The Deadly Kiss-Off

by Paul Di Filippo

  Stan seemed to consider this seriously. “Like having you in the car behind me with a hit of Narcan just when I OD’d.”

  “Why’d you have to go and remind me of the biggest mistake of my life?”

  “Biggest smart move of your life, you mean, you ungrateful bastard! For one thing, without our connection and everything that happened, you’d be jerking off every day instead of tapping your cute little brown shorty.”

  “Maybe instead, I’d be an honest lawyer again, about to get nominated for a state supreme court judgeship.”

  Stan laughed so hard, I thought he was going to drive into a mailbox. When he could talk again, he said, “You are so permanently bent, you could not even walk into a courtroom without giving yourself a black eye from the doorknob.”

  “Here’s Luckman’s house, on the right,” I said to bring the frustrating conversation to a close. Stan pulled into the short hedge-bordered driveway of a colonial with an attached garage, both in need of a paint job, sitting on an unkempt quarter-acre lot.

  We had finally made an appointment with Luckman, so he was expecting us. And indeed, the door swung open almost immediately after we rang the bell, and Dr. Ronald Luckman stood revealed.

  The scientist was of average height, not precisely burly or fat, but rather, cylindrical, keg-shaped, without many natural contours. The punch line to an old joke involving scientists popped into my head: First, postulate a perfectly spherical cow … This odd quality extended even to the formation of his skull and his pan-shaped face, which could reasonably be called, in a way, good-looking despite its oddity. I realized that what he most resembled was a living Lego sculpture.

  Luckman’s short sandy hair was threaded with gray, and I realized he had to be at least in his late fifties—older than Stan and me by quite a few years. He wore wide-wale corduroy pants and a much-laundered checked flannel shirt against the November chill; argyle socks, and scuffed boat shoes.

  “Mr. McClinton? Mr. Hasso? Won’t you come in, please.”

  His baritone voice, though educated and composed, conveyed some level of incertitude, lack of self-confidence, or weariness, as if life had delivered to Luckman more than his share of beatdowns.

  The house’s interior displayed an absolutely average array of furniture and decor, except perhaps for an excess of overstuffed bookcases. But I had little time to scope out the environment before Luckman said, “Let’s go right out to my workshop. You’ll be able to see the project for which I need your chips.”

  Off the neat kitchen, a door opened directly into the garage. As he stepped through ahead of us, Luckman flipped on the overhead fluorescents.

  The chilly place was filled with shelving stuffed haphazardly with various electronics, components, tools, and complete devices. A portable heater unit radiated scant warmth. The smell of old motor oil and fried transformers filled the air. A large stained workbench centered on the concrete floor held a soldering station, pliers, spools of wire and solder, and an open laptop next to a gadget that I assumed was Luckman’s project.

  The gadget was a gray metal chest with a shoulder strap and a hinged lid, rather resembling a carry case designed to hold a hundred music CDs. But the interior was instead filled with a welter of complicated circuitry, connected to various readouts and controls and a tiny LCD display like a phone’s screen. I assumed that the innards were exposed to be worked on and would be hidden in the finished state. From the case emerged a slim electrical cable terminating in a pistol-grip device that reminded me of a point-and-shoot video game controller.

  I noticed Stan taking everything in with acute discernment and judgment.

  Luckman’s attitude as he approached the gadget became that of a beaming father ready to introduce his child prodigy. His dour face lit up with real enthusiasm and affection.

  “Here it is, gentlemen. The result of over a decade of research and labor, all on my own nickel. No institutional backing—a hindrance that slowed my progress considerably. But that leaves all the patents and rights in my name. I call it the Luckman Blast Agent Sensor—LBAS, for short.”

  The name didn’t help clarify anything. “Exactly what does the machine do?” I asked him.

  “It’s an explosives detector. Let me demonstrate.” Luckman took down a glass jar filled with a quantity of pinkish granules. “ANFO—ammonium nitrate–fuel oil. The stuff McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. Now, watch this.”

