Carrion

by Gary Brandner

  “Well,” he said, giving her his professional smile, “you don’t look very sick to me.”

  “That’s what I keep telling people,” she said.

  “Got any complaints? Aches and pains? Dizzy spells?”

  “I’m afraid not. This is probably a wasted trip for you. I feel just fine.”

  “And you look fine,” he said. “All the same, we — ”

  “Why, thank you, doctor,” she interrupted. “Do you mean I look fine from a medical standpoint or” — she let the robe gap just a bit and smoothed the pajamas over her flanks — “just in general?”

  “Both,” he said briskly. “Your husband tells me you haven’t been eating well.”

  “Elliot’s like a Jewish mother. Always ‘Eat, eat.’ Do you think I look underfed?”

  “No way.”

  “Are you married, doctor?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, I am.”

  “Children?”

  “I have a little girl.”

  “That’s nice.” She reached down to straighten the robe, and her hand brushed against his thigh.

  “What’s her name?

  “Kelly.” He checked his watch. “Shall we get started?” he said.

  “I’m ready. Do you want me to take off my clothes?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” He plugged the tips of a stethoscope into his ears and became professional. “Suppose you just loosen your pajama tops a little.”

  Slowly, keeping her eyes on his, Leanne began opening the buttons from the throat. She had freed the third and had her hand on the fourth when Dr. Maylon spoke up.

  “That’s fine.” He placed the diaphragm against the soft flesh high on her breast.

  Leanne continued to open the buttons. “How do I sound?”

  “Mmm.” He moved the diaphragm lower. “Healthy. Lungs clear, heart strong.”

  She freed the last button, and the pajama coat slipped away. Her breasts rose and fell with each breath. A musky odor, tinged with soap, rose from her flesh.

  Dr. Maylon started to take away the chest piece of the stethoscope. Leanne caught his hand and guided it back. She brushed his fingers across her nipple. It stiffened under his touch.

  “Aren’t you going to do me here?” she said, peering at him through lowered lashes.

  “Do you?” He cleared his throat.

  “Listen to me here.”

  Dr. Maylon pulled away hastily. “That won’t be necessary.” He slipped the stethoscope back into a pocket.

  “I think you’d better have your husband bring you in to my office. I have a nurse there. And special equipment.”

  Leanne’s eyes ranged down his body. “You didn’t bring the equipment you need?”

  “Mrs. Kruger,” he said carefully, “I don’t do this sort of thing.”

  She snaked a hand behind his head and with surprising strength pulled him down. She kissed him, open-mouthed. He tasted mint … and something else. While part of his mind cried out at this terrible breach of ethics, he did not resist as Leanne guided his head down over the yielding flesh of her breasts until he took her nipple eagerly in his mouth.

  Chapter 11

  BILLIONAIRE’S WIFE, D EAD SIX MONTHS, R ETURNS

  Mac Fain stood in the Safeway checkout line on Wednesday, muttering to himself as he scanned the story on page three of the L.A. Insider. Didn’t even make page one, for Christ’s sake. That seemed to be reserved for the female stars of a prime-time soap, whose alternating love affairs and ailments were considered endlessly fascinating by the editors.

  Furthermore, he had to read down to the third paragraph of Ivy Hurlbut’s bylined story to find his own name. Okay, so maybe Elliot Kruger had more news value than McAllister Fain; they might still have mentioned him in the lead.

  And where were all the pictures? Zeno must have shot a roll of film up at his place, but the only photo accompanying the story was one of Kruger that must have been some twenty years old.

  At least his name was spelled correctly. Other inaccuracies, like the six months mentioned in the headline, peppered the story. Mac wondered about the “billionaire” business. If Kruger was close to that, he should have asked for more money. A lot more. At the time, thirty thousand had seemed like the jackpot. Now it was peanuts.

  “Will that be all?”

  Fain looked up from the paper to see he had reached the cash register.

