A Good-Looking Corpse (16 page)

I want to tell him that he doesn't know how right he is, but I stay silent, listening.

“So if I threatened Ivy, you would probably say ‘Kill her.' You don't negotiate like that, right? If I stuck a gun in your face, you would say ‘Kill me.' Am I right?”

“You're not wrong,” I admit.

“Good, we understand each other. But as I said, some people think they love nothing. The reality is that everyone loves something—even if they do not realize it yet. The trick to negotiating with men who think this way is to give them something to love. And then you barter with that.”

Mikey reaches his hand down to pluck a large manila envelope from the seat beside him, which he then hands over. An identical one sits beneath it. “We were going to get you a puppy, but this seems much more effective.”

“What is this?”

“Your girl's medical file.”

“And?” I ask, annoyed now.

“If you care to read her charts, you'll see she's expecting a little bundle of joy.”

“What?” I open the packet, containing numerous notes, printouts, and medical logs. I scan through them, searching out words that indicate anything hinting he is telling the truth, but the words seem blurry and unfocused. “You're lying.”

“Ask her yourself. She's been going to all the same doctors since she moved here. Really, it was all very easy information to obtain. Did you know that she didn't think she could get pregnant?”

“So what happens now?”

“Nothing. Nothing happens. Sign the contract, we'll give you some money, you can put it in the kid's trust fund. Don't sign the contract, that's fine too. You leave here, you don't see me again, as promised. You go back to your life. Hollywood leaves you alone.”

“I don't buy it.”

“I didn't think you would. Here is the contract, incidentally, if you want to sign.” He hands over the other manila envelope. I glance inside, pulling out what appears to be a standard business contract and drop it on the floor.

“I only ever wanted to be left alone,” I try. “Nothing personal.” The handgun weighs heavy in my jacket pocket.

“Tom, you've hung around Ramen enough. I'm certain he's said, ‘Mikey Echo always gets what he wants.' He has, hasn't he?”

“Sure.”

“Well, apparently not this time,” he says plainly. “Okay, Tom, have a nice life.” Mikey gestures to the door of the limo.

I don't budge. “Listen, you demented fuck. Why don't you just make it clear what you're playing at.”

Mikey leans forward, his eyes adopting a cold menace. “You're going to leave here tonight safely, as promised. It doesn't matter to me what you do next because you won't see me again. You will go about your life and I will go about mine. You and your girl might get married, you might not. But that baby you knew nothing about until I told you, will continue to develop inside your Ivy. You'll care for her and it, and the months will go by. Four months, five months, six months, seven months. Your girl will lose that slim figure as that baby grows inside her like a tended watermelon. You take her for doctor visits, watch as the fingers and toes develop, as it changes from a tiny fish-like blob into an actual person. You'll feel it kick by placing your hand on her belly. The baby will make Ivy crave strange things at odd hours—pickles, ice cream, sardines. But you'll get them for her because she's carrying
your
kid inside her—the miracle of life. And one day, you'll realize that you care about that kid because it's something that you've nurtured, something that you've watched grow and form. And it's about that point that Ivy will have an accident. Nothing too serious, a tumble down some stairs maybe. Ivy will be fine for the most part, but that fall will land her right on her pretty, fat belly. And that will be enough. She'll say that she was pushed or that someone fell into her, but there won't be anybody who can corroborate that. And life will go on for you and Ivy, only it will be just a little sadder, a little more empty. You might even try for another kid, eventually. But it won't ever be the same. And you'll always kind of wish you'd have signed that contract all those months ago. That's it.”

He leans back in his seat, smug, folding his hands across his lap.

Everything within me demands that I pull my gun and shoot Mikey multiple times. Keep firing until he is dead and his corpse is shredded from the close-range impact, to show him how much his money and power mean against a GLOCK 43, fired point-blank.
I will have to save one for Crozier too.

