The Embalmer: A Steve Jobz Thriller

by Vincent Zandri

  Retrieving the scalpel from the tray set on the table, he brings it to her left leg. Feeling her inner thigh for her femoral artery, he makes a deep incision. The suddenly sliced artery causes Peg to heave up against the straps, but she’s got nowhere to go. The blood squirts, but then quickly settles into a nice steady flow onto the metal slab, where it collects near the table drain and down into the holding basin.

  He then takes two steps to the left and touches her carotid artery with his fingertips. There’s no need to go hunting for it since it’s already pulsing out of her skin like a purple snake. He aims the blade and makes a second small incision.

  Once more she thrusts her body upward.

  “Poor thing,” he whispers. “It’s the prep that’s the worst part.”

  The ball gag muffles her screams. Taking hold of the plastic, funnel-shaped nozzle that’s attached to the translucent plastic tubing, he inserts it directly through the incision and into the artery. He then flicks on the pump that sends the pink embalming fluid into her arteries and veins. Her body thrusting and convulsing, he knows she must be feeling the burn right about now. The searing heat of the toxic chemical entering into her system while the blood exits out the other side.

  “My bad, Peg,” he says, “but it’s gonna take you a little while to die. My humblest of apologies.”

  This is his favorite part. So much so that he takes a step back to the stereo and lowers the volume for just a second or two, so that he can make out her pathetic wails, moans, and sobs from down on her back. He’s not sure why, exactly, but the noise calms him. It’s kind of sick when you think about. Sicko stuff. Turning the music back up, he goes to her once more.

  “Don’t cry, honey,” he says. “Don’t think of this as dying. But living. You’re my new living sculpture. My newest work of art.” He goes for the stairs. “I’ll be back for you, baby. But first, I have to attend to someone.”

  He heads back up the stairs, oblivious to Wendy’s demand that he turn the music down. His boss spotted him in the bar parking lot this evening. Now, through no real fault of her own, the big bitch must die tonight.

  I sleep it off on a hardwood bench bolted to the floor of the basement cage inside the Albany Police Department, Central Avenue Precinct. I never got any dinner to soak up the alcohol, and my head is banging louder than the Bells of St. Mary’s. Not that I ever could sit through that movie.

  An old drunk is seated in the corner, his head stuffed between his legs. Judging by the pleasant looking puddle on the floor under his knees, he’s pissed himself.

  Hmmmmm . . . Please God say it ain’t so . . .

  Slowly, hesitantly, I peer down at my own lap. I touch my trousers. Bone dry. There is a God after all.

  A door opens.

  “Jobz. Steve . . . Jobz!” shouts the cop.

  The old drunk raises his head. His eyes go wide and his mouth opens under a scraggly beard-like mask.

  “Steve Jobz, is that really you?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. Then, realizing precisely who he’s asking for, and that the real Steve Jobs is in fact long dead and buried. “Errr, no.”

  His eyes still wide, he shifts himself onto his knees.

  “I was like you once, Steve,” he mumbles. “I owned a dot com start up. Pup dot com. Featured a lot of cute puppies. Who can resist a fuckin’ puppy, right? I made a quarter of a billion dollars in 1998.” His eyes droop, and he lowers his head so that his nose is almost touching his piss-stained trousers. “But then came the dot com bust in 2001, and I lost it all. Every damned cent. I haven’t been sober since.”

  “I’m sorry,” I offer, as the officer approaches the cage, opens the door. I go to step out into the brightly lit corridor. But the old man grabs hold of my leg.

  “Steve,” he says. “Don’t leave me. At least give me something. Some words of wisdom so I don’t die like this.”

  He’s so desperate, his voice filled with such sadness, I can feel it in my exhausted bones.

  “You want my advice, old timer,” I say. “Get yourself together. Get sober. And start over again. You’ll make your first million by this time next year.”

  He does something miraculous then. He stands up, slowly. Holds out his hand. But as we both peer down at a scrawny hand that’s filthy, the fingernails overgrown and yellowed, he pulls it back.

