Dalton flicked his brother’s ear, hard. Turd Unit pretended to cry for a minute, saw that there was zero value in it, and then went back to scooping Frooty Bobbers.
“Let me find the extra helmet,” Dalton said, turning on the basement light, an old fluorescent carpenter’s lamp that mostly left it dark. He stepped carefully over junk piled along the wooden stairs. The damp concrete floor was covered with stacks of cardboard boxes, rusting machinery, and piles of long-moldered laundry. There were magazines tossed at random, headless dolls, wheelless tricycles, and Joes with very little G.I. left in them. Dalton picked his way to where he thought the helmet was stashed, nosing through garbage, when he realized he wasn’t alone.
Something was in the basement with him.
Something big.
Farck.
Hadn’t he ever seen a slasher movie before? Everyone knew you didn’t go in the basement alone.
Dalton peered over a cardboard box full of Christmas tree parts. In the back corner, a large, dark shadow flickered, moving slightly. It was hard to tell if the thing was ducking between boxes, or if it was the effect of the bare bulb hanging over the utility sink.
The one that Dalton hadn’t turned on.
Run. Scream.
There had to be a better option.
Pee pants?
Uh, no.
Think, guy, think.
He was about equidistant to the thing and the stairs, the top coordinate in a serial killer isosceles. If he ran, it meant turning his back while picking through garbage in the dark. He didn’t want to turn his back. At all. The other option was to fight. Dalton thought of Landon and what his brother was probably looking at through an infrared scope right that second, before forcing himself into Grow a Sac mode. He picked up a piece of rebar from a pile against the wall, hefting it. Rusty, but solid. It hurt his palm, but in a good way. He looked back longingly at the stairs, a thousand pounds of junk between him and the bottom step.
Then the overhead went off.
Dalton faked left. The thing didn’t move. He faked right. The thing didn’t move. He crept sideways, figuring it would try to cut him off, but it remained stationary. He could hear Turd Unit’s girly laugh through the floorboards.
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #20
When you’re scared, always run directly at the thing you’re scared of. Never run away while looking over your shoulder like every dead slasher blond. Force the thing to make a decision, and just hope it makes the wrong one.
Dalton raised the rebar over his head and charged.
Six feet.
The thing didn’t move.
Three feet.
The thing didn’t move.
One foot.
You have got to be shite-ing me.
The rebar fell with a clang. The thing was hanging from water pipes threaded through the ceiling joists, right above a pile of folded towels and nighties.
Wrapped in duct tape.
Head to toe.
The Body.
It had big red letters spray-painted on its chest. I KNOW I DIDN’T KILLED ME. And under that, the word TERRUR.
“Let’s go, Johnny Rambo!” Mole yelled from the top of the steps, causing Dalton to jump and bang his head. The Body shook wildly. The room spun for a second.
“Turn on the lights!”
The lights clicked on.
“What are you doing down there?” Mole asked. “We’re gonna miss vital instruction. I have a GPA to maintain.”
Dalton spat, trying to think. It was ridiculous. A frame job? But by who? And how did they sneak it in here? Lex Cole would have just soaked The Body with kerosene and burned the house down. So much for actionable evidence. In Takin’ Care of Witness, he’d siphoned fuel from a lawn mower and torched a sweatshop full of bloody tartan. Not really an option in this scenario, though. There had to be a smart play.
Get rid of it.
How?
Call the Snouts, claim zero knowledge, let them deal.
No chance.
Call Macy?
Why? To tell her you found her un-missing brother?
Dalton reached down and pulled a strip of duct tape off the thing’s face. Two red lips puckered behind the tearing sound, but didn’t move. He fought off a gag. Wesley Payne’s lips. Shouldn’t they be decomposed? Or was he jacked from the funeral home still full of formaldehyde? Dalton sniffed. It smelled like potato chips. Sour cream and chive.
Do not puke. Just don’t.
Dalton slipped back up the stairs and into the kitchen. His mother was finishing the dishes. “Honey, did you turn the wash over? Or do I need to?”
