A Good-Looking Corpse Read online

  The way he tells it, I have already signed his contract and the picture is going to matter . . . it will be profound. Everyone is eager to meet me, to shake my hand, to pull me in for a hug or embrace, to let their tits press up against me. They want to be seen with me.

  “I think I’ve been your show pony long enough,” I say, stepping away from Mikey.

  “Don’t go just yet. I’ve got one last thing I think you’ll be interested to see,” he begs, the smirking grin affixed to his face, as if confident the trick up his sleeve is a good one.

  Mikey leads me through a series of doors and into his private screening room. Posters of movies dot the walls, tastefully hanging over the rich red theater seats.

  He gestures for me to take a seat and he selects the one next to me. Punching a button on an enormous remote that looks more like an iPad, the lights dim us into silhouettes and the expectant tingle of forthcoming sensation takes over. Punching another button, Echo starts the show. At first, tone-setting silence and then, over a black screen, the voice-over begins, gravelly and deep: “If he comes for you . . . you’re already dead.” The screen slash cuts from the dark to a brilliant white. We pan out from a logo—the Trauma-Gone logo on a Tyvek suit. Alan Van stands large on the screen, handsome and bloodied from head to toe in his splattered suit, a gut-soaked mop in one hand.

  “His last project before his untimely passing—I figured you’d appreciate that,” Mikey hisses through the shadows.

  “What is this?” I ask, confused. Several of the scenes that pass look oddly familiar, moments from outdoor crime scenes past, but Alan is doing all the work . . . Alan as me.

  “It’s a trailer for your movie! I got the filler from a bunch of media outlets and transformed their footage into long shots and scenes for this. I actually just got done cutting the trailer this afternoon. Well, having it cut this afternoon.”

  A man, meant to be Andy Sample, attacks Alan with a knife on a motel balcony—but it’s all wrong in the moment. The basics are there, but it goes overly dramatic as the two tussle before Alan—me—receives a slash across his forearm. The film switches scenes before I can see what happens next. “Obviously everything is going to have to be reshot with a new lead,” Mikey whispers. “And with you as a technical advisor, we’ll get things more accurate.”

  The movie trailer provides my character with a love interest—a brunette with no tattoos, and she has a switchblade for some reason. I—Alan—calls her “Trixie.” “We didn’t know if you had a girlfriend or a wife or a boyfriend or whatever, so we just winged it. Were we close?” Mikey asks, whispering under the film.

  “She’s female,” I admit and Mikey laughs. I’m too busy watching Alan Van crack a mop over his knee and use the perfectly sharp end as a weapon while he brutally battles a street gang.

  “Gritty stuff,” I murmur, annoyed.

  “It’s Sunshine Cleaning meets Rambo by way of Manhunter. That’s just for this teaser though—when you sign the contract, I want to do more of a Taxi Driver meets Drive meets Silence of the Lambs thing. Really show your character against the backdrop of Los Angeles. I want the feel of Michael Mann’s Collateral too. A beautiful but violent city. Cold. And you’re the only really good guy left. But you’re still an antihero—’cause of the dead kid.”

  “That’s enough,” I say, standing to leave.

  Mikey studies my face intently, looking frustrated with himself. “I fucked up, didn’t I? The dead kid comment was too far?” The screen behind us fades to the title, squared and tough: L.A. Rotten.

  I head for the exit but Mikey does not follow. “Are you going to the cops now?”

  I throw out my hands, uncertain. “I’d be a monster if I didn’t, right?”

  “Right,” he agrees, smiling. “Absolutely right.”

  Chapter 7

  The Century City police are just an adjunct of the LAPD—the Westside Division, patrolling everything on this edge of the city except Beverly Hills. The 90210 has its own police force . . . not that it matters—it’s Century City’s jurisdiction. The Westside station is located off Butler, five or six miles southwest of me.

  I hesitate at the light on Sunset—going right means heading down to the station, going straight points me toward home. Decisions, decisions. I can’t for the life of me figure out how Mikey could be so cavalier about everything. Doubtless he is going to change his story when the cops haul him in. Hell, maybe that’s what he is banking on—somehow having an airtight alibi? Ramen seems afraid of Mikey—maybe working him for cooperation is the smart move before I actually go and pester the detectives? Or maybe I am just a big pussy?