And yet, something in the moment stops me. There is something not quite right about all of this. I can't put my finger on it, but the realization of a bigger game at play stays my hand from going for the gun.
It's almost as if Mikey wants me to shoot him.
But that can't possibly be right. Even if he's wearing a bulletproof vest, he can't know if I will shoot him in the head—and I absolutely would. I don't like the sinking feeling in my gut that I am somehow being manipulated. Instead, I take a deep breath and retrieve the contract from the floor. “Got a pen?”

Ivy and I take a cab back to Burbank. She's agreed to my rule that we don't talk until we're home. But now we're both sitting in the back of a dingy yellow cab, pissed off. I have my reasons to be mad, she is only angry because I'm angry and she doesn't want to feel left out.

When we reach the curb, where hours earlier we were so much happier, I take her hand, caressing it lightly with my other. She's not sure how to act now. She thought my anger was directed at her and so she stands there aloof.

“Do you have something you want to tell me?” I try.

“I left my mask in the cab,” she admits, sad.

I shake my head and decide to take a different tack. “How come you didn't tell me you were pregnant?”

“How do you know that?” she asks, astounded, and shakes her hand loose to put it to her mouth.

“ ‘How come I didn't know that before now?' is the real question.”

“I was going to tell you…that night at the cafe…but…”

“But I was an asshole.”

“It doesn't matter anyway, Tom. I'm going to have an abortion.”

“What?”

“We're not parents. You said so yourself, once upon a time. We can't raise a child. We're too fucked up. And…I thought you'd want that.”

“Why would I want you to get an abortion?” I ask just as a straggling band of teenagers in Halloween costumes walks by. My words make them move faster up the sidewalk, away from us. “You didn't even think you could get pregnant!”

“We're all alone, you and I. No friends, no family. Just us. I was going to wait until I met your parents…I was hoping you were wrong about them…I wanted to give it a chance.”

“You let my parents factor into this?”

“I don't know…I just…wanted to believe in something good. I wanted to believe we wouldn't be alone with this.”

I take her hand again, and then grab the other one as well. “Look, I don't know what to say right now. You know I'm not good with the emotional stuff. Let's not have any abortions right now, okay? We've got some other hurdles to deal with. Just stay pregnant for now, okay?”

She's teared up and her heavy mascara isn't doing her eyes any favors. “What sort of hurdles?”

“Stay out here for a bit, okay? There's something in the apartment I want to look at real quick, okay?”

“That doesn't sound good,” she says, choking back sobs.

“It probably isn't,” I agree.

I jog quickly to the door of our apartment, kicking the empty candy bowl into the shrub beside the doorway as I do. Considering I never discussed anything of the sort with Mikey or Ramen or anyone else, Mikey has to have a different means of knowing that I knew nothing about the baby.

Inside, the apartment looks just as we left it. I head straight back to the bedroom though, knowing I will find something that answers my suspicions. I start with the bed. Running my fingers along the sideboards, I search out the small metallic components of an electronic surveillance device. Sliding my hand between the overhang and the wall, the probing of my fingertips is stopped midway across by the presence of something boxy and foreign. It feels coldly metallic, so I grip the object and yank it loose. I've never looked upon a surveillance bug in person before, but it's bigger than I expect, roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes and adhesive on its backside. “It feels good to be home,” I say, and a red LED beams on, picking up my transmission. It's voice activated and looks expensive. But is it the only one in the house?

Taking it to the bathroom, I toss it in the sink and turn the water on. Invading the innards of the gadget, the water shorts out the circuit board with a crackling buzz and the red light flashes on briefly at the noise only to die out with the rest of its parts.

Where else would they stash one though? And would they all be as big as this one?
I walk back through the living room scoping out the visible surfaces for anything that seems out of place. It all appears status quo, but that only means that Mikey's goons didn't stash it somewhere obvious.

In the kitchen, something else catches my eye: on the dining room table, a wrapped gift sits in a square box like it contains a mixer or a bowling ball. Sinister red wrapping paper with a black bow: Mikey's colors.
At least it isn't another dead body
, I think.
Too small
. A small tag attached to the bow reads only one word—
FRAGILE
.

