For several days and nights Clarence stayed
glued to his TV set. Countless cartoons, talk shows, movies and news reports
were without a single message for him. Then, one evening, it happened.
A news segment on animal rights activists
featured their spokesman, Sonny Barlow, showing clips of animal torture by
cosmetics companies. Rabbits were shown, strapped down while various cosmetics
were put in their eyes.. The purpose was to see if their eyes would be
damaged. If not, the eye cosmetics and shampoos would be safe for humans.
Sonny ended his short talk with, "One
would have to be from outer space to not know this is the willful torture of
helpless animals."
Clarence had watched in horror. He had not
imagined such cruelty. There had been cages holding cats in the same room. He
pictured in his mind his own cat in one of those cages, awaiting some awful
experiment.
As he thought about it he grew enraged and
tearful. He looked over at his cat and the cat looked back at him. His guides
assured him that those monsters would get around to his cat in time.
"But they won't", shouted
Clarence. "They're Martians, all right. The man said you would have to be
from outer space not to know it was torture. Of course they're from outer
space. So they're our next targets."
He discussed the matter through the night
with his guides. Clarence was willing to kill anyone connected with such
brutality. But it was not as simple as that. These were businesses, with
mainly Earth people duped into doing the dirty work. He could kill a dozen
employees without getting to one Martian.
So how to ruin the Martians' business? The
main culprit Barlow named was Tressallure. This was a hair cosmetic firm which
came out of nowhere to flood the TV with dazzling commercials. Tressallure was
owned by Vito Benno, a greasy slug said to have mob connections.
As Clarence and his guides discussed
Tressallure, one of the guides brought up Milton, the electro-chemist back at
the hospital. Milton had refused to use shampoo and would only wash his hair
with soap. He had assured Clarence that the pyrithione zinc in most shampoos
made the scalp a conductor. Space people could then beam their messages to
those zinc-coated skulls and cause those people to vote for politicians who
were actually space people up to no good.
"The best way to stop that is to make
people afraid to buy Tressallure", said Clarence to his guides.
"That would not only stop the Martian radio beams but would stop the
torture of rabbits and cats."
After more discussion they hit upon the
idea of buying two hundred bottles of Tressallure and substituting hair
remover for the shampoo. Clarence decided to doctor the two hundred bottles of
Tressallure with hair remover. That would cost maybe $2,000.
He needed nearly $1,000 so he loaded up
four pipe shotguns and went hunting for Martian muggers that night. With his
padding to rest the handle of the gun on, he looked sort of fat, and being
loaded down, a little drunk.
After a few blocks into the rougher part of
his neighborhood, he was approached by two blacks who saw him as an easy mark.
Clarence pretended to scratch himself and put his hand through the slit in his
jacket.
Neither of the two blacks even pulled a
weapon, thinking Clarence was that easy. When they stopped in front of him and
demanded his money, Clarence pulled out the gun, rested its handle on the
padding and fired. Sixteen .30 caliber pellets ripped into the throat of one,
nearly tearing his head off. Clarence quickly pulled out the barrel and
smashed it into the skull of the other.
He took his time searching the bodies on
the dark street. These two had been at work. He collected over $400. Since it
was now 10 o'clock, Clarence stayed out hunting. He no longer enjoyed it. He
had gotten so skilled at spotting, attracting and killing muggers it had
become boring.
The next morning newspaper headlines
screamed, "SHOTGUN VIGILANTE SLAYS 8 MORE!" The TV gave his night's
work full coverage. Commentators accused the police of laxity and demanded
troops to protect New Yorkers from the killer of muggers.
That afternoon Clarence walked to the drug
store and bought one bottle of Tressallure and one of a popular lotion hair
remover. It was for coarse, dark hair, supposedly the strongest. He had
intended to mix it half and half and so he smeared a generous helping of the
mixture on one arm and let it alone for five minutes. When he scraped it off
he was disappointed to see it did not work.
So much for that. He would have to use it
full strength. He then put the pure lotion on his arm and, sure enough, all
the hair in that spot came off at the roots after five minutes.
