with Satan worship. This self-feeding passion was described by the governor, famously, as “that silly downstate wildfire,” and soon L.A.’s much-publicized excesses were being eagerly blamed for the entire Vilenov affair. The rest of the nation looked on, first with a corn-fed, purple-mountains curiosity, then with that Very East Coast derision known as California Envy.

Disgust descended like God on the troubled South Bay.

As rumors of Vilenov’s alleged trespasses surfaced, news stations jumped on the bandwagon, interviewing anybody with a grievance and a suntan. Nationally, eyewitnesses to Vilenov rapes and molestations popped up in places Vilenov had manifestly never heard of. A hunger sounded in the nation’s upright, well-manicured streets. Even in the Bible Belt, rape became sexy. Soap operas, talk shows, supermarket tabloids would dwell on nothing else. Nicolas Vilenov, or at least his two-dimensional specter, simply would not go away.

Although it’s the practice in L.A. county to file a case in the judicial district where the crime occurred (which in this instance was Santa Monica), the DA filed the case downtown, away from the carnival-like energy of the Venice Beach community. Vilenov was arraigned in absentia, far too ill to make an appearance. On the strength of semen data and crime scene signatures, Nicolas Vilenov was charged with multiple counts of rape and forced entry. His trial date was arranged to coincide with his doctors’ go-ahead, and his bail set in the ionosphere.

In Abram’s and a trustee’s presence, a groggy Vilenov angrily waived his right to a jury trial. He cursed all of Abram’s personalized defense strategies, instructing him to instead impress the court with lurid details of the Vilenov philosophy. The attorney was ordered to not pursue change of venue, and to insist courtroom cameras be prohibited. Also, he demanded the removal of a specific psychiatrist, one Doctor Edward Reis, who he claimed was in the practice of ridiculing him, and harassing him with bizarre and unorthodox procedures, most notably conducting sessions in the dark. He then gave the lawyer the combination to a second storage locker, and told him to “get busy.”

Within that locker, in large bills stuffed in a fat canvas bag, Abram found a considerable fortune. His previously narrow eyes grew wide in his head. He began visiting this shrine on a daily basis.

Lawrence Abram hired assistants, conferred with specialists, and interviewed dozens of prospective witnesses--but everything he turned up only made him loathe his client more. The Purly sample matched semen taken from the homes of seventy-four hysterical women. There were scalp and pubic hairs, clothing fibers, fingerprints almost too numerous to catalog. A dead man would have been aware of Vilenov’s guilt. And there were the inadmissible but very damning videotape, the claimant location photos, and that signed affidavit from the Purly crime scene. Ordinarily this affidavit, attesting to the validity of the sample obtained, retained, and deposited by Ms. Purly, would have been tantamount to eyewitness evidence, for it was signed by Purly, the scene’s senior officer, and the forensic man responsible for its transport to Parker Center. But Abram understood that lack of remembrance on the part of surviving signatories would render the document worthless; it could not be recognized under oath. Just so: every speck of physical evidence that could not be corroborated by testimony served only to prejudice the prosecution. And all these DNA-matched semen samples, now cropping up around the county, were next to useless so long as complicity between Vilenov and his “girlfriends” could not be ruled out. Irreducible testimony is concrete. Partial memories, misgivings, a sense of violation, mean nothing. Furthermore, tons of complaints came from women claiming violations years prior to the arrest. Why were these women silent so long? Were they really, as Prentis suggested, a flock of menopausal gadabouts crying wolf only because they were so desperate for attention? Lawrence Abram hired the best polygraphists in the state. It was easy as pie, using a lie detector, to dismantle the most complex statements with simple questions. Abram knew these women were dealing with feelings, rather than genuine recollection. And the audaciousness of some of their claims only served to undermine the believability of others.

