Stiffed (4 page)

‘I’ve just had a shower and change
d my clothes,’ I try.

‘You’re going through his pockets not rubbing yourself against his head,’ Jason says unhelpfully.

‘In which case, you can do it.’

‘It’s your body, man.’

‘We’re going in circles,’ Annabelle says.  ‘Jesus, Tadhg, find a backbone.  Get a pair of scissors and cut round the sheet leaving the top bit over his head.’

I
don’t feel well.  Who cares who Junior is?  We should just dump the bodies and let the police identify him. They can deal with Barry White as well. 

Jason hunts
through an old kitchen dresser.  He turns and hands me a rusty pair of scissors.

Damn. 
I’m really going to have to do this.

I take a couple of steps forward and glance back.

Annabelle and Jason wave me on.

I shuffle up to
Junior, place the scissors against the fabric at waist height.

I
’m not faking this; I really don’t feel well.  In addition to my fragile, hung-over state, I’m not designed for this kind of thing.  If we had to kill and prepare our own food I’d be a vegetarian.  Somehow, an hour or so ago, I’d managed to wrap Junior up and scrub his brains from the wall.  Now, I can’t even cut a sheet that’s covering his clothes.  Some people might think I’m some kind of wimp, but if they had to unwrap a dead body I bet most would blanche, and a sizable chunk would refuse to do it, even if they’d been the one to wrap the body up in the first place.  It’s damn creepy however you look at it.

The world starts to spin.

I flail out trying to find something stable to hold onto, my legs feeling weak.

Then I’m falling and something is falling with me.
  Then dozens of things are falling.

I crash to the floor and
Junior lands on top of me, head-butting the bridge of my nose, knocking me half senseless.  A ski somehow seems to have come between us.  We lay like that, Junior’s cheek resting against mine; bloodstained sheet against freckled skin.  Inside I’m screaming like an Edward Munch painting.

FFFUUUCCCCKKKKKKKKK!

‘Fuckwit,’ Jason says.  ‘Are you trying to wake up the whole neighborhood?’

I do
n’t seem able to answer.  I’m too busy hyperventilating.  And trying to retain my sanity, the voice in my head still screaming:

FFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK!

Whatever the hell Marino or Barry White wanted, they can have it.  They can have the whole damn house.  I don’t care.  What I should have done was the sensible thing. 

Disappeared.
 

Forever.

‘Hey, man, it looks like Junior’s fucking you,’ Jason says.

First
it looks like I’m fucking Marino, now Junior’s fucking me.  How much worse can this get?

‘Have you got a camera on your cell phone?’ Jason asks Annabelle.

FFFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!

2

If you are going to walk on thin ice you might as well dance

Whilst I tried to reassemble my dignity by sulking, Annabelle’s solution to Junior’s wallet problem was to pat him down and then to only cut out an opening in his body-wrap large enough to retrieve whatever he was carrying.  We’re now in possession of a wallet, an iPhone, a set of keys, and a handgun.

The wallet contains sixty three dollars in cash,
a bunch of receipts, and a driver’s license that reveals that Junior is Ronald Carter Jnr who lived in an apartment complex on A Street, Boston.  As for what kind of neighborhood it is, I can’t say.  If Junior’s living there it probably isn’t great.  If it’s Barry White’s neighborhood it probably fits every urban dystopian stereotype one can think of, though the scary dude was driving a Lexus.  Who knows?  Suffice to say, they’re from the big, bad city.

The iP
hone needs a four digit code to access its functionality, which renders it inert for now.  The handgun is a Kimber Raptor.  It has a stainless steel body and a wooden clad handle.  I wouldn’t know a Kimber Raptor from any other gun.  To me they are all just gun-shaped and fire bullets.  I have no use for one and I never want to use one. 

Frankly, it being in our possession makes me nervous.
  More nervous than I already am and I’m well up whatever scale they measure nerves by.  The sphincter scale, probably.  I’m at the ‘insides writhing, buttocks clenched’ level. Guns and bad things happening go hand in hand.  Or at least hand in hand of whoever is holding one.

Annabelle and I
have left Jason in his basement with a set of tasks: find out more about Carter; discover a way into his iPhone; and organize a vehicle suitable for getting rid of Marino, Junior and my blood stained mattress.

The first two
tasks should be relatively straightforward.  The big man spends most of his day messing about on the Internet, or fiddling about with bits of computer equipment or gadgets, or programming code for a company in California that he freelances for, or playing World of Warcraft, which he does for hours on end. 

