Suckers - Jack Kilborn [37]
Next I checked my email, where I discovered I’d won the Irish lottery, inherited eighty million dollars from an unknown relative, and was asked to shuffle funds into my bank account from the President of Rwanda. They all got my standard response: enthusiastic replies with an attachment supposedly containing my routing number. The attachment really contained an email bomb, which once opened would bombard their computers with tens of thousands of naked pictures of actress Bea Arthur. I called it the Maude Virus.
I had a bit of a hangover, my ass still hurt from where I’d fallen on my keys, and I was hungry. But the only food I had in the condo was that head of lettuce, which I wasn’t going to eat even if I were starving to death, so I changed into a slightly less dirty suit and hit the corner convenience store for an overpriced cup of joe, a dose of Advil, and a prepackaged cheese Danish.
It was a gorgeous Chicago day, the sun shining, the lakeshore breeze blowing, the pigeons singing their lovely song. I leaned against the storefront window and called my client.
“Hello?”
“Is this Maxine Drawbridge?”
“It’s Norma Cauldridge.”
I rubbed my nose. “Hi, Maxine. It’s Harry McGlade. I need more money.”
“Did you find something out, Mr. McGlade?”
“I did. And it’s ugly. Real ugly. Plus, I was gravely injured during my surveillance.” I smiled at my unintentional pun, which was actually intentional. “I’m not going near him again without more cash.”
“I’ve already paid you twelve hundred dollars.”
My nose still itched, so I scratched it. On the inside.
“I want double that. Think of it as an investment. When the lawyers see the dirt I’ve got on old Roy, you’ll take the freak for every dime he has.”
I removed my finger, noted something gray and waxy stuck to the end. I’d been picking my nose for years, and this was the strangest booger I’d ever seen.
“Who’s Roy?”
“Whatever the hell his name is.”
I took a closer look. Sniffed. It smelled familiar.
“Do you have pictures?”
“I will. Send the money to my PayPal account. My email is… oh god…”
The odor was rotten meat and formaldehyde. Somehow, while I was in the coffin, I’d gotten a hunk of dead flesh up my nose. Dead flesh covered in boogers. And a nose hair.
I leaned over and puked up the coffee, Danish, and Advil. Eighteen bucks and change, shot to hell.
“Mr. McGlade? Are you there?”
I wiped a toe through the puke, looking for the Advil. They were probably still good. Instead, I saw something that made me want to quit eating forever.
Part of a human ear.
I got closer, sure it had to be some coincidentally-shaped chunk of chewed Danish.
No, it was an ear. The upper, cartilagey part. I often nibbled women’s ears when we were fooling around. I must have got caught up in the role-playing and bitten off a hunk.
“Mr. McGlade?”
“Scratch that. I want triple.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“Lady, I went to third base with a dead guy last night, all because of your husband. Pay me, or find some other schmuck to do your dirty work.”
“You did what with a dead guy?”
“Don’t believe me? You want to talk to him?”
I held my cell phone over the ear. Then I realized I was acting a bit hysterical. Maybe I was still asleep, and this was just a dream.
I felt my backside, wondering if the pain in my ass was truly from sitting on my keys, or from something that was still up there…
I stuck my hand inside my pants, reaching down the plumber’s crack…
It’s a dream, it has to be a dream…
A pigeon waddled over, pecked up the ear, and ran off. My fingers crept closer…
“Mr. McGlade?”
A dream, all a dream, just a harmless dream…
And then I touched the severed end of something that shouldn’t be there. Something that felt like a Pepperidge Farm County Style Breakfast Sausage Link.
“Please!” I cried out. “If there’s any decency left in this cruel world, let this be a dream!”
It was a dream. I woke up in bed next to an empty bottle of tequila. Blessedly, there was no head of lettuce between my legs. And the