The Wrong Dead Guy

  “Good point. Sorry. Have you ever seen one?”

  Vargas shrugged. “Just pictures. They look a bit like a lamprey someone turned inside out a million years ago and they’re still holding a grudge.”

  Zulawski made a face like he’d swallowed what he thought was Turkish Delight and then realized it was jellyfish. “It sounds horrible.”

  “One might even say . . .”

  Zulawski nodded. “I know. Abysmal.”

  “Exactly,” said Vargas triumphantly.

  Zulawski stuck a finger into the box with the squid. “I suppose the mice are no stranger than anything else down here. You know the mirror that shows you your true self, but always being dragged away by dingoes?”

  “Yes. Who would invent something like that?”

  “I don’t know, but last night one of the dingoes tried to bite me.”

  Vargas brought his fist down on his desk lightly so as not to disturb the mice. “I told you not to go back there without adequate protection.”

  Zulawski looked down at the floor. “Doggie treats and a big stick. I know.”

  “Maybe now you’ll listen to me.”

  “Ow.”

  “What happened?”

  Zulawski held up a finger. “The squid bit me.”

  “They are mighty hunters of the deep,” said Vargas.

  “If it does that again, it will be a mighty hunter in my lunch,” said Zulawski crossly.

  “Where do you think we should keep it?”

  “It’s a desk squid. I suppose we should—”

  “Not it,” said Vargas quickly.

  “Fine,” Zulawski said, shoulders slumping. “I’ll keep it in mine.” He got up and put on a fencing mask and hockey pads. Picking up a chisel on the end of a collapsible pole, he said, “I’m going back to clean the haunted toaster oven.”

  “Don’t upset it,” said Vargas. “I brought pizza rolls and I don’t want them getting burned.”

  “I’ll be careful,” said Zulawski, his voice muffled by the fencing mask.

  Vargas started taking the mice out of the box. “And put the gargoyles and dingo mirror and anything else with teeth on a higher shelf. I’m releasing the mice.”

  Zulawski, who’d been heading to the back of the office, stopped. “Why am I always the one on gruesomes duty?”

  “You’re right. I’ll do it,” said Vargas, setting the mice on the floor. They scurried away in all directions. “But you have to milk the mole people.”

  Zulawski took off the mask and pads. “All these years and no one has ever once requested mole milk.”

  “I know. But it’s our duty.”

  “True,” said Zulawski. “And knowing that someone will be down here soon makes it all easier.”

  Vargas pulled on the hockey pads. “And then the parcel will be someone else’s problem.”

  Zulawski started to follow him into the back.

  “Don’t forget ear protection,” said Vargas. “The mole people are screamers.”

  Zulawski went back to his desk. “Thanks, Vargas. If I’m stuck down here, I’m glad it’s with you.”

  “Ditto,” said Vargas.

  Armored and chisel in hand, he walked into the shadowy recesses of the storeroom. Zulawski followed with ballistic earmuffs in one hand and a clean bucket in the other. Just another day at a, now, much happier office.

  24

  Sheriff Wayne Jr. strutted into the back office in a tailored Stars and Stripes cowboy suit that would make Captain America look like a commie stooge. Donna was signing invoices. She set down her pen with great care and looked him over.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said.

  Sheriff Wayne did a turn like a model on a catwalk and shot out his hands. “What do you think?”

  Donna looked down at the pile of invoices. It wasn’t just that the car lot cost a fortune to keep open, but Sheriff Wayne was actually losing money on the stolen cars. What kind of lame-ass outlaw loses money on hot cars? Donna took a deep breath. She’d chosen to be with a manic little boy when she’d left Roy for Sheriff Wayne, and now she had to live with that decision. She wondered if she could explain that to their creditors.

  You see, I made certain life choices and I would love to have paid the electricity bill this month, but the sheriff needed neon underwear to go with his neon Frye boots or he might have looked silly on the playground with the other children. I’m sure you understand.

  “You’re making another commercial?” she said. “I swear, with the money you’ve spent on those things, you could have made a whole movie.”