“I’ll do it!” Dalton answered, slipping a cleaver from the knife rack and hiding it in his waistband.
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #21
Why didn’t you just tell her it was already done?
“Why did you just slip a cleaver from the knife rack and hide it in your waistband?”
“Um. I was going to clean the lint trap. It’s all backed up.”
“Stiff Sheets battles lint!” Turd Unit yelled. “Lint wins!”
Dalton ran upstairs. He slipped a business card out of his wallet and called the number at the bottom. Then he pulled his throw rug from under the bed, rolling it like a tortilla and dragging it down the basement steps. A minute later, Mole materialized from between stacks of boxes like he’d been stored there for a year.
“Dude, what the em eff?”
“I know.”
“Is that Wesley Payne? That can’t be Wesley Payne. He’s, like, muerto already.”
Dalton unrolled the rug.
“And why does he have that on his chest? I know I didn’t killed me? What’s terrur supposed to mean?”
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #22
Explaining the unexplainable is like de-virgining a virgin. It’s like sewing hair on a goat. It’s like punching yourself in the face. And liking it.
“It means help me with this so it doesn’t make any noise when I cut it down.”
Mole shook his head. “Don’t want to.”
Dalton was already supporting the weight with one hand while extending the knife with the other. “Don’t want to what?”
“Touch him.”
“Touch him?”
Mole nodded.
“Listen—” Dalton began, but was drowned out by a rumble that shook the basement window, followed by a squeal of tires. That was fast. Dalton let go of The Body, which jounced on its rope like a piñata. “Stay here and make sure my mom doesn’t come down, no matter what.”
“No, please,” Mole said. “Don’t leave me with—”
Dalton ran back up the stairs and out the side door.
The rumble wasn’t coming from a Nova. An earth mover was parked at the neighbor’s, a truck from a septic tank company angled out the driveway.
Farck!
Dalton turned, slamming into Mole. They lay in the grass for a minute, holding their heads.
“You’re supposed to be in the basement,” Dalton moaned. “In case my mom—”
“But it’s wicked dark.”
Dalton got up and pushed past the stacks of junk again, hurrying over to the utility sink. The laundry was there. The bare bulb was there. The rope was there.
But The Body wasn’t.
It was gone.
“It’s gone,” Mole said over his shoulder.
Dalton ran back upstairs. He checked every door, every closet, making his way to the family room.
“Hey, Dad. Did you see anything weird go by?”
“No sign of Landon,” his father said, turning up the volume. That left the kitchen. Shite. Dalton zipped through the saloon doors, losing his balance and slamming into the fridge. A bowl of oranges fell on its side, rolling across the floor. Sherry Rev and Turd Unit looked up quizzically. If a body had somehow managed to zombie its way by, they obviously hadn’t seen it.
“Thought I lost something. Guess I was wrong.”
“Dalton l
ost his mind,” Turd Unit said, almost calmly, his blood sugar having leveled off. “Dalton lost his boyfriend.”
“Aren’t you going to be late for school?” Sherry asked.
“Already am,” Dalton said, wondering if he should warn her, Hey, um, Mom, if you happen to see a, y’know, dead body around, um, go ahead and call the cops right away, okay?
Pass.
In the driveway, Mole stood mopping sweat from his neck. His Hawaiian shirt was soaked through. He smelled like a wedge of Gouda.
“Look at me,” Dalton said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Mole turned reluctantly.
“It was down there, right?”
“Come again?”
“The Body?”
“Yeah, man. It was there. Whatever it was.”
Ronnie Newport’s Nova screeched up to the curb. The window rolled down. Newport aimed his lens and took three pictures of the two of them, Fatman and Blobbin, rumpled and defeated and confused. Then he kicked open the passenger-side door.
“Got the trunk cleaned out. What do you need to move?”
“False alarm,” Dalton said. “Now we just need a ride.”
“Salt River?”
“No, Tarot’s.”
“Tarot’s?”
“Tarot’s.”
“But we’re gonna miss school,” Mole said. “I got a test in Splonge’s after lunch. No way I can skip that.”
