A Good-Looking Corpse

by Jeff Klima

  “Please don’t do that,” the doughy guy, Doug, begs me, drunkenly possessive.

  “Bullshit,” Mikey says, standing and sliding his feet into a pair of white dock shoes. “We’ll get her a merkin for the nude scenes. Tom can do what he wants. So what do you want, Tom?”

  “I want to get out of here,” I say. “I only came because Ramen said he was worried you’d murder him too.”

  “Did he now?” Mikey says, fitting the Indian man with a bemused look.

  “You do have that Mikey Echo reputation to live up to,” Ramen says, cautious.

  “Tom, let’s go inside before you get too many bad ideas about me,” Mikey says, moving up toward the house.

  “You need me to go too?” Ramen asks.

  “Nah, you stay down here with Crozier. Maybe you’ll feel safer with him.” Mikey grins back at me and lifts his shades to wink. I look back at Ramen concerned, but he nods for me to go.

  “You really can have that girl if you want,” Mikey says, leading me through the French doors and on into the living room. “They arrive in Los Angeles by the busloads daily. At first, they have standards. The pretty ones don’t want to fuck for a part. They’re used to being hot shit in Kansas or wherever. Give ’em a few years though and they get desperate. Constant rejection in this town makes ’em crazy. Pretty soon they’ll do any fucking thing to get short-listed for a part. That one out there is an exception. Fucked in the head from the get-go. Probably has daddy issues.”

  “Sounds like there are a few people in this town with daddy issues,” I say, but Mikey doesn’t take the bait.

  A black butler in a blacker tuxedo appears, ready to entertain Mikey’s beck and call. “Clothes,” he says to the man. “Would you like something to drink? Eat?” Mikey asks me, his shades still on. He settles into a suede chair and invites me to do the same.

  “I’m good,” I decline as the servant walks off with a look of resentment that Mikey does not see.

  “Tsk, tsk, man,” Mikey says, focusing his shades in my direction. “You have such an opportunity to be a bastard and you haven’t done a single offensive thing yet. I tell you time and time again, the world here is your oyster.”

  To indulge the man, I abruptly shove a pricey-looking art deco lamp off the end table beside my chair. It shatters loudly on the floor, causing him to laugh and clap, overjoyed. “Tom, you fucking wild man, I love it. That’s being in the moment—pure method acting.”

  Already a hardened young black woman in a maid’s dress is moving in to clean up the mess, making me feel guilty.

  “Honestly, I want you to get used to this world, Tom,” Mikey says. “This isn’t Los Angeles, no matter what the zip code is: this is Hollywood. We make the rules.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “I wondered if you went to the police—you did, didn’t you? That night?”

  “The next day.”

  “Eye-opening, right? I promised you freedom, didn’t I? Those people out there, beyond the walls, they sit on their old couches, stuffing their faces with I don’t know what and yelling at their TV screens. And they think that is freedom. They don’t have a fucking clue, the slobs. Money is the only freedom. Or being connected to money. Even Gloria Jean has more freedom than most of them, don’t you, Gloria Jean?”

  “I do, yes sir,” Gloria Jean, the maid, says from beside me as she gets the last of the busted lamp into her dustpan. She exits, carrying out the cleaning supplies and the mangled mechanicals of the lamp.

  “I want you to embrace that freedom because I like you. That night you walked out on my party? You should have—I was disrespectful to you. And to Holly Kelly. We have a movie coming out soon. Did Ramen tell you that?”

  “I saw a billboard.”

  “Exciting, right? It’s on Halloween. I want you to come to the premiere. Be my guest of honor.”

  “I don’t know how else I can say this, Mike. I don’t want my story told. So you can stop trying to woo me.”

  “Mikey,” he corrects me. “Always Mikey.” The servant returns with tan trousers, which Mikey slips on over his suit and dismisses the man with a wave. “I want to show you something, Tom.” He beckons me to follow. “This is my favorite thing in the world, and somehow, I think you’ll appreciate it too. Maybe it will change your mind about me.”

