Zombie Pulp (20 page)

“
Jesus.”

He looked like he was going to be sick, so I turned the screw a bit.

“
They want to talk to you about what happened out at Harvest Hill. Some ghouls hit it last night, snatched a couple stiffs. Caretaker found the graves all messed-up this morning.”

Bernie stared off into space. “You think they’d put the graves back in order when they were done.”

Some cabbie laid on his horn and I gave him the finger. “Who are
they,
Bernie? Listen, you might as well be square with me on this bit. Better me than the bulls, you understand? They put the pinch on you, you’ll be wearing a state suit.”

“
I don’t know nothing about nothing,” he said.

But he knew. He knew, all right. “You know a cop name of Albert?” I asked him. “Big ugly flatfoot? Know the guy?”

“
Never heard of him.”

I smiled…then frowned, shook my head before he saw me. “Well, this Albert, this big ugly shit-eating ape, he’s really something. He’s handling all this. You sure you never heard of him? No? Damn, guy gives me the creeps. They should’ve thrown him off the force years ago. Things he does to guys…
boy.
Anyway, he’s in charge. He’ll be coming to see you real soon. You can count on it.”

Bernie looked at me. “What…what kind of things this Albert-guy do? I mean, what? Knocks guys around? Rubber hose or what?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Only if they’re lucky. See this Albert…boy, he’s something. Some kind of pervert, I guess. Likes to get a guy alone. Strip search him and stuff. But that’s just the beginning with this freak…man, makes me sick, Bernie. I just hate the idea of him pawing you up and all. Forcing himself on you—”

“
Christ!”
Bernie said, desperate now. “I’ll just talk to you, okay, Vince? You can keep him off me, right?” He dragged off his cigarette and he could barely hold it still. “All I know is these people come to me. They say they’ll pay me a hundred just to look the other way. But when I found out what they want…I’m, no sir, no goddamn way…”

“
Not unless they up the sugar?”

He shrugged. “Well, you know how things are these days. So five-hundred they give me. I tell ‘em, okay, just put everything back the way you found it. First couple times they did too.”

I swallowed. “How many times this happen?”

“
Three, four times. I don’t know what their thing is. Don’t wanna know. Last night, though, Vince, that was my night off. They must’ve just come in and did what they wanted.”

“
Who watches it when you’re off?”

“
No one. They were all by their lonesome last night.”

“
Who are they, Bernie?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Didn’t get no names and didn’t give ‘em mine. There’s two of ‘em—a man and a woman. Creepy, I tell you. Both of ‘em. But they just handle the business end. This truck pulls up and men get out, do the digging. It’s dark, I never see what they look like.”

“
Why these hoods, Bernie? Why are they after these dead criminals?”

He just shook his head. “They know who they want and where to find ‘em. I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

He told me a few more things, but nothing of any value. I brought him back to his place even though I knew the cops would be waiting for him. But it had to be done. They had to put Bernie in custody…if somebody really was following him, he might not be around in a day or two.

Two uniforms jumped out from behind a parked car and put the elbow on him. He was like jelly in their hands, trembling, shaking, loose as a bag of poured rubber. Completely boneless. Tommy came walking up and nodded to me, then he turned to Bernie.

“
You Bernie Stokes?” he said, flashing his tin. “Yeah? Well, I’m Detective-Inspector Albert. I need to have a word with you. Alone.”

You should’ve seen Bernie then. Christ, he came alive like a sack of cobras, twisting and writhing and fighting. The uniforms could barely hold him. Me? I had all I could do to keep a straight face.

“
Put him in the car,” Tommy said. Then he turned to me. “What the hell’s wrong with that sonofabitch?”

“
Search me.” I quickly filled him in on everything I’d gotten out of Bernie. “You better put him under protective custody, just in case.”

Tommy nodded. “He’ll be safe.”

