Best New Zombie [3] - Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3 Page 18

  "He say anything?" Amberson shouted as soon as he got into the room.

  "Like?" asked the medic. He was on the twelfth hour of a sixteen-hour day. He'd had two "breaks." Once he stopped for a coffee and doughnut at a convenience store, both of which he gulped down rushing to yet another overdose call. An hour later at Hopkins he stopped briefly to call his wife and use the bathroom. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to get as excited about this dead junkie as the detective was.

  "Like did he say who shot him?"

  The medic shrugged. "Maybe. I wasn't listening." In fact, the medic had stopped listening a year ago. He'd heard a dying declaration from a gunshot victim, reported it to the police. That lead to his going to court several times, spending hours waiting in a cold, dark hallway only to be told the case was once again postponed. When he finally did get to testify, he was on the stand three hours, as a team of defense attorneys challenged his competency, questioned his hearing and subtly suggested that he'd let the victim die so that declaration could be used in court. When a "not guilty" verdict came back the medic decided that from then on, he'd be deaf to anything not directly related to treating his patient.

  ~

  Like a baby, Eddie felt himself being cradled in someone's arms. There was a gentle, rocking motion. Gradually, the arms became a hand, with Eddie cupped in its palm as if being weighed. He became aware of all the decisions, good or bad, he'd ever made in his life. He saw too all the decisions he'd failed to make. Every path his life could have taken was revealed to him. Some were worse than the one he had lived. Most were better.

  From somewhere there was a voice. "A life mostly wasted. An effort at redemption towards the end." A light appeared----a golden light. Eddie was drawn toward it. But he knew without the voice telling him that despite his yearning, he'd get no closer to the light than where he was now.

  ~

  "Can you make the ID?" the attending examiner asked Amberson and Russell.

  The detectives looked down at the body. There wasn't much to see: a body ravaged by drugs, thin and dirty from too many months on the street.

  "Yeah," Russell answered. "For your records, I identify this body as one Wallace Cromwell, a.k.a. Fast Eddie."

  "And do you agree, sir?" the examiner asked Amberson. There was a slight lilt of the Caribbean in his voice.

  Amberson nodded. "Well, Eddie," he said to the corpse, "I guess you won't be needing that treatment now. I just wish you'd held on long enough to give us Santos."

  Now would be a good time, the examiner thought. In his six months in this country, five months doing this job, he'd seen too much of this tragedy, too many wasted lives. It was time to do something about it, if these men were willing.

  "He still could."

  Both detectives looked at the examiner, who had finished weighing the body and was now filling out a toe tag.

  "Excuse me, Mr.----?" Amberson asked.

  "Jones, Dominic Jones. I said that maybe he still could."

  "And how, Mr. Amberson, could he do that?"

  "I am from the Dominican Republic. My country, as you may or may not know, shares its island with Haiti. When I was in medical school, it was close enough to Haiti that, occasionally, myself and other students would slip across the border to study, shall we say, comparative medicine and religion."

  "Voodoo," Amberson said softly.

  "Vodou," Jones corrected, giving the word a slightly different pronunciation.

  "Wait a minute," Russell said, almost shouting, "you're saying you can bring this guy back from the dead?"

  Jones smiled. "Not exactly. Rather, it may be possible to awaken a soul, as if from sleep, before it passes on. If so, one can ask what questions one needs to, before the soul is called away forever."

  Russell gave a derisive laugh. Amberson, on the other hand, asked, "And you can do this?"

  "I have seen it done. An old man, called back to tell where he had hidden his wealth. A woman, dead after childbirth, summoned from the dark to say which man in the village fathered her child. In each case, the priest performed the ritual. In each case, an answer came from the corpse."

  Russell interrupted. "And there are guys in Vegas who stick their hands up dummies's butts who can do the same thing."

  "Ventriloquism, Detective? Maybe. But the money was found where the old man's ghost said it would be. And the child grew up in the image of his announced father."

  "Do you know the ceremony?" Amberson asked suddenly.

  "This is crazy!"

  At his partner's exclamation Amberson said, "And we haven't seen crazy before? Besides, it's not like we got anything to lose. Unless you've got a better idea?"

  "I can do it, Detective. I have watched the priests and studied with them. One thing about this place: it's got everything I need, except... do you know where we can get a live chicken?"

  ~

  Eddie drifted. Try as he might, he couldn't move closer to the glow. Then he felt himself being pulled away. He thought he heard someone call his name. And then----something else. There was something else he had to do. The golden light got fainter, smaller. Like the dot on an old TV, it faded away.

  ~

  "Eddie, Eddie, can you hear me?" Amberson shouted, shaking the corpse. "Come back, Eddie! Give us Santos!"

  "It's no good, partner." Russell drew Amberson away. "It was dumb idea to begin with."

  "It should have worked," a despondent Jones said. He looked at the bodies of the dead pigeons in the biohazard waste bin. "We should have used chickens."

  "Yeah," Russell turned on him, "and I should maybe run us all up to Mercy for an emergency commitment. Me searching the parking garage for those birds, catching them yet. I have to be crazy."

