The Professional Corpse (The Departed Book 1)

by Sean Arthur Cox

“Well, Ambrose said that people would ignore someone who looked ‘close enough’ as a look alike. He shaved my head the day I saw that I had fallen down those stairs, and he told me to stop shaving my face. It’s worked so far. If anyone points out how similar I look, I just say that I get that all the time and they nod and don’t say anything else.”

  The Marquis was right. I had done the same thing when I needed to change face but didn’t have the blood to do it. Still, it felt sloppy to let him walk about freely. It wasn’t just about getting recognized. Someone was out to kill him, after all. And speaking of the Marquis…

  “Well, no more outings,” I said. “Where’s Ambrose?”

  “He should be coming up soon. He said he had to drop something off at the mailbox.”

  I nodded. I wanted to get down to business, but I wanted the Marquis there for it. After all, this whole business venture was his idea. If he could act as my agent, I’d have a much easier time getting paid.

  “So how are you holding up?” I asked. Knowing the Marquis, he hadn’t asked, and it gave me something to talk about until he arrived.

  “Okay, I guess,” said Bill. “Being dead is… it’s strange. Maybe because I’m not really dead. Everything gone in an instant except me. Still, it was nice to see the news say such nice things about me.”

  I joined him on the couch and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

  “It’s weird, losing everything like that in the blink of an eye. When I saw the news, I wanted to run out and tell everyone, ‘Hey, it’s okay! I’m not dead.’ Thankfully, Ambrose was here to keep me from doing that. He said there would be an investigation, and that I might end up going to jail for fraud over that for faking my death or something. He explained the particulars, but it was a lot of legal statute that I didn’t understand. But now I feel like a ghost. I don’t legally exist right now. I’m already dead.”

  I nodded. I would have to do something about that.

  “Not that I have anyone who misses me. Not that I would have anything to go back to but my company, and even that isn’t mine anymore. It’s public. It’s the stockholder’s company now.”

  I wanted to say something, but we were interrupted by the Marquis, who waltzed in with all the grandeur of a king who stepped into his extravagant palace, discovered it was not up to his standards, but graciously accepted the accommodations anyway.

  “Ahh, Jaime, I see you’re back,” he said. “At least I assume that’s you beneath those retched clothes. Tell me, how many spinsters did you have to assault to collect that ensemble?”

  “Hilarious,” I said. “While you’ve been pre-fabricating clever one liners like that, I’ve been shoved down stairs, poisoned, mangled, shot, and suffocated more times than I can count, so let’s dispense with the jokes and talk numbers, shall we?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Let me just put a kettle on.”

  I politely excused myself and followed the Marquis into the kitchen.

  “You’re making tea?” I asked. “You’re not even going to try to talk me into making it for you?”

  “It’s not that I don’t enjoy putting my powers of persuasion to work,” he said. “It’s that somehow, in all the time you’ve been alive, you’ve never learned to make a cup that isn’t offensive to my palette.”

  While the Marquis set to making tea, he and I went over how much my fee should come to. Thirty thousand for the three weeks. Fifteen thousand for the three actual kills, plus a grand for the day recovering from poison, a grand for the time recovering from the clean kill in the graveyard, and we would call it seven grand for the car accident. That was fifty-four thousand, plus we would call the stairwell murder attempt torture. Another five grand. Fifty-nine thousand so far. I don’t know how long I spent digging myself out of the ground, but we would say it took a few awful days and call the whole affair seventy-five thousand dollars, rolling my buried alive deaths together as torture on account of him having such a rough time of it what with being legally dead. I hadn’t made seventy-five thousand dollars in a year in quite a while. To earn that much in three weeks felt really good.

  The Marquis presented Bill with the tea and the invoice.

  “That’s fair,” said Bill. “It goes with the rates you gave me, better than, to hear you tell it, but…”

  “But?” asked the Marquis. “No one likes a person who backs out of a deal, especially once services have been rendered.”

