The Wrong Goodbye tc-2

by Chris F. Holm

  The answer was right in front of me, but in my panic, I almost didn’t see it. There, atop the shifting insect landscape before me, was my little beetlefriend. It drifted toward me from the foot of the bed as if by magic, its cohorts beneath it conveying it ever closer.

  And with it, its payload.

  Once the beetle and its earthen ball reached me, it stopped. The mass of insects beneath it still boiled with activity, all red and brown and iridescent blue, but the fat black beetle held its ground, regarding me with what I couldn’t help but think was an expectant gaze. Then it nudged the ball toward me once more with one spindly, bristle-laden leg.

  Gingerly, I accepted the proffered package, and the sea of insects seemed to calm a little —not receding, exactly, but quieting, as though waiting for my response. My heart was anything but quiet as it thudded painfully in my chest. What I’d taken for a ball of dirt wasn’t dirt at all, though its surface was filthy enough that my mistake was understandable. No, what the tiny creature had been carrying was in fact a small bundle of cloth —once military drab, but now black from the dirt in which it had been buried.

  I recognized that bundle. Of course, I should have —I’d buried it two days and a continent ago.

  It was a soul —Varela’s soul. And suddenly, the insects that surrounded me made sense.

  These creatures were Deliverants.

  They were Deliverants, and they were angry.

  I wasn’t yet sure why, but I was beginning to get an idea. Whatever was going on, Danny Young had set me up.

  He’d set me up, and he was going to pay.

  7.

  That fucking son of a bitch. In all my time as a Collector, I’d never once had occasion to interact with my Deliverants, and now after my meeting with Danny, they flat-out reject the soul I’d buried? That was too much of a coincidence for me to swallow. The question was, why had they rejected it? What exactly had Danny done? I didn’t know, but I had an idea how I might find out. So I left the motel in my rearview, and headed out into the night to get some answers.

  I eyed the door before me. It was typical for the front door of an apartment —stainless steel, and reinforced, at that. But the jamb was standard pressure-treated lumber, and the building wasn’t young, which meant that all that held this tank of a door closed was a latch installed in a plank of aging wood. Not great if subtle’s what you’re shooting for, but easy enough to pop if you don’t mind a little noise.

  Right now, I didn’t mind a little noise.

  I glanced back toward the front of the building where I’d left the Fiesta, but the night was getting on, and there wasn’t anyone about. The place itself was nestled in an upscale residential neighborhood, and from the curb, it looked to be yet another in a line of neoclassical homes, all stark white and austere, with a series of four columns flanking its massive, transomed entryway. But the hearse in the large circle drive out front and the tasteful, somber sign beside it indicated otherwise. No, the only living going on around here was in the apartment tucked around back —and that’s just where I was headed.

  The first kick made a hell of a noise, but the door didn’t budge. The second, and the wood began to splinter. If this were some cheesy dime-store novel, I suppose the third time woulda done the trick, but the fact is, I had to kick that fucking door a half a dozen times before it finally gave, swinging inward with a sickening crack and a hail of wooden shards.

  I was inside in a flash. Ethan Strickland was cowering behind an upturned kitchen table, a Louisville Slugger in one hand and a cordless phone in the other. He was trying desperately to dial the cops, but his hands were shaking so bad, it was all he could manage not to drop the phone —that, or bean himself with the bat.

  I spotted the base of the phone on an end table beside the couch, and I dove for it, wrenching the phone cord from the wall. Ethan stared in horror for a moment, and then leapt at me with a guttural —if not entirely manful —scream, his bat brandished high above his head.

  I rolled. He missed. His bat instead met the floor with a crack, and Ethan yelped in pain and surprise as his wispy frame was wracked by the reverberations. He tried to wheel toward me, but I’d already found my feet, and I sidestepped the blow with ease. Then I wrenched the bat from his hands and drew it back to strike. It was instinct, nothing more, and when I saw him cowering on the floor, his hands raised to protect his tear-streaked face, I tossed the bat aside. Then I extended a hand to help him up. But he just lay there, cowering, and regarded my hand as though it were an asp about to strike.

