The Death of Israel Leventhal

by Boom Baumgartner

  "What number do I call?" asked George.

  "Promise me." His face pressed into the carpet, Kelly's voice was half-muffled.

  "What?"

  "Promise me you'll let me die here. I tell you, and you never bring me back."

  "I never want to see you or speak to you again, Kelly."

  "Fair enough," Kelly said. Then he told him the number, and George entered it into the mobile.

  *~*~*

  The burner phone he had taken from the now dead Kelly felt like a lead weight in his twitching fingers. It had been at least twelve hours since he left Izzy's flat, not sure what to do about Kelly's body. He called Aodhan, and asked him to handle the disposal of the body while he took a train to the airport, not sure where to go next. Maybe Colorado, like Aodhan suggested.

  But first, he had to call the number Kelly had told him.

  "Hello?" answered a voice. A woman's voice in fact. George stared at the phone confused. He had thought this Woodmansey person would be a man.

  "Hiya," he responded. He hadn't really thought through how he was going to handle this.

  "Why are you calling this phone?"

  "I was hoping to speak with Woodmansey," he responded cautiously.

  "Can I have your name, sir?"

  "I'm sorry, but who is this?"

  "This is Detective Garson from the Miami Police Department."

  Instantly, George grabbed for his suitcase, and he rummaged through it while he mumbled something like "I'm sorry. I must have the wrong number" and she pressed for a name.

  He pulled out an Oklahoman driver's license from with the name David Mayweather on the front. "My name's Dave. What's going on here?"

  "Dave what?"

  "Mayweather."

  "We found this phone on a body. Mr. Mayweather, where are you right now? I think we would like to have a word with you."

  George stabbed his thumb down on the end button. Whoever Wooodmansey was, that person was dead, and George had used a perfectly good and incredibly expensive identity to find that out. He ditched the phone in a garbage can, and bought a ticket to Miami under a different alias.

  George tried to sort the facts in his head while he flew to Florida, intent on breaking into the morgue. He was fairly certain that if Woodmansey died under suspicious enough circumstances that a cop was answering his phone that his body was still in the morgue and would be for at least two more weeks.

  The weird bits of knowledge one had at one's fingertips when you're a gravedigger, George thought grimly.

  It was only when he entered, wearing a white coat he had bought at a uniform store on the way, did George realize that there was a hitch to his plan. He had no idea what Woodmansey would look like. He snuck into the computer records, and found four bodies that matched around the time he thought Woodmansey would have been killed, only two were marked under suspicious circumstances.

  He took down their tag numbers, and he went in search for them.

  The first body he pulled out was an elderly man with a comb over. There were bruises around his neck. He seemed a little old to be a fixer, but nevertheless, George touched him and reached into the void.

  "What is going on?" croaked the old man, his voice hardly audible.

  George had transformed himself into Gabriel, his favorite gambit, and one he was certain Woodmansey wouldn't know. After all, gravediggers told fixers a lot of things, but they would never tell them the tricks of their trade. "I am Gabriel, and you stand outside heaven's gates."

  The old man smiled. "But I don't believe in God."

  "God is forgiving, my son. If you are honest with me, you will go to Heaven." George was almost bored saying it. "Who killed you?"

  "My son." George let out an exasperated sigh, but he pressed anyway. Maybe this fixer knew to lie.

  "Why?"

  "I wouldn't lend him twenty dollars," replied the man.

  Abruptly, George broke off the connection. He moved on to the next one and pulled him out.

  George gasped as he looked at the pale face of Charles Hastings, his throat slit. George could harldly believe it. Had he sank that far into the void? Tentatively, George reached out and touched Charles' neck. It felt real. When he convinced himself that it was real, he slowly turned his gaze to the wound on Charles' neck. Fuck. Usually, gravediggers had sense enough to dismember corpses, but whoever this was had been in a hurry, so they did the next best thing and disabled the voice box.

