Bleeders

by Bill Pronzini

  When Kerry was done explaining, she said, “Now really, isn’t that interesting? What do you think?”

  If I’d answered that question truthfully, she might have decided to divorce me. I was trying to think of a tactful, noncommittal answer when Emily walked into the dining room. Little pitchers, by God. I said to Kerry, “We’ll talk about it later,” and she nodded. Even a short reprieve is better than no reprieve at all.

  Emily was dressed in the uniform white blouse and dark skirt they make the kids wear in her private school. She hated the outfit, that was plain, but she’d made no more than a token complaint about it. All her complaints were token: briefly expressed and seldom repeated. That was another thing that made communication with her difficult. If she’d gotten angry now and then, thrown a tantrum like most other ten year olds, we’d have had a better psychological understanding of her. But she guarded her emotions, kept them locked away inside; faint glimpses, like subliminal messages, were all you ever got to see of them.

  Part of it was genetic; part of it was learned behavior. She was her mother’s child in too many ways. Shiela Hunter had been closed-off, secretive, self-involved, fear-ridden-anything but a nurturing parent. She and Emily’s father, Jack Hunter, had structured their lives and Emily’s life as a tightly knit, rigidly controlled unit, permitting only superficial relationships with others. They’d done it for selfish reasons, because they were afraid of their past transgressions catching up with them, and with no thought to the effects this would have on their daughter. Two separate, bitter tragedies had destroyed the closed unit and left Emily more alone than ever. She seemed on the surface to have handled the loss of her parents as well as any child could; she was a strong, resilient, and very intelligent little girl. But on the inside? That was what worried us, that and the long-range effects. She looked like her mother, the same dark-haired, luminous-eyed, willowy beauty; suppose she grew up to be like her mother—closed—off, secretive, self-involved, fear-ridden?

  This morning she was her usual quiet, polite self, until I asked her if she’d like to spend the afternoon at the zoo. Then she perked up some. The prospect of the three of us spending the weekend together brightened her smile even more. The one thing Kerry and I had no doubt about was that Emily liked and trusted us, wanted to be with us. It was not only because we were surrogate parents; she seemed to genuinely care for us as individuals. The source of worry here was that she viewed and would keep on viewing the relationship as the same kind of tightly knit unit she’d had with her natural parents. Kerry and I had leanings in that direction; neither of us had a lot of friends or outside interests. Had Emily sensed that in us, responded to us in part for that reason? And if she had, what could we do about it?

  Whenever possible we took turns driving Emily to her school in Glen Park. My turn today. When I dropped her off I said, “Your last class ends at one-thirty, right?”

  “One-forty.”

  “One-forty. I’ll be here waiting.”

  She said seriously, “If something comes up and you can’t make it, I’ll understand. Really.”

  “Listen, kiddo, nothing is going to keep us from going to the zoo this afternoon. This is our day together. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Sometimes, when I drop her off, she leans over and gives me a peck on the cheek; other times she just gets out and lifts her hand in a little wave. Today she smiled, one of her rare smiles without a trace of wistfulness or sadness, and shyly touched my hand. Somehow that smile and that touch made me feel better than any of those dutiful little kisses or waves.

  Everything was fine at the office. Carolyn Dain’s seventy-five thousand was still neatly stacked inside the safe—not that I’d been concerned about it, particularly, but caretaking other people’s money always makes me uneasy. After I checked the safe, I went to see if there was a message from the rightful owner. No message. No messages at all, in fact. I thought about ringing up her house, but it was still early, and she may not have returned from wherever she’d spent the night. There was also a chance Cohalan had gone home last night rather than shack up with his viper-tongued girlfriend, and I had no interest in talking to him this morning.

  I made the coffee and was pouring a cup when Tamara came in. I couldn’t help a small double-take. Clothes had never been her long suit—no pun intended. Her outfits when I’d first hired her had consisted of such as orchid-colored slacks, green sandals that showed off a variety of toe rings, men’s baggy shirts, and tie-dyed scarves. The grunge look, she called it, and in my experience the only person who dressed more flamboyantly and with less taste was Paula Hanley. Since then Tamara had modified her appearance somewhat, actually wearing shoes and now and then a skirt to the office. Conservative, however, was not a word in her lexicon ... until today. Today, by God, she was dressed in a light tan suit, a pale blue blouse that set off her dark skin, short-heeled shoes, either nylons or pantyhose, and lipstick that was neither blood-red nor purple.

  She caught me staring and scowled. “Don’t ask,” she said.

  “You clean up nice.”

  “Hah.”

  “Funeral, wedding, or job interview?”

  “Hah.”

  “Just tell me it’s not a job interview.”

  “Horace,” she said.

  “What about Horace?” He was her live-in boyfriend, a 250-pound cellist with linebacker eyes.

  “His idea. He thinks I need to upgrade my image.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I work in a business office, the man says. I want to open my own business someday, the man says. I better start dressing like a businesswoman, the man says.”

  “The man has a point.”

  “Besides, it’s the Year of the Suit. That’s what he says Vogue magazine says.

  “Horace reads Vogue?”

