The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  But that ship has long since sailed, even if I wanted a return ticket, which I don’t. Okay, yeah, so now you know I used to be bi, or maybe still am, but I prefer men now. That’s my story these days, and I’m sticking to it. Although, according to Bull McGuinness, Devon is “the kind of guy if you’re fuckin’ his wife and he walks in on you, you just take your time and finish up whatever you’re doing, then ask him where the fuckin’ bathroom is.” OK, gross. But you know? If I’m brutally honest with myself, maybe the old ghost bastard’s a little bit right. About Devon, I mean. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why I married him in the first place. Because he’s kind of a girlie man, despite the beard.

  Something tells me Val Tabori is no way that kind of guy, though. He’d probably slit your throat just for looking cross-eyed at his wife. However, I didn’t see a ring…

  So when Mom has to go to the bathroom, which she does for maybe fifteen minutes out of each hour, I give Tabori’s cell a quick ring. It takes him a while to answer; when he does, I hear women’s laughter and the throb of music in the background. So…not a married man, I’m guessing.

  “Val? This is Richelle. Sorry to bug you off the job, but I’ve got a quick question.” Oh, maybe I forgot to mention it, but before we parted this afternoon, the detective and I somehow got on a first name basis. And in spite of my being accursed and undead and whatever, his glances and general level of flirtiness had gotten way torchier again by then. So getting back with Layla or somebody like her is sort of the last thing on my mind right now, if you know what I mean. “What does didikoy mean?”

  Pause. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Just came up at the dinner table.”

  “Well, it’s kind of an all-purpose term for a ‘half-breed.’ Somebody who’s part Gypsy and part gadjo. Generally, if your mother’s Romani, then you’re accepted all the way―again, like the Jews. But it’s also a word for, I dunno, British pikeys who have real Romani blood. Gyps or Gyppos, they call themselves.”

  I am little the wiser, but at least manage to thank him before he hangs up. What the hell is a pikey?

  I guess that would be me…

  Obviously, I have a lot to learn about the half of me that is apparently Gypsy now. The question is, will I be given the time to learn it? “Pikey”, Wikipedia tells me, is derogatory slang for a British or Irish Traveler. Its most famous usage in popular culture was in some Brit heist flick where Brad Pitt or somebody says, “I hate fuckin’ pikeys.” Great. Another derogatory term I better get used to, as if those I endured throughout my childhood just weren’t enough.

  Hell, as if the word muli isn’t enough. Or cop, for that matter. I seem to have spent my life specializing in becoming a despised minority. Who knew I’d actually been born into one?

  When I get home, I find Devon out and McGuinness and Lorna half-unbuttoned on the sofa. They spring apart when I walk in, and furtively adjust their ethereal clothing. Lorna disappears into the bedroom, and while I feed a loudly reproachful Kitty, McGuinness joins us in the kitchen. By the way, so far as I can tell, cats see ghosts about as well as they see humans. They don’t make a big deal of it most of the time, but when they do, watch out. You’ll get to experience a lot of weirdly inexplicable behavior; arched backs, hair standing up on tails, hissing, and dilated pupils. Kitty seems pretty used to these two, though. I guess they’ve been keeping her company a lot lately, poor thing.

  “Sorry about all the, uh, canoodling,” says Bull in an embarrassed tone. “You know, out in the front parlor just then.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, the spooning and petting. Okay, I admit the petting was getting a little heavy, maybe.”

  “Jesus, Bull, that’s way too much information.” I guess it answers my question about sex in the afterlife, though. By implication, anyway―seems like it’s more fun than the mere shrug Lorna awarded it.

  “The thing is, I just wanna make sure it’s fine by you. That we two are sparking, I mean. Because Lorna’s really a swell kid once you get to know her, and she had a pretty rough life. Her death ain’t been no picnic, either, if you get my meaning. You can get chewed up and spit out again this side just like on the other if you don’t stick up for yourself.”

  “Look, you guys don’t need my permission. Lorna’s not my daughter or anything.”