“Slip her a twenty,” Newport said. “You’ll pass.”
“Euclidians don’t do it that way.”
“What way do Euclidians do it?” the Ginny Slims asked.
“And, um, also? I could have sworn you just said something about Tarot. No way do I want to go near that vampire.”
“You can walk,” Dalton said. “You don’t have to come.”
“Walk? Okay, for one thing, that’s exercise. For another, there’s a dead body shuffling around. Lester Bucharest and dead bodies don’t mix. You feelin’ me?”
“I’m feelin’ you!” one of the Ginny Slims called, grabbing Mole’s wrist.
“No, I’m feelin’ him!” the other insisted, holding out her arms for a motherly embrace. Dalton shouldered Mole in with the Slims and then got in front, slamming the door.
“School’s shut down today, anyhow,” Newport said, lighting a butt and flicking the old one past Dalton’s nose and out the window.
“What for?”
“Contraband locker search. Snouts’re in there with bolt cutters right now, working the rows.”
“Snouts?”
“Snouts, Inference, whatever.”
“They announce it?”
“Nah, sign on the doors said ‘Danger: Radon Leak.’ ” Newport slicked back his pompadour with two fingers, staring straight ahead. He lifted the camera from around his neck, focused the massive lens, and took a picture of a bird pecking at an old candy wrapper. “Lot of cliques gonna lose their shirts today.”
“What are you going to lose?”
“I lost way before I even started,” Newport said, exhaling six lungs’ worth of smoke.
“Then why take me to Tarot? Long as you’re being existential, why bother doing it at all?”
“Cash.”
Dalton wondered if it was an act, this purposeful slide into disgrace, or if Newport really had been ruined on some level by the death of Wesley Payne. “You know who Mary Surratt is? She a friend of Wesley’s maybe?”
“How you spell it? She got an unnecessary Y?”
“No.”
“Everyone was a friend of Wesley’s. I never heard of her, but she probably was too.”
“Take the long way around, Godot,” Dalton said, handing over four twenties. “I need to think.”
Newport lit another cigarette, as the Nova peeled from the curb.
CHAPTER 13
ALL ALONG THE DONGTOWER
The car broke down twice. First it was a blown manifold. Then a problem with the linkage. Newport tinkered under the hood while the Slims cackled and whined. Dalton stood on the side of the road thinking while Mole tried to escape, vainly, from the backseat. They had to drive across town twice for two different parts, and then wait while Newport tried to decipher the elaborately folded Korean instructions before installing them. It was late afternoon by the time the red Nova pulled into the parking lot of Archie Shepp Studios, dropping off Dalton and Mole.
The building was in the worst part of town, under the highway bridge and near the docks. The pavement was pitted and wet. Men in trench coats slept by the rail lines, or sat on beds of cardboard, picking at their damp toes. They watched as van after van of tattooed longhairs and tattooed skinheads loaded amps and cords and mic stands up and down the steel loading dock. The sound of dozens of bands rehearsing simultaneously funneled out the blast doors like a jumbo jet coughing bolts from its last engine. Dalton could feel the blister of dropped notes and chord changes and falsetto choruses against his face. It was impossible to imagine how each band could hear enough to differentiate their songs from the rest of the primordial squall. In From Crayons to Perfume, Lexington Cole goes undercover playing harmonica in a gutbucket Kansas City dive that sounded like Abbey Road compared to this.
“Now what?” Mole asked, his smirk and lingo gone, his flow of patter down to a faucet drip, suddenly just a fat, scared kid in a ridiculous shirt. He was also covered with scratches and hickeys courtesy of the Ginny Slims.
“Now we wait.”
“You let them paw at me. I feel so dirty.”
“You paid your dues,” Dalton agreed, wiping lipstick off Mole’s elbow. “No doubt.”
“Move it, hand gallops!”
