Death Never Sleeps

by E. J. Simon

  After a moment of shocked silence, a few brave souls in the audience applauded. Slowly, the few became many, and the room erupted in a spontaneous and exhilarating roar of applause—except for the stunned members of the Gibraltar’s board of directors surrounding Michael’s boss, Chairman Dick.

  Michael waved and smiled to the appreciative audience, turned around, and stepped down the same steps he had walked up twenty minutes before. He then attempted to take his seat in the front row. But before he reached his seat, Dick Applegarden jumped up, took Michael firmly by the arm, and led him to the nearby hallway and exit.

  “Are you fucking crazy, Michael? No wonder I never saw the fucking speech. What the hell is wrong with you? You just committed suicide, my friend.” Dick’s face was red and contorted. “The board will have your head. I’m not going to let you damage me with this disaster, but mark my words, I will destroy you.”

  Chapter 38

  Beverly Hills, California

  December 2, 2009

  It had not been a good day for Dick Applegarden.

  Still in his forties, he was extraordinarily successful. Tall and wiry, with prematurely gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, he looked more like an accountant than a chairman. Early in his career, he had toiled as a salesperson selling mortgage services to corporations for its employees, achieving success at a time when the real estate and mortgage markets were booming. As he rose up the executive ranks, he proved to be an adept political player in the big corporate world.

  Dick was frequently critical of Michael, who was trying to fix the mess he had inherited. But Chairman Dick’s memory was short. In the frequently contentious board meetings, Michael was interrogated by Applegarden, who did not want to hear that the company he had purchased and that Michael now led was a godforsaken disaster needing a total and costly overhaul.

  Dick needed a scapegoat to deflect attention away from his ill-conceived acquisition, and Michael’s explosive speech had just presented the perfect opportunity.

  Now, nearly inebriated after an evening of scornful discussions in the Peninsula Hotel bar with Michael and the angry members of the board, Dick was in his suite and about to retire to his bedroom when he received a call from his own boss, Richard Perkins, the chairman of Gibraltar Financial’s parent company.

  “Richard, I’ve got it under control. I have the agreement from our board members to remove Michael from his position. We just need to let a discreet period of time go by so it won’t look as if we fired him over this goddamned speech. In the meantime, I will make his life a living hell before I kick his ass out of here. Maybe we can get him to resign, and we won’t have to give him a severance package. When I’m done with him, he won’t know what hit him.”

  Applegarden took the two Ambien he had earlier placed on the night table by his king-sized bed and washed them down with the remaining Bushmills single malt whiskey in the glass he had brought up from the bar.

  Within five minutes he was sound asleep, lying on his back and snoring heavily, his mouth wide open.

  * * *

  At midnight, the power mysteriously went off throughout the Peninsula Hotel, shutting down the security cameras and casting the hallways in near darkness except for the glare of emergency lights placed at various positions.

  Minutes later, two men in dark, well-tailored suits and ties, and one woman in a long black evening gown walked casually through the hotel lobby. They passed the bustling bar and two sets of doors until they approached the door to Suite 134, at which time they each put on gloves. They ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign, expertly disabled the electronic lock on the door, and without making a sound or uttering a word, entered Dick Applegarden’s suite. They carefully closed the door behind them and stood inside, stopping briefly to adjust their eyes to the dark and to survey the room layout. The only noise was Applegarden’s tortured breathing and gasping coming from the open door of the bedroom.

  One of the men nodded to the rest of the team, and they all entered the bedroom. They rushed to Applegarden’s bed and removed the covers over him, causing him to stir. For a second, he opened his eyes wide and appeared to try and raise his head from the pillow. He was able to utter only one word, “Who—” before the men held him down and pulled off his boxer shorts. The tall woman in the long black dress jabbed a needle into his upper thigh near his groin.

  In the next moment, every muscle in his body went limp, and although his eyes were wide open and his mouth seemed to form a scream, he was silent and totally paralyzed.

  As the others watched, one of the men placed a pillow over Applegarden’s face, leaving only his eyes exposed. “Don’t fight it,” he said. “Just go gently into the night and it won’t hurt a bit.” While holding down the pillow, the killer was careful not to bruise his immobilized victim. For two or three minutes, he watched as Applegarden continued to stare at him in uncomprehending disbelief. Finally, Applegarden’s eyes took on the unmistakable look of the dead.

  The three then carefully put Applegarden’s boxer shorts back on his body and pulled the covers back to their original position. They opened two of the suite’s windows slightly. Then, one by one, each of them silently climbed out one of the windows and onto the isolated flagstone path outside, just a few feet below.

  Applegarden’s body, neatly tucked back in under the covers, would be found the next afternoon when his fellow board members notified the hotel that he had not shown up for their meetings and that calls to his room and cell phone had gone unanswered. The coroner would attribute the death to a case of sleep apnea, whereby he stopped breathing in his sleep, aggravated by a combination of Ambien and the consumption of a large quantity of alcohol. There were no signs of a struggle on the body. There were no reports of suspicious people in the hotel around the time of death, and the door was securely locked and latched from the inside. The police believed that the deceased had opened two of the windows sometime before he went to bed to allow fresh air into the room.

