A Dirty Job Chapter 15

15THE CALL OF BOOTYFuck puppets, beam of light said show up(p) of nowhere.He was on the stair-climbing machine next to Charlie and they were both sweating and sodding(a) at a row of six, perfectly tuned female bottoms aimed at them from the machines in front of them.What was that? Charlie said.Fuck puppets, shot said. Thats what they atomic number 18. quill had discour follow upd Charlie into coming to his health beau monde with him under the pretense of impartting him into the flow of cosmos single. Actually, because light beam was an ex- disembowel the picture, followed multitude more closely than genuinely was rosy-cheeked, had withal much fourth dimension on his men, and didnt make it clear up much himself, the real reason he asked Charlie to tote up give out with him was so he could get to know him international of the sponsor. Hed noticed a strange pattern that had developed since Rachels death, of Charlie showing up with peoples property shortly afte r their obituary appeared in the paper. Because Charlie kept to himself socially and was ar drive outumive about what he did when he was out of the shop, not to credit entry all the atomic animals that ended up dead in Charlies flatcar, irradiate suspected that he readiness be a in series(p) killer. radio beam decided to try to get close to his boss and harness out for sure.Keep your voice experience, shot, Charlie said. Jeez. Since Ray couldnt turn his head, he was talk of the t birth in good sight at the womens preciselyts.They cant hear me get a line, e really single unrivalled has on a headset. He was right, every one of them was talking on a carrell squall. You and I are invisible to them.Having actually been invisible to people, or nearly so, Charlie did a double carry. It was midmorning and the gym was full of lean spandex-clad women in their mid-twenties with disproportionately large breasts, perfect skin, and expensive pig, who seemed to drop the ab ility to advert right through him the instruction that everyone did when he was in pursuit of a spirit vessel. In fact, when he and Ray had first come into the gym, Charlie had actually looked around for close to object, pulsing red, opinion that he might confirm missed a address on his date book that morning.after I was shot I dated a physical therapist that worked here for a temporary hookup, Ray said. She called them that fuck puppets. Every one of them has an flat tire that some grey-haireder executive guy is paying for just exchangeable he paid for the health-club membership and the fake tits. They spend their old age get facials and manicures, and their nights under some suit out of his suit.Charlie was wildly uncomfortable with Rays lit whatever, talking about these women who were only a couple of feet away(p). analogous any genus Beta Male, he would open been wildly uncomfortable in the presence of so many beautiful women anyway, nevertheless this made it wo rse.So exchangeable theyre analogous trophy wives? Charlie said.Nuh-uh, like wannabe trophy wives. They dont get the guy, the augury, whatever. They just know to be his perfect piece of ass.Fuck puppets? Charlie said.Fuck puppets, said Ray. exclusively forget them, theyre not wherefore youre here.Ray was right, of course. They werent why Charlie was there. Five years had passed since Rachels death, and everyone had been telling him he deficiencyed to get back in the game, only thats not why he agreed to accompany the ex-cop to the gym. Because Charlie spent too much time on his own, especially since Sophie had started school, and because hed been hiding a secret identity and avocation, hed started to suspect that everyone might yield one. And since Ray kept to himself, talked a lot about people in the neighborhood who had died, and because he really didnt seem to apply a social life beyond the Philippine women he contacted online, Charlie suspected Ray might be a sequen t killer. Charlie imagination hed try to get closer to Ray and rally out.So theyre like mistresses? Charlie said. Like in Europe?I suppose, Ray said. however did you ever get the impression that mistresses worked this hard to look good? I think fuck puppet is more accurate, because when they get too old to hold the attention of their guy, theyve got cipher more exhalation. Theyll be done, like marionettes with no one at the strings.Jeez, Ray, thats harsh. possibly Ray is stalking one of these women, Charlie thought.Ray shrugged.Charlie looked up and stack the line of perfect derrieres, then felt the weighting of his years alone or in the company of a claw and two giant dogs, and said, I trust a fuck puppet.Aha thought Ray. Hes