  When the light changes for me, frustrated with myself, I drive straight ahead.

  Every bit of the drive as I make my way home feels like defeat. Saving Detective Stack from Andy had been a real step in the right direction for me with cops. It had seemingly undone years of bad blood that Holly’s dad had pumped into the veins of seemingly every officer in the LAPD. I still didn’t want to interact with them if I could help it, but I was at least more open to the idea of going to them with a homicide tip now. Why did Mikey practically insist I go to the cops though? What was his angle? I went to the party anticipating that he’d deny everything. He didn’t. I thought Ramen was overselling Mikey’s involvement. He was underselling it if anything.

  Ivy is already in bed when I get home, sprawled out across the mattress, facedown, fast asleep on top of the covers. I strip quietly down to my white briefs in the room, lit only by the glow of the television. Some gossip show is doing a countdown of Alan Van’s nine best movies. I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t have ten movies to count down or because the producers of the show decided that viewers responded better to odd-numbered lists? My cynicism for Hollywood strategy and manipulation is growing.

  Ivy’s T-shirt—my T-shirt—that she’s employing as a nightgown has failed her and has ridden up, exposing her small round buns for all the world to see. There isn’t room left for me to slide into bed with her there so I push once, softly, on her bottom, hoping she’ll roll over without waking up. Instead she farts, mumbles something incoherent and resumes her slumber. Sighing, I resort to a dedicated push that aligns her body into a stick formation on her side of the bed. The move startles her awake and causes Ivy to stare at me with a mix of confused annoyance. “What are you doing, fucker?” she asks softly, groggily.

  “You were hogging the bed again,” I say. This seems to be a frequent conversation for us since I tend to keep late hours and she will fall asleep as early as possible as often as possible. It’s as if she never got enough sleep in life and now that she has me looking out for her, she’s catching up. “Also, you’re on top of the covers.”

  “Ehhhh,” she mumbles and reaches over to her nightstand to fish through the assortment of food wrappers that have collected over there from her evening snacking. Tossing the empties to the floor with the abandoned clothing and makeup products, she finds a chip bag with little slivers of fried potato still in it and gobbles them eagerly. “How was the party?”

  “I don’t believe in him, but I think I just met the Devil.”

  “Did you party with him?”

  “I left early.”

  “You? Noooooo.” Ivy shifts below the covers, kicking the blanket down to her feet. One of the first amenities I made sure our new apartment had was air-conditioning. Ivy, who is never frugal about anything else, refuses to use it. “How could you go to a Hollywood party at a superstar producer’s mansion and leave early? What a waste you are when it comes to going balls-out crazy.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. There was a lot to not like about that scene.”

  “Was there anyone there you rec—who am I asking? Of course you didn’t recognize anyone. You probably didn’t even know who Mikey was.”

  “Wrong,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I researched him today. Or at least tried to. He doesn’t have a lot of press. His dad though, George Echo, he’s like the king of H
ollywood.” I begin picking at my toenails, which she hates.

  “Did Mikey say anything about Alan Van?”

  “Yeah, the creep admitted to murdering him. He even told me to go to the cops.”

  “And?” An errant hunk of toenail goes sailing up and lands on the bed, but Ivy, in the process of flipping over to get close to me at the foot of the bed, no longer cares. I’ve got dirt—Hollywood dirt.

  “He looked me right in the eye, calm as calm could be too. Cold-blooded.” Appropriately, as I sit between Ivy and the muted TV, a tabloid image of Alan pops up on the screen showing him gripping an ecstasy pill between his teeth. A caption on the screen reads: Did the pills kill Alan?

  “Why did he do it?” she asks.

  “It was suggested Alan mouthed off. But I dunno. It seems like there’s more to it.”

  “Ooh, a mystery.”

  “No, there’s no mystery. He told me he did it. Case closed.”

  “Are you sure? There’s nothing we can stake out? No danger, no suspense?”

