Speak the Dead Read online

  The fourth stage was what separated the cosmetician from the artist.

  In the living, the first things Sally tended to notice were the eyes. Being a window on the soul, a sparkle in the eye expressed so much. But with the dead, the eyes are closed, and necessarily so. Shortly after death, the eyes, which are mostly water, begin to collapse. To preserve the illusion of peaceful slumber, special gel-coated discs were inserted under the eyelids before they were sealed with a needle-thin line of glue.

  With the eyes closed, it was the mouth that became the most crucial area.

  Sally had learned the reason the dead tend to look sad was because the round muscle of the mouth relaxed at death, causing the corners to droop. To correct this, Sally used more of her special adhesive to hold the lips together and then applied a colorless wax to shape and soften the line. At Madame Tussauds’ famous wax museums, the artists made the stars’ smiles fill a room, but at Paynes’ Funeral Home, Sally’s job was to simply make the dead look at peace.

  A grinning corpse could give mourners nightmares.

  The finishing touch was a dab of oyster-shell gel that Sally created herself to bring warmth and shine to the lips.

  Once the mouth was complete, Sally lightly brushed a subtle coral blue onto the natural hotspots—jaw, cheeks, and eyelids—to add shadow and depth.

  “Nearly done, Mrs. Shoumatoff,” Sally said cheerfully. “Thank you for being so patient.”

  Being careful not to overdo it, Sally lifted a ball pump and antique glass decanter from her cosmetics bag and sprayed a mist of fine powder across the surface of the dead woman’s skin. The powder was used to seal the cosmetics and flatten out any distracting shine.

  Satisfied with her work, Sally smiled down at her guest. Mrs. Shoumatoff looked ready for a night of cheek-to-cheek dancing and one last stolen kiss.

  With a contented sigh, Sally glanced up at the clock on the wall. Three a.m. It seemed later, somehow.

  After returning Mrs. Shoumatoff to cold storage, Sally decided to brew a fresh pot of coffee before wheeling out her next guest, Mr. Lombardo.

  The men never took as long as the women.

  In death as in life, she supposed.

  2

  With a wide grin splitting his face, Jersey Castle soaked in the raucous applause and ear piercing whistles from the amped-up audience as he brought his drum solo to its head-banging crescendo. Sweat flew in all directions as, with a final crash of the cymbals, he tossed a pair of hickory drumsticks into the air.

  At the front of the stage, dressed in head-to-toe black leather, chromed spikes, and face piercings, John “Johnny” Simpkins, lead singer of The Rotten Johnnys, was snarling at the crowd, the index and middle fingers of both hands raised and parted in rude defiance.

  “What ya cheering for, ya wankers?” Johnny yelled in his horribly fake British accent. “We were crap!”

  The crowd roared its approval.

  Still grinning like a fool, Jersey slid out from behind his drum kit and exited the stage. In his form-fitting, black leather pants, ripped T-shirt, and bandoleer of rusted chain, he was perspiring like a junkie in the holding tank and badly needed re-hydrating.

  “Great set, Skunk,” said Malcolm “The Mouse” Malkovich, the Rottens’ publicist and manager. He handed Jersey a large bottle of water. “I thought you were going to burst those skins.”

  Jersey gulped the water greedily, not caring as the cold liquid dribbled out of his mouth and onto his sweat-drenched chest.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” he said.

  Pouring water into his palm, Jersey splashed it across his close-cropped black hair. His stage name, Skunk, came from a natural streak of premature white that began just below the peak of his hairline before zigzagging off in a lightning bolt pattern to a spot above his right ear. It made him look like the love child of Frankenstein’s Bride and Pepé Le Pew.

  He nodded in the direction of the audience. “Most of them look underage.”

  Malkovich shouted to be heard over the crowd as Johnny continued to abuse his fans. “That’s what keeps you young. If you were playing to a load of seniors, I’d tell you to hang it up, but punk is big with the kids again. Five years ago, a tubby bastard like you wouldn’t be allowed near a stage, never mind drumming in a sold-out gig.”

