Read Online The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang - Free Book Online

“Hello?”
    Finch said, “Hello.”
    “Can I help you?”
    “SFPD. I’m here about Dolores Stone.”
    “Who?”
    “Dolores Stone.”
    “I heard that, but who are you?”
    “SFPD.”
    “SFPD who?”
    “Sid Finch. SFPD. Homicide.”
    “Coming right down.”
    While he waited, Finch flashed through a series of fantasies about the woman who was coming right down. Would she be a black drag queen wearing some jewel-encrusted, solid-gold bikini? A six-foot-nine Amazon in leather? A petite Asian girl whose monstrous implants doubled as a double-barreled fuck-you to the Hippocratic oath? Just as he was measuring out the contours of the Asian girl’s cookie nipples, the door swung open, revealing a woman who, unfortunately, sat squarely within his expectations of the women of San Francisco. Finch, stillpricked up by his prior expectations, gave her the up and down, starting at her Chinese-ish shoes, her pale, follicle-stippled legs streaked pink from a careless shave, the soft bulge of thigh hanging unathletically over well-scrubbed knee. The heavy, two-tone skirt—cordovan and a deep purple—hung stiffly and unevenly from sharp hips, revealing a flash of midriff that ended at the hem of an overwrought, vaguely African halter top. A wooden bead held the neck together. Her mousy hair had been butchered straight across her forehead before giving way to two wings that hung damply over her ears. She was ugly, of course, but like so many of San Francisco’s ugly girls, she buried the fact behind an earnest expression, as if every doorway was a wardrobe and the entirety of Narnia lay across the threshold.
    “Come on up,” she said. “Miles has been expecting you.”
    MILES HOFSPAUR, ENTREPRENEUR , sat behind an industrial desk in a bare room on the second floor. Again, Finch felt let down. Where was the approximation of Hefner life, the blond twins, the stained casting couch? Hofspaur—bald, blotchy, unevenly hefted—was dressed in a tight black T-shirt that barely hemmed in his bulk. He stood up and shook Finch’s hand. On the desk, Finch noticed a drawing, not quite finished: Lisa Simpson, on her knees, holding Bart’s snail cock in her hand. Through a feat of neck contortion only allowed by 2-D, the viewer could see Lisa’s face, the look of tired guilt. Were there a speech bubble sprouting from her now-defiled mouth, it would have read, “I guess you caught us, so what are you going to do?”
    In a nasally, giggly voice, Hofspaur said, “Sorry.”
    “They look old.”
    “Those early seasons were the best seasons.”
    Finch didn’t really see what that had to do with anything, but he asked, “What’s with the look on her face?”
    “That, believe it or not, is the product of market research. Our research team said that this sort of cartoon shit does better when the girl looks like she isn’t really enjoying what’s going on.” He paused, waited for Finch to respond, and when Finch said nothing, said, “Sorry, it’s sick, I know, but it’s not kiddie porn because there’s no victim, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “You know what’s really fucked up? We can do whatever we want to Lisa Simpson or Dora the Explorer or Minnie Mouse, but if we Photoshop footage from nonanimated sitcoms, the feds immediately start sending us e-mails. We ran this Rudy Huxtable reverse interracial series a couple years ago, and I swear we almost got shut down.”
    Finch, despite himself, chuckled.
    Hofspaur sat back down behind his desk and folded his hands, regally, in his lap. He asked, “What do you want to know about Dolores?”
    “Anything that seems relevant.”
    “Relevant? Her stage name was Gray Beaver, for the obvious reasons, but also because she was a quarter Potawatomi and incorporated some weird Indian shit in her videos.”
    “Gray Beaver?”
    “Yeah. You know, ’cause she had a gray beaver.”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re a bit slow for a detective there.”
    “Sorry. I don’t have my notebook with