He’s connected to the whole world, but spends the majority of his time staring at two screens in his basement
, hammering at a keyboard.  Fit fingers, fat everything else.  The main thing is, he’s a friend, he’s trustworthy and he’s now bound into this mess whether he likes it or not. 

The street is quiet.  That eerie calm before the day breaks and people scurry out from their homes into their cars and head for
a day of making ends meet.  The neighborhood is part of an inner suburb of Folk Victorian units built in the 1920s to cater for an emerging middle class that then almost got wiped out by the depression that followed.  Each house is a slightly different design and is set near to the road, with a front porch and a slither of front garden, and separated by enough space to get a car between to access back garages. 

Number 67
looks fine except for the broken pane in the front door and the need for a fresh lick of paint.  Kate’s Carrick Crusaders cap is on the front porch.  I pick it up, widen the strap and put it on.  Kate rarely left the house without it.  Baseball was one of the few things on which we just about always agreed and we barely missed a game at Spring Stadium - buckets of popcorn, 16 ounce beers, chili hotdogs and the occasional home run. 

I
open the door and stand in the hallway. 

Nothing but silence
. 

And no sign that Marino had tumbled down the stairs or Junior’s brains had been splattered across the wall. 

To the untrained eye at least.

‘
Come on, let’s get started,’ Annabelle says, brushing past me, heading for the kitchen.

I duck into the front room and
glance around.  The clock above the fire place reveals the time to be 5.35am.  The day is barely a few hours old, yet it already seems to have lasted a lifetime.

‘Tadhg!’

‘Yeah?’

‘You better get in here.’

‘Now what?’ I mutter to myself.

Annabelle has her foot on the pedal that opens the large metal waste bin. 
Under the raised lid a blood stained shirt is clearly visible.

‘I think
we now know what happened to Marino’s clothes.’

‘Shit!’

‘We need to go through the pockets.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Get a spine, Tadhg.  You’re in freefall on the manliness scale.’

‘I was barely on the manliness scale.’

‘You managed to bash Psycho-Bitch over the head and drag her into your cave.  Mind you, she was so easy she probably hit herself over the head and fell with her legs wide open.’

‘Miiiaaaoooowww
www!  It sounds like somebody’s jealous.’

‘Of P
sycho-Bitch?  You’re joking, right?  When God was distributing hormones and insecurity he gave her a triple shot.  She’s more unstable than nitroglycerine.  Calm one minute, a quick shake and she explodes.  Don’t be under any illusions, Tadhg.  You try and hit me over the head and drag me in here and I’ll cut off your balls and make you wear them as earrings.’

Nice.  Who’d have guessed that Annabelle Levy, Master Choc
olatier, was a raving feminist?  If she ever deigned anyone a first date it would probably start with the poor bastard signing a contract of acceptable conduct.  Given that neither Jason nor I are paragons of good virtue and political correctness, heaven knows why she hangs out with us.  I’d like to think we’re the best of bad bunch, but I suspect it is inertia, habit and we’re easy to handle. 

Plus Jason is her number one custo
mer.  He eats enough chocolate to keep the Easter Bunny working overtime.

‘Tadhg?
  Backbone.’

At least the clothes are not still wrapped round a body stiff with rigor mortis. 
I step forward and shove my hands into the bin, lifting the shirt and a light grey suit free and dumping them on the floor, trying to avoid contact with my favorite t-shirt.  It’s faded green, adorned with the slogan: ‘If you’re uncertain whether you have any Irish in you, I can guarantee it.’

It’s yet to lead to
a date.  Or even a sniff of a date.   

Which is too bad,
as I have a lot of Irish with which to satisfy demand.

In my dreams.

Perhaps not even there.  Less there be any confusion, Marino died pure Italian.

The point is:
I really would like to avoid having to burn the shirt along with the others.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Anna says sarcastically.

At the bottom of the bin I can see a couple of other items and the heel of a shoe.  Just as I reach down to lift them free a loud male voice booms, ‘Hello,’ from the hallway.

I have a damn good go at
trying to leap out of my skin.

‘Hello?  Is anybody home?’

‘Shit,’ I whisper harshly, bending down to grab the clothes.

Annabelle flips up the lid with her foot and I shove them down, the legs of the suit flopping down over the rim.

‘Hello?’

I stuff the
stray trouser legs into the bin.

‘Who is it?’ Annabelle says, shuffling towards the backdoor.

‘Anna!’ I hiss. 

Is she mad?  What if it’s whoever killed Marino?
  We should have just snuck silently into the garden and headed for the Canadian border.

‘It’s the police, ma
’am.’

‘Shirt,’ Anna hisses at me.

