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- Herausgeber: Icarus Publishing
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The world has been taken over by zombies. Small pockets of humanity remain. Cities lay in ruins. But none of this can stop Jake Trundle from solving the biggest case of his career because Jake Trundle is also a zombie. And somewhere deep within the recesses of his long dead brain flicker the embers of the last case he was working before the world turned to hell. And now he is compelled to solve it for all eternity, or at least until New Orleans falls down around his ears. He doesn't know why, he doesn't know how and he doesn't know much of anything when the smell of fresh meat is on the wind. But he's going to solve this case anyway. Even if it kills him all over again. Jake Trundle is a zombie. But he was a detective first. And nothing can take that away from him. Not even death. »One of the few writers to make me laugh out loud.« – David Baddiel, Comedian »One of Britain's best kept literary secrets.« – The Big Issue in the North
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The No.1 Zombie Detective Agency
The No.1 Zombie Detective Agency © 2023 Danny King © 2023 by ICARUS Publishing, an Imprint of Luzifer Verlag Cyprus Ltd.www.icarus-publishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover: Michael Schubert
ISBN: 978-3-95835-975-8
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
For Frankie & Scarlett, with my undying love.
Chapter 1
Jake Trundle was a familiar face around the French Quarter. He’d been pounding its streets for more years than he cared to remember and knew every side alley and back door between Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue better than he knew the fickle moods of his secretary, Agnes. Even on the stormiest of mornings after. Moreover, Trundle knew the Quarter’s people: the people who lived there; the people who worked there; the people who lingered there without much of an obvious purpose and of course, the people who died there. Not much went on in this part of New Orleans that Trundle didn’t hear about and even less that he cared about because information was money. And in the Quarter Trundle could always find someone looking to buy.
He stood at the corner of Royal and Conti looking westwards towards Canal Street. The newer and taller buildings of the central business district dominated the skyline and cast long, disdainful shadows across their older colonial neighbors to blot what little light reached the Quarter’s narrow streets.
Somewhere up there it was dusk. Great flocks of sparrows and flycatchers circled the rooftops to loop the loop in the warm air currents and feast upon the wing. The sounds they made were overwhelming; thousands and thousands of little wings beat against the skies to drown out everything that shuffled below so that Trundle didn’t hear the footsteps approaching him from behind until they were almost upon him. He just stood stock still, gazing up at the birds as they churned the skies like a freewheeling kaleidoscope when the figure pulled up alongside him.
Trundle turned to look when he felt the newcomer’s presence. The sight that greeted him was one of pure horror; half his face had been torn away from nose to ear and what little flesh remained hung in dried leathery strips to flail lifelessly against his cracked and blackened skull. His hands were little more than hooks; seven of ten fingers were missing and those that remained were little more than shards protruding from two chewed wrists. His clothes were in worse shape than he was, with a few tattered rags caught between the clavicles of his back and pelvis bones to maintain the illusion of attire, but in essence, he was a skeleton that had failed to lie down when required.
The figure growled at Trundle: it was a low, guttural growl of pain and despair, though it had little to do with his wounds and everything to do with his hunger. He wanted one of those birds – just one. There were thousands upon thousands up there, enough to blot out the sky so why couldn’t he have just one? It would be so divine, he could see it now; two birds chasing the same mosquito, they clunk heads and one falls from the sky. It lands at his feet like a gift from the Gods and he picks it up and eats it. Simple. Flesh, feet, bones and beak. He wouldn’t waste so much as a feather. He’d savor every morsel. Every atom. He’d even eat the flies inside the bird’s intestines. He made this promise to his stomach and to the birds that flocked beyond his hunger pains, as if this would somehow clinch the deal, but none felt so inclined, and instead continued to dance the dusk away, taking off from their rooftop perches to chase their own suppers through the red skies as they teased those below to delirium.
The man wailed – Damn it!
Trundle wailed in response – You said it, brother.
The man shuffled off holding his stomach, or at least, purporting to. But like the flesh on his face his stomach was long gone. As were his liver, kidneys, heart and lungs. All that remained were a few ribs, the remnants of a twenty-dollar shirt and his all-consuming hunger.
Trundle was quite the looker by comparison, although he was no less dead for it. He still had four limbs and the skin over most of his body – albeit graying, flaying and shrunken. But a vicious bite mark on his left leg and two toes missing from the other foot told their own story as to how he’d come to be a part of this story.
New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States, the world? Who knew how far this thing had spread? Not Trundle that was for sure, who didn’t know much beyond the utter certainty that he would tear four kinds of hell into his brother’s face should he ever stoop to pick up a bird that was meant for him. Food was short in the Quarter. But tempers were far shorter.
