The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  What I need, I decide as I get on the east-bound freeway, is a ‘salt-buddy.’ Somebody I can totally trust. Somebody who’ll fill my PJ pockets with salt at bedtime and then empty them out at dawn. You’d think the obvious candidate for that would be Devon, my so-called husband, wouldn’t you? You know, the guy who tried to have me “translated to the astral plane” last night. But he’s plainly out of the picture; I don’t trust him any more than I do that Haitian voodoo queen.

  The next obvious candidate is Malena Ayon, my partner. I mean, she’s always around, we pull most of the same shifts, and she could even take care of me if we were in a police car together on a late shift. But I can’t trust her either―last night, I basically had to sleep with one eye open. She might be the one who set me up for Gana Kali in the first place and then plugged me in the warehouse that night. And then switched guns on me. Bottom line: if she’s guilty, she’s the last person on earth I can trust―and if she’s innocent, she still doesn’t know I’m dead. And there’s really no way you can ask a favor like that of somebody without telling them all about that part of the deal.

  I mean, they would basically have to trust you a lot to ask no questions. And given her nature, Ayon would be bound to snoop.

  So ideally, my salt buddy would have to be someone I can trust who already knows I’m dead. That leaves three people: Cappy, the Gypsy King, and Harper. There are problems with all three. Cappy is my boss, and if he isn’t involved in setting me up―and that’s a mighty big if―then he certainly doesn’t want to be constantly reminded of my condition. Plus, I really don’t want him around my bed in any capacity. I mean, I’ll be physically utterly helpless and vulnerable…so no.

  Val Tabori, on the other hand, would be the perfect choice from the bed and sleeping over standpoints, but I really don’t know him well enough to ask. I mean, a favor like that is totally intimate, putting your life and death in somebody else’s hands. And I haven’t learned enough about him yet to trust him, either. I mean, we’re not even sleeping together―and he’s a Gypsy, for Chrissake! For all I know, he’s one of Gana Kali’s nephews or cousins. Plus he works in PD headquarters downtown, the same building where my Glock got switched…

  Which leaves Harper. He already knows I’m dead, and I can trust him (I think) not to want me to stay that way. But there are a few problems with appointing him my salt monitor. For starters, he doesn’t know about the Gypsy curse or my being summoned to murder anybody. And I’m not sure he’d believe it if I told him. He’s a surgeon, a trained medical man, which means he’s been able to accept that I’m undead when the facts are shoved in his face, but I doubt he could ever get his mind around the curse thing. He’d always be looking for some scientific explanation.

  And then there’s his wife. I’ve already wrecked one marriage―I don’t want him sneaking around, getting out of bed early to drive over just to pull salt out of my pockets, and then having to lie to his wife about it. Frankly, if I’m being totally, completely honest here, I’m not sure I want him having a key to my house, either. I don’t want him back in my life that way; it was hard enough dumping him the first time.

  Which reminds me, I need to call in and check with the locksmith.

  But if not Harper, then who? Mom? Dr. Sid? Yeah, right. Maybe I can train Kitty to do it. I’ve always thought that if only cats had opposable thumbs, they would rule the world.

  I wrestle with these thoughts while sitting parked in front of the Roosevelt Automotive Center, which looks exactly like you’d imagine: a series of low, rambling white brick garage buildings baking in the sun, fronting a huge wasteland of rusting hulks and automotive parts behind a chain-link fence. The front parking lot is about a quarter filled with cars, and I can see the occasional Latino auto mechanic moving around the yard and hear bursts of noise from compression tools inside the open garage bays. It’s a scene that makes you want to doze off almost instantly on a warm and sunny Sunday when there’s little traffic. I’m across the street, half-slouched down in the passenger seat of my Toyota; whenever a new car pulls into the lot or anybody leaves the automotive office, I scan them through the lenses of my portable field binoculars. No Mercedes so far, silver or otherwise; it’s the kind of place that seems to cater more to Dodge Chargers or Camaros pimped up with big wheels and lots of detailing.

