Dover Beach

by Richard Bowker

  "I'm going to leave you with your memories," I replied softly. "Do what you want with them. I'm heading back to Boston."

  She reacted as if I had punched her. "Oh, no, Walter. Please. You can't go. You hate America."

  I shrugged. "I guess I don't hate it as much as I thought."

  "But—but you've got to stay. You have to testify at Winfield's trial, right?"

  "I gave my statement to the police yesterday. They said it would be sufficient. It's not like this is a difficult case. They were actually quite eager to have me leave."

  Then Kathy did something awful. She got down on her knees in front of me, her hands clasped as if in prayer. "Please, Walter. Please. I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I'm so sorry. You're all I've got now. I love you, Walter. Can't you see that? I love you." And she buried her face in my lap, her hands clutching at my sides, her body shaking with grief and despair.

  This wasn't the way it happened in books, in movies. This emptiness wasn't what I was supposed to be feeling. In movies, in books, you chucked people under the chin and said what needed to be said, and the scene faded out. The hysterics took place between chapters, the regret and the uncertainty were merely glints in the hero's steely eyes.

  What could I say to her? I had to go back. Even if she were innocent—and she wasn't. Even if she loved me—and I wasn't sure she did, wasn't sure this wasn't a final, desperate performance. Even if I loved her—and I didn't want to think about that.

  I had to go back, you see, because the case, such as it was, was not quite over. And the final chapters would have to take place in Boston.

  Chapter 32

  Hello good-bye hello good-bye.

  The shotgun was trained on me from the time I turned the corner. I smiled.

  The shotgun was slowly lowered, and the person holding it started to smile too. "Wally?"

  "Hey, Doctor J."

  Doctor J shook my hand solemnly. "What you doin' here, Wally?"

  "Come to call on your boss. Is he in?"

  "Course." He pounded on the door. "Got a visitor," Doctor J informed Mickey nonchalantly when he opened it; Doctor J looked pleased at Mickey's astonished reaction. Inside, Brutus started barking furiously. Nothing had changed.

  I exchanged pleasantries with Mickey, then went upstairs and knocked on Bobby's door.

  "Yeah?" he called out.

  "Delivery from Harrods for a Mr. R. Gallagher," I said. "Fish and chips and shepherd's pie and a pint of bitter, eh what?"

  Bobby opened the door in a hurry. "Jesus fucking Christ," he said cleverly.

  "Hiya." I walked inside and sat on the couch beneath the photograph of John F. Kennedy. "How's things?"

  He shut the door and went back to his desk. "Fine, I guess. I sent you another letter yesterday."

  "Waste of postage. Sorry."

  He sat down. "What happened, Wally? They kick you out?"

  I shook my head. "I finished the case, more or less, so I figured I should come back here and get another one."

  "You finished the case?"

  "Yup. Tracked down Cornwall just the way I was supposed to. Of course, my client then proceeded to murder him, which isn't the way it's written up in the textbooks, but that wasn't my fault. So here I am, back at my home base, ready for anything."

  Bobby looked nonplussed. "Jesus, Wally. You wanna elaborate on all that?"

  "Oh, not just now. Maybe I'll write it down someday, get Art to publish it. But listen, there's this one aspect of the case I thought you might be interested in."

  "Yeah?" He sounded more suspicious than interested.

  I took a breath. I was getting to be an old hand at this. "It was just this minor point, you know, but it's been sort of nagging at me, and we experienced private eyes like to tie up all the loose ends. See, when I visited the Ministry of Science to find out about Cornwall, I asked for Mr. J. T. Carstairs. He was the guy who signed the letter that your friend in the JFK Building showed me, remember? Well, they had never heard of this guy at the Ministry. Okay, so big deal. But then I found Cornwall anyway, and he was talking about this and that before my client killed him, and he mentioned the months he spent at a military base after his arrival in England. But the letter said that all the scientists were put up at college dorms in London. Okay, big deal again. But it made me think about the letter and, you know, it was on this plain white stationery, and you'd think the Ministry of Science could afford their own letterhead. Well, I kind of juggled all of this around in my mind and came up with a theory. Just a theory, mind you."

