Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Gabe observed the detonation in the rearview and, nodding his head, raised his voice over the ringing in his own ears.

– Stupid crackers, I'd have let them, they'd have climbed in that thing and tried to drive it off the fire, got their asses blown to hell.

I turned from staring out the back window as he took us round the corner onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

– You're a paragon of charity and compassion, Gabe. A real model to the rest of us when faced with the opportunity to think of our fellow man's well-being before our own.

He took the gun from between his legs and put it back under his seat.

– Good of you to say so, Web.

He straightened his tie.

– Now let's go drop that stiff.

One of the keys on the big ring in Gabe's glove box got us into Woodlawn and we rolled the gurney down an empty tile corridor, one wheel balky and loud.

Gabe stopped at a steel door.

– Hold up.

He took the ring off his belt, sorted keys, and unlocked the door.

– OK.

He pushed the door open and we rolled into the morgue.

I held up.

– Wow.

Gabe looked at the butterflied corpse on the table in the middle of the room.

– Yeah, it's a sight. Come on.

He guided the gurney to the back of the prep room and jerked the handle on the door of a walk-in.

– Park it here. OK. Got the legs, by the heels there. And lift.

We swung the body onto an empty rack at the side of the walk-in.

I looked at the dead in their rows.

– Lotta dead people, man.

Gabe took a look.

– Yeah. And the world isn't running out of raw supplies to make more.

We walked back down the corridor, the jittery wheel squeaking.

Gabe pulled up and tapped it with the toe of his shiny black shoe.

– Got to take that off and straighten it out tonight. No one wants their dead rolling out of their home on a gurney sounds like a shopping cart with a bum wheel.

Outside he locked up behind us.

I pointed at the keys.

– So you work for Woodlawn?

– No. Work for a company that does accommodations all over. Night shift I handle, never know if someone will be around to let you in.

He pointed at the Cruiser and we took the gurney over.

– Funeral homes contract with the service. Give us keys so we have access. Got keys to pretty much every home from the Valley down to Long Beach.

We dropped the gurney down to its wheels, lifted it into the back of the station wagon and swung the door shut.

I rested my ass on the gleaming chrome bumper.

– So, Gabe, teil me, how's one go about getting the job as the grim specter of death?

Gabe took a clean white handkerchief from his breast pocket, blotted his upper lip, tucked the handkerchief away and pointed at the car.

– Let's go.

I circled to the passenger door and got in.

– That's OK. I understand you're the reticent type. I just thought that since we were accessories in a few felonies together that you might warm up a little and share a couple biographical details. For the sake of conversation.

He pulled his seatbelt across the shoulder and buckled it into place.

– I make an observation here, Web?

I buckled my own belt.

– Sure, but don't go crazy. You've already spoke more in the last fifteen minutes than I thought was possible. Don't want you to sprain your tongue or anything.

He nodded.

– No danger. No danger.

– Good. Well, as long as you're careful, what is it you've observed?

He licked the pad of his thumb and rubbed a spot on the inside of the windshield.

– Some looks. A few silences.

I nodded.

– Wow, man. Fascinating stuff.

He looked at the speck he'd rubbed onto his thumb.

– It is. In its own way.

– Uh-huh. Well. Thanks, Gabe. That was enlightening. Thanks for the observations.

He took out the handkerchief again and wiped his thumb on it.

– The way you and Po Sin talk about some things. Don't talk about others. The way I know Po Sin, and the way he is around you, that suggests things. About you, I mean.

– Deeper and deeper, Gabe. Deeper and deeper.

He tucked the handkerchief away.

– Way I know Po Sin, how little he keeps from me, lets me know that whatever it is you two talk about where you're not talking about anything, that it's pretty personal to you.

I scratched at a spot on my new old slacks.

He turned his lenses on me.

– A person, he's got a past. Everyone dragging one behind them. You want to know how I ended up driving dead people around? Cleaning up after them? Well, that's my past, ain't it?

I nodded.

– Yeah. I get it.

He shook his head.

– No. You don't. See, point here isn't mind your own goddamn business. Point is, Web, you want to know how it is I can be comfortable with the dead?

He looked out the windshield.

– You might first ask how you're so comfortable with the dead.

He fired the engine.

– What's that they say about familiarity that I read somewhere?

– Breeds contempt?

He checked his mirrors, began to back down the drive.

– Way I read that, just means you're around something enough, you get used to it.

We bounced down into the street and he dropped the gearshift into drive and pointed us east.

– Me and Po Sin, there's just shit we have reason to have gotten used to when we were younger. That's all.

Chev's Apache wasn't out front.

Whether that was good or bad, I couldn't say. Letting another day go past before I could do some serious ass-kissing, well, some serious sarcastic ass-kissing anyway, might be what the doctor ordered. Or it could be one step closer to him being done with my shit and throwing my possessions out the window for me to claim from the street.

From the alley, a sudden burst of dialogue.

– You fucking bitch, you fucked him, didn't you?

– Fuck you.

– You fucking cock tease bitch.

– Fuck you.

– You had his cock in your cunt, didn't you?

– Fuck you.

Going up the stairs, I considered the virtues of being homeless and friendless. The first of these being that no one would offer me a job that would turn into a crime spree.

I unlocked the apartment door, found I was just a little disappointed not to see Dot inside waiting to irritate me, walked into the dark livingroom, got tripped by someone hiding behind the door and went face-first into the carpet.

The someone lurking behind the door put his foot in my back and shoved me deeper into the carpet.

– Where's our fucking can?

My hands flailed and hit something solid and heavy and I grabbed it.

– It's down the hall.

The foot shoved harder.

– What? What the fuck? Are you fucking? Is that a joke?

Of course it wasn't a joke, I was telling the absolute truth. The can, or bathroom if you will, was indeed down the hall. I wasn't sure why this person was referring to it as our can, or why finding it required battering me, but it was there. Perhaps I was a bit confused. That, along with, you know, my general exhaustion, emotional chaos, and fedupness with being fucked around got the better of my good manners as a host and the next thing I knew I was twisting and swinging the huge old phone my hand had found and listening to it make the kind of heavy thunk against a man's shin that only genuine craftsmanship can produce. This, followed by a faint ringing as the bell inside was jangled by the blow. A tone, oddly, in perfect harmony with the ringing still sounding in my ears from the shots Gabe had fired.

The guy, with what I can only assume was a genuinely desperate bladder condition, hopped off me and dropped into the Barcalounger that Chev had bought at the Melrose Trading Post, and clutched his shin.