owes.'
'Did you know her?' I asked, idly gazing around the room. My guts jumped as I made out a large dark stain in the middle of the rug. I moved toward it.
'Nah,' he mumbled as he flung the chain of keys from hand to hand. 'I only saw her the once or so. Great lookin' piece with red hair. Her tits was out to here!' He made an exaggerated motion with his hands. I hoped he was exaggerating. 'I just started here a couple of weeks ago. She dressed real fine and had an ass she could roll cigarettes with, I'll bet. She was kind'a snooty though-didn't have the time of day for me-or nobody else who didn't pay.'
'Didn't pay?' I said as my fingers probed the sticky darkness that smelled of must and old pennies.
'Sure, she was a go-girl, you know. Oh shit, she might'a said she was a professional massage therapist or whatever, but I know she was a PRO-something else.' He winked. I think he winked. I couldn't tell. His eyes were two bony caverns in the overhead light. I winked back anyway. It was one of those man-things.
'She just left?' I said absently, peering into a doorway that opened at the back of the room. There was a bed in it.
'Yah, so far as I know-course, I didn't see her go. I was off that night. Hard to figure her leggin' out without her silkies and stuff. Anyway, if you wanna talk more, see me at the desk. I been havin' a shit-load of trouble lately with dead punks in the neighborhood. Jesus, those fuckers are hard to kill and they think they own the place!' His bulk moved from the doorway, a glassed picture of a schooner glinted on the wall outside.
'Lock up when you're done!' He barked over his shoulder.
I nodded and walked into the bedroom. The bed was unmade and I could just detect the sour reek of baby oil. I moved to the closet-the door hung open. On the floor, a small travel bag grimaced at me with brass teeth. I pulled my mini-flash out of my pocket and quickly probed the floor with its fairy light. Beside the travel bag, a rectangle of wheel marks in the carpet told me a larger companion suitcase was missing. Farther in, shoes, purses and belts: the normal tangle you find on the floor of a woman's closet. My flash winked across the shoulders of a line of dresses. I brushed them. They swayed like the Supremes.
Van Reydner was about medium height, if the dresses told me anything, and she wore a particularly flowery perfume. There were enough gaps on the rack to make me think a dress or two could be missing. I shrugged at the heaviness growing in my shoulders, then pulled the chair out from under the vanity and sat on it. I had to be careful now that I had been in Tommy's body for a few hours. There was a tendency to get overwhelmed by sensation at first, followed by bouts of anxiety and introspection as the emotions piled up.
What in hell was I doing? It just wasn't like the old days. What old days? I couldn't remember them, any better than one remembers a childhood dream. Memories did come at me like shadows sometimes; but they were familiar feelings without a narrative, unrecognizable faces and places, nothing more. I just knew that life had been simpler then. Bodies stayed dead, and detectives possessed their own bodies. Impulsively, I tried to remember a time before I knew Tommy, before my death if that was what had happened and immediately felt the usual sharp pain. It always happened. For some reason, what was left of me refused to remember what I was before. The only thing I knew for sure about myself was that I was a detective. At least that was something. I had to get up, get working, get moving. That was something too.
I pulled the chain on the lamp that rested atop the chipped enamel surface of the vanity. It didn't work which didn't surprise me. Nothing worked anymore. Instead, my mini-flash's dollar coin light scanned the wrecking yard of new and used makeup and creams scattered around it. In an ashtray was the crumpled black nub of a cigar among a host of lipstick-stained cigarette butts. It was a cute little thing really-nothing big and Cuban about it. I pulled it out. It smelled like coffee or Irish Cream. I pocketed it, then opened the single drawer and snooped inside-more makeup-a card for Simpson's Skin Tanning Salon for the Deceased. I almost thought that was strange, but matches of the kind were common. Advertising for afterlife products was an aggressive business. Flipping the matchbook over I found five numbers written in a strong hand. I put that in my pocket too, then rummaged a little more. She must have had an appointment book. Of course, if she were on the run, she would have taken it with her.