  He paid for the tabloid, carried it out of the market, and sat on the low wall bordering the parking lot to read the story again.

  There were, of course, no quotes from Elliot Kruger or Leanne, although the story was written to imply that the Insider had had reporters right on the scene. By reading between the lines, Fain figured that the source for the story was Rosalia, the maid. He wondered if they had paid her for the tip.

  The thought of payment brought him back to his own fee, which was looking smaller by the minute. With accountants and bankers and lawyers involved, especially that asshole Richard Kruger, Fain would be lucky to see any of the money he had coming before the end of the year. He was glad he had cashed the check for the retainer before somebody had put a hold on that.

  He walked the two blocks back to his apartment, opened a Heineken, and settled into his recliner to read the Insider story one more time.

  BILLIONAIRE’S WIFE, D EAD SIX MONTHS, R ETURNS

  BY IVY HURLBUT

  A woman pronounced dead last year was returned to life over the weekend in a luxurious mansion in Beverly Hills. Before the unbelieving eyes of startled witnesses … [Enough of that, let’s get down to paragraph three and the good stuff.]

  McAllister Fain, 36, a well-known psychic and occult practitioner [“Well-known” is stretching it a little, but what the hell], operates out of a funky apartment in the picturesque Echo Park district of Los Angeles. [Funky? Picturesque? Nice way of saying seedy and run-down.] Fain, a personable young man with an engaging smile [Why, thank you, Ivy], declined to reveal to the Insider the methods he used in the astounding resurrection of Mrs. Kruger. [And with good reason. The well-known occult practitioner had not a clue as to what he had done last Friday night to make a dead woman live again.] Fain said only that a metaphysical strain running through many generations of his family gave him the power to perform feats outside the range of scientific knowledge. [Had he really said that? What utter bullshit.] He stressed that bringing back the dead was not his usual line of work. [They got that right, for sure.]

  He read the story a last time and put the tabloid aside. It would make a nice entry for his scrapbook. If he had a scrapbook.

  He called Jillian, got the answering machine, and made an indecent suggestion. Then he got out his address book and started a new list of his regular clients whom he had neglected during his brief adventure in the land of the millionaires. At least until he collected the rest of his fee from Elliot Kruger, he had better get back to work. Break out the trusty tarot deck. His ladies would be getting antsy waiting for word of the imminent ocean voyage and the mysterious, handsome stranger.

  The next day Mac got two telephone calls from people who had read the Insider story. The first was from a pool-shooting, beer-drinking acquaintance who thought the whole thing was a rare joke. Fain let the guy have his laugh and hung up. The second was from an oily-voiced young man who identified himself as Dean Gooch, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

  “You may be familiar with my work,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, I just read that Insider story about you and the Kruger woman.” he said. “It gave all of us here at the Times a good chuckle.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Fain said, working up a dislike for the guy.

  “Not that I take it seriously for a minute, but I thought you might have something to say about it that I could use in my column. I do humorous stuff, you know.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” Fain said.

  “I don’t mean at your expense,” Gooch said. “What I had in mind was taking a couple
of shots at those supermarket tabloids and the lip-readers who buy the things.”

  “As opposed to the mental giants who read the Times?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Forget it. What do you need me for, Dean?”

  “Just a quote on how ridiculous the whole story is. I mean, bringing back the dead … after all.”

  “Why don’t you just quote yourself like the rest of the Times gang? You know: ‘Informed observers say …’ That kind of thing.”

  “Wait a minute; you’re not trying to tell me this story is true.”

  “You’re a reporter. Find out for yourself.”

  He hung up feeling a little contrite about mouthing off at Gooch, but only a little. He was in a rotten mood, anyway, and the guy’s smug attitude had been asking for a smack across the chops.

  Mac goofed away the rest of the day, got no more calls, and went to bed feeling cheated out of even the fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol had once predicted for everybody.