  “It isn’t that,” said Bill. “I would gladly pay you, but I don’t have anything to pay you with. I lost my company, my bank accounts. All of it is gone. I’ve got nothing.”

  I had forgotten that important detail. “Surely you at least have some cash lying around, tucked away in a tin can or under a mattress somewhere.”

  “Maybe a few thousand but not seventy-five.”

  “Yes, I see,” said the Marquis. “This is a predicament. You wish to honor your agreement, but lack the funds you had initially. And this is, sad to say, your fault, Jaime.”

  “My fault? How?” I wanted to punch him in the face for trying to pin everything on me. I didn’t care that we’d known each other since the French Revolution. He had been a thorn in my side so many times, and the way he made me feel so worthless, like I should count myself privileged to keep him alive like I do. The more I thought about it, the more my anger boiled.

  Maybe it was the miserable way the job had turned out. Maybe it was the car accident or clawing my way up from the grave. Maybe after our unnaturally long time together, he had piled on one blow to many. Whatever it was, life was too short to endure his nonsense uncontested. I punched him hard in the jaw. It was a blow two centuries in the making. I hoped he felt every year.

  “Well, if you had been able to keep our friend alive, at least publicly, he would still have his business.” He didn’t even acknowledge the blow, but his eyes said I should be grateful to him for that. Bastard. Always more trouble than he was worth.

  “It was your guy who got me killed, driving the way he was,” I said. “And that criminal record? What were you thinking? Couldn’t you maybe vet your associates a little better?”

  “I understand that blame lies on all sides,” he said, “which is why I propose the following solution. Jaime, because Bill’s life is over even if he is still alive, it doesn’t seem fair you should get the full fee for saving him. How does fifty thousand sound?”

  Bill cried out, “I can’t afford-” but the Marquis cut him off.

  “One thing at a time. Jaime, would you take fifty thousand dollars for your services?”

  It was still a lot of money, more than I had seen in one place at the same time in ages. “Yeah, I’ll take it.”

  “Bill, I feel terrible for the way this turned out. You lost your home, your business, even your identity. I blame myself. I will pay your fifty-thousand-dollar fee on one condition.”

  “You screw me over, and now you want a stipulation on paying a fee I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for you?” Bill spat. He had a valid point. I was glad to see him standing up to the Marquis.

  “Ahh, but if not for my intervention, you would have lost your life as well, and who can put a price on that?” Also a valid point.

  “You can,” I said. “Fifty thousand dollars.” I couldn’t help myself. Bill must bring out the best in me.

  “Touché,” said the Marquis. “I’m sure, however, that you will not find this condition so abhorrent. I would like to help you start over with a new identity, a new business, a new life. I will pay your fee if you will allow me to do this favor for you.”

  Bill looked skeptically back and forth between the Marquis and myself. “How are you going to do that?”

  “My friend Jaime here, I’m sure, could find a nice young face for you. I know people who could set you up with all the paperwork you need to have a legal identity again, and I would fund your initial venture. I would request profit sharing, my accountant would have kittens otherwise, but only a small amount. Twenty-five percent of what you make, a
nd you would retain all control.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course, but while you do, think on this. Think of all the lessons you learned between the time you opened Thompson’s and now. Think of all the times you said, ‘I wish I knew then what I know now.’ Think of all the young ladies you can attract in a new, youthful body. I offer you a chance to live your life over, and to do it right this time. This is a once in a lifetime offer well worth fifty thousand dollars.” The Marquis held out his hand, not all the way. Just enough that Bill would have to rise to take it.

  “That does seem reasonable,” Bill said, cautiously taking the Marquis’s hand and shaking it.

  “Good,” he said. “We’re all settled. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the paperwork. Jaime, if you could go through that fridge of yours and find our friend a nice new body.”

