A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (11 page)

“I thought I was just growing into my powers. I made a lot of lists of people I wanted gone.”

“Yeah, I do that. And you just found out yesterday that it was Asher?”

“Yeah,” said Lily.

“That sucks,” said Abby.

“Life sucks,” said Lily.

“So, what now?” asked Abby. “Junior college?”

They both nodded, woefully, and looked into the depths of their respective nail polishes to avoid sharing the humiliation of one of them having gone from dark demigod to local loser in an instant. They lived their lives hoping for something grand and dark and supernatural to happen, so when it had, they took it more in stride than was probably healthy. Fear, after all, is a survival mechanism.

“So all these things are soul objects?” asked Abby, as cheerfully as her integrity would allow. She waved to the piles of stuff Charlie had marked with “Do Not Sell” signs. “There’s like a person’s soul in there?”

“According to the book,” said Lily. “Asher says he can see them glow.”

“I like the red Converse All Stars.”

“Take them, they’re yours,” said Lily.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Lily said. She took the All Stars off the shelf and held them out. “He’ll never miss them.”

“Cool. I have the perfect pair of red fishnets I can wear with them.”

“They probably have the soul of some sweaty jock in them,” Lily said.

“He may worship at my feet,” said Abby, doing a pirouette and an arabesque (remnants, along with an eating disorder, of ten years of ballet lessons).

S
o I’m like a Santa’s Helper of Death?!” Charlie said, waving his coffee cup. The tall man had untied his one arm so he could drink his coffee, and Charlie was baptizing the stockroom floor with French roast with every gesture. Mr. Fresh frowned.

“What in the hell are you talking about, Asher?” Fresh felt bad about hitting Charlie Asher with a cash register and tying him up, and now he was wondering if the blow hadn’t caused some sort of brain damage.

“I’m talking about the Santa at Macy’s, Fresh. When you’re a kid, and you notice that the Santa Claus at Macy’s has a fake beard, and that there are at least six Salvation Army Santas working Union Square, you ask your parents about it and they tell you that the real Santa is in the North Pole, and he’s really busy, so all these other guys are Santa’s helpers, who are out helping him with his work. That’s what you’re saying, that we’re Santa’s helpers to Death?”

Mr. Fresh had been standing by his desk, but now he sat down again across from Charlie so he could look him in the eye. Very softly he said, “Charlie, you know that that’s not true now, right? I mean about Santa’s helpers and all?”

“Of course I know that there’s no Santa Claus. I’m using it as a metaphor, you tool.”

Mr. Fresh took this opportunity to reach out and smack Charlie upside the head. Then immediately regretted it.

“Hey!” Charlie put down his cup and rubbed one of his receding-hairline inlets, which was going red from the blow.

“Rude,” said Mr. Fresh. “Let’s not be rude.”

“So you’re saying that there
is
a Santa?” Charlie said, cringing in anticipation of another smack. “Oh my God, how deep does this conspiracy go?”

“No, there’s no goddamn Santa. I’m just saying that I don’t know what we are. I don’t know if there is a big Death with a capital
D,
although the book hints that there used to be. I’m just saying that there are many of us, a dozen that I know of right here in the city—all of us picking up soul vessels and seeing that they get into the right hands.”

“And that’s based on someone randomly coming into your shop and buying a record?” Then Charlie’s eyes went wide as it hit him. “Rachel’s Sarah McLachlan CD.
You
took it?”

“Yes.” Fresh looked at the floor, not because he was ashamed, but to avoid seeing the pain in Charlie Asher’s eyes.

“Where is it? I want to see it,” said Charlie.

“I sold it.”

“To who? Find it. I want Rachel back.”

“I don’t know. To a woman. I didn’t get her name, but I’m sure it was meant for her. You’ll be able to tell.”

“I will? Why will I?” he asked. “Why me? I don’t want to kill people.”

“We don’t kill people, Mr. Asher. That’s a misconception. We simply facilitate the ascendance of the soul.”

“Well, one guy died because I said something to him, and another had a heart attack because of something I did. A death that results from your actions is basically killing someone, unless you’re a politician, right? So why me? I’m not that highly skilled at bullshit. So why me?”

Mr. Fresh considered what Charlie was saying, and felt like something sinister had crawled up his spine. In all his years, he didn’t remember ever having his actions directly result in someone’s death, nor had he heard of it happening with the other Death Merchants. Of course you occasionally showed up at the time when the person was passing, but not often, and never as a cause.

“Well?” Charlie said.

Mr. Fresh shrugged. “Because you saw me. Surely you’ve noticed that no one sees you when you’re out to get a soul vessel.”

“I’ve never gone out to get a soul vessel.”

“Yes, you have, and you will, at least you should be. You need to get with the program, Mr. Asher.”

“Yeah, so you said. So you’re—uh—we’re invisible when we’re out getting these soul vessels?”

“Not invisible, so to speak, it’s just that no one sees us. You can go right into people’s homes and they’ll never notice you standing right beside them, but if you speak to someone on the street they’ll see you, waitresses will take your order, cabs will stop for you—well, not me, I’m black, but, you know, they would. It’s sort of a will thing, I think. I’ve tested it. Animals can see us, by the way. You’ll want to watch out for dogs when you’re retrieving a vessel.”

“So that’s how you got to be a—what do they call us?”

“Death Merchants.”

“Get out. Really?”

“It’s not in the book. I came up with it.”

“It’s very cool.”

“Thanks.” Mr. Fresh smiled, relieved for a moment not to be thinking about the gravity of Charlie’s unique transition to Death Merchant. “Actually, I think it’s a character from an album cover, guy behind a cash register, eyes glowing red, but I didn’t know that when I came up with it.”