picking a victim. Me, too, he said. provided guys like us dont get fuck puppets, Charlie. We just get ignored by them.Aha Charlie thought. The bitter sociopath comes out. So thats why you brought me here, so I could show I was out of shape in front of gorgeous women who wouldnt notice?No, the fuck puppets are fun to look at, but theres some normal women who come here, too. Who wont talk to me either, Ray thought.Who wont talk to you either, Charlie said. Because they can tell that you are a psychokiller.Well see in the juice bar after our workout, Ray said. Where Ill sit at an angle so I can watch you pick your victim.You regurgitate fuck, they thought.Charlie awoke to find not one, but three virgin names in his date book, and the last one, a capital of Wisconsin McKerny, had only three days for him to retrieve her soul vessel. Charlie kept a stack of immaturespapers in the house and, typically, would go back for a month looking at for an obituary of his immature client. More a good deal, if the hellhounds would sire him some peace, he would simply wait for the name to appear in the obituary section, then go find the soul vessel when it was easy to get into the house, with mourners or posing as an terra firma buyer. s imply this time he had only three days, and capital of Wisconsin McKerny hadnt appeared in the obituaries, so that pie-eyedt she was probably still alive, and he couldnt find her in the telephony book either, so he was press release to indigence to get locomote quickly. Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev liked to do their marketing on Saturdays, so he called his sister, Jane, and asked her to come watch Sophie.I want a baby brother, Sophie denote to her Auntie Jane.Oh, sweetenedie, Im sorry, you cant have a baby brother, because that would mean that Daddy had sex, and thats neer going away to happen again.Jane, dont talk to her that way, Charlie said. He was making sandwiches for them and wondering why he ever got stuck making the sandwiches. To Sophie, he said, Honey, why dont you go in your room and play with Alvin and Mohammed, Daddy needs to talk with Auntie Jane.Okay, Sophie said, skipping off to her room.And dont change clothes again, those are delightful, Charlie said. Thats the fourth outfit shes had on today, he said to Jane. She changes clothes like you change girlfriends.Ouch. Be gentle, Chuck, Im sensitive and I can still kick your ass.Charlie spanked some mayonnaise onto a social unit wheat slice to show he was serious. Jane, Im not sure its healthy for her to have all these different aunties around. Shes already had a hard time losing her mother, and now youve go away I just dont think she should come on getting attached to these women only to have them yanked out of her life. She needs a consistent female influence.First, I have not moved away, Ive moved across town, and I see her every bit as often as when I lived in the building. Second, its not like Im promiscuous, Im just lousy at relationships. Third, Cassie and I have been together for three months, and were doing fine so far, which is why Ive moved out. And fourth, Sophie did not lose her mother, she never had her mother, she had you, and if youre going to be a decent human being, yo u need to get laid.Thats what I mean, you cant talk like that in front of Sophie.Charlie, its true Even Sophie can see it. She doesnt level off know what it is and she can tell that youre not getting any.Charlie stopped constructing sandwiches and came over to the counter. Its not sex, Jane. Its human contact. I was getting my hair cut the other day and the hairdressers breast rubbed against my shoulder and I some came. Then I almost cried.Sounds like sex to me, little brother. postulate you been with anyone since Rachel died?You know I havent.Thats wrong. Rachel wouldnt want that for you. You have to know that. I mean she took pity on you and hooked up with you, and that couldnt have been easy for her, cognize she could do so much better.Took pity on me?Thats what Im saying. She was a sweet cleaning charr, and youre much more pitiful now than you were then. You had more hair then, and you didnt have a kid and two dogs the size of Volvos. Hell, theres probably some order of nu ns that would do you now, just as a holy act of mercy. Or penance.Stop it, Jane.The Sisters of Perpetual Nookiless Suffering.Im not that pernicious, Charlie said.The Holy Order of Saint fair(a) of the BJ, patron saint of Web porn and incurable wankers.Okay, Jane, Im sorry I said that about you changing girlfriends. I was out of line.Jane leaned back on her bar stool and crossed her arms, looking satisfied but skeptical. But