Dead Mann Walking

mistook me for the neighborhood bully. At least, I like to think they did. Part of the reason I joined the force was because Officer Mann or Detective Mann sounded better. Didn’t always help. Once during a bust, a dealer, all buff and full of tattoos, saw my badge and said, “Jeepers, Mr. Mann!” He and his buddies had a real laugh riot until I coldcocked him with my nine-millimeter. He nearly lost an eye.

Police brutality? Nah. Mr. Mann brutality. Maybe I was the neighborhood bully.

These days, no pride to hurt. Hell, I had a hard enough time thinking of myself as a real detective. I sat there until Turgeon composed himself. I figure if he pays me enough, he can call me whatever he wants.

“I’ve got a couple of sources I can check out,” I told him. “Misty can make you some coffee. I’ll be back soon.” That seemed to satisfy him.

Maybe the big rush should’ve set some bells off, but between wincing about my name and thinking about the dead presidents crammed in my desk, I was distracted. I snatched the head shot and left Misty to babysit. I kind of wished she had some car keys to jangle in front of him.

I trudged down three flights of interior squalor to get to the squalor on the street. The sun had pretty much said screw this and was headed home. A yellow Hummer was parked right in front of my building, a piece of gold in a toilet bowl. I figured it belonged to Turgeon. The only working streetlamp crackled like it was spitting the light on the sidewalk.

This was the Bones, the kind of place even crack heads see as a step down, six blocks of half walls, barbed wire left over from WWI, and vacant lots. Since we generally don’t have jobs, homes, or most of our faculties, any Fort Hammer chak who doesn’t hole up in a shantytown stays here. It’s the better choice, but not by much. We’re a city park away from a gated liveblood neighborhood, so the cops keep things relatively quiet. Not at the shanties, though. Hakkers, bored, disaffected livebloods, pick one every Friday and go play whack- a-chak, beating, cutting, and otherwise not letting the dead rest in peace. It’s like a live-action role-playing game, only you can’t tell who the monsters are.

Turgeon hired me probably thinking all chakz know one another. Truth is, he may have been better off on his own. Finding a particular chak was no easy trick. Yellowed finger bone in a haystack. There were four shantytowns everyone knew about: two in the desert, one near an old iron mine, and the biggest, Bedland, in an abandoned mattress factory. When I first came back, I stayed there a while, until a bad raid wised me up.

Since I barely remembered anyone from yesterday, my best play, my only play, was to find Jonesey. I’d known him long enough for the name and face to stick. Before he was wrongly convicted of childnapping, he was a motivational speaker. If you want it bad enough, you can have it; just act as if; that sort of horseshit. Had some books published. Somehow I don’t think he was found guilty because he didn’t want his freedom bad enough. Ha. When it turned out a year later that the kid was living with his aunt in another state, they brought him back. Oops. So sorry, Mr. Jones. Now he’s a small-time dealer, and he knows not to call me Mr. Mann.

The dead make okay street dealers. They can’t get hooked, and in a pinch they can take a bullet or three. Sure, eventually the damage gets too severe to patch with thread and Krazy Glue, but who cares? So what if pieces dangle, rot sets in, things fall off? Eventually they go feral, but by then there’s not enough left to do much damage. It’s a win-win.

A couple of cars trolled the field of potholes that passed for a street—most likely liveblood druggies hoping to score. If you’re not an addict, alive, and here at night, then you’re a whole new breed of pervert, into chakking up: a quick one with an animated corpse in the alley, or a drive back home, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase dry humping. And they know what they want. Back when Misty tried passing as a chak, it earned her a beating or two from disappointed johns. She showed me the bruises.

My dad once said to me, “There ain’t a single thing in all creation someone hasn’t tried to fuck.” I was five or six at the time. Had no idea what he meant. Now I wish I didn’t.

Then again, I’ve never heard of a chak, male or female, going feral from what pervs do to them. I guess there are some things we really just don’t care about anymore.

Jonesey usually hung at the third lamppost down Cruger Avenue. Just my luck, tonight he wasn’t there. That was a little weird. He was a regular guy, for a chak.

In his place, a real Romero type was leaning against a building like he was holding it up. The left side of his skull looked like it’d been caved in by an anvil.

Hoping his remaining ear still worked, I sauntered up. “Jonesey around?”

I got some grunts. He twisted his shoulder to the right, the arm dangling, useless. At the end of his hand, bones poked through blackened skin. I knew what it was, but a whiff of something putrid told me how bad.

“Hey, pal, watch the rot. Soak that in some bleach before you lose the muscle.”

He gave me another grunt. I hoped I wasn’t talking to myself.

“Bleach? You know? Kill the rot? Keep the fingers?”

Nothing. At least I tried. There’s not much you can do for the low-level types.

I hoped Jonesey was all right, but I was starting to worry. The feral thing’s hard to predict. I knew a chest, arm, and head that had its act together for years. Others go with a finger snap. The fastest was under thirty seconds, Tanya Felding. Funny story. She was a cover girl who died in a car accident. It was the early days of the process, so her agent figured he’d have his cash cow ripped. A little makeup, some plastic surgery, and he’d have the first living-dead model. The look was in. But the stupid docs, typically arrogant, thought they’d done such a great job, that right after she woke up, they shoved a mirror in her hands. It wound up embedded in one of their skulls. After tearing off another doc’s face and swallowing it, sweet little Tanya was subdued and humanely D-capped. Her agent sued. Dunno if he won or not.

Jonesey was always a bit on edge, but I never took him for someone who’d go wild. That’d be bad news. If he’d picked tonight to fall off, I’d never find Boyle. Aside from which, I kind of liked Jonesey, insofar as I liked anyone. When I first moved to the Bones, he taught me some of his memory tricks, using weird images to remember people, like that baby-Eggman thing for what’s-his-face.

Oh, yeah, Turgeon. See? Works sometimes.

If anyone could find Frank Boyle, it was him. The problem was finding Jonesey.

I tried turning my back on Anvil Head, but he grunted again, real loud, and kept it up. It was like Lassie trying to tell Mom that Timmy was trapped in a cave. I thought he wanted money, so against my better judgment I pulled out a buck and pressed it into his good hand.

He didn’t want it. He pulled away quick. The loose arm fluttered like a bird wing.

All of a sudden I realized what he was trying to say. He was answering my question about Jonesey, pointing as best he could toward the alley.

“Much obliged.”

He nodded.

I pulled out the recorder and made a note to have Misty come out with the bleach. Could’ve called her, but I forgot my damn phone.

The alley was a car-wide slot between half-standing walls. Stepping in meant leaving even the sickly yellow streetlight behind. It’d been a hot day and I still felt it on the sidewalk, but as things went from dark to darker, it got noticeably cooler.

Takes longer for chak-eyes to adjust to lighting changes. I could make out a Dumpster, and the fact that there was more garbage outside it than in. I kept going, farther back, toward what looked like a fire escape.

I stepped on something. It was big, slightly soft, and when my foot hit it, it moaned.

Not a sound you want to hear in this neighborhood. Better to hear a snake rattle. Moaning is what chakz do right before, and after, they go feral.

This one obviously wasn’t feral yet, or it’d be chewing on me. It looked like he was under some cardboard. Poor bastard probably felt it coming on and crawled in here to be alone when it happened. We have an instinct for that sort of thing, like dogs.

I didn’t think it was Jonesey, but I had to be sure. Jonesey had a red flannel piece of crap he called his lucky shirt. They buried him in it. When they rip you, they give you a cheap new set of clothes, generally prison gray, but Jonesey turned it down and kept his lucky shirt. It was the only shirt he ever wore. I think over time it melded with