  “I understand you don’t want to shake my hand,” he says. “But know this, Mr. Jobs. From this day forward, I’m a changed man.”

  “God bless you,” I utter. Not because I’m a religious guy. But because it sounds like the right thing to say. Under the circumstances.

  Stepping out into the hall, the officer asks me if I had a nice conversation with the man I shared the holding cell with.

  “Not really,” I say. “He’s an old drunk.”

  “He’s not old,” he says. “He’s in his mid-forties.”

  The news doesn’t take me by surprise. It shocks me. I recall the old black lady in the booking room outside Miller’s office. How she smiled at me. Turns out she wasn’t as old as I thought either. Maybe I’m the one who’s getting old. Older, stupider, more desperate.

  “The booze,” the cop goes on. “It can be a slippery slope.”

  “But for the grace of God go I,” I say, my head throbbing with every syllable uttered.

  “And remember to have sympathy for the devil,” he says.

  Together, we head up the stairs and into the general booking room of the Albany Police Department. A most unholy place.

  The officer escorts me through a crowded booking room to a solid metal door that accesses a brightly lit, eye-burning corridor. When we come to Miller’s door, the cop wraps on it with his sledgehammer-like hand.

  Jesus, can you stop it with the noise already?

  “Enter,” calls out a voice from the other side.

  The cop opens the door.

  “Go ahead,” he says.

  I step inside and behold Detective Miller seated at his desk. He’s got his sleeves rolled up like he never went home last night. And maybe he didn’t. I can’t help but notice the semi-automatic tucked into his shoulder holster, the grip inverted under his left armpit. He’s staring not at me or the cop, but instead at some paperwork that’s drowning in the white light oozing from a desktop lamp that’s probably as old as my Mustang.

  “That will be all,” he says to the cop.

  The door is shut behind me.

  “Good morning,” I say, spotting the framed pictures of the detective and the detective’s wife. Maybe now’s a good time to pry into Miller’s past. Or considering my head banger hangover. Maybe not.

  “It’s three AM,” he says, not looking up from the paperwork laid out before him. “What’s so fucking good about it?”

  I can see where this is going, so I take a seat. He must think I’m a real screw up. Here he goes out of his way to give me a shot at working a case for him, and I blow it by getting into a fight in the parking lot of the McDonald’s.

  “Listen,” I say, “I’m sorry. I had a little too much to drink.”

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “How . . . old . . . are you?”

  “Old enough to know better,” I say, feeling the slight burn of humiliation.

  “The kid with the man bun, or bald spot, is not pressing charges.”

  “That kid was twice my size.”

  “You’re a cop . . . excuse me, were a cop. You’re a trained killer. More or less. Plus, you poked him with a potentially deadly weapon.”

  “He had a man bun,” I say in my defense. “He had it coming.”

  “Nonetheless, you’re getting off easy. County Prosecutor passed on it too. So, you’re in the clear.” For the first time, he raises his head, shoots me a gaze that’s hot enough to burn the rust off a fender. “But let me tell you something, Jobz. You screw up again, I can’t let you proceed with this case. It goes to trial the defendant’s lawyer will make a
point of calling you out as an asshole and they’ll call for a mistrial before the ceremony even begins. You got it?”

  “I get it,” I say dejectedly. “Can I go now? Before I get the runs?”

  “Yes,” he says, “you can go.”

  I get up, go for the door, put my hand on the opener.

  “One more thing,” Miller says.

  Turning, I face him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your boss at the State Unemployment Insurance Agency, Henrietta.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “What about her?”

  “She’s been assaulted with intent to kill.” He exhales a mixture of sadness and general pissed off-ness. “Somebody tried to cave her skull in with a blunt object while she slept in her own goddamn bed.”

  My empty stomach drops to somewhere around my ankles. My parents come immediately to mind. Assaulted in their own bed, while they slept. Everybody’s nightmare.

  “What happened, Miller?”

  He stands up, grabs his coat off the rack behind him.

