The Trouble With Hairy, page 3
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
To his credit, in the few years Clive had known Fred, he had made a few attempts to cut through Delaney’s pomposity and discover the human being that surely lurked underneath. However, he had since come to the conclusion that Delaney’s irritating exterior masked, if possible, only an even more irritating interior. It wasn’t as if Delaney didn’t try to be friendly. It was just that he lacked the talent for doing so. As a result, though their respective jobs brought them in frequent contact with one another at many of West Hollywood’s endless social functions, Clive avoided the fire chief whenever possible.
Avoiding Delaney, however, was never easy. Ignoring constant rebuffs and sometimes downright snubs, he persisted in his puppy dog-like attempts to be personable. Like a large Doberman, who hadn’t quite realized he isn’t a lap dog, Delaney forced his presence on those who would prefer to do without it.
Across the smoking rubble, Clive could see him busily waddling back and forth consulting with his men. Delaney bent down several times, carefully examining a bit of charred wood or a piece of scorched brick, nodding his head knowingly and occasionally, barking a command. Even from where he was standing, Clive could see the joyous grin plastered across the fire chief’s face. It was clear that Fred was in his element.
With a grimace, Clive recalled a dinner party he’d attended several months ago, given by West Hollywood Mayor Daniel Eversleigh. During the meal, Delaney had entertained the assembled guests with lavishly detailed descriptions of his work in a monologue best entitled “Fire Victims I Have Known.” His wife, Florence, a delightful woman whose patience Clive admired endlessly, had finally gotten him to change the subject. The result had been forty-five minutes of boredom as the guests were entertained by Fred’s intriguing, one-sided discussion of the new subject, “Bureaucracy in the Fire Department.”
The capper of the evening however came when Delaney, determined to put on a good show, led the bewildered Mayor Eversleigh through every room of the house, pointing out potential fire hazards. By his descriptions of the massive flaming destruction that could be brought down upon the Eversleigh family by the merest combustible spark, the fire chief had reduced the poor mayor to a quivering nervous wreck. Clive made his excuses as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so and fled.
Although Fred made no new friends that evening, his discourse did have a lasting effect. Within a week, Eversleigh had gotten the city council to pass an ordinance banning smoking at City Hall and in other public places. To everyone’s surprise, for the first time in West Hollywood’s history, Pamela Burman had actually sided with the mayor on an issue, and the ordinance passed unanimously.
Florence Delaney seemed to be the only person who could stand to be around Fred for very long with the sole exception of his best friend, Ed Larsen, the editor of The Gay Gazette. Florence frequently joked the only reason Fred had married her was because she’d inherited a house from her father on Genesee Avenue — directly behind the old fire station. Clive sometimes wondered if her jokes weren’t intended to be taken more seriously than she let on.
Clive sighed yet again as Delaney spotted him and started to approach, lumbering carefully across the rubble of the previously flourishing business establishments. He recalled with a shudder how Fred had, during a false alarm at the Sheriff’s Station almost a year ago, demolished the walls with an axe, refusing to believe Clive’s protestations that a potential spark of fiery destruction wasn’t lurking within. It had cost the county almost a hundred thousand dollars to repair the damage.
“Clive, my man!” yelled Delaney. Clive plastered a patently false smile of greeting on his face, politician enough to mask his feelings.
“What’s up Fred?”
“Not this place anymore,” said Delaney with a grin. “You should’ve been here. Blazed like a cat with its tail dipped in kerosene.” He chuckled to himself and slapped Clive on the back. Clive tried to ignore the attempt at jocular camaraderie as well as the sooty handprint that was undoubtedly gracing the shoulder of his five hundred dollar suit. “Any ideas on how it started?”
“Nothing for your boys. Looks like an accidental electrical fire.” Delaney surveyed the ruins once again. “Man, that furniture shop went up like a Sunday Bar-B-Que. We could’ve roasted wieners. What a blaze!”
