Secret Dead Men

by Duane Swierczynski

  –––––––––––—

  Secret Dead Men

  by Duane Swierczynski

  –––––––––––—

  Mystery

  Fictionwise

  www.fictionwise.com

  Copyright ©2005 by Duane Swierczynski

  First published by PointBlank, 2005.

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  DUANE

  SWIERCZYNSKI’S

  SECRET

  DEAD

  MEN

  A DETECTIVE NOVEL

  For Meredith, who wasn’t

  afraid of the bloody axe.

  Contents

  Start

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  WOODY CREEK, ILLINOIS LABOR DAY 1975

  One One and A Half Dead Bodies

  Two A Confession

  Three Brain Hotel

  Four Fieldman’s Trip

  Five Pepperoni and Cheese

  Six The Face They Feared

  Seven A New Case

  HENDERSON, NEVADA EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  Eight Soul Patrol

  Nine Sherman Oaks Gold

  Ten The Thing In The Trunk

  Eleven Supernatural Disaster

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  Twelve Love City

  Thirteen Portraits of the Artists as Young Men

  Fourteen Drinks At Tom’s Holiday

  Fifteen First Days on the Job

  Sixteen Deja Rendevous

  Seventeen Christmas Mistress

  Eighteen Case Solved

  Nineteen Macho Cheese

  Twenty Shot Contest

  Twenty-One Toilet, Cat

  Twenty-Two Electric Amy

  Twenty-Three The Spirits Of ‘76

  Twenty-Four H-Bomb In Vegas

  Twenty-Five Soul Gun

  Twenty-Six Gallantly Screaming

  Twenty-Seven Four And A Half Dead Bodies

  About the Author

  Visit www.fictionwise.com

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Theresa Dougherty (for the spelling), James Roach (for The Most Dangerous Game), Michael DeMeo (for the Stephen King), Albin Dixon (for the detective stories), Robert Dunbar (for the Pines), Bro. Gabe Fagan (for the Waste Lands), Bill Wine (for the sick puppy), Loren Feldman (for the career), Art Borgeau (for the hardboiled talks), as well as the Salesian Sisters, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and the Christian Brothers (for the metaphysics).

  Honorary guests of the Brain Hotel include Paul and Cindy Barsky, John Betancourt, Ken, Phyl and Grace Bruen, Father Luke Elijah, Gary Goldstein, J.T. Lindroos, Jordan Matus, Myatt Murphy, “Kid Valentine” O’Connor, Tom “Sir” Paul, Sr., Jason Rekulak, Rich Rys, Kevin Burton Smith, Lynne Texter, Sean Wallace, Jim Warren, Lou Wojciechowski and all Swierczynskis, everywhere.

  Residing in a penthouse suite of the Brain Hotel is David “Hale” Smith, without whom the Brain Hotel would have been condemned and turned into a retirement home for the hopelessly senile. In the other penthouse suite is Allan Guthrie, an amazing hardboiled writer and editor who I’m convinced is the Scottish recincarnation of David Goodis. (And one of these days I’m going to hire a hypnotist to prove it.)

  Meredith, Parker and Sarah enjoy luxury suites in the heart of the Brain Hotel.

  WOODY CREEK, ILLINOIS

  LABOR DAY 1975

  “One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I’ll have a bit of tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.”

  —LORD BYRON

  One

  One and a Half Dead Bodies

  Alison Larsen’s body went undiscovered for about 6 hours. Local children found her first. The paper never reported this, but a couple of the kids organized an impromptu club with a mandate to “experiment” on her corpse. What would happen if we put rocks in her mouth? Can her eyes still see? If we cut her, will she still bleed?

  Twisted bastards. Did they think to call an ambulance? Scream for a neighbor? No. The first thing they did was grab a rock the size of a softball and shove it into Mrs. Larsen’s mouth. According to the report, her teeth were chipped where the rock made contact. Alison was a petite woman. They had to push hard to shove that hunk of granite into her face.