“Well, it makes perfect sense.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” said Mr. Fresh. “More coffee?”

“Please.” Charlie held out his empty cup. “So, someone saw you. That’s how you became a Death Merchant?”

“No, that’s how
you
became one. I think that you may, uh—” Fresh didn’t want to mislead this poor guy, but on the other hand he didn’t actually know what had happened. “I think you may be different from the rest of us. No one saw me. I was working security for a casino in Vegas when that went sour for me—I have a problem with authority, I’m told—so I came to San Francisco and opened this shop, started dealing in used records and CDs, mostly jazz at first. After a while it just started happening: the glowing soul vessels, people coming in with them, finding them at estate sales. I don’t know why or how, it just did, and I didn’t say anything about it to anyone. Then the book came in the mail.”

“The book again. Don’t you have a copy around?”

“There’s only one copy. At least that I know of.”

“And you just mailed it out?”

“I sent it certified mail!” Fresh boomed. “Someone at your store signed for it. I think I did my part.”

“Okay, sorry, go on.”

“Anyway, when I got to the Castro it was a very sad place. The only guys you saw on the street were very old or very young, all the ones in the middle were either dead or sick with HIV, walking with canes, towing oxygen cylinders. Death was everywhere. It’s like there needed to be a soul way station, and I was here, trading records. Then the book showed up in the mail. There were a lot of souls coming in. For those first few years I was picking up vessels every day, sometimes two or three times a day. You’d be surprised how many gay men have their souls in their music.”

“Have you sold them all?”

“No. They come in, they go out. There’s always some inventory.”

“But how can you be sure the right person gets the right soul?”

“Not my problem, is it?” Mr. Fresh shrugged. He’d worried about it at first, but it seemed to all happen as it should, and he’d gotten into the rhythm of trusting whatever mechanism or power was behind all of this.

“Well, if that’s your attitude, why do it at all? I don’t want this job. I have a job, and a kid.”

“You have to do it. Believe me, after I got the book, I tried not doing it. We all did. At least the ones I’ve talked to did. I’m guessing you’ve already seen what happens if you don’t. You’ll start hearing the voices, then the shades start coming. The book calls them Underworlders.”

“The giant ravens? Them?”

“They were just indistinct shadows and voices until you showed up. There’s something going on. Starting with you, and continuing with you. You let them get a soul vessel, didn’t you?”

“Me? You said there’s a bunch of Death Merchants.”

“The others know better. It was you. You fucked up. I thought I saw one flying over earlier in the week. Then today, I was out walking, and the voices were bad. Really bad. That’s when I called you. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Charlie nodded. “I didn’t know. How could I know?”

“So they got one?”

“Two,” Charlie said. “A hand came out of the sewer. It was my first day.”

“Well, that’s it,” said Fresh, cradling his head in his hands. “We are most certainly fucked now.”

“You don’t know that,” Charlie said, trying to look on the bright side. “We could have been fucked before. I mean, we run secondhand stores for dead people, that’s sort of a definition of
fucked
.”

Mr. Fresh looked up. “The book says if we don’t do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don’t know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I’ve caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I’m not interested in finding out. How ’bout you?”

“Maybe it’s Oakland,” Charlie said.

“What’s Oakland?”

“The Underworld.”

“Oakland is not the Underworld!” Mr. Fresh leapt to his feet; he was not a violent man, you really didn’t have to be when you were his size, but—

“The Tenderloin?” Charlie suggested.

“Don’t make me smack you. Neither of us wants that, do we, Mr. Asher?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’ve seen the ravens,” Charlie said, “but I haven’t heard any voices. What voices?”

“They talk to you when you’re on the street. Sometimes you’ll hear a voice coming out of a heating vent, a downspout, sometimes a storm drain. It’s them, all right. Female voices, taunting. I’ve gone years without hearing them, I’ll almost forget, then I’ll be going to pick up a vessel, and one will call to me. I used to phone the other merchants, ask them if they’d done something, but we stopped that right away.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s part of what we think brings them up. We’re not supposed to have any contact. It took us a while to figure that out. I had only found six of the merchants in the city back then, and we were having lunch once a week, talking about what we knew, comparing notes—that’s when we saw the first of the shades. In fact, just to be safe, this will be the last time that you and I have contact.” Mr. Fresh shrugged again and began to untie Charlie’s bonds, thinking:
It all changed that day at the hospital. This guy has changed everything, and I’m sending him out like a lamb to the slaughter—or maybe he’s the one to do the slaughtering. This guy might be the one—

“Wait, I don’t know anything,” Charlie pleaded. “You can’t just send me out to do this without more background. What about my daughter? How do I know who to sell the souls to?” He was panicked and trying to ask all the questions before he was set free. “What are the numbers after the names? Do you get the names like that? How long do I have to do this before I can retire. Why are you always dressed in mint green?” As Mr. Fresh untied one ankle, Charlie was trying to tie the other back to the chair.

“My name,” said Mr. Fresh.

“Pardon?” Charlie stopped tying himself up.

“I dress in mint green because of my first name. It’s Minty.”

Charlie completely forgot what he was worried about. “Minty? Your name is Minty Fresh?”

Charlie appeared to be trying to stifle a sneeze, but then snorted an explosive laugh. Then ducked.

I
n the hallway of the third floor of Charlie’s building, a meeting was going on between the great powers of Asia: Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev. Mrs. Ling, by holding Sophie, had the strategic advantage, while Mrs. Korjev, who was fully twice the size of Mrs. Ling, possessed the threat of massive retaliatory force. What they had in common, besides being widows and immigrants, was a deep love for little Sophie, a precarious grasp on the English language, and a passionate lack of confidence in Charlie Asher’s ability to raise his daughter alone.