—Some other little girl will find it, then.
Before the door closes she has the kitty in her arms.
I go down the hall, following the sound of the TV, the blare of a late-afternoon talk show; couples fighting, a conversation made up almost entirely of bleeps.
I raise my chin as I come into the room. Po Sin lifts his cane at me, reaches for the remote and hits mute.
—I love that shit. This one, those two there, they're sisters, they both married the same guy, but he's not a guy, he's a transsexual. Used to be a girl. Got a fake dick. Funny thing, the two who married him, both of them trannies, too. Both used to be guys. Brothers.
He goes to push himself from his chair and I wave him down.
—Sit. No, don't get up.
He gets up.
—Need to move around. They want me getting exercise. Took a walk yesterday.
—Yeah?
—Around the block. Thought my lungs would explode. Give me that shit.
I hand him the bag and he takes out the invoices.
—What's this?
I look.
—Decomp.
—You bill this?
—That my handwriting?
—Don't fuck around.
—I billed it.
—You underbilled for materials.
—You want it out of my pocket?
—No. I want it out of your hide. What's this expense?
—Day labor.
—For what?
—We had to do the job at night. Gabe was doing accommodations. I needed to pay someone.
—Who?
I look at the families fighting on the TV.
—Dingbang.
He grunts.
—He show up on time?
—Pretty much.
He looks at another invoice.
—Shotgun job?
—Gabe did the invoice.
—I know.
His eyes go over it.
—What was it?
I sit on the edge of the bed.
—Guy put it to his chest. Knew his wife was the open-casket type, didn't want to blow his own head off. Maybe, I don't know, upset someone. Did it out in the backyard in their drained swimming pool. Blew out half his lung, missed his heart. He flopped around, actually tried to climb out of the pool, pumped blood over the whole thing. Handprints on the tile all the way around.
—How'd you?
—There was pathology on the side of the house from the blast. I did the detail work there while Gabe got the chunks out of the pool. We couldn't just hose those.
—Yeah, clog the drains.
—Yeah. Had to cover that. Ended up.
—I know.
—Filled the pool partway.
—Chlorinated the shit out of it. Scrubbed and pumped it out.
He runs a finger over the invoice.
—That's a good one.
We sit there till I stand up.
—You gonna eat? Want me to?
He shakes his head.
—The stuff I'm allowed to eat, I'd rather fast. Lost fifty pounds. I'd known I could do that, I'd have had a stroke ten years ago.
—Start a diet craze.
—Man, it's sweeping the nation.
I go to the door.
—I'm gonna see if I can get Xing in the bath.
He puts his hands together in prayer.
—Best thing about this whole deal, not having to wrestle with her. You want to borrow my cane to beat her?
—No, I brought a belt.
—Good man.
He picks up the remote.
—You know Lei won't make it back in two hours.
—She never does.
—Woman can't be on time for shit. You got something going tonight, you take off. I can handle Xing once she's run down a little.
—No, I'm cool. Hooking up with Soledad later. See a movie. Try to distract her a little. Tomorrow we have to get the last of her stuff out of the Malibu place and into her apartment. Fed will have it up for auction next week.
—Fucking Fed.
—Well. Her dad did the crimes. So. Anyway.
I go out in the hall.
—Web.
I go back to the door.
He looks at the TV, looks at me.
—I'll be back at it soon enough, and I'll forget how much help you've been and I'll just push you around on the job like the peon you are. So. Thanks for all this.
I touch the nearly healed cut on my forehead. It's going to scar bad because I never bothered to have it stitched.
—Yeah, sure. After all, not like you ever did anything for me.
Po Sin nods.
—Nothing I can remember.
He aims the remote at the TV and unmutes the escalating melee on the screen.
—These people, they're living proof that a human being can live with any old stupid shit they can dream up.
I look out the window and watch Xing on the front lawn, kicking her new kitty around like a soccer ball.
—No argument here, Grandfather Elephant.
He waves the remote.
—Holy! This chick is gonna claw that asshole's eyes out.
He bumps the volume up, and I turn and leave the room, the raised voices of brawling families following me down the hall as I go to bathe his daughter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLIE HUSTON is the author of The Shotgun Rule; the Henry Thompson trilogy, which includes the Edgar Award–nominated Six Bad Things; and The Joe Pitt casebooks. For Marvel Comics he has written Moon Knight, as well as special annual issues of The Ultimates and X-Force. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Virginia Louise Smith. Visit him at www.pulpnoir.com
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Charlie Huston
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Huston, Charlie.
The mystic arts of erasing all signs of death: a novel / Charlie Huston. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51307-6
1. Crime scenes—Cleaning—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles County (Calif).— Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.U855M97 2009
813' .6—dc22 2008035293
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Jealous, Bitter, Cynical, Hostile and Pretentious
Chapter 2 - The Last Time I'd Seen Her
Chapter 3 - Code Enforcement
Chapter 4 - Till His Neighbors Skelled Him
Chapter 5 - Pipe Bomb in the Ass
Chapter 6 - The Soun of A Bitch he Raised
Chapter 7 - What Being A Dick Gets You
Chapter 8 - As Normal as it Gets
Chapter 9 - No Woman's Tool
Chapter 10 - How Breathing Works
Chapter 11 - Only A Skall Earthquake
Chapter 12 - To Keep him from Crushing My Spine
Chapter 13 - Aquisitious
Chapter 14 - Skewed
Chapter 15 - The World Without Ke
Chapter 16 - Other Things Blown
Chapter 17 - Hinterlands
Chapter 18 - Beneath A Raging Eye
Chapter 19 - What She Thought of That
Chapter 20 - The Absent Photo
Chapter 21 - Too Tired to be Alone
&nbs
p; Chapter 22 - Secret Skeletons
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death Page 27