The hotdogs were still fighting when we pulled up in front of an ancient rooming house. Commanding the front lawn was a crude fountain that had been formed of bleak gray cement. Constructed, no doubt, to help justify the exorbitant rent people would have to pay to live behind it. Water trickled out of the top, adding to a sick brown pool clotted with leaves and smelling of dead rats. The whole thing looked lovely in the weak light of morning.
I belched ground hotdog, whiskey, onions, and coffee. I was tired and hung over. Nausea rippled through my system from epiglottis to the unseeing eye. I had the distinct feeling I had swallowed a sick python.
A chill raised the hair on my neck. I looked over into Elmo's eyes. "Christ Elmo, remember to blink would you," I muttered and lurched out of the car. I leaned in the window. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
As Elmo lit a cigarette, I turned toward the house. Chavis Street was balanced on the edge of the Downings District and Gritburg. Gritburg was about an inch above the filth of Downings and about nine miles below most of the Authority controlled sections.
Downings was becoming overcrowded with the dead. They didn't have anywhere else to go. Right after the Change, the dead had been embraced as a welcome if somewhat unpleasant novelty. Since they retained their personalities, they were people that living people knew, and so there was a festive aspect of reunion to things. But they kept coming. And the longer the living had to think about it, the more unsettled they became. It's one thing to have to look after an aged parent, quite another to have to oil up a dead one and live with its sleepless pacing. The dead didn't eat so they were relatively inexpensive to keep but their expressionless faces raised primitive hackles amongst their survivors.
The dead claimed to experience varied levels of sensation from pain to pleasure; but each case was different. Everything was different. Psychologically, at least, they seemed to act on similar impulses to the living. There were dead dancers, romantics, rapists and thieves. But the more lifelike the dead behaved, the more the tension grew between the groups. Life was tough enough without having to compete for jobs with people who did not tire or sleep.
So most municipalities passed bylaws restricting the actions of the dead that would have contravened the rights of the living. The dead represented a large gray area that public opinion could exploit. And so, as the dead were oppressed, they began to strike back. There were incidents and riots; people were killed. The dead were burned and dismembered. Unofficial Regulators were brought in to suppress the uprisings, and then disbanded for excesses and abuse. Eventually Authority stepped in and forced a truce between the groups. Dead people were free to travel in living sections of town if they were gainfully employed. So even in death the poor got poorer. The others were forced into derelict sections of town like Downings where the resident living people were already downtrodden enough not to care. In Gritburg it was slightly different. A dead man could walk down the street but he could not live there.
I snagged the toe of my boot on an uneven crack in the sidewalk and stumbled on my approach to the house. A faded picket fence circled the yard. Its gate was open forever, entangled in overgrown weeds. There was something nice about it. From the lowest step of a broad front porch an old native woman hacked and gurgled until she spat chunks of lung onto the uncut lawn. She swilled down the remainder of her beer while two old men sat watching her with lust-glazed eyes. The old coots were stripped to the waist in the heat-their fat white bellies gleamed like fine china. The old woman was also bare-chested; her breasts hung slack like a couple of oranges in panty hose.
"Good morning," I greeted the woman. "One hot bastard isn't it?"
She looked at me like I was a mirage.
"Rot and socks you Microsoft-rot-rot!" Her smeared brown eyes coalesced for a moment to sharp black points that spewed venom at me, then oozed back into their natural shapeless state. She grunted, then sucked her lips past toothless gums.
I smiled pleasantly and continued up past the old men perched on the top step. They didn't make a move and could very well have been formed from the same cement as the fountain. I imagined them set out on the lawn with fishing poles and funny red caps.
The door had no knob and swung open with a slight push. Inside, I saw a battered old pay phone in the hallway. The dial was missing, the receiver was gone, and someone had gutted the body looking for change. There were two doors-rooms one and two. Dirty tiles crackled underfoot as I made my way to a stairway shy a banister. On the way up, the odd wooden strut poked out of the blackened carpet like a rotten tooth. At the top of the stairs, I found room five. Its doorframe was chewed and chipped from a thousand break-ins. I stood to one side of it-knocked, then heard a grumbling sound within. A metallic rattle followed as someone fumbled with the lock. The door swung open. Harsh yellow light was diffused by the dim gray morning of the hallway. I could see the illumination came from a single uncovered light bulb in the ceiling over Willieboy's head.
He glared angrily with his deep-set eyes. His mouth moved as though filled with gum. It was apparent that in this petulant state, a logjam of nasty words had formed behind his lips that his tongue hurried to sort out.
"You're early," he said finally with great restraint. I could tell by the swollen veins at his temples that he had other things he would like to say.
"You called late," I grumbled back as I stepped over the threshold onto matted orange carpeting.
Douglas Willieboy led a humble life. A hot plate and miniature fridge occupied a small five by five space in the corner that had been wallpapered with bright sunflowers to more resemble a kitchen. Food-encrusted plates were piled in a small sink that dripped and dripped. Willieboy's bed was a pullout couch that occupied the space opposite the door. It was pulled out and its gray sheets rumpled. I had to be careful of banging my shins on its metal frame as I entered. There was a funky smell of moldy cats in the room, but I resisted the urge to mention it.
A box of crackers lay open on a table in a pile of crumbs. Mayonnaise and peanut butter mini-sandwiches were dinner if the empty jars on the floor told me anything. In front of a door, I suspected was the closet, was a large iron bar loaded down with weights.
