by Braun, Matt;
Nor was any connection ever established between Brokaw's birthdate and the time of his death, all of which coincided rather neatly with certain remarks in his will, never stated openly, but expressed in muted terms, that he would be reborn on the very day he died. Since Brokaw had left no explanation behind, choosing to take his secret to the grave, it remained a mystery, perhaps the most unfathomable of all the riddles surrounding his death.
"I suppose most people consider the whole thing a little spooky. But if you stop and think about it, Brokaw's idea was really quite sane."
Stacey had the feeling she was talking to herself, and she was growing weary of the conversation. She hesitated, watching Tanner inspect the vault for the third time, and finally went on. "Well, anyway, my point was, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose, so why not try? Or don't you agree?"
Tanner merely nodded, offering no comment. He kept pacing around the crypt, studying it from various angles, clearly preoccupied. At last, he halted behind the cryptography machine, directly opposite the entranceway, frowning thoughtfully to himself. A moment passed, then he patted the machine with his hand and gave her a quizzical look.
"Doesn't it seem odd to you that Brokaw left this in such an exposed position?"
"Exposed? I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Think about it a minute. Unless I missed something, there's no alarm system of any kind leading into this room—not even an electronic eye. Nothing along the stairs. Nothing in the entranceway where you're standing. Nothing at all, right?"
"Yes, that's correct. But I still don't—"
"And yet this machine was just left sitting here, totally unprotected, in a room that doesn't even have a door. Now, wouldn't you say that's a little strange, almost too casual? Especially when breaking the code to this thing"—he tapped the machine with his finger—"is what qualifies a man for a shot at the vault."
"Not really." Stacey sounded a bit defensive. "Aren't you forgetting the guards and the fence, not to mention the dogs? I'm no expert, but it seems to me it's an exaggeration to say the machine is totally unprotected."
"I am an expert," Tanner informed her. "So take my word for it. There's never been a security system invented that couldn't be penetrated. All it requires is know-how and determination, and the world's full of men who have both."
"If that's true, then I've missed the point." Stacey searched his fare, suddenly very intent. "Or is there a point? What is it you're trying to say?"
"The point is quite simple." Tanner's gaze sharpened perceptibly, and he glanced down at the machine. "A genius doesn't make stupid mistakes."
"Yes, but really! Don't you see, that would mean—"
"Exactly. Brokaw left it here on purpose. Went out of his way, as a matter of fact, to make it seem vulnerable."
Stacey caught her breath, darting a look at the machine, and in the stillness of the crypt her words were barely audible. "Why? What could he hope to accomplish?"
"Good question. And just to be truthful . . . I don't know." Tanner laughed a short mirthless laugh. Then a peculiar glint came into his eye. "I'll tell you one thing, though. Whoever finds out might wish he hadn't."
Stacey shivered, glancing around the crypt. Suddenly she knew it was true—that somehow Tanner was right—and she felt a compelling urge to turn and flee, to escape this place and rejoin the world of the living. She backed out of the entranceway, edging toward the stairs.
"Shall we go? I just remembered . . . I have to speak with the housekeeper. Then I really must get back to the office."
Tanner wandered into the drawing room. He'd seen the look of fear on Stacey's face—an instant of comprehension mixed with dread that she hadn't entirely hidden. Clearly it was an emotion she'd never before experienced in the crypt. But why hide it? Why pretend otherwise and refuse even to discuss it? Her hurried retreat up the stairs had merely been a device to end the conversation. In the foyer she had cut him short—simply left him standing there—and whisked off in search of the housekeeper. Yet her abrupt manner wasn't what bothered him. Nor was he concerned by the look of fright itself. He had the very distinct impression she was frightened of him. Or, if not him, then by the fact that he'd unearthed still another contradiction in the paradox of Lucas Brokaw.
Uneasy, lost in thought, he slowly circled the drawing room gallery. He paused from time to time, caught by a splash of color in a Monet or the primitive symbolism of a Gauguin. But his expression was abstracted, vaguely unaware. Though the paintings registered, there was a deeper level of concentration. His mind kept drifting back to the crypt and the curious machine. And Stacey.
