Let There Be Linda

by Rich Leder

  “If you talk again, I’ll grab the wheel and crash us headfirst into a brick building,” Danny said, turning to the clown. “Pull over here.”

  Paul stopped the truck in front of a bus stop across the street from the George Edwards Mortuary. Danny got out, walked around to the driver’s side, and spoke to the clown through the open window. “You know what to do?”

  “Drive to Vegas and marry your mother,” Paul said.

  “You’re a sick person,” Danny said.

  “I’m a deep-fried clown,” Paul said.

  “Mike said George leaves for lunch every day between one and two,” Danny said. “The staff does the same. There’s just one woman in the office. You should be clear.”

  “Not a living soul in sight,” the clown said. “Hey, maybe I’ll tell funeral jokes at the porn parties. Porn people love that shit.”

  The internal visualization of Paul the Pervert having sex with his broken neck dead mother, who the clown had married in Vegas between telling funeral jokes at porn parties, made Danny’s eyes roll back in his head—the secondary image of Paul as his stepfather made his knees buckle. “In and out, understand? No fucking around.”

  Paul pulled the truck away from the bus stop, turned into the mortuary, and stopped under the carport, next to the hearse.

  Surreal on top of surreal, Danny thought, watching Paul get out of the truck. The pervert was adorned in his full rat-shit regalia, and Danny wondered why men with big butterfly nets had not yet hauled the clown to a padded room somewhere psychiatric.

  Paul walked to the hearse, looked inside, and then strolled around it—as if a horror house clown perusing a mortuary hearse in the middle of broad burning daylight was not an unusual sight, as if there were horror house clowns across the San Fernando Valley peering into various funeral home vehicles at this very moment.

  Paul clicked the handle on the rear hearse door and pulled it open. Then he walked to his truck, opened its back hatch, removed Danny’s dead mother, carried her to the hearse, and slid her inside.

  She tried to choke me to death, Danny thought as his mother went into the hearse. If it wasn’t for Mike, I’d be dead, and then Jenny would have to bring me back to life, and then I’d get like Maggie and Mom, and they’d have to kill me again and slide me into the back of a fucking hearse.

  And that thought sparked two other thoughts that took him by surprise.

  The first thought was that he and Mike had saved each other’s lives, something they hadn’t done since they were nine and six years old and fighting outer space aliens in the small yellow house backyard. In those days, there was never any question that he would save Mike and Mike would save him. They were brothers and were bound by blood to save each other when bad shit hit the fan. And after all the years of animosity and disrespect and estrangement, it turned out that was still true.

  The second thought was that as Linda squeezed his throat and cut off his air and he prepared himself to suffocate and die, right before Mike jumped in and saved his life, the person who appeared in his head was Jenny Stone.

  Danny didn’t know if he was in love with her or not. How was he supposed to know something like that? He’d never loved any woman. Love was a foreign land for him. He didn’t speak the language. He didn’t recognize the architecture. His money was meaningless. But his heart was feeling something new, something special, and he wanted to follow that feeling forward, even if the woman he was feeling it for was a supernatural freak of the universe.

  As Paul shut the hearse back door, the one woman left in the mortuary office stepped out of the building and into the carport, crossed to the clown, and confronted him between the back of the hearse and the back of the truck.

  Danny watched from the bus stop across Chatsworth. He couldn’t see the woman’s face, but her body language was one part incredulous, one part terrified, one part nauseated, and one part adamant that this disgusting human being dressed as a sewer clown leave the premises immediately if not sooner.

  And then the woman slapped Paul across the face and marched back inside the mortuary.

  The clown climbed into his truck, rolled out of the George Edwards Mortuary, picked Danny up at the bus stop, and drove off into the Valley.

  “What happened with the woman?” Danny said after a while.

  “She asked me who I was and what I was doing,” Paul said. “I told her I was a pervert clown in the market for a new car and saw the hearse and pulled in to check it out. I said I could see myself in a hearse. Dead or alive, I told her, it was a good ride for me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it was private property, and she was going to call the police.”

  “Why’d she slap you?”

