The Man Who Wouldn't Die

by A. B. Jewell

  From my phone came her voice: “This is Shirli. I can help you find a collage.”

  I flicked off the phone. I obviously knew the answer to the question I was asking Danny. But this served as confessional and test. Would he tell me what I knew from his transcript? How trustworthy was this canny kid?

  The transcript held other interesting clues in that it had the words “pay dirt” and “Da Raj.” And it was in the possession of a geek named Floyd, a guy who seemed desperate for seed capital. I was figuring I wasn’t the first guy to figure out that Danny doubled as David Skellow and had attended Colester College.

  But Danny wasn’t giving an inch. He stared straight ahead.

  “Maybe it wasn’t you,” I said. “David Skellow got a B-plus in computer science. I figure you’re way better than that. You’re a Donogue, after all.”

  Still nothing.

  “Okay, kid. I’ll let the cops sort it all out. You can go.”

  “Wait.”

  “I’m tired of waiting. A picture says you and David Skellow are the same guy.”

  “Just let me think for a second,” he pleaded.

  “What is there to think about? Good-bye, Danny.”

  “I have a lawyer. One of the best. She did the disclaimers for Gooble and every player in the virtual military-industrial complex.”

  “I thought you said there was nothing illegal about going to college.”

  No answer. The problem was that I didn’t really want to turn Danny over to the cops, at least not yet. I needed his help to find the Spirit Box.

  “You went to Colester College for a semester.”

  “Yes,” quietly. Then he looked up: “Yes. I went to Colester.” He looked at me. “I thought it would be good to get a college education. Because my grandfather wanted me to get one and he was usually right about everything. Okay?”

  “And you resented him for that.”

  “No, I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “And so you came home and killed him.”

  “What? No. No!” He shook his head.

  I realized I’d pressed too hard too fast. I could feel the clock ticking in my pocket, four hours and counting. But getting someone to spill took more than brute force.

  “Why the fake name?”

  He clenched his teeth together, every bit the adolescent. Then: “Did you ever hear of Priorit-E?”

  Lord, another dot-com teaching moment. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  He explained that Priorit-E was an app for your phone. It entailed programming in your top five priorities for the week. If by midweek you hadn’t checked off at least two items, the phone started calling you names.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Just listen. By the end of the week, if you hadn’t completed at least four, the phone badgered the hell out of you. Shitbag, nowhere man, lazy bitch.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “At its peak, Priorit-E had six-point-two million downloads. Pretty heady stuff for a high school sophomore.”

  “It was your app.”

  Yep, he said. He had come up with it, he said, and became, briefly, a darling of the can-do community. “Captain Don Jr., they called me. And Junior Don and Don Juan Don.”

  He accumulated millions of Twipper followers and took on the mantle he’d been given, touting school-of-hard-knocks homilies and linking to examples of other young studs innovating ahead of their time.

  “You became the poster child for the who-needs-college movement. It would’ve looked awfully hypocritical to all those Twipper followers if they’d discovered that their man-child had logged some hours in an actual classroom.”

  “It was great.”

  “What was?”

  “Colester. I was just another guy there. In the virtual world, as Danny, I was a big shot, the guy who’d done it by age fourteen and would surely do it again. But then, at college, I could just be anonymous. It’s funny. You think of the virtual world as being the anonymous one. But no one knew me at Colester. I was just another funky kid from California, although one who kicked some absolute ass on Wife of Fugitive VI, the Legend of Fugitive, in dorm video-game tournaments.”

  “Dare to dream.”

  “I didn’t want to be Captain Donogue’s grandson and I didn’t want to go against all the stuff I’d put out there on social media during high school.”

  “Respectfully, Priorit-E doesn’t sound like great shakes.”

  “That’s what Grandpa said.” The kid looked at me. “He was right. Of course it wasn’t great. It wasn’t an innovation, no matter what BusinessGeek called it. It wasn’t a time-saver or an efficiency maker or a niche or anything else. It was a nasty name-calling shitbag. Though, seriously, Fitch, it is very funny to hear Shirli call someone a lazy bitch.” He half smiled and I found myself laughing, almost connecting to this kid’s awareness.