  I’ve already decided I’m not going to tell her about my incident today with the Sureño Lowriders. Just another secret for the vault. It feels like days ago with all that’s happened since. Instead I change the subject. “He also wants me to sell him my life story. He wants to make a movie about me . . . and Andy.”

  “Shut the fuck up! Oh my God, that is crazy. Wait—what about me? I was there too! Some would say that since I had a bigger danger element to overcome, I might work better as the protagonist. Did you tell him about me? Escaping my own burning car?”

  “You only survived because you’re a slob,” I remind her. “Burrowing through your trash-filled car to safety isn’t exactly big-screen material. More like an episode of Hoarders.”

  Ivy swats at me and comes up short.

  “Calm down,” I say, putting my hands up belatedly. “He made a movie trailer about everything—you were in it . . . a total ‘damsel in distress’ type.”

  “What?! He’s fucking dead. Seriously though,” she implores. “Who do you think should play me?”

  “I already told him no. No movies. Especially not ones made by some megalomaniac killer.”

  “So you’re going to the police?”

  “I’m calling Stack tomorrow,” I say, not bothering to tell her I had just decided that on the spot. “It’s the right thing to do—I’ve learned that much since Andy. But still, I can’t help but feel this will tangle more things than it unravels.”

  “Maybe it’s all a conspiracy and the cops are in on it? Maybe Mikey wants to brainwash you to be his free assassin?”

  “And why would he do that?” I ask, humoring her.

  “Well, I don’t know that. Umm, maybe he wants to make your life story more interesting, Mr. Boring Man Who Doesn’t Stay at Awesome Parties. Or maybe he wants you to kill his dad because his dad is more powerful than he is and he hates that! Or maybe . . . ” she begins, getting really amped up now.

  “Okay, okay, I get it, you’re full of theories,” I say, climbing into bed. “I’ve really got to stop letting you fall asleep to that true-crime channel.”

  “That’s not true crime, that’s just analyzing a mystery from different perspectives . . . which I . . . learned from watching my true-crime shows,” she admits.

  “Stop calling it a mystery,” I remind her.

  “Well what do you call it?”

  “A real pain in the ass and that’s it,” I say, turning off the bedside light. “Just another big pain in my ass.” I poke her in the dark just in case she misses the subtlety.

  Ivy is still fast asleep when I wake in the still-dark prelude to morning and slide out of bed. She doesn’t even stir. What she does could practically be called hibernating. I dress quietly in jogging clothes, matching black sweats and a hoodie, and leave the apartment, shutting the door and locking Ivy safely inside. If I’m going to call Stack, I have to go down to the office to do it. I still only have his one business card, sitting in my office desk. Sure I could call the police desk and have them patch me through, but then I wouldn’t have a perfect excuse to get out of the house.

  I haven’t been in contact with him whatsoever since all the shit went down, which is probably a dick move. His two busted legs and all that. But he hasn’t exactly contacted me either, so I don’t feel too strung out on it. Andy Sample, the motel-room killer who’d taken an interest in me a few months back, had used Detective Stack as bait to draw me out and test me. He’d shattered the detective’s legs and handed me a gun, wanting me to finish Stack off. It didn’t work out well for Sample.

  Driving down toward Los Angeles city proper, I pass a shuttered Offramp Inn along the way, one of the many now. The whole company ended up going out of business shortly after the lurid stories and lawsuits began to pile up. Turns out, a bunch of people getting murdered in your establishment is bad for business. Initially the company had pledged to completely overhaul their entire safety protocol and keycard system—a faulty keycard let Sample gain access to a whole lot of rooms—but the media still ate the company alive. After a weeklong barrage of twenty-four-hour-news-cycle hell, the Offramp Inn corporate team decided the best move was to just say “Fuck it” and walk away. All of the Offramp Inns are now skeletal shells of motels, their marquees simply reading For Sale as the graffiti on the buildings grew with each passing night. Most of it was gangland scribble, but street artists had tagged some of the buildings with colorful murals of murder scenes or short fragmented quotes about justice. It was all very poetic and expectedly cheesy.