  Of everything I had left, I figured only Mister Trustworthy would fit Bill’s needs, so with a sigh, I took the pint and the former billionaire to the bathroom and had him strip for me. I didn’t want to, but the old man clothes would not fit, and the spell worked better nude, besides. It was awkward, to be sure. You do not want to be a woman telling Bill Thompson to strip. But in the end, I was able to get him into a handsome new skin. He took a few moments to admire himself in the mirror, run his fingers through his full head of hair, flex his new muscles, and check the size of his anatomy. He gave himself a nod of approval and a Fonzie thumbs up. Then, he put on the clothes I had set aside for him.

  Before we could leave the bathroom, I stopped him.

  “Bill, remember how you said you lost everything?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You didn’t. Not everything. Valerie? She loves you. You aren’t the old Bill. You’re some young, new guy. But you are still you on the inside, the same person she fell in love with. She could use someone to comfort her right about now. Someone like you.”

  “And if I screw up? Know something this new guy shouldn’t know?”

  “Have a date night with her and watch Heaven Can Wait.”

  Young Bill smiled and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder so genuine it could have come with a certificate of authenticity. “Thanks. You’re alright.”

  “You too.”

  I was glad to see his new life off to a good start, though something still nagged at me about his old one. Something wrong.

  “Hey Bill,” I said. “I thought you said you never wanted to take Thompson’s public. What was with the news saying the paperwork had been in the works for several weeks?”

  “Oh, that was Ambrose’s doing. He said that the way things were looking, that killer was going to get me one way or another, and since you had all but proven it was Nick Presario trying to get my job, he said the best way to stop that was to make the job disappear. No more president. Plus, a board of directors would have to be appointed who would then choose a CEO, and nobody likes Nick.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I can get that. The old ‘If I can’t have it, no one can,’ but how was it on file for several weeks?”

  “He used the paperwork I started a long time ago and pulled in some favors to make it look like it had been in the system backlog for a while. All it needed was some date changes. He said it would make the paperwork seem a lot less suspicious if it didn’t appear right before I was murdered.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just curious.”

  That had me worried. The Marquis didn’t call in favors for just anyone. If he pulled strings, he was up to something. I thought about telling Bill, but he had enough on his plate already. I led him out of the bathroom and back to the Marquis, who was just wrapping up a conversation with his lawyers.

  “Ah, Bill, I barely recognized you! You look fantastic! Years younger! Did you get work done?”

  “A little bit, it would seem,” said Bill.

  “So, have you chosen a new name for your new face?”

  Bill apparently had not considered this part of his transformation. “Good question,” he said, and pursed his lips. As he thought, he made a clicking noise with his tongue, huffed his cheeks. I couldn’t decide if he was joking or if this was honestly how he behaved when he weighed a tough decision. Both seemed equally absurd. “Maybe James Monroe?”

  “No middle name?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I suppose it’d be a bit odd if I didn’t have one of those. I guess Marshall.”

  “James Marshall Monroe,” said the Marquis. “I like it. I think it suits you.”

  Bill looked to me, and I gave him two thumbs up. Satisfied with our seals of approval, he gathered his things and readied himself to let the Marquis’s car drive him away to a brand-new life.

  “Well, it was good knowing you, Bill,” I said, “and it’s nice to meet you, James.”

  “Likewise, Jaime,” he said. “Or should I call you that now, what with you being… you know?”

  “Why do you think I use a name that works both ways?” I asked.

  He gave me a warm friendly smile, patted me on the back, and stepped out of my dingy apartment for the last time.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked, once I had the place alone with the Marquis.

  “Because I’m a gentleman who helps his friends,” he said in that way that made me want to choke him and fuck him at the same time. Was it auto-erotic asphyxiation when I’m the one who wants to suffocate him? I don’t know how he got under my skin like that, my sweet disease, my own special opium addiction.

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “I’ve been your friend for two hundred years, and you don’t help me.”

  “I just gave you fifty thousand dollars,” he said.

  “I earned seventy-five,” I said. “More if I had remembered to charge for finding out who did it. You stiffed me twenty-five grand on that job.”

  “And who gave you that job? Who turned you on to this entirely new enterprise?”