  Sheriff Wayne cleared away the papers and sat on the edge of the desk. “With my Gary Cooper good looks, maybe I should.”

  Donna looked up at him. “You look like Gary Cooper like I look like Princess Di.”

  He put a hand under her chin. “You always look like a princess to me, darlin’.”

  “Thanks. But you still look more like Alice Cooper than Gary Cooper.”

  He jumped up. “Nonsense. We can do it in black and white like High Noon. My old enemies—high prices, lousy financing, and no guarantees—come back to town. I try to get the other car dealers to stand up with me, but they turn chickenshit and run, so I have to face the gang down myself. And I blast them all to Kingdom Come!”

  “Oh my God. You’re serious.” For a brief second, she wondered which would pay off bigger, shooting him or burning the whole place to the ground.

  “Why not? That piece of shit Johnny Newman did a whole series of ads like Casablanca.”

  “Yeah, and he looked like Howdy Doody in his dad’s overcoat.”

  “And Ed Clay did one like King Kong.”

  “’Cause the big ape looks the part. Christ, that guy is hairier than gorilla shaving day at the monkey house.”

  “The bastard is a tad Neanderthal,” said Sheriff Wayne. A thought crossed the desert of his mind like a stray tumbleweed. “Did Ed ever bother you?”

  Donna looked away. “Once, a long time ago. It was a New Year’s party over at Zoom City. It was no big deal.”

  Sheriff Wayne sat back down on the desk. “I wonder if he knows what a tire iron tastes like? Maybe I should send some boys over to show him.”

  Donna immediately forgot about shooting Sheriff Wayne. “You’d do that for me?” she said. If it came down to it, she could burn the place and make it look like an electrical fire.

  “Bash old Fred Flintstone around? Hell, I’d do that just to see if I could knock some of the ugly off him.”

  “You’re so sweet.” Donna looked out the office window. “I think your boyfriend is here.”

  Sheriff Wayne turned. “Chris? I don’t see him.”

  “He’s over talking to the guy with the eagle.”

  Sheriff Wayne looked at his watch. “That little art school faggot is late. Do you have any idea how much it costs an hour to rent an eagle?”

  Donna nodded at the suit. “How much did that Uncle Sam onesie cost?”

  Sheriff Wayne put his thumbs under his lapels. “This is an investment. I can wear it every July Fourth. Presidents’ Day. Christmas.”

  “Christmas?”

  “Santa is a patriot first and toymaker second. How do you not know that?”

  Donna up smiled at him. “I’m not a genius like you.”

  “Maybe I ought to do an Einstein ad,” said Sheriff Wayne thoughtfully.

  “Hotrod Al. E equals MC squared,” said Donna, holding up a hand like she was painting in the air. “M for low mileage and C for even lower cost.”

  “Holy shit balls. That could work. Who’s the genius now?”

  Donna pointed to herself. “That would be me.” Okay. She’d pay what bills she could this month, lose the rest, and save the fire for a less romantic moment.

  “But Einstein did not have your ass,” Sheriff Wayne.

  “Too bad for Mrs. Einstein.”

  “Damn straight.” Sheriff Wayne took off his hat and smoothed down his hair in the office mirro
r. “Okay, I’ve got to go and make some movie magic.”

  “Knock ’em dead, Bogey,” said Donna.

  “I’m going to knock someone dead if he makes me do more than three takes today.”

  Donna picked up her pen. “I’ll keep the ice ready for your knuckles.”

  She blew Sheriff Wayne a kiss. He caught it and put it in his pocket. Then he checked his pistols and went out to the lot.

  “Okay. Everyone fan out and look for the llama,” said Tyler.

  They’d only arrived at the car lot a couple of minutes earlier and he was already taking command. Heather squeezed in next to him. She couldn’t be happier. Leave it to her idiot brother to ruin the moment by opening his stupid mouth.

  “What are we planning to do if we find it?” said Dylan. “It’s not exactly a cageful of mice.”

  “Speaking of which, how are the mice doing?” said Sarah.

  “They’re fine,” said Brad, trying to sound casual. It would have been more convincing if his throat hadn’t closed up on the word fine.

