Peter Sellers is perhaps best known as the editor of the Cold Blood crime fiction anthologies. He is an advertising copywriter whose short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and in the late, lamented Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. A former chairman of the Crime Writers of Canada, he received honourable mentions in The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories in 1985 and 1988. His “Boogie Man” is a combination of macabre humour, hardboiled prose, and a contemporary twist on the old-fashioned zombie story.
King pulled his car to a stop in front of Diamond’s house just as the ambulance drove away. He watched it ease onto the street and drive half a block before switching on its headlights, the siren and the flashing light on its roof remaining silent and dim. Climbing out of his car, King walked to the front door. Two men stopped him there, but they weren’t cops so King knew Gore hadn’t told anybody yet.
“Yeah?” one of the men said. Both stood with their backs to the big double doors and their arms folded across their chests.
“King. Gore sent for me.”
“Yeah.” One of them stepped back and let King in through the door, closing it again immediately.
King stood in the hallway on the deep pile carpet and looked around. He had never liked Diamond’s house. There was something about it that reminded King of Diamond himself. It was ornate and expensively furnished, but somehow seemed austere. Busy, but empty.
King looked at the paintings in their heavy gilt frames, lining the walls along the hall and up the big circular staircase where they vanished in the darkness of the second floor.
“King.” Gore appeared in the doorway off to the left. Small, round, untidy, and rumpled, he looked like a janitor. He looked like he had slept in his suit, but King knew be had been up all night. His call, an hour earlier, had woken King up.
King followed Gore into the room. It was Diamond’s trophy room, filled with awards, gold records, and photographs, all of Diamond with one celebrity or another, or accepting some honour.
There was another man in the room, sitting cross-legged on the couch, his arms loosely folded, resting in his lap. He smiled at King, but his eyes remained still.
“This is an old friend of mine,” Gore said. “John Devereaux. He’s a doctor.”
Devereaux rose with a smooth uncoiling of limbs. He held out a cool, moist, slender hand. “Hello,” he said softly, the word rolling off his tongue like syrup.
King shook hands and nodded. “Doctor, eh? What kind?”
Devereaux smiled without revealing any teeth. “Let’s just say I’m in private practice.”
Gore chuckled and settled into a big wing chair by the fire. It was early October, but cold. The doctor sank back to the couch. King hesitated, then took a chair opposite Gore.
“When did he die?” King asked, sticking his feet towards the fire and looking at Devereaux.
The doctor shrugged. “Probably around one or two, but the exact time doesn’t really matter.”
“It does to me. I’m the one who has to feed it to the press.”
Gore prodded a big log on the fire with a poker and sent up a shower of sparks.
“How did it happen?” King asked.
“Heart attack, possibly. Perhaps induced by alcohol. Or drugs. Or both. I’d really need an autopsy to discern exactly.”
“Was he alone?”
“Oddly, yes. As far as we know.”
“What about cops? They’re gonna want a full investigation.”
Gore still poked and jabbed at the fire. “Leave that to me,” he said. He seemed very calm. King had felt sure he would either be in a rage or sick with anxiety.
King himself was not too upset, but then he never cared much for Diamond. He found Diamond abusive and arrogant and not nearly talented enough to deserve all the attention he received. But, King knew, he was partly to blame for Diamond’s success. He was responsible for hype, promotion, and building anything connected with Johnny Diamond up to a major international event.
Even so, King didn’t have the same vested interest in Diamond that Gore had. King did most of the flak, but Gore ran the show. Without Diamond, King was out of a product to plug, but Gore was out of a burgeoning corporation to run. He seemed too calm for a man who stood to lose a multi-million dollar investment. No one could expect the manager and mentor of one of the top pop idols of his age to be so cool when his star died just one week before he was due to begin a ninety-date tour.
King watched Gore as the shadow and firelight alternated on his face, and waited to hear more. “I don’t think they’ll bother us much,” was all Gore said.
King didn’t agree or disagree. “What about the tour?”
“What about it?”
“Now that it’s off, what are the losses going to look like?”
Gore set the poker back in the cast-iron stand next to the fireplace and settled back in his chair, his fingers steepled under his chin. “There won’t be any losses.”
