That shyster plucked out a roll of bills big enough to choke a porn star and peeled off five Benjamins.
“Here,” she said, smacking it into my open palm. “Take old woman’s bingo monies.”
“Damn straight,” I said, shoving it into my go-bag, beneath the ice pick and the trusty pack of Lays Barbecue chips. They’d both come in handy on our mission. I mentally crossed myself and promised God that if we managed to pull this off without a hitch, I’d try harder to be nice. He probably busted a gut on that one, considering the odds of either of those things occurring were slim to none.
“Let’s ride,” I said.
Nonnie put the Pinto in reverse and laid rubber as she backed out of the driveway, giving me a lawn job and missing my mailbox by less than an inch. The car coughed and choked its way up the street, belching smoke and noxious fumes, swerving in and out of the lane markers as if Nonnie had had a three-martini lunch. Chances were, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught breaking into the funeral home. The drive there would likely kill us all.
“Mrs. Falconi… Lucia,” I said, doing my best to focus on something other than our impending doom, “I know you want to speak to your son. But what if you don’t hear what you want to hear?”
She played with a loose thread on her coat, winding it back and forth around her finger, and finally murmured, “Maybe he forgive me. Maybe not. I love him. This. This he need to hear.”
“You do realize, once I wake him up, I have to…return…him to sleep. Permanently.”
No need to put too fine an edge on that. The solemn expression on Lucia’s face told me that she’d caught my drift.
Nonnie turned off her headlights as we pulled around the back of the funeral home, and then parked beneath the covered portico, where caskets are loaded into the hearse.
“Harder see us here,” she whispered, peering left and then right, as if someone might be within earshot—at midnight, in the pitch dark, as we broke into the back door of a funeral home. How many of us could there be?
Clearly, Nonnie had given this operation some thought. Either that, or she had some transferable skills and experience I didn’t really want to know about. My suspicion was confirmed when she pulled a small, zippered kit from her pocket and removed a set of pick tools. I silently groaned, wondering if it had belonged to Mortie, and if I’d grow old waiting for her to crack the lock. She slipped the tension wrench in the bottom of the key hole and then inserted the pick. Within seconds, the tumblers clicked and we were in. Nonnie flashed a triumphant grin. I didn’t know whether to feel proud, disturbed, or simply relieved at the lack of a security decal on the window.
We pushed inside Templeman’s and closed the door behind us. I led our group of unlikely burglars forward, shining my flashlight from side to side. The viewing rooms branched off to the left and right of the main hallway.
“Wait here,” I whispered, creeping into the parlor on my left. One sweep of the light told me we were in the wrong room. Not a casket to be found. I returned to the hallway and motioned for Nonnie and Lucia to stay put as I skulked into the other parlor. Sure enough, the casket faced me, positioned against the wall at twelve o’clock. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. If I was in the right place and doing the right thing, why wasn’t I getting a better vibe? I retraced my steps to the hallway and gave the ladies instructions.
“You two stay here until I tell you it’s safe to come in. Rocco only crossed over a couple of days ago. Raising fresh corpses is…unpredictable.”
If that wasn’t a freaking understatement.
Freshies, corpses less than seven days dead, still have muscle memory. They’re quick and agile. They also wake up hangry. And while they’ll gnaw on anything from Frisbees to mailboxes, they really go for junk food. Supposedly, the fat content stimulates their relentless taste for flesh—which kicks in once they reach the flesh-eater stage, on the eighth day after having been raised.
I pointed at the ladies, reminding them to maintain their position, then stepped back into the parlor, approached the casket, and lifted the lid. Poor kid. It looked like he’d had a hard, if short, life. No hint remained of the life force that rightfully belonged to an eighteen-year-old. Lines etched his face, a face far too gaunt and haggard to belong to a teen. Damn drugs. And damn the dealers for turning addicts into shambling zombies long before they ever die.
I bowed my head and sucked in a breath, centering my mind and heart. Warmth flooded each of my fingertips, one at a time, and then coursed through my hands into my arms. The warmth quickly escalated to an agonizing burn, like it always does when I raise the dead.
