Bet Your Life

by Richard Dooling

  My heart beat like thunder, coming in waves every decade or so. I was expecting that Bird of Eternity to come along any century now and sharpen its beak on the barrel of Don’s gun. I kept trying to snag sweet Hector’s eyes with mine, so I could silently plead with him, using only my face and my eyes.

  “If you come away from this meeting with only one thought,” said Hector, “please let it be our policy of absolute confidentiality.”

  Hector handed two more glossies to Don, who fanned them in front of my face. The photo of Miranda with a bullet hole between her eyes, and right next to it a glossy of yours truly with three bullet holes, one in each eye and another in the center of my forehead.

  “If we discover that you’ve breached our confidentiality policies,” said Hector, “we would have no choice but to cancel everything. Including you…as a client, I mean, of course.”

  The universe came to a complete stop when Hector gave Dr. Ray a curt nod. It meant Eternity was ending and something was going to happen. But what?

  26

  ETERNAL LIFE GRANT UNTO HIM, O LORD

  THE DOOR OF THE black van slid open, and the boys were inside eating Burger King Whoppers and frowning at me. I fell into the jump seat and panted for air, rubbed my arms, savored the horrible metallic taste in my mouth. I revelled in every last bit of my unmolested flesh. Maybe somebody would kill me tomorrow, and maybe tomorrow I’d be worried about it. But right here, right now, I had one roomy second after another—thousands of them if I stayed up again all night and examined each one—thousands of seconds to squander just sitting here feeling wet and cold, smelling my own urine and sweat and hideous breath. Air was a rare delicacy. Like Hamlet, I could be bounded in a nutshell or a pest-control van and count myself a king of infinite space.

  McKnight wiped mayonnaise off his lips with a napkin.

  “What happened? Why’d you stop talking?”

  Like so many extreme states of consciousness, its effect was paradoxical. I had lived the terrors beyond the grave and now had come back fearless and reckless as Lazarus about the tiny threats of this one.

  I was cold and shaking, my damp clothes clinging to me. I touched my face, my fingertips delighting in the tactile pleasures of my intact skull.

  Hector had given the nod, and the good doctor Ray—God bless him! He was probably a good person who meant well!—had cut the zip ties. All I had to do was sign my application, while Hector pattered along in his unctuous, we’re-here-to-serve ministerese: “Any breach of confidentiality has dire consequences, as you know.”

  Don had nudged me with the muzzle of his gun, and Ray had put the cap on his needle.

  “We’ll save this sample for you,” he said. “So you won’t have to come back. We hope.”

  Agent Langdon, the handsome, deaf one, was watching me. His little beige disk was off the side of his head and dangling against the lapel of his tweed jacket, meaning, I guess, that he just wanted to watch me again, without being distracted by sounds or words or explanations. See if I was telling the truth.

  When he finished looking me over, he laughed and signed something to McKnight, who smiled.

  “What?” I asked, and handed McKnight the cell phone that had almost gotten me killed.

  “He says, ‘Maybe Hector Crogan is not a nice man?’”

  27

  ESAU AND JACOB

  SOME SAY THAT THE gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us: The first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them. For the moment, my dreams were stamped “granted,” and I had plenty of infinite seconds left on earth to plan my next move, which would not entail working as a confidential informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Fuck the junior G-men and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Eagle Scouts and the Viatical Fraud Task Force in Washington, D.C. Bend them over in the Terre Haute showers and zip-tie their hands to their ankles. I was picking up my chips and leaving the federal table. Tomorrow morning I’d stack them up in front of Charlie Becker in his interrogation room.

  When Mutton asked me what had happened, I told him. He got a quizzical expression on his face and consulted with McKnight. Whenever their whispers and murmurs surfaced above the traffic noise, I was able to gather the following: I seemed to be traumatized and emoting about a personal misfortune that was tragic and compelling, but had nothing to do with federal jurisdiction. Even if they decided to believe me, I was describing a simple assault, a local matter. They had nothing in their digital recordings to suggest that I’d been threatened. Mutton and McKnight’s reasoning went this way: This is the same guy who’s lied to us how many times? Maybe we should check with the Viatical Fraud Task Force before we go barging in and spoil their investigation. What if we screw up their investigation, all because some lying insurance adjuster complained that somebody made him read a threatening note?

