by Greg Kihn
All in all, things seemed more reasonable and less strained the second time around. The crew felt easier around Johnny D., and hardly flinched when he was hauled out of cold storage for his reprise.
They even used a few of Johnny’s buddies. Buzzy was now an expert at corpse choreography, and seemed to have a real rapport with them. The other cadavers were just plain dead folk; nothing special, they were used as background mostly. None of them had the unchained charisma of Johnny D. Landis was beginning to feel that Johnny was the actual star of the movie.
Try as he might, Landis could never repeat the intensity of the Tad Kingston surprise-reaction shot, or the utter repulsion of the worm shot.
They wrapped up the last few scenes and went home ahead of schedule. A miracle. Landis was in heaven. His little production had worked out smoothly and showed every sign of being a success.
Landis took the exposed film stock to Fairfax Film Labs for immediate development. On the way he had to stop and see Sol Kravitz to get the cash for the processing, because Fairfax wouldn’t take a Landis Woodley check.
He couldn’t wait to start editing because he knew he’d see it again on the film splicer—that stark terror and hungry weirdness that permeated the footage they’d shot at the morgue. He knew it would be there in black and white, waiting for him.
He’d created magic.
After sleeping all day, Buzzy Haller drove to Don’s Liquors and picked up a bottle of Chardonnay, a pack of cigarettes, and a half pint of Seagram’s. The sun was sinking low in the western sky, just beginning to touch the tops of the hills behind Sunset Strip. The palm trees were silhouetted vividly against a fleeting orange universe.
Buzzy sat in his car in the parking lot and cracked open the Seagram’s. He brought it to his lips. It tasted wonderful going down, and he finished the swig in one long, smooth swallow. The burn in his throat felt good.
Lighting a cigarette from his new pack of Luckies, he sat back in the seat of his ’48 Dodge Roadster and switched on the radio. The old gray car had a metal visor in the front that hung out over the windshield and cut the glare. He smoked while waiting for the radio to warm up. It came to life a minute later and throbbed with the deep voice only vacuum tubes can achieve, a kind of basso profundo that gently rattled the loose panels in his door.
Buzzy’s car radio didn’t have reverb, like some of the other models, but it kicked ass.
He scanned the dial, looking for some of that high-octane, new music that was sweeping the nation, that crazy rock and roll.
Buzzy was a jazz man, mostly. He was much too hip for the hillbilly cats who had recently invaded the airwaves. Yet, when he was alone, and no one could see him enjoying himself, he curiously tuned into the rock station. Some of the stuff, the hot rhythm and blues, was a jazz spin-off anyway. It was okay to dig people like Ray Charles and Fats Domino.
It was just that wild teenage stuff that was uncool. People like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Ricky Nelson were beneath him … unless he was alone. Then it was all right to tap his foot.
He zeroed in on disc jockey Art Laboe’s show just in time to hear the second half of “Suzie Q” by Dale Hawkins. Leaning back in the roomy seat, he casually let the smoke drift out the open window and sang along. He liked the song; it was about a girl he thought he once knew.
Abruptly he thought of Roberta. She was suck a Goody Two-shoes. Cute, though. Nice butt, too. Too bad things turned out the way they did. He almost felt a pang of guilt when he remembered the way she’d cried at the party.
God, I’m scum, he thought. That’s why I don’t get any chicks anymore, because I’m pond scum. What girl wants pond scum?
He visualized Roberta’s smile.
That’s what I like about her, he thought, her smile, and the fact that she’s a nice girl. That’s what Woody digs too—the nice girl scene. Who wouldn’t? Chicks like that are hard to find.
I got dibs on her anyway ’cause I found her first. Not too many nice girls in this town anymore. My mom would have liked her. Maybe if I apologized …
Thinking of his mother caused Buzzy to squirm in his seat. It was impossible to think of Mother and not recall the same scene every time. He wondered why he couldn’t remember anything else, just that one grotesque moment. He tried to shove it out of his mind but it persisted. He was only five years old.
