Favors
“Can you do me a favor?”
I rolled my eyes. Fortunately my brother couldn’t make a show of being offended by something he couldn’t see. “What sort of favor?”
“Well, my car’s been stolen….”
“Then call the police.”
“You find lost things,” Ekundayo said, as if I should perhaps be flattered that he’d called me.
“Not usually stolen vehicles. Unless you know who stole it…?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go,” I said happily. “You’ve got better odds if you call the police.”
“Why should they give a shit about a nine year old Accord?”
I almost said “Because they’re paid to give a shit,” but refrained. I awarded myself some good brother points, and spent them immediately: “Maybe this is a sign. Maybe you’re not meant to have the car.”
Since he started grad school, Ekundayo’s made a show of interest in the otherworldly. Oddly enough, he seemed not to have considered the possibility of divine intervention in his own life. “Look,” he snapped. “I’m not asking you to drop everything. I’m just asking if you can keep an eye out for it.”
“Fine, okay. I’ll keep an eye out for it.”
I assumed that would be the end of it. A city filled with millions of people is also filled with a lot of cars. I figured that anyone who stole an Accord had probably taken it to his friendly neighborhood chop shop. So I was rather surprised a couple of days later when I saw the car parked two blocks from my office.
My girlfriend was out of town visiting a sick aunt. In her absence I’d been working later, gathering photographic evidence of adultery, so it was after ten when I saw the car. It was tucked down a little alley, the sort directors love to use for chase scenes with the car scraping the walls and shooting sparks. If it wasn’t for the shadows, I might have walked past it. Ekundayo’s rear driver side door had acquired a sizeable dent–he swore someone hit the car in a parking lot–and I recognized that first.
In the interests of playing the good brother (or perhaps one-upmanship, should the opportunity present itself), I’d written down the VIN and license numbers and had been carrying them around. The license plate matched. I approached the car carefully, in the spirit of common sense rather than specific fear of lurking car thieves. No one was sitting in the car and externally at least it seemed to be in good shape. The windows were intact and the front door was unlocked. I took advantage of the opportunity to check the VIN number.
If the thief hadn’t taken the car to a chop shop, then it had probably been used in the commission of a crime. That meant I was sitting in Evidence, but I didn’t feel particularly uneasy. Since the criminals in question hadn’t even bothered switching license plates, I assumed they had
dumped the car before getting too attached to it.
I exited the Evidence and pulled out my cell phone, but I didn’t dial. It occurred to me that I hadn’t looked in the trunk, and I had a really bad feeling about doing so. It was ridiculous, of course. I’d seen too many movies. I went ahead and popped the trunk. By checking, I was either being mature (thoroughly examining the vehicle) or childish (looking for the boogeyman). I reached the trunk before I could decide which applied, and at that point the debate was moot.
There was a dead man in the trunk.
I just stared at him for a few seconds. Seeing dead bodies is not a daily occurrence. For that matter, I don’t normally find living people sitting in the trunks of cars. So I just stood there until my brain deigned to process the information coming from my eyes.
This particular dead man had a small, round hole in the middle of his forehead. I didn’t recognize him, and if I’d just passed him on the street I probably wouldn’t have remembered much about him. Dark skin, tattoo, jeans, okay shoes, worn shirt–maybe an old favorite. It was very strange to think of the dead man having a favorite shirt, but I preferred looking at the shirt rather than the glassy eyes.
I knew he was dead, but I always hate the part in movies when someone turns their back on the apparently dead bad guy and is then shocked when he turns out not to be dead. How much effort does it take to check a pulse? Looking at the dead man in the trunk, I had a little more sympathy for the dumb characters in movies. I really didn’t want to touch him. But I reached in, decided that the wrist was moderately less disgusting than the neck, and held my fingers against the cold skin long enough to confirm that there was no pulse.
I turned away from the trunk and, using my untainted left hand, pulled out my cell phone again. I stared at it for a few seconds. This wasn’t just a case of a stolen vehicle; there was a dead man in the trunk. Clearly I should call the police. But it also dawned on me that it was quite a coincidence that the car had been dumped so close to my office. What if the choice of cars had been intentional?
I decided that being a good brother took priority over being a good citizen; the police could wait. But before I hit the speed dial I heard a noise behind me and turned.
The dead man in the trunk was now standing next to the car. He didn’t seem any less dead, aside from the increased mobility. I was significantly less mobile, and gaped as he swung at me.
I came to flat on my back, wondering why I was lying in an alley. Clearly I couldn’t have been knocked out by a dead man.
The brain’s powers of recovery are, unfortunately, quite remarkable, so within a few seconds I’d scrambled to my feet. The trunk was empty and the dead man was nowhere in sight. I didn’t find that particularly encouraging. If a dead man could get up and walk around, I saw no reason why he couldn’t also turn invisible, fly, teleport or use any number of other superpowers.
