Dead Men Scare Me Stupid
Page 11
And the town’s ghost problem has been solved as well. The ghosts are still there, of course, but they are all productive members of the community now. Instead of haunting houses and slouching around town making everybody nervous, they are hard at work every day serving up hamburgers at fast food joints, guarding warehouses at night, filling up gumball machines, and doing other low profile, but necessary, productive, and satisfying jobs. Thanks to their special survival gear, they can stay substantial for a full eight hour shift. And after working all day, they’re too tired to do any haunting, even if they wanted to. Just eat some dinner, watch some ghost stories on TV, then hit the sack.
That’s not to say that the ghosts are actually good at these jobs they’re doing. Even with their special equipment they’re still slow and clumsy and tend to drop things a lot. So if you’ve noticed that the service you’re getting these days isn’t as good as it used to be, or the products you buy look like they were put together by someone wearing a catcher’s mitt, or the people who are supposed to be helping you suddenly just disappear and never come back, now you know why.
The whole Clarence machine thing eventually came out in the papers. You can’t stop people from finding out about things. At least not since I wrecked that machine.
When the story first broke, a lot of people were angry. There were calls for investigations, demands for resignations, and so on. All the usual stuff. But pretty soon the public’s tone changed to one of admiration. Pretty slick cover-up work, a lot of people thought. That’s the kind of people we want representing us. Sneaky little shits like that. Why didn’t they tell us they were sneaky little shits instead of pretending to be self-promoting idiots?
Now the word is that the old sneaky regime might be swept back into power in the next election, despite its obvious flaws. The public wants to get some of that shitty sneakiness working for them.
So things worked out pretty well for just about everybody. I’m still not born, and I’m still regularly struck by lightning, and women I ask out say I smell dead to them, but you can’t have everything.
I saw Ed and Fred one last time. They had really landed on their feet. Instead of working at some crappy low-wage job like the other ghosts, they had opened up a detective agency on the floor below mine, and were cleaning up on cases where the client didn’t want to ride the elevator up the last eight feet just to get to me. I congratulated them on their success, and they said they owed it all to me. And I said I guessed that was about right.
As a parting gesture, they told me who the real murderer was in that case I told you about earlier – the one where I rented the stadium. In fact, they brought him into my office, looking a little shamefaced. He was a ghost now too. Ironically, I had gotten him killed when I was messing around with the Clarence machine. Thanks to me, he had gotten beaten to death by Jack Dempsey in a title fight he knew nothing about. There’s some justice there somewhere, I suppose.
When he admitted his guilt to me, I couldn’t believe it.
“But you had an ironclad alibi!” I said.
“Maybe so, but I still did it.”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun! Did you really shoot all those men on that troopship I was guarding?”
“I sure did!”
And we all had to laugh.
When Ed and Fred left, I waved goodbye to them, and I even blew them a little kiss. It was nice of the boys to solve my murder for me, but I still think they’re a couple of pricks.
BOOKS BY JOHN SWARTZWELDER
THE TIME MACHINE DID IT (2004)
DOUBLE WONDERFUL (2005)
HOW I CONQUERED YOUR PLANET (2006)
THE EXPLODING DETECTIVE (2007)
DEAD MEN SCARE ME STUPID (2008)
EARTH VS. EVERYBODY (2009)
THE LAST DETECTIVE ALIVE (2010)
THE FIFTY FOOT DETECTIVE (2011)
Copyright © 2008
by John Swartzwelder
Published by:
Kennydale Books
P.O. Box 3925
Chatsworth, California 91313-3925
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
First Printing April, 2008
ISBN 13 (paperback edition) 978-0-9755799-8-5
ISBN 13 (hardback edition) 978-0-9755799-9-2
ISBN 10 (paperback edition) 0-9755799-8-3
ISBN 10 (hardback edition) 0-9755799-9-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008901007
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
DEAD MEN SCARE ME STUPID
John Swartzwelder
Kennydale Books.
Chatsworth, California
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BOOKS BY JOHN SWARTZWELDER