Death Dealers

by M. G. Gallows

  “The man likes his coffee,” he said.

  “Tap tastes like piss,” I admitted. I dug a ‘World’s Greatest Accident’ mug out of my cupboard. “You want anything in it?”

  “Frothy soy milk and chocolate shavings?” He asked with a smirk.

  “Sure. You want a shot of testosterone, too?” I asked. Lorensdottr snorted.

  “Two sugars, one cream,” he reiterated.

  I loaded his mug, then made one for myself with more than double of both. ‘Real men drink it black’ is bullshit. I drink my coffee however the hell I want, testosterone jokes aside.

  I handed it to him. “Food of the gods.”

  Lorensdottr stepped forward and eyed her partner. “If we’re done with the pleasantries?”

  He shrugged, and sipped his coffee with a look of surprise on his face.

  “You didn’t get what you wanted last night? Fire away, detective.” I sat on the opposite end of the L-couch from Runner.

  “What were you doing that had you up late last night?” she asked.

  “Out for a drive. The city is peaceful at night. Meditative.”

  “You don’t strike me as the spiritual type.”

  “I’m a man of hidden depths.”

  “Do you often frequent the more unpredictable parts of the city?” She asked, without missing a beat. “The Lincoln Street Mambas don’t let just anyone wander their turf.”

  “Lincoln? I was on Samson and Pine. It’s an industrial park.”

  She pursed her lips. “What were you doing there, then?”

  “West-Side Noodles. They’re open late.”

  Her eyes were frosty behind her glasses. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Fossor?”

  “They already asked me at the station,” I said. “Gave ‘em my boss’s number and everything.”

  Her smile was insincere, but still attractive. “Humor me.”

  “I’m a mortician’s assistant at Keller’s Funeral Home.”

  She nodded as if that made sense. “What does that job entail?”

  “The Kellers run a family business, not one of the big chains, so I do a bit of everything. Dig plots, move caskets, decorate, cater, prepare pamphlets, anything that funerals involve I’ve experienced, even if it’s not my job description.”

  “Like working with corpses?”

  “Dietrich Keller is the mortician, but I help him prepare, dress and move bodies, sure.”

  “Do you have any other co-workers?”

  “Dietrich has three brothers, they’re all funeral directors with assistants of their own.” I hesitated. “We hired some new gofers, dropout college kids. Don, Jeb, Frank and Max. We were on the job yesterday at Our Lady of Bethlehem for a burial service.”

  She nodded. “Mr. Keller hired these men?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you like being a mortician, Mr. Fossor?”

  “It’s alright. Death is steady business, to put it grimly.”

  “Thinking of running a mortuary of your own?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d need four years of anatomical, physiological, and business management study, plus at least a year’s apprenticeship to become a fully fledged mortician. I never went to college. And there’s a big dropout rate. Dietrich said he almost did. I would have.”

  An eyebrow perked over her glasses. “Why’s that?”

  I sighed. “Undertakers have to bury children. Prepare their bodies, build a coffin to their size...”

  She broke eye contact and stared at her shoes. I drank my coffee. I had never buried a child in my time working for Dietrich, and he said he’d never done it before. For what it was worth, I hoped he never had to. Or anyone else, for what that was worth.

  Runner broke the silence. “So, you live here alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Rent?” Lorensdottr asked. I nodded.

  “Pretty nice, for this part of town,” Runner said. “My apartment is half this.”

  “I get it at a discount. The landlord says it’s haunted.” They both looked at me. I shrugged. “Some people take it seriously.”

  They both laughed. Well, Runner laughed.

  Lorensdottr strolled into the kitchen and surveyed the space. My heart seized as her eyes lingered on it. The moment drew out like a blade being pulled from my chest, but she moved past it to the fridge instead.

  “Do you mind?” She asked. When I shrugged, she opened it. “At least you don’t live on takeout.”

  I let myself exhale. “I like to cook for myself.”

  She left the kitchen, and the trapdoor creaked under her foot. If she noticed, she didn’t so much as flinch.

