Let There Be Linda

by Rich Leder

  “Where’s the Airstream, Judd?” Gary said.

  “I had to move it.”

  “Why?”

  “The wrong kind of people moved into sixteen, and the neighborhood went south.”

  “Who could possibly be the wrong kind of people for you?”

  “Frat boys. Kryptonite for zombies.”

  Kryptonite for zombies! Gary thought. Funny stuff! “So where did you move it?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  Gary recognized the irony of the answer, of course, and thinking about irony made him wonder if Judd Martin was putting him on, if his zombie act was just that—an act. If it was possible that Martin had been an extra on the Warner Brothers lot in an apocalypse project, walked home in costume, stayed in character, and lost himself in the role. He decided it was impossible. Even Robert Downey Jr. couldn’t pull this off, he thought, although he could play me in the feature.

  “I have a job for you, Deputy,” Gary said, looking at the toy store badge pinned to Martin’s putrid camo vest. He would deal with the location of the Airstream later. There was pressing business at hand. “I got a phone call from Dr. Greenburg. Remember him? Mike Miller’s brother called, and you answered because Miller was duct taped to a chair.”

  “Dead goldfish swimming in the bowl,” Martin said.

  “He called me today, Greenburg did, about the seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “Hard cash for something about his wife’s dog and a woman named Jenny.”

  “He thinks I have the money, and tomorrow morning he’s going to have his attorney sue me and send the police department to get it back.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “No. But Jenny the Gypsy goes down at midnight, and I’ll find out who does.”

  “I want that money.”

  “If you convince Greenburg to change his mind about his attorney, I’ll tell you where it is. If you don’t convince him, I’ll have to close the case and take back your badge, you’ll lose the money, and you’ll have to stop stalking Mike Miller.”

  Martin stood up and filth fell off him. Gary kept his gun pointed at the zombie, who either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The sun was inconceivably hot.

  “Given the opportunity, I can be painfully persuasive,” Martin said.

  “Escalon Drive in Encino,” Gary said. “I’ll give you his address.”

  I’M A SWINGER

  Mike Miller sat on the settee in Jenny Stone’s cockeyed parlor. It was noon on Sunday. The air was one hundred fourteen degrees. He’d climbed her crooked steps, crossed her slanted porch, stood at her lopsided door, and rang her doorbell, which had chirped like a wounded bird. That was amusing to Mike because lately he’d been thinking of himself as having a busted wing. But the time for self-pity was over. He was fit to fly.

  Jenny had answered the bell with red hair—Auburn! His favorite!—and green eyes, wearing a multicolored, psychedelic, neon bright, flower-power, micro mini dress and white go-go boots, looking like Nancy Sinatra or Goldie Hawn from Laugh In, a 1970s dancing queen. He’d told her he was on his way to see Ahab and Ishmael and that Chachi was secured and dead—or re-dead—that the show was on for midnight and that he had something he wanted to ask her. She’d invited him in, led him through her house of many angles to the parlor, and sat next to him on the settee. He’d opened his mouth to make a date, the doorbell had chimed, Jenny had gone after it, and he’d had this thought: Mike Miller has balls.

  After Marcy had told him about the handsome jock pediatrician she’d blind dated, most of which he’d missed because she’d been speaking Chinese on a garbage scow on the Yangtze River, Mike had tried to suffocate himself in his pillow. Of course, he hadn’t suffocated himself. Instead, he’d decided to ask Jenny Stone out on the town. Two can play this game, he’d said in his head. If Marcy could have sex with a pediatrician (he had no idea if Marcy was having sex with him or not, but his imagination sure thought so), then he could have sex with Jenny Stone (his imagination felt strongly about that too). Tits for tats, he had thought at the time. And yet he still didn’t have the courage to make his move.

  He had hoped an early morning swim would snap him out of it, but he’d been distracted by reggae music and had ended up getting drunk on piña coladas in his garage instead of doing laps in his pool.

  What happened after that had turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back: Paul the Pervert and his mother hooked up in a way that defied all rules of romance.

