I was over at Sam Hellerman’s house because I believed it was the best place to explain my ideas concerning lawsuits, the sadistic structure of reality, and my General Theory of the Universe. It seemed like a bad idea to discuss such matters when Little Big Tom was liable to break in at any moment saying “Let’s hear some more of that Jesus Proust, boys.”
I had been building what I thought was a pretty good comprehensive case against Matt Lynch, Paul Krebs, Mark McAllister, Rich Zim, Mr. Teone, Mr. Donnelly, the Hillmont High School administration and student body, the Santa Carla Unified School District, the State of California, and the United States of America for conspiracy, murder, grievous assault, violent misuse of a public school band instrument with intent to maim or kill, educational malpractice, extortion, censorship, racketeering, obscenity, torture, discrimination, civil rights violations, human rights violations, and crimes against humanity.
Now, as my friends looking back from the future mists of time will know, Halls of Innocence barely scratched the surface of the greater conspiracy I’ve tried to outline here. According to Halls of Innocence, all “Mr. Cabal” did was put a few pinhole cameras in the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms and walk around saying disturbing things like “Get to class, young lady—I’ll be seeing you later!” Not that that isn’t accurate, or disturbing enough on its own, but it’s the stuff beneath the surface that truly matters in the case.
My apologies to those who already know all this from my previous extremely clear and easy-to-follow explanations. I know I’ve been over it before and you’re all saying, “Yes, yes, we know all that, you’ve already made it abundantly clear and presented the case with utter and complete persuasiveness and coherence, so why bother to rehash it now?” Hey, I said I was sorry, didn’t I?
Anyway, for those who have missed my p. e.’s: the key to the whole sick, twisted affair was the Catcher Code, a creepy encoded square of slanted text, in backwards French, that reveals the remote origins of Mr. “Cabal” Teone’s criminality, as well as his connection to my dad, going back to when they were both students at Most Precious Blood College Preparatory in San Francisco in the sixties. As the code and its associated materials indicate, the young Mr. Teone, known at the time by the acronym Tit, had already been involved in creepy perverted skullduggery at that school. (“Skullduggery” means illicit or underhanded activity. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve digging up any actual skulls, but it could, and in the case of Mr. Teone, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did.)
For reasons not yet clear, Mr. Teone had also arranged for the fake suicide of a fellow student named Timothy J. Anderson, otherwise known as the Dead Bastard. Later on, when the grown-up Mr. Teone had become the assistant principal at Hillmont High School, he returned to his old perverted tricks. But my dad, now a police detective, had known too much, and Mr. Teone had murdered him, staging the murder as a fake suicide just as he had done with the Dead Bastard so many years before. Then, when the songs we played at the Battle of the Bands seemed to indicate that I knew too much as well, Mr. Teone tried to have me killed too, delegating the task to a group of ultra-normal teenage subhuman replicant thugs. How he would have made a tuba wound seem self-inflicted had this attempt on my life been successful, I cannot say, but I’m confident he would have managed it: Mr. Teone’s depravity and ingenuity had few limits, if d. and i. mean what I must assume they mean.
Mr. Teone had done more than just set up cameras, and he hadn’t acted alone. He had sold his illicit videos on the underground market and had recruited like-minded normal students to help with the operation by setting up their classmates to be unwitting stars of the videos, and enforcing the silence and cooperation of the student body and administration by means of violence, subterfuge, and intimidation. To the extent that this silent cooperation amounted to participation, the conspiracy went right to the top, which was why I ultimately named the United States of America in my indictment.
Underlying it all was the sadistic structure of society and its organizing principle of Normalism, reflecting in turn the sadistic, essentially evil structure of reality itself, i.e., the Survival of the Cruelest and the Dumbest at the Expense of the Nice, the Decent, and the Moderately Intelligent. But I couldn’t very well indict the universe. Or could I? No, I had to draw the line somewhere, and for the purposes of my lawsuit, I had elected to draw the line at the United States of America. The universe could wait.