I tear the paper from the box, and something inside thumps from side to side with the motion. It's not heavy, but it's not weightless either. Sliding the top from the black box, I find a gleaming white human skull, small and female, resting inside. I'm reluctant to touch it, but there is a note tucked beside it.

Setting the skull on the table, I lift the unsigned note to read: Congrats on a successful business deal. Here's the first skull in your own collection. P.S. Your starter skull should be an important one. And what skull could be more important than your first kill?

My stomach drops as I realize:
It's Holly Kelly's skull
.

Ivy's eyes go wide when she sees the skull. “Did you have to put it on the table we eat on?”

“Oh, calm down, that's the least of our problems right now,” I snap. “Can you get your boss out here to sweep for other bugs? I don't trust that there is only one.”

“Bugs?!” she exclaims, horrified.

“Electronic bugs. Surveillance stuff.”

“I know what you meant,” she snaps, but the way she says it, I can tell she didn't.

“I found one in the bedroom, but there could be others.”

“You mean someone was listening to us have sex?”

“Don't worry, I'm sure they are very impressed by the little chipmunk noises you make right as you're about to come.”

“Ugh. I feel…not violated exactly, but, well, maybe ‘violated' is the right word? Yeah, violated. I'll call Don right now.”

“Good,” I say, staring at the skull of Holly Kelly sitting beneath the bright kitchen light. I take my car keys up from the table.

“You're leaving?” she asks, not taking her eyes from the child's head on our table. To be fair though, I haven't either as an idea has formed in my brain.

“You hang here and deal with your boss, I am going to run out.”

“Where are you going?”

“There's a few things that don't add up with this whole Mikey Echo mess. I'm going to go check them out.”

“Be careful,” she says.

“Always,” I say, flippant.

“No, I really mean it. Be careful.” She strokes my cheek.

“I will,” I promise, more serious.

“And get that creepy thing out of here,” she demands, switching tones.

Running out in the Charger, I take Cahuenga up over the Santa Monica Mountains, my car racing through the warm night air toward Hollywood. The little kids have all gone in for the night, now it's the adults' turn to take over the holiday. I do take Holly's skull with me, back in its box, and in the trunk—it isn't something that I want to get caught driving around with, but Ivy doesn't want it in the apartment, and I don't feel like letting Don Tart know any more than he has to.

Hollywood will be insanity tonight, but I want answers and I don't know what Mikey's got in store for me. Mikey, Crozier, Ramen—they should all still be at the premiere. I didn't feel like sticking around after I'd signed the contract and Ivy hadn't put up too much of a fuss now that she was off drinking for the next nine or so months.

Could I be a dad?
I wonder.
What kind of life could I give another person?
A better one than my dad gave me, that's for sure. I would hardly have to try to succeed in that department.

The traffic into the city slows me to a crawl once I reach the Hollywood Bowl on Highland. Partiers are running out through the stopped cars, some exiting vehicles and heading forward on foot, abandoning their drivers to the traffic. Others mob the sidewalks on foot, heading to and from the big crazy scene that is no doubt Halloween in Hollywood.

A brunette girl dressed as a sports referee in knee-high striped socks and short shorts walking with her friends turns and pulls up her top to flash me. Her tits are big and stiff looking with stretched-out dark brown areolas and they don't jiggle when they fall out of her top.
Forget Crozier, the real butcher in this town is whoever jammed the water balloons under her skin,
I smirk. When I don't hoot or honk my horn in enthusiastic appreciation, she gets miffed and spits on my car's hood. I gesture now, annoyed, but she is already off, catching up with her friends, too drunk to notice.
Maybe I should have waited until tomorrow
, I think.

I hit Franklin and hang a right, cutting over to La Brea, ditching the heaviest of the Hollywood-bound traffic. Ramen said that the paparazzo who was always hassling them,
Steve Simon
,
he said his name was
, could be found hanging out around the clubs on Sunset. Steve was maybe the perfect guy to answer a few of my nagging questions.