Then he came to the portrait of Stephanie Brokaw.
Suspended over the fireplace mantel, it was a large oil, warm and lush, with faint russet hues reminiscent of the old masters. It was hauntingly lifelike, as though the artist had captured on canvas the very essence of his subject. Stephanie Brokaw was an arresting woman, strikingly beautiful, with raven hair and delicate features and an almost ethereal quality of elegance. She was bare-shouldered, dressed in a flowing terra cotta gown, and the claret glow of a ruby pendant sparkled on her breast. Yet it was her eyes that dominated the portrait—deep umber pools, tantalizing and strangely inviting, filled with a spiritual wisdom that transcended time and place and the impermanence of flesh.
Tanner stared up at the portrait, captivated by her gaze. Some inner part of him felt drawn to her, irresistibly beckoned; he couldn't seem to tear himself away. He had the odd sensation of being touched, somehow caressed, as though her eyes plumbed the core of what he was and gently laved it with affection. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he was consumed within the umber depths of her gaze, the single focal point in a world that had suddenly gone hazy. An exquisite vertigo swept over him, an intensely sensual feeling, and suddenly he was aware of a swirl of color and sound, as if he were no longer alone and somewhere in the distance music played.
She moved toward him then, sweeping majestically down the staircase. She was a vision of loveliness—never more radiant—a creature of stunning incandescence, small and vivacious and graceful. Her beauty was heightened by the russet gown and glittering bloodred ruby he'd given her to mark the occasion—their anniversary.
He crossed the foyer as she descended the last step. Her eyes held him enthralled, brimming with love, and he extended his hand.
"Stephanie . . . thank God! I thought you'd never come down."
"I beg your pardon."
Tanner blinked, the spell broken. The music faded and the voices drifted away. His vision slowly cleared. He found himself staring at Stacey.
"What is it, Warren? Are you all right?"
"Of course, never better." He smiled, suddenly aware of her hand, and released it. "Why, something wrong?"
"No, you just startled me and . . . well . . . there for a moment, you didn't seem yourself."
His smile broadened. "That's because you don't know me well enough yet. But it's an oversight easily corrected . . . if you'll break your rule."
Stacey appeared uncertain, on the verge of a question. Then her expression changed and she merely shook her head. "I'm sorry, but we're running late. Do you mind?"
Tanner stepped aside and she moved past him. There was a look of mild puzzlement on his face, and as she walked toward the door, it occurred to her that the question wasn't necessary after all. He really didn't remember! None of it. Not the words or the name or the tenderness in his voice.
Nor the fact that he'd mistaken her for a dead woman.
V
Logs crackled in the fireplace and a stereo flooded the apartment with gypsy violins. Through an elliptical picture window that overlooked the lee side of Telegraph Hill, lights on the Bay Bridge flickered in the distance. As it did on most autumn nights, the city lay cloaked in a murky haze, punctuated by the basso wail of foghorns and the almost inaudible clang of cable cars. It was a night that invited a toasty fire and dreamy music.
Curt Ruxton lounged back in a hug
e beanbag chair. He was smoking a joint, drifting lazily on some inner cloud as he watched the blink-blink of fights on the bridge. Beside him, sharing both the chair and the joint, Jill Dvorak hummed softy to herself, lost in an erotic little fantasy of her own. Her cheeks were flushed and her body glowed with anticipation, as she unconsciously carressed and explored, her hand running over him like a rain of softly falling petals. Scarcely aware of her, Ruxton took another long drag, savoring the acrid, grassy taste. Then he pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, passed her the joint, and again focused on the blinking lights.
