turning white

"So, then. Where are the bodies?"

Burt didn't answer. He just stared at me, and blinked once, like I was too obscenely forward.

"The sooner I see it, the sooner people get paid," I sighed and looked away, making sure the sound of the word "paid" trailed off into the next room, through the open door behind me.

Burt grunted, turned on his right heel and crossed the blood-mapped carpet, avoiding the forensic tags, the deflated body bags, the white-coat lab guy zooming in and leaning into the blood work. We had all thought this private party would end up with tomorrow's headlines. Mafia boss gets laid. Gets done in. I followed Burt, skipping the darkened red on the already red carpet.

Martinique Berrangerie hung on his necktie, the slow pendulum swing of his body stilled by two more forensic kids, but in blue, not in lab coat white. Compared to them, Burt was near retirement, and I was at my peak, but already retired from the force. The lifeless, naked man with drooping eyelids, limp arms and sagging skin was my boss. Burt's, too. Unofficially, that is.

Berr's right hand's body was not in the room, making him a suspect, since the boss-man was last reported to have been guarded by him. Strangely, rumors had it that the chief accountant was here. That was not according to the boss-man's plan, as far as I knew it. But there was only one body here. No right man. No accountant. And until forensics disclose everything, the front story will be that a hired bitch-for-the-night turned out to be a hired killer as well.

'I was got paid," that was the right hand man's dictum, his rationale. I always found that funny, and as Burt murmured to a beat cop beside him, under the bathroom's door frame, I looked around for lipstick or blood scribbles: "I was got paid." No dice.

Anyway, I got him killed. The boss-man. Just as he arranged it. And I was here tonight, dodging badges, shaking hands with people who knew me and knew my work back as a detective, because Berrangerie arranged for a spectacle--his death--so his gay son could inherit the declining Crystal Meth business. Daddy copped out, got out, bailed out on his son. Never mind that. I was got paid.

I could feel Burt watching me watching him. Now let's see who's the better detective. A hundred bucks says that beat cop is going to cuff me, but not before Burt has theatrically declared to the cop-filled motel room, that they have reason to believe that I had something to do with all this.

I kept staring at the body. Burt grunted and as if on cue, I turned around. His mustache just twitched. He does that when he's happy. I cut off his speech and ask the whole room, "His prints," I point to the hanged man. "Do they match with the boss-man's?"

"That's not important right now," Burt yells a level louder than me.

"Really?" And a staring contest between a former detective and the Captain that mentored him ensues. I know what Burt was thinking. With the boss-man down, his illegitimate source of income, he could return to his pristine moral ways, and maybe even sleep at night. So he's pinning this on me, the cop who copped out.

"Let me save your sagging career, Burt, before you showcase all this to the cameras." At that, Burt, crossed his arms and exhales through his nose, blinks at me. His get-this-over-with pose.

"The $3,000.00 suit on the bed."

"What about it, cop-out?"

"It won't fit the hanged man."

More staring.

"But it will fit," I said slowly, thumbing in the direction of the corpse behind me, as through I was hitchhiking, "the beggar from fourth and Main."

I had never seen Burt turn that white, not in the ten years I solved cases for him.

Fast, fast fiction!

Very Short Stories for Harried Readers, an anthology of very short fiction (edited by Vince Groyon) where I have one story tucked in, is now available at UP Press (inside Balay Kalinaw, UP Diliman) for only P290.00. By the end of the week, it will hit the shelves of National Bookstore and Powerbooks. To my friends, former classmates, online lurkers, and fellow bloggers, if you have any good memories of me in you, you are to going to sigh, be happy for me, and buy the book. :D


Here's the blurb on the back cover:

In these hectic times, who has the time to read? Fortunately for us, the short short story, sometimes called “sudden fiction” or “flash fiction”, is here. In one to three pages these stories render complete, complex and engaging worlds. They can be read in only a few minutes, but those minutes may linger in the reader’s mind forever.