Grimoire Diabolique

The sun in the window blinded him. Tipps didn’t want the answers most cops wanted—he didn’t give a shit. He didn’t even care about justice. Justice is only what the actualized self makes it, he reflected. Tipps was obsessed with philosophy. He was forty-one, never married, had no friends. Nobody liked him, and he didn’t like anybody, and that was the only aspect of his exterior life that he liked. He hated cops as much as he hated bad guys. He hated niggers, spics, slant-eyes. He hated pedophile rings and church coteries. He hated God and Satan and atheists, faith and disbelief, yuppies and bikers, homos, lezzies, the erotopathic and the celibate. He hated kikes, wops, and wasps. Especially wasps because he himself was born a wasp. He hated everybody and everything, because, somehow the nihilistic acknowledgment was all that kept him from feeling totally false. He hated falsehood.

He loved truth, and the philosophical calculations thereof. Truth, he believed, could only be derived via the self-assessment of the individual. For instance, there was no global truth. There was no political or societal verity. Only the truth of the separate individual against the terrascape of the universe. That’s why Tipps had become a cop, because, further, it seemed that real truth could only be decrypted through the revelations of purpose, and such purpose was more thoroughly bared in the spiritual proximity to stress. Being a cop got him closer to the face that was the answer.

Fuck, he mused at his desk. He wanted to know the purpose of things, for it was the only way he’d ever discover his purpose. That’s why the Mr. Torso case fascinated him. If truth can only be defined on an individual stratum via one’s conception of universal purpose, then what purpose is this? Tell me, Mr. Torso.

It had to be unique. It had to be—

Brilliant, he considered. Mr. Torso was making effective efforts to avoid detection, which meant he was not pathological, nor bipolar. The m.o. was identical, painstakingly so. Nor was Mr. Torso retrograde, schizoaffective, ritualized, or hallucinotic; if he were, the psych unit would’ve discerned that by now, and so would the Technical Services Division. Mr. Torso, Tipps thought. What purpose could there be behind the acts of such a man?

Tell me, Mr. Torso.

Tipps had to know.

««—»»

Lud always ’ranged ta meet ’em out in the boonies, with phony plates on his pickup. Old lots, convenience stores an’ the like.

“Oh thank God I can’t believe it’s true,” yammered the blueblood lady when ol’ Lud passed her the fresh, new critter. The critter made cute goo-goo sounds, its pudgy little brand-spankin’ new fingers playin’ with his new mommy’s pearl necklace. She was crying she was so et up with happy. “Richard, give him the money.”

Lud scratched his crotch sittin’ back there in the back seat of this fancified big lux seedan, one of them ’spensive kraut cars was what he thought. But the gray hairt guy in the suit gave Lud a bad look. Then, kinda hezzatatin’ an’ twitchy, this fella asked, “Could you, uh, tell us a little bit about the mother?”

She’s a torso, ya dipstick, Lud thought. An’ it was my spunk preggered her up. But what’choo care anyways? I got’cha what ya wanted, ain’t I? Jiminy Christmas, these rich folks!

“I mean,” the suit said, “you’re certain that this arrangement is consentual? I mean, the child wasn’t…abducted or kidnaped or anything like that, right?”

“No way this critter here’s kitnapped, mister, so’s you’s got nothin’ to worry about.” Then Lud felt the fella could use a reminder. “Acorse, no questions asked is what we agreet, weren’t it? Like ya said in yer ad, conferdential. Now if yawl gots second thoughts, that’s fine too. I’lls just take the little critter back and yawl can sign back up at the ’doption agency, a’course if ya don’t mind waitin’ like five er six years..”

“Give him the money, Richard,” the lady had out in a tone’a voice like the devil on a bad day. Women shore did have them some wrath now an’ again. “Give him the money so we can take our baby home! And I mean right now, Richard, right now!”

“Er, yes,” mouthed the new papa in the suit. “Yes, of course.” And then he passed ol’ Lud an envelope full ’o hunnert’ dollar bills stuffed like ta the tune of twenty grand. Lud shot the folks a smile. “I just knows in my heart that yawl’ll raise yer new critter fines an’ proper. Don’t ferget ta teach ’im ta say his prayers ever night, an’ make shore he’s raised in the ways of The Man Upstairs now, ya hear?”

“We will,” said the suit. “Thank you.”