Death Warmed Over - By Kevin J. Anderson Page 0,38
the sports scores.
“How did Notre Dame do?” I asked.
He slowly turned and looked at me through his round spectacles. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard that joke?”
“Sorry, I’m a detective, not a comedian.”
When Albert brought back the correct plate, I concentrated on my lunch, cutting a chunk of meat and popping it into my mouth, chewing as I considered the cases again. Somehow I couldn’t believe that the rabbi or even the necromancer had any motive to shoot me. One down. Only about ninety-nine more cases to go through.
I finished my lunch in a hurry, paid the tab at the cash register, and returned to the counter to leave a two-dollar tip for Esther, even though she hadn’t spoken a word to me. Maybe that was why I did leave her a tip.
I left the diner and headed out into the streets. I had work to do that afternoon.
CHAPTER 16
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’d been 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