"The Lively Corpse" by Garon E. Whited

                The night sky drizzled like a wino sneezing down your collar—wet, cold, and stinking.  The factory smoke blew in on an ugly wind and made the mist into a grey mud in the air.  The first faint traces of frost were creeping in on the edges of the window, a promise of a bone-breaking cold and an early winter in the big city.

                I poured myself another shot of bourbon and turned the collar on my overcoat up.

                The cold didn’t bother me much.  I used to walk a beat in worse weather.  Twelve years I spent on the Chicago police force.  Twleve of the best years of my life.  Now I’ve got a small pension from being shot—and enough money to pour one.  So here I am in a small office with “Gideon Frost” on the door and a pair of letters on the glass that say I’m allowed to not only drink ‘em, but fire ‘em and to stop ‘em.

                That’s right, I’m a private dick—and no smart remarks.

                I haven’t been in this line of work long.  Couple of years.  Just long enough to know how ugly it is.  Divorces looking for evidence.  Affairs and torrid romance.  Occasionally the missing lover or kid.

                But, every so often . . . every once in a while . . . something unusual walks in my door.  I get all the weirdness of this town.  Like the time the parrot came in through the window and—well, maybe I’ll tell you about it later.

I knew they were trouble the moment the door opened.  The second thing I noticed was her; she had legs long enough to wrap around a man’s hips twice, and the rest of her could make him like it.  Everything she needed, she had, in all the right amounts and in all the right places, packed neatly into a bundle so hot that my window frost started to steam.  She smiled at me with lips as red as my own blood and with teeth so white and perfect they belonged on a dentist’s shelf.  She was wearing black—and not a lot of black, either.  There was only enough to of it wrap around her once, and not entirely so.  The dress was tighter than a sailor on the second day of shore leave, and what it didn’t reveal, it outlined in detail.

                The first thing I noticed was her boyfriend.  He was the one holding the gat.  Nice one, too; matte black, .45 caliber automatic—or roughly the size of a rocket launcher, since it was pointed at me.  It didn’t waver in the slightest, just came around the edge of the door like it was on a track and looked me in the eye, followed by the man himself—tall, dark, pale, wearing a dark suit and darker glasses, hair slicked back like a drowned cat.

                I didn’t say anything, just waited.

                They came on in as though I had invited them and the thin guy shut the door with one foot.

                “Your hands, Mister Frost.  Please bring them into view.”

                I shrugged.  “Okay.”

                I brought both hands up from behind the desk, the .45 in my right and the .38 in my left, both pointed in their direction—.45 for the guy, .38 for the dame.  He didn’t seem happy about it.  She smiled more, like I’d just made a joke that she particularly liked.

                “Put the guns down, Mister Frost.”

                “Have a seat,” I suggested.  “We can have a staring contest and discuss the weather.  Or you can put your gun away, I’ll put mine away, we can all have a drink and talk business.  Your other options include starting a gunfight in a very small room or trying to get out that door without getting shot as many times as I can manage.  What’ll it be?”

                He stared at me from behind the dark glasses, as though he couldn’t quite believe what I was saying.  Outside, there was a skating, skidding sound as a car braked to round the turn onto Grand in the wet; I always expect a crash to follow, but usually there isn’t.  Sometimes someone isn’t so lucky.

                Tonight, there was luck.

                He lifted his weapon, pointing it at the ceiling, and lowered the hammer.  He flashed me a smile so short it could have been used to measure his sense of humor.  Then he put it into his belt at his back.  I expected him to have a shoulder holster, what with the expensive suit.

                “Won’t you please both sit down?” I asked, and put the .45 down on the desk.  The .38 went back into the holster mounted under my center drawer.

                They sat.  I found that I was watching her move; it was like watching a cat that has decided to ignore your little foibles and allow you to pet it.

                “Drink?”

                “Not right now,” the guy said, still not happy.  I’d left the gun on the desk pointed at him.  He could deal with it.

                “Okay.  What’s on your mind?”

                “We understand that you find people.”

                “Sometimes.”

                “We want you to find someone.”

                “I figured.  Who?”

                “We don’t know.  But we can provide you with a description of him.”

                “Odd.  But okay.  Why do you want to find him?”

                “Is that properly any of your concern?”

                “Yes.”

                We waited for several heartbeats.  He looked at me.  I looked at him.  I could feel the frost creeping back onto my windowpane.

                “Gentlemen,” the lady said, and I found I’d lost my staring contest.  That never happens; I can focus on a brick in the wall and keep that stare until it cracks.  I’ve done it before to people I was questioning; it’s unnerving, almost unnatural, and nobody stands up to it for long.  I shifted to glance at her, then changed focus to look at them both. 

                “I think,” she continued, “that Mister Frost feels he might need to know.  Why is that, Mister Frost?”

                “Because if I know why you want him, it may clue me into where to start looking for him.  I don’t start hunting for ex-butlers on skid row; I don’t ask the Hall of Records for information on a hobo.”

                The man nodded, grudgingly.  “You could have just told me that,” he hissed.  Yes, I know there are no sibilants in the phrase; he hissed it just the same.

                “But I don’t like it when you question me,” I replied.  “It says to me that you don’t trust my judgement.  It says to me that you don’t think I know what I’m doing.  It pisses me off.”