  He heads down into the basement and I follow nervously, wishing I had some protection. The room is now devoid of guests, but the fighting pit is still splattered with dried blood. True to Ramen’s word, the ventilation system suppresses the stink of rot—not completely, but close enough to be impressive.

  “How much would you charge to clean all this?” Mikey asks, not stopping.

  “I wouldn’t. I’d just burn it to the ground.”

  Laughing nonchalantly, he trots around the perimeter of the pit and heads for the steel door at the far end of the room. The room beyond, what I thought was a shallow closet, as I quickly find, is actually a long corridor that clearly extends well beyond the property and disappears around a kinked elbow in the distance. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all concrete and spartan, and there are four more steel doors down here, established in the wall, all similarly unmarked.

  The nearest one to us, on our left, has a leering skull-shaped doorknob with a numerical push-button lock fixed above. The others have no such security, I notice. Though Mikey obscures my view with his body, I listen in. Four punches sound on the lock before something clicks and Mikey pushes his way into the room. “In here, Tom.”

  He flicks on a light beside the door and I step in to join him in the small but impressively decorated room. Skulls, dozens of them, all human, stare down at me from three levels of shelves framing the small room. A workstation inside and to my left, beside the door, houses an industrial-looking grinding machine and a small tool chest full of what looks to be thin steel wires, tools, and various adhesives. On the right side of the door, a large hundred-gallon fish tank appears to contain thousands of wriggling dark brown beetles, many of them swarming about a skull in the late stages of being eaten clean of tissue, their bodies making a feverish clicking noise as they climb over one another. It’s horrifying to observe but worse to hear.

  “Dermestid beetles,” Tom answers my unsettled expression. “They love flesh. The noise is actually soothing once you get used to it. They do most of my dirty work when I get a trophy that isn’t up to show quality yet. You’re one of the few people who has ever seen this room. What do you think?”

  I tear my eyes away from the scavenging insects to stare around the room at the host of skeletal faces staring back at me from the shelves, and a few from podiums placed artfully about the cramped room. Most of the round white orbs are in perfect condition, their teeth still gleaming and intact, but a few have dings or patches of missing cranial plating to indicate the violence that befell them. Somehow I don’t think the skulls with additional holes in their supraorbitals or parietals fell off the shelf during an earthquake.

  “I collect heads,” Mikey says proudly. “You’ve noticed my decorating motif? It’s merely window dressing for the real thing. I knew as soon as I met you that I’d be sharing this with you. I figured you could appreciate it like few can. Several men and women died for this collection.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, that depends. A few of them used to be quite famous. See, normal skulls don’t interest me as much as celebrity skulls. There’s old Hollywood and new Hollywood all mixed in here. I have my employees working at the cemetery, you see. As well as funeral homes all over Los Angeles. Which ones I want, I get. For instance . . .” Mikey goes to one on the middle shelf, smaller and a little more faded and gray than most, a hairline slice that rings the head horizontally—an autopsy cut. It appears to have been glued back on. “Meet Marilyn Monroe,” Mikey says excitedly. He extends the skull out to me and more out of disbelief that it can be real, I put my hands out to take it.

  “Support the mandible,” he urges me like a new father handing off t
heir firstborn. “Do not sweep one of these to the floor,” he adds and there is a strong threat in his voice that he only slightly tries to mask. I hold it long enough only to be absolutely certain that it is in fact real before carefully returning it to him. Mikey sets it back on the spotlessly clean oak shelf and goes for another one on the next level down. This one he picks up but does not offer, instead he jams two fingers into the orbital cavities. “Nyuk, nyuk,” he exclaims. “This one’s a Stooge.”

  “How do you know who’s who?” I ask, noting that none of them seems to be labeled.

  Mikey quickly but carefully resets the comedian’s head bone back on his shelf and turns back to me, offended. “When you care about something this much, you study every nook and cranny intimately. I know every single piece in my collection like a mother knows her child.” He goes about the room, savagely pointing at various pieces. “Ted Bundy, Jody Johnston, Matt Helm, Frank Sinatra, Patricia Ann, Katharine Hepburn, Jesse Smith, John Candy, Phil Carter, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mack Sennett, Bob Hope, Bela Lugosi, Corey Haim, Lauren Green, Sharon Tate . . . The tragic deaths are my favorites . . .”

