Dead Mann Walking

by Stefan Petrucha

  He paused. His eyes flared as if he felt guilty about dragging all this up, but he didn’t say anything else. I figured that meant it was my move.

  “Is there a question in there?”

  He rubbed the brim of his hat. “Well . . . did you do it?”

  I leaned back and twisted my head. Something in my neck cracked. I hoped it wasn’t bone. “I’ll answer you, but first, I like to know who I’m working with, too.”

  Turgeon pulled out an envelope and tossed it on the desk. It slid a little before coming to a halt against a crack in the veneer. I didn’t have to pick it up to see it was stuffed with hundreds. Decent amount for a liveblood detective. For a chak? A fortune.

  “I don’t know what sort of cases you usually get, but I’m certain this isn’t one of them. Your police background makes you perfect for what I need. I don’t care if you lied to the jury, but I can’t take the risk that you’d lie to me.” He moved his shoulders in what seemed an apologetic fashion, then lowered his voice to a boyish hush. “So, did you kill your wife?”

  “Honestly?” I told him. “I don’t remember.”

  “In the court transcripts you say you were innocent.”

  “Did I? I’ve read them a few dozen times, but a chak’s memory, right? I get flashes, but the actual moment? A total blank.”

  That’s why I never went looking for her real killer. I’m afraid I’ll find out it’s me.

  He zeroed in on my eyes. Like that would help. Idiot, you can’t read chak eyes. It’s like watching someone zoned in front of a TV or video game. They don’t call it a zombie look for nothing. You can’t tell a thing by looking at our eyes.

  I met his gaze nice and steady, but it was like that lame wolf whistle I gave Misty, going through the paces out of politeness . . . acting, like a friend of mine says, as if, in this case as if I were still alive. Turgeon’s eyes were a weird baby blue, the color so consistent he must have been wearing contacts. Funny thing to be vain about, but beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.

  Finally, he said, “I believe you,” as if we were in his no-girls-allowed tree house, making some kind of pact.

  A man of many pockets, he pulled a photo from one. It was a head shot, posed, showing a square-headed forty-year-old with close-cropped curly hair, a few lines on his face, and a decent smile. The top button of his blue shirt was loose, the collar not completely ironed, so whoever he was, he wasn’t anal. Into himself enough to pose for a head shot, though.

  “Frank Boyle,” Turgeon said. “His father, Martin, was a close friend of my firm’s founder, Mr. Trent Derby. Martin Boyle passed away last week from lung cancer and left all his money, a considerable sum, to his eldest son. I have to find him and let him know about his inheritance.”

  It was starting to make sense.

  “Let me guess. Frank’s a chak, right? On the streets somewhere, no known address?”

  Turgeon nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Even so, why hire me? Why not a liveblood, or go to the cops?”

  He rubbed his hat again. “It’s complicated. He has a living brother and sister who are both contesting the will. They’re people of influence who wouldn’t think much of . . . getting rid of a chak to preserve their fortune. Mr. Derby is concerned that they may have already reached out to the local police and any real . . . uh, liveblood detective in the area. Sorry, no offense.”

  “None taken. I get your point. They’d never hire a chak, right?” I drummed my fingers on the envelope and tried to look as if I were thinking about it. “You’re leaving out the other complication. Frank might be feral.”

  Turgeon made a funny little swallowing sound. “Naturally, that’s a concern.”

  “Natural’s got nothing to do with it.” I laid my palm on the envelope. “I get paid whether he is or not, long as I find him for you before the sinister siblings?”

  He nodded at the money as if embarrassed it was too little. “That’s for accepting the job. I’ll pay the same if you find him first, feral or not. Time is of the utmost. You have to start now. I need . . . I . . . expect immediate action. They can’t be allowed to find him first.”

  I flipped through the bills. It was more than I’d guessed. I looked up into Turgeon’s eyes, trying to suss him out. Mostly he looked nervous, which pretty much matched his story.

  I picked up the envelope. I started to put it in my jacket pocket, forgetting there was a tear in the bottom. Before it fell into the lining I pulled it out and shoved it into the top desk drawer, trying to make it look like that had been the idea all along. The drawer stuck. I cursed under my breath until I got it closed.