  She rolled her eyes. “So he bought me this outfit,” she said, scowling again. “Some outfit.”

  “Back in the eighties they called it a Power Suit.”

  “Yeah—White Power. I feel like Nancy Reagan in black face, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “You don’t look like Nancy Reagan, thank God.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with dressing up. Lots of people do it, young African American women included. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “You sound like Horace.”

  “Is that bad? I’ll say it again: You clean up nice.”

  The compliment pleased her, but she was not in a mood to admit it. “Damn pantyhose pinches my crotch,” she said.

  No man of my generation is capable of an adequate response to a statement like that. So I said, “Have some coffee, Ms. Corbin, and let’s get to work.”

  We had a couple of cases working in addition to the Dain matter. One was an investigation for an insurance outfit that had good cause to suspect fraud on a personal injury claim; the other was a domestic affairs case involving the custody of two preschool children. The custody thing was nasty, with allegations of abuse on one side and neglect and drug use on the other. We were looking into the abuse angle for the plaintiff’s attorney, and so far it appeared to be unfounded. Which made the work a little less unpleasant.

  Tamara tapped away on her new Mac computer, and I made some phone calls and wrote out a report on the domestic affairs investigation, and most of the morning disappeared. The phone rang twice, but neither caller was Carolyn Dain. A little after eleven, I rang up her home number, got her machine and Cohalan’s recorded voice. Then I tried White Rock School and was told she was “out for the day,” which probably meant she’d called in with some excuse. There was nothing else I could do except keep on waiting. Sooner or later she’d decide it was time to claim her money.

  These and other thoughts ran around inside my head, as often happens when I have some down time. The one I was dwelling on when Tamara shut off her computer and stood up to stretch led me to open my mouth.

  “Mummies,” I said.

 
“Say what?”

  “Mummies. The basic concept—”

  “Yeah. Retro, but still cool.”

  “Oh, so you know about it.”

  “Sure, I saw it.”

  “The book?”

  “The movie.”

  “There’s a movie too?”

  “Brendan Fraser, Arnold what’s-his-name. The Mummy.”

  “What mummy?”

  “That’s the title, right?”

  “The book’s title is Forever Lasting.”

  “I didn’t know there was a book.”

  “You just said you knew about it.”

  “The movie. I saw the movie.”

  “The Mummy?”

  “Right.”

  “ ... You don’t mean the Karloff movie?”

  “Karloff?”

  “Boris Karloff. The Mummy.”

  “Arnold what’s-his-name played the mummy.”

  “No, it was Karloff.”

  “Vosloo, that’s it. Arnold Vosloo.”

  “Who’s Arnold Vosloo?”

  “The mummy. Real hunk, for a dead guy.”

  “What does Arnold Vosloo have to do with Forever Lasting? For that matter what does Karloff have to do with it?”

  “What’s Forever Lasting?”

  “The book about mummies!”

  She looked at me. I looked at her. Pretty soon she said, “What’re we talking about here?”

  “Mummies. I asked you about mummies, not movies.”

  “The Mummy is a movie.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it again. It was like being trapped in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine, but I didn’t say so; if I had, Tamara would probably have said, “Who’re Abbott and Costello?” and we’d have been off again on another round. Sometimes the generation gap is a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  I took a few seconds to make a careful selection of materials before I attempted to build another bridge. “What I’m trying to ask you,” I said, “is your opinion of mummification. The concept of mummifying dead bodies instead of burying or incinerating them.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Egyptian history. Cleopatra, King Tut.”

  “Yes and no. There’s plenty of history in Forever Lasting, so I’m told, but it all leads to present-day funeral practices and a pitch for the so-called art of commercial mummification.”

  “They still do that? Embalm dead folks and make mummies out of them?”

  “Evidently. Seems to be more than one company specializing in modern mummification. And this Forever Lasting outfit is doing well enough to print up an entire book about it.”

  “Man,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So what do they do? Use bandages and stuff like the Egyptians?”

  “Oh, they’re a lot more sophisticated than that. They drop the body into some chemical brew for a few days, formaldehyde and salt and God knows what else, and when it’s all dried out they treat it with scented oils and then bind it in linen topped with polyurethane so the cloth won’t deteriorate.”

  “Then what? Don’t be telling me they seal it up in a sarcophagus?”

  “Just what they do. Only they call it a mummiform. You can get one made out of bronze that resembles King Tut’s. Or made out of silver or gold, and crusted with jewels. You can even get an art deco coffin, any design—engraved likeness of yourself or your family members, even.”

  “Dag,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Where do they put the mummies afterward?”

  “Private crypts and mausoleums. Or you can buy a niche in Forever Lasting’s Chamber of Eternal Rest.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The guy who runs this outfit, Joseph Im-tep—”

  “Joseph what?”

  “Im-tep. Real name Joseph Schultz, but he took an Egyptian name when he founded Forever Lasting.”

  “ ... You making that up.”

  “Do I sound like I’m kidding here?”

  “Joseph Im-tep. Wonder why he bothered to leave out the ’ho’?”

  “What ’ho’?” I said, which made me sound like an Englishman on a fox hunt.

  “You know, Im-ho-tep. Mummy’s name in the movie.”

