Date: Mon, 26 May 2014 17:11:08 -0400
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Psychic Detective 37

Psychic Detective 37
By: Jake Preston

This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a
murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in
other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes
recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described
explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character
development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there
are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that
while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think
about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html

Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on
nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters
and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions
for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!

Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com


       *  *  *  *  *  *



Chapter 37
Aztec Cosmology, I
 


      On the morning of Good Friday, while Salvador and Jack and Göran
and Xiu were still on the beach, the heartless unmanned body of an athletic
Aztec-looking Mexican was found in the desert south of Mérida, in a
place where they harvested wild agave used to distill tequila.  When
Salvador, Göran, and Jack arrived at Police Headquarters, the Coroner
told them that the killer had driven a knife through the victim's left
armpit and reached in and pulled out his heart, and afterward severed his
genitals.
      
      Jésus and Xiu spent the afternoon visiting the Catédral de
Mérida, finished in 1598 after 37 years of construction, an art gallery,
and colonial streets and buildings in the centro histórico.  In a modern
neighborhood, they visited the house where Jacqueline Kennedy lived in
retirement after her husband was shot down in Dallas by Lee Harvey
Oswald. They kept a lookout for Albino, but the reader will be relieved to
know that he did not follow them on this occasion.
      
      Göran asked to visit the body in the morgue. It was removed from
the vault on a stretcher, and laid out on a table. Göran stood at the
right side of the corpse. He placed his left hand on the place where his
genitalia had been, and his right hand over the hollowed-out left side of
his chest. Wounds in his groin and his axilla bled at his touch, a
phenomenon which (the Coroner said) was an impossibilia.
      
      "This is one of the Papantla acrobats," Göran said. "Pablo
Labrador Rivera will be able to identify.... Pablo Rivera will make the
identification."
      
      An hour later in the morgue, Pablo Rivera wept over the body, which
he identified as that of José Castellano, another Aztec with a Spanish
name. The Coroner wrote it down together with information about his family
in Papantla.
      
      "We need a private conference," Jack whispered to Salvador. They met
in Salvador's office- Jack, Göran, and Pablo. Officially this was
Pablo's interrogation, but it was not to be held in the unfriendly quarters
of an interrogation room. In the event, Pablo wasn't asked any questions at
all.
      
      "I asked for this meeting because Göran knows more than he told
the Coroner," Jack said.
      
      "How could he know more?" Salvador wondered.
      
      "He touched the wounds and they bled," Jack replied.
      
      Göran sat silent in his chair. At Jack's prompting, his reluctance
gave way to terrible words. "I know something that isn't helpful to the
investigation, but I must disclose it first. If I don't, my vision will be
obscured." Jack could see that Göran was in a trance, like the day when
he wept over unmarked graves at Buffalo Run and skeletal remains seemed to
speak to him from below the ground. "The Coroner got it backwards, or
perhaps he gave us a humane version of that happened."
      
      "The Papantla acrobat was mutilated first, and heart-sacrifice came
after," Jack said.  Sometimes he could read Göran's mind.
      
      "His scrotum was severed first," Göran said. "Then his
penis. After that, heart-sacrifice was a mercy. He felt everything, and saw
it, even Albino holding his still-pulsating heart in his face while he
choked on his tongue."
      
      Pablo wept like a boy who had been beaten. "O José!" he
cried. Salvador and Jack were too mournful to comfort him except by adding
their tears to his.
      
      Horror and sorrow were followed by terror when Göran announced in
a monotone clinical voice: "Albino, also known as Howard Coleman, has found
a new accomplice, probably a man from México" (he meant Mexico City)
"though they might be living in Mérida."
      
      Jack gasped. Pablo looked bewildered. Salvador groaned at the
implication. This was a new twist in an already complicated mystery.
      
      "How does he do it?" Jack wondered, meaning, How is Albino able to
recruit accomplices?
      
      "Tell the Coroner to check for signs of rape," Göran said. He was
right about one thing: the Coroner hadn't checked, being squeamish about
digging into the anus of a corpse. Göran continued in his clinical tone:
"After the Maundy Thursday performance of the acrobats, José Castellano
went to El Flamenco." Göran named a seedy gay bar that he had neither
visited nor heard of before. "There, at El Flamenco, José was
propositioned by Albino's accomplice, who led him into an alley where
Albino was waiting. Naturally Albino had to delegate this task, as a
proposition from him would seldom meet with success. The rest is obscure to
me, except for the murder. José might have been drugged. Blood-work from
the lab will confirm that. They drove him to the desert where the
accomplice screwed him from behind. The sex was consensual until Albino
pulled a knife. Then it was rape, while Albino cut off his genitals."
      
