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“Because I’m more optimistic than you. You can wait for Santa.”
She throws a pillow at me.
“You dick.”>Candy carries each soaked sheet and towel into the bathroom and throws it in the tub. The wall looks like a musk ox exploded while taking a soak.
“Where are you taking the body?” says Candy.
“Teddy Osterberg’s place.”
“Silly question.”
Kasabian moans and groans, but he does his bit getting up the blood. I bag as many of the sheets and towels as I can carry, figuring I can come back for the rest later.
I kiss Candy on her bloody cheek. She smiles but I can tell she’s still a little sore. I toss Declan’s body over my shoulder, grab the bags of bloody sundries in my hands, and tuck the shovel under my arm. No one in recorded history has looked more like he’s going to dispose of a body than I do right now.
I step through a shadow and come out in the garage. It only takes a couple of minutes to find Declan’s Beamer. I pop the trunk with the black blade, toss Declan inside and the other goodies on top of him.
The black blade opens the door, and when I jam it into the ignition, the car starts right up. I back up carefully and drive out of the garage, giving the attendant a friendly wave as I leave.
THERE ISN’T MUCH traffic on the road at four A.M., but with a dead guy in the trunk the roads still feel crowded. All it will take to spoil the rest of the night is a bored cop pulling me over or a drunk driver plowing into me. I’m more worried about the cop. Yeah, I know I can get away from them. I’ve done it before. It’s the dash cam that bothers me. I don’t like the idea of LAPD having any more footage of me, especially with a corpse in the trunk and the murder weapon behind my back. It’s a long drive out to Malibu when you have to stick to the speed limit.
I turn off the headlights when I head up the hill to Teddy Osterberg’s place, driving by moonlight. I haven’t been out here since I burned the place down. Teddy’s mansion is a pile of rubble and some scorched beams surrounded by police tape. Teddy was a ghoul. Someone with an appetite for dead flesh. In his spare time he was a cemetery buff. He collected them like other people collect model trains. At the top of the hill, I pop the trunk and haul out the body and the shovel.
There are hundreds of grave sites sprawled in every direction. Marble tombstones and rotting wooden markers. Angel-topped mausoleums and rocky burial mounds. I take Declan out to the far end of the collection where Teddy has an old-fashioned potter’s field. It’s invisible from the road and seems like a good enough place for Declan to spend his retirement years.
The ground has baked hard under the California sun. I should have brought a pick to break up the soil. After about an hour of digging, I have a hole just deep enough to hold Declan. I push him over the edge with my boot and fill the hole back in, packing down the earth on top of the grave and scattering the leftover dirt around the cemetery.
Back at the car, I toss the shovel in the trunk and head down the hill, not turning on the lights until I’m back on the main road. I’m trying to decide if I should burn Teddy’s car or push it into the ocean when I hear a horn behind me. I put my arm out the window and signal for whoever it is to go around, but the car just keeps honking. It’s a late-sixties’ cherry-red Mustang. Probably the property of some movie star’s kid. At least it isn’t a cop.
When the road widens enough to have a decent shoulder I pull over to let the car pass. Last thing I want is to attract attention when my coat is covered in cemetery dirt and another man’s blood. Imagine my glee when the car pulls off on the shoulder behind me. I pull my gun and put it in my coat pocket.
I get out and wait. The other car’s headlights are in my eyes, but I can hear the driver’s door open and someone start my way. It’s a woman and she’s walking with purpose. All I can see is her outline. She’s wearing spike heels. I cock the hammer on the pistol.
“I don’t always expect tribute, but can’t a girl say hello around here without every nervous Nellie pulling heat on her? You boys do love your guns.”
I recognize the voice.
“Mustang Sally?”
She steps between the headlights and me and I can finally see her face. She’s smiling, knowing how much she spooked me. I smile back.
“Is that a guilty conscience you’re wearing tonight?” she says.
“Not guilty. Just tired. I buried a guy up at Teddy Osterberg’s place. What are you doing here?”
“What I always do. Driving.”
Mustang Sally is the highway sylph. The queen of the road, a spirit that’s been around in one form or other since the first humans left the first mud ruts in the ground with their feet and then wagons. She drives L.A.’s roads 24/7 every day of the year and only stops when bums like me lure her over with tributes of cigarettes and road food. But tonight she stopped me.
“It’s nice to see you. Thanks again for the help last time.”
“Getting you into Hell or keeping you from getting run down when you got back?”
“I’m grateful for the first and pathetically grateful for the second.”
She doesn’t say anything for a second. I’m not the one who stopped her, but she’s still a spirit that needs feeding. I pull out the closest thing I have to a tribute. Half a pack of Maledictions.
“It’s all I have. I didn’t expect to see you.”
