“Stuff,” said Neuland. “Random nature stuff.”

  “Exactly. Random nature stuff.”

  “It’s the price of growing up a city kid.”

  Ford said, “I should have bought a book on trees before we left New York.”

  “You can get one in LA.”

  “Speaking of LA…”

  “Yes. Everyone will know what happened in New York,” said Neuland. “Do you think there will be guns waiting for us?”

  “It’s true that they’ll know, but I don’t know anyone in LA who’s particularly fond of Garrick. Do you?”

  “No. But the local outfits might object to the overall nature of our actions.”

  “If no one will give us work, then we’ll move on,” said Ford.

  “San Francisco?”

  “Everybody loves us in San Francisco.”

  “But let’s check out LA first,” said Neuland. “Get a feel for where our reputation stands. If we need to, maybe take a job or two at a reduced rate. Just to show we’re team players.”

  Ford was eating a steak with green beans and mashed potatoes. Neuland hadn’t eaten in years, but he appreciated the smell of it even if the sight of the living shoveling food into their mouths was unpleasant. He didn’t order any food, but had a cup of black coffee in front of him just to fit in. Every now and then he took small sips, knowing he’d vomit it all up when they got back to the cabin.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Ford. “Play it cool. Get the lay of the land. Besides, we haven’t been in LA in years. Maybe we can take in the sights.”

  Neuland took a sip of his coffee and said, “I’m going back to the cabin. That guy keeps looking at me funny.”

  “A cop?” said Ford, concern in his voice.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Besides, I want to get this stuff out of my stomach. I’ll see you back there.”

  “Okay. I won’t be long. Just try to relax. We’re both a little on edge after last night.”

  Neuland nodded and left the dining car.

  Back in the cabin, he vomited easily into the toilet and flushed the coffee away. Sitting on his bunk, he took a big gulp from a bottle of goofer juice, the only thing he consumed. It was a combination of blood, holy water, soil from a grave in consecrated ground, and a dozen other ingredients that the brewers held secret. The juice kept Neuland sharp, so he could do his job well, and not become his greatest fear—just another shambling pile of undead bones, as useless as a skid row wino.

  Ford came back to the cabin a few minutes later, kicked off his shoes, and settled into his bunk. He said, “You feeling any better?”

  “About what?”

  “Getting out of the dining car. I checked around before I came back. The crowd looked like the usual bored dummies to me.”

  “Good. Maybe I was just a little paranoid.”

  “It’ll be good to have a couple of days to unwind.”

  “It might be nice to go to the beach when we get to LA,” said Neuland. “I haven’t seen the ocean in years.”

  “I’d like that. The beach. Let’s do that.”

  Ford settled back in his bunk with a camera magazine and read about the new models coming out. Neuland read a Patricia Highsmith novel.

  Around ten, there was a light knock on their door. The two men looked at each other. Neuland got up and said, “Who is it?”

  “A friend with a business proposition.”

  It was a man’s voice, low and rumbling.

  Neuland looked back at Ford, who shook his head. “We’re on vacation,” said Neuland. “You must be looking for someone else.”

  The voice came again. “Only if there’s another dead man on this train.”

  Neuland opened the door and a man pushed past him into the small cabin. Though his voice had been deep and large through the door, he wasn’t that big. He wore a wrinkled suit jacket and his thin hair was a mess. Someone who didn’t know how to travel well, thought Neuland. Still, the man had something going for him. He knew what Neuland was.

  The stranger spoke again. “My name is Jake Wetton. I’m a private investigator from Pasadena and I know one of you is a dodo.” He looked at Neuland. “You, to be exact.”

  “What do you want, Jake Wetton, P-fucking-I?” said Ford.

  “I’ll tell you, but first you both need to know that I called my partner and told him about what I’m doing. If anything happens to me, he’ll alert the authorities who deal with things like your friend.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Jake looked from one man to the other and laughed. “Money, you asshole. Cash now or my partner calls the garbage squad. You have three minutes to hand it over.”