Trundle couldn’t remember the last time he ate. It might have been last week or it might have been last century – it made no difference. His pain was ever-present, ever-crippling, driving him onwards like an inexhaustible source of power and plaguing him to the point of madness. Only the next meal counted, never the last one when he occasionally did find a scrap of carrion. And the pain never went away. It never dulled. It just pulled at his guts and drove him onwards to deny him the eternal rest he aspired to.
New Orleans had been a city of around a third of a million in its prime, but these days there were barely fifteen or twenty thousand left to wander its ruins. The rest had either fled or been devoured. Those that had remained, like Trundle, lingered on because they knew no better. Trundle had always been here. He’d grown up here. He’d worked here. He’d died here. Where else could he go?
So Trundle continued to pound the streets of this once vibrant city, poking his nose into the same clip joints of the Quarter, rooting around the same garbage cans of the big houses up on St Charles and Lafayette and meeting the same long-dead informants as arranged. Not because he was driven on to by his hunger but because he was a Private Detective. Or at least he had been in his previous incarnation, and the city’s side streets, clip joints and garbage cans had been his domain.
The sparrows and flycatchers eventually caught their fill and returned to their roosts, on the rooftops and window ledges of the tallest buildings in the business district. Anything lower than that was too low.
Trundle continued to stare up at the sky as the last birds fluttered home despite him no longer being able to see anything. The night had come but Trundle failed to notice, he simply stood there wondering what he’d been looking up at in the first place, figuring it must’ve been something otherwise why else would he be looking up?
This was Trundle’s nightly routine and it would take him a couple of hours before he finally moved off again, but when he did he would head for the office.
Trundle had two rooms above a bar on Dumaine. They were meant to be his business premises, but in truth he’d rarely gone home to his house out in Kenner when the jazz and the bourbon had been flowing and he was of even less of a mind to do so these days.
A steel staircase led up the outside of the rear of the bar and Trundle climbed it with a little grunting and groaning digging into his pants for his keys as he went. He reached the top of the staircase and after five minutes of searching located a hole in the bottom of his pocket. Trundle let out a groan. He’d roamed the entire city today. His keys could’ve fallen out anywhere. But luckily his door had fallen off some years earlier too so Trundle was able to step inside when he forgot he didn’t have a key to get through a door that was no longer there.
The corridor was in total darkness, save for the small window at the far end, but Trundle followed the same footsteps he followed every night, tripping over the same debris and bumping into the same upturned chair until eventually, over a period of time, he’d kicked clear a path to his office door – at least he had until the ceiling had fallen in.
Once again Trundle looked for his keys and once again there was no need. The glass door that had once borne the legend “JAKE TRUNDLE – DETECTIVE FOR HIRE” lay on the floor in front of Agnes’s desk and crunched beneath his feet as he entered. Agnes was not at her desk as usual. She’d locked herself in the stationery closet some years earlier when all this had started and she remained in there to this day to become a permanent fixture.
Trundle ignored her wailings as he hung up his hat and coat and looked around the office. There was a large sofa across from Agnes’s desk for clients to wait on but none waited there tonight, so Trundle pushed open the door to his private office and parked himself behind the large oak desk within.
He opened the top drawer, pulled the Colt Detective Special from his holster and dropped it inside, then took out the half bottle of sour mash and poured himself a stiff drink, despite the glass having lost all but an inch off one side. Still, enough whiskey pooled in the bottom of the glass to wet Trundle’s desiccated throat and he leaned back in his chair, put his tattered feet up on the desk and closed his eyes.
What a day it had been!
Chapter 2
Of course, Trundle didn’t sleep – he never slept these days – but he remained in his chair and did a fine impression of a man sleeping for another eight hours before dropping his feet off the desk a little after sun-up.
It had been a quiet night in all. Apart from Agnes’s non-stop wailing, he’d barely heard a sound pass his window, but then the city was becoming quieter and quieter as its population rotted away to nothing or got stuck in upturned refrigerators. Some familiar faces seemed to disappear every day, but not Trundle. He was bullet-proof. Literally.
Trundle wailed – Agnes, bring me some coffee.
Agnes wailed back – I’m in the closet. I can’t get out.
It was the same every morning – damn Agnes! – so Trundle reached into his top drawer and poured himself another whiskey, finishing off the bottle and tossing it out of the window and into the open dumpster below. Perhaps this was why Trundle had fared better than most in this city. He’d done such a fine job of embalming himself in life that he had somehow managed to extend his shelf life by another couple of decades. Either way, Trundle knocked back his morning pick-me-up and smacked his cracked lips together.
Another day. Another dollar. It was a fine life – even if it wasn’t exactly a life.
Trundle reached for his smokes and slipped a Marlboro between his teeth. The silver lighter Francine had given him as a going-away present (as in, “please go away Jake, you’re no good for me”) wasn’t in his pocket where it normally was, but Trundle soon spotted it on the floor by his feet. He picked it up and flicked it a couple of times. Like Francine, her lighter always required a couple of flicks in the morning to get it going. A tiny yellow flicker popped out and Trundle baulked at the sight of it, instinctively dropping the lighter and tumbling back over his chair as he scrambled away from the dreaded flame.
