Джо Горес - Dead Man

“Because you’re a fucking nerd, same as you ever was.” He gave his big booming laugh. “You ain’t figured out shit. And you got no proof of anything.” He was suddenly curious. “What really tipped you off it was Doug and me?”

“Him, a phone bill. You, the remark about the bonds — eventually it sank in. And how scared you got when I almost took Shenzie out of his carry case in the car. So up at the loft I checked and sure enough — there was a wire running from his collar down into a lump of molded plastique in the case with a detonator embedded in it. If I’d lifted him out—”

“So you blew up the loft, figuring I’d be watching the news and figure you were all done. And old Dougie went there, tryna get you before you got him, and by accident got blown up along with the place. You’re pretty slick, Sherlock. But not slick enough. ‘Cause you don’t want revenge hard enough. You gonna talk me to death. Only people don’t die that way.”

“I’d quit wanting revenge at all,” said Dain. “I was going to let it go with Doug, even after I knew he’d been the go-between. But he wouldn’t let it alone. Just like me five years ago. And it got him killed, just like me five years ago.”

Randy made as if to step around Dain toward his car, then checked himself again.

“Like I told you in the car last night, he couldn’t leave it alone. I can’t leave it alone. I ain’t safe long as you’re alive. But the difference between you and me, Sherlock — I know the way people die is somebody kills ‘em. So I ain’t gonna talk you to death.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Dain in a strangely flat voice.

“I’m gonna give you time to have a lot of fun wonderin’ when it’s gonna happen. Then, one of these days, just when you figure I’ve forgot all about it, you’ll turn around and, wham! You ain’t there any more. Nobody’ll ever suspect me, ‘cause see, Dain, the whole world knows I’m your best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at your funeral.”

He laughed his big booming laugh again, went jauntily down the street and across the grassy strip to his car, went around to the driver’s side and unlocked it, opened the door. Dain bent down to pick up something he’d put down out of sight beside the roots of a tree, then just stood there with it in his hand to watch Solomon get into his car.

As Randy slid in under the wheel, he checked the back from automatic cop’s habit. And froze. On the seat behind him was Shenzie’s cat carrying case with a big red satin bow tied around it. A bow with bright gold letters stamped into it:

FROM A FRIEND. MEOW.

“No!” he screamed.

Utter terror distorting his features, he tried to get out of the car before Dain pushed the button on the transmitter. Moe Wexler had been up almost all night putting it together for the detonator in the plastique Randy had put in Shenzie’s case.

Randy didn’t make it.

With a great whoosh! of sound and a burst of flame, his car went up with him only halfway out of it. Black smoke poured up into the unusual summer morning without fog. Dain just stood there, watching, tears on his cheeks.

“You turn around, Randy, and wham!” he said in a soft, sad voice, “you aren’t there any more.” He started down the street, murmuring to himself, “Nobody’ll ever suspect me. I was his best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at his funeral...”

Cautious people had begun venturing out of their houses with stunned faces, but by then Dain was gone.

From force of habit, he went around to the back door of the little bungalow in Mill Valley, started to let himself into the kitchen, stopped dead, key in hand. The door was unlocked. He had locked it after leaving Shenzie off last night before going back to Moe Wexler’s shop in the city. And Shenzie hadn’t come to greet him as he usually did...

Nightmare. Yet another hitman was in the house, someone else he had to kill... forever and ever, yet another murderer to murder... And the iron grip of the past on his heart would never ease, he could never die and be reborn again...

Set carelessly on the kitchen counter was an attaché case. One that looked very familiar...

Dain slid forward silently, opened the case carelessly — if he was wrong and it was another bomb, now was the time to go. He had nothing left in his life he valued...

No bomb. It was indeed the bearer bonds that had started it all — and ended it all.

Dain moved silently through the little house he knew so well. Vangie was slumped back in the big easy chair across the coffee table from the couch, asleep, her fierce and beautiful face relaxed and childlike. Dain felt his heart leap up as he stood looking at her.

Something in his life that he valued.

Shenzie was asleep on her chest.

Dain crossed silently to the sleeping pair, put his finger down under Shenzie’s throat. He was purring, his little motorboat going even in his sleep. He woke at Dain’s touch, looked up at him with big pop eyes, stretched, kneading Vangie’s sweater with little front paws, then shut his eyes again, indifferent to Dain’s arrival.

The kneading paws woke Vangie. Just like the cat, she looked up at Dain for a long time without moving or speaking. Finally she sat up and cradled Shenzie upside down on her lap.

“You said your cat didn’t purr,” she told him.

“Not for five years.”

She touched the name tag on Shenzie’s collar.

“Shenzie. What a goofy name.”

“It means crazy in Swahili. But more than that. Goofy is right — nuts, a little out of control. He always has been — knocks your cup of tea off the arm of the couch just to see what you’ll do, sleeps on the cable box on top of the TV ‘cause it’s warm, quits purring for five years...”

Vangie stood up, turning to set Shenzie back in the chair when she did. She stood in front of Dain looking up at him. They were not touching, but almost.

“I came in through the bedroom window — the latch was loose.” She made a quick gesture with her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and hiking boots. “You don’t owe me anything, Dain, I’m not expecting anything from you, but I want to give the bonds back to that woman they were stolen from and I don’t know how, so I had to ask you—”

“Eddie,” said Dain.

“Eddie?”

“My name is Eddie. Dain is my last name.” He scooped her up in his arms and started toward the bedroom. He had a sudden, intense erection, as he used to get with Marie at unexpected moments, as he’d had in his airplane dream. “We have to check out that loose lock on the window.”

When they came the first time it was absolutely together, and both cried out when they did. And then cried, real tears, because both of them could finally let go of their losses.

Dain woke alone in bed, stretched luxuriously, felt automatically for Shenzie’s little head on the pillow beside his. Shenzie wasn’t there. Noonday sun through the branches of the pine tree outside the window made the bedroom a green cavern, like the bedroom in his dream. He could smell coffee. New Orleans coffee, thick and rich with lots of chicory in it.

Everything came back to him, everything, all of it.

He pulled on his shorts and padded barefoot out into the living room. Vangie was on the sofa, coffee mug in hand, staring at the half-finished chess game on the coffee table that for five years Dain had been physically unable to put away.

She looked up when he came into the room. She was wearing one of his shirts, the tails came down almost to her knees.

“My pa-pére taught me to play this game,” she said. “My grandfather. Is this one of those chess problems he used to tell me about?”

“No,” said Dain. “This is just an unfinished game...”