  I shut up. Bobby's customary smirk had disappeared. He looked very unhappy. "I confess," he whispered.

  There. That was easy enough. But I hadn't expected him to take it this seriously. "You forged the letter?"

  He nodded. "You needed proof to give your client so you could go to England. You weren't getting any. So I made it up."

  "And the guy at the JFK Building just pretended it was a real letter?"

  "Sure. What harm did it do?"

  "I don't know," I said, quite honestly. "Um, why are you crying, Bobby?"

  "Ah, shit," he said. He groped for a handkerchief and blew his nose. "Ah, shit."

  Watching Bobby cry was very unsettling; that wasn't the way the world was supposed to operate. I tried to figure it out. "Bobby, the other scientists on the list—they were real, they went to England. I came across their names while I was tracking down Cornwall." He stared at me, cheeks wet with tears, not disagreeing. I plunged ahead. "Bobby, you told me once you worked at MIT. Did you know something about all this?"

  He slowly nodded. "I worked at MIT. Until there was no more MIT, until there was just one long nightmare you never woke up from. Remember those days?"

  "A little," I said.

  "Yeah. You try to forget, like me. But they don't go away, Wally, they're gonna stay with you to the grave. No food, disease everywhere, people going nuts. And all you try to do is stay alive, even though you can't figure out why that seems so important. You know?"

  "I know," I said. "Bobby, did you—"

  "I worked for the fucking Brits," he shouted, loud enough to rattle the crucifix behind him. "There," he said, in a normal tone. "Satisfied, Wally? I heard they were rounding up the scientists. Shit, I knew what all those MIT guys looked like, I even knew their fucking addresses. So I offered my services to the Brits. And they put me on. Piecework. They gave me food for every scientist I brought in. And they gave me a gun. I suppose they told you over there it was all voluntary. Bullshit. Ask your friend Professor Hemphill."

  Hemphill wasn't there, so I asked Bobby instead. "What happened?"

  Bobby leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his large stomach. He wasn't crying anymore, but his eyes had that distant, misty look I knew all too well. "I went to get him, over in Cambridge. Cornwall was with him. That was great—saved me a trip, and the Brits were real interested in biologists like them.

  "Cornwall was dying to go. I didn't have to do any convincing with him. Most of them, I think they wanted to get out, but they wouldn't look too eager, they felt like they should pretend they wanted to stay, help the suffering, shit like that. So I had to do a little persuading, maybe pull the gun on them, and that would do the trick. But I didn't have to bother for Cornwall.

  "Hemphill was a different story, the stupid shit. He wasn't going. Couldn't convince him—I don't know why. I took out the gun finally and I pointed it at him and I said, 'You're taking food out of my mouth, asshole, so you'd better come with me or you're a dead man.'

  "And he wouldn't come, Wally. And Cornwall starts laughing and says something to him like, 'You've only got one life, pal. Don't waste it.' But he wouldn't budge. I never killed anyone before in my life—shit, I never even fired a gun. But I figured it was now or never. A guy has to eat, right?

  "But I couldn't do it. Not in cold blood, Wally. I left him there and took Cornwall to the Brits. And that was the last I heard of either of them, until you started asking your damn questions
on the way back from New Hampshire. Didn't feel like going into it then. Don't much feel like it now, for that matter."

  "And then Hemphill showed up out of the blue a couple of weeks ago with a business proposition," I murmured.

  Bobby looked at me, wondering how I knew that, but he let it pass. "Yeah," he said. "We recognized each other right away. And we got to talking, and I said, 'You know, I've thought a lot over the years about that time I almost killed you, and I've decided I was stupid. I shoulda killed you.' And you know what he said, Wally?"

  I shook my head.

  "He said, 'I wish you had. I wish you had.' How do you figure people, huh, Wally?"