Like most walkers, Trundle’s only terror was fire. Very little else seemed to frighten the Detective, probably because he didn’t know to be frightened of anything else but he understood fire and what it could do only too well.
The flame died the instant the lighter hit the floor and Trundle’s howls subsided a moment later. If his heart had been beating, it would’ve been beating hard, but the terror ebbed quicker than the memory and Trundle climbed to his feet again.
He hollered into the front office – Agnes, any calls?
Agnes moaned in response – I’m in the closet. I can’t get out.
Trundle wandered through to Agnes’s desk and picked up the loose-leaf file on top of the pile in her In-Tray. The typed notes had long since fallen away, but the 8x10 black & white photograph remained held in place by a rusted binder clip that refused to relinquish its grip. And who could blame it? As assignments went, she was a peach: aged 22, with platinum hair, auburn eyes and an English rose complexion that almost leapt off the page to give him a kiss.
She had looked good enough to eat even before Trundle had lost his keys. Now her photograph drove him to distraction…
***
Reece Fairchild, the youngest daughter of Ronald Fairchild, the oil tycoon who owned that huge whitewashed pile up on St Charles directly opposite Audubon Park. The Mayor had once told Trundle that Fairchild regarded the park very much as an extension of his own gardens. The thought had amused Trundle at the time – how it must’ve irked old Ronald to look out each morning and see his neighbors taking their dogs for a crap on his front lawn.
Still, it didn’t pay to laugh too hard in Fairchild’s face. Besides his awful Greek revisionist monstrosity, he also owned a considerable chunk of downtown, but like with so many powerful men, he seemed to be more concerned with what he couldn’t call his own than what he could. This extended to family members, hence Trundle’s involvement. He’d been summoned one blustery night a long-forgotten February ago and had duly attended – primarily to get the blanks filled in on the unsigned check the Fairchild Foundation had sent him, but also to listen to what the old man had to say. It seemed only polite.
“My daughter is a wayward and wicked young madam,” it turned out to be. “I’ve tried to help her in every conceivable way; private tuition, elocution, deportment and politics, all to no avail. Why I spent more money on that ungrateful creature than most men spend on airplanes.”
“I never spend money on airplanes myself,” Trundle replied, helping himself to a cigarette from the box on the desk between himself and Fairchild. “I have their complementary nuts but I always take my own bottle.”
Fairchild elected not to respond, either to Trundle’s admission or plundering. Instead, he continued. “She never wanted for anything, my daughter; hair, clothes, masseurs and maids; if I’d treated Cleopatra herself as I’d treated my own fair daughter, she would’ve hardly had grounds for complaint.”
“Hardly?” Trundle picked up on, striking a match against the underside of the desk before him. “There’s your problem, Mr Fairchild. That one little word.”
“Mr Trundle,” Fairchild responded, “I could not have pampered my daughter any more had I tried.”
“I guess not. So what did you require in return?” Trundle asked with the confidence of a man sitting on a signed check.
“I beg your pardon?” Fairchild bristled.
“To hear it laid out like that, it sounds like a swell deal, but very one-sided. And in my experience, no relationship is ever that one-sided, even between parents and their children. So what did you want from her, Mr Fairchild?”
“I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating, Mr Trundle,” Fairchild snapped.
“I’m not insinuating anything, I’m asking outright. I could do insinuating if you’d prefer but it only ever prolongs these conversations.”
“All I ever wanted for my daughter was her complete and utter happiness,” Fairchild fumed, although this still came across a little light for Trundle’s liking.
“That was all I ever wanted for my ex-fiancée too, but no matter how much I drank, gambled or womanized she never learned to love it so I guess I’m no expert on what makes women happy either.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Fairchild pointed out.
“And yet all the rage in the Quarter. Go figure,” Trundle replied.
Fairchild stood up and glared. He gave Trundle a moment to see if he was arrogant enough to remain seated and he wasn’t disappointed. Fairchild turned and paced the room. It was an opulent grand room designed to impress visitors with its stained oak panels and original canvases and it lent itself very well to pacing, yet Trundle remained where he was, wondering what a man had to do to get a drink around here.
“Are you a Communist, Mr Trundle?” Fairchild asked after a time.
“A Communist? No, Mr Fairchild I’m not a Communist, but I’ve met a few in my time, most of them frozen solid where they lay.”
Fairchild blinked.
“Ah yes, you were in Korea. How did you find it?”
“Cold,” Trundle replied. “And then hot. Hot and cold. Can’t say I cared for it much. What’s this got to do with your daughter?”
“My daughter is not a Communist either, Mr Trundle,” Fairchild said for effect.