“What? How can there be no losses?”
“It’s very simple, King. We are not cancelling the tour.”
“What?” King looked at him blankly.
“You heard. We open Friday as scheduled.”
King knew then why Gore had been so calm and quiet. He had lost his mind. “And just what the hell do you expect to do? Sell out ninety shows with nothing on stage but the microphones?”
Gore shook his head. “We won’t need microphones at all.”
“Huh?”
Gore smiled. “King,” he said, “this was going to be a big tour for Diamond. We think he should try to make it.”
“What are you talking about? The man is dead, Gore. Dead.”
“Exactly.”
Gore and Devereaux watched King with sated looks. The germ of an idea started to grow in King’s mind, but he forced it down.
Gore brought it back up. “Remember, King, when Elvis died? Remember the thousands of fans who lined up for hours outside Graceland in the hope of God knows what? They were all over the place. They needed guards to keep them away. At the funeral. At his grave. Don’t you think if each of them was charged five bucks to file through the house and look at the body they would have done it?”
He was speaking very softly, almost in a whisper, leaning forward across the front of the fire towards King. “Sure, there would’ve been a few who’d refuse. A few who’d be, what, too noble. And there’d be some who’d only go in for free. But most of them would have gone. At five bucks a head. Multiply that by the number of fans Elvis had and you’re talking about a hell of a lot of money. How many fans does Diamond have? We won’t make a cent less than we would have if Diamond hadn’t kicked.”
King looked from Gore to Devereaux.
Gore laughed. “When the curtain goes up on Friday night, Diamond will be on stage. Christ, we could put an urn full of his ashes in the spotlight and they’d still pay to see it. Imagine what they’d pay to run their hands through those ashes in the hope that one or two flakes would stick to their sweaty palms.” his eyes were wide, reflecting the firelight. He spoke with hushed intensity. “The possibilities are limitless.”
“They won’t all come up here just to see a corpse,” King said, still half convinced Gore was joking.
Gore was out of his chair. “Of course not. That’s why the tour is on. When we’re finished here, we just close the lid, nail it down, and move somewhere else. People don’t just want to see him here, they want to see him everywhere. Every city in this country and half the cities in the world are crawling with Flawless Johnny Diamond fans. There’s a market for the guy dead or alive and why the hell should we let it slip through our fingers when we can get him anywhere in the world for the cost of excess baggage and no bitching about the accommodations. No food complaints, no drug busts, no torn-up hotels or smashed equipment. It’ll be like going on tour with Marie Osmond.” He brought his knuckles to his mouth and gnawed. King wasn’t sure if the action was brought on by the thought of low overhead or Marie Osmond. He hoped it was low overhead. “This is a dream.” Gore flung his hands wide. “This is the greatest angle in history, and I’m giving you the chance to promote it.”
“Diamond’s dead, Gore,” King said again, not sure he wanted to promote anything like it. “In a few days he’s going to start to rot. He’ll decompose and he’ll stink like hell. And I guarantee nobody’s going to pay to sit in a concert hall all night just so they can smell some guy decomposing.”
Gore chuckled. “That won’t happen.”
“How are you going to stop it?”
“We’ll freeze him.” His eyes were wild and his chuckle turned to maniacal laughter directed at the ceiling and ringing through the dark, still room.
King turned to the doctor. “Will that work?”
Devereaux nodded. “It should. It should keep him fresh long enough to serve our purposes.”
“Our purposes?”
“Diamond is a star. Even dead, he’s going to need a lot of care. The best care.”
“The kind of care you can provide?”
Devereaux inclined his head slightly, modestly.
“Gentlemen, shall we drink to the future success of the late Johnny Diamond?” Gore asked, crossing to a mahogany liquor cabinet by the far wall and raising a cut-glass decanter of scotch. Twelve years old if it was a day. He poured out three stiff drinks. It tasted like money.
“Where’s the body now?” King asked with the scotch sitting warm and golden in his stomach, almost masking the uneasy feeling he felt growing there.
“Safe,” Gore said. “We’re keeping a very close eye on him until Friday. And then we’re going to rock the rock world.”
“At least no one will be able to say he died in New Haven,” King said.