                “Please accept our apologies,” she said, smiling again.  I could swear that she turned the charm on, like a switch.  Either she was really, truly pleased with me or she was a hell of an actress.  In my line of work, I’ve met dames who were either, but never both.  Usually the second; I make people about as comfortable as having an attack dog sniff at you.

                “Okay.  So what do you want this guy for?”

                The pale guy sniffed.  It was one of those prissy butler sniffs, the kind that they make when you’ve neglected to take off your overcoat and are dripping slightly on a four-thousand-dollar carpet from Peking.

                “I do not think we need this gorilla,” he said, in that perfect prissy butler tone.  All he needed was the outfit and maybe a monocle and he’d have fit right in to any number of houses up on Lakeside.

                “We need you,” she said, ignoring him, “to find the man who murdered me.”

I gave that all due consideration.  This promised to be sticky, like gum on the bottom of your shoe on a hot day—something impossible to deal with completely, something that would take a lot of time and effort and more than a little aggravation.

“That,” I replied, “will cost you.”

“I can afford to pay handsomely.”

“Then you’ve got the wrong guy,” I replied, one of my sparkling rejoinders.  I do that when I’m flustered; I’ve never been hired by such a lively-looking corpse.  Or any corpse, for that matter. 

“Come, come, Mr. Frost.  How much will it cost to have you on this case?”

“Standard scale.  Sixty a day, plus expenses.”

The butler—I thought of him as a butler, what with the sniff and tone—started up again.  “And when do you think you will have results?”

I shrugged.  “Hell if I know.  But I’ll keep looking until I find him or she decides she doesn’t want me to.”  I figured the dame was the one who would call this shot; butler-boy was just oozing “flunky.”

“I presume,” he went on, “that daily progress reports will be made.”

“Let me see if I get this straight.  She wants me to find the man who murdered her.  You can tell me what he looks like.  And you want daily progress reports on how I’m doing with that.  Buddy, one of us is cracked in the head, and my skull is half Irish; you can’t break it with anything less than a baseball bat.”

He flushed an ugly shade of purple.  “Let me kill this fool and be done with him.  There are others who will be less trouble.”  He spoke to her, not to me, and I picked up my .45 again.

“Hush,” she replied.  Then, to me, “Mr. Frost, please do not be alarmed.  There are several private investigators who would be willing to take this case without questioning me.”

“I’m not one of them.”

She nodded.  “Just so.  And there are others who would be boggled as my assertion that I have been murdered and not take the case.  In either instance, they would achieve little in the way of results.  But you, Mr. Frost, have a history of doing the unthinkable:  believing what you see.”

I felt a cold sensation crawl down my spine.  It wasn’t the weather, either; I spend a lot of time in front of that window, between cases, and it doesn’t have a draft anymore.

“Such as?” I asked, quietly.

“You were hired to find Alonzo Rodriguez, two years ago.”

I remembered.  Rodriguez had been a hunter, spent a lot of time up in the hills.  Loved tramping around with a big-game rifle and blowing away anything that moved.  Then, one day, he orders up six boxes of bullets for his H&H .500 Nitro Express . . . silver bullets.  And off he goes into the hills, never comes back.

“Yeah.”

“You found his bones, did you not?”

They were chewed on and stripped clean.  I remembered.

“Yeah.  And?”

She smiled.  I swallowed.  I hated it.  She knew things about me and I was on the defensive.  I had to find a way to take charge, take the initiative again.

“What killed him, Mr. Frost?”

“I wasn’t hired to find that out.  Just to find him.”

“But you know.”

I thought unkind words at her.  Yes, I did know.  And I kept it to myself; I don’t feel like being in a padded cell.

Or hunted down, for that matter.  There’s a reason the .38 has silver bullets.

“Yeah, I know.  And before this goes any further, how long have you been dead?”

She smiled, almost as though I’d scored a point.  I didn’t see fangs, though. “Nearly six weeks.”

“That would explain why you’re dead,” I replied.  She caught my eye and held it; I met her look and didn’t smile an inch.  Her face changed.  Her amused expression remained, but it turned into an icy mask, hiding what she was thinking.

“Do you have a problem with a dead client?” she asked, sounding casual.  Far, far too casual.  Her butler was all sorts of tense, watching me, watching the gun.  I put my hand on the .38, just in case.

“Nope.  You’re the one with the money and the murderer.  Keep laughing boy here on his leash—and my blood out of your mouth—and you’ve got a deal.”

Butler-boy rose to his feet, face twisted in fury, screaming, “How did you know?” while his ladyfriend just laughed, like beer bottles breaking on an icy sidewalk.

I kept the .45 pointed at his chest; he didn’t look like he was in control.

“I didn’t,” I admitted.  “I just made a remark.  But now I’ll remember.”

He shrieked at me and went for his gun.  So I shot him.  Just once, in the shoulder, to keep him from getting the piece out.  He staggered back over the chair, knocking it over, tripping, landing heavily and with a cry of pain.

“The chair will be an expense,” I observed.

She nodded.  “Justin,” she snapped.  “Go downstairs and wait in the car.”

He struggled to his knees, good hand on the remains of the chair, rising.  There was blood on his shirt and jacket.

“Mistress, this—“ he began, gasping.

“Now.”

He slunk out of my office without a word or backward glance, clutching at his shoulder.

She settled herself more comfortably and very entertainingly in my remaining chair and smiled at me, slightly.

“Now, what do you need to know?”