I made haste to my office and locked myself in, trying to take comfort from being on my own turf. Calling the police was no longer an option. I tried to entertain myself with the thought of how such a report would read, but utterly failed to distract myself from a very strong desire to take a shower. Being hit by a dead man’s fist seemed impossibly gross. I’m generally a slob, but I border on obsessive-compulsive when it comes to a select number of things, and it seemed that contact with dead human flesh could be added to the list somewhere between silverfish and lumpy milk.
I picked up the phone–I could always incinerate it later–and called Ekundayo. “It’s me,” I said to the answering machine. “Pick up the damn phone–”
“Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
And here I thought I’d managed a non-hysterical tone. “What the hell is going on?”
“You called me–”
“I just got punched out by a dead guy. What’s going on?”
“Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right!”
“Iyapo, calm down.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m as calm as possible, under the circumstances.”
“Okay. Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in my office. Two blocks from your car, which until recently contained a dead man.”
“Okay, yeah, I got that part. Are you on your cell?”
“Dropped it outside.” Maybe the dead man was running up charges.
“Okay, I’ll call you back at your main number. Give me five minutes.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said in a tone of voice that indicated he had a pretty good idea. “But I think I probably don’t want to be in my apartment right now, and if you don’t currently have any visitors your office seems like an okay place to be.”
And then the bastard hung up, leaving me to imagine all the improbable spaces dead men could hide. I did make use of the lava soap in the bathroom, but even after rubbing my skin raw I couldn’t forget the feel of cold dead flesh.
I jumped when the phone rang. Picking up the receiver, I realized that the dead man cooties had just transferred back to me.
“It’s me,” Ekundayo said. “I’m on my way over.”
“Okay. What’s your best guess for what’s happening?”
A deep breath. He was either in a taxi or on public transportation, neither of which lent themselves to private conversations. Of course, Ekundayo’s always taken a certain amount of pleasure in being publicly unconventional. “I’m sort of unpopular with some people right now.”
“Yeah, like me. More information, please.”
“What did he look like?”
“Aside from dead?” I bit my tongue. It was possible he’d known the guy. “Mid-twenties, medium build….”
“Tattoos?”
“Something on the arm. I didn’t look that closely. He was wearing jeans and a purple shirt–”
“Yeah. Damn. Okay, I think I know who he is. Was.”
“A friend?” I prepared to dispense sympathy.
“Acquaintance. I was doing some research….”
Oh, shit, I thought. Ekundayo’s idea of research usually involves poking things with sticks to see if they bite. It’s a good thing his interests run to the occult rather than nuclear physics.
“You’ll probably find it difficult to believe,” he continued in preachy-mode, “but there’s some weird shit out there.”
“More things in heaven and earth. Yeah, I know.”
He seemed a little put out. “Okay. Well, there’s this guy who’s got an interesting take on Voudun.”
Terrific. But not surprising. “So I can officially start saying ‘zombie,’ then?”
“Yeeess….”
I sensed a thesis in that syllable. “Am I correct in assuming that the dead man is walking around because of something this guy did?”
“Yes. But it’s not authentic Voudun at all,” Ekundayo said. I had a feeling the inauthenticity offended his sensibilities more than the animated corpse.
“Okay. So we’ve got an inauthentic zombie walking around–”
“Don’t mock me, all right? I’m trying to explain this.”
I took a deep breath. “Let’s ignore the weird shit for a second. Somebody shot the guy.”
“Well, they don’t subscribe to the drug theory.”
I waited as patiently as possible.
“One of the theories about authentic zombies is that they’re living people in a drugged state,” Ekundayo said after it became clear I wasn’t going to take the bait. “Tetrodotoxin’s been suggested as giving the appearance of death–”
“He had no pulse.”
“But if you buy into the drug theory–”
“Which neither you, I nor the hougan in question do, apparently.”
“More of a bokor, really,” Ekundayo said. “His stuff’s pretty black. Though I’m reluctant even to use that term, since he diverges so far from mainstream Voudun.”
“Can you do me a favor and drop the authenticity tangent?” I asked. “Just be glad I’m the sort of enlightened person who doesn’t start laughing when you say things like ‘mainstream Voudun.’”
“All right,” he sighed. “Anyway, I heard about this bokor, and I wanted to interview him but he wasn’t interested. One of his associates was.”
“The guy in the trunk.”
“The guy in the trunk.”
“Who’s currently wandering around aimlessly.”
“Not aimlessly. He’s probably headed for my apartment. I’m here,” he added, and broke the connection. A moment later he unlocked the door, reminding me that I’d meant to confiscate his keys weeks ago.
