Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Read online

  “This place looks like Arkham Asylum,” Robin joked.

  Manny laughed.

  “Job done, then. I'm going home to boink the wife. I mean suck her off.”

  Manny laughed so hard he teared up. “Will you stop?”

  “And he's having a party here next week? Can anyone spell ‘slaughter house?’"

  Manny took out a cigarette, tapped his silver cigarette case with it. “I'm thinking we should bring a house-warming gift – in case things get a little too chilling.”

  “Drew is going to think I'm capitalizing on a loophole in the ‘till death do us part’ clause.”

  “Bring her along as backup. No one's going to mess with a transvestite.”

  “That's transsexual, you bi-gender bigot.”

  “I'm just saying me and my .32 caliber are feeling a little insecure.” He pressed on the intercom at the gate.

  Hartman’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Come on in.” He buzzed them through.

  “Why is it psychos always sound friendlier than sane people?” Manny said.

  “They have way better mood therapy.”

  The Bullmastiffs sniffed them on their way in, herded them toward the path leading to the front door.

  “All this time my wife's been trying to clear a path for me, she should have gotten one of these dogs,” Robin said, marveling at the creatures.

  “Makes you wonder what else they're trained to do.”

  Robin did a quick count of dogs in his head. “Is it me, or are there just enough of these animals to eat us alive, and shit out the evidence before help got here?”

  Manny smirked. He had apparently come to the same conclusions through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Funny the things we can agree on.”

  ***

  After greeting Robin and Manny at the door, Hartman gestured them to a room more suitable for lounging. Robin noticed the professor wore a Sunrise Love beanie purchased off Telegraph Avenue, where Sunrise sold her hand-woven, hand-died stretch caps. The local cops knew most of the Telegraph Avenue crowd by name, as they were an invaluable source of intel when crimes were going down. That included Eric Falton, an eleven-year-old filmmaking savant who had created the YouTube documentary “The Venders of Telegraph Avenue.” Speaking with a narrative voice closer to that of a college grad in his twenties, Eric was responsible for first introducing Robin to Sunrise.

  As to Hartman’s taste in artwork, Robin noticed he sported a couple finds from Recology San Francisco. All their artwork was made of recycled garbage. Artists in residence had their gallery inside a warehouse right at the dump site, where they foraged for found art. Robin recognized the mannequin trailing plastic piping out her back which lay in strands along the floor, from the Recology exhibit. That catch was courtesy of Drew’s efforts at enculturation. Drew alone could afford the artwork, and had dragged Robin to one of the functions.

  Robin thought, if suspicions proved correct, Hartman may just be the most politically correct, likable psycho killer on the planet.

  Hartman sat in a burgundy leather wingback chair across from the two detectives.

  He gestured for them to sit, but Manny preferred to prowl. He scoured the room for anything that would give him a bead on this guy, noticed the books climbing the high walls. To him, they were just more authority figures trying to tell him what to do, how to live life. He couldn’t hide the expression of distaste on his face. Running his eyes over the intellectual achievement awards, he didn’t look like he recognized any of the awarding institutions. But he didn’t exactly flow in the same circles as Hartman. Maybe philosophers had their own equivalent of “Pulitzer” or “Nobel.” Hartman was either the real deal, really full of himself, or possibly both. MIT had awarded the doctorate in Philosophy; Manny’s “I’m impressed face,” indicated he recognized that name.

  Manny looked ready to dismiss Hartman as merely a bookworm when he noticed, through the sliding-wood doors to one of the adjacent rooms, a chem lab. “Please tell me that’s your distillery. Finally, a law I don’t mind someone breaking.”

  “I’m not as interested in laying waste to myself, detective, as I am in bringing myself back to life.” Hartman cracked his knuckles. “I create the vitamins and elixirs that keep me going.”

  “Really? And what kind of knowledge would that take, doctor?” Manny asked.

  “A little of this, a little of that.”

  “Biochemistry, biophysics, immunology, genetics, and about a hundred other sub-fields tucked inside each of those,” Robin offered helpfully.

  “Nothing you can’t come by with subscriptions to a few good journals,” Hartman said.

  Manny played with his wedding ring. “You are well read, doc. There’s no denying that.”

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, gentlemen?” Hartman asked.

  Robin cleared his throat. “Doc, we have you on tape trolling the nightclub last night where two young ladies were killed.”

  Hartman chuckled. “I can get a little dark. But no, I'm afraid I'm more the suicidal type.”

  Manny read the suicide note in the typewriter, flipped through the earlier renditions of it stacked next to the machine. “Too afraid to pull the trigger? They say it's the coward's way out. I don't know. Seems like it'd take a lot of guts to go through with it.”

  Hartman perked up, intrigued perhaps by what he hoped was the warm soul of a fellow philosopher. “I suppose living with cowardice does require more courage when you think about it,” he said. “Much harder to crawl out from under a pile of negative emotions.”

