Lee. What would Lee think, if she ever found out I was too much of a coward to stand up and keep fighting? Or that I'd suffered a moment of weakness with the person I hated more than anyone? Never mind that I hadn't actually tasted the apple. I'd still climbed the tree.
My caseworker must have read the expression on my face. "Yeah, that's right. You don't know a damned thing about sacrifice. You're nothing but a self-centered pile of—"
She stopped herself and made a quick hand gesture of penance that may have been from some obscure Eastern religion.
I no longer feared an eternity spent with Diana, an endless circle of apologies and blame. I was more afraid Hell was just an endlessly unsolved missing-persons case concerning a person who had never existed and a merry-go-round of guilt. "Sorry," I whispered.
"Sorry. Christ on a Popsicle stick, Steele. You're a real piece of work." She held up my file, which had grown considerably thicker. "I've got addendum on top of memo on top of cross-reference. You think you're the only bozo in the world I'm trying to move along?"
"No, ma'am." I was beat. I had no get-up-and-go. I couldn't even muster any sarcasm. They'd probably yank my gumshoe license and send me back to noir school to learn to twist off cynical one-liners again.
Miss Titanic sighed and sat back down. "You better be glad I like you. So what you got?"
"I'm still dead, as far as I can tell."
"And? Why the hell are you here again? You need to be back there, where you can do some good. If 'good' is even in your vocabulary."
"I've been good once or twice."
"Better make it two or three times, know what I mean? Because I'll bet you've got somebody back there worth believing in. I see it in your eyes, Steele."
"I wasn't getting anywhere. Everything was a dead end."
"Nonsense. Go back to the basics. What happened first?"
"It all started with the note, I guess."
"You guess? No wonder you billed only a hundred a day plus expenses. A private investigator is supposed to deduce, not guess."
"The note, then. Somebody slipped it under my door."
"Who?"
"Maybe the person who shot me."
"Then why didn't the person just knock on the door, wait until you answered, then shoot you?"
"Plot complications? Fool the cops? Fool me?"
"Right. It's never the most obvious answer. Who else?"
"Well, the note was from Bailey DeBussey, I think."
"Bailey DeBussey. DeBussey." Miss Titanic went to the filing cabinet, prowled for a moment, then pulled out a slender folder. She opened it and whistled. "Pretty."
"I seen worse."
She closed the folder and slipped it back into its proper place in the chaotic universe. "So why would Bailey want you to meet her at a certain time, which you say happens to be the exact same time you got a chestful of hot lead?"
"My killer must have known about the note."
"Jeez, Steele. You're so quick on the draw, maybe we'll reincarnate you as a postmodern Billy the Kid."
"She must be in on it, then. She was putting on quite an act in the coffee shop."
"And you thought she was after you for your looks."
I stood up. "Hey, Lee likes my looks just fine, and she—"
My caseworker leaned back in her chair and smiled. "Aha. I knew there was somebody back there worth fighting for."
Busted. The worst thing about real love, the kind you feel in your guts and soul, is you can't really keep it secret. You can hide names and places, but there's something different inside you that bursts out when you least expect it, a light you can't hide. Even to yourself, the one person who is often the easiest to fool.
She stooped down and rummaged in a bottom drawer, then came out with a piece of paper. "Here, fill this out. Form 3716, a deadline extension. Forgives the penalty you should have drawn for committing afterlife suicide. And don't let anybody know I did you a favor. Word gets around fast up here and no good deed goes unpunished."
I fidgeted with the paperwork. When I was done, she said, "I see something else in your eyes, Steele."
"What?"
"The thing you're running from."
"I'm past it now."
"Really? It looks like the kind of dead weight that makes a lovely anchor in the lake of fire."
"Well, it's my problem, not yours."
She pursed her ice-blue lips. "Okay. But don't make it my problem. I've got to clear up this clutter or I don't get to move on myself, and I want to get my lovely bones out of here and meet five people in heaven."