  “So you had it both ways; to the kids at Colester, you were another Joe, and to the Twipper followers, you were the can-do kid.”

  “Something like that,” he mumbled.

  “But you came home.”

  “Grandpa got sick with something or other.”

  “Is that it?”

  “You saw Grandpa’s deathbed video yourself.”

  “And you figured you’d help him along into the afterlife?”

  “What? No. I told you.” He looked down and then up at me. “Anyhow, I was home and I got this idea for Froom. And I met some guys at Incubator Wednesday and one of them was Raj.”

  “Da Raj. What about him?”

  He clenched his teeth hard. This next part didn’t seem like it would come easy, or maybe he was making a show of it. “Da Raj wasn’t satisfied with fifty/fifty on Froom, okay? So one day he shows up at the office and he shows me David Skellow’s transcript.” He sighed. “My transcript. He wanted to go seventy-five/twenty-five for him to keep his mouth shut about Colester. At first, I was like: ‘Dude, you can’t run this without me.’ And he was like: ‘Dude, watch me.’ And then I was like: ‘Dude, you’re messing with the wrong guy,’ and then he was like—”

  “Slow down.”

  Danny told me that he agreed to give Da Raj sixty/forty and the title of Da Raj. But then, he said, Da Raj upped the ante. “He wanted the Spirit Box,” Danny said. Sitting in the car, sun getting to noon above us on a dry Silicon Valley day, he looked like a pleading little boy. “I didn’t have it. I told him. It wasn’t done. Grandpa wasn’t finished or, if he was, wouldn’t tell anybody. It was just an idea, I told Raj.”

  “I can’t figure how you got the Tarantulas to kill Da Raj.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m gonna kill a guy because he threatens to tell the world I went to college?” He looked at me. “Sure, I guess, some guys would do it. Not me. Hell, I could hardly butcher a cow.”

  “But you did.”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re a racist?”

  “I really don’t get that—calling somebody a racist. It’s happened to me like five times in the last few days.”

  “You should hear Shirli say it.” He half smiled again, winsome.

  “So, Danny, I’ll play along: Who do you figure killed Da Raj?”

  He smirked. “You think you can protect me, Detective?”

  “From whom?”

  “From all of them. These guys are killers, whoever they are. I don’t know all of them. I—”

  “Danny, lemme make it plain: when I’m done, there won’t be anyone left to be afraid of.”

  “You always talk like this?”

  “Who killed Da Raj?”

  “Hear me out. The way you talk, you’d have a huge Twipper following. Quippy, tough-guy stuff. Smart, concise. You should get a handle.”

  “I won’t ask again: Who killed Da Raj?”

  He sighed. “If I give you a name, will you, y’know, keep me out of it?”

  “No.”

  “See, that stuff will kill on Twipper. Anyhow . . .” He looked out the window again. “My guess is a guy named Floyd Chiansky.
”

  He turned to me and I knew now he was telling me the truth, laying it out.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’m guessing you know, dick. Guy from Colester. A fellow student of mine, freshman, total dud, I thought at first but cool in that he’s half Chinese, half Polish, and half Thai, lucky bastard. One day, he comes to me after a late-night video-game and study session and accuses me of being Danny Donogue. Doesn’t ask me, tells me. He was a few years older, a TA in computer science. I’d seen him before. I denied it, but that was hopeless.”

  “How’d he know?”

  “Some facial recognition software he was working on. He uncovered like five secret identities in the freshman class. Me and four others who had told their parents they attended Yale.”

  It was coming together. Danny said that Floyd told him he’d keep Danny’s secret. Then, little by little, Floyd started making demands. He wanted to meet a few people in the Valley, then he wanted some seed capital. Next thing Danny knew, he said, Floyd had showed up in the Valley, renting a house in Menlo Park.

  It had the ring of truth. It also had some holes. I couldn’t pinpoint them on the fly, but I sensed them.

