Read The Dead Do Not Improve Online
Authors: Jay Caspian Kang
The Dead Do Not Improve (9 page)
Kim growled. Neither officer noticed.
“Yeah, so we did an eyeball approximation of the radius of the ski pole and approximated that the holes in his neck were a match. We scanned his, uh, parts, for traces of drugs, but there was too much, uh, obstructive blood.”
Kim sighed and asked, “Anything else?”
“His fingernails.”
“Yes?”
“They are clean.”
The two officers went back downstairs to cordon off the block and greet the coming circus. The body was laid out on its back, arms and legs splayed out at angles that could have been produced only by a fall from over ten feet, meaning either his arms were broken or someone had purposely put him in this position. His eyes were closed, as was his mouth. Everything—face, neck, cowboy shirt, jeans, Rod Lavers—was absolutely ruined with blood.
Finch said it first. “Fuck.”
“Why does he have his hands spread out like Saint Francis of Assisi?”
The usual clutter of Finch’s brain cleared momentarily—he noticed, with unusual clarity, that his thoughts were moving a bit more slowly than usual. He suddenly knew what was wrong with Sarah, what he should say when he got home, but the knowing expressed itself more as a lightness in his heart rather than an actionable, worded thought. When he saw the blood—the sight of a body always was good for a little surge of adrenaline, but despite the concurrence of all this brain activity, each thought stayed separate, rational, and symmetrical—he said, “Whoever did this must have stayed with the body for a bit.”
“I see six clean puncture holes all to the neck, but not much damage anywhere else. Doesn’t seem to be bleeding from the head.”
“Yeah, what the fuck. Where’s this ski pole?”
“Over by the fridge. It’s hardly bent at all.”
“That’s a trekking pole.”
“What?”
“A trekking pole.”
“What?”
“It’s used for hiking, not skiing. It’s a bit more rigid to support your weight as you go down hills.”
“Good lord.”
“How the fuck did they get these holes so clean? And why didn’t this kid struggle?”
“Those
CSI
-watching retards put the wallet back in his pocket.”
“Jesus.”
“All right. We have William Curren, account manager at getoverit.com, office phone 4156678282, cell phone blahblahblah. Credit cards, California driver’s license issued to this address, some cash, some other business cards, Caroline Sanders, associate at who cares, toothpick, no wallet photos, sandwich shop punch card …”
“No bloody footprints.”
“Noted. No black glove.”
“Anything else?”
“Fuck. Is it that time already?”
“Well, I don’t think there’s much else we can do here.”
“All right then, let’s go find the fucking Internet.”
THEY WENT DOWN
to Cozy’s Kafe on Lombard. Kim tried to commandeer the pay-per-use Internet terminal from the woman at the desk. After five minutes of haggling, she agreed to let him use it as long as he bought two sandwiches.
William Curren had spread himself thick over the Internet. There was a Facebook account, a Myspace, a photo stream (90 percent of the photos involved outdoor activities), a Yelp account (reviews, mostly negative), and a blog entirely made up of links to eighties music videos. From his Yelp account, Kim and Finch learned Curren’s last meal had been
at Sun Fat, an order-by-picture Chinese dive down on Jackson Street that doubled as a Pinoy karaoke bar. He complained about the service and said his barbecue pork bun was “perfectly adequate,” adding, “That’s not a compliment.” From Facebook, they learned that he had grown up around Boston, gone to Tufts, and moved out to the Bay Area to work for getoverit.com, which, as far as they could tell, was some sort of scam. They couldn’t learn much from the comments on his wall, only that they hated his friends. After more Googling, they found his thisiswhereIbe account, a service that allowed you to “check in” wherever you went. Over the past four days, William, who seemed to go by Bill, had checked into the Secret Smoke Spot on 4th and Minna, the Blasted Shields Pub on 5th and Mission, Blue Tangerine on 18th and Valencia (“The almond cheese on the nachos is bomb.”), Limon on 23rd and South Van Ness, Starbelly on Market and 16th (“service is slow, but hot!”), the 7-Eleven on Sanchez and 18th (“
;-)”), and, finally, Sun Fat on Jackson.