  “Let’s not get started on that again. This Im-tep guy owns some property in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico, claims to have his Chamber of Eternal Rest built inside a cave up there—niches carved into the rock where the mummified bodies can quote enjoy blissful solitude for all eternity unquote.”

  “What’s all this cost?”

  “Well, let’s see. You can get your dead body mummified without any of the trappings for under ten thousand.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Dollars. If you want a funeral and flowers and one of the cheaper airtight coffins, the tab’ll run you around twenty-five thousand. The fancy gold-and-silver mummiforms cost a hundred and fifty grand or so. And if you want a niche in the Chamber of Eternal Rest, that’s another seventy-five hundred.”

  “Off da hook!” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And rich people actually go for this?”

  “Rich and not so rich. A lot more than you’d think.”

  “What’s the big attraction?”

  “Im-tep’s selling it as a kind of immortality. Mummifed bodies last forever, at least in theory.”

  “Yeah, forever. If some dude with an archeology degree or a handful of tanna leaves doesn’t show up.” Tamara came over and perched a plump hip on the edge of my desk. “No way you be thinking about turning yourself into King Tut?”

  “Me? Good God, no.”

  “So how come you read this Forever Lasting book?”

  “I didn’t read it. Kerry’s reading it.”

  “She’s not? ...”

  “Just finds the subject interesting, she says. I’d divorce her if she let Paula Hanley talk her into contacting Im-tep, and she knows it. Paula’s the one who loaned her the book.”

  “So that girl’s serious about getting mummified?”

  “She is now. In the unlikely event she stays serious, she’ll probably want to design her own mummiform.” I had a mental image of a golden sarcophagus, elegantly and tastefully carved—and inside it, Mrs. Boris Karloff resplendant in linen bindings of shocking pink and bilious green, Day-Glo orange and fetching lavender.

  “But you don’t think it’ll happen?”

  “I’ll be astonished if it does. By next week or next month, Paula will be into something else—burial at sea decked out in United Nations flags, maybe. She’s not too well wrapped.”

  Tamara laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Pun you just made.”

  “What pun?”

  “‘Not too well wrapped.’ Neither was Im-ho-tep.”

  I frowned. “You know I don’t like puns.”

  “Well, it came out your mouth.”

  “Unintentionally.”

  “Right. You a man who doesn’t make puns on purpose, doesn’t even get ’em half the time.” She stood up and smoothed her new skirt. “You really want my opinion on this mummy business?”

  “That’s why I brought it up.”

  “Truth is, it leaves me cold.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Me, too.”

  “How about we lay it to rest now? We done talked the subject to death.”

  “Fine with me.”

  She favored me with one of her funny little smiles. “Well then,” she said, “I guess that’s a wrap,” and went back to her desk and sat there chuckling to herself.

  As much as I like Tamara, she can be strange sometimes. Not quite but almost as strange as Paula Hanley.

  FIVE

  IT WAS CROWDED AT THE SAN FRANCISCO Zoological Gardens. Nonstormy Fridays are usually busy days, even at this time of year. Overcast, fog, and icy winds don’t keep visitors away; if they did, the zoo would go out of business inside a year. Its seventy-some acres are spread out so close to the ocea
n you can hear breakers lashing the seawall across the Great Highway which forms the zoo’s western boundary. Most days out here, you get a brisk sea wind; most days the afternoons are chilly even when the sky is stripped clean of clouds or mist. This one was no exception. Patchy sun and cloud scuds, but offshore a huge fogbank was getting ready to unroll again like a giant fuzzy carpet, and the wind blew sharp and cold. I had my overcoat and gloves on, and Emily was bundled into a heavy wool coat, mittens, scarf, and knitted cap, but neither of us minded the cold or the bulky outfits. She was smiling, and there was a skip in her step, both very good to see.

  The zoological gardens have expanded quite a bit since a financier named Herbert Fleishhacker contributed enough money and animals to open them in the early 1920s. Back then, and for some time afterward, they had been small and modest and known as Fleishhacker Zoo. Next door had been Fleishhacker’s Pool, the world’s largest outdoor saltwater swimming pool at a thousand feet long and a hundred-and-fifty feet wide, known locally as “Herb’s white elephant” since hardly anybody used it because of the weather and Ocean Beach being so close by. When the pool was finally shut down, the zoo took over the land and a lot more animals and exhibits were added. Today it’s one of the largest on the West Coast, with fourteen hundred animals and birds and dozens of grottoes, brushy fields and slopes, rush-rimmed ponds, and other areas simulating natural habitats.

  If you want to see everything the zoo has to offer, you need a full day to prowl those seventy acres. In the three hours we had, the choices were somewhat limited. Emily was interested in birds, so the big aviary was a definite stop. So were Monkey Island and the Primate Discovery Center, the sea lion tank, the koala compound, and the Lion House.

  We went to the aviary first, then wandered over to see if it was feeding time for the big cats. It wasn’t; all but one of the cages was empty, the animals still out back in their grottoes. We stopped in front of the occupied cage, where one of the Bengal tigers was pacing restlessly. We were the only two-legged animals on this side of the bars.