The light of passion shone in Delaney’s eyes as he continued waxing enthusiastically about the fire, making Clive uncomfortable. Clive was a relative newcomer to West Hollywood, but Delaney was a lifelong resident, and so Pamela Burman and others had filled him in on various exploits of Delaney’s youth. As a child, he had always wanted to be a fireman, just like his dad. Thus, he often could be found attempting to incinerate the garages and tool sheds of his neighbors, not seeking to destroy them, but rather to test his ability at putting the fires out.
Delaney had once confided to Clive how he found something seductive about a fire, something deliciously dangerous. Clive figured it was only by some miracle of fate the fire chief hadn’t become a pyromaniac. In Clive’s investigations of criminals with a penchant for recreational arson, he’d frequently been surprised and disturbed to hear Delaney’s words and emotions echoed back to him by suspects in custody.
As Delaney continued his rhapsody on the way the inferno had started his blood pulsing, Clive prayed fervently that sometime soon Delaney would rediscover his childhood pastime. With a great deal of satisfaction, Clive then would be able to arrest him for arson and have him quietly transferred elsewhere to plague another city — perhaps Long Beach, or even better because it was farther away, San Diego.
Delaney was interrupted by the approach of a young fireman, his soot-stained face bearing a grimace of distaste.
“Chief!” he called out.
“Yeah, what?” asked Delaney, irritated at not being able to finish his enthusiastic exposition on why he preferred a good electrical fire to, let’s say, a brush fire.
“We found someone.”
Clive’s eyes grew wide. “In there?” he asked.
The fireman nodded miserably. “There’s not much left.”
“I’d say not enough to light a cigarette with.” Delaney’s grin practically divided his face. “Yep, any poor bastard caught in there is a genuine crispy critter.”
“That’s a human being you’re talking about, Fred.” Clive kept his tone mildly chiding, hiding his irritation.
Delaney elbowed him jocularly in another weak attempt at camaraderie. “I’ll bet you’ve seen burnt popcorn in better condition than that guy in there, whoever he was.” Delaney elbowed him again. “I’ll bet that son of a bitch is fried black enough to give even you a run for your money, Anderson old boy!”
Clive looked down at the side of his Italian suit, now irreparably smudged by the soot that had been clinging to the elbow of Delaney’s slicker and decided that it wasn’t worth confronting Delaney over the racial slur. With a sigh, he removed his pocket handkerchief and dabbed futilely at the stain, succeeding only in spreading it and covering his hands with grime.
“Awww, forget about staying clean, Clive. We’d best wade in and pull that poor piece of charcoal outta there. Wait’ll you get a load of this!”
Clive looked at him aghast. “Don’t you have trained people to…”
“Oh, yeah,” Delaney added, thoughtfully. “Might ruin the suit. Cost a fortune to clean, I’ll bet.” He turned to the waiting fireman. “Better pull the stiff out and bag it for the captain’s pet ghoul.” He turned back to Clive. “You wanna call the coroner?” He paused, a look of distaste passing over his pudgy face. “Or shall I?”
If Clive’s feelings for Fred Delaney could be described as intense dislike, Fred’s feelings for Becky O’Brien, the city coroner, could only be termed mild hatred. First, she was a woman, and Clive had frequently heard Fred ascribe to the outdated notion that women belonged at home, not traipsing about the streets of the city masquerading as city officials.
Unfortunately, Fred carried his personal beliefs into his work, where he was always more “sympathetic” to the trials and tribulations of the female residents he encountered in the line of duty than to the males. Clive had noted that Fred was quick to provide what he felt was a strong masculine shoulder when the universally weak female would inevitably faint at Fred’s tactful report that their homes, their families or their worldly possessions were now so many matchsticks.
He’d been sued twice. Once by a young woman who had been summarily rejected as a fireman solely due to her sex. And once by a Mrs. Jurinia Salton when, to assuage her hysterics after the burning of her house, he’d helpfully informed her that since her husband and three cats could now fit easily into a Mervyn’s shopping bag, she could save money on burial and cremation fees. And as for lady doctors, Fred had often publicly stated his relief that, at least O’Brien never tried to practice her dubious skills on living people; that was some consolation.
