Plainclothes Naked (13 page)

“But that’s just not possible,” said Mister Edward.

Tina almost lost it. “Why not? Look, I’m not gonna plant the guy, so give it a rest.”

“Tina,
please,
” said Mister Edward, “it’s not that.” The mortician tried to hide his shock. “We don’t ... have the body. I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you.”

“What are you saying?”

“The police are holding your husband. They want to do an autopsy.”

“I see.”

For one reeling second all Tina could think about was ground glass, how she’d explain the lightbulb salad in her husband’s belly. Death by Drano was one thing, but would anybody believe Marv had committed suicide by drinking drain cleaner
and
eating a GE 40-watter?

“When will they be finished?” she asked, hoping her fear would look like grief to anybody outside her head.

“I don’t know,” said Mister Edward. “But a Detective Rubert called and asked you to phone him when you were through here.”

The mortician handed her a piece of paper with Manny’s number on it. Tina thanked him. She was almost out the door when he called her name again. “Tina, please . . .” When she turned around his eyes were wet with pleading. “Take some Jujubes. You’ll feel better.”

The place Tony Zank called home, a dank, cottage cheese–ceilinged railroad flat, occupied the top floor of a building that had, until years earlier, been the general headquarters and processing plant for Bundthouse Fresh-Taste Sausages. Bundthouse had once stood proudly as the region’s Number Two employer, second only to Jones & Laughlin Steel. Both industries disappeared at around the same time. But, unlike the sulfurous odor of J & L, which dissipated once the mill closed, the stench of dead-pigs-walking lingered on. And no amount of air freshener could cover up the eau de sausage factory that persisted, with varying intensity, in cold weather and warm. Not that Tony bothered with air freshener. The smell seemed to live in the very walls of the Bundt house Arms, which was one reason he picked it in the
‌

first place. Since you practically needed a gas mask to live there, the rent was dirt cheap, and there were no other tenants. For some reason, no one wanted to live in a converted slaughterhouse.

“Man, I don’t know how you can hang here,” whined McCardle, hunkered in front of Tony’s full-length mirror. He held a Bounty paper towel–wrapped ice cube to a tiny bump on his forehead, the result of a collision between his face and the dashboard St. Christopher in Carmella’s Gremlin. “I had to breathe this stink every day, I’d chop my nose off.”

“You already chopped your nose off,” Tony replied, knocking back his seventh Iron City. When he wasn’t guzzling Colt .45,Tony liked his Iron whenever he smoked crack, which he’d been doing since the sec ond they stumbled in. He loaded the rocks into a glass stem that’d been broken so many times it was now only an inch long and had to be held with an oven mitt. After each puff his voice came out warbly. “You threw your real nose away and glued on that Caucasian niblet instead. You say you didn’t, but I know you did.”

“You’re obsessed,” said McCardle. “You got some kinda thing about my nose. My therapist, back at Riker’s, told me when you’re obsessed with one thing it’s usually ’cause you’re really worried about something else.”

“That’s right.” Zank sprawled on the floor in his boxers, arranging and rearranging Dee-Dee Walker’s notes. “I’m worried about who to kill first, you or that bitch from Seventh Heaven who stole my goddamn photograph.” He wrapped the oven mitt around the hot glass tube, sucked hard. “Oh shit!” he warbled to McCardle. “I can’t close my eyes. I keep seeing that dead lady’s head on the sidewalk. It’s like she’s
starin’
at me.” His whole body gave a shudder. “I think she was even talkin’ when we left. Could that
happen,
man? It couldn’t, could it? I swear I heard her tell me I was gonna get
hole
cancer.” He started scratching himself. “I need another Iron.”

McCardle gingerly lifted the ice cube and checked his wound. “That lady’s head was
dead,
” he said. “But I’d bet cash money the last thought in it was about you. And it wasn’t good.”

“Don’t
say
that!” Tony’s voice quavered, unnaturally high. “Shit, man, what are we gonna do? We don’t even know for sure that chick stole the picture. There’s nothin’ about it in this goddamn notebook.”

Tony scooped up a batch of pages and crumpled them in trembling hands.
“Nothin’!”

“That’s the rock talkin’, Dog. She’s not gonna come out and broad cast she got a picture of the president’s genitalics. You think she wants the Secret Service all up in her face? Not everybody’s stupid.”

“Don’t talk down,” Tony panted. “I’m warning you.”