  Warren held up two fingers to make a cross. “Your landlord didn’t send Super Jesus over to purge the demon rats?”

  “Nope. They’re doing fine. However, there’s a lot more of them now. I wouldn’t mind handing a few off to people.”

  “One thing at a time,” said Tyler. “Today’s mission is entirely llama-oriented.”

  “Okay, but I kind of feel like whenever I bring up the idea of someone else taking the mice, the subject changes.”

  “Who wants to get ice cream?”

  “Shut up, Warren,” said Tyler. He turned back to Brad. “We’ll discuss your situation immediately after we’ve secured the llama.”

  “Back to my question, what do we do when we find it?” said Dylan.

  Dylan looked out over the lot like he was searching for the source of the Nile. “Let’s rendezvous back right here in twenty minutes. In the meantime, try to look like you’re really thinking about buying a car.”

  “Who’d sell Warren a car?” said Sarah. “He’d just try to eat it.”

  Warren smiled. “It’s true.”

  “Just do your best,” said Tyler.

  “All these cars look new,” said Linda. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?”

  “Of course I’m sure we’re at the right place. I printed out the directions from Google,” said Heather. She took a piece of paper from her back pocket and unfolded it.

  Dylan snatched it out of her hand and looked it over. “Let me see.”

  “Dick,” she said.

  He folded the paper and handed it back to her. “You took us to Detective Jesse’s. We want to be at Sheriff Wayne’s.”

  “Sheriff Wayne Junior.”

  “Shut up, Warren.”

  “So, this isn’t the guy with the camel?” said Heather.

  “Llama,” said Brad.

  “Actually, they’re in the same family,” said Linda.

  “Wouldn’t it be awesome if Detective Jesse had a camel and a llama?” said Dylan. “Then this wouldn’t be a complete goddamn waste of time.”

  Tyler put a finger to his lips for silence. “Calm down. We’ve had bigger setbacks. Now, does anyone know where Sheriff Wayne is?”

  “Sheriff Wayne Junior.”

  “Shut up, Warren.”

  Sarah held up her phone. “I’ve got it.”

  A smiling salesman in a neat blue shirt and gold tie with money signs on it came over. “Hi. Can I help you folks?”

  “We’re spotted,” said Brad.

  “They’re onto us,” said Dylan.

  “Onto what?” said Tyler. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “Run!” shouted Heather.

  They ran back to Dylan’s Land Rover and fishtailed out of the parking lot.

  “Why did we just do that?” said Linda.

  “We panicked,” said Brad.

  “Heather panicked,” said Sarah.

  Heather turned around in her seat. “You ran, too!”

  “No, I didn’t. I was just swept up in the wake of your fat ass.”

  Silence fell on the car like a skydiving rhinoceros that didn’t realize until too late that without opposable thumbs it couldn’t pull the rip cord.

  “Um, Sarah. Can you give me the directions to Sheriff Wayne’s?” said Dylan.

  “Sheriff Wayne Junior,” said Warren.

  “Turn left up here.”

  It was a very solemn ride.

  It took another forty-five minutes for the crew to set up the lights and camera before they could begin shooting the commercial.

  Sheriff Wayne looked impatiently at his watch. “Let’s go, Fred Zinnemann. I haven’t got all day.”

  Chris had come off back-to-back shoots for Thar She Blows 1 and 2 (rather loose porn interpretations of Moby-Dick, with Dixie Calhoun as a sexy, but murderous she-whale) and he was not in the mood for this cowboy bullshit. “Who?” he said, a bit more testily than he intended.

  “Fred Zinnemann,” said Sheriff Wayne. “He directed High Noon.”

  All the speed Chris had taken to get through the overnight shoot had left his brain active but somewhat nonlinear. He tried to make words come out of his mouth, but as soon as he got hold of a few, they skittered away like hyperactive gerbils.

  Sheriff Wayne closed in on Chris. “You call yourself a filmmaker and you don’t know the greatest western in cinematic history?”

