Джо Горес: Dead Man

“Mr. Inverness and I will be checking out.”

“Certainly, sir.” The clerk got out both bills, ran them through the computer to get the final totals, handed them over. “These include all phone and laundry charges.”

Dain was here doing this only because he didn’t want any loose ends. He wanted it finished. He didn’t want anyone coming around a week or a month or a year from now to ask him questions he couldn’t really answer. End it here and now, cleanly, so there would be no sticky strands tying it to him later.

It had been eight days since he’d dumped Inverness’s body into the Atchafalaya. The identities of the other hitman and the man who had set up the hit had died with him. So be it. But could he just walk away from it? Could death still be looking for him though he no longer was looking for it?

Of course he could. The dead were dead, blood had paid for blood. He would not be working for the mob any longer, would no longer be moving in those circles. He could make a new start of sorts. Let Doug Sherman go back to book-selling full-time while he became the sort of P.I. who took any and all clients through the door. Randy would help him get referrals...

He went through the invoices item by item with the clerk fidgeting in the background, just so there would be no surprises. He hesitated for a long time over one item on Inverness’s bill, then folded them up and put them in his wallet. He felt as if he had been kicked in the heart.

“These look in order. Put Mr. Inverness’s room charge on the signed credit card charge he left with you — I’ll pay for mine with cash.”

From the motel, Dain drove to an auto supply store, bought a towbar, drove back to park half a block from the motel, went into the lot, got Inverness’s car without being seen by the clerk, and drove back to his own car.

He arrived at New Orleans in midafternoon with the Inverness car on the towbar behind him, drove to the government housing developments near the Superdome, and dumped it at the curb. Driving to New Orleans International Airport to turn in his rental, he figured the abandoned car would be in a bump shop by nightfall, unrecognizable by dawn.

He fought hard against thinking about Vangie, speculating where she might be or what she might be doing. She had brought him alive again by accepting him into her body, he had set out to save her life, she had saved his. She was involved in life, she was life.

The urge to run to her, try to build his new life around that vitality, was almost overwhelming, but he had no right to do that. She had a new life to build, and the bonds with which to do it. A new life having nothing to do with hootch dancing in cheap strip joints.

The sign over the clock read NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. The clock read 7:32. Dain had just paid with cash, and the attractive blonde in the blue uniform with little silver wings over her left breast gave him his ticket to San Francisco. She had nice dimples and bold eyes.

“Your SFO flight boards in twenty-eight minutes, sir.”

He went through the detectors, stopped at a bank of pay phones on his way to the gate. He was once again carrying his leather-bound Tibetan Book of the Dead, which he set on the metal shelf below the phone as he waited for his call to be picked up.

“Douglas Sherman here,” said the phone.

“Dougie! It’s Dain.”

“Dain?” He paused. “My God, I was starting to wonder—”

“I’ll be getting in tonight, going to the loft.”

“Did... everything go smoothly?” Sherman asked cautiously.

“Not really,” he said. “I found the fugitives and I found the bonds, but... I don’t believe we’ll be collecting our fee from Mr. Maxton.”

There was a long pause. “Maxton is—”

“Not going to pay our fee,” said Dain firmly. “I also ran into one of the gentlemen from Point Reyes. I’ll tell you all about it at the bookstore in the morning.”

He started away, then looped back to the phone. He had realized he didn’t want to take the shuttle bus from SFO back to the city when he got home. And he wanted to tell Shenzie all about it. Cats understood things like revenge very well indeed.

The call was a short one.

“Randy? This is—”

“Hey, Hoss, where the hell are you?” demanded Solomon’s big voice. “Why the hell haven’t you—”

“Still in New Orleans, catching a flight home in...” Dain checked his watch. “Eleven minutes—”

“I’ll be waiting at the airport.”

Dain gave him flight number and arrival time, then added, “Can you bring Shenzie, too? I really—”

“Sho nuff,” said Randy with his big booming laugh. “He’s right here with me on the couch, watching TV.”

Dain’s window seat looked out at moon-silvered clouds far below the plane. His face was exhausted and drawn. He thought he was too keyed-up to sleep, but then he was dreaming.

He was in a strange apartment in a hot steaming tropical land, using his computer to identify those he sought. He was nude, sweat-drenched. In thirty seconds he would have them, their identities and locations would leap from the screen at him...

He heard voices, as if through steel wool.

They... they all... dead?

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

There was a loud pop! and a flash of light, and the computer blew up with an acrid puff of electrical smoke. One leg of the computer table collapsed, the whole setup slid to the floor. He had spent hours in the intricate tracery of their tracks, now it was gone, all gone in a puff of smoke.

Dain threw himself on the bed, arms and legs flung wide. On the opposite wall was a familiar Magritte. The door of the bathroom opened. Vangie emerged, like him nude in the blanketing heat. Suddenly he had a massive hard-on, the biggest erection of his life.

She stepped up on the bed astride him, looking down at him in anticipation as his exciting view of her dark sexual nest made his hard-on even more distended. She lowered herself onto him with exquisite slowness, impaling herself on that enormous organ. Her body accepted all of it, she immediately began fucking him frenziedly, immediately reared back in ecstasy, immediately collapsed shuddering against him, all within a few seconds and long before he could come himself.

Then she lifted herself off his still-erect member, planted a kiss on its engorged tip as if kissing a rose, winked bawdily at him, and was gone.

Randy was waiting by the loading gate at SFO, his face a huge grin as passengers streamed around them off the plane. He examined Dain keenly and gave his big laugh.

“You look like you got a tale to tell, Hoss.”

He told it on the way into the city, Randy behind the wheel, Dain beside him, Shenzie in his carry case on the backseat, meowing in his pissed-off way at being cooped up so long.

“Hell, if Inverness was a cop, I oughta be able to find out who he saw when he came to town—”

“Five years ago? And he wouldn’t have come as a cop.”

Shenzie meowed yet again, insistent for attention. Dain started to reach over the back of the seat with his good arm to open the case and stick his hand in.

“Hey, man, don’t let him out in the car!” Solomon said in alarm. “I did driving down, he like to took my ear off.”

Dain nodded and took his hand from the case. To their left the lights of the tough little town of Brisbane were scattered like children’s jacks down the eastern slope of San Bruno Mountain; ahead and to their right beyond an arm of the bay was the pale unlit mass of Candlestick Park.

“Only thing you ain’t told me, what happened to the bonds?”

“Vangie kept ‘em. She paid enough for them.” He added, “I also didn’t tell you, I think I might know who brokered the hit.”