Stiffed (3 page)

‘I’ll put
him in the garage,’ I continue, ‘then I need a shower.  We can then work out what to do with them.’

‘You can’
t shower here,’ Jason protests.

‘Why the
hell not?’

‘B
ecause you’ll be washing off their blood and DNA and … shit in my unit.  If the police check it out I’ll be implicated.’

‘You
are
fucking implicated, you fat fuck.  There’s a body in your garage and another in your bushes.’

‘
Look, you can’t shower here,’ Jason reiterates.

‘Fine, I’ll go back to my house
and shower there.’

‘But what if the cops
turn up?’

‘What do you suggest
then, Jase?  I can’t shower here, I can’t shower there.  I should go round like this for the rest of the day?’

There’s a sound in the alley at the side of the house; somebody making their
way along it.

Shit
.

I scoot backwards and dive in under one of Mrs Choi’s hebes.  Jason closes the basement door.

Annabelle Levy turns the corner.  She taps on Jason’s door in a coded pattern.  I guess I now know who Jason would call when he’s in a bind.

I’ve known Annabelle the same length of time as Jason.  She was one of our odd-club at school.
  She’s mixed race – white, Jewish father, black mother.  She’s intelligent, beautiful and pissed off with the whole world.  She was the only one of us that could have fitted in with the in-crowd.  Instead she chose to hang around with the losers.  It didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t make sense to me now.  She could be whatever she wants but she’s somehow managed to both over and under-achieve at the same time – top of the class, Harvard degree, started her own business; moved back to Carrick Springs, stayed single, and still hangs round with the idiots.

She actually has
a life to lose.

Jason pushes
open the basement door.

I slid
e out from under the bush.

‘No.  No fucking way.  She’s going home,
right now.’

‘I was worried.  You were meant to be right behind me, but you never showed
up.’

‘Well, I’m here now.  Anna, it’s all under control
.  You can go home now.’

She looks
me up and down, her forehead creased in concern.  ‘What the hell happened to you, Carrothead?’

‘Nothing.
  Nothing happened to me.’ 

When I arrived in Carrick Springs
, I had an accent that nobody could understand, knew nothing about American sports, and had a healthy head of bright orange hair and a face that looked like one enormous freckle.  I wasn’t a red head, or even auburn.  I was orange, like the strip of the Cincinnati Bengals.  I was an outsider with few attributes to help me become an insider.   It sometimes still feels that way.

‘Yeah, and I’m Oprah Winfrey and Billy Crystal’s love child.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘Don’t make me come over there and force it out of you.’

Annabelle is a connoisseur of the Chinese burn and pinkie bend-back.  She could kick all of our asses.

‘Will you two get in here before you wake up the neighbors,’ Jason whines.

‘And leave Junior out here?’ I say, regretting it as soon as it leaves my mouth.

‘Who’s Junior?’ Annabelle asks.

‘Nobody.’
 

‘Nobody?’

‘Yeah, nobody.’

She turns back to Jason.  ‘Is he the dead body you were talking about?’

‘No,’ Jason says.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

‘He’s a new one,’ Jason continues.

Fuck.

‘This should be good,’ Annabelle says sarcastically.  ‘You have two dead bodies.  How did they die?’

‘One was stabbed, the other shot,’ I say, folding. 
What’s the point of lying?  She would drag it out of us eventually.  She’s always had a knack of prizing information out of us.  ‘Jase, I need the key to the garage.’

‘You really
do
have two dead bodies?’ Annabelle says, her eyes becoming wide.

Jason disappears from view for a moment.  He throws me the key. 

‘You should leave now, Anna, before you get embroiled in whatever madness is going on.  There’s no point all three of us going to prison.’

‘I’m not
going to prison,’ Jason says.  ‘I didn’t kill those two … dudes.’

‘Dude, it’s you that was quoting federal law to me,’ I say and head off down the garden.

Junior is where I left him – leaning up against the back fence.  A dark stain has seeped through to the outer sheet around his head.  I glance up at the sky; it’s starting to glow on the horizon.  Another half an hour and it’ll be daylight.

I tuck my shoulder into
Junior’s stomach, take a deep breath and hoist him up.  He’s not particularly heavy, but my body’s taken a bit of a battering.  I jiggle my torso trying to get comfortable and swing round.

Junior’s legs pass
an inch in front of Annabelle’s horrified face.

We both jump in fright.

‘Jesus, Tadhg,’ she mutters.

‘I thought I told you to go home.’

‘Give me the key,’ she instructs.  ‘I’ll open the garage door.’

* * *

I feel better after the shower, though better is a relative term.  I feel more wholesome than before I stepped into the steaming hot water, but a hell of a lot worse than I did this time yesterday.  I’ve an ugly graze on my forehead and the left side of my body is mottled yellow, green and blue.

I
’ve slipped into a t-shirt and a new pair of jeans.  My old clothes are in a plastic bag; the plan is to drive out into the middle of nowhere, soak them in petrol and set fire to them.  Dump Marino and Junior on the same trip.  All we need is a car with a trunk big enough to fit two bodies. 

Annabelle has some kind of sports car
that only seats two and has a trunk the size of a small suitcase.  Jason drives a Jeep Wrangler TJ which has no trunk and he categorically rules out using his parents old Hyundai.  I don’t own a car after the accident. 

The one that killed my parents.
 

The one
where I was driving. 

Like a moron.

The one that turned me inside out and upside down, literally and figuratively. 

