A Good-Looking Corpse

by Jeff Klima

  The guard I got with the glass bottle has been moved off to the side in the lounge, facedown, the mouth of the bottle extending upward. Most of his blood is soaked into the carpeting here, but some of it has been tracked onto the stairs leading up to the deck, the bloodiest of the footprints leading up and out.

  I stalk across the lounge, moving the gun around, checking behind me, expecting an ambush, but there is still nothing. I’ll go up, I decide, when I reach the pool of red at the base of the next stairs.

  Poking my head up on deck, I bring the gun up ahead of me, still looking for signs of life, but it too is eerily quiet. A swell rocks the boat, making me move unsteadily; I correct for it and step out off the stairs. The deck level appears to be empty, but I don’t want to move too far out into the open to probe. A splash sounds in the water off the back of the boat, something emerging up out of the water and then dipping back down. Just the sharks, I tell myself.

  The blood tracked up on deck goes all different directions here, tracked by Mikey and George. The freshest tracks go up to the next level though and I follow them up.

  I find Mikey in the dining room, one level down from the top of the yacht, in an expansive dining room that is remarkable in that it isn’t decorated by imagery of skulls or Hell. I step into the room, leaving the door hanging open. The decor, a blend of earth tones and marine-grade upholstery actually feels light and pleasant with the sunlight shining through its many windows. Mikey is seated in a booth behind an oblong dining table that has been bolted into the yacht’s flooring. The table, stained a high-gloss tan, is currently housing a small pile of cocaine that Mikey is focused on cutting into crisp lines with a black American Express card. “Well, Tom, technically you proved my point,” Mikey says, glancing up and eyeing me cautiously, with newfound fear. “I need to get that dollar back from my dad.” He’s already high as shit and looking to become more so.

  “Where is your dad?” I ask, the gun pointed at Mikey as my eyes scan the room.

  “He’s up in the wheelhouse trying to charter a helicopter. He’s pissed,” Mikey says, glum, taking the entirety of the blame onto himself. Behind me, a latch on the door to the dining room slaps off its locking mechanism, bouncing metal against metal, a sharp bang timed with the ocean swells.

  “Are you armed?” I persist.

  “Only with credit cards.” He smiles, wan, and hoovers up a line with a rolled hundred-dollar bill.

  “What happens now?” I ask, suddenly feeling like Ivy.

  Clack, goes the door.

  “You tell me; you’re the one with the gun. I’m prepared to negotiate a large cash settlement though, if you want to let me live.”

  “I don’t want your money,” I tell him. “Or your father’s.”

  Clack.

  “Well then, we don’t have a whole lot to talk about.” He snorts another line.

  “We need to get to shore,” I say.

  “Ha, my dad’s not gonna let that happen. You think he’s going to pay you off? He wants to blow my boat up. With you and Ivy on it. He says that will be the easiest course of action.”

  Clack.

  “How is he going to do that?”

  “He’s trying to get the pilot to bring dynamite.”

  “It sounds like he’s the one I should be talking to.”

  Clack.

  “That’s what everyone says.” Mikey shrugs. He goes back to meticulously sorting his cocaine.

  “Hey, what happened in 1924?” I ask him, trying to make him focus.

  “What?” he asks, and I feel like it’s the first time I’ve actually gotten his attention.

  “1924,” I repeat. “It’s the security code to your skull room.”

  “Oh.” He smiles, stoned. “That 1924. William Randolph Hearst murdered a movie producer aboard his yacht.” Mikey laughs.

  The sudden quiet grabs my attention—the absence of the door smacking against its lock. I spin, but I feel a slap of impact against my side, as if I’ve been punched by a tiny fist. The sound of the gunshot registers a moment later. Still numb, I watch in fascination as the blood spreads outward—my blood, absorbing into the fabric of my shirt. Once it becomes too saturated, something that happens rather quickly, I note, the drops begin to spill down onto the floor of the dining room. I look up from this and see George Echo, holding a pistol from one of the guards, dark smoke still drifting up from its barrel. I try to lift the Desert Eagle from where my arm has fallen limp at my side, but the gun feels impossibly heavy. Instead, it feels much more comfortable to slide to the floor, leaning up against the booth. I use my free hand to push on the wound, trying to stanch it.

  “Oh good, more blood,” is Mikey’s response to the moment.

  “What’s power worth anymore? I couldn’t find a single friend willing to bring dynamite, let alone come out and get us,” George tells his son, disgusted, and then notices the cocaine. “Put that shit away.” He keeps the gun trained on me, watching. “That stuff will kill you.”

  Mikey stands, abandoning his coke and then sees me, seated, grasping my side and squats down to join me. “I tried to be too dramatic with this one,” Mikey admits, humbled. “I should have just stuck to the basics—drug you and drop you off Mulholland.”

  “I agree,” I gasp, pained. “Much more pleasant.”

  “Where’s the girl? Since we can’t get dynamite, we’ll shoot her too,” George tells Mikey, but it might as well be to me, so preoccupied is his son with trying to stare directly into my eyes. Three quick pops sound from behind the senior producer as Ivy stands behind him, her own gun now wafting smoke. The dark red blood, much more visible on George Echo’s linen suit, branches out from the trio of wounds on his chest. Exit wounds, I realize. My bullet is still in me.