  While Linda and the clown ate sardine-jalapeno pie in the kitchen, holding hands, making eyes, and flirting in ways both nauseating and terrifying, Mike went to his bedroom, passed out, and had a terrifying dream about Marcy having wild sex with the pediatrician while her parents cheered them on—especially Marcy’s mother, who kept yelling Mike Miller has no balls, Mike Miller has no balls throughout the dream.

  He’d shot up like a rocket at eleven a.m. with this realization: if the clown could hook up with a woman—even if that woman was his recently deceased mother—then by God, he could hook up too. He’d found the bottom of the barrel of humanity and discovered it wasn’t him; it was Paul the Pervert. The clown was Mike’s measuring stick. If Paul had balls, even half an electrocuted nut, then Mike had more than that. It was the first good news he’d heard all week.

  He’d showered and shaved and put on clean jeans and loafers with no socks and his favorite black and blue, short-sleeved, mafia-style silk shirt (the kind Tony and his mobsters wore on The Sopranos), and driven to Northridge, where he now sat on Jenny’s settee and thought, Mike Miller has balls.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Danny said to Mike as he followed Jenny into the parlor.

  Mike looked at his brother in shock. Not so much because Danny had arrived in Jenny’s parlor at this particular moment, although that was certainly bad timing and, yes, shocking—Mike hadn’t even considered adding Danny-showing-up-out-of-the-blue to his things-that-could-go-wrong-with-asking-Jenny-out list. No, the really shocking part of this equation to Mike was the way Danny looked.

  For the entirety of their lives, in every instance Mike could recall, Danny had looked like a movie star or a rock star or a movie star playing a rock star. Even when they were boys at the small yellow house, Danny had looked like a Calvin Klein model, and Mike had looked like an accountant—only grade-school bookkeeper in the Valley is what his flim-flam father had said.

  But Danny was a mess today, and Mike was a Sopranos goombah. The tables had turned. Danny’s nose was still a little swollen and his eyes a bit black and blue from when Omar had rabbit punched him in the back seat of the Range Rover after Harvey had picked him up at Santa Anita on Friday. And there was a gash-like bruise on his forehead that hadn’t been there this morning. The bruise was turning black and blue and was crusted with dried blood. His brother’s clothes were wet and ragged, as if he’d been dragged across a mopped warehouse floor. There was also dried blood on Danny’s black T-shirt. He looked like a beat-up junkie.

  The shock wore off in a microsecond, and Mike stood up and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I went to Shuler’s office to tell him about the midnight show, that we were all in.”

  “And?” Mike said.

  “And Harvey and Omar were there to cut off Shuler’s thumbs,” Danny said, “and Harvey took two shots at me, and I fainted and smashed my head, and Omar dragged me across the floor and laid me out on Shuler’s stage and threw a bucket of water on me, and I came to and told them about the midnight show and the dead dog.”

  “Who killed him this time?” Jenny said to Danny. She stood by the coffee table in front of the settee. Danny stood by the door. Mike stood at the opposite end of the coffee table from Jenny so that the three of them made an isosceles triangle.

  “He was dead when we got to Greenburg’s,” Danny said with a shrug. “Drowned in the pool.”

  “I meant: and what the hell are you doing here?” Mike said, glaring at Danny. His
brother glared back at him, and they both glanced over at Jenny, and their isosceles vibe went from bad to worse to weird.

  “I can’t get you out my mind,” Danny said to Jenny. “Thinking about you makes me crazy. I can’t wait one more minute. Will you go out with me?”

  “I call bullshit,” Mike said. “You can’t ask her out. I’m asking her out.”

  “I asked her first,” Danny said.

  “I was here first,” Mike said. “And if she didn’t answer the door, I would’ve asked her first too.”

  “Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Danny said.

  “Screw you,” Mike said, and he looked at Jenny. “My brother’s never had a relationship with a woman that’s meant anything to him. He’s shallow and hollow and superficial. Did I mention he’s a whorehound?”

  Danny looked at Jenny and said, “My brother’s had one relationship his whole life, and it’s been miserable and loveless and empty. Did I mention he’s married?”