  “Not much to tell yet. But I have my theories.”

  “Such as.”

  “Listen,” he says, “the whole thing just went down twenty minutes ago.”

  “Where is she?” I press. “Where the hell is she?”

  “Still in bed. From what they’re telling me, she hasn’t been moved yet, probably because they can’t move her without hurting her. She’s in pretty bad shape, Jobz.”

  My mouth turns dry. I try to swallow, but I can’t.

  “She called 911?”

  He exhales once again, nods.

  “It’s a miracle, believe me.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “Why don’t you go home get some sleep,” he insists. “I’ll come get you in a few hours, and we can talk about it.”

  “How can I sleep at a time like this?”

  “How can anyone who lives in this city ever sleep at all?”

  He’s got a point.

  Miller walks out of his office. I follow like a scolded lamb on its way to slaughter.

  I leave my Mustang in the back lot of the precinct in the exact spot where the cops parked it late last evening. Instead of heading home for what would turn out to be two or three hours of staring at the ceiling, I insist on riding along with Miller to my boss’s downtown townhouse.

  As we speed along Central Avenue in the deep night towards the Lark Street arts district where Henrietta lives, I can’t help but feel like my entire body is levitating above a suddenly shifted reality. Who on God’s earth would ever want to harm a single hair on Henry’s body?

  Sure, she could be loud, abrasive, and even insulting at times. She was the antithesis of political correctness, and I loved her for that. That was her larger than life personality. And her soul was just as large. Like all good people, she would do anything for you, so long as you were a good and fair friend to her in return.

  She was also one hell of a boss.

  There had to have been a dozen times she should have fired my ass for simply being too depressed to do my job, or too drunk, or too stupid. But she always found a way to inspire me, even if it meant the threat of revoking my pension. She could be tough, but if she hadn’t been so tough, chances are I might be one of those jerks trying to game the unemployment insurance system rather than working for it.

  The city streets are mostly deserted. The inverted arcs of yellow-gold street lamp lighting shines down on the cracked concrete. A black man jumps out of an alley. He’s bare chested and wearing baggy jeans that hang down off his waist, exposing his too big boxer shorts. He’s running, full gallop, with what looks to be a knife gripped in his hand.

  “Shouldn’t we stop?” I say, suddenly alarmed. “Call in a one-ninety or a two-ten or a six-six-six or whatever the hell it is again?”

  “Sure you were a cop?” Miller says, clearly agitated. Then, “You really wanna get out and question him at this hour of the night? Now that he’s jacked up on crank or meth or both? You wanna ask him where he’s been? Why he’s got that knife in his hand? You wanna stand there while he spits in your face, tells you to fuck off now that you’re the white cop profiling his skinny black ass?”

  “But he’s got a knife.”

  “That he does. Maybe he was picking dandelions for a salad.”

  “In the middle of the concrete jungle?”

  Miller glances at me over his shoulder. “Who are you to say? Maybe he keeps a garden back there.”

  The kid scoots back into another alley and disappears from sight. Somehow, I feel better about things. Now that I can’t see him.

  We drive on.

  Turn right onto Lark Street, and its four and five-story, century and a half old, brick and wood brownstones. We hook a quick left onto Hamilton and slow down while the cobblestone road makes the entire vehicle vibrate. Up ahead, I see flashers from several cop cruisers and a big EMT van parked at odd angles in front of a townhouse.

  We come to a stop only a few feet away from the EMT van.

  Miller kills the engine.

  “Before we get out,” he says. “I just want to say, I’m sorry. I know you and Henry are close.”

  I look into his gray eyes reflecting the flashing red, white, and blue halogen lights.

  “That means a lot, Miller.”

  “Also, if this is too much for you, Jobz, I’ll understand. She’s in pretty rough shape, I’m told. Might be a better idea altogether if you wait out here.”

  “No,” I say, my pulse pounding in my temples. “I want to go in. I owe Henrietta that much.”

  “Let’s do this then.”

  We both exit the cruiser, make our way toward my old friend’s home sweet home.

