Dead Folks

by Jon A. Jackson

  “I did, Joe, but I can't really point it out at the moment. Face-to-face I could give you some suggestions. Say, aren't you worried about this little lady? She's just sitting over there on the bed—she's still got all her clothes on, for now—but she looks kind of worried. You wanta talk to her?”

  “Nah,” Joe said. “What can she say that would help?”

  “He don't want to talk to you, honey.” Cap'n Lite spoke, ostensibly to Cateyo.

  “Joe!” came an answering yelp, from some distance. It was Cateyo's voice, all right.

  “All right, I heard her,” Joe said, “but it doesn't change anything. I hear Cateyo; you hear money. Who talks loudest? It's always money, right Cap'n? Mmm-hmm. But it doesn't change anything, except that you think you've got a little more leverage. I concede that the money is probably—that's probably, mind you, ‘cause I really have no way of knowing—more in the million range. Maybe it's two million. So instead of a hundred big ones, you get three hundred big ones, or six hundred big ones. What's the big deal?”

  “We didn't really talk enough about the deal, Joe. I trusted you, I let you out of the car, and then you don't call and in the meantime I find out that you low-graded the take by at least a hundred percent. Thirty percent of a hundred grand is exactly thirty thousand dollars. A good day's work, but that's it. I figure, no matter how much the take really is, if I leave it in your hands, it'll turn out to mean thirty gees for me, us. So I covered my bet with a little insurance, in case the take is a little higher. And since you didn't live up to the rules, I gotta increase the percentage. Fifty-fifty, Joe. And don't argue,” he added, cutting off Joe's protest, “'cause I'm thinking we can maybe find this shit by ourselves, and you know what that means.”

  “What does that mean?” Joe asked, calmly, although he was fairly certain of the answer.

  The answer was as expected. “It means a hundred percent, which means we don't need you and we don't need Blondie, which means you won't be around, neither of you.” This chilling statement was followed by a good measure of silence, before Cap'n Lite spoke again: “You there? So, get dressed, go for a walk, and someone will pick you up.”

  “Forget it,” Joe said.

  “Then forget Blondie,” Cap'n Lite retorted.

  “Well . . . I hate to disappoint you, Cap'n, but I just can't see putting myself in your hands. I don't see how it helps me and if you think about it, it doesn't help you either. You said you found out something about Helen. What did you learn?”

  “Why am I gonna tell you this, if you won't cooperate?” Cap'n Lite complained. “Here, your girlfriend wants to talk to you.” He spoke to Cateyo: “Talk to this chump. He don't seem to care what happens to you. He needs to come here.”

  Cateyo's voice said, “Joe? Joe?” She sounded very worried, very frightened. “Joe, can you come here? Please?”

  “I can't do that, honey. It wouldn't help. They—”

  “Joe! They're pulling my clo— He's pulling my jeans off! Joe! Please, please, help me!”

  “Honey, what can I do?” Joe sounded very calm. Cateyo wailed, her voice fading as the phone was obviously taken from her and she was removed to another part of the room.

  “Joe from Kokomo,” Cap'n Lite said, “how come you're not worried about your girlfriend? Jesus, you are a tough guy. I don't think Tutu and Polly will really hurt her, I mean not permanently, but she ain't gonna like you for letting them have her.”

  “Can't be helped, Cap'n,” Joe said. “Pussy's not like sliced bread, a guy takes a piece and there's that much less in the loaf. But don't be hard on her. I thought we had a deal: you help me, I compensate you. Instead, you want to fuck with me. Well, that's a bad choice of words, but let's quit all this screwing around. And Cap'n, please don't tell me how it was my own fault for not allowing myself to get mugged. I didn't come looking for you folks, did I? Now you snatch an innocent woman who knows nothing, who isn't any part of my business. How does this help? No, no, you listen to me.” Joe resisted Cap'n Lite's efforts to interrupt. “You want to make some money? Okay, there probably is more than I mentioned, but I'm leveling with you—I don't have any way of knowing how much money it is. It could be nothing—you heard me, nothing. Zero. Nada. But, it could be a couple million. I don't know. First I gotta find out what Helen was doing here. If you can help me with that then, okay, I'll go fifty-fifty with you. But don't give me any more of this crap about how I hurt your people. I don't give a damn about a bunch of Tongans. Okay?”

