The White Flamingo by James A. Newman

think everything is prescript?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, was this in the script?” The White Flamingo unbuttoned the detective’s pants with one hand while draining her glass with the other. She put the glass down on the table and gracefully lowered herself to the floor.
    She kept eye contact at all times as the larvae inside the Detective’s head broke from their cocoons and grew wings. The butterflies flew around inside his skull as the White Flamingo weaved her magic.
    “The locals have a saying,” he said.
    “Mmmm,”
    “ Krueng Sawan .”
    “What does it mean?”
    “To go up to heaven.”   
     
     
     
    TWENTY-FOUR
     
    THEY DID .
    Near empty cocktail glasses and dawn were threatening, like an angry promise, to end the show. The sun slowly rose above the harbour, beams of light glimmering above the water. A house lizard languidly climbed the wall toward a light where flying insects hovered. Miss Bell kept the conversation alive. “I read a story in one of those television listing magazines. It was a true story. There was a young girl abandoned in a collapsed building in Czechoslovakia. The authorities thought that she was dead. She wasn’t dead. She was two years old and was saved by a pack of feral dogs. The dogs brought her food. She lived with the dogs for four years. She learned how to bark and she walked on all fours like the dogs that had brought her into their world. She grew up thinking she was a dog. Imagine that? When she was discovered by the authorities , she was taken into care and taught how to walk on two feet, how to eat, and talk. Fate and genetics are not important in establishing adult behaviour. Who wrote that script for her? How could that life be predetermined?”
    “Most writers I’ve known would be thrilled with imagining such a story.” The Detective took a bite on the lemon. “Including the hack that wrote the article.”
    “The article went on to explain that nurturing was the most important consideration in human behaviour. I feel that we are a victim of our environment. This city was not the place to let Sebastian live. I have failed as a parent. Yet, part of me is afraid that he is in some ways troubled, not at peace with himself. And this can only be my fault. This episode will remain with him unless you can find out who is really killing these women. We need closure. We need to find out who this woman hater is so that we can move on with our lives, to somewhere better.”
    “Every boy is innocent in his mother’s eye, Miss Bell.”
    “On the contrary, every child is guilty, of something, somewhere in his mother’s eye. We keep a record, a score. We mothers know it. Whether we choose to ignore it or forget it is another matter entirely. Find the beast that did this. Find him and make him suffer.”
    “I’m working on it, Miss Bell.”
    “Good. A strong man like you ought to be able to…” Her words stopped. She placed a hand around his head and brought his lips to hers. They kissed. Tongues like two snakes tangling in the night. The dog on the floor began to make a whining sound. She grabbed the Detective by the hair and brought his head back, away from hers. “You will do this for me?” she said.
    “The killer will be found, Miss Bell.” He stood up. His feet led him to the door. He opened it. The sound of a cigarette lighter flicking. He closed the door and walked past the pond and down onto the road. A flock of birds flapped in a sky dark with something besides dawn.
    His thoughts turned to Kelly.
     
     
     
    TWENTY-FIVE
     
    HE FOUND her drinking in the bar on the seventh road. Kelly’s head was slumped on the table. Her make-up was smeared and her hair was like an abandoned rat’s nest. He walked over and sat opposite her. She gazed up at him with drunken hateful eyes. He ordered a bottle, two glasses, and a bucket of ice. “I thought I told you to get out of town,” he whispered gently to her.
    Her head whipped up like a threatened snake and she