(Continued from the August 2020 issue of Exotic)
I didn’t start with the clubs. Instead, I went back to the morgue.
As I headed downtown, a few stray leaves blew around like street kids hitting you up for change and cigarettes. I took a deep breath, before pulling open the medieval doors, saluting security and sending my keys and belt down that long perp walk through the x-ray machine.
I snapped on blue gloves, pulled on a face mask and got to looking. The bracelet was still there and was indeed made of bits of compressed carbon. I patted myself on the back.
She looked more peaceful than the photos—her hair was brushed straight and even. Her nails were done up in a French manicure and crossed on her chest. She was just about ready for an open casket, which was strange, because Jane Does spend the afterlife in deep freeze, which meant someone had paid for all this. I found Dan in his office, puzzling over the latest textbook on the dead.
"I don’t know. Sometimes the guys, this job...it gets to you. Sometimes, you have to do something nice every once in a while. Ya know, to feel human." He did a flourish with his hands that said "Ey, come on, they’re dead."
"Necrophilia. I get it, we all have our moments," I said.
He glared at me, went back to his studies and I went back to my new girlfriend.
I pried her hands apart to get a closer look. It didn’t take long. Her left forearm was scabbed from surface piercings—five of them, in the shape of the Big Dipper pointing at the North Star. This Jane was all about stars. It was almost too easy. There weren’t many clubs in this town and I didn’t mind seeing some entertainment, while I crossed them off the list.
I saluted the guard again on my way out and he was probably just a statue.
The dancer was friendly, like dancers are. She asked if I wanted a dance and I said, "no thanks." Another dancer asked. I said, "no thanks." Finally, the proprietor—heavy set, bra-less and with a little too much makeup—came to the bar and asked to touch up my beer, which was getting warm from nursing. I said, "sure." When she set it on the damp coaster, I knew the small talk was coming. I put on my best poor lonely motherfucker voice and looked at the glass like it was a pebble on a cliff, shook my head and said, "There was this sweet thing used to come here, she was about this tall, had the coolest piercings I’ve ever seen. They was in the shape of the Big Dipper." Then I laughed without joy and shook my head, while taking a big swig.
The makeup lady looked me up and down.
"Well, you must mean Darling, she ain’t been dancing for a few months now. Don’t know where she is."
"Aaaah Darling, ya that’s the one." I laughed and shook my head again, tears salting my eyes. "My darling Darling." Makeup lady sighed and took pity on me.
"She was a worker, you know" and did a half wink and sideways tilt of the head.
I nodded with furrowed concern.
She sighed deeply and sloshed a shot of well whiskey on the bar for me. I drank it, graciously.
"That girl was always on her way somewhere or coming back from somewhere else. Could never get a bead on her, not even her real name. She was always talking about Alaska, though, the way the sun shone up there on the turning leaves."
I tipped the busty bartender and dropped the rest of my singles on the stage. The dancer didn’t notice.
When I got home, I rang up all of the runaway shelters I could find listed in the great state of Alaska, and, finally, a social worker in a small town near the Kenai Peninsula recognized the description.
"Can’t recall her name, she was only here for a minute, before going back out into the weather. Didn’t even get a chance to get any paperwork on her. Is she okay?"
"She’s in a good place," I said and hung up.
Captain Henley’s office was about as friendly as the man himself. The chair was the shade of faded orange that once had a cocaine problem in the seventies, but was now content to live out its days in Central Precinct, absorbing mild civic abuse and the occasional spilled coffee. The walls were decorated with various photos of the Captain with various civic leaders. Not a wife or kid in sight. The desk was bigger than a Supreme Court Judge would need for a high profile murder case. He stared at me with the same love I felt for him. I leaned back, gave him my best toothy smile and said, "How’s the fam’, ‘Cap?"
He sighed, and somewhere deep down in his soul, an ulcer started to develop.
"Alaska?"
"Alaska. Kenai Peninsula, to be exact."
Henley’s bushy mustache quivered like a trapped gerbil. He reached underneath the stretch of his desk and pulled out a bottle and two glasses. He poured us each one.
"I assume you still smoke?" he asked.
I pulled out my pack and lit one for each of us. He took a long drag and said, "Now I gotta shower again, before I go home...Mel will have what’s left of my balls if she thinks I’m smoking again."
I nodded in the way you do, when it’s none of your business and there’s nothing you can do anyway. I sipped my glass and smoked, toeing at the frayed carpet.
"Crawford, you remember when we first met?"
"Try not to."
"Well, I do, I remember it when I can’t sleep at night."
I smiled.
"You were dragged into the tank, beaten half to death and laughing. No one could get a word out of you. I waited a full day, before pulling you out of there and sitting you down. You remember why?"
I took a serious pull from the glass and set it down.
"Because, I could go places you couldn’t."
"That’s right. You’d put Johnny Savelle in the hospital over a pool game. We’d spent months just trying to get a man through the door of that joint, the...what’s it called?"
"The 416."
"That’s right, The 416. And, Johnny finally went away for all the sociopathic shit he was wanted for. Months, Crawford. Months we were trying to get our hands on that miserable excuse. And, you wrapped him up for us, in a bloody little bow and I put you on payroll as a consultant."
"Deputy."
"That’s what you called it."
"Call me old fashioned."
"Okay, Old Fashioned, here’s the deal—you’re unpredictable and unreliable. If I send you to Alaska, are you going to run off the map and join the fucking Russians?"
"I’d join the dragons first, honestly."
Henley’s gerbil quivered again and we finished our drinks and smokes.
"Pack your bag, then. I want a check in call once a day. Sharon will work out the details for you on the way out. You’re flying tight on the company dime, so pack light."
I thanked my Captain and slid the glass over the vast tundra of a desk to him—tiny caribou loping out of the way.
Fingering my temporary badge on the march out of downtown again, I tried to recall myths of Alaska. I pictured constant sunlight, constant darkness and people who were either born there or running away from something. Reindeer sausage. Chainsaws and fire, blue mountains and bluer lakes. A big country. The last, last frontier. A state four times the size of Texas, with half the population. A dead runaway and two dead Johns. Where men outnumbered women three-to-one. Piercings pointing North. Strange stuff, unknowns moving about mute in the dark, when the sun wasn’t a thing.
I got home and checked my go bag. It smelled stale, because it had never actually been used. I put fresh socks and underwear in it and walked out to hit up the liquor store for carry-on minis. On the walk, a crazy person shouted crazy things at me and I had to go around the block—wishing, for not the first time, that the dead could talk and the living would shut the fuck up.
After I got back, I brewed some tea that I didn’t drink. I sat in the dark, like my own version of crazy and tried not to think about being alone in the cold. Staring at the ashtray billowing with the remains of shared cigarettes, left behind when they exited, laughing or shouting or crying and slipping on that top step. Admiring the flowers. A good year for the roses.
