Shining City

by Seth Greenland

  “Why did you need me?”

  “You have to help move the body.”

  “Marcus … how am I supposed to …?”

  “We’ve got to get him in the van.”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re not going to put a dead body in the van we drive our son to school in.”

  Marcus thought about the argument she was making and found it to be so utterly unconsidered, he allowed himself a hint of sarcasm.

  “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll call a cab.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Listen, Jan, I’d still be working at Wazoo if things were okay, but they’re not, so if you want me in jail you can go home.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “There’s an arcade game in the trunk and it’s too heavy to move.”

  “Why is there an arcade game in the trunk?”

  “I’m giving it to Nathan.”

  “You bought him an arcade game without discussing it with me?”

  “Can we not talk about that right now?”

  “Fine.”

  Marcus wanted to maintain some shred of dignity but understood supplication was in order. “Please help me tonight and I’ll never…”

  “Where are you planning to take…?”

  “About an hour north of here.”

  “Do you have any lime?”

  “Why do I need lime?”

  “It’s what they put on dead bodies to make them decompose.”

  “We don’t need lime.”

  “You get it at a gardening store. Maybe you should pick some up.”

  “I SAID WE DON’T NEED LIME!” Marcus’s face was red. Sweat had begun to trickle down his brow. He saw the way she looked at him and realized he needed to ratchet down the tension level. Silently, he vowed to say as little as possible for the remainder of the evening. Jan was the one who brought up lime. That was complicity. For better or for worse. Marriage was wonderful.

  It took Marcus fifteen minutes to hack his way through the slender chain. Then, hunched like Quasimodo and craving morphine, he maneuvered the dead man onto the imitation Persian rug and rolled him in it. Under Jan’s nervous gaze, he took the duct tape and sealed both ends of the rug. After a few false starts, during which the pain was so severe that Marcus felt like a dagger had been thrust into his lower back, the two of them were able to lift the rug and its contents off the ground and into the hallway.

  Since the apartment was on the fifth floor, the next question was whether to head for the stairs or the elevator. Although the chances of running into someone were far greater in the elevator, Marcus knew trying to get the cargo down five flights of stairs would probably result in a period of prolonged hospitalization. They dragged the rug down the hall, pressed the elevator button, and waited.

  The hall was eerily quiet in the half light cast by the dim sconces. It was around one in the morning now, and if anyone appeared, Marcus would simply tell them they were moving late at night to avoid the crush of people during the day. As excuses went, this was not a good one, and he was hugely relieved when the elevator arrived before an interloper did. They were able to maneuver the body through the deserted lobby and out the front door. Marcus and Jan were panting from the effort, and the chill of the night air was welcome. Marcus told her he was going to get the van.

  “You’re not leaving me on the sidewalk with a dead body,” Jan hissed, her look daring him to take even one step away.

  Marcus gazed around. The apartment building they had come from loomed behind them, and there was another one across the street. Several lights were on in both buildings, units containing who knew how many sets of prying eyes. Someone in a station wagon was pulling out of a parking space across the street and driving toward them. They watched as the car drove past, but the driver was looking straight ahead. Jan told Marcus she would get the van and left him standing on the sidewalk next to the rolled-up rug.

  Half an hour earlier, while he was lying on the floor waiting for Jan to arrive, Marcus had considered where he might dispose of Amstel’s deceased client. He recalled a voluminous “Best of L.A.” feature done by a local magazine where the editors variously held forth on where to find the Best Vintage Autos, the Best Dim Sum, the Best Teeth Whitening, the Best Whatever-The-Bourgeoisie-Requires. He dimly remembered a sub-category in the “Best Of” compendia called “The Best Place to Dump a Body.” The winner: Angeles National Forest.