“Does her maid know?”
“But she fell into a bad crowd, as they say.”
“Communists? In this town? There goes the neighborhood.”
“Even here, Mr Trundle. Never assume you are safe.”
“I live in Louisiana, Mr Fairchild. The thought had never occurred to me.”
Fairchild stopped circling the room by a tray of drinks and poured a glass of scotch. Before he could hand it to Trundle, he’d downed it himself and passed the Detective a plain brown envelope instead containing several photographs. Trundle pulled them out as Fairchild helped himself to another drink and flicked through them. The first of the photographs was an 8x10 portrait of a pretty girl with platinum hair – this one he would eventually be allowed to keep. The others were smaller but no less memorable. That same girl with platinum hair was featured in each, only scantily dressed and provocatively posed, and in the final picture, tied to a bed wearing nothing but a doped up expression on her pretty English rose face.
“You were sent these?” Trundle asked.
“Yesterday afternoon. A messenger was called to collect them from a locker at Union Station. These pictures and the messenger’s fee were inside.”
“That’s very trusting of the messenger,” Trundle cooed.
“I’ve had him checked out already. He’s just a mail boy working at the Monteleone Hotel.”
“Checked out? Checked out by who?”
“I have friends in the Police Department and in the FBI, both the regional and national offices,” Fairchild said, finally pouring Trundle a scotch, but only after Trundle held out a hand as a prompt.
“Which begs the question why am I here?” he asked, accepting the drink with a nod of gratitude.
“I have friends in the department, Mr Trundle, but also enemies.”
“Who’d be without ’em,” Trundle agreed, knocking back Fairchild’s 40-year-old whiskey as if it were 40-hour-old hooch.
“I have spoken out many times on the dangers of Communism, Mr Trundle, both here and abroad. If it were to be known my own daughter had succumbed to the Socialists, it might seriously undermine my position in this town, not to mention the country in general,” Fairchild warned.
“Yep, let’s not forget those guys,” Trundle agreed, finding he’d finished his scotch without even trying. Nice bar. Lousy measures. “So you want me to bust a few skulls and hush things up for you, is that the score?”
“Hardly. I want you to bring home my daughter, Mr Trundle. The rest, I will attend to myself.”
Trundle didn’t doubt it so he accepted the assignment and finally got up off his check.
“Very well, Mr Fairchild. I’ll find your daughter but my involvement ends the moment I wheel her across your threshold. Keeping her here is up to you. I ain’t playing nursemaid to no runaway red, no matter how much her daddy needs to please her, we clear?”
“Crystal Mr Trundle,” Fairchild nodded, parking his hands behind his back in the event Trundle thought to offer him his own. But Trundle didn’t. He just put on his hat and picked his wet rain mac up off the back of Fairchild’s Louis the Thirteenth chair before stopping at the door.
“Two final questions, Mr Fairchild. Why Communists? I’ve seen Communism first hand and it don’t often look like this – more that it did,” he said, returning all but one of the photographs to the envelope and holding it out for Fairchild to retrieve.
Fairchild glowered, crossing the room to take back the envelope. “Let’s just say, we have had many conversations on the subject, my daughter and I. She knows exactly how best to hurt me. I have no doubt.”
“And lastly, where’s the note?”
“The note?” Fairchild feigned.
“Those pictures didn’t arrive alone. I’m going to need to see that note,” Trundle said.
“It didn’t say anything important.”
“Then there’s no reason not to show it to me.”
“I don’t have it here. I’ll have it sent to you directly.”
Trundle shrugged. It was Fairchild’s decision and made no difference to the Detective anyway. He was now on the clock. If Fairchild wanted to make things difficult for him he would only be hurting himself in the long run.
“And so to the question of my fee,” Trundle said.
“Your fee? That check I just signed is for two-hundred dollars. Won’t that cover your inconvenience?”
“Nope, that gets you this conversation, not one iota more. I charge fifty dollars a day, plus expenses,” Trundle outlined, determined to eat at only the finest hot dog stands for the next few weeks.
“Fifty dollars a day?”
“You did hear me say I weren’t no Communist, didn’t you Mr Fairchild. So, do we have a deal?”
Fairchild looked down at the envelope in his hand and let out a sigh of failure and remorse. He nodded a couple of times then looked the Detective in the eye.
“We have a deal, Mr Trundle. Now go and find my daughter.”
***
In Trundle’s office many moons later, Trundle looked down at the dog-eared and faded 8x10 and felt an impetus to pick up the threads of this long-dead case.
He slipped the photo into his pocket, put the file back on top of Agnes’s In-Tray and shuffled into his office to grab his Detective Special.
Trundle groaned on the way out – Hold all my calls.
Agnes wailed – I’m in the closet. I can’t get out.
