Dead Man

by Joe Gores

  “We’ll have you out of there in no time, cat,” he promised. “Just one phone call to make first.”

  Dain dragged Moe Wexler, the electronics genius, away from his reality cop show on TV, got some precise advice from him, then asked him to do a little job. Moe sighed and said he would have to go down to his shop in the middle of the night and it was going to cost Dain plenty, and Dain said that was all right, he had plenty, and he would meet Moe there.

  The next part was going to be difficult and dangerous. But if he had to go, Dain figured, he would be going in good company. Shenzie had always wanted to be an engineer and he would be able to see some engineering problems get worked out at first hand.

  Especially if Dain quite literally blew it…

  The eleven o’clock news told the hitman he was safe. An explosion had gutted a semi-abandoned pier on the San Francisco waterfront. Fortunately there was a firehouse next door, so they were able to extinguish the resultant blaze before the flames had a chance to spread to adjacent structures.

  One unidentified body had been found in the wreckage, at this hour police and firemen were sifting through the rubble for clues to his identity and for the source of the blast…

  The shooter tapped his remote to blank the screen, and went to bed feeling totally safe and at peace with himself for the first time in five years.

  34

  It was one of those unusual San Francisco summer days, a sparkling sunlit morning without fog. Randy Solomon bounded zestfully down the outside stairs of his beautifully restored old Victorian on Buchanan, whistling. He turned downhill toward Fell and his car parked half a block away.

  Standing on the sidewalk waiting for him was Dain. No sling this morning; both arms were free. Solomon checked his forward momentum, momentarily appalled.

  “You were the other hitman,” said Dain simply.

  His face was pinched and drawn; another sleepless night. Randy had recovered; his face was placid, beaming. He mimed holding his arms out from his sides.

  “You a tricky enough dude to be wired, Dain?”

  Dain opened his arms wide for the frisk. “Doctor said I could take the sling off today, so I did, that’s all,” he said.

  “So, no wire.” Randy gave his big laugh. “So it’s just us, sorta mano a mano, huh?”

  “Something like that,” said Dain. “After all, I’ve been looking for you for five years.”

  Randy nodded.

  “Lots of activity gettin’ you nowhere. Sure, I was the second shooter. Who the hell else could it have been? I been waiting five years for that penny to drop. When you said last night about Inverness bein’ a cop, I thought you knew then.”

  “I didn’t,” said Dain. There was none of the heat and hatred he’d shown the night before with Sherman. Only a sort of sadness. “You’re right, I should have known. It only made sense—a couple of murderous cops working together. You had the directions to the cabin—I’d given them to you myself. Inverness had the instructions from Sherman—kill us all.”

  Randy laughed his basso profundo laugh, spread his hands.

  “Always tellin’ you how I couldn’t stand old Dougiebaby, where’d he get his information, shit like that, when all the time him and me…”

  “You’d worked for him before,” said Dain, more a question than a statement. “Paying for your house.”

  “Couple of times,” Randy agreed. “Do a hit locally saves travelin’ on the weekends.”

  “It was you who blew up Grimes on his boat.”

  Randy chuckled again. “You sure you ain’t wearin’ a wire, Hoss, seeking all these admissions, like?”

  “No wire,” said Dain. “Just trying to understand.”

  Randy was suddenly irritated. He looked around the quiet early-morning street. No one else had come from any of the houses on the block. No cars had started up at the curb. Randy had always been an early one in to the office. Dedicated cop.

  “What’s to understand? Killin’ people’s the easiest way I know to have a nice retirement.” He swept an arm around to encompass the city. “Shit, they kill each other every day—over what TV show to watch and what corner to sell crack from.”

  “But… but I was your friend. Marie was your friend. Albie was your friend. Even Shenzie was—”

  “Can’t be friends with no cat, Hoss.”

  “But all you had to do was—”

  “You wouldn’t let it alone. I had set up the accident on Grimes’s boat, and you just kept peckin’ at it. So me and Sherman decided…” He broke off, said, “That was old Dougie’s body they drug out of the loft, wasn’t it?”

  “His body,” said Dain. “I called him from New Orleans, told him I was on my way back and would be at the loft last night. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I had to know one way or the other.” He suddenly quoted, “’Was me, I’d be plannin’ a whole lotta other people’s deaths.’” He met the incomprehension in Randy’s eyes. “It’s what you said to the doctor at the hospital that night. Whatever part of me was still alive heard it… It kept me going all those years…”

  Randy shrugged. “I don’t remember it.” Then he was suddenly intense, with an edge of anger again. “But you shoulda listened closer, Sherlock. I said that’s what I’d of done. Me. Not you. Hell, you was just a nerdy chess player in those days.”