A trio of tall bald men with black eyeliner pushed past. Stenciled on all their equipment was the name STORMING KABUL. The tallest one wore a T-shirt that said ACE STORMING. The shortest one’s said BILLY KABUL. Dalton stepped out of the way, slipping into Yeah, I’m That Keyboard Player Everyone Says You Shouldn’t Mess With mode. He cleaned his fingernails with Wes Payne’s locker key, staring at the black maw of the loading dock as if waiting for the rest of his band to show.
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #23
Abandon Most of Your Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
“I want to go home,” Mole said.
“I know.”
“Seriously, man. What am I doing here?”
“I dunno. You’re the one who came to my house, remember?”
“That’s cold, yo. I came for waffles. Instead, there I am rolling up my sleeves helping you with a dead body in your basement. And now we’re scuffling around downtown Beirut looking for Transylvanian Elvis. This is so messed up.”
Dalton nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. He was trying to time the gap in bands as they came in and out of the giant front door. Eventually the traffic would slow and there’d be a window to slip through, sort of like walking over to your buddy Ed Lecter’s wearing a pork-chop necklace. A-one and a-two.
“Where you going, guy?”
“Room sixty-six. Like Newport said.”
“No way.” Mole ducked behind a gold truck that had the name TRANNIE AND THE TRAWLERS spray-painted on the side. “Tarot snacks on small children and shites out knitted booties. He wants to stick a straw in me and turn me into the world’s biggest can of Rush.”
“I won’t let him do that,” Dalton said, not entirely sure let was part of the equation.
“Let is so not part of the equation.”
“I could use some sidekick backup here. Time to stop sitting on your ham.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Mole said, thumbing his glasses in place. “Kicking some serious side. I’m just doing it out here. Way out here. Ham or not.”
“You know what Newport told me on the drive over?”
“How to rebuild a carburetor with hair gel and cigarette butts?”
“Salt River’s closed today because they’re tossing lockers for contraband.”
Mole’s face blanched. He r
ubbed his eyes counterclockwise. “For real?”
“For real.”
“Yeah, um, okay. I gotta split now. This was fun. I’ll see you later.”
“You’re walking? You won’t get home until Christmas.”
“At least there’ll be presents when I get there,” Mole said, already at the edge of the lot. Dalton turned into the warehouselike darkness. The entire building was vibrating. It was like entering the lung of someone burning through two cartons a day. He asked for a pair of earplugs at the little booth in the corner that sold strings and straps and tuning forks.
“Thirty bucks.”
“For earplugs?”
The woman manning the booth nodded. “Seller’s market.” Her lips barely moved beneath a layer of white makeup and purple dreadlocks.
“You remind me of someone. You know a guy who drives a—”
“Lunch truck? Yeah, that’s Roach. My cousin.”
“That makes you, what? Black Widow?”
“Everyone loves a crackstar.”
“It’s so not true.” Dalton inserted one earplug, about to insert the other when she said “Strata.”
“Huh?”
“My name.”
Dalton held up Wes Payne’s key. “Ever seen one of these, Strata?”
“I believe they call that a key.”
Dalton slipped her an extra twenty. She put his money in a little pouch sewn inside her skirt. “There’s lockers on every floor. End of the hall on your left.”
Dalton walked around in the dark until he found the staircase, climbing to the next level. Each floor contained two hallways, both gauntlets of mayhem. Dirty rugs, jangling guitars, shadowy figures in black smoking and arguing through jolts of distortion as pure as fresh corn. Girls in skirts and heels ran squealing after each other. Drummers air soloed. A hair metal band seemed to be shooting craps in the corner. Behind them was a wall of blue lockers covered in graffiti. Dalton patted his pockets, acting like he’d forgotten his sheet music, and tried number 9. It fit, but didn’t turn. He repeated the pattern with the lockers on the second and third floors with the same result. At the end of the fourth hallway was room sixty-six, the door shaking like it was about to be torn off its hinges and swept across the Kansas prairie. Dalton counted to twenty-three trying to summon Wronged Commuter Metes Out Subway Justice mode, settling for Not Really All That Tough, but at Least Not an Obvious Purse instead.
You Killed Wesley Payne Page 9