  “Joe, Blondie ain't no loaf of bread. What's the matter with you? These guys got dicks on them like ponies, man. That what you want for a sweet little blond lady like her?”

  “You're breaking my heart,” Joe said. “But all right, all right, I'm not going to come to you, but I guess we could meet in some neutral place. You can hang onto Cateyo and we'll talk. In a public place. Say, the Market Street Grill, you know it? Leave the girl alone, you come to see me. Okay? If you've got something worthwhile about Helen, then we can work together. If not, not.”

  As soon as he'd hung up, Joe threw what little he had in the way of clothes and toilet articles into an athletic-equipment bag that Cateyo had purchased earlier that day. Then he went down to the desk and settled the bill. There were no further charges. “I've decided to split,” he explained sourly. They were solicitous at the desk. The bellman took off for the car. Joe followed him into the elevator that went to the underground parking garage and rode down with him. Joe gave him a fresh fifty and told him to drive the Cadillac down the street and park it. “Just leave the keys in it and go on back to the hotel. I'll be in the back seat.” The bellman looked at him with misgiving and Joe handed him another fifty. Joe got into the back seat and lay down until they had driven away and parked on the street. When the man had gone, Joe slipped over the seat and behind the wheel.

  The streets of Salt Lake City were practically empty. Joe started the car and drove around for a few blocks, checking his mirror for a tail. When he was convinced that no one was trailing him he circled back to the hotel. He parked in a lot near the Market Street Grill and waited. Within ten minutes he had spotted the setup. A couple of heavies were plodding down the street, then back. One walked from the west and one from the east, on opposite sides of the street. They were Tongans, he thought, but a little smaller than some he'd seen. Plenty big, though. They had phones in their coat pockets and they occasionally stopped, ostensibly to light a cigarette, but obviously to make telephone contact, stepping into the darkened doorways of stores. Cap'n Lite's Cadillac pulled up in front of the grill and he got out with one of his huge pals. The car drove off as the two men went into the club. Joe waited. He figured they would give it at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen. The two outside men had gone past the club and down the street, almost certainly to cross over and return, like sentries on patrol. In the meantime, Cap'n Lite's Cadillac would no doubt orbit the area, maintaining contact.

  It was a very good arrangement, Joe thought. They had the numbers, communications, and certainly arms. He had nothing but himself. He sighed. He watched until he saw the Cadillac pass a block away, headed east toward Main Street. He hopped out of his car and moved as quickly as he could toward the man who was walking west. He caught up to him as they passed an abandoned furniture store. It wasn't difficult at all. He kicked the back of the man's knee, snatched the phone out of his hand as the man sagged to the cold concrete, then kicked him in the balls and the side of the head. He had the man's Glock out of his pocket a second later and stepped back into the doorway, racking the slide on the automatic. The gun was huge and blocky, a 9mm. Joe didn't care for it, but he squatted in the darkness, showing the gun to the frightened eyes of the man while he held the phone to his ear.

  His victim's other half was babbling something in a language that Joe could not understand. He looked down at the phone, pressed buttons until the instrument emitted a weird squawk, then switched it off. He laid it on the concrete and brought the butt of the gun down on it hard en
ough to shatter the plastic.

  “Don't make me kill you, chief,” he said to the downed Tongan. “Come on, let's go for a hike.” The Tongan got laboriously to his feet and with Joe's urging moved, limping and groaning, over to the lot where Joe had left his rented Cadillac. “You drive, chief,” Joe said. He got into the back seat, directly behind the Tongan. He jammed the Glock into the base of the man's skull and said, “Drive.”

  The man started the car. “Where we goin’, man?” he said.

  “You tell me, chief. Where the girl is.”

  They drove south, right past the house on Main Street that Helen had rented, on for several blocks, and then turned west. The Tongan pulled the Cadillac up in front of a small apartment building, three stories, brick, belonging to a different era. The Tongan said, “This is where she is.”

  “Let's go get her,” Joe said.

  They got out and Joe followed him through a small lobby and up the stairs to the second floor. There were only four apartments on each floor, a front and a back apartment on each side of the central staircase. The Tongan knocked on the west front door and when a voice on the other side said something in, presumably, Tongan and got a grunted response, the door was opened and Joe and his hostage pushed inside. The single guard left with Cateyo was a big one, but docile. He handed over his weapon, another Glock, and backed into the living room with his hands held at half-mast. Both of the men looked calm and unconcerned. They didn't seem angry or even nervous. Cateyo was sitting on the couch, staring wide-eyed.