  My phone rings. Automatically, I check the caller ID to see if it’s Val, but it’s only Ayon. “Hey, partner,” she says, “They just left. Couldn’t do anything about the hole in the floor, but I sort of glued the edges of the carpet together over it. I wrote them a check―at least they gave us a professional discount.” When she tells me what the total bill is, I almost faint.

  “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” If I’m not overdrawn now, that is. “Listen, hon; thanks for taking care of this for me.”

  “Sure thing. And there’s no hurry about paying me back. How did it go at his wife’s?” She means Jenni, his ex, I guess, but it gives me a jolt to hear her described like that. However temporarily, I’m still Devon’s wife. Technically, anyway.

  “Good, actually. He wasn’t there, but Jenni and I had a pretty civilized talk. I hate to say it, but I think she’s probably better for him than I am.”

  Malena laughs. “Okay, now I can really tell you’re totally not into him. I mean, if you’re saying nice things about her.” When she gets off, I give in and call the Gypsy King, something I swore to myself I would not do today. But I have an excuse. I need him to teach me Romani cant.

  But there’s no answer; he must have his cell switched off. Maybe he’s on duty. Or in bed with somebody else. I leave a lame message on his voicemail that fools nobody. I mean, in a situation like this, if it’s you who’s doing the calling, then that pretty much says it all, right?

  An hour later, my cell rings just as I am seriously drifting off. Val returning my call, I think, and hold it to my ear without checking the incoming number.

  “Rishya, it’s your mother.” That’s how Mom always introduces herself on the phone, as if I don’t know who she or our real relationship is. Who knows? Maybe I don’t. Because she’s always changing the rules and the playing field. I was one of those kids who used to fall asleep at night consoling herself that she was probably really adopted.

  “Uh, hi Mom. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is that we’ve invited our rabbi to dinner tonight so you can talk with her. It was Sid’s idea. So we will be expecting you to be on time, okay?”

  Our rabbi? Since when? Sigh. “Sure, what time?” So much for taking up where things left off last night with the King.

  “Seven.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there. Hey, Mom, sorry―I gotta go―”

  After all, a silver Mercedes has just pulled into the auto center lot.

  ou’d think that tailing somebody in an unmarked car would be pretty easy, but it’s not. In fact, it’s one of the toughest things I have to do as a detective, unless I’m part of a tag team. Ideally, what you try to do is keep several cars between you and the target while driving as anonymously as possible―and trying to anticipate where they’re going. The problem is that any sudden turns off the freeway can take you by surprise. And if you miss a turnoff, then you’re screwed if you don’t have backup.

  So I’m especially cautious tailing the Mercedes. I run the plates before it’s even left the parking lot, and it comes as no surprise that they come back as belonging to some little old lady in Garden Grove. I’m guessing the Horvaths have quite a collection of old tags and titles somewhere, and they probably rotate them on all their vehicles once a week or so. There likely isn’t a single legitimate VIN Number on any of their fleet of vehicles, either; in the bright sunlight, I can see subtle variations in the Mercedes’ paint job that makes me think it’s been chopped and reassembled from several different stolen models.

  There are three people in the car, at least one of them a man in early middle age, the one who got out at Roosevelt’s. Probably the other two guys are his brothers; t
he same three who killed Gluckstein. That homicide was called in late this morning, according to my radio, but it’s not my case, and there’s no BOLO on the Horvaths aside from mine. So I have no probable cause to bust these guys―not for suspicion of murder or anything else. They’re scrupulously driving the limit, hugging the right lane and piling up traffic behind them. Which, surprisingly enough, makes following them without being spotted even tougher. If they were hot dogging, they wouldn’t even notice me.

  They lead me on a long leisurely looping trek out past the farthest-flung suburbs and into the countryside. Now we’re in rolling farmland with the mountains rearing up in the distance. Once we’re off the main interstate and onto rural roads, it gets a lot harder for me to trail them without being spotted, and I have to hang farther and farther back until finally I’m driving with one hand holding my binoculars. Sooner or later, I know I’m going to miss them turning off the road; luckily, my GPS keeps me from being totally lost out here in the boonies.