  There was no official effort to prosecute the children. Big mistake, in my book. This kind of behavior, left unchecked, often results in severely disturbed adults.

  Then again, what do I know? At the time, I was a dead man impersonating an FBI agent.

  Ten hours after the discovery, top brass—in other words, me and a bunch of agents from the Chicago office who I’d just met—sped through the weedy flatland somebody once decided to call “Woody Creek” and arrived at the Witness Protection house. The “safe” house. What a joke. If we cut her, will she still bleed?

  After we pulled up, somebody handed me a doughnut and a Styrofoam cup. I thanked him and peeled off the lid. The coffee was lukewarm and milky. I prefer my coffee hot and black. But it’d been a long day—flying from Vegas to Chicago, and then this drive. I was grateful for any kind of stimulant. We all started up the front driveway.

  The local cleanup crew had arrived a few hours before us, so I didn’t see any of the corpse mutilation first-hand—I only read the report. The crew had checked Alison Larsen’s body for vitals (as if there were any to be found), made the requisite notations, zipped her up in a plastic bag, and loaded her into the van.

  Ms. Larsen’s body may have no longer been here, but her blood certainly was. It was splattered on the tan shag carpet at least three feet in every direction. “Shit,” somebody said. I stepped over the soiled area and walked into the living room. There was a cluttered desk with its chair tipped over, one leg broken. A fat book was split open on the floor. I walked into the kitchen. Glass cupboard doors were shattered; broken pieces littered the hardwood floor. I noticed a smear of dried blood along one wall. The radio was playing “The Air That I Breathe,” a Hollies tune from a couple of years ago.

  “Who turned this on?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” replied an agent. “It was on when we got here. We left it.”

  “You think it might cough up some evidence?” I joked.

  “Possibly,” the agent said, poker-faced.

  A dark-haired man with a thick neck and clothes that were supposed to be stylish approached me. “Agent Kennedy?”

  “Yes,” I replied. I flashed the temporary photo I.D. I’d received upon arriving at the Chicago office. I’d told them I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it, but I’d been in such a hurry to make the plane I must have … blah, blah, blah. They bought it.

  “I’m Agent Nevins. Welcome to Illinois.”

  Dean Nevins, SAC—Special Agent in Charge. I’d heard a bit about him from the boys on the two-hour drive down from Chicago. One-word descriptions flowed freely: Territorial. Obtuse. Egotistical. Only hears what he wants to and beats the piss out of anyone who says different. When you’re on a Dean Nevins case, they told me, you’re in Dean Nevins’ world. Keep your head down and questions to yourself. He loved murders, too. Couldn’t get enough of them.

  “You have the name of a great man,” Nevins told me.

  “Yes, I know.”

 
; I told Nevins I wished I was here under better circumstances, it was a beautiful state, and all that. I wanted him to point me to Brad Larsen’s body right away, but I thought to do so might seem weird. Instead, I asked him to walk me through what had happened.

  Nevins gave me a funny look, as if I’d ask him what brand of underwear he wore.

  “Well, this all went down yesterday,” he said. “Early Sunday afternoon. We assume the gunman took her by surprise, at the door.” He led me deeper into the living room. “The guy knocked, and Mrs. Larsen went over to answer it.”

  I shook my head to indicate my disgust.

  “Next thing you know,” Nevins said, punctuating his words with a thumb-and-index-finger pistol, “blammo. Hubby stands up, and somewhere in here…” He paused to point to the middle of the room, in front of the desk. “…Hubby makes a break for it. It’s typical. These WP guys are almost always Grade-A, U.S.D.A.-approved pussies.”

  I nodded as if I agreed. “The body was out back?”

  “No.” Nevins continued into the next room—a small kitchen, done over in way too many earth tones. He pointed at a puke green wall. “The perp nailed Hubby here, and smacked his head into a glass cabinet.” I saw the blood. “They must have scuffled, and backed into this table.” Or what was left of it. “Then Hubby runs for it again, and skips out to the back door. The perp follows.”