  “How much do you want?” said Neuland.

  “All of it. Everything you have.” He looked at Neuland. “Something like you, what do you need money for? If you have money it means you took it from a living person. Someone who deserved it.”

  “What about me?” said Ford. “I’m alive.”

  “True, but fuck you for throwing in with a goddamn ghoul. Now show me some cash. You have about two minutes left.”

  “Two minutes,” said Neuland.

  Ford shook his head. “That’s not very long.”

  “Damn right,” said Wetton. “Now let’s see it.”

  Ford stood from his bunk. He said, “Let me make a counteroffer,” and punched Wetton in the jaw. The man dropped to his knees, blood streaming from a split lip. Ford hit him again and knocked the man unconscious. Neuland got his bottle of goofer juice and poured some into Wetton’s mouth. The man sputtered but kept it down. He came to a moment later and pulled himself up from the floor.

  “That was a big mistake,” he said. “You’re both fucked now.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ford.

  Neuland held out his phone. “No bars,” he said.

  “No bars on mine either,” said Ford. “And it’s been that way most of the day.”

  “So, you were lying. You didn’t call anyone.”

  Wetton wobbled on his feet. He wiped at his bleeding mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, then made a face and spit on the floor.

  “Got a funny taste in your mouth?” said Ford. “It’s called goofer juice.”

  Wetton went pale. “You didn’t.”

  “He didn’t,” said Neuland. “I did. You might want to go lie down. You have about twelve hours before it takes effect.”

  “Until you die,” said Ford. “And then wake up.”

  “And are like me,” said Neuland.

  Wetton slumped against the wall. “You’re lying.”

  “Wait and see.”

  “I’m a ghoul,” whispered Wetton.

  “Not yet. But soon.”

  He looked at Neuland. “Filthy baby eater.”

  Ford laughed and said, “Yeah. Babies. Cats and dogs, too.”

  “And PIs,” said Neuland. “You can’t help the hunger. It grows and grows. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. You’re just another thing now.”

  “Oh god,” said Wetton. “Mother Mary.”

  He pushed his way out of the cabin, tripped and fell in the corridor that ran the length of the train car. “Mother Mary protect me,” he said, and stumbled back toward the dining car.

  Neuland shut the cabin door. “Do you think we should go after him?”

  Ford lay back on his cot. “You heard him. A nice Catholic boy like that. He’ll do the right thing.”

  Neuland sat and slowly said, “Baby eater.”

  Ford gave him a sympathetic look. “The shit some people will believe.”

  Neuland got up and went into the little bathroom to throw water on his face, still weighing whether he should go after Wetton and finish him. But a moment later came the sound of a muffled explosion. He went out and looked at his partner. Even on a noisy train, both men recognized the sound of a gunshot.

  Ford smiled. “What did I tell you? He handled it himself.”

  “Idiot,” said Neuland.

  “Completely.”

  “One more reason I’m glad we’re heading west.”

  “You mean how there are too many second-rate randos with big ideas back home?” said Ford.

  “Big ideas and big guns. I need to get away from it for a while.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Neuland wiped his face on a towel and scowled as something occurred to him. He went to his bunk and said, “What if he had a satellite phone? He might have called his partner after all.”

  Ford thought about it. “He was a mess. Small time. A guy like that doesn’t have a satellite phone.”

  “Maybe he’s a gadget freak like some people.” Neuland nodded toward Ford’s camera magazine. “I should have followed him to his cabin to be sure.”

  “If he had a satellite phone he would have said so. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Maybe,” said Neuland.

  Both men sat up the rest of the night with their guns nearby. Eventually the train stopped, and they heard the sound of police in the car examining Wetton’s room and removing the body. No one came to their cabin. In the morning, Ford went to the dining car, ate a quick breakfast, and came back. Neuland was still waiting with his pistol handy.

