Robert Silverberg: The Dead Man's Eyes

Frazier keyed in the privacy filter. All the lawyer would know was that some client was calling; the screen image would be a blur, the voice would be rendered universal, generalized, unidentifiable. It was more for the lawyer’s protection than Frazier’s: there had been nasty twists in jurisprudence lately, and lawyers were less and less willing to run the risk of being named accomplices after the fact. Immediately came a query about the billing. Bill to my hotel room, Frazier replied, and the screen gave him a go-ahead.

“Let’s say I’m responsible for causing a fatal injury and the victim had a good opportunity to see me as the act was occurring. What are the chances that they can recover eyeflash pictures?”

“Depends on how much damage was received in the process of the death. How did it happen?”

“Privileged communication?”

“Sorry. No.”

“Even under filter?”

“Even. If the mode of death was unique or even highly distinctive and unusual, how can I help but draw the right conclusion? And then I’ll know more than I want to know.”

“It wasn’t unique,” Frazier said. “Or distinctive, or unusual. But I still won’t go into details. I can tell you that the injury wasn’t the sort that would cause specific brain trauma. I mean, nothing like a bullet between the eyes, or falling into a vat of acid, or—”

“All right. I follow. This take place in a major city?”

“Major, yes.”

“In Missouri, Alabama, or Kentucky?”

“None of those,” said Frazier. “It took place in a state where eyeflash recovery is legal. No question of that.”

“And the body? How long after death do you estimate it would have been found?”

“Within minutes, I’d say.”

“And when was that?”

Frazier hesitated. “Within the past twenty-four hours.”

“Then there’s almost total likelihood that there’s a readily recoverable photograph in your victim’s brain of whatever he saw at the moment of death. Beyond much doubt it’s already been recovered. Are you sure he was looking at you as he died?”

“Straight at me.”

“My guess is there’s probably a warrant out for you already. If you want me to represent you, kill the privacy filter so I can confirm who you are, and we’ll discuss our options.”

“Later,” Frazier said. “I think I’d rather try to make a run for it.”

“But the chances of your getting away with—”

“This is something I need to do,” said Frazier. “I’ll talk to you some other time.”

He was almost certainly cooked. He knew that. He had wasted critical time running frantically back and forth across the continent yesterday, when he should have been transferring funds, setting up secure refuges, and such. The only question now was whether they were already looking for him, in which case there’d be blocks on his accounts everywhere, a passport screen at every airport, worldwide interdicts of all sorts. But if that was so they’d already have traced him to this hotel. Evidently they hadn’t, which meant that they hadn’t yet uncovered the Southeast Asian trading alias and put interdicts on that. Well, it was just a lousy manslaughter case, or maybe second-degree at worst: they had more serious things to worry about, he supposed.

Checking out of the hotel without bothering about breakfast, he headed for the airport and used his corporate credit card to buy himself a flight to Belize. There he bought a ticket to Surinam, and just before his plane was due to leave he tried his personal card in the cash disburser and was pleasantly surprised to find that it hadn’t yet been yanked. He withdrew the maximum. Of course now there was evidence that Loren Frazier had been in Belize this day, but he wasn’t traveling as Frazier, and he’d be in Surinam before long, and by the time they traced him there, assuming that they could, he’d be somewhere else, under some other name entirely. Maybe if he kept dodging for six or eight months he’d scramble his trail so thoroughly that they’d never be able to find him. Did they pursue you forever, he wondered? A time must come when they file and forget. Of course, he might not want to keep running forever, either. Already he missed Marianne. Despite what she had done.

He spent three days in Surinam at a little pastel-green Dutch hotel at the edge of Paramaribo, eating spicy noodle dishes and waiting to be arrested. Nobody bothered him. He used a cash machine again, keying up one of his corporate accounts and transferring a bundle of money into the account of Andreas Schmidt of Zurich, which was a name he had used seven years ago for some exportimport maneuvers involving Zimbabwe and somehow, he knew not why, had kept alive for eventualities unknown. This was an eventuality, now. When he checked the Schmidt account he found that there was money in it already, significant money, and that his Swiss passport had not yet expired. The Swiss charge-d’affaires in Guyana was requested to prepare a duplicate for him. A quick boat trip up the Marowijne River took him to St. Laurent on the French Guiana side of the river, where he was able to hire a driver to take him to Cayenne, and from there he flew to Georgetown in Guyana. A smiling proxy lawyer named Chatterji obligingly picked up his passport for him from the Swiss, and under the name of Schmidt he went on to Buenos Aires. There he destroyed all his Frazier documentation. He resisted the temptation to find out whether there was a Frazier interdict out yet. No sense handing them a trail extending down to Buenos Aires just to gratify his curiosity. If they weren’t yet looking for him because he had murdered Hurwitt, they’d be looking for him on a simple missing-persons hook by this time. One way or another, it was best to forget about his previous identity and operate as Schmidt from here on.

This is almost fun, he thought.

But he missed his wife terribly.

While sitting in sidewalk cafes on the broad Avenida de 9 Julio, feasting on huge parrilladas sluiced down by carafe after carafe of red wine, he brooded obsessively on Marianne’s affair. It made no sense. The world-famous actress and the awkward rawboned paleontologist: why? How was it possible? She had been making a commercial at the museum—Frazier, in fact, had helped to set the business up in his capacity as member of the board of trustees—and Hurwitt, who was the head of the department of invertebrate paleontology, or some such thing, had volunteered to serve as the technical consultant. Very kind of him, everyone said. Taking time away from his scientific work. He seemed so bland, so juiceless: who could suspect him of harboring lust for the glamorous film personality? Nobody would have imagined it. But things must have started almost at once. Some chemistry between them, beyond all understanding. People began to notice, and then to give Frazier strange little knowing looks. Eventually even he caught on. A truly loving husband is generally just about the last one to know, because he will always put the best possible interpretation on the data. But after a time the accumulation of data becomes impossible to overlook or deny or reason away. There are always small changes when something like that has begun: they start to read books of a kind they’ve never read before, they talk of different things, they may even show some new moves in bed. Then comes the real carelessness, the seemingly unconscious slips that scream the actual nature of the situation. Frazier was forced finally to an acceptance of the truth. It tore at his heart. There was no room in their marriage for such stuff. Despite his money, despite his power, he had never gone in for the casual morality of the intercontinental set, and neither, so he thought, had Marianne. This was the second marriage for each: the one that was supposed to carry them happily on to the finish. And now look.