The Corpse Whisperer

by H. R. Boldwood

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Did you tell them what you wouldn’t tell me?”

  “Quit badgering me, Nighthawk. You’re worse than them. I answered every question they asked me.”

  “You’re protecting someone. That’s the only explanation, Leo. Who is it?”

  He sat forward on the end of the couch and shook his head. “Nobody. Knock it off. I’m tired.”

  His eyes were wide, and his chest heaved. He was breathing too fast. Leo was scared. But of who? And why? He was already a dead man. What was left to fear?

  “Who are you protecting, Leo? Tell me. I can help you.”

  He fidgeted and rubbed his hands through his hair. Then, he began to hyperventilate. I found him a paper bag and held it to his lips, giving him my Come to Jesus speech while he caught his breath.

  “Listen to me, Leo. Whatever you’re afraid of, I can handle. I’m sure you think by holding back, you’re protecting someone, but consider this. If you don’t tell me who’s in danger, I can’t protect them. Please. Let me help you. I promise, if it means that much to you, I’ll protect whoever it is with my life. Hell, Rico and Ferris will as well. Just like they protected you.”

  Leo’s breathing returned to normal, but tears filled his eyes.

  “You swear,” he said. “You swear on your mother’s grave, if I tell you, you’ll do that? You’ll protect them?”

  “Leo, look at me,” I said, taking his hands. “I don’t make empty promises.”

  He collapsed back against the cushion and exhaled. “His name is Vincent Arturo Abruzzi. And he’s my son.”

  34

  The Last Dance

  Shit the damn bed, Louie. In all the time I’d known Leo, he never once mentioned he had a child.

  “He’s twenty-one,” Leo said. “Vinny and me, we’re like you and De Palma, we don’t mix. Too much alike, I guess. Wants nothing to do with me. He goes to school at Tulane. Lives in Monroe Hall. Remember that.”

  “Why is Vinny in danger?” I asked.

  “I laundered money for a living. Some of the guys I did business with, they’re not so nice. You know? This one guy, I never knew his real name. Called himself Stanous. He was into the mob, big. The bastard must have got scared that I was going to talk, ‘cause next thing I know, I’m bit, and he sends me a message. You tell the Feds about me, your son gets it next. I couldn’t do that to Vinny.”

  Leo lay his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “Jesus. Who could do that to anybody? Let alone his own son.”

  Stanous. As in Stanous Electric. I shook my head. Leo probably did answer every question the D.A. asked. But the D.A. wasn’t asking the right questions. The Feds wanted to know who was fronting the money. They didn’t give a rat’s ass who was borrowing it. But someone the Feds weren’t interested in was willing to kill, to keep his name out of the investigation.

  Why?

  Leo lifted his head and peered into my eyes. “I give you what you need, you swear you guys will protect Vinny?”

  “With our lives.”

  Leo let his eyes linger on mine, then nodded, and dug his hand into his pocket, pulling out a thumb drive. “This is my set of the books. Take it. Do whatever you need to do. Just remember you, De Palma and Ferris are on the hook for my son.”

  Leo laid it in my hand and then wiped his eyes.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Leo,” I said, shoving the drive into the pocket of my jeans. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll help us catch the fucker who’s responsible for this mess.”

  Leo lay back against the couch and exhaled. The air in his lungs rattled out in a long, slow wheeze.

  Oh, God. My poor fucking heart.

  “You know what I have?” I said, forcing a smile. “DVR’s of the entire season of Dancing with the Stars. How ‘bout we watch it together?”

  “Why not?” he murmured. “That reminds me. There’s a bag on the shelf in my closet. Go get it, would you?”

  I grabbed it from his room and handed it to him.

  “This…this is for you,” he said. “Nonnie ordered it for me, since you wouldn’t let me online.”

  He pulled an envelope out of the bag, gave it to me, and said, “Life’s too short, Nighthawk. Don’t leave nothing on the table.”

  Inside the envelope was a gift certificate for ballroom lessons at Arthur Murray’s.