  George bent over him, examined the bloody gash, and smiled. Whoever did it cut too high. It was right under the chin. There was a chance he could still talk to Charles and figure out what the hell was going on.

  He snuck out of the morgue, and back into his hotel and googled a medical supply store.

  *~*~*

  It had taken George no less than four medical supply stores to find a mechanical larynx. Four. Four bloody stores of making a stupid story about his grandfather having lost his, and needing to buy a new one. It was ridiculous, and it was the fourth store that had one and didn't seem to mind handing one over to him sans insurance. It was a bloody voice box, why all the trouble?

  He snuck back into the morgue by the one nighttime morgue attendant and found the body, making sure to lock the door behind him.

  Then, he took out the mechanical larynx, and touched it against his throat, and he reached into the void and found nothing. George closed his eyes, and reached further, feeling sweat forming under his arms, and slowly coating his face. There were too many dead people in the room, and though he was touching Charles, finding him behind the mass of voices was hard.

  George was leaning heavily against the metal slab he lay on when he finally reached him.

  Charles' head turned towards him, the wound at his throat gaping like a demonic grin. He pressed the mechanical larynx to his throat and turned it on.

  "Boy George?" said the larynx, electronic and monotone.

  "Charles. What are you doing here?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Charles laughed, but it came out in bursts of static. "You mean you don't know?"

  "Know what?"

  Charles smirked, and it looked as gruesome as the gash in his throat. "Boy George, you are so naïve and trusting. You didn't know that your loverboy Leventhal did this?"

  "Bollucks. Izzy's dead."

  "How the hell are you so trusting in this business?" Charles rolled his eyes. "How do you not know better by now?"

  "You know," George said, channeling the ember of rage that had been stoking for days to change the shadows around him. The morgue disappeared, and the room filled with the clanking of chains. "I'm getting very tired of people like you."

  One by one, images of Izzy showed up in the chains. Someone dangling from them like a hung man, others suspended by their arms and legs, others held fixed to the ground. They all had different expressions from blank to smiling to abject pain. Every Izzy had shown up in his nightmares, and they were created easily enough without George having to think about it.

  Standing in his own sinewy shadow, he conjured up tentacles that reached around the room, grasping at Charles and Izzy.

  He pressed the mechanical larynx into Charles' throat painfully hard. "Who killed you?"

  His breath came out in short, whistling gasps as the air from his lungs tried in vain to traverse the gap the slit in his esophagus made. "He did!" he yelled, coming out like a static mess as he pointed at Izzy's bodies. "That nightmare killed me."

  "That's impossible. Leventhal's dead. I saw his body."

  "I did, too. I was trying to figure out who when he flounced into my hotel room with that ridiculous mop top of his and suffocated me with a dirty pillow." Charles' eyes burned furiously as he glared at George.

  George stared back, unable to process the information he had received.

  Letting go of the void, George returned to the cold, disinfected white of the morgue. He pocketed the larynx, and left the building, his thoughts caught in a morass of ghosts.

 
When he walked out of the morgue, Izzy stood amongst them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Israel took a great deal of pleasure in killing Charles, though it lasted barely longer than a minute. Whether it was because of what he had done to George all those years ago, or if it was because he tried to kill Israel, Israel couldn't say.

  When Charles had said, "It won't matter. I sent a bodysnatcher to get Boy George," Israel felt vindicated for taking so much pleasure in killing him.

  The moment Israel left the void, he contacted everyone he knew to find Rose, but only Aodhan MacAuliffe knew and was willing to tell. "He's in Miami looking for Woodmansey," the man had said warily. "I don't know when his flight is, nor what name he used."

  In his dirty motel room bath in pink from a neon sign just outside his window, Israel let himself take a moment to sleep. If George had left Chicago, it would be some time before he made it to Miami, and Israel was exhausted from having to watch his back for a killer he did not know.

  He awoke to the sound of Amanda's voice echoing all around him in a tiled room not unlike the one he and George gravedug the cultists. "Another morgue? You're not terribly imaginative, are you?" she said. "I far preferred Istanbul."

