Dead Ringers

by Christopher Golden

  Alonso chuckled softly. “You asking me on a date, Tess?”

  “I’m at work right now, so I thought I’d hurry things along.”

  “If you like Thai, I know a place.”

  Tess forced herself to breathe, forced away all the ugly scenarios that she imagined when she thought about anyone seeing her without her clothes on. “I love Thai. Seven o’clock?”

  It had been a very long time. She wasn’t ready to have sex, but she told herself she was being a presumptuous fool. Alonso might spend ten minutes with her and want to run for the hills. Even if he liked her, who was to say she would do more than kiss him?

  Your vibrator says so, she thought, and stifled a laugh. Guys had hit on her plenty of times in the past two years, but they had almost universally been swaggering asshats, or just flirting to pass the time. Reflex flirting, married men keeping in practice.

  “I’ll text you the address and I’ll see you there on Tuesday,” Alonso said.

  “Sounds good,” she replied. “I’m glad you called.”

  “So am I.”

  He hung up without the sort of awkward, diminishing farewell small talk most people indulged in. Tess liked that. Thus far, there were a lot of things about Alonso she liked. Suddenly her rainy Friday didn’t seem quite so dismal.

  Until she remembered Lili, and the plans they’d made for after work.

  The butterfly of anxiety in her chest began to beat its wings again.

  THREE

  It was midafternoon before Nick could get Derek Wheeler to call him back. He’d left three messages on the drive home from North Conway, dropped Kyrie off in Allston, where she shared a place with two other Boston University grad students, and gone back to his Somerville apartment. He taught classes Monday through Wednesday and usually held office hours on Thursday and Friday, even as he tried to finish the manuscript for 18th Century Boston, the book he’d been researching and writing for nearly four years. But he and Kyrie were in the midst of making important decisions about their life together, and canceling his office hours for this week had allowed them to steal away on Wednesday afternoon and spend two nights and one lovely day in the White Mountains. He was sure that autumn in England held its own charms, but though he’d grown up in Florida, he’d grown to love the seasons of the American Northeast, and would miss them.

  Oxford, he thought. An image of Maddie twirling in delirious circles swam into his head and hesitation plagued him again. Not doubt, really, but worry.

  Since arriving home, he’d walked to the market to pick up some essentials, done a load of laundry, and put away the clean dishes that had been in the dishwasher since he had left on Wednesday. He felt the pull of his desk from the second bedroom he used as an office. There were e-mails to answer and research materials to catalog, now that he was getting closer to finishing the book, but he had promised himself that he wouldn’t work at all today. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Kyrie had work of her own to do and they’d agreed that Saturday would be a day apart, to focus.

  He had just started to surrender to the inexorable pull of his desk when Wheeler finally phoned him back.

  “Thanks for calling,” Nick said as he answered.

  “You left three messages. Didn’t seem like you were giving up, though I don’t know why. You made it pretty clear you didn’t want me to call you.”

  “I never said that, Derek—”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Mr. Devlin?”

  Nick hesitated, disturbed by the real anger in the man’s voice. He moved into his desk and slid into his chair. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but the last time you and I talked was Monday and at that point, we were very much on the same page.”

  The line went so quiet, Nick thought he had hung up.

  “Derek?”

  “You called me yesterday afternoon. Said some really unpleasant things about my business skills and about me, personally. Or don’t you remember telling me you didn’t think people would want to buy an apartment from a Realtor who looked like a troll?”

  “Jesus,” Nick whispered. “No, I don’t remember that, because I never said it. I was up in New Hampshire with Kyrie. Whoever made that call, I swear it wasn’t me. I hired you because I knew you would help me make the place presentable and get me a fair price for it. That hasn’t changed.”

  Nick could practically hear him mulling it over.

  “The guy said he was you. And he sure sounded like you,” Wheeler said.

  “I’m telling you—”

  “You do realize how this sounds? I mean, who the hell does something like that?”

