Dating Dead Men

by Harley Jane Kozak

  “Yes, fine, thank you.”

  He had me leave the radio, phones, and keys on the ground, then changed his grip so that he was no longer holding me around the waist, but around the arm. It was a lot easier to walk now, but I missed being welded to him. It was okay that he had my arm; holding hands would be even nicer. Shock, I realized, was affecting my judgment.

  We reached my car. “Would you mind unlocking it?” he said, letting go of me to pay attention to his pocket. The thing that wasn't a gun was getting restless.

  “Well, for Pete's sake,” I said.

  “What?” He reached in and with one hand pulled it out, a lanky white animal the size of a small cat. It was too dark to identify a species.

  “You're leaving yourself wide open right now, ‘Doc.' Anyone could just . . .”

  With both hands, he lifted the animal to eye level and clucked to it. “Just what?”

  I hesitated. “Well, kick you in the . . . or punch you.”

  He turned, presenting me with his torso. “Want to?”

  “No.”

  “Then let's get out of here.” He smiled. “Please.”

  My heart began to pack an overnight bag.

  I opened the door and cleared off the passenger seat, throwing my purse into the back. When we were settled in, I fired up the VW Rabbit and started off down the road.

  I wore my seat belt. He did not.

  chapter five

  “You're somewhat unusual, aren't you, Ms.—?”

  “Shelley,” I said. “Wollie. Wollie Shelley. Call me Wollie. And you are—?”

  “Call me Doc. Would you mind driving without lights, Wollie?”

  Talk about unusual. I'd never in my life—purposely, that is—driven without lights. I said, “Can we get past the body first?”

  “What body?” Doc, scrunched down in the passenger seat, now raised himself until he saw what body. “Jesus Christ.” He seemed as shocked as I'd been.

  “Shall I stop?”

  He looked behind us. So did I. There was nothing, not human or vehicle, visible. “Yeah,” he said. “Wait. Are we sure he's dead?”

  “Pretty sure. I sort of checked him on my way in.”

  He stared at me. “Yeah, stop.”

  I braked a couple of yards in front of the body and announced I was staying in the car, if it was all the same to him.

  Doc got out. He squatted next to the body and studied it, then took the lanky white animal out of his pocket and stroked it as he did so. It was a strange thing to do, I thought, but then my own behavior was—as he'd pointed out—unusual. For instance, was there a good reason I didn't at this moment drive around Doc and the corpse and speed away, a reason that didn't involve dimples and winking? While I tried to think of one, he came over and got back into the car.

  “You're right. He's dead.”

  I'd thought the man unflappable, but he was now clearly disturbed. He held the animal in his lap, slunk down into the seat, and put a hand over his eyes like he needed an aspirin. Apparently there was some comment from the animal. “Not now,” he said.

  I navigated the VW around the dead man. “Did you know him?”

  “No.” He sat up straighter and turned to me. “Did you?”

  “Me? No.”

  He kept staring at me. I looked back. “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Can you drive faster?”

  “Sure. Just trying to show a little respect for the dead.”

  “And can you kill the lights now?”

  What the heck. I killed the lights. The three-quarter moon fought its way through treetops to help me, but it wasn't enough. I slowed down again.

  “Look, let me take the wheel,” he said.

  “No. You've got your hands full with that—what is that animal?”

  “Ever been told you drive like someone's grandmother?”

  “Whose grandmother drives without lights? On dirt roads full of potholes?” I heard my voice go unattractively shrill. No doubt I looked like someone's grandmother too, hunched over the steering wheel, all my nerve endings exposed. I took a breath. “At least let me use parking lights.”

  “No. You're doing fine. Sorry I insulted you.”

  I nodded. “So what killed that poor man? Heart attack, maybe? Aneurysm?”

  “Bullet,” he said. Then, to the animal, “All right, all right.”

  The creature, some sort of elongated hamster, started a climb toward the doctor's green paper head covering, which had managed to inflate in the night air. It reminded me of an old-fashioned bonnet hair dryer with a dangling air hose, a welcome image, undercutting the man's blatant virility.

