The Creep (18 page)

He got out of the Jeep, dropped the keys down a drain and walked away.
Garlic my ass,
he thought, and started humming
Rawhide.

As an afterthought he went back to the Suzuki to collect the last bottle of whiskey.

By pre-arrangement Harvey met Bishman in downtown L.A.,
then
drove five hours to a quiet spot in San Fran
c
isco. Harvey often used different locations that were off the beaten track. He seemed to have a nose for discovering desolate places.

Harvey made a note that the dialogue was beginning to sound like the continuation of a previous story. He was right, and yet another piece of the jigsaw fell into place:

Bishman had had enough of Central Park. He had another plan in mind. He walked briskly up Second Avenue, carrying his carefully wrapped ten-pound package as though he hadn't a care in the world, as far as East 120th Street,
turned right and walked down to First Avenue. Just before First Avenue he saw what he was looking for. In
fact he heard it first. Montego Bay was blaring away from the crumbling brownstone. It was four in the morning, there would probably be about a hundred and twenty people, mostly blacks, Hispanics and Puerto Ricans, in the club, The Grape Escape. But outside, there was no-one around. Bishman knew there wouldn't be
...
i
ntuition
!

He carefully opened the door and scattered the contents of a trashcan that he'd brought off the street and emptied half the gallon of gasoline he'd bought earlier. The gasoline went all over the trash, up the walls and over the painted door. About three feet away from the gasoline, he deftly made a fuse from one of the votive candles he'd stolen from St. Patrick's Cathedral. He carefully arranged the paper against the candle, figuring that he would have about four minutes to do what he had to do next. He carefully lit the candle and blew out the match, closing the door quietly and deliberately behind him. The door opened outwards onto the street so he wedged the empty trashcan up against the door handle.

Bishman calmly walked around to the back of the brownstone and did the same to the back door, using up the remaining half gallon of gasoline and the second St. Patrick's candle. He lit the candle carefully and nestled it in amongst some old newspapers he found by the back door. He pulled the papers over to where there was plenty of gasoline. Bishman had used this technique before and had nearly cremated himself when he lit the match - the flame had actually tracked across the gasoline fumes and ignited the whole shooting
match. That was in Michigan. He'd learnt a valuable lesson. Keep naked flames well away from gasoline, even the vapors can ignite from an open flame from as much as ten feet away, especially on a hot day,
à
la
Michigan.

The front door should be firing up just about now, thought Bishman as he closed the back door behind him, wedging it firmly with an old wooden board.

As Bishman suspected, the place turned out to be a fire trap. The fire exits were padlocked to stop gate crashers getting in for free and the windows were boarded up to keep the place dark. He didn't wait around. He'd read about it in the newspapers the next evening.

There were no survivors. The police and fire crews worked till nine in the morning taking out one hundred and forty-seven victims in body bags, many of them never formally identified.

Bishman took
Harvey through five hours of jokes and ramblings, of which this was the only memory of any consequence:

Bishman had his thumb out; he was humming
Hitching a Ride
. He was in good spirits. His blond wig was just the thing he needed to attract the guy who was to be his next victim. He'd had a close shave and he smelt good too. His make-up was just right.

Many vehicles drove past as the sun started to go down. It looked like the e
arth had the s
un for supper that night, the way it gobbled it up.
Crickets chirped, the evening was humid.

A dark red panel van pulled up; the signwriting on it was painted over roughly and Bishman could see a driver but no passengers. He approached it cautiously, looking out for any dudes in the back. It wouldn't be the first time a hitchhiker got in a vehicle to find there were five or six motherfuckers ready to rape and pillage.

He poked his head in as he talked. Everything was cool. He got in and the driver moved off.

They looked at each other. The driver was wearing a blonde wig too.
They both knew
! The driver turned up the rock music full blast.
Heavy metal, Deep Purple.
Bad news.
He started to haul ass!

"You fuckin' asshole, child abuser, homo, sadist, killer," screamed the driver at the top of his voice right in Bishman's face, spit, froth and foam coming out of his smelly mouth.

"You fuckin' cocksucker, motherfucker, son-of-a-bitch," screamed Bishman venomously, pushing his face right up close to the driver's. Adrenalin levels began to rise.

The driver gassed up, really hauling ass. The road was clear for the next thousand miles
...
at least.
Just three hundred and sixty degrees of tumbleweed and cornfields plus the occasional billboard.

