Stiffed

by Kitchin, Rob

  I slowly push myself up onto my knees. Nothing seems broken, thank heavens. Cautiously I stand and limp towards Jason and the body. The hall table is on its side, the phone on the floor, a high pitched tone whining from the receiver. Two potted plants have been upended, dried soil spread everywhere. It’s a miracle the plants are alive given how infrequently I remember to water them.

  ‘Who is it?’ I whisper.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get him out the back door.’

  Jason nudges me out the way, drags Marino back up onto his feet then flips him up onto his shoulder, letting out a grunt with the effort.

  We head through the kitchen to the back door and I let Jason out.

  ‘You go,’ I say, ‘I’ll follow you in a minute.’

  ‘Tadhg.’

  ‘I need to tidy up a little.’

  ‘Tadhg!’

  I sneak back in and dash up the stairs. I want to flip the mattress in a vague effort to hide the blood stain and throw on a fresh sheet and bed clothes. As I reach the landing a heavy hand raps on the door.

  Damn.

  I grab hold of one side and yank the mattress up, dragging it across and letting it drop back into place. I throw a fresh sheet over the bed and quickly start to tuck it in.

  The knocking is repeated.

  This is hopeless. I glance round the room. It’s a mess. There’s the residue of puke on the closet door, there are flecks of blood I’ve missed on the wall and floor, the crap that was on the bedside locker is jumbled on the floor, and the blood stained duvet cover is in full view.

  I kick the duct tape under the bed and stuff the duvet into the closet. It’ll have to do. I can explain. Kind of.

  Except I no longer have the body.

  I should have fled with Jason.

  Fuck, Jason! He’s now on the run with a dead made-man. I wonder who he’ll ring to help him out if I’m indefinitely delayed?

  I head for the top of the stairs. Time to face the music. I scratch at my arm and stop. It’s still covered in blood. Marino’s blood.

  Oh God.

  There’s a tinkle of glass in the hallway and a black hand sneaks in through the shattered pane, reaching for the lock.

  I shuffle backwards and head for my old bedroom at the rear of the house. It’s still full of the crap I accumulated in my youth - books, comics, games consoles, fantasy figurines and model aircraft - though now neatly rearranged by the hands of my late mother. I open the window and step out onto the pitched roof of the back porch. I’ve years of practice sneaking out this way. During my teenage years it was Route 1.

  The front door is now open and I can hear the voices of two men as they enter.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right house?’ The man sounds like Barry White with the flu. Deep and guttural.

  ‘Of course I’m fucking sure!’

  ‘Someone’s been here before us. The place is a fucking mess. You take upstairs, I’ll look round down here.’

  ‘I ain’t your fucking flunkey. You take upstairs.’

  ‘Just fucking do it, Junior.’

  ‘And stop calling me Junior! I ain’t junior to no-one.’

  ‘If I have to tell you again, Junior, it’ll be for the last fucking time. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ve had just about all the shit I can take for one evening. Fucking rednecks.’

  ‘Fuck you, man. Fuck you and fuck your crazy shit. I got better things to be doing than getting into gun fights and chasing a crazy white bitch. I should have listened to Denise. She said this trip would be fucked up. That you’d gone color blind. I could be at home with her right now, doing the nasty, instead of fucking about here with you ... what the …’

  There was a kind of hiss, then a thunk, followed by another.

  ‘Fuck.’ Barry White didn’t sound happy. ‘Fucking Denise.’

  If these were cops, then it sounded like one of them had just knocked out his partner.

  Which probably meant they weren’t cops.

  Oh shit.

  The stairs creak as Barry White ascends. As he reaches the landing I chance a quick peek through the window. He’s tall, broad and bald, with skin that seems blacker than the shirt he’s wearing. Pure ebony. He enters each room then heads back downstairs.

  I climb down off the porch and sneak round the side of the house. A minute later Barry White emerges alone, his face a fierce scowl. He isn’t someone you’d want to bring home to your folks – unless you wanted to scare them half to death.

