Dead Man Read online

  A shadow shot across them, making both Marie and Eddie duck. It struck the ground thirty feet away with a thump, extended claws first, then flapped up again with a tiny rodent wriggling in its talons. It was a foot-long handsome bird with hooked beak and heavily barred tail.

  “Daddy! Look!”

  “We see, Albie. It’s a…” He turned to Marie.

  “Harrier hawk,” she said. “With a harvest mouse.”

  “He gonna kill the mouse?” demanded Albie.

  “I’m afraid that’s what he does for a living,” Marie said regretfully.

  Further in, the pickleweed was replaced by bright orange splotches of parasitic dodder and stiff triangle-leaved salt-bush. Marie broke off a stem so they could bite it and taste the salt.

  “Could the hawk kill me?” said Albie suddenly.

  “Not a chance, Tiger, you’re too big for him,” said Eddie. “In fact, there’s nobody around big enough to kill you.”

  “That’s okay, then,” said Albie.

  There had been heavy surf the night before, so out on the beach they found great washed-up strands of kelp, its strange broad indented streamers looking as if they had been stamped out of green tin. The thirty-foot stalks, as big as a wrist, had heads like bulls’ testicles. All smelling of salt and the sea and not unpleasantly of the deaths of the tiny marine creatures clinging to it when the giant seaweed had been washed ashore.

  Looking at the shredded, ragged leaves, Eddie was reminded of one of Marie’s favorite poems.

  “’Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing,’” he quoted,“ ‘For every tatter in its mortal dress…’”

  “Except these tatters are on purpose,” she said. “They split under the force of the waves so the holdfasts won’t be pulled off the rocks down below. But these were anyway.”

  Eddie put his arms around her. “Let’s always hold fast,” he said to her in sudden inexplicable fierceness.

  She laughed up at him. “Okay, big boy—forever.”

  “That’s okay, then,” he grinned, in imitation of Albie talking about the assassin hawk’s activities.

  Soaked in Bullfrog-36 to counteract depleted ozone, they sunbathed on a tiny wedge of sand available only at low tide, with occasional forays into the frigid surf. Albie wanted to be carried in each time also, game to their last icy dash back out of the water shrieking with frozen laughter.

  Wrapped in towels, they watched a flock of sandpipers run seaward at the foot of each retreating wave, run back up at the lip of each advancing wave, moving almost in close-order drill as they pattered about stabbing sharp slightly up-curved bills into the sand for tiny living things.

  Finally, they ate sandwiches and drank hot tea from a thermos, were waked from their nap by raucous western gulls squabbling with two crows over a dead striped bass without any eyes. Sun-dried and salt-crusty, they explored a tidal pool in slanting late-afternoon sunshine, moving down to it gingerly through the so-called black zone caused by lichens and blue-green algae. The gelatinous coat that kept the algae moist between their twice-monthly spring tide soakings made for treacherous footing.

  Albie was in his glory here, being a touchie-feelie sort of guy, totally unsqueamish, as usual finding the tidal pools the high point of his day along the water.

  “Mommy, what’s this?”

  He was squatting on the algae, holding up a tiny, spiral-shelled creature for Marie’s inspection. He had long since learned that Eddie was next to useless in identifying either living or dead things on the beach.

  “That’s a periwinkle snail,” she told him. She squatted beside him. “They eat the algae by scraping it off the rocks.” She turned the shell over, pointed. “See? Rows of teeth.”

  “Lots of rows of teeth,” said Albie solemnly.

  “Thousands of them,” agreed Marie. “When the rocks wear the teeth down, the snail just rolls up a new set, sort of like the teeth are on a conveyer belt.”

  The barnacle zone was mostly acorn barnacles, their close-packed flinty white cones making the rocks also look white.

  “But when a barnacle dies his shell gets taken over by periwinkles, or little bitty shrimp, or limpets…”

  Back at the cabin at dusk, Eddie put briquets on the hibachi and grilled the steaks while foil-wrapped potatoes baked in the coals and sweet corn roasted in its own husks. To Albie’s delight, no crucifers. But there was ice cream and a chocolate Sara Lee with a single candle in it, and the cards and little presents they had picked out for Marie.

