The Embalmer: A Steve Jobz Thriller Page 10

  “They creep me out,” Henry says, after a beat. “And the way Herman cheats on his poor wife.”

  “His wife is sick, am I right?”

  “So I’ve heard. Cancer or something like it. Absolutely ravaging her body. I’ve never actually met her in person. But I’m told she’s bed-ridden, so he’s gotta do everything for her. And I mean . . . everything.”

  “No wonder,” I say.

  She elbows me. “What you mean, no wonder, Jobz? You married to a woman you stay loyal to her no matter what. Through thick and thin.”

  For a minute, we both concentrate on our drinks, the two of us stealing the occasional glances at Herman and his date, and Lu and his date. How both girls are warming right up to the two men, how already they can’t keep their hands off of the ladies. It dawns on me then that the girls must either be nuts or professionals. Maybe both.

  “Okay, so where were we, Jobz?” Henry says after a time. “So, what’s the detective’s theory? What kind of man injects embalming fluid into a living human being?”

  “We’re looking for a man who was very good at his job. In fact, get this: too good.”

  She gives me a look.

  “Wait just a cotton pickin’ sec. I thought what we’re looking at is a guy who got let go from his job. A guy not only collecting UI, but making fraudulent claims. Ain’t that the point of all this?”

  I nod.

  “You and I both know from the career advisor portion of our jobs, that for some bosses, the only thing worse than a worker who sucks, is a worker who is better than the boss at the same job and who doesn’t mind letting said boss man—or woman—know it. Real talent makes some bosses uneasy.”

  “Makes sense,” she says. “So, why’s this guy killing women with embalming fluid and leaving them in places like Washington Park?”

  “He’s creating a work of art. Embalming them, making them more real and alive than they were when they had blood flowing through their veins. They reject him when alive, but they accept him entirely . . . and I mean entirely . . . when dead. He makes them living dolls, so to speak.”

  She finishes her drink, the straw slurping what’s left at the bottom of the glass.

  “What you mean they accept him entirely? Do you mean, he had you-know-what with them after they were . . .” she allows the thought to dangle, because I’m guessing she doesn’t have the stomach to finish it. Who would?

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Henry makes a sour face. Behind her, at the opposite end of the bar, Herman and Lu and their dates are getting drunk on shots. I wonder if the girls are truly interested in those two clowns. Allow me to rephrase that. I wonder how in the world they could be interested those two clowns. Or is it just the booze starting to whisper in my ear?

  Raising my beer, I finish it, set it back down on the bar. That’s when Herman picks up a set of keys off the bar and says something to Lu about it. Like he might even be taking Lu’s ride for a spin. All four of them come around the opposite side of the horseshoe-shaped bar and quickly exit through the front door.

  “Gee, how do you like that?” Henrietta says. “They didn’t even say goodbye to their boss.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Touché.”

  “You want another daiquiri?”

  She gets up.

  “Best that I get going, Jobz,” she says. “You’re depressing me. Besides, a woman of my stature and importance to New York State government can’t be risking a DWI.” She says DWI like, Dee Wee.

  “A man as low as I am can,” I say, signaling to the bartender for another.

  “You never know,” she says, “you just might be on your way out the door of the Insurance Fraud Agency and on your way to a new career.” She holds up both her hands. “I can just see the wood shingle hanging up outside your new office now. Steve Jobz, Private Investigator. Now, how could you not trust in a name like Steve Jobz?”

  I feel a start in my heart, because you know what? My boss has herself quite the point. Steve Jobz, PI. The name does, in fact, have a nice ring to it. Be cool to work for myself too, instead of working for the man. Or in this case, a woman who also works for the man. In this case, the state.

  So how does one go about becoming a private investigator? I guess I’ll have to look into that later on.

  Henry leans into me, gives me a kiss on the cheek with those big, luscious, red lips.

  “Good luck tomorrow, Steve—Dick Tracy—Jobz,” she says.