  “Separated,” Mike said.

  “One week,” Danny said.

  “The amount of time is irrelevant,” Mike said. “It’s the separated part that counts. I’m a free agent. That’s the point. I’m available.”

  “Available loser,” Danny said, and he took a step toward Mike.

  “Whorehound douchebag,” Mike said, and he took a step toward Danny.

  “I’m taking her out,” Danny said, and he took another step.

  “I’m taking her out,” Mike said, and he took another step.

  “Not if I kick your ass first,” Danny said, and he stopped in the middle of the parlor.

  And then the idea that he looked like a mobster somehow took over Mike’s brain, and he took a step to the middle of the parlor and said, “Fuhgeddaboudit.”

  They stood toe to toe. Danny grabbed Mike by his Sopranos shirt, and Mike grabbed Danny by his bloody black T-shirt, and they drilled each other’s eyes.

  “Loser,” Mike said.

  “Deadbeat,” Danny said.

  “Con man,” Mike said.

  “Fat man,” Danny said.

  “I’m not fat,” Mike said.

  “When we were in school,” Danny said to Jenny without letting go of Mike’s mobster shirt, “the kids had a song.”

  “Don’t do it,” Mike said, eyes wide with bad memories.

  “Everybody knew the words,” Danny said.

  “Not everybody,” Mike said.

  “All the teachers,” Danny said.

  “Two teachers, maybe three, okay five,” Mike said.

  “It goes like this,” Danny said.

  “I hate this song,” Mike said.

  “Big fat Mike needs a hunger strike,” Danny sang in a mean-spirited, third-grade voice, “big fat Mike will break your bike, big fat Mike go take a hike.”

  The brothers started to wrestle, but Jenny stopped them before it got hot. “I choose Mike.”

  The men stopped, still gripping each other.

  “What? Him? I don’t believe it,” Danny said.

  “One condition,” Jenny said to Mike.

  “What is it?” Mike said.

  “Ménage a trois,” Jenny said in a voice laced with sexual innuendo.

  The brothers let go of each other’s shirts and faced Jenny, blinking like idiots.

  Somewhere in the darkened rubble of Mike’s marriage, when his daughters were young and the sexual spark between him and his wife had already been extinguished by car pools and play dates, Mike had asked Marcy about having a threesome. There had been a single young mother at school who’d flirted with Mike and Marcy at a third grade choir performance, making it clear she went both ways. That night, after the girls were bathed and read to, Mike had suggested an evening of red wine and low lights and hot sex with the single young mom, who also happened to be Jamaican. Marcy had squashed the idea (and Mike’s libido) like a bug, and Mike hadn’t thought of it again in years.

  Flashing forward into the moment, he imagined the kind of wicked women Jenny liked to play with. Asians. Africans. Europeans. Norwegians. Latinos. Long legs. Soft skin. Big breasts. He felt his groin swelling. It made perfect sense that Jenny was a swinger. How could he not have considered it already? And in this brave new world of zombies and dead dogs and resurrections, Mike wondered why he couldn’t be reborn too—as the swinger he once wanted to be.

  “No problem,” Mike said. “I’m a swinger.”

  “I can’t believe you chose Mike,” Danny said somewhere beyond incredulous.

  “You and me and who makes three?” Mike said to Jenny, gloating at Danny, already picturing Jenny and some Mexican mamacita making him feel like a man.

  “Him,” Jenny said, pointing at Danny, “and you and me makes three.”

  Mike looked at his brother and made a horrified face like vomit was on its way up.

  “You look like you screwed the pooch, fat man,” Maggie said to Mike as she entered the parlor. “What’s the problem? You never crossed swords with your brother before? Don’t worry about it. You and Pretty Boy are closet fags anyway.” She wore denim overalls and nothing beneath them. Her eyes and hair were wild, feral. She carried a tray with three glasses and pitcher of something pink. “I made punch,” she said. “Who’s thirsty?”

