Josh Stallings - Beautiful, Naked and Dead

At midnight, I passed a VW van full of college kids. A bumper sticker in their rear window read WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. That all depends on the question. But I didn’t have to tell them, they were young, with any luck the world wouldn’t come along and smash their illusions.

At four AM I hit Palo Alto, I had crunched enough whites to know sleep was a distant dream. I parked on Hamilton and walked up to the Tudor. Moving down the driveway I noticed that the Volvo was gone. I let myself in the back door, the house was dark. At the top of the stairs I opened a door into a kid’s room, all the toys were gone the beds had been stripped. In the beam of my Maglite the walls glowed with a bright field of sunflowers. Stars and a smiling moon were painted on the ceiling, it was every child’s dream bedroom, but it was lacking any sign of children. Closing the door I tried not to think about the kids who had slept in that room. The master bedroom was large, in a carved oak bed the ponytail prick was sleeping, his face bruised and scabbed from our last meeting. I clamped my hand over his nose and mouth, cutting off his air.

He woke choking, his arms flailing. My grip was steel, his eyes bulged. He could feel the end coming near.

“Tell me about Jeffery Sabatini,” I said, taking my hand off his face. He gasped for air, clutching his chest. “Whatever patience I had was lost a long way back down the road so start talking.”

“I don’t know what you want.”

“Goodbye,” I said and clamped my hand back over his airway. His eyes bugged wildly. “Jeffery Sabatini?” I said, letting him breath.

“I don’t know him. Really, I don’t.”

“Good. Now where is Gino’s cut for the last months?”

“No, he’ll kill me,” he said. My hand hovered over his face. He lost all will to fight. “It’s in a safe down in the den. But if you take it, you might as well kill me.”

“I care as much about you, as you cared for those little girls, now move.” I pulled him out of bed by his ponytail. He had on a pair of Ward Cleaver PJ bottoms that his wife probably bought him for Father’s Day.

At the wall safe, he turned to me, for a moment he thought about trying to talk me out of it but one look into my eyes made him turn back to the dial. The steel door opened with a solid chunk. I pushed him out of the way and reached inside, pulling out stacks of banded hundreds.

“Half of that’s mine,” he said.

“And it’s damn nice of you to donate it to a dead girl’s sister,” I said, and walked out. I knew if I stayed any longer, I might wind up killing the worthless piece of human flesh. I walked out the front door, then moved around the corner of the house and stood outside the den. Through the window the skinny punk slumped down into a leather club chair, he wiped sweat off his pale face. Moving to an ornate roll top desk he unlocked a small drawer and took out a piece of paper, he typed a number into the phone. I moved silently back into the house, hiding in the hall I could hear him. “…yes, it’s late! Look, he was just here… yes in my house… No, I did not keep him here, he tried to kill me. I need traveling money and I need it fast…You promised… Screw you… You want me to go public is that what you want? No don’t hang up, please I’m dying here… ok… two days, fine.” I slipped back into the living room and hid in the shadows. I could hear the clink of a decanter against a glass then a long gulp. The skinny punk plodded upstairs with heavy footsteps. He was at the helm of a fast sinking ship, sharks were circling and I was sprinkling blood into the water. Slipping into the den I used a silver letter opener to jimmy open the small drawer, the phone number was missing but I did find a passbook to a savings account. It held a hundred and fifty grand plus change, it was in his name alone. Searching the desk I found a letter from his wife asking him not to contact her or the children. I was sure she would love to know about his hidden assets. I wrote her address on an envelope, slipped the passbook in, stole a stamp and put it in my pocket. The phone was very sleek and hi-tech, I hit redial and a number popped onto the L.E.D. readout. I scribbled down the number while it rang twice.

“Sanders here,” a tired voice said. I could tell he was a cop, they always answered with their last name first.

“Your punk Jerry is dropping fast, I’d get out of the way if I was you.”

“Who is this?”

“A concerned citizen.”

“McGuire?” I placed his voice, he was the fed who had jammed me up at my place. “Didn’t I warn you about walking away, wasn’t I crystal clear about what would happen if you kept trampling around on my turf?” I hung up the phone, I was tired of people threatening me. I took the can of black spray paint from the trunk of the Crown Vic and scrawled in tall letters across the side of Jerry’s BMW, “PORNOGRAPHER”. It was childish but it made me feel a little better. On University Avenue I dropped the envelope into a mailbox, teach him the price of looking the other way while he collected a pay check.

I headed north on the Bayshore Freeway toward San Francisco. I pulled forty thousand dollars out of the safe, Cass and I could make a real border run on that kind of cash. Hole up in San Blas, eat fish fresh out of the sea, make love under the stars on a blanket down on the beach. So what if I had made a promise to Kelly, she hadn’t told me one straight word. But I gave my word, all my life that was the only thing I ever had that was worth anything. My word. So I kept driving north. I got a room at the same dive across the street from the Barbary Coast. The junkie desk clerk looked up with dead eyes, if he recognized me it didn’t show. I registered under the name Joe Strummer and asked for room two fourteen. I lay on top of the bed, my.45 clutched in my hand. The sky was turning gray when I finally drifted off.

I am running down the dusty Beirut streets. I am hunted from the alleys and windows all around me, I can hear the running of bare feet dashing across the roof tops. Circling, coming closer, on all sides. I keep pushing forward, I know salvation is ahead if I can only make it. I round a corner into an open plaza. On a carved sandstone platform a faceless man in a suit sits on a throne made of human bones, he looks at me laughing. Kelly is sitting at his feet. A chain around her neck leads up to his hand. I raise my M16, taking aim at him, he blinks and the gun turns to dust. He blinks again and the three thugs we killed in the desert rise up out of the dirt. They move slowly toward me…

My yell woke me. The muted afternoon sun was filling the room. Thankfully the fog kept the light soft, my head was splitting. I chased four aspirins with a deep drink of water from the tap then took a long shower. I changed the bandage on my leg, it looked good, no signs of infection.

Walking down to a Best Western I got a room in my name, taking several cards with the phone number. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate so I found a small coffee shop and had steak and eggs and a bottomless mug of coffee. I was feeling almost human when I entered Java Enabler, the kid behind the counter’s face lit up when he saw me. He looked around, clearly hoping Cass would trail in behind me.

“She’s in school today.” I answered the question he didn’t ask.

“How’d that thing work out?” he said.

“I shut them down.”

“Good for you, sir. I used to be proud to be on the cutting edge of geekdom, now I don’t know, maybe I’ll go back to school and learn to do something with my hands.”

“Before you do all that, could you help a Neanderthal out with a problem?”

“Sure, what’d yah need?”

“I have an old war buddy I want to surprise, but he’s unlisted.” The kid gave me a long grin, I don’t know if he knew I was lying or not.