  “Stop!”

  I hit the brakes. We'd come to the end of the hospital's private drive. Doc opened his door and aimed my tiny flashlight into the ditch, motioning me forward. He leaned way out, then came back up with a black vinyl gym bag. Then he turned to look out the back window.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing there but the Welcome to Rio Pescado sign warning against bringing in firearms, and stating, in English and Spanish, that it's a crime to help a patient escape. It was too dark to read, but I knew it by heart.

  “What I'd planned,” Doc said, “was to have you get out here and walk back—”

  “What?!”

  “—to the hospital. You don't have to yell, I'm right next to you. That body changes things. We don't know who's out there, and I'm not going to risk your life. So when we get to town, you can jump out at a gas station and call the police and say—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I'm trying to tell you. Can you listen and use the accelerator at the same time?”

  “Faster? Fine.” I switched on the lights. “I'll even go the speed limit, but I'm through roaming in the dark. Shoot me if you must.”

  “Would it improve your driving?”

  He looked behind us again, then turned back to me. “Wollie, I need your car. I won't pretend I'll hurt you if you say no, but I'm desperate. You'll get it back tomorrow, I'll even fix that defective CV joint—”

  “That what?”

  “The click click click noise that sounds like horses' hooves. Meanwhile, if you could give the cops a slightly modified—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No cops. No dropping me off at gas stations. I'll drive you anywhere you want to go, within reason, within the continental United States—”

  “No. I want to keep you out of this.”

  “Well, you should've thought of that when you took me hostage and—what is that animal and why is it staring at me?”

  “Ferret. Listen to me. That guy in the road, I don't know who killed him, but I think I know why, and the sooner you and I split up, the safer you'll be.”

  “What's a ferret? Not a member of the rat family, is it?” I asked. It was smaller than a cat and very oddly shaped. I don't know how he'd kept it still in the elevator, because now it was a real live wire, climbing over his shoulder and onto the headrest of the seat with considerable energy, even with some sort of leash attached to it.

  “She's a member of the family Mustelidae. Not a rodent. She kills rodents. Her name's Margaret.” He turned around. “I'm letting her crawl around in the back. You okay with that?”

  I wished I could say I was okay with that, but I didn't say anything.

  “What? Are you scared of her?” he asked. “She's domesticated. She won't bite. Some do, but not her.”

  Unless you're a rodent, I thought. We were coming into town: lights, traffic, civilization. “I don't have a lot of experience with animals. I'm more of an indoor person.”

  “You never had a pet?”

  “I'm allergic to things with fur.” Number nine on the List, I thought automatically, No Pets.

  “Says who? You're not breaking out in hives, are you?”

  I wasn't. Except for the sneezes in the elevator, I had no symptoms. “My mother always told my brother and me we were allergic to things with fur.”

  “Smar
t mother.”

  I looked over and caught the tail end of a smile. The dimple again. And a good profile. Strong nose. He pointed out the window to a gas station just short of the freeway entrance. “There. Pull in.”

  “No need,” I said, and stepped on the gas. “We have half a tank.”

  WOULD THINGS HAVE gone differently if I hadn't had to pee?

  North of Thousand Oaks sat a good-sized mall, dark except for a corner facing the freeway, featuring the Donut Stop (“Fresh—All Day, All Nite!”). I parked in front of a blue neon doughnut and practically leaped from the car.

  Doc got out too. “Throw me the keys, I'll lock up and meet you inside.”

  I stopped. “What do you take me for?”

  “Look, I won't drive off. Margaret's gotta pee, then I'll put her back in the car.”

  “So leave it unlocked. She can't open doors, can she?”

  “Leave your car unlocked?” He sounded shocked.

  “It's a sixteen-year-old Rabbit with a defective CD joint,” I said and ran inside.

  The bathroom at the Donut Stop doubled as the supply closet for industrial doughnut making. From the toilet I stared at multi- gallon–sized cans marked “blueberry filling” and wondered what the chances were that Doc was actually waiting for me, as opposed to hot-wiring the car. Just in case, I squandered a full minute in front of the mirror to see if my appearance could be improved. It couldn't. I looked tall, tired, and tense.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Doc was at a window table, reading the paper. A warm holiday feeling engulfed me, at being in a well-lit, well-heated place redolent of brewing coffee and rising dough. Where a man like that sat waiting for me.