  Finally, plates scraped and washed and leftovers in the fridge, Eddie started the fire laid in the stone fireplace. Albie was suddenly asleep, tipped over on his side. Marie carried his small sleeping form into his bedroom as Eddie went outside to bury the garbage in the mulch heap. Tree frogs trilled, branches rustled, something of consequence moved through the brush flanking the sandy track leading in from the main road.

  He looked back at the cabin under the cold pale blue light of a waning moon. Smoke swirled from the chimney with the night breeze. Light shone from the windows. He shivered, somehow felt lonely even though everyone he truly valued—except for Shenzie—was just inside.

  Watchman, what of the night?

  He went back into the cabin, hungry for Marie. She held out fisted hands with chess pieces hidden in them.

  “Left,” said Eddie.

  She opened her hand. “You get black.”

  “Black’s good. I can do black.” He sat down at the table and offered her a shameless bribe. “If I win you get your real birthday present.”

  She gave him a bawdy grin. “And if you lose?”

  He brought out the book, beautifully wrapped by Doug Sherman, and laid it on the table beside the board.

  “You get your real birthday present.”

  “Ah-hah! Win-win for Marie!”

  But when she sat down at the board, her face lovely in the flickering firelight, she was concentrating too hard on her usual pawn first move, and spoke too casually without looking up.

  “You know, honey, maybe Randy’s right.” When he didn’t immediately react, she sought his eyes. “Maybe you’re treating the Grimes thing a little too much like just a game.”

  “You know that all investigations are just a game, sweetie—move, countermove, just like chess.”

  “But what if it isn’t just a game to somebody else?”

  “You and Randy.” He shook his head in mock despair.

  “You didn’t see Randy’s face when we left. I did. He’s worried, Eddie. Really worried.”

  He reached across the chessboard for her hand. “Okay, when we get back I’ll just Close and Bill on Grimes, and forget him. Like Randy says, I was only hired in the first place to find out if he was skimming or not.”

  Her eyes glowed at him. She squeezed his hand. He grinned at her and picked up the wrapped package and gave it to her.

  “Now that’s out of the way…”

  The somber moment had passed. Marie always opened presents in the same way, starting sedately as if to save the wrappings, then suddenly losing control and turning into Albie, ripping the paper to tatters no matter how beautiful it might be.

  An aged man is but a paltry thing,

  A tattered coat upon a stick…

  She went still, staring at the leather-bound Tibetan Book of the Dead. She turned it over and over, her eyes huge stars.

  “Oh my God, Eddie,” she whispered, “it’s Alexandra Neel’s own copy! Oh my God! It’s the most beautiful… I don’t…”

  She stood, eyes brimming, opening her arms to embrace him.

  The cabin door crashed back against the wall. Two bulky men, silhouetted by moonlight, charged in with sawed-off shotguns in their hands, heavy boots grating on the bare planks. Silver ring glinting on a finger. One, sunglasses, sandy hair. The other, ski mask.

  Eddie leaped up against the sudden sticky molasses slowness of terror as his conscious mind cried, No no no, stop, it’s just a game, I don’t need to keep on with the in
vesti—

  He heard the roar even though he didn’t feel the shot pattern shred his shoulder, and rip his chest, and pop blood out of the side of his neck, and burst his cheek so his teeth were bared all the way back to the jaw hinge.

  He crashed down, upsetting the table, as the shotgun belched yellow flame to smash Marie back and up, her mouth strained impossibly wide, her eyes wild, her hair an underwater slow-motion swirl, the black hole between her breasts blossoming red, her feet coming up off the floor with the force of her death. Her face thudded down a yard from his, her utterly dead eyes staring into his with inanimate patience.

  Through cotton, Albie’s voice came faintly up the hall.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” With terror in it.

  No, Albie had never known terror. Mustn’t know terror. Eddie began a crabwise scrabble toward the voice. He couldn’t raise his head, so he could see only Albie’s stubby legs appear in the doorway, hesitate as he surveyed the room.

  A question this time. “Mommy?”