Across from them, on a plush sofa, Monk Birkhead uncapped a vial of white powder. A small cutting board and a penknife were arranged on the coffee table before him. Carefully, with a slight tap of his finger, he sprinkled a pinch of cocaine onto the cutting board. After sealing the vial, he set it aside, opened the knife, and scraped the powder into a thin line about an inch long. Then he rolled a dollar bill into a tight tube and inserted one end into his fight nostril. Leaning forward, he pressed his left nostril closed, positioning the tube over the coke. With a loud snuff, he quickly ran the line, sniffing every last flake off the board. All in one motion, he pulled the tube loose, tossed it onto the table, and flopped back against the sofa.
The effect of his snort was almost instantaneous. A rushing high swept over him, and his skin tingled with a feeling of raw sensuality. The flames in the fireplace became bolder, every color in the spectrum bright and clear and intensely brilliant. A grotesque, lopsided grin spread across his face. His eyes glazed in a look that was at once sinister and lighthearted, a sort of jovial, rapacious lust.
"Anybody wanna fuck?"
The offer was all-inclusive, directed to both Ruxton and the girl. Birkhead was a switch-hitter and by no means a stranger to San Francisco's gay bars. But he generally found all the action he wanted at home. While Ruxton himself wasn't bisexual, Jill's appetites were wholly without inhibition. In bed her entire body became a damp, inviting orifice.
The three of them formed a highly compatible ménage à trois. As roommates they shared one another in the same way they shared a bed—comfortably, without jealousy or jostling, and with very little emotion. Yet however cosmopolitan the arrangement, their needs beneath the sheets were not always the same.
Tonight Birkhead had that weird look on his face—-the look that invariably signaled one of his sadomasochistic spells. But at the moment Ruxton simply couldn't be bothered. His own mood was much too mellow to have it spoiled by the big man's whip-and-whimper routine. He ignored the invitation.
"Don't you think you're hitting the coke a little heavy?"
"Hell, this is good stuff!" Birkhead jiggled the vial. "Best I've had since I left Nam, and that's a fact. It's uncut . . . pure as the driven snow!"
"And you're the snowbird that ought to know."
Birkhead gave him a dopey grin. "Yeah, that's me. King of the snowbirds!"
"Which merely proves my point," Ruxton observed. "Keep hitting it the way you have and the inside of your head will look like you inhaled napalm."
Birkhead already had the nasal drip of a cocaine addict, and he sniffed constantly. But his philosophy was live for the instant, and it concerned him not at all that he was slowly incinerating his nasal passages.
"So I'll go down in flames. Who gives a good goddamn? At least I'll be flying high when I take the dive."
"You always were a fatalist, Monk. But unoriginal, sadly unoriginal! All this bunk about live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse is pure camp. You think you're into a whole new bag, and all you've really done is take three giant steps backward."
Ruxton's wit, while sometimes charming, often carried a sting. He was inclined to provoke arguments merely to sharpen that sting, for he viewed other people as a foil for his own thoughts. Not surprisingly, this generated a certain irreverence toward the rest of the world. But it wasn't so much contempt as amusement. He found the folly of those about him rather quaint, almost touching, and he had a curious empathy for their struggle to escape the treadmill.
After college he'd spent several years on the treadmill himself, leaping about from job to job in a flurry of disillusionment. Out of his bitterness sprang the conviction that the only way to beat the system was to finesse the men who ran it. So he'd become a stockbroker, and later an entrepreneur, and there he found his true métier in life.
A man of mercurial moods, Ruxton had the look of an aesthetic roué. Lean and wiry, possessed of a massive calm, he had clear, hypnotic eyes, angular features, and dark curly hair cropped close to the skull. Yet it was a deceptive appearance, for he was urbane and glib, with a quicksilver mind and a profound sense of life's absurdities. All of which created an understated air of authority, an advantage he exploited to the fullest.
By contrast, Birkhead was robust as an ox and uncommonly agile for his size. Not slow-witted but simply big and tough, with scarcely any neck, his head fixed directly upon his shoulders. He had a great black ruff of hair, muddy deep-set eyes, and a mouthful of teeth that looked like old dice. His youth had been spent in logging camps, where punishing hours and physical labor had quilted his arms and chest with thick, corded muscle. Later in the army he had acquired a certain worldliness, if little in the way of polish. On occasion he left the impression he was only one step removed from walking on his knuckles.
