Here Comes the Corpse

by Mark Richard Zubro

“You came to me as an expert. You can check my opinions with others. I’m not sure how easy it will be to find someone to ask. I’m not claiming what I’m telling you is anything but an expert opinion. You want certitude, try a mob-connected source. Do you know one?”

  I shook my head, then said, “Some of the records are missing. We found sets of pictures that seem to be connected to blackmail.”

  “They didn’t need money. There was no need for blackmail. Remember, porn may be sleazy and looked down on, but in most jurisdictions, it is not illegal.”

  Scott said, “He had a lot of old videos there. Where did he get them?”

  “He brought up a bunch of old collections from companies and individuals around since the early days of porn. Back then a lot of them were pretty fly-by-night—actually, many still are. Conventional wisdom is that in the old days many that weren’t mob-connected didn’t stay in business long. Some just folded because they were run by a bunch of goofs.”

  I said, “And there was lots of kinky stuff.”

  “That was Ethan’s specialty. If you had a kink, he had a video for it. On Ethan’s Web site, he advertised, offered money for amateur stuff. Ethan paid top dollar. That’s where he got a lot of the strangest videos.”

  “Isn’t some of that stuff illegal?” Scott asked.

  “Sure. They had a famous video with several sets of twins doing it together. Filming incest and selling it is very illegal. They charged premium prices for those and sold tons of them.”

  “All gay?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not. The majority of the twin ones were sets of straight women with one guy. They also had private collections that were not advertised on the Internet. You had to know Ethan or Cormac personally to get those. They charged premium prices for them. Exactly what precise combinations of near relatives they had, I’m not sure. I don’t know if there is a complete list. Even if you had model releases, I doubt if they’d list the familial relationship. If you’re doing something that illegal, you’re not as worried about model releases and age requirements as you might be.”

  “Do you know about the condo here?”

  “Sure. They made videos there. There’s nothing sinister in that.”

  “How did you meet him?” I asked.

  “I was in one of his classes at the university. I fucked him on the top of his desk in the classroom one night.”

  Scott asked, “Why aren’t you dead?”

  Burnes looked shocked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Two of the people with a connection to the porn empire are dead. The third is missing. If I were you, I’d be frightened out of my mind.”

  “I don’t know anything worth being killed for.”

  “Josh Durst claimed he didn’t know anything,” Scott said. “He’s missing. Two others are dead. Why aren’t you?”

  “This is absurd. I have no reason to fear.” Burnes glanced around uneasily.

  Into the silence that began to stretch uncomfortably, I asked, “How’d you get into the porn business?”

  “Ethan introduced me to people. As positions for reviewer or hanger-on opened up, I’d take them. I spend my life surfing porn sites. I go to all the video award ceremonies. I get myself onto as many porn sets as I can.”

  “Do you appear in videos?”

  “I don’t have guts enough to show my body on camera. I wish I did. I try to make personal contacts with as many people making videos as possible. For someone living in the Midwest, I know a great deal. In fact, a lot of folks in the porn industry love me. Partly they feel a need to suck up because I’m a reviewer. Partly because I’m fair and honest in my reviews.”

  “We’ve got to tell this stuff to the police,” I said.

  “Fine. I’ll deny I said anything.”

  “You don’t like the police?”

  “I hustled a little in college. I got hassled by some pretty nasty cops. They are not my friends. I will help you. I will not help them. Don’t bother to send them.”

  Scott asked, “Ethan and Cormac had a live Web site or a purportedly live site. Who’s keeping it up?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  I’ve watched teenagers lie for too many years not to have been suspicious of him at that moment. I said, “Why would you lie to us? Did you kill the others?”

  “Hey, I agreed to help you guys. What the hell is this?”

  “We’re not trying to accuse you,” Scott said, “but nobody we know of has any knowledge of their porn business except you. You could easily have a reason to kill them—business rivals, jealousy, something. The Web site is still running at least in part. It’s got to be somebody. Why not you?”

  “You can’t talk to me like this.”

  “Sure we can,” I said. As soon as Scott aired his suspicions, I glommed on to them as truth. They sounded so right.

  “Where were you about eight o’clock Saturday night?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t invited to your wedding.”

  “Maybe you’ll be talking to the police after all,” Scott said.

  “You guys are assholes.”

  “From stars to shits in less than an hour,” Scott said, “that beats my previous record.”

  “We keep track of his best times,” I added.

  Scott said, “It’s us or the police and lots of questions.”

  “Last Saturday I was fucking a porn star who wanted a good review of his latest movie. I haven’t been to St. Louis in ten years. I wouldn’t step in that cesspool. I didn’t kill anybody. I barely knew Durst.”

  “Who runs the porn site now?”

  “I do, okay. I have the passwords. I’ll shut it down if you want me to.”

  “We just want to know if what’s on it will give a clue to the murder.”

  “Basically right now I’ve got it set on permanent loop. It’s not live anymore. We advertised it that way, but, Christ, that takes a lot. There is nothing on it anyone would kill for.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” I said. “Two people are already dead. If you won’t talk to the cops, then you’ve got to at least have protection. We know a private detective who can help.”