  “You loved your grandfather?”

  He nodded.

  “I love my husband.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “He’s been kidnapped. He’s going to be killed, Danny. I need your help to get him back.”

  “What can I—”

  “Spirit Box. I need the Spirit Box. I need you to give it to me so I can trade it for Terry.”

  “I would if I could. It’s not finished, as far as I know. Or if it is finished, I don’t know where it is.”

  “Your grandfather is tweeping from beyond.”

  “Maybe he’s got it. Maybe you should ask him.” It was facetious, even deeply sarcastic. Then, “Or . . .” His face lit up.

  “What?”

  “Maybe I can ask him!” Far from sarcastic this time. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic, lacking entirely the adolescent show of ennui. He explained his idea: he could try to communicate with his grandfather. “You think he’s out there?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m sure your mother has tried to reach him.”

  “I don’t know. We’re obviously not that close these days.”

  “You’re about to be,” I said. I held up the gun and pointed across the street to the Donogue estate.

  “No . . .”

  “Yep. Get in there and do everything you can to contact your grandfather, if he’s . . .” Hell, what was I saying? I was grasping at straws. “You’ve got an hour. I’m going to make another stop and I’ll be back. Get me something or the cops hear what’s been going on. Maybe your story about David Skellow checks out and maybe it doesn’t. If not, the cops will get to the bottom of it.”

  “An hour. But . . .”

  “Fifty-nine minutes. Get going.”

  Twenty-Five

  ALAN KLIPPER LOOKED like a mess when he met me at the invisible fence. “Nothing left for us to talk about,” he said.

  “My husband’s been kidnapped.”

  This perked him up and he buzzed me in, though he stopped me in the foyer, crossed his arms, and made it clear through body language he’d prefer to keep this short. He wore a terrycloth bathrobe and slippers.

  “I’ve got a boating question.”

  “I thought this was about your husband. Is he okay?” He peered over my shoulder, warily. He was nervous, but at the same time acting so nonchalant about my telling him Terry had been kidnapped. Not the kind of thing you hear every day. He stood two feet from a mirror hung on the wall behind him and I could see in his reflection how hunched and old he looked. I didn’t remember his being this way yesterday—practically frail.

  “No, not okay. Kidnapped. By bad guys. And you can help me find him.”

  “What?” This seemed to shake him and he fought to focus; he looked like he’d been up all night. Maybe he hadn’t heard me say the first time that Terry’d been kidnapped. “I don’t understand. How can I help? I think maybe you should go.”

  I rocked forward on my toes, like I might step. It was a trick I learned in the ATF; a simple weight shift into a more aggressive stance could help me deduce the mind-set of the other person. A bad guy with ill intent, for instance, might move his hands to his belt to grab a weapon, while a less hostile bad guy might step back or put his hands over a cherished body part.

  The Shipper practically fell into the mirror. “What do you want?”

  “Say I’m in a boat, Alan, how do I connect to a cell phone?”

  “Mr. Fitch, I don’t see why this is so important that you’d barge in here. You’re scaring me.”

  “Fitch. I didn’t scare you yesterday.”

  “You weren’t asking bizarre boating questions yesterday.” His voice seemed to recover some dignity. He remembered that people asked for his time, pleaded for it, not demanded it. He smoothed out his bathrobe.

  I leaned forward again. He stood his ground. “Get out.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll call the police.”

  “I’ll wait,” I said. “You have lemonade?”

  He laughed, somewhat appreciatively—I wasn’t intimidated and he sensed it. “When I’m on a cell phone on a boat, one of your boats, a gigantic yacht in the middle of the Pacific, can my phone be traced?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Because the call comes from international waters.”

  “Depends on how the boat is registered and to whom and what kind of scrambler is used on the signal.”

  “Say your boat—the Last Dolphin.”