  “I told her the hearse was automatic and that I like a stick and that I had one in my pants, and she could give it a go after she called the cops.”

  “What are the odds an average Joe on the line could be electrocuted into a coma one day and wake up two days later like you?”

  “I said if she shifted my stick, I’d let her play with my ball bearings.”

  “About the hearse being a good ride for you, the dead or alive part?” Danny said, “I vote dead.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Paul said.

  MASSIVE INTERNAL COMBUSTIBLE CONFUSION

  Mike had last seen Mrs. Alemi on Thursday, at her Valley Storage facility, when she’d opened the doublewide unit in which she’d graciously stored the contents of the small yellow house after Linda had died—the first time.

  Actually, that was the second to last time Mike had seen her. The very last time he’d seen Mrs. Alemi was an hour or so after that, when she’d found him in his boxers, duct taped to a dining room chair, in pounding pain from where Judd Martin had whacked him upside the head with a snubnose.

  Mrs. Alemi did not mention the incident—a kindness, Mike promised himself, he would repay some fine day when the temperature wasn’t one hundred sixteen degrees.

  As she searched for the key on her ring of keys (because somewhere in the chaos of the week he’d lost the key she’d given him), Mike marveled at how easily he stood here in the heat of the concrete storage yard after breaking his mother’s neck with the refrigerator door an hour and a half ago. His knees were not knocking. His pulse was not racing. If I’d murdered my mother two weeks ago, he said to himself, I would have turned myself into the police by now. Or jumped in front of a bus from the guilt. Now I’m looking for a new burial outfit—preferably something with a high neck.

  He smiled at his macabre joke, and then smiled at his smiling, and then he stopped smiling because there was nothing funny about murdering his mother, and then he practically cried. It was sad and terrible and absurd. His head and his heart were spinning in opposite directions, and the result was massive internal combustible confusion: some things were tragically settled while others were wildly up in the air.

  On the settled side of the ledger, Danny had called and said, “The clown has delivered the package.” Which meant that Paul the Pervert had returned their mother to the mortuary as per the plan. And Mike had said, “The accountant will collect the clothes.” Which meant Mike would go to Mrs. Alemi’s and choose a new funeral suit for Linda. Danny had said they sounded like secret agents, and Mike had said they sounded like World War II spies—both of which they’d been as boys—and they had both laughed out loud. It was the first time they’d shared a laugh in several decades.

  What a relief not to have to deal with Linda anymore. His mother reborn as an Undead Tasmanian Devil Woman aside, the whole point of grief, Mike had reasoned, was to bring the sad and sorry episode of a loved one’s death to an end. To end that life for those still living so those still living can go on still living, Mike thought as Mrs. Alemi found the key and slid it into the padlock.

  Grief had a role to play, he’d learned. It served a specific human purpose—to propel people forward through death and loss. It was part of the panoply of emotions human beings
were born with and required so they could face the rest of their lives as those close to them passed on. Short sheet a man’s grief, Mike had found out the hard way, and all his other emotional gears get thrown out of whack. Now that Linda was dead again, he could commence gluing his unglued world back together and start the healing process, which he’d done on his way to Mrs. Alemi’s, stopping at Earl’s on Devonshire to consume a dozen donuts and two large iced coffees.

  Also settled—and related to his mother’s funeral home return—was the fact that Linda had released Mike from The Oath just before he and Danny crushed her neck in the fridge. He’d expected to feel elation at being freed from a lifetime of big brothering his brother, a hopeless task of frustration, annoyance, anger, and regret, and he did feel that way—elation, jubilation, liberation. And yet he had a tinge of an iota of a wisp of sadness too. He’d seen Danny more in the last seven days than he’d seen him in the last seven years, and the result of all the violence and blood and chaos they’d shared was a laugh and a story they would remember and tell each other for the rest of their lives. If we ever see each other again, that is, Mike thought as Mrs. Alemi jiggled the key in the stubborn lock.