  “You really think I’m in danger?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I hadn’t thought so.”

  “The killer is desperate about something. The model releases are missing. Do you have them?”

  “No, I swear.”

  This time I didn’t sense he was lying. I said, “You’re the last link. Josh Durst ran again.”

  “He called me,” Burnes said, “Monday morning. He said people were questioning him. He didn’t say it was you guys. I told him not to trust anybody and that he’d better run. He didn’t tell me he had a copy of the records. I didn’t know the records are what was getting people killed.”

  I said, “When we talked to Durst, he claimed that he had tapes of Scott pitching. We didn’t see Scott’s name in the athletes’ list we saw.”

  “Durst never told me about them. If he had them, he never added them to the collection that I know about.”

  We used the cell phone to call Miller. He agreed about the need for protection. While we waited for his arrival, I asked, “Was there anyone significant in his life named Michael?” I told Burnes about Ethan’s last words.

  “Nobody I can think of,” Burnes said.

  “I can’t figure out what it was he wanted to come to the wedding to talk to me about.”

  “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. He would talk about you on occasion. He always said he wanted to apologize to you. When I asked him what for, he only ever said he was a shit to you when you were kids. He said he could always trust you. I can’t tell you how many times he showed me that goddamn little brown football with your initials carved on it. You do know he kept little souvenirs of many of his conquests?”

  I shook my head.

  Burnes continued, “He said you were the one person in his life who was honest. As for me, I never got a good impression of you from Ethan�
��s descriptions. You seemed like someone who couldn’t let go. The last time you called, he found it embarrassing. Who would cling to memories long since past and best forgotten? From what I heard, you were pretty pathetic.” Burnes shrugged. “But he was desperate to apologize. I think that’s why he came to town. He wanted a fresh start. I thought it was kind of silly.”

  When Miller arrived, we filled him in on what we’d learned, especially about Murphy and Fariniti.

  As Miller was escorting Burnes away, the private eye said, “This one won’t get away.”

  Back in our car I said, “I want to talk to Murphy and Fariniti.”

  “Got that right,” Scott said. “I’m not sure I trust Burnes all that much.”

  The cell phone rang. The service said, “It’s one of Mr. Carpenter’s nephews. He says it’s urgent.”

  I put it on the speakerphone expecting it to be Donny. It was Brent, Scott’s sister’s oldest. He sounded scared. “I just a got call from Donny. He’s in trouble.”

  “Where is he?” Scott asked.

  “I’m not sure. He said I should meet him at the corner of Clark and Diversey. I can’t get there. I don’t know where it is. I think he was out of his mind. He didn’t give me time to say I couldn’t make it. I knew I should call you.”

  “You could have taken a bus or a cab,” Scott said.

  “I don’t know the city. I’ve never been in a cab.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Scott asked.

  “I think she’s gone out with Grandma and Grandpa to talk with the private investigator.”

  “Stay there,” Scott said. “We’ll call the police. You wait there until one of the adults comes back and give them the news.”

  I asked, “Was he staying with you?”

  A very soft, “Yes.”

  I decided family units closer to the kid than I could go over the stupidity of not revealing that Donny was hiding there. At least Brent had the sense to call now.

  “Did he tell you to call us?” Scott asked.

  “No, but after talking to all of you earlier, I realized I had to tell. I would have told him I was going to.”

  We called the police. The candy shop is mere blocks from Clark and Diversey. We rushed over. In the car on the way to the intersection we phoned each of Scott’s relatives still in town. None of them was in. We left messages for each.

  Since finding a spot on the street in that neighborhood is nearly impossible, we parked in the Century parking garage up Clark Street. We walked quickly to the intersection. We saw no one we recognized until Rohter and Hoge parked in the bus zone on Diversey west of Clark. We hustled over to them. We all scanned the never unbusy intersection.

  “Why here?” Scott asked. “What the hell is he thinking? What the hell is going on?”

  27

  A bus drew up across the street on the south side of Diversey. When it pulled away, Donny was leaning against a no-parking sign. He was clutching his side. Scott began to run across the street. Car brakes squealed. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back. A southbound car turning right onto Diversey from Clark missed him by inches.

  Traffic cleared. The cops, Scott, and I dashed across the street. I watched Donny stumble. He had both hands holding his jacket tightly to his torso. He saw us and tried to move in the opposite direction. As soon as he let go of the sign, he began to fall. A pedestrian stopped and held out a hand toward him.

  By the time we reached him, the kid was on the sidewalk and gasping for breath. Rohter called for an ambulance. Hoge ran back across the street and hopped into their unmarked car. At the time I didn’t pay much attention to him. Later I found out that he was chasing the bus so they could talk to the passengers about Donny.

  Scott and I knelt next to the kid. He breathed heavily. When he pulled his hand away from his side, we saw that he was rapidly losing blood. Scott tore off his own jacket, ripped off his shirt, and used it to apply pressure to the wound. The blood quickly soaked it through.

  “This must have just happened,” I said. “He couldn’t have gone far for long on a bus without someone noticing.”

  Donny cried out in pain. He was panting hard. He tried to push Scott’s hands away. The most bleeding seemed to be coming from a gash just below his rib cage on his far left side. I had no idea which organs were directly under that spot.