"Sounds like you're bound for the great Oprah Book Club in the Sky."
"It beats learning to play a harp."
"Hey, wait a minute. I thought you were Jewish."
She shrugged. "Did I say any of this made sense? If we knew what we were doing, life would have no point."
She waved me out the door and returned to the heaps of business on her desk. I didn't ask the way out. I figured there would be an exit sign somewhere. I'd discovered God had a great sense of humor, despite being a heartless bastard.
***
6.
The hall was empty. The woman in white no longer occupied the bench, and presumably she'd been swept off to some make-good mission of her own. There was a door at the end of the hall, but the sign above it said "Emergency Exit Only." What were they going to do, slap me with a civil fine? Give me the death penalty?
I pushed the door open and took a step, expecting a set of corny golden stairs. Instead, I found myself fighting for balance in a river of red lava. Heat singed my eyebrows as I slipped waist-deep into the bubbling morass. Though the air was hot, the lava itself was clammy against my skin, as thick as sewer sludge and about as odiferous.
The river flowed into a dark cavern that yawned like an afternoon wino. Was this the route I was supposed to take? Because of my slip-up, was I now to take the hard road home?
Turned out harder than I expected.
"Get your ass down here," she roared. "Now!"
Diana. I turned, fighting my way back up to the landing and the hall I'd left behind. But you know how these things work by now: the doorway had changed and was now a glass wall, with silver rain on the other side, so that it cast a million shards of reflection. In those shards, I saw myself as a multitude, and behind me was a legion of oversize scorpions, something laughable in a cheesy sci-fi movie but not so funny when they were creeping toward you with tails quivering in the air.
Tails full of poison.
I turned to face her wrath. "This relationship is over."
Laughter again, the whoosh of rising flames, the crackle and drag of a whip uncoiling and testing the air. "You owe me."
"I said I was sorry."
She mimicked me in a high-pitched voice, the mockery all the more disconcerting coming from those arachnid lips. If scorpions even had lips, that is. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. I wish I had a rosary bead for every time I've heard that word. Maybe I could pray my ass out of here."
I had the feeling she didn't want to be out. Some people are gluttons for punishment, masochists, misery addicts. She'd married me, after all.
"I have nothing to pay you with," I said. Back on Earth, when I committed transgressions, she'd sought payback in a straightforward expression of commerce. Staying out late merited a bouquet of flowers, Godiva chocolates compensated for bold-faced lies, and the bigger offenses required breaking the bank for shiny baubles. I was a pretty decent liar back then, so the corner candy store hadn't seen much business. But when I had the first affair, she'd been fairly content with a set of ruby earrings, especially as I'd had to moonlight as a bartender for three months to pay them off. If the punishment fit the crime, I'd never seen it.
"I want my pound of flesh," she said.
The lava flowed around my ankles, then up my legs, teasing me with heat. When it was waist deep, it suddenly cooled and solidified. I couldn't run. She had me right where she wanted me, just like always.
"I don't care whether I win or lose," she said. "As long as you lose."
"Look, I'm doing my best to clean up the past. I know I made mistakes but all I can do now is make amends and move on."
"Richard."
I lifted my palms in the universal sign of surrender. "It's the best I got."
"Always a disappointment."
"Yes, dear."
"You don't get it. I don't care if you jump off this little carnival karmic wheel and land on your head. But you're never going to have Lee."
The anger came easily, self-righteous indignation, the only kind of righteousness I'd ever known. "You stay away from her. She has nothing to do with you."
Her forked tongue flicked out the crevice of her smile. "I'm on a mission."
She shimmered, the atmosphere around her glistening like iced jewels dangling from thin blue threads.
"Live and let live," I said, a corny peace offering.
"If I can't have you, nobody can." She grinned again, but her eyes were an arctic cemetery as she faded to mist.
I closed my eyes and clenched my muscles against the hardened lava, willing it to shatter and release me to the bigger cage of my eternal life.
***
7.