Secondly, O’Brien was fat. Not just chubby, as Clive knew Delaney had been as a boy, but downright fat. Forced by his own physician to strictly adhere to a limited diet, Delaney resented Becky’s obvious relish of the multitudinous goodies she always carried around with her. “Christ,” he was always certain to blurt out to anyone who would listen whenever Becky was in the room, “doesn’t she have the decency to at least pretend to feel guilty?”
Finally, Becky was extremely popular in West Hollywood — where the fire chief was not — and Fred was, quite simply, jealous.
Despite her ghoulish profession, or perhaps because of it, Becky was always quick with a smile, a clever quip and a helping hand in times of adversity. She was a favorite of the city council and adored by her staff and the members of the Sheriff’s Department with whom she worked. Even West Hollywood’s ineffective mayor, Daniel Eversleigh, looked upon Becky as he would a favorite niece. She was also, to Delaney’s further irritation, one of the few people besides Clive himself who seemed to be able to actually get along with West Hollywood’s notoriously cantankerous city manager.
Clive knew that Pamela Burman hated Delaney with a passion, in no small part due to his friendship with Ed Larsen. Larsen’s paper was well-known for blasting Burman whenever the opportunity arose; Pamela had repeatedly sued the paper for printing political cartoons that portrayed her in what she considered an offensive manner. Clive had watched Burman and Delaney go at it whole hog over various matters, most recently about the bill for the repair of the Sheriff’s Station. Clive had wisely stayed out of the conflict.
Clive also surmised that, since last Halloween, the increasing closeness between the three of them — himself, Burman and Becky — was driving Delaney insane with curiosity. They were, Clive had to admit to himself, three of the most powerful and easily identifiable figures in West Hollywood government, not counting the mayor who no one took seriously anyway. As such, they were constantly together, leaving Delaney frustrated and shut out of their little clique despite his attempts to break down the walls to entry.
Thank God Pamela’s out of town, Clive repeated as he trudged through the rivulets of blackened, oily water, passing the still hysterical Pauline on the way to his car. There’ll be hell to pay if the bird lady decides to sue.
He paused, briefly surveying the water damage to his imported leather shoes, and as Delaney and his men went to retrieve the corpse, he picked up the handset, radioed the station and ordered the duty sergeant to patch him in to the coroner.
Becky O’Brien glanced bleary-eyed at the illuminated digital clock on her nightstand as she reached for the telephone. Cutting it off mid-ring she said, “Whoever this is, it’s two thirty in the morning. I’m a doctor. Don’t think I don’t know how to use a scalpel.”
“If I can’t sleep, why should you?” Clive’s cheerfulness wafting through the telephone lines may not have been the most annoying experience of Becky’s week so far — but it came close.
“Oh, God,” groaned Becky. A vague premonition of unpleasantness to come washed over her. She shook herself further awake and the feeling faded but didn’t quite vanish.
“If you’ve got insomnia, and I’m hoping you do, take a pill. If this is work, I’d rather go back to sleep.”
“Sorry. We had a fire down on Melrose. A furniture place. Right by the PDC.”
“Shit,” she said. “How many for me?”
“Just one. But it’s bad.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?” Becky fought to keep the whine out of her voice, but she was just too tired.
“Afraid not. I just checked on the ownership of the business. We started an investigation on him two or three days ago.”
“So the body’s the owner?”
“Hard to tell. But if it is…”
Becky cut him off. “Two thirty in the morning is a hell of a time to start a murder investigation, Clive.”
“I know,” he said, with sympathy. “But I need an ID on the victim as soon as possible. Just to make sure. That is, if you can even manage to get an ID.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned again. Fire victims tended to be messy. “I am not in the mood for this,” she grumbled.
“Neither was the victim,” Clive reminded her.
“Yeah, well, if there’s an ID to be gotten, I’ll get it. Gimme half an hour.” She hung up with a sigh of resignation, yawning as she climbed out of bed.