  Also accounted for was Judd Martin, who was dead—still dead—on the floor of Mike’s garage, the Makita sticking out of his chest. The fear of being kidnapped and tortured and finally killed by the phantasmagorically insane real estate zombie had been a heavy cross to carry around the Valley for a week. Yes, there was some cleaning up to do and a body to dispose of, but Mike felt lighter on his feet, even after the donuts.

  Wildly up in the air was the ménage a trois with Jenny and his brother. Creating a visual image on the inside of his eyeballs of that upcoming event gave him goose bumps and simultaneous nausea—concurrent titillation and turmoil. He couldn’t deny his sexual attraction to Jenny (though watching her strangle her own mother with his belt had muted the hard-on that had occurred when she’d removed his belt), but the idea of being naked with her and Danny at the same time was unsettling to say the least. Up in the air is too casual a phrase for the ménage, Mike thought as Mrs. Alemi pulled the key from the open lock.

  And what about Marcy? What about his girls? His family? His marriage? What about the pissant Paramus pediatrician? Mike wanted to break that fucker’s neck in a fridge door. I could do it, Mike said to himself. I’ve done it before. Wildly up in the air? Hell yes.

  And he was unemployed. So much of his self-esteem, self-image, and self-confidence had come from the fact that he’d been senior accountant at a well-respected company and had lived his life accordingly—in a sweet ranch house with a backyard built-in pool. That was his identity, who he was when he woke up, how he faced the world day after day. He’d had no time during the week to face the sobering fact that he was now a missing person.

  Tethered to his unemployment was his empty bank account: he was broke, and the bills were rolling in. He’d been blown off the financial tightrope upon which he’d precariously balanced his life, and he was spinning into bankruptcy. Maybe money wasn’t everything, but Mike the Accountant knew it was the linchpin to saving face, the light that would lead him back to his family, the glue that would allow him to rebuild his life. And he had none. No income. No cash on hand. No savings. He realized he was as sad as he’d ever been. I’m going to lose everything material, everything personal, and everything important, Mike thought as Mrs. Alemi turned to him.

  She saw the sadness on Mike’s face and touched his arm. Then she smiled sympathetically and walked away.

  Mike watched her go, took a heavy breath, and lifted the extra-tall, doublewide, roll-up garage door. It was pitch black in the unit. He stepped inside, clicked on the lights, lowered the door, and turned to see a decrepit 1980s Airstream, rusted and beaten and giving up the ghost.

  “What the hell?” Mike said.

  He wondered why Mrs. Alemi hadn’t told him she’d stored someone’s mobile home in the unit where she had graciously moved the contents of the small yellow house. The stuff of Linda’s life was scattered helter-skelter around the Airstream—the sofas, the chairs, the tables and lamps and dressers and bookshelves, the boxes of books and clothes and kitchen accouterment. Mrs. Alemi’s six sons had handled Linda’s possessions with care. It seemed unlikely to Mike they would return with a dying Airstream and toss those very same things around without regard for, well, anything.

  He decided to ignore the Airstream, find new funeral attire for his mother, and head home to clean up the mess in his garage, but when he moved deeper into the unit, he had a sensation that made his skin crawl. He’d never seen this trailer before, yet it was uncomfortably familiar. I know this Airstream, he said to himself. And it knows me.

  He felt himself drawn to the trailer, and with a growing sense of dread, he climbed the Airstream steps, opened the door, went inside, and felt his heart stop beating.

  There was a poster of him on the wall—his Wasserman and Waddell photograph blown up to poster size—with knives and screwdrivers and ice picks stuck into it and horrible swear words written all over it. “What the hell?” Mike said in a whisper.

  He moved into the filthy, disease infested Airstream, trash and waste everywhere all around him, and then he realized what it was that seemed so terribly, horribly familiar: the smell. It was the smell of the undead, the smell of a zombie, the smell of Judd Martin.

  But not just the smell, it was also the sound of the place, the creaking of the floor and the walls and the cabinet doors. Mike knew these sounds. This was where Martin had taken him. This is where Gary Shuler had spoken to him that first time. It was here. Inside of this Airstream.

