The Creep (3 page)

Before Harvey left England he'd already decided that he wanted his office away from his home. He'd been tied to the International Organization of Hypnotherapy headquarters in England for many years. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. The comprehensive I.O.H. headquarters were in
Springfield, Missouri, not far from Max's thousand-acre ranch, but he had Max set him up an office in Pasadena. Small and efficient: just a reception area that doubled as the secretary's office and Harvey's consultancy room. Not that he intended doing any hypnotherapy.

Things were working out like a military operation, just as Harvey had visualized before he left England. Jai, his personal assistant, was there to greet him as he arrived.

"I know this is your first morning in, sir, but there are some messages for you. Max Hatfield has called a number of times from Springfield. Nothing important, he wants to know if you've settled in and if there's anything he can do for you. Here are the other messages. I've also had a string of telephone calls from a Mr. Bob Bishman who says he wants to see you about
personal problems.
I tried to explain that you weren't taking on private clients, but he keeps calling. What should I do?"

"Put him onto Max directly. He'll fix him up with a hypnotherapist in the L.A. area. What else?"

"That's all, sir. Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes I'd love some: black, no sugar and please call me Bill. We went over this at the interview, I won't tell you again.
Bill - right?"

"Right sir.
I mean Bill." Jai did that on purpose and gave a little flip of her leg as she walked out of the door, as secretaries sometimes do to humor and tease their bosses. Harvey loved it.
Simple things, right
.

Once a week Harvey flew his
personal
Lear jet to the I.O.H. headquarters in Springfield, Missouri to work with new franchisees.
Everything Harvey did was covered in numerous books, videos and audio cassette programs that all the franchisees had bought as part of their package. The in-house hypnotherapists also did all the lectures and seminars that Harvey did. But nothing, not a single thing, could measure up to a performance by the master of hypnotherapy, the maestro himself, Bill Harvey.

"Give clients time to assimilate what you have told them," said Harvey as he loosened his loud Disney-imaged tie.

"Let me give you an example. If I said to you
first kiss
, then stopped to pause, you'd immediately conjure up images of your first kiss. You'd go into great detail, in your imagination, about the time, place, person, perfume,
your
feelings. Not because I said two words,
first kiss
,
but because I paused and allowed you time to assimilate the information. If I said
first kiss
and
kept right on talking, I'd have you thinking about the next subject. Giving people time to
assimilate
what you have just told them is crucial."

"It allows you to mentally transport your client from where they are now to where you want them to be."

Harvey deliberately allowed
them
time to assimilate what he had just told them.

"Bill, you remember about two weeks back I told you about a Mr. Bob Bishman calling a number of times? Well, I did put him onto Max as you suggested but he's here right now, in the waiting room. He says he won't go until he speaks to you. He's extremely insistent."

"OK Jai, bring him in." Harvey put down the phone, and thought. He really didn't want to take on private clients in Ame
rica. He'd done years of
practice
and was feeling drained. But he knew persistent behavior when he saw it and he knew that if he refused to see this Mr. Bob Bishman that wouldn't be the end of it.

Jai knocked on the office door and entered.

"Mr. Harvey, this is Mr. Bishman whom I told you about." Jai showed Bishman into the wainscoted consultancy room.

"Is there anything else I can get you?
Coffee perhaps?"

"No it's all right
Jai,
we'll fix our own coffees, thanks. Please hold all calls, no
interruptions whatsoever. You know what to do." Jai smiled and left without saying anything.

"Make yourself comfortable. What can I do to help?" Harvey motioned Bishman to pull up a chair to the extravagant Australian Walnut desk where he was sitting and they shook hands over it.

Harvey found himself looking at a man
five feet seven inches tall and what you would call broad-shouldered and trim. He had a carefully clipped moustache, short brownish hair and the coldest expression you've ever seen.
Sort of intense.
He wore brown corduroy trousers, a light-blue sweatshirt and sneakers. He looked nondescript, an ordinary guy. He was smoking.

"Can I call you Dr. Bill? I know from what I've read in all the magazines that everyone does. I need your help." Bishman was not backward in coming forward.

"Well, I must tell you, as you probably
know
already,
I'm not really in the States to take on private clients. I'm here to make sure the training programs for our franchisees are in place and working properly, that sort of thing.
All somewhat boring really.
I even have a business manager, Max Hatfield, who does all the day-to-day running of the business and sells the franchises."

Harvey got up and filled two mugs with coffee from the hissing Cona machine.
"Cream, sugar?"

"Yeah, cream and four sugars. Thanks." Bishman took the coffee and lit another cigarette. Harvey pushed a heavy glass ashtray towards him.