      "It's starting all over again," Jack said mournfully.
      
- Yo no sabía que José era un hombre homosexual, Pablo said,
ruefully.
      
- Quizás Xiu vio el cómplice en Uxmal, Salvador said. -Él
podría saber má de lo cree.

      Jack started to translate Salvador's words for Göran, but stopped
when he saw that Göran was still in a trance. He signaled for the others
to wait in silence.
      
      - Los acróbatas de Papantla deben bailar su certamen Azteca
creación de esta tarde, en memoria de José Castellano, Göran said,
and it was evident to Salvador and Jack and Pablo that the words were not
his but came from José Castellano.
      
      "They're saying that the show must go on," Jack said, and by 'they'
he meant both Göran and José.
      
      "If the Policía knew I was taking counsel from a North American
mystic, they'd send me to a psychiatrist," Salvador mused. Then he saw
blood from José Castellano's wounds on the palms of Göran's
hands. Göran had hidden the stains under clenched fists, but now his
hands opened and Salvador saw the blood.
      
      Göran ignored the comments of Jack and Salvador, or else he didn't
hear them, as he was still in a trance. Göran continued: "The vultures
will attack the cosmic serpent at Chichen Itza.  Then they will fly to the
ya'axche at the sacred cenote. Not for them the river below the roots of
the ya'axche. That journey will be for another."
      
      When Göran came out of his trance, Jack and Salvador repeated
everything he said. He remembered most of it, but he couldn't explain the
part about the vultures and Chichen Itza. "I don't know what ya'axche
means," he said. "My guess is that it's some sort of tree." A cenote, of
course, is a sinkhole that leads to an underground river, the only kind of
river found in Yucatán.
      
      "So we come to the most important part of the message and we don't
know what it means!" Salvador exclaimed.
      
      "It was a message from Manitou," Jack explained. "The first part is
clear because it tells what already happened. The last part is obscure
because it's a prophecy. Göran may not look like an Ojibwe shaman, being
a Scandinavian farm-boy, the great shaman of Crane Lake, the shaman we call
Dark Eagle, recognizes Göran as a kindred spirit. Whenever a shaman
utters a prophecy, it's the responsibility of others to interpret
it. That's the way Ojibwe mysticism works. That's why Göran can't
explain it. But if the oracle is valid, someone will be able to explain
it."
      
      "Maybe we should ask Xiu," Salvador said. Intrigued by the oracular
riddle, he forgot his doubts and cast skepticism aside.
      
      On departing the Policía, Göran declined an invitation to wash
his hands. "I must wear the blood of José Castellano until his memorial
has been fulfilled in the Creation pageant of the acrobats of Papantla," he
said. He raised his right hand and inscribed new bloodstains on his
forehead and on each cheek. Quite remarkably, the blood hadn't dried, but
it didn't leave stains anywhere else except on his forehead and cheeks.
      
      Back at the Juan Carlos Hotel, Jack, Göran and Salvador learned
that Jésus and Xiu had gone for a self-guided tour of Mérida. For
this reason, the bar was closed, as the manager had failed to reach an
accommodation with the bartender and his staff. "It's too early for booze,
anyway," Jack said. They took coffee at a Starbucks on the opposite side of
the Square. There they were joined by Pablo and two other
acróbatas. Pablo had failed to dissuade the acrobats from cancelling
their Good Friday pageant. They were in mourning for José Castellano,
and also they feared for their safety, they said. "Someone is kidnapping
Papantlas for rape-murder," one of them said.
      
      A fourth acrobat joined them. Pablo told them the story of Göran's
trance at the Policía, assisted by interjected comments from Salvador
and Jack. Skepticism showed in their faces, until Jack explained about
Ojibwe mysticism and Göran's status as a shaman among the Ojibwe
people. They had never heard of the Ojibwe tribe before, but they knew that
Jack was Lakota and they accepted him as one their own. Göran's
shaman-like silence persuaded them, too. He spoke not a word in defense of
the ya'axchte-oracle when Jack and Pablo asked if they could tell its
meaning. "It sounds like a Maya word, but I don't know what it means," one
of them said. "The Maya languages are completely different from Nahautl."
And now they were intrigued by the oracular riddle, just like Salvador, and
Jack understood that this, too, was a miracle from Manitou, for the riddle
had united them in a common purpose.
      
      Then they went silent and looked at Göran. It was time for him to
say something, and when he did it would be a shaman speaking. Göran
understood shaman-etiquette and played his part with a cryptic,
authoritative utterance:
      
      "For reasons unknown to me, the azteca creación is required by the
Great Spirit as a memorial to José Castellano and as a prerequisite to
retribution for his death."
      
