CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Honey? Peter?” Teri let herself in their front door and closed it quietly behind her. There was a faint groan from the living room. She flipped on the ceiling light as she went in

Peter blinked and sat up on the couch, naked. “Mmpf,” he grunted. “What time is it?”

“About four a.m.,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve got a headache,” he mumbled. He had the godfather of all headaches, actually. He got up and stumbled in the direction of the kitchen. “And my throat feels like sandpaper,” he said. He filled a glass from the faucet and drained it, and filled it again.

Teri paused to take off her gun and holster and toss them on a chair before she followed him. She watched him from the kitchen doorway. “Did you make it to the Castro tonight?” she asked.

Sipping his second glass of water more decorously, Peter took a minute to consider that. He must have, hadn’t he? He vaguely remembered being with Lee—and crowds of people in funny costumes, and there was this giant owl....

“Yes,” he said. “Of course I did.”

“I didn’t see you there,” she said.

“Oh, you know how those mob things are,” he said, turning toward her. “You could be three feet away from someone and not get a glimpse of them. Did you have any trouble?”

“Just one dust up, with some gangbangers,” she said. “Oddly, they were the same ones I told you about before, remember, they had that brush in with Drag Thing a few nights ago. They call themselves The Moes. You didn’t happen to see them while you were there, did you?”

He considered that for a moment. “No, I didn’t. What happened? Did they make trouble?” he asked, glad to deflect attention even briefly from himself, at least until he had a chance to collect his thoughts. The mention of Drag Thing had made him uncomfortable.

“The Moes? I’ll say. It was totally crazy, really. They were staging, like, some kind of live sex show right there on the sidewalk, with one of the guys taking on a whole pack of dogs. Can you imagine that? It was totally disgusting. And at the same time, one of them was trying to pimp this little gay boy.”

“It certainly sounds bizarre,” Peter said.

“It was, you can’t imagine it,” Teri agreed. “Anyway, the pimp resisted arrest and he managed to get hold of Jake’s revolver and fired it into the crowd before we got him subdued. Unfortunately, I had to see to another disturbance and by that time the other two had gotten away. We’ve got the one, though, he seemed to be the ringleader, and with all the charges, attempted murder and prostitution and the live sex show, he’ll be out of circulation for a long while.”

“That’s good news,” he said. “I remember those boys now.” A peculiar expression drifted over his face and his voice changed subtly. “They were very naughty, those three. The ringleader especially, Mister Moe. Naughty, naughty.”

“Peter,” Teri began, giving him a puzzled look—he seemed peculiar suddenly. But before she could say what was on her mind, the living room door suddenly crashed open, and Janet Jackle burst into the room with a mighty leap.

“Uh oh,” Teri said, and ran for the chair where she had left her gun, but Janet, with her incredibly long legs, got there before her in two quick strides.

“Easy, now,” Janet said, snatching Teri’s gun off the chair and brandishing it. “Just do as I say, and no one will get hurt.”

“Who are you?” Teri demanded.

“I’m Doctor Janet Jackle,” the intruder said. “Don’t you remember me?” She gave a coarse laugh—a cackle, really.

Teri stared at her. Janet Jackle? That was the woman who had attacked Caleb Wald outside the Copa Club the other night—but this wasn’t her, surely. This nightmarish apparition was eight feet tall, maybe taller...only...Teri stared hard at her. There was a resemblance...it was like remembering someone from a dream. It was all so unreal. Teri shook her head. She didn’t know what to make of it. Everything was so confusing.

“What are you doing here?” she asked instead. “What do you want?”

“I want Drag Thing,” Janet said.

“Drag Thing?” Teri said, more bewildered than ever. “Why are you looking for him here?”

“Uh, what makes you think we would know anything about Drag Thing?” Peter asked.

“I saw the lady cop let him go earlier, in the Castro,” Janet said, “And I got suspicious, so I followed her back here, and hung around outside to watch, and I saw Drag Thing climbing the fire escape to the roof, so I know he’s in the building somewhere. And I put two and two together, and this is the logical place. Where are you hiding him?”

Teri laughed. “You think we’ve got Drag Thing stashed under the bed? Go ahead, take a look around, why don’t you? She’s a big girl, it would be kind of hard to hide her, don’t you think?”

