Let There Be Linda

by Rich Leder

  She’d arrived before eleven and found him draped over a chaise lounge, his legs akimbo on the ground, too weak to lift himself up. She’d helped him into the house and guided him to the bedroom, where she laid him on the bed, stripped him down, and cleaned his wounds. She’d dressed him in a gray Garth Brooks T-shirt and khaki shorts and left the room to get him a glass of water. When she’d returned, he was asleep.

  He awoke again at seven thirty Sunday morning. She was lying beside him, watching the TV at the end of the bed, a Jesus talk show discussing the promise of everlasting life in heaven. He hoped Carol had made it there, but he doubted she did.

  “That your dead wife by the pool?” Ramona said.

  “Yes,” Greenburg said.

  “You kill her?”

  He shook his head. “Chachi.”

  “The poodle killed her?”

  Tears came to his eyes as he relived the attack in his mind. He saw his wife go down, her artery open, her blood spout into the pool as if from a stone cherub fountain. He heard her trying to scream but unable to make a sound beyond an inhuman gurgling noise that was both terrifying and pathetic. “He chewed through the leash and assaulted us.”

  “The white poodle?”

  “It was a horror movie.”

  “The little white puppy poodle with the bad attitude?”

  “Blood and death.”

  “Where he at?”

  “I drowned him in the pool.”

  “Say what?”

  “I held him under the water until he drowned. I killed Chachi. I murdered my own dog.”

  Ramona turned off the TV, got up off the bed, and crossed to her Civil War sword, which leaned against the dresser. Despite his state of drowsy shock, he knew she was onto something.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “You take your damn dead dog out of your pool?”

  “He floated to the surface, and I left him there.”

  “Then we got a problem, DG.”

  She stood at the end of the bed, holding her sword with her right hand and tapping the broadside of the blade into her left palm.

  “Don’t leave me hanging, RC,” Greenburg said.

  “Ain’t no damn dead poodle in the pool.”

  Greenburg sat up on his elbows. “What?”

  “You sure he dead?”

  “Drowned dead. I’m sure.”

  “Voodoo girl breathe on his drowned dead poodle ass?”

  “No.”

  “Then he didn’t do no damn dead doggy paddle, did he?”

  “No way.”

  “Somebody come get him, DG.”

  Greenburg sat all the way up, his back against the headboard. He was still woozy, but her focus, her energy, her charisma, her brute sexuality was waking him up in a hurry. “Who?”

  “You tell me.”

  The dentist thought about it for a moment, and then his eyes opened and narrowed at the same time—simultaneous suspicion and conviction. “Dan Miller.”

  “Hair dude think he a movie star?”

  Greenburg nodded. “I called and told him I’d changed my mind about the free attitude adjustment. I told him Chachi was getting worse, not better. He said he’d be here at nine to pick him up and would bring him back first thing Monday morning.”

  “It always the hair dude.”

  “I was in and out of consciousness. I remember I heard—or dreamed I heard—someone slapping the water. I had an out-of-body experience and could see myself on the steps, half in the water and half out. I could see blood on my arms and legs and hands. I could see Carol on her back, dead as dust. And someone…someone was skimming Chachi out of the pool. Yes, yes, I remember it now; they were catching him in the net, slapping the water to get him closer. I remember.”

  “Was it Miller?”

  “Yes—and a horrible, disgusting clown. I thought it was part of the same dark, terrible dream because there could never be a clown that grotesque in reality, so I let it go and must have passed out again, but now I remember. It wasn’t a dream. It was Miller and a clown. They took Chachi.”

  Ramona nodded and said, “Somebody cross a line can’t be crossed.”

  “Not somebody,” Greenburg said. “Dan Miller.”

  “He got your dog and your money?”

  “He told me Shuler had the money.”

  “So hair dude got your dog, cop got your money, dwarf got your Lexus, and you got nothing. That about right?”

  The reality of it depressed him. He felt his chin fall to his chest.

  She walked to his side of the bed, reached out with her sword, put the tip under his chin, and lifted it up. “You know what that mean, DG?”