  “Help you find something?” I asked.

  She looked into my bedroom. “Just curious.”

  “Well the TV shows say you need a warrant to search a person’s house.”

  Her face froze over. “I’ve seen enough for now. Those friends of yours, they got numbers we can reach them at?”

  I shrugged. “Try Dietrich. You’re pretty thorough about this, eh?”

  She frowned. “We go where the leads point.”

  “So, I’ve answered your questions. I think I’ve been cooperative. What is going on, exactly? Those cops on Samson were waiting to ambush somebody. Why?”

  “We’re not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation,” Runner said. He set his empty mug on the table.

  “Especially not with a person of interest,” Lorensdottr added.

  Great. Stonewalled. So much for quid pro quo. “Then I’ll call an attorney while you show yourselves out. I’d like to see what he has to say about this whole situation. As far as I can see there is no investigation, just cops bullying random citizens.”

  “Now listen here-” Lorensdottr started.

  “It was an anonymous tip,” Runner interrupted. “Someone contacted Narcotics, told them a shipment of Stig was being moved in a truck matching yours.”

  “Stig?” I asked, then added, “What’s that?”

  Lorensdottr grabbed Runner by his coat. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Fossor.”

  I watched them go from the porch. They entered her car, an unmarked gray mid-size, and sped off. When they were out of sight, I shivered.

  That was close. It wasn’t the end of my troubles, either. Lorensdottr had it out for me. She’d be back with a warrant and a forensic team, as soon as she could get them.

  Which meant I had to get the meat in my freezer to the Gallows yesterday. I emptied my freezer into the grocery bags, jumped into my work van and left in a hurry, with one eye on my rearview.

  SEVEN

  I parked the van in my usual patch of gravel, in the alley behind Dowry Street.

  Dowry was a middle-class townhouse neighborhood southeast of the Uptown. It was clean, with trees planted in decorative gaps along the sidewalks. I always thought if I’d won the lottery, I would buy a place on Dowry.

  I cast a covert eye about, scanning the windows. Don’t mind me, folks. Just a gravedigger, dropping off six bags of butchered drug dealer.

  Putting the macabre thoughts aside, I walked to the back door of the Dowry Street vent station. The building looked like any other townhouse on the block, but inside it had a system of automated machinery to move fresh air into the subway tunnels below the street. It was the easiest way into the Gallows.

  I knocked once, then twice. A second later it opened.

  A curvy, forty-something woman emerged, dressed like a homemaker from any sitcom made in the sixties, beehive hairdo and all. Deborah St. Germaine had lived in the Gallows longer than anyone else, one of its original inhabitants. “Alex?”

  “Heya Deb,” I said, hefting a bag. “Got a delivery. Wanna help me move the TV in?”

  “Oh, thank heavens!” She said, putting a hand to her chest. “It was getting to be a bit too much with those boys asking to share Bill’s set all the time.”

  I smirked. “Sorry I haven’t been around. Work is slow,
you know?”

  “Hush,” she said. “I know you weren’t holding out on us.”

  “How’s Max?”

  “Downstairs. He’s hanging on, but he’s grouchy. I feel terrible for that woman’s family.”

  “Hopefully, this will help,” I said. But she stopped me in the doorway.

  “You promised this would not be a problem,” she said.

  I shrank back a little. Deb wasn’t a tall or violent woman, but she was a den mother to the Gallows. She had given her all to looking after its inhabitants, keeping them safe, and keeping the rest of the world safe from them.

  “I did,” I said. “But let’s not talk about it here, okay?”

  Past its deceptive exterior, the vent station looked like a factory, with lots of warning labels on everything. The machinery hid behind sound-proofed walls, and I’d never seen it, but it took up most of the interior space.

  We descended well below street level and navigated a dimly lit maze of concrete corridors. A freight elevator, big enough for ten or more people, waited at the end of our path. We set the TV and bags aside for the slow ride to the very bottom of the city.

  “Donnie and his buddies have been sneaking out,” I said. “Max is starving. That’s why this happened.”

