I had a moment of worry when he scrambled up the fold-down steps and was out of my sight as I climbed them. I stopped, pointed the gun up toward the attic entrance, and sat, waiting for the rock or trophy or boiling oil or whatever he was going to dump on me.
“Joey?” I asked loudly.
“Yeah?” He was still invisible.
“Let me see your head.”
He popped his head back out of the attic, grinning like a child who had realized his mistake.
“How’s about you stay right there?”
“Sure, Mister…?”
He was prodding me, but I didn’t finish his sentence for him. The little punk could go on calling me just “mister.” I should have known better than to think he was smart enough for any funny business anyway.
The asbestos peeled away from the garret walls, and a single boarded-up window faced Ganesh. I could see the city in the spaces between the boards, and it seemed almost peaceable from up there. Someone lived in the garret, or maybe had and didn’t anymore. There were cracker crumbs and cheese curds scattered around the floor that the mice had only recently started to nibble. A mattress with a massive yellow stain lay on the floor. Other than that, there were no furnishings, just cardboard boxes and foot lockers and trunks.
Joey didn’t have to look at all, which was good, because none of the boxes were marked “Christmas Decorations” or anything like that. I wondered what they would be marked in that den of iniquity. “Mootah” for one and “Hot Crap” for another and “Heaters” for a third, maybe. All their loot was in one particular trunk, the only one with a padlock. He thumbed the combination into the tumblers and threw open the little treasure chest.
I almost whistled in appreciation at the load those little pack rats had squirreled away. The locket took a little scrabbling to find, but it was the only locket, which was good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to identify it. I had no idea what Miss Claudia’s husband looked like. The rest of the chest was filled with mementos: silver picture frames and diamond rings and tie tacks and just about anything you could pluck off a corpse.
Each hot rock, I supposed, was a life ruined or wrecked or maybe just made a little more miserable. I should’ve said something brave, should’ve taken it all. But I didn’t. One step at a time.
I made him walk in front of me all the way to the back door. I stopped before I hit the door though. “One more thing. You’d be better off to stay away from the graveyards.”
He said, “We don’t go there anymore. Too many of your kind now.”
“That’s good. Now forget you ever met me.”
He closed the door behind me and waved as though we were old friends.
1. Who stole Miss Claudia’s locket? Two gangsters for the Infected, Ed and Joey.
Case closed.
Before I went back into Hallowed Grounds, I crossed the revised first numbered question out of my notebook. It’s the little things that make a difference. “Why did they bump me off?” was number one again. Time to get cracking on that.
Baldy was still at Hallowed Grounds, of course.
“You know where I’m going,” I said.
“Password?”
I stopped and thought for a moment. I wanted to take a swig from my flask, but there was nothing left. I turned it upside down. I could only shake out a few drops. I even coveted those. Even though the man may (or may not) be blind, I didn’t want to drop to the ground and lap it up in front of him. I just had to get through and get more.
“Come on, let me through, stretch.”
“Not without you giving me the password, stretch,” the old fence responded.
I took a deep breath even though, functionally, I didn’t need it. It was just one of those things we do, I suppose. Same way Miss Claudia kept crying even though her tear ducts were all shriveled up and useless. We’re nothing if not creatures of habit. People, I mean. If we are still people.
I fingered my gun and considered using it on a blind man to scare him to death for the second time in three days. What was I becoming? Was I really the monster that greeted me in the mirror every morning?
No. I closed my eyes and stared at the backs of my eyelids. Lazar, that damn absentee landlord, had never mentioned a password. He couldn’t have guessed I would’ve muscled my way into the speako the other day. That meant the password had to be something all of our kind would know or guess. Something we would see and remember if we hadn’t woken up in a pool.
“Resurrecturis,” I realized.
He smiled. “Go on back.”
Once inside, I took a quick look around the speakeasy. She wasn’t there, of course. That would be too much to hope for. I bellied up to the bar anyway. Same old gorilla in shirtsleeves was there.
