A Good-Looking Corpse (21 page)

My text from Coco comes right after I walk in the apartment door. I wonder what he can possibly threaten me with, he's already promised me my death. Opening my messages, I see he's sent a picture. I click on it and find an image of the two boys, his guards, the stacks of money clenched between their teeth and wretched scorched holes where their eyes used to be. I can practically smell the cooked flesh from the disturbing sight through my phone. Whether they are dead or not, I can't tell.
They did not use their eyes and so they lost them
, the message with the picture reads. A second text message arrives. It says, simply:
You did not use your head.

I know I told the boys to run, but a chill runs through me regardless.

I wait a moment before I respond, checking the fridge for possible dinner options. It would be nice to actually make something for Ivy for a change, considering I'm home first. She's a big believer in buying everything that will fit in the cart when she goes to the store, so picking through the assortment of foods in various states of decomposition is tricky. Her fridge habits are just as messy as the rest of her life.
Fuck it
. I close the fridge.
We're going out. Date night.
Besides, it might well be our last.

Enough of a buffer has passed without any further messages from Coco, so I text back,
Mikey Echo sends his regards.
I am not the texting sort and so the message takes time and this fucking autocorrect function keeps changing “Mikey” to “microwave,” which would defeat the purpose of my plan. Finally, I'm able to spell everything correctly and hit send. A thrill pulses through me, wondering if this will all work. Almost immediately I get a text back, a single question mark.

Now for the sell. I send Coco the pic of Mikey wearing Coco's necklace and holding his gun. Without context, Mikey looks almost menacing in the photo.

The puppet master,
I type.
If you want your shit back, bring everyone you've got. Tomorrow. 7:05 p.m. 100 N. Carolwood Dr. Holmby Hills. I'll leave the gate open for you.

What's in it for you?
he types back.

Forget you ever knew me.

If you're there, you die like the rest
, Coco texts.
Otherwise, stay out of my way going forward and I'll forget we ever had a beef.

Fair enough
, I send back. It really is the best deal I could hope for, but it does give me a small window in which to operate. And no room for failure.

Ivy doesn't want a fancy dinner. “Too gloomy,” she protests, even though I remind her that gloom might be in order considering the potential for everything to go completely ass up tomorrow. Finally we settle on Pink's, a little hot-dog place down in Hollywood on La Brea.

“I want to wander,” she says. “But I also want to eat.”

Getting our dogs, we head south down to Melrose on foot. Her dog is completely overstuffed, of course, and begins falling apart as soon as she bites in. “Goddamn, that's good,” she says, smiling with her mouth full and her face a mess of mustard, ketchup, and relish. I offer her a napkin, but she wants no part of it. “Eating for two now,” she says, and uses her finger like a push broom to slick the runoff into her smacking lips.

“You already eat for two. This is more like two-and-a-half.” I shrug and pocket the napkin.

Wandering past the head shops, bodegas, and hipster boutiques, we hold one another's free hand and look up at the crescent moon together. “We've been through a lot, you and me,” Ivy says.

“That feels like a loaded statement,” I say, anticipating some larger point.

“Aww, I thought I was being casual.” She laughs.

“You have the subtlety of a car bomb,” I remind her, smiling a little.

“Well, you have the niceness of a…car bomb,” she declares right back, proud of herself.

“I can accept that.” I nod. “So what's the thought that you've got rolling around in there, marblehead?”

“I was just gonna say I can't imagine being without you. You and me, we're partners in crime.”

“And?”

“And I want to be there with you tomorrow. If you go down, I want to be right there, going down too.”

“I see,” I say evenly. There's a trash can beside me, so I set my uneaten dog, still wrapped in foil, down atop the lid. Hopefully some homeless person with a bigger appetite than I have will get a meal out of it. “You know, you're the only person in this world who I care about, right?”

“I'm practically the only person you know, so that's only sort of the compliment you intend it to be,” she points out. “But thank you, sweetie.” She leans in to kiss me, mustard still staining the lines in her lips—and now staining my lips too.

“That's why I can't have you there,” I say, finishing my thought. “If I die, so what. If we both die, so what. But if you died and I lived…”

“So what, right? You get another tramp, another fucked-up chick to give you head in the Target parking lot.”

“I've got to learn to be nicer to you,” I admit. “You're starting to anticipate mean comments even when they aren't coming. You're too good a person to be like me.”

“What were you really going to say then?” she asks, still not quite believing.

“I was going to say, if you died and I lived, there'd be no one I loved left alive. And that's too bleak a thought, even for me.”

“You love me?” she asks, squinting, her mouth still stained. “Really?”