It was this atavistic quality that fascinated Ruxton even as it revolted him. It was one of the reasons Ruxton kept him around. At times, particularly in their business affairs, it was both reassuring and persuasive to have a neatly groomed Neanderthal backing his demands.
An ex-Green Beret, Birkhead was a master of karate and had a fondness for mano a mano brawls. Churlish even at the best of times, he had all the social instincts of a cobra and an absolute genius for the macabre, which was never more evident than when he'd gone too long without a snort of coke. Then he turned brutal, unpredictably vicious, a man to be feared.
But now, like a child rebuked for believing in the tooth fairy, Monk Birkhead grinned sheepishly and averted his gaze. Had anyone else mocked his outlook on life, he would have administered, free of charge, a lesson in brute force. Under Ruxton's haughty stare, however, he simply let it pass and quickly changed the subject.
"Say, talking about three steps backward, that reminds me. What I told you about at the office. You got busy on the phone and you never did answer me."
"Sorry, old buddy, I don't even remember the question. Answer you about what?"
"You know, about whatsizname. The old spook."
Ruxton rolled another joint and lit it.
Several moments passed while he contemplated the fiery coal on the tip. Then he smiled, a lazy sphinxlike smile, as if Birkhead's question were a trifle absurd but he had decided to indulge him nonetheless. At last, having milked the pause for dramatic effect, his words tumbled out in little spurts of smoke.
"Ah, yes, Lucas Brokaw. The fiddle of the ages. An ethereal testament to man's supreme gullibility. Part genius. Part ghoul. And the greatest practical joker of all time. A formidable if not altogether lucid combination.''
"In a pig's ass?” Birkhead laughed, relaxed now, playing the game. "Save your highbrow routine for somebody else. You just put him down because you're some kind of oddball heathen. Same old think tank mentality."
"Monk, you have a rare and singular talent for the mixed metaphor." Ruxton wagged his head back and forth in mild wonder. "To be more precise, I'm simply your everyday iconoclast who believes in lopping off the heads of all ancient and feeble myths. Which includes everyone's favorite genie, Lucas Brokaw."
"Bullllshit! Lemme tell you something, wise guy. There's more to reincarnation than you think. When I was in Nam I met lots of chicks, and they told me things that'd blow your mind. I mean real live spook stories!"
"Now who's doing a number? The only chicks you met in Saigon were hookers. So don't futz me around, old buddy. Whatever they taught you, it didn't have anything to do with you
r mind."
Jill suddenly stirred, alert as ever to any topic with erotic overtones. She struggled upward out of a glassy-eyed daze and laughed a throaty little laugh. "No fair, you guys! We made a rule, remember? Just the three of us, no outside chicks."
"We weren't talking about chicks," Ruxton informed her. "Tonight's seminar deals with my impending reincarnation."
"Reincarnation?" Jill batted her lashes, thoroughly disoriented. "I don't get it, luv. Who are you supposed to be?"
"According to our resident scholar," Ruxton made an expansive gesture toward the sofa, "who is a self-professed expert on such matters, I might be none other than old moneybags himself, Lucas Brokaw."
"Oooh wow!" Jill clapped her hands with the greedy savor of a little girl. "Super idea!"
"Monk thought so too. Except that he'd just sniffed a pinch of twinkle-dust, and to put it charitably, he had his head screwed on backward."
"Hey, that's a crock and you know it." Birkhead looked genuinely wounded. "All I said was that you were born on the day he died."
"Wait a minute," Jill interjected. "The day who died?"
"Who we're talking about, juicyfruit. Lucas Brokaw."
"You just lost me again. How did you know that?"
"Hell, I don't know. I just knew. Everybody knows! Besides, it was in this morning's paper. That's what gave me the idea. There was an article about the Brokaw Foundation, and it gave a rehash on the old man. I guess that's the first time I ever really noticed the date. All I did was subtract back and it turns out Curt was born on the night Brokaw died. It's as simple as that."