  "The only other choice was regular or extra crispy," Amberson said. "Come on, we've already wasted two hours. Let's get some papers signed and get back to work. Mr. Jones, thanks for your effort, but let's not mention this to anyone."

  "Agreed, detective. Now if you two will step into my office, we can get the paperwork out of the way."

  It took Jones about ten minutes to find and fill out the forms. Amberson signed them and gave them back. Jones was just putting them into a folder when an alarm sounded.

  "What's that?" Russell asked.

  "The door to our vehicle bay," Jones explained. "Someone's coming in."

  They went out into the receiving area to see who it was. Russell was the first to notice the empty gurney where Eddie's body had lain. "Or someone left."

  Beside him, Amberson swore quietly.

  "You know," Jones said, staring at the empty place where Fast Eddie had been, "when you use a chicken they don't get up and leave."

  ~

  Eddie woke up, sort of. Light and sound rushed back in. His chest hurt. He felt the cold steel of the gurney beneath him. Not knowing where he was or how he got there, Eddie got up and walked toward the door. It opened automatically, as did the gate of the vehicle bay when Eddie crossed the electric eye. Driven by a need he didn't understand, Fast Eddie walked out into the night.

  He was confused. Memories of a warm, safe place where he was loved conflicted with other thoughts. He was talking to someone, someone who was helping him. He heard a noise. He turned. Talking, then more noise, louder this time. Pain. Eddie looked down at his chest. His shirt was open. He could see the holes the loud noise had put there. A clear liquid was seeping from them.

  Eddie was still looking at the bullet wounds when he wandered into the street. There was a screeching of wheels, then Eddie was struck by steel, glass and steel again as he went up and over the car that hit him. Eddie stood up and, ignoring the curses of the driver, slowly walked away.

  ~

  "Now what do we do?" Amberson asked no one in particular.

  "I don't know about you two, but if he's not back by six a.m., I'm shredding everything and he was never here."

  "We'll find him, Jones,"

  "We will?" asked Russell.

  "Of course," Ambers
on assured him. "How far can a dead guy go?"

  The detectives left the ME's and walked out on to an accident scene: a late-model sedan with pedestrian damage to the hood, windshield and roof; two patrol cars blocking the street; a uniformed officer taking a statement from a distraught driver. No victim, no ambo.

  "What happened?" Russell asked one of the officers standing by.

  "Damnest thing," came the reply. "Driver here says some junkie walked out in front of him. He couldn't stop in time and the guy went up and over. Says he came down hard, then got up and walked away."

  "Driver didn't try to stop him?" Amberson asked.

  "Would you?" The officer shook his head. "You'd think the guy would be dead, wouldn't you?"

  Amberson looked at Russell. Russell looked back. Neither said a word.

  ~

  Eddie wandered, his thoughts a jumble. He sensed a need, but for what? Dimly he recalled the taste of food, of strong drink. He vaguely remembered the touch of a woman and how that made him felt. Then there was the needle, the high that had made him float and forget. It had taken the place of the others, but it was still not enough, not now, not tonight.

  Brightness blinded him. His wanderings had taken him out of the dark streets and alleys and now he found himself on Greene Street.

  Streetlights, stoplights, neon and the glow of the not so distant Oriole Park all hit his too sensitive eyes at once. It came back----he needed the light, the golden light he'd been denied earlier. But no, that light was gone, taken from him when he was called back. Its absence left a yearning, a hole to be filled. Instinct turned Eddie to the east, towards the one man who had always given him what he needed.

  ~

  "We've been driving in circles for hours," Russell complained. "It's time to give it up."

  "It's only been an hour, and we're not giving up," Amberson said in a flat, determined tone.

  "Can't we at least put out a description?"

  "And say what? Eastern CID looking for a walkaway from the Medical Examiner's; suspect's a light-skinned black male, about five-nine and believed to be dead?"

  "That would do it," Russell said after some thought. "Look, Danny, we're never going to find him this way. We turn right, he goes left and we miss him. We drive straight, he turns down an alley, he's gone."

  "So we quit?"

  "No, we start thinking like cops looking for a suspect. Eddie never was that bright, and I'm betting that whatever smarts he had died when he did and didn't come back. He's down to memory and habit. Let's hit the Eastside, check out his haunts. See if anybody saw a zombie tonight."

  Nobody had. Russell and Amberson hit all the corners where Eddie hung out. They questioned some of the girls he saw when he had the stuff to trade for their favors. They braced the low-level dealers Eddie knew. Everywhere was the same story.

  "Nope, ain't seen him."

  "Guess you ain't heard, Eddie bought one tonight."

  "Hasn't been around."

  "Eddie gone, some fool done kilt him over a phone call."

  "Eddie got wasted."

  "I want a lawyer. This is police harassment."

  "Fast Eddie who?"

  "You guys don't talk to each other, do you?"

  "Eddie wouldn't get off the phone. Junkie wouldn't wait. Blew him away."

  "You 5-0, I don't talk to 5-0."

  "Thought I saw him. But he be dead, so it wasn't him."

  The two detectives questioned this last one more thoroughly. "Where'd you see him? Which way was he going? How long ago?" For answers they got "Around, down there, don't know."