“Whatever this is, this feeling I have for you…I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I've never felt it before—about anything, except you. So what else could it be?”

“Lust.” She laughs and it turns into a burp. “Welp, killed the romance there.” She smiles, knowing she did nothing of the kind.

We stop in front of a tattoo parlor. “Want me to get ‘Ivy' tattooed on my heart or something?” I ask. “Will that prove it to you?”

She smiles. “That reminds me of a joke. Wanna hear it?”

“That's what's gonna kill the romance—whatever joke you think you know,” I warn.

“No.” She grins. “I do know this one. So this girl's boyfriend is always telling her what a beautiful butt she has. And it is, it's a great one—really round and perky.”

“Is this a joke or do you want me to notice your ass more?”

“Hold on, wiseass,” she says. “So the girl, she secretly goes down to the tattoo parlor and she says to the tattoo guy, she says, ‘I want a big letter B on each of my butt cheeks—for beautiful butt.' And the tattoo artist does it. So that night she goes home and he's lying in bed and she goes over to him, turns around, and bends over to drop her panties and show him. And her boyfriend looks at it and says, ‘Wow, that's great…but who the heck is BOB?' ”

“Hah,” I laugh, genuinely impressed. “That's actually a good one and you told it perfectly.”

“Because of the butthole, you see,” Ivy explains, proud of herself. “The butthole makes the ‘O.' ”

“Oh, thank you,” I say but try not to be condescending. I'm having too good a moment with her to muck it up. “So do you want to get a ‘T' and an ‘M' tattooed on your beautiful butt, then?”

“No, I think we should just go home and I can show you it,” she says and then kisses me longer. I'm not one to argue.

There's a tender familiarity to our sex now, an understanding of our respective pleasure zones that has come from rigorous and often frenetic experimentation. The small of her back, her wrists, the bald, goosebumped flesh around her mound all ignite her, amplify her yearning. My fingers move gently in these areas, drawing soft moans as her teeth press into the plump exterior of her lip, biting controlled, exacting a hint of pain. Nipples aroused, pointing skyward, she begs me to caress them, but I ignore her pleas, concentrating instead on her vulva, sliding my fingers down along the hairless skin, lightly grazing her clit. She's begging for quick release, but I know her senses well enough to delay the easy climax in favor of a sustained and throbbing orgasm. Her hands, pressed into the mattress forcefully, now grasp at the sheets, bunching them in her fists as her moans grow more audible.

“Please,” she rasps, begging for me to continue, to dip my fingers inside her and explore the warmth emanating from her depths. My hand slides back up the length of her slit allowing my fingers to penetrate her, briefly, feeling her wetness, before I return to her hood, pressing upon it so my tongue can dart once, twice against her bud before engulfing it. My lips at work, it frees my hands to probe up the length of her body, fingers extended, encountering the extreme orbs of her surgically enhanced breasts.

“Thank you,” she whimpers, as her fists, still ensnared in the linens, begin a rhythm-less beat against the bed. Pressing my palms still upward against the taut skin, my fingers slide across the prickled flesh of her areolas, which encompass the circumference of her swollen nipples, locking them against my skin, pinching firmly as my thumbs explore the farther reaches of her heaving chest.

She's up now, her back arched like some grand overpass, forcing itself against the physics of possible movement. My tongue, moving through the soft skin of her folds, returns alertly to tease at her clitoris, sensation pulsing through her into me. Ivy comes then, against my tongue, her own mouth eliciting a guttural cry of release that sounds like a thousand words compacted into one frenzied neologistic exclamation.

Her cunt is overly sensitive now, and she guides me up to her, pulling my hair, kissing my face, tasting herself on me while she reaches down to grasp my cock and plunge it inside her. I go deep, deep as my own body will allow and rock Ivy upward until she's seated against me, her arms over mine, grasping at my shoulders and neck, drawing me close. The lovemaking forgotten now, she pounds down upon me repeatedly, forcing my throbbing erection to spasm against her contracting vagina, her primal urges willing my ejaculate to commingle with her own. Grasping her shoulders, my mouth slick with the tang of her, our tongues frantic, I explode at last, filling her with the warming secretions spilling out from my ensnared tool, oozing everything into the lubricated grip of her quivering gash. She too knows how to manipulate my baser senses.

Lying in bed, spent, sweat-soaked, and happy, Ivy is atop my torso, her fake tits a noticeable barrier between us. “I hope you didn't dent the baby,” she coos, happy.

“It's just a little nub at this point, I think it will be fine.”