  “I know some of those names, but not others,” I tell him, curious if he will be disappointed.

  He isn’t. “The skulls you haven’t heard of—they’re people who said no to me. I took their heads. Live fast, die young. That’s the rules of the game.”

  “Alan Van?” I ask, indicating back toward the skull currently being ravaged by the horde of beetles.

  “No, no. His skull was ruined on impact, as you must know. Not that he deserves to be amidst such formidable names anyhow. Since you’re so curious, the skull that’s being cleaned belonged to David Bowie. I always had an affinity for The Man Who Sold the World.”

  “I liked ‘Under Pressure.’”

  “Yeah, that’s a great one. I’ve been waiting a long time for him to die. But this one’s my prized possession.” Mikey picks up another, small like Marilyn’s. “If I could only save one, this would be it. It’s my mom.” He extends it out to me at face level, and I take it gingerly. I pretend to drop it, just to see his face, and as I expect, his eyes nearly bug out of his own skull. “You bastard,” he mutters, and I delight in knowing exactly how much the collection means to him. This skull—his mom—there’s something strange about it that I can’t quite figure out just from holding it. I note it is missing a chunk near the ridge, like it received a blunt-force blow, which is suspicious in its own right. Also, no autopsy cut. But there is something else off about it as well. Uncertain, and feeling his gaze, I hand the skull of his mother back, which he eagerly accepts, relieved to have it back in his control.

  I sense that Mikey’s tour of the room is complete, so I step back into the hallway. Mikey follows, clicking off the light and making sure the door is locked.

  “Where does this tunnel lead?” I ask, pointing. “I notice it extends off your property.”

  “Apologies,” Mikey says, leading me back out into his fighting room and making sure I follow. “Beyond this door, your anything-goes privileges don’t extend. The truly elite have got to have a few bawdy secrets.”

  “Skeletons in the closet?” I mutter.

  “Hah,” he laughs once, not at all sincere and it makes me feel dumb for saying it.

  “So what do you say, Tom?” he asks, once we are back upstairs. “Am I the right one to make your movie?”

  “Still no.” I shake my head.

  “You’re a tough nut to crack,” he admits, though a little more sourly.

  Outside, Doug is passed out in the sun, red as a lobster, and the YouTube girl is just where we left her, but Crozier and Ramen have mysteriously disappeared. “Get rid of her,” Mikey snaps to his attending butler. “I’m sick of seeing her.” Dutifully, the dreadlocked man attends to the YouTuber’s limp frame, lifting it easily up onto his shoulder to be carried out.

  “Party’s over, I guess,” Mikey says, clearly in a mood. He walks me to the front door. Once there, he starts to go for a handshake and then, perhaps worried I won’t return it, slaps me on the arm instead. “I’ll send an invite for the movie premiere. With a plus one, of course. Let’s consider it my last-ditch attempt to woo you. If you still say no, I’ll leave you alone, I promise. But somehow, I still don’t think you’ll say no. In fact, I’d bet your head on it.”

  Chapter 11

  “We’re going to that party,” Ivy assures me in the tone she uses when something is no longer up for discussion.

  “Why?”

  “Because A, awesome Hollywood Halloween party, even if it is thrown by a murderer; B, I’m curious what he will do to convince you; and C, we never do anything fun.”

  She’s already put on an annoyed grimace, expecting my retort, so I give it. “A, I’m looking out for your safety. I don’t know if this guy is actually a murderer—I get the feeling he isn’t just a poser though, and the more distance I put between him and you, the more I’ll be able to protect you. B, the less time I spend around him, the happier I am, and C, your definition of fun and mine seem to differ greatly.”

  Ivy shoves another spoonful of chicken tortilla soup in her mouth. We’re seated in a booth at the Coral Cafe and it’s late, but it’s a twenty-four-hour kind of joint. Ivy loves their tortilla soup, so we come often, splitting our late-night dinners typically between the Coral in Burbank, and the Pantry in downtown L.A. “Youf les Haffowne up sue me,” Ivy tries, the soup threatening to spill down her chin as she talks with her mouth full.

