by A. B. Jewell
“You’ve got no proof of this.”
“None.”
“So you’re going on what exactly?”
“Instinct. It’s what drove your grandfather, by the way. He made money and changed the world, of course. I’m just a hack taking on little misfortunes. Captain of the minimum wage. In this case, I kept getting nagged by something you told me when we were sitting outside your parents’ house. We were talking and you told me that you knew I’d already seen Captain Don’s video, the one where he talks about fearing death. It’s the video that your mom showed me in that weird wooden house.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“So I’d never told you that I’d seen that video. How did you know I’d seen it? Here’s my guess: you’d been listening to everything your mother did and said. Everything. Her initial visit to my office, the activity in the house.”
“You should write fiction.”
“My guess is that you put a bug on her brief-back-case.”
“This is laughable.”
“I don’t think so. I think you realized something else when she came to me: you realized that your grandfather was sending messages about his own murder. Am I right?”
No answer.
“She came and told me that he was warning about his murder. And now the whole story turned. Now you had to destroy the very technology you’d hoped to complete. It was working too well. From the grave, your grandfather was outing his murderer—you!”
“No.” This time it was halfhearted, a denial, sure, but only in language. The white in his face told me otherwise.
“You had to shut this thing down before Captain Don turned in his own grandson. It was that good—too good. It was everything Captain Don had hoped for. You got the Tarantulas on board with the promise that they’d get a piece of the Spirit Box. But the reality was that you needed to find it, shut it down fast, before you got outed as a murderer.”
Danny had tears in his eyes.
“I loved him—more than any of those people did!”
“He loved you, Danny. He believed in you.”
He didn’t speak.
“He knew you could do it on your own, that you could be great and create and that you just needed to wait. You didn’t need to accelerate your life with a bunch of money from his innovation.”
“He was suffering, Detective.”
“The trouble is: you didn’t believe in yourself. So you had to lay down a financial future. You got Floyd on board. You were young guys picturing yourselves as the Beatles of the afterlife.”
“The who?”
“Not the Who? The Beatles.”
“Sorry, who?”
“Bruce Springsteen?”
“The guy who built the car-sharing service?”
“Never mind. Look . . .” I waited until he did look, right at me. “I think you’ll do better if you confess. You’ll be free.”
He shook his head. His jaw hardened. The moment had been lost, his mask was back on.
I let out a deep exhale. “It’s one thing to take out your dying grandfather,” I said. “Maybe it was merciful, though it feels to me like murder. Even harder for me to digest, though, is killing Da Raj. I realize you thought he was the weak link, that you thought he might crack and tell me everything. But he also was only twenty years old.”
“You mean practically twenty.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Over the hill. Past his prime, Detective. Whoever killed him was doing him a favor,” Danny said.
He’d taken on a look of pure evil. In this moment, he wasn’t like his grandfather at all; he was a sociopath.
“Now can I tell you something, Detective?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Guys like me and Dutch Abraham, we’re the future,” Danny said, and smiled.
Holy hell. It hit me. He’d gotten Dutch to drive by the PAST Office and take out Floyd. The last remaining witness. And everyone else who heard Floyd’s deathbed confession had reason to want to keep Danny out of trouble—Tess and Lester, Veruca Sap, who needed the family’s business.
“I’m sorry you had to waste your time coming down today, Detective.”
I shook my head. “No waste, Danny. You’ve taught me more about the world than I thought any teenager could.”
“Say hi to your husband for me.”
I walked outside, my gut tight with recognition: Truth, what did it even mean anymore?
Thirty-Four
TERRY AND I were on the last bites of a homemade casserole when justice was served. The local news said there had been a near tragedy in Palo Alto. Danny Donogue had been found in his garage.
He locked himself in there and turned on the car.
Unfortunately, he’d failed to realize that he had an all-electric vehicle, which would not suffocate him with carbon monoxide. After a couple of hours, he fell asleep, then awakened, thinking maybe he’d died. Then, as he gathered his senses, he thought maybe he was just delirious or hurt. He had second thoughts about killing himself and started to drive himself to the hospital. But he ran right into the garage door, which he’d forgotten to open. He’d been badly injured. Another garage start-up tragedy.
Terry put his arm around my shoulder.
“Maybe he’s learned his lesson.”
Maybe.
I leaned against Terry’s shoulder. Goddamn if it didn’t feel good to be old.
Acknowledgments
THE USUAL NODS (but never mailed-in nods) of eternal gratitude to the gang at William Morrow, led by Liate Stehlik (publisher), Peter Hubbard (world-class editor), Lynn Grady (best publishing-industry dual threat marketing executive/tennis player), Nick Amphlett (secret brains of the operation), and the entire sales and publicity team. I’ll single out here Kristen Bowers because she is so talented and also because she has some kind of magical hold on the Internet and might reverse witch me if I didn’t give her the rightful honors.
My main message to this talented and gracious group is: How many genres will you permit me to stain? Really, you should all seek psychological assistance.
My heartfelt thanks to Vicki Yates, a natural-born copyeditor who came from the blue to scour my many lapses and redundancies.
To my agent, Laurie Liss, you are complicit. Can you live with that? Love you.
To my wife, thank you for letting us get a dog. To my children, thank you for saying you’ll walk the dog. To the dog, Uncle Mort, you cannot read. Love you all.
Finally, the idea for this book sprung, as so many ideas do, from a conversation with a barber. I was getting my hair cut by Tom, and he told me about his badass husband, who works for the ATF, and carries heavy artillery and busts up bad guys, and I thought: “Hey, that sounds like a good character,” and, also, “I should probably leave a good tip.” Thank you, Tom!
About the Author
A. B. JEWELL is the pseudonym for a Pulitzer Prize–winning technology reporter. He lives in San Francisco.
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Copyright
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE. Copyright © 2019 by A. B. Jewell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Front matter art © agsandrew/Shutterstock, Inc.
Cover design by Stephen Brayda
Cover photographs © 4x6/iStock/Getty Images (falling man); © Westend61/Getty Images (skyline); © CSA-Printstock/iStock/Getty Images (clouds); © Transfuchsian/Shutterstock (font)
FIRST EDITION
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Libr
ary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jewell, A. B., author.
Title: The man who wouldn’t die / A.B. Jewell.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : William Morrow, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037121 | ISBN 9780062201201 (paperback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Thrillers. | GSAFD: Noir fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.I36 F67 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037121
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Digital Edition AUGUST 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-220121-8
Version 06132019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-220120-1
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