She dwells on that for a moment and then expands on what's invaded her thoughts. “I don't want to think about what-ifs,” she says. “But what if you die, Tom? What will I do? I've got nothing—no money, no family, no friends. Part of your love for me is thinking about that bigger picture.”

“Sell what you can from the business and get out of this town,” I offer. “Go somewhere small and quiet. Have the baby, do what it takes. You're a survivor—not just Andy Sample, but your whole life, you've survived and did what it took to make the best of bad situations. You can do it again.”

“Why don't
we
do that instead? Forget Mikey Echo, forget this Lowrider gang. Let's you and me leave tonight. We can go to that small town together.”

I think about it then, closing my eyes and envisioning the two of us out on the road and then settling somewhere, raising a beautiful little girl. Or a boy, maybe. I could get some manual-labor job at a place that doesn't ask too many questions and then just live for the next forty or fifty years with Ivy.
It's odd—it's the kind of scene I could never imagine in the past
. I've only ever closed my eyes before and seen darkness. I open them now, slowly, not wanting to leave the pictures in my head behind. “I can't,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

“I can't let Mikey Echo survive. He's everything that's wrong with Los Angeles. And the people in this city, warped and miserable as they are, don't deserve to have him preying upon them.”

“You're not a superhero, Tom. He might be a super villain, but let him be somebody else's super villain.”

“No, not this time. I've never been a particularly good person, but I know I can be a better person. I don't have to be the one who pulls the trigger, but I'm the one who can stop him. I have to.”

“And if you can't?”

“One way or the other, we'll find that out tomorrow.” I reach over to turn off the bedside lamp. “Actually, there is something you can do for me tomorrow. I need a black light and some magnetic fingerprinting dust. Can you get them from your boss and bring them to me?”

“What for?”

“You wanted George Echo to know the truth about his son? I'm going to bring him his wife's head.”

My day is a countdown from the moment I awaken. I'm surprised when I sit up in bed, Ivy slumbering beside me, completely wrapped up in all of our blanket. I hadn't thought I'd be able to fall asleep last night but now, I feel oddly rested. Immediately alert, I glance at the clock on Ivy's nightstand. An excavated exoskeleton of a cookie package shrouds the digital numbers, but I surmise it's just after 6
A.M.
I'm twelve hours away from destroying the existence I've cobbled from the wreckage of my own bad choices.
Will I be alive to begin anew
, I wonder.

Restless, I dress and head out in my car west toward Hollywood, or the ocean maybe, and into the thickening traffic. Exiting short of wherever I thought I was headed, I turn north on the streets and drive up to North Hollywood, decidedly seeking out the physical locales of my old world. The streets feel haunted by the shade of advertising billboards with Mikey's movie eyes glaring down upon me, watching me. I pass my old apartment complex, its sallow facade still in need of a paint job it will likely never get. Whoever owns it now is just as neglectful as my old landlady was. Driving on, I cruise the length of the street that houses the Electric Candy Factory, the strip club where Ivy first came into my world. It looks lifeless without the neon magic of its operating hours, tragic even. I don't stop there either, but turn around in the lanes to drive past it once again, drawn like a moth, considering its place in my past.
Our past now
—mine and Ivy's—two strangers forever linked by biological circumstance. Regardless of how things turned out tonight, I will forever be a father. How much stranger can this strange world get?

As I drive, my mind wandering, I find myself outside the tall, square edifice of Cedars-Sinai, the hospital where my own father keeps an office. Or did, years ago, when I last talked to him…before my incarceration. It's a long time to stay at one location, nearly a decade, and I wonder if he still works there. He's not the sort to make drastic life changes, I think, and then correct myself, realizing that he abruptly severed his relationship with his only child. I'm tempted to park, to go hunting through the halls in search of him—to see his face and tell him he's going to have a grandchild. I want to show him that I'm more than a convicted killer. I've made something of my life. I might not have followed in his footsteps and become a doctor, but I'm happy—that should count for something. I wonder if his expression would change to one of surprise and delight or stay the same grim, calculated look of reined-in and uninterested acceptance that I remember from my childhood. I want to believe he'd be excited to see me—but I don't stop. He'd decided, years ago, that he and my mom would quit being my parents. I was a late-term abortion. And while they hadn't necessarily been wrong in their choice—after all, they'd let me live long enough to be a fuckup of my own design, it had cut me deeper than any prison yard shank. Like all the other worn-down landmarks of my past I've already observed, I just drive on past.