“Well, the man they call Braineater.”
“Damn straight,” I said. “I’m a braineater and proud of it.”
The gorilla shook his head and wiped at his favorite spot on the bar. “What can I do for you?”
I sighed. Another one of those physiologically meaningless gestures.
Whoa. Where did all that fancy talk come from? Maybe I was a professor in my old life.
“I don’t suppose you would comp me,” I said.
“No,” the bartender said.
I held up my hands imploringly. “Well, could you ask the owner?”
The gorilla scowled. “You do not”—each word thudded like a boot stomp—“want to bother him.”
I perked up. Lazar! Had to be. Whatever he called himself to the help, I had a feeling it was him. “No, I do, in fact. I want you to ask the owner.”
To my surprise, instead of going up to talk to Baldy or pulling out a telephone, he disappeared down into the floor. I leaned over the counter and saw a trapdoor lid hanging open with a ladder leading tantalizingly down into some secret, subterranean lair. I listened as the big gorilla descended into the sub-basement and came back up holding a pickle jar. I felt a stabbing pain like an ice pick through my eye. A painful headache of memory. I had seen something like that before at a sideshow, except it had had two heads. The image was clear as day in my mind, and another one was on the counter in front of me. A pickled human fetus floating in something. Grain alcohol maybe. A joke, no doubt.
“What’s this?” I said.
“It’s the boss,” the bartender assured me.
I looked into his eyes. No hint of caginess. A good joke maybe. Then the little baby opened its eyes and put its hand against the wall of the jar. The little beastie motioned to the bartender.
The gorilla opened the top of the jar and pulled the little guy out. He put it down on the counter where it stood, wobbly, on its stumpy little flippers. It was definitely soaking in moonshine, or something equally potent and disgusting.
“This is the boss?” I asked, looking at the bartender.
“Don’t talk to him,” the fetus grunted. “He’s just the help. Talk to me.”
“I’m new,” I said, hoping that would explain it all.
The little guy shook his head. He took a few steps and shook the booze out of his nonexistent hair. He snapped his fingers, and the bartender immediately dropped a martini in front of him. He could’ve taken a bath in that damn thing. “They call me the Old Man. Kind of a joke, I guess. Ha ha.”
“What’s your story?” I said.
“Oh, it’s like that, eh?” the Old Man said. “Grilling me in my own place? My mama aborted me with a coat hanger in an alley. Does that shock you?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Yeah, I thought not,” the Old Man said. “If there’s one thing I don’t trust, it’s bitches. Can’t stand ’em. Can’t stand to be around them. All they ever want to do is be near me and cuddle me.” He shuddered at the thought of a kind woman showing him some affection.
Somehow, I doubt that anyone would want to be near him for any reason, being as I had the heebie-jeebies just talking to him. But you never know. Skirts are weird.
Sudd
enly he became alarmed. He looked around, panicked. The soft, sloughy flesh of his neck made him look like a fish on a tripod. “There aren’t twists in the bar, are there?”
“No, sir,” the big gorilla said in his best approximation of a soothing voice.
The Old Man relaxed into a wad. “Don’t like ’em near me. They’re all like my mama. But what that whore didn’t know when she buttonhooked me was I was one of us and not one of them. The doctor who scraped me out sealed me in a formaldehyde jar and kept me on his shelf. That’s where I learned English, all that good stuff. That was all… damn, twenty years ago.”
“He’s the oldest of us,” the bartender said.
I looked from the giant servant to the tiny master. The Old Man tipped over the martini glass and gave himself a little shower, most of which went into his vestigial mouth.
“Why? How long do we usually last?” I asked.
“If you’re not kept in a pickle jar?” the Old Man said. “Five years. Ten tops. But, as I always say, the brain can last longer.”
“Is that what you keep down there?” I pointed with my chin toward the trapdoor leading to the sub-basement. “Pickled brains?”