  THE MOST FUCKED UP THING I HEARD SINCE YESTERDAY

  Sawed-Off Sally was the name of Greenburg’s twelve-gauge, double barrel, sawed-off shotgun. He kept it under the bed because Poor Dead Carol was—had been—in a constant state of delirium imagining one day some creep would see her at yoga and follow her home to ravage her in her own bedroom while Donald was building crowns and bridges, and so she would have to shoot the son of a bitch. Or maybe Donald would be home and then he would have to shoot the son of a bitch. “Either way,” Poor Dead Carol had said, “we need a shotgun.”

  The whole thing was absurd on so many levels that the dentist had never known where to start when she’d brought it up. Usually he’d started with two fat lines and four fingers of Tanqueray. But then he’d bought a sawed-off shotgun.

  Poor Dead Carol had insisted they name the gun so the son of a bitch who had followed her home after yoga to ravage her wouldn’t be suspicious when she called out: “Donald, get Sally, and get her now!”

  He had never fired the shotgun because no one had ever followed Poor Dead Carol home to ravage her. Surprise! And so Sally lived under the bed, where Greenburg had forgotten about her until Ramona had asked him if he’d had a gun.

  The plan was to clean up the bloody mess Chachi had made—before Greenburg drowned him in the pool—and then take back the Lexus, the Mercedes, the money and the dog from Harvey and Omar and Shuler and Miller. That was all they had so far.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The weather service had missed its mark by two degrees: it was one sixteen. Greenburg couldn’t believe how hot it was and wanted more than anything to be in his office sipping cold gin, but instead he was sweating bullets scrubbing the flagstone patio with bleached soapy water and a wire-bristle broom. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep the sun off his face, a white, wife-beater T-shirt, powder-blue board shorts with a white floral pattern, and flip-flops. He had already changed the replacement cartridge filters twice and had destroyed the bloody ones, bagged them, and driven them to a Sylmar dump on the far side of the Valley. He’d dropped the leather leash down a Van Nuys sewer. The good news was that the filter had done its job. The pool was clear and clean. Greenburg had checked and doubled-checked the disinfectant level of the water, and there was no sign of foul play in the pool. When he finished bleaching the patio, there would be no evidence of Poor Dead Carol’s death at all.

  Except for the body. And Ramona had taken charge of that. She’d carried Poor Dead Carol’s corpse to the garage, the body thrown over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She’d steadied it there with one hand while holding her sword with the other and said, “Don’t ask me no questions, DG. I won’t tell you no lies.”

  “I won’t tell you no lies either,
RC,” Greenburg had said.

  She’d been in there a hell of a long time.

  He had lied, however, to Emily Portobello, one of the more obnoxious Seuss reading group women—maybe the most obnoxious. Portobello had surgically lifted her breasts so many times that her nipples—Good God, Greenburg had often asked himself, how many different nipples have they put on those things?—now pointed due north.

  Emily had called asking for Carol, and Greenburg had said his wife had gone to visit her Canadian cousin somewhere in the northern Nunavut Territory—a stunning lie. Emily had said she didn’t know anything about Carol taking a trip to Canada and had never heard about Carol’s cousin in the northern Nunavut Territory or the southern Nunavut Territory or anywhere in the Nunavut Territory and then said there had been a Seuss reading group medical emergency (a last-minute rhinoplasty) and that she had to find Carol right away. “Right away means now, Donald,” she’d said.

  Greenburg told her to follow her nipples until she got to Canada and then to keep on going, and then he’d hung up, feeling better about everything.

  Indeed, except for wilting in the heat, he was feeling better by the minute. Ramona had told him he looked like he’d been in a street fight with a hooker high on crack cocaine, and he’d looked at himself in the mirror and thought she was right. He liked the thought of himself in a street fight with hooker high on crack.

  I could take her, he thought while dumping a puddle of bleach on the patio, near the edge of the pool, where his wife had fallen, bled out, and died. And then he said it to the imaginary hooker junkie out loud, “I can take you.”

  “Seventy-five grand says you can’t,” Judd Martin said, moving across the patio toward the dentist.