Clarence reasoned that since Tressallure
was a relatively new product, people would not know what to expect. They would
just rub it in like their regular shampoo, usually while in the shower, or
even over a sink. Then after a few minutes they would try for lather, of which
there was none, and rinse it out; along with their hair.
Clarence bought two hundred twelve ounce
bottles of Tressallure and four hundred six ounce bottles of the lotion hair
remover. This took him five days as he visited six hundred drug stores, mom
and pops and supermarkets in a ten square mile area. It cost him nearly all he
had, but easy come, easy go.
To avoid suspicion, although he could have
bought a dozen bottles without arousing comment, Clarence bought one at a
time. He was methodical to the extreme. He would buy a bottle, stick it in a
pocket in its sack with receipt and go on until front, back and jacket pockets
were filled. When he had six, he would go to a trash receptacle, find a dirty
sack and put the six bottles in it and stuff it down in the receptacle. When
he had five sacks of six bottles each, he would go back and collect them and
take the thirty bottles back to his room.
After twenty trips he set to work emptying
the Tressallure down the sink and refilling the bottles with the lotion hair
remover. He had bought a pair of rubber gloves at a pharmacy and was careful
to wipe off any fingerprints. He also made sure to put each Tressallure bottle
back in its original marked sack so it would go back to the store he bought it
from.
When he had the two hundred bottles filled,
he made the rounds, going into each store and putting its bottle or bottles of
Tressallure back among the rest, up front.
Molly Franklin was coming out. She expected
to see Todd Jordan at the ball this evening. He had twenty million and she
wanted it. Her parents had pulled a lot of strings to get Todd to the coming
out. She was pretty enough, but with Tressallure (she believed commercials),
she was a cinch.
She undressed and stepped into the shower.
The Tressallure had a different smell from most shampoos she had used, but so
what? She massaged it in, took the bar of Lady Beauty soap and commenced to
soap herself all over while the Tressallure worked its magic. She luxuriated
for several minutes while bathing then stood on one foot, then the other,
making sure she got between her toes clean.
Then she turned the faucet on full and bent
her head, eyes closed. She then directed the spray to he underarms and the
rest of her. As she rinsed out her eyes, she noticed the water coming up over
her ankles and begin to flow out under the shower door. She looked closer and
noticed the drain clogged with hair. She screamed.
Her mother fainted when Molly appeared in a
towel, shrieking hysterically. Only a few dripping wisps were left. "I
can't go", yelled Molly. "I don't even have a wig. Now that slut,
Angela, will get him."
Mr. Franklin examined the Tressallure
bottle and had his now recovered wife search out the receipt. That snot Todd's
twenty million was chickenfeed compared to what he could get from Safeway and
Tressallure.
By noon the next day an alert had gone out
over every radio and TV station. Within hours Tressallure was being taken off
the shelves of every store in the city. Then it was statewide. The networks
joined in and by that evening Tressallure was pulled from every store
nationwide.
Eighteen lawsuits were filed in the next
three days. Then the phenomena began. The networks had described the
substitution as a matter of course. Hundreds of persons around the country
were turning in bottles of Tressallure they had bought before the recall and
filing suits.
Anyone willing to lose his or her hair in
expectation of collecting big in court was claiming his or her bottle had been
spiked with hair remover. Even other shampoos were affected, as all one needed
was any shampoo bottle filled with hair remover, even without a receipt.
Within another week there was no shampoo of any kind for sale.
Vito Benno was hunted down by the media and
found in a massage parlor. His attorney was with him and nervously advised him
not to make any statements. Vito Benno waved him aside and shouted, "You
call this justice? I hire the best looking broads for my TV commercials, with
the nicest hair. I even hired a nigger teenager to tell those broads to shake
their bodies for him, like in the Revlon commercials. Who says I ain't got
class?" His lawyer left the room.
Then Vito Benno began to weep. He swept the
toupee off his head and used it to wipe his eyes. Then he blew his nose in it.
"Just because we blinded some rabbits those animal activist freaks gotta
go and put me out of business. I'll get them, see if I don't."