  Luckman powered up his detector, and various colored LEDs began to glow, while numbers flickered and waveforms appeared on the little display screen. The whole affair reminded me of a clunky tricorder from early Star Trek. He picked up the pistol grip and held it over the vial, squeezing the trigger. Nothing happened, and he frowned. He adjusted some controls and tried again. Nothing. More adjustments, and finally a beeping like the backup indicator on a forklift sounded. Luckman appeared relieved.

  “You see? Once the sensors are calibrated precisely, perfect detection every time, even through a glass barrier. And it doesn’t work only with ANFO. The LBAS detects any kind of explosive you can name.”

  Stan gave me a look that asked, Who’s nuts, him or us? I really couldn’t decide.

  “Each unit uses one Intel chip such as the kind you are offering for sale. I will need a large number of such chips, at a suitable discount, if I am to start mass production of my device.”

  “Do you have a buyer already?” I asked.

  Luckman frowned. “No, not exactly. But the market for sensors such as mine is large and robust. The military, both domestic and international, places great store in such devices. Police and fire departments around the globe, also. Transportation security. The demand for a really accurate and reliable explosives detector is practically unlimited! The ones that exist now are primitive. But if I can only get mine to market before any of the next-generation rivals, I’ll be able to establish a dominant position in the marketplace. That’s why I’m eager to secure your chips.”

  “How would you pay us?” said Stan. “These babies go for fifteen hundred apiece.”

  Luckman’s face fell. “Well, you see, I was hoping for credit, perhaps in return for a partial stake in the enterprise. My capital at the moment is limited—I’ve invested so much in R and D over the years already. And I’m afraid a professor’s pay—I teach physics at the State University, you know—goes only so far.”

  The longer Luckman talked, the less I believed in him. He just seemed like an eccentric loser. Maybe his machine could do what he claimed. But more likely not.

  “That’s asking an awful lot from any partner, Dr. Luckman,” I said. “We have to limit our risk, you see.”

  “Oh, but there’s very little risk! Sales are practically guaranteed. Just look!”

  On his laptop, Luckman brought up a recent news article from the Wall Street Journal that detailed the demand for such devices.

  big aerospace firms gear up for increased

  bomb-detection sales

  I was starting to reconsider the potential here when Stan cut right to the chase.

  “How much would one of these babies go for?”

  “Oh, given its superior performance against any competitor, I estimate somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars apiece, based on prices charged for other, more limited devices.”

  We—or Vin Santo, to be precise—were sitting on five thousand chips worth fifteen hundred each on their lonesome: seven and a half million dollars’ worth. Almost 100 percent profit, since Santo had paid peanuts for the initial load of junk hardware. That was a figure that could stoke a man’s greed.

  But now, inside one of Luckman’s gadgets, each chip would suddenly be worth up to twenty times as much.

  The math was easy enough even for a law-school grad. A hundred fifty million dollars gross. And again, while there were bound to be expenses, the vast bulk of that take would be pure gravy.

&nb
sp; And Stan and I were nothing if not gravy hounds.

  22

  I knew that Stan had instantly run the same astonishing numbers in his own head as well. I gave him a look, which he correctly interpreted as a desire for a confidential talk. He addressed the professor.

  “Dude, sir, me and my partner need to exchange a few private words.”

  Luckman seemed thrilled that we had not dismissed him and his proposal out of hand. “Of course,” he said. “I understand completely. You two stay right here and have your discussion. I’m going back inside. I’ll ask my wife to make some coffee for us.”

  Luckman left the garage and respectfully closed the door to the house behind him.

  “So, whaddya think?” Stan said in a lowered voice. “Does this fossil got something valuable or not?”

  “I’m no expert, Stan. I know that explosives detectors really do exist and that there’s a deep market for them. That’s about the extent of my wisdom on the topic. His gadget seemed to register the sample material after he fiddled with it for a while. But maybe he just pressed a button that set off the beeping manually. We don’t know.”