He shuffled back down the corridor, towards the staircase and out into the light of a new day. Out there somewhere, in the decay and bedlam that once was New Orleans, somebody knew where Reece Fairchild was.
When Trundle found them, he’d find her.
It was enough to make the Detective salivate at the prospect.
If only he could.
Chapter 3
The first thing Trundle did was the first thing he did every morning – he went to Ernie’s to buy a quart of whiskey.
Ernie’s store was one block over and it was always open, thanks to the hungry mob who’d bent the shutters back some years earlier and Ernie was no longer in any sort of state to fix them.
Trundle entered the store and wandered along the first aisle. Cans of peaches and processed ham sat on the shelves unmolested while the fruit and vegetable counter had all but disappeared beneath a carpet of brightly colored mushrooms. Trundle shuffled on, past the upturned deli counter, the cleaning products and the magazine rack and stopped in front of the liquor counter. Where once there’d been enough booze to fuel a small Mardis Gras, the shelves now stood barren. Trundle looked up and down for a bottle. All the sour mash was gone. So was every other type of whiskey. All the cognac had been plundered too, all the gin, port, vodka, wine and even vermouth. All gone. All quaffed. And all thrown out of a second-storey window and into an open dumpster below by Trundle’s own hand. A couple of cases of beer sat on the shelf below but Trundle left them untouched because he didn’t recognize them as booze, not even in life; Trundle was a straight-up spirits man, a habit he’d taken from the army; it was far easier falling back against relentless waves of Chinese with a bottle of mash in one’s backpack than a crate of Buds. So Trundle double-backed along the aisle and worked his way up the shelves until he found a trio of dusty crème de menthe bottles that Ernie had bought during one of his more optimistic forays to the wholesaler’s. Finally, after drinking everything else in the store and losing 98 percent of his brain, the mint liquor looked acceptable, so he grabbed a bottle and headed for the exit.
Ernie wasn’t at the cash register as usual so Trundle hollered for service – Damn Ernie, I ain’t got all day!
Ernie never appeared, not today, not yesterday, nor the day before or the day before that so Trundle stood rooted to the spot hollering for the store owner before figuring he’d catch him the next day. He wouldn’t of course, because there was nothing of Ernie left to catch. Not him, his wife, their two grown-up sons nor the family dog. Trundle himself had led the ravenous mob that had torn back the shutters and then torn to pieces the family that sheltered within but none of this rang a bell with Trundle. It simply wasn’t in his files, so he shrugged his shoulders, slipped the bottle into his pocket and shuffled out of the store.
Damn Ernie!
The day looked set to be another hot one, but it made no difference to Trundle. He wore his rain mac because he'd always worn it when he was out on assignment and he drifted down the block towards Bourbon Street. The thoroughfare was lined with clip joints and the destination of choice with runaway girls – particularly bratty runaway girls looking to stick it to daddy – so Trundle poked his nose into a few doorways looking for signs of life until he got to Otis Paramore’s place on the corner of St Ann.
The Hoodoo House was something of an institution in the Quarter. It led the way where other clip joints followed and seemed to push back Louisiana’s beleaguered decency laws at will. Before The Hoodoo House had opened, hostesses weren’t allowed to shake more than a leg or two in the customers’ faces, but Paramore brought in nylon bodysuits that left little to the imagination except the relevance of the artistic performance license above the door. Still, the place was never less than packed with art lovers seven nights a week and the odd raid asides Paramore rarely closed his doors for more than a few hours at a time. It was against his principles.
“Somewhere out there,” he once told Trundle, “no matter what time of day or night it is, there will always be someone willing to pay good money to see a pretty girl smoke a cigarette with her feet.”
And how right he’d been, at least, until the end of the world had come along and pushed back the boundaries of taste and decency to realms not even Paramore could have envisaged. As ever, the Hoodoo House had stayed open throughout, despite the doormen’s best efforts, and a clutch of deadbolts weakened by years of police raids gave way after the briefest of sieges so that the place could now truly claim to never close.
Trundle wandered in, past the blackened potted ferns and through a set of velvet curtains that had long since lost their luster. As ever, Trundle got disorientated halfway through the curtains and crunched into the doorframe they concealed as he thrashed in all directions attempting to free himself. The curtains eventually parted and he stumbled headfirst into one of six cages that ringed the bar. The girl inside let out a wail of despair, but she began to dance all the same: evocatively at first and seductively, if a little lopsidedly, her left arm having been chewed off up to the elbow.
Each cage contained a girl, or in a couple of cases what remained of a girl, and those that could move jiggled themselves to the beat of long since silenced music. Most had bite marks on their arms or legs, evidence of their final shimmies when they really must’ve driven the Johns out of their minds, but most had escaped with their polyester fig leaves intact. And so the girls had retreated inside their cages and put themselves out of the reach of that final happy hour, at least until their flesh no longer interested those howling against the bars.