“How’s about you get to the point?” the Old Man said. “I’m getting a little pruny out here in the air.” He grabbed his forehead with his flippery little arms. He looked more than a little pruny. He looked as if he was about ready to collapse.
“Uh, can I have a drink?” I said.
The Old Man looked me up and down. “I like your spunk.”
“I am full of spunk,” I agreed.
“But too much of a good thing can be bad, Sonny Jim.”
“I will watch my spunk output, sir.”
“Give him a daiquiri,” the Old Man said, “then a boot in the ass when he’s done. Now get me back in my jar.”
And that was that. Luckily, Miss Claudia came in eventually. God damn, did I ever nurse that daiquiri. The gorilla knew it too, but he didn’t call me on it. She was so overjoyed to see me—and she gave me a stack of money—I felt as if I was on cloud nine. I wanted to head out and get my old room at the Three Rivers.
A hand stopped me. “You did good.”
It was Lazar. We sat down.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t real,” I said.
“In which sense?”
“So I learned you’re not the owner.”
He perked up. “Ah, so you met the boss. Well, I never claimed I owned the joint. I’m nothing more than a salesman.”
“You mean a pusher.”
He shrugged. “Names.” As if that explained everything.
“How is it that a fetus makes a fortune, anyway?”
“Same way the rest of us do, I imagine,” Lazar said, avoiding the question. “Are you starting to get a grip on your situation, I wonder.”
I couldn’t be sure whether that was a question or not. Didn’t sound like one, but it did. Hard to say. “Well, I got a few bucks in my pocket.”
“Yes, I heard. Claudia is quite taken with you. She’s singing your praises to everyone who’ll listen.”
I looked around. It sort of looked like that. She was sure pointing at me a lot.
Lazar—or whatever his name was—leaned in toward me. “We are a very small community, Jones. Or more accurately, I should say a close-knit community. It doesn’t take long to make or break a reputation. Helping Claudia Winston is a reputation maker.”
“You mean Baumer? Maybe you were behind it, huh?” I said. “You told me to come here, but I haven’t seen you in days. Just so happened when I got here that she’s here and crying.”
“You can’t lead a horse to water, and you certainly can’t make him drink. But I’m a bit of a junior gambler, Jones, and there’s one thing I do know. You can always arrange things in your favor. What comes out of it, though…” He shrugged.
I nodded and stood up. “Well, thanks for everything. I’m going to go check into the flophouse, I think.” I made a circle over my right eye with my thumb and forefinger and tipped it forward in a salute. “Be seeing you.”
I was halfway to the door when he said, “Why not stay here?”
I turned back. “In the bar?”
“Not in the bar,” he said. “Above it.”
He tossed a keyring on the table. One key was marked “FRONT DOOR,” one was marked “FENCE’S CAGE,” and one was marked “OFFICE.” I noticed there wasn’t one for the bar. There was a difference between being trusting and being crazy.
“Isn’t that where Baldy lives?”
He stared at me for a moment, his face unchanging though his pause suggested he was thinking deeply. “Oh, Homer. No, he doesn’t live here. I did, but I’ve moved recently. Maybe you’d like the room.”
“I don’t got that much money,” I said.
Lazar looked around the room. “You might, given time. You know how the police treat us as pariahs. You could be a policeman of sorts, for a price.”
“You mean a private dick,” I said.
“That I do,” Lazar said. “I’ll cover your rent. I’ll even keep you in booze, to an extent. Well, let’s say I’ll give you a small working discount.” He placed a small bottle of Crow on the table.
I’d been feeling a little fuzzy lately. Not that fuzzy, though. “What’s the catch?”
“Ah, yes, the catch.” Lazar nodded. “You just have to do a few things for me. Otherwise, any cases that come your way, take them.”
“Braineater Jones, P.I.,” I said.
Lazar raised a glass. “Shall we drink to it?”