The next evening Sonny Barlow was found
shot dead. Everyone suspected Vito Benno but two women swore they were in bed
with him at the time. Vito Benno had mob connections but nothing could be
proven.
When his TV informed him of Sonny Barlow's
death, Clarence was shattered. He had caused the death of a human being! He
wept with shame and recrimination.
But he would avenge Sonny Barlow. Vito
Benno was a Martian and so would have to die. But how? Clarence did not know
where Vito Benno lived and supposed he would be guarded, anyway.
He would have to draw Vito Benno into the
open and in a situation where he could be gotten at without much risk. His
guides came up with a plan to burn Vito Benno's warehouse, thus getting him
into the open as a spectator.
But first, Clarence needed a weapon which
was easily concealed, not too noisy and disposable. One of his guides
suggested an ice pick. This was logical, since an ice pick would be silent and
would produce a small but deep wound. Clarence liked the idea but naturally
improved on it.
He went to a dime store and bought two
wooden handled ice picks and a packet of large fish hooks, size 5/0. When he
got to his room he tried to pull the picks from their handles. They were in
too tight so he put a knife blade alongside the pick and whacked it with a
pair of pliers. The handle split and he took the pick out. He then put a piece
of match stick in the slot so the pick would not go in farther than
three-eighths of an inch.
Next he bent back two of the fish hooks
until they broke. He used GOOP to glue their points onto the points of the
picks. Then he used more GOOP to glue the handles back together. He then
whittled the pick ends of the handles to within a sixteenth of an inch of the
pick. Thus, he had the absolutely perfect murder weapon.
At the hospital he had often discussed
surgery with Dr. Blount, a fellow patient and defrocked surgeon. Dr. Blount
had taken to searching for CIA electronic implants during routine surgery. He
had told Clarence how the body tissues tended to instantly close in around
wounds. Clarence also remembered how in war movies, a soldier often had to use
his foot on an enemy while withdrawing a bayonet.
The pick would stay in the handle but was
plenty loose enough to stay in a body after entering. Nonetheless, Clarence
put the pick point-up in his shirt pocket and the handle in his jacket pocket.
He then went to Central Park looking for someone to test it out on.
As he stopped to watch some children at
play, he heard a small voice at his side. "Hey, Mister." He looked
down and there was a little girl. He was amazed that he could see right
through her.
He called her to the attention of his
guides and was told that they could not see her at all. One even accused him
of hallucinating. Clarence was angered and protested that he did not
hallucinate. "What do you think I am, crazy?"
He turned back to the little girl and she said, "That man
over there on the bench did bad things to me and then he choked me."
So she was a ghost. Clarence had never seen
a ghost but did not doubt the child. Still, not one to overreact, he watched
the man the little girl had pointed out before taking any action.
The man was watching the children intently.
One of the girls called another little girl by name, "Margie". The
man stood up and approached Margie. "Margie", he said, "your
mother's been hurt and she wants me to take you to her."
The little girl burst into tears and asked,
"Is Mommy hurt bad?"
The man answered, "Pretty bad. So you
had better come along now." He reached out his hand and Margie took it
and the man proceeded to lead her out of the park.
Clarence had heard it all. He took the pick
out of his shirt pocket and inserted its end into the handle. He followed the
two a few paces and as he got alongside the man, he plunged the ice pick into
his side, below the ribs, with enough force to cause the handle to push the
flesh a couple of inches inward.
When the handle was pulled away the pick
stayed deep inside the body, held partly by the 5/0 fish hook. As the flesh
rebounded, it closed over the end of the pick. There was hardly any blood and
little appearance of a wound, especially since what wound there was was
covered by clothing.
Medics just coming on the scene would be
hard put to find the wound and it would certainly be fatal before any sort of
surgery could remove the pick. It had also passed through organs and
intestines, making dozens of holes which could not have been mended in time.
The man screamed, clutched his side,
staggered around for a while and fell to the ground writhing. Margie had no
idea of what had happened but stood apart, worrying about her mother. Clarence
stepped away unnoticed. The little girl had disappeared.
