This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us Read online

  ALSO BY EDGAR CANTERO

  Meddling Kids

  The Supernatural Enhancements

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Edgar Cantero

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cover design by Michael J. Windsor

  Front-of-cover images: flames © Anna Panova/Shutterstock; handcuffs © Oleksandr Malysh/Shutterstock; gun © Tedgun/Shutterstock; faces © Jena_Velour/Shutterstock

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cantero, Edgar, [date] author.

  Title: This body’s not big enough for both of us : a novel / Edgar Cantero.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018003301 | ISBN 9780385543965 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385543972 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Private investigators—Fiction. |

  Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Satire. | GSAFD: Black humor (Literature) | Humorous fiction. | Mystery fiction. | Satire.

  Classification: LCC PR9155.9.C27 T48 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018003301

  Ebook ISBN 9780385543972

  v5.3.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Edgar Cantero

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue (Cold Open)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  An A. Z. Kimrean Adventure

  Elmore Leonard said it’s bad style to open a novel with the weather. Well, fuck him—it was a blazing red-hot August morning. The ceiling fan did little more than amuse the flies, many of which wandered up to the highest layer of the office’s troposphere to burst into flame and fall spiraling down like wounded Zero fighters. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and interbreast sweat. It felt as if El Niño, California, and Satan were conspiring to push the city to the brink of spontaneous combustion.

  And then, like a high-heeled coup de grâce, she arrived.

  She paused briefly outside the door, her hourglass silhouette cast upon the glass panel with the fresh shiny vinyl letters reading,

  A. KIMREAN

  Z. KIMREAN

  PRIVATE EYES

  She knocked first, waited, then tried the handle, and the door surrendered to her touch. She wandered in like a fairy-tale top model into a CGI forest, a flutter of long skirts and flaming red hair kiting behind her, a flock of freckles swarming her eyes like glistening lakes of whoa whoa whoa, okay, wait, wait, wait.

  —

  Kimrean stops, stares dead at Detective Demoines across the interrogation room table.

  DEMOINES

  Sorry, just…Can we dial down the poetry a notch? The narration’s way too colorful.

  KIMREAN

  (shrugs)

  My life is colorful.

  DEMOINES

  Maybe play down the alliteration a little.

  KIMREAN

  “Alliteration a little.” You know, your life could’ve been colorful too, Ted, but you chose the SFPD. The thrill of paperwork and the flashy badges.

  DEMOINES

  You need a badge to work as a P.I. too.

  Pause.

  KIMREAN

  Sure. I was testing you.

  —

  Darkness prevented long descriptive paragraphs. Blind-striped sunlight poured through the large windows across a vast, empty space navigated by intrepid motes of dust. The woman discerned a cleared desk to the right, smelled a bed in an alcove to the back left. In the middle of the room stood a high stool or a very narrow table, dais-wise. Atop sat a chess set in mid-battle.

  Through a lateral door on the alcove’s side, somebody—the slender, long-limbed ink sketch of somebody—stepped out, preceded by the sound of a flushing toilet, and stopped right upon seeing her. The woman barely made out an eye glistening in the dark, two hands wiping some rumpled clothes, a mouth greeting her.

  “Wow, you are hot.”

  The woman looked away, smoothed her dress, checked her hair, scratched her forearm, did another thirty irrelevant actions meant to summon her cool, and finally resumed speaking. “Are you the private investigator?”

  “I can be whatever you want me to be.”

  She pointed at the door, baffled. “The sign says ‘Private Eyes.’ ”

  “And you’re so sagacious, I can’t believe you’re in need of one.” The mouth drew a grin as shiny and sharp as a cutlass.

  The dame paused for a second while she realigned her expectations with the slim, beaming reality before her. It didn’t match her platonic archetype for a private detective. The spartan pay-by-the-week rental office she had anticipated; also the fedora and the white tank top—maybe not the skimpy black waistcoat on top. But she was also expecting a square jaw, coarse stubble, the odd scar, a dark brow: the features of a man of action as defined in her mind by the cover art of some gritty paperback. The face watching her now was oval or ogive shaped. It had the featureless skin of a mannequin and the vigilant look of a small bird. The only visible eye, spotlit by an implausibly accurate stripe of blind-filtered daylight, was a lemony green. And whether the collection of parts added up to a man was still up for debate.

  “I’m sorry, are you A. Kimrean or Z. Kimrean?”

  The green eye stared back at her, silent. Then the whole figure moved past her to the entrance, leaned out into the landing, looked both ways, and carefully closed the door.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked, scowling at her host’s frowsy appearance.

