The Man Who Wouldn't Die

by A. B. Jewell

“What?”

  “The tunnels—they get steep.”

  “Take me to the room or find yourself another detective.”

  She swallowed.

  “One more thing. I have to ask one more thing.” I looked hard at the pair of them. “Did Danny have something to do with Captain Don’s death?”

  Another moment of silence.

  “No way,” Lester said. “They loved each other. Birds of a feather.”

  Mrs. Donogue nodded in agreement.

  “Mr. Wollop, I’m going to want a word with you—later,” I said.

  He looked at his wife and shrugged and nodded affirmation. And Mrs. Donogue and I left the room. A few minutes later, we found ourselves in a spacious, indoor-only master bedroom, the one at the peak of this log monstrosity. It overlooked the back of the estate through expansive windows. Presumably, it was once a great view but now opened on a large industrial project: the desalination plant—again barfing noises. At my request, Mrs. Donogue turned it off.

  The tasteful, if modest, room had a drawing table, shelves, a worn recliner, and a bed, and every damn piece of furniture had one thing in common: they were covered with books. Books and books and books. Dozens, hundreds, strewn and stacked.

  “I haven’t had the heart to clean it up.”

  “He read all these?”

  “Read, underlined, read again.”

  “But never put anything away.”

  “He did. Usually. I don’t think he would’ve left things such a mess. He was very orderly.”

  We were standing next to the door. I gestured to a pile on the bed. “Do you mind?”

  She nodded: go ahead.

  I picked through the pile, glancing at titles. I wasn’t much of a reader but enough of one to know this was a random—what’s the word—amalgam. Nonfiction, fiction, technical, various genres, serious tomes, mysteries, science, lots of math and engineering. I’d heard of some of the authors and books: Common Ground; Good to Great; a bunch of books by Walter Mosley; The Selfish Gene; Steve Jobs, the biography; Martin Luther King’s Why We Can’t Wait; Stalingrad; The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage; Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister; The Best and the Brightest; The Hot Zone and Into Thin Air; and tons of technical books with names too boring to mention, some of them merely symbols.

  Near the middle of the pile on the bed, my eye settled on My Life by Bill Clinton. I shooed aside the books and opened the autobiography, instinct and whim. Inside the title page, a note: Captain Don, Thank you for innovating us into the black. My debt is to you. Sincerely, and then the former president’s signature.

  “Impressive.”

  “He innovated that bed.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’ve heard of the king and the California king? This is a new size, entirely, all new, the Silicon Valley king. It’s in between the size of the California king and the Northern California jester and it has built-in Wi-Fi.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Patented.”

  “Why does your bed need Wi-Fi?”

  “So it has wireless capabilities.”

  “Because . . .”

  “What if you’re in a place where there’s no Wi-Fi?”

  “What if?”

  I eyeballed this woman, speaking of jesters. I couldn’t help but think about Captain Don’s video, his message.

  I continued: “He didn’t sound so proud of all these innovations. It seems like he wasn’t entirely sure they were all so innovative after all.”

  She looked suddenly sad. Deep wells formed beneath her eyelids. She took a step forward, then another. A smile formed on her face, nothing real, but pained almost.

  “It has a patented pillow lining, the Silicon Valley king. Very bouncy,” she said. Another step forward.

  Next thing I knew, she’d planted one on me. I push her away, tasting strawberry and grief.

  “You’re not my type.”

  She looked like she’d been stung. This one didn’t get turned down very often.

  “It’s never too late for an experimental phase.”

  “What’s your game, Mrs. Donogue? You’re upset, you’re tawdry, angry, sad. It’s not all adding up to me in any way that makes sense except that it adds up to a lie. You don’t have to be a math whiz like Captain Don to see that.”

  “You don’t get it!”

  “What don’t I get?”

  “Something was wrong with Daddy. What he said on that video, it was crazy talk. The talk of a madman. This is Silicon Valley. We innovate. He innovated, he was the Silicon Valley king. He was an OI.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Original innovator.”

  “So you’re upset that he spoke against conventional wisdom.”