  • • •

  On Friday the telephone woke him at seven-fifteen. He fumbled the receiver off the cradle and up to his ear and managed a hoarse “Hello?”

  “Antichrist!” shrieked a woman’s voice.

  “What?” Fain held the receiver away from his ear.

  “Devil worshiper!”

  “What number are you calling?”

  “Fascist! Blasphemer!”

  “Wait a minute, lady — ”

  “Defiler of the grave!”

  His brain began to function. The shrieking woman had read the story and looked up his phone number. Unfortunately, he was listed in the book.

  The shrill voice continued. “Only the blessed Christ Jesus can make the dead to live again. You are an accursed spawn of Satan.”

  “Get stuffed,” Mac told her, and cradled the phone.

  Ten minutes later it rang again. Another woman’s voice. This one teary and beseeching.

  “Please, oh, please, sir, you must help me. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “My darling Joseph, my husband of forty years, was taken from me before his time. I’m all alone in the world. If only you will bring him back to me, I’ll be forever grateful.”

  In spite of himself, Mac felt a surge of compassion. As gently as he could, he said, “Ma’am, after forty years, maybe it was his time.”

  “I beg of you, don’t refuse me. If I can’t have my Joseph back, there is nothing for me to live for. These five years he’s been in the ground have been misery for me.”

  Five years in the ground? “Lady, I’m sorry, really, but I can’t do anything for you.”

  After a second’s pause the woman went on in a hardened tone. “You did it for those rich people; why can’t you do it for me? You only help millionaires — is that how it works? Ordinary people aren’t good enough?”

  “Lady, that is not the way it is.”

  “I know how it is, Mr. Big Shot. You’re just like the doctors. You fall all over yourself when the rich guys want something, but for the poor people you’re out to lunch. I know where you live, too. Think about that.”

  Fain hung up and thought about that. What was going on? How come the delayed reaction? he wondered. Did everybody go to the supermarket on Friday?

  The next call was from a weak-voiced old man who was willing to pay every cent he had for the return of his dear dead wife. The one after that was from a little kid who missed his turtle, flattened by a UPS truck. Fain was shakily pouring his first cup of coffee when the fifth call of the morning came. It was Jillian Pappas.

  “You’re famous,” she said.

  “Tell me about it. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I don’t know what happened; the Insider ran the story two days ago.”

  “Fuzz the Insider. Haven’t you seen this morning’s Times?”

  “The Times? Jesus Christ.”

  “I think he made it, too, but back in the Religion section. You’re on page one of Metro.”

  “Balls. Hey, I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “Was that you talking dirty to my answering machine?”

  “Never mind. When can I see you?”

  “I’ve been real busy. Gotta run now; I’ve got a look-see for a McDonald’s commercial.”

  “How about dinner?”

  “Okay. Talk to you later. B’bye.”

  “Good-bye,” he said to the dead phone. “Nice talking to you.” He hung it up, and it began to ring immediately. He let it go this time and walked to the front door to retrieve the Times.

  There it was, as advertised, under Dean Gooch’s byline on page one of the Metro section:

  DO DEAD RETURN?

  ONE DID, S AYS TABLOID

  Tucked away among the stories of UFO’s and miracle diets and singing fetuses in the pages of a supermarket tabloid this week was the news of a woman dead — not for minutes but for months — who was miraculously restored to life.

  The alleged returnee to the land of the living is Leanne Kruger, 23, wife of wealthy industrialist Elliot Kruger of Holmby Hills. The engineer of this remarkable feat is said to be one McAllister Fain of Los Angeles, who bills himself, perhaps too modestly, as a “Master of the Occult.”

  A check of the records tells us that Mrs. Kruger was indeed reported dead last November 1. There were rumors at the time that her body was cryogenically preserved and maintained at the Kruger home, but this was denied by the family. According to an impressionable member of the Krugers’ household staff, Fain conducted a bedside ceremony lasting several hours, after which Mrs. Kruger awoke and spoke to the people around her, seemingly restored to life.