  We walked past a bedroom to a flimsy aluminum door through which I could see outside. The porch overlooked a thin stretch of Woody Creek. Agent Nevins led me out onto the back porch deck, but a nervous-looking member of local law enforcement interrupted the agent’s compassionate, insightful description of the Larsens’ double murder.

  The man’s face lit up. “Was it the Mafia?” he cried. “One of dem Manson cults? C’mon, you gotta tell me!”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff…” Nevins started, then paused to look down at his notebook. “…Alford. This thing is ours now. Nothing to worry you.”

  “Hey! I found the body! I knew she weren’t creekfolk, I called you guys…”

  “We appreciate your cooperation,” Nevins said, “but it’s better you leave it to us now. We’ll take care of her. I promise you.”

  The sheriff shuffled off to another part of the house. I looked at the water for a few moments, waiting for Nevins to continue his story. But then an assistant investigator—Fieldman, I think his name was—approached with a clipboard. “You were right,” he told Nevins. “Blood type matches Larsen. Wit Protec number 2-3-3-oh.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You haven’t found Larsen’s body yet?”

  “His blood’s all over the deck,” said Fieldman. “We think he’s in the drink, but nobody’s spotted him yet. We found another blood type, too—probably our suspect.”

  “Aw, fuck a duck,” Nevins said. “Okay. Call in the cleaners, take our samples, then strip the house. Leave nothing but a shell. And have some guys out to check the creek already. I know they don’t like getting their Thom McCann specials all wet, but it’s part of the job.”

  Fieldman nodded.

  “And another thing,” Nevins said. “We’re not going to file a report today.”

  “Sir?”

  I asked myself a similar question: What the hell was going on?

  Nevins enunciated each word: “We. Don’t. File. Which part of that did you fail to comprehend?”

  Fieldman didn’t breathe for a moment. Then he ventured: “Don’t you want to—”

  “You want to be the one to tell the world this program can’t be trusted?” Nevins said. “That some of our esteemed colleagues sell addresses to hired guns? That the fabric of our judicial system is routinely ripped open like the panties of a Louisiana whore?”

  Fieldman looked around to see if anyone else was catching this. When he saw we were alone, he turned to me. I kept my face blank. This was not something I wanted to be in the middle of—at least not right now. Finally, Fieldman turned back to his boss. “No sir,” he said.

  “Fine then. Raze the house. And take care of the sheriff. His name is…” Nevins glanced at his notebook. “Daniel Alford.”

  “Daniel Alford,” Fieldman repeated.

  I looked over the creek again. It looked like the water in a backed-up bar toilet.

  As Fieldman was walking away, Nevins called out to him, “Shoot the bastard if you have to.”

  Now that was gratuitous. But so what? Everything was gratuitous this morning.

  I turned to follow Nevins back into the house, and my foot bumped against something. A book. John Donne, the spine read. Standard Edition. I picked it up, flipped through a few pages. Daubs of dried blood speckled the orderly lines of verse.

  Damn. Nobody should read poetry right before they die.

  Twenty minutes later, when nobody else was looking, I walked back outside and climbed over the porch railing. Hanging on the framework below, I swung hand over hand until my legs dangled over the choppy, muddy ground. I let go and miraculously landed on both feet.

  I took the time to breathe, then listened to make sure nobody had stepped out onto the deck. I started along the shit-mud bank as quietly as possible. It was not much of a creek—not much to feed it except freak storms and floods. When I got further out, I stretched my head up to look back at the house. The deck was still empty. I turned around and headed downstream.

  Why bury this thing? According to the F.B.I.’s own files, Brad Larsen was the “key to exposing organized crime in the greater Las Vegas area.” Unless … well, unless, of course, the Association’s influence had pushed its way upstairs, all the way to Special Agents in Charge. But it didn’t make sense; not from what I’d heard about Nevins. He was too much of a Boy Scout to be in somebody’s pocket.

