Heavy on the Dead

by G. M. Ford

  First thing he did was walk the guitar over to the case and tuck it inside.

  “So . . . how you gonna make it worth my while?” he asked as he straightened up.

  “Tell you what . . . You go with me over to the Scripps Clinic in Mission Valley, get a blood test and maybe let ’em run a big Q-tip around your mouth, and I’ll buy you dinner when we get back. Also I’ll be eternally grateful—”

  “Hodad’s,” he interrupted.

  “Okay, Hodad’s . . . and . . .” I paused for effect. “And . . . I’ll give you a nice crisp hundred-dollar bill when I bring you back here.”

  “Twenties,” he said immediately. “Ain’t nobody around here gonna cash a hundred for me.”

  “Done.”

  I stuck out a hand. He looked at my outstretched palm like I was trying to hand him a dog turd.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Right fucking now,” surged from my throat like a cheetah. Even surprised me. That’s when I realized I was having one of those moments when the sound of my voice had pushed something to the fore—something I’d been keeping at arm’s length.

  I was shit scared. Probably as scared as I’d ever been in my life. Over my twenty some years in the private eye business, I’d pondered and pictured and personally experienced all manner of violence and mayhem and had gone through many moments where I’d figured the jig was finally up for me. The way I saw things in those days, it just came with the territory . . . But this . . . dying from some slow wasting-away disease, in some shitty hospital room with strangers standing around me like I was some kind of exhibit. That was too horrible for me to contemplate even from a distance.

  I looked over at Gabe and shrugged an apology.

  Gabe grinned. “I’ll walk home and take the bus to my karate class.”

  Lamar pointed through the dirty windshield. “There’s the other one,” he said.

  They watched as the other one exited the park and started walking south on Bacon Street. Ten seconds later, the car they’d come in rolled out the park entrance. Leo Waterman and somebody new turned left onto Voltaire.

  “He’s got somebody with him,” Lamar said as the car went by.

  “We’ll follow the one on foot,” Chub announced.

  Took less than fifteen minutes. The freak walked down to an apartment building near the middle of the block, turned into the narrow walkway, and disappeared.

  Lamar and Chub were still deciding what to do next when the freak came back out, walked down to Cable Street, got on the number 35 bus, and dieseled out of sight.

  Marshall took his time cleaning his glasses. He was lost in thought when his phone began to blink. He put it on speaker.

  “Lamar Pope on line one,” the young man’s voice said.

  Click. “You motherfuckers hear me, you want Greenway dead you better drag your white Aryan Brotherhood asses down here and do it yourself, ’cause I’m telling you right now I’m not good for it. You know what they say: if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, and motherfuckers, I’m not doing hard time for nobody. And that big ol’ boy ain’t about to give up anytime soon neither, so if . . . y’all got any . . .”

  Marshall settled his glasses onto his face and broke the connection. He leaned back and laced his fingers together. “Well,” he whispered into the silence. “That settles that, doesn’t it.”

  Greenway and Pope had officially gone from being a dubious asset to being a definite liability. Quite simply put, for the good of the cause . . . they simply had to go. No doubt about it. The way he saw things, it was wise to assume that every time Pope had called, including this one, the cops had been listening. The cause couldn’t take any more heat at this point and neither could he. No . . . those two had to be removed . . . posthaste and permanently.

  The problem was that the white separatist movement, at least this particular end of it, was just about flat broke. He sat there leaning back with his eyes closed for the better part of twenty minutes, going over his options in his head. The phone buzzed again.

  “Fresno on line four.”

  Marshall wasn’t surprised. Of the various West Coast chapters of the Aryan Brotherhood, Fresno was the most hardline and the most difficult to manage. Their founder, Paulie Kopecnick, known among the members as Paulie K., was the most militant and outspoken of all the chapter leaders. Nobody would say it out loud, but Paulie was the chief instigator of blaming Marshall for the Conway disaster.

  Truth was Paulie had always wanted Marshall’s job. Thought he should have had it from the beginning; despite being virtually illiterate and about as inarticulate as humanly possible, he had always thought himself a great leader of men. Marshall heaved a sigh and picked up the phone.

  “Paulie,” he said.

  “You get that Waterman guy yet?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “Something needs to happen, man. The guys are coming apart. I’ve heard from other chapter presidents. They need somebody to pay the price for what happened up in Washington. Way I see it, it’s either this Waterman guy or it’s you.”

  “Paulie—” Marshall began.

  “They’re done with your bullshit, Marshall. No more hiding out while the scum of the earth take this country away from us. No more lying low, driving around in PTA vans, leaving our bikes in the fucking garage. That shit’s done. My boys have had it with that. They need something to happen. They need somebody to pay the price for what happened up there. Right fucking now!”

  “I couldn’t agree more, but it has to happen surreptitiously.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Paulie growled.

  “We can’t take any more heat,” Marshall said.

  “Get it done, Marshall. If you have to, do it yourself.”