  “What happened?” Scott asked.

  Donny gazed at us and mumbled, “Help me.” I realized this was the first time I’d heard his voice without a trace of teenage hostility. That was neither a helpful nor a comforting thought. He sounded eerily like Ethan. He put his bloody hand on top of the bloody shirt on top of his bloody wound. “Help me,” he said again. I tore off my shirt and added it to the rapidly spreading red mass.

  Scott cradled Donny’s head and torso and murmured, “Everything’s going to be fine. Just hold on. The paramedics are on their way.” The kid shut his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he remained conscious or not, but he was still breathing.

  The paramedics did show up pretty quickly. As they worked, Scott phoned his parents’ hotel room. He got hold of them. Hiram and Cynthia were with Scott’s parents. We found out what hospital they were taking the kid to and told them. The paramedics loaded Donny into the ambulance. We ran to our car and raced after them.

  At the hospital Donny was rushed into the emergency room. Hiram, Cynthia, and Scott’s parents hurried in moments after we arrived. For once Hiram did not bluster or fulminate or foam at the mouth. He saw us, came over, and asked, “Is he all right? Where is he?”

  Hiram and Cynthia were allowed to rush to the back where they’d taken Donny. We stayed in the waiting room. Hoge and Rohter arrived. The news they had was unhelpful. No one on the bus had noticed anything. It had been crowded. Six or seven people had gotten off at the stop. A number had gotten on. No one could say for sure if Donny was even on the bus or if he’d come to the corner at the same time the bus pulled up. No one claimed to remember seeing anyone approach Donny. They had found a knife in an alley half a block away.

  While we waited, we told the cops about Murphy and Fariniti. “Who’s your source?” Rohter demanded.

  “For now, we’d like to keep confidence,” I said. “We may be able to get more out of him if we need it. If his information is any good, you’ve got two people to question. He claims he’ll deny everything he told us if you come to talk to him. He’s had some unfortunate experiences with the police.”

  Rohter said, “We are the murder police and this is a murder investigation. You are not going to play some goodhearted amateur-sleuth crap and not tell us. Spill it or get ready to come down to the station.”

  I wished I had my lawyer around to consult. I said, “Call my lawyer.”

  Rohter swore, but refrained from arresting us. They left to pursue the leads we’d given them.

  Half an hour later, Hiram came out. He nodded to us. We clustered around him.

  “How is he?” Scott asked.

  Hiram said, “They aren’t sure he’s going to make it. He hasn’t regained consciousness. They don’t know if he will.”

  Scott’s father put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “We’ll stay with you for as long as it takes.”

  Scott’s sister, her husband, and Scott’s nieces and nephew hurried off the elevator and joined us. As Hiram explained what was going on, Cynthia hurried down the corridor. She was crying. We all rushed to her. She clutched Hiram. She said, “They’re taking him up to surgery. They couldn’t stop the internal hemorrhaging.”

  A nurse joined us. “What’s happening?” Hiram asked.

  The nurse, an older woman in her fifties, said, “The doctors are going to try and …” She listed a series of medical things that needed to be fixed.

  “Is he going to make it?” Cynthia asked.

  “We’ll have to see. There’s been a lot of damage internally.”

  Hiram held Cynthia. They were both in tears. Scott’s mom and dad did their best to comfort them, but they, too, looked s
tricken. I didn’t like the kid, but there is nothing worse than losing a child.

  We waited for hours. I stopped in the gift shop to pick up a book to read. When I came back, I saw Scott in a corner with Hiram. Their heads were close together. I read for half an hour. I looked up to see them hug briefly. Scott came and sat next to me. His thigh and knee leaned against mine. He took my hand. He was teary-eyed. He said, “We had a good talk. Better than we’ve ever had as adults.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  When the doctor finally emerged, she looked grim. We gathered around. She said, “We did everything we could. Several vital organs were lacerated. We’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the next few hours. He’s going to be in the intensive care unit.”

  “Will he make it?” Cynthia asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing more we can do medically. I’m sorry.”

  Cynthia and Hiram went to sit with their son up on the intensive care floor. Only two people were allowed in at a time. Scott’s mom and dad said they would wait outside. We stayed for another hour. Scott’s sister, brother-in-law, and I decided to go down to the hospital cafeteria to eat. Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter said they weren’t hungry.

  Scott’s brother-in-law, Mary’s husband, is the manager of a convenience store in East Nowhere, Georgia. He’s got an odd sense of humor. We all picked at the hospital food. They asked what we knew about the background to the attack on Donny, and what it might have had to do with the murder. We told them all we knew.

  28

  Scott’s pager went off as we were busing our trays. Scott dialed the number. He talked for a few moments, then hung up. He turned to me. “Josh Durst is dead.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. “Where is he?”

  Scott said, “Miller went to Ethan Gahain’s condo. He found Josh there.”

  “Have the police arrived?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hesitated. “I’ll stay here,” Scott said. “You go and check out what’s going on.”

  “I’d prefer to stay with you.”

  Scott said, “If you’re in the hall with us or checking this out, it’s not going to change Donny’s condition.”