  My eyes welled. “What am I going to do with this, huh? Dancing’s for graceful people.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, handing me the bag. “Open it.”

  I reached inside and pulled out a box of bright yellow dancing shoes. Salsa shoes, according to the label. Words failed me, but for the first time in weeks, I smiled. Really smiled. I slipped them on and laughed.

  “Yellow was all they had,” Leo rasped. “You know how hard it is to find women’s size ten dancing shoes?”

  The celebrity couple on TV was dancing the waltz. I reached for Leo’s hand. It trembled in mine. “How about one dance. For me.”

  He smiled and I helped him to his feet.

  “See,” I said. “You really did take me dancing. Just like you said you would.”

  We hung on to each other, swaying to the beat. We kept on swaying, too, even after the music stopped.

  Then Leo went limp in my arms, and looked at me with eyes that were nearly as yellow as my new shoes.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he whispered.

  Oh, God. I can’t do this. I just can’t.

  “Where’d you go, Nighthawk? Turn the lights back on, huh?”

  “I’m here,” I said, sitting us both back on the couch. “Right here.”

  His voice cracked. “You remember your promise. Don’t you let me—”

  I blinked back tears. “I got you, Leo. I got you.”

  “And my son. You’ll watch over him?”

  “Him, too, buddy. I swear. You just lie there. Get some rest.”

  Within minutes, his tortured breathing stopped altogether.

  When his head fell to his chest, I summoned every ounce of strength inside me, pulled my Ka-Bar, and drove it into his brain stem.

  “Thanks for the dance,” I whispered, laying him back gently. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  Less than twenty-four hours later, Leo was buried at The United Jewish Cemetery in Montgomery, Ohio. Nonnie helped me with the arrangements, and per Leo’s only request, made sure we recited Kaddish. Only six people showed up. Cap, Rico, Jade, Ferris, Nonnie and me.

  I called Vinny in his dorm room at Tulane and told him about his dad’s death. I was hoping Vinny would make the trip up for the funeral. No dice. A real hard case, this Vinny. A Grade-A, know-it-all, pain in the ass. The apple sure didn’t fall far from that tree.

  I told him his dad asked me to watch over him, and why. The kid wanted nothing to do with his dad or me. Fine. I’d keep tabs on the little shithead anyway. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Director Dickhead had the gall to show up at the gravesite, toward the end of the service. Probably just to make sure Leo ended up six-feet under. I wanted to boot Dickhead’s ass to the street, but the brain bitch wouldn’t let me. Pansy-ass wussy. Maybe that was because she’d figured out the real reason he’d come. It surely wasn’t for Leo.

  Dickhead motioned me aside. Keeping his voice low, he said, “I thought I’d find you here. We need to have a chat.”

  I walked with him to his car, where he reached into the glove compartment, pulled out an envelope, and shoved it into my hands. “We’ve had our differences, you and I, but you seem to know this Hoodoo, Voodoo crap better than anyone else. You were the first to suspect that the Z-virus had been manipulated. And statistics have shown you were right about the rotter population being on the rise.”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot, and then sighed. “The FBI wants to keep you on the task force. They’re offering you a contract as a paid consultant. But only on retainer and only until we get a handle on this mess. I
t’s nothing permanent, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  A smile played at the corner of his mouth. “For the duration, you’ll be reporting to me.”

  I should have known there’d be a turd at the bottom of the punch bowl. But things had been awfully tight lately, and I enjoyed eating as much as the next guy, so I asked, “What’s the pay?”

  “It’s all in the contract. You’ve got forty-eight hours to make up your mind.”

  I wouldn’t even need forty-eight minutes. Of course, I’d accept. Whatever the pay, I needed the money, but the thought of letting Dickhead stew about my decision for the next couple of days gave me a certain amount of childish satisfaction.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  Dickhead got in his car and drove off.

  I rejoined the others at Leo’s grave, having no idea how to explain Dickhead’s mysterious appearance.

  “What did he want?” Cap asked.

