Carrion

by Gary Brandner

  From time to time he glanced off toward the tall French windows that overlooked an expanse of the rear lawn. Beyond that lay the swimming pool and a row of eucalyptus trees that guarded the pool house. Kruger could see only vague outlines in the darkness, but in his mind every line and angle of the pool house was etched forever. In the stillness he fancied he could hear the mutter of the generator idling there. No failure of the lines would cut off power to the pool house.

  He sighed and slumped deeper in the high-backed chair that dated to the Spanish Inquisition. Always a robust man, Kruger now seemed shrunken and dried out in the cavernous room and the oversized chair.

  At the far wall a log fire was dying slowly in a hearth built of stones from a Moorish castle. From the high-beamed ceiling an eighteenth-century chandelier provided a subdued light. The three-hundred-year-old Italian harpsichord stood silent, its ornate scrollwork reflecting a dull gleam.

  On this night Elliot Kruger was oblivious to his house and his possessions. The wealth his father had amassed and Elliot had increased gave him no pleasure now. With a phone call he could have bought the entire block of Echo Park where McAllister Fain lived without making an appreciable dent in his fortune. Yet at that moment he would gladly have exchanged places.

  How different the world had become in just four months. In 120 days his life had crumbled. Kruger’s thoughts returned for the thousandth time to the day it began.

  • • •

  October 30, it was. The day before Halloween. Leanne had been busy all morning with arrangements for the party they were giving the next day. Early in the afternoon Kruger came into their bedroom still sweaty after three sets of tennis. Leanne was in front of a full-length mirror, trying on her witch costume; Rosalia knelt beside her, making last-minute adjustments.

  Leanne turned and smiled at him. As always, his heart gave a lurch when he looked at her. Not until the seventh decade of his life did Elliot Kruger learn what it was like to be in love. And now he loved to distraction. He loved Leanne’s rich brown hair, which she wore long and full, the way he liked it. He loved the big expressive eyes that could look right into his soul. He loved the wide mouth that even in repose seemed ready to smile. He loved the smooth, graceful body that molded itself to his in their bed. He loved her enthusiasm, and he loved her youth.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Like the most beautiful witch there ever was.”

  “You don’t think it’s too revealing?”

  “It would be a crime to hide all that.”

  “Come here and give me a hug.”

  “I haven’t showered.”

  “Who cares?”

  She held out her arms, and he came willingly into them. Rosalia stood back and smiled at the shared joy of her people.

  Kruger squeezed Leanne, enjoying the firm, resilient feel of her through the satiny witch costume. Suddenly, she tensed under his touch. He released her and stepped back.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Just my big strong husband.”

  Kruger raised the costumed short skirt and gently touched a purplish bruise on the inside of her thigh. “Is this still bothering you?”

  “No, I hardly know it’s there. I’ll have to cover it with makeup tomorrow night, won’t I. Who ever heard of a witch with a black-and-blue mark?”

  “I wish you’d let Auerbach take a look at it. It’s been a week now, and the bruise should look better than that.”

  “How sweet to have a man so concerned about every little bump. Anyway, I’d be embarrassed to tell anybody how it happened. I mean, how many people bang themselves up getting on a horse?”

  “All the same — ”

  “Or I could tell everybody you did it to me in bed. Out of your mind with passion.”

  Kruger could not keep from laughing. “All right, but if it doesn’t look better in a couple of days, I’m going to bring Auerbach over here whether you want me to or not.”

  Leanne embraced him again. “What a worrier you are. But sweet.”

  Through the door dashed an animated ball of white fluff. It jumped up and pawed at Kruger and his wife, yapping excitedly.

  Kruger released Leanne and looked down. “Damned if I don’t think that dog is jealous of me.”

  “Don’t be silly. Pepe loves both of us. You’re his daddy now.”

  Kruger tried to look exasperated but couldn’t make it. He relaxed into a grin. “Little did I know I was inheriting a family.”

  • • •

  The last log crashed in the hearth with a display of red-orange sparks. Elliot Kruger slowly raised his head and stared at the room’s dark walls. The rich Spanish tapestries hanging there did not register. From somewhere in the big house a grandfather clock bonged the hour. The deep note echoed through the silent rooms and corridors, bouncing off the dark walls and rolling through the empty crannies.

  Empty. Forty rooms richly decorated and furnished with authentic Spanish antiques. Empty. Half of them closed off now. Still too much for one old man and a handful of servants who walked on silent feet.

  Kruger lowered his head again and covered his face. Tears dampened his cheeks, pale now without their accustomed tan. He sobbed silently, thinking of what he had lost.

  • • •

  They had made love that last night before Halloween in the huge bed that Leanne had always laughed about.

  “It’s much too big for the two of us,” she had said. “We could get lost.”

  “I’ll find you,” he said.

  “You’d better. And don’t try slipping out of my reach. I like touching you at night.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  She gave the bed a mock frown. “It is awfully big. We could have another couple in and never know it.”

  “I intend to keep it just for you and me.”

  “Well, I certainly hope so.”