  Neither of the Krugers was available for comment. Richard Kruger, a son by a previous marriage, declined to be quoted but implied that the whole thing was a hoax. Dr. David Auerbach, the family physician said to be present at the time, was vacationing in Hawaii.

  Fain, who works out of his apartment in Echo Park, refused to talk to reporters. We wonder if this means he is abandoning the resurrection game. That would be a pity, considering the wondrous things he might accomplish by bringing back, say, Abraham Lincoln or Galileo or Freud. Or how about W. C. Fields or Marilyn Monroe? The possibilities boggle the mind.

  Fain sailed the Metro section across the room, watching the pages separate in midair and flutter to the carpet.

  “Thanks a lot, Gooch,” he said between clenched teeth. “Nice piece of writing. Asshole.”

  The telephone rang.

  A woman claimed to have returned from the dead on her own and wanted to meet him and share experiences.

  An agitated man talked nonstop in some language Fain did not recognize.

  Another man wanted to know how he could arrange to be brought back when he had passed to the great beyond.

  A young woman with a Middle Eastern accent proposed marriage.

  Say what you will about Gooch, Fain thought, the man had his readers.

  The telephone rang. This time it was Ivy Hurlbut.

  “Did you read what that prick did to you?”

  “Our friend Dean Gooch? Oh, yes.”

  “I take it you didn’t talk to him.”

  “No.”

  “Or any other reporters?”

  “Nobody’s asked.”

  “They will, but hold out. You’re hot now, honey.”

  “Hooray for me.”

  “The Insider wants me to do another piece on you. Front page this time, and definitely with pictures.”

  “No, thanks, Ivy. I’m through being the hero of the supermarket set.”

  “I don’t blame you, honey. I put them on hold while I talked to Los Angeles magazine and People.”

  “People?”

  “Sure. I’ve got contacts, honey. I don’t just write schlock, you know.

  “People magazine?”

  “That’s not all. I’m thinking book.”

  “Book?”

  “Sure. An as-told-to autobio. I’ve got a friend who
knows an editor at Bantam. They can crank these things out in less than six weeks.”

  “A book,” Fain said again.

  “When can we get together, honey? I can come over there.”

  “Let me get back to you. I’ve got a lot going on here at the moment.”

  “Don’t wait too long, honey. Now’s the time we want to jump in with both feet.”

  “Yeah, feet. I’ll talk to you.”

  Mac hung up the phone and took two aspirin. His mind felt jumbled with all that was going on, like a file drawer dumped out and restuffed with no attempt to get things back right.

  The telephone continued to ring.

  There was a call from a woman who said that if he liked to do it with corpses, she could lie real still.

  An older woman scolded him for contributing to overpopulation.

  A thundering voice announced itself as God. Fain hung up on that one with his shoulders hunched reflexively against a thunderbolt.

  The next call was from Barry Lendl.

  “Barry who?”

  “Lendl. Barry Lendl and Associates, Inc. Artistic and personal representation.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me; I’m on my way out.”

  “Getting a lot of calls, are you?”

  “Too many.”

  “Then I’m the man who can help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  “Can you be at Nate and Al’s by one o’clock?”

  “What for?”

  “For your future, my friend, your future. You need somebody representing you, and you need him now.”

  Short pause.

  “You haven’t got anybody else, have you?”

  “No, but — ”

  “Good, then you might as well start with the best. Nate and Al’s one o’clock. Or do you want to fight your own way through the yahoos who are calling you?”

  “Nate and Al’s,” Fain said. “One o’clock.”

  Chapter 12

  Richard Kruger stood uncomfortably at the side entrance to the Holmby Hills house, leaning as though anxious to continue through the open door to his Buick parked outside. He was held where he stood by the force of his father’s tirade. Elliot Kruger held a rolled-up copy of the Times Metro section that he slapped into his other hand to emphasize his points.