  “You all right, babe?” Joe asked.

  She came to him quickly. “I'm okay,” she said.

  “They hurt you?”

  “No. I'm fine,” she said. “I thought you didn't care what happened to me.”

  “What was all that about tearing your jeans off?”

  “It's okay, Joe. They didn't hurt me.”

  He looked at her closely. She seemed all right. She was nervous, though. She was eager to get out of there. Joe felt relaxed. In fact, he felt better than he had in several days. He had the two Glocks, one in each hand; he had the Tongans at bay. It seemed reminiscent of the night at the bar, the night that had turned out to be some kind of blend of dream and reality. He looked around the room. Was this real? Was this a dream? He didn't think so. He didn't think that his mind, capable as it might be of conjuring up surreal froggy blues pianists, shadowy rooms full of zombies sipping Mad Dog, guns blazing . . . that mind couldn't imagine this faded wallpaper with its dead roses on ocher background, the mouse-colored velveteen drapes, the electric wall sconces with shaded twenty-five-watt bulbs, the sagging nappy couch, the Formica-topped kitchen table and white metal cabinets.

  “Okay,” he said, “if everything's hunky-dory, let's go. You got all your stuff?”

  She held up her purse. It had been lying on the kitchen table. “My bags are in the car,” she said.

  “Where's the car?” When she shrugged, Joe asked the Tongan he'd abducted, “Where's her car?” The man nodded toward the back of the building, but when Joe asked for the keys he just shrugged and mumbled something that Joe didn't understand exactly, but took to mean that he didn't have the keys and didn't know where they were.

  “Joe, come on,” Cateyo said, impatiently. She tugged at his arm.

  “Hang on, honey. I'm trying to get your car. You don't want to go off and leave your car, do you?” Joe pointed the right-hand Glock at the guard. “How about you? Where's her car keys?” When this oaf shrugged Joe sighed and stuffed the left-hand Glock into his belt, then took aim at the man's knee. BAM! The noise of the gun was loud but well contained in this overstuffed room. The sofa behind the two standing men was knocked a few inches back against the wall and gave off a puff of dust. Joe frowned and looked at the end of the barrel. The guard looked down between his legs, wide-eyed now. He looked up with a sickly smile, glad that the bullet hadn't hit him but now convinced that Joe would really shoot.

  “Cap'n got ‘em,” he said.

  “Cap'n got the keys?” Joe said. The man nodded his big head rapidly. “Well darn,” Joe said. “Okay, come on, honey. You guys sit down. Wait for the Cap'n. Don't come out.”

  He and Cateyo left the apartment building and Joe put her in the front seat of the Cadillac. He stood on the street, looking about in the cold Utah air. It was a run-down street, bordering on an industrial zone, but even so it had what he was beginning to think of as a kind of Mormon cleanliness. It wasn't spick-and-span, but a street like this in Detroit, or Oakland, would have a hell of a lot more debris, more graffiti, more vandalism.

  “Jo-oe,” Cateyo whined, “come onnn!”

  “Okay, okay, keep your pants on.” Joe got in the car and drove around to the alley behind the building. There was a small parking lot and Cateyo's Ford was parked in it. Joe got out and tried the driver's door. It was unlocked. Not only that, the keys were in the ignition.

  “Can you believe this?” Joe said. “Middle of the city, they leave the keys in the ignition! What are they thinking about? Well, code of the West, I guess. Come on, babe.”

  But Cateyo didn't want to get out of the Cadillac. “Joe, I'm afraid. Can't we just go? I can come back for the car some other time.”

  Now it was Joe's turn to be impatient. “Oh for crying out loud, Catey . . . get your butt in here. We haven't got all night. Those bastards will be back here in a minute or two.”

  Grumbling, she got in her car and at his request followed him while he drove over to the freeway. They took the northbound interstate, toward Montana. There was a large truck plaza north of town, the Flying J, open all night. They stopped there. It was after two A.M.