Kim said, “You know what? I’m glad this kid’s last meal was so shitty. You fucking white people. You go into a nice, cheap establishment where they let you get rice and chicken, hot and sour soup, and fucking egg rolls for four dollars and you complain because they won’t look you in the eye? And why did he write it as a fucking haiku?”
“He put a picture of Lion-O from
ThunderCats
as his profile pic.”
“Lion-O was black, don’t you think?”
“Let’s not do this now.”
“Okay, but think about it. He was like a big black gay man.”
“Jesus.”
“Who the fuck is Richard Feynman, and why are all these people quoting him?”
They went on like this. Kim e-mailed some of the more pertinent
info to Goldwyn back at the office. A waitress brought them their sandwiches and wondered why two officers of the law found it necessary to speak so vulgarly.
After a few bites, Finch noticed that his thoughts had sped up a bit. But there was still the clarity, a deep blue, cold clarity. It felt strangely familiar.
“Hey, Jim.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I know what happened to me back in that restaurant.”
With special attention paid to Lionface’s breasts, Finch described what had happened at the Being Abundance Cafeteria.
Kim said, “That is fucked.”
“Fucked.”
“She was topless?”
“Yes. And who has ever heard of a bee pollen allergy?”
“Everything looked scaly?”
“Yeah. And some of the light was bulging.”
“Your pupils do look dilated, Keanu.”
“Exactly. She looked like she was checking for that.”
“Are you seeing things very clearly right now? Like, is there some calm clarity to your thoughts?”
Finch burped. Kim’s mouth swung slightly open, and the hard, sarcastic gleam in his eyes softened a bit. Then he picked up his knife and sawed his sandwich in half.
After chewing thoughtfully, he said, “Why would these weirdos drug a homicide detective?”
“To be fair, it might have been for the other guy.”
“Do you want to go down there, arrest them all?”
“I don’t know.”
For a second, because neither knew what to do, they stared at the computer screen.
An e-mail popped up in Kim’s in-box. It was from Goldwyn.
TO: James Kim
FROM: Eric Goldwyn
SUBJECT: getoverit.com
Thought that website looked familiar. Went back over the Dolores Stone file. Turns out her neighbor, PHILIP KIM (your cousin?), works for the same site. Called up the office. They said he hasn’t been to work in nine days. Not sure if it’s relevant, but thought you might be interested.
THE WINDSHIELD GLASS
1
. Taxidermy, the spot where I agreed to meet up with Performance Fleece, was a bar up on 22nd and Guerrero. Back when it was called The Liberties, I used to meet Adam there for drinks because none of the flabby old drunks at the bar reminded us of what we had left behind in New York. All traces of the old Irish pub had been entombed in a thick layer of staple-gunned fur—the heraldic shields that once hung above the top shelf of the bar had been replaced by Goodwill salvage stuffed animals.
Performance Fleece was at a small, furry table near the back.
She said, “Why did I want to see you?”
“Hello.”
The lines on her face had fractalized, deepened. Those cheeks, which had radiated with the pink good health of New England, now looked drained of any health or protest. I admit, it made me feel a bit empowered to be on the other side of one of those girls who so tightly, and effectively, guard the secrets of their makeup bags.
Still, she smelled like freshly cut grass.
I sat down, smiling stupidly. She clacked the salt and pepper shakers together. Pewter deer heads. I asked, “What are you drinking?”
She shook her head, but then, miraculously, smiled. She said, “Whiskey and soda.”
I went up to the bar and ordered two. The bartender looked me over and poured two doubles.
We drank them down without saying much. The color—that good post–hockey practice color—flushed back into her face.
“So,” I said, “what’s this about?”
“I’m a direct person.”