  “Oh, yeah,” said the other, pointing toward the bathroom. “Much better now.”

  The same implausible light stripe fell on the right eye now: a gentle orange brown, like ale, peeking through bangs of straw-colored hair.

  “Interesting.”

  —

  DEMOINES

  No, it’s not.

  Kimrean shuts up, clearly offended by the unflattering review.

  DEMOINES

  You’re recounting your sexy scenarios with red-haired women instead of explaining your role in this…

  (reads notes)

  “Shooting, arson, and destruction of a police vehicle.”

  KIMREAN

  I’m giving you context. This is relevant.

  DEMOINES

  How?

  KIMREAN

  It’s a fundamental principle of private investigation. There’s no yin without yang. No violence without love.

  DEMOINES
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  Zooey…

  KIMREAN

  I’m serious! You wouldn’t know ’cause you’re in the public sector, but it’s a natural constant in my business. From the moment you rent an office on Fisherman’s Wharf and spell your name and the words “Private Eye” in vinyl letters on the glass, only two types of people will go through that door: femmes fatales and neckless thugs coming to pummel your teeth in.

  The detainee sits back, stick-insect legs spread outward, exposing the irrefutable truth. Demoines rubs his face.

  DEMOINES

  Can we just skip the redhead and start with the shooting?

  KIMREAN

  (sighs, frustrated)

  Fine.

  —

  Elmore Leonard said blah blah blah blah blah. It was a blazing red-hot August morning. The fan on the ceiling did little to stir the gunpowder and brick dust suspended in the air while a long-condemned second of calm died in the clangor of Kimrean blasting through the wall, an avalanche of plaster and bathroom tiles pouring onto the bedspread. Green Teeth Murdoc, standing in the middle of the office, stepped back and fired a new burst of automatic gunfire into the alcove, the P.I. barely brushing the mattress before sliding into the narrow gap between the bed and the wall, taking cover from the bulletstorm.

  A round of ammo or a piece of shrapnel tipped over the bottle of bourbon on the upside-down carton serving as a bedside table. Behind the bed, reeking with adrenaline, Kimrean took some quick, deep breaths and set out to execute their plan for survival.

  Step one: Plug in the extension cord.

  Step two: Yank the bedsheets and search the bundle for the revolver.

  Fire ceased. A rare, quivering silence took over the room.

  Kimrean found their gun and flipped it in their hands.

  “Is this loaded?”

  They pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into the brick wall. A new burst of submachine-gun fire immediately zeroed into that same exact square foot, splashing Campbell’s soup chunks of brownstone everywhere.

  “That was unbelievably fucking stupid,” Kimrean judged, hands squeezing the revolver, mouth counting down the seconds, chest heaving at the rate of the Uzi fire, which barely muffled the sandpaper voice of Green Teeth Murdoc screaming, “WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY, YOU CHEATING HOLY SHIT OKAY OKAY WAIT WAIT WAIT!”

  —

  DEMOINES

  (takes a deep breath)

  That’s the neckless thug, I suppose.

  KIMREAN

  Actually, that was Green Teeth Murdoc. Qualifies as a villain, but yeah. He still counts.

  DEMOINES

  Okay, forget it. Adrian.

  KIMREAN

  Yes?

  DEMOINES

  Take me back five minutes before the shooter comes in.

  KIMREAN

  (“But, Mom!”)

  That’s where I started!

  DEMOINES

  Shut up!

  —

  “Please take a seat…over there, I guess.”

  The femme approached the alcove indicated on the left. A twin bed, unmade, filled up the P.I.’s burrow, guarded by a bare coat stand. Half a bottle of bourbon dozed next to a pair of handcuffs on an upside-down carton beside the pillow. Kimrean pulled up the window blinds, and jeering sunlight poured in to reveal something ever more embarrassing in the sheets.

  “There is a gun in your bed,” the femme pointed out.

  “That’s good to know.”

  She turned to face the desk. It wasn’t completely cleared, she could see now: there was a toaster on it.

  The P.I. presumptive was now studying the ongoing game of chess on the dais in front of the window. A mischievous smile dawned on their blank face as the left hand pinched a black knight’s head and skipped it over enemy lines.

  The femme invoked some saliva and stated her purpose. “I am looking for a detective.”

  “Good job so far. Any idea who’s stalking you?”

  “No, that’s what—” She cut herself off midsentence. “How do you know I’m being stalked?”