  No,” he said. Having his woman put her cold blade on his hot skin excited him in a way he didn’t expect.

  “It mean we getting your dog, your cash, and your car. It mean we at war. You hear what I’m saying? It mean we on a mission.”

  Greenburg knew that a war and a mission would take guts and courage, and he didn’t have either one of those things at the moment—if he’d ever had them. But Ramona had guts and courage by the boatload. She was the most spectacular woman he’d ever met. She was strong and fearless, and through her he could feel his strength and courage coming back, his adrenaline flowing, his heart pounding like a jackhammer.

  “What about Miller?” he said.

  “He a fly on the wall. We going to slap his ass.”

  He loved the sound of that, loved it. He’d never liked Miller and couldn’t wait to slap his ass. But first he would have to dispose of Carol’s body—Poor Dead Carol is how he would think of her now—and then he would have to clean the blood from the pool, and then he would have to get rid of the leash, and then he would have to handle the Seuss Club women, who would come looking for his wife and would demand answers.

  There would be lying, he knew, phenomenal lying. But he was nothing if not a phenomenal liar. Look at the lies I’ve been telling myself for thirty years, he thought.

  “And Shuler?” he said.

  “He a dirty cop. We going to clean his ass.”

  She was talking about revenge, and it sounded sweet and fired him up. He couldn’t stand Shuler from the first phone call, and now that he knew the detective had his seventy-five grand, he wanted to clean his ass but good. He felt the muscles in his legs fire like pistons and stood up, ready for battle.

  “What about Harvey?” he said.

  “He a damn dwarf. We going to kick his ass.”

  “He has a giant.”

  “Bigger they are, harder they fall.”

  He was totally turned on by her confidence and power, which confused him because how could he feel so alive after what had happened to him and his wife and his dog just yesterday afternoon? But that was the confusion of a weakling, the confusion of a man who no longer lived in this house, the confusion of his past. This was the new Don Greenburg and his sword-swinging woman. This was the new Don Greenburg, who named names and took numbers. This was the new Don Greenburg, who, after watching his wife bleed out and then drowning his dog the day before, had a hard-on like a Harley Davidson at seven thirty the next morning.

  He walked to the end of the bed and stood beside her, a flagpole in his khakis. “You’re not scared of them?”

  “Ain’t nobody mess with my man.”

  He put his arms around her and kissed her on the mouth.

  She looked down at his shorts and said, “Keep that rocket in your pocket, DG, and tell me something.”

  “Anything, RC,” he said.

  “You got a gun?” she said.

  “I’ve got Sally,” he said.

  A RUNAWAY TRAIN ON A TRACK TO DESTINATION UNKNOWN

  Mike woke up at eight a.m. Sunday in a hot stinking sweat, staggered out of bed, and stood before the full-length mirror beside Marcy’s makeup table, the one she’d bought at Pottery Barn, to look at his naked body. He did not like what he saw.

  His hair was thinner than he remembered, and there were dark circl
es under his eyes that made him look like a balding raccoon—no surprise there; he’d hardly slept since Linda died, and when exhaustion had roped him in at four in the morning, his head swirled with nightmares nearly as extreme as the waking life he was actually living.

  He was pale and flabby—even when he sucked his gut in. He flexed his muscles, hoping to see some sign of the young buck who used to cut down trees with a chain saw, but that kid was nowhere in sight. He was soft all around.

  The “M” Judd Martin had branded into his chest was scabbed over and still sensitive to the touch. His sunburn had peeled and left pink patches behind. On the outside, he was a mess. On the inside, he was a runaway train on a track to destination unknown.

  He had called Marcy last night to tell her he’d been offered the bookkeeping job at El Cab, hoping that splinter of good news might loosen her up little, but he never got to that part of the conversation because he’d said he had something to tell her, and she’d said she had something to tell him too, and she wanted to go first, and then she did, and that was that.