Mother in her bathrobe, dead on the bathroom floor, the water running in the tub. Turn off the water and kneel down beside her. Alone for two days. Afraid to close her eyes.
Buzzy shivered and rolled his head.
Fuck this. He took another hard swallow of Seagram’s and turned up the music. Thinking about Mother hurt, and he hated to hurt.
“Suzie Q,” ended and Laboe introduced the next song. “It’s a little ditty from New York City. Paul Anka singing about that crazy chick, ‘Diana.’” The song started.
Buzzy turned the music down again, and his mind returned to Roberta. She couldn’t take a joke. That’s all. If I explain it to her, she’ll understand.
Suddenly calling Roberta seemed like the most important thing in the world. He got out of his car, walked across the street to a pay phone, fished out a dime, and dialed her number. He let it ring three times before hanging up. Then he leaned against the cool glass of the phone booth door and closed his eyes.
“You got a match, Daddy-O?”
Buzzy looked up. “Huh?”
“You gotta match?” a young voice asked.
Buzzy looked at the guy in the blue jeans, T-shirt, and black leather motorcycle jacket, and nodded. They all wanted to be Brando now, he thought, the rebel, the wild one. Buzzy was cool; he knew the score with all the hipsters. He handed a match over to the kid and watched while he lit a cigarette.
Life is passing me by, Buzzy thought. This punk is living more than me. I’m falling behind. First the chicks, then the whole scene. What’s next?
Buzzy felt every one of his twenty-five years weighing down on him like boulders.
He watched the kid walk away and remembered how he felt when he was like that, a young rebel. He would have felt exactly like that kid, that he had just bummed a match from a square.
Is that what I am now? A square? No, I’m still a rebel, damn it. I’m still the wildest cat in town.
He eventually drove to Scrivener’s drive-in, near Hollywood High School, and had a hamburger. Watching the high school chicks tease their boyfriends made him feel even older.
He drove on, knocking back another long swallow of the Seagram’s at the next light. He drove in the direction of the morgue.
Pulling into the parking lot there, he waited a while longer, had himself several more drinks, and listened to some more rock and roll. At eight o’clock he went in.
“Say man, how’re ya doin’?”
It was Charles, the night watchman, at his usual post.
“Oh, I’m doin’ all right. ’Course there ain’t no excitement since you boys left.”
Buzzy smiled. “I’ll bet.”
“That was the most action we ever had down here,” Charles said. “Not that I minded it, you understand. It’s just that it gets pretty quiet around here at night.”
“Do you ever get spooked?”
“Spooked?”
“Yeah, with all those stiffs back there, and you the only living soul in the building?”
Charles smiled through his bad teeth. “Sometimes it does get a might creepy, especially after I been watchin’ one of them horror movies y’all make.” He chuckled. “Seriously, though, once in a while I think I hear something, and I go back there and have a look.”
Buzzy offered a cigarette. The old man coughed and took one. He continued speaking after lighting up.
“Yeah, I go down there and have myself a nice long look. Sometimes I swear I hear voices. Of course, that’s impossible. When I get down there I halfway expect to see all the dead bodies sitting around having a party, and when I walk in the room they all stop talkin’ and look at me. Th
ey don’t look too happy to see me. In fact, they probably hate me. They all think, well, he’s still alive, and we’re dead, so fuck him. It ain’t fair.”
Buzzy looked past him, down the hall into the shadows of the dead room. “Yeah, I’ll bet you hear all kinds of shit in a place like this, night after night.”
“I gotta go back there to check.” Charles nodded in the direction of the abattoir. “’Course, there’s nothin’ there, there never is. Then I come back out here and have a smoke and forget about it. Still, sometimes … voices. Ya know what I mean? Fuckin’ voices. Whispering. Kinda gives ya the creeps.”
“I can imagine,” Buzzy said honestly. “Hey, I almost forgot, I brought you something, a little gift, from the guys on the crew.” He pulled the bottle of wine out of the brown paper bag he carried and smiled.