  Grimacing, the old man drops his own gun, which hits with a clank on the flooring and then he too falls forward onto his face. “Dad!” Mikey yells, momentarily shocked out of his high, and sees Ivy standing in his place, the gun in her hand spent.

  “Too many bullets,” I chastise her, gritting my teeth to get the words out. “You still need one more.”

  Mikey, assessing the situation, sees the golden pistol still in my hand. “You shot my dad,” he yells to Ivy and grabs for it, pulling it, attempting to loose it from my grasp. I don’t have the strength on that side to fight him off, but I notice the gun is pointed at his face with my finger still on the trigger. His hands are on the barrel, pulling the gun away from me and toward himself. I fire, one last grand exertion from me. The big gun jerks painfully in my hand, impractical weapon that it is, but steadied by his hands on its undercarriage, finds its mark. The high-caliber bullet seems to ripple his face like a disrupted pond, forcing his dark skin to pucker first inward and then back out, spraying me with a thick misting of blood and exploded brain matter. The ceiling diagonally above his head gets the worst of it, thick lumps of jellied brain and skull are splashed across it, surrounding the hole where the big projectile continued up on through.

  “You better hope that death tour business has a boat,” I gasp.

  Mikey, his face a wrecked ball of meat, drops down forward onto my legs and sickeningly, I feel the blood spilling into my jeans, sliming against my skin. I use my free hand to push the body off as Ivy runs to me.

  “Tom, Tom, Tom” it sounds like she is saying, but I realize she is just crying in great, sucking sobs. “Please be okay,” she begs, steadying me upright. I hadn’t even realized I’d slouched over.

  “You know,” I say, “I’m thinking you should meet my parents after all. Suddenly, my family situation doesn’t seem quite so fucked up.” I gasp, trying for a reassuring smile. Ivy lifts my shirt up and away from the wound, kneeling in the muck from Mikey’s excavated facial cavities, not caring that her bare legs are soaking in the mess of brain bits, skin, and body fluids. “Bad day for short shorts,” I try again.

  “Just shut up, Tom,” she says through her tears. She wipes at the blood on my side, but more replaces it. “How do
I stop this?” she asks.

  “You don’t,” I say.

  “You can’t leave me, Tom, tell me what I can do to stop this,” she begs.

  “No, I’m serious,” I persist. “The bullet is stuck in there, probably cauterized the wound. Looks bad but the blood isn’t flowing near fast enough to be fatal. As long as we don’t fuck with it, it should be okay.”

  “But there’s so much coming out,” she says, not buying my explanation.

  “Gunshot wounds tend to bleed,” I say, but am in too much pain to shrug. I actually don’t know the severity of the wound. It hurts but I can also tell that I am in shock, and can’t feel the real extent of it. I really could die from this, I know, but there’s no sense in Ivy spending this time with me frantic and worrying.

  “I need you to go up to the radio,” I say, effecting a calm but stern demeanor, uncertain if it will really matter for me in the end. “Call the Coast Guard. Channel 16—it’s like 9-1-1 on the ocean. Tell them to get a helicopter out here. Tell them time is a factor.”

  She returns after a bit, and seems hopeful. “They’re on their way.”

  “Hold my head,” I ask her. She does so, putting her bloodied hands up to guide me down onto her shoulder, the mess getting into her hair and onto her face. “One last thing . . . for me. Whether I make it out of this or I don’t.”

  “What’s that?” Ivy asks, anxious.

  “Detective Stack. Get ahold of him. Tell him I want the favor he owes me to be keeping you and me out of this. Whatever he has to do, I don’t want the reporters finding out we were involved. At all. Tell him to make our names disappear from the reports.”

  “I’ll do that, but only if you promise not to die here.”

  I feel myself beginning to lose consciousness but there’s no reason that should come into play now. “We’ll let things happen and go from there,” I tell her and then change the subject to something I can control. “So we have a name if it’s a boy, but what do we do if the baby’s a girl?”

  A calming haze settles over me as we sit there, my girl and I, the salt air thick in the cabin, the stink of things not yet permeating my nostrils. I smile, happy it’s over, maybe all of it. I don’t really know—it’s not my problem anymore, at least. Ivy is talking but I don’t hear a word of it. Outside of my control, my eyelids flicker and close, leaving me to dream of what comes next.

  Epilogue

  Death, which I always imagined as a stopping of consciousness—merely ceasing to exist, instead looks a lot like the stark white confines of a hospital room. I attempt to move and there is surging pain from my side, so I content myself to remain in one position and let my eyes scan the room. There are two people, a man and a woman, having a lively discussion at the foot of my bed. My eyes water and I move my hands to clear them, producing an excited gasp that is instantly recognizable to me—Ivy. The man, an older gentleman, stands over me as well now, observing me through eyes that are less foggy than my own. He seems pleased by what he sees, but it’s less Ivy’s squeal of excitement and more an officious “Welcome back.” The doctor no doubt, because who else would it be wearing a long white lab coat, but this voice too seems familiar. As my eyes focus further, the features of my father, aged considerably since I last saw him ten years ago, become apparent.