  What Marcy had said was that she’d met a man. Her mother knew a handsome, successful, athletic pediatrician with two sons whose wife had died three years ago. The pediatrician was just now getting back into social circulation, and Marcy’s mother had introduced them, and they’d gone for coffee without any kids. Marcy had told Mike about their date, but his brain became a Chinese garbage scow, and he was sifting through the foreign rubbish on a misty Chinese river and didn’t understand a word she’d said because she was inexplicably speaking Chinese.

  When she’d hung up, he had fallen face first on the bed, hoping he would suffocate in his pillow, but instead he’d had nightmares about zombies and dwarves and giants and dead poodles and pediatricians and Marcy and his mother, and he woke up at eight o’clock in a hot stinking sweat.

  He knew that beneath the layers and layers and layers of bizarre emotional upheaval he’d experienced since last Monday—last Monday—was an all-encompassing sadness and sense of loss. And he knew that the only way through the sadness was to face it down and fight back.

  He put on a bathing suit and went out to the pool, thinking an early swim might just be his first step toward normality, but he heard reggae coming from the garage, and instead of jumping in the water, he followed the music.

  Danny and Paul the Pervert were drinking piña coladas at the Tiki bar. The clown wore his full, rat-shit regalia and was the designated bartender. Danny wore hip surfer shorts and no shirt and sat on a barstool. There were umbrellas in their drinks. It was ninety-five degrees in the garage.

  Reggae blasted out of Danny’s iPod player. It was either Bob Marley or Ziggy Marley or Stephen Marley or The Wailers or somebody who sounded like one or all of them. Mike wasn’t really a reggae guy, and he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Turn it down,” Mike said from the doorway, shouting over the chorus of “I Shot the Sheriff.”

  “We’re celebrating,” Danny said, also shouting. “Make my brother a piña colada, Paul. He looks like he could use one.”

  The clown made Mike a drink in Danny’s blender, which added to the uproar.

  Mike took five steps to the Tiki bar and ripped the iPod out of the player. “What could you possibly be celebrating when the whole goddamn world is falling apart?”

  Danny pointed at a pink, plastic beach pail ten feet away. Chachi was in the pail, vicious snarl on his dead poodle face.

  “We don’t have to kill the dog,” Danny said. “Hip, hip, hooray. Greenburg did it for us. Drowned him in the pool.”

  “Not before the beast killed his wife,” Paul the Pervert said, handing Mike the drink. “Ripped her throat wide open.”

  “Greenburg’s dead too,” Danny said. “Chachi tore him up. He looked dead anyway.”

  “Backyard was a blood bath,” the clown said.

  “We get the poodle already dead; we don’t owe the Greenburgs shit because they’re dead, and somebody else finds the bodies, so we’re out clean, and, oh yes, not dead,” Danny said. “It’s a trifecta. I always drink piña coladas when I hit a trifecta.”

  Mike swallowed the entire piña colada in one shot. The rum bit through the cream of coconut and the sweet tang of the pineapple juice. As the drink went down, Mike knew he should feel some kind of compassion for the late dentist and his wife, knew he should worry that Danny and the clown had left clues at the murder scene that would lead the police to his house, knew nothing good could come of a dead poodle in a pail in his garage. He knew all this and said, “So we’re on for tonight?”

  “Showtime,” Danny said. “Midnight.”

  “We have to get the word out,” Mike said, handing his glass to Paul and gesturing for another round.

  “I think Harvey and Omar may kill me,” Danny said, “so I’ll tell Shuler.”

  “I may kill Shuler, so I’ll tell Ahab and Ishmael,” Mike said.

  “I’ll tell Jenny,” Danny said.

  “I’ll tell Jenny,” Mike said.

  Paul poured rum in the blender, filled it with ice from a small cooler, and clicked on the motor.

  “She’s my client,” Danny said.

  “She’s my client too,” Mike said.

  “Till midnight,” Danny said. “Then you go to New Jersey forever.”

  “Not until you pay me seventy-five hundred dollars,” Mike said.

  “There’s no money for us,” Danny said.

  The clown killed the blender, poured the piña colada in the glass, put an umbrella on top, and gave the drink to Mike.

  The news that Danny did not have their money did not surprise Mike. It pissed him off but did not surprise him. “What do you mean there’s no money for us?” he said.