Coming up on West Sunset, I see the scope of the party taking place. Spilling out of every club and bar, the sidewalks are alive with costumed partiers. Bouncers and police are working to maintain order, but it is too lively, too raucous by now for them to do anything but corral the wildest of the drunks. There's an organized Carnival party over on the west side of Hollywood, but these people either didn't get the memo or don't care. Police are in riot gear, using their plastic shields to keep the crowds from spilling out into the street and risk getting run over. Up ahead, a fire truck and ambulance have taken over the far right lane and are carrying a girl out of a bar on a stretcher, yelling for people to “make a hole.” A girl sets her half-full beer on the stretcher, not realizing, and when she turns back, it is gone. A man walks past me, his entire costume only a hot dog bun wrapped around his penis, complete with ketchup and mustard. A cop yells from the sidewalk at the man, but he keeps walking, and the cop, already overworked, lets him go. I make my way over to the right lane, forcing my way in front of a car full of face-painted ghouls in baseball uniforms. Two of them clamber out the side windows to grip the rooftop, wielding Louisville Slugger baseball bats and yelling at me to go fuck myself. They have to move anyway because of the ambulance blocking their lane and so the altercation ends there. I see a few paparazzi, not in costume, clustered around the entryway of a place called Katana Robata. I send my window down and yell out to them through the passing crowd.

“Hey, you know where I can find Steve Simon?” I ask when there's a small break in passersby.

“He's at 1 OAK,” one of them yells back, gesturing farther west.

“No stopping!” One of the riot-gear-clad cops is suddenly at the front of my car and gives my hood a tap with his baton. I gesture to him too, irritated at the further abuse on my ride. “Keep moving,” he yells, but does not hit my car again. Annoyed, I force my way back into the moving lane and continue on westward, deeper into the Sunset Strip. “1 OAK,” I repeat, pulling out my phone to map it.

It takes almost half an hour for me to drive the less than a mile of road between the two restaurants. I pull up in front, attempting to leave enough room for the cars to slide around me. The valets are already declining me based on my car. “No more valet,” one of them yells.

“Steve Simon,” I yell out of my lowered passenger window.

“You the one looking for me?” the bald man asks, stepping forward from the group.

“How did you know that?”

“One of my hombres phoned me someone was heading my way. We look out for our own. Mostly.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I yell.

“You got beef?” he asks, suddenly menacing.

“No, just questions I need answered.”

“Get lost!” he yells and turns back toward the club.

I grab cash from my wallet. “One hundred bucks for you to take a ride with me.”

“Hah, and miss out on a potential big-money shot? Not worth it.”

“Okay, two hundred and…thirty dollars,” I say, quickly counting what I have left in my wallet.

“Sonofa…” he mutters and then says to the man next to him, “Jerry, take my camera. Anything happens, don't fuck me.”

The pap next to him dutifully accepts the monster piece of equipment. Steve runs up to my car and climbs in. “You got until the traffic starts moving,” he warns as he pockets the cash. “Don't fuck me, Jerry!” he yells back to the guy on the sidewalk. “I've seen you before,” he says, studying me quickly, but not quite placing it. “I got a thing for faces. It's kinda my gig,” he adds.

“What do you know about Mikey Echo?”

“Echo Junior? Hah, he's what we call a ball stain. Hangs off his daddy's testicles to make movies. He's got a bullshit thing across town tonight. Waste of my fucking time. He'd be kind of a laughingstock if he wasn't so dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Nothing too concrete, but he tends to wreak havoc with people he don't like. Or so the gossip goes. The paparazzi and the makeup girls know all the best gossip. All his power comes through his daddy though.”

The traffic begins to accelerate ahead of me. “Hope it was worth it, bud,” Steve says, opening the car door.

“Last question,” I beg, not moving with the flow of traffic, which results in instant and angry horns. “What does Mikey Echo look like?”

“You've heard of Google, yeah?” he asks, annoyed.

“It's the two-hundred-dollar question,” I persist.

Steve, outside the car now, puts his hand out forcefully to momentarily quell the blaring horns. “That's where I know you from!” he realizes, leaning back in to glance at my face. “You were in his Ferrari last week when he flipped us the bird. Lately he's running all over town with this bit actor, Bill Amos, but last week it was you in the car.”

