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  “Sure,” I said, “now, first off, what’s your name? Your real name?”

  I felt the snub-nosed revolver poking me in the side. He was holding it under his coat.

  “You got a permit for that thing?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions here,” he said, giving me a little poke with the firearm.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Who put the tail on me?”

  “Lady Death.”

  “Lady Death?” he laughed. “Don’t give me that crap!”

  “I crap you not. That’s what she calls herself, ‘Lady Death.’”

  “Some nut, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where can I find this bitch?”

  “I don’t know. She only contacts me.”

  “You expect me to buy that?”

  “I don’t know, it’s all I got to sell.”

  “What’s she want?”

  “She wants to know if you’re the real Celine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who do you like in this race?” he asked.

  “Green Moon,” I told him.

  “Green Moon? That’s my selection.”

  “O.k.,” I said, “let me go bet. I’ll be right back.”

  I started to rise.

  “Sit down,” he intoned, “before I blow your balls off.”

  I sat down.

  “Now,” he said, “I want this woman off my tail. Also, I want her real name. I’m not buying this Lady Death thing. And I want you to get busy on this matter. In fact, beginning now!”

  “But she’s my client. How can you be my client?”

  “You figure it out, fat boy.”

  “Fat boy?”

  “You got stuff hanging from your gut.”

  “Hanging or not hanging, if I work for you I get paid, and I don’t come cheap.”

  “Name it.”

  “6 bucks an hour.”

  He reached into his pocket and came out with a roll of bills. He dropped them down my shirt front.

  “Here’s a month in advance.”

  Then there was a roar from the crowd. They were coming down the stretch and who was leading by 3? And who won by 4? Green Moon. Odds: 6 to 1.

  “Shit,” I told him, “you cost me a score. Green Moon got it all.”

  “Shut up,” he said, “and get busy on my case.”

  “All right, all right,” I said, “where do I contact you?”

  “Here’s my number,” he said, handing me a tiny piece of paper.

  Then he got up, walked down the aisle and was gone.

  I knew I was in the middle of something big but I couldn’t un-scramble it. Well, I had to get busy, that’s all.

  I opened the Form and checked out the 5th race.

  24

  The next day I went down to the Silver Haven Mortuary to check things out there. Damn good business to get into—no slack periods.

  I parked outside and went in. Nice place. Hushed hall. Thick, dirty rugs. I walked around and into another large room. It was full of caskets. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, thin ones. Some people pur-chased their caskets ahead of time. Not me. To hell with it.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody about. I could boost a casket. I could rope it to my car. Drive away. Where was Grovers? Where was anybody?

  Then I got a little itch and the itch got worse. And then I did it. I lifted a casket lid and looked inside. I SCREAMED. And slammed the lid.

  There had been a naked woman in there. Young, a looker, but dead. Wow!

  Hal Grovers came running in.

  “BELANE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “DOING? DOING? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN, GROVERS?”

  “THE MEN’S ROOM. WHAT WERE YOU SCREAMING ABOUT?”

  I pointed.

  “YOU GOT A STIFF IN THAT CASKET! A BABE! BIG JUGS!”

  Grovers walked over and opened the lid.

  “There isn’t a body in here, Mr. Belane.”

  “What?”

  I walked over and looked. The coffin was empty.

  I whirled and grabbed Grovers by the lapels.

  “Don’t play games with me, baby! I saw it! I saw her box! A young dead bimbo! You playing games with me? You and…Billy French…the blood-sucker! I’m not a man to play with, Grovers!”

  “Nobody is playing with you, Belane. You’re hallucinating.”

  I let go of his lapels.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  “It’s Jeannie Nitro. She’s playing with my mind. She knows I’m on your case.”

  “I haven’t seen her lately. Maybe she’s gone.”

  “She’s not gone. She’s waiting, Grovers.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “I don’t know right now.”

  I spun on my heel and looked all around.

  “Grovers, quick! How many dead do you have here now?”

  “We’ve prepared two. They are in the Slumber Room.”

  “I’ve got to see them!”

  “What?”

  “You want me to crack this case or not?”

  “I want you to…crack it.”

  “Then I’ll have to look at the two stiffs.”

  “Why?”

  “If I told you, you’d never guess.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Never mind. Now let me have a look.”

  “This is highly irregular.”

  “Come on! Come on!”

  “Very well. Follow me…”

  We went into the Slumber Room. Classy place. Dark. Candles burning. There were three caskets.

  “O.k., lemme see,” I told Grovers.

  “Could you please tell me why?”

  “Jeannie Nitro wants to house her space aliens in these dead bodies. Give them a shell, a hiding place. A shell, you know, like a turtle. Nitro is hanging around you to get at these bodies.”

  “But these are dead bodies, they are in a state of decay. Besides, we are going to bury them. How can they use them?”

