Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

by Daniel José Older

  "Damn."

  "Did you know D had a dentistry degree?"

  "I didn't know that."

  "Yessir, went to school and everything. Had a wife and kids once upon a time too. His degree'd up ass still landed next to mine on this here park bench."

  "Look how she swings."

  Brett pours a swig of his bottle onto the grass and takes one himself. I wonder if Delton will turn up in the afterlife, maybe even end up back here, and keep his old drinking buddy company. You never know.

  * * *

  Like drunk teenagers with too much toilet paper, cops have strewn that ridiculous yellow tape haphazardly across the upper park area. I find that if I act like a real dick and scowl a lot, I don't even have to flash the fake badge that the Council of the Dead gave me – the street grunts just assume I'm some high up brass they've never met and do whatever I tell them. But I'm not in a mood to take chances, so I exaggerate my grimace, lean hard on my wooden cane and flip out the silver shield. With a few arbitrary curses thrown in for good measure the two uniforms guarding the crime scene fall right into line.

  You can tell the new guys 'cause they have a lot to prove. It's written all over their faces. This one's named O'Malley and he's masking how mortified he is with an exaggerated brotherhood of cops chumminess. "What's going on, Sir?" he chuckles like we're old college buddies. "Didn't know the brass wanted in on this one."

  "We don't," I say curtly. I don't like forced friendliness, especially when I'm in character. "Just swinging through for a looksee. Where's the kill spot?"

  O'Malley makes a I'll-take-him-you-stay-here sign to his partner, who just rolls his eyes. I follow the kid up a winding path into the darkening underbrush. "You shoulda seen the body, man," he yammers. "It was like someone ironed him." I'm too busy trying to weed out all the new-guy excitement this guy's projecting so I can focus on the crime scene. So far though, it's just your basic city park deal: The slow pulsing of plant life arching towards the sky, a flurry of insects and the scattered frenzy of midsized mammals scurrying for trash. Oh yes: And the unforgettable aura of homelessness – that pungent, lived-in clothes desolation.

  "Here we go, boss." O'Malley waves his light over a dark stain on the path. "This is where the bum got done." I scowl at him and walk up close to where Delton's blood is slowly absorbing into the cement. Forensics teams and the urban wilderness have swallowed up most of the useful details. A few candy wrappers and beer bottles lay scattered around, remnants of Delton's last supper no doubt, and a little further away there's a used condom and an old hat. None of this is particularly helpful. I take a step into the total darkness of the underbrush. It's here I realize that there's something else odd about the park tonight. It'd been bothering me since I stepped in but I couldn't put my finger on it, like a humming you don't notice until it stops. There's no ghosts here. Usually any city park hosts a whole cross section of spirits. This park's particularly alive with the dead; you can see 'em fluttering in their strange circles like glow bugs anytime after sunset. Well, I can anyway. But tonight, it's like an empty school house. A silence so deep it curls up inside my ears.

  Then, all at once, I'm inundated by a rush of thick, pungent wind. The trees around me tremble and send up a mournful shushing. Back on the path, O'Malley shifts his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. The leaves convulse more frantically. I hear the snapping of branches. Something huge is moving very quickly towards us.

  I smell it before I see it; that same old-feces-circus-tent stench from the body. O'Malley yells and I duck as three gunshots ring out behind me. There's a flurry of motion – the huge, fast thing lets out its deafening shriek and thunders towards us. It's only a fuzzy flicker – tall as a two story building, long matted hair and all shiny transparent like a jellyfish. It bursts out of the trees and knocks me on my ass.

  For the first year after my death, I got the heebie-jeebies each time I rolled up on some runaway spook. In time, I got used to it, and I haven't felt much of anything for quite a while. This situation, on the other hand, has reached some place deep inside of me and crushed all that cool-headed resolve. Find out what's going on, the Council message had said. Okay, I found out: There's a huge hairy freak show in the park. Done. I hear that inhuman shriek mixed with the wet crunching sound that's probably the end of Officer O'Malley. I don't look back, don't think. I just run. I don't stop running 'til I reach my friend Victor's spot in Crow Hill. I ring the bell until I collapse in a heap on his doorstep and only then do I realize I'm bleeding.