“Let me get this straight,” I say, incredulous. “Mikey Echo is an Indian guy?” The horns start up with more intensity now and cars are starting to cut around me.

Steve slams the door, shaking his head, now thoroughly confused. And with a parting shot yells, “Yeah, the fucking Indian,” and then runs back to the pack.

“Fuck,” I exclaim and stomp the gas pedal to blast forward, feeling betrayed, feeling stupid and naive. Driving hard now, I take the first major street that will get me out of Hollywood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I scream.
I should have known. I should have trusted my instincts
.
But what did it all mean?
Why the games?
That was a question only Mikey Echo—the real one—could answer.

I get home just in time to find Don Tart, private investigator, finishing up his sweep of the house, headphones on and a device scanning the walls. Ivy is asleep on the couch; as usual she has stolen one of my T-shirts to sleep in. I head to the bathroom to piss. Two more electronic bugs, much smaller in size, have joined the first receiver in the bathroom sink. “Where?” I ask Don when I return.

“Living room and kitchen. Those little bastards are SOTA—state of the art—pretty much the best you can get.” He nods, impressed. “They could pick up a moth fart. Someone really wanted to know your business.”

“So I'm learning.”

“Mikey Echo?” Don guesses.

I nod.

“Well, rest of the house is clear,” he says, putting a handheld scanner into a small leather satchel.

“What's the damage?”

“Ah,” he says, getting a little embarrassed. “No charge. Ivy's special to me. Just treat her good is all I ask. And maybe give her one for me later—make her call you Don sometime.” He winks.

“Will do.” I smile, indulging the letch. “Hey, before you go, do you know the name ‘Bill Amos'?”

“No, can't say as I do,” he says, mulling it over.

“Worth a shot.” I shrug.

“Look, Tom. From what I'm seeing tonight, I'd say you're dead-center in a spider's web. And with this particular spider, he's clearly got a hell of an appetite. My advice to you: get the hell out of Hollywood. Or squish the spider.”

“I'll remember that,” I promise.

“This town just has a way of eating good people,” he says softly, betraying that he might have some skeletons of his own.

“Hey, just so you know,” I tell him quickly, at the door. “So someone knows in case this all goes south; Esteban Morales is dead. They sent him and his car over the side of Mulholland.”

“The ol' ‘Mulholland Falls' treatment, eh? Yeah, there are more than a few unsolved cases in this town that seem to point down that way. Okay, I'll quietly let the family know they can stop looking,” he says, reaching out to shake my hand. “And Tom? Since you don't strike me as the running type, get him before he gets you.”

With the “Mikey Echo” name a dead end on Google, near as I can tell, I instead concentrate on researching “Bill Amos.” Instantly, I strike pay dirt. The man I have been talking to all this time in the guise of Mikey Echo, is instead a bisexual actor working in seemingly low-budget films. His IMDb list of credits reads like a series of titles you might find in a bargain bin at a drugstore.

Switching over to YouTube, I type his name in there and find several clips of the actor. One of the videos, labeled “Bill Amos Sizzle Reel” and listed on his personal page, seems to be a combination of his appearances. I click on it.

“Hi, I'm Bill Amos,” the actor announces, leaning up against the back of a sofa and looking confident, but outfitted in far less expensive clothing than I'm accustomed to seeing him in. “I have my SAG-AFTRA card and have done several films, a TV pilot, and some commercials. I can play an age range from sixteen to forty and can sing, dance, and juggle. I can do German, Italian, and Russian accents and some stunt work. Here are a few of my clips; I hope you consider using me in your next project.”

My skin tingles as I watch him in clip after clip, embodying a lawyer, a teacher, a Russian cop, a space renegade. The role of Mikey Echo is by far his best, and it will probably never make the Sizzle Reel. Then again, with a powerful Hollywood buddy like Mikey Echo backing him, he likely doesn't have much auditioning to worry about anymore.

I debate whether or not to let Ramen know the game is up. “Ramen.” I don't even know what to call him now. Ultimately, I decide to keep quiet and go from there. For once, I might just have the upper hand.