  “Tubby?” Jersey protested.

  “Hey!” Malkovich held up his hands, allowing his fake diamond rings to catch the light. “Just a figure of speech.”

  “You do remember I’m licensed to carry a gun, right?”

  “Come on, lighten up, you know I love you, man.”

  Jersey looked Malkovich up and down, taking in the vintage 1970s crocodile-print suit, purple silk shirt opened to just above the navel, and a half-dozen assorted gold chains tangled in a nest of graying chest hair.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Johnny and the rest of the band—Fudge on bass, Tick on guitar—joined them in the wings.

  “You two fighting again?” Johnny swept his drenched hair out of his eyes, rivers of sweat running black from the excess dye he used to keep a firm rein on his receding youth. Comically, the gold chain that ran from a piercing on his lip to another on his left nostril had snapped in half and dangled from his nose.

  “He implied I was fat,” said Jersey.

  “You threaten to shoot him?” asked Johnny.

  “I did.”

  Johnny turned to Malkovich. “He’ll do it, you know? He may be a chubby bastard, but he’s a damn good shot. Even has a medal for it.”

  Jersey tried to make his grin look fierce. “You should remember that, too, Johnny, instead of prancing around like a Bond villain.”

  “A Bond villain?”

  Jersey grinned wider. “Yeah, Gold Booger.” He touched the side of his nose. “Look in the mirror.”

  Johnny reached up and discovered the broken chain.

  “Ah shit, when did that happen? I must have looked a right idiot.”

  “You?” Jersey’s tongue burrowed into his cheek. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Ha, Ha.” Johnny stormed off to the green room at the rear of the club.

  As the crowd took the hint that there would be no second encore, the house DJ flooded the bar with mellower go-home music. Relaxing, the four men followed Johnny’s lead. Inside a storage closet that had been converted to seat six with folding chairs, a large mirror, and a small bar fridge, the Rottens cracked open a chilled six-pack of Heineken.

  Jersey took a long pull of Dutch lager. “You know what I was thinking?”

  “How good my ass still looks in these pants?” quipped Johnny.

  “Besides that.”

  Johnny unclipped the chains from his piercings and dropped them into a purple velvet drawstring bag that had once contained a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian whisky. “Tell me?”

  “The crowd really got into God Save the Queen on the encore, so what if we tried a Rotten version of Star Spangled Banner?”

  Johnny shrugged. “The Pistols never did it, but I guess if the New York Philharmonic can play it in North Korea… I don’t see why not.”

  “We could throw in some light and sound effects,” Tick jumped in excitedly. “You know for rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air.”

  Johnny started to laugh. “And maybe a few ‘Fuck Yous’ after the line, ‘where is that band who so vauntingly swore’.”

  “Yeah, that’s the spirit,” Jersey agreed. “With the right inflection we could make it an anti-war anthem.”

  Malkovich turned pale. “Err, guys, that could get us in trouble.”

  “We’re a punk band, Mouse,” said Jersey. “Trouble is our business.”

  “No,” argued Malkovich. “Getting people to pay to watch you old farts relive some other band’s glory days is our business.”

  Johnny laughed harder. “Get us some more beers, Mouse. The boys did Rotten proud tonight.”

  3

  Sally fastened a plastic diaper around Mr.
Lombardo’s hips and began to whip up a small bowl of shaving cream.

  When she was satisfied with the consistency, she brushed the thick cream on his stubbled cheeks and chin with an old-fashioned shaving brush made from genuine badger bristles. She had found the brush along with a matching mother-of-pearl straight razor in an antique shop, and couldn’t resist the impulse to buy. It had taken her a while to first sharpen and then master the proper technique of the straight razor, but felt that her guests deserved the best for their final shave.

  Besides, even if she wasn’t perfect, the odd nick here and there didn’t really matter. Her guests didn’t bleed.

  Once Mr. Lombardo was stubble free, Sally produced a thick sponge and a bottle of liquid detergent to clean any leftover medical residue from his body and legs.