  ‘Fuck,’ he mutters and heads for his car, a black Lexus, leaving the front door wide open.

  He reverses out and glides away slowly.

  I wait a minute or so then cautiously step back across the threshold, my heart in my mouth.

  Junior is slumped at the bottom of the stairs. He is, I mean was, a small black man dressed in jeans and a grey hooded top, RED SOX printed across the front. There’s a neat hole in his forehead, his brains sprayed all over the hall wall and a photograph of my parent’s wedding.

  Fuck.

  Fuckity fuck.

  I turn away and dry heave.

  * * *

  I tap lightly on the door leading into the basement. A few moments later Jason pushes it open. The basement is his domain. He shares the middle floor with his parents. They occupy the top floor.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he whispers waspishly and not unreasonably. It’s nearly an hour since he left my house carrying a heavy corpse with attached liabilities.

  ‘Tidying up.’

  I hand him a sports bag that contains some spare clothes. Every part of me aches like a mouthful of rotten teeth. The fall over the banister seems to have jarred every bone in my body. Sweat is beading on my forehead and dribbling into my tired eyes. Despite drinking a gallon of water and taking a handful of headache tablets my head still feels like it’s been the test site for high explosive ordnance.

  I’d figured that if the police hadn’t already showed, they weren’t likely to do so until the morning. I’d wrapped Junior up in sheets and duct tape as with Marino. Then I cleaned up the hall as best I could, picking up the stand and phone, repotting the plants, sweeping up the soil and wiping down the walls. I’d also had another go at the bedroom, scrubbing the walls and floor, and replacing the duvet. I’d shoved the sheets and debris into garbage bags, which were now at the back of the Choi’s garden.

  ‘Where’d you hide the body?’ I ask, rubbing my face with my filthy t-shirt.

  ‘In the garage, like you suggested.’

  ‘I have another one. He’s in the bushes.’

  ‘Another one!’ His harsh whisper rises an octave and two dozen decibels. ‘For fuck’s sake, Tadhg.’

  ‘There were two of them. The smaller one pissed off the mean motherfucker and he shot him in the head. The gun must have had a silencer.’

  ‘They weren’t cops?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Double fuck.’

  Two people had been murdered in my house in the space of a few hours and I had absolutely no idea why. And now I possessed two bodies. An Italian bad dude and a Black bad dude. At least I’m assuming Junior is a bad dude. He sure as hell hung around with one. And Kate has done a runner, but not to the police. So far. The obvious conclusion is that this is either a case of mistaken address or something to do with her. She’s kooky and sees the world in a way I just can’t fathom, but I have a hard time seeing her mixed up with Marino. But then anything is possible, as the last hour has just proven.

  ‘I’ll put him in the garage,’ I continue, ‘then I need a shower. We can then work out what to do with them.’

  ‘You can’t shower here,’ Jason protests.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because you’ll be washing off their blood and DNA and … shit in my unit. If the police check it out I’ll be implicated.’

  ‘You are fucking implicated, you fat fuck. There’s a body in your garage and another
in your bushes.’

  ‘Look, you can’t shower here,’ Jason reiterates.

  ‘Fine, I’ll go back to my house and shower there.’

  ‘But what if the cops turn up?’

  ‘What do you suggest then, Jase? I can’t shower here, I can’t shower there. I should go round like this for the rest of the day?’

  There’s a sound in the alley at the side of the house; somebody making their way along it.

  Shit.

  I scoot backwards and dive in under one of Mrs Choi’s hebes. Jason closes the basement door.

  Annabelle Levy turns the corner. She taps on Jason’s door in a coded pattern. I guess I now know who Jason would call when he’s in a bind.

  I’ve known Annabelle the same length of time as Jason. She was one of our odd-club at school. She’s mixed race – white, Jewish father, black mother. She’s intelligent, beautiful and pissed off with the whole world. She was the only one of us that could have fitted in with the in-crowd. Instead she chose to hang around with the losers. It didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t make sense to me now. She could be whatever she wants but she’s somehow managed to both over and under-achieve at the same time – top of the class, Harvard degree, started her own business; moved back to Carrick Springs, stayed single, and still hangs round with the idiots.

