When Graveyards Yawn Read online

  "I was visiting a friend--er, a specialist, she's a massage therapist who treats me for a back problem..."

  'Bucking hips syndrome,' I thought, and grinned at the idea of a dead man trying to cover up his living tracks. He continued.

  "It happened in the older part of town--the Downings--47th Street. I met with her for a treatment and must have fallen asleep. I woke up around three a.m. and I guess I was dreaming, because I thought I heard a baby crying. I was up, so I decided to go to the washroom. I went--the washroom adjoins the bedroom--and when I was through I heard the sound of a door opening and closing.

  "There must have been another blackout because I tried to turn on the overhead light. When nothing happened, I felt around on the bed and found my therapist. She was in a deep sleep--we'd shared a bottle of gin earlier, so I grabbed a candle from the nightstand--lit it--and walked out into the living room. The candle didn't throw much light. I took about six steps, felt a minor pressure at the back of my head...then it was B-b-bl-blacktime." His newly deceased tongue machine-gunned the word. 'Blacktime' was the catchphrase for the amnesia dead people experienced in the moments between life and death. The length of it varied from person to person.

  "How long were you out?" I asked.

  "I don't know, you'll have to understand my condition, having just been shot, I was rather frantic. Though I do not remember the moments immediately following my waking, I know it was morning. But the impressions I have of that time are funny--fuzzy."

  I nodded my head, lit a cigarette of my own. "So your therapist found you."

  "No, I was alone. I can remember wandering downstairs…it was a horror! I spoke to someone then, a little fellow--the night clerk, I think..."

  "So," I said. "What happened to your therapist?"

  His face drooped like someone had yanked the bones out of it. "I'm afraid that is a problem. She disappeared."

  I clicked my tongue and felt adrenaline prickle the hair on my scalp. The prickling caused a distracting shiver to itch quickly down the length of my back. "How long?" I drummed fingers on the desk--enjoyed the feeling.

  "You must understand, that being newly deceased, my mind was preoccupied with many details. I spoke to Authority, told them what had happened. They've investigated, I'm told. My wife had to be notified...it was a very strange time." He studied his fingernails like they were unfamiliar to him. Maybe he was realizing they would never grow again. Billings would soon find out there were varnishes on the market designed to thicken and preserve them. "They told me about you though."

  "Who?" I tried to imagine a single Authority Investigator who hated his career enough to recommend Wildclown Investigations.

  "You were recommended to me by an Inspector Borden. He interviewed me later, after the initial questioning."

  "Don't know him. When were you killed?" I snatched a notepad and pencil from the desk, wrote Borden.

  "It was two nights ago, Thursday, the first," he said this in hushed tones, as if we were at a funeral in the rain. "The Authority Investigators said they tried to question my therapist, but she has simply vanished. They're still investigating--said they'd contact me if anything turned up. Jan Van Reydner is her name--my therapist. She hasn't been seen since that night. Left her valuables and everything--apparently."

  "It will cost you a hundred a day to find your murderer, plus expenses." I murmured, jotting the therapist's name beside Borden's.

  The dead lawyer smiled and shook his head. "I was told you worked for two hundred dollars a week on your last case, Mr. Wildclown." I could tell that for a moment at least he was feeling like his old self. "Nevertheless, I'll pay you seventy-five dollars a day to get my killer. Authority is too big and clumsy; they're investigating too many murders now--others that are more--more important. I'm at the back of the line. 'Be patient,' they said. Patient! It's not right! It's not right! I've been murdered, and they ask me to be patient!" He rose to his feet, dead voice alive with rage. He shook his thin arms at me. "Well, I'll show them patience! I want my murderer dead! There's a ten thousand dollar bonus in it if you make sure he experiences...that he feels what it's...only his death is good enough for me!" He rasped--his face was strained and oily in the lamplight. A last wave of anger caught his fists and pounded my desk.

  "Be careful." I gestured to his fists, then the desk. "You've got to learn to take things easy. You don't heal any more." I spotted Elmo's face peeking in the door. I shook my head--he vanished. I lit a cigarette.

