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CRANKYBLANCA
CHAPTER TWO: Bad News in Crankyland
RBB [voiceover]: I sat there nursing my coffee, listening to Jason Cranky talk, and occasionally making a note or two. Every now and then, Cranky would pause to bring over a waiter to refill my coffee cup. I nodded silently. No need to talk when your client is spilling his guts, and that's exactly what Cranky was doing. It was a memorable monologue, and it would have caused a lot of the beautiful people in Crankyland to slink away, tails between their legs, if they ever discovered what he thought of them. I made sure not to react to some of his more pungent observations; it would have done no good, and I needed to keep him talking.
What Cranky had to tell me was stunning. I don't claim to have a full understanding of the relationship between Crankyland and the real world. Sometimes, I leave the law school where I teach and I take a walk, and it's as if I'm turning the corner and entering Cranky's Cafe Americain. Sometimes, it's just a matter of going to the computer center and logging into the website. However it works, that's the way it is. I don't ask too many questions about such things; I'm not in the mood for metaphysics even at the best of times.
I was aware that, every now and then, a Crankizen would announce that he or she had to bail out of the place, usually citing as reasons the pressures of work, or the crackdown on Internet play at work, or starting school, or sheer exasperation with the raucous goings-on. Sometimes I heard from such departed folks, sometimes not. Often I was just as glad not to hear from them; Crankyland had more than its share of people who behaved as if their psyches were warehouses full of boxes of slightly crumbled corn flakes. But now something nastier was happening, according to Jason Cranky: Those who announced their departures were turning up dead.
RBB: Dead? Where? How?
JASON CRANKY: Here, in Cranky's Cafe Americain, Professor. The bodies turn up in my office. Someone cuts their throats, but there's no blood, except for dried blood on the body, which means that they're killed elsewhere. But they're always left in the desk chair of my office. The coroner, Doctor Rochelle, tells me that the killer is an expert. Each corpse has been killed swiftly and, given the method, painlessly.
RBB: You said, "They." How many bodies have there been?
JASON CRANKY: Four so far -- The first one was Simon the Great. Then came Discord, Darksider, and gnosticdogma, in that order.
RBB [voiceover]: I remained expressionless. I had no problems with Darksider, who was a good guy; I hated the idea that he had been knocked off. Discord and gnosticdogma, on the other hand, were partners in creative harassment. They were well known as people who liked to engage in verbal mindfuckery, to push people's buttons just because they could. Their departures upset a lot of Crankizens, but they left me unmoved. But they didn't deserve to die. I realized that, if it hadn't been that the bodies were turning up in Jason Cranky's office, I would be a prime suspect. I still might be. And then there was Simon the Great, a notorious troll who postured as a backward child with an invincible ignorance and a determined need to butcher the English language, but whom I suspected of being a hyperintelligent shut-in with a sadistic need to torture others with blatant stupidity. Again, had the corpse not turned up in Jason Cranky's office, I'd be a prime suspect in that one, too.
RBB: Why haven't these deaths been made public?
JASON CRANKY: The police don't want to tip off the killer. Besides, they don't want to start a panic, and neither do I. They've said nothing to anyone -- not about who has been killed, or how, or where the bodies have turned up.
RBB: So the police are already in on it. Do they know you're hiring me?
JASON CRANKY: They do. Lieutenants JunkYardDog and zeppo weren't happy about it, but that's none of my concern.
RBB: Why bring me in?
JASON CRANKY: You know why. I want this to stop. The police act as if their hands are tied, or perhaps they just don't care. Either way, nothing is happening in this case. And that is driving me mad. What corpse will turn up in my office next? I can't sleep for worrying. But that's not the worst. I've had ... phone calls ... threatening phone calls....
RBB [voiceover]: His voice was beginning to break under the strain, and he kept wiping his brow with a handkerchief. I motioned over a waiter.
xyz: Yes?
RBB: Bring Mr. Cranky a tumbler of Macallan single-malt Scotch, straight up, right away. And bring a tumbler of ice water with it.
xyz: Right away, Professor.