"Yes I know that - I've already spoken with Max - but what I have is something a little different. I know I need help and I also know you're the only one who can help me."

"How do you know that?" Harvey said in amazement. He was trying to elicit a response.

"Well I've read some of your articles in various magazines, and lots of the things you write about and do for druggies and alkies, like me, make a lot of sense. I've done
a lot'a bad things
to a lot'a people. You know, really bad. I've done a lot of Mario's bananas and cannibal's resin, speed, LSD and booze. Huh.
Boogaloo.
I've been in and out of detox, mental
institutions,
I've had electric shock treatments and a frontal lobotomy. I've had all sorts of medication. I was well fucked-up, but I'm all right now. All I have now are these terrible depressions, headaches and nightmares, but I know you can cure me with your hypnotherapy treatment. I need a check-up from the neck-up."

"You've certainly been through a lot. Can I call you Bob? You're going to call me Dr. Bill, right. Tell me a little more about yourself and I'll see what I can do. Why don't you start at the
beginning.
"

"How long have I got?" Bishman was serious. He finished his coffee and lit up again.

"I don't know about you, but I've got the rest of my life!" Harvey smiled. He knew he was already in the thick of it, but there was something about this guy that he liked. He could tell that his new client had been through a lot and perhaps had a highly intriguing story to tell. Harvey was a connoisseur of human nature and
couldn't resist the out of the ordinary. Such is the thirst for knowledge.

"The first time I ever took a drink was
when I was fourteen years old and I drank a complete bottle of gin, chug-a-lug." He demonstrated by holding an imaginary bottle up to his mouth, tipping his head back and holding it there.

"I passed out for three days. My sister kept an eye on me. She told me my eyes rolled around in my head and I snored loudly and just slept for three whole days. Since that day, the one drink I've never been able to touch is gin, although I drink everything else. Gin makes me violently sick the minute I touch it.

"We used to drink and smoke dope and pop pills all day, every day. That was when I was
fourteen,
I'm now thirty-eight. We used to take bottles of liquor and beer up to the farmer's field at the back of my place and ride the pigs. We'd be as drunk as skunks and try to hang on to the fuckers for as long as we could. We used to get covered in shit and stuff but we just didn't care.

"One day we got hold of this kid and held him up by his ankles to shake him down for money, for booze. He only had a couple of bucks on him so we took him over to the Laundromat and put him in the spin dryer for about ten minutes. When we let him out he was all red in the face and crying. He ran
like hell." Bishman didn't smile or laugh. He just kept deadpan, his eyes bugging out of his head, those cold light-blue eyes.
Death eyes.

"One day we asked this bitch to give us money for booze, but she gave us a hard time. We
gave her a hard time. We slashed her tires and kept leaving dead rats on the back seat of her car and in her glove compartment.
Harder than you'd think to slash the tires of a car.
They're really tough. You need a bayonet. We'd take it in turns to phone her up and say her son was dead and leave messages
on
her answering machine to freak her out."

Bishman sat expressionless.
Smoking, talking, talking, smoking.
The ashtray filled up. The room was clear of smoke - luckily the air conditioning worked extremely well.

"Do you know what a serial killer is? Well I know quite a bit about serial killers. In fact I know there's the body of a five-year-old boy buried in a clump of trees not two miles from here
...
so I'm told.

"I'm not talking about the Hillside Strangler or Mack the Knife or The Boston Strangler, Henry Lee Lucas, Benny the Axe Man, or Melvin the Monster. I'm not talking about the ones you've heard of, the jerks who get caught. I'm talking about the professional serial killers who operate in the States today.

"All this stuff you read about in the newspapers is bullshit. It would frighten you, if you knew the truth. The newspapers will tell you, at any one time there are about one hundred and seventy serial killers on the loose and on an average they may kill about twenty or thirty people over a period of years. There are the jerks that get caught, like the Black Panther, Son of Sam, Peter the Pervert, John Wayne Gacy, The Goat Man - he only killed kids - Theodore Bundy, and the Driller Killer.

"The real serial killers don't get caught
and they operate on a simple basis. There's a figure-of-eight loop that goes across America. New York to Los Angeles with about thirty-eight States in between. Texas is t
he heart of the
figure-of-eight
loop. That's why Texas has the highest murder rate in America. They start there and end there. It gets double whammy, if you like.

"The serious killer keeps on the loop and doesn't stop. He's on the move continually and I can assure you there are about fifty of these guys on the circuit, and they have killed over a thousand people each, say over a period or ten or fifteen years. They don't get caught because they know the rules of the game. I'll tell you what the rules are.
Yeah, Boogaloo."