  Beats me. I am not a brave man, Mr. Sands. That's what Hemphill had said to me in McDonald's. He had managed to be brave once, with Bobby's gun pointed at him and Cornwall's laughter ringing in his ears, so that he could be there if his clone ever returned. But the joke was on him. Was that the real reason he hated Cornwall so much?

  Beats me. The more I knew, the more I knew I didn't know. Hemphill, Cornwall, Winfield—their dreams and passions would always be slightly beyond my grasp. Now my fat friend Bobby was turning out to be a lot more complex than I could have imagined. And Kathy—if I had stayed with her, would I ever have really understood her? She probably didn't understand herself. Maybe real private eyes had a better handle on these things. But I was beginning to doubt it.

  "I'm sorry to bring all this up, Bobby," I said. "You did a big favor for me—bigger than I realized—and I appreciate it."

  Bobby shrugged. "Shit, what are friends for? It's good to have you back."

  "It's good to be back." I stood up, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke. "Bobby, there's just one thing that still bothers me about this case."

  Bobby looked at me, and I looked at him, and then he started to laugh.

  I laughed too.

  Bobby stood up and stuck out his hand. "So long, Sherlock."

  I shook his hand. "Thanks, Bobby."

  Chapter 33

  Rush hour outside Park Street Station. Not much of a rush. By the cemetery, Ground Zero was sitting on a milk crate in the slush, playing his accordion. A few people were waiting, like me, for the train to come in. "Haven't seen you around lately, Walter," a casual acquaintance said.

  "Been on a business trip."

  "Oh? How's business?"

  "Never been better."

  I waited, and Jesus Christ came walking across the plaza, dragging his cross. His little boy handed out scraps of yellow paper to anyone who would take them. I reached into the pockets of my parka and felt around. Yes, it was there. I took it out. "Still have mine," I said when the boy came up to me. I showed it to him:

  The End Is At Hand

  "Do you heed the message, Walter?" Jesus Christ asked me.

  "Sure do," I said. "Thanks for reminding me."

  He nodded solemnly and walked on through the Common with his cross and his child. I heard the train rumble into the station below. After a few moments, the commuters started straggling out of the exit. Gwen was one of the last of them.

  She almost walked past me, head down, intent on making her way home through the slush. "Happy New Year," I murmured.

  She stopped. "Walter?"

  "Hi."

  She reached out and touched my arm, as if to make sure I was real. "What happened?" she asked.

  "Long story. Maybe I'll write it all down someday."

  "Is the case over?"

  "Well, not exactly."

  She stared at me. I had looked at that face so many times—those hollow cheeks, those deep, wise eyes. We were so young; we were so old. I remembered. "Then why are you here?" she asked. "The case is in England."

  I shook my head. "That wasn't the real case. It took me a while to figure out, but I finally understood. The real case was back here in Boston. I just finished extracting a confession from one Robert Gallagher."

  Gwen was silent.

  One last, spectacular summary of the evidence. "He admitted forging the letter that sent me off to England," I went on. "But see, that couldn't be the whole story. Bobby can't write letters like that. And besides, he's almost blind, and he has to dictate to Doctor J, who's a fine fellow but can't spell for shit. No, there's only one person Bobby could turn to who could've written that letter. Only one person," I repeated. "And I taught her everything she knows."

  Gwen tilted her head just a little. She denied nothing, she admitted nothing. "You came back," was all she said.

  "I came back. Linc will call me a fool, but I came back."

  I took her arm, and we started to walk away from the station. Gwen stopped after a few steps and stood facing me. "There's no good time to tell you," she said, "so I'll just say it. Linc killed himself New Year's Eve."

  I stared at her, unwilling to believe it. "No."

  "He was in terrible pain, Walter. It was only a matter of time."

  Time," I repeated dumbly. Memories of Linc rushed through me. I know I'm dying, he said, but you're dying, too, everyone is dying. All that matters is what you do before you take that last breath. Time. I wanted to turn it around and go back and see him just one more time, but that's not the way things work around here. Linc was gone. "I wish I could've said good-bye to him."

  "He loved you," Gwen said. "He loved all of us."