“Yeah.”
“So, I’ll just come out and say it, okay?”
“Sure.”
“I left Mel.”
2
. There’s no need to detail a girl’s domestic misery in her own words, especially when those words are frazzled words, so for Performance Fleece’s sake, I’ll paraphrase. She and Mel had been having problems for quite some time. They had met as freshmen at Williams—he, the dark Italian star of the hockey team (her words), and she, the blue-blood field hockey star from
Choate
(her italics). Their relationship had taken on easy contours from the start. In a nice private-school way, she and Mel were well aligned and stayed so for years.
Whenever she felt bored, she’d ask Mel to take her down to visit his family in Providence. There, she would sit down at one of those Italian feasts they show in those movies, with gigantic
happy
women
(her words) who wore gold jewelry and drove American cars and men who smelled like trashy women. It was Mel’s family, more than Mel himself, that kept Performance Fleece around. She had always shown an interest in other cultures. (I snickered at this, but after she stabbed me in the back of the hand with a cocktail straw, I shut up.)
No
, not lame, like
that
. Not like those girls who travel abroad to
Tibet
or some fucked-up place and take 16-mm photos of poor children playing
soccer
, but more like I was interested in
fucking
a lot of different types of guys, like in middle school, I gave one of the METCO kids a blowjob after he got done with football practice. At Choate, I stole out of my dorm and let two of the Mexican guys who worked in the dining hall fondle and suck on my breasts, for like an hour, and rub me. Over the pants. (Again, her words. Note: longest sentence I had heard out of her. Plus, she giggled.)
She did not know why she stayed with Mel for all those years. Maybe the stability of the logic behind their union helped her with the guilt she felt over her true inner slut. Or maybe she did love his family enough to lease out their son. Maybe Boston just didn’t make sense to her without Mel. They had the same friends, they ate at the same five restaurants, they drank at the same two bars, they shopped at the same supermarket, and both took the T to Downtown Crossing. Love and cities are always inextricably entwined. There’s no restaurant or corner store or run-down dive in any city that doesn’t double as a monument for a lost love. I think that’s why we always stop and stare whenever we come across a girl crying in public. We sense the imprint of a memory being pressed onto the sidewalk, onto the building contours, onto the names of the streets.
Boston, Performance Fleece explained, had become just a photo reel
of her years with Mel. In the first frame, she and Mel move her mom’s old furniture into the bottom floor of a run-down duplex in Cambridgeport. Farther along the reel, after having lived all over Boston, they stand smiling next to a
SOLD
sign. She had just accepted the progression of these images, just as she had accepted Choate, lacrosse camp, Williams, and, ultimately, Mel. Then, one day, for reasons unknown, she simply didn’t. Everything became ugly to her—the hats the cashiers at Dunkin’ Donuts had to wear, the grease on the handgrips on the T, the excess butter served with the bread at Bertucci’s, the endless talk about the Red Sox, the droves of pale, mute Chinese kids, forever shuttling on the Red Line between Kendall/MIT and Harvard Square, the green everywhere on Saint Patrick’s Day and the kids who never took an interest in anything other than Tom Brady suddenly asking one another what part of Ireland their people were from, the constant questions from their married friends about when they were going to “repay the party,” the drabness of the drive on the 2 up to her parents’ house in Beverly, the only stretch of road in America where the trees are bare year-round, the bartender at their neighborhood bar, a guy Mel described as “the salt of the earth,” and his stupid philosophy about what constituted “honest work,” mostly stolen from
Good Will Hunting
.
When they left Boston for San Francisco, the scaffolding of their love fell away. She had known this would happen. The move was her idea. She had gotten a job offer at Wells Fargo and found him a position at a start-up. She reasoned that they would never get to live in California ever again, and he couldn’t think of much of a rebuttal. His best friend from college lived in San Francisco, and he was tapped into a network of good dudes. They’d moved into the condo on Natoma Street nine months ago.