RBB: When the Scotch gets here, I want you to sip it, and then take a sip of water. It cuts the edge and lets you savor the Scotch without choking.
JASON CRANKY: Why on earth would you presume to give me instructions on how to drink Scotch?
RBB: You have the purple complexion of someone with blood pressure high enough to give a blimp problems as it flies over you.
JASON CRANKY: Nonsense, I'm fine.
RBB: Just do as I say, and have respect for the Scotch.
RBB [voiceover]: The Macallan's arrived, and Cranky, glaring at me, followed my instructions.
JASON CRANKY: Oh, that *is* good. I am beginning to feel better.
RBB: Keep talking, big guy.
RBB [voiceover]: And so he did. He showed me a few crime-scene photos, taken by Doc Rochelle's favorite corpse photographer. The corpses were just as he had described them. I learned nothing from them, other than I had been right about Simon the Great all along -- he looked like the obese comic-book store proprietor in THE SIMPSONS -- and that Discord had a beard.
RBB: OK, what about those phone calls?
JASON CRANKY: Listen for yourself. I taped the latest one. There have been two, the first one after the third corpse and the second one after the fourth.
RBB [voiceover]: He reached into his pocket and produced a Sony Walkman, and I reluctantly donned earphones. I hated the damn things -- I called them life-support systems for people whose brains could not function without outside input. But I understood. Jason Cranky didn't want to risk spooking any of the people in the cafe that night. So, I listened carefully to the tapes ... and my blood ran cold.
TAPED VOICE: "Jason ... Are you there? I was hoping you'd be there. I enjoyed our little talk last time, and I couldn't resist calling you again...."
TAPED CRANKY: "Who *is* this?"
TAPED VOICE: "As I told you last time: My name is ... unimportant."
RBB [pausing machine]: He waited three beats. Movie fan.
JASON CRANKY: Shut up and listen.
TAPED VOICE: "Do you like your souvenirs?"
JASON CRANKY: "Souvenirs?"
TAPED VOICE: "They're a bit cold and stiff, aren't they?"
JASON CRANKY: "You sick bastard."
TAPED VOICE: "But I thought you'd appreciate my artistry. No blood in your office, and they didn't suffer. Oh, no, just the tickle across the throat as if from a feather. But it wasn't a feather, was it? [chuckle]"
JASON CRANKY: Why are you doing this?"
TAPED VOICE: "Oh, Jason, you already know. You delete threads, you oust people, you cut Crankizens off, you rule your little roost. Well, I'm going to rule you for a while, and *I'm* going to cut Crankizens off. And maybe, just maybe, I'll bring down Crankyland around your ears."
JASON CRANKY: "WHY?"
TAPED VOICE: "You already know the answer to that, too. Just because I can..."
RBB [voiceover] There followed a sound of diabolical chuckling, which in turn was followed by a click as the connection broke. I thought for a moment about the voice. Absolutely uninflected, precise, grammatical, and familiar. Then it hit me: it was Tom Hanks's voice. No need to use a voice distorter -- the killer was channeling his or her own voice through some sort of software that turned any person's voice into that of a major actor. I would think of the killer as "he" for the time being. Cutting throats was rarely a woman's method of homicide, or so my forensics books told me.
Cranky was staring expectantly at me. I figured I'd better say something.
RBB: Well. He gives you something to think about.
JASON CRANKY: You have to stop him, Professor. The police don't understand. They think it's an idle threat.
RBB: It's no idle threat.
JASON CRANKY: How do you know that?
RBB: He knew too much. He knew how they died. He knew that they were killed elsewhere. He knew that the killer tried not to mess up your office with blood. He's the killer, and he wants you to know it. He is going to try to dump more bodies in your office, and he will start doing something to spread the word. He means what he says, Mr. Cranky, and you're right to worry.
RBB [voiceover]: We haggled out my fee, and Cranky grudgingly agreed to the hefty retainer. He also promised to pick up my expenses on top of the generous roll of bills he would give me.
Then I sighed. I was committed, and I would have to begin by getting in touch with the police and smoothing whatever ruffled feathers they might have because I was stepping on their turf.
[end of chapter two...]
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