Braineater Jones

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “Well, it’s better than your childish ‘double dog dead,’” the head said. “You may as well be ordering a kneehigh from the sody jerk man.”

  Not liking the lip he was giving me, I flicked the head off the desk.

  “Another thing,” he added from the floor, his voice coming in waves as he rolled back and forth, “you ought to have killed them.”

  “I ought to have lots of things,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll bother the gravedigger anymore. You give him a call for me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He skipped town. Not worth it, you know. Would you want to work in a cemetery with us crawling out of the graves?”

  “No, I guess not,” I said.

  I went to see the pseudo-European scratcher again. He whistled loudly when he saw me.

  “You look like a colander,” he said in that extra spicy German sauce of his. “You want me to fill in all the holes?” He had a bucket of spackle ready for the task.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Make me seaworthy.”

  He got started.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He looked at me expectantly.

  I pointed at my first bullet hole, the one that had gotten me into all this mess. It was a little more ragged than the others, and despite near-constant and liberal application of Old Crow, it was becoming home to a nest of maggots. “Not this one.”

  The scratcher eyed up my hole. It was clearly the worst one. He shrugged. “Whatever you say. No accounting for sentiment.”

  When I was all patched up, sitting in the office, it started. As I knew it would. No avoiding it with that jack-in-the-box, less the jollity.

  “You know what we have to do,” he said grimly.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You know where we have to go,” he added, as if I hadn’t gotten it the first time.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said.

  “Then why aren’t we going?”

  I looked at him, drink in my hand, Lucky in my mouth. The walls of the office were stale with cigarette smoke, already. At least, I imagined they would be if we ever stopped smoking long enough to let the five-foot-high cloud of smoke clear out. “Why are you so eager to sell her down the river? If it wasn’t for her, you’d still be a lab rat in that bokor’s clutches.”

  “There are worse things than being preyed upon by others,” the head said.

  “Like what?” I sneered.

  “Like, for instance, being preyed upon by our own kind.”

  I stood and walked to the window. A derelict lay on the sidewalk, face covered by newspaper. Two bums came by and picked him up, beat him up, and took his coffee cup full of change. Crippled doughboy according to his cardboard sign, though that was poorly written and could’ve been a lie.

  “You’ve got a soft spot for her,” he said.

  “As I recall,” I said, “she’s got a soft spot for me, too.”

  “Dames always get in the way,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of good men, and our kind too, led astray by a pair of fancy gams. She’s a traitor. A Benedict Arnold. We should figure out her game and shut her down.”

  “You know,” I said, “those two morons didn’t describe her in any great detail. It could’ve been any one of our kind.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Prove me wrong. Let’s investigate. Get me my hat, would you?”

  I grabbed his damned Panama hat and plopped him on my shoulder. No need for all the theatrics of the birdcage. We were going somewhere in the Mat, and somewhere where we could get some answers.

  Ivan Skaron looked surprised to see us. Surprised and delighted. He threw his arms around me and kissed Alcibé over and over. I hoped he was foreign and not just a weirdo. “Come in, come in. My saviors. Let me make you some drinks.”

  “We’re not here about that,” Alcibé said.

  “I won’t argue with you,” I said.

  “Good, good,” he said.

  It was the first time I had really been in his apartment. Not much to say about it. Covered with an inch of dust and two inches of books. I was familiar with a few of them from the Mat Library; others seemed new. He was branching out. Besides history and witchcraft, there were biology texts and quite a bit on astronomy.

  “Your legs look good, back on you,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Thanks,” he yelled.

  He was busying himself in the kitchen, clattering dishes and putting a teapot on the stove to whistle, when I sat down. I stuck the head on an ottoman. It sure sounded like he was making tea, or maybe what the Italians called “expresso,” although neither made a whole lot of sense as a beverage to offer one of our kind.