  “I don’t—”

  Now I took a full step forward and he lunged backward defensively. “You sure do. I saw the painting in your office. The Last Dolphin. I’ll show you.” Before he could respond, I walked through the dining hall to the right, leaving the pathetic man leaning against the wall. I passed the living room with the vegetable watching cat videos and wound up in his office. As I expected, the Shipper quickly was on my heels.

  “Out!”

  I looked at the painting that covered the safe. The Last Dolphin. I was thinking about what Dutch Abraham had said: Terry would swim with the dolphins. A message, it seemed to me. Had to be. And Lieutenant Gaberson had told me that he couldn’t trace Terry’s cell phone, if he even had his cell phone on him. It seemed to be somewhere international. So did the phone of the Deuce.

  International waters. Or maybe a boat with its own damn zip code.

  I grabbed Klipper by the lapels and I hoisted him in the air and slammed him on the desk. I had to be careful not to kill the frail technocrat but wanted him to think I might. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Where is the Last Dolphin?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know! I don’t. Please believe me.”

  I loosened my grip a tad. “You have a boat called the Last Dolphin.”

  “Yes, of course. Everyone knows that. Did you read the piece in Pacific Monthly? I just want to say that those photos were taken before we redid the pet salon. So the experience has gone up orders of magnitude, especially if you’re a dog. Where was I?”

  “Where is the boat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Let me up.”

  I let him up.

  “It docks at the San Francisco Yacht Club, okay,” he said. “It would be reasonable to assume that it’s there.”

  “But you know it’s not there. You just said that—five times . . . that you don’t know where it is.”

  He grimaced. “Technically, I’m not contradicting myself. I don’t know it’s there or not there, but it would be reasonable to assume that it’s there.”

  “Who did you give it to?”

  “No one!”

  “Was it someone from the Donogue family? Tess or Lester? Was is Danny?”

  “Of course not, Danny’s like a son
to me.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What’s interesting about that? Our families have known each other for years.”

  “It’s interesting that you are pals with the grandson of a murdered man, and you all want the same thing—the Spirit Box. I count that as interesting.”

  He laughed. “You know what? You’re just like the rest of us, Fitch.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you’re trying to make connections between things, establish patterns, solve problems. But in your case, there’s one big difference: You’re doing it in a way less lucrative fashion. If I might speak freely, that’s because you’re doing it less ably than the rest of us. You’re putting food on the table, sure, that’s good enough. It won’t win you any medals or patents or retirement money. If you can afford a house in the Bay Area, it’s probably because you and your partner work crazy hours and squeeze into a box.”

  “Where’s the boat?”

  He moved five inches from my face, fighting distance. If this were a pickup basketball game, he was more than close enough to invite a shove and maybe a punch.

  “It would be cliché to call you a dinosaur, Fitch. But I’ve earned the right to say any damned thing I want. You are a dinosaur—and a cliché. A tough guy cloaking himself in justice to push people around. But justice in my book is measured by market forces and innovation and shiny things that blink that, even if they don’t bring eternal life, make you feel good and make this life worth living. I don’t know where the Last Dolphin is and I don’t care, and you know why? Because I have ten more yachts just like it and ten more under construction. One so small that you need a microscope to take a shit. Or, if you prefer a shorter version of this soliloquy, here it goes: go fuck yourself, dick.”

  Then he shoved me. Tried to. Gave me a push that I barely felt and I gently pushed him away, like swatting a child. On his way backward, his face contorted into fierce determination, and he snagged a paperweight shaped like a ship. I shook my head, urging him to think twice. With great effort, he lifted the paperweight over his head and took a step forward and swung it at me. I ducked. Instinctively, I gave the guy a roundhouse. It was a whopper. The one that had been building up for days.

  It sent the Shipper flying across the desk. He landed with a flop and tumble and crashed against the wall and I could see that he was knocked out cold and something else: he had a smile on his face. I knew right then that the Shipper had gotten what he wanted. He’d gotten himself knocked out so he wouldn’t have to say another word. Hell if he hadn’t out-negotiated me. Maybe he didn’t know where the Last Dolphin was located. If he did, he wasn’t going to tell me. He’d goaded me into giving him his escape route.