  "Me, too." Israel sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "You're still here, then?"

  "Did you find Charles?"

  "Yes."

  "And what did you do?"

  Israel looked at her, discerning if he should tell the truth or not. She had mentioned she and Charles were friends. How would she react if she knew he had killed him? "I talked to him," he said finally. "Turns out I got involved in all of this bloody comedy of errors."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Simple. Charles decided to help you and created a fake name of Woodmansey to cover his tracks in case Derek found out."

  "Okay." She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

  "You blackmail Derek, and then he kills the only three people in his company who might have leaked it. Then he hires me to find out that info."

  Amanda inhaled sharply. "So Charles realized that if Derek had that quick of a temper without knowing the facts…"

  Israel nodded and finished her thought. "That he better stop whatever hapless gravedigger from finding out it was him all along because the last thing he wants is for Derek to find him out."

  "So you were attacked by Charles."

  "His lackeys. I survived."

  "Then why did Derek hire you a second time?"

  "Remember that comedy of errors thing?"

  Amanda inclined her head, and frowned. "I don't get it."

  "I went underground, and the only way for Derek to lure me out was to offer another job. One I couldn't refuse. Then, he could kill me in case I intended to blackmail him."

  "Wow."

  Israel smacked his lips. "Yeah. Wow."

  "Meanwhile, Charles has to kill you because you might know more than you do, so you what?"

  "Faked my own death to take him off the trail."

  "What a shitty business you work in. I thought Derek was the scum of the Earth until now."

  Israel could not deny it. When he couldn't look at her anymore, he moved to a refrigerator unit and opened it. He wondered if there were bodies inside this time. The pink underside of feet loomed in the darkness of the cubby hole. When Israel read the toe tag, he yanked out the slab.

  On it lay a man who was tall, dark, and wearing a smart suit.

  Amanda gasped. "That's the man that was with you. When you first talked to me."

  Israel's nerves blazed with every heartbeat. Somehow he was able to reach Amanda, who he should not have been able to see with how weak his powers were. Did that mean George was dead, too?

  "You don't think he's…" Amanda didn't finish her sentence in the face of Israel's cold expression.

  George opened his eyes. "Hello, Izzy."

  "What are you doing here?" asked Israel, his voice choked with anxiety.

  "I don't know. Do you?"

  Israel shook his head.

  "Is that really him?" Amanda whispered.

  "Izzy?" George continued. "You should have told me."

  Should have told him what? That he faked his death? "I couldn't."

  "You needed me to be believable. You knew how I felt about you."

  "I didn't know. I thought we were friends."

  "Me, too."

  Israel glanced over at Amanda, uncomfortable to be having this conversation in front of her, even if he still wasn't sure if she was real; even though he was sure this George wasn't as well.

  "You should have told me." George sighed, and looked over at Israel, a soft light in his eyes belying the hardness of his words.

  "I didn't mean for it to get that far. I didn't know you'd do anything at all."

  "You had to know there was a chance."

  "Fuck you, Rose. If you don't actually say what our relationship means to you, how am I supposed to do anything about it?"

  "I don't think I really could have told you. I'm brave, but I'm not that brave."

  "Don't be stupid, you've always been brave. Braver than me."

  "No, just more naïve." George grinned cheekily, and Israel felt his heart press against his chest.

  "It'll be over soon," Israel said, his hand reaching out to grab George's.

  "I won't know that," George replied, shutting his eyes.

  "You will, though."

  "Promise?" George whispered, before his body stilled.

  Israel nodded. Unbidden, the drawer closed itself. George's hand slipped from Izzy's before he could react. When Israel tried to reopen it, the door was immovable.

  Time went by, though Israel couldn't tell if it was doing so quickly or slowly. He gave up on George's door to open another. This time it was empty, and somehow it looked inviting. Behind him, Amanda floated up to him, and put a decaying hand on his shoulder.