  “I'm with you there,” Manny said, still looking around. The old Victorian was intricately adorned, like a fine aged wine that took on more character with each passing year. More than that, Hartman was no stranger to interior decorating; he had a real eye for mosaic patterns and how the most complex picture puzzles could go together in ways that were pleasing to the eye.

  Manny brushed his fingers over some more book titles: Philosophy texts, classic literature, enough scientific fields to give someone specializing in nomenclature a hard time, psychology, sociology. Did this guy know what he wanted to do when he grew up? Robin thought, taking a stab at what was going through Manny’s head. Manny noticed the spine of Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking? wasn’t in alignment with the others. A personal favorite? Robin wondered.

  “Before they lock you away,” Robin said, hoping to throw Hartman off balance, “I have a problem at home maybe you can help me with. My wife's… decided to become my husband.”

  “Thinking clearly through that kind of hormonal imbalance can't be easy.”

  “Please, she's the sanest person I know.”

  “There's a clue in that for you.”

  “Come again?” Robin said.

  Hartman crossed his legs as if to kick his mind into high gear by forcing blood away from his groin. “Her mind's pickled by hormones brought on by the change. She’s lucky if she can string together two or three coherent thoughts. Yet she stays the course. Just goes to show you, Robin, it's not what's on our minds, it's the distance we can get on them that makes us who we are.”

  “I might have to take one of your classes, doc.” Robin glanced at Manny. “I've been trying to teach this one here as much, only I'm not quite so elegant.”

  “Robin, please don’t ask the suspect for personal advice,” Manny said. He stared into one of the other adjoining rooms, visible between the sliding wood doors that were capable of disappearing into the walls. The décor didn’t blend well with the rest of the house; it was a little too heavy metal.

  “Detective Breakman is less inclined to digress than you are,” Hartman said. He tracked Manny’s eyes to ascertain what he was gleaning about him from the clues in the décor. “For Manny, release comes in tuning out as much of life as possible, everything but what's relevant to the investigation.

  “Doing so gives him a sense of control in a chaotic world.” Hartman poured scotch for the three of them. “Gives meaning to his life. Tak
e away his coping device, and he'd have to face his own fears of meaninglessness.” Hartman handed Robin a glass. “…Which he has aplenty, because he never comes up for air long enough to question his motives for doing what he does.”

  Hartman’s manner had turned breezy and upbeat, just short of giddy, now that he was enjoying his favorite hobby, tuning up other people’s minds. He talked with his hands. He was full of life, betrayed only by his pale clammy skin, which gave him the appearance of a body at the morgue.

  “You got his number, all right,” Robin said. “What about me, doc?”

  Without missing a beat, Hartman said, “You feel clumsy and out of step with the world. Like you just don’t fully get the rules of the game. That’s okay. Game changers seldom do.” He squeezed his shoulder for reassurance. “Besides, why fit right with the world when you can just change it?”

  Robin smiled, no longer able to peel apart how charmed he was by Hartman from his rising sense of revulsion. He slammed down the drink, then hammered down the glass, angry that someone could read him better than he could read himself.

  He had been covering for Manny while he explored Hartman’s chem lab a little more thoroughly. Now that Hartman was in less of a mood to be put off, Robin redoubled his efforts.

  “Did you kill those girls or didn't you?” Robin asked. “Because honestly, I'm thinking you'll make more progress with the inmates at Sing Sing than a hundred psychologists.” Robin eyed his surroundings. “And at this stage of your life, I bet leaving your mark means a lot.”

  “Nice sales pitch, Robin,” Hartman said, more entertained than unnerved. “With a bribe so perfectly suited to me, I'll have to give a false confession some thought.”

  Robin felt a tense silence saturate the air. It was not unlike a blanket of positive ions settling on the northern slope of a mountain in the Himalayas to suffocate anyone trapped in the valley. As soon as the thought struck him, he derided himself for leaning too heavily on analogies; in his mind, everything connected to everything else, was somehow related. It made him open minded, and ensured his thinking was flexible in the extreme, but it also made it easy to lose sight of the trees for the woods.

  “Oh, to hell with it,” Robin blurted. “Anyone who can help me deal with my wife can be a psycho, for all I care,” he added mockingly cavalier, still hoping to throw Hartman off balance. “Like I can afford a shrink.” He stowed his notepad.

  “We're all mad hatters, Robin,” Hartman said. “We’re insane as a testament of our resistance to God. Surrender is the only real cure. The further from our mission in life we get, the madder we get.”

  “And what mission is that, doc?” Robin asked.

  Hartman plucked one of his crazy pens from his pen bowl. They all had jack-in-the-box heads on them with the jack out of the box, swaying and laughing madly. He stuffed it in Robin’s jacket pocket. “Do what you’re best at, whatever makes your heart sing. No reservations, nothing held back.