  “I have no idea,” Nick said, trying to make a mental list of people he and Kyrie had told about their plans. “A practical joker, I guess.”

  Wheeler sniffed. “I’m not laughing.”

  “No,” Nick said. “Neither am I.”

  FOUR

  In the gloom of his basement, Frank woke with a start. He whipped his head around, suddenly afraid that rats might get at him, there on the floor with his wrists cuffed behind the support column. Had he heard something in his sleep? Yes, there had been something—a skittering whisper that had chased him up out of his dreams and lingered in his thoughts now. His throat was dry and he wetted his parched lips with his tongue.

  Rats. So stupid. He’d never seen rats in the basement. A couple of times he had needed to set traps for mice, but never rats.

  Exhaling, he sagged against the post. His cheeks were stiff with dried tears and the memory of his breakdown this morning brought a fresh wave of humiliation crashing over him. The only saving grace was that nobody had been there to see it, not even the man who had his face. The impossible creature. The bastard.

  The muscles in his shoulders burned, not just from his hands being cuffed behind him all the time but from the way his arms had been twisted into uncomfortable positions while he slept against the post. The blanket underneath him did not keep the cold of the concrete floor from seeping through and the stink of the waste bucket permeated the entire basement, making his stomach roil. The stench clung to the inside of his nostrils and mouth like the yellow coating of pollen that blanketed everything in springtime. He’d never be rid of it.

  He’d die first.

  The truth and the pain and humiliation made him tremble. His lips pressed into a thin line and he felt his eyes welling with fresh tears of exhaustion and fury.

  Frank exhaled and then slipped back against the post so unexpectedly that his head struck the metal hard enough to clang. Pain echoed through his skull but suddenly he no longer had the energy to react to it. For several seconds he felt a pull inside him, an awful suction as if something had crept up into his chest cavity and begun to tug on his heart or draw the blood from it.

  Like a leech, he thought. Inside.

  His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, his limbs like lead. He almost surrendered to that dreadful, sudden weakness, almost lost consciousness entirely, but the sound of the basement door opening made him force himself to sit up. He blinked and shook his head, breathing deeply, and some of his meager strength returned.

  The light clicked on and the man with his face came down the steps. He wore the tailored suit Frank had bought to wear at his mother’s funeral and what looked like a brand-new tie, brighter and more stylish than anything Frank would ever have put around his neck. Clean-shaven and with a neat haircut, eyes bright and smile wide, he approached to within a few feet and tossed the keys against Frank’s chest. They fell onto his bare leg, then slid down to rest against his scrotum. The cold reminder of his vulnerability forced him to sit up straighter, but his flagging strength did not return.

  “You don’t look well, Frank,” the man said with an air of false concern. “Very pale.”

  “Let me go.”

  The man cocked his head. “It’s an odd combination of pitiful and adorable that you’d still be asking me that. I’ve told you, it’s going to be awhile. When the time comes, you’ll know.”

&nbs
p; Frank wanted to spit at him but couldn’t muster the strength or the saliva.

  “I’m going to be late with dinner for you,” the man said, “but I figured you’d need to use the bucket, so I came down.”

  Mustering up what little energy he had, limbs heavy as lead, Frank drew his legs under him and began to slide around the pole until his cuffed hands could snag the keys that his captor had tossed his way. The bastard must have seen how much difficulty he was having and could have helped him, but no help was forthcoming.

  When Frank had unlocked his cuffs and gone over to relieve himself in the bucket, the man turned his back. He’d been holding his piss for hours and the stream splashed loudly into the bucket. Frank had pissed and shit in the bucket with this bastard in the room many times by now, but the shame had not relented. He doubted that it ever would.

  Just as he’d finished, the man spoke again.

  “I also wanted to share the good news. I got the job. They loved my samples—”

  “My samples,” Frank said, his voice cracking as he turned, nakedness and humiliation forgotten. Anger made his heart race as he took a shaky step toward his captor. “You used my portfolio to get that job?”