  Officially, Chairman Richard “Dick” Applegarden had died of “natural causes.”

  Chapter 39

  Queens Village, New York

  December 3, 2009

  It was a short detour, maybe ten minutes out of his way, but it would take Michael Nicholas back a lifetime. He steered his car off the Grand Central Parkway and headed toward the quiet suburban street in Queens Village where he and his brother had grown up. It had been over twenty years since the last time he had passed by it, and even then, he had not paused to sift through his memories.

  He drove up to the house, a two-story Tudor-style home on a manicured lawn, still looking like it did when he lived there. He parked across the street and reached over to the passenger seat for Alex’s laptop.

  “What are you doing back there at the house?” Alex said.

  Michael was taken back. “How do you know where I am?”

  “I have a GPS system that allows me to track your location when you log onto me. I’ve just figured it out.”

  As Michael began to speak, he thought about what an incredible advance this software—his brother—had just made.

  “What am I doing here? I don’t know, I just thought that coming here, with you, maybe I could discover some insights, something to help me understand what is happening,” Michael said. He sat behind the wheel, alternating between looking at his childhood home and watching his brother on the laptop screen. “I guess I’m waiting for some revelation, something to connect the dots from a time and place where we once were together, to now, where we’re together again, but differently.”

  “I wouldn’t waste your fuckin’ time.”

  So much for deep insights, Michael thought. Alex didn’t appear interested in an emotional experience or the “awakening” that Michael had intended for their visit. But he wasn’t going to give up.

  “Alex, can you speak or communicate with the dead? A few days ago you seemed to indicate that you might at some point.”

  “Michael, you know how you
used to say that life is complicated?”

  “Yes, I still say it. More than ever now.”

  Alex’s face was blank. “Well, death is even more complicated. Believe it or not, the world here, if you can call it that, is divided into two groups: BI, Before Internet, and AI, After Internet. Finding or communicating with people is very different depending on when they lived and died.”

  “You mean kind of like BC, Before Christ, and AD, the year he was born or whatever?”

  “Something like that. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. I’m getting smarter, but it takes time. I was programmed to keep learning, you know. Unlike when I was alive.”

  Michael sat back, trying to make sense of what Alex had said. But, as he played back the words and looked again at his old home, he felt a wave of memories passing through him.

  “My first contact with death or even its very existence came the day our Uncle Tom died,” Michael said. “I thought of that day last week while I was watching Sharkey choking.”

  “You were just a little kid. You were at home that day, weren’t you?”

  “I was five. I remember it, Alex. Forty-five years ago, but I can see every minute detail. I can replay it, like a video in my head. I can see each room—his bedroom, ours, and then our parents’ bedroom, where I heard it all. It’s engraved in my brain, and I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, just as though I’m there right now and it’s happening in front of me.

  “In some strange way, I cherish the memory because it’s always allowed me to put myself back in that precise moment, to remember everything around me on a particular day so early in my life. I’ve got a permanent picture, more vivid and precise than I ever could have had if hadn’t been so traumatic.”

  “Uncle Tom was like another father, except he was home all the time. I always went to him whenever I did something wrong—which happened a lot. He was my protector as a kid,” Alex said.

  Michael resumed his story. “It was an ideal world, to have two good parents and an older uncle living with you. He wasn’t that old, maybe late fifties when he died. He was a tall man, in good shape. I remember his frameless glasses and his short white hair—he had a crew cut. Mom said Uncle Tom had been a captain of a big Greek cargo ship. He used to take me everywhere. I hadn’t even started school yet. I remember he’d taken me for a few practice walks for the three blocks to my school, I guess so I’d be more comfortable on the day he would actually walk me there. But, looking back, it was like he was preparing me for the walk without him.” Michael paused and looked at the computer screen. He could see that Alex was processing the story from so long ago that impacted both of them.

  “I was out playing ball that day. It was a summer morning. I’ve never heard you talk about it. Everything I remember, I heard from our mother,” Alex said.

  Michael continued. “I was in the kitchen. He had made me my breakfast, soft-boiled eggs, and then he went upstairs to his bedroom. He told me he wasn’t feeling well, but the way he said it, it didn’t sound like any big deal. The next thing I knew, Mom was with him in his room upstairs—she was by his bed. He was having a heart attack. She ran to the phone to call an ambulance, and in the rush, forgot about me for a minute or so.

  “So I watched him, from his bedroom door. I was scared. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew it was terrible. Mom called out to Peggy, our housekeeper, to take me away, but I ran to join her in her bedroom. She was on the phone, fighting with the operator who evidently wasn’t going fast enough or tried to put her on hold. And I was standing there, by her side, watching and listening. I was worried about catching germs. I was so young.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She went back to his bedroom, and they made me stay in Mom’s bedroom, but I could hear everything. She was asking if he wanted water, telling him help was coming. I could tell she was helpless. I don’t think he was saying anything. And then I heard it. The most terrifying sound I have ever heard, even today.”

  “What was it?” Alex said. He looked somber, as though it had just happened.