  She actually has a life to lose.

  Jason pushes open the basement door.

  I slide out from under the bush.

  ‘No. No fucking way. She’s going home, right now.’

  ‘I was worried. You were meant to be right behind me, but you never showed up.’

  ‘Well, I’m here now. Anna, it’s all under control. You can go home now.’

  She looks me up and down, her forehead creased in concern. ‘What the hell happened to you, Carrothead?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing happened to me.’

  When I arrived in Carrick Springs, I had an accent that nobody could understand, knew nothing about American sports, and had a healthy head of bright orange hair and a face that looked like one enormous freckle. I wasn’t a red head, or even auburn. I was orange, like the strip of the Cincinnati Bengals. I was an outsider with few attributes to help me become an insider. It sometimes still feels that way.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m Oprah Winfrey and Billy Crystal’s love child.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘Don’t make me come over there and force it out of you.’

  Annabelle is a connoisseur of the Chinese burn and pinkie bend-back. She could kick all of our asses.

  ‘Will you two get in here before you wake up the neighbors,’ Jason whines.

  ‘And leave Junior out here?’ I say, regretting it as soon as it leaves my mouth.

  ‘Who’s Junior?’ Annabelle asks.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Yeah, nobody.’

  She turns back to Jason. ‘Is he the dead body you were talking about?’

  ‘No,’ Jason says.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘He’s a new one,’ Jason continues.

  Fuck.

  ‘This should be good,’ Annabelle says sarcastically. ‘You have two dead bodies. How did they die?’

  ‘One was stabbed, the other shot,’ I say, folding. What’s the point of lying? She would drag it out of us eventually. She’s always had a knack of prizing information out of us. ‘Jase, I need the key to the garage.’

  ‘You really do have two dead bodies?’ Annabelle says, her eyes becoming wide.

  Jason disappears from view for a moment. He throws me the key.

  ‘You should leave now, Anna, before you get embroiled in whatever madness is going on. There’s no point all three of us going to prison.’

  ‘I’m not going to prison,’ Jason says. ‘I didn’t kill those two … dudes.’

  ‘Dude, it’s you that was quoting federal law to me,’ I say and head off down the garden.

  Junior is where I left him – leaning up against the back fence. A dark stain has seeped through to the outer sheet around his head. I glance up at the sky; it’s starting to glow on the horizon. Another half an hour and it’ll be daylight.

  I tuck my shoulder into Junior’s stomach, take a deep breath and hoist him up. He’s not particularly heavy, but my body’s taken a bit of a battering. I jiggle my torso trying to get comfortable and swing round.

  Junior’s legs pass an inch in front of Annabelle’s horrified face.

  We both jump in fright.

  ‘Jesus, Tadhg,’ she mutters.

  ‘I thought I told you to go home.’

  ‘Give me the key,’ she instructs. ‘I’ll open the garage door.’

  * * *

  I feel better after the shower, though better is a relative term. I feel more wholesome than before I stepped into the steaming hot water, but a hell of a lot worse than I did this time yesterday. I’ve an ugly graze on my forehead and the left side of my body is mottled yellow, green and blue.

  I’ve slipped into a t-shirt and a new pair of jeans. My old clothes are in a plastic bag; the plan is to drive out into the middle of nowhere, soak them in petrol and set fire to them. Dump Marino and Junior on the same trip. All we need is a car with a trunk big enough to fit two bodies.

  Annabelle has some kind of sports car that only seats two and has a trunk the size of a small suitcase. Jason drives a Jeep Wrangler TJ which has no trunk and he categorically rules out using his parents old Hyundai. I don’t own a car after the accident.

  The one that killed my parents.

  The one where I was driving.

  Like a moron.

  The one that turned me inside out and upside down, literally and figuratively.