  “No, but she’s real attached to you―looks up to you, I mean, respects your opinion. All that shit. Grateful to you for giving her a home.” Giving her a home? She’s freakin’ haunting me!

  “Okay, you have my permission, Bull.” If I wasn’t feeling so scared and sorry for myself, I’d be sniggering over this. But his next words rob me of any mirth.

  He sidles up very close, managing to look even guiltier, and says, “I, um, sort of tailed your old man tonight. To see what he was up to.”

  My old man? “You mean Devon?”

  “Yeah. The beard. Anyhow, I followed him downtown to some kind of restaurant―and you’ll never guess who he was meeting there.”

  My heart sinks, or at least it would if I still had one that worked. I have a feeling I know what’s coming next.

  “That little Mexican spitfire broad I saw you with at the bar the other night. What’s-’er-name.”

  Malena Ayon. My partner.

  ntimacy is a really weird thing. I’ve never trusted my mom any farther than I could throw her, but even a couple of years ago, I used to tell my husband everything. Until I discovered he wasn’t actually listening. Then I guess Ayon slowly filled that void for me. But obviously I can’t trust my partner anymore now, either. So here I am, sharing all the deepest darkest secrets in my life with a deceased racist, sexist pig of a dirty homicide cop who died sixty-some-odd years ago.

  Maybe in life you can choose your friends―but not in the afterlife, it seems. And especially not in the twilight world in-between.

  So on the way downtown, I fill him in on the curse that’s been put on me and ask him if he’s ever heard of any other cases like mine. He’s heard all the usual stuff on the radio, he says; thriller serials about Haitian voodoo and zombies rising from the grave to do the bidding of their masters. What’s happening to me is sort of like that, but I need to know the rules. Can the disgusting fat old Gypsy witch summon me at any time? Or does it require a special ceremony? Does it only work at certain phases of the moon, for example―or can it strike any time?

  Or―and this is a really creepy thought that’s only just occurred to me―is she always living in my head now, able to see everything I do and everywhere I go through my eyes? Could she actually possess me, taking over my younger body and living the rest of my life for me―before hopping into another?

  This thought is too horrible even to contemplate for long, so I’m grateful when McGuinness changes the subject.

  “Know what I think, girlie? I think last night was just a test. You know, to see if she could control you. I don’t think she and whoever put her up to it were even sure how it would fall out―they just pointed you at another couple of low-lifes, probably rivals of some kind, and made you pull the trigger.” That made sense. “But that wasn’t the big labonza, kiddo―I’m bettin’ these creeps got even bigger plans for you. Real big.”

  “You mean like…a presidential assassination?”

  He just laughs at this. “What the hell do Gypsies care who the fuckin’ president is? Even I don’t give a shit about that. No, this is about money. It always is. They want to use you for some really big heist, the bank job of the century or something.”

  Except for the bank part, this actually makes pretty good sense. The old bastard was maybe a better cop in his day than I’d thought. Because no way the old Gypsy witch actually pulled the trigger―that took somebody who had real training. Somebody who could finger me and take me out. And odds were that was who was pulling the strings on the Gypsies, too. But…Malena?

  Unless Gana Kali put a scratch on her, too…

  “It won’t be a bank job―nowadays, money’s pretty m
uch electronic, so banks don’t keep that much on the premises.”

  “While we’re on the subject,” he says, sounding sheepish, “you know how I’ve sorta been peeping for you on this side, running here and there, asking around, seeing if anybody knows anything? Well, I’m running into expenses. Bein’ dead don’t come with a pension plan, you know. So I was wondering if you’d like to hire me. To act as your investigator, I mean.” He must have seen the look on my face, because he stops talking and stares down at his shoes.

  “You need money when you’re dead?” Jesus Christ, religion really has got it all wrong.

  “Well, sure. I mean, you ain’t gonna starve or anything here if you’re dead broke. Dead people don’t gotta eat or drink―we just like to. It’s enjoyable. But there’s a lot of baksheesh involved getting anything done here, and if I want to take Lorna out one night, treat her right, well, bars and dance-clubs cost plenty of dough, just like they do on your side of the river. So I was thinking…maybe a hundred a day? Plus expenses?”

