Джо Горес - Dead Man

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

Weight, 180.

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.

Knows better than to fuck with us.

Of course he knew better, knew all about the buried codes that gave warnings when access was effected. But he didn’t care. Once he was inside, his obsession deepened. Sometimes, alone at night in his office, trying to find the man who had ordered his family murdered, he thought he might be cracking up. And still didn’t care. The search gave him focus, eased his nightmares.

As for that access the wise guys thought impossible, at Cal-Tech he had learned all about the back doors always left in computer systems. Had designed viruses that would take security checks out and put them back when he was done. At Cal-Tech he had built his own computer, designed his own computer language, created his own software, broken into half the federal security mainframes in D.C. just for the hell of it.

So latenights, weekends, overtime, his computer made love to the mob’s, stuck its tongue down their system’s throat, lapped up their data. The books behind the books, the offshore skim accounts, the secret sauna meetings to move millions... The feds would have killed to know what he knew, but he cared nothing about that. Let the feds make their own cases. All he sought was to name the nightmares that rode through his sleep.

the door crashed back against the wall, two bulky men charged in with sawed-off shotguns in their hands, heavy boots on bare planks ...

Long after midnight, almost four years after it had happened, he found a name, buried deep in the belly of the beast, that meshed with all the givens of that June night.

Mario Pucci. Los Angeles.

Pucci’s specialty was bringing in drugs from Mexico on other people’s private powerboats. Like Ron Grimes’s. In fact, he and Ron Grimes had been yacht club cronies, had played poker together. What more natural, Grimes bringing in drugs for him? But maybe a scare from the Coast Guard had made him panic, want out... or maybe he’d gotten greedy...

A phone call from Pucci, a specialist gets on a plane, Grimes’s yacht blows up with Grimes on it. Accident. End of story. But unknown to Pucci, a private eye named Eddie Dain had been hired by Grimes’s business partner fearful Grimes’s black money was coming from their company accounts. The private eye confirmed that it wasn’t — and then kept going on his own with his computer, like a kid with a new toy, thought it was all just a big fucking game, wouldn’t quit poking around...

Dain saw himself reflected in the computer screen, panting, sweating as with fever. He’d read the joke in the P.I.’s report on Travis Holt, about him watching his reflection in the screen as he jerked off... Was that what he was doing here? Mentally masturbating into this goddamned machine?

He sure wasn’t acting like a normal human.

Goddammit, he wasn’t a normal human being. He was a man who had been blown to pieces and fit back together again like a jigsaw puzzle. A man whose wife and child had been blown to pieces with him, then burned up without the chance to be fitted back together. Anything he did was all right, was justified...

He eagerly punched more keys. But when the machine spoke again the fire went out of his eyes, his jaw went slack, he sank back in his chair shrunken in size and density.

Mario Pucci had died of a heart attack on top of his mistress in a fancy Beverly Hills hotel two years ago. Had left no records in anyone’s computer of who he might have called to swat that bothersome fly at Point Reyes.

Dain settled slowly back in his chair. It was over. All finished. It all died with Pucci. He had nowhere else to look. Nothing else to do. No more reason to go on living. By habit, he backtracked out of the maze, reset the bypassed traps, logged out of the legitimate files, closed down his computer just as if he were coming back. But he knew he was all finished.

Out in the desert the sun was just up. Empty, brilliant, still. Saguaro cacti, Joshua trees, rocks, sand. Cry of a distant hawk, dry moan of the wind. A good day to die. He left his car, ran at a steady pace out into the desert. He would run until he died, like the runner bringing news of the victory at Marathon. His was a defeat, but his death would be as good, as clean, in the desert. A Hemingway death: grace under pressure.

Finally, miles from the road, where tumbled rocks rose to a ridge shaded by a big Joshua, he indeed fell. Collapsed facedown on the sand. A minute, ten, twenty. But he didn’t die, clean, in the desert. He didn’t die at all. He just felt hot, sticky, tired, irritable. He rolled onto his back. Lay there, arms wide, chest heaving, staring up into the clear blue sky. High above, wings motionless, dwarfed by distance, a turkey buzzard rode the thermals, binocular eyes seeking dead meat.

What had he done? Trained too well? Forged a body and a will that knew no despair? But Mario Pucci, like the vulture’s meal, was dead meat. Along with Pucci, Dain’s planned revenge was also dead meat. Tears ran down the sides of his face to the sand at the thought of it.

Finally he sat up, forgotten arms still outstretched. Scrambled to his feet. Began dancing to some silent inner music. Faster and faster, like someone stoned, twisting, rhythmic, sensual. Improvising, sweat flying.

If he couldn’t run himself to death, he would dance himself to death.