  Their lovemaking that night had been delightful as always. Leanne was inventive, enthusiastic, and passionate. She was as warm and giving as Opal had been cold and selfish. In thirty-nine years of marriage to his first wife, Kruger had not experienced anything like the wild pleasure of his twelve short months with Leanne.

  Afterward he lay on his back while she swabbed his body with a moist scented towel.

  “God, you make me feel like a boy again. You really do.”

  She tapped him on the nose with the towel. “Will you stop with that age business?”

  “I am forty years older than you,” he said softly.

  “Thirty-nine,” she corrected. “I had a birthday, remember?”

  “My son Richard could be your father.”

  “Well, I’m glad he isn’t. Richard doesn’t approve of me.”

  “There isn’t much Richard does approve of.”

  Leanne was thoughtful for a moment. “Was your other son very different?”

  “Gil was another breed entirely. There was only a year between their ages, with Richard the older, but you would have thought he was the father. Gil had a joy in him, a zest for life, that his brother lacked. It was partly my fault, I guess, for being closer to Gil. I’ve been trying to make it up to Richard for nineteen years, ever since Gil was killed.

  “An accident, wasn’t it?”

  “Racing. Gil was driving with the Ferrari team in Madrid, and a freak gust of wind caught him. Flipped the car into the air. It exploded when it came down.”

  “It must have been hard for you.”

  “A long time ago,” Kruger said. “Anyway, I do have Richard. He can be stuffy, but I know he worries about me. Thinks he has to protect me in my dotage.”

  “Do you need protection?”

  “Come here and let’s find out.”

  He pulled her down on top of him and kissed her mouth. He tasted her tongue, warm cinnamon. Her breasts spread against his chest, and the puff of her pubic hair brushed his lower stomach. He felt the beginning of another erection.

  “My God, will you look at me!”

&n
bsp; “I’ll do more than look,” she said, reaching down to take him in her cool, busy fingers.

  He gasped. “Sometimes I think you are a witch.”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  He grasped her smooth buttocks with his hands and let his body give her the answer.

  • • •

  With a groaning effort Kruger pushed himself up out of the chair and crossed the room to the tall window. He stared out into the night. His own ravaged face looked back at him from the dark pane.

  The pool house and what it held had been the only thing he and Leanne had ever quarreled about. Not a quarrel, really; she just hadn’t approved. She hadn’t understood.

  • • •

  “I’m sorry, Elliot,” she had said when first he took her out there. “It makes me feel creepy. It isn’t natural.” When she saw the look on his face, she had taken his hand and tried to smile. “Maybe if you explained it to me. The truth is I really don’t know much about — What is it, cryogenics?”

  “It’s called cryonic interment,” he said. “The steel cylinder is kept at a temperature of minus a hundred ninety-six degrees Centigrade with liquid nitrogen.”

  “And that will keep a body from … you know?”

  “That’s right. The blood is pumped out first and preserved separately. It’s replaced with a kind of biologic antifreeze solution to protect the tissues. The theory is that sometime in the future medical science will come up with a cure for whatever killed you, so they thaw you out, administer the cure, and bingo, you’re back in business.”

  Kruger’s attempt to keep it light fell flat.

  “That’s the theory,” Leanne said. “Have they ever done it?”

  “Not yet.”

  She looked with distaste at the steel cylinder, about the size of an old-fashioned iron lung. “Didn’t Walt Disney have it done?”

  “That was only a rumor. Disney’s relatives had his remains cremated.”

  “Good for them.”

  “It’s not a crime, you know. Not wanting to die before your time.”

  “I know, darling,” she said softly. “I don’t want you to die, either.” Thoughtfully, she added, “You don’t hear much about it anymore.”

  “I know. There was a scandal seven or eight years ago when one cryonics outfit went bankrupt. They skipped town, leaving a load of debts.”

  “What happened to the … clients?”

  Kruger coughed. “Well, the liquid nitrogen has to be renewed every month, and without the proper maintenance they — ”

  “Rotted.” Leanne supplied, and shuddered.

  Kruger pulled her to him. “It didn’t have to happen. That’s why I wanted my cylinder right here, where it can be maintained by my own people. I’ve made it an absolute requirement in my will.”

  Leanne shivered, although the temprature outside the cylinder was a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. “Can we go now?” she said.

  “Of course.”

  They left the pool house, Kruger securing the double door after them. As they walked back across the lush green lawn to the main house, Leanne kept her arm around his waist and her body pressed against his.

  “Darling,” she said softly, “don’t you think that when it’s time to die, you should … let go?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m only hedging against dying before it’s my time. My father was younger than I am and just as healthy when he died. He choked to death on a piece of steak. That was before anybody knew about the Heimlich maneuver. My father just turned purple and died while fifty people in the restaurant watched and couldn’t do a damn thing.”

  “You never told me about that,” Leanne said.

  “It’s not something I like to talk about. It’s always haunted me how easily my father could have been saved if someone there had just known the proper technique.”