  “You OK?” I asked him.

  He said nothing. I stooped a bit to bring my hand closer, and he flinched.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the entrance, but I had a feeling if I knocked, you weren’t going to let me in.”

  Still nothing —that is, unless you counted the sobbing.

  “Damn it, Ethan, I’m not here to hurt you —I’m here because I need your help! Now will you take my hand so I can help you up?”

  He blinked at me a moment, and then accepted my offer with one trembling, hesitant hand. I helped him up off the floor. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve, gulping air all the while, and cast a sly sidelong glance toward the gaping apartment door.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said, and he deflated slightly.

  “P-p-please d-don’t…” he stammered as he tried to bring his panicked breathing under control. “Don’t tie me up again. I couldn’t take it.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that, but it was for your own good. As for whether I’m going to have to do it again, that’s going to depend a lot on you. Besides, you look like you came out of it OK.”

  “Took me six hours to get out,” he said. “My legs still hurt like hell.”

  “You call the cops?”

  “No,” he said too quickly.

  “OK, I’ll take that as a yes.” His eyes bugged out in panic, and he went a little green. “It’s OK, Ethan —I would’ve too if I were you. But it does complicate things a little. Which means you’re going to have to make it up to me.”

  His eyes narrowed. He took a small step backward. “What do you mean, make it up to you? Make it up to you how?”

  Fuck it, I thought. The truth was probably the safest thing I could tell him —after all, who in their right mind was gonna believe him?

  “The fact is, Ethan, I am not the guy they wheeled in to your funeral home. That guy’s dead and gone —I’m just borrowing his body for a while. As for who or what I actually am, that’s complicated, and you’re probably better off not knowing. Suffice it to say, I’m a guy who’s got a job to do, just like you. Now, if you help me do my job, I promise you I’ll walk out that door tonight and you’ll never see me again. If, on the other hand, you don’t…”

  Ethan swallowed hard. It seemed he got the picture. Good thing, too, because that whole implied violence thing was nothing but a bluff —the worst I was going to do to the guy was tie him up again until I got what I came for. Still, this night was going to go a whole lot smoother if he’d cooperate, so I’m glad he was on board.

  “W-what,” he said, wincing at the quaver in his voice. “What is it that you need?”

  “What I need, Ethan, is a body.”

  “You sure this is the best you got?”

  Ethan shrugged his shoulders. With his willowy frame, he looked sort of like a twitchy scarecrow. “It’s been a slow week, death-wise. Besides, uh, you, Mr Frohman’s all we’ve got. He was the sausage king of Chicago!” he added helpfully.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he looks it.”

  Though the guy wasn’t an inch over five-four, he must’ve gone four hundred pounds, and every inch of him was covered in a thick mat of hair —well, every inch that wasn’t on his head. Even in death, his face had a sort of pinkish hue; I couldn’t help but think it was his sausage subjects who’d eventually dethroned him. Eh, I thought, he’ll do. And hell, it’s not like I’d have to worry about him making a break for it.

  I fished
Varela’s bundled soul from my pocket and picked at the dirt-caked twine until finally, the knot untied. The tiny orb swirled gray-black atop the scrap of fabric in my open hand, and Ethan stared at it, entranced. “What is that?” he asked, his voice full of awe and wonder.

  “Gumball,” I replied. The pale man frowned. He was standing at the corner of the mortuary table, scant inches from Mr Frohman’s bald pate. I jerked my head by way of indication, and said, “You may want to stand back a little —this is liable to get messy.”

  Ethan took a big step back, and I drew in a deep, halting breath. Truth is, I didn’t know if this’d work. I’d never done anything like this before —as far as I knew, no one had. But hell, a bad plan is better than no plan at all, right?

  In one swift motion, I grabbed the soul from the fabric upon which it sat, and plunged it into Mr Frohman’s meaty chest. For a brief moment, I was engulfed in a swirl of light and sound. Then the Frohman body gasped, and the world came rushing back.