  Of course, of course, Mike thought. I didn’t lose Mrs. Alemi’s key; Martin stole it from me; it was labeled and numbered with the name and address of the storage facility and the doublewide unit. Then he moved the mobile home here later in the week, after he’d tortured me in it.

  He looked at the couch upon which he’d been naked and hogtied and gagged. He remembered the humiliation and the pain, remembered the sense of helplessness and hopelessness, the feeling of weakness and vulnerability, and he lost his mind.

  Then he saw the branding iron on the kitchen counter.

  He exploded with rage, ripping through the Airstream like a madman, tearing the place to shreds, pulling cabinets off the walls, smashing windows, throwing shit everywhere, kicking the hell out of the mountain of garbage and refuse that covered the floor, screaming and shrieking and swearing at the top of his lungs.

  When he was spent and breathless, he dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face, and saw that one of the bags was not filled with garbage but was instead filled with…money.

  WHEN THEY MAKE THE MOVIE OF MY LIFE

  So much of Gary Shuler’s life had been serendipitous that, by comparison, his ascension to the King Cop of Comedy throne seemed architecturally engineered.

  From his first-grade knighting as Gary Shuler Vista through his marriage to Maryanne McCarthy through his unlikely landing at Ross Baker Towing, everything that had happened to him had been coincidental, accidental, incidental, inadvertent, unforeseen, unexpected, unintended, and hilariously random.

  And then he’d found Chachi on the side of the 101, dead as a hammer, and the disparate plot threads of both his cop and comedic lives had become entangled, and he’d recognized the entanglement as greatness and grabbed hold of it and guided it along the path that had led him to this moment: two minutes from taking the stage at Ha Ha Café Comedy Club on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

  He had seen the house, Gary had, and it was everything he’d hoped for. The place was packed. He’d called his cop acquaintances (meaning detectives and uniforms that owed him favors for taking their cases that had come from Mars) and collected his debts. He’d counted two dozen officers. None of them were friends, but all of them wanted to pay off their IOUs, and so here they were, eating wings and nachos and drinking beers and waiting for Shuler to take the stage so they co
uld head home and owe him nothing.

  Gary had also seen the booking agents for Kimmel, Conan, and Fallon. They each owed the detective for services rendered as well—a speeding ticket that mysteriously disappeared off the docket, a DUI that went AWOL, a lewd public behavior citation that had vanished in the chaotic fog of the Los Angeles legal system.

  Joining them was the Monday night comedy club crowd, here for a few drinks, a few laughs, and few hours away from their everyday lives, which—even by Monday night—had become humdrum enough for a hike to Ha Ha.

  The host of Next Comic Standing was a plain vanilla Minnesotan stage named Bland Blaine Blumenthal, who had told Gary he was getting out of the stand-up grind and refocusing his efforts on becoming a game show host. Because his eyes were set unusually close to his nose and because his face was narrow and came to a mousy point and because his coloring was dark for a Minnesotan but about right for a rat, Bland Blaine looked like a rodent, which, Gary thought, did not bode well for his game show host future.

  While Bland Blaine warmed the room, Gary looked down at Chachi, who was leashed and standing backstage beside him, glaring upwards, growling imperceptibly low, occasionally flashing a snarl. “When they make the movie of my life, no one’s going to believe the last twenty-four hours,” he said.

  After he’d cashed his chips with the cops and the talk show agents, he got a call from an incredulous sergeant who told him there had been some kind of ludicrous, freak-show, triple homicide at Pacoima Pawn and Loan and since Shuler was the Pawn Palace specialist, he should drive his ass over there and figure out what the fuck had happened.

  Has to be Greenburg and Ramona and one of the Millers, Gary had thought, or maybe both Millers and Greenburg, or anyway, some set of three from that quartet. But when he’d arrived, he discovered it was Harvey and Omar and Umberto the limping counterman, an unexpected triptych. Forgetting Umberto, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time—as he’d been every morning when he came to work—Gary had focused on Harvey, who’d been fished from the tank with very little flesh on his very little bones, and on Omar, whose guts had been emptied from the flap in his abdomen.