“You don’t really know what a lawsuit is, do you?” was Sam Hellerman’s response after I had given him this brief outline of my plans.
“Well, no,” I replied to the response, after a brief pause. “I guess I don’t.” But, my eyes implored, you do. Or failing that, somebody does. “That’s why I’m asking.”
Sam Hellerman did seem to know a bit about lawsuits, as I had anticipated, but he was hardly encouraging. I guess I’d thought of it like a court version of a citizen’s arrest, where people do something to you and you catch them, take them to court, get to tell your story about how bad what they did was, and get lots of money from them, and then they go to jail.
“So let me get this straight,” said Sam Hellerman, simply for the sake of reveling in my absurdity rather than from any true desire to get anything straight. “You want to do a citizen’s arrest on the United States of America.” Well, yes, I did. After all, it was largely their fault.
Sam Hellerman wasn’t even sure I could file anything or sue anyone without a parent or guardian doing it on my behalf. They look at your age on the form, and if you’re not at least eighteen, they throw it away without reading it, just like they do with your assignments at school. And according to Sam Hellerman, you can’t bring a lawsuit against someone just because he’s a bad person. If they ever caught Mr. Teone, it’s possible I could be a witness or give some evidence in the criminal trial, and maybe even get money in a separate action if I could prove I had been injured. Which wouldn’t present much of a problem. But to hear Sam Hellerman tell it, the opportunity to put my centipede on the stand was not likely to come about. As there were no criminal charges against the school, or against anyone but Mr. Teone himself, there would be no trial unless they caught Mr. Teone, who was probably safely in South America by now, living as a gentleman farmer with a new identity, protected by former Nazis and the Venezuelan government and other bad guys like that.
Such was Sam Hellerman’s view. He really made it seem like it wasn’t worth doing at all. Moreover, I got the impression that he didn’t particularly care for the idea of my doing it. Well, his mind was on other matters, like Jeans Skirt Girl and the publicity for the Teenage Brainwashers, it’s true.
But the most disheartening thing of all was Sam Hellerman’s dismissive attitude toward the Catcher Code. This was galling, because my General Theory of the Universe as it applied to Mr. Teone and the Catcher Code was largely based on the analysis of Sam Hellerman himself, presented in the immediate aftermath of my hospitalization. In fact, I had been hoping for a little more clarification from him on certain points that were still extremely fuzzy and confusing. But as I said, he just waved it all away.
“Forget about this,” he said, jabbing a disdainful finger at the Catcher Code and the assorted secondary documents I had neatly assembled in a binder, some of which he himself had produced in his Sherlock Hellerman phase. “It’s all circumstantial. It doesn’t prove anything.”
Well, that’s not what you said when you explained it all to me just a month ago, counselor, I said in my head. But what I said, in words, was: “Well.”
I snatched the polyethylened Catcher Code square and secured it in my jacket pocket, because it looked as if Sam Hellerman might grab hold of it and tear it to pieces before my eyes. Such was his newfound disdain for the Catcher Code. But the Catcher Code meant a lot to me. The least I could do was ensure that it be treated with the reverence it deserved.
“Bathed lately?” I asked in words, when my wrinkled nose and raised eyebrow proved unequal to the task of posing the question in a way Sam Hellerman could understand.
His aroma was particularly biting on this day, and it was interfering with my powers of concentration.
Sam Hellerman raised his arm and sniffed his armpit, nodding as though satisfied with the results. I suppose that was a kind of answer. Sam Hellerman came with several drawbacks, obviously, and here was yet another, and by no means the worst of them, was how I chose to look at it. You take your geniuses as you find them.