  "The good news is," Russell said, as Amberson turned down yet another side street, "is that he's here somewhere."

  "So says one lowlife out of ten. And what's the bad news? Other than we haven't found him yet."

  "Who says there's bad news?"

  "There's good news, gotta be bad news."

  Russell thought for a moment. "I guess the bad news is that Santos didn't kill him. Just some crackhead who thought Eddie was taking too long on 'his' phone."

  Amberson gave a rueful smile. "Yeah, it would have been nice to pin this one on Santos. Murder one, killing a witness----you get the needle for that."

  "Damn shame," agreed Russell. "Santos would have sung just to do twenty to life. Actually would have worked out better than if Eddie have stayed alive to give him up."

  Amberson stopped the car, looked at his partner, an idea forming in his mind.

  ~

  I got a good life, Antoine Santos told himself. Not great, but good. A decent house, plenty of food, a nice ride, women when I want them. It's not a mansion in Guilford, steak every night, a Mercedes and Playmates, but it's better than the slobs I deal with have.

  Unlike his clients, the ones who bought and resold his product, Santos lived outside the drug area. His house was on the east end of Federal, close enough to the Eastern District police station that it was in a safer neighborhood than most. That's why he bought it, for the security. He also liked the idea of the police helping to keep him safe, that the same cops trying to put him away were, by their very presence, protecting him. Irony, he thought, remembering an old English lesson. It was what Miss Helens back in high school would have called irony.

  And was irony, he wondered, about how it ended with that Fast Eddie guy? Word from the street was that Eddie was shopping him to the cops; that he'd worked some kind of deal to trade what he knew about the organization for cash and a ticket out. Santos was going to have the boy hit then he'd found out tonight that he wouldn't have to. Poor Eddie, guess he forgot that you didn't use the holy phone anytime St. Kevin was around. Hell, everybody knew that. Kevin thought that that phone was his direct line to God, that one day the savior would call him up and invite him to Heaven. He got very upset if anyone used it. God might call, and what if He got a busy signal? And who would have thought Kevin had a gun?

  As Santos contemplated his life, he heard a pounding on his front door. Who the Hell is that, he wondered. Wasn't cops, they'd have broken down the door. Can't be clients, they knew he didn't sell direct. And his boys had the word not to come to the house. Always some fool didn't get the message. Well, he'd get the message tonight, Santos decided. Find out who that fool is, then fire him or cut him off. He'll be flipping burgers for his cash and going to the Westside for his stuff.

  Santos moved to go downstairs. The banging got louder. Then the crashing of glass. Santos paused, got his nine from under the bed, made sure the clip was good and the chamber was hot. He tucked it in his dip, just in case.

  More banging, more glass breaking. Santos got to his door just as the invader came through. "What the..." he started as he saw who it was.

  Fast Eddie stood in his doorway, his shirt bloody, clear fluid leaking from the wounds on his chest. His face and arms had a death pallor and he moved with the stiffness of the rigor that had come over him.

  "Saanntoooosss," Eddie's voice creaked as he raised his pale hands towards the drug dealer. "I neeeedddd..."

  Santos reached into his dip, pulled out his nine. "You're dead," he cried, recognizing the absurdity of his statement while realizing at the same time that it was true.

  Eddie ignored the gun, kept coming one step at a time. Santos fired----once, twice, a third time. Eddie's body jerked with each impact, but he kept coming. Backing up, Santos emptied the clip. Eddie slowed, stopped, fell.

  Relief washed through Santos; he had stopped the Eddie-thing. He wondered what to do next, Eddie's left hand twitched, then clawed the carpet. His right hand moved, fingers clutched the carpet and pulled his body forward. Slowly, Eddie crawled toward Santos.

  Russell and Amberson were just pulling on to Federal Street when they heard the shots. They looked at each other. "I got the back," Russell said as they both bailed out of the unmarked car. Amberson gave his partner time to get around back before going through the open front door.

  Russell got to the rear of the house just in time to see Santos run out the kitc
hen door. Both men had their guns out. Santos saw Russell, made him for a cop and dropped his piece. A good thing. A second later, Russell would have done Santos like the dealer had tried to do Eddie.

  "You okay?" Russell heard his partner call form inside the house.

  "Okay," Russell confirmed, snapping the cuffs on Santos. "You secure?"

  "Under control. Come on in."

  "Let's go," Russell urged Santos forward. The dealer balked.

  "Not going back in there. Don't take me back," Santos pleaded.

  Russell shoved the dealer into the doorframe----hard. "Walk or get dragged. Either way you're going in."

  Amberson looked up as Russell came in from the back, pushing Santos ahead of him. "Found him," he said, indicating the mostly lifeless body on the floor.

  Eddie was still trying to get to Santos, hands and knees weakly moving him along. Hearing the detective's voice, a distant memory came back. He turned towards Amberson, raised an arm and pointed it towards the dealer. "Saanntoooosss," he croaked out. Then, his appointed task done, and with what could have been a smile, or maybe just the effects of rigor, Fast Eddie collapsed and was finally still.