Chapter 1

It's eight fifteen AM and I'm still at my desk. It wouldn't be remarkable if I'd just strolled in, but I've been here for days. My feet are propped up on my desk, the left one crossed over my right. I've got my hat tilted over my eyes, like I'm trying to get a bit of shut eye. I'm not sleeping. I'm waiting, and even if I wanted to, I can't sleep. I'm dead.

I hate reminding myself that I'm dead. I need a drink. I throw my feet off the desk and stroll over to where I keep my gear. I reach past my Colt .45 and grab my biggest gun.

The Regal '45 makes a cool splash in my scotch glass. There is no ice. It melted days ago. It's okay, though, I don't need it. The hard liquor sears my tongue and burns my throat as it passes through me and splashes on the floor, joining the growing stain of good whiskey.

Ah, the rules of being dead, of being a ghost, of being whatever the hell I am. I can pick stuff up, I can move it around, I just can't drink it. I don't completely understand the rules, I didn't make them. I just have to live, or whatever, with them.

I look over at the corner and the broken shards of frustrated dreams that litter it. I dream that one day the scotch will actually stay in me. I dream that it will get me drunk. I toss the glass in my hand, contemplating giving it a second toss over into the wall so it can join its crushed brethren. I put it back down on the table. It's my last glass and besides, my ex gave it to me. Damn, I need a drink.

There's no use going out and looking for the man who killed me. I don't know who killed me. When I came back to life I tried finding him, but the trail's run cold.

I was following up on a case that had already cost me something personal, my ex. I fill another glass and after burning my throat, it widens the puddle. If only that was the only thing the job had cost me.

The case doesn't make any sense from the start. Some Joe hires me to find out who'd dolled up his wife. He brings her in with a before picture and I don't believe they're the same person.

The woman in the picture is far from remarkable. Short and plain, her short brown hair that's put up in a curled bob manages to make her look worse. She's in a long, navy dress that pinches in on her hips, showing off doughy rolls that ring her waist like a life preserver. The dress bells out over her legs that by looking at her ankles I assume are short and stubby. Pudgy arms stick out of two short sleeves and the front buttons up to her neck, leaving only a small hint of skin.

By contrast, the dame drips sexuality. Tall and striking, her long golden lock flow down her back, emphasizing her beauty and height. Modest would prevent calling the black fabric hugging her curves from being called a dress, but lack of a better word forces it to be one. Breasts that could feed an army of babies, or a teenager's fantasies for a year, overflow the top of her dress. The only rolls left around her waist are the perfect curves of her wide, inviting hips and spectacular ass. Towering legs that dwarf the Empire State Building vanish into the dress' short hem.

Joe assures me that the broad is his wife. It seems as if some side effect of the process has driven her sexually insane. I can see his point. While we talk, his formerly prim wife pleasures herself on my sofa.

I'm not a head doctor. I don't know what or who to ask about her new personality, but I know about changing looks from going after a few fellas that tried escaping with a new face. I know who to ask about that.

I take a few pictures of his wife and finally get one decent enough to show in public. Every quack I take the pictures to says a surgery like that is impossible. I believe the guy's a nut job, but he hired me and he's paying the bills.

After a month of searching around, I get a lead on a guy I assume is a surgeon who's supposed to be able to do unbelievable work. I can't get in to see the guy. I figure it's because he only works on the fairer sex.

We'd split up long before, but the ex is the only woman I know that might agree to do it. She's also the only woman I know that won't slap me on sight. There goes another shot. I've got to stop wasting my good stuff.

My ex comes back to me looking and acting like my client's now missing wife. Only, she doesn't come back alone. In my shock, I don't see him come in for the kill.

When I awake and find that I'm not quite dead, but not alive, my killer is already long gone, taking every clue and lead with him. I bust into his office. It was an empty shell. I go back to the surgeon who clued me in. He's vanished and know one knows where he's gone.

Any other lead or idea comes up just as dead as me. I realize I'm just as likely to find what I'm looking for moping behind my desk as I am tiring myself out on the streets. I come back to my office and wait.

I put the scotch glass down and resume my position: feet up, hat down.

Hours pass. It's mid afternoon when a pair of cantaloupes attached to a woman bounce through my door. She's the type of dame you don't want your son seeing before his eighteenth birthday. I could use her figure to help keep track of the time. Her smile tells me I could flip her over and use her again.

Her red dress strains to keep her cartoon proportions from flowing out into public space. She walks with a sexual grace that can give the dead a hard on. I take my feet off the desk and adjust my pants. Golden locks and empty blue eyes complete her look. She's a ringer for my ex. Where the hell did I leave my drink?

"Are you the dick?" she asks me. She doesn't have a clue upstairs, but that's okay, her walking in is a clue enough for me.

