When Graveyards Yawn by G. Wells Taylor (popular books to read txt) 📖

Speeding recklessly down a pier past midnight with two dead men might make your average detective a little nervous. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’d ever done, but I had experienced stranger. Since the Change, I couldn’t walk into a convenience store without something unbelievable happening. You could see it on people’s faces. Hesitation and fear lurked behind every pair of eyes. Everyone was a little disturbed, a little on edge, waiting for the next change. Yet, there were truly unsettling moments, and this was one of them. There are intuitive flashes one gets when in the company of the dead. I suspected some dark brotherhood—minute adrenaline impulses of warning—nanoseconds of paranoia flickered where a comment or action was mistaken for envy. I had to remember I was with Elmo. He was my partner.

The pregnant bellies of freighters bowed out toward us. The pier and the looming shapes of rusty hulks were created instantaneously from the fog ten feet in front of us only to be returned to the gray chaos the moment we passed. The pier’s uneven planking gave the car an unsettling bounce.

“Ease it back a little, Elmo.” I patted the dash. “Ease it back.”

Elmo’s driving managed to shake Moreau’s tough demeanor. “This fucking partner—he’s crazy. We don’t need to go so fast, but he goes so fast! Ah, fuck!” He leaned forward and pointed. “Just ahead.” Moreau breathed the word. “Clementine.” he repeated, “Clementine.”

Elmo must have spotted a dime, because he stopped on it. “Ease it back next time,” I scolded him. If I wore dentures I would have had to pry them out of the dashboard. But Elmo was all primed for something. Perhaps speeding down a pier past midnight with a dead man and a gun-toting clown might make your average dead gunsel a little nervous. His hands gripped the wheel as though the rest of his body were hanging over a cliff.

On our right was an old, well-patched freighter named Clementine. Large rectangles of steel were welded over its many portholes. From the awkward angle of its smokestack and superstructure, I could tell that the Clementine’s well-traveled keel rested on the garbage and junk that made up the bottom of Greasetown harbor. Its tie lines were slack. The dock it leaned against had shifted with the weight. Its planking zigzagged dangerously away from the ship. I climbed out of the car, cautiously fingering my gun. Moreau followed me. I stared up at the superstructure of the freighter and barely made out a dim orange glow.

“So this…” I was cut off.

“Is the Clementine. Jeeze, Dick, I don’t think you gotta be no smart guy to figure that,” he chuckled. “No wonder you need help investigating…”

“Right.” There was no use getting upset with Moreau. I wasn’t afraid of him there was just no point in having it out with someone who was undoubtedly tough. It would be a rather meaningless display of violence, and a messy one at that. Instead I chose to frustrate him with pleasantries.

“Right, you’re right, Mr. Moreau. And thank you for helping me and my partner find the Clementine.”

“Hey.” I noticed a demonic lack of light in Moreau’s heavy-lidded eyes. “You ain’t taking a sort of stab there are you, Dick?”

“Of course not, Mr. Moreau. Just making light, you know.”

“Oh, haw, haw,” Moreau laughed in his unnatural way. “I just wanted to be sure. I never know.”

I smiled and turned away breathing a “No kidding…” and then mumbled to Elmo. “Well, Elmo, here we have the Clementine. I wonder if anybody is home.”

“Go on up,” Moreau said plainly as he lit a thin black cheroot. “He’s waitin’.”

I didn’t ask who was waiting, because I knew I would receive a “Well, a scientist a’course, Dick! Haw, haw!” I could feel Tommy’s anger just beneath the surface of my mind. He did not like insults. I released the suppressed anger by tearing the soles out of my boots with my toenails.

“Thanks.” I nodded again, and lit a cigarette. Moreau backed into the fog. Elmo followed me along the wharf to a rusted iron gangway—the weight of the Clementine was slowly driving it through the dock. I saw a large silhouette at the top of it. It carried the sharp angle of a machine gun.

“You Wildclown?” The words came out as a growl.

“Yes.” I tried to do my serious face.