A small crowd finally gathered around the
man as Clarence stood and watched. The man could have been drunk, doped,
epileptic. There was no sign of an injury. One concerned comforter relieved
the man of his wallet. Another took his wristwatch. After a half hour, medics
appeared to take away the corpse.
Clarence was satisfied. On the way back to
his room, he went to a drugstore and bought a two-liter enema bag. Then he
called the Tressallure company. When the receptionist answered, Clarence said,
"Hey, Babe, I've got a load of Tressallure from Nevada and the bill of
lading got coffee spilled on it. I can't read the address. What's your
warehouse address?"
The receptionist rummaged around and
finally told him where the warehouse was. Clarence then took a bus to the
address and found it was an old warehouse down near the docks. He had expected
to need a cordless drill to make a hole in the wood or metal front to stick
the enema bag tube through.
He was lucky, since the warehouse, old but
sturdy, had several slits as wide as a half-inch. The warehouse was nearly
full of cartons of returned Tressallure. There was nothing else there, since
the product was put up by a commercial bottling plant elsewhere.
Clarence went back into his room and waited
until near dark before taking the bus again. This time he carried the enema
bag by a cord around his neck, under his jacket, filled with two liters of
gasoline.
There was no one around so he stuck the
bag's tube through a crack and pressed the bag. The gasoline squirted several
feet into the warehouse. Clarence made sure to ease up near the last so there
would be a gasoline trail up to the crack.
Then he lit a match, thrust it through the
crack and walked away. The two liters of gasoline made a glorious fire, which
would not be noticed for several minutes. He disposed of the enema bag.
Clarence then went to the nearest fire
alarm and set it off. He then went to a public phone and called the
Tressallure office. He expected an answering machine but someone was still
there. He reported the fire, saying he was with the Fire Department. He
suggested that Vito Benno should be notified and told to go to the warehouse.
Clarence sat in a nearby coffee shop until
the fire trucks arrived. Then he ambled back to make up part of the small
crowd collecting.
The firemen did not seem much interested in
Vito Benno's warehouse, probably because the plastic bottles in the cartons
were such good fuel. While they concentrated on keeping the fire from
spreading to the nearby buildings, Vito Benno was driven up. He and two
obvious bodyguards poured out of the limo and Vito Benno commenced to scream
hysterically at the firemen.
While the bodyguards looked around for
recognizable enemies, Clarence edged near and plunged the ice pick into Vito
Benno's side. As Vito Benno gasped, Clarence flicked the handle to the ground
and looked at his victim as would any bystander. Vito Benno clutched his side
and his bodyguards quickly looked him over for any signs of a wound.
His suit jacket showed no holes and Clarence told one of the
bodyguards, "This man's having a heart attack or a stroke or something. I
don't like his color. You shouldn't let him get so excited."
The bodyguards just scowled at Clarence and
half carried Vito Benno back to his car. That evening the TV announced Vito
Benno's death, speculating it was a mob hit. The anchorman explained that Vito
Benno had probably borrowed millions of dollars of mob money and could not
begin to pay it back. That sounded reasonable to Clarence.
Clarence then settled back to watch his
favorite TV evangelist, Brother John, the white shepherd of New York's Ebony
Baptist Church. Brother John was holding a telethon, beginning the next day.
He showed the large hall he had rented for the assembly of hundreds of
storefront pastors and politicians. If Jerry Lewis could hold telethons for
muscular dystrophy, he, Brother John, could hold a telethon for Jesus, to
bring the brothers together for a renewal of faith and faith offerings.
Brother John then launched into a sermon on
how the devil's servants would try to disrupt his telethon. Some would come to
the telethon as wolves in sheep's clothing. "You know who the devils
are," shouted Brother John to his TV audience. His meaning, of course,
was that some of the pastors and politicians might come but be less than
supportive. Brother John was subtly telling them that those who withheld full
support would lose his support.
Clarence heard a different message. He
imagined Martian infiltrators disrupting the telethon. So when Brother John
asked for volunteers to help set up the show and answer the phones, Clarence
decided to be a volunteer.
Onward to Clarence's next adventure...
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