  Finally, the words got together and came shooting out of Chris’s mouth all at once. “I think you’ll find that most critics consider Once Upon a Time in the West to be—”

  Sheriff Wayne grabbed Chris’s shoulder and jammed a finger in his face. “Mention that Italian piece of dog shit one more time and I’ll chop you up and personally feed you to this magnificent animal that’s costing me a goddam fortune every second you waste with not knowing about High Noon.”

  Chris felt something very strange. All the speed had amped up his system to the point of aggression, and it waged a fierce battle with his lifelong and innate fear of all physical confrontation. He wasn’t exactly a coward, but he had recently left a Slayer concert when he refused a passing joint and two girls called him a “little bitch.”

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “Look, I’ll rent High Noon and we can talk about it the next time we shoot.”

  “Next time? Son, I have grave doubts about your making it through this time.”

  Chris retreated to his video monitor. “Maybe we should get started.”

  “That would be awfully fucking nice,” said Sheriff Wayne.

  Across the parking lot, Donna, who couldn’t stand looking at the accusing faces of invoices anymore, had come out to do a little sales work. She escorted an older couple and their little rat dog around the lot.

  “Have you decided on a model you like?” she said.

  “Something big. I like legroom,” said Walter, the older man. He reminded Donna a little bit of Roy. That man scowled like he thought it would make his dong grow six inches.

  “We talked about this,” said the woman. Her name was Doris. “It’s not 1965 anymore. The kind of cars you like go too fast and are too big. We’ll never find parking.”

  Walter made a growling sound in the back of his throat. “A big car, you don’t want to park anyway. You just drive until you or it dies.”

  Doris put a hand on Donna’s arm. The little dog yapped. “Something small. Something compact.”

  “Like the damned dog,” said Walter.

  “It’s very cute,” said Donna.

  “I wanted a husky. Instead we got a tribble.”

  “She’s a teddy-bear Pomeranian,” said Doris.

  “I can see that she likes you,” said Donna.

  “Thank you. Now, about the car?”

  They walked across the lot, moving from sedans to compacts.

  “Nothing Japanese,” said Walter. “I don’t trust them.”

  Doris scowled back at him. “He got sick at a Benihana’s a few years back
. He blames the food, but he doesn’t talk about the eight beers he had before dinner.”

  “I’ve been drinking beer my whole life. It was the food.”

  Visions of an electrical fire were coming back to Donna.

  Doris can live, but if I could figure out how to get Walter to hold a can of high-test next to a spark, I’d burn down the whole San Fernando Valley.

  “We have a large selection of European compacts,” she said.

  Doris looked back at her husband. “See? European. Just like James Bond.”

  “You have any compact Aston Martins?”

  “I don’t know if they make a compact,” said Donna.

  “There goes that theory,” he said.

  “Let me show you what we do have.”

  “Thank you, dear,” said Doris. “Come on, grumpy bear.”

  Donna smiled and ushered the couple along, wishing she had a flamethrower or at least some oily rags for Walter to hold near a bonfire.

  Dylan parked his Land Rover and the group piled out. This time they were careful to keep low and prowl through the car lot using vans and pickup trucks as cover.

  “All right. Same plan as before,” said Tyler. “Fan out and look for the llama.”

  Brad said, “It just occurred to me, I mean we were so worked up about having a target—”

  “You mean having a chance to friendmancipate,” said Linda.

  “Sorry. How do we know he still has the llama? It was just a commercial. Maybe he just only had it for a couple of days.”

  “Still, we should look around. Even if the llama is gone, he might be oppressing another animals,” said Tyler.

  “Beings,” said Linda.

  “Right. Other beings.”

  Sarah pointed at a red, white, and blue figure halfway across the lot. “Is that him? It looks like he’s shooting another commercial.”

  “He has a bald eagle,” said Linda.

  “They’re endangered,” said Heather.

  “The bastard,” said Tyler.

  “I hear they taste like chicken.”

  “Shut up, Warren.”

  “Should we try to grab it?” said Sarah.

  “An eagle?” said Brad. “It will claw your face off.”

  “And Sheriff Wayne Junior,” said Dylan, cutting off Warren, “is wearing guns.”