  Deb sighed. “Norton has suspected for a while, but he hasn’t caught them in the act.”

  “If you knew, you shouldn’t have said something. I wouldn’t have taken their side when they said they wanted to get jobs.”

  She sighed. “If Norton had caught them, I would have been certain. But you know how little escapes his notice.”

  “And Max getting sick? Hungry?”

  “We both failed to notice that,” she said. “This past year, you’ve given so much towards improving the Gallows. It doesn’t feel like a cage anymore, at least to an old maid like me. But seeing more of the outside world only made their isolation more difficult for them. I mistook his mood for restlessness, not hunger. They want to go out, like all boys their age.”

  “They’re not boys. They’re old enough to drink, and it’s not them I’m worried for.”

  “I know. Hopefully, some food and the sports channel will help.”

  The lift stopped in pitch darkness. I pulled open the gate, and Deb turned on an electric lantern hanging from the low ceiling. The sewers at that level were some of the deepest in the city, abandoned as the city constructed modern tunnels above them. The smell was less like damp sewage, and more like an old cave. Sometimes I swore I could hear a distant tapping behind the mustard-colored brick, though Deb assured me the city had sealed the tunnels decades ago.

  The short hallway ended at a solid steel door, with ‘Hazardous Materials’ painted on it in faded red stencil.

  Deb knocked, and a middle-aged man with a potbelly opened it from the other side. He had the look of an aging biker, still pretty solid, but his bare arms showed off sagging skin and faded tattoos.

  “Alex!” Bill Weber’s voice came out as a breathless rasp. “Finally showing your face.”

  “Bill, how is everyone?” I shook his hand, calloused and yellow from a lifetime of labor and cigarettes.

  “Quiet. Come on in,” he said. “Is that a TV? Look at the size of that sucker!”

  He hefted it out of our arms by himself, and we entered the Gallows proper.

  It was an old cistern, about the size of a hotel lobby, dotted with pillars that rose to an arching ceiling. Thankfully, it no longer received runoff from the tunnels above.

  Metal catwalks lined the walls about five feet off the ground and connected to bricked off tunnels, or storage rooms that served as private dwellings. The central drain in the ceiling now overflowed with power, TV and internet cables. They hooked into a frantic web of extension cords, splitters and Wi-Fi, granting the Gallows electricity and internet connections siphoned off Dowry’s networks.

  A bar and dining area dominated a corner of the cistern, with a handmade counter, a few scavenged tables, chairs and stools. Two old freezers and a refrigerator hummed behind the counter. Someone—I suspected Donnie, or Miguel—had nailed up a wooden sign that read ‘Fossor’s Finest Cuts’ in bright red letters. Deb’s had pinned paper pumpkins and witch silhouettes to a corkboard under the sign. Miguel and his sister Ximena had scattered orange and yellow silk marigold petals, and painted sugar skulls decorated the counter.

  My arrival had stirred the wights from their rooms. There were a dozen, and I knew them all, at least in a professional sense. Donnie and his frat-boy crew were the youngest inhabitants. Bill, Deb and Henry were its oldest, though Deb treated all them like they were her kids.

  “Brought us a snack,” Ichiro muttered. Ichiro Takano was a wiry, Japanese man with tattoos up one side of his body, from his knee to his shoulder. He was missing his left pinkie, and the right was only a stub above the knuckle. He scratched his head and cocked his ear towards empty air beside him. “No, we’ll watch it later, afterward.”

  “Hi, Alex. A new TV? It’s a big one.” Roger Pedanski chuckled, but he never took his eyes off the grocery bags. He was a lanky, wild-haired electrician, and it was thanks to his skills that the Gallows had its electrical conveniences.

  “Alex, I am sorry for Max’s actions.” Norton Mwela shook my hand, something he always did when greeting someone. He was the tallest, an African immigrant with dark hair and eyes.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  “It is. I promised I would watch over this place. I don’t know how they are getting out.”

  “Just the same, leave them be. I don’t want any of you fighting one another. I’ll be the bad guy here, okay?”

  He sighed but nodded.