  “You’ll take the case?” Eggman asked.

  “Hey, you’re the Eggman. Goo goo g’joob,” I said.

  I don’t think he got the joke.

  2

  When Turgeon said now, I didn’t realize how much he meant it. I offered to do some digging and call him in twenty-four hours, but he crossed his arms over his belly.

  “I need results tonight. Frank Boyle may be in immediate danger, Mr. Mann,” he said. After a beat, he lowered his head and tried to suppress a giggle. “Mr. Mann . . . Sorry . . .”

  Yeah, the name Dad left me gets big yuks sometimes. I got into so many fights when I was a kid, they mistook me for the neighborhood bully. At least, I like to think they did. Part of the reason I joined the force was because Officer Mann or Detective Mann sounded better. Didn’t always help. Once during a bust, a dealer, all buff and full of tattoos, saw my badge and said, “Jeepers, Mr. Mann!” He and his buddies had a real laugh riot until I coldcocked him with my nine-millimeter. He nearly lost an eye.

  Police brutality? Nah. Mr. Mann brutality. Maybe I was the neighborhood bully.

  These days, no pride to hurt. Hell, I had a hard enough time thinking of myself as a real detective. I sat there until Turgeon composed himself. I figure if he pays me enough, he can call me whatever he wants.

  “I’ve got a couple of sources I can check out,” I told him. “Misty can make you some coffee. I’ll be back soon.” That seemed to satisfy him.

  Maybe the big rush should’ve set some bells off, but between wincing about my name and thinking about the dead presidents crammed in my desk, I was distracted. I snatched the head shot and left Misty to babysit. I kind of wished she had some car keys to jangle in front of him.

  I trudged down three flights of interior squalor to get to the squalor on the street. The sun had pretty much said screw this and was headed home. A yellow Hummer was parked right in front of my building, a piece of gold in a toilet bowl. I figured it belonged to Turgeon. The only working streetlamp crackled like it was spitting the light on the sidewalk.

  This was the Bones, the kind of place even crack heads see as a step down, six blocks of half walls, barbed wire left over from WWI, and vacant lots. Since we generally don’t have jobs, homes, or most of our faculties, any Fort Hammer chak who doesn’t hole up in a shantytown stays here. It’s the better choice, but not by much. We’re a city park away from a gated liveblood neighborhood, so the cops keep things relatively quiet. Not at the shanties, though. Hakkers, bored, disaffected livebloods, pick one every Friday and go play whack-a-chak, beating, cutting, and otherwise not letting the dead rest in peace. It’s like a live-action role-playing game, only you can’t tell who the monsters are.

  Turgeon hired me probably thinking all chakz know one another. Truth is, he may have been better off on his own. Finding a particular chak was no easy trick. Yellowed finger bone in a haystack. There were four shantytowns everyone knew about: two in the desert, one near an old iron mine, and the biggest, Bedland, in an abandoned mattress factory. When I first came back, I stayed there a while, until a bad raid wised me up.

  Since I barely remembered anyone from yesterday, my best play, my only play, was to find Jonesey. I’d known him long enough for the name and face to stick. Before he was wrongly convicted of childnapping, he was a motivational speaker. If you want it bad enough, you can have it; just a
ct as if; that sort of horseshit. Had some books published. Somehow I don’t think he was found guilty because he didn’t want his freedom bad enough. Ha. When it turned out a year later that the kid was living with his aunt in another state, they brought him back. Oops. So sorry, Mr. Jones. Now he’s a small-time dealer, and he knows not to call me Mr. Mann.

  The dead make okay street dealers. They can’t get hooked, and in a pinch they can take a bullet or three. Sure, eventually the damage gets too severe to patch with thread and Krazy Glue, but who cares? So what if pieces dangle, rot sets in, things fall off? Eventually they go feral, but by then there’s not enough left to do much damage. It’s a win-win.

  A couple of cars trolled the field of potholes that passed for a street—most likely liveblood druggies hoping to score. If you’re not an addict, alive, and here at night, then you’re a whole new breed of pervert, into chakking up: a quick one with an animated corpse in the alley, or a drive back home, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase dry humping. And they know what they want. Back when Misty tried passing as a chak, it earned her a beating or two from disappointed johns. She showed me the bruises.