Gore laughed and drained his glass. He smashed it in the fireplace.
Devereaux and Gore had done a lot of planning in the two hours between the discovery of Diamond’s body and Gore’s abrupt call to King.
“He’s being taken care of right now,” Devereaux said, his gaunt face slightly flushed from the scotch and the heat of the fire. “We’re storing him in a full-length freezer for a day or two. We have somebody working on a special casket for him, with satin lining and mahogany panelling. It’s just a fancy freezer really, but then this is a pretty fancy side of beef. That will be his new home.” Devereaux smiled. “He’ll never get a chance to thaw out.”
Gore did a few steps of a jig in front of the fire. “I told you, King, it’s perfect. It’s an opportunity too good to pass up.”
King was still not sure. He pursed his lips and thought about it. “What happens if it bombs?”
“It won’t,” Gore said. “And if it does, what the hell? Diamond’s kicked anyway, so we’ve got nothing else to lose. And when we win, we win in a very big way. We’re going a long way fast with this thing. I want you along on that ride.”
“You, me, and Devereaux?”
“That’s right,” Gore said with a toothy smile. “Right now, the doctor and I have a few more things to take care of. I’ll call you when everything’s set to go. I’m glad you’re with us, King.” He ushered King to the front door, leaving the doctor sipping scotch and smiling.
King left the house uncertain whether he was glad to be with them or not.
The lineup was already over a block long, curving around the corner and out of sight, when King got to the concert hall. The doors weren’t slated to open for two hours. Gore had been right. Only a few of the people holding tickets had redeemed them. Others kept them for use at this new exhibit, and an almost infinite supply was available at the door.
From the looks of things, Gore would have no trouble making up for the few returned tickets. King watched the string of people, ranging from their teens to late middle age, shivering in the late fall drizzle. After a moment, he turned down an alley next to the theatre and knocked on a side fire door.
An usher opened the door. “King?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The usher stepped back to let King inside. The first thing he noticed was the chill. He shivered involuntarily at finding so little relief from the dampness outside. He wondered if it was real or imagined.
“Chilly in here,” the usher said, blowing on his knuckles.
“Yeah. Like a tomb,” King said, with a wry smile.
The usher made no comment and King went to find Gore.
Gore was standing on the stage shouting lighting directions to the booth at the back of the auditorium. He could have used the intercom, but when Gore ran a show he wanted everybody to realize it. Behind him stood a waist-high platform, eight feet long and draped in floor-length black velvet with long candles in ornate candlesticks at each end. It was for Diamond’s casket. A freezer encased in dark wood that worked very well.
Gore had experimented by filling it to capacity with bricks of ice cream and, turned up to only half power, it had kept the bricks hard enough to bend spoons. When they emptied the casket to put Diamond in, Gore started giving bricks away but stopped when he realized people would pay for ice cream that had been kept frozen in the same box that held the remains of Johnny Diamond. He stashed the ice cream in another freezer, waiting for the doors to open.
The lighting man was having trouble getting the right combination of spots on the platform. Gore found fault with every possible variation. Green and yellow would make it look like Diamond had a liver infection. Green and red made it look too much like Christmas, and red and blue too much like a brothel. Plain white was too austere. It would make Diamond look dead.
“He is dead, Gore,” King said, stepping from the shadows into the light on the stage.
“Damn it, of course he’s dead,” Gore snapped. “But we don’t want them to know that.” He made a great sweeping gesture with his arm, presumably to indicate the mass of humanity.
“I think they already do know,” King said, thinking of the thousands of lines of newspaper copy that had been dedicated to the occurrence.
Gore sighed deeply and shook his head. “Of course they know,” he said softly. “But when they come in here tonight, all shapes and sizes, all ages, sexes, and colours, with their tear-stained hankies clenched in their trembling hands, I want them to be able to look down at Johnny Diamond, at perhaps the last pure untarnished idol of this badly tarnished age, and I want them to feel a glimmer of hope, faint as it might be. I want them to feel that maybe, while they watch, he’ll just sit right up in that coffin and give them a big wink and leap over the side, taking a microphone and giving them the concert of their lives.”