  Jan drove up the 405 freeway staring through the windshield like a zombie and gripping the wheel so tightly, her fingers were becoming numb. Because the seats in the van could not be moved, Marcus was lying on top of the rug that contained the corpse. Jan had turned the heater on so it was warm in the rear of the van, and Marcus began to notice the too-sweet smell of the dead man’s cologne. He would have preferred to be driving himself, but getting the body out of the apartment and into the van had further aggravated his injury, necessitating his prone position. Trying to forget that he was lying on a cadaver, Marcus adjusted his sore neck so he could see Jan in the driver’s seat. He was happy she was here—no, ecstatic. No longer did he feel like he was writhing on the end of a fishhook. He thought she might never forgive him, but at least she was going to help get rid of the body. If that wasn’t love, he reflected, he didn’t know what love was.

  After forty-five minutes during which the only sound was the humming of the engine, Jan asked Marcus to tell her about the business. Her interest revived his spirits, and in confidential tones he told her about how the operation worked, who was on the payroll, and, most important, how little contact he had with the women. He did, however, emphasize that he had helped several of them set up 401(k)s, and when Jan evinced amusement at this incongruity, Marcus believed whatever he was doing at that moment was working. Then he delivered the coup de grace: “I’m going to stop eventually, but let’s remember that we have health insurance now and it paid for your mother’s eye surgery.”

  Jan absorbed this information silently.

  They drove past Magic Mountain, where Marcus had ridden the roller coasters with Nathan the year before, and out of the San Fernando Valley. Past Castaic, where he’d gone on family picnics when he was a boy, before things had soured with Julian. Past Santa Clarita, where Marcus and Jan had gone to a birthday party Plum threw for Atlas at an art deco bowling alley in a happier time that was receding behind them at warp speed.

  The van was surrounded by a herd of groaning semis as it climbed the steep northerly incline. Pushing himself off the floor, Marcus rose to his feet and lurched to the passenger seat. He told Jan to take the exit for Solitario Canyon, a remote place where he remembered camping with Roon the summer after they’d graduated from high school. A dirt road there ran deep into the mountains. Jan eased the van off the freeway, then headed west on the overpass before dipping into the canyon.

  Marcus directed her to an access road that led into the backwoods. After a couple of minutes he told her to turn off the headlights and pull over. She did as she was directed.

  “Stop the van and get out.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you driving, okay? So if anything bad happens, it’s my fault.” Marcus believed the least he could do in this situation was be chivalrous.

  Jan got and walked around to the passenger side as Marcus slid into the driver’s seat, his back throbbing. They turned off the main road and onto a dirt road that led directly into the woods. He cracked the window slightly, and the scent of pine blew in as they bumped along, climbing into the hills, dense chaparral rising on both sides. They rode in silence, their path illuminated by moonlight. Marcus stared straight ahead. Never in his fifteen years of marriage could he have imagined the two of them dumping a corpse together. He was impressed she had come and amazed she had stayed. It was a high-water mark in their relationship, a life-or-death test Jan had passed admirably. That she wanted to throttle him—which he could discern from the s
evere expression on her face—was immaterial. She was here. That was the important thing. Moreover, he knew how she felt. Had their positions been reversed, he believed he would have acted similarly, and wanted to throttle her, too, for having created such a regrettable situation. He suffered greatly for putting her in this position. Not quite as much as he was suffering from the back pain— which had become transcendentally agonizing—but close. After ascending for nearly ten minutes, during which he prayed for a giant Vicodin lick to magically appear, Marcus pulled the van to the side of the road.

  “Where are we?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You have no idea? Then why are we here, Marcus?”

  “Shhhh. Be quiet for a second.” He spoke with an authority to which she was not accustomed. “Do you see anything? Do you hear anything?” She had to admit that she didn’t. “That’s why we’re here.” He pulled the emergency brake and got out. They were over four thousand feet above sea level and the night was cold. His breath was visible, but he didn’t feel the chill. He walked to the side of the van and pulled the door open. “Would you give me a hand? I can barely move.” She got out and stood next to him. “I need you to rub right … there.” He indicated a spot just above his right hip.