I don't answer her. I walk around to the front of my desk and drop my pants, the biggest gun in my arsenal is pointed at her. The lady does this high-pitched squeal and launches herself at my genitals. She passes through me and smashes her face on my desk. The thud of her shock absorbing ass is joined by the clattering of her two front teeth.

"Oppshie," She whistles through the gap in her smile.

As she stares up at me with that uncomprehending look, her broken teeth grow back into place. She is the clue I'm looking for. That's his trademark. Can't let beauty be flawed.

I pull my pants up so I don't torment the poor girl any more. I set her on the sofa and get her my glass. My mouth waters as I pour a nice shot of the Regal. What I wouldn't give to feel settling in my stomach.

The glass clinks in her red talon-ed hand. I enviously stare as the brown liquid slides into her mouth. Her throat pulses as she swallows it down. A tongue that could melt chocolate licks her upper lips clean and she sets the glass on the table between us. What I wouldn't give to have been that glass of scotch.

"Are you the dick?" she asks again.

I point to the door and the cheap gold stenciling that says "Tracer Spiff, PI".

She mouths the words as she reads them. I should have told her to save the time, but seeing that she can still read lets me know she's not too far gone.

"Oh, good," the sex sitting on my sofa says. "I wet to two other offices first and blew half the staffs before they told me I was in the wrong place."

I nod. That's par for the course. Two other women like her had sat in that very spot. They hadn't had her self control. They'd wriggled and wormed on the seat, fingering themselves silly. They were the ones who'd led me to my death, my last case and my ex. I need a double shot, but the dame across from me had already drunk my drink.

"I'm here because my husband thinks I'm cheating on him. I want you to follow me around and take pictures of me not fucking anyone else so I can prove that I'm faithful." The whole blowing an office full worth of people had seemed to have slipped her mind.

Marital disputes. Fidelity. These were the kind of jobs that low level dicks took. In my day, I wouldn't have been above taking them for the buck. Payday is payday. Being dead, though, I have no need for the cash. I just need information. Information that this woman was oozing from her pores like the sweet sensuality of a quick lay. I take the case.

I gather my goods for the road and make sure I got everything. Camera, filled with fresh film: big and bulky slung by my hip. Colt .45, filled with my last four bullets: big and bulky sheathed in my shoulder holster. Flask, filled with undrinkable relief: big and bulky shoved in my coat pocket. Heart, filled with despair and a glimmer of hope: big and bulky hung in my chest.

She wants me to take pictures of her not having sex. That's what the camera's for. I don't point out the fallacy to her. I don't think she'll get it. Just because she's not fucking in the pictures doesn't mean she wasn't fucking five minutes earlier or later.

A woman like her got me killed once. That's what my gun's for. I don't trust her. I can never be too careful. Maybe it's just paranoia on my part, but I'd rather be paranoid and standing over my killer's body than dead again.

The flask is a lot simpler. I may be dead, but old habits die harder.

The dame takes us back to her place. The June Cleaver house betrays the sexpot that ushers me in. The pad is as immaculate. I can feel her former self floating, lingering about the place. It's more than a feeling. I can see what she used to be.

She's sitting on the sofa, but instead of the short dress and the creamy, inviting thighs that it reveals, she's wearing tan slacks. The inflated mounds on her chest are a more reasonable size and hidden by a white blouse. She is June Cleaver.

June offers me a drink, but I decline with the wave of my hand. I don't want to ruin her nice furniture. The dame from the office sits back and sips on a glass of bourbon so expensive that a dick like me couldn't have afforded the sniffer it was poured in. June takes the glass of ice tea away from her mouth and sets it on the table.

It's hard. I've never experienced this before, the double vision. My eyes can't tell who is actually sitting across from me.

The woman leans forward. She gives me a view of slopes downhill skiers have dreams about. June fiddles with her hands.

They start to talk. The kitten's voice jump starts my libido again and June's fearful tone dashes it off like a shower after they cut the hot water because you haven't paid your bills since your wife left. Why'd I turn down that drink?

I can't stand to listen to them. I just put my hand up to silence her. June looks at me with pleading eyes, begging me help her. The bombshell looks at me with suppressed desire, but she remembers the incident in the office. She knows I can't help her.

The pinup fades out as I concentrate on my real client, my real clue.

I can see it all like it's happening before me. Events days old unfold before me like an episode of a bad sitcom. June answers the door to the salesman. He's very convincing. It doesn't take him long to talk his way into the house. The poor girl doesn't realize that it's already too late for her. He's not trying to sell her a new vacuum, he's selling her a new life.

She sits down on the couch. Her slacks have already turned into a skirt. She doesn't see it, but the salesman does. The bastard is getting off on it. He's setting her up so that when he's good and ready, he'll let her see it, too. He loves the confusion.