Christopher Moore: A Dirty Job

Inspector Alphonse Rivera has spent most of his life trying to change his life. He’d worked in a half-dozen different police departments, in a dozen different capacities, and although he was very good at being a cop, he always seemed to be trying to get out. After the debacle with the Death Merchants and the strange, unexplainable things that had gone on around it, he was simply exhausted. There had been a brief time when he’d been able to leave police work and open a rare-book store, and he felt as if that might have been the only time he had ever truly been happy. Now, at age forty-nine, he was ready to try it again: take an early retirement and just read and live in a calm, unevent-filled world of books.

So he was somewhat pleased when, two weeks after the death of Charlie Asher, he went to his mailbox to find a substantial envelope that could only be a book. It was like an omen, he thought as he sat down at his kitchen table to open the package. It was a book—what looked like a very rare and bizarre children’s book. He opened it and turned to the first chapter. So Now You’re Death: Here’s What You’ll Need.

The Emperor enjoyed a happy reunion with his troops and went on to rule benevolently over San Francisco to the end of his days. For leading Charlie into the Underworld, and for his boundless courage, the Luminatus gave Bummer the strength and durability of a hellhound. It would fall to the Emperor to explain how his now all-black companion—while he never weighed more than seven pounds soaking wet—could outrun a cheetah and chew the tires off a Toyota.

Audrey continued her work at the Buddhist center and did costuming for a local theater group, but she also took a volunteer job with hospice, where she helped people to the other side as she had done for so long in Tibet. The hospice position also, however, gave her access to bodies that had been recently vacated by their souls, and she used these opportunities to cycle the squirrel people back into the human flow of birth and rebirth. And for a while, there were remarkable instances of people recovering from terminal illness in the City, as she exercised the p’howa of undying.

She didn’t give up her work with the squirrel people altogether, however, as it was a skill she had come to over a long time and a lot of work, and it could still be extraordinarily rewarding. At least that’s how she was feeling as she looked over her latest masterpiece in the meditation room of the Three Jewels Buddhist Center.

He had the face of a crocodile—sixty-eight spiked teeth, and eyes that gleamed like black glass beads. His hands were the claws of a raptor, the wicked black nails encrusted with dried blood. His feet were webbed like those of a waterbird, with claws for digging prey from the mud. He wore a purple silk robe, trimmed in sable, and a matching hat with a wizard’s star embroidered on it in gold thread.

“It’s only temporary, until we find someone,” Audrey said. “But take my word for it, you look great.”

“No, I don’t. I’m only fourteen inches tall.”

“Yeah, but I gave you a ten-inch schlong.”

He opened his robe and looked down. “Wow, would you look at that,” Charlie said. “Nice.”

As with any book, I owe a debt of gratitude to those who helped inspire the book, as well as those who actually helped in the research and production.

For inspiration, my deepest thanks to the family and friends of Patricia Moss, who shared their thoughts and feelings during the time of Pat’s passing. Also thanks to the hospice workers in all capacities, who share their lives and hearts every day with the dying and their families.

The city of San Francisco is always an inspiration, and I’m grateful to her people for letting me stalk their neighborhoods and for being understanding about my teasing. While I’ve tried to “represent” the feeling of the neighborhoods in San Francisco, I’m quite aware that the actual locations in the book, like Charlie’s shop and the Three Jewels Buddhist Center, are not at the addresses indicated. If you find it absolutely necessary to write me to inform me of my inaccuracies, I will be forced to point out that you won’t find giant shampoo-slurping hellhounds in North Beach, either.

I did not go into the storm sewer to confirm the details of descriptions in scenes that take place there, mainly because IT’S THE SEWER! San Francisco is one of the few coastal cities that combine their sewer and storm-drain system—a fact that I completely ignored in my description of that underground world. If you’re really that concerned about how it looks down in the sewers—well—eww. Just take my word for it, all that stuff could happen down there and don’t ruin the story for yourself by being a stickler about the details. There’s a squirrel in a ball gown, for Christ’s sake, just let the sewer thing go.

As for other factual faux pas, I do not know if you can actually pinch a kid’s head off in the electric window of a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado—I just thought it would be cool for this book if you could. Please don’t experiment at home.

My sincere thanks go to Monique Motil, upon whose amazing art the squirrel people are based. I happened across her sculptures, which she calls Sartorial Creatures, at Paxton Gate, a gallery in the Mission district of San Francisco, and was so charmed by their macabre whimsy that I wrote to Monique and asked her if I could bring them alive in A Dirty Job. She graciously gave me permission. You can view Monique’s art at http://www.moniquemotil.com/sartcre.html. You can read about her sideline career as a zombie lounge singer (I’m not kidding) and her passion to bring zombies the sensual gravitas that vampires enjoy at zombiepinups.com.

My thanks to Betsy Aubrey, for her line “I like my men like I like my tea, weak and green,” which, once I heard it, I had to put in a book. (And thanks to Sue Nash, whose tea was, indeed, weak and green.)

For sending me an emergency package of books on Tibetan Buddhism and p’howa when I was under the gun and out of sources, thanks to Rod Meade Sperry at Wisdom Press.

For keeping me fed, my thanks to my agent, Nick Ellison, and Abby Koons and Jennifer Cayea at Nicholas Ellison Inc.

Thanks, too, to my brilliant editor, Jennifer Brehl, who continually makes me look smarter without making me feel stupid. Many thanks to Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Mike Spradlin, Jack Womack, Leslie Cohen, Dee Dee DeBartolo, and Debbie Stier, who have all kept the faith and kept my books in front of you readers.

And, as usual, my thanks to Charlee Rodgers, for her tolerance and understanding during the writing of this book, as well as for her extraordinary courage and compassion in caring for both of our dying mothers—events that helped shape the very soul of this story.

Christopher Moore is the author of eight previous novels: The Stupidest Angel, Fluke, Lamb, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Bloodsucking Fiends, Coyote Blue, and Practical Demonkeeping . He divides his time between San Francisco and Hawaii. He invites readers to e-mail him at BSFiends@aol.com.

www.chrismoore.com

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