  “The space aliens hide in the dead bodies until they are buried, then they find other dead bodies.”

  “But if they want to hide, why would they use dead bodies? Why wouldn’t they hide in storage tanks or caves or something like that?

  Why wouldn’t they use live bodies?”

  “You fool, the live bodies would react to their presence. Open these caskets, Grovers! I think they are in there now!”

  “Belane, I think you’re mad!”

  “Go on, open them!”

  Grovers opened the first one. Nice oak casket. There was a fellow in there about 38, bushy red hair, dressed in a cheap suit.

  I turned and looked at Grovers.

  “One of them is in him now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just saw him move!”

  “What?”

  “I saw him move!”

  I reached over and grabbed the man by the neck.

  “Come on, come on! Get out of there! I know that you’re in there!”

  As I shook the head, the mouth opened a bit and spit out some white cotton.

  I jumped back.

  “SHIT! WHAT WAS THAT?”

  Grovers let out a low moan.

  “Belane, I worked for a good hour, padding his cheeks, making him look fulsome and healthy! Now he’s all sagged in again! Now I’ve got to do it all over.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize. But I think we’re closing in. Open another casket! Please!”

  “You open it. This is truly disgusting. I don’t know why I’m allow-ing this. I must be crazy.”

  I walked over and opened a pine casket. I looked. And I kept looking. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Is this some kind of joke, Grovers? One doesn’t joke in this fash-ion. It’s not funny at all.”

  The figure stretched out in the casket was me. The casket was lined in velvet and I was smiling a waxy smile
. I was wearing a dark brown wrinkled suit and my hands were crossed over my chest and holding a white carnation.

  I turned around and faced Grovers.

  “What the hell’s going on here, baby? Where’d you get this one?”

  “Oh, that’s Mr. Andrew Douglas, died suddenly of a heart attack.

  Been a community leader here for some decades.”

  “That’s crap, Grovers. That stiff in there is me! Me!”

  “Nonsense,” said Grovers. He walked over and looked into the coffin.

  “It’s Mr. Douglas.”

  I walked over and looked in. It was some old white-haired guy, 70 or 80 years old. He looked pretty good, they had rouged his cheeks and put on just a touch of lipstick. His skin glowed as if they had waxed it. But it wasn’t me.

  “It’s Jeannie Nitro,” I said, “she’s fucking with us.”

  “I think you are a very confused man, Mr. Belane.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  I had to think. Somewhere it all fit. It had to fit.

  Just then another man entered and stood in the doorway.

  “The body has been prepared, Hal.”

  “Thank you, Billy. You can leave.”

  Billy French turned and walked out.

  “Jesus, Grovers, doesn’t he wash his hands?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw red on his hands.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I saw red.”

  “Mr. Belane, would you care to look into the third coffin? Although it’s empty. A gentleman has selected it in advance.”

  I turned around and stared at it.

  “Is he in there, Grovers?”

  “No, the gentleman is still alive. It’s a pre-select. We give ten percent off on pre-selects. Would you care for one? We have a lovely selection.”

  “Thanks, Grovers, but I have an appointment somewhere…I’ll contact you.”

  I spun on my heel and walked out the doorway, down the hall and out into the good, clean air. Any son-of-a-bitch who picks out his own casket is the same son-of-a-bitch who diddles with himself 6 times a week.

  I got into my Bug, kicked it over and sliced out into traffic. Some guy in a van thought I had cut him off. He gave me the finger. I gave him the finger back.

  It was beginning to rain. I rolled up the good window on the right hand side and snapped on the radio.

  25

  I took the elevator up to the 6th floor. The psychiatrist’s name was Seymour Dundee. I pushed the door open and the waiting room was packed with nuts. One guy was reading a newspaper and holding it upside-down. Most of the others, men and women, sat silently. They didn’t even appear to be breathing. There was a heavy dark feel to the room. I signed in at the desk and took my seat. Guy next to me was wearing one brown shoe and one black. “Hey, buddy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Got change for a penny?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him, “not today.”

  “Tomorrow maybe?” he went on.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

  “But maybe I won’t be able to find you tomorrow,” he complained.

  I hope not, I thought.

  We waited and waited. All of us. Didn’t the shrink know that waiting was one of the things that drove people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn’t have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink’s office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

  I must have waited for so long that I slept and I must have been awakened by the receptionist shaking me, “Mr. Belane, Mr. Belane, you’re next!”

  She was an ugly old gal, she was uglier than I was. She startled me, her face was very close to mine. That’s what death must be like, I thought, like this old gal.

  “Honey,” I said, “I’m ready.”

  “Follow me,” she said.

  I went through the office and followed her up the aisle. She opened a door and here sat this very satisfied looking guy behind his desk, dark green shirt, unbuttoned floppy orange sweater. Dark shades, smoking a cigarette in a holder.