Charles stood up and shook his hand, admiring the bottle and smiling back at him like he’d just found a ten-dollar bill.
“Well, I’ll be damned. That’s awful nice of you, Buzzy. Damn. You know, in all my years down here, nobody ever gave me a gift until you came along.”
Buzzy nodded. “Yeah, it’s a rotten world. You deserve a little reward, Charlie. You’re doin’ a hell of a job guardin’ the stiffs. What do you say we have a taste right now? I got a corkscrew and some paper cups.”
Charles smiled. “Don’t mind if I do.”
They shared a few glasses and some small talk. Twenty minutes later, Buzzy stood and said, “Well, I gotta go. Take care of yourself Charlie, okay? Keep the bottle.”
Charlie held up the wine. “I sure will.”
Buzzy left the building and found his way back to the car and the rock and roll.
“I’m still the wildest cat in town,” he said to himself.
Lieutenant Garth Prease walked up the front path to the Beaumond house marveling at what a nice, normal place it appeared to be. He’d expected some sort of Satanic temple, not the white picket fence and well-tended lawn that greeted him.
The path to the door was made of flagstones, set into the earth and measured carefully so that each stone was approximately where your foot would land as you walked at a normal pace.
Garth smiled. This was not what he’d expected at all. It was evening, just after ten o’clock, and the house was illuminated from within. Squares of warm yellow light shone like color slides projected on glass.
Thora’s face appeared at the window, pale and drawn, the black circles under her eyes visible even through the gauze curtains. His heart sank. The girl was already fragile enough. He didn’t want to upset her further, but it was part of his job. He chose to do it in person, rather than over the phone.
He cursed the medical examiner for being so tardy with the forms, but it was typical. When the unclaimed-body notification came in from the morgue, it was already quitting time. It had taken several phone calls to set the wheels in motion. The coroner didn’t like being disturbed at home during dinner, but Garth didn’t like having to work after five. If the damn note had been filed when the body first arrived and not a day and a half later, maybe they all could have done their jobs during normal business hours. Bureaucracy was like cancer.
After arranging to meet the coroner and view the body, he called Thora and told her he wanted to come over and talk. The John Doe matched the description of Albert Beaumond.
Some things are best not discussed over the phone. Garth, a good Christian, appreciated that, and, if nothing else, he was sensitive. He’d done this before, and it was never easy, but it had to be done face-to-face.
Thora opened the door before he rang the bell. The door opened a crack, her face loomed from the shadows like an apparition, ghostly and tortured. It struck him as incredibly sad.
“Hello, Miss Beaumond,” he said.
“Lieutenant Prease,” she replied. “Have you found my father?”
He answered her question with a question. “May I come in?”
The door swung in a little farther and he slipped through. It was subdued inside, the lights tastefully kept at a low wattage. What had looked so bright and cheerful from the outside appeared now to be of minimal candlepower and somewhat depressing. He stood in the hall with his hands at his sides.
“Have you found my father?” she asked again automatically.
Garth looked away and began his prepared speech. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you, Miss Beaumond, but I may have some bad news. There was a body found yesterday. It hasn’t been identified, but it matches the description you gave me. I think maybe you should come with me and have a look.”
“Oh my God,” Thora said in a rushed breath, a sob already erupting through the thin layer of control. Her eyes quickly filled with fluid. Garth wanted to comfort her but didn’t.
“Look,” he said, “it could be nothing. I just want to make sure …”
“Of course,” Thora, dazed, said in a barely audible whisper. “I’ll get my things.”
Garth watched her climb the stairs, and for the first time noticed how much of a woman Thora Beaumond was becoming. She was young, but her youth was tempered with a quiet maturity that comes with tragedy. He found himself wondering about her life. How much had she suffered already? With her father a devout Satanist and the family home a pagan temple, how had the child’s adolescent years been distorted?
Garth looked around the hall and peered into the living room. No signs of devil worship were visible.
Thora came back down the stairs, drying her eyes with a balled tissue.
