Losers Live Longer

tasteful thing. But I had to unwrap him and know for sure.

The thick sheet of plastic was slick with something oily. I smelled my hand. It stunk of pesticide, insecticide, and—I sniffed again—citronella.

The plastic was folded and tucked under his body and once I shifted him a bit it came open like a flower.

What the plastic revealed was a desiccated corpse. Not much face left to make a positive I.D., it looked like it’d been crushed in, but only after death since there’d been little bleeding. However, I could see that he’d had blond hair, long limbs, and had probably looked a lot like a Swede. No doubt in my mind, it was Law Addison, dead in the trunk of his own car. His daring flight from justice had never gotten off the ground.

There was more of him left solid than I would’ve thought possible after four months. But I saw a possible explanation. Like the outside of the plastic, the body was slathered with insecticides and citronella. It would’ve kept the flies away and retarded decomposition.

He was dressed in a blue shirt. The one wound I could see that had bled was in his chest near his heart. The dried blood splotch around it was black and flaky. There were other wounds, about a dozen repeated punctures in the lower chest, belly, and groin, strikes at all the major organs and intestines. But none of those had bled. All had been delivered post-mortem.

Like the insect poison, it looked like another measure to impede decomposition, by releasing the build-up of interior gases which so quickly aid in the corruption of flesh and the reduction of the body into sludge.

It all pointed to workman-like improvisation, but by an informed hand. Someone who knew what he was doing and didn’t want a stinking car trunk full of dead man soup. Instead he had something more along the lines of a modern mummy.

I poked around gingerly, looking for the bulge of a wallet on Addison’s body, but no luck. Shifting his husk, it felt like all his weight was concentrated in the middle, around his waist. He was wearing a brown leather belt. It looked wider than most belts. It had probably been snug back in May, but it was loose now, and I gave it a little tug. It was heavy. Heavier than leather and its brass buckle would explain.

I unhooked the belt and pulled it off him in one motion like someone starting a lawn mower with a ripcord.

Dangling from my fingers, it felt heavier still. Heavy as a deep-sea diving belt. I located a tiny zipper on its underside and opened it. It was lined with gold coins. Krugerrands. By quick estimate twenty of them. By quick arithmetic, over seventeen thousand dollars, if not more. I zipped it back up and draped the belt over my shoulder.

Law Addison had tried to make his getaway, was all ready to flee. But something had stopped him. Someone.

A lot of things made sense in a hurry. This discovery was like the last marble that tips the scale and starts the peppery march of a hundred other marbles cascading. A few minutes ago, I hadn’t even known what had happened. Now I knew what—and I also knew who.

The realization gave me a sickening lurch, like losing your grip while climbing a sheer rock face. Falling backward into utter nothing, a gluttonous void. In front of you, vanishing rapidly, is the view of your last good firm handhold, getting smaller and smaller as you plunge. All around, the air is whistling and just behind you, out of sight, growing larger and larger in the corner of your eye, lies the end of all suspense.

Chapter Twenty-one: ’TIL WHEN-NEVER

Two sounds brought me back to the now. One a sound like dragging and the other like a squeaky wheel. I tried to trace its echo in the desolate top level of the garage. My eyes fastened on the rounded concrete corner of the dividing wall, beyond which was the stairwell.

The dragging sound stopped briefly, but the squeaking continued. Then footsteps began, sharp and direct slaps bouncing off the concrete walls of the chamber. Getting closer.

I unpacked my gun, held it in my right hand hanging loose down by my thigh, and waited, watching that corner.

A thick shadow appeared and behind it a man.

“Payton? What the fuck?”

“Hi, Matt. What you doing here?”

I wasn’t trying to be funny, I guess I was just a little punchy, and he sounded so…normal.

“Oh. Trying to clean up your mess.”

“My mess?”

“Yeah, dickhead.”

He came forward, dragging something behind him like a laundry sack, but it wasn’t a sack. It was alive, it was Elena. Duct tape wrapped several times about her mouth, all around her head and hair. Her wrists and ankles were bound the same way. The squeaky sounds I’d heard were just her muted whimpers.

Matt stopped advancing about eight feet away. He dragged Elena up beside him in one pull, his hand wrapped around the back of her blouse.

He said, “I had it all settled so neatly, things were finally fine. Then you start nosing into it. You’re as bad as Owl was.”

I gestured—with my left hand, not the one holding the gun—at the open trunk of the car and Law Addison’s body in its chrysalis of plastic sheeting.

“How did this happen, Matt?”

“I did my job. That’s all. Metro was brought in by the bailsbond agency. We were supposed to keep an eye on Addison, in case he got antsy. Which he did. Unfortunately, he slipped our tail—the assholes I had watching him lost him. Better believe I fired their asses on the spot. Same way I fired you five years ago. Remember?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

“So then I had to track this Jethro down. And that’s what I did.

“We didn’t know about the ‘L. Andrew’ apartment down on C, but we did know about the junkie girlfriend. Easiest thing in the fucking world for me to roust her connection and let him know he was looking at a federal beef unless he called me immediately the minute she got in touch. Sure enough, she phoned him up, looking to score a stockpile before going away. And he called me like the good little pusher he was. He told me when and where, I went in his place, and when she got there, instead of her delivery she got me, reading her the riot act.”

“I heard about that,” I said. “From her husband. You bum-rushed her out of the city and got her tucked away in a rehab clinic upstate. Same place you went for your detox treatment, I bet, that place you said your cousin runs.”

“Not bad, Payton. I shouldn’t have let that slip. But you get under a guy’s skin, y’know.”

“De nada,” I said. “But explain this to me. You hid Michael Cassidy away and pumped her for info—fine. She spilled to you where Addison was and you staked out his hidey-hole—fine. But how’s all that end up with him in the trunk and you owning this place?”

“Well, this place is where Addison ran to when he finally made his move,” Matt said. “I was getting ready to bust him—swear to God, I was maybe two hours away from kicking in his door and putting the cuffs on him—when he walked out with three suitcases in tow and jumped in a cab. Of course I followed him, I figured he was making a run for the airport. But instead he came here. Took the elevator up with his luggage. I took the stairs. When I got here, he was over there—”

Matt nodded toward the car behind me, but I didn’t turn and look.

“He was loading his bags into the trunk, getting ready for his big escape. Kept looking at his watch. I guess he was still waiting for his girlfriend to show. It was pathetic what a drop I had on him.

“So I shouted, Hey, Addison! Might as well take ’em out again, you aren’t going anywhere. I was sick of this asshole and all the trouble he’d made for me. All I wanted was to cuff him, deliver him to the cops, go home and take a fucking nap.

“But instead of just takin’ it like a man, he starts in blubbering, begging me to cut a deal. Payton, you don’t