  In those few lines of dialogue, the detective’s countenance had segued from patent curiosity to absolute tedium. No trace of interest belied that impression during the following speech:

  “Young high-class white woman visits cheap private eye; she’s neither employed nor married, so this isn’t business or family related; it’s personal. Your pulse was shaky when you applied your lipstick, but it’s steady now: you feel insecure at home; your space was violated. My first choice would be burglary, but victims of burglary become more guarded, whereas you didn’t hesitate coming to this neighborhood wearing that gold pendant shaped like a vine leaf. Nonetheless, despite the heat, you opted for a high-collar dress this morning, so I’m leaning toward my second option: harassment.” Oxygen was replenished, and the conclusion followed. “Thus, you’re being stalked.”

  All this had spurted out of the mouth like a telex message, while the hands interrogated a couple drawers in the desk and moved a white bishop on the chessboard.

  The femme examined her host once again, or rather the assembly of body parts that played said role. The mismatched eyes hardly blinked; the lipless mouth (lips, in fact, so thin and pale as to be considered absent) virtually vanished when it closed. The body was neither muscular nor bony: both those qualities presume volume; the subject here, perched on the desk, looked flat. And yet, as she glanced down the P.I.’s neckline…were those breasts inside the tank top?

  “You had breakfast?” the good host chimed, hopping off the table and crossing the room toward the embryo of a kitchen next to the coat stand, left hand prodding a black pawn to c5 on the way. The kitchen consisted of one salvaged wood-grain vinyl cupboard and a camping stove connected to a propane canister. The detective retrieved the single item in the cupboard—a box of blueberry Pop-Tarts—and headed back to the desk, right hand pushing the white queen to xc5 and tossing the captured pawn over the shoulder. It clunked somewhere in the dark side of the alcove.

  “Yes, I had breakfast,” the femme said. “And I am being stalked. For a time now, at nights, I’ve been feeling someone watching me when I undress.”

  “Can’t imagine why!” the P.I. inserted as a riant exclamation while loading two Pop-Tarts into the toaster.

  “And last night, when I was going to bed, I saw somebody peeping through the French windows. I screamed, and he disappeared into the rosebushes.”

  She stood by for another comment, but the detective’s attention was now on the toaster. The lever was down, but the appliance wasn’t working.

  The brown and green eyes tracked along the power cord slithering across the room and disappearing under the bed. Then they rose to meet hers.

  “Terrifying.”

  The smile was gone. Along with any other sign of human emotion.

  The femme wondered whether the voice (cold, slightly coarse) fell within the masculine or feminine spectrum. Terra nullius, she concluded.

  “So, can you help me?”

  “I charge three hundred bucks a day. Half a day in advance.”

  “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to ask,” she began, gathering courage for the indiscretion: “Are you a man?”

  “Aww, she’s so sweet. I love silly redheads!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Granted,” the orange-brown eye ruled. “As soon as you give me my one fifty.”

  The voice had again become a mirthless drone, the asymmetrical face inches away from the client’s. If only to look away, she went for her purse and pulled out a wallet. By the time awkwardness yielded to common sense and she realized she was giving $150 to a virtual stranger for no apparent reason, she already had the money in her hand. The other’s right snatched the notes in an asp-like movement.
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  “Thanks, you can leave now.”

  The detective counted the money and slipped the folded notes into the nonexistent space between the pants and the hip.

  The femme felt heat in her cheeks. And not from the blazing red-hot August morning. This was her blushing with shame.

  “Are you even going to ask my name?”

  “Fiona Hearsh,” one of the two eyes answered. It would be difficult to assert which one; they were both looking away. One mantis leg topped the other, hands alighted on a knee. Then the eyes noticed the customer was still there. An index finger pointed at her purse. “Your name is embossed in the inside.”

  “It says ‘F. Hearsh.’ ”

  “And Fiona is the most popular F name among women of Irish ancestry,” the index postulated, alluding to her red hair. “Plus, it means ‘vine’ in Gaelic.” It pointed at her gold pendant.

  A fly buzzed between the characters, aware of its comic-relief role.

  The grin dawned back in the lipless mouth one last time.

  “If you wanna help, we could role-play the facts of the case. Pretend you’re going to bed, it’s been a long day, you take off your dress, finally get rid of that bra—do you mind if I take pictures?”

  Five seconds later, the femme fatale was walking out of the office and the novel, her scandalized steps echoing down the stairwell.

  * * *

  —

  Kimrean stood up, smoothed out their two-dimensional pants, and leaned outside the door into the shadowy landing. Eventually, the slam of the front door downstairs announced that the client had left the building.

  “All clear,” Kimrean said. “No need to rein in your halitosis.”

  At the far end of the landing, the ember of a cigarette twinkled in the dark. It died a moment later, squished on a step.