  “I had to pay Jenny our commission to do tonight’s show,” Danny said. “She gets the whole seventy-five grand from Shuler or she doesn’t bring the dog back. If she doesn’t bring the dog back, then Harvey has Omar crush my skull. I had no choice. Those were her terms. I had to make the deal so at least we’d be free of each other.”

  Mike glared at his brother, let the rage and disappointment rise through him, and swallowed the second piña colada in one shot. As the frozen Hawaiian cocktail went down, Mike knew that without the seventy-five hundred he would miss a mortgage payment, a car payment, a credit card payment, and a life insurance payment, knew that missing those payments would drag his credit scores into the toilet, knew that not even Bob Cutting would hire a bookkeeper who missed multiple payments and had credit scores in the toilet. He knew all this and said, “The money doesn’t matter.”

  “What?”

  “Shuler’s got evidence it was us at the mortuary. His deal is double or nothing. We bring the dog back; Shuler gives us the money, except now we don’t get any of it, oh well, another Dan Miller fuck up. We bring Mom back; Shuler doesn’t arrest us, except we already brought her back, so the money doesn’t matter because we’re going to jail.” Then he handed his glass to Paul and said, “Put some rum in it this time, clown.”

  Paul made him another drink, heavy on the rum. And made one for himself too.

  “It’s all right, not a problem, we can make that work,” Danny said. “Shuler knows Mom died. He confirmed it with your mortuary guy. So we make a big show of the dog, like nothing could be bigger than bringing the poodle back from the dead, and when the poodle is barking, Mom walks into the room out of nowhere, I mean we throw open the door, she’s backlit, music’s playing, and we introduce her and blow his mind. His mind would have to be blown. It will be blown. He gets his comedy cornerstone. We get the money and the get-out-jail card, and you go to New Jersey.”

  The blender roared, chopping the ice, chilling the rum, creaming the cream of coconut. Mike shook his head, disapproving of the plan while knowing there was no other option, and said, “Or we don’t pass go; we don’t collect two hundred dollars.”

  “Why not?” Danny said.

  “Because Mom won’t release me from The Oath because
we won’t let her leave the house.”

  “So you don’t pass go,” Danny said.

  “If I don’t, you don’t,” Mike said.

  “Because?” Danny said.

  Paul put the drinks on the bar. Mike picked his up and took three steps to Danny so that they were face to face.

  “Because I’ll hound you every day for the rest of your life,” Mike said. “I’ll be your moral conscience, the ever-present angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear. I’ll watch over you every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year, just like Mom made me swear on her dying heart. My oath is your oath.”

  Mike watched the reality of The Oath hit Danny in the head like a two-by-four, clinked glasses with Paul, and he and the clown swallowed their third piña coladas in one shot. As the rum-heavy frozen concoction went down, Mike knew there was something fundamentally wrong with his mother—separate and apart from the fact that she was alive after she was dead— who had called him a fairy and a pussy and swung an iron pan at his head, knew there was something fundamentally wrong with his brother, who insisted on digging the hole deeper and deeper without being aware that he was the one holding the damn shovel, knew there was something fundamentally wrong with himself for shooting piña coladas with the pervert clown on Sunday morning instead of calling the whole thing off before everything went in the shitter. He knew all this and said, “She’s going to ask what the hell’s happening here tonight.”

  “What the hell is happening here tonight?” Linda said, entering the garage from the laundry room off the kitchen.

  She still wore her blue business suit, but she had one of Marcy’s aprons on over it and was holding a mixing bowl and a whisk. Mike looked at her like she was from another dimension because, well, she was from another dimension.

  “We’re having a party for you, Mom,” Mike said, “to introduce you to some people and get them used to the idea that you didn’t really die, so you can go home. How does that sound?”

  “About time, fairy boy,” Linda said. Then she turned her attention to Paul, who was already blending piña colada number four for Mike, and said in a voice dripping with sexual overtones and undertones and tones not yet defined, “Hey there, clown man? Where you been all my life and death?”