I’d placed my hands above the corpse and had begun to do my thing when a shriek from Lucia stopped me cold. “Madre di Dio! Stop. Is not my Rocco.”
Nonnie and Lucia, who had crept up alongside me, cringed and quickly reeled away from the casket. They crossed themselves feverishly and began chanting something from the old country—something with a lot of consonants and phlegm.
I shot Lucia the stink-eye. “What do you mean, that isn’t Rocco?”
“Is not my boy.” She craned her neck forward, peering over the edge of the casket. “Is old man. Older than me.”
“You’re sure?” I asked. “Rocco lived a rough life, what with the drugs—”
Nonnie pulled her glasses down her nose and peered at me over the top of the rims. “Try these,” she said, taking them off and shoving them at me.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Stop that,” I said, batting them away.
The codger in the coffin twitched, causing the ladies to scamper further back and shoot him the Italian horned hand, in unison.
Son-of-a-bitch. I knew I shouldn’t have taken this gig.
The corpse, suspended somewhere in the galvanized gray space between reanimation and death, resembled a modern-day Frankenstein. The good news was that Lucia had distracted me before I’d raised him completely. If I’d have brought him all the way back, I’d have had to put him down by extreme means. As it stood, I still had a chance to make this go away quietly.
“Sorry, guy,” I said, bending over him. “Wrong number. Go back to sleep.”
The corpse twitched again, opened his eyes, and shot me an accusing stare.
Like this was my fault, right?
“What the hell are you looking at? Haven’t you ever made a mistake? Go to sleep, you crusty buzzard.” I brushed my hand down his forehead and over his eyes, letting it linger there, pulling back the energy I’d infused into him. As I drained my life-force from his body, his muscles relaxed. Seconds later, he returned to the world of the dead. Disaster narrowly averted.
Lucia, apparently unimpressed by my power over life and death, merely wrung her hands and whined, “Where my Rocco?”
Good question. There were only two visitation rooms, and Rocco wasn’t in either one of them. I closed the lid of Frankengeezer’s casket and pulled the Sicilian hen party back out into the hallway. “We do have the right funeral home, don’t we?”
Lucia glared at me. “Si. Non sono pazzo.”
I glanced at Nonnie for a translation.
“She say, yes. She no crazy.”
“Okay, you two. Stay here. Don’t move a muscle. I mean it. I’m going to find Rocco.”
Lucia stuck a stubby finger in my face. “I no pay more monies. Last corpse you mistake.”
“Did I ask you for more money?” I asked, whapping her hand aside. “Pull that finger back before I bite if off, sister.”
I followed my flashlight beam down the hallway, opening additional doors as I came to them. After ruling out the bathrooms and the business office, only one door remained. And it was locked, damn it. When I turned to call for Nonnie, she and Lucia were already at my side. It was like babysitting two-year-olds.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
“Quiet. I working,” Nonnie said, nudging me out of the way.
She picked the lock in seconds and pushed the door open.
“T
hanks,” I said, more impressed than I let on. “Now, stay right here while I…what the hell. Stand wherever you want. Just don’t get in my way.”
From the doorway, I spied a body bag laying atop a steel gurney in the middle of the room. I moved alongside it and pulled the zipper down. The body appeared to be that of a young male, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Lucia, is this Rocco?”
Lucia shuffled up beside me and looked down at the face inside the bag. Her eyes clouded with anguish, then quickly darted away. “Si. My firstborn.”
She began to cry, so I motioned for Nonnie to come get her. Zombies, I can handle. Tears, not so much.
“It’s not too late to stop this.” I said. “We can leave right now. I’ll even give you your money back.”
Lucia shook her head. “No. Do it. Before I change mind.”
I closed my eyes and called forth the strange and awesome power that brings the dead to life, feeling it surge through me, first searing my fingertips and then my hands, before traveling up my arms. It had been a very long time since I’d attempted back-to-back raisings. I was exhausted. Pain snaked across the nerve endings in my fingers as energy arced from my body into Rocco’s. The hair on my arms stood up, and the pungent, familiar smell of ozone hung in the air.