      For the benefit of the other acrobats, Pablo translated Göran's
words into Spanish: "Por razones que desconozco, la creación azteca es
requerido por Ometéotl-Omecíhuatl como un monumento a José
Castellano y como requisito previo a la retribución de su muerte."
Except that instead of 'Great Spirit', which should have been 'el Gran
Espíritu', he substituted 'Ometéotl- Omecíhuatl', an Aztec name
that was more meaningful to them and gave them the impression (not entirely
unintentional) that Göran was acquainted with the Aztec Creator-God.
      
      "Five acrobats are required for the Creation pageant," one of them
said. "Without José Castellano, we'll have to include one of the women
in the dance."
      
      "María Santana," one of the acrobats said. "She's a feminist, and
she's been asking why women can't dance the azteca creación. Besides,
she's one of José's closest friends."
      
      Pablo explained the dance to Jack and Göran. Salvador had heard it
before but now he paid closer attention: "The acrobatic dance of Papantla
is a moral allegory, a genealogy of gods, and a Creation allegory. After
the unsuccessful rebellion and death of Moctezuma's nephew, Cuauhtémoc,
it was rumored among the Aztecs in Tenochtitlán that the conquest of
their city marked the end of the Fifth Age. 'Today our sun has been
canceled', they whispered; 'our sun has gone hiding and left us in complete
darkness'. ? Hoy nuestro sol se ha ocultado, nuestro sol se ha escondido y
nos ha dejado en la más completa oscuridad."
      
      "Good Friday is a Christian Day of Darkness," Pablo
continued. "That's why we perform azteca creación on Good Friday in the
colonial town of Mérida, because Mérida was an ancient Maya city,
called Ichkaanzihóo, the 'City of Five Pyramids', until 1542 when El
Mozo the Conquistador enslaved the Maya and colonized the town for Spain."
      
      "El Mozo?"
      
      "Francisco de Montejo y León. He renamed the town after his
Spanish hometown in Extremadura," Pablo replied. "The Spanish Mexicans come
for the acrobatics, but they don't understand why we do it in Mérida on
Good Friday. It's subversive political theater, signifying the end of the
Maya, and symbolically of all Indian cultures, and the beginning of Spanish
oppression. It's subversive to Christianity, too, as it presents an
alternate myth of Creation. The Aztec Creation myth is similar to that of
the Maya."
      
      "And you play the part of the Creator-God?" Jack asked Pablo.
      
      "Yes, I'm the central figure in the pageant. My dance impersonates
Ometéotl- Omecíhuatl. That's another Aztec subversion. Ometéotl is
male. Omecíhuatl is female.  Ometéotl-Omecíhuatl is transsexual. I
dance on top of a thirty-meter pole while supporting acrobats who swing
from four ropes. I start out as Ometéotl and we dazzle our macho
homophobic spectators with our acrobatics and then I become Omecíhuatl
and then Ometéotl again, and Omecíhuatl. Through my erotic
impersonation, the Father-Mother of Creation reveals Himself and Herself as
both genders."
      
      "Thirty meters!" Jack exclaimed. "That's 33 yards?"
      
      "That's the height of the pole," Pablo said. "A bit more than 98
feet. It's a combat-dance in the air. The other four acrobats impersonate
North, South, East, and West. They take turns knocking me off the top of
the pole and taking my place, but I come back at the end. By this means I
signify the Fifth Age of the cosmos. Maybe Xiu can explain the rest of it
during our performance. Most Maya understand the Creation myth."
       
       
       
       * * * * * *
       
       
       While all this was going on at Police Headquarters and then at
Starbucks, Jésus and Xiu climbed a narrow sixteenth-century stone
stairway to the balcony in Catédral de Mérida. The cathedral is
Renaissance Gothic, but the stairs were stones quarried from one of the
ancient Maya pyramids. Indeed, the exterior walls of the cathedral were
built from stones quarried from the pyramids. It was just as well that
Mérida was no longer called Ichkaanzihóo, since then it would be
embarrassing to answer tourists who asked 'Where are the Five Pyramids?'
      
      At the third step in the stairway was a chain with a red sign and
white letters that read: 'Balcón cerrado', 'Balcony closed', but the
chain was unhooked and the sign was turned inward facing the wall. When
they got to the balcony and saw no one else there, Jésus clambered back
down the stairs and hooked up the chain, so that now when visitors came to
the cathedral and wanted to see the Mass from the balcony, a chain blocked
their way and a sign read 'Balcón cerrado'. For this venal transgression
Jésus was rewarded privacy with Xiu. They sat through two and a half
Masses, or rather, the same Mass repeated from dawn to midnight by
different priests in rotation on Good Friday.
       