  Earlier, his widow had delivered a favorite gray herringbone suit along with a beautiful new silk tie in light turquoise that, in life, would have complemented his eyes. The suit had been dry-cleaned and pressed at Mr. Lombardo’s own shop, a downtown fixture since the early Fifties. It almost seemed a pity that Sally would have to slice the suit open in the back before the fitting, but it just never laid properly otherwise.

  Sally had just begun dabbing the sponge across Mr. Lombardo’s bird-like chest when a loud, piercing scream shattered her serenity. She spun to the small basement windows high on the rear wall that, if they had been clear rather than painted black and barred in iron, looked out on the alley behind the funeral home.

  Another high-pitched scream punctured the silence, but this time it was accompanied by the roar of a powerful engine and the ominous squeal of tires.

  Instinctively, Sally dropped her sponge, snapped up her straight razor, and ran up the concrete stairs to unlock the rear fire exit.

  A third scream was cut short by the sickening slap and crunch of metal upon flesh.

  Sally yanked open the heavy door and vanished outside.

  On the abandoned stainless steel table in the mortuary basement, detergent leaked from Sally’s sponge in tiny rivulets of phosphorescent green.

  The liquid flowed through the coarse, dry hair of Mr. Lombardo’s inert chest and spread across his sunken bleached-white stomach.

  As the lemon-scented chemical soaked into dead flesh and flowed around old surgery scars, several shimmering words became visible on the corpse’s stomach.

  The detergent didn’t reveal every letter, but anyone with a passing interest in word puzzles would have been able to decipher the two simple words scrawled in a childish hand: He knows!

  4

  Jersey was already rushing toward the heavy fire doors at the rear of the club when the woman’s third scream was cut short.

  A fresh rush of adrenaline instantly made his pulse race faster. When he burst through the exit, he was clutching a Glock 26 semi-automatic handgun. Even in uncomfortable leather pants, Jersey never left home without his sub-compact 9mm snugged in an ankle holster.

  A flare of brake lights at the end of the alley was accompanied by the ear-piercing squeal of burning rubber as a large four-door, American-made sedan took the corner at a high rate of speed and vanished from view.

  Jersey briefly considered chasing after the vehicle when a door directly across from him burst open and a petite woman in a blue lab coat rushed out.

  Her exit triggered a pair of bright security lights above the door, and in their dazzling radiance Jersey was taken aback by short, spiky hair the color of fresh snow, a button nose, and perfect Cupid’s bow lips. Most startling of all, however, were her eyes. Large with fright, they were the most vivid shade of green he had ever seen.

  Although distracted by her understated beauty, Jersey wasn’t blinded enough not to notice she was clutching an old-fashioned straight razor in an aggressive don’t-fuck-with-me grip. And lying on the ground between them was the broken, unmoving body of a well-dressed woman in a black trench coat.

  “Stay back,” Jersey shouted. His gun felt unexpectedly heavy in his hand as he aimed it mid-mass on the attractive arrival.

  The white-haired woman stared at him through those enormous eyes, her feet frozen in place, her face pale with fear.

  Jersey suddenly remembered what he looked like.

  “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “I know I don’t look it right now, but I’m a cop. Do you work in that building?”

  The woman nodded.

  “You heard the scream?” Jersey asked.

  The woman nodded again.

  “Can you put the blade away?”

  The woman looked down at the razor clutched in her hand, and her face flushed with embarrassment. She quickly snapped the razor into its handle and dropped it into a pocket of her lab coat.

  Satisfied that she wasn’t a threat, Jersey lowered his gun and moved to the crumpled form lying on the gravel road. He pressed his fingers to the victim’s neck, although the angle of her head and a spreading pool of blood suggested there was little point.

  As he expected, there was no pulse.

  When Jersey looked up, he found the attractive woman kneeling close beside him, staring in fascinated wonder at the recently deceased.

  “Her neck’s broken,” said Jersey. “Nothing we can do.”

