The Laughing Corpse

His face clouded up then. A wrinkling between his eyes. “I don’t know that name.”

“Oh, give me a break. I’m not wearing a wire.”

“Name your price. We can meet it,” he said.

“There is no price.”

“Two million, tax-free,” he said.

“What zombie could be worth two million dollars, Tommy?” I stared at his softly frowning face. “What could Gaynor hope to gain that would allow him to make a profit on that kind of expenditure?”

Tommy just stared at me. “You don’t need to know that.”

“I thought you’d say that. Go away, Tommy. I’m not for sale.” I stepped back towards the door, pla

I pulled the Firestar and pointed it at his chest. He froze. Dead eyes, blinking at me. His large hands balled into fists. A nearly purple flush crept up his neck into his face. Rage.

“Don’t do it,” I said, my voice sounded soft.

“Bitch,” he wheezed it at me.

“Now, now, Tommy, don’t get nasty. Ease down, and we can all live to see another glorious day.”

His pale eyes flicked from the gun to my face, then back to the gun. “You wouldn’t be so tough without that piece.”

If he wanted me to offer to arm wrestle him, he was in for a disappointment. “Back off, Tommy, or I’ll drop you here and now. All the muscle in the world won’t help you.”

I watched something move behind his dead eyes, then his whole body relaxed. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Okay, you got the drop on me today. But if you keep disappointing my boss, I’m go

A little voice in my head said, “Shoot him now.” I knew as surely as I knew anything that dear Tommy would be at my back someday. I didn’t want him there, but...I couldn’t just kill him because I thought he might come after me someday. It wasn’t a good enough reason. And how would I ever have explained it to the police?

“Get out, Tommy.” I opened the door without taking either my gaze or the gun off the man. “Get out and tell Gaynor that if he keeps a

Tommy’s nostrils flared just a bit at that, veins straining in his neck. He walked very stiffly past me and out into the hall. I held the gun at my side and watched him, listening to his footsteps retreat down the stairs. When I was as sure as I could be that he was gone, I put my gun back in its holster, grabbed my gym bag, and headed for judo class. Mustn’t let these little interruptions spoil my exercise program. Tomorrow I would miss my workout for sure. I had a funeral to attend. Besides, if Tommy really did challenge me to arm wrestling, I was going to need all the help I could get.

Chapter 9

I hate funerals. At least this one wasn’t for anyone I had particularly liked. Cold, but true. Peter Burke had been an unscrupulous SOB when alive. I didn’t see why death should automatically grant him sainthood. Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?

I stood there in the bright August sunlight in my little black dress and dark sunglasses, watching the mourners. They had set up a canopy over the coffin, flowers, and chairs for the family. Why was I here, you might ask, if I had not been a friend? Because Peter Burke had been an animator. Not a very good one, but we are a small, exclusive club. If one of us dies, we all come. It’s a rule. There are no exceptions. Maybe your own death, but then again being that we raise the dead, maybe not.

There are things you can do to a corpse so it won’t rise again as a vampire, but a zombie is a different beast. Short of cremation, an animator can bring you back. Fire was about the only thing a zombie respected or feared.

We could have raised Peter and asked him who put a gun to his head. But they had put a 357 Magnum with an expanding point just behind his ear. There wasn’t enough left of his head to fill a plastic bag. You could raise him as a zombie, but he couldn’t talk. Even the dead need mouths.

Ma

Charles Montgomery stood just behind me like a tall dark mountain. Charles looks like he played football somewhere. He has the ability to frown and make people run for cover. He just looks like a hard ass. Truth is, Charles faints at the sight of anything but animal blood. It’s lucky for him he looks like such a big black dude. He has almost no tolerance for pain. He cries at Walt Disney movies, like when Bambi’s mother dies. It’s endearing as hell.

His wife, Caroline, was working. She hadn’t been able to switch shifts with anyone. I wondered how hard she had tried. Caroline is okay but she sort of looks down on what we do. Mumbo jumbo she calls it. She’s a registered nurse. I guess after dealing with doctors all day, she has to look down on someone.

Up near the front of the crowd was Jamison Clarke. He was tall; thin, and the only red-haired, green-eyed black man I’ve ever met. He nodded at me across the grave. I nodded back.

We were all here; the animators of Animators, Incorporated. Bert and Mary, our daytime secretary, were holding down the fort. I hoped Bert didn’t book us in anything we couldn’t handle. Or would refuse to handle. He did that if you didn’t watch him.

The sun slapped my back like a hot metal hand. The men kept pulling at their ties and high collars. The smell of chrysanthemums was thick like wax at the back of my throat. No one ever gives you football mums unless you die. Carnations, roses, snapdragons, they all have happier lives, but mums, and glads--they’re the funeral flowers. At least the tall spires of gladiolus had no scent.

A woman sat in the front line of chairs under the canopy. She was leaning over her knees like a broken doll. Her sobs were loud enough to drown out the words of the priest. Only his quiet, soothing rhythm reached me as I stood near the back.

Two small children were gripping the hands of an older man. Grampa? The children were pale, hollow-eyed. Fear vied with tears on their faces. They watched their mother break down completely, useless to them. Her grief was more important than theirs. Her loss greater. Bullshit.

My own mother had died when I was eight. You never really filled in the hole. It was like a piece of you gone missing. An ache that never quite goes away. You deal with it. You go on, but it’s there.

A man sat beside her, rubbing her back in endless circles. His hair was nearly black, cut short and neat. Broad shouldered. From the back he looked eerily like Peter Burke. Ghosts in sunlight.

The cemetery was dotted with trees. The shade rustled and flickered pale grey in the sunlight. On the other side of the gravel driveway that twined through the cemetery were two men. They stood quietly, waiting. Grave diggers. Waiting to finish the job.

I looked back at the coffin under its blanket of pink carnations. There was a bulky mound just behind it, covered in bright green fake grass. Underneath was the fresh dug earth waiting to go back in the hole.

Mustn’t let the loved ones think about red-clay soil pouring down on the gleaming coffin. Clods of dirt hitting the wood, covering your husband, father. Trapping them forever inside a lead-lined box. A good coffin will keep the water and worms out, but it doesn’t stop decay.

I knew what would be happening to Peter Burke’s body. Cover it in satin, wrap a tie round its neck, rouge the cheeks, close the eyes; it’s still a corpse.