  * * *

  "Really, babe? Penicillin? You gotta be fucking kidding me."

  "You can't crush up some aloe, love muffin, and make this all go away, okay? That gash is deep as shit."

  "Oh, is that all I do? Crush up some aloe? Victor, I swear to god, if Carlos wasn't here bleeding all over my couch, I would stab you in the neck."

  It's comforting really, the gentle love-hate routine that Victor and his girl Jenny banter back and forth over me. I wake up smiling, in spite of the dull throbbing in my flank. The brand new thing called terror is a faraway echo.

  "He's awake. Put the kettle on, Vic."

  "You're the tea-master general, you put the kettle on."

  "Victor..." There's a serious threat in Jenny's voice. It might be the threat of no ass for a month, but whatever it is, it works. When I open my eyes, it's Jenny's calm, slender face that's looking down at me. She's one of these new age urban herbalist types, straight out of Minnesota or Ohio or somewhere, by way of some fancy liberal arts school. In spite of it all, she's grown on me. Victor's a paramedic with the FDNY. The combination makes for some fiery dinnertime showdowns about the best way to manage a broken bone but the make-up sex is sensational, from what I can hear one room over.

  "You're gonna be alright, Carlos," Jenny says. "I'll keep Victor busy making tea so he can't get to you with any of those synthetic death medications."

  "Actually, synthetic death medication sounds like it might really hit the spot right now," I say. When I sit up it sends splintering pain down my right side.

  "Lay down," Jenny scowls. "And shut up. I'll let you know when dinner's ready."

  * * *

  Dinner is fake chicken mixed with something green called kale but I eat it anyway.

  "You gonna tell us what happened?" Victor asks. By the way he gets a little rounder each time I visit, I'm guessing he still sneaks in a few pernil sandwiches during those long nights on the ambulance.

  "Probably not," I say.

  "Really, you should go to a hospital, man. That wound is nasty."

  "You know damn well I can't do that." We have this argument almost every time I show up at their door with some otherworldly injury. My heart barely beats at all. My complexion is a dull brownish gray. Medically speaking, I'm all but dead – a partially resurrected, gimp-legged half-wraith. Treatment at a hospital would mean answering far more questions than I care to. Much easier to just come here, where I only say what I need to and get some form of dinner on top of it.

  "What's up with the elephants?" Jenny asks. I look at her with raised eyebrows. "Elephants. You wouldn't shut up about them when you were writhing around on our couch." She flails her arms in the air and affects some version of a Spanish accent. 'Oh, the elephants! Estop the elephants! Oh!"

  "Okay," I say. "I got it. I have no idea what you're talking about." But my mind is racing. Is that what I saw flashing out of the underbrush?

  "That's what did this to you?" Victor gapes. "I've never had an elephant injury before."

  "No," I say. "It was...hairy." The frenzied memories aren't leaving me with much information to go with. "It was huge and hairy and stank. That's all I got."

  "The Hindus believe that elephants used to be able to fly," Victor informs me. "Until one of them fell out of tree onto a great meditating sage and he cursed away their wings."

  "Whoopee," Jenny says. "I know how to Google too."

  Victor grunts.

  "Elephants," I say,
retreating deeper and deeper into my mind. "Elephants." I look up at Jenny and Victor. "Can I use your phone?"

  * * *

  When the regular old fully dead Council agents want to get in touch with headquarters, they just use that special afterlife telepathy shit and it's done. My half-and-half ass has to use the phone. I receive all their irritating updates and directives perfectly clearly – comes through like a radio blasting inside my head, but for whatever reason, it doesn't work the other way. They rigged up a phone line and answering machine somewhere in that vast, misty warehouse they've taken over in Sunset Park. I call the number, leave my message and wait for the reply to blare through my skull.