I froze when the floor creaked in the outer room. I clicked off the flash and whipped out my gun. Dropped to one knee, I waited. Another board creaked, followed by the sound of cloth rustling. Edging forward quietly, I pushed a sliver of my eye around the doorframe.
Three dead men fidgeted in the doorway-the hall was a curtain of black behind them. One of them carried a double-barreled shotgun. He was very old and decrepit. His skin looked dry and cracked, and was heavily stitched with green shoelace around the jaw. Hair like weak spider webbing trailed at his shoulders. From his movements, I could tell he was the leader. The other two were in equally bad shape and dressed the same, in filthy knee-length overcoats. One had dark green lichen or mold on the left side of his head; the other was missing a shoe. A mangled foot showing yellow bones protruded from his ragged pants leg.
I listened.
'Dis da' room, now dammit. We do wadda boss wants. Dis da' room I knowed it,' the leader hissed. 'Horley, got da jooze man?'
Automatically, I ran an inventory. They were obviously derelicts-the smell that tortured the air in the room gave that away-likely hired on a one-shot deal. I was positive all three were dead-which was bad. Eight bullets wouldn't guarantee a take down on any one of them. I knew I could take the head off the leader, but that would leave me with a scratch and claw finale with the others. My guts told me the dead men wouldn't respond well to a calm discussion. I watched the machine-like clasping of their withered hands. Their muscles would be like woven leather-hard to rip or cut. I took a bead on the leader's head.
'Okey,' he garbled in a guttural lipless slur, teeth clicking like a typewriter. 'Doot!'
A flame flared in the hands of one of his cronies and a glass bottle of gasoline appeared in the hands of the other. The rag atop the bottle burst into flame and for a moment they stared wide-eyed. The dead feared fire. Their bodies go up like tinder. I knew this. With all the preservatives and oils they used they burned like torches. I'm glad I knew this because when the dead leader took the bottle and raised his arm to pitch the cocktail, my gun roared once. The bottle disappeared in a ball of flame-so did the dead men. The shotgun blazed, and the wall came away over my head.
I glanced in and saw all three doing a fiery dance. They were screeching, staggering and rolling-setting the whole room on fire. The outer doorframe burst into flame along with the hallway outside. They must have splashed a lot of gasoline around. In a moment, I knew the whole building would go up.
I turned; the only way out was the window. Twelve stories down-no net. That was the flaw in my plan. I slipped my gun away, and tore the sheets off the bed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror. In the eerie red light, I looked like some terrified clown in Hell. I knotted together the sheets and a blanket, then kicked the window out. Above me, I could see the fake Arab minaret hanging drunkenly over the street. It was about fifteen feet above me, but its wooden supports looked inviting. A quick climb up onto the roof, and down the fire escape. Easy.
The dead men were silent, and the heat of the flames was growing intense accelerated by the tough old flesh and ratty clothing. I turned back to the room to attack the vanity chair. In moments, I had it apart and had fashioned a crude grappling hook from its chromium legs. I knotted the sheets to this and leapt to the window. The flames were already licking the frame of the bedroom door. I glared down at the street below. News of the fire had traveled fast. A crowd had gathered. They chanted, 'Burn, burn, burn!'
I tested the weight of the hook in my hand and swung it upwards. It lodged in the wooden framework on the first try. Doing my best to grin like Captain Blood, I tugged twice on the sheets and launched myself into space.
There wasn't even a single sound of protest as the whole structure came off the building. Not a creak of wood, no groan of tortured nails, it just came off of the building like it had been balanced there awaiting the exact addition of my weight to upset its ancient equilibrium.
I think I screamed once as I fell toward the street with the strange, crumbling structure. I clung tight to the sheets. I really didn't have anything else to do. I remember a sharp, searing jolt to my shoulders, and a powerful tearing of wood. Then falling again. Then another jolt, a wild swing and a tooth chipping slap into bricks. More falling.
I tasted blood-there was another crash of wood and bricks and human-then a darkness that was complete. Which was strange.