  “Run, Albie, ra—”

  The second shooter blasted Albie’s legs back down the hall out of sight. No blood, no pellets striking flesh. Just the legs disappearing as the door frame was splintered and pocked and ripped by the edges of the shot pattern.

  A voice croaked despairingly, “I wasn’t ready… Oh Christ… I wasn’t ready…”

  The first shooter fired again, almost casually. The twin charges of buckshot swept Eddie’s body back against the legs of the table like a surge of floodwater. A widening red pool spread beneath his chest. His groping hand closed around The Tibetan Book of the Dead knocked from the table, held it.

  His view was narrowing and darkening. His ears were failing. The voices were through steel wool.

  “They… They all… dead?” Second shooter.

  First shooter. “Yeah. We’ll check if he has any notes here, a computer… then we’ll burn the place down…”

  Darkness. Silence.

  Silence. Darkness.

  I wasn’t ready…Oh Christ… I wasn’t ready…

  Not a voice. A thought. A bed. Harsh antiseptic smell. Shush-shush of rubber-soled shoes in the corridor outside.

  He knew he was in a hospital. He just didn’t know why.

  But then voices. Real voices.

  “Goddammit, when can I see him? Every hour—”

  “Every hour he lives is a miracle, the blood he’s lost, the mess they made of him. He’s alive only because a neighbor saw the flames and dragged him out before the place collapsed. Right now he won’t remember anything anyway, Inspector. Why don’t you let it go? Leave him alone.”

  “How about I just see him as a friend?”

  Sounds. Movement. The voices were stereophonic now because they were on either side of his bed.

  “Will he ever remember any of it, Doc?”

  “This much massive trauma, who knows? He should be dead, he may be paralyzed… Physical survival is fifty-fifty at best, who can tell about memory?”

  “Fifty-fifty? Was me, I’d make it,” said Randy’s voice thoughtfully. “I’d have too much to live for to check out yet.”

  “In his condition, what could he possibly have to—”

  “Death, Doc.” A pause, then Randy’s voice added, softly, “Was me, I’d be plannin’ a whole lotta other people’s deaths.”

  Hearing that, knowing it to be true, Eddie died.

  Leaving only Dain to live on.

  Not that Eddie Dain knew any of this. The only thing functioning was his ancient lizard brain, nestled down there at the base of the cortex. Hunger, fear, survival—those were what the lizard brain knew about. And only one of those, survival, meant anything just then. If the organism could survive, the rest of what it needed would follow.

  Because now some part of Dain had something to live for.

  A whole lotta other people’s deaths.

  II

  DAIN

  The Windy City

  THE SECONDARY CLEAR LIGHT SEEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER DEATH

  O thou of noble-birth, meditate upon thine own tutelary deity as if he were the reflection of the moon in water, apparent yet inexistent in itself. Meditate upon him as if he were a being with a physical body.

  THE TIBETAN BOOKOF THE DEAD

  4

  Weight, 100 pounds. For two years, pain.

  Constant. Low and throbbing, like drums. Or high and shrill, like red-hot irons laid lovingly against his flesh by medicine’s benevolent sadism.

  Start with the bones. Pins here, steel rods there.

  Then, muscles and tendons. Slow, careful reconstructions.

  Finally, the flesh. Operate, wait for the scar tissue to heal, operate again.

  Now, the physical therapy. Move this finger. Wiggle that toe. Wonderful! Can you move that arm? Can that leg support…

  No no, that’s fine. Falling down is part of the therapy. One, two, three, four, rest. Let the pulse slow… One, two…

  Two years. Weight, back up to his original 140.

  5

  For the year after that, Las Vegas. At first he’d thought Phoenix, Santa Fe—just so it was desert. He thought he ended up in Vegas only because more buses went there. Hot sun, dry air, burn out the pain that, often, had him sitting on the edge of the bathtub with a razor blade against the inside of his wrist.

  Not just the physical pain, though that was bad enough.

  two bulky men charged in with sawed-off shotguns

  Fragments of nightmare.

  the shotgun belched yellow flame to smash Marie back and up

  Razor blade. A couple of swipes against the wrists, and…

  Albie’s legs disappeared as the door frame splintered

  But—these were not nightmares. These were memories sent to him by God. The half-formed idea of doing something about their deaths started small, grew with the nightmares.