  I either walk, cycle, get cabs or lifts. I don’t feel any better doing so, but I can’t face the responsibility of driving; the damage I could inflict on other drivers, passengers or pedestrians. Been there, done that, worn the guilt-ridden t-shirt and been through the therapy.

  I’m still wearing the t-shirt.

  I’m always wearing the t-shirt.

  We’re not going anywhere at present, however, despite the lack of a suitable vehicle.

  I want to get rid of the bodies.

  Jason wants to get rid of the bodies and disinfect his shower.

  Annabelle wants to whiteboard the situation, check out my house and, if the coast is clear, to blitz it with disinfectant.

  Ergo, we’re sitting in Jason’s crowded basement, surrounded by a chaotic jumble of stuff – clothes, comics, books, supposed collectibles from the Star Wars franchise and God knows what else, and dozens of gadgets and toys – nursing black coffees, staring at a blank piece of paper.

  ‘As I see it,’ Annabelle starts, ‘there are five key questions. First, what was Tony Marino doing in your house?’ She scribbles on the sheet. ‘Second, who killed him and why?’

  ‘That’s two questions,’ Jason interrupts.

  ‘One question, two subparts,’ Annabelle corrects. ‘Third, what happened to Psycho-Bitch when she left the house’ – Annabelle has never taken to Kate and has called her Psycho-Bitch since the day she met her, a name that Jason happily mimics – ‘what is her relationship with Marino, and why didn’t she call the police? Three subparts,’ she says, before Jason interrupts again.

  ‘Fourth, who were the two black men who visited your house and why were they there? You did check his pockets before you bundled him up like a mummy?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘I just wanted to clean his brains off the wall and get him out of the house.’

  ‘So his wallet might be in one of his pockets?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘We need to check. We’ll do that after. To return to question two. A third subpart: what happened to Marino’s clothes?’

  I shrug. Good question. What the hell did happen to his clothes?

  ‘Here’s how I see it,’ Annabelle says, getting to her feet and starting to pace. ‘Psycho-Bitch and Marino were hav
ing an affair. Something happened and she flipped. She’s stabbed him in the chest and neck, left him in bed and took his clothes to get rid of them. She then took some time to get her mojo back together again before returning to the house. She panicked when she saw you, whacked you on the head and then disappeared. She’s probably already across the border in Canada.’

  ‘Why would she take his clothes, but leave him there?’ I ask, defending Kate against my better judgment. ‘Why would she come back to the house?’

  ‘She forgot something,’ Annabelle suggests.

  ‘She stripped down to her underwear to get in the bed. She’d hardly do that if she knew he was already there.’

  ‘How’d you know that?’ Jason asks.

  I stay silent.

  ‘Shit. You were in the bed.’ His voice goes up an octave again. ‘You were in the bed with Marino!’

  I stare down at Annabelle’s notes.

  I’ll never live this down.

  Sleeping with a dead man. A dead made-man. A man, who if he ever went bald, could run a comb-over from his lower back.

  ‘Holy fuck!’ Jason exclaims.

  ‘What’s question five?’ I ask, trying to move things back to Annabelle’s list of questions.

  She’s staring at me, her mouth open in a silent ‘O’.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Question five.’

  ‘Question five,’ she repeats slowly. ‘What do we do with the bodies? Jesus, Tadhg, you were in bed with Tony Marino?’

  I take a deep breath and count to ten.

  I’m hoping that one of them will move the conversation forward. Instead they’re waiting for an explanation.

  Sod it. I better give them some kind of account or heaven knows what their over-active imaginations will conjure up. The truth is bad enough, but Jason is capable of adding a spin that even Hieronymus Bosch wouldn’t have been sick enough to imagine.

  I mutter, ‘I thought he was Kate.’

  ‘You thought a dead man twice her size was Kate?’ Annabelle says, not hiding her disbelief.

  ‘Just drop it will you! I’ve had a really shitty night. The last thing I need is you two … judging me.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Jason says wistfully.

  That about sums it up.

  ‘Well?’ Annabelle says, looking down at her notes.