  “You want a massage?” Jan had zipped her jacket up to her chin and was rubbing her hands together for warmth.

  “Please?” He sensed she would have liked to reach through his skin, remove the closest organ, and feed it to the owl that was hooting in the distance. Instead, she surprised him by digging her fingertips into his lower back and kneading the taut muscle. He exhaled gratefully.

  In a moment, they had maneuvered the rug and its contents out of the van. Jan climbed back into the passenger seat. Marcus asked her what she was doing.

  “Getting ready to go.”

  “We can’t leave the body here,” he said. Once again, she got out of the van and the two of them dragged the wrapped corpse fifty feet off the road. A coyote barked and was quickly answered by another. They sounded very near. Across the canyon the headlights of a car could be seen navigating a fire road. It was miles away.

  “I think we’re deep enough in the woods,” she said. “What do you want to do about the rug?”

  “Let’s leave it.” She nodded and tried to catch her breath. “I love you,” he said.

  Jan did not respond to this cheap-sounding stumble toward connection. That it was not cheap, that it was the opposite, as sincere, earnest, and forthright as Marcus had ever been, meant nothing to her at this moment. Marcus was reeling from the pain—it was radiating down his legs now—and walking back to the van, gingerly shuffling through the woods so as not to further exacerbate it. Ten minutes later they were on the paved road, and five minutes after that, fleeing south on the freeway. Jan drove and Marcus lay in the rear.

  They had been riding quietly for fifteen minutes when Jan said “Should we call that guy’s family?”

  “Why?”

  “If you died and someone knew where your body was, I’d want them to tell me.”

  Marcus thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think we need to do that. I mean, what would we say? That he died in flagrante with a prostitute? It’s probably better they don’t know that.”

  “I would want closure.”

  “Closure is a pathetic word. There is no such thing as closure. It implies things can be put in a box and filed away. Nothing can be filed away. Everything is always present.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “We’re not calling anyone.”

  “It’s wrong not to call.”

  “Right and wrong doesn’t enter into it.”

  Jan didn’t answer. Marcus thought about what he’d said for a moment, reflecting on whether he actually thought it was true. His back still ached, and he watched the lights flash by the windows of the van through eyes chalky from lack of sleep. Had he completely jettisoned the moral belief system he had subscribed to for his entire life, or had his standards simply become more elastic? A year earlier, he would have recoiled at the thought of what he’d done this evening. But recoiling was not a realistic option any longer. Leaving a dead body in the forest was something that now went with the territory. Why should he tell anyone where it was? So he could feel good about himself?

  “I’m worried about you, Marcus. I’m worried about what could happen to you.”

  “Well, that’s two of us.”

  “The pressure could kill you.”

  “What do you propose we do about it?”

  “I want to be your partner.”

  Marcus was astonished by her offer. He thought about it for a moment and was struck by the unexpected nature of what he’d concluded. Jan was smart and hardworking. Temptation would be held at bay. All things considered, this was a splendid idea.

  Chapter 15

  When Jan woke up the next morning her first thought was not What have I done? It was this: How could Marcus have kept his life as a pimp hidden from me? Normally slow to ease from the arms of sleep, her mind was already sprinting. As Marcus quietly snored on the other side of the bed, Jan quickly reviewed his behavior over the past several months, scrutinizing random moments for clues that had eluded her. Other than the newfound confidence he’d been exuding, something she had naïvely ascribed to his success as a dry cleaner, she could recall nothing unusual. Then she remembered—the sex! After years of married copulation he had suddenly, and with no prior warning, ejaculated on her breasts. Shouldn’t it have been obvious that something unusual was going on? She upbraided herself for not picking up on the hint, then quickly realized, behavior of that nature did not necessarily mean someone was engaged in the sex trade—he could have gotten the idea from the Internet, or a cable movie, the kind that comes on after midnight and stars actors no one’s heard of. But Jan’s momentary sanguinity vanished the second she remembered the toy Marcus had introduced during their hotel room tryst. How could she have ignored the significance of a vibrating egg? Alone, the egg could have been attributed to media influences, or a momentary flash of wanton lunacy, but in tandem with his unprecedented bedroom acrobatics—there was an obvious pattern and she had missed it. How she yearned for yesterday, life before the phone call and the trip to the forest.