  “We can’t expect them to sit on their hands. They’re still adjusting to all of this.” Henry Offerson said. Physically, he looked to be the oldest, having ‘died’ in his late seventies, but he was still younger than Deb. There was always a book in his hands, because death had been the retired professor’s chance to read to his heart’s content.

  “They should respect their responsibilities,” Norton argued.

  “That’s easy for us to say, we didn’t die when we were college students,” Henry replied.

  “Hello Alex,” Ximena Celestino whispered, while the two men argued. Her frumpy sweater, dress, and black wig hid the burns that scarred most of her body.

  “Hey Xim,” I whispered to her. “I like your skulls.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled. It was brave of her just to get that much out without an anxiety attack.

  I turned to address the crowd. “Everyone eats today.”

  Some looked reluctant, others resigned, but they all nodded.

  “Time again, huh?” Miguel asked. Unlike his sister, he wore bright Hawaiian shirts, cargo shorts and sandals. “This sucks. I don’t need to eat. I don’t feel hungry. I haven’t left my room in weeks.” Ximena tugged on his sleeve, and he held up his hand in surrender.

  I turned to Bill. “Hey, go show Donnie and his boys their new TV, then ask Donnie and Max to come meet me.”

  “Right-o.” Bill said. He hesitated, eyes on the grocery bags, then hurried off.

  Guess it has been a while, I thought, and loaded the freezer while everyone stood by and made small talk. When I was done, Deb grabbed a portion and hurried to her room. The others followed suit.

  No one was greedy. None of them took more than they needed. It didn’t come from a spirit of communal sharing. Perhaps what they were doing was evil. Or wrong. Or unnatural. Whatever you want to call it. They knew it. I knew it. Eating human flesh? Does that sound right to you?

  But it doesn’t mean they enjoyed it, that they wanted to, or that it gave them some kind of buzz. It was a balm. It dulled the hunger, but never satisfied it. An insane act to keep them sane.

  Ximena approached, with a plastic-wrapped bundle tucked under her arm. “Thank you, Alex.”

  Before I could reply, she scurried away after her brother. I felt a pang of guilt. Thanks for bringing he
r a hunk of human being? So she could eat it and hold off the hunger, so it was more bearable to lurk in their glorified sewer, and exist. Just exist. For as long as she or any of them could.

  Being undead was a miserable existence.

  Donnie arrived, dragging a sick-looking Max with him. “See? He’s here, man. Ta-dah.” He grinned at me. “Thanks for the TV, man. I know we ain’t exactly earned it-”

  “You can thank me by keeping near your phone,” I said. “Something happened last night, and now two homicide detectives are hounding me. They want to talk to my co-workers, and that means you. I need you ready if you get a call.”

  “What do I tell ‘em?”

  “The truth. I’m your buddy, your brother from another mother.”

  He smirked. “So lie to them?”

  “You know what to do, smartass.”

  “Okay.” He tilted his head. “I’ll do it for a field trip.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Give me a goddamn break. After sneaking out? After the TV?”

  “Look, hear me out. Once Max eats, he’ll be fine. And it isn’t just to have fun. A lot of us haven’t been up top in a long time. We need things. Clothes, books, toilet paper. The rest are too polite to ask, or they think you’ll say no.”

  “The cops are watching me, I can’t be your chaperone. And there’s more, the Society has tabs on this place. They know you’re here.”

  “The who?” Donnie asked. “We haven’t seen anyone down here.”

  “Mages. Big league ones, and I don’t think they have to be here to watch us. But my arrest was thanks to another necromancer who tried to make me take the fall. I’ve got to deal with him, or shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

  He nodded. “So we scratch each other’s backs. One day. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “You’re gonna blackmail me?”

  Donnie shrugged.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Goddamnit, fine. One trip. Tomorrow. Today you sit by the phone and be the best goddamn friend I ever had for those cops.”

  He smiled and made a little cross over his heart. “Hope to die.”

  “You’ll want to if this goes south, Donnie. And first things first,” I pointed at Max. “He eats.”