  The wooly mammoth of a man sat up, his eyes wide, his limbs flailing madly. Then he doubled over and puked. Ethan let out a whimper, and crumpled to the tiles. That made twice in two days. Still, you couldn’t really blame him. At least this guy he managed not to cut.

  Frohman/Varela’s eyes were wild, panicked. His massive chest heaved as it sucked in breath after labored breath. His neck craned as he took in the scene around him: me, standing over him, expectant; Ethan, lying unconscious on the floor; him, draped in white as he floundered on a stainless steel slab. Despite myself, I felt a stab of pity for him —as I well know, that first wake-up is pretty damn traumatic. But when he decided it was time to flee, my sympathy evaporated.

  I had to give it to him —for a big guy, the man could move. He rolled away from me, the sheet falling from him as his feet hit the floor on the far side of the slab. He got halfway to the door before his limbs gave out on him. It’s always that way with a fledgling meat-suit —it takes a while for the body to acquiesce to your commands. And never more so than your first time out, which is why I didn’t even bother giving chase.

  The big man hit the tiles with a fwap, and I was on him in seconds. I rolled him over with a nudge of my shoe, and slapped the look of blind panic from his face.

  “¿Habla ingles?” I asked him, but he just let out a wail of confusion and panic.

  “¿Habla ingles?” I repeated. “¿Como te llamas?”

  He blurted out a couple nonsense syllables as he struggled with his unfamiliar meat-suit. Then he squinched his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it. I cocked my hand back to slap him a second time. It seemed to do the trick. He grabbed my wrist with one sausage-fingered hand to still the coming blow, and, anger glinting in his eyes, he finally found his voice.

  “Listen, asshole, I don’t speak Mexican, so slapping me ain’t gonna help! You try that shit again, you’re liable to lose your fucking hand, comprende?”

  I stared at him a second, dumbfounded. “You speak English?”

  “That a trick question? Yeah, dipshit —I speak English.”

  “I’m guessing your name isn’t Pablo Varela then, huh?”

  “Wow, a gold star for the good guesser.”

  “So who the hell are you?”

  “Why the fuck should I tell you?”

  I plunged my free hand into his chest and gave his soul a twist. The big man’s face contorted in fear and pain, and reflexively, he released my wrist from his grasp.

  “’Cause I’m the guy who rescued you from oblivion —and if you don’t start talking, I’m the guy who’ll send you back.”

  “Jesus, dude —that fucking hurts. You try that voodoo shit again, I’m gonna break your fucking face.”

  Sure, his words were plenty tough, but they were betrayed by the frightened look in his eyes.

  “Really? That’s the way you wanna play it? Me, I’d prefer to keep this all friendly-like, but you want to play the bad-ass, be my guest —we’ll see how far it gets you.”

  I drove my fingers into his chest once more. This time, he tried to fight, but it wasn’t any use —with his soul held tight inside my fist, his borrowed body wouldn’t listen. Once his thrashing died down, I let him go. He collapsed back onto the tiles, sweating and exhausted.

  “Gio,” he said, sucking wind. “My name is Gio.”

  At that, I deflated a little. I don’t know what I was hoping for —some kind of clue, I guess, as to what Danny was up to —but the name meant nothing to me. “Tell me, Gio,” I said, sighing, “you got a last name?”

  “Gio is my last name. My first name’s Francis, but nobody calls me that but my mother.”

  Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. “Gio,” I said. “As in, short for Giordano?”

  “That’s right,” he said, eyeing me with sudden suspicion. “How the hell’d you know that?”

