Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

You're panicking. Stop it. Think. Breathe. In, out-slow, in, out-slow. Okay. Call 911. All right. All right. All right. I'm going to. Just a moment here. What do I say? Do I say: There's been a little problem with cocaine here and… Jesus, this is not a "little problem" here, this is a major fucking disaster. The mirror, the coke, the razor, Bernie and Karen's fifty. Great. Wonderful. Is this your cocaine? No, Officer. Well, whose is it? You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney… What the hell happened? Is this what happened to the Kennedy kid, to that black basketball player? No. Those two were doing, like, massive quantities. There's still half a gram left here. Jesus, Ramirez, what kind of coke is this? So good you drop dead? You Puerto Rican piece of shit, Ramirez. Well, you're in it same as me, pal, up to your fucking-

Stop. Breathe from the diaphragm. Okay, flush the coke down the toilet. Wait a minute. They'll do an autopsy, they'll find the coke one way or the other. They'll find the coke and then I'm dead too. Might as well be. Probably end up envying her for Chrissake.

Look, make a choice. Call 911 or get out of here. It's not like you're going free. My God, this is going to be with you for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Jesus, it's like Frank Capra in reverse, It's a Horrible Life. Rikers Island. Great. If you're lucky you'll get for a roommate the guy who killed John Lennon, or Joel Steinberg. Joel can keep me up all night explaining to me how he didn't really kill Lisa. It was really Hedda. Great, fucking great, Tasha. Is that what you want? Me and Joel fucking Steinberg in the same cell. Me and, and, and Mark David Chapman in the same cell? Mark can read to me from The Catcher in the Rye, tell me which of Lennon's songs he liked best, "Day in the Life" or "Imagine." Can you see me in there, Tasha? Doing Chekhov at Rikers Island with Black Muslims? The Three Sisters? Can you see it? After the show, instead of a cast party they sodomize the director. Maybe I'll get AIDS and they'll let me out early on humanitarian grounds. Tasha, for Christ's sake, get UP, please get up off the floor.

He was in the bathroom now, splashing water on his face. His heart was beating. He put his hand over his chest to try to slow it down.

He found a handkerchief in her bedroom and used it to wipe his fingerprints off the glass vial and the mirror. He wiped every surface he thought he might have touched. The fifty-better take that too. Knowing fucking Bernie, he wrote down the serial number.

Let's see. The review. The page was folded over to show the review. It was lying there right next to the coke. Move it a bit closer to the coke? Or is that too obvious? Yes, that's too obvious. Leave something for the audience to put together on its own. The review is fine where it is. Wait, is a cop going to notice something like a review? Should the paragraph be circled in red or yellow-highlighted? No, that's too much. But it needs something else.

He held the vial with the handkerchief and knelt and put Tasha's still-warm thumb and index finger on it-was she right-handed? yes, she was right-handed-and pressed them there. Then he held the vial up to the light and saw what looked like a print.

Okay, let's get this scene on its feet. Let's block the scene. The cops walk in the door, the first thing they see is the body. Then they see the coke on the table. Are they going to see the review? They'll come back to the review. The first cop leans over you and the second cop goes to the coke and puts his finger in it and tastes it and, like, nods. Good shit. Thanks to you, you rat bastard, Ramirez. Okay, then he sees the review, and he picks it up and reads it. And the second cop says: So why weren't all the locks on the door locked-

Keys. Good, the door needs to be locked from the outside so it looks like she locked it from the inside .

They were in the bowl next to the door. He put his ear against the door to listen. Did ears leave prints? No, Jesus, ears do not leave prints, you're being paranoid.

Using the handkerchief as a glove, he opened the door, let himself out and shut it. There were three dead-bolt locks to contend with. Jesus. That's right, he remembered her telling him that she lived in a three-lock neighborhood. The dead bolts were incredibly noisy. He was sure someone was going to see him before he got them locked. Boy they were noisy, so noisy he didn't hear her moan on the other side of the steel door.

Charley and Felix sat together in the back of the limousine, sinuses suffused with gun oil. They'd been cleaning shotguns when the call came from a Detective Mullen of the Sixth Precinct and they used what rags they had on hand.

Felix saw the crowd of reporters and TV people outside the main entrance to the bright blue brick-and-glass building on the corner of Thirtieth and First Avenue. He told the chauffeur to drive straight through the intersection to the side entrance on Thirtieth.

The reporters saw the limousine pulling up and closed in. Charley got out and was pinned against the car. The housekeeper had put a pair of woman's sunglasses on him, left behind by a houseguest, as he left, the Jackie O paparazzi-proof type, big and round, the kind that make you look like a stylish insect. Felix managed to get between him and the press, but he couldn't clear a path to the door that said:

PRINT YOUR NAMES ON ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES CLEARLY

They shouted at Charley and jabbed at him with their boom mikes, then there was a voice, familiar, practiced, New York-weary and seen-it-all-before: "All right, let's give them some air, let's move back, folks, that's it." Detective Mullen.

He got them inside and Charley found himself standing in a black marble lobby while Felix and the detective spoke to a black man behind a black desk. The outside of the building was done in a bright, almost gay, blue ceramic brick; the inside was all business. An inscription ran across the wall in raised steel letters.

TACEANT COLLOQUIA, EFFUGIAT RISUS. HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE.

What did that mean? All he recognized was HIC. Scripture? How was anyone supposed to know? Suddenly he was shouting at the old black man behind the desk and the man, with an air of no offense taken, was handing him a smudgy Xerox. "Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living." But what did that mean?

A man in a white jacket with script stitching that said Dr. Thomas E. Bratter was introducing himself in a kindly, confidential tone of voice. Charley and Felix followed him down a half flight of stairs and the smell shoved through the gun oil. They'd tried to disguise it, but when nature asserts its claims there is basically no arguing with it. Death would never be lemon-fresh or minty-green, no matter what they sprayed it with. Steps, yes, I see them, said Charley.

The meat lockers were arranged two-high along a large gleaming metal cube in the center of the tiled room. Autopsies were in progress behind glass doors on the outer wall. As they passed Charley heard bored voices saying, "The pericardial cavity contains twenty CCs of fibrinous yellow fluid. The pericardial surfaces are smooth and glistening." Another door opened: "… the septum is in the midline and the nares are patent. The ears are unremarkable and the external auditory canals are patent. The teeth are in poor repair."

They came to compartment number three. Charley and Felix saw their distorted reflections in the brushed steel, like faces at an amusement park. The typed card on number three announced: BECKER, NATASHA P. The needle on the temperature gauge pointed to thirty-six Fahrenheit.