"You better watch your diet, Mr. Willieboy." I pointed to the remnants of his supper. "Mahatma Ghandi ate that stuff, look what it got him."
Willieboy was wearing nothing but his denims. He showed off an enormous musculature in chest and shoulders. "Shit man, am I ever wasted." He went to his fridge, and pulled out a little stack of pre-cooked beef patties that were glued together with a mortar of yellow grease. He peeled one off and ate it noisily as he spoke.
"Did you bring the fifty?" His lips smacked with a waxy sound and his yellow teeth champed like a horse's.
"Of course I brought the fifty," I snarled and took a seat in the crumbs on the side table.
Willieboy pulled up a chair that had been obscured behind curtains. I noticed an angry red welt on his neck and back.
"If you didn't know the dead guys who set the fire, then how did they know where I was?"
"What dead guys?" His forehead wrinkled.
I told him.
He made a fist of his face and shook his head. "I'm tellin' you, Wildclown, it must'a been a set up 'cause after I left you, I found six dead punkers waitin' for me downstairs. Jesus, I was mixin' it up good with them when the fire started!" He gestured to the injury on his back.
I pulled my gun. I didn't point it at him-just fiddled with it, sighting along its length and hefting it like it was new.
"Not the best excuse I've ever heard, Mr. Willieboy." I continued to play.
He froze, mouth full of hamburger, and then began nodding his head and sputtering. "There-there! Give a guy a goddamned gun and he gets tough every time. But I'll show you, you bastard, nobody fucks with Douglas Willieboy."
"Unless he has a gun, right." I grinned.
"That's right," he laughed. "You're okay, Wildclown-did you bring the money? I'm tired of eatin' like a blowfly!"
"I've got the money, but it'll take a good story to squeeze it out of me. I fell twelve stories last night-and I'm a little cranky." I leaned back against the cracker box and wall.
Willieboy started talking. He punctuated each sentence with squishy hamburger noises.
"All right, I knew her better than I said-the Van Reydner broad. I mean I knew her in that way, you know. Shit, who wouldn't-she was gorgeous. So, I was a little bit involved with her, which I said I wasn't. It wasn't true love or nothin', but it was fun. Not every night, but sometimes she'd phone down for room service…" He leaned back and laughed. "That's what she called it. Well fuck, who wouldn't go along?"
I couldn't think of who wouldn't and I said as much.
"So that went on for about a month, until she left." He smiled a great idiot grin.
"Congratulations, Willieboy," I grumbled. "But that's not worth squat to me. I hope you enjoy your memories." I stood up to leave.
"That's not all," he said this very shrilly for a man his size. "I knew she was going away. I was there when she packed her bag."
"Go on," I lit a cigarette, offered Willieboy one and took my seat in the crumbs.
"It was about six days ago-Tuesday night. She said she'd be leaving soon, but she wouldn't be away long. Asked me if I'd be sweet enough to let her go without a hassle. She owed money. See, I was kinda suckered, but fuck, what the hell. It wasn't my hotel."
"Do you know where she went?" I drew in on my smoke-there was no protest from the hotdogs. I felt like belching anyway.
"No, she just went. Course, the night she split-Thursday, no Friday morning-I didn't know that lawyer had been shot up there. He came down when I was going off my shift at six. She had already left, around 3 a.m.-nailed me in the back room for being a good boy!" he cackled knowingly.
"Did Authority question you?"
"Funny that, a little shit from Authority came in before I even got a chance to call. I just figured someone else in the building got a'hold of them."
"What was his name?" I leaned forward.
"I don't know, shit-I'm not a secretary!" he frowned.
"Did you tell him what you told me?" I started glaring.
"Hell no, they'd have framed me like a Vangoff. I'd be eatin' rats in their cellar right now." Willieboy wiped a hand across his mouth.
"Okay," I said. "You haven't told me much worth $50, give me some more, or I'll leave you to your filet mignon."
"All right, don't get your shorts stretched out of shape. See, she got a few calls from this guy, Simon-he never gave a last name. I'd work the switchboard you know, and he'd call up from time to time. Always late. Shit, I always figured she was full of it on the massage crap 'cause I only saw her with the one client. What did I care, right? That lawyer he had lots of folding money, understand? He can look after himself.
"I listened in from time to time, when they'd talk, her and that Simon guy. I ain't proud of that but it's a boring late night shift anyway. His voice was always kind'a scared like he knew I was listening. Well, they'd talk and I've never heard more boring talk. He'd only mention the weather. He'd say that the clouds were going to break soon. He wondered if she were ready for some sun. I kept wanting to break in and scream that they're both boring and could they talk about some sex or something." Willieboy sat back, his face a mask of introspection before continuing. "The only time it was interesting was the night the lawyer got whacked. This Simon guy calls her and says it's time for a change in the weather. She said she was getting really tired of the clouds and would be glad for a change and tonight would be good. Boring shit, still maybe, but at least it was something different. He sounded like a real pin-head." Willieboy smiled as though he'd just opened a treasure chest.
"Great Willieboy, he was a pin-head, big deal. I could have guessed that. It sure as hell isn't worth fifty bucks. A name, Simon, talked to her. Wonderful."
He kept grinning like a fool. Finally, he leaned forward and pulled a stained envelope from his back pocket.
"I wonder what his phone number and a picture of Van Reydner would be worth?" He waggled the folded envelope between his fingers.
I began digging for Tommy's annoying plastic mouth purse.