The girl ran a finger between her graying breasts and down her abdomen to a large gash that ran from her belly to her side and parted provocatively to reveal a glimpse of her liver and intestines. Trundle lingered for a moment to admire the view before the image of Reece Fairchild looking all lovely and pink and unsullied returned to refocus his thoughts. He moved on, through the carpet of one dollar bills that littered the floor and over to the bar.
Trundle’s usual stool at the end of the bar was free so he took the weight off his feet and hollered for service. Nobody came. Trundle hollered again and slapped the bar but still his cries went unanswered. Eventually, a hand reached up from behind the bar and Eddie hauled himself up off his stumps.
Trundle groaned – Whiskey sour, two rocks.
Eddie gasped – I’ve got an uncle got a house on Lake Pontchartrain. We’ll be safe if we can just make it out of here and get up to him.
Trundle chewed his jaw – Asshole! Where’s my drink?
Eddie dropped back down behind the bar and scoured the shelves for a glass, finding the remnants of a broken tumbler beneath the basin. Beside the tumbler was a bottle of something, so Eddie poured the Detective a very generous measure until he remembered to stop, then he climbed up onto his stumps again and dropped the glass in front of Trundle. Trundle glowered, picked up the broken tumbler and knocked it back in one, cutting his already tattered lips and soaking his chin with blue window cleaning fluid.
Trundle shivered – By God, that hit the spot!
If there had been a bottle of sour left anywhere in the Hoodoo House it would’ve hard enough to find with a flashlight, a full set of legs and a brain that knew what time of day it was, so the regulars had been drinking whatever Eddie could lay his hands on since the grand re-opening all those moons ago. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t taste it and Eddie still charged the same anyway so who was complaining? Or more to the point, who was able to?
The bar was thick with gloom. Only a window towards the rear of the main stage let in a few jagged rays where someone had tried to leave in a hurry, but on the whole, this was a bar of silhouettes and shadows.
Trundle looked about. The girl in the nearest cage to him was rattling her bars. A big gold, novelty padlock sat on the back of the cage to stop her from getting out. A simple button on the bottom of the padlock sprang it open, but she had yet to find it, so like the other girls she was stuck in there for all eternity, doomed to dance in front of the Archbishop, the Mayor, the Chief of Police and half the City Council as they knocked back Bleach or Drano and jawed about how the city had gone to the dogs.
Trundle hollered at Eddie again – Otis in today?
Eddie dragged himself up to be heard again – My uncle’s got a boat. We should get out of here and use it before they break through that door. It ain’t gonna hold forever, God damn it!
Trundle nodded and slipped off his bar stool – Catch you later, asshole!
He pushed his way past a couple of old soaks teeming with barflies and made his way around to the booths. Paramore’s own personal booth was at the far end of the row. It was where he could be found any given church day and where he’d ended up for his sins. A tangle of bones and spent .38 cartridges ringed the eminent showman but this was one raid he hadn’t been able to resist. A bite on his ankle and a dozen scratch marks to his head had eventually got through despite Paramore’s valiant last stand, but he’d carried on plugging away right to the end, dropping every smiling Jack and Jill who came to dine at his table until all he had to hold them off was an empty gun. Fortunately, if only for Paramore’s suit, he’d lost that essential spark by this time and the pile of bodies around his table grew no larger.
Trundle tripped on a couple of loose tibias and cracked his face as he landed across Paramore’s table. Paramore pressed the gun into the top of Trundle’s head and pulled the trigger, but the Detective neither flinched nor noticed as he pushed himself up and took the seat opposite.
Trundle sighed – Hey fat man, I’m looking for a girl, let’s talk!
Paramore blinked at his silent gun, pointed it at Trundle and clicked the trigger again, but still nothing happened – Piece of shit!
Like Trundle, Paramore was in pretty good shape, all things considered. He’d been jammed into his seat from the very beginning so unlike most walkers, he’d not been roaming the streets under the merciless sun to accelerate his decay. Even that deep, booming baritone of his had weathered the storm and he used it now to bark into Trundle’s face – You got some nerve showing your puss in here after what you done pulled!
Trundle glared – Cut the crap, where’s the girl?
Paramore growled – Which girl?
Trundle nodded over at the Mayor’s private booth – The new Trudy; the expensive piece you save for your most exclusive clients. You know who I’m talking about.
Paramore laughed – What makes you think there’s a new girl?
Trundle reached into his pockets and pulled out a smoke – There’s always a new girl, fat man. Let’s not play games.
Paramore ran a desiccated finger across his leathery chin and looked the Detective up and down. Trundle and Paramore had known each other for as long as they’d been out of short pants and while Trundle’s activities had occasionally hit Paramore in the wallet, Paramore’s boys had taken any shortfall out on the Detective’s head, so it was a finely balanced relationship. Say what you liked about either of them, they knew where they stood with each other and that counted for something in an unsure world.
