Train Wreck Girl (9 page)

The first thing I had to do was drag Bart's drunk ass out of a bar. This was actually part of the plan. First light bulb that went off in Bart's head when I said I wanted to work with him picking up stiffs must've been: cool; if Danny can drive me to Space Coast and drive the van, I can get as drunk as I want.

Bart had been drinking a lot more since I started driving us to get the dead bodies.

He was in Sullivan's. He had his pager, too. He was supposed to come outside as soon as the pager went off. Still, I had to park Bart's car, go inside, and get him.

Sullivan's was as packed as Duke's had been. I noticed some of the crowd from Duke's had filtered down. A DJ worked on weekends. Spinning the same songs he'd been spinning for a decade, more or less. Mostly disco. It was like he was the musical embodiment of the guy who tells a joke so many times that it goes from funny to ridiculous to funny again. Or, at least the disco at Sully's had gone through various stages of funny to ridiculous to funnier to more ridiculous and so on. And where was Bart? Getting down on the dance floor.

He was flanked by two young women. He was dancing with them, but they didn't seem to be dancing with him. He was that drunk. I paved my way through the dance floor, grabbed Bart by the ear, and tugged enough so that he knew he really had to go. He followed my trail off the dance floor. He chugged the last of his beer.

When we got to the door, I worried for a second that Bart would make a run for it. Go back for the two broads on the dance floor. I turned to make sure he didn't. As I did this, I caught a glimpse of her at the bar. Summer dress. Mary Janes. Bangs cut high up her forehead. Still lean. Still looking peaceful. Drinking wine. Sophie.

I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. Sophie waved. I looked at Bart. Bart waved back. I waved, too. Then I pulled Bart out of the bar.

We got into Bart's car and headed for Rockledge to pick up the van. “You see me with those two girls?” Bart asked. “Out on the dance floor?”

“Yes I did,” I said.

“Aww, man, I was in there. Did you see that?”

“You're the mack.”

“Shit,” Bart said. “Hell of a time for someone to die.” Bart fumbled through his glove compartment. Down in the bottom of it, beneath the registration and sunglasses and map and rolling papers and lighter was a cassette tape. He pulled it out and put it in the stereo.

At first, I didn't believe my ears. A few notes played. I looked at Bart. He was dancing in his seat. My ears weren't lying. My punk rock buddy was playing the
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack. Not only was he playing it, but he owned it. What kind of crazy shit was this?

I tried to ignore it as we drove out of Cocoa Beach. I wanted to think, anyway. I wanted to think, what the fuck was Sophie doing in Sullivan's? Where did she come from? Bart told me she'd moved back to Atlanta to live with her mom. What was she doing in Cocoa Beach? She didn't have family down here. Except for her dad. That's right. Her dad moved down to Orlando when he finally decided that Atlanta wasn't big enough for him and Sophie's mom. A move I guess I could relate to. So he lives in Orlando now. That's pretty close. She could be visiting her dad and decide to come to the beach for a weekend. It could have nothing to do with me. And I guess this would be a good time to visit family. Spring. Right around Easter, maybe. Was that it? Was this Easter weekend? I asked Bart, “Hey, Travolta, when's Easter?”

“Last Sunday,” Bart said.

Oh shit, I thought. He's right. But that was okay. Last weekend would be close enough. It would make enough sense for me to relax about Sophie being in town. It could possibly be a coincidence. Nothing to do with me. Sophie comes down to visit her dad for Easter and visits Cocoa Beach the next weekend. Easy enough.

And it only bugged me because I happened to see Sophie on the exact same night when it seemed like I may have a chance with Helen again. It felt like that DJ was spinning my life, letting it go from funny to ridiculous and back again. All the while, still playing the same old tunes.

By now, I was driving across Merritt Island. Bart had his window down. His hand was out the window, snaking up and down in the wind. He started calling out the names of all the places we passed. “Wal-Mart. McDonald's. Applebee's. Steak and Shake. Outback. AMC Theaters. Barnes & Noble. Toys R Us. Blockbuster. Circuit City. Chili's.” And so on. This stretch of Merritt Island was Generic Town, USA. I noticed this every time we drove to Space Coast to pick up the van. I never said anything about it. I knew it bugged Bart, though. He said, “Remember when we were always talking about the meaning of life?”