  "It's Delacruz," I say (as if anyone else calls them on that line). "Updating on the Delton Jennings park murder. Checking on a possible link to a phantom pachyderm." I feel stupid saying that, but it sounds better than 'ghost elephant.' "Check and advise on any recent circus or zoo fires. Also: An Officer O'Malley with the NYPD was injured or killed earlier while I was at the scene. Advise on status. That's all." Is that all? Is it ever all? I hate updating. I hang up and sit on the bloodstained couch to wait.

  The reply takes a little longer than usual. When it does come, it rustles me from a troubled nap. Council of the Dead to Agent Delacruz. A dull ache begins to spread across my forehead. Your orders are to detain but not destroy the subject. Do not, under any circumstances, damage the ghost pachyderm.

  I hate my job.

  Capture it and bring it to headquarters. That is all.

  I don't know if I can all the way die or not, but I have a feeling I'm about to find out. Just the thought of going anywhere near the park sends a shudder through me.

  "I'm out," I say, poking my head into the kitchen.

  "You're not even better yet!" Victor says.

  It's true; my flank still burns every time I move. I shrug and then scowl in pain.

  "See?" Jenny says. "Just lay back down on the couch for a few hours."

  I shake my head. "Thanks for dinner."

  "You're a pain in the ass."

  * * *

  Since they can't be trusted with full missions, kids who turn up in the afterlife end up wandering around the city aimlessly, running errands or causing mischief. It's a bleak existence. You can usually catch them floating around the industrial south Brooklyn wastelands, not far from Council headquarters. That's where they congregate, like tiny shiny bored teenagers, wasting infinities of time and waiting for some spook to send them on an errand in exchange for toys or candy.

  "You there," I say as I wave down a passing ghost child. "You like cowboys?" The kid wanders over glumly, eyeing me. I produce some small plastic figures from my coat pockets. I usually carry a handful of cheap doodads around for just this purpose. The kid's unimpressed.

  "Not really," he says. He looks to be about five, maybe an underdeveloped six.

  "Breath mints?" I say, digging deeper in my pockets.

  "Uh-uh." The kid shakes his head.

  "Dice? Rubix Cube?"

  "Nope."

  "Look I need a message delivered. What you want for it?"

  "Try ten bucks."

  "Smartass."

  "Or a gear shift."

  I raise one eyebrow.

  "Like from a car. Leave the wiring on, please. Who the message go to?"

  I give him a folded up piece of paper. "Agent Riley Washington, COD."

  "Ooh, an agent? Must be important. Why don't you throw in a fan belt to make sure it doesn't get to the wrong person?"

  "Why don't you do what you're told so I don't go find some other wee dead thing that'll do it for free? What are you building anyway?"

  "Nonya."

  "What's a nonya?"

  "Nonya damn business, man. Go get my shit and Riley will get his."

  This is why I don't like kids. I scowl down at little man and head off to find an old car to break into.

  * * *

  When something sinister seems to be brewing at the Council of the Dead, Riley is the dude I politic with. They usually partner him up with me on assignments, and he's the closest thing to a friend I've got in the Underworld. Also – he has an uncanny ability to wreak havoc on authority figures and an entire network of like-minded phantoms scattered throughout the Council that he goes to for information.

  He materializes next to me at the Burgundy Bar. The Burgundy Bar is a rundown saloon in Red Hook owned by a one-eyed drunk named Quiñones. It's mostly a bunch of dazed alcoholics in there, so no one pays much mind when I sit at the bar carrying on a full conversation over drinks with someone that ain't there. Long as Quiñones gets his little package of twenties at the end of each month, courtesy of the COD, he's perfectly happy ignoring whatever hints of supernatural activity sputter up at our after-hours spot.

  "What'd you find out?" I mutter at the gently glowing apparition beside me.

  The drunks can't see or hear Riley, and he enjoys taking full advantage of the situation. "Found out you stepped into another dead people clusterfuck," he says loudly. "Get me a Henney."

  I nod at Quinones. "A Hennessy for my friend." He winks at me like I'm some happy idiot and busies himself with my order.

  "It wasn't an elephant," Riley says. He loves knowing shit I don't.

  "What the fuck was it then?"

  "I got a guy coming, Dr. Calloway. He's gonna fill us in on some shit."

  "What's the word on O'Malley?"

