Dating Dead Men (10 page)

My God, I thought, we're about to have phone sex. “What?” I whispered.

“Replace your wire connectors. They're rotted away.”

“Was I supposed to—polish them?” What the heck were wire connectors?

A beeping sound came over the line, then, “Cell phone losing battery—I'm surprised to get any reception at all out—” His words began to randomly disappear. “—phone, this—happening.”

“Wait, Doc!” I said. “Doc?”

“—here.”

“What's Margaret eat? What do I feed her?”

“Well,” he said, “the thing is—needs—but—tricky, so box of—”

And that was it. Loud static, then silence.

I looked at the phone in disbelief. I hadn't told him about Carmine or the Humvee, hadn't learned his cell phone number, or found out anything at all, really, except that I possessed rotten wire connectors. Wait—*69. This was what that little device was for. My thumb reached for the star key, but the phone rang. Too late.

“Hello,” I said, not very graciously.

“It's me,” my brother said.

I took a deep breath. “Good. You're alone, you can talk? Teeth all wrapped?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Tell me everything you know about that murder.”

“Why?”

“So I can figure out what we do next. The police are probably going to show up at the hospital, if they haven't already and—”

His voice lowered, into his paranoia range. “Special forces?”

“No, the regular local police. Sheriff's department, I think. I'm not sure.”

“Not the Ssssss—?”

I looked at Margaret, puzzled. “Sssecret Service?”

“No. The other ones. The ones looking for me.”

“Someone's looking for you? Since the murder?” I hesitated, then said, “Earthlings?”

“It was an execution,” he said. “Point-blank range. His soul was not able to ascend. I couldn't see his face. Ssss . . . Swedes, that's the word. I'm going now.” He hung up.

Execution? My brother had witnessed an execution?

Or carried one out?

This time I did press *69, but the phone, somewhere at the mental hospital, just rang and rang.

chapter twelve

T
he Korean-operated Bodega Bob was often devoid of basic items; in this case, boxed cat food.

“Wet! Wet!” insisted the clerk-manager. “Just as good! Better!”

“No. It has to come in a box.” The word “box” was the only actual clue I had about Margaret's diet, and cat food was my best guess.

“But. Wet food, they like so very, very much, the cats.” The manager's voice took on a piteous quality. “I'm telling you. Tasty white fish.”

“No fish,” I said. “She rejected tuna.” But I accepted a tiny can of Fancy Feast turkey and giblets, even though I had doubts about a ferret eating a turkey.

My doubts were well-founded. Back in the apartment, Margaret continued not to eat. Doc and P.B. continued not to call. I was searching the yellow pages for a pet store to give me food advice when Dr. Cookie's radio call-in show,
Love Junkies,
made me look up.

“Who is this guy? That's my question,” Dr. Cookie was saying to her caller. “You answer with how cute his baby blues are and, because this is L.A., what kind of car he drives. Well, darlin', any yahoo can rent a car. I repeat: Who
is
this guy? Forget the bedroom eyes. Where does he stand with the IRS, what's under his bed, does he call when he says he's gonna call?”

I looked to the top of the refrigerator, and Doc's gym bag. “Margaret,” I said, “what if that bag contains vital information—or food for you? That would be a reason to look inside.”

Margaret, tasting a yellow page, appeared to consider the possibility.

“Or an address book,” I said, standing. “With his phone number, so we could call him.”

Dr. Cookie was now yelling at her caller. “You know the saying ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse'? Well, the same applies to romance, honey. It's your responsibility to find out about this man you're dating, and your reluctance to do it means you're afraid.”

Not me, I thought. I'd faced down a corpse. Gym bags didn't scare me.

“Afraid,” Dr. Cookie persisted, “that it's gonna be bad news.”

“Margaret,” I said, “you're his next of kin. If you tell me not to look in there, I won't.”

Margaret said nothing.

I pulled the bag down from the refrigerator. “It's not as though he told me not to. This isn't a Bluebeard situation, with the wife and the locked room. Actually, if Doc didn't want people in here, he
would
have locked it. Unconsciously, he must want me to look.”

I unzipped the zipper.

The first thing I pulled out was the paperback I'd seen the night before.
Mortal Splendor
was neither romantic nor religious, and certainly not pornographic; it had no cover art. As far as I could tell, it was something to do with economic theory, its author described as a post-Toynbee historian. Hmm.

There was the pack of Marlboros and the pocket calculator and a silver lighter, with July 12, 1948 engraved on it. There was an
L.A. Times,
two days old, a key ring from Yellowstone National Park with two keys on it, a pack of disposable razors and some shaving cream. There were black cotton socks and black Calvin Klein low-rise briefs, new looking. There was a toothbrush and toothpaste and dental floss.