It seemed like since September, West Hollywood residents were determined to slowly do themselves in, one by one. California law required that an autopsy be performed unless the deceased had been under a doctor’s care at the time of death, thus the more bizarre the departure, the more likely Becky was to see the results. Not that Becky didn’t appreciate her work; her professional talents were aroused and challenged by the demise of people in strange and unusual ways.
She had long since developed the unconscious habit of looking at each new “patient” as a riddle to be solved: how they died, why they died, even sometimes what they had been like in life. And she always made sure to do a little forensic investigating into the latter, even if it wasn’t strictly required. A trace of chemical residue in the lungs or on the skin might give a clue to the victim’s occupation. Signs of broken bones or healed scars told her something about the person’s early years. Stomach contents and blood analysis often provided her with a host of information about the personality that had once resided within the corpse, humanizing them, preventing her from becoming jaded and thinking of them as nothing but pieces of meat as she had known some of her colleagues to do.
Sometimes she could be even more specific. She’d once identified a murder victim as a bank teller from certain distinctive marks on the fingers of the woman’s hand, evidence of rapidly counting stacks of currency day after day for thirty years. On another occasion, she’d linked a John Doe with a missing grade school teacher from the remnants of chalk dust in his lungs. Becky was frequently amazed at what the medical evidence could tell her beyond the merely physical. And, in her heart, she never forgot that each and every one of her patients was once a living, breathing human being with a life and personality that was unique; her investigations always helped remind her of that.
But that business last fall resulting in five young, gay men being admitted to the morgue in the prime of their health and strength, lacking only their blood, seemed to trigger a bounty of bodies. Had it not been for the arrival of her sanguinary friend Chris and his lover, Troy, Becky was fairly certain that Rex Castillian would still be at large with the body count mounting.
Vampires aside, by Christmas, along with the usual AIDS-related deaths that were sadly so prevalent amongst one-third of West Hollywood’s population, and the frequent expiration from the infirmities of old age of another third of the populace, there had been several, much more unusual deaths.
Mr. Finkleman was eighty years old and had absolutely no business, in Becky’s opinion, riding a motorcycle in the first place. He’d just managed to walk into the Sheriff’s station, complaining of a pain in his stomach and requesting an ambulance, before collapsing to the station floor. Both the desk sergeant and Becky, upon her arrival, had been shocked by the thirty-six inch length of parking meter, the TIME EXPIRED flag clearly visible and sticking out of the now-defunct Mr. Finkleman’s abdomen.
In the week before Easter, little Tommy Saville had decided his six-year-old brother, Jerry, would have a better chance of meeting the Easter Bunny were he were disguised as an Easter Egg. Becky wept with frustration at the senselessness of the death when Jerry was laid out on the autopsy table, covered head to toe in bright purple latex, his throat swelled completely closed, dead of a massive allergic reaction to chemicals contained in the paint.
Despite the city’s bizarrely decreasing population, by far the biggest concern of Becky’s life at present was a problem that was entirely self-induced. Becky O’Brien, after much soul searching and countless discussions with her best friend, Chris, had decided to go on a diet.
She made a firm resolution to banish from her menu the crème pastries and candy bars she loved so dearly. She committed to dispensing with her customary morning breakfast of Yoo-Hoo, iced cinnamon rolls and strawberry milk shakes. She swore to make chocolate, peanut butter, and cherry Danish a thing of the past. With head held high, her chest thrust forward past the expanding girth of her belly, Becky O’Brien had decided to make a new woman of herself and join the ranks of the svelte, healthy, and hopefully, married.
Her freezer, once full of frozen Milky Way and Snickers bars, ice cream containers and Pepperidge Farm cakes, now held an abundance of carob-covered granola snacks and something called Tofutti. Her pantry was laden with bags of dried peaches, apple slices, dates and banana chips. Nevertheless, she was still unsatisfied; no matter how hard she tried to psych herself out, carob tasted nothing like chocolate, and frozen tofu was a poor substitute for the luscious richness of pure, creamy ice cream. She gamely persisted, convinced that a loving husband waited just around the corner from the new, slender Doctor Rebecca O’Brien.