  No, they said. I should tell Becker about the assault, because then it would become part of his homicide investigation. They didn’t even thank me for wearing a digital listening device into Heartland Viatical—because the recordings were useless, I guess, and so was I.

  The only numbered clause I cared about in my cooperation agreement was the one I’d handwritten in and faxed back to Rhuteen for initials before I went into Hector’s place: the clause that promised me the image file of whoever had been in Lenny’s place the night he died. And according to my specific instructions and the terms of our agreement it should be on my home machine attached to an e-mail from GothicRage86, right about now.

  Before I went home to get it, I had to stop by and see Eve, Lilith, Lorelei. Tie myself to the mast and sail by Siren Miranda’s place. I wanted to sit with her in one of those eternal moments I’d shared with Don, make her see Eternity from this side of the grave the way I had.

  She opened the door, took a look at me, and knew that bad things had happened to me, and that I was thinking about doing worse.

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  “I been through hell, Miranda, and I brought something back for you.”

  I’d learned a few things from regional investigator Becker in the short sessions I’d spent under his tutelage. Don’t say a word, just let her talk. If she asks a question, don’t answer, ask one back. If she tries to tell me a story…?

  I didn’t want to hit her, I wanted to kill her. But even on rampage autopilot I knew that if I did that, I could wake up in Terre Haute, BOP Mid-Atlantic region, or in that nightmare penitentiary I’d dreamed about the night Lenny had died. I could kill her and then kill myself, which seemed to be the modern solution to these intractable crime-and-punishment dilemmas. Strangling her would be the easy part. After that, I was afraid I’d find myself in that Deep Valley of No Time I’d shared back at Heartland Viatical with my old buddy, Don Juan Gandhi—the moment standing still. I’d have a century or two to think about whether to turn a gun or knife on myself. A loss of nerve would land me in lockdown at Leavenworth with my new boyfriend, Butch the Dungeon Master.

  She was afraid of me, and that was a thrill. I was a lot bigger and stronger than her and ready to enjoy every minute of it. She had her Christless Bible open on the table and that sent rage like a lightning fork to my brain stem. I tore out a fistful of onionskin sheets and threw them at her.

  “Three hundred thousand,” I said. I kept it businesslike, easy to understand. Why get emotional? “Omaha Beneficial. Owner, Miranda Pryor. Insured, Miranda Pryor. Beneficiary, Annette Pryor.”

  She looked like she was sorry she’d opened the door. Too late to change that. Time goes forward, and treachery has consequences, my darling.

  “Okay,” she said. “I lied to them. I told them I had a qualifying medical condition.”

  I looked her up and down like the infected carcass of lies she was, and I said, “Right, Miranda. What’s your qualifying medical? Your bad back? Your mental illness? Pathological lying? Mythomania? I can vouch for it being a ratable risk factor, because it makes me want to rip you
r pretty head off. Like right now.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I had to—”

  “No, Miranda,” I yelled. “No more stories from you. It’s my turn, and have I got a story for you! It’s a really dark one, just the way you like them, but I didn’t get it from the Fraud Defense Network or the John Cooke Fraud Report.”

  I ripped another wad of Bible pages and shredded them.

  “No, I know how much you like religion and the Bible, so I went to Bible-Dot-Com and made sure it’s a fucking bona fide Bible fraud story.”

  If she was breathing, I couldn’t tell. She leaned over the coffee table and picked up her wineglass, but she was shaking too much to get it to her mouth. Then she looked as if she was thinking about throwing it at me instead.

  “I hate all that namby-pamby, New Testament, sign-of-peace, love-your-neighbor crap, Miranda. I’m an Old Testament guy. I wanna trade eyes and teeth.”

  She looked at the phone and knew she wasn’t going to get to it in time to dial 911 if it came to that. Then she looked at me. Maybe I should let her think she was gonna make it to the phone, even though she wouldn’t.

