Jack Kilborn & J. A. Konrath by Suckers

myself.
    “Goddamn germs on public transportation,” I said, loud enough for most of the bus to hear. This provided a clever reason for my conspicuous face-hiding behavior. I said it seven more times, just to be sure.
    We took the bus to Jefferson Park, a northwest side neighborhood named after that famous politico, Thomas Park. George exited on Foster. I followed, tailing him up Pulaski and into the Montrose Cemetery, my mind racing like a race car on a race track, driven by a race car driver, named Race.
    I never liked cemeteries. Not because I’m afraid of ghosts, even though when I was a child all the kids used to tease me because they thought I was. They would dress up like ghosts and try to scare me by visiting my house at night and threatening to hang us all because my family didn’t go to church. They usually left after burning a cross on our lawn. Damn ghosts.
    No, I hated graveyards for much more realistic reasons. When a person died they shouldn’t be kept around, like leftovers. People had a freshness date. Death meant
discard
, not
preserve in a box
.
What ghoul thought that one up? Fifty thousand years ago, did some caveman plant Grandma in the ground hoping to grow a Grandma Tree? What fruit did
that
bear? Saggy wrinkly breasts that hung to the ground and smelled like Ben Gay and pee-pee? And what’s with neckties? Why are men forced to wear a strip of cloth around their necks good for absolutely nothing except getting caught in things like doors and soup?
    As my computer-like mind pondered these imponderables, George cleverly gave me the slip by walking someplace I could no longer see him. That left me with three options.
Wait at the entrance for him to come out.
Search for him.
Drain the lizard. Those eighty ounces of Super Berry Taurine had expanded my bladder to the size of a morbidly obese child, named Race.
    I opted for number 3, and chose
Mary Agnes Morrison, Loving Wife and Mother
, to sprinkle. Maybe the taurine would liven up her eternity.
    I soaked her pretty good, and had enough left over for the rest of the Morrison family, including the
Loving Husband and Father
, the
Beloved Uncle
, and the
Slutty Skank Daughter
.
    I made that last tombstone up, but it would sure be cool if it was real, wouldn’t it? And wouldn’t it be cool if someone made a flying car? One that gave you head while you drove? I’d buy one.
    I shook twice, corralled the one-eyed stallion, and began to look for George. An autumn breeze cooled the sweat on my face, neck, ears, hair, armpits, back, legs, and hands, which made me aware that I was sweating. I put a hand to my heart and discovered it was beating faster than Joe Pesci in a Scorsese flick. Because he beats people in those flicks. Beats them fast.
    Why was I so edgy? Had my subconscious tapped into some sort of collective, primal fear? Did my distant ancestors, with their reptile brains and their bronze weapons made of stone, leave some sort of genetic marker in my DNA that made me sensitive to lurking danger?
    I did a 360, looking for pointy-headed ghosts with gas cans. All I saw were tombstones, stretching on for as far as I could see. Hundreds. Thousands. Maybe even billions.
    “Easy, McGlade. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s not like you desecrated their graves or anything.”
    Noise, to my left. I had my Magnum in my hand so fast that it probably looked like it magically appeared there to anyone watching, even though I didn’t think anyone was watching.
    Anyone
alive.
    My eyes drifted up an old, scary-looking tree, which had branches that looked like scary branch-shaped fingers, but with six fingers instead of the usual five, which made it even scarier. The sun was going down behind the tree, silhouetting some sort of nest-shaped mass on an extended limb that I guessed was a nest.
    “Chirp,” went the nest.
    My first shot blew the nest in half, and two more severed the branch from the tree.
    “Dammit, McGlade. Stay cool. You just assassinated a