We went through file after file, piling them on the long table between the velvet-covered couches. They were all variations of the same thing. Some went far enough back that the big three wouldn’t have been old enough to be city council members. Just strange kids who had certain nasty proclivities in common. My guess was a lot of that stuff had been kept in a shoebox until they became rich and powerful.
The oldest files had obviously been cherished. These contained drawings of squirrels, dogs, and cats with ropes around their necks, their eyes marked with Xs, their tongues drawn unnaturally long. What made it so goddamn creepy was how silly it all was and at the same time as earnest as a genital wart.
Also in the drawings were images of Creosote Johnny of the wide smile and sharp teeth, forever squatting, holding his penis like a priceless object.
In later files there were greening Polaroid snaps. In others, more sophisticated photos. The most recent file drawers were larger and contained labeled home movies.
At some point in the later photos, the crude triangular table appeared. There were shots of the three and unidentifiable others sitting at the triangular table. A male child, eleven or twelve, also was shown sitting at the table, and later photos revealed the child had aged and grown to enormous size and was none other than Jack Jr., maturing into a cold, calculating son of a bitch.
In the early photos, the big three ranged from youthful to middle-aged, and the later ones showed they had arrived at the Methuselah district.
The men were dressed in the fashions and hairstyles of the photographic moments: suits with narrow lapels, then broad ones, ties fat and skinny, white belts and mod scarves, cream and lime-green leisure suits, cowboy boots and Italian shoes, short hair, long hair, mustaches and beards and, finally, back to clean-shaven. Kate Conroy appeared with varying hairstyles, wearing poodle skirts, miniskirts, tennis shoes and sensible shoes, go-go boots, high heels, and black flats with all the personality of an afternoon in New Jersey. Frosted lips and ruby lips, mascara thick as a second coating of wall paint, then little to no makeup.
Other photos showed them looking at something, and the something was Creosote Johnny. The figure had been placed in front of a chair. The chair changed, but the person behind the chair twisting a garrote was consistent for a long time in the photos. It was Jack Sr.
In a few photos, when the victim was a child, Kate Conroy was twisting the garrote. Early shots of her when she was quite beautiful were somehow more disconcerting than later photos. A strange contrast of this woman in a miniskirt and jacked-up boots tightening the garrote, the expression on her face akin to sexual gratification.
The occupants of the chair changed, of course. Black. White. Male. Female. Young children, young adults, middle-aged, and old. In a couple of photos, I noted some who had been seated at that triangular table had been demoted to the big chair and the garrote.
The expression on Jack Sr.’s face and, later, Jack Jr.’s as they twisted the garrote was equally as orgasmic as Kate Conroy’s. A look of someone having temporarily been invited into a heaven filled with sadists and torturers, given a seat among all the dark angels from the beginning of time.
The faces of the victims were less rapturous. They were obviously drugged, which would, of course, make them easier to handle. Their eyes bulged; their tongues, dark and swollen, stuck out of their mouths like stuffed socks. Their chests were expanded, the toes of their shoes were curled like claws.
In the files, all of their names were listed. These would be those who had been assigned insurance policies they had never paid for and were totally unaware of owning. Sacrifices to Creosote Johnny. The council, a club of ritual killers, had transformed their existence through imagination and greed. They were warped proponents of free enterprise and the American dream. They were the worst manifestation of the American dream.
They were among the self-chosen ones who made the soup, and the rest of us were boiling in it while being told we were merely warm, that there was a God in heaven and all was right with the world, when in truth, we existed only to be ladled into our masters’ bowls and consumed.