  “Don’t tell me this was gentlemanly friendship,” I said. “Money you’ll spend. Money comes and goes. You called in favors to help Bill. What’s your game?”

  “Game?” the Marquis played innocent, but I could tell from his tone he was dying to talk about it, to gloat about how cunning he was.

  “Why did you hire someone to kill Bill Thompson?”

  “Oh Genevieve, Genevieve,” he said, the name I wore when we met. He must be about to lecture me like a child. “It’s as though you never listen to a word I say. For generations, I’ve been trying to teach you to be a better person—fierce, ruthless, uncompromising—but you keep ignoring me when I say anything important. It’s just as I told Bill when this whole affair started. People with that sort of money and power don’t do anything for themselves. They get others to do it for them.”

  “So, Nick… Did he hire that hit woman, or did you, or did you hire the driver and Presario just happened to hire someone too?”

  “I put the bug in Nick’s ear,” he said, “or rather a dozen bloggers online did, each statement innocuous in itself, but when combined make a beautiful portrait that can only lead to murder, like a George Sarat painting. And now it’s his emails linking him to the criminal underbelly of the internet, and not my clean hands. And now it’s his bank account that shows a twenty-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal.”

  “To who?” I asked. “Your driver or the father-daughter duo?”

  “To whom,” he corrected. “And to the duo. The driver’s pay came out of my pocket posthumously. I know Nick operated via electronic communication because I inserted myself surreptitiously in between both parties, and the payment was a dead drop, never met the killers personally. When the police get the copies of his emails I just sent them, they’ll connect the dead driver to Presario and no one will ever be the wiser. It is an open and shut case.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble for someone whose plan allegedly leaves no crumbs leading back to his own front door.”

  “Do you know nothing about me? I’m always interested in the long-term investment. You want t
o know why I threw away twenty thousand dollars on a dead body? Because he’s a dead asset. That twenty thousand dollars keeps those two killers Houston and Olivia in my rolodex for future use. Money, I have in spades, but people who can keep even you on the run for weeks are worth their weight in gold.”

  “And Bill Thompson?”

  “The same. He wouldn’t sell his company unless I convinced him someone wanted to take it from him, and the only way to keep it out of the wrong hands was to put it into everyone’s hands. The company goes public, I buy up a controlling interest, thanks in part to the twenty-five percent he entrusted me with as a safety measure, which I quickly unloaded to my shell companies to spike panic. The rest I’ll snatch up easily enough continued investor uncertainty as the board squabbles over who will run the company, and then once they settle on Nick Presario, he gets arrested for murder. Stockholder confidence will plummet, shares will sell for a song, and I’ll be able to purchase a fortune five hundred company for pocket change.”

  “You would ruin several lives just to get your hands on a company that’s only a fraction of your net worth? That’s cold,” I said, and my stomach turned in revulsion. And yet, that uncaring display of power made me want to impress him, please him, do anything for his approval. For the first time, however, the revulsion had a minor advantage.

  “That? That’s the sprint,” he said. “That’s just for sport while I watch the marathon play out. It’s seed money for the real plan. I don’t want control of Thompson’s, but I will take it because it’s a cash cow with a rather great deal of milk left in its teats. I don’t want to control the business. I want to control the man. Bill Thompson has the knack for running a company that is both profitable and socially responsible. That’s going to be increasingly valuable as social media becomes the new normal. I want to control Bill Thompson’s next business, and the one after that.”

  I nodded, finally understanding his game and where I fit in it. “But Bill was in his sixties. He didn’t have another business in him.”

  “And that’s where your new business comes in,” he said. “As I said, I don’t want your pennies. I’m as much investing in you as I am in Bill and Houston and Olivia. You lack purpose, Genevieve. You’re a dead leaf drifting across the centuries. Let me hone you. Let me mold you. Do as I say, learn all I have to teach. You will be my masterpiece. We will rule the world together, and in the end, you will thank me.”