  “He was kind of choking. I couldn’t understand what the sound was then. I had no idea, although it was so gruesome I knew it was bad, very bad. I know now it was his death rattle.”

  Alex stared ahead. He showed no reaction. Michael wasn’t sure what, if anything, his brother was thinking or whether Alex actually could think. He wondered what was going on behind that screenshot, that seemingly live image of the person who was supposed to be dead. But Michael wanted so badly to believe his brother was really there in front of him and not at Saint Michael’s with every other dead relative.

  Michael continued, “I’m sure that in my own final moments, I’ll think of that terrible scene. I’ve been drawn back to it all my life. I know it’ll be with me to my own end. It’s shaped how I feel about death—and life. You know, how fragile and fleeting it all is.”

  Michael and Alex looked at each other in silence, nearly mirror images. “From that day on,” Michael said, “I knew life didn’t last forever.”

  Chapter 40

  South Beach, Florida

  December 5, 2009

  Miami was steamy. Despite what every doctor and morning news show medical analyst advised, Michael always felt like the sun and a tan did wonders for his health. It certainly made him feel good.

  Michael wanted to formally announce his decision regarding Alex’s business to Donna and the Lesters. Since Donna was already vacationing in Miami, Michael flew down with Samantha and the Lesters. Michael called it an “off-site management meeting,” which had Fat Lester confused and concerned until he realized that it didn’t matter, because Michael was picking up the tab.

  Michael booked their usual junior suite at the Setai in South Beach, where Donna was also staying. He then booked Fat and Skinny Lester at a discreet distance away in the South Beach Marriot. Although Michael had come to trust and cherish both Lesters, he could not envision Fat Lester lounging at the pool of the Setai, with its international clientele and its understated almost Zen-like atmosphere. Alex himself would have checked out before he even made it up to his room. It was, Michael thought to himself, perhaps one of the remaining differences between them.

  DeVito’s restaurant, however, at the foot of South Beach was anything but Zen-like. Danny DeVito wasn’t in town, but Frank Sinatra’s recorded voice filled the air while the waiters rolled by with eight-pound lobsters and sizzling Kobe beefsteaks that almost looked like they were worth the astronomical prices on the menu. The décor was a combination of Tuscan villa and 1940s Hollywood glitz. The deep-red Venetian crystal chandeliers softly illuminated the bright-white leather chairs, but mostly spotlighted a bevy of discontinued models: tall, young blondes accompanied by deeply tanned men twice their age.

  Despite smoking restrictions, there was a whiff of cigar smoke in the air. This was a macho man’s place, Michael thought to himself.

  Donna approached the table wearing her oversized Dior sunglasses, despite the evening shade, and a short, tight white skirt showing off her shapely legs and slim ankles. Michael noticed that she attracted the leering glances of the open-shirted, gold-chain male crowd in DeVito’s that night. He knew, just watching her stroll to the table, that it wouldn’t be long before Donna lined up a new husband.

  They sat out on the patio overlooking the crowd of partygoers, strollers, and the stream of cars on Ocean Drive. In the near horizon, the sand and the Atlantic Ocean were vaguely visible in the darkening night.

  Their waiter looked like he had played for the Italian football team twenty years ago. “I’ll have a dry Blue Sapphire martini and Greta Garbo here will have a Grey Goose cosmo.” As Michael smiled at Donna, Fat and Skinny Lester, distracted and captivated by the parade of scantily clad women all around them, each ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks.

  “Samantha’s just spending a quiet night in her room watching some movies and enjoying room service. She’ll see you tomorrow at the pool,” Michael s
aid, looking at Donna. He was relieved Samantha had backed out of the dinner, otherwise, he would have had to arrange a daytime meeting while she was shopping so he could make his announcement. He knew he would need to filter or at least carefully position any such conversation with his wife.

  “She’s also not crazy about DeVito’s. Just a little too much testosterone here for her.” Or, Michael thought, maybe just too many young blondes. Michael chose to keep that thought to himself.

  After a round of drinks and the usual small talk, everyone dug into their first course. Michael took charge of the dinner conversation. Although keeping a low tone so he wouldn’t be overheard beyond their table, Michael was confident and firm.

  “We’ve all gotten through a lot in the past month. Together, we’ve collected the money due Alex, paid all the money out that Alex owed others—except, of course, for the two hundred thousand we charged Sharkey for being greedy. We’ve uncovered the three million that Alex had stashed away.

  “I’m going to be sure that the money is distributed in a way that my brother would have wanted. Most of the money, of course, is going to Donna and George. But,” Michael continued, looking at the two Lesters, “I’m also sure Alex would have wanted you guys to receive something in his memory. I’m going to sit down and work out the details next week with Donna, but I wanted you both to know that you’ll be getting some part of that money.”

  Skinny Lester was the first to respond. “Michael, Donna, you both have been like family to us. I think I can speak for Lester, too, when I say that we didn’t expect anything from the cash Alex left. Alex always paid us well. Better than we could have done anywhere on our own. I could have never done this well driving a taxi, which is the only thing that college ever really prepared me for.”