       The balcony was furnished with wooden folding-chairs because the
stairway was too narrow to get pews up there. Jésus and Xiu sat side by
side and their legs touched and Jésus flung an arm around Xiu. At their
distance and height it felt like watching baseball from top seats in a
stadium. Two priests were in attendance and were wore red vestments. Two
altar boys had red vestments, too. "Nicer than the black they usually
wear," Jésus whispered to Xiu. The music was a cappella, the organ being
covered with a great black blanket.
       
       A mass was in session but it had only begun. The priests were
transitioning from passages in Isaiah to readings from the Psalms. "Soon
we'll get the Prayer of Humility, then readings from Hebrews and two
chapters from John and a Prayer before the Crucifix," Jésus said. "It's
not really a Mass. It's Bible readings and prayers, embellished with a
cappella music, except that the music isn't really music, it's
chanting. Afterwards there's Communion, but before you do that, you have to
confess your sins to a priest in one of those little closets at the left."
       
       Xiu looked down at men and women, mostly grave older women at the
doors to the confessionals and they seemed embarrassed to be seen
there. "Why would those old ladies need a confessional?" Xiu asked. "What
sins could they have done to need confessing?"
       
       "Bless me Father for I have sinned I kicked my sixteen-year-old boy
out of the house and it was Papa who did it but it was my idea because the
neighbor lady who's a terrible gossip told my cousin Rosa who lives on a
farm in the country that he's a mariposa, my son's a butterfly-boy, as a
nińo he was marica and now he's maricopa but before we kicked him out of
the house I sat on his chest while he was down on the kitchen floor and
Papa kicked him in the groin so first we kicked him in the groin and then
we kicked him out of the house for good and those were my only sins since
my last confession which was Sunday because I'm here in the cathedral every
week as you must know, blessed Father"- rapid-shot breathless words from
Jésus.
       
       Xiu looked at Jésus and saw that his face was angry when he
thought it should look sad. "What does the priest say after that?" he
asked.
       
       "Recite three Ave Marias for not bringing your nińo to me earlier
for an altar-boy," Jésus smirked.
       
       Xiu counted seven birds that looked like sparrows, only smaller,
flitting above the pews in the cavernous cathedral, one for each deadly sin
or maybe it was the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse.  "Let's leave this
dreadful place," he said.
       
       "Stay for a while, I like it here, it's cool," Jésus replied. The
sparrow-like birds started chirping above the priests chanting and Xiu
thought the birdsong was better. "If we can barely see the priests, we're
almost invisible to them," Jésus continued. "I want to hear all about
your game of 'spank and spunk' with Göran."
       
       "Are you angry with me, Jésus?" Xiu asked.
       
       "Not at all. I just want to hear the details," Jésus said, so Xiu
told him about how Jack and Göran were punished for swimming with the
sharks and about spankings that graduated to paddling and breeding. He left
out the part about the flowers but Jésus reminded him.
       
       "We exchanged flowers," Xiu said. "I gave Göran a sprig of white
sac nicte and Göran gave me a sprig of red xukul nicte. It was an oath
of brotherhood that we took so that we could always regard each other as
equal no matter what depth of erotic submission Göran sunk to, but the
truth is he didn't go that far. But why do you ask me questions when you
already know the answers?"
      
      Far below on the floor, people were lined up like cattle in the
central aisle to kiss the cross and taste bread and wine from a common cup
and the sparrow-like birds flitted and chirped above them in the barnlike
cathedral.
      
      "Göran thinks it was a Yucatecan wedding, but I told him that
wasn't so, as there were no witnesses," Jésus said. "He wants you to
come to America with us."
      
      "I know. I'd love to come for a visit. I've never been out of
México. But how would I live in America? All I know is tour-guiding the
ruins of my people," Xiu replied.
      
      "You know four languages," Jésus said; "more than four if you
count three Maya dialects besides Yucatecan. You could study linguistics in
college. It would be easy for you to get a student visa. There are people
in America who get paid for studying and teaching Maya languages. They're
called anthropological linguists, or linguistic anthropologists depending
on your point of view. You have a mind that has not yet been challenged."
      
      "I thought you were jealous, but now you're trying to talk me into
America," Xiu said.
      
      "We love Göran in different ways and I think he needs both of us,"
Jésus said. "With me he's Ometéotl the Father-God...."
      
      "Even when he's taking it up the ass?" Xiu interjected, and by now he
was fondling Jésus's crotch and Jésus was fondling his crotch.
      