  I watched her carefully.

  “Something . . . someone got him talking like that. It goes against everything he stood for, everything he built. All of this . . .” She spread her arms out expansively. “It all came from innovation, F and B—fasterness and betterness, he was the Emperor of Efficiency. This is his empire.”

  “Your empire now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Mr. Fitch?”

  “Fitch. And what it’s supposed to mean is that you inherit all of this, right? Since he’s gone.”

  “Gone-ish. But yes, sort of. It all has to be sorted out.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much are we talking about? How much money is at stake? How many billions to be sorted out in his estate?”

  “A few.” Softly.

  “There’s a will.”

  She was quiet. “-Ish.”

  “There’s not a will?”

  “Well, he didn’t leave one per se.”

  “So there’s no will.”

  “No . . .” Then she looked up. “I think he was writing a will. But it doesn’t matter. Next of kin, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “No will.”

  “Standard protocol. Maybe it’ll be challenged by various parties who claim the man loved them more.” She sniffled.

  “Or maybe he was going to write a will and you didn’t like what it would say.”

  “No!”

  “You wanted to get control of the money, right? Is that it? You . . .” I was feeling it out aloud, letting my temper get the better of me. Usually, I didn’t talk until I had things better figured out. “You . . . thought he was acting funny, talking strange. You were afraid he’d—what—give away the money? What did Lester call it—ill-gotten gain?”

  “No!”

  “Maybe Captain Don stopped believing he, or you, deserved all this wealth. Maybe he didn’t think he was so innovative after all.”

  All of a sudden there was the sound of exploding machinery—the desalination plant, starting up with a belch.

  Mrs. Donogue stared at me. She screamed: “I’d rather hear that than listen to your ridiculous theories!”

  Now I had to scream: “Did you kill your father?!”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill your father?!”

  “Can you speak up?”

  “Did you—” I yanked the remote control from her hand. I pressed off. The sound died.

  “Did you kill your father?!”

  “Why are you screaming?”

  “Mrs. Donogue, time to come clean: Did you kill him? Did you kill Captain Don to gain control of his empire?”

  She looked at me, her lip quivered, and suddenly weak-kneed, she wilted to the ground.

  “What was he so afraid of?”

  She didn’t answer. She was near sobbing, real or faked.

  “He said, in the video, he said he was afraid. Was he afraid of . . .” I didn’t say what nearly slipped out: that someone would kill him. I wasn’t keeping that thought to myself because I was being polite, or whatever, but because I wasn’t. That’s what Captain Don was talking about. He seemed afraid of dying. Period. Like everyone, I guess. Who the hell wants to take t
hat long walk off the plank?

  So I just stood there mutely, like a donkey, lost in thought, stuck in a recognition that I had no freaking clue how to interpret. My accusations against Mrs. Donogue didn’t feel exactly right. Not exactly wrong either, but not exactly right. After all, why would she hire a detective if she was the one who had done the murdering?

  Hell, I was tired. That was it. I had no clue what time it was, maybe not even midnight, but it felt like two in the morning. Made me envy the Tarantulas and their steady stream of double-synthetic Adderall, and I’d never taken anything stronger than coffee.

  “You want to lie down?” Mrs. Donogue asked me. “No wiles here. No games. You look like you’ve been hit by the high-speed rail.”

  “I’m a hundred percent. How far along was your father on his immortality program?”

  “The Spirit Box? Far along, I think.”

  She repeated that he’d been, during the last few weeks of his life, in a frenzy of meetings with Alan Klipper, his friend and codeveloper. “Lives next door,” she said. “Our neighbor. Next property over. Takes about ten minutes to get there.”

  “You seem anxious for me to talk to Klipper.”

  “I’m anxious to find out what happened to my father. You sure you don’t want to lie down? We have ten bedrooms next door.”

  I let the idea sink in. I needed some sleep. I told her I’d take her up on it. So ten minutes later, after an underground tunnel walk, I was nearly asleep in a luxurious bed within the largest mansion I’d ever seen. Like something that got in the way of Sherman’s March. At the last second, before slumber took hold, I shook myself awake, fired up my phone, and texted Terry. On assignment. Back in the AM. A second later, a response: Don’t get killed.

