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by Eckhard Huelshoff, November 27th 2000
Lepus hated New York.
Being in this awful city was one of the moments where he had to admit that he definitely was a kid from the countryside. A Hillbilly, that's what the drill sergeant in boot camp had called him: "Private Hillbilly". Ah, wonderful memories. Lepus always smiled when remembering those days in '65. He had entered the corps as a naive farmers' kid from Alabama and had left boot camp as a deadly weapon. The idea of boot camp in perfection.
And now this weapon sat on a bench in East River Park feeding pigeons with poisoned crumbs of bread, clad in black, wearing his sunglasses. He had to kill time before his prey would arrive at La Guardia. The park was full of people, most of them tourists. Two fat ladies in their late 30s, probably sisters but definitely tourists from some useless Midwest state, kept on lingering near Lepus. They were obviously talking about him, he noticed, pointing at him once in a while. Then one of the ladies took a deep breath and approached him:
"Mr. Jones? Tommy Lee Jones? Ehm, Sir, would you be so kind to give us an autograph?"
Lepus was amused. It happened from time to time that people mistook him for the actor. He even had to admit that he felt a bit flattered. He had enjoyed "Men in Black", especially the bits of truth in it. And - as usual - without saying a word he signed whatever they wanted to have signed. But then something happened he always tried to avoid: One of the fat ladies smiled "Cheese", her sister started to hug Lepus and a photo was taken. They thanked him, giggled like teenage girls and continued their sightseeing tour."Fuck!", Lepus hissed. Photos were unacceptable. He quickly got up from the bench and followed the women.
They did not notice.
And Lepus started to grin.
He was a hunter and now he had a prey he could kill time with before the woman and the lunatic would arrive in the big apple.
He wouldn't waste bullets on those obese chicks, this was a job for his knife.
Or even just his bare hands.
Lepus grinned.
He would have enough time to decide how he would kill them until they arrived in their motel...
__________________________
Just in the moment when Adolph Lepus was smashing the heads of the two spinsters from Iowa with a fire extinguisher, Martin Arnold awoke from bad dreams in his lousy apartment in the South Bronx.
He lay on his dirty mattress, piles of dishes and empty cans of beer covered the floor around him.
Arnold got up and went over to start his old record player. Judas Priest, always a good way to wake up. He saw his face in the broken mirror and took a long glance at his face.
It was the face of an old man. He was an old man. 52 years old. But he still wore his - now greying - hair long, dressed in dirty jeans and on most of his t-shirts were the names of some rock'n'roll band.
And he had worked with many of those bands.
Arnold had been a roadie, for nearly all of his adult life. For many years, the best of three decades, being a roadie had provided him with the two great loves of his life: Rock'n'Roll and Drugs.
The business had changed in the last years though: cleaner, less Drugs and even less Rock'n'Roll.
Anyway: His life on the road had ended abruptly about ten months ago. He had worked for N'Sync. Sure, this was complete and utter crap, but they paid well.
Unfortunately the tour manager had surprisingly opened the door of the truck just as Arnold was receiving a blowjob from a 14-year old girl whom he had promised an AAA-pass for her services.
Bad Luck.
He had lost his job and the chick had been sent home without her backstage pass.
Poor girl.
And Arnold was still pretty confused. In the good old days his behaviour would have been absolutely acceptable.
He was still the same, but the world had changed.
O tempora, O mores.
He had returned to his hometown, New York, spending all his money on drink and drugs. He did not find a bloody job, which did not really surprise, since he didn't even seriously try to find one.
But then, about 2 months ago, he got a job, and a new mate: The Lizard King.
Just as Arnold was recovering from a nine day drinking spree, Jim Morrison had knocked at his door, ordering him to go to 96th and East 5th, knock at the green door and to ask for a job.