  “You said dick,” I say.

  “Haha,” she says. “What are you, in kindergarten? Just help Miller find this creep so we can put him away for good. Make us all proud.”

  “I’ll try, Henry,” I say. “Thanks for believing in me.”

  I watch her back while she leaves the bar. When my new beer arrives, I turn back around, face the bartender. She’s young with sandy brown, shoulder-length hair. Cute. Someone I might have dated when I was younger.

  “So, how do you go about getting a Private Investigator’s license?” I ask her.

  She smiles, giggles.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe you should just ask Siri?”

  Suddenly, I’m reminded of Janice at Jack’s Diner. That I have her number stored in my pocket. That I owe her a phone call. Cute, cheerful, Janice.

  “Just ask Siri,” I whisper to myself. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Guess I have a lot to learn about being a private dick.” Then, gazing at the new beer and how lonely it looks sitting there all by itself. “How about a shot to go with the beer?” I add.

  “Coming right up . . . detective.” She smiles at me over her shoulder when she says it.

  “Detective Steve Jobz,” I say inside my mind. “That’s Jobz with a Z. I could get used to that. It’s a name I could be proud of.”

  Like a true gentleman, he opens the vehicle’s passenger-side door for her. Nervous about the possibility of being spotted, he looks over one shoulder and then the other while helping her make the high step up into the back of the large white van. The step is difficult even under normal, sober conditions. But she’s a little drunk, if not outright wasted. Just the way he planned.

  “A total lightweight,” he whispers to himself. “But then, that’s a good thing.”

  She stumbles on her way in, falling flat onto her belly in the narrow space between the front bucket seats and the long backseat. But at least she’s giggling through the entire process, climbing up onto the seat while pulling her tight skirt back down in a last-ditch effort to appear not only in control, but lady-like.

  She must be a Catholic, he thinks. First communion in a little white dress, the sacrament of Confirmation in a long white dress, now my slave in a little black dress.

  She smiles at him, lets loose with the tiniest of belches, which seems to catch even her by surprise. Her eyes go wide. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she mumbles, “Excuseeeeee . . . me.”

  At least she didn’t fart, he thinks.

  But she’s still quite cute, and her thighs look tasty in that short skirt, and so do her breasts which fill out her blouse. He can’t wait to get at them, they look so creamy and delicious.

  Bending, he climbs up into the opening. He turns in order to shut the sliding door. But that’s when he sees her. The middle-aged woman, moving across the parking lot to her car. For a brief second that seems like a full hour, they lock eyes. No words are spoken between them, but it’s as if the big bad lady is saying, “I see what you’re about to do with that young woman inside that van.”

  Even if it is none of Big Black Lady’s business, her having seen him with the girl is not a good thing. He’s been careful thus far, and the cops have no clue about him and what he’s been doing down inside his basement laboratory.

  The longest second ever in his life finally passes.

  He slams the vehicle door shut. Somehow, now that the black woman is out of sight, he’s holding onto the hope that she didn’t see him at all. That she was looking at someth
ing else entirely. Something beyond the vehicle. Still, better to be safe than sorry.

  He climbs up into the front and sets himself behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing, lover boy?” the girl utters from the back seat. “Thought we were gonna smooch for a little while.” She hiccups when she says smooch so that it comes out sounding like “Sma . . . oooch.”

  “We are, love,” he says. “Just don’t want to do it right here. Too many people. We’ll go someplace down the road that’s more private. A place where we can relax a little more, maybe shed some of these clothes. And when you’ve finished and I’ve finished . . . if you know what I mean, Jelly bean . . . I’ll drive you back to your car. Sound awesome?”

  “Awesome.” Another hiccup. “Ooopsies.”