Janet looked around the room. The cop lady was right: it would be nearly impossible to hide that monstrosity anywhere. She went to open a closet door anyway and took a cursory glance inside, but without much hope. Nothing there but dresses—incredibly tacky dresses.

There was nothing in the bathroom, either, or the bedroom. There just was no place that would conceal someone as enormous as Drag Thing. She paused, scratching her head in puzzlement. Grimalkin approached to give her a measuring look, and sniffed and strolled away, disinterested.

Seeing the cat, Janet gave an anguished sob. “Oh, what a beautiful pussy you are, you are, what a beautiful pussy you are,” she cried.

“Grimalkin?” Teri said. “He’s a very friendly cat. You can pet him, if you want.”

“What I want is Drag Thing,” Janet snarled. “If he’s not here, then he must still be on the roof. Come on, we’ll go there.” She waved the gun in the direction of the open door.

“But why do you need us?” Teri asked.

“I may need bargaining chips,” Janet said. “And for crap’s sake, you put on some pants,” she snapped at the still naked Peter, “I don’t want to have to watch your dingus flopping about like that. It’s disgusting.”

“There’s nothing disgusting about my Peter,” Teri said shortly.

“It’s okay,” Peter said. “It’s probably kind of chilly on the roof anyway at this hour of the night.” He found his robe and quickly slipped into it.

“Let’s go,” Janet said impatiently. She shepherded them out the door and down the hall toward the elevator. Teri kept one eye on the gun, watching for an opportunity to try to wrest it away from her, but Jackle was too careful to keep them at a distance and the gun trained on them.

The door to the Kravitz’s apartment swung open as they neared it and Gladys Kravitz appeared in the open doorway, a suitcase in her hand.

“I don’t care how you explain it,” she said over her shoulder in an indignant voice. “I saw what I saw, Abner. That man with the shaved head had his hand up—well, I’m not going to say it aloud, but you know where he had it.”

“I’ve told you and told you, he was looking for something,” Abner said from inside the apartment.

“A cheap homosexual thrill, I should say. And I didn’t see you struggling, if I may say so.”

“This was a matter of national security,” Abner said.

“Right,” she fired back. “Like the president cares about your bodily functions. We have suppositories in the bathroom, you know.”

“This was dynamite.”

“They’re very powerful suppositories!”

“He was a Homeland Security agent, Gladys. You have to let a Homeland agent do what he wants to you, it’s the law. It wasn’t like he was doing it for fun.”

“He seemed to be enjoying himself well enough.”

“He thought I had a stick of dynamite stashed there and he was looking for it. I’ve explained that a dozen times. He apologized after he’d had himself a thorough search. I was just cooperating, is all. I swear to you, I didn’t enjoy it at all, honest, and I’ll bet he didn’t either. You can’t blame a man for being thorough. Not when it’s Homeland Security.”

“Very thorough, it looked like to me.” She gave a muffled sob. “Oh, Abner, what you’ve done is bad enough, please don’t make it worse with feeble excuses. A stick of dynamite? And that Lee Appel person put it there, I suppose. And what was he doing in our apartment anyway, I’d like to know? With an eight foot drag queen. They told me quite plainly they were here to visit you. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t invite them? For a little private party? A round or two of ‘Lets-hide-the-dynamite,’ perhaps? I’m a registered nurse, remember, a professional? I’ve heard all about this sort of disgusting nonsense, let me tell you. We get it in ER all the time. Vibrators and cucumbers and candles—but dynamite is a new one, I’ll have to say. I’ll give you credit for originality, at least.”

She stepped into the hall, and found herself suddenly face to face with Janet Jackle. Gladys let out a bloodcurdling shriek. “Abner, Abner, it’s the woman with the pussy,” she screamed. “And she’s got no pussy.”

“Gladys,” Abner started to say, but Gladys was gone. She dropped her suitcase and galloped down the hallway at a furious pace, screaming repeatedly and loudly. They heard her footsteps pounding down the stairs.

“I’m never coming back, Abner,” she shouted as she fled. “You can play hide the stick with all the men in the world, for all I care.”

“A nervous type, I’d say,” Janet commented dryly as the footsteps faded into the distance.

“Gladys is a bit high strung,” Peter said.

The elevator arrived and the door swished open. “Listen, Doctor Jackle,” Teri tried to say, but Janet cut her off.

“Save it,” she snapped, motioning them into the car. “Get in. We’ve got a Drag Thing to find.”

