by Rich Leder
“He said he’d thought about Chachi and had reconsidered his position and offered to do a free attitude adjustment.”
“Ain’t no such thing as free, DG,” Ramona said. “Somebody somewhere going to pay something to someone.”
“You’re right about that, RC,” Greenburg said, leaning against the sink, drying his hands, and drinking her in. Her skin was smooth dark chocolate and soft as silk. Her nose was wide, and her lips were full. Her eyes were mahogany brown. She was thirty-eight years old but seemed younger, except when she seemed older.
“He was a damn dead dog,” she said.
“Yes, he was.”
“Now he mean as a mule.”
“We have him leashed to a pipe by the pool. He’s growling and snapping at us.”
“You got to deal with the dog, DG, before he get worse.”
“I don’t see how he can get worse. I’m hoping he gets better from here. I thought about it, and it can’t be an easy transition going from dead to alive. Maybe it takes him a few days to get re-acclimated. I’m giving Chachi the benefit of the doubt.”
He moved beside the dental chair and looked down at her. She’d worn a mini-skirt to the office, and her legs were thick and muscular. These are the thighs of Athena, Greenburg said to himself. If he could slide that skirt up just a few more inches, then he’d be on his way to Mount Olympus. “The way he stared at me, after I leashed his collar to the stake, that was worse than the growling and the snapping,” he said. “Just drilling me with his eyes, like he wanted a piece of me something bad.
“Like the way you staring at me?” she said.
“I…uh…well…I…” he said. He was embarrassed, but he also wasn’t embarrassed. From their very first meeting at the pawnshop, he’d thought this was their destiny.
She put the mirror down and reached her hand out and felt the woody in his pants. His eyes rolled back in his head. “You hard as a hammer, DG,” she said.
“That’s what you do to me, RC,” he said.
“You like my ladies?” she said, moving her other hand to her top blouse button.
Sweet mother of Jesus, it’s happening, Greenburg thought. “I definitely do.”
She undid the first button, which fled to freedom upon its release, exposing the tops of two great mountains of brown flesh. “I’m thinking you want to get all up in here and rub around.”
“Good God, yes,” he said.
She undid the second button, and her blouse went wide open. She wore a leopard-print bra with a flimsy front clasp that couldn’t quite contain the treasures with which they’d been entrusted.
“You wearing a ring, DG,” she said.
“Bad habit.”
“I don’t want to hear nothing about no guilt.”
“Apart from removing the noose from her neck three days ago, I haven’t touched my wife in twenty years. I have no guilt.”
“You still love her?”
“Not for a long time. We don’t even like each other. What we have is a chemical codependence that will never go away but will never amount to anything either.”
She pulled him a little closer by his cock and said, “I don’t want no husband. I want a man can buy me nice things. You that man?”
“I think I am,” he said, moaning his way through the sentence.
“Then you my man,” she said, “my skinny white man.”
“Skinny white man, yes, that’s me.”
She pulled him all the way beside her, and with her other hand, she put his hand on her chest. He undid the clasp and her tits fell out all over the place. He made a soft sound and then bent over and put his mouth on them.
“You best call the hair dude think he a movie star because your damn dead dog need a new point of view,” she said, running her fingers through his thinning hair, “just like his daddy.”
AN INTELLECTUAL CHUCKLE THAT WOULD MAKE PAT PAULSEN PROUD
The last thing in the world Mike wanted to do was stand beside George Edwards in the viewing room of the mortuary in front of his mother’s empty casket and talk about the tragedy of her missing corpse, yet here he was.
As he’d turned off Chatsworth into the mortuary driveway, he had wished the place didn’t just look like an Olive Garden restaurant, he’d wished it really was one and that it was open at nine thirty Saturday morning. I could eat a million fucking breadsticks, he had thought as he parked under the carport—next to the hearse that would have carried his mother to the cemetery had she not been drinking coffee in his kitchen instead of being dead.
“It’s a hell of a circumstance, Mike,” George said. “I’ve turned it over in my mind a thousand times since six thirty, and I can’t imagine who would do such a thing.”
It was the first time in fifteen years of doing his taxes that Mike had ever heard George use profanity. By all outward appearances, the mortician seemed as kind and courtly and formal as ever. He stood ramrod straight. His gray suit was impeccable. His black shoes were polished to a military patina. But Linda’s unexplained absence had him rattled. Some of his ceremonious air had been let out of the bag. The voice that had calmed countless grieving families now needed calming.
“The question I can’t stop asking myself is: Why?” George said. “What is the motivation? What purpose could there be for taking a deceased woman from her casket?”
“Matte maple finish with a Rosetan interior,” Mike said, nodding at his mother’s casket. What had the pervert clown called it? Oh, yes, a hotel in a box.
George had said on the phone that he’d called the police, so Mike wore the same suit he’d planned to wear to the funeral—navy blue Brooks Brothers—so it would seem he’d been unprepared for the news of his missing mother, that he’d been fully expecting an emotional morning at the mortuary until George called to say stop the presses.
“What is there to do with a dead body?” George said, answering his own question with a question. “It’s terribly concerning.”