the problem remains.Im fine. I have Sophie and I have the business, I dont need a girlfriend.A girlfriend? A girlfriend is too wishful for you. You just need someone to have sex with.I do not.Yes, you do.Yes, I do, Charlie said, defeated. But I have to go. Are you okay to watch Sophie?Sure, Im going to take her to my place. I have an obnoxious neighbor up the street that Id like to introduce to the puppies. Will they poop on supremacy?They will if Sophie tells them.Perfect. Well see you tonight. Promise me youll ask someone out. Or at least look for someone t o ask out.I promise.Good. Did you get that new blue pinstripe tailored yet?Stay out of my closet.Dont you need to get going?Ray figured that it had probably started when Charlie murdered all those little animals he brought home for his daughter. Maybe buying the big stern dogs was a cry for help pets that someone would really notice being gone. tally to the movies, they all started out that way with the little animals, then before large they moved up to hitchhikers, hookers, and pretty soon they were mummifying a whole bay window of counselors at some remote summer camp and posing the crustlike remains around a card table in their wad lair. The mountain lair didnt fit the profile for Charlie, since he had allergies, but that might just be an indication of his diabolical genius. (Ray had been a street cop, so it hadnt really been necessary for him to study criminal profiling, and his theories tended toward the colorful, a side put in of his Beta Male imagination and large DV D collection.)But Charlie had asked Ray to use his contacts on the force and at the DMV a half- cardinal times to settle down people, all of whom ended up dead a hardly a(prenominal) weeks later. But not murders. And while a lot of items belonging to the recently decedent had turned up in the shop in the last few years (Ray had found antitheft numbers etched on a dozen items and called them in to a friend on the force who identified the owners), none of them had been murdered either. There were a few accidents, but mostly it was inherent causes. Either Charlie was devious to an extraordinary degree, or Ray was out of his mind, a possibility that he didnt discount completely, if for no other reason than he had three ex-wives who would testify to it. Thus, hed devised the workout ruse to draw Charlie out. Then again, Charlie had always treated him really well, and if it turned out he didnt have a mountain lair full of mummified camp counselors, Ray knew hed feel bad about tricking him.What if there was nothing wrong with Charlie except that he needed to get laid?Ray was chatting with Eduardo, his new girlfriend at when Charlie came down the back steps.Ray, I need you to find someone for me.Hang on a second, I have to sign off. Charlie, check out my new squeeze. Ray pulled up a photo on the screen of a heavily made-up but attractive Asian woman.Shes pretty, Ray. I cant give you any time off right now to go to the Philippines, though. non until we hire someone to take Lilys shifts. Charlie leaned into the screen. Dude, her name is Eduardo.I know. Its a Filipino thing, like Edwina.She has a 5-oclock shadow.Youre just being a racist. Some races have more facial hair than others. I dont awe about that, I just want someone who is honest and caring and attractive.She has an Adams apple.Ray squinted at the screen, then quickly clicked off the monitor and spun around on the stool. So who do you need me to find?Its okay, Ray, Charlie said. An Adams apple doesnt pr eclude someone from being honest, caring, and attractive, it just makes it less likely.Right. It was just bad lighting, I think. Anyway, who do you need to find?All I have is the name capital of Wisconsin McKerny. I know he or she lives in the city, but thats all I know.Its a she.Pardon me?Madison, its a strippers name.Charlie shook his head. You know this woman?I dont know her, although the name seems familiar. But Madison is a new-generation stripper name. Like Reagan and Morgan.Lost me, Ray.Ive spent some time in strip joints, Charlie. Im not proud of it, but its sort of what you do when youre a cop. And you pick up on the pattern of stripper names.Didnt know that.Yeah, and theres sort of a attainment going back to the fifties Bubbles, Boom Boom, and Blaze begat Bambi, Candy, and Jewel, who begat Sunshine, Brandy, and Cinnamon, who begat Amber, Brittany, and Brie, who begat Reagan, Morgan, and Madison. Madison is a stripper name.Ray, you werent even alive in the fifties.No, I wa snt alive during the forties either, but I know about World War dickens and big-band music. Im into history.Right. So, I need to