  Right back at you.

  Next thing I knew, I was out, deep into REM, and having a dream with images and words and jumbles and spiders. Monkeys and bicycles and spiders. Spiders, tarantulas.

  The sound of a shattering window. Not a dream, not that part, not the tarantulas. I opened my eyes just in time to see the big fellas moving toward me. Assassins in the night.

  Thirteen

  ONE SHADOWY FIGURE dove at me from the foot of the bed. Launching himself over the footboard. He was midair, nearly on touchdown atop my legs, when I spun left.

  Bad idea.

  A second attacker stood right there, waiting for me, sumo stance, framed in the dim moonlight’s gaze. He had something in his hand. He reached out with it, and I recoiled back to the headboard to avoid the object (a knife? gun?) or whatever it might propel (a bullet?). I shot my right foot forward to knock whatever it was out of his hand.

  ZOOM!

  From the bottom of my foot, electricity screamed through my body and I was instantly helpless. Well, nearly helpless.

  Brain said: Taser. Brain also said: indirect hit. Because a direct hit would have left my brain saying nothing.

  In the remote distance, like a dream again, I heard a woman’s voice. “Recalibrating. Turn eight inches left.”

  What the fuck?

  “Seven inches right.”

  That voice. Shirli. No way. Had I died and gone to hell?

  It was coming from the device, the Taser.

  “Hold him down,” said the Tarantula with the Taser, his voice penetrating through my mucky brain fog.

  I felt the weight on my feet, the spider who’d attacked from the bottom of the bed now getting a grip on my legs.

  “Target interference. Recalibrating,” said the Shirli voice.

  “Get out of the way,” said the guy next to the bed.

  I had a feeling like my ears were popping and I realized I was coming out of my trance. I bucked my knees in an effort to destabilize the guy holding on, but he was hanging tight. New plan: I brought a right fist around to his temple. Not much leverage but lots of training. So a direct, if lightweight, hit. The stunned Tarantula froze, just for a millisecond, his bell rung. I used the instant to flail out my legs again with everything I had so that the Tarantula weighing down on me, the one I’d whacked, went flying toward his brother with the Taser.

  ZAP.

  The Taser went off, a misfire, or a misaim.

  I saw the thin blue strands of electricity coursing through the Tarantula who had been attached to my legs. Ugh-ugh; he spasmed. I scampered backward to avoid the juice being conducted through him. Then I rolled to my left and onto the floor, nearly a full somersault, and I was on my feet.

  “Recalibrating,” said the Shirli voice. And my suspicions were confirmed: the digitized sound came from the Taser. She was everywhere.

  I took a step backward.

  “Recalibrating. Three steps forward.”

  The Tarantula with the Taser was standing still and I knew why, having been on both sides of these standoffs often enough to understand his hesitation.

  “Math just got tougher,” I warbled. “Was two on one and now it’s just me and you.”

  He considered it. Lean guy, wiry, the kind that scares me the most; one doesn’t get far in this business if he’s built that skinny unless he can put out the lights with a single haymaker.

  “Yeah, but still highly favorable,” he said. “It’s me and the Taser six-dot-zero. New OS packs way more punch than the Taser 5i.”

  “As your buddy discovered.”

  His fellow spider lay peacefully, a few hours away from a nasty hangover.

  “The on-board nav gets finicky.”

  “They’ve thought of everything. But I have to wonder how many Tarantulas it takes to point a Taser.”

  I was buying time.

  “Racist,” he said.

  “Finding nearest tapas,” said Shirli.

  He slapped the side of the Taser and I looked around in the moonlit room for a weapon—an umbrella, walking stick, fireplace poker. Something.

  “Say good night, Fitch.” The Tarantula stepped forward. I retrenched and moved left, running out of room.

  “Six steps forward and three inches left,” Shirli said.

  I stepped left.