And there was a gun.

It was wrapped in a man's white handkerchief embroidered with the letter “F.” The gun itself was dark gray. “Gunmetal gray,” I realized, thinking of the words as I'd seen them on tubes of paint. The gun lay heavy and serious in my hand, its coldness piercing the thin white cotton. The handle of the gun was scored, and the rest was smooth. The words “
UNCETA
y
COMPANIA
” were engraved on the upper part of it. I placed it on the floor and stared at it, scared it might go off, scared it had absorbed my fingerprints through the handkerchief. Number eleven, I thought, No Guns. After a time, I rewrapped the handkerchief around it, and set it carefully back in the gym bag, cushioned amid socks and underwear. I zipped the bag and carried it like a sleeping puppy back to its place on top of the refrigerator.

“Let's get out of here, Margaret,” I said, closing the yellow pages. “Let's buy cat food.”

We went through the shop to ensure that it was locked up, then out the front door. In the parking lot a limousine the size of a city bus sat idling, as if waiting for valet parking. You'll be waiting a long time, I thought, setting Margaret on the sidewalk. She was delighted to be outdoors. I clutched her leash and steered her onto Sunset.

I'd never considered my neighborhood from a ferret's point of view. It wasn't pleasant. Within a block we'd encountered a syringe, a tampon, and a partial, mustard-encrusted hot dog. Margaret seemed charmed by it, but when the next street yielded a shopping cart full of dirty pillows, driven by a man with few sexual inhibitions and a desire to know me better, I'd had enough. I picked her up and hurried on, until the sound of yelling made me turn around.

Behind us, the extraordinarily long limousine was making its left turn out of the mini-mall parking lot onto Sunset, closing down three lanes of Saturday night traffic in the process. Engines gunned and horns honked. Margaret wanted to get down and join in the fun, but I held her tight, watching as traffic waited and the limo crept toward us.

There's something sinister about a slow-moving limousine.

I wanted to run.

But where? Straight ahead, and the limo could overtake us. Behind us, Mr. Shopping Cart stood with open arms and open raincoat. Crossing Sunset amid all that traffic was suicide. I skidded down a side street, assuring Margaret that this was almost certainly an unnecessary detour, because people don't get stalked by luxury vehicles.

Halfway down the block, I glanced back to see the limousine make a labored left turn onto our side street. Heart pounding, I made myself wait until it was almost upon us, then did an about-face and headed back to Sunset. Don't run, I told myself. Don't panic. Don't let him know you're on to him.

I heard the limo stop, then go into reverse. Fast.

Could I, carrying a ferret, outrun a car driving backward? If I reached Sunset, would anyone stop to help? I sped up.

The vehicle reached us, kept going, and screeched to a halt. It was even with me now, and for reasons I couldn't quite explain, I stopped. It was brown, I noticed irrelevantly, a color as not-quite-right on a limousine as it is on a tuxedo. One darkened window descended.

A uniformed driver looked me right in the eye and I looked back, mesmerized, waiting for whatever diabolical thing was going to come out of his mouth.

“Do you know where I could find an all-night hardware store?”

Hardware. Power tools. Chain saws. “No,” I said and resumed walking, cradling Margaret against my chest.

“Really?” He coasted backward in perfect time with me, without even glancing in the rearview mirror. He was maybe ten feet away. I moved to the inside edge of the sidewalk.

“Come on, it's L.A., you got twenty-four-hour everything.” He took off his cap to reveal a military haircut. His arm rested on the window, and I caught the glint of a silver watch. He smiled. “Help me out here.”

Should I break into a run or keep him off guard? I kept walking, but I didn't speak.

“You need a ride somewhere? I'll drop you.”

Are you serious? I thought, and glanced at him just as he looked into the rearview mirror. Was he checking where he was going, or was there someone in the back of his limo?

His profile was chiseled and his face craggy, like he'd done hard time somewhere. He turned to me and smiled again. “What's the matter? Your hamster doesn't like limos?”

“She's not a hamster.” Mob, I thought. That's who rides in cars like this. Organized crime. Gangland executions. No, not execution—if he wanted to kill me, I'd already be dead. Kidnapping, then. He wants me in his car. Quietly, without a scene.

“What is it, one of those Chia Pets?” he asked, and when I didn't answer, said, “Not very welcoming, are you? For someone in the greeting card business.”

I gasped. I stopped. The limo kept going, backing steadily toward Sunset, as he turned to look behind him, out the window. His chauffeur's jacket slipped open to reveal a leather harness-type thing, a little like the one Margaret was wearing, and the glint of a gun.

“Run,”
said Ruta's voice in my head. I ran.

As I passed him, he speeded up. With Margaret clamped to my chest, I ran faster, praying for intervention, divine or human, because I knew he was going to catch me.