look for a stripper? Doesnt help. I dont even know where to start.Ill go through the DMV and the tax records. If shes in town well have an address on her by this afternoon. Why do you need to find her?There was a pause while Charlie pretended to find a smudge on the glass of the counter display case, wiped it away, then said, Uh, its an demesne thing. One of the estates we got recently had some items that were left to her.Shouldnt the executor of the estate take care of that, or his lawyer?Its minutiae, not named in the will. The executor asked me to handle it. Theres 50 bucks in it for you.Ray grinned. Thats okay, I was going to help anyway, but if she turns out to be a stripper I get to go with you, okay?Deal, Charlie said. collar hours later Ray gave the address to Charlie and watched as his boss bolted out of the shop and grabbed a cab. Why a cab? Why not take the van? Ray wanted to follow, needed to follow, but he had to find someone to cover the store. He should have anticipated this, but hed been distracted.Ray had been distracted since talking to Charlie, not just by the search for Madison McKerny, but also because he was trying to figure out how to work Do you have a penis? casually into the conversation with his sweetheart, Eduardo. aft(prenominal) a couple of teasing e-mails, he could stand it no hourlong and had just typed out, Eduardo, not that it makes any difference, but Im thinking of sending you some sexy lingerie as a friendship present, and I wondered if I should make any special accommodations for the panties.Then he waited. And waited. And granted that it was five in the morning in Manila, he was second-guessing himself. Had he been too vague, or had he not been vague enough? And now he had to go. He knew where Charlie was going, but he had to get there before anything happened. He dialed Lilys electric cel l phone, hoping that she wouldnt be working at her other job and would do him a favor.Speak, ingrate, Lily answered.How did you know it was me? Ray asked.Ray?Yeah, how did you know it was me?I didnt, Lily said. What do you want?Can you come cover the store for me for a couple of hours? Then, as he heard her take a deep breath that he was pretty sure would be propellant for verbal abuse, he added, Theres fifty bucks extra in it for you. Ray heard her exhale. Yes After graduating from the Culinary Institute, Lily had gotten a job as a sous chef at a bistro in wedlock Beach, but she didnt make enough to move out of her mothers apartment yet, so she let Charlie talk her into keeping a couple of shifts at Ashers Secondhand, at least until he could find a replacement.Okay, Ray, Ill come in for a couple of hours, but I have to be at the eatery by five, so be back or Im closing up early.Thanks, Lily.Charlie sincerely hoped that Ray wasnt a serial killer, despite all the indications to the contrary. He would never have found this woman without Rays police contacts, and what would he do in the future if he needed to find someone and Ray was in jail? Then again, Rays experience as a cop could account for his never leaving any evidence. But why, then, would he pass to pursue the Filipino women over the Internet if he was just looking to kill people? Maybe thats what he did when he went to the Philippines to visit his paramours. Maybe he killed desperate Filipinas. Maybe Ray was a tourist serial killer. Deal with it later, Charlie thought. For now, theres a soul vessel to retrieve.Charlie got out of the cab external of the Fontana, an apartment building just a block up from Ghirardelli Square, the waterfront coffee factory turned tourist mall. The Fontana was a great, curved, concrete-and-glass building that commanded views of Alcatraz and the Golden ingress Bridge, and that had drawn the disdain of San Franciscans since it had been built in the 1960s. It wasnt that i t was an ugly building, although no one would argue that it wasnt, but with the Victorian and Edwardian structures all around it, it looked very much like a giant air conditioner from outer post attacking a nineteenth-century neighborhood. However, the views from the apartments were exquisite, there was a doorman, underground parking, and a kitten on the roof, so if you could handle the stigma of residing in an architectural pariah, it was a great place to live.The address Ray had given him for Madison was on the twenty-second floor, and so, presumably, was her soul vessel. Charlie wasnt sure of the exact range of his unnoticeability (he refused to think of it as invisibility, because it wasnt), but he hoped that it reached twenty-two floors. He was going to have to get past the doorman and into an elevator, and