He had multiple concerns, George did: Mike’s and Dan’s emotional well-being, the complicated algebra of the police investigation multiplied by the wave of negative publicity that would consume the mortuary in the ensuing days, weeks, and months, and, of course, the mortician’s potential liability—legally, financially, and morally.
“As you know, I’m fully insured, Mike, and the mortuary won’t contest your claim, should you make one. My assistant will give you the contact information for my insurance carrier and my attorney. We were victimized as well, as a result of this tragic crime, and so I suspect there will be some back and forth before a settlement can be reached, but, again, the safekeeping of your mother was my responsibility, and I accept…”
Mike didn’t hear a thing George said. He tuned the mortician out as if turning the volume down on his Bose Wave, which was still at the bottom of his pool along with the Hello Kitty lounger.
Instead, he looked at the empty coffin and remembered pulling Mrs. Peterson from her casket and dumping her on the floor and climbing into it and Judd Martin holding a knife to his throat. So much had happened to him since that day—Wednesday—that he thought of that now as the good old days, before he’d been duct taped to a chair or hogtied and branded like a steer.
“…There’s simply no explaining why someone would break into a mortuary in the middle of the night and steal a corpse.”
“Necrophilia,” Mike said.
“I don’t understand,” George said.
“Erotic attraction to the dead,” Mike said. “To a necrophile, this place is Match.com.”
“I meant, why you would say something so disturbing?” George said.
“I’m under a lot of pressure, George. It’s possible I’m cracking,” Mike said, knowing full well he’d already cracked.
At that moment, a voice came from behind Mike and George. Both men turned to face it. “They cut the main power to the building. That’s why the alarm company didn’t read it as a break in. Whoever did this thought it through.”
; “Mike Miller, Detective Shuler,” George said. “Detective, Mike Miller, the deceased’s eldest son.”
“Gary Shuler, Mike. Nice to meet you,” Gary said, shaking Mike’s hand. “I’m sorry about your mother. Just when you think something like this could never happen anywhere, it happens in the Valley.”
Mike was aware that he was shaking Gary’s hand, but his mind was imploding and exploding at the same time, making his jaw clench and his heart stop and his eyes go wide and his blood go cold. “Shuler,” he said softly. He couldn’t blink. My eyelids are stuck, he thought.
“Detective Shuler specializes in unusual cases,” George said. “Your mother’s disappearance meets his criteria.”
“George, would you mind if I asked Mike a few questions in private?” Gary said. His left arm was in a makeshift sling, and the left side of his face was bruised. He had a fat lip.
“Not at all,” George said. “Mike, again, I’m so very sorry this happened.”
And then the mortician crossed the viewing room, lined with chairs that were supposed to be filled with mourners, and exited into the whisper-quiet hallways.
“Stand-up comedian,” Mike said.
“Your face is priceless right now,” Gary said. “This moment is why I left your blindfold on.”
“You’re a cop? And you deputized that insane zombie? Are you fucking crazy?” Mike said, his thoughts smashing together like electrons in a particle accelerator.
“It’s a small moment, of course, not a belly laugh or even a guffaw,” Gary said, “more of a thoughtful snicker.”
“He said he had monstrous things in his mind, and you told him to stalk me.”
“The audience will forget the bit about the blindfold as the story moves on.”
“What part of To Protect and to Serve do you not understand?”
“And then, when I get to this moment, where you see me for the first time in the funeral home and I describe the look in your eyes when you realize who I am, they’ll recognize that I set them up all along, and they’ll have an intellectual chuckle that would make Pat Paulsen proud.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“This—you, your brother, the dead dog, my act. What are you talking about?”
“You let Judd Martin brand me,” Mike said, his hand moving to his chest.
“Actually, I stopped him from branding you a second time. I thought that might be one step too far for that particular joke.”
Mike’s eyes were blinking now—about a thousand times a minute. He couldn’t process the idea that a LAPD detective considered his being branded a joke. “If you thought it was funny enough, you would have let him brand me twice?”
“If I thought it was funny enough, I would have let him brand you three times. In comedy, third time’s the charm.”
“Also, strike three, you’re out,” Mike said, pulling his phone from his suit coat. This was his chance to get rid of the zombie and comedian cop all in one bold strategic move. Finally, finally, the moment had arrived that could turn his life around. Here, in front of his mother’s empty casket, his fortunes would change and his fate would float to the surface. “It’s time to tell people who and what you are. I was a respected accountant. Someone’s going to believe me. You’re history, Shuler. I’m turning you in. I’m calling the police.”
“I am the police,” Gary said.
“No,” Mike said. “You’re a runaway squad car whose screws are so loose that your wheels have fallen off, and you’re crashing through the guardrail into the aqueduct.”
“That’s hilarious,” Gary said, taking out his pocket pad. “Can you say it again? I want to get it word-for-word.”
Mike dialed 9-1-1.
As it was ringing, Gary wrote down Mike’s funny quote and said, “You can call them if you want to. But when they get here, I’ll have them arrest you for breaking and entering and stealing you dead mother. I know you did it.” He took Mike’s driver’s license out of his pocket and held it up for Mike to see.