  I smiled and shrugged. “Nothing important. What do you say the five of us throw Leo a wake? I think he’d like that.”

  Cap let my flip answer to his question slide, and he begged off the wake, saying he had a pile of work on his desk that he needed to get back to. Jade had to get back to the station. That only left six of us, Ferris, Rico, Nonnie, me, Headbutt and Kulu, a small but determined bunch, dedicated to celebrating the life of the mobbed-up moneyman with a heart of gold.

  Rico volunteered to stop at the liquor store, but Nonnie said she had a leftover stash of Mortie’s Chianti in her basement. What better way to toast the crusty Italian-Jewish gangster than with vino from the homeland? We would drink multiple toasts to Powell and Ortega too, before the day was through.

  Not only did Nonnie supply the Chianti, she also brought sandwich trays and chips. Lucky for us. She knew I sure as hell wasn’t going to cook. Nonnie set up the food, and then announced she was returning home. Leo had no one else, she explained, so she decided to sit shiva for him.

  After she left, I walked back to the bedroom to change into my jeans. I slid them on, stuck my hand in the front right pocket and pulled out the most important piece of evidence we had.

  Leo’s thumb drive.

  “I’ve got something to share with you,” I said, walking back into the living room with the drive in my hand. “Something Leo gave me on his deathbed, in exchange for a promise.”

  I told Rico and Ferris about Vinny—and about the collective promise I’d made that involved us all.

  Ferris stared at my hand. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Rico, tossing back some wine, turned to me wide-eyed. “Leo’s books? No way. Are you shitting me?”

  I plugged in the drive and pages of data populated the screen.

  “Look at all these names,” I said.

  Rico whistled. “Look at all that money changing hands.”

  I scanned page after page, searching for the name I wanted—needed—to see.

  “Bingo!” I yelled. “Here it is. Stanous Electric. Big as day. And check out the amount of that loan. Five million dollars.”

  I sorted the list by totals. That was the largest loan in the book. I was closing in on something. But what? Stanous Electric meant nothing to me. The longer I stared, the more frustrated I got.

  Then, I remembered Leo said he never knew the client’s real name, so I grabbed a pen and started moving the letters around.

  Holy crap.

  There it was, after all this time. The name of the demon who’d been stringing us along, playing us for fools. It was the same demon who’d been haunting my dreams for the past three years. Somewhere in the back of my mind, where I shove the shit that terrifies me, maybe I’d always known.

  “Toussaint Le Clerc,” I whispered, although by then, my mouth had gone bone-dry.

  Rico shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “You wouldn’t have.”

  “Who is he?” Ferris asked.

  “Just a ghost from the past,” I said unable to meet his gaze. “An evil, fucking ghost.”

  “Screw it, then,” Ferris clapped his hands loudly. “It’s still early. I say we bring that ghost down now.”

  “Not tonight.” I closed the laptop and shoved the flash drive back into my pocket. “Tonight is for Leo.”

  We ate too much and drank even more, toasting lost friends and comrades like Leo and Harry Delk. I even flipped on the DVR of Dancing with the Stars, and laughed while Ferris and Rico danced the worst Argentine Tango in the history of tangos.

  It wasn’t long after that, that Rico’s phone rang. I could tell by the look on his face, Jade was on the line. He moved into the kitchen to take her call and Ferris scooped me into his arms, for an impromptu waltz.

  Everything was fine, until my size tens tripped over the leg of the coffee table and we fell onto the couch, laughing.

  He pulled back just a bit and stared into my eyes. Then he kissed me, like I’d never been kissed before, long, slow and deep.

  When the kiss ended, and I came back down to earth, I noticed Rico standing in the doorway watching us. He glanced away quickly, and retreated to the kitchen.

  Ferris, oblivious, rolled to his feet giggling, excused himself, and wandered down the hallway toward my bathroom.

  I walked into the kitchen and found Rico staring out the window into the darkness.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just Jade,” he muttered.

  “Just Jade? That sounds…ominous.”