“I can drive you, if you like,” he offered.
Thora’s eyes lifted to meet his. The dewy sadness that he’d seen there before had now been replaced by an agitated, steady weeping.
Garth wanted to look away. The fear on her face hurt to watch. He could tell she was silently praying that the body was not that of her father. And so was he. There was something about this girl.
He dreaded the moment.
“Okay,” she said in a fragile, frightened voice.
“My car’s outside.”
22
When Buzzy Haller returned to the morgue at ten o’clock in the evening he was not surprised to find Charles, the night watchman, asleep at his post, the empty bottle of Chardonnay next to him.
Buzzy was drunk himself, but with him it was an entirely different animal. Buzzy drank, not to forget, but to remember. He didn’t want to pass out, he wanted to conquer the world. He laughed at old lushes like Charles, who only wanted to use the booze for sleeping medicine. What a waste, he thought. There are things to do, places to go, applecarts to upset.
He opened the front door, walked past the desk, and strolled down the hall to the abattoir.
Drawer sixty-six had not been opened or disturbed in any way since the night before. Buzzy slid it opened and said hello to Johnny D.
“Hey, man, how’s it goin’?”
Buzzy laughed. How could it be goin’? The man is dead. To him, every day is basically the same.
He’d actually missed the ripe old guy since their last dance.
“You know, Johnny, I been thinkin’ about you, my man.”
Johnny didn’t move. His closed eyelids stared at the ceiling, and his sagging face remained the same.
Buzzy gave old Johnny the once-over and was shocked by the deterioration that had occurred in just one night. The man was going fast, like hamburger going bad. Whatever Johnny D. was going to do, Buzzy thought, whatever his destiny, it better happen fast or forever hold his peace.
“I been thinkin’. It’s a shame to know that a major talent like you is down here with ho work, no agent, and no publicity, while all those other stiffs are out there making millions! It ain’t right. Well, I’m here to save you, my man. I’m here to save you from this fuckin’ place, where they don’t understand and appreciate you. From now on, you’re a star.”
Bluish lips stayed shut. Were the eyes full of worms still? Buzzy almost checked, then decided to do it later, when he could be more thorough. Besides, what
was he going to do about the maggots?
Buzzy considered it for a moment.
Well, let’s see, he thought. I could always spray some ant and roach killer in his eyes, that would probably do some damage, but then the rest of them, the ones not killed by direct contact with the spray, would just crawl back into the skull where I couldn’t get ’em. They would multiply back there and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it. No, the worm thing is problematic, but it’s one of Johnny’s many charms. There’s not a damn thing I can do.
“The strong silent type, aren’t you?” Buzzy murmured. He hoisted Johnny out of the drawer and onto a nearby gurney. Not bothering to cover the corpse, or obscure it in any way, Buzzy began to wheel the gurney toward the door, then he caught a whiff of decay and stopped long enough to pick up a can of deodorant spray, which he stuffed in his pocket.
“Deodorant for corpses, what will they think of next?”
Buzzy rolled the gurney up the hall, past Charles, and out the front door. With wheels squeaking, he taxied the gurney right up to his car. Without even bothering to look around, Buzzy casually unlocked his trunk and put Johnny inside.
He left the gurney in the lot and drove away.
As he accelerated, he felt Johnny’s body thump against the rear wall of the trunk. Buzzy lit a cigarette and turned up the radio. “In The Still of the Night” by the Five Satins was playing. The pimply teenage harmonies made Buzzy smile. To some people, this was a serious piece of music, the definitive Doo-wop song. To Buzzy, it was a joke. Everything was a joke. Life was a joke.
As Buzzy drove away, he was passed by a black sedan traveling in the other direction. The car pulled into the parking lot of the morgue, into the spot vacated by Buzzy’s car. The gurney stood alone in the lot, ominous and enigmatic.
“What’s that thing doing out here?” Garth Prease asked aloud.
“What is it?” Thora asked. Then she knew, she knew in a twinkling. Garth didn’t answer.