“So the bokor kills his associate and sics him on you,” I said. “Why bother with the car? And why leave him two blocks from my office and not outside your building?”
Ekundayo shrugged and dumped a bag and an armload of books and notepads on my desk. I plunked myself back down in my comfy chair before he could think about it, and left him with a choice of client chairs. “I’m not completely careless. I watch out for weird shit, especially the black stuff. I’d have tried to neutralize the zombie. Did you touch him?”
“Yes.”
Ekundayo nodded wisely. “That was probably what triggered it. You shouldn’t touch things–”
“I was looking for a pulse,” I grated. “And until I opened the trunk I thought we were just talking about a stolen vehicle.”
He had the grace to look sheepish. “I didn’t think it was related. It’s a little prosaic when you think about it. Stealing cars, I mean. Not to mention shooting people.” He bent down over the books. “This isn’t exactly a well-documented phenomena–”
I swatted the back of his head, and got an “Ow!” that was equal parts outrage and whine. “What was that for?”
“You mean aside from the zombie? How about sticking gris-gris in my computer?”
“Oh.” The sheepish look again. “But it did work….”
“It certainly stank up my office,” I said. “What were you thinking, getting involved with inauthentic psychotic bokors?” Not that I’m one to cast stones on the matter of undesirable business associates, but for tonight at least I felt like I held the moral high ground.
“He didn’t seem psychotic.”
I swatted him again, and this time he was smart enough to push his chair out of easy reach. “I interview lots of people,” he pouted.
“The gris-gris was a lab project, not an interview. What other shit are you into?”
A shrug. “Enough that I think I know how the zombie was animated, and how to stop it. Theoretically.”
Lovely. “Worst comes to worst, we can always go for the traditional torch-bearing mob.”
Ekundayo frowned. The frown deepened when I pulled the gun out of my drawer. “That won’t work.”
“I’m not planning on trying to kill it again, just slow it down.” The zombie seemed dependent on bones and tendons and muscles for its mobility, and I was pretty confident about my aim.
“I thought you hate guns.”
“I do. But I hate the idea of my idiot brother getting killed by a psycho bokor’s zombie even more.”
“I can do this,” he told me, flipping through a notebook filled with his tight scrawl. I’d have had an easier time reading Sanskrit.
I glanced at the phone. I could probably call in a couple of favors. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to do, and there wasn’t any guarantee that it would work…but if the alternative was trusting in Ekundayo’s abilities….
“I said I can do this,” he repeated, and I wondered if he was teaching himself telepathy as well.
“All right,” I said without much conviction. “How about a name?”
“Name?”
“The psycho bokor?”
“Jean-Claude Balan-Gaubert is his legal name, so far as I know. Says he’s Haitian.”
“I thought you were studying the American South.” I booted up the computer, and wished he’d thought to call me when all he needed was a background check.
“I got distracted by a shiny thing.”
“A shiny thing?”
“Yeah. He seemed interesting, and not completely unrelated to what I was working on.”
Of course not. An inauthentic modern-day bokor was exactly like Marie Laveau.
“Why is Ogun wearing a fedora?” Ekundayo frowned at the partially obscured statue he’d given me as an office-warming present.
“Because it was a gift from my girlfriend and deserves to be prominently displayed.” I wished Lota was in town. I could be having sex at this very moment, rather than sitting around with my idiot brother waiting for a zombie to show up. “What’s our time frame?”
He shrugged. “If I’m right, Balan-Gaubert’s not directly controlling the zombie. It’s more like he programmed it. So it’ll probably just keep going till it finds me, sort of like the Terminator. Putrification may become an issue eventually; I’m not sure.”
I did not take heart, especially since it would be just like Ekundayo to turn this into a lab project rather than a monster hunt. “Do you remember the body count in that movie?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. No. It knows who I am. He’d have given it something to identify me, like a bloodhound. It won’t be interested in anyone else. It didn’t hurt you. Not seriously, anyway.”
Since the thing had already been on the loose for a while, I decided I’d feel better if I believed him. The computer blue screened, perhaps trying to tell me something. “For somebody being stalked by a zombie, you’re taking this pretty well.”
Ekundayo shrugged. “Comes with the territory. Hah!” He grinned. “Okay, I can do this.”
I spread my hands. “It’s your show. Just tell me what to do.”
He sat down in the center of the floor, pulled a box of flour out of his bag and sprinkled a handful on the floor. I didn’t recognize the pattern he drew, but it was clearly not random. “Don’t go blabbing about this tomorrow.”
Ekundayo does not typically understand the meaning of the word “secret.” “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I’m just calling in a favor.”
“I really don’t like the sound of that. There are favors, and then there are favors….”