I took a dead breath, opened my eyes, and I was back in the lobby of my apartment building. I let my fingers do the walking near the lobby telephone. Bailey's address was on one of those fancy streets just up in the hills below the Hollywood sign, so I drifted over. The house was a Moroccan-Mediterranean type, with a lot of ceramic work and bougainvillea climbing all over the place. Probably cost a mere half-million. Wait till she got my bill. I'd been known to adjust my rates both up and down, depending on a client's ability to pay.
Darkness was falling by the time I checked the place out. Bailey was sprawled in the hot tub, nude except for some bubbles. She was listening to that song of the dogs barking "Jingle Bells," which definitely wasn't mood music. I discreetly left her to her champagne and ice bucket, though I noticed two glasses were set out.
Nothing else aroused my interest except for the photographs on the den wall. Bailey was in one, with the white-haired boat captain from the digital photo. A black-and-white portrait hung below that, of an actress whose name I couldn't remember. She had a '60s housewife hairdo, a strand of pearls, and a plunging neckline, and her cheekbones were as strong as Bailey's.
A Fiat pulled into the drive, the top down and the hunk from the photos all smiles and sunglasses. He let himself in and went straight to the hot tub. I was right behind him, a real sticky gumshoe.
"It worked," he said to Bailey. "So far."
She flicked some water toward him with her toe. "I told you it would."
"Hey, it was my idea."
"I'll remember to tell the cops that, if they ever catch on to us."
The hunk took off his sunglasses, then the rest of his clothes. He slid into the tub and popped open the champagne. He filled the glasses and toasted. "To our future."
"Eight million," she said dreamily. "Acapulco or the Riviera?"
"We have to stay here until the storm blows over."
"No problem. We've got a good lawyer." She laughed, a chilling sound.
"They'll find Steele's body soon. But it's a risk we had to take. We couldn't have Lee's sweetheart finding out that she was set to inherit a fortune."
Fortune? Lee couldn't inherit anything. She was an orphan. At least, that's the story she gave me. Many nights I'd held her as she cried about the not knowing, the lack of roots, the yawning gray emptiness of her childhood. I'd even been looking into it for her, tracing her lineage, but without much luck.
"Think I can manage to look bereaved at Lee's funeral?" Bailey asked, quaffing some champagne.
"You can pull off anything for a buck. And slipping that love note was a streak of pure genius. No fingerprints, right?"
"We handled it with kid gloves. Except for when I stripped in Steele's apartment."
"I hope our friend didn't touch anything," he said, his face sweating and his moussed hair going limp.
"Hey, you jealous or something? All he did was take the pictures."
"Well, let's just say that you're a natural for the role of the 'other woman.' So you planted the photographs?"
"Yep. They're in Steele's pocket, right where the police can find them. The one you took, too, behind the building." Bailey was getting less attractive by the minute, or maybe it was the presence of Mister Charm.
"Lee will be so guilt-ridden over what she's done that no one will be surprised. Jealousy does strange things to a person."
"I've noticed. Did you pay him?"
"You mean 'Raymond Chandler'?" He laughed. "Bet the cops loved that one. I dropped off his down payment right after he ditched the rifle." He shook his head, dripping sweat from his damp hair. "Damnedest thing, though. He says he shot Steele at four o'clock."
Bailey sat up. I cursed her for taking away all my enjoyment of nude women. "But it had to be at least 4:15 before Steele went back to his apartment. And 'Chandler' met me there at 4:30."
He-man shrugged. "He's got enough money now to buy himself a decent watch. Anybody see you go to Steele's room?"
"I was practically invisible," she said.
He kissed her and she giggled. He put down his champagne glass and went for her. I left before the scene got disgusting.
***
8.
My apartment was suffocating in its stillness. The blood on the floor had congealed. My body stank. My flesh was colder than a lawyer's heart.
I checked the answering machine. No calls. If Bailey set me up to make Lee think I was having an affair, Lee would have called by now. She wasn't really the jealous type. She just liked to know which way the wind blew.