  If he thinks that’s real money, then the poor guy really has been dead a long time.

  “I figure it won’t be for long,” he adds quickly. “One way or another, this is bound to play out soon.” I can’t argue with that.

  “Okay. But how…how do I pay you? Do I write you a check?”

  “Well, that could take a while to clear. Better just give me a few hundred in cash.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “It’s easy,” he says. “You just set fire to it. Then it turns to smoke—that’s what everything on this side is made of, more or less.”

  So I stop at an ATM and then have to go into a 7-11 to buy a book of matches. Next, feeling like the biggest idiot on earth, I set $300 on fire on the sidewalk. When the little blazes die down, and the bills turn to black ash, McGuinness squats down, picks them up off the pavement, and clips them in his billfold. Did I say it wasn’t real money? It’s a hefty chunk of my weekly take-home, and as I watch it going up in smoke, I realize just how…well, insane my life has become. And not just my life. Maybe it’s me who’s gone crazy from all those psychotropic poison-toad drugs the fat old Gypsy bitch gave me.

  Maybe I’ve just hallucinated the whole thing.

  And how pathetic is that? That that’s my best-case scenario, I mean.

  The law offices of William A. Gluckstein & Associates are in the Marshall Building, an antique six-story brownstone in the business district, so old that even Bull recognizes it when we get there. Long ago, it used to be a Federal building, but now the FBI and most other US government agencies are concentrated in a huge modern skyscraper near City Hall. There’s a cheap shoe store and a bail-bondsman’s office on the ground floor, and a few other smaller businesses on the second―a yoga studio, a small-time stockbroker and… another palm reader. Bingo.

  In the old days, there would have been a night watchman on duty. There’s still a burglar alarm, I’m guessing, but no security guard; my problem, I discover when I reach the building’s dimly-lit front entrance, is that even this crumbling old ruin has a Kastle key security system. I have no way to pick that. So I go round the back, pull down a fire escape ladder, then climb it and strip the lock on a third-floor hallway window, before cutting the contact wire. Tonight, I’m wearing my white latex gloves; the last thing I want to do is leave any fingerprints around. Bull is already waiting impatiently for me when I clamber inside.

  “Fourth floor,” he tells me. “No meat at home.” Meat is ghost slang for the living, in English at least. Apparently, death doesn’t do wonders for spiritual sensitivity.

  “What are you so tweaked about?” I whisper to him on the way up.

  “This place is lousy with shades.”

  He’s right. The old building is literally full of ghosts, and he has to elbow a few aside on our way up the stairs. The walls are glowing so green I don’t even need the stairwell lights to see by; I remember reading there was a bad fire here once in the Thirties that gutted the place.

  “Scumbags,” Bull mutters. “The only thing I hate worse than shysters are the fuckin’ G-men.” I’m sensing some history there.

  Sure enough, one of the ghosts haunting the place recognizes him, and they get into it, exchanging loud insults. “Hey!” I say. “Knock it off, Bull! I need you to go in first and tell me if the offices are wired.”

  “You planning on breaking and entering the premises?” demands this phantom, who’s nattily dressed in a faded double-breasted suit and fedora. No spats, though.

  “Yes, I am. Police business.” I actually show him my badge. “What’s it to you?”

  “Sheesh! Nothing, sister.” He backs away. “Keep your shirt on.”

  I plan to. And not just my shirt; I’ve already got my crime scene booties and gloves on, too.

  The door looks like something from an old movie set; the window on its top half isn’t frosted or pebbled, but it has closed blinds just like the ones in the Cap’s office back at the stationhouse. “William A. Gluckstein & Associates” is painted on the glass, then in smaller letters: “Attorneys at Law.” I try the knob, and the door opens. Not locked. Not good.

  I’ve bought a pencil beam LED flashlight with me. I turn it on and play the light around. The place has been completely and thoroughly trashed; desks overturned, papers and file folders strewn everywhere, even the cushions of the waiting room couches and the secretaries’ chairs slashed and the stuffing torn out. And there’s something sticky and black spread over it everywhere. Blood. I squat down and dab a little on a Kleenex. I sniff it, then taste it briefly with the tip of my tongue. Not human; chicken, I’m guessing―just like the sea of blood I woke up to in the warehouse that second time. Was it just last night? My, how time flies when you’re having fun.