  Ford lay down on his bunk and said, “Relax. It’s over.”

  Neuland put his gun under his pillow and lay down too.

  Wetton reminded him of the men—it was always men and mostly from the city—who would come to the swamp where he’d spent so many years in servitude. The men all wanted the same thing: secrets. Secrets to power. Secrets to riches. Secrets to immortality. They would offer mansions, exotic cars, women—even children. Whatever they thought of as valuable. But the swamp people could spot a card shark or thief as easily as a buzzard spots a carrion meal. The lucky strangers got away with their lives, but often missing an eye or some fingers because there was powerful magic in those things. The unlucky men joined Neuland in his numb servitude. He never felt sorry for a single one of them.

  Ford slept and Neuland willed himself into a fugue state, but neither man really rested. Both awoke bitter that what was supposed to have been a pleasant trip had been completely spoiled.

  3

  It walked through the parlor of the old house, though few would consider what it did truly walking. It oozed on its belly and dragged the rest of itself on many short legs, like some huge, gelatinous insect. The tube of its mouth—lined with both teeth and slits, like that of a baleen whale—protruded as it moved, sucking mice and spiders into its enormous belly. It even lapped dust with its long tongue because it could sustain itself on mere filth. No one could see it unless it wanted to be seen, but there had been few enough people in the house over the last few years for it to remember the pleasure of showing its form. So, it remained in a state of ghostly transparency, its presence marked only by its tiny footprints on the dirty floor and the fact that the house remained virtually vermin free even though it had been empty for many years. Few things outside dared to come in, and nothing caught inside ever got out.

  Still, it wasn’t content.

  It longed for more stimulation and better food. It slept for months at a time, so that seasons seemed to pass by in a single day. It remembered when people used to live in the house, and how fun it had been to play with them because they were so soft and pink and tasty. It would appear before them and then disappear a moment later. There were shrieks. Wide-eyed sprints down dark halls before they tumbled down the stairs. The crunch of their bones. It missed the smell and the taste of humanity. But here it was, trapped like a roach within the house’s whitewashed walls. It would have wept if it had eyes. Properly moaned if it could. The best it could muster in its sorrow was a slurping, gurgling trill through its long-tubed mouth that reminded it of the moans of the screaming handyman it had once drowned in the upstairs tub.

  So, it waited, in boredom and misery. The only thing that sustained it was knowing its anguish wouldn’t last forever. This was a house, and it knew the soft things didn’t let go of houses easily. Sooner or later, someone would come back. Sooner or later, someone would return to play.

  4

  There was no ambush waiting for them in LA, but there wasn’t any work either. Everybody knew about the Garrick affair and no one liked it.

  During their first couple of days in town, Ford and Neuland set up meetings with Jimmy Graham, Big Tommy Wong, and Mia Solonotsyn. They even rented a car and drove out to Covina to see Rudy Jay, with his greasy hair, his bad breath, and his too-small suits. They played it cool because being cool was their nature, even when in dire circumstances—which the trip was turning out to be. Every contact they had, every lowlife who’d ever approached them with a job offer, now had the same answer: “Fuck off.”

  The crews didn’t want to work with Neuland especially. Some intrepid reporter had stumbled on evidence of LAPD’s Marcheur clean-up squad. Rumors of the undead walking among the living were all over the local media and no crew wanted to stick its neck out. Especially for a couple of killers who’d murdered their own client and then split town.

  “We are shit out of luck in LA,” said Ford back in their suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

  Neuland sat on one of the beds with the TV remote in his hand. An old black-and-white cowboy movie he didn’t recognize played silently on the set.

  “It’s mostly my fault,” Neuland said. “I’m the pariah right now. Maybe you should go out on your own. At least for a while. I can go to Mexico and maybe the story about the undead will play itself out.”

  Ford dropped into a leather chair by the window. “You’re not going anywhere. We’re partners. And what we do doesn’t work without both of us.”