Gore placed a hand on King’s shoulder. “You see, King, hope is what we’re dealing with here. We’re just trying to give these people something to pray for. Some spark of light in the great black firmament of life. Hope that something beautiful hasn’t really died after all.” King was almost sure he saw tears in Gore’s eyes.
Suddenly, Gore pulled back and swung towards the lighting booth, yelling, “Okay, you dumb bastard, let’s try and get it right this time. I want something mellow and laid-back, but not catatonic. Jumping Jesus H. Christ, I could do better with a flashlight than you’re doing with those spots, you son of a bitch.”
King retreated backstage.
Devereaux was lurking there. He nodded at King and came over to him. “Everything’s going very well, King,” he said.
“Seems to be. Gore’s having a field day.”
“He’s very excited. This is a very exciting project. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before.”
“Freezing people? Sure it has.”
“Yes, but we are not merely freezing someone. We are preserving for posterity a legitimate and important slice of twentieth-century popular culture.”
“Sure. And making a few bucks on the side.”
Devereaux smiled. “A mere consequence of our enterprise, King. And don’t be so self-righteous. You take just as much as we do. And don’t ever forget, Gore and I don’t need you. We could drop you in a second and there’d be a hundred other publicists clamouring for your job. Always remember that. You need us.”
“Maybe so, but there’s something you shouldn’t forget either. You both need Diamond. How’s it feel to rely totally on a corpse?”
Devereaux smiled his empty smile. “You can count on them,” he said. “They never do anything you don’t expect.”
One cold son of a bitch leading another, King thought, the feeling growing that Diamond, Gore, and Devereaux deserved one another.
To King, it was a difference of degree. He got paid to do a job, but he didn’t own a percentage of the body. The thought had crossed his mind that if Gore and Devereaux ever severed their partnership they’d have to divide their assets with a hacksaw. Then, while Diamond’s head was playing Poughkeepsie, his genitals would be on display in South Bend, Indiana. “Just make sure he doesn’t thaw out, Doc,” King said, walking away.
The show went very well. Gore finally decreed the lighting was acceptable, and the doors opened just half an hour late. There was some grumbling from the lineup, which now stretched for blocks, that it was probably all a hoax and Diamond wasn’t really dead at all, but nobody left.
Once the doors were open, they streamed in for hours, moving past the blown-up photographs of landmark events in Diamond’s career and the collection of memorabilia in glass-covered cases set up in the lobby. Then it was into the auditorium itself, suitably dim as befitted a place of mourning. Filing down the right-hand aisle, they climbed the steps to the stage, where Diamond lay in frozen state.
Each spectator was allowed five seconds’ peering down at the star’s icy face before being moved along by two burly guards. All through the evening, recordings of Diamond’s greatest hits boomed from the speakers, even outside so those still waiting could hear. The music, however, was interrupted frequently by Gore, admonishing the crowd to have patience. After all, Diamond was in no hurry to go anywhere.
By the time the last fan had been ushered out the door, Gore was ecstatic. The evening had gone smoothly. Lighting and sound problems had all been ironed out and crowd control had been the only real concern. Five people, two of them female, had tried to climb into the coffin with Diamond, but the guards restrained them with a minimum of violence. Aside from those few isolated and minor incidents, there had been no trouble.
King found Gore in the lobby rubbing his hands with pleasure.
“Did you see them, King?” Gore asked with a chuckle.
“I saw them.”
“We made a killing.”
“That’s a good thing to call it.”
Gore chuckled again. “And it’s going to be like this for the whole tour. The extended tour.”
It certainly looked, at the outset, like it would be. For the first month the crowds were phenomenal. In every city, they lined up for blocks.
Near catastrophe struck once when a harassed baggage clerk accidentally put Diamond on the wrong flight, and sent Gore and his entourage merrily on their way with the body of a butcher named Stanley Minsky. But the error was discovered in time, and a few frantic phone calls averted potential disaster. But the novelty began to wear off after a while. Crowds grew thinner and the media no longer gave Diamond the coverage or hype Gore felt the show deserved. King did the best he could, but found his own enthusiasm waning as quickly as the media’s.