  My dad once said to me, “There ain’t a single thing in all creation someone hasn’t tried to fuck.” I was five or six at the time. Had no idea what he meant. Now I wish I didn’t.

  Then again, I’ve never heard of a chak, male or female, going feral from what pervs do to them. I guess there are some things we really just don’t care about anymore.

  Jonesey usually hung at the third lamppost down Cruger Avenue. Just my luck, tonight he wasn’t there. That was a little weird. He was a regular guy, for a chak.

  In his place, a real Romero type was leaning against a building like he was holding it up. The left side of his skull looked like it’d been caved in by an anvil.

  Hoping his remaining ear still worked, I sauntered up. “Jonesey around?”

  I got some grunts. He twisted his shoulder to the right, the arm dangling, useless. At the end of his hand, bones poked through blackened skin. I knew what it was, but a whiff of something putrid told me how bad.

  “Hey, pal, watch the rot. Soak that in some bleach before you lose the muscle.”

  He gave me another grunt. I hoped I wasn’t talking to myself.

  “Bleach? You know? Kill the rot? Keep the fingers?”

  Nothing. At least I tried. There’s not much you can do for the low-level types.

  I hoped Jonesey was all right, but I was starting to worry. The feral thing’s hard to predict. I knew a chest, arm, and head that had its act together for years. Others go with a finger snap. The fastest was under thirty seconds, Tanya Felding. Funny story. She was a cover girl who died in a car accident. It was the early days of the process, so her agent figured he’d have his cash cow ripped. A little makeup, some plastic surgery, and he’d have the first living-dead model. The look was in. But the stupid docs, typically arrogant, thought they’d done such a great job, that right after she woke up, they shoved a mirror in her hands. It wound up embedded in one of their skulls. After tearing off another doc’s face and swallowing it, sweet little Tanya was subdued and humanely D-capped. Her agent sued. Dunno if he won or not.

  Jonesey was always a bit on edge, but I never took him for someone who’d go wild. That’d be bad news. If he’d picked tonight to fall off, I’d never find Boyle. Aside from which, I kind of liked Jonesey, insofar as I liked anyone. When I first moved to the Bones, he taught me some of his memory tricks, using weird images to remember people, like that baby-Eggman thing for what’s-his-face.

  Oh, yeah, Turgeon. See? Works sometimes.

  If anyone could find Frank Boyle, it was him. The problem was finding Jonesey.

  I tried turning my back on Anvil Head, but he grunted again, real loud, and kept it up. It was like Lassie trying to tell Mom that Timmy was trapped in a cave. I thought he wanted money, so against my better judgment I pulled out a buck and pressed it into his good hand.

  He didn’t want it. He pulled away quick. The loose arm fluttered like a bird wing.

  All of a sudden I realized what he was trying to say. He was answering my question about Jonesey, pointing as best he could toward the alley.

  “Much obliged.”

  He nodded.

  I pulled out the recorder and made a note to have Misty come out with the bleach. Could’ve called her, but I forgot my damn phone.

  The alley was a car-wide slot between half-standing walls. Stepping in meant leaving even the sickly yellow streetlight behind. It’d been a hot day and I still felt it on the sidewalk, but as things went from dark to darker, it got noticeably cooler.

  Takes longer for chak-eyes to adjust to lighting changes. I could make out a Dumpster, and the fact that there was more garbage outside it than in. I kept going, farther back, toward what looked like a fire escape.

  I stepped on something. It was big, slightly soft, and when my foot hit it, it moaned.

  Not a sound you want to hear in this neighborhood. Better to hear a snake rattle. Moaning is what chakz do right before, and after, they go feral.

  This one obviously wasn’t feral yet, or it’d be chewing on me. It looked like he was under some cardboard. Poor bastard probably felt it coming on and crawled in here to be alone when it happened. We have an instinct for that sort of thing, like dogs.

  I didn’t think it was Jonesey, but I had to be sure. Jonesey had a red flannel piece of crap he called his lucky shirt. They buried him in it. When they rip you, they give you a cheap new set of clothes, generally prison gray, but Jonesey turned it down and kept his lucky shirt. It was the only shirt he ever wore. I think over time it melded with his skin, and he couldn’t get it off anymore.