  I glanced at his wall. He was constructing a sort of a word maze on the wall with bits and pieces carved out of books and newspapers. Seemed to me a bit like a minor sacrilege to cut up a book. A penknife sat on a stack of books he had either recently gone through or were up on the chopping block.

  “So,” I said, “you hear from any of your morgue mates lately?”

  “Eh?” Skaron yelled from the kitchen. “What’s that?”

  “I said—” I yelled.

  “I suppose you’re referring to Kumaree.” Guess he had heard me. Weird. He emerged from the kitchen with a platter of what the Orientals call “socky.” Warm. Blech. But as they say in the Welcome Mat, booze is booze. “So naturally I assume when I’m visited by a couple of busy P.I.s, this is not a social call.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Don’t think that.”

  He looked over his glasses at me. “Don’t be coy, Jones. This is the first time I’ve seen you here. You’ve had ample opportunity. I don’t mind, of course. I hate being interrupted when I’m conducting research.”

  “When aren’t you doing research?”

  “Precisely my point. Tell me, though, what was it you were wondering about a pro po my sister?”

  “Anything you can tell us,” I said.

  “Anything unsavory,” Alcibé had to add.

  “Unsavory?” Skaron scratched his scalp.

  Leave it to the head to ruin a lead. As soon as we left, Skaron would go running to her or, worst-case scenario, telephone and tell her to pack up shop, wherever she was.

  “That is to say,” I said, “how close are you?”

  “Well, we’re morgue mates.” He added with a laugh, “Whatever that means.”

  “What does that mean, I wonder,” I said.

  He waved his finger. “It’s an interesting story, actually. Oh, but I don’t want to bore you two.”

  “Oh no, bore away,” I said. “What about you, Alcibé? You find ‘remember-when’ stories boring?”

  “Not at all,” Alcibé said.

  “Well, as you know, we’re both from Greater Russia,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Alcibé nodded. Or more accurately, he rocked back and forth on his ottoman.

  “We were both in the Ukrainian neighborhood, as it were, when we died. Probably passed each other on the street, but the sort of thing where you never stop to think about it. I always had my nose buried in a book, rushing to and fro, here and about. As it turns out, that was my undoing.”

  “Hit by an auto?” I said.

  “Piano, actually,” he said. “They were lifting one of those grand affairs into an apartment a few stories up. There I was, reading And Quiet Flows the Don, ignoring that frayed piano rope, and it crushed me. Like the cartoon after a newsreel. Next thing you know, I wake up in the morgue.”

  “Huh,” Alcibé said.

  I would’ve said, “Go figure,” but I figured he didn’t need his bullshit in stereo.

  “Well, I don’t have to tell you my sister’s a bit ginchy,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Hadn’t noticed,” Alcibé said.

  “Anyway, thing about it is, I tried to make a pass at her when we first woke up. Didn’t work out so great. The mortician had already gotten to me. My intestines were out of my body and in a scale.”

  “How did sh
e react to that?”

  “A lot better than I did. She’s always kept me together, so to speak. Some of the other morgue mates…” He shrugged. I guess they didn’t take their responsibilities so seriously. “It was nice, though. We both spoke Russian, I being from White Russia and she being from Georgia.”

  I scratched my head.

  “They speak Russian there?”

  “If you know what’s good for you.”

  Must be a big expat community in Atlanta or something.

  He continued. “A few others woke up, and we switched to English. But she stuffed my guts back in and stitched me up. You wouldn’t think a woman like that would be good with a needle—you’d think she’d get by on her looks—but she sewed me up just fine.”

  As if to prove his point, he opened his shirt and showed us the gruesome wound from his dissection. Vivisection? Whatever.

  “How often do you speak to her these days?” Alcibé asked.

  Skaron seemed lost in his own memories. “Hmm?”

  “I said—” the head said.

  “Oh, I heard you,” Skaron said. “Well, hardly ever, honestly. I was actually rather surprised she, you know, hired you to find me. Not, uh, deeply shocked to my core, but you know, we don’t exactly talk all the time.”