Out of sheer curiosity, I drive down to Third and Broadway, well into the depths of the Los Angeles city limits, to scope out what has become of my garage. As expected, the Sureño Lowriders have found me once again. A window, the bars pried free and left sitting in the parking lot amidst the broken glass, served as their entry point. They'd evidently come down expecting to chainsaw me into pieces because that's what they've done to the desks and shelving that they'd found inside. I unlock the door, picking up the crumpled “We've Moved” sign from among the broken glass. All the windows are busted out and they'd tagged the walls, but there is no real damage to the structure, meaning my landlord won't have too much to complain about. I begin cleaning up the scraps of my office—apparently cleaning is a sort of second-nature activity for me in stressful situations. It actually makes a lot of sense—hiding and obscuring seem to be my mode of dealing with problems in my personal and professional life. And really, the damage this time around isn't too bad. If I can escape with my life tonight, I'll be back in business.

I park my car down the block from Mikey's house just before 7
P.M.
, risking that it won't get towed. Holmby Hills's draconian parking laws are the least of my concerns. Donning a pair of my black latex gloves, I take the folded brown Gelson's bag from my front seat and unlock my trunk. As I walk back, my phone rings: Ivy.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“I'm safe,” she assures me. “I'm at Don's house. His guys are here too.”

“Good.” I'd asked her to go someplace where she wouldn't be found. Don's would do, I reckoned, though I'd hardly call her safe with her lecherous boss. “Alright, I'll call you when it's over.”

“Make sure you do,” she chides. “Even…even if it's to say goodbye, okay?”

“Okay,” I promise and hang up on her, not wanting to get into the love talk again. From the trunk, I produce the black duffel bag with the allotment of guns I'd taken from the Sureño Lowriders. I open the bag to ensure everything is there. It is. On top of the weapons, I add my own handgun. It is all or nothing at this point.
And if things go according to plan, Mikey and his crew will need the GLOCK more than me
.

Last, I set the folded grocery bag on top of the mix and take the bag. It's heavier than I remember. I leave my car and make the walk up the street to Mikey's gates.

Mikey's cameras point only at the entryway, so everything beyond them is fair game. This includes the tall iron gates that open beyond the reach of the security cameras' vision. And without guards walking the perimeter, the space directly inside his driveway affords me a perfect blind spot. I hit the button for the intercom and Mikey's butler greets me, either recognizing me or knowing to expect my presence. He doesn't even question my lack of vehicle. As the gates pull open, splitting down the middle, I walk forward through them, past the cameras and their unblinking eyes. Stopping inside, I set the bag down and remove the object from the paper bag inside: Holly Kelly's skull. Delicate with it, I support the mandible just like fake Mikey taught me to do. Waiting until the gates are fully open, I stuff the skull beneath the iron balusters at the bottom of the left arm. The skull wedges in perfectly, settling neatly between the bars and the concrete. I give it an extra push, making sure it's tight.
Sorry, Holly, I didn't want this gift, so I'm giving you back. Holly would if she could. Now she is
.

As the right side of the gate retracts, closing, the left side tries to match it, but the skull sticks. The gears grind, give up, and then try again to no avail. The left side of the gate stays open and the resulting space is easily large enough to drive a car through…and hopefully several cars will come through tonight.

I shed the gloves, careful to put them in my pocket, then pick up the duffel bag and resume my walk up to the house. Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower rings out seven times.

I only need knock once before the massive oak door is opened, the left, and Mikey's dreadlocked butler greets me with a slight nod of his head. I tote my bag inside, accidentally banging it off the right door. I hear an annoyed grunt from the butler after the dull, hard impact and note that he checks the paint on the front. I move on into the living room where Mikey is seated in a crimson velvet robe, pajamas, and holding a martini glass. He looks positively dapper, and excited to see me.

“So punctual,” he cries, elated and a little tipsy. “Good. I wish I'd told you to wear pajamas though. There's a party tonight at the Playboy Mansion that we're pre-gaming for.” He nods to Doug, his fat media confidant who is seated on the couch, in equally expensive silver pajamas. “Should be a good time. Hef though has really slowed down in his old age.”

“Sorry I'm missing it, I'm sure.” I set the duffel bag down.

“What's in the bag?” he asks.

“More gifts,” I promise.

“Good! I was just showing Doug the thing you got me.” Mikey fishes the eagle out from beneath his pajama top. “Too bad I can't bring the gun tonight,” he says and pulls it from the seat beside him, where he cocks it and leaves it on the table beside him, pointed at me as if in warning. “They're really a package deal.”

“I thought you didn't drink?” I nod to the martini glass, and sit in the chair opposite his.

“The other Mikey Echo didn't drink or do drugs or eat red meat or enjoy dogfighting—
this
Mikey Echo does. And he does a lot of all of them.” On cue, he drains his martini and extends the glass out to the maid, who is ready with a fresh one.