  “Still am,” said Dain, and meant it. “Playing around at life, playing around at revenge… Who else but you would have put that second bug on Farnsworth’s phone? I never told you about the bonds but you knew about them in the car last night from the airport and I still didn’t get it…”

  “Yeah. Beefed up yo’ body, got all ready physically for the war, but up here” —he tapped his forehead with a finger— “and here” —he slammed a fist against his own washboard gut— “you’re still a fucking nerd.”

  His anger boiled over, he put a hand on Dain’s chest and shoved him back a couple of steps. Dain gave without pushing back. Randy nodded as if his point had been made.

  “You know I killed your fucking kid, you know I helped kill your fucking wife, you know I planned to blow you and your fucking cat all to hell, and what do you do? You think it all through an’ you come here for a fucking confrontation.”

  He whirled, jabbed a finger at the flat roof of the Victorian across the street.

  “Why the fuck aren’t you up there with a sniper rifle and a scope, layin’ the cross hairs on my chest?”

  He shoved Dain again, harder this time. Dain went back a few more paces, still not trying to defend himself.

  “Because you’re a fucking nerd, same as you ever was.” He gave his big booming laugh. “You ain’t figured out shit. And you got no proof of anything.” He was suddenly curious. “What really tipped you off it was Doug and me?”

  “Him, a phone bill. You, the remark about the bonds—eventually it sank in. And how scared you got when I almost took Shenzie out of his carry case in the car. So up at the loft I checked and sure enough—there was a wire running from his collar down into a lump of molded plastique in the case with a detonator embedded in it. If I’d lifted him out—”

  “So you blew up the loft, figuring I’d be watching the news and figure you were all done. And old Dougie went there, tryna get you before you got him, and by accident got blown up along with the place. You’re pretty slick, Sherlock. But not slick enough. ‘Cause you don’t want revenge hard enough. You gonna talk me to death. Only people don’t die that way.”

  “I’d quit wanting revenge at all,” said Dain. “I was going to let it go with Doug, even after I knew he’d been the go-between. But he wouldn’t let it alone. Just like me five years ago. And it got him killed, just like me five years ago.”

  Randy made as if to step around Dain toward his car, then checked himself again.

  “Like I told you in the car last night, he couldn’t leave it alone. I can’t leave it alone. I ain’t safe long as you’re alive. But the difference between you and me, Sherlock—I know the
way people die is somebody kills ‘em. So I ain’t gonna talk you to death.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Dain in a strangely flat voice.

  “I’m gonna give you time to have a lot of fun wonderin’ when it’s gonna happen. Then, one of these days, just when you figure I’ve forgot all about it, you’ll turn around and, wham! You ain’t there any more. Nobody’ll ever suspect me, ‘cause see, Dain, the whole world knows I’m your best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at your funeral.”

  He laughed his big booming laugh again, went jauntily down the street and across the grassy strip to his car, went around to the driver’s side and unlocked it, opened the door. Dain bent down to pick up something he’d put down out of sight beside the roots of a tree, then just stood there with it in his hand to watch Solomon get into his car.

  As Randy slid in under the wheel, he checked the back from automatic cop’s habit. And froze. On the seat behind him was Shenzie’s cat carrying case with a big red satin bow tied around it. A bow with bright gold letters stamped into it:

  FROM A FRIEND. MEOW.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Utter terror distorting his features, he tried to get out of the car before Dain pushed the button on the transmitter. Moe Wexler had been up almost all night putting it together for the detonator in the plastique Randy had put in Shenzie’s case.

  Randy didn’t make it.

  With a great whoosh! of sound and a burst of flame, his car went up with him only halfway out of it. Black smoke poured up into the unusual summer morning without fog. Dain just stood there, watching, tears on his cheeks.

  “You turn around, Randy, and wham!” he said in a soft, sad voice, “you aren’t there any more.” He started down the street, murmuring to himself, “Nobody’ll ever suspect me. I was his best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at his funeral…”

  Cautious people had begun venturing out of their houses with stunned faces, but by then Dain was gone.

  From force of habit, he went around to the back door of the little bungalow in Mill Valley, started to let himself into the kitchen, stopped dead, key in hand. The door was unlocked. He had locked it after leaving Shenzie off last night before going back to Moe Wexler’s shop in the city. And Shenzie hadn’t come to greet him as he usually did…

  Nightmare. Yet another hitman was in the house, someone else he had to kill… forever and ever, yet another murderer to murder… And the iron grip of the past on his heart would never ease, he could never die and be reborn again…

  Set carelessly on the kitchen counter was an attaché case. One that looked very familiar…

  Dain slid forward silently, opened the case carelessly—if he was wrong and it was another bomb, now was the time to go. He had nothing left in his life he valued…

  No bomb. It was indeed the bearer bonds that had started it all—and ended it all.

  Dain moved silently through the little house he knew so well. Vangie was slumped back in the big easy chair across the coffee table from the couch, asleep, her fierce and beautiful face relaxed and childlike. Dain felt his heart leap up as he stood looking at her.

  Something in his life that he valued.