  We pass a country store with a single row of gas pumps, and I hang back even farther, drifting onto the shoulder just past it, so it looks like I’m parking before going in. I catch a glint of silver in the distance through the trees ahead, and can just barely make out that they’re turning into a driveway or farm entrance, someplace that’s kicking up some dust. If it was rainy or even a cloudy day, I’d have lost them long ago. As it is, I give them two minutes, then slowly pass their turnoff. It’s a farm entrance; there’s a tiny peeling frame bungalow festooned with old satellite dishes just before it. I drove slowly by just as a steel farm gate is being drawn closed behind the car by two darkly bearded guys with shotguns. Behind them, I glimpse a long dusty gravel driveway leading back into untended fields between groves of trees. It leads into a sort of improvised RV park with three trailers forming a rough circle with a couple of old Winnebagoes. There are also a few pickup trucks parked there, along with more Mercedes.

  I don’t spot all this in a single pass. Instead of slowing, I go down the road a bit, then turn around in front of a house that looks like it’s left over from the set of Psycho, and drive back just close enough so I can stand on the roof of my car and scope the place out from behind a couple of willow trees. This gets me a few weird looks from passing truckers before I climb down and get the hell out of Dodge, making very sure that nobody’s tagged me. I’m way out of my jurisdiction here in another county; for all I know, the landlord of this property is the local sheriff.

  But at least I know where to look for them now. On my way back to the city and Mom’s house I try Val’s cell phone again to see if he knows anything about the Gypsy camp here, but again all I get is voicemail. Is he avoiding me?

  Over the years, I’ve had a lot of weird dinners with Mom and her various husbands, though the ones with Sid have at least been pretty normal on the surface, since she’s been trying for a sort of Martha Stewart image with this marriage. As opposed to her usual retired hooker lifestyle. However, tonight, this meal rapidly becomes one of the weirdest. Because it turns out that Mom is trying to match-make me with the rabbi.

  Under other circumstances, I guess I might even be slightly interested, but the rabbi really isn’t my type. Besides, I keep checking my cell under the tablecloth for messages from the Gypsy King, which is a pretty surefire indicator that my romantic interest lies elsewhere. However, the poor thing has obviously been dragged here to meet me, so I try to put the best face on things that I can.

  Not that she seems to mind all that much. Rabbi Tamara Hirschberger is a round, cheerful little woman about my age with downy skin and frizzy orange hair that makes her look like a big apricot. Everything about her is round, including her thick eyeglasses; beneath them are a pair of gorgeous eyes that are, disturbingly, almost the twins of Val Tabori’s; huge and dark and tragic. But there’s nothing tragic about the rabbi’s personality, which appears to be always bubbling with merriment.

  “Rishya had a long lesbian relationship in college, too, so she swings both ways,” my mother is proudly informing Tamara Hirschberger now.

  Who turns to me, her round lenses glinting solemnly, and says in an understanding tone, “But you’re married now?” Mom’s gone crazy on the candles, so the dining room bears sort of a resemblance to the warehouse where I got shot, minus all the blood. Of course, the night’s still young.

  “Separated,” I tell her. “Which reminds me, I need to call a lawyer.”

  “I never thought Devon was…right for you, exactly,” says Mom, that awesome judge of men. “Didn’t you think so, too, Sid?”

  “Oy, leave me out of it, Kat.” He’s very obviously trying to peer down the front of his guest’s shapeless black dress for a good look at her outsized rabbinical boobs. He has, during the meal’s main course, only scratched the surface of his vast repertoire of rabbi jokes. Which I gotta admit, are pretty much the funniest jokes there are. Like the one about…well, never mind.

  “Lesbians can get married and have insurance together now,” Mom goes on, as if reciting from an article she’s just read. “And make families. Will you want children, Tamara?”

  “Maybe someday,” says the rabbi, glancing at me shyly. I need a big gulp of wine.

  “Rishya has been too busy with her police work to give me grandchildren.”