  Rico studied me with unreadable eyes. “She’s been after me to move in with her.”

  Move in with her? What was wrong with this guy? She was such a user. With everything that had happened between them, he was too good a cop, too analytical, to not see that. He was pissing me off. And yet, for some reason, my heart was in my throat. That pissed me off even more.

  I sucked in a breath and asked, “So, what did you tell her?”

  “That I need some time. That I’m not sure.”

  Ten seconds, pal. That’s all the time it should have taken to give her a big, fat, definitive no. But he was in love, and love brings out the stupid. Still, he was hesitating. Why?

  “Is there someone else?”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Those words came out of my mouth before the brain bitch could pull them back.

  He paused and glanced at Ferris approaching from the hallway. “No, of course not. When would I even have time? All I do is work.”

  Ferris staggered and banged into the kitchen archway with a chuckle. “What’re we talking about now, boys and girls?”

  “Your dancing ability,” I said, poking my finger into his chest. “The consensus is, you can’t lead for shit.”

  Ferris looked back and forth between Rico and me, then winked at me and stumbled back to the couch. Even drunk, it seemed nothing got past Ferris.

  The guys left around midnight. I’d taken Ferris’s keys away hours earlier, so Rico drove him home. I locked the door behind them and soon found myself standing in the hallway, peering into Leo’s room.

  For years it had been the arsenal, a place to store weapons, ammo, and other assorted crap. Somehow, in a very short period of time, it had become Leo’s room. Freaking loud, obnoxious, warm, wonderful Leo.

  Not yet ready for a trip down memory lane, I returned to the couch beside Headbutt, grabbed my laptop, and googled Toussaint Le Clerc. I hadn’t lied about his being a ghost from the past, but I had neglected to mention he was a necromancer whose powers rivaled mine—and whose heart was black as pitch.

  My search came up empty. I sighed. Of course, it had. Toussaint worked in the shadows. I shut down the computer, sipped the last of my Chianti, and watched the screen go black.

  The air grew thick, almost expectant, and a hush fell over the house. Headbutt rose to his feet, ears peaked, hackles raised, a low growl humming in his throat.

  “What is it, boy?” I scanned the living room, then craned my neck to
peer down the hallway.

  Finding nothing, I settled back in my seat, and stifled a scream. Toussaint taunted me from the darkened laptop screen, beckoning me with a crook of his finger. On his left bicep was the same Vodoun tattoo I’d seen on BOLO Guy and the fake nurse at the hospital.

  I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, he was gone.

  Damn him. He had surfed my mind and manipulated my thoughts, like he had in the old days, before we went our separate ways. I slammed the laptop closed, and spun around, half expecting to find him standing behind me.

  When I found myself alone, I hurled a message of my own through the cosmos. I’m coming, you son-of-a-bitch. I’ll find you wherever you are. And this time it won’t be over until one of us is dead.

  Excerpt: Corpse Whisperer Sworn

  H.R. Boldwood

  “Get your hands off my Harley.”

  I leveled my gun at the bastard’s bald head and racked the slide, producing the metallic click-clack that commands instant attention.

  Baldy froze, inched his hands into the air, and pivoted toward me. “You…ah,” he squinted under the street light at the paper in his hand, “Allie Nighthawk?”

  I walked to within a few yards of him and then planted my feet shoulder width apart. “I’m not going to say it again. Step away from the Low Rider.”

  He backed off, shaking his head. “Bank One says it belongs to them, now. You should’ve made the payments.”

  It was a warm Saturday in May, just after midnight in Cincinnati, and the weekend was already full-tilt in the crapper.

  “They’ll get their money,” I said, keeping him in my crosshairs. “Go on, now. Leave before my friend Hawk here has second thoughts.”

  “Nice piece,” he said, backing up, eying my gun. He turned and climbed into the cab of his flatbed. “Semi-auto?”

  “Custom nine-millimeter. Nighthawk.”

  Baldy cranked the engine. It turned over slow and then backfired, the sound echoing against the houses on Pitty Pat Lane.