Free Wolf Flow by K. W. Jeter Page B

'em teach and do university stuff, and they're telling him about the problems they got. And it seems-" Aitch spread his hands out. "Seems there's a real drought in the market right now, for really good Grade A human skeletons. Everybody's gotta make do with these plastic ones, or fiberglass. They used to get 'em, the real ones, out of India and places like that, he told me-a real Third World export product, you know-but a lot of those places have clamped down. Politics and stuff. Plus now-catch this-a lot of the ones that do come up for sale, they get snagged by these interior decorating places. Some yuppie, he's into like a bone motif, he's already got a water buffalo skull or something up on his wall, then he wants like real human bits and pieces. Plus, you figure, he's only ever going to buy one, so he can pay whatever they want. Drives the prices right up."
        He knew Aitch was watching him out of the corner of his eye, checking his reaction to this kind of talk. Seeing if he was squeamish about it. He kept his face composed, just watching the traffic. The talk was more cold-hearted than actually grisly.
        Aitch stroked his lower lip, musing. "You know, what else Hollis told me was that you got your different quality skeletons. Especially in the skulls. Like A, B, and C grades. Depending on how much of their teeth they got left in their heads. They got all their teeth, maybe a few fillings, that's a Grade A. I wonder…" He pinched the lip between his thumb and forefinger, then let go of it. "Hey, you remember our buddy Mike?"
        He was talking about it as though they'd dumped Mike off months ago, instead of just the other day. As though he had to really work to dredge him up out of memory.
        Charlie nodded. "What about him?"
        "He had pretty good teeth, didn't he? I mean, with him being a young guy, and a doctor and all…, he took pretty good care of himself. Maybe a couple teeth got busted, when you hit him with that bar."
        Aitch had been the one that had hit Mike with the bar, a roundhouse swing that had laid Mike out on the floor. Charlie looked over at Aitch. "What do you want to do? You want to go back out there and get him, scrape the meat off his bones or something?"
        "No, come on… shit." Aitch shook his head. "I mean, he's out there in the middle of nowhere, he's gonna be bones after a while. You don't have to pick meat off him. The sun just, you know… dries him out. Bleaches him."
        "Um, I don't think so. There's coyotes out there. They'd pull him to pieces. Crack the bones to get at the whatta-ya-call-it, the marrow inside. You'd go back out there and you wouldn't find any pieces bigger than your thumbnail." He didn't know if that was true or not, but it sounded right.
        "That's a pisser." Aitch stared out the windshield. "Coyotes, huh?" He mulled it over. "That's really too bad. Because you can get a pretty good price for a nice human skeleton, with all its teeth in good shape. I don't mean tons of money, but still…"
        Charlie knew that Aitch wasn't interested in the money at all. Some bent yuppie has a human skeleton in his bone collection, then Aitch had to have one. That fucker Hollis had put the idea in his head. Plus to have it be somebody you had known… a former business associate, instead of just some dumb Indian peasant… that would appeal to Aitch. He could hang it in the corner of his bedroom, maybe with some artistic lighting on it, and make little sly comments about it to the girls. Oh, that?-just somebody who had a, uh, little accident . Mysterioso gangster vibes. They went for that sort of thing.
        Aitch lifted the sleeve of his jacket to his nose and sniffed it. His face curdled. "Christ! All I did was walk past that guy, and I can still smell his fucking cigar!"
        "Yeah, it really gets in there." Charlie let the traffic pull the car along, on toward the city. "Hey, did you know I used to