  “Well, the more I think on it, the less it matters whether the gadget works like he says or not. All we gotta do is convince a buyer or three that it works. Maybe not the Pentagon, but somebody lower down the food chain and a little more gullible. Look at this thing, all them wires and dials! It’s impressive enough to bamboozle that Apple guy Jobs, even, if he was still around.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.” I pondered Stan’s argument for a moment. “So you’re saying we can build a fake detector with a fake chip inside and still sell it and get rich.”

  “Absolutely. You’re a respectable and competent con man, aren’t you? This looks like a perfect scam. No harder’n selling fake pocketbooks at the flea market.”

  “But what about the financials?”

  “Obviously, we gotta bring Santo on board. You and I don’t got the nut to get things rolling. Let’s say we cut Vin in for eight million off the top for his chips. Another couple for whatever the production costs are, which he’s gonna front. Call it ten. After we sell all the units, that leaves a hundred and forty million to split four ways.”

  “Four ways?”

  “You, me, Santo, and Dr. Doolittle here. What’s that work out to, roughly? Thirty-five million apiece. And you thought we were gonna score big off Nancarrow! We’d be set for life even if we paid legit taxes! With that kind of dough, we could spit in the eye of anybody we please.”

  “As Groucho said, ‘If that’s your idea of fun.’”

  “Whadda ya say? Are you on board this gravy train or not?”

  I considered the matter for a short interval. “It’ll be a lot of work. We’ve got to babysit Luckman, keep Santo happy, make sure the girls stay blissfully in the dark, oversee production of the gadget, line up buyers, run the dog-and-pony show …”

  “You want your thirty-five million for doing nothing? Where’s your goddamn work ethic?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “My man! Okay, we just have to make sure Luckman don’t go looking for no other backers; then we convince Santo we are onto a major deal and we know what we’re doing. Let’s get our asses in gear.”

  We opened the door into the kitchen. No one was there, but an old coffeemaker was dripping dark brew into its pot and filling the air with a pleasant aroma. We went on into the front room, where Luckman had first received us.

  The bulky inventor was kneeling on a throw pillow in front of a modest side table in a wall niche. With no lamps lit, it took me a minute in the gathering November late-afternoon gloom to recognize the setup as a small, modest Christian shrine. A decorous statue of the Holy Virgin, an unlit votive candle in its painted glass jar, a set of rosary beads lying flat on the table at the foot of the statue, a framed photo of an elderly couple whom I instantly assumed were his venerated parents, probably long deceased. Luckman’s head was bowed, his hands clasped, and his lips moving almost imperceptibly.

  Hearing us come in, he unhurriedly finished his prayers, made the sign of the cross, and stood up. His guileless face exhibited no embarrassment whatever. Hardly my reaction or, I suspect, Stan’s. Funny how Luckman’s innocent piety disconcerted us more than if we had stumbled on him in flagrante with his wife.

  Approaching us with an eager yet anxious smile, Luckman guided us back to the seating area. “Gentlemen, I hope you’ve reached a favorable decision on investing in me and my machine.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, we have. Your demonstration was most impressive. All this is contingent on approval by our superiors, of course, but I feel fairly confident in giving you our pledge of support. All that remains is to work up the exact agreement.”

  Luckman beamed and began shaking both our hands exuberantly in seemingly endless rotation. “Mr. Hasso, Mr. McClinton, this is the culmination of a dream. I can’t possibly convey what this means to me. Oh, I know our success is not guaranteed, but I sense nothing but a clear road ahead of us. Let me get my wife in here with the refreshments, so I can tell her the good news. Rosa! Rosa, we’re ready for the coffee now!”

  In from the kitchen stepped a striking, elegant, yet somehow humble-looking woman in her fifties. Slim and small-bosomed, Rosa Luckman wore a simple brown sheath dress in an almost indiscernible plaid design and coordinated flats. Her wavy black hair, falling just below her shoulders, exhibited some proud streaks of gray. The few age lines on her face enhanced rather than detracted from her well-wrought full lips and large green eyes. She carried a tray with coffeepot, cups, and a plate of supermarket doughnuts.