  “You could split town. Find a new dead man—or woman—to partner with.”

  “Stop talking like that. You sound like my grandma. Anything bad happened, it was the end of the world. This is just a rough patch. We’ll get through it.”

  Neuland stared at the TV for a moment. During a commercial he said, “I’m not sorry about New York. If I had to do it all over again, I would.”

  “Me too, so stop obsessing and let’s think this through.”

  “I don’t think there’s a lot to think about. You said it. We’re done in LA.”

  Ford got out his phone and scanned his address book. He said, “What about showbiz creeps? I still have some producer and agent contacts. There’s always a shitty movie in trouble somewhere with a leading man the studio wants to murder for the insurance.”

  “Maybe,” said Neuland, brightening. “It’s better than nothing, I suppose. Sure. Make some calls.”

  Ford made some calls. A dozen of them. Neuland went out to get him a burrito from his favorite place a few blocks away. The round trip took perhaps thirty minutes. When he returned, he found Ford standing in the open door of a fire exit, puffing a cigarette and blowing the smoke into the empty stairwell. Ford thanked Neuland for the burrito, but just held it to his side.

  Neuland said, “How did it go?”

  Ford flicked his cigarette butt down the metal stairs. He said, “We are shit out of luck in LA.”

  They checked out of the hotel the next morning and drove north in the rental car, finally ditching it at Oakland Airport. Ford had used a fake ID to rent it, so there was no way to trace it back to them.

  In San Francisco, they decided not to set up meets. Coming at the problem head-on hadn’t worked in LA, so it was time to try a new strategy. Instead of begging for work, they simply appeared in certain bars and restaurants in North Beach, Chinatown, the Mission, and SoMa. They made sure it was known they were around, but they didn’t make a big deal of it. They knew word would soon circulate to the right people. Work would come their way. It had to. If no one wanted them in San Francisco it meant heading to Europe, and Ford dreaded a long flight with Neuland white-knuckling it the whole way. Though he couldn’t really blame him. Neuland didn’t like talking about his past, but one thing he’d revealed was that he’d died in a plane crash somewhere down south, somewhere people were comfortable with the old ways of doing things. Working with spirits, bones, and potions. At the crash site, he’d been one of the lucky ones intact enough to have his body stolen and then brought back to something like life. Neuland said he’d spent years killing and stealing to work off his life debt. Ford didn’t know Neuland’s exact age, but he was certain the man had a couple of lifetimes on him. No, for both their sakes, San Francisco had to pay off.

  5

  On their fourth afternoon in the city, there was a knock on the door of their hotel room. Neuland went to see who it was, and since they weren’t expecting anyone, Ford sat on the sofa with his pistol hidden by his leg.

  When he opened the door, Neuland found a small blonde woman in an expensive business suit. She appeared to be in her early twenties and was very pretty, but he was more interested in the fact that, while her suit fit well, she didn’t seem entirely comfortable in it. She was trying to look commanding and in charge but was a bit embarrassed by it.

  “Who are you?” Neuland said.

  “Tilda Rosenbloom,” she said quietly.

  Neuland didn’t recognize the name, so he didn’t let her in. “Who sent you?”

  “No one. I just heard they were around.”

  “From who?”

  “Jesus Cortazar. At the Black Heart last night.”

  The Black Heart was a biker bar on Valencia Street that the men liked because, even though their dark suits stood out among all the leather, the patrons of the bar were too smart to bother them.

  Neuland took a step back and let the woman inside. When he closed the door, she jumped a little. He went to join Ford on the sofa, but Tilda was too nervous to sit. She stood in the center of the room like she might bolt out the door at any minute.

  Ford said, “Cortazar told us he didn’t want to do business. Did he change his mind?”

  Tilda shook her head. “No. This is for someone else.”

  “So, someone did send you.”

  “I mean, not to you specifically. Just to someone like you.”

 

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