  “My name’s Isaac,” I said. “Remember? Abraham and Isaac? I’m Abraham’s son, Isaac? My old man came within a gnat’s ass of throwing my twelve-year-old flesh on a bonfire because he thought God was talking to him and asking him to sacrifice me so He could have some filet of firstborn son.”

  She took a shaky sip and tried to pretend we were just talking.

  “An angel saved my bacon on that go-round. He probably gave old Abraham six hundred milligrams of Thorazine in the butt muscle and threatened him with commitment proceedings if he ever tried to serve me for lunch again. After that, Abraham, my crazy old man, lived to be a hundred seventy-five years old and left everything to me. We buried him next to my ma in a cave, and I took over as chief of operations.”

  “You’re drunk,” she said.

  I picked up the nearest half-full wine bottle and sucked it dry.

  “I’m tasting currants, anise, black cherry, coffee, herb, sage, chocolate, toffee, licorice, and spice with a long integrated finish,” I said. “The nose on this is so perfect it makes me wanna break it black and blue with a sucker punch. Do you have any Pussy Fouissé?”

  She tried to get up, and I pushed her back down on the leather sofa, right in front of old Gustav’s The Kiss.

  “I’ve listened to all of your play-acting fraud stories, Miranda. Now you’re gonna listen to mine. My name’s Isaac, Miranda. Read all about me in Genesis, Miranda. I married a woman named Rebekah, and we had two sons, twins actually: Esau and Jacob.”

  I could see it come home to her now, which was fine. I wanted her to know where I was going so I could force-feed her ears with every word of it. I let her think about it while I sucked on another bottle.

  “That’s where you come in, Miranda. Your name is Jacob. Your twin brother’s name is Esau. Esau came out first all covered with hair, so guess what? He’s my firstborn son. You came out second, just your basic naked newborn babe riding dead last in terms of inheritance.

  She brushed shredded Bible pages off her lap and thought about trying to get up again.

  “Both of you grow up and Esau becomes a skillful hunter, a rugged outdoorsy-type guy, with hair all over him. Esau is my personal favorite, because I like meat, and he brings me lots of it. You? You’re a simple, smooth-skinned guy with soft hands, who likes to sit in his tent alone and think up news ways to fuck people out of what’s rightfully theirs. Your mother’s slippery herself, so she takes more of a shine to you than to honest Esau.

  I poured another three fingers of wine into the nearest glass, drank it, and tossed it into the fireplace, just like they do in the movies.

  “This wine is really good, Jacob. I’m tasting pear, lemon, fig…Where was I? That’s right, I’m Isaac. Before long I get old, too, just like Abraham, my dad, did, and soon I’m older than the dirt in King Tut’s tomb. I’m blind, I’m sick, I’m dying in bed. I can feel myself taking the far turn and headed for my last meal, so I call in my firstborn son. Not you, Jacob. Esau.

  “‘Esau,’” I say, “‘take your bow and arrow and scare up some game. Cook it up rare the way I like it, and bring it in here on a platter. We’ll have ourselves a real last supper, and then I’ll give you my special, final, irrevocable blessing.’”

  Miranda slowly turned and lowered her head into her arms, burying herself in the sumptuous leather interiors of her sofa, like maybe she couldn’t hear me there. She was at least pretending to sob.

  “As it happens, Miranda, I mean, Jacob, you had already fucked Esau over once before when he was starving, and you made him surrender his birthright to you before you’d give him a bowl of soup. It’s right there in Genesis, Miranda. You’re such a greasy greedhead, Jacob Miranda, that even a guy’s birthright ain’t enough for you. Now you want the blessing that I, Isaac, plan to give Esau, too, because my blessing will say who’s who and what’s what until Christ rides the pony into Jerusalem. And once it’s done, it’s done. In the Old Testament there were no take-backs on blessings, and what was done was done.”

  She got up off the couch and started up the loft stairs to the bedroom, and I followed her, chewing her shapely ass the whole way.

  “So, what do you do, Miranda? While I’m out hunting, you and your mother, Rebekah the Rat, cook up two choice kids from the goat flock, and the old lady fixes them just the way I like them. She dresses you up in Esau’s clothes, and she covers the back of your hands and the skin of your neck with goat hair and sends you on in with the food to see me.

