Bill Pronzini - Bleeders

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.”