That afternoon I turned my attention to investigating Miranda Jekyll’s case, revisiting my previous surveillance of her husband back when I was a living, breathing private eye. I had no doubt the man was scum, but so were a lot of people. It isn’t always illegal. I had to catch him at something else.
The corporate president and CEO hadn’t left his offices in two days, except to be transported in his black limo back and forth from the factory and the Jekyll mansion in a high-rent, guarded area outside the Unnatural Quarter. Earlier in the case, I had shadowed Jekyll for weeks to catch him going out on his extracurricular expeditions. (He was a singularly uninteresting man.)
This time, I wanted to get my ducks in a row before I started shooting.
Robin was preoccupied in her office writing a brief, so I told Sheyenne where I was going, then borrowed the keys to Robin’s car.
Since I live and work in the Quarter, where most of my clients are, I rarely need to drive. However, the municipal dump is on the outskirts of the city, so I drove.
Even though I’m a zombie, my driver’s license remains valid—a landmark case that Robin herself had pushed through the court system. However, I was required to reapply and take another driving test shortly after returning from the grave. I memorized the traffic rules and passed the written part of the test, but no one should have to go through an actual driving examination more than once. Parallel parking had always been a challenge for me, even when I was alive.
The Department of Motor Vehicles driving-test administrator was a rotund balding man who perspired profusely and seemed very uncomfortable to have to sit in the front seat with an undead applicant. He rolled down both windows and breathed as if he were either aroused or hyperventilating.
I performed my hand signals by the book, drove properly on one-way streets, executed a perfect Y-turn, and, with a generous amount of open curb, managed to parallel park. I left more than the preferred gap between the tires and the curb, but the DMV test administrator called it good enough and marked on his clipboard. If he failed me, he knew I would just reapply, and he was anxious for the test to be over. I got my renewed license.
Robin owned a rusted-out Ford Maverick two-tone (three tones, if you count the rust as a separate color). The original paint job was a brilliant lime green that had faded to a color more akin to snot. The engine puttered and snickered, but the muffler wasn’t too loud, and at least the car ran. Sheyenne decided to dub the Maverick the “Pro Bono Mobile.”
I drove out of town. The landfill’s euphemistic name—the Metropolitan Pre-Used Resource Depository, according to the sign—was a reflection of some deluded city councilman’s idea of beautifying an eyesore without actually changing anything but the name. Sanitation trucks from all over the city, both the Unnatural Quarter and the natural populated areas, poured their refuse here until high mounds of bagged garbage, loose litter, discarded furniture, and cast-off machinery formed an exotic artificial mountain range. Foul-smelling organic stuff belched and burbled as it rotted. Dried paper and cardboard whispered around in updraft circles as if stirred by a witch’s broom.
For some mysterious, and therefore suspicious, reason, Harvey Jekyll had come out here late at night, alone and secretive, and I’d followed him. He must have delivered something that he didn’t want a sanitation engineer, or even his own henchmen, to know about. And that made it very interesting to me … although shady company dealings would not necessarily help Miranda Jekyll get a good divorce settlement.
Nevertheless, I wanted to find out what he’d been doing. Since I had no particular desire to wade through the mounds of piled garbage, I went to the man who might have some idea what Jekyll was up to.
The dump manager lived in his own double-wide house trailer parked in the foothills of the ever-changing debris landscape. The trailer had plywood for windows, sheet metal for an awning, and two old and bent folding lawn chairs so that he could sit outside and watch the rot.
After parking in the dirt clearing in front of the trailer, I climbed out of the Maverick and slammed the creaky car door. Three large flakes of rust broke off the driver’s side door and fell to the ground; rust was basically the only thing holding Robin’s car together. I knew what Sheyenne would have said: If Robin didn’t do so much work for free, Chambeaux & Deyer would be able to afford a decent company car. Maybe our cut from the Ricketts art auction would be enough to upgrade.
I called out, “Hey, Mel, you in there?” I heard movement inside the trailer, and the door swung wide open with a bang because one of the hinges was loose and the air-piston door stop had broken off.
A hulking zombie—one of the putrefying kind—stepped onto the front step, swayed, caught his balance, then got his other foot on solid ground. “Dan Chambeaux! How are you, bud?”
“Just great, Mel.” I don’t know how he could be so cheery with his body falling apart like that. “How’s life treating you?”
“Just as good the second time around as it was the first. Let’s see where karma takes me this time.”
I’ve mentioned Mel before: He was one of my very first cases, when his family hired me to find him, but then decided they didn’t want him back after all. Mrs. Saldana had helped Mel get his job as landfill manager, and he loved the work. I had stopped by to see him often over the years.
Sometimes on my visits he’d invite me inside, and we would sit, holding highball glasses filled with ginger ale—not because Mel couldn’t afford real booze, but because in life he’d been a recovering alcoholic. Even though dead, he didn’t want to fall off the wagon, just on general principles. On a bowed shelf above his sofa, sandwiched between two wooden bookends, was an array of old used paperbacks, self-help books that he read with great interest.
Now that I’d also come back from the grave, Mel and I had more in common. Seeing me, he reached out and pumped my hand. I cringed at his strength. “Careful, Mel! Don’t do any damage—it’s hard to fix.”