  Rosa Luckman turned her generous attention first to her husband, giving him a big smile. Her gaze flicked to me, then to Stan.

  She stumbled, nearly losing the tray. Her face had gone solemn and pale. With an immense effort of will, she regathered her composure, but her pleasant voice quavered when she spoke.

  “Forgive me, the rug …” She hastily set the tray down on the coffee table. “Ron, please, all of a sudden I’m not feeling well. I have to excuse myself. I’ll hear all your news later. I’m so sorry, gentlemen. Goodbye.”

  She turned and hastened out.

  I looked at Stan. His face mirrored Rosa’s. I had never seen him so pale and aghast.

  Luckman, however, seemed to detect nothing odd. He made gentle excuses for his wife, poured us coffee, talked about a dozen random topics. It seemed to take forever before we could break away.

  I waited until we were in the car. Stan seemed to have trouble finding reverse. Out on Greenwood Street and motoring away, I said, “Okay, you want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “I know Luckman’s wife from way back. Twenty years ago, she was Rosa Saxby.”

  “And?”

  “And she was my fucking wife!”

  23

  The pleasant, manicured suburb of Hayfields seemed to acquire a Twilight Zone aura. Strangers in the street looked like alien mimics still learning their craft. A sheen of sweat on Stan’s brow confirmed the depth of his unsettled state. I felt as if certain assumed foundation stones in the relationship between Stan and me had crumbled to dust. What the heck could explain this bit of ancient history, previously sealed away? And what line of questioning could I take that wouldn’t further upset Stan and possibly earn me a bop in the snoot?

  Luckily for me, Stan started talking first.

  “You knew I grew up in the Gulch, right?”

  “Sure, a real old-school slum. You had to walk uphill both ways to and from school through snowdrifts you could barely see over—that is, when you weren’t shoplifting, rolling drunks, and shooting dice.”

  “Hardee-har-har. Easy for a rich guy’s kid to make fun of us poor slobs.”

  “My dad never made more than thirty-five thousand dollars a year. Hardly rich-rich.”

  “Yeah,
okay, but at least, you had a dad. And a mother, too, I know. That’s being rich in the only way that counts. My old man croaked when I was seven. Too much booze all the time, and then one night he decided to take a little nap on the train tracks.”

  “Holy fucking Christ. I never knew. I’m sorry, Stan.”

  “Thanks. I try not to make a big deal out of it. All water over the bridge. And plenty of other chumps’ve had worse things happen to them. Lucky for me, my mother held it together and kept the family going.”

  I chose not to inquire at this moment about siblings, including the quasi-mythical trampy sister. I figured Stan would mention any such relations if they figured into his tale.

  “But Ma died when I was sixteen. Cancer. I had no relatives—at least, not any that wanted to take in a stray kid. And I was a minor. The state was gonna put me in a group home. I couldn’t stand the idea. I was all balled up inside, confused, half crazy. Plus, I was pretty wild to begin with. You weren’t so far off the mark with your joke about shoplifting and shit. Except it was more of a grand-theft-auto thing. The idea of having to live with a bunch of strange kids and follow some dumb-ass rules and do what a bunch of busybody adults told me to do—it drove me nuts. I was all set to hit the road. Christ knows what woulda happened to me as a runaway. Sure, I was big for my age, and tough. But that’s no proof against anyone bigger and tougher and meaner. I’d seen too many other kids go down that path to an early grave. But that was when Rosa stepped in.”

  “Rosa Saxby, who was—”

  Stan took a sharp turn onto a wide avenue without really slowing down enough, as if he were trying to outrun the memories.

  “Miss Saxby was our science teacher.”

  “And she took an interest in you because you were such a promising student?”

  “Shove it! She had an interest in me because we were already screwing our brains out.”