It was time.
I crossed myself, and then lay my hands on his chest. “Rocco Falconi, in the name of God, I command you to rise.”
Rocco moaned and Lucia let out a gasp.
I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “Rocco, you will rise.”
Rocco sat up sluggishly on the table, wearing the same blank, bewildered stare the dead always have when they are awakened. Lucia, now seated on the mortician’s stool, twisted her hands over and over in her lap, crying openly, her grief laid thick and bare. Feelings. Emotions. All the touchy-feely crap that makes me uncomfortable.
Why had I let Nonnie talk me into this?
“Rocco, your mother wants to speak with you,” I said. “You will stay where you are and answer your mother’s questions. Do you understand me?”
Rocco glanced around the room, his gaze finally coming to rest on his mother. He nodded, never taking his eyes from Lucia. “Tired. So tired.”
I pulled the bag of barbecue chips from my pocket and waved them under his nose. For the moment, I had his undivided attention. On my cue, Nonnie walked Lucia closer to the table, stopping a few feet away from it when I held up my hand.
“Go ahead.” I nodded to Lucia. “Ask what you came to ask.”
“Why, Rocco?” she sobbed. “Why you do this, mio bambino? Was it Mama? You do this because of me?” She stepped even closer to the table. Nonnie eyed me silently, waiting for my direction. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Lucia to stand next to Rocco, but I motioned Nonnie to let Lucia be. She planted herself beside me at the edge of the table.
Rocco flinched as Lucia’s hand touched his cheek.
“Not…you, Mama,” he murmured. “Accident. Sleep now,” he said, laying back down.
Lucia slapped his face “You no lie to Mama. Tell truth.”
I reached over and grabbed her hand so she wouldn’t slap him again. “He’s not capable of lying, now, Mrs. Falconi. That would require deliberation and intent. He has no choice but to tell you the truth.”
She smiled through her tears, but her voice had a razor’s edge. “Who give you the drugs, Bambino? Who do this—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’re not going there. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Rocco sighed. “Gino, Mama. Gino Ferrari. Sleep now,” he mumbled, closing his eyes.
Lucia’s voice turned cold. “Where I find this Gino Ferrari? This monster?”
I didn’t like the turn this had taken.
“You got what you came for, Mrs. Falconi. Rocco told you his death was accidental. We need to let him sleep now.”
Rocco’s eyes remained closed; his hands folded neatly on his chest. By all appearances, he had already returned to his eternal rest. But appearances can be deceiving.
Lucia reached over the edge of the table, took his hand, and gasped. “Santa Madre!” She turned to me, grabbed my hand, and placed it on Rocco’s. “See?” she said, with tears in her eyes. “He is warm. He lives. Is miracle, Miss Allie.”
“No, no miracle. He’s just warm from the reanimation. C’mon,” I said softly. “It’s time for you to go, now.”
“No yet,” Lucia begged. “Please, no yet.” She squeezed Rocco’s hand and choked out a sob. “Non lasciarmi, piccolo. Ti amo.”
No leave me. I love you.
That’s the sucky part about raising kids. Every parent wants to bring them back, but no one ever wants to let them go the second time around.
I nudged the oldsters out into the hall. “Why don’t you and Nonnie wait here while I help Rocco get back to sleep?”
The last thing I needed was for Lucia to see how I would help her son return to his eternal rest. There’d be no gunshot or K-bar knife to the brain, no gore, no zombie guts. Rocco needed to be presentable for his visitation in the morning.
I closed the door and locked it to keep the fossils out of my hair, then jerked the icepick out of my pocket on my way back to the table. In one swift motion, I lifted his head and plunged the pick into his brainstem, at the base of his skull. The mortician might notice the small puncture when preparing Rocco’s body for presentation, but no one else would. Little Allie reassured me that since I did all this at Lucia’s behest, even if there were a minor kerfuffle, I wouldn’t face any serious repercussions.