  "I'll tell you what, Mr. Billings. I can't guarantee I'll kill him, but I'll find him for you. Killing is still illegal in the eyes of Authority, and I don't want to experience one of their jails. I'll find him." I smiled. "I'll need your massage therapist's address and a number where I can contact you."

  Billings fumbled in his vest pocket and produced a business card. He scribbled something on the back. It skimmed across the desk, hit the phone.

  I read the address. "The Morocco Hotel?" I looked at him. "That's where she lived?"

  "No. That's where we got together." Billings' eyes trembled under the weight of disclosure. "I first met her at the gym I belong--belonged--to." He paused, saying goodbye to another facet of his life before continuing. "She convinced me to try one of her treatments."

  "How long did you know her?"

  "About three months." He looked away.

  "She didn't have a phone number?" I put the card on the desk.

  Billings deflated. "Jan called me to arrange treatments. I assumed she was married too." His hat had fallen to the floor as he had risen. He shuffled over, bent to retrieve it. From my vantage point, I could see that his left buttock was indented like a punched pillow from a wayward spring in the chair. It looked like Mr. Billings was in need of a lot more re-hydration therapy.

  He cocked an eye over his shoulder as he set his hat over the mortal wound in his forehead. "You'll contact me," he whispered like he was exhausted.

  "Yeah," I said and watched his back go out the door.

  Elmo came in and took his seat opposite me. His face looked anxious, but it was always hard to tell what was really going on in his head.

  "Warm up the Chrysler, old boy. It looks like we're working again." I grinned through a cloud of smoke and watched him leave the office.

  Seventy-five bucks a day wasn't much, but it would buy us a few more of these dismal days and--what did Tommy say, more senseless arguments. A lot of whiskey! The phrase floated up through my mind from the depths where Tommy's spirit lurked. "It will buy a lot of whiskey," I agreed then pulled the bottle out of the desk and took a barefaced snort from it. I relished the burning pressure in my throat and the cool slap on my face and neck where I spilled it. I took another belt and smiled wildly at my reflection in the door's dimpled window. I put the bottle away, checked the action of my gun and left the office with a cigarette clamped between my teeth.

  Chapter 4

  "Sleazebags will be sleazebags 'til the end of time," I said, gesturing to a pimp who counted money in the dim light of a flickering street lamp. Two foxy lady corpses in tight red skirts leaned provocatively against the front fender of his mint-green Cadillac. I lit a cigarette.

  "No kidding," muttered Elmo nodding his knobby head. His hands moved in swift practiced motions on the wheel. "The way I see it," he continued. "Everything's going to be everything 'til the end of time."

  "Just my luck." I chuckled at the absurd humor and flicked ash out the window. I imagined an eternity playing mental leapfrog with a loser who dressed like a clown. "No thanks!" I sneered at the idea and blew a thin stream of smoke between my teeth.

  Our sleek retro 1965 Chrysler Newport roared past a group that stood on the crumbling curb. A gang of dead youths with spiky hair and pierced faces dressed in studded leather and chains made threatening gestures as we passed. The light from a truck they'd set aflame had the pavement at their feet glowing illuminating a body there. The tires of the Chrysler hissed like cobras over the damp streets, still wet with rain.
Dark alleys yawned on either side of us and passed quickly like gaps in the giant bars of some terrible cage. I caught glimpses of figures moving jerkily in the amber light of bonfires. They were silhouette monkeys clambering through a grim jungle of twisted steel and night. In the air, there was the thick scent of oriental oils dead men used to keep their skins supple. Burned rubber colored the reeking breeze black. A group of pariah dogs quarreled over something that waved a walking stick. A shot echoed out of an alley. This was Greasetown after dark. The city's original name was left behind with the world it belonged to. Greasetown had been adopted soon after the Change and it stuck, it was said, because after a walk down one of its streets, you got something on you that wouldn't come off.