“Hey,” said McCardle, “it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t
have
that notebook. I’m the one who did the quick thinkin’.”

“My hero,” said Zank. He took a shaky hit off the stunted glass dick, then crept to the window. “I hear helicopters, man. I swear! They got those new kind fly so high they’re invisible to the naked eye. They can see through walls. They’re
watching,
man! Oh shit, we shouldn’t have done that fat bitch. ...I shouldn’t have dropped my mother out the window....
I don’t know what’s happening!
I didn’t mean to run over a priest or get that lady decapitated.
I’m not like that
... .” He dropped to his knees and hugged himself. “No wait, wait! Maybe it’s
you,
man.Yeah! They could be FBI choppers, after
you!
You got a price on your head!”

“You’re tweaking,” McCardle replied nervously. “Enough of that ready-rock and you think Navy Seals are comin’ out of the bathtub. Have another beer.”

“Right, right,” said Zank, talking fast. “Beer’s good. This rock is fucked. I’m never doing this shit again. Is there any more?”

McCardle clucked his tongue and rechecked his tiny injury. “You need some kind of treatment, Tony. I’m not just saying that ’cause you’re psychotic and hurt my feelings. I’m saying that for
you,
brother. I was you, I’d look into rehab.”

Zank finished the bottle in one gulp and dropped it on the carpet, among the fifty or so others. He felt almost relaxed again. “Look who’s talking, Shovel-killer. I got a sore poop-chute says you’re not exactly nor-
male,
yourself. Nor-
male,
” he repeated, “get it?”

“I get it.”

“Yeah, well, if it turns out you have the A-I-D-S, don’t think I’m not gonna kill you sideways before I do myself. I don’t care how I go, but I ain’t goin’ ’cause I got caboosed by some black Twink with a but ton nose. I get so much as a herpes bump, you’re toasted pumper nickel, motherfucker.”

“Hey, I been tested. I should be worryin’ about
you!
I seen what you stick it into. Besides, it wasn’t for me we’d be fighting over grape jelly in the joint right now. You blanked out, man. Did your zombie thing.You did it in the old people’s home, when your mom dissed you, and you did it again after the accident. Shit hits the fan, T-bone, you lose your nerve.”

“Bullshit!” Zank countered, getting defensive. “I was concussed. It was
medical.
Look at my head! It was already banged up when I conked it again in that midget car. Fucking fat lady drivin’ a Gremlin. What’s up with that?”

McCardle rolled his eyes. In fact, after they’d slammed into the back of Dee-Dee Walker’s Camry, after
she
slammed into a utility pole five blocks from Tina’s house, Zank
had
had one of his whiteouts. They’d been tailing the newspaper lady so closely, when her Toyota jumped the curb and sailed down the sidewalk for twenty yards, the Gremlin jumped the curb and skidded right behind it. When she crashed, her skull did a full Jayne Mansfield and landed on the manhole cover, look ing confused. It was the worst thing either of them had ever seen. Zank zombied out until some mongrel, what looked like part beagle, part Shetland pony, scampered out of nowhere and started lapping the blood off his forehead. Zank came to with a face full of dog tongue. He hadn’t been knocked out. Just stunned. Staring wide-eyed and catatonic at nothing. The horse-dog went whimpering off when Tony shoved his thumb in its eye.

“You’re just lucky I stayed focused,” McCardle nagged, now clean ing his minor bruise with a stray slipper-sock soaked in beer. “You never give me credit, but when you zone, you’re useless, homes.”

“Yeah, right. So who’d your mother fuck, anyway, Dean Martin or Prince?”

McCardle ignored him, and Tony made a show of scratching his crotch and sifting through the dozen or so pages they’d pilfered from the reporter’s car. He did have a sketchy memory of Mac tugging him from behind the wheel, then propping him up in the passenger seat. He semiremembered seeing his partner scramble over to the Toyota and reach through the scrunched window, right past the smoking engine that had rammed through the dashboard. Mostly, what he recalled was the awful quiet after the crash. He’d listened to the drip

and hiss of bleeding motor oil, thinking
Car sleep now.
(Zank always thought in baby talk when he zombied off.
Me sad
....
I hope Mommy dies
. . . That kind of thing, when he was out cold with his eyes open.)

Right after the accident, Mac had snatched Dee-Dee’s notebook and her purse. That’s how the priest found him, bleeding from the forehead and rifling her wallet. He’d roared onto the scene in a ’66 Mustang and lumbered out with an audible grunt.
“Whoa, the knees. . . .”