I either
walk, cycle, get cabs or lifts.  I don’t feel any better doing so, but I can’t face the responsibility of driving; the damage I could inflict on other drivers, passengers or pedestrians.  Been there, done that, worn the guilt-ridden t-shirt and been through the therapy.

I’m still wearing the t-shirt. 

I’m always wearing the t-shirt.

We’re not going anywhere at present, however
, despite the lack of a suitable vehicle.

I want to get rid of the bodies. 

Jason wants to get rid of the bodies and disinfect his shower.

Annabelle wants to
whiteboard the situation, check out my house and, if the coast is clear, to blitz it with disinfectant.

Ergo, we’re
sitting in Jason’s crowded basement, surrounded by a chaotic jumble of stuff – clothes, comics, books, supposed collectibles from the Star Wars franchise and God knows what else, and dozens of gadgets and toys – nursing black coffees, staring at a blank piece of paper.

‘As I see it,’ A
nnabelle starts, ‘there are five key questions.  First, what was Tony Marino doing in your house?’  She scribbles on the sheet.  ‘Second, who killed him and why?’

‘That’s two questions,’ Jason interrupts.

‘One question, two subparts,’ Annabelle corrects.  ‘Third, what happened to Psycho-Bitch when she left the house’ – Annabelle has never taken to Kate and has called her Psycho-Bitch since the day she met her, a name that Jason happily mimics – ‘what is her relationship with Marino, and why didn’t she call the police?  Three subparts,’ she says, before Jason interrupts again.

‘
Fourth, who were the two black men who visited your house and why were they there?  You did check his pockets before you bundled him up like a mummy?’

‘No,’ I reply.  ‘I just wanted to clean his brains off the wall and get him out of the house.’

‘So his wallet might be in one of his pockets?’

‘I guess so.’

‘We need to check.  We’ll do that after.  To return to question two.  A third subpart: what happened to Marino’s clothes?’

I shrug
.  Good question.  What the hell did happen to his clothes?

‘Here’s how I
see it,’ Annabelle says, getting to her feet and starting to pace.  ‘Psycho-Bitch and Marino were having an affair.  Something happened and she flipped.  She’s stabbed him in the chest and neck, left him in bed and took his clothes to get rid of them. She then took some time to get her mojo back together again before returning to the house.  She panicked when she saw you, whacked you on the head and then disappeared.  She’s probably already across the border in Canada.’

‘Why would she take his clothes, but leave him there?’ I ask, defending
Kate against my better judgment.  ‘Why would she come back to the house?’

‘She forgot something,
’ Annabelle suggests.

‘She stripped down to her underwear to get in the bed
.  She’d hardly do that if she knew he was already there.’

‘
How’d you know that?’ Jason asks.

I stay silent. 

‘Shit.  You were in the bed.’  His voice goes up an octave again.  ‘You were in the bed with Marino!’

I stare down at Annabelle’s notes
. 

I’ll never live this down. 

Sleeping with a dead man.  A dead made-man.  A man, who if he ever went bald, could run a comb-over from his lower back.

‘Holy fuck!
’ Jason exclaims.

‘What’s question f
ive?’ I ask, trying to move things back to Annabelle’s list of questions.

She’s staring at me, her mouth open in a silent ‘O’.

‘Anna?’

‘What?’

‘Question five.’

‘Question five
,’ she repeats slowly.  ‘What do we do with the bodies?  Jesus, Tadhg, you were in bed with Tony Marino?’

I take a deep breath and count to ten.

I’m hoping that one of them will move the conversation forward.  Instead they’re waiting for an explanation.

Sod
it.  I better give them some kind of account or heaven knows what their over-active imaginations will conjure up.  The truth is bad enough, but Jason is capable of adding a spin that even Hieronymus Bosch wouldn’t have been sick enough to imagine. 

I mutter,
‘I thought he was Kate.’

‘
You thought a dead man twice her size was Kate?’ Annabelle says, not hiding her disbelief. 

‘Just drop it will you
!  I’ve had a really shitty night.  The last thing I need is you two … judging me.’

‘Fuck,’ Jason says wistfully.

That about sums it up.

‘Well?’ Annabelle says
, looking down at her notes.

‘Well, what?’ I say, tetchily.

‘Do you have any answers to these questions?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think we need to go through Junior’s pockets.’

* * *

The three of us stand in the garage staring at the two makeshift, blood stained body bags propped up in the corner.  Alongside Mrs Choi’s garden tools and paraphernalia, the garage houses all kinds of crap that the Choi’s no longer deem necessary to store in the house – stacks of plastic boxes filled with bric-a-brac, old clothes, books and heaven knows what else; ancient cardboard suitcases; disassembled furniture; old pieces of computers and peripherals; unused ski equipment.  It would be worth an entrance fee to see Jason on skis.  Basically, most of the contents are landfill in waiting.

‘Which one is Junior?’ Annabelle asks.

‘That one,’ I answer, pointing to the smaller figure.

‘Well, go on then,
unwrap him and see if he has a wallet or some form of identification.’

‘Jason?’ I prompt.

‘Don’t look at me, man.  They’re your dead bodies.’

‘And it’s your garage.’

‘Ownership trumps location.  Anyway, you found him and wrapped him up.  My offer of help extended only as far as Marino.  I didn’t know you were going to start a collection.’

‘I haven’t started a collection.’

‘You’ve more than one of them; that suggests intent.’

Oh
God.  I really don’t want to do this.  I was never a great fan of dead bodies to begin with.  Now I positively detest them.  My stomach is already performing somersaults at the prospect of unwrapping Junior.  There must be nothing left in it, but it’s prepared to test the hypothesis.