I said, “Yeah.”

Bart didn't say anything. The
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack danced on. We drove past another dozen or so chains.

I said, “Why'd you bring that up?”

“I was just looking at all these joints along this strip here. And I was thinking, you know, about the meaning of life and why we're here and where we're headed right now. To pick up dead people. And I was thinking, because we're always sad when people die. But how bad is death, really, if all it cheats you out of is another shitty meal at Applebee's or another crappy movie rental at Blockbuster? It's not so sad then, is it? If all you were gonna do on your last day on Earth was go shopping at Wal-Mart, then, shit, you might as well die a day earlier, right?”

I saw my opportunity here and I went with it. “Exactly,” I said. “It's like, if all you're gonna do is listen to the
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack one more time, what's the point?”

Bart gave me the dirtiest look I'd ever seen him give me. I smiled. He ejected his tape and threw it out the window. I immediately felt guilty. We didn't say anything again until we picked up the van.

The dispatcher at Space Coast said two things to me when I picked up the van and got our instructions. She said, “Bart needs to sober up.” Which was true, but I wasn't gonna let on that I agreed. She also said, “You got a nasty one tonight.”

Bart and I climbed into the van. I drove to the Merritt Island Airport.

It was pretty obvious where the bodies were. Two fire trucks were parked in the field west of the runway. A cop car was there, too. Red and blue lights swirled around, bouncing off the remains of a plane. I parked the van next to the fire trucks, got out, and walked to the back of the van. I started to unlatch the gurney but Bart said, “No.” He grabbed two body bags and handed one to me. “Those wheels will just get stuck in the grass. We'll use these,” he said.

The plane and the bodies inside it were about twenty yards across a field, west of the runway. The door to the plane was open. The grass surrounding it was black, moist, spongy. Outside the cockpit was all charred metal and flakes of burnt paint. It was a small plane. A two seater. The body of the pilot leaned on the controls. He was black. Not brown like an African. Crispy black. Burnt.

Bart and I walked up to the plane together. Bart said, “Remember when you were in high school and you'd walk into the locker room and that smell of ass would just hit you?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, now it's the smell of death.”

And Bart was a pro at this, or at least his timing was perfect, because as soon as he finished saying this, that sweet, rotten stink slapped me in the nose. The kind of stink that seems to glue itself to your nose and esophagus and lungs and just keep stinking. I nearly puked right there in the wet grass by the plane.

Bart watched me gag and smiled.

“Don't you fucking fart,” I said. “It smells bad enough as it is.”

Bart laughed a little. We kept walking toward the plane. Bart reached into the pocket of his plaid bermudas and grabbed a handkerchief. “You'll learn to carry one of these,” he said.

I lifted the collar of my T-shirt up over my nose. It didn't do much good. The stench of smoked plane and charred flesh was too strong.

There were two bodies in the plane. A pilot and a passenger. Bart took his body bag around to the passenger side. I worked on the pilot.

I grabbed the his arm. It felt like a burnt turkey leg. Like something you were planning on serving, but you left it in the oven too long. I pulled on his arm, but he hardly budged. I made a rookie mistake. I put my foot up on the edge of the plane, got a good hold on the arm, and yanked with all my might. The arm popped right out of the socket. The arm and I flew ass backwards into the wet grass outside the plane. Water seeped through my t-shirt. I got back to my feet and looked at the arm. Cooked meat and tendon stuck out of the shoulder. I put the arm in the body bag and went back for more.

Bart was on the other side of the plane. He couldn't budge the passenger. He said to me, “Don't take him apart piece by piece.”

I gave Bart my best no-shit look, then turned my attention back to the pilot. I had no idea how to get this bastard out. His skin seemed to have fused to the leather of the seat. And it wasn't that I was squeamish about touching him. I wasn't. A few days on this job and you realize that there's a big difference between dead people you know and dead people you don't know. Dead people you don't know don't have a history for you. They come with no baggage. It's easy to accept their mortality. They're just the corpse in front of you. Part of the job.