Once out of his ’Stang, the man of God looked like a professional wrestler. A middle-aged wrestler, in a collar. In spite of everything, Mac couldn’t help but admire the pecs and traps under the man’s snug black shirt. The priest called over his shoulder as he half-ran, half-hobbled to the totaled Camry. “I’m Father Bob. What the hell happened here? And what are you doing with that purse?”

McCardle began to sweat. Did they have cop-priests? In his shock and stupor he thought he remembered a TV show called
Father Cuffs.
He seemed to recall that it starred Eddie Albert.

Mac had to think fast. “I was, uh, I was just looking for some ID on the lady here.” By now he’d already slipped the notebook in his pants. He also pocketed her cash, and a corporate AmEx, which read
DEE
-
DEE WALKER
,
UPPER MARILYN TRUMPET
. That’s when he knew

they’d been following the wrong woman.

The way Father Bob kept staring at him, McCardle was convinced the wrestler-priest must have made him from
America’s Most Wanted.
After he’d poked his head in the remains of the Toyota and phoned for help, the hardy man of God snatched Dee-Dee’s wallet out of Mac’s hand. “I’ll take that,” he spoke solemnly. “There’s nothing we can do for her now. What happened, boy?”

All he had to hear was that “boy,” and McCardle shifted instantly into his Good Negro mode. Shaking his head in simple confusion, he explained that they’d come around the corner just in time to see “that po’ lady” jump the curb and hit the utility pole. They decided to pull over and help. “In all the excitement,” he said, scratching his head in dumb wonder, “I guess I done run over the curb my own self. I jus’ wanted to help, Father. This ol’ head o’ mine’s all
confused.
”

“Uh-huh,” said the priest, neither buying nor not buying. “What’s up with your buddy there?”

“Sleepin’ one off,” McCardle lied again. “Fool caught his wife with the mailman. It’s like some dirty joke, ain’t it?”

The priest frowned. “Show me your license, boy, we got a dead lady over there. Is that what dead ladies do for you? Put you in the mood for dirty jokes?”

“No, suh!” Mac stalled. Maybe it wasn’t Eddie Albert. Maybe Bill Shatner was the tough detective-priest, pre–
T. J. Hooker
. He mentally kicked himself as he shuffled his feet. Zank had been on him to get a fake driver’s license. They were twenty bucks, but McCardle figured he could save some dough and make one himself. An old-timer in County showed him how. It was Mickey Mouse. All you needed was somebody else’s license, a photo booth photo, and access to a laminating machine. Stone simple. Except he hadn’t done it, and now Father Macho was going to nail his ass.

“Must be in the car,” Mac hedged, heading for the Gremlin. If he made a run for it, he might have a chance. It would mean bailing on Tony, but he’d explain later. If Tony didn’t kill him first.

The muscular padre grabbed him before he could make a move. “Hey, don’t I know you? I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

Zank chose this moment to stumble out of the Gremlin. “Musta bumped my head,” he mumbled. “What happened?” Tony pretended to gasp at the sight of the dead woman and the accordianed Toyota. “Oh my God, are you here to administer the last ripes?”

The priest had peeled off his jacket and laid it over Dee-Dee’s sev ered head. McCardle kept waiting for it to move, like a bunny under a blanket, and couldn’t stop staring.

“That’s last
rites,
son. This lady’s already bound for eternity. The ambulance’ll be here in a second to take her away.” Then he turned suddenly to McCardle. “You’re on TV, right?”

McCardle wanted to cry. The priest seemed to have forgotten about his driver’s license, but he was still fucked—until Zank swung into action. Leaking blood from the scalp and face, he smiled big and threw up his arms. “I guess we might as well tell him, huh, Scooter?”

McCardle swallowed. “Tell him what?”

“You
know,
” Zank said. “Okay,
I’ll
tell him. Y’see, Father, Scooter here was a child star. Only he don’t like to talk about it.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s right,” said Zank. “Remember the old Cosby show?

Scooter was one of the kids.”

The priest screwed up his face. He crossed his arms at his massive chest, Mister Clean–style, and squinted hard.

“Not, you know, one of the
main
kids,” Zank back-pedaled, “a neighbor kid. Only Hollywood got to him. He didn’t like the, what do you call it ... ?”