Paramore gurgled – Supposing there is a new girl; what’s in it for me?
Trundle slipped the cigarette between his lips – Nothing, other than the satisfaction of knowing you’d reunited an innocent child into the arms of her loving family.
Paramore smiled, some of those bumps must have started to mess with Trundle’s wiring. The poor dumb bastard!
But Paramore didn’t have a chance to expand on the point because at that moment a hostess who’d been circling the club caught her foot caught in one of the rib cages near Paramore’s table and she blundered headfirst into the Detective’s lap. In days gone by you had to pay extra for that sort of service but now Trundle, Paramore and the hostess all barked and hollered at one another as Paramore clicked his gun against her head until she was able to free herself from the tangle. Trundle lashed out as she stumbled back out of reach and Paramore once more turned his gun on the Detective and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Paramore looked at his gun in confusion – Piece of shit!
He now looked again at the Detective sitting opposite him – You got some nerve showing your puss in here after what you done pulled!
Trundle reached into his pockets and pulled out a smoke – There’s always a new girl, fat man. Let’s not play games here.
Paramore growled – Which girl?
Trundle slipped the cigarette between his lips – Nothing, other than the satisfaction of knowing you’d reunited an innocent child into the arms of her loving family.
Paramore laughed – What makes you think there’s a new girl?
Trundle leaned forward – What’s the address of this warehouse?
Paramore gurgled – Supposing there is a new girl; what’s in it for me?
Trundle sighed – Hey fat man, I’m looking for a girl, let’s talk!
Paramore ran a desiccated finger across his leathery chin and looked the Detective up and down – There’s a warehouse across town. You won’t find any answers, but you may find a whole lot ’a new questions to ask, slackjaw.
Trundle nodded over at the Mayor’s private booth – The new Trudy; the expensive piece you save for your most exclusive clients. You know who I’m talking about.
Paramore pulled a paper napkin from a silver dispenser by his elbow and scratched a raggedy hole in it with his monikered gold pen, then slid it across the table to Trundle. Trundle folded it and slipped it into his pocket without looking at it – Much obliged fat man. You take care now, you hear.
Paramore growled – Which girl?
Trundle hauled himself to his feet and tripped on a different tibia to the one he’d tripped on earlier, stumbling into the next booth. Paramore baulked, pointed his gun at the Detective and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Paramore looked at his gun – Piece of shit!
Trundle found his feet again and wobbled through the darkness and back towards the filthy velvet curtains, winking at one of the caged girls as he shuffled by. The girl failed to return Trundle’s wink, just as she had done in life, and simply carried on dancing as the Archbishop, the Mayor, the Chief of Police and the City Councilors threw bills at her and ordered another bottle of Drano.
Chapter 4
Outside the club, Trundle took the paper napkin from his pocket and opened it up. A two-inch hole stretched across the middle of it to reveal the paving slabs of Bourbon Street below, but Trundle considered the paper napkin carefully all the same, refolded it and slipped it back into his rain mac pocket.
He now took the bottle of crème de menthe from his other pocket, twisted off the cap and took a generous belt. A little of the green liquor dribbled over his chin through the fresh gouges on his lips, but most of it made it down his throat and out of the hole in the bottom of his stomach to soak his shirt tails anew.
Trundle savored the memory of the burn – Saint Peter with a heater!
His screwed the top back on, slipped the bottle back into his pocket and set off for the far side of town.
The streets were mostly deserted this morning. The odd curtain twitched here or there and an intermittent whining followed Trundle along Decatur but on the whole, the Detective had the Quarter to himself. It wasn’t an ideal situation, a Detective’s best weapon was more often than not a crowd to blend into, but the town had done stayed in bed so Trundle had to make do with the shadows.
At Esplanade Avenue Trundle suddenly stopped. A rumbling in the distance had him turning in the direction of the Interstate and focusing to get a fix, but the noise was too far off to isolate against the breeze and before he could pin it down it was gone again. Trundle chewed his jaw and took a step towards the freeway, but the tender purring of Reece Fairchild sang to him from the napkin in his pocket, so he turned back again and continued on his quest.
If it had been possible for Trundle to have a fantasy, he would’ve fantasized about finding Reece in a stalled Buick on the Huey P. Long Bridge. She’d scream as she saw him approaching and drain her battery trying to escape, but it would be no use. Eventually, she’d make a break for it on foot, but she’d twist her ankle and Bridge City behind her would already be thick with dead. Reece, knowing that this was the end but fearing the mob, would give herself entirely to Trundle and he’d climb into the car with her and eat her finger by finger as she stroked his withered hair and told him how much she loved him. But Trundle couldn’t fantasize about anything, he could only want. He had planes of wanting, with some things more desirable than others, but no level of detail to his longings. It was all just one-to-ten with Trundle. Some things he wanted a bit. Others he wanted a lot. And what he wanted most of all was Reece Fairchild, all to himself, and with a day and a night to spare.