“9-1-1,” a voice said on the other end of the phone.
Mike held the phone against his chest, which hurt a little because the brand still stung. He looked at the license, at his name and photograph, and said, “That’s not mine.”
“9-1-1,” the voice said again.
“You should check,” Gary said. “You don’t want to make a mistake here. I’ll tell you why in a minute. That’s called comedic tension, by the way.”
“I know what comedic tension is,” Mike said, removing his wallet. “People think accountants have no sense of humor, but they do. Accountants are very funny, in fact.” He opened his wallet, and his license was missing. He was surprised, and then he was surprised that he was surprised. Hadn’t he just this morning told his brother that you could always dig deeper? Yes, yes he had. He just hadn’t expected to dig this deep this fast.
“9-1-1,” the voice said.
Mike clicked off the call.
“I found it under the casket in the shadows,” Gary said. “George was so upset, he didn’t see it.”
It must have fallen out of my wallet when my wallet fell out of my pocket when I was choking the pervert clown, Mike thought, and he said, “I don’t like where this is going.”
“You’re going to like it less if we get there,” Gary said, “because I’ll dust for prints and find yours and probably your brother’s all over of the mortuary. The DA will press charges and put your face on the front page of the LA Times. You’ll be the freak accountant who stole his dead mother—the necrophile son. You know what that means?”
“Erotic attraction to the dead,” Mike said with a voice so glum he didn’t recognize it as his own.
“It means here’s why you don’t want to make a mistake: your friends and family and colleagues and associates and complete strangers will see your face and read your story and know who and what you are,” Gary said. “You have daughters, right? You want them to read about you having sexual relations with your mother’s corpse?”
Mike lost feeling in his extremities.
“That would be hilarious,” Gary said. “But there’s something even funnier waiting in the wings.”
“What?”
“I think you think you can bring your mother back to life—that’s why you broke down the door and carried her away—and bringing your mother back to life would be the funniest thing that’s happened in two thousand years. If you let me include it in my act, I’ll return your license. Double or nothing, Mike—bring back a dead dog, the money’s yours; bring back your dead mother, the mortuary’s a mystery; ruin my act, you lose the money, you face the zombie, you go to freak prison. What do you think?”
What Mike thought was that he had mutated from Partner Accountant to Freak Accountant in less than a week. He could feel his heart skipping beats in his chest. He could feel the blood pulsing in his ears. How could he agree to those terms? How could he not agree? He noticed for the first time that the detective looked beat-up and decided to change the subject.
“What happened to you?” Mike said.
“Two guys dropped me four stories into a dumpster. I landed on my left arm and shoulder. I’d be dead, except for someone had thrown out an old mattress. I don’t really need the sling. I’m trying it out as a prop. Maybe when I reach this part of the story, I’ll put it on for effect.”
“Why didn’t you arrest them?”
“They have hilarious roles in my act. One’s a dwarf; the other’s a giant.”
“Ahab and Ishmael.”
“You know them?”
“They tried to electrocute me in my pool.”
“That’s hysterical,” Gary said, pocketing Mike’s license and walking away. “You can tell me about it tomorrow when you raise the dead.”
HE’LL BE DEAD WHEN WE KILL HIM
Danny parked the Pathfinder in front of the sky-blue craftsman cottage and went up the walk, where, two days ago, Jenny’s mother, Maggie, had nearly decapitated him with her
serrated grass whip. He climbed the skewed steps, crossed the slanted porch, and knocked on the crooked, carnival funhouse door. While he waited for Jenny to answer, he looked through the three warped windows that made up the door’s uppermost panel. The Northridge Quake had done a number on the inside of the house as well—cockeyed walls, tilted ceilings, drunken floors. If you drop a marble in this place, Danny thought, it will never stop rolling.
He stepped away from the windows and looked back at his old and weary SUV. He could see the dent in the door where Maggie had kicked it in with her Croc before whipping her whip at his neck. He remembered she’d said, “Make us some money, Pretty Boy, or you’ll be solly, Cholly” as she went cackling into the house.
Yeah? Danny thought, Pretty Boy made you sixty grand so far, so shove your grass whip up your solly, Cholly ass. Then he made a little face because, okay, it wasn’t quite exactly so far. It was more like he had almost so far made them sixty grand. He had to get the cash from Shuler before he could say it was exactly so far. And that’s why he’d come to the flatlands of Northridge—to get the money back.
“This is a surprise,” Jenny said, coming through the front door onto the porch. She was wearing white, skin-tight, see-through yoga pants with a thong underneath and a white bikini yoga top that left even less to the imagination than the see-through pants, which showed every curve, every line, every everything. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her lips were painted devil red. She was barefoot, and her toes and fingernails were painted to match her lips. She was smooth and toned and sexy as hell.
She’s so freaking hot, Danny said to himself, though he couldn’t help but notice her eyes were now midnight black. “I went to Ralphs. They said you don’t work there anymore.”
She laid her mat on the porch and began to stretch and pose and bend her body into positions that made him think of sex—specifically, sex with her.
“On Thursday, I made sixty thousand dollars in less than five minutes. I’d have to work three years to make that much checking groceries.”