Toto growled something in one of the languages he liked to swear in and added, “Not now, Manny. I’m in the middle of something with Naranja here.”
Funny. I should have been elated. I had found my missing sailor without even trying. Somehow, I didn’t much care.
Naranja took a swig from a bottle that had been resting on the counter beside him. I walked over to take a look at the design Toto was working on, and at the ones Naranja already sported. Naranja lowered the bottle and hit me in the chest with it when he tried to set it back on the counter. I took it from him.
“Strong stuff,” I said, looking at the label and seeing it was absinthe spiked with a tiny amount of sproutella, a mixture that had recently been made legal despite the obvious danger. “That oughta kill the pain.”
“Should, but it don’t,” Naranja said, slurring the sentence into one long word. He was probably tanked when he came in. He wasn’t going to get any more numb. I, on the other hand…
Toto interrupted my chain of thought. “I kill pain,” he said in a sneering tone, “turn off drill, stop working, how ’bout that?”
“No, no, no,” Naranja protested, “I can take it! Bring it on, pops!”
“I ‘pop’ you, sailor boy,” Toto grumbled.
“I’m thinking about heading out for donuts,” I suddenly said, my mouth on autopilot. “Want anything?” What the fuck was my problem?
“Don’t you have some fancy club to run someplace?” Toto snapped.
Naranja took his bottle from me and took another gulp. He gave it back to me. Apparently I was the new drinks holder. Two surprisingly clear thoughts suddenly entered my skull. The first was that I’d never get anything out of Toto so long as he was working. The second was that I could get Naranja out of the way without drawing any suspicion to myself.
Sometimes a customer was too much trouble for the bouncer, or maybe we just didn’t want a scene. Either way, there were quieter ways to get rid of a problem than grabbing it by the pants and flinging it out the door. I fished around my pockets and found a mickey. Naranja was watching Toto and Toto was watching his work. Without either noticing, I broke the little capsule over the mouth of the bottle. A minute or two later Naranja took another gulp. Then he got very relaxed, quickly turning into a limp sack of bones.
Toto put his tools down and swore. He rapped sharply on Naranja’s skull and shouted “Wake up!” into an ear hole. It didn’t do any good. My customers always got the best, even when they didn’t expect it. Or want it.
I helped Toto drag Naranja over to the cot Toto kept at the back of his shop. Then Toto stomped away to straighten up his work area. “Some sailor,” he muttered, “can’t handle booze, huh?”
“Doesn’t look like you’ll be showing up for work any time soon,” I said quietly to the unconscious Naranja. I made sure Toto’s back was toward me before patting Naranja down for anything interesting. All he had on him was a wallet holding a few pesos and his union card, and a set of dog tags. I slipped them from around his neck and looked them over. Just his name, rank, and pay number. I absently put the tags in my pocket as I fished out the plastic automat card and turned back to Toto.
“This mean anything to you,” I asked as I held out the lengua card.
Toto looked at it blankly for a couple of seconds before exclaiming, “Oh! Oh, yeah. Lola was here. She left something for you. Sweet girl. Like daughter to me.” Toto felt around his counter and finally located a small envelope. “She don’t come around here so often anymore,” he said as he handed it to me. “Tell her, Papa Toto is very cross.” He waggled his finger in a mock scold that told me more than I wanted to know.
“Right,” I said, stuffing the envelope into the same pocket with the dog tags. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.”
When I got back outside, I found a lamp post where I could see what I was doing. I pulled out the envelope, snagging Naranja’s dog tags with it. I stuffed them back into my pocket and opened the envelope. Inside was a juicy photo of Nick and Olivia kissing. I returned the picture to the envelope and put it into my breast pocket. I started walking, hands in trouser pockets, fingering the dog tags. Then I stopped, took out the tags, jammed them back into my pocket, and swore at myself. I thought of throwing the tags into the sea, but I couldn’t. I had to keep them.
Habeas Corpus Delecti
I returned to the lighthouse. I climbed back up to the catwalk and sat down again beside Lola. I took out the tags again, fingering them. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” I said slowly, “but I gotta tell you about what I have to do. You’re gonna hate me, I think. I know I hate me. I told my gang I’d do anything to find Meche. And I’m going to, even if it is the worst thing I’ve ever done. Even if you are my friend and I never knew…” I broke off, unable to finish that thought.
I put the dog tags back into my pocket and started undressing Lola. “I wish I could ask for your help, angel. Maybe you’d want to help me. You were always a trooper.” The leaves and flowers growing from her bones rustled as I gently pulled her clothes off.
“You know, I really wish I could justify what I’m doing,” I said. “But this is wrong. You deserve better from me, especially after what I’ve done to you.” I shook my head slowly. “But I’m going through with it anyway, ’cause I don’t have the nerve to… to find some other way.”
I sighed deeply. “Slisko would stick to his principles, I think. I don’t think I ever had any. I should have introduced you.” He would have been a better consolation prize than Toto. “He’s a little impulsive, has a big mouth, but he’s an OK guy. You’d like him.” I made myself stop babbling.
I took a deep breath and took out the dog tags one last time. “I guess I’d better just go through with it.” I slipped the tags over her skull and settled them among the foliage. “Forgive me, Lola,” I said and gave her a kiss. I went down to the shore, found a nice big rock and wrapped it up in her clothes, using her stockings to tie the package together. Then I heaved it all out into the sea as far as I could.
There was just one more thing to do. I found a pay phone and called the police. I left an anonymous tip that there was something suspicious going on at the lighthouse. I hung up and quickly walked away. I wandered around town for a while and eventually found myself outside police headquarters. That was probably a stupid place to be, but it was unlikely that Bogen would be around at that hour. I went in and the officer on duty just nodded to me. I’d been in often enough to talk to Membrillo over the last few months that I didn’t have to explain myself.
I went to the morgue and found Membrillo working on two sprouted souls. One was Lola. I only recognized her because I knew what flowers had sprouted on her. “Late night at the morgue, isn’t it Membrillo?” I asked, although I knew perfectly well he didn’t keep ‘office hours’.
He looked up at me tiredly. “You know I can’t sleep with John Does on the slab, Manny.” Yeah, I did. The man was dedicated to the point of obsessive compulsiveness. He turned back to his work. “If I don’t ID these rose gardens tonight, I won’t be ready for the two that come in tomorrow, and before you know it I’ll be up to my ass in azaleas.” That was a mental picture I didn’t really need.
“Do you ever worry that your job is getting to you, Membrillo?” I asked. It always got to me, seeing him paw through foliage that way. And now that he was feeling up Lola…