  His facial muscles relaxed as he pushed away the memory. “If I get torn up in an accident like Gil or eaten away by some disease, that’s it, good-bye. Bury me, cremate me; I don’t care. But if I feel as good as I do now and I’m still in good shape and some crazy thing or other snuffs me out, I want another chance, that’s all.”

  “It still sounds like something people shouldn’t monkey With. I know I’d hate to be frozen in one of those things.”

  “Let’s call it an eccentric hang-up on my part. I’m entitled to one, am I not?”

  “Sure you are.” She gave him a playful punch. “Let’s play some tennis.”

  After that day they never again discussed the pool house or its contents. Leanne, however, stopped using the swimming pool. Kruger was sorry about that. He had enjoyed watching her in a bright spandex suit, poised on the board, knifing into the water, crossing the pool in strong, graceful strokes. But he respected her feelings, as she had respected his, and he said nothing.

  • • •

  Leanne Kruger never appeared in the witch costume. The Halloween party was never held. Because on the morning of October 31 Leanne Kruger was dead.

  Pulmonary embolism, Dr. Auerbach told Kruger. A blood clot in the internal saphenous vein of her leg, probably a result of the riding injury, broke loose and traveled through the circulatory system. Leanne’s heart stopped without warning, and she died silently as Kruger slept by her side.

  “Sometimes these things give a warning, sometimes not.” Dr. Auerbach spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Kruger stared at him. “She’s only twenty-four years old.”

  “Embolism knows no age,” Auerbach said. “Of course, there may be contributing factors that an autopsy will — ”

  “No autopsy,” Kruger said flatly.

  “But in a case of this kind, sudden death with no witness — you were asleep — it’s customary.”

  “I don’t give a damn what’s customary,” Kruger told him. “Nobody is going to cut on my wife.”

  “Elliot, listen to me — ”

  “Like hell. I’m taking Leanne home with me. Now.”

  “Be reasonable, Elliot. There are procedures that have to be followed. Papers to be filed.”

  “Procedures be damned. Get me a telephone.”

  • • •

  As Elliot Kruger well knew, there are few obstructions that cannot be overridden by enough money. Within an hour, the body of Leanne Kruger had been signed out of the hospital and returned to the house in Holmby Hills. Under the supervision of a different doctor, the body had been prepared and sealed in the steel cryogenic cylinder. There, in the pool house, watched over by full-time attendants, she had remained through the fall and into the winter while her husband sought a way to bring her back.

  At first, Kruger had looked for medical help. From three continents he flew in physicians, surgeons, and specialists in the heart and blood diseases. Some of them were tempted by the huge fees he offered, but when faced with the undeniable fact of Leanne’s death and the enormity of what Kruger asked of them, they all backed down.

  “Impossible” was their unanimous opinion.

  Elliot Kruger would not accept it.

  “Why must it be?” he asked. Through the viewing plate of the cylinder Leanne’s features remained so perfect, so relaxed and without blemish. Her body was untouched except for the damnable blood clot, no bigger than a dime, that had cut off her life. He would not, he could not, accept it.

  After the physicians came the religious practitioners. A noninvolved Protestant himself, Kruger had stood by through endless hours of prayer in strange tongues and finally to strange gods in the hope of seeing his Leanne rise again. Discouraged and exhausted, he had dismissed the last of the self-styled prophets just this week.

  Now, as he stared through the dark toward the pool house, Elliot Kruger was ready to break. After so many years, to find happiness and have it capriciously snatched away from him — it was not fair. He would not allow it. There had never been a time when, if he wanted something badly enough, he could not go after it and get it. By God, he would get it this time, too. No matte
r where he had to go for it.

  He went into the study and buzzed the room of Rosalia, Leanne’s personal maid. He had kept her on because … well, because letting her go would have been like disposing of Leanne’s little dog. It would have admitted that his wife was lost to him forever.

  “Yes, sir?” a sleepy voice answered him through the small speaker.

  “I’d like to see you in the study, Rosalia,” he said.

  In minutes she was there, her hair tied back, face innocent of makeup. She wore a quilted robe Leanne had given her for Christmas.

  “Rosalia, you, uh, wanted to show me something in one of those supermarket newspapers the other day.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kruger. I was only trying to help.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I was abrupt with you. I haven’t been thinking straight lately. I should have listened.”

  “That’s all right; it was nothing.”

  “Do you still have the paper?”

  “I — I think so.”

  “Will you get it for me, please? Show me again what you wanted me to see.”

  Rosalia hesitated a moment, then nodded and left the room.

  Alone, Elliot Kruger turned once more to the dark window. Silently, he mouthed the name of his wife. This would be his last try. The final, humiliating step in hopes of accomplishing the only thing that mattered to him. If this failed, it would all be over. If, by some miracle, it succeeded, no price would be too great.

  Rosalia returned with the current copy of the L.A. Insider. She turned to the back pages and handed the paper to Kruger, pointing to a small ad.

  SECRETS OF THE SUPERNATURAL

  Seer — Mystic — Oracle

  M. Fain, Master of the Occult

  Readings by Appointment

  Kruger’s mouth turned down in distaste, but he folded the paper and tucked it under his arm.