  “Whatever you have to say can wait the extra second it takes to swallow,” I chide her.

  “You left Halloween up to me,” she reminds me once everything has disappeared down her gullet. “So I get to choose. No exceptions.”

  “Wasn’t that just costume selection?”

  “Nope, everything. Look, there’s nothing you can do if someone wants to hurt me. Andy Sample is the perfect example. I can’t spend the rest of my life in a jar on a shelf because you worry for my safety. At a certain point, I get to have adventure in my life too, buster. Plus, I really want to get a look at this psycho.”

  “You mean you want to get an autograph. If you knew how he treated women and animals, you wouldn’t be so excited to meet him.”

  “Yeah, the animals thing tells me he’s bad news. But most guys treat women like shit. No surprise there. And if the guys aren’t doing it, they’re thinking it. Honestly, I at least prefer the ones who are open about it. It’s the ones who claim to be nice guys who give me the creeps.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be a nice guy.”

  “You’re practically the biggest offender! Don’t forget, I met you in a strip club, buster, getting poon off the dancers. How pig is that?”

  “Sometimes I miss that place.” I shrug and give my cup of coffee a slow, thoughtful spin in my hands.

  “I didn’t ask you to take me here for you to reminisce about dirty flappy labia,” Ivy declares, pushing her bowl of soup away though she hasn’t finished, something she’s never done before. “I’ve got something I want to tell you.” Her hands are doing the business of conveying the gravity of her announcement. Angst is a becoming trait on her, the pouting, the nibbling of the lip.

  “Hit me,” I say. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I don’t want you to get upset.”

  “Aww honey,” I say in my most soothing voice. “You know anything you tell me is probably going to get me upset. You just have that effect on me.”

  She gives her paper napkin one more twist and adds in an accepting sigh. It all seems so emotional; I silently resolve to try to at least be empathetic.

  “I think,” she begins timorously, and I lean forward toward her to almost coax the words out. “I think I might be psychic,” she expels.

  I laugh and she wilts. “Oh, sweetheart.” I try reaching out but she’s retracted her hands into her lap. “Honey, you said don’t get upset. Maybe laughter is not a great response, but it’s better than anger.”

 
; “Just forget it,” she mumbles and brings the soup back in front of her, defeated.

  “No, it’s out there now. I need details. What brought this on?”

  “Really, can we drop it? I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “Well that hardly seems fair, you suddenly knowing everything I am thinking and me left guessing.”

  “Tom, please?”

  “Fine, I’ll drop it. You said you wanted to do fun stuff. What would you like to do?”

  “I feel like an idiot for even trying to talk to you.” Ivy shrugs, sullen.

  “Try me . . . again.”

  “Remember when we went to the Venice Boardwalk?” she asks. “You took me there because it was meaningful to you. I want you to show me places in this city that brought you joy. As a child.”

  “That’s what you consider fun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ve already got a place in mind.”

  “Where?”

  “You’re psychic now, you tell me.” I smirk, hoping the moment for seriousness has passed. It hasn’t.

  “Okay, I’m done here. You stay, I’m going to walk home,” Ivy announces, throwing her soup spoon down with a clatter that splashes warm stock onto my side of the table. She gets up with a quickness evidencing that this is not a ploy—she means to walk to our apartment from here. It’s only about a mile, but in Southern California, at night, a mile for a pretty petite blonde girl can be deadly. A girl like her can disappear in an instant—even from a safe city like Burbank. I throw a twenty on the table, a big tip for the server on a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee, and chase after her.

  Ivy’s on the corner, directly outside the restaurant, waiting for the light to change. I hand her the car keys. “You drive, I’ll walk.”

  “Fine,” she says, huffing. Proud but also lazy, she goes toward the Charger and I take her place waiting for the light. I could use the walk anyhow, if for no other reason than to sort my thoughts.

  Behind me, I hear the Charger roar to life as I head out across the street moving southwest. As Ivy races by me, she extends a middle finger out the window as she passes, letting it hang out there until it is a blur up the road. “Fucking psychics,” I mutter.