“
He’s not a bad guy, Tommy. Just a little sleazy is all. He’d make a good little rat. Let him skate on this and he’ll be more than happy to finger these people for you if we can bring ‘em in.”

“
Yeah, okay. Sure was acting funny…not a hophead, is he? No?” A look passed over Tommy’s face. Then: “You didn’t happen to tell him I was some kind of pervert, did you?”

“
Me?”

“
You bastard. You goddamn bastard, Steel.” But he thought it was funny as always. “Listen. Do the names Yablonski and Sumner mean anything to you?”

They did, but I couldn’t place them

“
They were two of the jurors that put Quigg away,” he said. “They found their bodies this morning. Same as Bobby Tanner.”

I just stood there, the color running out of my face slow and steady. “It’s connected to him. It all is. But how?”

“
That’s what we’re gonna find out tonight, sunshine.” Tommy put an arm around me and grinned at me salaciously with a face uglier than a boar’s backside. “You think I’m a pervert? Good. Because me and you got a date.”

“
What should I wear?”

“
Come as you are. We’re pulling the night shift out at Harvest Hill.”

7

Truth was, we weren’t alone.

Tommy and me were staked-out in a stand of dark bushes that bordered a family plot of leaning marble headstones. Roughly dead center of the graveyard. Two uniforms were hiding out by the north wall and two more near the gates. Tommy’s instructions were simple: nobody moved until the ghouls were in place and digging. It was a clear, cloudless night. Cool and breezy, but with a big old moon riding high in the sky and painting down the cemetery in a white, even glow. It was a good night to do what we were doing.

I lit a cigarette, cupping it in my hands to cut the light same way I was taught in the Navy. “This is a hell of a date, Tommy,” I whispered to him. “No wine. No steak. No music. Not even a goddamn movie. You think you’re getting into my pants, guess again.”

“
Shut your yap, Steel,” he said.

I had an ugly feeling I wouldn’t be seeing my bed this night. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work or not. I just kept watching the headstones dotting the hills, jutting from the dark earth like teeth, angled and white. A sudden gust of wind blew leaves in our faces.

And then we heard gunfire.

Someone shouting.

A police whistle.

Screaming.

It was coming from the north end. Tommy and I were already running, ducking through the marble forest of tombstones. I leaped over slabs and leapfrogged markers. Guns were still shooting and men were still shouting. We came around a stand of gnarled elms and saw shapes in the darkness.

I pulled my .45 out of the speed rig under my left arm and almost started pumping metal into a pair of stone death angels flanking some rich guy’s grave. And then suddenly there was a third angel, only it was no angel. The guy advanced on me with an upraised shovel. I yelled at him to drop it, but he waded right in. I put three slugs in him and it dropped, but he didn’t. I tried a fourth and fifth but I might as well have been plugging a bag of wet cement for all the affect it had. Suddenly he was on me and I was bathed in a putrid stink like a morgue drawer full of spoiled beef. He took hold of my arm and nearly broke it he was so goddamned, unnaturally strong. He tossed me around like a scarecrow stuffed with straw. And at 6’3 and over 200 pounds, I’m no lightweight. I punched him and he didn’t even notice so I went for his eyes, clawing at his face…and it came apart under my fingers like dry, rotting plaster. My nails scraped the skull beneath and then he tossed me through the air and my head struck a stone and Goodnight, Irene.

A few minutes later, Tommy was pouring a flask of whiskey into my mouth. I came awake coughing and gagging and swinging, completely disoriented. I felt like I was sewn up in a bag of black velvet. The mists parted and Tommy helped me up.

“
They got away,” he said in a hopeless voice. “Never seen nothing like it. I gave one of them four rounds, point-blank, and that meateater went through me like nobody’s business.”

He brought me on a quick tour of the carnage. One cop was dead. His head was nearly twisted from his shoulders. He was laying on his back, a broken arm tucked under him. But to see his face, you had to flip him over. Two other cops were beaten and busted-up.