Abram grew nervous and remote as Vilenov’s physical condition improved, complaining of stomach aches and lancing pains. He actually seemed to shrink in stature when near his client. The knob on Vilenov’s temple was now only a slightly discolored lump, yet he was plagued by crunching headaches, blackouts, and lapses in memory. The entire ward was affected by malaise during Vilenov’s stay, and by deep depression following his occasional grand mal seizures. Vilenov’s hold on medical personnel was weak, but it was enough to change a few minds and bend opinions in his favor. He told Abram that his doctors were quite satisfied with his condition, and that a clean bill of health was already being prepared for submission to the court. Vilenov smiled wanly. The doctors, he said, were proud of him. When Abram tried to coach him for what would turn out to be the shortest criminal trial in L.A.’s history, Vilenov told him not to worry. The point was to get the trial over ASAP. All Abram needed to do was lend his presence and his legal acumen. Vilenov would do the rest. But Abram, still the strong partner in their relationship due to his client’s injury, explained repeatedly, and occasionally with attitude, that the system was not a forum for egotistical sermons--that he, Vilenov, was not a very popular guy right now, and that there were a whole lot of things to worry about besides the trial. Such as the ongoing frenzy right outside, where a pair of Hysterics had recently kicked to death a lone Enabler and posed triumphantly while being taken into custody. Their shouted on-camera desire to share a cell with Nicolas Vilenov had created two awkward new heroes on one side and an unbidden martyr on the other.

When Vilenov was finally brought to trial in an L.A. courtroom, he arrived in a secure van followed by an endless parade of police cars, news vehicles, and groupie-like spectators.

Enablers felt the exclusion of cameras, lack of venue change, sky-high bail, and non-jury trial demonstrated just how much control the state exerted over their precious symbol of persecution. That this setup was Vilenov’s own wish, publicly supported by his famous attorney, meant less than nothing to the line of Enablers now running alongside the slow caravan, for in the context of their ideology it only revealed how incapable he was of taking part in his defense. They shouted rhyming slogans about the squelching of freedoms, based mostly on the fact that the media were (wisely) denied in-house interviews due to his “injuries and incoherence.”

This first line of Enablers fumed as they ran. Alongside and behind trotted a motley mob, waving American flags of all sizes. Among these flags could be seen placards citing Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, with an occasional Lincoln silhouette thrown in. On the mob’s fringe were the megaphone toters, wearing Vilenov T-shirts and exhorting passersby to “stand for the man.” Most arresting of the Enablers’ gimmickry was a magnificent fifty foot-wide American flag, passed along like an Olympic Torch by a broken line of wheezing high school faculty volunteers.

On the convoy’s other side Hysterics ran hooting, shaking their fists and shouting obscenities. Every other member carried a hot-selling placard featuring Vilenov’s mug shot, the image cleverly made up with horns, fangs, and mangy goatee. Just behind were the chanting waitresses and swooning schoolmarms, the Ivan Phelps wannabes, and a miscellany of schoolboys, ruffians, and pickpockets. Then came a row of placards citing the Apostles, bobbing above a wide current of banding-and-disbanding groups. Finally, making up the fringe, were the so-called “Milk Carton Mothers,” a subdued group bearing placards featuring enlarged photos of missing children and pets, famous murderers and runaway daughters. On the fringe of the fringe were the nuts and the noisemakers, the petty dope dealers and the darting soda vendors.

Through this miserable sea the police van and its entourage moved like the children of Israel. As the vehicles neared the courthouse a phalanx of riot police commenced a flanking maneuver. The train crept between parallel lines of manpower until the van reached the courthouse’s very steps. The cargo door slid open, and a heavily-shackled Nicolas Vilenov was helped out by two men in suits. Vilenov, wearing a blind man’s shades outfitted with crown-and chin straps, dropped his head in pain. After a moment of absolute silence a roar went up from the crowd. Vilenov doubled over. There were many elements constituting that mass ejaculation, but, depending on which direction you were leaning, it could have been described as either soulless ecstasy or mindless outrage.

The two men hustled Vilenov up steps flanked by cops in riot gear. On both sides of the staircase reporters popped up like jacks in the box.

Inside the building a mousy little man appeared and dramatically thrust outward the tall glass doors. The two officers pushed Vilenov up and through while the flanking cops closed behind him, forming a tight living wall.

The mousy man ran his eyes back and forth over the passion and pain. After a minute he sneered and pulled the tall doors shut with a slam.