I guess I got jaded pretty quickly, too, because I was looking at that burnt pilot stuck to his seat and wondering where I could get a spatula to pry him out. As I was thinking of this, someone walked behind me and said, “Damn, Bart, where'd you find this loser?”

I turned around and looked at the guy who'd spoken. He was a cop. In the darkness, I could barely make out his face. He stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder. “It's good to finally see some black folks around here,” he said. As soon as he said this, I recognized him. Dante Jones.

We'd gone to high school with him. He and my ex-girlfriend Rosalie were the only black kids in the school. Whenever Dante saw me and Rosalie, he'd say that line about seeing black folks. At first, I thought he was just talking about Rosalie. After a while, though, he started saying it to me when Rosalie wasn't around. I didn't really get his joke, but I liked it, anyway. It always feels good to be included.

I gave him a big smile. “Holy shit,” I said. I held my hand out to shake his.

He said, “I'll shake your hand after you wash it, you nasty motherfucker.” He squeezed my shoulder. “How the hell have you been?”

“Up to my ass in dead guys right now,” I said, “but pretty good otherwise.”

Bart said, “Hey, Dante, you got a knife?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“These bastards are stuck to their seats. We have to cut them out.”

Dante reached into his pocket and grabbed a Leatherman. He handed it through the cockpit to Bart. “Try not to get dead guy all over it,” he said.

Bart opened the knife and started cutting the passenger out of his seat.

Dante turned his attention back to me. “I heard you were back,” he said.

“Who told you?” I asked.

“The Flagstaff Police Department.”

This surprised me. This actually freaked me out more than the crispy guys in the plane in front of me. “Huh?” I said.

Bart stopped cutting the passenger out and looked up.

Dante said, “I got a call about a month ago from the Flagstaff Police Department. They'd called the station a few times asking about you. They said you were involved in some kind of shit back there. Somehow word got around to me, so I talked to them. They said some white chick died back there. Said they wanted to talk to you about that. You know anything about that?”

I shrugged. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them that you wouldn't have anything to do with white girls.”

“If I had any sense, I wouldn't,” I said.

Dante put out his fist. I touched it with my fist. “No shit,” he said. He looked down at the spongy grass around his police black loafers. “Anyway, you didn't kill any white girls, did you?”

“No,” I said. “I haven't killed anyone.” I looked at Bart. He was back to cutting up the seat. He'd cut open the side closest to him, and now he was leaning over the body, cutting the other side. “Is that what they thought? That I'm a killer?”

“Nah,” Dante said. “They thought you were more of a manslaughterer.”

I laughed a little nervous laugh. “That's better, huh?”

Dante smiled. He told me that he'd looked into it. He said that, if the police department really had anything on me, they wouldn't have been calling him. They were just trying to shake me down. “But if you go back to Flagstaff, they'll probably throw your ass in jail,” he said.

By now, Bart had his dead guy cut free and stuffed into the bag. He handed me the knife. I started cutting the pilot's seat. Dante kept talking. He said to Bart, “Do you know where Flagstaff is?”

“Arizona,” Bart said.

“Did you know that before this motherfucker told you?” Dante pointed at me. Bart shook his head. “I'd never heard of that town,” Dante said. “I had to get out a map and look that shit up. I didn't even know which state to look in. What were you doing way the fuck out there?”

I shrugged and kept cutting. As I started getting around the pilot's legs, I put my hand on the floor for balance. I felt something hard and metal under the seat. It was a flask. “What's this?” I said. I handed the flask to Dante. He opened it and took a whiff.

“I think it's whiskey,” he said. “I better make sure.” He lifted the flask over his mouth and poured about a shot of whiskey down without touching his lips. He swallowed and shuddered. “I can't be sure.” He handed the bottle to Bart. “Taste like whiskey to you?”

Bart did a shot, too. “Yep,” he said. “It's whiskey.”