“Sorry, bud. I just like to have visitors. We zombies gotta stick together. We’re blood brothers—or we would be, if anything was still pumping.”
“I guess we’re embalming-fluid brothers.” He grinned at that. “I’ve got a few questions to ask you about a case. Maybe you could help me?”
“Feel free to ask anything, bud,” Mel said. “You already helped me out so much. It’s what friends do for each other.”
Before I could inquire about Harvey Jekyll, I heard a loud rustling from the garbage embankment. Bloated black plastic bags were nudged aside, and I saw a huge rodent with bright beady eyes tunneling its way out of the pile like a gigantic mole—a rat the size of a German shepherd.
“Holy crap, Mel! What is that thing?”
Mel whistled to the emerging rat and slapped the thighs of his stained pants. “Here, boy! Come on.” He was grinning. “That one’s Spot, I think. Or it could be Fido. The third one’s Rover. I haven’t named the other ones yet.”
“Other ones? How many are there?”
“It’s a dump, bud. There’s bound to be rats. And it’s a big dump, so why wouldn’t we expect big rats?”
The gargantuan rat waddled forward, enormously fat, no doubt because of all the garbage available to eat. Mel patted the brown bristly fur on its head, scratched behind the pink ears. The rat turned to regard me, snuffling, its whiskers twitching.
Two other enormous rodents followed the first out of the trash tunnel. Mel laughed and patted all three. “No, no treats for you today.”
I didn’t think monstrous mutated rats were an aftereffect of the Big Uneasy, but I couldn’t be sure. “This is … unsettling, Mel. Why do they grow so big?” I had never much liked rats.
“Oh, probably because of the toxic waste dumped out there. I try to bury it deep, but sometimes the containers leak.” He shrugged. “And then what are you going to do?”
I sensed there was more to the story, but wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Mel lowered his voice, kneeling down so that he could keep scratching the three giant rats that jostled around him for attention like eager puppies. “Every private citizen who comes here pays a dumping fee. I get all sorts of people and all sorts of trash. You never know what you’ll find. Manna from heaven, or just garbage from the city.”
The big zombie picked up a broken pipe from the ground, cocked back his arm, and flung it twirling out into the mounds of garbage. “Fetch!”
The three huge rats bounded after the pipe, scampering up the piled trash bags.
He took a seat in one of the wobbly lawn chairs in front of his trailer. “This is a place where people dispose of things, whatever they want to hide. Including bodies. And if somebody slips me an extra ‘discretionary fee,’ then I’ll make sure no one ever finds whatever they want to get rid of.”
I took a seat in the other bent folding chair. “I’m trying to track down something that was delivered here a little while before I was killed. Do you know Harvey Jekyll? Big corporate exec who runs Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals.”
“Oh, yeah!” Mel beamed, showing crooked brown teeth. “A big shot from the factory in the city. He’s been here. An uptight fellow, doesn’t seem to like being around zombies. Now that I think of it …” Mel scratched his head a little too vigorously and a clump of dark hair came off on his fingernail. “I can’t picture him being comfortable around anyone.”
“So you’ve seen him come out here?”
“Sure, bud. It’s just business … but none of my business, if you know what I mean.”
I perked up, leaned closer, not sure the rickety lawn chair would support me. “What does he drop off? Can you show me where it is?”
Mel looked very sad. “You know I love you, bud, but he pays me to hide ’em, not share ’em.”
I reached in my pocket, felt around for my wallet. “Maybe I could pay you more.”
“I doubt it, but that wouldn’t be fair or honest anyway. It upsets karma. If I break a trust like that, then who else can trust me?”
I decided to use the guilt card, embalming-fluid brothers and all. “Come on, Mel—who found you sleeping in an alley and brought you back to your family? Who put you in touch with Mrs. Saldana?”
His shoulders slumped. “You did, bud. And I guess I owe you.”
“I can’t even say for sure if this is important,” I said. “But I’ve got to know. I’ll leave your name out of it.”
Mel gazed off into the garbage ridges around the trailer. “Okay, every once in a while Mr. Jekyll delivers a drum or two of toxic chemicals, experimental mixtures from his factory. Needs to get rid of the junk, but doesn’t want to fill out all the paperwork. It all smells like perfume to me.” He sniffed under his arms. “I put on JLPN deodorant every day. He gave me a lifetime supply. Want some?”
“Never use the stuff.” Now I understood why Jekyll would come all the way out here, by himself, late at night. “Thanks for the conversation, Mel. You’ve helped me fill in a few blanks.”
“Anytime, bud. Care to come inside for a non-drink?”
“Not this time. Other things to do.” I wanted to go back to Sheldon Fennerman’s apartment, talk to the landlord about the missing vampires, keep an eye on his place. “I’ve got a stakeout to set up before sunset.”
“Suit yourself. You know where to find me.” He shook my hand, then settled back into the folding chair.
I climbed into the rusty Pro Bono Mobile and started the engine (after two tries). The tires crunched as I executed a perfect three-point Y-turn—the DMV test instructor would have been impressed—and drove away from the dump.