James Siegel - Epitaph

Someone had tried to kill him. He'd gotten too close to something or someone and they'd tried to kill him. That might've made him defiant, or real determined, or plain stubborn, or just pissed off, but what it actually made him was scared to death. The real world had given him back his fear of death. So okay, he'd keep it. Besides, he owed nothing to nobody-certainly not to Jean, whom he hadn't worked with in years and hadn't liked when he had, and certainly not to those twelve old people who'd gone to Florida by way of the Bermuda Tri- angle-none of whom he'd seen, ever.

William the Conquerer was going back into mothballs. William the Meek was now taking calls.

One from Jilly-all the boys down at OTB say hello, and don't worry, your job's still waiting here for you when you get back on your feet. One from Mr. Brickman-you sound groggy, William, just wanted to say I'll be stopping by.

And making calls too. At least one call, just to tidy things up a little. A week after his admittance, wrapped in a soft cocoon of bandages and morphine-induced haze, he rang up Mr. Greely.

"No," Mr. Greely said, "no one called me. But I put out the word."

"The word?" thinking that Mr. Greely sounded like a missionary.

"Sure. The word. I said you were looking for Arthur. You understand, in case anybody heard from him."

"Who did you put out the word to?"

"Who remembers. You know, people. In the building. Whatever. So did you find him or didn't you?"

"Didn't."

"Too bad."

"Yeah."

End of inquiry, end of the road. He owed nothing to nobody.

So he kept reminding himself, as the nurses dressed and redressed his bandages. The neck bone's connected to the chest bone, he sang in his head, the chest bone's connected to the rib bone, the rib bone's connected to a twenty- four-volt battery that was mercilessly sending rivers of pain down his body. That's what it felt like. Question: How do you make your arthritis feel better? Answer: You fall down a thirty-foot hole and smash your ribs to bits. Which guarantees that you won't even notice your arthritis; arthritis, what arthritis? Old bones, that's what the nurses said he had. And old bones take a long time to mend. He needed time to recuperate-that's what the rest of his life was perfect for. If he needed purpose, he'd found one. To mend.

And yet he kept thinking about Jean. How he didn't owe him anything. It was the shots that did it, he thought. Painkillers, mind-numbers, narcotics of one form or another, they kept him dreaming. One minute he was stuck painfully in the present, the whoosh of the air conditioner, the wheeze of the bronchial patient in the next bed, the whine of the TV And he did mean whine. My Wife Doesn't Dress Sexy Enough. My Wife Dresses Like A Slut. My Husband's A Drag. My Husband's In Drag. She's Vain. He's Stupid. She Eats Too Much. He Cheats Too Much. A nonstop litany of peeves, complaints, potshots, and outright humiliations. One minute he was there, wondering if Caught My Husband Wearing My Shoes should go a little easier on Thinks Wife Should Share. The next minute he was back fifty years or so and staring at Lost My Soul In Nazi Death Camp, at Jean, for the first time.

It was Santini who first brought Jean in. William had just left Mutual of Omaha-five years of being a claims investigator and he'd had it. Santini had left over a year ago-or been asked to. Something about a fraudulent claim that he'd either engineered, overlooked, or just plain screwed up. It didn't matter to William. They'd worked together a couple of times over the years and they'd gotten along fine. So they were going to start a detective agency together. Which is what ex-claims investigators did in those days if they didn't stay for the gold watch. William and Santini, the Two Eyes. Except Santini had somebody else he wanted to bring aboard.

Jean was a charity case. Which isn't what Santini said- but is what he was. What he said was that Jean had been doing the legwork for a highly disreputable agency down- town-highly disreputable in Santini's book being a euphemism for highly successful. Highly successful being the exact opposite of his recent forays into betting the over- unders in college basketball, bets that he'd placed with a certain Mr. Klein. Who was highly successful, not to mention highly fortunate, having sat out the Holocaust comfortably ensconced in a 32nd Street brownstone, and not somewhere in Poland like his late uncle Lou. Which, the truth be told, made him feel just a little guilty, which caused him to actually chair a number of very legitimate refugee programs after the war. America, which was feeling just a bit guilty itself, had finally opened its doors to a number of Jews who were still breathing. Not a large number, not a number with a lot of zeros behind it, but a decent number. And a suddenly decent Klein was there waiting for them, with warm clothing and hot soup. And in Jean's case, a job. Jean, whom he'd found with just the shirt on his back, that faded snapshot in his pocket, and some ugly blue numbers on his arm. Not to mention a chip the size of Mauthausen on his shoulder. Mr. Klein had apparently taken to Jean, to his story anyway, which was of someone who'd actually tried to do something in a time and place where everyone mostly did nothing. Everyone, that is, who wasn't committing crimes against humanity on a regular basis. Jean had helped smuggle Jews out of occupied France, onto ships in Marseilles and then south, to Argentina maybe. But Jean had been seized, been tortured, and nearly been killed. That he wasn't, that he'd survived all that, was something of a miracle. That San- tini was into Mr. Klein for four figures was something of a pain. Giving Jean gainful employment was something of a solution.

Not that Santini had been thrilled about it, at least, not at first, especially after they'd received a notice from Bellevue-or at least Jean had, a notice which had somehow been intercepted by Santini, who'd placed it on William's desk with a mournful look of dread.

"Jesus," he told William. "The guy's wacko."

"What?"

"Jean. He's nuts. They had him in Bellevue. Jesus Christ. Look at the notice, for Chrissakes. Due for a follow-up. Do you see that? We've got a nut on our hands."

Which was true and not true. The actual story, the one Santini pieced together later after he'd paid Mr. Klein a visit, was a lot less alarming. All survivors in this particular refugee program had been offered psychiatric therapy; Jean had apparently accepted it. Which didn't much mollify Santini any-crazy was crazy. What did mollify Santini was that Jean began to show how good he was, that his hard-won knowledge of the darker impulses of humankind was paying dividends. Jean wasn't making any friends but he was making lots of clients. So while crazy was crazy-money was money. His place was secure, even though one of the friends he wasn't making, was William.

Though William, of course, had tried. He'd greeted the frail, wasted soul before him with pity and been met squarely with a roundhouse right of scorn. Of course, he understood-Mauthausen and all. He'd tried flattery too, told Jean how proud he was of what Jean had attempted, told him how special heroism was in a world with so little of it. Jean told him to shut up. If Jean was a hero, he was a reluctant one. He'd seen the real human spirit at work; he'd seen it man an assembly line of death with crackerjack efficiency. Heroism-he wanted no part of it. And he wanted no part of William either-William, whom he saw as just one more bleeding heart. And maybe, William thought now, stuck back in the present with its wheezes, whooshes, and whines, he was right.

But not now; now's different. Jean would have approved, he thought. He was giving up the ghost, and even though it was Jean's ghost, he would've approved. Heal thyself, William thought, then whispered it aloud. Heal thyself.