“Where's the tux?” he yells, clapping. “Bring the tux and the invite!” He tosses the bottle of aconite across to me and I one-hand it. I glance at the clear liquid inside, and slip the bottle in my pocket.

One of his thugs enters the room then and extends the bagged tux to me. I take it, standing, and lay it gently across the back of my chair. “Actually,” I say. “I think I've changed my mind.”

“What do you mean, Tom?” Mikey slurs from his chair.

“I really can't stay long, you've got an appointment. But I wanted to let you know in person I changed my mind and that I won't be killing your father. I just came to drop off some gifts.”

“I don't want gifts; I want you to stop thinking you've got a say in the matter.” He picks up the .50 caliber Desert Eagle and points it directly at me. His hand wavers from the alcohol.

In spite of the threat, I bend down for the bag, which I set on my former seat. “These gifts aren't for you, they're for your staff.”

“What's this?” Mikey says, confused and leaning forward in his chair to glimpse inside as I open the zipper.

“Guns. Lots of guns,” I say and lean the bag up to show him. “All loaded.”

“Haha, you son of a bitch,” Mikey laughs, feigning delight, but I can see the veiled anxiety in his eyes. “My staff won't turn against me, they're too well paid. Isn't that right, Arness?” Mikey asks his dreadlocked butler, who stares at the weapons and says nothing. Mikey's gun hand points in Arness's direction.

“Actually, these aren't to be used on you,” I say. “They're to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Mikey swings the gun back to me. “From what?”

“Well, as it turns out,” I say, stepping away from the guns and toward Mikey, looking down upon him. “That necklace and gun you're holding, they weren't mine to give. I took them from a dangerous man. And he really wants them back.”

Mikey looks suspiciously at the weapon in his hand. “What are you talking about, Tom?” He laughs again, less certain this time.

“I shared your picture with the actual owner of that gun. And the necklace. He wants them back and in exchange for my life, I told him I'd help him get them.”

“You did what?”

“He's actually coming here tonight and bringing some friends. They should be here any second,” I say, confirming the time on my watch. “I was hoping to be gone by now, but well, I'm stuck here with you.”

“They won't get past my gate,” Mikey retorts.

“Oh, I left it open for them.” I shrug. “You taught me about John Holmes, remember? The death tour?”

“You didn't,” he says, his brown skin paling.

The sound of heavy bass interrupts the otherwise quiet air of the neighborhood as Coco and his crew arrive on Carolwood.
Right on time
.

“I did.” I offer up a small smile now. “And it looks like they've arrived. So punctual, as you say.” The bass grows louder as a succession of cars creep up the driveway. “Don't you hate when the poor think they're rich?”

Headlights flash across the tops of the windows as the cars pull up to the house. Mikey is up now, drink spilled and forgotten, gun in hand. His staff too, the hardened criminals, are at the windows, peering out. Doug lets out a terrified moan and flops down from the sofa to the ground, apparently hiding.

“Make them go away, Tom,” Mikey begs of me. “Call them off.”

“I almost wish I could,” I promise Mikey. “They're here to kill me too. We're sort of a package deal, you might say.”

The music cuts off and I hear doors open. I stand, calm.

“You're fucking crazy, Tom!” Mikey squeals, uncertain.

“I wonder what Crozier would have done if he were here?” I say, a thin smile spreading helplessly across my lips. “You want to be a real thug, Mikey? Here's your chance.”

The remaining house staff is gathered in the living room now, all of them at the windows with Arness and the maid, watching.

“Your help might surrender to them, maybe they'll get to live, maybe they won't. But you?” I warn. “You accidentally disrespected Coco. He'll want your skull. Maybe he'll start his own collection?”

“Get the guns, everybody. They can't have my house.”

Arness looks out the windows, considering, and then toward the guns. “Fuck this,” he mumbles. “Them's Sureño Lowriders. I know a grip of them fools from back in lockup. I'll take my chances they don't want my ass.” The others nod and move toward the door.

“Cocksuckers,” Mikey screams. “They'll kill you all.”

Arness is already moving out the door though, into the glow of headlights, his hands up. “No!” Mikey is screaming, pointing the gun at them to no avail. “Stop leaving!”

As Mikey is distracted, I choose my moment and bolt from the room. I head to the stairwell to the basement and secure the door behind me. It's a sturdy thing and the one below it, even more so. Gunshots cut the air. Loud ones. They sound like they're coming from inside the house. Down at the steel door, I lock myself into Mikey's fighting pit from the inside. It will take considerably more than a firearm for someone to break in here.