Free A Good-Looking Corpse by Jeff Klima

“I can’t find a Mexican housecleaner willing to dust it. The same guy who did the hallway art did this piece. I had it specially commissioned. It cost a fucking fortune, and he had to sculpt it in the room, but it’s truly a masterwork. My starting influence was Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, but I wanted something singular and unique that really expressed the core of me.”
    “You just confirmed all my darkest opinions of you.”
    “I hope so.” He smiles, unfazed. “But it would be unfair of you to think that is all I am.”
    “I also read up on all your philanthropic activity.”
    “See there,” he said, delighted that I’d checked up on him. “For someone to be as grim as I appear and yet still aiming to make the world a better place, I can’t be all bad, right?”
    “With the money you clearly have, you can be anything you want. Or at least appear that way.” I want to show him I won’t be swept up or manipulated by charm.
    “Ramen told me you were a hard-ass.” He chuckles and leads me through yet another set of French doors and out to a massive stone veranda. The night air is warmer than inside the house and Mikey basks in it, loving its effect on his skin. “Ah, Los Angeles, am I right? It just feels different than the rest of the world.”
    “You sound like Ramen.” I move to join him at the edge of the terrace, looking out onto the rear spread of his property with its long stretch of blue pool and a massive guesthouse at the rear of the property. The grounds below are set up for a funeral party with black chairs set at tables covered with ink-colored tablecloths. Another photo of Alan stands on an easel beneath an outdoor light on a pole, giving the deceased actor’s image a sort of heavenly glow.
    “It’s a tragedy, huh? Here we are mourning the loss of a truly magnificent actor like Alan Van. So young, so…enamored with being tragic.”
    “The way I hear it, he didn’t jump,” I state bluntly, a second warning to Mikey to avoid the bullshit.
    “Ramen tell you that?” Mikey asks, the charm fading for just a moment.
    “It doesn’t matter where I heard it,” I say, suddenly feeling like I’ve just thrown the Indian man to the lions. “Is it true?”
    “What if I told you that Ramen pushed him?” Mikey probes, patronizing.
    “I wouldn’t believe you. How do you know about me?”
    “Isn’t all this mind-blowing? That people can live like this?” Mikey says, changing the subject to exalt in his apparent glory. He smacks his hand down on the thick patio railing just to feel its decadence. “Fame is the best feeling in the world. It’s like being everyone’s favorite teddy bear. You just experience so much attention from everyone who matters.”
    “Yeah, great stuff. Why’d you bring me here?” I shift the conversation back on course.
    “I want to buy your life,” Mikey says offhandedly, staring directly at me. “Your story. The rights to tell it to the world. In pictures. I want to make you famous too.”
    This is not what I was expecting. “What?”
    At this moment, the rabble streams out of the house onto the patio below. An unseen band launches into song and from nothing, a party emerges.
    Mikey grins large again. “I know all about you, Tom. Don’t shoot me down just yet—I know you want to, but don’t. At least hear me out.”
    I look down upon the revelers dancing and carousing below. From the middle of the pack, Ramen looks up at me, watching intently. He nods when he sees me looking and then breaks contact to reach into his pocket and hand a blonde girl attached to his side one of his baggies of coke.
    “What’s your pitch?” I ask, exhausted. His sales schtick reminds me of Andy Sample’s, only more rehearsed.
    “First, I heard of you from this annoying neighbor of mine. An old associate of my dad’s, he cornered me in the men’s room at the PGA, talking incessantly about you and how you’d overcome this serial killer, but that you didn’t want to