Pain Killers by Jerry Stahl Page B

Hitchens.”
    Mengele basked in the attention, his mustache gleaming from his own spittle. “What is the Rapture but divine genocide? The only difference between Jesus and Hitler is that Hitler showed up. And instead of a fiery lake we had the ovens.”
    “Dude,” Jimmy the white Rasta interrupted, “no disrespect, but Jesus had way better hair.”
    Mengele angled a glance at Jimmy. The white Rasta blanched. He didn’t need to know who the old man was to be scared. The old war criminal’s eyes radiated something they did not have words for. You could only feel it. And
yet
…
    Beholding Mengele, I was struck less by the banality of evil than its chattiness. Mengele had thoughts he thought were important. He talked like he was standing behind a podium—or at a train siding, lecturing a captive audience.
    “The Third Reich is a story the new Germans don’t want to dwell on. Because it happened. The Rapture is a story the evangelicals do nothing but dwell on. Because they
want
it to happen. It’s not the Final Solution, it’s the grand finale. How will six million compare to that holocaust in Revelations?
‘Those who reject him will be cast into a lake of fire.’ Mein Gott!
Every man, woman and baby on earth who has not accepted the Good News—hurled into boiling flames. Buddhist monks, adorable unbaptized babies, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Baha’i…All of them.” Mengele’s eyes bored into me. “You call it End Times. I call it waiting for Jesus to turn on the ovens. Hitler read the Bible, too.”
    “Uh-uh. No!” Movern wagged his finger. “Now you see that? That right there?
That
is over the motherfuckin’ line.”
    Roscoe shrugged. “The so-called righteous always think they know who deserves to die.”
    “Wrong,” said Mengele. “It was
science
. For the select to prevail, millions must be delivered into flames.”
    “Been there, done that, huh?” I said. I thought maybe an attaboy would get me on his good side.
    “Pops just hurtin’ ’cause he ain’t at the control,” said Reverend D.
    Mengele seethed. “I am not your pops.”
    “Come on now,” said the reverend. He flashed a smile that showed off his gold dental work. “You sure you never tapped no
schwarze
ass, a sophisticate like you?”
    Cranky snapped his fingers, sucking blood out of his chapped lips. “Oh shit, Rev’s punkin’ an old man.”
    Even Rincin stopped jingling his keys to watch.
    Mengele, if he was Mengele, sat perfectly still, eyes closed to vicious slits. The way he didn’t move made you think he was dangerous in some unspeakable old-man way.
    Prison was full-up with gangsters and hit men. But these were all small-timers. The real mass practitioners were the ones who ran the country. I had a feeling the old German was thinking the same thing.
    Mengele allowed himself a sour smirk—just enough to show he knew he didn’t belong.
    “Let’s stick to the topic,” I said. “We’re supposed to be talking about addiction. So let’s break it down. In the beginning, a man takes a drug; in the end, the drug takes the man….”
    I’d sat through enough twelve-step meetings—either as participant or on the job—to march out my share of lifesaving clichés. For a cop with a quota, church basements full of recovering junkies and drunks were great places to fish for parole violators. A lot of substance abusers washed onto the shores of sobriety with outstanding warrants. Though it was an article of faith in law enforcement that AA and NA members didn’t snitch on each other. (SLA—Sex and Love Anonymous—was apparently a different story. My experience with them was limited.)
    “One’s too many, a thousand’s not enough,” I said, marching out a sobriety chestnut. Somehow it was deeply gratifying when Movern and the reverend nodded.
    I followed that up with another slogan. “We’re only as sick as our secrets. What we need to do now is start talking about the stuff that we got loaded to keep from thinking about.” I