Slob

was tired and all. But I think that was him. I mean his size. He was huge. There can't be that many guys that big that look like that. Can there? I—'

'Edie. You're sure about all this now?'

'Jack, I'm not playing games. I almost didn't say anything but I had to tell you. I think that was him. Really. I bet it was him. Honey?' No response. 'Is it possible?' A long pause. She could hear him breathing. Thinking.

'Hell, I don't know.'

But he was pulling his pants back on as he told her he'd talk to her first thing in the morning. And at 011500 Eichord and three other armed detectives, plus two backup units of uniformed cops, plus a chief inspector, plus Lieutenant Arlen himself, were standing with their weapons drawn and staring down into the eery shadows of a submain, looking at the remnants of the killer's last feast, feeling icy fingers of dread reach up toward them in the flickering lantern light and flashlight beams and spotlights as they looked down into the den where the beast lived.

Eichord felt two things. A thrill, not exactly elation, but that sort of an energy spritz—and fear. He was afraid. A nervous tic was pulling at his right eye like a Bell's palsy attack, and he could feel the side of his face twitch as he stood in the middle of the street staring down into this vista of another world. And he wanted a real drink.

Leroy and Albert

You know how it is when the table sort of turns to rubber on you, and the windowpanes liquify. Well, that is how it was behind the green door of Dr. Geronimo's HERBS, ROOTS, DREAMS, CANDLES AND . . . POTIONS on the south side. The fat, black buck with feet unstable did not pound on the table for that very reason. When a table gets all rubbery, you can just about do good to hold on to the sucker and that was the case here. Everything was liquifying, rubberizing, moving.

It was either blood pressure, the dropsy, the whim-whams, an evil spell or curse, migraines, incipient tuberculosis, a severe hitch in the gitalong, or one of those cases of spofus sporium you read about. It could be the half tab he'd just done, some old hippy sunshine he'd smoked up somewhere, fuckin' hippies sell you any kind of shit, on top of all the gangster he'd smoked and that good sweet Boone's Farm he'd done put a hurtin' on.

Whatever it was it had Dr. Geronimo all queeeeasy Jesus I'm gonna lose it any minute, he thought as he saw the green door open and a man with spiky Martian-green-and-pink hair come slithering in.

'Oh, no. Lord have mercy omigoodness oh Sweet Jesus in Heaven I'm trippin' out baaaaaaaaaaad.'

'Hullo,' the Martian said.

'Ommma gowaamba, mumbo-jumbo, bopovauni—' It was the first incantation Dr. Geronimo could think of. Pure nonsense, but hell, maybe the Martian wouldn't know the difference and the fake curse would cause him to flee. 'Fepoapalula zawfram paradiddle oomgawa b'wana melloroony,' he intoned, waving his hands toward the Martian in the hopes of warding off the Evil Eye, voodoo hoodoo, and whatever bad jazz the Martian might try to lay on him.

'How do?' the man from Mars with the pink-and-green hair said pleasantly, liquifying slightly and waving as he dripped in the rubbery acid manner.

'I warn you extraterrestrial heathen slime, I am a fully ordained witch doctor of the Comanche Indians, licensed to kill by voodoo, and if you come any closer, I will put a curse on the entire planet from whence you come, not to mention any heirs and assigns you may have left on your Martian spaceship. So stay where you are oomala maxamillian shellaroony dilly gilavauni oomashabadoo,' still with the hands waving, fingers fluttering through the stale storefront air, warding off Martian badjazz.

'Hell, Dr. Gee, I ain't from Mars. It's only me, Woody.' The man with the spiky green-and-pink hair came a couple of steps closer.

'Damn you to creation, you dripping, poisonous, pukeface, I'll put such an incantation on you that your entire family will . . . Woody? Woody who?'

'Whatsa matter, Dr. Gee? J'a break your glasses or sum'thin'?' the man asked him.

'Ummm. Er, ah, hold on now just for a minute.' The room was beginning to solidify slightly, and a wave of nausea receded. The man named Dr. Geronimo steadied himself on the hardening rubber table and squinted at the apparition confronting him. A blurry focus sharpened and he could see that it was indeed a man with spiky pink- and-green hair but it was only Woody Woodpecker and not an evil further mucking Martian hit man.

'Woody, my main man. Er—uh, I was jes' jivin' witcha'—how's to it, brother?' he asked amiably, feeling his thumper palpitate with relief.

'Doin' fine, Dr. Geronimo, nothin' to it,' he told the man behind the counter, who was approximately the shape and hue of a cannonball. 'I need to ask your professional advice.'

'Axe away, my man,' Geronimo said expansively, as the rubber hardened.

'Well, I got me a girlfriend now. Well. Not a girlfriend exactly. It's May Seebaugh. You know May? From over on Wells?' May was a bag lady.

'I don't think I've had the pleasure.'

'A delightful flower. But to the point. Dr. Gee, I know you're a man of the world so that I don't have to feel shame at this admission, but sometimes, at a certain age, a man has problems with—' He trailed off as Dr. Geronimo surreptitiously attempted to glance at his watch, which was no longer dripping from his wrist in a Daliesque meltdown, but was hardening nicely into readable numerals.

'Urinary infections,' the good doctor helped him, 'prostrate problems, assorted plagues and social disorders, malfunctions, dysfunctions, nonfunctions— '

'I'm having trouble getting it up.'

'And an Afro-dizzy-act is in order. Well, Woody, you have, as they say, come to de right place. I have something so fantastic, so incredible, so foolproof, it would stiffen the member of a dead eunuch. It is the most secret, hush-hush Afro-dizz ever invented. It is called Alura.'

'How much is it?' Woody Woodpecker was fifty-seven and did in fact have pink-and-green hair. His real name was Albert Sharma.

'It ain't cheap,' said Dr. Geronimo, a.k.a. LeRoy Towels.

'Say what?' Woody Woodpecker was reasonably intelligent or had been prior to the pickling of his thinking apparatus in a variety of stimulants and depressants that included but was not limited to vodka, gin, tequila, paregoric, Ripple, pruno, White Tiger, Black Panther, Green Dragon, absinthe, Brut, Sterno, Chaps, Old Spice—the list is long. He had ended up with a partiality toward Mission Sweet Lucy and all he needed was a drink of men's room water and he stayed on a kind of semipermanent buzzer.

'Two hundred a cap,' the cannonball-shaped entrepreneur told him.

'Wheeeee,' Woody lamented, 'shit.'

'I know, my friend. But you have to understand, it's not like there was an unlimited supply. When these caps are gone, that is the end of the tune. This was the top-secret discovery of the Sexual Research and Development Unit of the CIA. It is called Alura, the letters standing for Autoerotic Lutenizing Reagent. Only a small amount of this was cooked up, for use by impotent spies so they could seduce women to get information. It'll make your tool so hard you can use it for a cat-scratch post. So two hundred for a cap of this magic is a bargain.'

'Wow,' said Albert Sharma, trying to figure out how the hell he could boost enough cassettes and shit to come up with two bills. Woody Woodpecker was the name he'd gone by for six, seven years since he'd been known as the Wood Man. But Woody Woodpecker seemed more appropriate, and it had a street rhythm so it stuck. Now he worked to the image, talked funny, told people his pecker was wood, stuff like that. Punks sometimes spiked his hair and the pink-and-green bit was a leftover from a recent Woodpecker do.

He was called the Woodpecker, and Woody, and before that the Wood Man, because he saw men in wood. This is what started Albert Sharma drinking in the first place—years ago. He could not look at a piece of wood without seeing faces. If you're a carpenter by trade, this can become a very unsettling experience, and one thing