Christopher Moore - You Suck

"Getting warrants on Christmas day might be a problem."

"You won't need warrants if you get permission from the owners—we're not looking to bust anyone living here, we're looking for a murder suspect."

Cavuto pointed to the eight-story brick building that composed one wall of the alley. "This building has something like eight hundred ministorage units in it."

"Then you guys had better get started."

"Where're you going?"

"There was a missing person report on an old guy in North Beach a couple of days ago. I'm going to check it out."

"Because you don't want to go Dumpster diving for v—"

"Because," Rivera cut him off before he could say the V-word, "he had terminal cancer. His wife assumed he just wandered off and got lost. Now I'm not so sure. Call me if you find anything."

"Uh-huh." Cavuto turned to the three uniforms who were interviewing the bum. "Hey, guys, have I got a merry Christmas detail for you."

The Animals decided to hold a small memorial service for Blue in Chinatown. Troy Lee was already there, as was Lash, who wouldn't go home to his apartment until Blue's body was removed, and Barry, who was Jewish, would be coming there for dinner with his family, as was the tradition in his faith. Plus, the liquor stores in Chinatown were open on Christmas, and if you slipped some money under the counter, you could get firecrackers. The Animals were fairly sure that Blue would have wanted firecrackers at her funeral.

The Animals stood in a semicircle, beers in hand, on a playground off Grant Street. The deceased was being honored in absentia—in her place was a half-eaten pair of edible panties. From a distance, they looked like a bunch of wastrels mourning a Fruit Roll-Up.

"I'd like to start, if I may," said Drew. He wore a long overcoat and his hair was tied back with a black ribbon, revealing the target-shaped bruise on his forehead where Jody had hit him with the wine bottle. Out of his coat he pulled a bong the size of a tenor sax, and using a long lighter designed for lighting fireplaces, he sparked that magnificent mama-jama up and bubbled away like a scuba diver having an asthma attack. When he could hold no more, he raised the bong, poured some water on the ground, and croaked, "To Blue," which came out in a perfect smoke ring, the sight of which brought tears to everyone's eyes.

"To Blue," everyone repeated as they placed one hand on the bong and tipped a bit out of their beers.

"To Broo, my nigga," said Troy Lee's grandma, who had insisted upon joining the ceremony once she realized there would be firecrackers.

"She will be avenged," said Lash.

"And we'll get our fucking money back," said Jeff, the big jock.

"Amen," the Animals said.

They had decided on a nondenominational ceremony, as Barry was a Jew, Troy Lee was a Buddhist, Clint was an Evangelical, Drew was a Rastafarian, Gustavo was a Catholic, and Lash and Jeff were heathen stoners. Gustavo had been called in to work that day because someone had to be in the store as long as the front was only boarded up with plywood, so in deference to his beliefs, they had bought some incense and holders and placed a picket fence of smoldering joss sticks around the edible panty. The incense also worked within Troy and Grandma's Buddhist tradition, and Lash pointed out during the ceremony that although they have their differences otherwise, all gods like a good-smellin' ho.

"Amen!" said the Animals again.

"And they're handy for lightin' firecrackers off of," added Jeff as he bent over an incense stick and set a string cracking.

"Hallelujah!" said the Animals.

Each offered to share some kind of memory of Blue, but all of their stories quickly degenerated to orifices and squishiness, and no one wanted to go there in front of Troy's grandma, so instead they threw firecrackers at Clint while he read from the Twenty-third Psalm.

Before they cracked the second case of beer, it was decided that after dark, three of them—Lash, Troy Lee, and Barry—would take Blue from Lash's apartment, load her into the back of Barry's station wagon, and take her out in the middle of the Bay in Barry's Zodiac. (Barry was the diver of the bunch, and had all the cool aquatic stuff. They'd used his spearguns to help take down the old vampire.)

Lash braced himself as he opened the apartment door, but to his surprise, there was no smell. He led Barry and Troy into the bedroom, and together they wrestled the rolled-up rug out of the closet.

"It's not heavy enough," Barry said.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Troy said, trying furiously to unroll the rug.

Finally Lash reached down, grabbed the edge of the rug, and whipped it up over his head. There was a thudding sound against the far wall, followed by the jingle of metal, like coins settling.

The three Animals stood and stared.

"What are those?" Asked Barry.

"Earrings," answered Troy. Indeed, there were seven earrings settling on the hardwood floor.

"Not those. Those!" Barry nodded toward two clear, cantaloupe-sized, gelatinous lozenges that quivered on the floor like stranded jellyfish.

Lash shivered. "I've seen them before. My brother used to work in a plant in Santa Barbara that made them."

"What the fuck are they?" Said Troy, squinting through a drunken haze.

"Those are breast implants," Lash said.

"What are those wormy things?" asked Barry. There were two translucent sluglike blobs of something stuck to the rug near the edge.

"Looks like window caulk," said Lash. He noticed that there was a fine blue powder near the edge of the rug. He ran his hand over it, pinched some on his fingers, and sniffed it. Nothing.

"Where'd she go?" asked Barry.

"No idea," said Lash.

Gustavo Chavez had been born the seventh child of a brick maker in a small village in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. At eighteen he married a local girl, the daughter of a farmer, herself a seventh child, and at twenty, with his second child on the way, he crossed the border into the United States, where he lived with a cousin in Oakland, along with a score of other relatives, and worked grueling, twelve-hour days as a laborer, making enough to feed himself and send more money home to his family than he could possibly have made in his father's brickyard. He did this because it was the responsible and right thing to do, and because he had been raised a good Catholic man who, like his father, would provide for his family and no more than two or three mistresses. Each year, about a month before Christmas, he would sneak back across the border to celebrate Christmas with his family, meet any new children that might been born, and make love with his wife, Maria, until they were both so sore it hurt to walk. In fact, the vision of Maria's inviting thighs would often begin haunting him around Halloween and the hapless night porter would find himself in a state of semiarousal as he swung his soapy mop, to and fro, across fifteen thousand square feet of linoleum every night.

Tonight he was in the store alone, and he was feeling far from aroused, for it was Christmas night, and he could not go to mass or take Communion until he confessed. He was feeling deeply ashamed. Christmas night and he hadn't even called Maria—hadn't spoken to her for weeks, because like the rest of the Animals, he had gone to Las Vegas, and had given all his money to the blue whore.

He had called, of course, after they'd first taken the vampire's art and sold it for so much money, but since then, his life had been a fog of tequila and marijuana and the evil attentions of the blue one. He, a good man, who cared for his family, had never hit his wife, had only cheated with a second cousin and never with a white woman, had been undone by the curse of the blue devil's pussy. La maldición de la cocha del diablo azul.