‘What?’

‘Shirt!’
She’s pointing at my chest.

I glance down.  It’s covered in rust colored stains.

‘What the ...’

‘Get it off,’ she instruct
s.   

I whip the shirt off,
knocking the cap to the floor, just as Sergeant Joe Gerlach pushes open the door with his toe, both hands clasped round a pistol.  I’ve no idea what kind.  A big one. 

Fuck.
 

I glance down at the bin.

He follows my gaze.

My heart
attempts to jump out of my mouth.  I reach down and pick up the cap, hoping to divert his attention.

I’ve known Joe
Gerlach since I moved back to Carrick Springs five years ago, a few weeks after my parents perished on a mountain road fifty miles out of Denver.  He’s tall, broad and blond and doubles up as the police spokesperson.  He’s a teddy bear until he has a few drinks, then he mutates into a grizzly.

I feel completely ridiculous standing bare-chested, my t-shirt wrapped round my bloodstained arms.

Annabelle has twisted her skirt out of shape.

‘You’ve had a break-in,
’ Gerlach states, lowering the pistol.  ‘A neighbor reported the broken pane in the door.’

‘We were just tidying up,’ Anna says.  ‘Nothing seems to have been taken, so it didn’t seem worth reporting.’

His face creases in a puzzled frown as if something isn’t quite right.  ‘Are you two … like … you know,’ he moves his pistol between us with one hand.

‘Well …’ Anna smiles coyly.

‘Damn, really?  Tad and the Ice Cream Queen.  Wow!’

I shrug my shoulders, but m
ake no move to put the shirt back on.

‘What hap
pened to … you know …’

‘
Kate?’

‘
Yeah, Kate.’ 

‘She left.’

Gerlach nods his head as if that makes perfect sense.  As if every woman is destined to leave me.  Perhaps they are.

‘I thought
… well, I thought she might settle down with you.  I guess not.  What happened to your head?’ He asks, pointing with his pistol.  I wish he’d use his free hand.

Shit.  What
did happen to my head? 

In big white
lie land, not reality. 

My mind’s gone blank.
  ‘I …’

‘I accidentally hit him with a spade,’ Annabelle says.  ‘We were gardening and, well, his
head got in the way and … clunk.’

‘A spade?’
Gerlach repeats.

‘It hurt like hell,’ I offer, pointing at my lump.

He doesn’t look convinced by the explanation.  He turns and heads back towards the front door.  ‘Is it okay if I take a look around?’

‘No!’ Anna and I say simultaneously.

The last thing we need right now is him searching the place.  Goddamn neighbors; why can’t they mind their own business instead of being good citizens? 

‘There’s no need,’ I continue.

‘I have to make a formal report now I’ve been called out,’ Gerlach says over his shoulder.

‘But nothing’s been taken.’

‘Doesn’t matter; I still have to file a report.’ 

For flip’s sake
.  The tyranny of bureaucracy.

‘Always
preparing damn reports,’ Gerlach continues.  ‘There was a gun battle out at the interstate truck stop earlier tonight.  Sheriff Hanratty will be filling out forms until the cows come home.’

I follow him into the hallway
and set off up the stairs.  ‘I’m going to get changed,’ I mutter.  ‘I’m freezing.’

I hurry into the bedroom
.  It looks fine.  Lived in, but not died in.

I open the closet and stuff the t-shirt deep inside, hiding it behind some
sweatshirts.  I yank out a long-sleeved shirt, tug it on and head back downstairs, buttoning it.

Gerlach
is chatting to Annabelle in the front room.

‘I was just saying it’s strang
e that they never took anything; that they didn’t turn the place over and smash everything up.’

‘Maybe they realized we were in the house and left?’

‘You didn’t hear them?’

‘That’s why we got up.  I heard something. 
It woke me up.’

‘But you didn’t see anybody?’

‘No.  As I said, they must have left once I switched on the lights.’

Gerlach
doesn’t look convinced. 

The doorbell rings.

My heart does a triple beat with a double back somersault.  Who the heck can that be at this hour?  The grim reaper?

I shrug my shoulders.  ‘Excuse me a second.’

Paavo Poukkanen is standing on the threshold, looking as serious as he always does.  He’s six feet five, rake thin, with thin sandy hair and a slightly slavic face.  He stoically carries the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders.

‘You need a van,’ he says
as a statement, not a question. 

When I shake my head no, he continues:
‘To move a mattress.’

‘No
t now,’ I hiss.  I mouth: ‘Come back later.  Later.’ I motion with my hand in front of my chest for him to leave.