  The scrub cap was gone. I'd hoped for a little baldness, something to reduce him to mere mortal status, but he had a full head of hair, black and wavy. Whole wigs could be made from its excess. I sat opposite him.

  Without looking up from the L.A. Times, he tapped a well-stocked plastic plate. “Crullers. Chocolate éclairs. Glazed.” He handed me a napkin.

  “You're awfully well brought up for a kidnapper,” I said.

  He acknowledged that with a smile, but kept reading. He'd already put away a doughnut or two, judging from the powdered sugar dotting his five o'clock shadow. One of those men who has a five o'clock shadow six minutes after shaving, I decided. He looked like he'd been up since the seventies. He looked ravaged. He looked good.

  He took the paper and ripped out a piece of the page he was reading, then tossed the rest onto a pile on the adjoining table. “Okay, Wollie, plan B: I borrow your car, give you money for a cab, and later, you tell the police—”

  “Shh.” I nodded toward the counter, where a husky red-faced trucker type fortified himself for the return to the convoy. “We'll talk in the car.”

  “You're not listening.”

  “I've already taken a cab tonight; one's my limit.” I broke off a piece of cruller and put it on my napkin. “My best offer: you drop me in Hollywood, you can have the Rabbit.” There were four coffees in front of him. I opened one and added a drop of half-and-half from a tiny plastic container.

  He opened a second coffee, threw in five packets of sugar, and stirred violently. His black hair and unshaven face brought to mind the Middle East: one of the Apostles, on a coffee break. He looked out the window. I did too. The Rabbit was the only vehicle in sight. Margaret stretched out on the dashboard, looking back at us.

  He spoke quietly. “Look, I'm trying to limit your involvement here. Why are you making it so hard?”

  “Stockholm syndrome.”

  He stopped stirring. “I'm serious.”

  “You think I'm not? There are dead bodies in the road and killers out wandering around, and you keep looking over your shoulder to see who's following you, but you want to strand me in the middle of Ventura County at whatever time it is, hailing a cab? It's like a horror movie. I won't do it. You want my car, you take me too.”

  “How do you know I'm not the killer? A killer doctor.”

  “You may be a killer; you're not a doctor, ‘Doc.' Those paper slippers are supposed to be worn over the shoes, not instead of—you'd have learned that in surgery school. The guards noticed it too. And nobody at Rio Pescado dresses like you're dressed, it's a mental hospital. They only do simple stuff, like stitches, and they don't dress up for it. Anything complicated, they go to a regular hospital.”

  “Then what were these scrubs doing in a supply closet?”

  I shrugged. A thought occurred to me. “You're not a patient, are you?”

  “Yes. I'm a patient. A dangerous one, with whom you do not want to—”

  “Yeah? What meds are you on?” I took a bite of cruller and watched his mind working. “Meds,” I repeated. “Haldol, Thorazine, lithium. You're not on anything, and except for this obsession to drop me off places, you don't seem symptomatic.”

  “Symptomatic.” He looked out the window again. “Tell me something. Do you think every patient at Rio Pescado is crazy?”

  “It's not a word I'd use. But it's a state hospital, so there's not enough money to keep them if they're not.”

  The bell-rigged door—not as musical as my shop's—made us turn. A man in a madras shirt and a name tag held the door for the departing trucker, then surveyed the crowd, which was us. “Hey, Douglas,” he said to the proprietor. “Coffee fresh?”

  “Also—” I said, but Doc reached over and put a hand on my arm to silence me.

  “—show biz!” we heard, then laughter. Douglas, behind the counter, talked a little louder than was strictly necessary, the way you do when you like being overheard.

  I was still transfixed by the hand on my arm, when Doc stood and leaned over the table. “Occupy them. The guy who walked in—don't let him leave till I get back.”