  Not that I’m one to judge. Besides, it made him easy to spot.

  I lit a match and knelt for a better look. The moaner wasn’t him. I snapped the match out before it reached my finger. Odds are I’d feel the burn, but no sense in taking chances.

  My big plan was heading nowhere. I put an elbow against the Dumpster and tried to gather the few thoughts I had. This is often a bad move. I never know what I’ll get. This time, a picture of Wilson’s head popped into my mind. I’d only seen the guy on TV, and here he was eyeballing me like I was supposed to do something about his unfortunate situation. Like what? Buy him a hat?

  It wasn’t ESP, more like my brain was a cave about to crumble. Strong picture, though, colors vivid enough to make you puke. I’d been thinking about the head too damn much, the way I used to close my eyes and see cards if I stayed up all night playing poker.

  It was starting to get to me. And I never knew which freaky obsession would be my last. If I wasn’t careful about my mood, I’d wind up sharing a cardboard quilt with the moaner at my feet. If I had a happy place I’d try to go there, but I don’t.

  What was wrong with me, other than the usual? Maybe it was all that talk with Turgeon about Lenore. Lenore. There’s a famous poem about someone named Lenore, real famous, but I can never remember it. I wonder if the guy who wrote it knew whether he’d killed his Lenore or not.

  Damn it, Lenore!

  I may have started moaning right then and there. I’ll never know, because a big distraction showed up. A shadow flew down from the fire escape, right at me, looking like a dark sheet hurled out of a window. One second there was building and sky, the next, just black.

  It wasn’t a sheet. It was heavier, and it caught me at just the right angle. I went down. My back slapped the asphalt. I didn’t quite feel it, but I heard the crunch, so I knew it was bad. Praying I hadn’t broken my ribs, I brought my hands up and grabbed what felt like an empty leather wineskin.

  It was a neck. I heard teeth gnashing, dried lungs wheezing. Then I caught a flash of red flannel.

  “Geez, Jonesey!”

  Like I said, any of us can go, and it’s hard to predict when. Once you’re feral, the cops do get involved, especially in the Bones, since we’re so close to that gated neighborhood. They’ll hunt you d
own, shoot you until you can’t move, then cart you off for a quick D-cap. So they say. More likely they’d need fire or a meat grinder. None of it sounds pleasant.

  Feral chakz aren’t much of a threat unless they come at you in numbers. Sort of like a poodle with rabies. You can kick it away, but you really don’t want it to get ahold of you, with its teeth or anything else. They do get all animal, as the name implies, like the body suddenly remembers it has instincts.

  I tossed him off—I still have some muscle left. He rolled into a crouch. As I lumbered to my feet, he came at me, mouth open, teeth like rotting bits of a yellow moon.

  The reason you don’t want them to get ahold of you isn’t that they’ll infect you. Once a chak grabs onto something, feral or not, he doesn’t let go unless he wants to. If Jonesey grabbed me, I’d have to break his hand off to get free, and unfortunately, I liked him.

  I stuck one hand out, open palmed, and planted it in his chest. It stopped him in his tracks long enough for me to give him a good hard slap. His eyes rolled in their sockets. Good sign. He felt it. There was still a light on in the attic.

  I slapped him again, harder. “Jonesey! Jonesey! You in there?”

  Third time I whacked him so hard I was afraid I’d pulled off some cheek skin.

  “Come on out of there, Jonesey!”

  Maybe the shirt really was lucky, or maybe it was just another random act of the universe, but he closed his mouth and shivered. I stepped back to put some distance between us, but his head bobbed like I was still slapping him. He brought his hands up to steady his skull. He blinked six or seven times and then aimed his pupils in my direction. They were still vibrating, but after a second they settled down.

  “Mann, that you? I am so sorry. . . .”

  “You and me both.”

  Low-level chakz tend to go feral and stay that way. The “lucky” or smart ones drift in and out first. It’s never a good sign. If a gun would work on him, and I had one, I’d be tempted to put him out of his misery.