First, Arnold had been pretty surprised that a dead rock star was trying to help him find a job, but then he found out that the job was both simple and well-paid: Once a week, every Friday, he had to go to a certain statue in St. Paul's Chapel, to see whether a mouth had appeared in the statue's palms. And he was paid 1000 bucks for this. 1000 dollars a week!!!
And every Friday night, Jim would come to his apartment, asking for the result.
Sometimes he knocked at the door, sometimes he was just there. And always Arnold told him that there was no mouth yet and then they would open a bottle of cheap whiskey and sing some songs from the good times, and once in a while Sid or Janis or both would come to join their singing. And last week Elvis had come over. He appeared as the fat, old Vegas Elvis and left as the young one from the fifties.
Today was Friday.
And this was a special Friday. Today there had been two obscene gaping mouths in the blessing hands of virgin Mary's statue.
The bathroom door opened and Jim entered Arnold's living room.
Arnold was surprised.
Jim was fat and he had grown a beard. And obviously he had taken a bath: He had a towel wrapped around his wet body. In his left hand he had a bottle of gin. The Lizard King seemed worried.
"Tell me, Martin! What did you see?"
"The mouths have arrived."
Jim took a large gulp from the bottle.
"It seems that the time has come, Martin."
Jim emptied the bottle.
_______________________________
Meanwhile on board United Flight 305 to Buenos Aires Hardigan felt sick. The weather over the Caribbean was terrible, he had had too many drinks and the film sucked. "Anna and the King". He had hoped that he might be able to make the film at least slightly amusing by changing to the Spanish channel, but no, Jodie Foster was still pretty annoying.
He rang for the stewardess. The sign on her uniform identified her as "Mariah".
She was a real beauty, a buxom latina, D-Cups, Hardigan guessed. This was better than Jodie Foster, Hardigan thought. Yummy.
"How can I help you, Sir?", she asked smiling.
"Do you have an aspirin, Mariah? I've got a hell of an headache."
"Sure, would you like...."
Mariah did not finish her sentence, she was interrupted by three men storming into the first class, two of them carrying H&K MP5 K submachineguns. The third just carried a 9mm pistol and a hand grenade and shouted with a slight German accent: "Achtung, Leute! This is a hijacking! Keep quiet and everything will be fine. By the way: You can call me Torsten, which is of course not my real name. But I am from now on the Commander of this aeroplane!"
Torsten was tall and slim, nearly skinny, in his late twenties with short black hair and eyebrows that had grown together. He grabbed Mariah and together they disappeared in the cockpit.
Hardigan could hear shouts from the cockpit as well as from the other areas of the plane.
"So there must be more than just three of them", he thought. A woman across the aisle started to sob hysterically. One of the thugs hit her directly in the face.
"Halt's Maul, Schlampe!"
Then `Torsten' appeared again, still holding Mariah.
"I just had a pleasant talk with the pilot of this vehicle. We have decided that our new destination will be Windhoek in Deutsch-Suedwest-Afrika."
He hesitated for a moment.
"Ach, Carsten, would you be so kind to hold our grenade for a while!?" He threw the grenade over to the guy who had just beaten the elderly lady and who caught the weapon without any problem.
"Now, meine Damen und Herren," `Torsten' continued, "I guess I have to do something to make certain that you have to take me seriously!"
Saying this he got a jack-knife out of his boot, opened it and, without any further hesitation, cut Mariah's throat. Gargling she fell to the floor spoiling the carpet with the vast amount of blood that rushed from the terrible wound.
Some women started to scream, but `Torsten' silenced the passengers: "Ruhe, bitte! Calm down, please! I would not appreciate to have any more casualties!"
Mariah's gargling had stopped. `Torsten' touched her with his boot, checking if she was really dead. Then he glanced at his weapon, licked the blood from the steel and put it away.
He cleared his throat.
"By the way, meine Damen und Herren. Who of you gentlemen is Mr. Hardigan? Herr Hardigan, would you please step forward? You are carrying a document that I am very interested in!"
Hardigan started to throw up
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