Gore grew moody and petulant, snapping at anyone on the slightest provocation. Devereaux remained as outwardly calm as ever. Diamond showed no signs of thawing out or rotting and the doctor was pleased that his job was well taken care of, although some concern had been generated by the appearance of a slight freezer burn on one of Diamond’s cheeks. But a careful application of cosmetics solved that problem.
Gore would pace endlessly backstage as the steadily thinner crowds straggled past his exhibit and mutter to himself as he tried to calculate a new approach. It came to him one night in a dream.
“Diamond will live again,” he proclaimed to King with a whimsical smile.
“Huh?” King wondered if the slump in business had finally affected Gore’s mind.
“I had a vision last night. The whole show is too static. It needs to be punched up, given a shot of pizzazz. Something to bring the people back and get those media bastards climbing all over one another for stories and pictures.”
“What do you have in mind?” King was almost afraid to ask.
Gore just smiled. “You’ll see. The new Flawless Johnny Diamond show debuts in a week.” He walked away humming to himself. King shuddered with trepidation.
King hadn’t slept all night. Watching the chill dawn of the day Gore had promised to rock the entertainment industry a second time, he felt cold. The snow was ankle-deep on the sidewalk and continuing to fall. By seven o’clock, the crowd outside the theatre was larger than any King had seen in weeks. Gore’s maddening secrecy on television, on radio, and in the press had had the desired effect.
King slipped in the back door and could have sworn he hadn’t gone inside. The whole building was like ice. Gore, wrapped in a fur coat and gloves and breathing steam, met King backstage.
“What happened to the furnace?” King asked, hands deep in his overcoat pockets.
“It’s been shut off.”
“Shut off? What the hell for? It’s twenty below out there.”
“We had to turn it off. To keep the goods fresh.”
“Goods?” King had an image of Gore’s new concept: to turn the place into a giant cold cellar full of Diamond’s favourite preserves.
“Yes. To keep Diamond solid.”
“Diamond? What about the box?”
Gore just smiled and led King to the wing where he could look out over the stage.
Dressed in the sequined silver lamé suit he had made famous, Johnny Diamond stood like a department store mannequin at centre stage. The lights cast alternate ghastly colours on his skin, so obviously pale behind the makeup.
King looked at Gore in horror. “What is this?”
“Quite ingenious, really.” Devereaux had crept up behind them on crepe-soled shoes and oiled limbs. He startled King. Walking over to Diamond, he said, “He is held up by a thin but very sturdy wire stand which is hidden inside his suit. Legs, back, chest, and arms.” He ran a hand up and down Diamond’s leg and caressed his belly like a lover. “Feel it for yourself. “
King’s stomach turned over. “No.”
Devereaux smiled. King could have sworn his teeth all ended in sharp points.
“And this isn’t where it ends, King,” Gore said, excitement in his voice. “The suit’s insulated and lined with tiny refrigeration units to help keep him on ice. But wait till you see the best part.”
King wasn’t sure he wanted to, but Gore waved both arms to the booth at the back and Diamond suddenly lurched into a grotesque twist while the sound system belted out his cover of an old Chubby Checker hit.
“Good God,” King said.
“Isn’t it great?” Gore cried, his hands raised before him.
Diamond began a passionate boogaloo as a new song started, strangely out of character with the lifeless aspect of his face.
“The wire does it all electronically,” Devereaux explained. “It keeps time, causing Diamond to dance. It’s a little jerky, no American Bandstand quality, but certainly more entertaining than having him just lie there and look dead. Care to see him frug?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” King said, turning away.
“Don’t go, King.” Gore put a hand on King’s shoulder. “This is the hope I was talking about. People will once again be able to see their idol dancing and performing before them. He has been raised from the dead for one farewell tour. One last great effort for his devoted fans. What you see before you now is only the beginning. By next week there’ll be a backup band.”
“That’s nuts,” King said. “What band in their right mind is going to want to play backup to a rock and roll corpse?”
“The kind of band we have won’t mind,” Gore said.
“And how the hell much do you have to pay them to play second fiddle to a stiff?”
“Nothing at all,” Devereaux said with a smile.