Ahead, on Sunset Boulevard, a westbound shopping cart came into view, piled high with pillows, pushed by the homeless man who'd suggested sex to me ten minutes earlier.

“Darling!” I called out. “Honey! It's me!”

         

I
NOT ONLY
locked the apartment, I actually pushed my daybed in front of the door, one of those horror-movie tactics that seems overwrought when you're watching it on TV, but now occured to me as the only sane thing to do. The fact that the limo had shifted gear and driven off the moment I'd hailed the bewildered Mr. Shopping Cart didn't matter. He was out there somewhere. I was in here. I was scared.

Margaret promptly climbed onto the sweatshirt I'd peeled off, and fell asleep, abandoning me to my fear. She was probably weak from hunger, along with everything else. There had to be a solution to this: she lived with Doc, so maybe she'd picked up his food habits. Doughnuts, for instance. I didn't stock doughnuts, but I did have frozen waffles. I stuck one in the toaster oven.

My phone machine was blinking.

The first message was a hang-up. The second message was from Fredreeq, saying that Dr. Cookie had moved up her research deadline for
How to Avoid Getting Dumped All the Time
.

“Because,” Fredreeq said, “all the other cities are finished, so Dr. Cookie's just waiting on L.A. That means you gotta meet 'em as fast as we can screen 'em. And no second dates with anyone till after the deadline, because there's no time. I wish you'd let me advertise in the
Jewish Journal
again. We could score a lot of first dates before they have to know you're not Jewish. Think about it.” Fredreeq took the Dating Project very seriously, even aside from the five hundred dollars I was paying her. Joey, doing it strictly for my sake, considered Dr. Cookie a quack. I, who'd begun with romantic expectations, now just wanted to survive it all.

I rubbed my eyes. How many dates had I had now? Nineteen? That meant twenty-one to go. It exhausted me to think about it. From hysteria to fatigue, just like that. Danger plus sleep deprivation. This must be how soldiers did it, I decided, how they managed to sleep in foxholes between battles. I threw sheets and blankets onto the daybed and set a hot waffle near the nose of the sleeping ferret. I began changing into my signs of the zodiac flannel pajamas, got as far as the top button of the shirt part, and collapsed.

When I came to, the phone was ringing and Margaret was nestled in my armpit.

         

“I
FIXED YOUR
cigarette lighter,” he said.

“Shut up, Doc,” I said, instantly awake. “Don't say a word till I'm finished. I was accosted tonight by a large brown limousine. A man named Carmine wants his merchandise back. I have no idea what Margaret eats. A Humvee followed me to the pet store. And I need to know who it is you suspect of this murder.”

“How did—”

“No, I'm not finished. Give me your cell phone number, for when we get cut off again, which seems to be a recurring thing with you.” When he didn't reply, I snapped, “Don't worry, I won't sell it to telemarketers.”

Doc gave me the number, which I wrote on a nearby Kleenex box, which woke Margaret. The ferret had crumbs on her whiskers.

“Can I talk now?” Doc asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You can start by telling me what kind of bullets your gun shoots.”

“My gun? Oh, the one in my bag.”

“Are there others?”

“I'm surprised at you, Wollie, going through other people's stuff.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “It's called an Astra 400. I don't know what kind of bullets it uses.”

“Oh, please. You expect me to believe—”

“It was my grandfather's gun, from the Spanish Civil War, it's a relic. I don't even know if it works, it's been in a safe-deposit box for years. Tell me about being followed.”

“Would you like the limousine story or the Humvee?” I asked.

“Hummer, not Humvee,” he said. “The Humvee is the military version, and I doubt they're doing maneuvers in Hollywood. You sure this isn't just guys hitting on you?”

“No one's hitting on me. It's the merchandise they want, not me. I assume. The merchandise Carmine talked about.” I started to tell him about Carmine.

He interrupted. “Did he smoke a cigar?”

“Yes.”

There was silence, then, “Okay. Tell me about the merchandise.”

“No,” I said. “You tell
me
about the merchandise. Something big, Carmine said, not size-wise, but value-wise, and he seems to think you have it.”

“I don't.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because you did help yourself to that scrub suit and you obviously consider dry cleaning to be community prop—”

“A lot of people are laboring under a misconception, because of something that was told to me in prison. That's all I'm going to say right now. Quit thinking about that, and listen to what I've found out here. The dead man was a patient, and the hospital isn't eager to release that, because they don't want to start a panic. The cops think it was done by someone outside the hospital.”

“An outside job? That's good,” I said, thinking of P.B. “That's great.”

“Maybe. They're still interviewing everyone. They started with the staff, and they'll get to the patients sometime tomorrow. That's one of the things holding up this release I'm working on.”