Fantastic Metropolis

Pickle had often watched Felencrest who had a cloying fondness for the word allegedly and a punctuating grin he used to transition in and out of commercials. He thought the obituary much too sentimental, probably written by one of the station’s public relations flacks. Maybe it was entrenched innocence that killed Felencrest, as the obit author noted, though everyone Pickle interviewed thought the victim a pretentious prick who’s dream was to host a more animated version of Nightline if Ted Koppel ever quit. In Pickle’s private opinion, Felencrest was more a mannequin than the bomb-rigged dancer who signed him off. But, asshole or not, nobody deserved to die like that.

Pickle got no breaks in the Felencrest investigation until an expatriate Iranian bicycle repairman, Rizza Sulman, was heard boasting about his role in engineering the lethal device. Under questioning the suspect claimed he was only trying to impress a Syrian belly dancer who worked at a Jersey City after hours club. The girl was stimulated by intrigue, Sulman said, and his little lie resulted in the greatest night of his life.

Media exposure is the terrorist’s best hope. If Forrest Felencrest had exploded during his live telecast, one can only imagine the conscious and unconscious damage to multitudes of viewers. At least we were spared that hellish vision. It is as if Felencrest knew that an off-screen explosion would be more considerate of his audience, though far less of a ratings magnet. He died during Sweeps Week, this man who, in his final hour, refused to live by the numbers. Fade out. Cut to a commercial. Life goes on. He would want it that way.

An FBI search of Sulman’s Newark apartment turned up many suspicious items including specialized tools and sophisticated electronic components but no explosives. Also, the place was decorated with pictures of Iran’s deposed Shah Palevi and Elvis Presley, not exactly a shrine to the fierce Ayatollah who lived to humiliate The Great Satan, affluent cesspool of lust, greed, bad jokes and dirty dancing.

While Sulman’s lawyer argued that the tools and electronics were used for building illegal pay cable converters, not weapons, and that the bicycle repairman was, in fact, “a royalist to the core,” the defendant entered a guilty plea with the understanding that the State Department brokered a deal in which he would soon be traded for a CIA operative held hostage somewhere near Damascus. The case was closed. So far as Pickle knew, the Arabs never came up with so much as a torn carpet for a Sulman exchange. His guilty plea bought him nothing but hard time. That left questions, serious questions to mull during more sleepless nights.

It was on a fine morning following one of those endless nights that a heavy lidded Pickle passed a church on Fifth Avenue that announced a coming Sunday sermon on its bulletin board: God Is Not A Serial Killer. He stopped in his tracks to ponder that one. Having turned 104, Pickle had become more concerned with God’s nature than he had been in his first hundred years. But instead of any religious insight or inspiration, what came to him was the first suspicion that the eight murders that gave him his reputation and left him a chronic insomniac might be linked.

It made no sense, there was no quick connection between any of those high profile crimes except that they were high profile. But the idea stuck fast. Was there a serial killer out there who struck, like clockwork, at least once every decade? What began as an impossible speculation became Pickle’s obsession. Instead of flailing himself with doubts, he thought about shaping a remote possibility into a tangible target. Cogitation was better than flagellation. Pickle got back his appetite along with a sense of purpose.

Taking the ninth step caused acute vibrations in Pickle’s temples and behind his eyeballs.

He slapped his head until the buzz subsided. The first time he’d experienced that symptom was in the executive suite of Flatland Press back when Ronald Reagan was President.

APRIL 16, 1986
BOOK SLAMS SHUT ON MEDIA MOGUL
PUBLISHER’S LIFE ENDS COLORFULLY

Ridley Smythe, the outgoing CEO of Flatland Press and architect of the company’s historic merger with Uberdingen Verlag, the German conglomerate, was found tattooed to death. Smythe’s rigid body had been adorned with elaborate artwork in the Art Nouveau tradition. Winged ladies, peacocks with flaring tails, exotic beasts and tangled vines dripping dew made his flesh into an Aubrey Beardsley retrospective…