  He fake giggles as he starts the vehicle and backs out into the lot. But he’s already sick of her cutsie shit. Cutsie fucking Catholic girl. He wants to get this one over with as fast as possible. Pulling out of the parking lot, he drives a mile north along Albany-Shaker Road until he comes to a wide-open space called The Crossings, the big, green park that’s been constructed smack dab in the middle of congested, sprawling suburbia. He turns into the park and pulls up into a far parking space that’s separated from all the other cars. Killing the engine, he climbs into the back and sets himself beside the girl.

  “Where were we, baby?” he says.

  “Smooching,” she says, hiccupping once more.

  “I know how to get rid of those,” he says, unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his pants, and exposing himself. “You just need to suck on something.”

  “Well, aren’t you the naughty one,” she says, wrapping her hand around his stiff pole.

  Leaning over him, she takes him in her mouth and starts working him over like a pro.

  So much for the innocent Catholic girl act, he thinks.

  He lies back on the seat, as if it’s a narrow bed, and slips his hand up her skirt, pulling her thong underwear down, and rubbing her gently. She likes his hand up her skirt so much, she works him faster, and faster, the sucking becomes more intense if not violent. She’s so good, he feels himself coming to that place that usually takes a while after a few drinks. But he’s swallowed his blue pill and this girl, despite her faults, is dynamite.

  When he explodes, she doesn’t move an inch, but instead takes it all in.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulls out his smartphone, snaps several pictures of her at work. The clicking noise has been turned off, so she’s entirely unaware of what he’s doing. She’s also unaware when he returns the phone to his pocket, reaches under the driver’s bucket seat, and pulls out the framing hammer he stores there as an equalizer.

  When he smacks her over the cranial cap with it, she does something strange. She lifts her head up, issues the tiniest of burps, then collapses like a bag of rags and bones.

  “Suppose, I should have waited until her mouth wasn’t around my cock,” he whispers to himself. “But what’s done is done.”

  He checks her pulse just to make sure he didn’t fuck her up entirely and kill her. When he finds a steady but slow pulse, he feels relieved.

  “She’ll live,” he whispers confidently.

  Climbing back into the driver’s seat, he restarts the engine.

  “Whaddaya say we go meet the wife,” he says. “You’re gonna love her.”

  Once I polish off my fifth beer and an equal number of shots—you don’t want to be asymmetrical when it comes to boozing—it’s time for me to head out, find some food, call it a night. The cute waitress asks me if I want her to call me a cab. But I tell her, “Nonsense, I drive dretter when I’m bunk.” Then, I tell her I’m joking, but I’m not entirely sure she believes me. Kids take things so seriously these days.

  Heading out to the parking lot, I slip behind the wheel of the Mustang, fire it up, feel the good vibrations of the recently refurbished engine. Reaching in the interior pocket on my jacket, I pull out what’s left of a joint I stored there a week or so ago, pop it between my lips. Lighting it up with the Bic, I inhale a deep drag and feel the goodness enter into my blood-stream.

  “You only live once, Jobz,” I say. I don’t know why I say it, but it feels pretty damn good to say it anyway.

  Slipping on my Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, I leave the lot, allow the warm summer air to blow against my face while I pop in an old Beach Boys cassette tape that must be going on forty years old.

  Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older . . .

  Man, Brian Wilson and that opening still gives me chills every time I hear it. It’s an optimistic song. But a song that also makes me sad. I remember playing the song over and over again with my then college sweetheart, Sheila. Remember how her thick blonde hair would blow in the Rhode Island wind back when the Mustang was my brand new used car and we were just about ready to escape from Providence College to take on the world. She as an advertising executive and me as a cop. My father had been killed and my mother nearly killed the year before in a senseless home invasion, and I wanted nothing more than to devote my life to putting dangerous criminals away. Sure, if I could, I’d have killed the creep who stabbed my parents in their bed, but that would have just landed me in jail. So, the next best thing was to become a cop.