  "Were you and that man… together?" she asked.

  Israel stopped, and stared at stainless steel door. "No." He opened it, and pulled out the drawer.

  "Maybe you should have been." Her lips pursed, Amanda looked like a young schoolgirl goading a friend about a crush.

  "I thought… I thought we were friends."

  "I don't want to make it sound like you're a middle schooler, but maybe you thought that he thought you were just friends, so you didn't ask for more."

  Israel's eyes felt heavy, and the grey slab looked strangely enticing. "Why would I want more?"

  "Oh, Israel. Is what you have with him enough?"

  Israel held up his hand, and stared at it. "No. It wasn't."

  He got up on the slab and lay down. Raising his hands, he pulled on the edge of the opening, sliding his drawer in and letting the darkness overcome him. The last thing he saw were Amanda's rotting and befuddled eyes.

  *~*~*

  Israel found George walking out of the morgue he had left Charles in a day earlier.

  "George," Israel said because he didn't know what else to say.

  Slowly, George blinked. He was dressed in a white lab coat, and Israel could not stop thinking of the day he found out George couldn't always hold the void in. "So now you finally talk?"

  "What?"

  "You've been haunting me in the void everywhere I go, and now you talk."

  "That's impossible. I'm alive, George."

  "Bullocks."

  Israel took a deep breath, and strode forward. George flinched as Israel took his hand. "I'm alive, George."

  "Stop calling me that."

  "What?"

  "George."

  "Your name?"

  "Yeah, my name. You've only ever called me Rose the entire time I've known you, and suddenly you show up and I'm George? What's your game, ghost?"

  Israel snorted. "My game? My game was to not get killed. I figure that should at least allow me to use your proper name."

  "You were killed."

  "Look," Israel held out a hand, and looked nervously down the alley way. "Let's go and we'll talk on t
he way."

  "No. Here."

  "In front of the morgue you just illegally broke into to talk to the man I just killed? I don't know, George. That seems like a really bad idea."

  "You killed Charles?"

  "He was after me."

  "I know. He killed you. Jaime told me that he killed you."

  "No. He wanted to." Israel sighed. "It's complicated, but I promise you, faking my death was the only way."

  "You would fake your death without telling me?"

  Israel nodded, unable to look at George.

  "You would let them show me a corpse that looks like you?"

  "Yes, damnnit." Israel clenched his fists. "I didn't know…. Well, no… first of all, you are a crappy actor George. You needed to think I was dead so Woodmansey… Charles would, too. And second of all, I didn't know you were in love with me. That might have changed things."

  Slowly, George raised his eyes to meet Israel's. "I never said that."

  Israel's heart constricted painfully in his chest. "I know. That's the problem."

  Neither moved.

  "George," Israel said quietly. "I have one last loose end to tie up."

  "Whatever, Izzy."

  "Go home. We'll talk when I'm done."

  George didn't say anything. He turned, and walked down the alley way, leaving Israel alone. Israel wished he knew what had just happened.

  *~*~*

  Below Israel, the American farmlands spread out like a web, its edges grasping toward rivers and roads. Israel watched the world get greener and greener until his plane was over New Orleans, which looked like a dull grey patchwork quilt made from dusty scraps of cloth. While they flew over Lake Portchatrain, it started to rain.

  He purchased a Saints umbrella. It had been a bad season for the team, so it was on sale. Then he rented a car and drove to Jaime LaFleur.

  LaFleur's house had no address, but Israel found it tucked behind a driveway that went to three separate houses. When he rang the doorbell, Chopin's Heroic Polonaise rang out in tinny, jumbled tones.

  Jaime opened the door, and pushed her long brown hair out of her face. "Ah, Leventhal, I didn't think you really died."

  Israel shook his head. "Let's make this quick."

  Jaime narrowed her eyes.

  "I understand why you sent me to Derek." Israel stood back casually but he let the threat of his knowledge hang heavily in the air.