  The man with his face reached under his suit coat and drew the gun from his rear waistband, not even bothering to take aim. He could see Frank had grown too weak to be much of a threat to him.

  “Every one of those articles was written by Frank Lindbergh,” the man said, his smile returning. “And I’m Frank Lindbergh, now. That’s my byline. My samples. My job.”

  Frank clenched his fists and howled. “It’s my life!”

  The new Frank pointed his gun at the original. “Not anymore. You had your chance and you blew it. Now put those cuffs back on so I can dump your shit bucket, and if I’m feeling generous later, I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  Frank wanted to kill him. He wanted to cry. But he didn’t have the strength for either. Drained and defeated, he turned and slunk back to the support column, sat on his smelly blanket, and put the handcuffs back on his own wrists. The son of a bitch had his face and now a job he’d dreamed of. Not the teaching post he’d dreaded, but the career rebirth he’d promised himself. Hell, the fucker had his name. Without those things, who was he?

  Again he felt himself fading. Diminishing, as if his very existence were a cup that had cracked, its contents bleeding off into nothing.

  What use was a broken cup?

  How long before the cup would just be empty? How long before it would be discarded?

  FIVE

  Tess stood beneath her black umbrella, rain pouring off the edges in drips and cascades that reminded her of a childhood spent on the corner of Little Tree Lane and Bosworth Road, waiting for the school bus. On rainy days the bus would always be late and the rain would crash down, and a fifth-grader whose name she could no longer remember would always be there without an umbrella, soaking wet. Tess sometimes invited her beneath the shelter of her own umbrella, but not always, and the sometimes of it had haunted her in her adult years. Why had she ever hesitated to offer the little girl shelter, waiting for someone else to do it? Had she worried that it would become her responsibility?

  The way that childhood hesitation disturbed her had helped her become a better human, she thought. A better grown-up.

  Or so she told herself. There had been times when she had seen homeless people in the area near her Boston office building and given away money, sweaters, and—yes, more than once—her umbrella. But not today. Sometimes had come back to haunt her, because today the rain poured down from the cold gray sky and her spine ached and she wanted to hold on to her umbrella. Today she wanted the man sitting beneath a makeshift poncho next to a shopping cart full of sodden belongings to be someone else’s problem.

  A finger tapped her shoulder and she let out an eep and spun around, heart pounding. Lili jumped back a step as they bumped umbrellas and they both laughed, there in the rainy gray Boston afternoon, with the after-work crowd rushing around them. Streams of people raced for cabs and parking garages and the T station, all clad in black and gray and brown. With the buildings of International Place looming nearby and the cars roaring through puddles, throwing sheets of rainwater onto the sidewalks, it seemed to Tess that Lili’s red umbrella was the only patch of vivid color in the entire city.

  Cold and damp, she lowered her umbrella and ducked beneath Lili’s for a moment, embracing her friend, warmed by the connection.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Tess said, rain trickling down the back of her neck, underneath her coat and her shirt. “Are we really doing this? It’s supposed to be sunny on Monday.”

  Lili kissed her cheek and took her hand. Both of them had frozen fingers. “Do you really want to wait till Monday?”

  Tess remembered the encounter at First Light Gallery last night and shook her head. “No. It’s too weird. I won’t be able to focus on anything else if we just go home, but what if he doesn’t show?”

  “Then we get coffee and warm up somewhere dry.”

  “Half an hour. That’s it,” Tess said. “Longer than that and we’re going to feel pretty stupid instead of just freezing.”

  Lili agreed. They found a spot out of the way, near a granite circle that surrounded a small patch of grass and a single tree. The rain lightened a bit as they stood there, umbrella to umbrella, watching the sidewalk where Tess had seen Not-Nick the previous afternoon, but after ten minutes the wait became numbing.

  “This is ridiculous,” Lili said with a shiver. “It’s not even October.”

  “Close enough, obviously.”