  “Recalibrating.”

  I stepped right.

  “Recalibrating.”

  The Tarantula crept a half step forward, wisely taking the cautious approach. The room was coming into low-light focus but nothing was presenting itself, no clear options, nothing to save me. I pawed at some waist-high, built-in shelves to my left, feeling a line of neatly placed books. Behind me, I sensed a nightstand and a bookshelf. Across the room, a curtain flapped. Must’ve been where the Tarantulas entered from one of the windows that stretched most of the way across the expansive suite.

  “Recali—”

  A step right. Inching along the shelf behind me.

  “Recali—”

  Here came the Tarantula.

  “Fire!” Shirli bellowed.

  I saw the flicker of blue electrical lines surging toward me. I curled my head sideways and to the back, milliseconds and centimeters from the blue arc. I tried to step back again, and hit wall and bookshelf.

  The Tarantula took another step.

  “Fire!” Shirli said.

  I ducked beneath the oncoming curl of blue death. As I began to sink to the ground to avoid the electrical surge, I used a firm underhand fling to hurl, Frisbee-like, the book I’d pulled from the shelf. I watched it spin against blue light in the direction of the Tarantula’s head and then nail him in the throat. “Whaa!” He groaned, and took a step back.

  “Recalibrating! Recalibrating!” Shirli screamed in orgiastic frenzy and I took three desperate lunges toward the Tarantula, closing at Big Boy speed. Before he could get his bearings and raise the Taser again, I dove forward and slammed him to the ground while simultaneously grabbing the wrist of his weapon hand. He landed with an oomph and the Taser shook free.

  We both reached for it, but I had the better vantage point and he was cowed by my weight. Seconds later, I was pointing the weapon at his stomach.

  “Target at ninety-degree angle,” Shirli said. She
sounded tense.

  “Device off!” the Tarantula said.

  “I think you’re looking for medicine for a cough,” the Taser said.

  “Oh shit,” answered the Tarantula.

  “I think you’re looking for a surge of electricity,” I said. I pressed the trigger, sending wild currents into the eyes-wide Tarantula. He went limp. Next to his head, in the blue light, I caught a glimpse of the hardcover book I’d plucked from the shelf and hurled at the asshole’s neck: Angle of Repose. Wallace Stegner.

  A classic. So I’d heard.

  Score one for books.

  Book. Shit. I realized what I’d been dreaming about. A monkey and a subconscious clue.

  I heard voices, coming from somewhere. Outside? More Tarantulas? Taser in hand, I made my way to the bedroom door. I had to get back to the other house to see if my instincts were correct.

  Fourteen

  BEST ADVICE I ever got in ATF training had nothing to do with bad guys or guns or interrogation or surveillance tactics. Best advice was about bread crumbs. Came from this codger named Sammy who spent years undercover with gangs selling steroids to guys on the bowling circuit. Heavies who would do anything to strengthen their forearms and fingers and then do anything to cover up the evidence. Sammy was missing a pinkie on his bowling hand and never would talk about what had happened.

  He was one of the few fellas I liked in the ATF. He didn’t care what the rule book said if it didn’t help you get the job done. They eventually weeded him out but not before I got a full dose of his wisdom in a seminar called Advanced Tactics 100. He told me over a beer one night that it should have been called “Cover Your Ass: Your Boss Is the Biggest Chump.”

  “Hansel and Gretel, Fitch,” he said to me. “You know the story.”

  I nodded. Kind of guy you trusted to take this somewhere.

  “Jackasses. Shoulda been eaten by that witch dame. Only one thing they did right: bread crumbs. Marked their way home. Knew the surroundings.” He’d been in Vietnam, so I figured that was the origin of his paranoid survival theories, but he didn’t make the connection himself. “Don’t trust this newfangled computer shit to tell you what’s what and where you are. Know where you are. Best defense and best offense is knowing absolutely your attack and escape routes. Worst mistake PIs make these days is tuning out on their way to and from an assignment. That’s where the best guys get their edge. You know the term they use these days: ‘own the last mile.’”