  A graffiti sign three stories tall screamed DOWNINGS. The letters were painted in neon orange on the wall of a burned out warehouse. The residents of this fair neighborhood had put it up for reasons of their own--either as welcome or warning. Authority had little influence in this section, which was good, because it gave a guy like me freedom I never had in the controlled parts of town, like New Garden. Authority, which was all that remained of law and order after the Change, had reprimanded me a few times about my occasional excesses. I usually just shrugged like a bad little boy and kicked my heels whenever I was dragged in. For the most part my cases were nickel and dime divorce stuff, lean on the odd creditor--nothing worth mentioning. After all, I knew they needed guys like me. Poor slobs who bust their knuckles and cheekbones because they think they know what's right and don't have the sense to become newspaper reporters or social workers. Guys like me who did the dirty work, bush beaters.

  The car fishtailed silently through the puddles, and I had to lend Elmo a hand on the wheel. It was no trouble. The force of his turn had put me into his right hip pocket.

  "Thanks, Boss," Elmo chattered as I inched back to my seat. "That was one wild mother corner."

  "Just keep her between the curbs, Fatso." I stared hard out the window and tried to unclench the muscles in my back and shoulders. My spine felt like a rusted spring. Elmo had a tendency to be a little brasher than other dead men I'd known. The majority of them walked around on tiptoes, trying to keep from scratching a body that wouldn't heal. As one dead acquaintance, Smilin' Riley, had told me, "A hangnail on a dead man. Fuck, you might as well sew a zipper on!"

  I chuckled at the memory and vaguely wondered what had happened to him. Smilin' Riley got his name because he had thin lips. Death had shrunk them to the thickness of a rubber band and stretched them back to his ears. I looked at Elmo's full lips and knew he was one of the lucky ones--of course, he had to take care not to bite them. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He was a mystery. I knew only that Elmo used to be grossly overweight, and went by the uncomfortable nickname Fat Elmo. I suspected he worked as a detective or private eye at some time because he behaved more professionally than I did. I couldn't prove it because the dead man's memory was hazy and in some places blank. Since my time in Wildclown's body was limited, Elmo's full pedigree was a puzzle I didn't have the leisure to investigate. I believed that Elmo and I were brothers in a sense. It was my assumption that like him I was dead. Our major difference being that he had a body; I did not. As a result I was forced to hitch a ride on Tommy's square-wheeled wagon.

  I had few clues to where the two of them had met and they, true to form, shared the ignorance--or were reluctant to discuss it. I had hoped that casual conversation elicited by me, and eavesdropped from my place near the ceiling would fill in some of the pieces of the puzzle; but they seemed to be disinterested in the past in any way other than how different things were now in comparison to it. I was in business with the pair for about six months before I quit trying to find out. Now, two years had passed. I was still pretty sure that neither of them knew I existed.

  Elmo slammed on the brakes and I took a mouthful of dashboard. I came up cursing and spitting and looked out at a long roadblock that stretched burning across the street. Poisonous black smoke billowed from it.

  "Queens!" Elmo shrieked in a voice that would have shamed a choirboy. My gun was already in my hand.

  "Back it out!" I barked before throwing my head around to see a truck was pushed across the road behind. The cab was burned out--the windows were black and puckered like scar tissue.

  Against the flaming barricade before us, strange shapes suddenly began to appear. Except for a few short squat forms, the majority of these Queens were tall and burly. They wore pink silk panties and black leather chaps. Brassieres cupped muscular chests while skirts of chiffon and taffeta curled and licked at the smoking wind.

  I stifled a giggle. I could feel Tommy's hidden mirth tickling at the back of my mind. True, they were as dangerous as hell, but they looked like assholes. Elmo began to chatter to himself--frightened. He knew the stories of Queens dismembering the dead as climax to their experiments in the necromantic arts--heavy on the romantic. I casually patted his arm with my gun, hardened my nerves, and stepped onto the street.

  The pavement was greasy under me as I glared into the whiskered faces of the hormone freaks. The Queen leader stepped forward. He was huge, made taller by a mountainous blonde Afro. He completed the picture by sporting a leather pantsuit with studs.

  "Fucker, you...!" He shouted through thick painted lips, then twisted his face in recognition. "You're that Wildclown asshole."