  Finally, after a quarter mile of wading, I found Larsen’s body, tucked behind a small pale bush and half-submerged in an eddy. The poor bastard looked like he’d been dead for no more than half a day.

  Perfect.

  Two

  A Confession

  My name is not actually Special Agent Kevin Kennedy. My name is Del Farmer, and I’m a soul collector.

  Not that this is a bad thing. I don’t collect souls to torture them, or to steal their essence of life or something depraved like that. I’m no vampire. I use the souls for informational purposes only, to perform acts of mercy and justice. Or at least, acts my moral compass told me were merciful and just. The souls I collect are damned anyway. Like Brad Larsen’s.

  I looked down at his body, which lay twisted in the muddy water. Clearly, he’d been trying to fight his way down the creek. Going to call for help? Probably. Trying to pull it together so he could march back up and kick the shit out of whoever killed his wife? Maybe. There wasn’t much to help him along in either direction. At least he was safe from the neighborhood kids back here.

  I scooped him under his arms and dragged his body to semi-dry ground. I touched his neck. It felt like a slab of ribeye right out of the refrigerator. “It’s going to be all right, buddy,” I told the corpse. The meat couldn’t hear me, but I knew Larsen could. His soul was still nearby.

  Collecting a soul is a fairly simple procedure. If the soul is still somewhere near its body, that is. If you wait too long, the link between body and soul is severed and it’s tough to locate the soul. It is possible, depending on the circumstances and a bit of afterlife detective work—which I would have been forced to do, had Larsen expired more than a day ago. (After 24 hours or so, souls start to figure out they should get going into the next plane of existence.) And sometimes, if you go poking around in the afterlife too much, it can suck you right in. German philosopher Fredrich Neitzsche was perfectly on-target about that “looking into the abyss, the abyss looking into you” thing.

  But I would have gladly done it. Brad Larsen was extremely important to me. I had tracked him down this far, and wasn’t about to give up now. I knew he was a hot-dog witness, important enough to the Association to warrant a hit, important enough to the government to keep h
im protected. Larsen knew something.

  But what? And why hadn’t he coughed it up yet? That’s what troubled me. Usually, spilling your guts was the requirement for receiving a new name and house in the middle of suburban nowhere, courtesy of the U.S. Government. If he had, I would have heard about it. After all, I am a Special Agent with the Las Vegas branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Okay, not exactly. I collected the soul of the real Kevin Kennedy—and glommed his credentials—seven months ago, and have been playing the part ever since. Before that, I kept an office as a private investigator in Henderson; before that, I was a county clerk in Reno. The jobs had to change. After a while, even the best cover story will fall apart. You will be found out. It will be time to move on, to adopt a new identity. The point remains: I would have heard.

  The first step was to lure Larsen’s soul back into his body. I knew he was still around, hanging onto this earthly plane by his astral fingernails. The vibe was strong; stronger still when I moved close to his corpse. The link hadn’t been severed yet.

  I won’t go into the technical details of luring a soul; let’s just say it’s a cross between a birdcall and a sleight-of-hand card trick. Besides, if I told you, you might be tempted to try it. God forbid you try it in an old house or graveyard. You never know what’s gonna answer your call.

  I made my move, and after a moment or two Larsen’s eyes opened. I’m not sure what he was looking at—there wasn’t much. His shirt was ripped and covered in dark maroon blood. Or maybe it was mud. It was unclear where the creek stopped and the man began. “Mr. Larsen?” I said.

  His eyes turned in my general direction.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  Brad stared at me.

  Now came the next step: soul collection. I had to work fast—a soul can’t animate a corpse for long. It’s a trick, really: The meat thinks it’s back on the job, and it takes a while to realize, Hey, waitasecond … I don’t think I’m alive anymore…