I believed that load of happy horseshit, too, right up to the point when I heard the front door open and saw the lights come on. Heavy footsteps bounded down the hallway. Nonnie and Lucia wailed at the top of their lungs, screaming Sicilian consonants. The doorknob to the mortuary jiggled, but held.
“Cincinnati Police Department,” came a voice from the hall. “Open the door and come out with your empty hands above your head. Now. Or we’ll break it down and do things the hard way.”
Shit, shit, shitty, shit, shit. I knew this escapade would end with me in the slammer. And where was that little brain bitch when I needed her? Why hadn’t she been the voice of reason and kept me from tumbling headfirst into a steaming pile of biter dung? What’s the point of even having a head-squatting voice in your brain if it doesn’t have your back?
I unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly, but before I could emerge with my hands held high, I was rushed and taken to the floor by four of Cincinnati’s finest. They cuffed me with my hands behind my back and yanked me to my feet.
“Hi, guys,” I said, keeping it light. “It’s okay. I’m Allie Nighthawk. Everything’s cool.”
‘I don’t care if you’re God, Himself,” snarled one of the officers, twisting the cuffs a bit tighter. “Things are definitely not okay.”
“Didn’t you guys get the directive from HQ? This is a training exercise.”
Even as those words came out of my mouth, I glanced at Nonnie and Lucia cowering in the corner, and realized they’d sell me down the river for a crust of bread. That sweet, wrinkled prune façade didn’t fool me. It was every skel for herself.
“Training exercise. No kidding,” the officer said with a snicker. “Since you tripped the silent alarm on the mortuary room door, I’m guessing you must have flunked.”
My mouth fell open. “Shut the hell up! A silent alarm—in a funeral home? Who the hell breaks into a funeral home?”
The cop cast me a tired gaze. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I glanced at his badge. “Listen, Officer Franks, I’m no thief. Do me a favor,” I begged as he hauled me out the door. “You know Rico De Palma—works out of the 51st?”
“De Palma. De Palma,” he said, scratching his head. “Is he that, what-do-you-call-it, spook squad guy?”
“The Paranormal Crimes Unit Liaison. Give him a call.”
Franks led me to his cruiser and pushed down on my head so I�
��d clear its roof. “Why the hell would I call that bozo?” he asked.
I slid across the backseat and played my get-out-of-jail-free card. “He’s my partner.”
3
The Full Moon Brings ‘Em Out
Seated in Investigation Room One, I tried my best to put a positive spin on the night’s events. I don’t know why. They had us dead to rights. At the very least, we’d committed B&E. The officers had split us up when they brought us in, taking us to separate rooms. Franks had deposited me in an overly bright, barren room and then left, leaving me to stew about my wise-gal partners, Nonnie the Nose and Lucky Lucia.
I glanced into the two-way mirror and imagined myself in prison stripes. I could pull it off. But Nonnie and Lucia, more round than tall, would look like human awnings. As I contemplated that disturbing visual, Officer Franks opened the door, moseyed back in, and leaned against the door frame. I jumped his ass like a dead battery.
“Where’d you stash the blue hairs?”
“They’re being interviewed.”
“I’d suggest you check on them.”
Franks chuckled. “We don’t use rubber hoses on old ladies, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I meant the officers.”
Tough as nails, Nonnie, the Mafioso widow of Morrie Nussbaum, had the balls and swagger of John Wayne. She could handle an interrogation standing on her head. And unless the poor sap who drew Lucia spoke Sicilian, he’d be banging his head against the wall about now.
I rolled my shoulders, then took a breath and started spinning my story.
“Mrs. Falconi just wanted to talk to her son, Rocco. That’s all. I was helping her get closure.”
Franks pursed his lips and nodded. “Naturally, you thought the best way to help her was to break into the funeral home in the middle of the night.”
“He’s getting buried tomorrow. We were out of time. Besides, we had permission to be there.”
“Permission?”
“Of course,” I said. “Mr. Templeman is an old family friend.”
Corpse Whisperer Sworn Page 2