  Marshall started to speak, but Paulie cut him off. “And don’t start that executive delegation shit of yours with me neither. I knew you when, you little motherfucker. I remember the time you put one in Shorty’s ear. And that shit hole greaser from Victorville too. You got quite a history of sneaking up behind people and putting out their lights. If you can’t get it done by someone else, then do it yourself.”

  Marshall was working up his chain-of-command speech when the connection broke. He again sat back in his chair and pondered what to do next. He’d heard through the grapevine that Paulie K. had showed up at the Portland chapter earlier in the week, so he’d been expecting him to sooner or later show up here. As Marshall saw things, the only way to maintain his position and come out of this smelling like a rose was if he did the job himself, so in that sense Paulie was right. Which meant that he needed to get Pope and Greenway out of the picture once and for all.

  After a considerable interval he slowly stood up and pulled a small silver ring of keys from his pants pocket. He sorted out a small brass key and used it to unlock the bottom drawer of the desk.

  He removed two items, set them on the desk in front of him, and slid the drawer closed with the keys still in the lock.

  He pushed the “Power” button on the disposable phone and watched it blink to life, then opened the leather-bound journal. Three pages from the back and then back to the inside of the front cover for the code sequence. Took him several minutes to work out the random algorithmic sequencers. He dialed the ten-digit number he’d block printed on the page. Somebody picked up but said nothing. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Garrett,” the little man said.

  “Your name?”

  “Marshall.”

  “Does Mr. Garrett have your number?”

  “Yes.”

  Click.

  He dialed another number. Waited.

  “Hola. BanRegio Bank.”

  “Mr. Romero, por favor.”

  He waited through three rings before somebody picked up.

  “Romero,” the voice snapped.

  “Mr. Romero . . . earlier this week you provided us with some information . . .”

  “What? I don’t know . . .”

  He let Romero sputt
er and deny for a while, then said, “I imagine the BanRegio bank would not look kindly on one of their IT employees selling confidential client information. I think it most likely that they would relieve you of your responsibilities were they to find out.”

  Long silence, then, “What do you want?”

  Marshall told him. “No money actually involved. It simply appears and then disappears, and nobody’s the wiser.”

  Romero started to sputter again. Marshall cut him off. “And better yet, you’ll never hear from us again.”

  “When?”

  He told him.

  I heard the squeak of her shoes on the floor and perked up. An official-looking hospital brunette, athletic looking, wide in the shoulders, long of limb in that healthy California-girl manner. Coming my way. Smiling.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “One . . . two o’clock.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what everybody asks first,” she said, clipping her pen into her lab coat pocket. “We’ll call you with the test results.”

  She checked her paperwork and then recited my phone number, making sure she had it right. She did.

  “Where’s he?” I asked.

  “Mr. Succotash?”

  I laughed for the first time today.

  “Mr. Succotash had the worst case of head and body lice any of us have ever seen, and we’ve got some grizzled vets around here. We cleaned him up in the shower and then more or less sheared him like a sheep. Head to toe. Stem to stern. We’re treating him for the parasites right now.”

  “He agreed to that?” I asked.

  She arched an eyebrow. “He signed the waiver . . . remember?”

  “Aaaah.” I made a mental note to have the car sandblasted when this was over.

  Twenty minutes later Bar Code eased out the swinging door, cleaner than I’d ever seen him, dressed in a pair of bright-blue scrubs and the neat little color-coordinated booties. I wolf whistled.

  “They burned my clothes, man . . . cut every damn hair off my body. Gonna sue these motherfuckers . . . gonna come back here with—”

  “You signed the release,” I interrupted. “You gave them permission.”

  “They got no . . . no goddamn . . .”

  I stood up. “Come on, man, we’ll go get you a fresh set of duds.”

  He mumbled and grumbled and bitched all the way back to Sports Arena Boulevard. I wasn’t really listening, but I could pretty much swear he mentioned the Supreme Court several times as we fought the traffic snarl down past Midway to the mall.

  We parked in the lot and moseyed into DICK’S Sporting Goods, where we fitted him out with a whole new set of clothes. For reasons of his own, he insisted on camouflage everything, including both the sneakers and the sunglasses. When he pulled the camo stocking cap down over the bar code, I started pretending I couldn’t see him, but I don’t think he got the joke.

  By the time we made it back to the car, he’d decided that The Habit burger joint on the far side of the mall parking lot was plenty good enough for this evening’s repast and that we could forget about Hodad’s. I sipped at a lemonade while he worked on two Santa Barbara burgers and a large order of onion rings.

  Between burgers, I asked him, “What’s your name?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Leo Waterman.”

  He swallowed. Took another bite and then started to answer.

  “Really,” I said before he could dream something up. “No frozen vegetables.”

  “Brandon,” he said after another bite of burger.

  “Brandon what?” I pressed.

  “Pitts,” he said before swallowing and then washing it down with Dr Pepper.

  “So how’d you end up on the streets?”

  “Why? You writing a book?” he asked without looking up from the plate.

  “Just curious.”

  He finished the second Charburger. Ignoring me.

  “Where you from?” I tried.

  “Redding,” he said around a mouthful.

  “How long you been homeless?”