  “Sit down,” he motioned to a chair.

  The receptionist closed the door and was off somewhere.

  Dundee began doodling on a piece of paper with his pen. Looking down at the paper he said, “This is costing you $160 an hour.”

  “Screw you,” I said.

  He looked up. “Ha! I like that!”

  He doodled some more, then said, “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Begin by counting to ten backwards.”

  “Screw your mother,” I told him.

  “Ha!” said Dundee, “have you had intercourse with yours?”

  “What kind? Vocal? Spiritual? Clarify.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He made a round hole with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, then ran the index finger of his right hand in and out of the hole. “Like this,” he said, “hmmm…”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I remember, she held her hand up like that once and I did it like that with my finger.”

  “Are you here to mock me?” said Dundee. “Do not make fun of me!”

  I leaned over the desk toward him, “You’re lucky, buddy, that you’re only getting mocked!”

  “Oh,” he leaned back in his chair, “is that so?”

  “Yeah. Don’t toy with me, baby, I am not to be held responsible.”

  “Please, please, Mr. Belane, what is it you want?”

  I slammed my fist down in the center of his desk.

  “GOD DAMN IT, I NEED HELP!”

  “Of course, Mr. Belane, where did you find me?”

  “Yellow pages.”

  “Yellow pages? I’m not in the yellow pages.”

  “Yes, you are. Seymour Dundee, psychiatrist, Garner Building, room 604.”

  “This is room 605. I’m Samuel Dillon, lawyer. Mr. Dundee is next door. I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.”

  I stood up and smiled. “You’re playing with me now, Dundee, you’re trying to get even! If you think you can outmaneuver me, you’ve got chicken shit for brains!”

  I was there to find out if the matter of Celine, the Red Sparrow, Lady Death, Space Aliens, Sam and Cindy Bass was really real or if I was actually having mental problems. I mean, none of it really made sense. Was I out of it? And where was I going with it and why?

  The guy who called himself Samuel Dillon pushed a buzzer on his desk and soon the receptionist was back. She was still uglier than I. Nothing had changed.

  “Molly,” he said, “please escort this gentleman next door to Dr.

  Dundee’s office. Thank you.”

  I followed her along and out into the hall where she opened door #604 and whispered to me, “Get straight, jerkoff…”

  I walked into another packed waiting room. First thing I saw was the fellow with one brown shoe and one black shoe who had asked me for change for a penny. He saw me.

  “Hey, Mr….” he said.

  I walked over to him. “Happened to you too, huh?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “He he…got the wrong door…got the wrong door…”

  I turned around then and walked out of there, took the elevator down. Then I waited for it to reach the first floor. Then I waited for the door to open. Then I walked down the hall and out onto the street and found my car. I got in. Started up. Waited for it to get warm. Got to a signal. It was red. I waited. I pushed in the cigarette lighter and waited. The light turned green, the lighter jumped out and I lit my smoke while driving along. I felt like I had better get over to t
he office. I felt like somebody was waiting for me.

  26

  I was wrong. There was nobody at the office. I went around and sat behind my desk.

  I was feeling peculiar. So many things didn’t fit. I mean, in the lawyer’s office, why was that man reading his newspaper upside-down? He belonged in the shrink’s office. Or maybe just the outside pages of the newspaper were upside-down and he was reading the inside straight-side-up? Was there a God? And where was the Red Sparrow? I had too many things to solve. Getting out of bed in the morning was the same as facing the blank wall of the Universe.

  Maybe I should go to a nude bar and stick a 5 buck bill into a g-string? Try to forget everything. Maybe I should go to a boxing match and watch two guys beat the shit out of each other?

  But trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job. And sometimes even in sleep you couldn’t rest. Last dream I had I was laying under this elephant, I couldn’t move and he was releasing one of the biggest turds you ever saw, it was about to drop and then my cat, Ham-burger, walked across the top of my head and I awakened. You tell that dream to a shrink and he’ll make something awful out of it.

  Because you are paying him excessively, he’s going to make sure to make you feel bad. He’ll tell you that the turd is a penis and that you are either frightened of it or that you want it, some kind of crap like that. What he really means is that he is frightened or wants the penis. It’s only a dream about a big elephant turd, nothing more.

  Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that’s all there is to it. The best interpreter of the dream is the dreamer. Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse.

  I had a hit of sake, cold. My ears jumped and I felt a little better. I could feel my brain beginning to warm up. I wasn’t dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay. Who wasn’t? We were all in the same leaky boat, jollying ourselves up. Like, you take Christmas. Yeah, take it the hell out of here. The man who made it up was the man who never carried extra luggage. The rest of us have got to dump most of our junk just to find out where we are. Well, not where we are but where we aren’t. The more stuff you dumped the more you could see. Everything worked in reverse. Go backwards and Nirvana leaps into your lap. Sure.