I didn't want to pay Lee a visit just yet. That would be too draining. I'd probably waste all my emotional energy tearing my heart out at the sight of her. I had too little reserve left as it was. So I just had to trust her to take care of herself for a while. I spent the night in the elevator shaft.
Do you know what the dead dream?
They dream about being alive.
I woke up to a commotion. I floated up the shaft to my floor, then went down the hall. The cops had discovered my body. The super must have noticed the smell and thought the toilet had backed up again.
The cops parted like the Red Sea before Moses as a hulking figure arrived. Lt. Lars Uhlgren. Ugly Uhlgren, they called him, but only behind his back. His face looked as if he could drive nails with it. His eyes were manholes filled with sewer sludge.
"The door was unlocked, Lieutenant," said a uniform. "Body's stiff. Dead maybe a day, maybe less."
Uhlgren nodded and brushed past. "Now we know what happened to those shots from the Hype. What you got?" he asked a mousy-looking tech holding a plastic bag.
"Dug some bullets out of the wall, sir. They were embedded in the concrete lathe."
Uhlgren glanced at them through the baggie. "And some people get nothing but coal in their stockings. Send them to ballistics."
Mouse nodded and scurried away. I'd worked with Uhlgren a time or two, and I'd also learned to scurry when he barked. I was a little cheered that he was on the case. He had a good solve rate.
Then I remembered that I was supposed to solve the case on my own. I couldn't count on human intervention, and my supply of divine intervention was dwindling. But I had as much right to be in the apartment as the police did. I'd paid rent through the month. So I shadowed Uhlgren.
He put on rubber gloves and searched my pockets. He found the note that Bailey had left. Next came my cigarettes, change, and lighter, then he dug into my breast pocket and pulled out three photographs.
I stood behind Uhlgren and craned my neck. The door opened and the breeze knocked me off-balance and I leaned into him. Not just against him, but into him. He shivered and gl
anced around, his heavy eyebrows low.
I drifted backward, stunned by what I had seen. Two photos were of a nude Bailey, her face hidden but her melons clearly recognizable, lying seductively on my bed. The other photograph was of Bailey and me holding hands, taken when we were heading to the coffee house. The way we were hunched made it look as if we were lovers sneaking off for a rendezvous. Obviously, that photo hadn't been in my pocket when I died, because Bailey had been walking with a ghost at the time the picture was taken.
"Hmm," said Uhlgren. "Old Steele got himself a babe. What they say must be true. It ain't looks that women are after."
You're one to talk, Ugly, I thought.
Uhlgren glanced around the room and saw Lee's portrait on the TV set. He looked from the photos in his hand back to Lee again. "Two beauty queens? I'm starting to lose my faith in romance."
He passed the photos to a detective, a guy who looked like a budget Fred Astaire. "See anything strange?" Uhlgren asked.
Budget Fred held the snapshots close to his face. He shook his head. "Nope."
"Steele's legs."
"Looks like a bad exposure."
Uhlgren smiled, a rare sight. "Damned feet ain't touching the ground."
"Maybe he was jumping for joy. I know I would be, playing smoochie-face with her."
Uhlgren looked down at my body, then knelt again with a pop of his knee. He reached inside my jacket to my shirt pocket, his tongue tucked in the corner of his lips. He came away with another note that I didn't know I'd had. Uhlgren was making like a modern-day Houdini. Next I expected him to pull out a rabbit or maybe a bouquet of dead flowers.
I hovered over him as he unfolded the note. Written on scrap paper were the words, Forget her, Richard my love. So what if she threatened to kill me? She can't keep us apart. Thanks for the great time last night. Love always, Bootsie.
Wonderful. I couldn't think of a single witness who could prove that I'd spent the night before my death with a James Herbert novel. I hadn't even snored loudly enough to wake the neighbors. As far as the cops were concerned, I was a two-timing dirty dog they would have envied except for the fact that they were still alive and I was headed for a toe tag.
The Dead Love Longer: A Novella Page 5