  She was crying hard, and what of it?

  “So you come on in dressed up like your twin brother with our feast in hand, and you say, ‘Father!’”

  I was right behind her head, making my voice high when I was doing her and Jacob’s part, following her through the bedroom so closely that if she stopped I’d probably break a tooth on her ivory hair comb.

  “I’m fucking blind, feeble, and decrepit on my deathbed, Miranda, so I say, ‘Yes, which of my sons are you?’”

  She opened the bathroom door and turned to look at me, her cheeks tinseled in wet streaks, and her lower lip twitching, all the shit I’d seen before whenever she thought it would help grease the chute for another run of lies.

  “So you lie, Miranda, like the siding salesman you are, and you say, ‘It’s me, Dad, Esau, your firstborn,’ you say. ‘I fetched some meat just like you told me, Dad. Sit up and eat it, and then hurry up with the special blessing.’”

  She slammed the door, but I had my foot in it, and I could still see her in the mirror over the washstand.

  “I’m blind, Miranda, and I’m dying in bed, but I still got half my wits about me, so I ask, ‘How in the name of Methuselah’s mother did you find meat so fast, Esau?’”

  She glared at my reflection in the mirror, like she was one of those legendary, ancient reptiles that could kill you with a glance.

  “What do you say, Miranda? I mean, Jacob? What do you say, Jacob Miranda? Maybe you’re both. Maybe you’re a fucking hermaphrodite, Jake, and that’s why you don’t like sex? What do you say, Miranda?”

  The door was pinching my foot, and she was shoving hard on it and sobbing. I tried to reposition it, but the second I moved it she got the door shut and locked. I put my mouth right up where the door meets the jamb so I could keep on her.

  “You say, ‘I dunno, Dad! The Lord, your God, must have planned it that way.’ And that’s just the kind of shit you would say, wouldn’t you, Miranda? It’s God’s will that you’re a chiseling insurance cheat, isn’t it?”

  I stood there staring at the door, thinking about whether I ought to just break the fucker down. I wouldn’t hit her. Probably wouldn’t kill her either. Just break something big, like a door, and if the cops came, she could sue me for damages but that’s about it.

  “My mother, Sarah, didn’t raise any fools, Miranda, so I say, ‘Come on over here s
o I can feel you and see if it’s really my son Esau or not.”

  “You walk right on over, barefaced as brazen brass, and come stand right next to me, and let me feel the goat hair on the back of your hands. And I say, ‘Fuck me silly and turn out the lights. It’s Jacob’s voice, but the hands are Esau’s. How in the fuck can that be?’

  “So, I say it again, Miranda. I ask you point-blank, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’”

  I hammered on the door and yelled in to her.

  “‘Are you really my son Esau, Miranda?’ And what do you say, Miranda? What do you say?”

  I had my leaky hot-water faucets going all of a sudden. Not sad, really, just purging fluids.

  I hammered on the door, big loud ones, one for each syllable. “You lie and say, ‘Fuck yes, it’s me, Dad. It’s Esau! Who in the fuck did you think it was? You didn’t think it was that scam artist, Jacob the snake, did you?’

  “I fall for it, Miranda. I fall like Cain falling into hell with the wicked. I fall hard. You and I eat food, we drink wine. We party righteous, Miranda. Then, I say, ‘Come closer, son, and kiss me.’

  “Not a problem for you, is it, Miranda? You kiss me, and you’re so close I can smell you, smell your clothes—smell Esau’s clothes, not yours. You kiss me, just like Judas kissed Christ, you bitch!”

  Wham! I hit the door a good one.

  “Then I let loose with your blessing, Jake. Jake the snake!”

  I whacked it again, and the hurt in my hand bones felt good, just like everything else I’d been feeling since I got my new lease on life at Heartland Viatical.

  “I love the smell of you, Esau, and I say, ‘Ah, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field that the Lord has blessed! May God give to you of the dew of the heavens and the fertility of the earth, abundance of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations pay you homage. Be master of your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.’”