  “You don’t know where she lives,” I said.

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Not by address. But I do know she lives down by the docks.”

  Alcibé and I exchanged a glance.

  “A bit unusual for our kind to stray from our watering holes, I know, but she must get her go-juice some other way. I wonder, should I come with you?”

  “Probably better that you don’t,” I said. “You ought to remember her the way she was.”

  “Dead on a slab?”

  “I meant as your beloved sister.”

  “Well, she’ll always be that,” Skaron said. “No matter what you do to her.”

  I hoped he didn’t have a gun. He smiled as he showed us out, though.

  November 20, 1934

  Morning came, and we were both exhausted. We had traded shifts watching the window. It had been too late when we left Skaron’s to go to the docks, but we didn’t feel safe enough to go to bed. I had gotten less rest though, because the damned head had woken me every few hours to light another cigarette. They were my cigarettes, might I add.

  I ended up sitting in my chair, wearing not much more than my drawers and a union suit, drinking a pick-me-up and chewing on a toothpick. There were no more Luckies. In life, it would’ve been pathetic. In unlife, it was still pretty pathetic. He sat in the windowsill, scanning the street.

  I felt compelled to pull out this notebook and flip through it. Something nagged at me, and lack of sleep was making it stick out in my mind. “Why do you suppose we have to sleep?”

  “Every living thing needs to sleep,” the head said without taking his eyes off the street.

  “Listen to what you just said,” I said.

  He shrugged in the fashion I was accustomed to.

  “We don’t heal,” I said. “We don’t dream. What’s the point of sleep?”

  “Maybe your body isn’t the only thing that needs sleep,” he said. “Maybe your brain needs it, too. Our brains most definitely function. Maybe booze alone isn’t enough to keep it functioning, despite what Lazar would have us believe.”

  Made sense, after a fashion.

  5. Why does a—whatever I am—need sleep? To give those meaty ticking time bombs between our ears a chance to settle down. Maybe.

  The hands of the clock made their rounds at half speed. My eyes were drifting shut. I snapped awake but good. “What do you think?”

  “Huh?”

  “Think we should risk it?” I asked.

  He looked at me, first out of the corner of his eye, then he rotated himself to face me with a sickening motion that made the jagged muscles at the stump of his neck ripple like a snail’s belly. His method of ambulation was forced and slow, as if to underline the point he was about to make. “I’m no use to you, Jones.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. A lesser man might’ve spilt his bourbon. As it was, I just put it down. “What’s all that, then?”

  “I’m useless. I’m a burden,” the head said. “I can’t cover your back, can’t answer the door, can’t even do research unless you turn the page for me. I kept you up all night when it was my turn for watch. I don’t bring a whole lot to this organization.”

  “You bring heart,” I said.

  “That’s not true, either. I don’t have one. You ought to have left me with the bokor. Let him dispose of me.”

  I took a long drag from my toothpick. I would have to go pick up some squares. Not yet, though. Newsstand wouldn’t be open yet. “Let’s not be stupid. Maybe I don’t slobber all over your ass every day, but as you say, you ain’t got one, so don’t be offended.”

  “You’re not the one who says it,” he said. “You don’t have to say it. I know it without hearing it from anyone else. A head’s just a head’s just a head. Worthless. Like a magic eight ball. All full of answers that don’t help anyone. You ought to put me out of my misery.”

  I stamped out the toothpick in the ashtray. I walked to the closet. In the time since I had—what’s the word?—“appropriated” Gnaghi’s piece, I had bought a rifle. It wasn’t exactly convenient to carry around the city, leastways not when I wanted to be subtle, but it had its uses. I pulled it out and pumped it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Do me.” He squeezed his eyes shut.

  I was way past telling if it was all just a fun little pity party or if he was really getting drowsy for the big sleep. Either way, I didn’t care. I mounted the rifle on the windowsill with a bit of wire and ran the venetian blind cord through the trigger. Messing with the cord didn’t harm anything. The blinds had long since been ripped out.