“Come on up…” The machine gun jerked up and down to encourage us. Tommy appeared like an afterthought to me, intensely aware of the gun barrel.

I muttered to Elmo. “Let’s remember Plan A.” Plan A was a simple one we kept around for trouble in close quarters. It ran like this: if someone had the drop on us, and didn’t just gun us down, whoever didn’t have a gun pointed at him would moan like a lovesick moose. We had used it once and it worked when we found ourselves ambushed by an angry man we had photographed with another man’s wife. He had caught us in a bar with a couple of his friends. In that case, Elmo had moaned, and I was able to deliver a searing right hook that downed the protagonist. His friends just carried him away, unimpressed by any of our actions. Regardless, Plan A became part of our repertoire.

I reached the top of the gangway. A lantern suddenly flashed in my face. “Shit.” I heard. “You do dress like a clown!”

“My detective costume is at the cleaners,” I snarled. “We’re here to see someone.”

The lantern fell from my face. The voice grunted: “Follow me.” I did my best. It was difficult with all those little green dots in the way, and with the deck of the ship rising at an uneven and steep incline. I heard Elmo bark his shin on something and swear. We were led along a shadow-strewn companionway to the bridge of the old freighter. Inside was all of the equipment you would expect to find there. A large wooden wheel and an instrument panel commanded a good portion of two walls. There was a cabinet for nautical charts and a broad brass and oak table to spread them out on. The ceiling was low, lit by a forty-watt bulb. The smell of fish and oil was heavy. There had been some changes. A leather couch stretched along a wall opposite me. In front of that was a battered coffee table bearing magazines, overflowing ashtrays and a couple of empty whiskey bottles. There were three fiberglass chairs arranged around that. Everything listed toward the dock.

Against the window, was a man in a long, black overcoat wearing a wide-brimmed fedora. He stood in shadow, staring away from us. The greasy, flyspecked window afforded him an ugly view of the fog. Smoke trailed up from his cigarette. I heard a funny trickling sound, like the last syrupy drops from a beer bottle.

“The most important point…” came a voice that was soft like the fog. “Is why you would want to talk to me. I don’t trust Pogo’s judgment. He takes too many of my drugs.”

I gestured for Elmo to sit in one of the fiberglass chairs. He quickly complied. “I just wanted to ask a few questions….”

“Don’t, Wildclown, if that is your name! Not about drugs, not about the infinitesimal parameters that they hold—the crystalline magnificence of chemicals. The more you know, the closer you get to death: by my hand, by the drugs, by Authority. Knowledge of them, the drugs, gives you knowledge of the Netherworld. Knowledge of the Netherworld gives you the power of Anarchy.”

“I’m not interested in drugs. At least not other than a severe alcohol dependency that I’m nursing.” I moved a little further in. I still couldn’t see his features.

“Not now, but you could be, if you began to know the complexity, the hidden qualities. They’re the building blocks of life—and death. I don’t care how strong you are. You would become addicted. If not to their effects—then their eternal natures. Such knowledge could make you god of the underworld—or a maggot in the belly of a corpse,” he chuckled, and then turned away from me when I drew nearer. He hissed, “No closer!” Again the strange trickling sound. “Take a chair. Take the couch. No closer.” I did as I was told, dropping into the chair beside Elmo. The man in black called to the guard that I now noticed had remained at the door. “Lonny! Get them a drink. Whiskey is all I have for you gentlemen. I will not insult you by offering less potent pharmaceuticals.” He chuckled quietly. I concentrated on his speech. There was a quality to the whispering that was forced. His words were pronounced with supernatural articulation. His diction reminded me of a bad stage actor.

“No, Wildclown, you would not be able to resist. There are too many interesting things to know, and you’re a detective. One clue leads to the next, and you go on and on, despite the fact that the clues may be leading you to your own death. You have no control over it after a while. We are the same in that, Wildclown. Explorers, driven and obsessive.” Again, I heard a low chuckling. The shoulders bunched.

“You have me at a disadvantage,”