"You scum-of-the-earth, fuck pig, queer, moron, motherfucker, murderer, asshole,
jerk-off," the driver screamed with unbelievable anger and ve
hemence. The hairs on
both thei
r
heads, necks and backs were standing on end.
Four hate-filled eyes, spit and foul breath.

"Gobshite, fucker, shithead, bastard, animal, child molester, ripper, asshole, shit-faggot," screamed Bishman, spitting froth, foaming at the mouth. Their hearts were now pounding with fury, hate and anger. The tension rose a few more percentage points.

"Swine, slasher, bitch, asshole, ripper, motherfucking shithead, bastard, jerk," yelled the driver, snarling and hissing, his nose nearly touching Bishman's nose. Bishman could feel his hot foul breath washing over
him,
feel the spit spraying his face. He could hear the words way above the heavy metal. They screamed and shouted like this non-stop for twelve minutes.
Twelve hair-raising, heart-pounding minutes of terror, high intensity
shouting-match, the driver hauling ass all the way.
They very nearly popped their rivets. If pure evil exists, this was it.

Suddenly, without warning, the driver hit the brakes and Bishman nearly went through the windshield. It was sheer luck that he didn't. No
judgment
involved. He thought to himself
I'm outta here, pal,
as he opened the door. Before he could slam it shut, the driver was gassing it hard, the door flapping in the breeze.

Bishman stuck his finger up at the van disappearing in the distance.

"Sit on that and spin you fuckin' cocksucker!" he shouted. Then he thought,
See ya later, pal...much later.

Bishman sat down by the side of the road, trembling. His hands were trembling so much it took three paper matches to light a cigarette. He was still sitting there an hour later and his hands were still trembling.

Harvey now had over three hundred audio cassettes and twenty-seven notebooks of jottings and scripts, representing over two hundred sickening hours of regressions. He called them the Bishman Files. He took Bishman into hypnosis:

Things don't just happen by accident, although on many occasions they may appear to. A panhandler doesn't necessarily ask everyone for money. He targets certain individuals in certain places at certain times, when he thinks he stands a good chance of getting money.

The serial killer doesn't kill everyone in his path. He deliberately goes walkabout, looking for stragglers and potential victims who are on their own, naive people who have left themselves wide open to be approached. Bishman had walked up Fifth Avenue and was just approaching the big super toyshop, F.A.O. Schwarz. Across the road a guy was drumming for all he was worth. His street
name was Harold - he was the Junk Yard Band and probably the best drummer in Manhattan.

The young man who was sitting on the toy-store's steps was transfixed by the drummer. He was searching, and Bishman knew he was onto a winner.

"Cigarette?" offered Bishman.

"Yeah, thanks."

"See the sign up there on the top of that building? That's 666 Fifth Avenue." Bishman lit up, always smoking, ever the conversationalist.

"What does that mean then?" asked the
guy.

"666. It's the Sign of the Beast. I thought you'd know that." Bishman paused to allow them both to listen to Harold, across the street, who was now building up a good head of steam for his grand finale - a raucous crescendo where everyone, hopefully, drops a dollar bill into the hat.

Harold the Junk Yard Band eventually quietened down and Bishman started talking.

"When we were kids we used to get out
a
Ouija board and ask it all sorts of questions. Nothing happened, but we stuck at it. We'd almost given up, when one day it slowly started spelling out letters. We put them together and it spelled out LUCIFER. We dropped the board and ran like hell." Bishman laughed.

"You're shittin' me?" Th
e
impressionable young man was glazed over.

"What d'you
do
? I mean other than sit on the steps of F.A.O. Schwarz and smoke other
people's cigarettes?" He took the hint and passed a cigarette to Bishman.

"Not a lot. Panhandle for small change. What about you?"

"Same as you, but I also help people make a lot of money.
Those who want to, that is."

"Yeah, like how? I've never had any money, but I sure could use some." The young man lit his cigarette.

Bishman wiped his forehead. "You see most jobs need skills th
at you haven't got, or pay commission only
for selling some stupid fucking knick
-
knack that no-one wants in the first place. How people really make a lot of money is just by talking to people, or more to the point, just by listening to people. Do you reckon you could do that? I never met anyone who can't." Bishman stood up.