Chapter 11
The car has been idling for maybe thirty seconds when the smell finally creeps in. Not sudden. Not dramatic. Just a slow, sour-sweet curl of something wrong threading through the air vents like it’s clocking in for a shift.
I catch it the same moment Alejandro does.
We both go still.
Then, very slowly, we turn our heads toward each other.
His nose wrinkles.
My stomach drops.
Neither of us wants to look behind us but we do anyway.
Skippy sits upright in the center of the backseat, seatbelt fastened like he cares about road safety, head tipped at a disturbingly jaunty angle. His grin—once stupid, now sinister—looks even worse with his lips turning that grayish-purple shade you only see on corpses and bad Halloween makeup.
But that’s not the worst part.
Our gazes drift down to his shirt.
The white button-down isn’t white anymore. First it was dirt-stained from the grave, and now… now it’s wet. Two bullet holes bloom dark across his chest, leaking a dark liquid that I’m going to try really hard not to think about.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
Alejandro lets out a strangled sigh. “He’s leaking.”
“He wasn’t leaking on the plane.”
“It was pretty cold though. He’s been dead over twenty-four hours,” he says, like that’s supposed to comfort me. “Bodies do things.”
I drag a hand down my face, trying not to gag. The smell is stronger now, mixing with the heat of the car, the Brooklyn air, and whatever died in the sewer last winter. Great. Perfect ambiance.
“Let’s hurry this up,” I say, pushing out the door before I start dry-heaving.
“Agreed.”
Alejandro heads for the trunk. I trail after him because I need to get away from this smell. He lifts the lid and stares into the mess like he’s hoping the universe packed us a solution.
Then his shoulders sag in relief.
He pulls out a puffy jacket—oversized, violently blue, and ugly enough to be a hate crime.
“Thank God,” he breathes, already shaking it out.
I blink at him. “That’s your plan? Put the corpse in a winter coat?”
He shrugs, absolutely serious. “Better than walking in with… that.”
I look back at Skippy’s leaking shirt, then at the blinding jacket.
“True,” I mutter. “Let’s wrap him before he stains the seat.”
That is how I find myself, two minutes later, wrestling a dead man’s swelling arm into a sleeve while Alejandro tries to zip the front. The jacket bunches. Skippy’s neck gives a soft crunch when his head flops forward. I hiss under my breath and shove Alejandro’s hand aside.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“You’re making it worse.”
Skippy slides sideways.
We both grab him before he face-plants into the parking lot.
It turns into whisper-yelling that absolutely no one wins.
By the time we drag him to the elevator, I’m sweating and one bad moment away from homicide number two.
The elevator shudders as it climbs, old cables groaning like they resent our existence.
Alejandro props Skippy upright, holding him by the jacket collar like he’s escorting a very drunk friend home.
I stand beside them, arms crossed, panting hard and profoundly irritated with everything, especially Alejandro’s breathing.
He glances at me, earnest and exhausted.
“Let’s not fight in front of the kid, okay?”
The “kid” tilts sideways, head thumping against the elevator wall in some macabre show of solidarity.
I stare at both of them in silence. The smell of death, old elevator grease, and my own patience burning out fills the tiny metal box.
The doors ding open, and I step out without looking back.
“If you don’t shut up,” I say, perfectly calm, “I’m going to punch you in the nuts.”
Behind me, Alejandro mutters, “I love it when your mama is feisty,” while dragging Skippy out of the elevator like this is all somehow normal.
The hallway hits us like a punch of noise and heat the second we step out.
A baby screams somewhere behind a thin apartment door.
Two people are tearing each other apart in Spanish behind another, the argument so fast I only catch the rhythm, not the words.
An old woman with white hair sits in a hallway chair shucking peas into a metal bowl like she’s monitoring the whole building.
I nod at her. She nods back.
Alejandro gives her a too-charming “hola,” because he can’t help himself even while hauling a leaking corpse.
“So,” he says, breathing hard, “who is this very trustworthy guy you’re dragging us to?”
I savor the irritation simmering off him. “A friend.”
“That’s descriptive. This friend have a name? Or are we playing twenty questions in a hallway full of witnesses?”
We reach the end of the hall where a single door sits under a flickering light, cigarette smoke leaking from other apartments creates an odd haze near the ceiling.
I stop. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
Alejandro opens his mouth, probably to bitch at me again, but the door cracks open first. A short Mexican woman in her mid-thirties eyes us with suspicion.
Before she can speak, I slip into Spanish. “?Está Grim?”*
Her whole demeanor shifts when she recognizes me. She smiles, shuts the door, and I hear the rattle of multiple chains being undone. All of them. It sounds like Fort Knox.
Alejandro sucks in a breath beside me. “Grim?” Shock, awe, a hint of terror. “As in… the Grim Reaper?”
“The very one.”
He props Skippy against the wall and immediately starts grooming himself. He smooths his hair, tugs his shirt straight, checks his reflection in the plexiglass of a bulletin board fixed to the cinderblock wall—like showing up rumpled to meet the most notorious hacker alive would be a cardinal sin.
“Why didn’t you tell me you know the world’s most prolific hacker that has ever lived?” he hisses. Then, panicked, “Do I smell like dead guy?”
He lifts his arm, sniffs, winces. “Fuck.”
The door swings open and the woman steps aside.
The apartment is a riot of sound and scent. The kitchen is immediately to the right, a second woman standing over a pot of tamales. She nods at me, then at Alejandro, then at the corpse. No reaction beyond mild acknowledgment.
I push through a curtain of hanging beads and step into the living room. It’s a chaos collage of thrift-store furniture: mismatched couch, battered recliner, a giant TV that looks like it cost ten times more than everything else combined.
Two teenage boys are parked on the coffee table, yelling at each other over a video game. The older one curses so loud the woman in the kitchen snaps,
“?Oye! ?Mira tu boca, chamaco!”*
“Sorry mama.” he yells back without even glancing away from the screen.
He lands the winning blow in the game, throws his hands up—then finally notices me standing in the doorway.
His face cracks into a grin.
“Ayo, Saint. What’s good?”
I lean against the wall, arms crossed, one foot hooked over the other. “Same old shit.”
He stands, offering a dab. I return it.
Then he notices Alejandro. And Skippy.
His face scrunches. “Who’s the nerd?”
I don’t bother hiding the smirk. Alejandro looks between me, the kid, and the corpse like he’s walked into a fever dream.
“Alejandro…” I gesture lazily. “Meet the Grim Reaper.”
There’s a full beat where his brain just… stalls.
Then he sputters, “The Grim Reaper is a fucking child?!”
* “Is Grim here?”
* "Hey! Watch your mouth, kid!"