“I just want to undo the magic someone else worked. That’s not such a big deal, and it’s right-handed.” He shrugged and pulled a rattle out of the bag. “Not black magic. Nothing like the favors he called in.” Then he closed his eyes and started shaking the rattle and chanting. His lips moved, but I couldn’t make out the words. I had a feeling they weren’t English anyway.
Ekundayo’s eyes snapped open, but it wasn’t Ekundayo looking out. I’d never seen anyone ridden by a loa, and I’d always assumed that it was bullshit, either an outright hoax or hysterical enthusiasm. But this wasn’t a hoax. Someone–something–else was in control of my brother’s body, swaying on the floor.
In another room, glass broke. I remembered the fire escape outside the bathroom window and reached for my gun. But whoever was in my brother’s body smiled and shook his head. I heard no further sounds, just the humming coming from Ekundayo’s throat, and even that began to trail off. His limbs moved spasmodically, though with a certain grace. The motions slowed as the humming grew fainter.
Sticking the dismount, I thought irreverently, and wondered if I should have taken the fedora off Ogun before Ekundayo invited a loa into my office.
Steps sounded on the stairs, then in the hall. I had a chance to wonder who else was in the building at this time of night, and hope that they didn’t hear our little freakshow. I realized that was an exceedingly optimistic line of thinking about half a second before Balan-Gaubert burst in.
It couldn’t have been anyone else. I’d never consciously imagined what a psychotic bokor might look like, but if I had he’d have fit the bill: shocking contrasts, white hair and eyes and teeth against dark skin, bright metal knife in one hand, dark metal gun in the other. A too-expressive face split into a grin at the sight of Ekundayo sprawled on the floor. I, like the absent zombie, seemed to be a non-entity.
There are moments when time seems to slow down, and this was one of them. Balan-Gaubert regarded Ekundayo, twitching and muttering
on the floor. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” he said, still grinning. He seemed to have forgotten the gun, but not the knife. Ekundayo–or
possibly the loa–said something. I couldn’t tell whether it was directed to Balan-Gaubert or someone on a different plane of existence.
I had time to think about favors, time to reach for my gun. Balan-Gaubert had time to realize that there was someone else in the room. And then I fired, aiming for center mass, and kept firing.
The echo of the last shot faded and Balan-Gaubert fell to the floor. It went quiet after that. Quiet enough that I could hear Ekundayo’s sub-vocal mutterings, and Balan-Gaubert’s final labored breaths. I’d heard phrases like “sucking chest wound” before, but I’d never really thought about the sounds.
Eventually I realized I didn’t need to keep holding my gun and dropped it on the desk. Ekundayo’s mutterings turned to loud inhalations, maybe hyperventilation. No, I realized, that was me.
“Shit,” Ekundayo said, and sat up.
I lurched for the bathroom. I remembered the smashed window before I opened the door, so I wasn’t surprised to see the erstwhile zombie lying on the floor like a broken doll. I waited for a couple minutes, until the urge to vomit or burst into tears passed. When I came out of the bathroom, the man I’d killed was still lying on the floor. Ekundayo, propped up against my desk, looked exhausted.
“You didn’t need–” he began. “I could have–”
I slid to the floor. “Called in another favor?”
He shrugged.
“That’s a lot worse than undoing somebody’s magic,” I said. “That’s got to be a pretty big favor.” Not to mention left-handed. Balan-Gaubert had killed at least one man, and I had no doubt that he would have killed two more tonight. But murder had to be a left-handed thing, regardless of circumstances.
“Yeah,” Ekundayo said softly. “A pretty big favor.”
“Better this way. More straightforward,” I shivered. “Nothing owed that you maybe won’t be able to repay.”
We couldn’t sit in my office all night, staring at one dead man with another in the bathroom. Well, maybe we could, but we really shouldn’t. I needed to pick up the phone, but my desk seemed awfully far away.
“The zombie’s dead again,” I added.
It was time to think of practicalities. We just needed to avoid mentioning the zombie part, and let the police draw their own conclusions about that killing. The rest really was straightforward. Balan-Gaubert was a poster boy for justifiable homicide: waving a knife and a gun, hands and clothes presumably coated in the gunshot residue from earlier in the day…I fought the urge to run back into the bathroom and wash my hands.
“Jean-Jacques,” Ekundayo said listlessly. “His name was Jean-Jacques.”
Jean-Jacques had died of a bullet wound sometime earlier today. He’d never been in the bathroom; that thing was just meat. I shivered again.
“What you did was…” I began, and then gave up. “I didn’t think you could do that.”
“Wasn’t me,” Ekundayo shrugged. “None of it was me.”
I almost told him that seemed like a pretty good deal, but I bit my tongue.
© 2003 Megan Powell
Originally appeared in The Blackest Death Vol. 1
Honorably Mentioned in The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Fifth Annual Collection