They took the elevator up and emerged into the darkness of the roof, a gloom alleviated only slightly by the faint light of the moon struggling through the nighttime fog.

“Over there,” Janet said, pointing them to a shadowy stretch against the wall of an abutting building—the most likely place for anyone to hide. She followed them, but there was no sign of Drag Queen in the darkness.

All at once Peter staggered and put a hand to his head, and gasped. “Oh, golly,” he said.

“Peter, what’s wrong?” Teri asked anxiously, putting an arm about him.

He groaned. “I feel dizzy all of a sudden,” he muttered, leaning heavily against her.

“Spare me any tricks,” Jackle said. She looked around in frustration. She had seen Drag Thing climbing up the fire escape no more than half an hour ago. He had to be here. But where?

“Wait here,” she told Teri and Peter, “And no funny business.” She returned to the patch of moonlight, peering behind some empty crates that had been abandoned, probably years earlier.

“I’m okay,” Peter told Teri. He moved away from her and leaned heavily against the dusty brick wall.

He didn’t look okay, though, to Teri’s thinking. And he was breathing heavily, practically panting. She looked away from him and stared after Doctor Jackle, and wondered briefly if they could get to the elevator before she spotted them.

Peter was ill, though, she doubted he could move fast. Plus, Janet Jackle had the gun, and she looked insane. There was no telling what she might do. Teri was in great shape, but she had serious doubts about getting into a physical tussle with Janet Jackle. She was the biggest woman Teri had ever seen, too, if you discounted Drag Thing—she was scarcely recognizable as the same woman she’d met before. And that hair, like a tangle of copper wiring. What had happened to change her so?

Janet circled the roof slowly. There were any number of places where someone might hide, though most of them did not look as if they could conceal anyone as large as Drag Thing. She had to be here, though. She had definitely come up the fire escape, and if she hadn’t gone downstairs, then where was she?

“Oh, Doctor Jackle,” a strange voice called from the gloom where she had left her hostages. “Yoo hoo.”

“Who’s there?” Janet demanded, whirling about in the direction of the voice. “Is that you, Drag Thing?”

Before she got an answer, however, a different voice said from the opposite side of the roof, “So, it is you, Doctor Jackle. I didn’t recognize you before, but I ought to have known. It was Alley Thing, wasn’t it, that changed you so? You took the formula.”

Janet whirled in that direction, to see a strange apparition step into view—no, it didn’t step so much as hop into view, like a bird walking, an eight foot tall goose with dingy white wings and feathers, and enormous yellow bird-feet.

“Who are you?” Janet demanded, staring at him. The feathers, the wings, the yellow bird feet—it looked like the costume Caleb Wald had worn in the Castro earlier in the evening, but this strange creature was twice Wald’s size. Even his beak was bigger, monstrous in fact.

His laughter came out sounding like, “Hoo, Hoo. Don’t you recognize me, you silly dyke?” he asked.

She peered closer. “It...it is you,” she gasped. “Caleb Wald. But what happened to you? And why are dressed like a goose, with that enormous beak?”

“It is not a beak, and I am not a goose,” he shouted angrily. I am....” He paused for dramatic effect and spread his wings to their fullest. “I am The Owl.”

“The formula,” Janet said in a burst of understanding. “Oh, yes, I get it, Alley Thing—but, how? I destroyed it all.”

“The cat,” he said. “That evil She Cat of yours. It was her claws. She scratched me when she attacked me in the Castro, and her claws infected me. I owe you for those scratches, dear Doctor Jackle. The beast might have killed me.”

“And I owe you, too,” she started to say, but she was interrupted.

“Oh, it’s the naughty man again,” Drag Thing said, sashaying out of the blackness at the other end of the roof. Teri trailed after her, looking completely bewildered.

“What—what happened to Peter?” Teri demanded. “He’s vanished, and you...where did you come from? I didn’t see....”

“So, Drag Thing,” Janet Jackle said with a triumphant cackle, “We meet again, and this time you won’t escape me, you bitch.” She raised the gun and pointed it at Drag Thing. “I vowed to my darling Melissa that I would kill you for what you did to her. Thanks to you, she lies now in a coma....”

“It was not Drag Thing who did that to her,” Drag Thing said indignantly, hands on hips. “Drag Thing does not assault women, she rescues them, from naughty men.” She lifted one hand and pointed a beer bottle sized finger at Caleb Wald, “Drag Thing rescued your friend from that naughty man right there. He was hitting her.”