  But my plans to serve and protect would be put off for a while. I ended up starting a semi-profitable fly fishing business on the Hudson River and most major streams that run through New York State, Western Mass, and Vermont. Everyone called me “Steve Jobz the Trout Bum” for a while, a moniker that didn’t offend me in the least. But then, Sheila had had enough of waiting around for me to get my adult act together. Before she bolted for good, however, she left me with one very important message. She accused me of running away from the pain of that home invasion.

  As I watched her fine, heart-shaped behind walk away from me for the last time, I decided then and there that I would, once and for all, hang up the fly rod, settle down, and take on honest work. Rather, the work I’d always planned on doing ever since my mom and dad were discovered in their marriage bed, one of their bodies bled out, the other nearly there.

  I would become a cop.

  I was considered old by the time I entered the force in the early two thousands. But luckily, most New York State agencies don’t have a maximum age so long as you pass the physical and mental tests (although, age restriction or no age restriction, they start cutting applicants off after forty). A local Poughkeepsie reporter even did a piece on me, since I was the oldest applicant by far in the force’s history which, when I graduated from the academy, meant I was also the oldest rookie. Turned out I proved quite the PR tool for them, especially when 911 occurred just a few months later. For a while, it all seemed like quite the joy ride.

  But the good times wouldn’t last for more than a couple of years. After I shot that teenager during a robbery in progress in 2010, and after the dismissal that followed, depression became my constant companion. My wife at the time, tried everything to pull me out of it, but all I could think about was how I’d made the right decision and still my brothers and sisters in arms . . . my friends . . . abandoned me over politics. My wife left me, naturally, and it was all I could do to keep it together.

  Suddenly, bearing the name Steve Jobz was no longer good for a laugh at the bar. It became a constant reminder of my dreadful situation. But then, I’m not one to brood for long. What is it they say these days when you have no control of your own circumstances and events?

  It is what it is.

  But while listening to the Beach Boys sing about true love while driving a Mustang convertible on a beautiful night might sound like one of those It-don’t-get-any-better-than-this experiences to some people, it can also conjure some serious crappy memories and even regret.

  Speaking of regrets, when the red and yellow McDonald’s signage appears just up ahead on the right, I decide to let the past be the past and to reward myself in real-time for a job well done today with a Big Mac and fries. />
  Damn the cholesterol, salt, and folic acid.

  I’m sure that dead old man being cleaned up for his funeral on Fitzgerald’s basement slab would tell me, go ahead and have that Big Mac. Something’s gonna get you in the end, anyway. But then, eating McDonald's after a mini-binge isn’t about philosophy. It’s about the munchies. And right now, the munchies have taken over my system like the Zombie apocalypse.

  I pull into the McDonald’s lot and speed around to the drive-thru. I kill the music, wait for the kid to ask me what I’ll have. But it’s then that something strikes my eye. Four or five vehicles up ahead in the queue for the payment window is a van. Not just any van. But a van that sports a taller than average roof. As though whoever owns it requires a taller than average ceiling for carting around special cargo. Like wedding cakes. Or dead bodies sculpted into works of art or living dolls.

  Okay, I’m sure there’s more than one tall-ceilinged cargo van on the road in Albany, New York. It’s not like I’m about to jump out of my car, run up to the driver, demand a full inspection of the van’s interior. I’m not even a real cop anymore. But then, why is my heart pounding so hard? My pulse throbbing in my temples. I might not be a cop, at least in the traditional sense, but I feel as though I’m rekindling my cop’s gut. My instinct for hunting down an elusive target. My Starsky-and-Hutchness.

  Or shit, maybe I’m just buzzed and stoned and hungry.

  The van pulls up to the food window. It suddenly occurs to me to make a note of some details. Grab the fucking license plate! the cop voice inside me screams.

  Heart in my throat, I sit up tall and try to grab a look over the rooves of the few cars that separate me from the white van. Did I mention the van is white? With some scrapes and rust stains on the corners and rear fender. I should write all this down. But I don’t have a goddamn pen or pencil.