posing as an estate buyer wasnt going to work.Ah, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. If he got caught, hed just have to find another(prenominal) way in. He waited by the door until a youth woman in business attire went in, then followed her into the student residence. The doorman didnt even look at him.Ray saw Charlie get out of the cab and told his own driver to stop a block away, where he hopped out, threw the driver a five and told him to keep the change, then dug in his pocket for the tarry of the fare while the driver pounded on the wheel impatiently and give tongue to under his breath in Urdu.Sorry, its been a while since I took a cab, Ray said. Ray had a car, a nice little Toyota, but the only parking place he could find was eight blocks away from his apartment in the parking lot of a hotel managed by a friend of his, and when you got a parking place in San Francisco, you kept it, so Ray mostly used public transportation and only operate the car on his days off to keep the battery charged. Hed jumped in a taxi outside Charlies shop and shouted, Follow that cab olibanum completely terrifying the Japanese family in the back.Sorry, Ray said. Konichiwa. Its been a while since I took a cab. Then he jumped back out and caught a cab that didnt have a fare.He sneaked quickly up the street, going from light post, to newspaper machine, to ad kiosk, ducking behind each, staying in his stealth-crouch, and achieving nothing whatsoever except to look like a complete birdbrain to the kid standing at the bus stop across the street. He reached the underground parking entrance of the Fontana just as Charlie was making for the door. Ray crouched behind the key-card pillar.He wasnt sure what he was going to do if Charlie went for the building. Fortunately, hed memorized Madison McKernys phone number, and he could warn her that Charlie was coming. In the cab on the way down here hed remembered where hed seen her name on the register at his health club. Madison McKerny was one of the midmorning fuck puppets from the gym, and as Ray suspected, Charlie was stalking her.He watched Charlie fall in behind a young woman in business dres s who was heading up the walk into the Fontana, then Charlie was gone. equitable gone.Ray came out onto the sidewalk to get a better angle. The woman was still there, shed gone only a couple of steps, but he couldnt see Charlie. There were no bushes, no walls, the whole damn lobby was glass, where the hell had he gone? Ray was sure he hadnt looked away, he didnt even think he had blinked, and he would have seen any abrupt move Charlie might have made.Reverting to the Beta Males tendency to demonic himself, Ray wondered if maybe hed had some kind of petit mal seizure that had made him black out for a second. Whether he did or not, he had to warn Madison McKerny. He reached to his belt and felt the empty cell-phone clip, then remembered putting his phone under the register when hed gotten to work that morning.Charlie found the right apartment and rang the bell. If he could get Madison McKerny to come out into the hallway, he could slip in behind her and look through her apartment f or her soul vessel. Just down the hall there was a table with an artificial flower arrangement. Hed tilted it over, hoping she was compulsive or curious enough to come out of her apartment to get a closer look. If she wasnt home, well, hed have to break in. Odds were that with a doorman downstairs, she didnt have an alarm system. But what if she could see him? Sometimes they could, the clients. not often, but it happened, and She opened the door.Charlie was stunned. She was stunning. Charlie stopped breathing and stared at her breasts.It wasnt that she was a young and gorgeous brunette, with perfect hair and perfect skin. Nor was it that she was wearing a thin, uninfected silk robe that just barely concealed her swimsuit-model figure. Nor was it because she had disproportionately large but alert breasts that were straining against the robe and peeking out of the plunging neckline as she leaned out the door, although that would have been enough to render the hapless Beta breathless under any circumstances. It was that her breasts were glowing red, right through the silk robe, glowing right out of the dcolletage like twin rising suns, pulsating like the lightbulb boobies of a kitschy Hawaiian hula-hula girl lamp. Madison McKernys soul was residing in her breast implants.Ive got to get my hands on those, Charlie said, forgetting that he wasnt exactly alone and he wasnt exactly thinking to himself.Then Madison McKerny noticed that Charlie was there and the screaming started.