  “Hey, come get a gander at this,” Bull McGuinness calls out to me from the other room. It’s been wrecked, too. In the middle of the debris there’s a toppled desk beside a dark pool of blood. But there’s a difference in the spatter in here. This room contains a human corpse.

  “Just a guess, but I’m bettin’ this is the shyster you’re looking for. Somebody’s done the world a favor and cut his throat.” And that’s not all. If this is Gluckstein, they’ve slaughtered him like a hog, slicing his belly repeatedly so that his guts are hanging out. I approach the corpse cautiously―I don’t want to track in the blood and leave footprints behind―then find a patch of skin that isn’t covered in blood to gauge the body’s temperature.

  “Happened sometime tonight. He’s not warm, but he ain’t stinking yet.” Except for the smell of his bowels and bladder, both of which appear to have emptied when he had his throat cut.

  “Yeah, I can see he ain’t even stiff. He’s probably still hanging around someplace close by.” When I look up at him inquiringly, McGuninness goes on, “When you kick the bucket, your, whatchamacallit, your spirit or soul or whatever, sticks pretty close to the cadaver for a few hours. Sometimes even for twenty-four hours or so. You know, you’re confused, don’t know what’s happened to you, you get a little sentimental. A little sappy.”

  He looks embarrassed again. “It’s kind of personal. Maybe your hide ain’t the prettiest sight on the planet, maybe it’s even pretty banged-up looking, but it’s all you got, and you’re probably pretty attached to it.”

  “Okay, okay, I get the picture…”

  “So I say we search the building,” suggests Bull. “Maybe he’ll be pissed off enough to rat out his clients. You can bet your sweet ass one of them put the hit out on him. No offense.”

  It doesn’t take long. We find Mr. Gluckstein in the closet. He is, as McGuinness predicted, extremely confused. His throat is cut, and his intestines are dangling from his three-piece suit. I’m wondering if there isn’t some way to fix that in the Afterlife. You know, just in case somebody chops me into little pieces or something. We take him out into the waiting room, sit him down on one of the wrecked couches, and Bull feeds him a few swallows from his hip flask. Spirits, a
t a guess. I’m tempted to ask for a pull myself. Might as well get used to the taste, right?

  “Where’s my iPhone?” the lawyer finally mumbles. “I can’t find it anywhere―I need to check my messages.”

  “You got no messages waitin’ for you here, believe me,” Bull tells him cheerfully. “You just dialed a doozy of a wrong number.”

  “You mean…am I…?”

  “Yep. You’ve croaked.”

  “Where…where am I?”

  “In your office waiting room,” I say.

  “Heaven has a waiting room?” Man, he is confused.

  “You ain’t in heaven, pally; no such luck” says Bull. Then he takes pity on the poor soul. “Or hell, either, I guess. Not exactly. Just stuck on the other side. Limbo, my old priest used to call it. Or Purgatory, maybe. It’s just like where you came from except it’s all filled up with everything that’s ever died―you know, people like you and me, dead leaves, cigarette butts, dead animals, even burned-up buildings and rusted cars and office furniture. That’s where you are right now; still in your own office. Wanna take a look at your dead body? Sometimes it helps when you’re having trouble letting go.”

  Gluckstein shakes his head. “What happened to me? I remember answering the door… I was working late.”

  “You were killed by Gypsies,” I tell him. Enough of the grief counseling and spirit guide bullshit; it’s time to cut to the chase. Time is what I’m running out of, just like this guy did. “I think it’s the same family you bailed out at the East Orange sheriff’s station six or seven months ago.”

  “The Nichols family… Shit. Those assholes. I always knew they’d be big trouble for me someday. But they always pay me―paid me―in cash. Totally tax-free. And you say they killed me? But why the fuck would they do that? We were protected by client-attorney privilege!”