  “What’s taking so long?”

  “Shut up,” I said. “No, wait. Better yet, open up.”

  He opened his eyes.

  “Open your mouth, come-rag,” I said.

  He opened wide and said, “Ahh.” I stuck the cord-pull into his mouth.

  He clenched down on it. “What’s this?”

  I spun him back around and pointed him out the window. “Can you move it?”

  He tugged on the cord, and the rifle moved up and down, left and right. A bit jury-rigged, but it functioned well enough.

  “Now don’t tug too hard,” I said, “or it’ll go off.”

  “I can’t kill myself with this, Jones. The barrel’s too long.”

  I smacked him upside the head, which unfortunately, sent him flying. I had to run and grab him. “Would you give me a break? At least wait to kill yourself until after I’ve cracked this case. I need you to watch the window. You don’t want to go, you’ve got a death wish, fine. But at least stay here and watch the office.”

  “I don’t think Skaron’s coming,” Alcibé said. “I think the absentminded professor bit is more than just a bit.”

  “He’s the least of our problems. At least, I think he is. Do me a favor and keep me from coming home to an ambush.” I pulled on my trench coat and made sure to stick Gnaghi’s piece in my pocket. I made for the door.

  “Jones,” he said. There it came, the blubbering “thank you,” “you’re my best friend,” and all that happy horseshit.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “All right,” he said.

  I got halfway down the stairs to the fence before I turned back. “Forgot my trousers.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  One-oh-one Gateway Lane. Again. I had no idea if that was the place, whether the bird was there, whether there was any relation to anything else in my life. But if Lazar was running something through the docks and the ginchy dame was running something through the docks, odds were they’d convene somewhere. Maybe that was the place. Maybe not. Maybe I’d get shot. Again.

  I checked my boomstick fo
r at least the fifth time since hopping off the back of a garbage truck once it reached the fish market. I knew the bullets weren’t going anywhere, but it never hurt to check. They were still there. I thumped on the door with the butt of the piece. Nobody came at first, so I kept on a-thumping. Finally somebody came.

  They hid back in the shadows like before. I waited. I could wait all night. Let the bastard talk.

  “Yes?” he said finally, and his voice reminded me ever so slightly of that back-alley abortionist I had been seeing.

  “You recognize me?”

  “Yes.” Descriptive.

  “Boss sent me back around,” I said.

  “For what?” the European asked.

  Finally. New words.

  “Hell if I know. Boss says jump, I say, ‘How high?’ Boss says shit, I say, ‘How wet?’ You know how it is.”

  “I most certainly do not,” he said.

  I shrugged. Maybe he could see. Maybe not. “Well, if you don’t want my help, I’ll go back and tell him.” I turned and started to walk away.

  “Wait!” he hissed after me.

  The door closed. I heard a lot of clinking and clanking. Then the door opened just a crack and he waved me inside.

  The inside of the loft was a lot like the outside. Metal. Stark. Bare. Only the inside was full of crates. Funny thing about the crates was a lot of them were marked with a funny bird holding a circle and a crooked cross. Looking at that load the eagle bore gave me a white, hurty vision of a fat man smiling at me. It definitely meant something to me. I ran my fingers along it. The ink was cool and stood out slightly over the woodgrain.

  I looked around. There were a lot of fellows moving cargo. They wore suits, which was strange enough for working men, especially in the middle of working. Stranger still was that all their suits were a bit oddly tailored. Like maybe they were off the rack, not really made for them. The tall ones wore sizes too small; the short ones were swimming in daddy’s clothes.

  “What’s this?” I said, jutting my chin out at the emblem.

  The doormonger stared at me. I got my first real look at him. He reminded me of nothing so much as a vulture. Long, sharp, nose, beady little eyes, and a lean and hungry look that put Cassius to shame.

  God damn it. There’s another flash of memory. What can I say about flashes like that?