  “The world is chaos, and life is meaningless without total surrender to the life mission we’ve been given. We, by ourselves, cannot give meaning to our lives.” As Hartman spoke, his eyes hunted Robin’s nonverbal cues for additional intel. He sucked the data in through a stream that was far more powerful than the one flowing from his lips.

  Robin was hang-jawed. “Doc, you gotta meet the wife. She is going to love you. She sucks me into these conversations all the time. I'm embarrassed I can't keep up with her. I got blessed with a humble mind.” Robin realized he’d dropped out of character, surrendered some of the hardboiled behavior he’d absorbed osmotically from hanging around Manny. He cursed himself silently for letting up the pressure. If he hoped to be a better detective, he’d better start with being a better actor.

  “Nonsense,” Hartman protested. “None of us is worthy in the first leg of our journeys.” Refilling his glass, he said, “That's why the hero's quest is ultimately a spiritual calling. Whatever God wishes you to do – which is no different than your heart’s innermost desire – know that you will do through Him. If you need another hundred IQ points, follow in the path he gives you, and you will get them.”

  “Manny, are you getting any of this?” Robin squeaked, losing even more control of his voice. “Because he just gave us everything we need to be all we can be in less time than it takes us to say, ‘You're under arrest.’"

  Manny fiddled with his wedding ring; Hartman was getting to him the way his deceased wife would. He forced a smile. “I like him too, Robin. Doesn't mean we won't have to shoot him.”

  “You must come to my farewell party. We could use that as the way to get the party rolling,” Hartman replied drolly.

  ***

  The front door to Hartman’s home closed behind them, Manny asked, “So what do you think? Complete psycho?”

  Robin said, “Complete psycho. There's no way you can be that smart and not be totally screwed up. Look at me, I'm half that smart, and half as screwed up. You're two-thirds that smart, and two-thirds as screwed up. Do the math.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “That just confirms what I know; I always seem to go for the strange ones.”

  Manny chuckled. “Last I checked, depth of character wasn’t a sin—though it may be in his case.” He lit a cigarette. “You see that gym in the adjoining room? The good doctor keeps himself in trim.”

  “Gym, or medieval torture chamber replete with instruments of self-flagellation?” Robin replied. “Hard to tell the difference from where I was standing.”

  “Maybe from his perspective, too,” Manny said.

  “They say an ordinary person under sufficient duress can incur an adrenaline spike that gives him the strength of ten men. How much stronger you think this guy might be?”

  “And that’s not factoring in his vitamins.” Manny puffed his cigarette.

  They eyed one another, and came to a decision.

  “I guess we'll be attending the party after all,” Manny said.

  “Packing more heat than a missile, I presume.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  They took a step down from the raised stoop.

  “I hope we’re wrong. I like him.”

  “Here we go again.” Manny shook his head. “I know this game. You drop your guard with that insistence on seeing the best in everyone—only to get your ass lit on fire. When you gonna learn, Robin?”

  He and Robin kept their eyes peeled for the dogs, contemplating where they’d gone to, and if it was safe to step all the way off the stoop.

  They descended to the trail, which opened a line of sight to the dogs. “Leave it to Hartman’s hounds to be more interested in bettering themselves than guarding the property,” Manny said, watching the animals stretched out on the ground, entranced by the neighbor’s big-screen TV. The gangster movie featured Jimmy Cagny and blaring Tommy guns.

  “If you’re so convinced he’s our guy, why don’t you take him in now?” Robin asked.

  “Inside of ten minutes that son of a bitch had me charmed. And you want me to put him before a jury?”

  “Don’t suppose it would hurt to have some actual evidence against him, besides the fact that he looks big, bad, and scary,” Robin said.

  “A court might say the fact he’s willing to drag out his inner monster for the world to see makes him healthier than the rest of us, who repress such things from conscious awareness.”

  As Robin watched Manny sally forth ahead of him, he couldn’t help wonder what such repression had cost Manny – had cost all of them.

  He made a mental note to download the psych profiles and personal histories on each of Hartman’s students to his cell phone, ahead of Manny asking. He was going to Hartman’s farewell party armed in more ways than one.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Robin and Manny stopped for a drink at In Your Face on the way home from Hartman’s. The hole-in-the-wall bar offered the warm embrace of dark shadows and the additional security blanket of minds too fried from a hard day’s work to muc
h register what they said or did.

  A flyer for MAD NOISE had found its way onto the floor near the entrance, perhaps in a desperate hope to lend it some traction against the puddle of vomit. The band’s chaotic and charismatic sounds were the brainchild of Kahlil Sullivan, an English graduate student. “These buskers have brains” was quoted from the SF Weekly write-up and their Facebook link was displayed prominently on the flyer. It had to have blown in like a leaf on the wind, as no one in this blue collar dive probably gave a damn. A shame; Robin thought they were pretty good. Being as they performed on Berkeley street corners for spare change, they were one of many cultural infusions afforded the ninety-nine percent.