  Shenzie was asleep on her chest.

  Dain crossed silently to the sleeping pair, put his finger down under Shenzie’s throat. He was purring, his little motorboat going even in his sleep. He woke at Dain’s touch, looked up at him with big pop eyes, stretched, kneading Vangie’s sweater with little front paws, then shut his eyes again, indifferent to Dain’s arrival.

  The kneading paws woke Vangie. Just like the cat, she looked up at Dain for a long time without moving or speaking. Finally she sat up and cradled Shenzie upside down on her lap.

  “You said your cat didn’t purr,” she told him.

  “Not for five years.”

  She touched the name tag on Shenzie’s collar.

  “Shenzie. What a goofy name.”

  “It means crazy in Swahili. But more than that. Goofy is right—nuts, a little out of control. He always has been—knocks your cup of tea off the arm of the couch just to see what you’ll do, sleeps on the cable box on top of the TV ‘cause it’s warm, quits purring for five years…”

  Vangie stood up, turning to set Shenzie back in the chair when she did. She stood in front of Dain looking up at him. They were not touching, but almost.

  “I came in through the bedroom window—the latch was loose.” She made a quick gesture with her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and hiking boots. “You don’t owe me anything, Dain, I’m not expecting anything from you, but I want to give the bonds back to that woman they were stolen from and I don’t know how, so I had to ask you—”

  “Eddie,” said Dain.

  “Eddie?”

  “My name is Eddie. Dain is my last name.” He scooped her up in his arms and started toward the bedroom. He had a sudden, intense erection, as he used to get with Marie at unexpected moments, as he’d had in his airplane dream. “We have to check out that loose lock on the window.”

  When they came the first time it was absolutely together, and both cried out when they did. And then cried, real tears, because both of them could finally let go of their losses.

  Dain woke alone in bed, stretched luxuriously, felt automatically for Shenzie’s little head on the pillow beside his. Shenzie wasn’t there. Noonday sun through the branches of the pine tree outside the window made the bedroom a green cavern, like the bedroom in his dream. He could smell coffee. New Orleans coffee, thick and rich with lots of chicory in it.

  Everything came back to him, everything, all of it.

  He pulled on his shorts and padded barefoot out into the living room. Vangie was on the sofa, coffee mug in hand, staring at the half-finished chess game on the coffee table that for five years Dain had been physically unable to put away.

  She looked up when he came into the room. She was wearing one of his shirts, the tails came down almost to her knees.

  “My pa-pére taught me to play this game,” she said. “My grandfather. Is this one of those chess problems he used to tell me about?”

  “No,” said Dain. “This is just an unfinished game…”

  Without visible hesitation, he pulled up a chair across from her and sat down. He leaned forward, studying the board.

  “It got interrupted and Marie and I never got back to it.”

  Vangie moved a piece. Dain countered. With a sudden soft thud, Shenzie landed on the corner of the coffee table and sat watching the play intently. His black tail with the white tip was twined loosely down around one leg of the table.

  “He wishes he had hands,” said Vangie.

  “So he can be an engineer when he grows up,” said Dain.

  “Check,” said Vangie.

  The three of them studied the board intently for a long while, Dain seeking a way to avoid checkmate. Then Shenzie reached out a tiny black and white hand and knocked over one of Dain’s pieces. It happened to be his king.

  He and Vangie laughed together. He felt as if he were coming up to the surface of a sunlit sea after a very long time in cold green depths where no light ever penetrated.

  They went back into the bedroom to celebrate again what they had found. As they celebrated, Shenzie went to sleep in the middle of the chessboard, the pieces he had knocked aside littering the tabletop like miniature overturned grave markers.

  DEAD MAN

  Once Eddie Dain had a life: a beautiful wife, a happy young son, and a thriving business catching soft-core bad guys by computer. Then he hung on to an odd-looking case and made a mysterious enemy—one whose calling cards were two men with shotguns.

  Now Eddie is reborn—as a dead man. Known by the single name of Dain, he pumps up his body and his psyche as he follows a trail of sweaty white-collar crime to the steamy Louisiana bayous. Here, in this torrid landscape, is a woman on the run who can lead him to what he wants more than anything: the man who took everything from Eddie Dain…

  In Dead Man Joe Gores ret
urns to the hard, lean style of his acclaimed novels Come Morning and Interface—in a stunning tale of crime and revenge.

  “THIS IS ONE AUTHOR WHO CAN WRITE WITH. A VENGEANCE. DEAD MAN IS SUSPENSEFUL, AND ITS VIOLENCE IS GRUESOMELY INGENIOUS.”

  —New York Newsday

  “GORES PENS HIS TOUGHEST AND DARKEST NOVEL YET”—Playboy

  JOE GORES was a San Francisco private detective before he became an award-winning screenwriter and author. The creator of the famous DKA detective agency series, Gores lives and writes in northern California.