      "Especially when he's taking it up the ass," Jésus said. "He's a
macho getting fucked by another macho, like Apollo with Admetus, but that's
only half his identity. The other part is Omecíhuatl the Mother-God,
which he wants to almost be when he's with you. The Ojibwe call him
Niizho-manitou, a two-spirited man. He wants you to try to feminize him,
but of course he won't let you succeed because a shaman, like an artist, is
half man and half woman and the woman is insufferable."
       
       By now their mutual cock-frotting turned serious until Jésus and
Xiu were interrupted, quite unexpectedly, by a Sister from the Antiguo
convento de Neustra Seńora de la Consolación, a nunnery as old as the
cathedral itself. The nun who intruded on their Good Friday devotions was
younger by four centuries, an aristocratically pretty girl, but timid. She
mounted the stairs to the balcony not on her own initiative, but because
she was sent by her Mother Superior, or perhaps by a priest, to warn off
two visitors who were now sitting through their third Mass.
       
       -żNo viste la cadena y la seńal que dice que el balcón está
cerrado? asked the Sister in a sweet tentative voice: "Didn't you see the
chain and the sign that says that the balcony is closed?"
       
       "Ah, Sister, when we first arrived, the chain was down and the sign
was turned toward the wall," Jésus replied in truthful English.
       
       Sister switched to English: "Are you visiting from America?"
       
       "Yes, Sister."
       
       "Perhaps you could sit in one of the pews in the cathedral below,
the better to hear the Mass and take Communion, if one of the priests has
heard your confessions," Sister said.
       
       "Thank you, Sister, but the balcony is closer to Paradise," Jésus
said.
       
       "Then I leave you to your devotions," Sister said.
       
       From the top of the stairway, Jésus watched her descend and
quietly replace the chain, so the sign continued to inform visitors,
'Balcón cerrado'.
       
       In the privacy of the forbidden balcony, Jésus and Xiu freed each
other's cocks from the rigid confinement of denim and sank into the
irresistible pleasure of mutual fondling. "Tell me what you like best about
Göran," Jésus prompted Xiu.
       
       "He's the kindest man I've ever known," Xiu said, "and
godlike-athletic, a Germanic Apollo. In my job at Uxmal I've met a lot of
men from Germany but he has more sex-appeal than all of them, and he's the
only one who reciprocated my interest."
       
       "That's true, but tell me something I don't already know," Jésus
said. "Tell me what you like best about him when you're making love."
       
       "His colors," Xiu said, "I like his colors. I like the rosebud-pink
color of his portal with not even the slightest trace of brown, and the way
his face turns red, and his neck and the top of his chest when I penetrate
his culo."
       
       "Have you noticed that he's got the same rosebud-pink in the seam
that runs down the middle of his scrotum, at the intersection of his
ball-sacs?" Jésus asked.
       
       "That, too," Xiu replied, regretting that he hadn't thought of
it. "And now you must tell me what you like best about Göran."
       
       Jésus hesitated, his thoughts interrupted by the urgency of lust
that increased with Xiu's hand on his cock. "It's embarrassing to come up
with something so predictable, but I like fucking guys with big dicks and
he's got a nice one. Each time it feels like a conquest. Even more than
that, he's got a tight culo so he's always snug and it hurts a little. I've
tried to give him an anal gape as a way of marking my territory, but it
never lasts. The next time we're together he's as tight as before, almost
as if he were getting screwed for the first time."
       
       "The mystery of perpetual virginity!" Xiu exclaimed, "just like the
Virgin Mary."
       
       Their bawdy talk about Göran gave way to the ecstasy of orgasm
and for both of them the first shot of spooge sailed over the balcony and
down to the central aisle in the cathedral, where worshipers were waiting
in a long line for their turn to kiss the Cross and take Communion. To
judge from the commotion just below the balcony, one gob of spooge hit a
middle-aged man on the shoulder, and another landed in an older lady's
Easter hat, which out of vanity she had chosen to wear two days early. All
seven sparrow-like chirpy birds flew over the scene and people pointed up
at them as the source aviary retribution for the transgression of wearing
an Easter bonnet on Good Friday. But as no one could testify as to which
two almost-sparrows had committed these crimes of scatology, all seven
birds escaped prosecution.
       
       Jésus and Xiu clambered down the Renaissance stairway, the one
built with stone vandalized from one of five Maya pyramids. They took care
to fasten the chain with the sign that said 'Balcón cerrado', assurance
to all that no one had been in the balcony. As they exited the front door
of Catédral de Mérida, the narthex crowded with two disgruntled
worshipers and some helpful supporters who appeared to be helping a lady
wash birdshit off her Easter bonnet with holy water.