  The graffiti I find plastered on my garage door at the office isn’t the cheesy kind though. Kelly-green spray paint—the tribal color of the Sureño Lowriders formed into an artsy interlinking LR inside a large pointed S. I panic. Have they found me already? Have I been too cavalier in moving onto their turf? Fuck. I reach for the pistol beneath my seat. The gun really belongs to Duane Caruzzi, my former parole officer, and as an ex-con I’m not supposed to be anywhere near it. But it is less likely to be used on an innocent person while in my possession. It’s safer with me than with his crazy ass. And, admittedly, since I’d taken it off him I have felt a whole lot safer with it. Even if it mostly just stays quietly loaded beneath my car seat. Keeping my hand on the gun and my finger firmly on the trigger, I stuff the piece into the pocket of my hoodie and climb out for a closer look. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around in the predawn weekend hours, but that means nothing with this crew.

  Something seems off about the tag though; it seems too generic for this situation. I touch it and wet paint comes away with my finger. It’s just one of their normal tags—no special message. I relax, taking my hand from the gun. I don’t think they’ve pieced together that I’ve moved right into the heart of their territory. Ivy certainly hasn’t connected the dots yet—and for that I’m grateful. It’s a sure bet she’d murder me just as much as they would if either party finds out.

  A glance across the street at the lowered metal door of the flower shop across from my building reassures me. It’s also been tagged. A sudden idea springs up—not the sanest one I’ve ever had. But if I’m going to avenge Harold, and I aim to, it’s necessary. I head out on foot, gun bouncing in my sweatshirt pocket, searching out other tags. If the spray paint is still wet, they’re probably still in the area. Taggers are low-level in the gang hierarchy, probably kids. They’ll be much safer to follow.

  I didn’t know what my plan was when I moved my shop here—the morning I’d signed to have Harold cremated, I’d been staring at the LAPD’s gang-tracker map online, all the highlighted markings showing what gang controlled what territory. The Sureño Lowriders called a nice jagged little square of downtown their own—one that had Third and Broadway smack in the middle of it. After that, I hopped on a real-estate page and started looking for commercial rentals in the area.

  I’d been tagged like this by them once before, same generic markings. But the danger has escalated for me considerably now. Back then, I�
�d panicked briefly, then washed it off and went about my business. Now, this graffiti . . . if the lowly taggers only knew who I was, it could mean that much quicker of a death sentence.

  The two juvenile delinquents aren’t hard to spot. I follow their tags like a trail of bread crumbs as they move throughout the turf that the Lowriders have claimed as their own. Up ahead of me, the duo is reckless, brazen even, occasionally jumping back and forth across Figueroa to artistically abuse buildings on both sides of the street.

  Following well behind, I figure I can follow them right back to the gang’s hangout. I don’t even have to try to hide my presence though. The boys, scarcely old enough to have pubes, looks like, don’t even glance in my direction.

  Moving west, they cut through the grounds of the Staples Center, one of them pausing to jokingly aim their spray can at the statue of former basketball star Magic Johnson. Ultimately they don’t hit it though—maybe tagging a patron saint of Los Angeles might be just a step too far over the line even for a criminal street gang. Or maybe they’re just Laker fans who respect the franchise history. Whatever it is, the one without the aimed spray can shoves the other and they resume their trek across downtown.

  Walking under the 110 freeway, the boys halt their spree at a house on Valencia Street, a run-of-the-mill one-story home on the edge of the suburbs, right where L.A. transitions out of its business district. There they push through a black steel gate—a poor imitation of Mikey’s, almost—and head up to the house, still unconcerned about being followed. A lone gang member, perhaps a sentinel, is seated in an easy chair on what exists of a grass front lawn near the porch. He’s well into a big bottle of something cheap. The sentinel greets them loudly, gesturing for a hand up, and the three make their way inside, the younger two assisting the drunk. Too bad Norman Rockwell isn’t alive to document this moment. Instead, it’s just me standing at the corner, watching silently, hand on my gun once more, taking it all in, memorizing. I resist the urge to send Coco a text as well. But now that I know where to find them, his time will come.