  He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Since I was fourteen. Damn near ten years now.” He knew where I was heading. He set the mangled burger on the plate, used a couple more napkins to clean himself up, and let out a sigh.

  “Okay, man . . . ,” he started. “Look . . . it’s not even exciting, bro. My dad died when I was little. The doctors told me he died of tuberculosis, but you ask his men friends and they say he was a little too fond of drinkin’ and carrying on to last very long at all . . . so anyway, after that things were hard for a while. We moved around a lot. Redding, Crescent City, Central Point, Roseburg, Canyonville . . . places like that. Mostly my mom cleaned motel rooms for a living. I was about eight when the boyfriends started coming round . . .” He waved an angry hand. Shook his head sadly. “From then on it was mostly just a question of which one of us they’d rather fuck.” He picked the burger back up. “About a month before I turned fourteen I just picked up and left. Seemed like just about any other place was better than where I was.”

  He grinned through a mouthful of burger. “Got me waterfront property now.”

  “You still talk to your mom?”

  “We’re done. She made her choices, and I made mine.”

  I had a feeling that I’d heard all I wanted to, so I changed the subject.

  “And . . . and . . . if you don’t mind me asking . . .”

  He cut me off. Almost smiled. “Why the bar code?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Felt like I was nothin’, so I made myself into somethin’. Simple as that.” He tapped the bar code with his index finger. “I’m whatever this thing says I am, man.” He snapped his fingers.

  Silence settled over the table like a shroud.

  “What were the cops chasing you for that day on the cliffs?” I asked.

  His neck began to redden. “That fat fuck . . . motherfucker calls the cops every fucking time he sees me . . . And you know . . . that’s not even the weird part. Weird part is the cops show up every time he calls . . . like he’s got ’em on a string or something. So . . . you know . . . I figured if that fat bastard was working for the guy on the cliff, he couldn’t be down at the big building at the same time, so I was running that way figurin’ I could lose the pigs on the stairs.”

  He went back to the burger. Stayed at it until the last morsel disappeared down his throat. “You got my money?” he asked.

  I counted five twenties out onto the table. Brandon Pitts snatched them up like he was catching a fly. “Howsabout you drive me back to the river, man,” he said. “Don’t want nobody messing with my shit.”

  I leaned forward. “I live on Del Monte, Brandon. The building with the bright-yellow window frames. You know where I’m talking about?” I asked.

  “Yep. Just about in the middle of the block.”

  “You ever decide you want to have that tattoo removed . . . you come and find me, and I’ll make sure it happens.”

  He seemed puzzled. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Maybe you’re already somebody. Maybe you don’t need a label on you anymore.”

  Garrett didn’t look the part at all, which was at least partly why he’d lasted so long in the business. If you saw him in the street, suburban lawns would come immediately to mind. And cul-de-sacs and backyard barbecues and Little League games . . . those sorts of things. Last guy on earth who killed people for a living. No way. Not ol’ Harve. Insurance, I think, someone would say. But Marshall had used him before when they’d required professional help, and with excellent results.

  They’d agreed to meet at a local discount mall south of Portland. Over by the north parking lot, by the Nike store. They were seated side by side on a blue steel Metro bench; Marshall had filled him in on the details thus far. Garrett hadn’t uttered a syllable since Marshall stopped talking. Marshall had given up trying to read his expressionless granite eyes. Talk about a sp
hinx.

  At this point the only thing Marshall was sure of was that the guy gave him the willies in a manner few other people ever had. Something about the way he sat there, not saying a word, staring holes in you with those flat gray eyes. That pouchy face and double chin with all his features crammed into the middle like they were having a meeting, the shiny, bald head and scuffed-up boat shoes. Joe Everybody.

  They’d been sitting there listening to the ebb and flow of traffic for what seemed like half an hour, when Garrett finally spoke again. “So . . . you sent these two guys down to Mexico to get some data on a guy you were hunting for. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were supposed to report right back to you, but one of them had other ideas and decided to off the original guy for himself.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told his partner he’d have to take care of him, even scrounged him a piece for the job, but he either can’t or won’t do the do. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you want me to off them both for you. Like right now. Before they can fuck things up even worse for your people, who, I don’t have to tell you, are hotter than the freakin’ surface of the sun right now.”

  Marshall nodded his grudging agreement.

  Garrett smiled. “You do realize this has a certain irony to it, don’t you?”

  “Most things do,” Marshall said as he handed a manila folder to Garrett. “He’s using the name Leon Marks and lives on the coast in San Diego. Your fee will be posted to an account in the Tijuana Rio branch of the BanRegio bank. First thing tomorrow morning.” He handed Garrett the envelope. “All the necessary information to transfer it wherever you please is there for you.”

  The man known in the trade as Garrett got to his feet. “I’ll handle your two guys,” he said. “The Waterman guy is strictly your problem. He’s involved in your disaster up north. That whole Conway thing is way too hot for me, and I hear your membership is blaming the Conway thing on you. I don’t want any part of it. I’ll check the account for the money first thing in the morning. As long as the money’s not mythical, I’ll be in San Diego by afternoon. This is the only time we’ll meet.”