Philip Dick - Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

He did not answer.

“Otherwise,” she said, “it going to get you finally.”

“Maybe so,” he said.

“I know so,” Mrs. Lane said.

They drove on until they had reached the Broadway business section.

“Where you want to go, Mr. Miller?” Mrs. Lane asked. Her voice had softened somewhat. “To your lot? Or home?”

“I want to go home,” he said.

She drove him to the building, the gray three-story old wooden building, in which he lived.

“Thanks,” he said as he got out of the car. He felt weary and run down.

“Get a good rest,” she said. “And tomorrow you see things with a new eye.”

He went on and up the stairs to his apartment, too tired even to say goodbye.

That night, very late, he was awakened by his wife pushing at him and calling insistently in his ear. He had taken two phenobarbitals and for a long time it was impossible for him to come fully awake; he sat upright in the bed, resting against the wall, rubbing his forehead.

“Didn’t you hear the phone?” Julie was saying loudly.

“No,” he said.

“And me talking? And trying to get you to wake up and talk to her?”

“To who?”

“Lydia,” his wife said.

“He’s dead,” Al said. “Isn’t he?” He got out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash his face with cold water.

While he washed his face, Julie sat on the edge of the tub; she had on her bathrobe and slippers and seemed fully awake and rational. “He had a bad heart attack about ten-thirty in the evening,” she said. “They rushed him to Alta Bates Hospital and put him in an oxygen tent. He died, I think she said, at three o’clock. It’s five now.”

“Five,” he repeated, drying his face.

“Lydia said it was the strain of some big check he wrote out. He told her when he got home at around six.”

“So he did write it out,” Al said.

Julie said, “They argued about it, but she said she could see he was unnaturally tired, so she didn’t try to reason with him but let him go to bed. Around nine. He went right to sleep and seemed to sleep soundly. Until the attack.”

“She can stop the check,” Al said. “I know God damn well he couldn’t have put it through.” But he did not know it; he only hoped it.

“That’s what she said,” Julie said. “She’s going to stop it, she said. It apparently was an enormous check. All their money. In the tens of thousands.”

“Good,” he said.

“You don’t seem very upset,” Julie said.

“Hell,” he said, “I saw it coming. We all knew it was coming.”

“Lydia wants you to meet her at her attorney’s office at seven-thirty,” Julie said. “She begged me to have you do it.”

“Seven-thirty a.m.?” he said.

“Yes. So they can be sure of stopping the check.”

“Christ,” he said, going back toward bed.

“You will,” she said, following. “You have to, with all that involved. She has to have someone she can lean on. I wish you could have talked to her. It would have made her feel better, and you would understand more. It’s really dreadful. They’ve been married for almost thirty-five years.”

He got into bed and pulled the covers over him.

At seven-thirty the next morning, Al Miller showed up at the address he had been given. It was an office building on Shattuck Avenue, and in front of it he found Lydia Fergesson standing with a small round bald-headed man who carried a briefcase and wore an old-fashioned double-breasted suit. Lydia introduced him as Boris Tsarnas, her lawyer. She herself was dressed as he usually saw her; she did not look especially different on this occasion.

As soon as she saw him, she came swiftly toward him, calling out to him, “The man whom you know, that criminal person, has possession of the check. What is his name? That we need to know at once.”

The lawyer explained that by eight o’clock he could be in touch with an official of the Bank of America. If the check had not cleared, it could be stopped, even though it might have been cashed somewhere, even at a branch bank. He spoke very rapidly, in an accented monotone. Al decided that he was Greek, too; certainly from the Balkans.

“If it’s a legitimate investment venture,” Tsarnas said, “this Mr. Harman can take legal action to force payment. But if he’s the confidence man that you and Mrs. Fergesson seem to feel, then he won’t dare go into court. He’ll know the situation. Probably he has no idea that your husband, Mr. Fergesson, passed away during the night, so we have at least half a day’s jump on him in connection with closing the account, if we decide to do that. It was a joint account, this commercial account on which the draft was made, is it not?”

“Yes,” Lydia said.

From Al, the lawyer got information about Harman’s business, his residence, the situation under which the check had been written. He seemed to be satisfied, and yet, throughout, he had an oddly neutral attitude. At last Al realized that this man had been Fergesson’s lawyer also, and, if the investment were on the level, he meant to see that the check was finally released. He took an abstract view of the whole business; to him, no persons were involved, only legal issues. His attitude amazed Al.

Scarcely anyone was up this early; only a few cars moved along Shattuck Avenue. The air was cold. All the shops remained shut from the night. Many neon signs, Al noticed, were still on. Pale in the morning sunlight.

“Now what?” he asked Lydia, after the lawyer had gone off in his own car. He and Lydia remained on the sidewalk together.

Lydia said, “I have God knows so much to do. It is all like some dream. You have been a great deal of help to me, Mr. Miller. Boris has the will. I know its contents. However, it must be formally read. You are not in it.”

“I guess I’ll survive that,” Al said. “Are you in it?”

“The law requires it to be,” Lydia said in a firm voice, the same voice she had used from the moment he had met her this morning.

“It was quite a surprise,” Al said.

“It was a fortunate thing that he died right then,” Lydia said, “because even a day later it would be too late to stop the check.”

Her matter-of-factness overwhelmed him. It was as if he were seeing the original peasant person showing through from beneath all the culture and learning. The same practical worldly dedication that he-had seen in the old man; they were two of a kind. But, on final analysis, it did not strike him as wicked. It seemed perfecdy natural. Even, he thought, what the old man deserved.

As they walked toward Al’s car, Lydia said, “This individual who has the check, this Chris Harman, will harbor ill-will toward you as a result of what you have done for me.”

He shrugged. “Maybe so.”

“Do you concern yourself with that?”

He did not know if he did. It was too early; too early in the day.

“You can count on my gratitude,” Lydia said. “I know that in a situation unforeseen now, perhaps I can return for what you did.”

To that, he said nothing.

She patted him on the arm. “Be of good cheer.”

“Why?” he said.

“Only God can know why,” Lydia said, and started off in the direction of the taxi which was waiting for her.

Now I have no job, he said to himself as he got groggily into his own car, a Chevrolet from the lot. Nothing. The old man is dead and I’m not in the will; not that I expected to be, or even gave it a thought. I am finished with the Harman organization. My lot is ruined beyond any doubt, not two months from now but right now. All the old mans property will be tied up in court. And the lot belongs to him; it is part of his estate. Of course, when the courts look it all over, they will conclude that it was legally sold. But that will take time.