a moment I let despair wash over me like a grim, black tide. Sundays were the worst, the end of one dead week and harbinger of the next. But I reveled in it. When the water gets deep-dive. Depression is a virtue. Only the holy find reasons to climb out of it. Looking out the window, I could see no finger of doom, but I had the feeling one was not far off.
I fumbled for, and dragged the phone to my ear.
'Hungry Elmo?' I asked before dialing. 'Oh, sorry.'
'That's okay, Boss. I f-forget I'm dead myself sometimes.' The dead took liquids to keep themselves fresh, but they had no need for food.
I had a brief moment of realization. I was a dead detective possessing a lunatic's body and having an early Sunday conversation with my dead sidekick. I forced the ideas from my mind and concentrated on the hot dogs and coffee I was ordering. It was an expensive way to eat junk food, but an all night diner down the street delivered anytime.
The only way to survive in Greasetown was to take certain things for granted. All my reason told me I was dead and that I possessed another man's body. For some insane reason he dressed like a clown. My companion, Fat Elmo, was dead as well, and a lot less fat. Desiccation had taken the smooth round shape of his belly and limbs. I could see how the stretched skin hung from him like sheets of thin black rubber. He was dead, but he was across from me smoking a cigarette. Something terrible had happened to the world that had driven reality insane. Since I had no way of finding out what had happened, I tried not to dwell on it. That way laid madness. All I needed to know was this: I was a detective, I tried to catch bad guys-I was on a case. Murder is still murder in Greasetown.
'Four hot dogs are on the way, Mr. Wildclown. Hot coffee too, sir! Boy will be right over.'
I cleaned and reloaded my gun as I waited.
Chapter 10
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