“Aha, I was right to begin with,” Janet cried, instinctively recognizing the truth of what she’d just heard. In her heart, she had known all along that Caleb must somehow be to blame. “Wald, you bastard, I should have....”

She started to turn the gun in The Owl’s direction, but she was not quick enough. He lashed out with one great feathered wing and knocked the gun from her hand. It clattered to the rooftop and vanished into the darkness.

“Yes it was me who sent your bitch girlfriend to La-La Land. I should have put you into a coma, instead,” The Owl said, “But it’s not too late yet to correct my mistake.”

In one mighty hop, he leaped across the space separating them and seized Janet by the throat, choking her violently. She gasped and struggled, and managed to break free of his deadly grip, but when she pulled away from him, she tripped on one of his chicken-feet and fell to the rooftop, hitting her head hard. The blow stunned her. A kaleidoscope of stars exploded before her eyes.

The Owl lifted one webbed foot, intending to deliver a vicious kick to Janet’s head, but Drag Thing intervened. She took two giant steps forward and smacked The Owl mightily alongside his tufted crown.

“Stop that, I say, you naughty, naughty man,” she ordered.

“You fucking fruitcake, I should have killed you when I had the chance,” The Owl cried. Forgetting Janet Jackle for the moment, he threw himself instead at Drag Thing and they began to wrestle violently, stumbling this way and that.

At first, it seemed as if Drag Thing had the upper hand, but to her surprise and dismay, she suddenly found herself beginning to tire. A moment or two before she had felt as strong as Super Woman, and now, her strength was rapidly fading. She was growing weaker by the moment. She could see that she was no longer a match for this avian evil. Great Dame Edna, what was she to do? She struggled to find some advantage, some weakness in The Owl’s frightening strength.

They staggered close to the edge of the roof. Teri could see that The Owl was getting the better of the match. Without quite understanding why, she had an odd sense that she must help Drag Thing, and she began to search in the darkness for the fallen gun. Nearby, Janet sat up, shaking her head dazedly.

“The Owl is overpowering Drag Thing,” Teri said, “We’ve got to save her. Help me, please.”

Drag Thing’s strength was definitely abandoning her. She suddenly realized what was happening: she was changing again, turning back, into...she didn’t know what, exactly, someone other than herself. And The Owl was so strong. Drag Thing sank to her knees, The Owl’s hands at her throat. She felt herself pulled, dragged toward the edge of the roof.

“Let’s see if the Tinker Bell can fly,” The Owl said. He shoved Drag Thing halfway over the edge of the roof. Dangling in the air, Drag Thing sought desperately for something to hold onto, to save herself from being thrown to the street ten stories below, but her grasping hands could find nothing. The Owl bent over her, tugging at her shoulders. Drag Thing felt so weak...she was helpless to save herself. Another moment, and....

There was a sudden roar and something flew through the dim moonlight and with a powerful leap, landed on The Owl’s back.

“Missy Hyde,” Janet cried, scrambling to her feet and running toward them.

The force of the giant cat’s leap sent The Owl tumbling over Drag Thing, and into empty space. He and the cat seemed almost to linger suspended in the air for a moment, clinging to one another, and then they fell. The Cat emitted a sound suspiciously like a yowl of triumph and The Owl gave a screech of horror. As he fell, he flapped his wings vainly, hoping at the last that perhaps he really could fly.

* * * *

Ten stories below, a weeping Gladys Kravitz had just told a repentant Abner she forgave him. “But, Abner,” she added sternly, “absolutely, no more dynamite sticks, I don’t care where they’re hidden.”

“Gladys, I swear to you,” he said in a solemn voice, crossing his heart, “If such a thought ever crosses my mind again, may a ton of bricks fall from the sky upon me.”

* * * *

“Missy Hyde,” Janet screamed, but Owl and Pussycat were both gone.

Teri ran to the roof’s edge. It was not Drag Thing dangling there, in imminent danger of falling as well, but her beloved Peter.

“Peter, my darling,” she sobbed, dragging him back to the safety of the roof.

“Teri,” he gasped. He scrambled over the parapet and fainted dead away.

“It’s all right, honey, it’s okay,” Teri crooned, cradling him in her arms. It wasn’t until minutes later that she realized Janet Jackle had gone, vanishing into the night.