King realized then what they had in mind. A dead band for a dead star. “Oh, no,” King said, backing away. “This is where it ends for me.” He turned away from Gore and Devereaux, ignoring their protests, and went out the back door, leaving the corpse doing the monkey to an audience of empty seats.
From a coffee shop across the road, King watched the crowds file in. After an hour and no diminishing of numbers, he left and trudged back to his hotel room, his decision made.
That night, after the show, King returned to the theatre. Gore was saving on hotel bills by storing Diamond in a room backstage, guarded of course, but still cheaper than the two-bedroom suite Diamond always insisted on. King had no trouble getting into the room. The guards were the same two who had been at the door of Diamond’s house the night he died the first time, and they knew King.
Inside the room, King worked quickly. He raised the lid of the freezer and caught his breath. Diamond seemed to be watching him suspiciously. Ignoring the glassy stare, his hands turned numb with cold and fear, King manoeuvred the rigid corpse free. Opening the single small window, he dumped the body, with much swearing and very little ceremony, into the alley behind the building. Straightening his tie and taking a deep calming breath, he left the room.
Backing his car into the alley, King picked Diamond up and somehow managed to stuff him into a trunk designed to hold little more than a spare tire. At dawn he was four hours from the city and Diamond was in the heated trunk thawing out like one hundred and eighty pounds of hamburger.
At noon, Gore was in the theatre lobby with Devereaux. Both men looked tense and upset. King walked up to them and they looked daggers at him.
“I want to talk to you, King,” Gore said, turning to walk into the auditorium. King followed and Devereaux brought up the rear.
They took seats in the centre of the great empty auditorium, the three of them side by side with King still in the middle.
“Where’s Diamond, King?” Gore asked when they were sitting.
King shook his head. “Out of your reach now, Gore.”
“I don’t think so, King,” Devereaux said with the soft, svelte tones he used when he was trying to be convincing. “I don’t think you can keep him from us.”
“I do. Because I don’t have him anymore.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Gore demanded.
“Just that. I had him, but I don’t any longer.”
“Who does?” Devereaux asked with a fatherly smile, although to King he didn’t look like he could ever be anyone’s father.
“No one.”
“How’s he staying frozen?”
“He’s not. I’ve buried him.”
“Buried him!”
“It wasn’t easy with the ground as hard as it is, but I finally got it done.” Devereaux’s eyes went wide and Gore slumped back in his seat, shaking the whole row. “You mean he’s thawing?”
King nodded. “Slowly, but surely.”
“Where is he, King? We have to get him back. He’s bread and butter for a hell of a lot of people.” Gore turned to Devereaux. “Will he be too far gone?”
Devereaux shook his head. “I don’t know. Name your price, King.”
“There’s no price.”
“Where is he, King?” Gore asked, and the way he looked, King knew he would dig Diamond up with his bare hands if he had to. King could see Gore kneeling on the ground in a soiled three-piece suit, face streaked with sweat, scrabbling in the dirt with cracked blackened nails, fingers worn to the bone, raw and bleeding. Like some crazed, desperate prospector lost in the desert without food or water but still seeking the great rich vein.
“I’m sorry, Gore,” King said, rising, “but Diamond gave you enough while he was alive. He was a bastard, but he’s dead now and you’ve got no right to make him stand up and twitch like a spastic mannequin to the tune of old records in front of a bunch of slobbering ghouls just so you can make a buck. I should’ve done this months ago. This show is over. Find yourselves a live star.” He squeezed past Devereaux to the aisle.
“Think it over carefully, King,” Devereaux said. “We can make things very uncomfortable for you. And believe me, we will. Unless you tell us where he is. Then we’ll pretend this never happened.”
“Go to hell.”
“Have a heart, King,” Gore said, his voice high-pitched in pleading. “What the hell am I going to do with four back-up musicians and nobody to back up?”
King sneered. “Drop dead,” he said, and turned away from them.
As he walked towards the back of the auditorium, Gore said to Devereaux, “What do we tell the people?”
“Tell them Diamond’s not feeling well and can’t go on tonight. We’ll think of something.”
They did.
The next day, King read in the paper that Bobby “Ace” Freeman had died of an apparent heart attack following a performance the night before. Two weeks later he opened in Vancouver.