  “What the hell?” I murmur.

  Ivy laughs happily, anxiously, and moves forward to softly rub at my cheek. My right hand, searching, finds hers and grasps it, holding it tight. My other hand slides down to force against the pain and push my body up into a seated position. “What is this?” I persist, grimacing from the belly wound.

  “It’s a hospital,” she explains. “You’ve been shot.”

  “What hospital?” The bank of fog settled over my brain is stubbornly refusing to dissipate.

  “Cedars-Sinai. I demanded you be airlifted here. You kept mumbling that name when you were passed out on the boat.”

  “Sensible choice.” My father nods. “The best surgeons in Southern California operate here.”

  “Did you operate on me?” I ask my estranged dad, feeling nervous through my drowsiness.

  “Medical ethics dictate that I can’t operate on family members, but then, I don’t exactly have a son,” he says soberly, and I recall enough of his dry commentary to know this is about as close as he gets to a joke.

  “Thanks,” I offer.

  “Can you believe this is your dad?” Ivy gushes. “He’s been in to check on you constantly.”

  “That’s what I would do for any patient,” Dr. Stanley Tanner chides Ivy. “That’s proper bedside protocol.”

  “Christ, you two are similar,” she retorts.

  “Not too similar,” both my dad and I say in unison.

  “Your mom wanted to come in and see you, but she wasn’t sure if you wanted that,” my dad continues. “I figured I’d let you decide. She’s in the waiting room, worried about you though, if that matters.”

  “I must be dead,” I mutter and feel at the bandaged area on the side of my abdomen. “How’s the baby?” I ask, the motion jogging a memory.

  “It’s fine. It’s part Tanner, so it is tough,” Ivy says happily. “Too tough, maybe.”

  “I’ve got other patients to check on,” my dad interjects, obviously still uncomfortable with the potential for a nice family moment. “What should I tell Judy?”

  I look to Ivy, who is clearly beaming about the potential of this family reconciliation that she gets to be involved in. “Send Mom in.” I nod.

  He exits, his hand grazing my foot in a sort of reassuring way—at least, that’s how I choose to take it.

  “I’m glad you’re alive,” Ivy whispers to me, putting her face right down to mine. “This is all so exciting.”

  “Glad you’re having a good time.” I lift my lips into a pained smile. “I kept my part of the deal and didn’t die, right?”

  “And I kept my part too.” She nods. “Detective Stack said we’re out of it. There won’t be any mention of us connected to any of this in the official reports or the papers. He also said that this makes you two even—and now you can leave him alone.”

  “Crime in L.A. is too messy for that; I’m sure he’ll need us again—or vice versa. But it’s nice to not have to worry about the media and whether they think I’m a good guy or a bad guy.”

  “Yeah, you’re just a regular guy for now,” she says, kissing my forehead. “You can just be this city’s hero in secret.”

  “Until the next time the shit hits the fan, that is.” I smile.

  “Let’s turn the fan off for a while,” Ivy says. “At least until you get better?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” I lie back down on my pillow to relieve the pressure on my wound.

  “Do you want to watch some TV while you rest?” Ivy asks, reaching for the TV remote connected to my hospital bed.

  “Don’t,” I implore her. “I’m over Hollywood for a while.”

  To Ben,

  the kind of brother who’d help you bury bodies

  Acknowledgments

  First, I absolutely have to thank my beautiful, wonderful, caring, and patient wife, Kerry, who puts up with my narcissism and golden-hued centaur-like awesomeness.

  And a big thank-you to the readers who have returned to continue the adventures of Tom Tanner. You are some of my favorite people and I can't speak highly enough of you. Obviously my agent, Ann Collette, gets a big shout-out for her continued dedication to helping me learn not to suck at writing. I’ve come a long way, I promise.

  In particular, I need to give high praise to my two editors on this project—first, Dana Isaacson, who believed in the adventures of Tom and Ivy, probably more than I did. He was the architect, shepherd, and gatekeeper for A Good Looking Corpse and I am thrilled that I know him. Anne Speyer had the thankless task of getting this manuscript into fighting shape and she did so terrifically. I hope I get to continue working with both of these people in some form or another for years t
o come.

  Here I have to give a special shout-out to Steve Hamilton—he loves reading more than anyone I know and he deserves to see his name in print as much as any of us. Thanks, boss. And what the hell, Luke can have a mention as well.

  BY JEFF KLIMA

  A Good-Looking Corpse

  L.A. Rotten

  The Dead Janitors Club

  About the Author

  Jeff Klima knows more about dead matter than is probably healthy. A lover of cigars and danger, he will probably be dead matter soon enough. Having previously written for NewMediaRockstars, the Huffington Post, and Girls and Corpses among others, Jeff honed his knowledge of all things morbid by cleaning up crime scenes for a living. He sometimes misses the work.

  A Good-Looking Corpse is his third book. You can find out more about his writing and occasional musings at www.JeffKlima.com.