  To do what you ought to do, you had to survive. So he started getting up before dawn each morning to walk along the road out into the desert. Half a mile, but and back. A mile. After a while, that led to trotting. Two miles, four. Jogging was the next logical move, skin brown, legs and arms pumping, sweat rolling, three, five, eight, twelve miles a day.

  Six months in, he found himself other disciplines. Health club. Boxing gym. Karate dojo.

  Weight, 160.

  Carrying a book to strengthen his hands—the heaviest he had was a leather-bound fire-singed copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Clutched in his hand as he was dragged from the fire.

  I wasn’t ready… Oh Christ… I wasn’t ready…

  So, strengthening not just his hands, but also his resolve. Until on the last morning of that first Vegas year, three years after it had happened, he was physically ready. Maybe emotionally he was still screwed up, maybe he couldn’t remember any of it without black swirling rage, but physically ready to…

  To what? To find the people who had done it, of course. After that was still hazy, but…

  Hey—find them how? How do you find two anonymous hitmen hired to kill you three years ago… hired!

  Somebody had hired them! So simple, yet in three years he hadn’t thought of it. Easier to find him than the hitters, because he wasn’t anonymous. Had to have a connection with Grimes…

  Also, had to be tied into organized crime. The Mob. Mr. Average Joe, no matter how pissed off, didn’t know anyone could blow up a boat and make it look like an accident even to the experts. Didn’t know shotgunners for hire who…

  Then he realized why he had come to Vegas. The mob still ran it, no matter how many layers of cotton candy you laid over them. The old men who played golf, the young men who protected them with watchful, venal eyes. Just because he was there recuperating, for the past year Dain had been studying them. He’d learned the players, the rules, without knowing it. Had watched the watchers without being watched himself, because he hadn’t known he was watching.

  So maybe he was ready to start looking instead of watching.

  Weight, 180.
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  His assets: he didn’t care if he lived or died; he didn’t care about legalities at this point in the game; he was a genius with a computer; he was physically ready. Maybe not emotionally, but at least he would be doing something about what had been done to him. Final asset, they didn’t know who the hell he was.

  Even as Eddie Dain, he’d just been a fly to be swatted, so with a new name, a Vegas name… Travis. Travis… Holt. That was good. No elaborate disguise needed, but why be careless? Nonprescription glasses, colored contacts, rinse-away hair coloring, a neat goatee and mustache.

  To go with the new name, a rock-solid new life. His laptop massaged Travis Holt into other people’s records. Gave him dead parents, schooling, a rather no-account brother named Jimmy, put him into the Las Vegas National Guard—this last a precaution just in case he had to disappear without making waves.

  As Travis Holt he was just a guy looking for a casino that needed a bookkeeper for its legit books. Big guy, thirty, maybe thirty-two, close to 200 pounds, moved quick, didn’t drink, smoke, gamble, chase broads. Or guys. When he wasn’t at work he was out jogging or at a gym somewhere. Physical fitness freak. And could you believe, a computer nerd. Genuine, complete nerd. The connected P.I. who checked him out joked that he probably whacked off at night watching his reflection in his computer screen.

  It took Travis Holt only six months to make himself indispensable to the casino that hired him. Creative ideas about bookkeeping. Always available for overtime. Always willing to fill in for vacations. And a real whiz with the numbers. Pretty soon they had to give him access to the sensitive files.

  Dangerous to give him access? Shit, no, man. Checked him out back to the cradle. Family gone except for one brother in Vero Beach, Florida, fucking commercial fisherman when he works, which isn’t often. By the records a drinker, can’t hold a job…

  Anyway, Chrissake, Holt is showing us things about figures make the accountants shoot their load. Legit ways to move money around, lose it, find it, turn it into goods and services—by the time it comes back in from the Bahamas it’s as clean as Tide Concentrate. And he knows he ever tries to get into files he isn’t authorized for, he leaves tracks right back to his terminal and we pound him headfirst into the desert and light his feet.