A Good-Looking Corpse Read Online Free PDF Page A

line tonight?” I ask after a bit more uncomfortable text-message silence.
    “You saw what happened to Alan, right? That’s the price of disappointment with Mikey. He told me that he’d have my head cut off and served on a literal silver plate if I didn’t meet with you tonight and get you to agree to come meet him this Friday night. And before you feel the need to ask, yes, I think he means it.”
    “Are you serious?” I ask.
    “When I need to be. But that doesn’t mean I’m honest. I can also be very dishonest when I need to be. It’s up to you to determine when I am being what. Honesty dictates that I’m honest about my dishonesty. I play a liar’s game, Tom, and sometimes withholding or giving false information is part of the game I need to play—professionally and socially. Like I said, it’s a lifestyle.”
    “So you could be lying about the entire mess?”
    “Oh yeah.” Ramen grins with his usual expression of boyish slyness. “This could be a whole Keyser Söze thing.”
    “Tell me about this thing tomorrow night.”
    “Mikey runs a sort-of dogfighting party at his place on Friday nights. It’s a real brutal Roman spectacle sort of thing—a lot of the industry goes. Mikey needs a cleaner for after the matches.”
    “Not interested,” I decline.
    “Okay, we’ll stick a pin in the part where I said, ‘If you decline, I get my head cut off,’ and we’ll circle back to that later. I’m not going to make you feel guilty about my life—it’s not what friends do. I made my bed, danced with the Devil, all of that. My concern presently is for your life. Mikey said he’s interested in meeting you. For what, I don’t know. But when he takes a personal interest in something, he gets kind of obsessive about it. Right now, he’s interested in you, so I’m a conduit for facilitating that interaction. And since I’m a good conduit, I know you’re kind of a strong-willed type. I did my research on you.” Ramen lifts his water glass and shakes it. An attentive waiter rushes over with a steel pitcher to refill it. “I’ve got kind of a dry-mouth thing going on tonight,” he says to him as much as me. “Cocaine does that.” When he leaves, he lowers his tone once more. “So, I knew you might say ‘not interested.’ Let me know how you might become interested though. Let me problem-solve this. Is it an ethical thing about dead animals?” He digs into his fried pig brain. “You keen on PETA?”
    “No,” I say.
    “Okay, is it a time-based issue? I hope it’s not a ‘money thing’ because the money would be very good. Ridiculously good, in fact.”
    “No, I get calls at all hours, it’s part of the job. I just don’t want to. I’m not interested in being a plaything to some spoiled, wealthy asshole who you claim is capable of murder. I’ve been in that position before.”
    “I did my research—Andy Sample was small potatoes compared to Mikey Echo.”
    “All the more reason for me to decline.”
    “Forget the cleanup, then. We can get somebody else. Just come out and enjoy the show, meet Mikey. I think he was maybe joking about the work part. With him, sometimes you don’t know what is real and what is fake.”
    “That makes two of you.”
    “No, no, Mikey and his love of spinning and warping truth? He is a Jedi Master at it. I’m a Stormtrooper at best. Will you please come out? Just for the one meeting?”
    “Let me think about it,” I say. “Give me the address and your phone number. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
    If Ramen is distressed or frustrated by my indecision, he doesn’t show it. Instead he leans forward matter-of-factly. “You want to know what kind of person Mikey Echo is? What if I told you Mikey had Alan Van thrown out of a skyscraper specifically so that he could make your acquaintance?”

Chapter 3
    Climbing back into my work truck, after exiting the Ferrari, feels like coming back down to earth. The Silverado, which has gotten a chill from being in