November 5, 1934
The apartment had apparently been Lazar’s workspace. It had a desk, a foldout bed, and not much else. It suited me just fine after a couple nights in the Three Rivers and out on the streets.
I glanced out the window. All I had a view of was the grimy street below. It made me, weirdly, long for the garret above Ed and Joey’s place. I shut the window, then put my hand through the holes where glass should have been. It’s a good thing the cold didn’t bother me.
I spotted a deck of cards snapped in a rattrap. Either the rat had been smart enough to use a decoy or someone had carelessly tossed the deck on the floor. I carefully extricated the deck, then flipped the cards out one by one onto my desk. There weren’t quite forty, not even enough for a proper game of Patience.
So I practiced tossing playing cards into my cap. Not much else to do. I meant to lay low for a while and settle into my new life. Then I would get into the business of who killed me and all the other mysteries that had been cropping up since. But for a while, I simply wanted to relax in a little peace and quiet in a place I could call my own.
I went down to what passed for a consignment store in the Mat and bought a suit that fit and even a trench coat. At Hallowed Grounds, I found a few bullets for Gnaghi’s boomstick—well, I guess it’s my boomstick now—and arranged to have Lazar send up a few bottles of mostly Crow to my room. After that, I was just about tapped. But what else does a man need?
So later that morning, I sat, still not playing Patience, tossing cards into my brand new fedora. I should have thought to buy a new deck while I was out. My solitude was inevitably interrupted.
It was a dame of course. She had legs up to her eyeballs. Literally. She was carrying a pair of legs, one over either shoulder. I shook my head in wonder, but it wasn’t even the cockamamiest thing I’d seen in the last twenty-four hours. “Pawn shop’s downstairs. Not sure if they take drumsticks but never hurts to check.”
“I’m here for you, Mr. Jones,” she said.
“Well, if you think my first name’s ‘mister,’ you ain’t here for me,” I said. “That was my father’s first name.” I wish I knew what my father’s first name really was. V-V-Victrola?
She threw the getaway sticks down on my desk. The toes were clenching, and the feet kept arching and flattening. Like the girls in Hat Scratch Fever, someone was still controlling the limbs remotely.
Sighin
g, I put the “deck” of cards down. “These aren’t yours. These aren’t even a dame’s.”
“No kidding, Sherlock,” she said. “Maybe I came to the wrong place.”
“No, no,” I said. “Calm down. Tell me what your issue is.”
Her name was Kumaree Tong. I might’ve spelled that wrong. You know how I am with foreign words. She’s a real spicy meatball, though. Or bowl of borscht. Or whatever.
In the course of our conversation, I never became quite sure how she had bought the farm. She didn’t show evidence of anything. Maybe an aneurysm or something that left no visible marks. Cause other than being dead, her body was about a cock’s hair shy of perfect. Gorgeous dame.
I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying. Gist was, her brother had been flopping on her couch. Tough times for everybody I guess, especially when you don’t have a rich patron like Lazar. Lucky me.
“One morning I came out of the shower,” she said.
She said it slowly enough that I pictured her dripping wet, wearing nothing but her hair up in a towel. That’s neither here nor there, but it seemed relevant to my line of thinking.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, the twist in my office.
“My brother was gone,” she said, putting a handkerchief over her face but thankfully not boo-hoo-hooing all the damn time like Claudia Winston.
I nodded sympathetically and poured her some Crow. It obviously wasn’t to her taste, but I had already finished the only bottle of Bacardi I had asked Lazar to forward me for variety’s sake. Well, she’d make do. A free drink’s a nice enough gesture in that burg. “Into thin air?” I asked.
“Well, no. He wasn’t totally gone. Half of him was still flopping on the couch.”
I glanced at the extra set of legs she had walked into my office. They were lying on my foldout, ripped apart at the seams and still kicking, but minus one owner. I rubbed my temples. It was more an affectation than anything else. “You think he’s dead? Well, you know what I mean. Double dog dead.”
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