  By now, as Joe had anticipated, Cateyo was furious. She'd had time to recover from her fear and it had been amply replaced by indignation. She felt abused. Well, she had been abused, but not by him and he had rescued her from the abusers. But her gratitude had dissipated. They sat down to a large breakfast of ham and eggs with buttery toast, hash brown potatoes drenched in gravy. Joe listened patiently to her voluble complaints—how he had kept her in the dark, how he had abandoned her, how he ignored her needs—while she packed in the carbohydrates and fats. When her blood sugar was up they both felt better, calmer, and even a little groggy. They drove their cars to the nearest motel. They were both in the mood for love and it was very successful, very pleasant. Afterward they lay together comfortably and Cateyo told him again all about her fears of her abductors, that he had abandoned her and didn't love her. Joe explained that he'd had to do it that way.

  “If I hadn't, Cap'n Lite wouldn't have fallen for my trap. He'll be pissed now, though. That's another reason why you've got to get out of town.” He explained what she should do in Montana, how she should listen to the kinds of questions the cops asked her, how she shouldn't be afraid of their threats. “They'll think of some charges that they're going to throw at you, but don't believe it. They have nothing on you. You're just a nurse who ran off with a patient. If the hospital comes down on you, well, I'm sorry. Find a good lawyer, someone who'll stand by you and won't let you answer questions you shouldn't. Hang tight. I'm close to my money now, so we shouldn't have any problems.”

  Suddenly she sat up. “Joe, I just remembered! I had a great idea while I was waiting for you. Do you want to hear it?”

  “What?” Joe asked. He smiled in the darkness.

  “You could open an AIDS house,” she said.

  “An AIDS house? Why would I want to open an AIDS house? What is an AIDS house?”

  She rushed on to tell him. The idea had just come to her in a flash, she said. She'd known a woman in Butte who had worked in Tacoma at a place where they took in indigent AIDS patients, people who were dying. They had gotten some grants together and they provided a decent, simple, dignified atmosphere for a few patients, a place for people to go and die.

  Joe sighed. It sounded discouraging and unpleasant. The very idea of AIDS . . . it wasn't something that he liked to think about. He didn't say so, however. He j
ust said, “Well, it sounds noble, a decent thing to do, honey, but what does it have to do with me? I mean, why would I put money into that? Doesn't the government take care of people like that?”

  “No, they don't, Joe,” Cateyo said. “People think they do, but mostly these people are just warehoused, they're just shuffled aside. Insurance companies cut off their benefits, society doesn't want to deal with it, and they're so poor, they have nothing. You said you wanted to help people. These people need help. Nobody needs help more.”

  And suddenly Joe saw it. Cateyo wouldn't see it his way, he realized, because she didn't know what his real purpose was. But she had unwittingly hit upon what looked like an ideal answer to his needs. What Joe needed were dead people. He needed dead people who were intestate, or seemingly intestate. But these people were even better, they were living dead people, people who could make a will. They could be destitute, ostensibly, but it would be found, after their death, that they had actually been in possession of at least modest estates. These estates would have been left to Joe, or his various legal personifications. They would in no case amount to more than $600,000, because that much could be inherited tax free. Oh, once in a while the estate might amount to, say $650,000—Joe didn't mind paying taxes on fifty grand. And once inherited it would be legitimate money, money that could be invested.

  Joe sat up and embraced Cateyo. She felt warm in his arms. “It's an idea,” he said, delightedly. They lay back in their embrace, which led to further lovemaking. A half hour later, he said to the tousled blond head resting on his arm, “Tell me, hon, these houses . . . are they like foundations? I mean, could a guy set up a foundation, expressly for this purpose, something maybe you could run?” She didn't answer. She was asleep. But the answers were there. He could almost see them. He wondered how much it would cost, on the average, to provide a comfortable last few months, weeks, days, for an AIDS patient.

  Yeah, he thought, the poor people would come to the home—he'd have to think of a good name: the Last Resort?—to die, and they'd sign away their nonexistent worldly goods and then, Lo!, after the funeral $550,000 in cash would be found, stuffed in a mattress, buried in the back yard, stuck in a safe-deposit box . . . hell, in a duffel bag in a bus-terminal locker. He thought it could work. And best of all, he would be doing good. Doing well by doing good, he thought. The Last Resort. He liked it. He couldn't wait to start serving his fellow man, his less fortunate brothers and sisters.