  We walked a little farther, and then I stopped in front of Ground Zero. "You know 'As Time Goes By'?" I asked him.

  His scarred face lit up. "Cathablanca. Nineteen-forty-three."

  I tossed a nickel into his soggy hat. "Play it, Ground Zero. Play 'As Time Goes By.' "

  He hit a few chords on his accordion and started to sing. It was awful. I listened for a verse, and then I turned to Gwen. "Shall we dance?"

  She gave a little smile. "I'd like that very much."

  And when two loverth woo...

  "Did you get to all those places on Art's list?" Gwen asked as we danced. "Stratford-on-Avon, Dover Beach...?"

  I shook my head. "Not a one."

  "Do you regret it?"

  "No, I guess I don't." And then I smiled. I had my title, just in the nick of time.

  They thtill thay "I love you." On that you can rely...

  "Did you know I'd come back?" I asked.

  "I don't know anything about the future," she said. "I try not to think about it."

  No matter what the future bringth...

  And I thought of Linc and of Cornwall, of Hemphill and Winfield and Bobby and Kathy and Stretch and Art, of all of us dead and dying, the past that clings to us and the future that terrifies us. And there is nothing we can do but hold on to each other on that darkling plain.

  And dance.

  Ath time goth by.

  So that's what Gwen and I did. As we had in the fallout shelter so long ago, as we would again (perhaps) in some unimaginable future.

  We danced—in the slush, amid the ghosts of the ruined city.

  The End

  Want more from Richard Bowker?

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  THE DISTANCE BEACONS

  The Last P.I. Series

  Book 2

  Excerpt from

  The Distance Beacons

  The Last P.I. Series

  Book 2

  by

  Richard Bowker

  Award-winning Author

  It was one of those May days that make you wonder what's so bad about being alive. Sun shining, birds singing, flowers blooming—the Earth seemed to have shrugged off the awful things we had done to her, and she was offering the same old beauty and warmth and hope that had always been her gift to us, It was the kind of day that could make you half-believe that nothing awful had happened. It was the kind of day you had to take advantage of, in case the Earth changed her mind.

  So why, I wondered, was I sitting in a dingy office on lower Washington Street, staring out into the sunshine and feeling sorry for myself?

  Here are the answers I came up with:

  ~ Beca
use I am a responsible professional, and anyone responding to my ad in the Globe would expect to find me here.

  ~ Because I don't have an answering machine to take a message, should anyone try to call. Don't have a telephone either, for that matter, so calling would not be easy.

  ~ Because I am a dreamer, still trying to live my dream.

  ~ Because I'm a fool.

  That seemed to about cover it.

  This is the life of the private eye, I told myself—the long stretches of boredom punctuated by the occasional burst of excitement. But this particular stretch was beginning to seem like a life sentence. I had arrived back in Boston from England in early January, having muddled through my first case, and there was nothing to do but set up shop once again. So I put a log in the wood stove and picked out a book from one of the many tottering stacks that littered the office. Then I said a prayer to the poster of Humphrey Bogart, my patron saint, who smiled a crooked but encouraging smile at me from the opposite wall, and I waited for the sound of footsteps on the dim staircase, the tentative rapping on the frosted glass door of my office.

  And I waited. I ran out of books. I used the wood stove less and less as the weather grudgingly improved. I went home every night and faced the uncomfortable silences as my friends tried not to ask me why I was wasting my life. And now a beautiful spring day was drifting away from me and my money was all but gone, but still I sat in my office, and stared out my window, and hoped.

  And eventually something happened.

  It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, of course: the mysterious blonde, dressed in black, desperate for my help; the dying man with a priceless figurine he could entrust to no one but me; the eccentric millionaire whose strange predicament only I could solve. Not this time, anyway. This time it was two young soldiers driving up in an ancient jeep. They parked and looked dubiously up at the building I occupied. I pulled back from the window. Wouldn't do to appear too eager. I hurriedly tossed aside the book I was rereading and spread some papers on my desk in what I hoped was impressive-looking disarray.