  “Wha—”

  “You can do it. You're very distracting.” He left me with my mouth open.

  This was the moment to walk outside, evict the ferret from my car, and drive home. That would be the act of a rational person. Grab a few hours of sleep before another day of blind dates and shop inspections.

  “If you hurry,” Ruta piped up, “you could even get some vacuuming in before dawn.” I did a mental double take. Was that sarcasm?

  She had a point, though. I couldn't sneak off and leave him stranded, because I didn't believe he would do that to me. Plus, he'd just called me distracting. I got up, put my cruller down, and moved toward the counter. Create a diversion, I thought. You read espionage novels, you'll think of something.

  I sneezed. It sounded phony to me, but the two men turned and I fixed the madras shirt man with my best smile. “Allergies. Pollen. Powdered sugar.” I perched on a stool next to him, my heart palpitating over this lie.

  Douglas said, “What can I get for you?”

  “I'll have whatever he's having.” Then I remembered I'd spent my last dime on the cab. “No, I mean a napkin. Just a napkin for me.” I turned back to my quarry. The name tag was on his far pocket, and I couldn't make it out. Pumping seductivity into my voice, I said, “Working late?”

  “Yeah. Dry cleaners. Two doors down.”

  “Really? Dry cleaning? I love dry cleaning—” I stretched across the counter until I could read the name tag. “—Raymond. Do you work all night long, Raymond?”

  He leaned back but his eyes stayed on me or, actually, on my breasts, draped over the counter. He was leaning so drastically I thought he might fall off his stool.

  “He's working on the movie,” Douglas said. “The Civil War thing.”

  “No! Really? A Civil War movie?”

  “You didn't hear about it? It's got Whatsername in it. Elizabeth Montgomery.”

  “Elizabeth McGovern, maybe?” I was pretty sure Elizabeth Montgomery was dead.

  “Last night,” Douglas added, “he did two hundred uniforms with caked-on blood.”

  “Caked-on blood,” I said. “What a challenge, Raymond.”

  “And he can't even get himself an a
utograph.” Douglas's voice leaked contempt.

  Raymond stood and reached into the pocket of his chinos. Was he leaving?

  I spoke fast. “Raymond's an awfully nice name. What is it, Spanish?”

  “Norwegian.” He plunked down some change and turned to leave.

  I looked out the window. The green scrub suit was nowhere in sight. “Wait!”

  Raymond stopped.

  “Let me buy you a doughnut,” I said. Maybe they took credit cards.

  Raymond shook his head. “Sugar, white flour, it's all poison.”

  “Okay, but let me just ask you something. In your dry cleaning, do you use . . . poly . . . Poly-something. That stuff that eats up the ozone?”

  Raymond frowned, and reached for the door handle.

  I slid off my stool. “Poly . . . urethane. No. Some chemical. Poly—”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “No, listen, this is important.” I was losing him. My assignment was out the door. “Perchloroethylene! That's it. Raymond! Do you guys use perchloroethylene?” I followed him outside. “Because it's dangerous, Raymond, dangerous for you.”

  He headed to the left, not trying to ditch me, but not slowing down.

  “Not just for the consumer,” I said, “or the planet, but you, you're the one who works with it, day in and day out. If you don't care about the ozone, care about your lungs. Cancer.” I was alongside him. “Sterility. Chernobyl. Doughnuts? Doughnuts are vitamins in comparison.”

  He moved faster. I didn't know what to do so I leapt in front of him and grabbed at his shoulders. We lost our balance and thudded against the glass window of A-1 Travel Agency, Raymond's startled face framed by a poster of Cabo San Lucas.

  I let go of him. “Sorry. I'm really sorry, Raymond, but it's my life's work.”

  He straightened himself. “Weirdo,” he muttered. Eyes fixed on me, he moved backward toward Lotus Blossom 24-Hour Martinizing. I figured that Doc was in there and I wanted to alert him so I yelled, “Agent Orange.”

  It worked. As Raymond reached the dry cleaner's, Doc emerged. He looked so different, though, I had to look twice. Gone were the green scrubs; the erstwhile doctor now wore a tuxedo.