  The trip to the forest!

  The memory struck like a meteor, bursting to the center of her consciousness where it fractured into pulsing particles of angst and dread. She had helped dispose of a dead body! She, Jan Ripps. A small business owner. A working mom. A loving mom. A woman who had baked cookies when Nathan’s Indian Guides tribe had met in her well-tended, suburban home. It seemed incomprehensible.

  As Marcus continued to snore, temporarily blissful in a drugged sleep, Jan was overcome with a sense of shame. How could she have taken part in last night’s macabre escapade? But what else could she have done? Her husband had found himself in extremis and someone had to help. In sickness, and in health and, apparently, in crime. And if she hadn’t pitched in, then what? He could have gone to jail! If you were a famous person in Los Angeles, you were immune to the vicissitudes of the judicial system. You could kill your girlfriend or your wife and still get a book deal and a good tee time, provided you played on public courses. But Marcus wasn’t famous, laid no claim on celebrity and the ethical pass it bought. So, yes, they could have done the “right thing” and called the police and maybe they could have come up with some kind of explanation about why there just happened to be a corpse in the apartment. But what if the story didn’t fly? And what if Marcus had to answer some uncomfortable questions? And what if …

  It didn’t matter now. The deed was done.

  On the bright side: she had gotten her wish. They were in business together.

  The hot stream of the shower felt good on her aching muscles. As she applied shampoo, she wondered how a decision like this could have been arrived at with such alacrity. Had some atavistic survival instinct kicked in? A circle-the-wagons, stand-by-your-man gene she had f
orgotten she possessed? She had suffered twin shocks. Either of them alone—the realization of what Marcus actually did for a living or the dark farce of the dead body—would have knocked her off the beam. Together, their power increased exponentially. Had she been taken so far out of her comfort zone that rational deliberation was no longer possible? In the clear light of morning, she didn’t think so.

  By the time Jan stepped out of the shower and was toweling off, she had reached a conclusion. She was a practical woman. Her dreams of a career had foundered. Ripcord had failed, and she felt guilty about her part in burning through the family finances. She needed to contribute. She could get a job of some kind, but having watched Marcus go through that, the thought of repeating his experience made her want to curl up in a ball and beat her fists. As for the criminal nature of the enterprise, Jan didn’t see how a crime that didn’t involve a victim was really a crime. And it was legal in Nevada, only one state away. Why should something Nevadans view as a legitimate source of tax revenue trouble her if it allowed the Ripps family to not lose their house?

  Marcus had downed four Tylenol PMs when they got home and had slept late. Jan didn’t mention her second thoughts to him, since by the time he was drinking his morning coffee she had convinced herself that she could live with them. The disturbance in his lower back had not abated, so she took him to the doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant chased with a strong painkiller and advised several days of bed rest. When the drugs kicked in and Marcus drifted off to sleep, Jan opened her underwear drawer and removed the contents. Then she placed them in a plastic trash bag and deposited the bag in the garbage. That afternoon, after dropping Nathan off for a session with his educational therapist, she drove to Something Blue, an erotic boutique in Sherman Oaks. Feeling empowered in her new purple thong bikini underwear and matching lace-trimmed push-up bra, Jan went grocery shopping. They ate chicken pot pies for dinner, and while Nathan was doing his homework and Marcus was enjoying the effects of the narcotics, Jan and Lenore settled in to watch a police show. At least Jan settled in. Lenore stood to the side of the sofa, doing curls with the five-pound weights she had recently purchased.