  And at this, I finally choke, snorting chardonnay out my nose. Mom would rather die than be a grandmother. In fact, for most of my life I’ve had to listen to nothing from her but complaints about how I ruined her figure, not to mention her life. And all the sacrifices she’s made for me, etc., etc. Plus, she always coyly lies about her age, even to me and Sid, who know perfectly well what year she was born. So it’s not like she’s in any hurry to play granny. She’s just trying to fluff the rabbi up to ask me out.

  “Are you okay?” Tamara asks after pounding me on the back a couple times. “Dr. Sid says you have some things you wanted to talk to me about? Something to do with the Romani?”

  “Right.”

  After supper we sit in the living room and have coffee while Rabbi Tamara explains to me that there are hardly any Gypsies in Israel, where she went to yeshiva; those that are there are usually Palestinians. “I know there was an edict in the Nineteenth Century in Austria that tried to force all the Romani to convert to Judaism. So maybe that’s what your friend meant. Maybe his parents are descendants of those people.”

  I shake my head. “He says that all the Romani oral scripture is based on the Torah. And they all believe they came out of Egypt―that they were the Jews left behind by Moses or something.”

  “Well, you know, there are lost tribes of Jews everywhere―Ethiopia, supposedly India, and even China. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who wants to be a Jew is welcome to it.”

  Including me, it turns out. The rabbi’s old clunker is in the shop, so Mom gleefully assigns me to drive the rabbi home. Which isn’t far out of my way, and I don’t have anything better to do anyway, except hang out with ghosts.

  “Kat said something about you being confused about your identity?” Tamara says once we’re under way.

  “You mean my sexual identity? No, I’m pretty clear on that.”

  “No.” She actually blushes. “I mean your identity as a Jew.”

  “My what?” This is all news to me. Then I get it and have a good laugh. I’d been half an hour late getting back from Nowheresville, so I guess my mother and the rabbi had a cozy heart to heart before I got there.

  “Let me guess―she told you her mother was Jewish. The thing you’ve got to understand about Mom is, she’s got a totally flexible relationship with the truth, especially about sh―about stuff―like her age or background. No offense, but if you’d been a Catholic priest, she’d have claimed to be half-Polish. Over the years, my dead grandma has been Armenian, Greek, Georgian, and whatever. Never Chinese, though; I guess that would be too unbelievable, even for Mom.”

  “Oops. Sorry,” says Tamara, turning an almost violent shade of pink with embarrassment.<
br />
  “Don’t be. Who knows? Maybe it’s all true.”

  “Her Yiddish is pretty good.” Mom speaks Yiddish? Jesus Christ.

  “At this rate, there won’t be a single ethnic minority not represented in my body. If there’s ever a Fourth Reich, I’ll be in some pretty deep shit.”

  “Yeah, I know, right? Join the club.”

  One good thing about Rabbi Tamara; she may not be any Gypsy King, but she is sort of…sweet. Comfy, like a favorite cushion. And definitely the kind of person you feel you can confide in. So on the way to her place I explain about the Gypsy connection, and one thing leads to another, and I guess at some point I sort of mention Gypsy spells and curses. A little, maybe. And hint that maybe I’ve been the victim of one.

  This gets her really hot. “I used to game those characters in MUDs and RPGs,” she says enthusiastically when we arrive in front of her place, which is a rundown apartment above a comic book store in a triangle of commercial red-brick buildings. Apparently, rabbis get paid even worse than cops. “You know, Role-Playing Games—like Dungeons & Dragons. Mulos and dhampirs and moroi.”

  Oh crap, there are more Gypsy monsters? “Mulos and what?”

  “Dhampirs and moroi are the offspring of mulos. Actually, there are two schools of thought about that, kind of like with Judaism.” She giggles girlishly. “Some people think dhampirs are the product of the union of a male mulo with a human woman, but another tradition is that it just means their male child, whatever their gender. And a moroi is the child of a human man with a female mulo.”

  “Muli,” I correct her.

  “Okay, muli,” she says. Then, curiously, “How come you know that?”

  I take a deep breath. “Because I am one…”

  kay, you can’t just walk out after telling me something like that,” Tamara says. So I park and go upstairs with her to her place, which is neat and tidy but looks almost as shabby on the inside as it does out.