  The front door is already open, and a uniformed cop is standing just outside it on the front stoop. He nods at Miller in that curious stone-faced manner that all cops seem to use when they wish to acknowledge one another’s presence, and we enter into the place.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve been to this residence, but somehow it feels like it. It appears that nearly every light is turned on in the two-story townhouse. Two uniformed cops are standing inside the living room, casually chewing the fat with one another like they’re hanging out inside a coffee shop. When they see Miller step in, they both go quiet. Their faces assume an expression of seriousness. Heart attack seriousness. They don’t speak to Miller so much as nod at him.

  “Upstairs?” Miller inquires.

  “Master bedroom,” the first cop says.

  It’s then, as Miller begins climbing the stairs, that I realize this isn’t going to be good. That what I’m about to see might be far more disturbing than anything I encountered yesterday. But I’ve come this far, and I’m not about to back down now.

  We climb the stairs, turn left at the top floor landing since it’s the only direction you can go.

  “First bedroom on the right,” I say.

  “Thanks,” Miller says. “Never occurred to me before that you probably know your way around this house.”

  The memories flash through my brain. Last year’s Christmas party. This year’s New Year’s Eve party. Some friends without significant others or extended families gathered for Easter brunch . . . Friends who would otherwise be all alone on a holiday.

  “Still feels strange,” I say. “Like we don’t belong here.”

  “That’s because we don’t,” Miller concurs. “We’re here because we serve and protect.”

  He steps inside. I follow, heart lodged in my throat.

  Soon as I’m through the door, I’m immediately drawn to the bed which contains Henrietta’s body. Four EMTs surround the mattress. They’re working on her, each person seemingly concentrating on a different area of her head and chest. She’s not moving a muscle. That is unless one of the EMTs shifts the position of a limb here or a limb there. They’re talking to her, reassuring her. But I’m not sure she can hear them. She appears unconscious. I pray to God she is unconscious.

  There’
s a gurney set directly beside the bed, and although I can’t see it entirely, it appears that Henry’s head is bandaged heavily. There’s also a kind of brace attached to her shoulders and neck. The brace is keeping her head perfectly still. Or so I assume.

  Blood covers everything. Dark red, nearly black blood. Arterial blood. So much that my stomach twists itself into knots and I feel a sick tightness in my sternum.

  “Henry,” I say, taking a tentative step forward. “It’s Jobz. What can I do to help, Henry?”

  One of the EMTs turns to me. A woman.

  “She can’t hear you,” she says. “We’re gonna need you two to move out of the way. We’ve got to move her, get her down the stairs and to the hospital ASAP for intubation.”

  “What’s that mean?” I say to Miller, somewhat under my breath.

  “Means she’s having trouble breathing on her own. That’s why they’ve been working on her for so long.”

  He clears his throat as two of the EMTs slip around the bed, raise the scissor lift gurney so that it matches the height of the mattress exactly. When they’re done, the EMTs go back around the bed.

  “She stable enough to be transferred yet?” Miller poses to the woman.

  “Finally,” she says. The woman, like the other EMTs, is wearing baby blue Latex gloves. Gloves stained and streaked with Henry’s blood. By now, I’ve deduced that she’s the leader of the crew. “Okay, everyone,” she goes on, “let’s work together on this. You know what to do. On three.”

  With two of the EMTs positioned on one side of the body, and the other two kneeling on the bed on the opposite side of Henry, the woman counts, “One, two, three . . .” On three they shift Henry from the bed to the gurney, the woman holding on to her head the whole time. It’s then that I get my first unobstructed view of my friend and boss.

  What I see is far from pretty.

  Knees go weak. Tunnel vision kicks in. I don’t exactly pass out, but my knees definitely tremble. It’s one thing to see violent crimes committed on television, no matter how graphic. But when you see them up close and personal, it’s another thing altogether. Even me, a once-upon-a-time cop who’s witnessed more than my fair share of messed up victims, including the young man I shot inside the convenience store.