  "Unfortunately for you," I growled. "You'll never see the real McCoy." Inside me, Tommy's spirit tittered wildly. My hand clenched the gun nervously. "You all look lovely tonight. But why don't you girls find something else to amuse yourselves; go do your nails." I was about five feet from the car. I could sense the approach of other Queens behind me. In all, I think I was facing twenty of them. The only thing keeping me virtuous was the .44 automatic that was plainly visible where it snaked around in my hand. Still, I only had ten shots in it and would never get another clip in. If these guys were glueheads or PCP freaks they might make a rush for me.

  "I've heard a lot about you, Wildclown." The head Queen had a very good growl of his own. "I hear you're crazy as a Varsol drinker."

  I smiled beneath my painted grin. "You girls and your gossip."

  The Queens had gathered in a thirty-foot ring around the Chrysler and me. Their leader moved smoothly toward me letting his spiked hormones work for him. His face was obscene.

  "I'll tell you another thing, my sweet-assed clown. I've heard that you like it like a woman. I bet you'd beg for it if we spanked you hard enough." He drew nearer. "I've heard about your hard on, boy, I know you like to use it." I noticed that as he approached he was slowly inching his lace panties down. He was now close enough that I almost choked on his cheap perfume. It smelled like turpentine and sweat. "I heard you like fuckin' like a bird likes flying." He dipped his whiskered chin and looked at my gun. "I also heard, my sweet baby boy, that you don't kill people."

  "One thing you pasties have to learn about gossip," I stared at the garish false eyelashes over his sick eyes. "It's never a hundred per cent true." I fired a single shot into his chest that lifted him off his feet and dropped him six feet away.

  I spun on my heel and jammed my back against the car. "Next one of you sisters that moves gets it--Blacktime!" I waved my gun at them. "I don't play games like your dear leader, so whoever wants to be the runner up in the dead queen contest, step forward!"

  Elmo gunned the engine. I swung the automatic around, trying to give them my 'I eat nails for breakfast' face--not easy in clown makeup. "Go! Now! Run away!" I yelled. "This isn't the real world any more." I fired a slug and tore open the thick calf of a bearded Queen in perverse yellow tights. He dropped shrieking. "Eight of you can still take the death walk!"

  They turned and ran as a unit, taking their wounded comrade with them. Their ridiculous hairy asses bobbed beneath thin silks. My eyes glared after them then fell on the dead Queen. He lay in the street like some ill-fated Hollywood starlet. All he needed was a bouquet of withered roses and a shoebox f
ull of yellowed love letters--maybe a princess phone, receiver off the hook. I felt like I'd done the world a favor.

  I slid into the car next to Elmo. The engine roared hungrily. "Sorry, Fatso."

  "That's okay, Boss. I never seen a man needed killing more'n that one," Elmo muttered this as he drove onto the sidewalk and dragged past the barricade with a scrape of painted steel.

  As we moved through the scene of death and destruction, I could feel Tommy's soul glowing within. It was as though he were happy for the first time in his life.

  "The Morocco Building," I muttered and began to wrestle with thoughts of my own.

  Chapter 5

  The street lamp buzzed and sawed overhead like an angry bee. Sparks leapt from the naked bulb. The Morocco Building was constructed of dirty red brick. About fifteen stories up, a wood and neon replica of an Arab minaret hung awkwardly from its moorings on the roof. It leaned over the street menacingly. I watched as people instinctively darted from beneath its shadow.

  Candles colored the building's many windows with an interior orange light too warm for this neighborhood. That light belonged in the hearth of some long ago home--not here on another godless night in Greasetown. My eye caught movement in a window, and I watched as a slack-breasted woman stripped with skinny arms. I turned away and nodded to Elmo. "Wait in the car," I said, got out, and then hurried under the shadow of the derelict dome. It was Saturday night, around eleven--thirty minutes after I had killed the Queen. Rain continued to fall in an oily drizzle.

  The double door hung from mismatched hinges with dirty light creeping out around it at odd angles. I grabbed the handle; it crawled under my grip. I pulled the door open and was slapped in the face with the reek of urine. I wiped my palms over my coveralls, then moved them up to the gun at my waist. It felt two bullets light. I cursed my carelessness and then did a quick inventory.