Tommy scanned the area with a flashlight. In the distance I could hear sirens. We came up to a body sprawled in the grass, arms outstretched to either side. There were so many bullet holes in it you could have used it as a watering can. Tommy put the light on the face. It was decayed, gray, and flaking, eaten away in places as if by insects. There were tiny worm holes in the nose. One glazed eye stared up at us.

Tommy looked at me. “You know this guy?”

I nodded dumbly. “Yeah…I think…I think it’s Johnny Luna.”

“
Yeah, it’s him, all right,” Tommy said in a dry voice. “And Johnny Luna died six months ago.”

8

The next night, I stuck to Marianne Portis like a birthmark.

I sat there in the darkness, my brain spinning like a top in an oil drum. This was all connected to Quigg somehow. The D.A. who’d convicted him was dead. Now two of the jurors. Tommy had placed cops at the houses of the others. But there were other people involved in putting that headcase away—the judge, Tommy, me, plenty of others. And how did all that tie in with glomming corpses and, worse yet, with walking dead men? Two days ago, you asked me if I believed the dead could walk I’d have laughed in your face. Now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know what to think.

But I did know a few things.

One of which was that Franklin Barre was missing, presumed dead by Tommy and his people. The links to this business were being cut like apron strings and I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before I got snipped. And Marianne Portis? We now knew she was a colleague of Quigg’s. At one time she had been chairwoman of the City Folklore Society. We also knew she was somewhat respected in the field, publishing assorted papers on folklore and the occult in various trade magazines.

But what did it all add up to? Anyone’s guess. That’s what.

Just before midnight the black sedan rolled up again. Marianne came out and got in it. I followed at a discreet distance. They drove slowly through the city traffic, but like a hooker paid by the hour, they were in no hurry. I followed them down the main stem over the bridge and right out of town. They hit the highway and then cut down a few deserted country lanes. My lights off, I followed at a safe distance.

I started to get that feeling in my gut. The one that tells me I’m onto something, that things are about to become…
relevant.
Either that or the salami roll I had for supper was starting its march to the sea.

Out in the middle of nowhere, the sedan whipped through a set of black iron gates and into yet another cemetery. I waited a few minutes before following. Just another boneyard—lots of monuments and scraggly trees. I piloted my heap down the lonesome dirt drive, shadows reaching out and clawing over the ruts. Above there was no moon, just gray clouds and skeletal boughs scratching against them. I got lost. I’ll admit that. I‘ll also admit I was starting to get the creeps just driving around and around, maybe half wondering if I’d ever find my way out. Wouldn’t that be a goddamn set-up? Stuck in some spookworld where I drove endlessly through a cemetery?

But, eventually, I found the sedan.

It was way out back. There was a big mausoleum crowning a barren hill. Two stories of rectangular gray stone set with huge black windows. A real inviting place…if you were a corpse. I killed the engine on the heap and coasted into a stand of trees, just off the drive. The sedan was parked up there pretty as you please. There was a delivery wagon and a truck up there, too. I sat there, smoking in the dark, wishing I had Tommy and his boys backing me up. But I was alone, so I did the first fool thing that popped into my head: I walked on up there.

The front door was a massive affair you could’ve driven a tank through. I went around back and cased the joint. I could see lights in a few windows, but there were drapes covering them so I couldn’t see what my pals were doing. I started checking doors and windows, but they were all locked. Then I found a cellar window that tilted up. I slid through like a greased eel and landed in the darkness. I sat there waiting for a reception committee, but none came.

So far, so good.

It took my eyes awhile to adjust to the darkness. I had a flashlight with me, but I didn’t dare use it. I could see that I was in a storage room of sorts—crates and boxes stacked up, a few metal barrels against the wall. It was all pretty pedestrian, except for that funny smell which I knew was formaldehyde. There were other odors, too. A sweet, sickly stink of decay and death hung in the air. And something like a spice cupboard that had been shut up for too long.