  I thought back to my meeting with Danny, to the sob-story he’d spun about his missing soul. “The bloke was a mob enforcer out of Vegas by the name of Giordano,” he’d said. “Only now his soul is missing. Stolen right out from under me.” But that wasn’t exactly true, now, was it? Turns out, Danny had Giordano’s soul the whole time. Which meant the whole fucking meeting was nothing but an elaborate bait-and-switch. He must’ve figured that when I buried Giordano’s soul, his Deliverants would be appeased, and he could go about his merry way with his stolen Varela, leaving me to twist in the wind. But why? What in the hell could he possibly want with Varela’s soul? And more importantly, how the hell was I going to get it back?

  “Hey, buddy,” Gio said, “you still there?”

  “What?” I said, snapping out of my reverie. “Yeah. I’m still here.” For now, I added mentally —because once my superiors caught wind of the fact that I’d lost Varela’s soul, they were going to shelve me for sure. Which meant I had to find that soul, and fast.

  “You wanna tell me how you knew my name?”

  “I know your name because I heard it from the guy who was sent to kill you.”

  “This guy,” he asked, his face clouded with sudden anger, “he a friend of yours?”

  “He was,” I said.

  “Yeah? The way you say that, it don’t sound like you and him are very buddy-buddy now.”

  “No,” I said, “it really doesn’t.”

  “Well, it’s a shame for him he missed me, ’cause now that fucker’s gonna hafta pay.”

  “I hope that’s true,” I said, “but Danny didn’t miss.”

  “The fuck’re you talking about?”

  “Look at yourself, man —this the body you remember?”

  He did. It wasn’t. He kinda freaked a little, then, but once I calmed him down, I explained as best I could. When I finished, he sat there stunned for a while, saying nothing, and occasionally shaking his head in disbelief. Eventually, though, he found his voice.

  “So I’m dead, then, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “And damned to hell for all eternity.”

  “Yup.”

  “And you —you’re some kind of fucking Grim Reaper!”

  I let out a bark of a laugh, shrill and humorless. “More like the devil’s mailman,” I replied.

  “I dunno, dude —I think you’re selling yourself short. You gave me another body. Another chance.”

  “More like a short reprieve.”

  He considered that a moment. “So what’s to keep me from taking off? Making a run for it, and starting somewhere new?”

  “Well, me, for one —I mean, you’ve got to know I can’t just let you walk. And even if I did, they’d hunt you down. Your soul belongs to hell now —and believe me, these guys always get their man. My guess is you wouldn’t last a week. Besides, you’re not going to take off on me —not when we have a job to do.”

  “Really,” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “You and me working together like some kinda buddycomedy? I gotta tell you, dude, I don’t see it. I mean, ain’t you one of the guys I should be hiding from in the first place? What makes you t
hink I’d wanna help you?”

  “Because the man who killed you also fucked me over but good. Because I plan to hunt him down and make him pay. And because right now, you’re the best lead I’ve got. So you tell me —you want to see the bastard hang?”

  He seemed to mull it over for a second, and then he smiled.

  “Shit,” he said. “Just tell me where we start.”

  I helped the big man to his feet, and looked him up and down. “Why don’t we start by getting you some clothes?”

  8.

  “So how’s this work, exactly?” Gio asked, tucking his shirt into his dress pants and straightening his tie. “How’m I gonna help you find this guy?”

  “When a Collector takes a mark’s soul, there’s this moment —a moment when that Collector experiences the lifetime of joy and sorrow, of happiness and regret, that brought the mark into their grasp. The thing is, that moment cuts both ways, which means that once it comes to pass, the collected can forever sense the presence of the person who collected them. That isn’t usually much of an issue, on account of once the collection happens, the collected’s dead, but in the rare instance a Collector makes a play and misses, it can make their second try a bitch. And if, after you’re collected, you’re unlucky enough to wind up a Collector yourself, that ability to sense the one who collected you never fades —it gnaws at you for all eternity.”

  “Wait —you’re telling me I’m like some kind of asshole compass? That you’re gonna follow me to the dude who screwed us over?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” I said. “But for you to sense Danny, we’re going to have to get you close to him. Which means we need to find out where he’s gone off to —and to do that, we need to figure out what he’s playing at.”

  “How we gonna do that?”