Of course I wanted a second opinion on the legal matter. It took over an hour of pleading and cajoling along with a bit of outright whining to persuade Sam Hellerman to allow me to present the matter to his father. After all, Herr Hellerman was an actual lawyer. Moreover, as the story of The Secrets of Women Revealed had seemed to indicate, he had once been one of us. He might have clawed his way into normalcy, but he certainly hadn’t been normal at our age. Perhaps there was still, buried in that dark, villainous, normal shell, a spark of humanity that could be kindled into a generous, helpful flame. Sam Hellerman wasn’t buying it, but one of many important lessons I’d learned from Amanda is that the easiest way to get people to do what you want is to make them feel that just about anything would be a relief if only you would shut up for five minutes. And though I am certainly no great talker, this I endeavored to do, with, as it happened, complete success.
“All right, all right,” said Sam Hellerman at last, in the tone that I imagine the bullied boys of yesteryear used to use when saying uncle. He coughed and suppressed a shudder. “It won’t be nice, though. He’s not a nice guy. He can melt the skin from your face with a single glance.” But I was undeterred. If I wound up with a bit of melted face skin, so be it, was my attitude.
There was a long silence. This gave way to another, even longer silence.
“You’re going in too, right?” I said, just making sure.
Sam Hellerman looked at me, startled. He hadn’t considered that to be part of the deal. But he reluctantly and shudderingly agreed. Ultimately, it seemed, Sam Hellerman would do anything to help out a pal. Even talk to his own father. That meant a lot.
There were several more long, uneasy silences, till we finally heard Herr Hellerman’s car snap, crackle, and pop its way onto the gravel of the Hellerman Manor driveway. Sam Hellerman recommended we give him twenty minutes to settle in with his predinner martini before attempting to solicit an audience with him.
“Make it thirty,” I said, blanching slightly and mindful of my mom’s own after-work cocktail schedule.
In response to Sam Hellerman’s discreet knock, we were invited into Herr Hellerman’s study. Herr Hellerman was at his large, unnaturally tidy desk, a martini glass before him in its center. He waved us forward, and then made a “have a seat” gesture.
“Now,” said Herr Hellerman pleasantly enough. “What can I do for you young men?”
“Tom has a, a legal question matter, sir, a legal legal, a legal …” That was the best Sam Hellerman could do under the circumstances. My heart went out to him.
Herr Hellerman turned his skin-melting eyes on me.
I stood up and gave him a brief summary of my lawsuit plan, with some nervousness but thankfully no stuttering. I displayed my centipede and my documents, including the Catcher Code square, and read the list of indictments as clearly and as distinctly as I could, beginning with conspiracy and ending with crimes against humanity. I realized halfway through the reading of this list that I didn’t have a specific question. I just wanted it to happen somehow.
“So,” I ended a bit lamely, reseating myself. “What do you, you know, think, and whatever?”
Remember that string of uneasy silences I referred to just moments ago, when we were waiting for Herr Hellerman to arrive? Well, that was nothing compared to the uneasiness of the silence that followed the delivery of my comprehensive indictment of Normalism in the thoroughly unsettling presence of Herr Heinrich Hellerman, Esq. Sam Hellerman was twitching. I was willing my face not to melt, long ago having failed in my initial resolution to retain eye contact with Herr Hellerman, surely the most unnerving entity I’d ever encountered at such close range.
His eyes behind their steel-rimmed spectacles darted methodically from one of us to the other, back and forth, lingering longer each time.
Finally, he spoke.
“Get out of here,” he said.
Well, you can bet we got out of there, scrambling over our chairs and each other and whimpering like drowning kittens, I mean, like drowning kittens seem like they might have whimpered if I’d ever drowned any.
“Satisfied?” said Sam Hellerman when we had fled to safety, his voice sounding almost “Crimson and Clover”–y, that is to say, shaky.
Well, “satisfied” wasn’t exactly the word, but for better or worse, I did have my second opinion. “Get out of here” says it all, really. And if nothing else was clear in this notoriously murky world, it was this: Herr Heinrich Hellerman had no concealed spark of humanity waiting to be kindled into a flame of warmth and generosity; he was, on the contrary, normal through and through. It was a bit sad, but mostly simply alarming, because if it could happen to Little Hitler Hiney Hellerman, it could happen to anyone. Even us.