Trundle already knew the warehouse in Marigny. It was a familiar part of town for him and he’d done a lot of snooping through its dumpsters on his previous travels. Like the Quarter, Marigny was an old neighborhood, only with none of her charm. It was the Vieux Carré’s dangerous half brother, an area most decent folks never felt comfortable around, but put up with just so long as it left them alone. Ugly, run-down and ramshackled, ‘Little Angola’, as it had come to be known, played home to the city’s criminals and vagrants – at least, the criminals and vagrants that couldn’t afford the rents in the Quarter.
As Trundle neared Port Street, he finally met some of Marigny’s residents coming the other way. Half a dozen walkers in varying states of health turned the corner towards him and shuffled past the Detective towards Esplanade and the Interstate beyond. These poor Christians had no Reece Fairchild to keep them going so they had to make do with any faint rumblings in the distance. The rumblings were already gone but Trundle’s brothers and sisters had a general idea of the direction they were heading and not much in the diary for the day so they took to their feet to investigate. Trundle paid them no mind. He simply walked through the cluster as if they weren’t there and soon he was all alone once more.
The warehouse itself was a burned out shell, but this had less to do with the end of the world and more to do with an insurance claim that had landed its bankrupted owner in jail some years earlier. The bricks and mortar were still standing, as were sections of the tin roof, but the fire damage had been cleared away so that the place was all walls and no doors, a winning combination in this part of town.
Trundle stopped at the doorway and peeked in. There was some moaning and some groaning and the drip drip drip of broken pipe that would never be fixed, but other than that the place looked about as welcoming as the Chosin Reservoir on a Chinese New Year, so Trundle reached for his Special and clicked off the safety.
The Quarter might’ve had The Monteleone Hotel and downtown had The Rosevelt, but Freddy’s Discount Furnishings (ceased trading) was the principal accommodation in Marigny for weary travellers. It lacked the five-star luxury of some of the other hotels in town but at least it was free. Cardboard bedding and self-service was the order of business but the roof kept the rains out and that was good enough for most.
Trundle sauntered in, flashing his gun to let the guests know room service hadn’t just blundered in.
A little knot of souls sat around a pile of bones in the far corner and scratched at the concrete floor. A few of them looked up as Trundle approached and he scanned their faces but Reece Fairchild wasn’t among them. More bones lay scattered amongst the trash and a shape moved beneath a pile of blankets, so Trundle bent down and pulled them back. This wasn’t Reece Fairchild either, or if it was, she’d really let herself go since the photograph. No arms and no legs, there wasn’t even much of a torso to speak of, just a chest and head with some blackened muscles and ligaments to keep whatever it was twisting in endless circles. Trundle dropped the blankets back on top of it and moved off.
Why had Paramore sent him here? There was no sign of any runaway heiresses and even if she’d been desperate to make a point, there were better ways of making one than offering herself up to certain rape and robbery.
Besides, the bed in the photograph Fairchild Snr had shown him, it wasn’t here either so this wasn’t his daughter’s final destination; it was just a corner piece of the puzzle, that’s all.
What was it Paramore had said? – You won’t find any answers, but you may find a whole lot ’a new questions to ask. Weren’t that a fact and Trundle scratched his flaking head as he wondered who to ask.
After a few moments one of the guys in the corner hauled himself to his feet and started a sustained tumble in the direction of the Detective. Trundle turned when he heard his coming but stood his ground.
Trundle barked at him – I’m looking for a broad, a young runaway with fair hair. Anything like that been hanging around the place lately?
The walker hissed – Spare a little change, Doc? I ain’t eaten in days.
Trundle took a step backwards – I’m just here for the girl, buddy. Whatever else you got going on is your affair.
But the walker kept on walking into Trundle’s face – Just a couple of dimes, that’s all brother. Times is hard for us ex-Marines.
Trundle now lifted the gun so that everyone in Freddy’s could see it – I fire two shots and no cops’ll come running, not to this palace, so take a number and go easy on yourself.
The walker smiled – You’re a gent mister, a dollar’ll save my life, don’t you know.
Trundle fired his gun. Unlike Paramore, the Detective was also in the habit of regularly cleaning and reloading his weapon and the twin cracks knocked rust off the tin roof and a lump of bone out of the on-coming walker’s chest.
But Trundle’s sparring partner kept on coming regardless as Trundle lowered his gun and turned to the others – You saw that, I had no choice, but I won’t hesitate to drop another of you monkeys if anyone else tries anything.
The walker extended his hand towards Trundle in gratitude and smiled – You are a true Christian sir. Say, let me give you something for your generosity, my old war medal. It don’t do me no good down here no how.