  "The cop that got squashed?" Riley lets out a belly laugh.

  "He got squashed-squashed?" I say. "Or just kinda squashed?"

  "No, he gonna make it," Riley chuckles. "But the thing got his shooting arm. Looked like God took a spatula to it. Just flat and splayed out. Like Wile E. Fucking Coyote."

  "Wow."

  "They had to take it off. He's got early retirement, line of duty compensation, and now your freakazoid park killing is big news. Press all over it. Major Crimes Division investigating. A hot mess."

  A sparkly, bearded form fizzles into existence in the barstool next to Riley. "Carlos, meet the good Doctor Calloway." The ghost nods and looks around nervously. "Doc, thanks for joining us today. You will note, no afterlifers besides us two are present and everyone else is drunk as fuck and can't see you. You can speak freely."

  Calloway nods again. His fingers fiddle endlessly on the bar. "What's the what?" I say.

  "The what," Doctor Calloway says, "is that the Council of the Dead is engaged in the systematic categorization of all things phantom."

  "This we knew," I say. "Get to it."

  "Which includes building a secret zoological theme park for the afterlife."

  "A ghost zoo?" I say.

  "Essentially," agrees the doctor. "For the purposes of both study and entertainment. And they are particularly interested in tracking down specimens that haven't previously been analyzed."

  "Eh?"

  "Meaning, things that were around before we had the ability or technology to really find much out."

  "Extinct shit," Riley explains.

  "It's all very sinister, really," Calloway says. "Like a prehistoric Noah's ark."

  "Charming," I say. "So my friend in the park?"

  "Mammuthus primigenius," says the doctor.

  "You tangled with a wooly motherfucking mammoth," Riley translates.

  I order three shots of rum. "It seems," the doctor continues, "that certain species continue to move in migratory cycles even centuries after they are extinct. The COD charted a pattern of savage disasters – unexplained building collapses, mysteriously crushed vehicles."

  "Flat dudes," Riley adds.

  "All bearing the unmistakable stench common to long-dead pachyderms, left like footprints behind the stampede. The Council calculated a few routes and determined when the herd would be passing through our fine city."

  I down all three shots in quick succession. "Go on."

  "Their team of forensic zoologists, of which I am occasionally a participant, proposed that the ancient pachyderm may
share a common behavioral trait with the modern elephant: An almost fanatical protective drive in relationship to their young."

  Riley's looking ornery about me hogging all the shots so I order two more and give him one. "Using a method too complicated to get into right now, they secured a sample of baby mammoth dung."

  "Then they kidnapped a vagrant that no one would miss," I put in, "and covered him in it."

  "Precisely!" exclaims Calloway, looking a little too impressed with the whole thing. "Turns out, mammoths were very attuned to scent. They could tell what kind of mammoth it was that produced the feces, how old, whether it was an ill mammoth or healthy one, all kinds of information."

  "Fascinating," Riley says.

  "Fascinating indeed," the doctor nods.

  "So a ghost momma mammoth returns to the park after the herd passes through," I say. "She's thinking she'll find a stray ghost baby mammoth there and take him along."

  "Instead she finds Delton Jennings," says Riley, "and makes a bum pancake."

  "But why's she still there?" I ask.

  "Once she was inside," Calloway explains, "the COD put the area on a kind of spiritual lock down. She is trapped within the boundaries of the park."

  I slam my hand on the bar, perhaps a little harder than is really necessary. "That's why there were no ghosts in the park! She scared them all out." A few drunks look over at me with their shut-the-fuck-up faces and I settle down.

  "Only trouble is, they had to put down such heavy barriers to hold her, now nothing dead can get in or out. It's a no-go zone for ghosts. If they take them down to go in, she'll make a break for it before they can subdue her."

  "Leave it to the Council to come up with a plan so brilliant that it doesn't work," Riley chuckles.

  "That's where I come in," I say. "Detain but don't destroy the subject. Send the halfie in to catch the momma, cut open the damn boundary from the inside and lure her right into their little Underworld entranceway in Prospect Park. Fuckers got me doing their dirty work again."