  They fell silent for a few seconds, listening to the rain around them. In the distance, thunder rumbled across the sky.

  “Alonso called me today,” Tess confessed.

  Lili’s eyes lit up with mischief and she grinned, about to speak before something caught her attention. She glanced at the river of umbrellas rushing past them and her expression flattened. Tess watched her mouth open into an astonished “O,” and Lili’s head turned to watch one of the black umbrellas float by.

  Tess understood. “Is that him?”

  Lili nodded. Her head slumped a bit and she stared at nothing, as if trying to make sense of what she’d seen. They had come back to the spot where she had first seen her ex-husband’s doppelgänger, thinking they might encounter him again in the after-work pedestrian rush. And now here he was.

  “Let’s go,” Tess said, taking her by the arm.

  A sixtyish woman cussed them out as they cut her off. Tess’s foot splashed into a puddle, but they bulled their way into the sidewalk foot traffic and she tried to keep an eye on that particular umbrella. She saw the man beneath it, the set of his shoulders, the fingers wrapped around the umbrella handle, and she knew them. Even from behind, she knew her ex-husband.

  “That’s Nick,” Lili rasped in her ear, leaning in and keeping her voice down, though in the rain and with cars roaring by, the man who was a half-dozen people ahead of them would not have heard.

  “It’s not,” Tess said. Windswept rain had soaked through the right arm of her jacket and slicked her cold legs, but she felt flushed with the heat of the moment, with stealth and pursuit and the impossible mystery of it all. “It’s not him, Lili. I know it looks like him—”

  “Just like.”

  “Did you think the gallery owner last night was reacting to you just bearing a passing resemblance to this Devani Kanda woman?”

  “I guess not. But still…”

  “I know,” Tess said.

  They followed him south at first, heading along High Street and trying to keep track of him in the flow of people. Tess lost track of where they were until they turned west onto Boylston for a block or so, and then they were headed south again, into the theater district. Lili walked alongside her in a silence Tess found unsettling. With every step, Lili’s reaction reinforced the uneasiness that Tess had been trying so hard to ignore. The resemblance this Theo guy had to Nick D
evlin wasn’t just startling, it was uncanny.

  Coupled with their experience at the art gallery last night, though, it became more than that. Tess felt her skin crawl as she kept her eyes on Theo. Unless Nick and Lili both had identical twins from whom they’d been separated at birth, the existence of Theo and Devani Kanda felt impossible.

  Impossible means impossible, she told herself. So obviously they weren’t. But still this act of tailing him had an air of unreality about it that made her feel a bit queasy, and she was glad to have Lili with her.

  The pedestrian traffic thinned out considerably and they had to drop back, worried that the man might notice them, but the rain fell harder and Tess realized this was an empty concern. Under his umbrella, with the gray sky and the hammering rain and the daylight fading, he wasn’t going to be paying any attention to the city around him, only his destination.

  Unless he’s worried about being followed.

  For half a minute she let this idea trouble her, but she realized that he hadn’t turned to glance back even once during the long minutes they’d been trailing him. He barely paid attention when crossing the street, as if his thoughts were entirely elsewhere.

  When Theo turned down Charles Street, they hung back fifty yards. Two blocks farther, he stepped under the awning of an elegant old brownstone and shook out his umbrella. Lili tugged Tess to a halt and they stood watching for a few breathless seconds, wondering if he had figured them out. Then he walked up the four steps at the front of the building and went through the revolving doors.

  “Shit!” Tess hissed. “Hurry!”

  Together they bolted along the sidewalk, dodging around a pair of older, wool-coated men. Tess splashed through several more puddles until her feet squelched in her shoes and she knew they would be ruined. Their umbrellas bounced along above them, sparring together, until they ran under the brownstone’s awning and came to a huffing stop. Heart pounding, Tess shook off her umbrella and closed it, wet and cold in spite of its protection. Six o’clock had come and gone, perhaps half an hour left before night fell, but with the storm raging it had grown dark already.