  The woman wiped a stray tear from her eye and Jersey felt an instant, irrational attraction. He was used to the public recoiling in horror, screaming hysterically, or even vomiting at the sight of death, but this tiny stranger displayed none of that. And for someone who dealt with violent death on a daily basis, her reaction was a powerful, if not totally appropriate, aphrodisiac.

  Jersey tried to clear his mind, to focus on the dead rather than the living. It didn’t work. While the woman’s gaze was riveted on the victim, Jersey’s was focused on her. This lovely stranger was a good eight inches shorter than his own six-foot-two-inch frame, but there was a palpable heat in her fragile beauty that made his breath catch in his throat. He instantly wished they were meeting in a different place at a different time when he didn’t look like such a clown and there wasn’t a dead woman on the ground between them.

  He foolishly tried to inhale the scent of her, but all he could smell was blood, excrement, and death. Jersey forced himself to break away.

  “I’m going to call it in,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”

  The woman offered a gentle smile and simple nod that made Jersey feel light on his feet and eight-feet tall.

  Jersey rolled up his pant leg to expose an ankle wallet containing a cellphone, his detective’s shield, a credit card, and a couple of neatly folded twenties. He removed the cellphone, stood up, and made the call.

  instead of retreating, Sally inched closer to the dead woman for a better look.

  She was in her early sixties with professionally colored and styled auburn hair. Her moderately expensive periwinkle pantsuit, flowing black raincoat, and simple but elegant jewelry reflected a comfortable stage of life. Her eyes were open and clear, but her face reflected the pain she had experienced at death with lips curled in an agonized grimace.

  It was a frightening way to leave the world and not a visage, Sally believed, she would want to leave her children.

  The dead didn’t frighten her, but Sally was never around them this close to the moment of death. She wondered if she could alter the muscles before they became locked in place by rigor mortis.

  Sally reached out to touch the woman’s lips, undisturbed by the blood that pooled in her mouth and overflowed at the corners. But the instant her fingers connected with the woman’s mouth, a flash of impossibly bright light exploded in her brain.

  Sally tried to scream, but she was no longer in control of her own body. In fact, she didn’t believe she was still in her own body. She lifted a hand and squinted against the glaring light. Shadows appeared around the edges and a shape began to form.

  The sight made her gasp.

  A large car was hurtling toward her, the chrome grill of its radiator like the teeth of a hungry shark. There were two people
in the front seat, but before she could make out their faces, the car struck her legs and sent her flying over the hood.

  The pain in her shattered limbs was blinding, but before it could fully register, her head hit the windshield with a sickening crunch. Sally’s neck twisted beyond the breaking point and then her body went limp as it skidded lifelessly over the roof and crumpled to the ground behind the vanishing car.

  And then, she was somewhere else.

  The light faded and Sally found herself alive and kneeling safely beside the dead woman. The oddly dressed detective was crouched beside her, his strong hands gripping her shoulders to hold her steady. He had removed her hands from the woman’s mouth and wiped the blood from her fingers with his ridiculous T-shirt.

  Sally shivered from a cold sweat, her teeth near chattering as though she had been doused in ice water.

  “ARE you okay?” the detective asked. “You went awful pale.”

  Sally nodded numbly, her vocal chords refusing to work.

  “I asked you not to touch anything,” he said, but his concerned tone betrayed no anger. He sighed. “Do you need a bottle of water or something?”

  Sally swallowed. “Sure.” Her voice was much softer than she planned.

  The detective turned toward the club just as another leather-clad punk rocker opened the door and stuck his head out, curious.

  “Get me some water, will you, Johnny?” the detective called.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Hit and run. Get me water.”

  “Okay, sure thing.”

  Johnny disappeared inside the club.

  “Come on.” The detective lifted Sally to her feet. “There’re a couple crates we can sit on while we wait for the lights and sirens brigade.”

  Sally allowed herself to be escorted across the alley to a pile of wooden beer crates stacked outside the nightclub.

  She hugged herself as she sat on an overturned crate, while the detective made himself comfortable on another. He tilted his chin to indicate the building across the alley.

  “That’s a funeral home, right?” he asked.