by David Stone
Dalton finished building his scotch in silence, poured a second one precisely the same, walked over to Naumann, and set it down in front of him with a hard glare. Fremont watched this entire exercise in silence, and sat back in his chair only when Dalton was sitting down across from him.
No one spoke for a while as the fire grew in strength, filling the
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low masculine room with dancing shadows and a warm flickering light. Fremont drained his Lone Star and set it down on the redwood slab.
“Micah, are you . . . seeing things?” Dalton nodded once, staring at the untasted scotch in his hands. “What kind of things?” asked Fremont, his voice unnaturally low
and calming, as if soothing a flat-eared horse. “Just drink your beer, Willard.” “Good advice, Willard,” said Naumann. “You’re not here,” said Micah, to Naumann. “I know that.” Fremont sighed theatrically, got up and walked over to the cabi
net, picked out another Lone Star, popped the cap, and came back to stand in front of Dalton.
“You know, I don’t mean to be a weak sister, but you’re sort of freaking me out here, man. I’m kind of depending on you to keep me alive, and right now you’re not looking all that reliable.”
“I’m fine, Willard. Really. I’ve been on another detail for over a week. I haven’t gotten much sleep. We’ll have something to eat, watch a DVD. In the morning, we’ll talk to Stallworth—”
“How’d he like the orchid?” said Naumann, cutting in. “He loved it,” said Dalton, after a long taut silence. “Told you he would.” “Yes, Porter, you did.” “Who’s Porter?” asked Fremont. Dalton just shook his head and sipped at his scotch. “Man. You do sound like you really are talking to another guy,”
said Fremont. Dalton looked up at him, and then back at Naumann, who lifted his hands, shrugged, leaned back into the couch, and put his bare feet on the table.
“I guess that’s what it sounds like, Willard.” Fremont sat down. He took a pull at his beer, considering Dalton. “Is this guy, like, dead?”
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“Very dead.” “He was a friend?” “Yes. A good friend.” “That’s rough,” said Fremont. “How’d he die?” “He killed himself—” “Like hell,” put in Naumann. “Don’t believe him, Willard.” “Killed himself ? How?” “Stabbed himself with an Art Deco hat pin, actually.” “Very funny,” said Naumann. “How can a guy kill himself with a hat pin?” “Wasn’t easy,” said Dalton, smiling at Naumann. “Took him sev
eral hours. Had to keep jabbing away. Squealed like a girl all the way
through it too.” “You really are an asshole,” said Naumann. “Where did he do this?” “In Cortona, Italy, about a week ago.” “Yeah? Why’d he do that?” “I’m still trying to figure that out.” “Suicide, huh? And this guy, this suicider, he’s here now?” “Yes. Over there. On the couch.” Fremont studied the couch for a time, narrowing his eyes. “Can’t say I see him all that clear. What’s he look like?” “Six two, one-ninety, big build. Pale-blue skin. Used to be
tanned. Now kinda moldy. Good-looking in an advanced-state-of-decomposition-crawling-with-maggots sort of way.”
This wasn’t completely accurate. Naumann was looking reasonably good, for a corpse. As a matter of fact he seemed to have improved quite a bit—he looked almost “fresh”—but the chance to heat Naumann up was just too good to pass up.
“I am not crawling with maggots, you lying snake.” “Got on a pair of emerald green pajamas.” “Green pajamas. That what he was wearing when he died?”
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“No. Matter of fact, I don’t know where he got them.”
“In Hell. Shop called Dante’s,” said Naumann. “Near Nel Mezzo del Cammin di Nostra Vita. Tell ’em Virgil sent you.”
“I knew a guy was haunted, once,” said Fremont, in a detached conversational tone. “His name was Milo Tillman, one of our guys, worked out of the Lordsburg division, over there by the Arizona border? Tillman was in the Marines, went to Vietnam, did what was required, Silver Star, Purple Heart twice. On the way home in the Braniff jet, he’s sitting beside this guy, Regular Army, name of Huey Longbourne, got a MAC SOG patch, fruit salad all over his chest, looks like he earned every stitch of it. Huey and Milo took a liking to each other, got themselves a little pissed, talked out some of the uglier bits of the war. They’re getting ready to land, Huey says he’s gotta go to the head. Huey never comes back. They land, go through customs—no sign of Huey. Milo gets the pilot to read him the manifest. The seat next to him was listed empty. No Huey Longbourne on the passenger manifest. But his name was there on another list. The cargo manifest. He’d been killed on a Lurp near Anh Khe the week before. His body was in the hold, along with ten other ex-grunts. After that, Milo saw Huey Longbourne off and on for years, mainly in the evening, or when he was tired. Got reconciled to him, I guess.”
“Does he still see him?” asked Dalton, deeply interested.
“Hard to say. Milo got himself disappeared years back, lost somewhere in the foothills of the Rockies, down in southeastern Colorado. Winter of ninety-seven, I think. A very bad winter. Lost in a storm, we think. Never come back from a field op.”
“You never found him?”
“We looked. Scoured the whole sector around Trinidad, all the way up the Purgatoire to Timpas, up along the Comanche grasslands. Got as far as the Kansas border, but that kind of looking sorta draws the cops and we were trying to keep a lower profile those days. It
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might even be that Milo’s not dead at all. I like to think he just decided it was time to walk away. He might be sitting in a cantina right now, down in Tularosa, talking about the Nam with the ghost of Huey Longbourne. I hope he is. Anyway, my point, Milo was haunted and it never got in the way of his job. So I figure, you got a ghost, you still look like a competent guy. I’m okay with it.”
“Sporting of you, Willard,” said Naumann. “I like this guy.”
“He likes you,” said Dalton. Fremont smiled, waved in the general direction of the empty couch, lifted his beer.
“Here’s to you too.” Turning to Dalton, “Porter?”
“Naumann. Porter Naumann. Porter, meet Willard Fremont.
“Nice to know you, Willard,” said Naumann.
“He says it’s nice to know you.”
Dalton topped up his glass and decided there was no room for ice, a situation he felt he could find it in himself to accept.
“Can I ask it a question?” asked Fremont, looking cagey.
“I’m not an ‘it,’ you wizened old zygote.”
“Porter says, By all means. Feel free. He’d be delighted.”
Fremont stared in Naumann’s general direction, looking myopic and unfocused as he searched for something to fix his eye on.
“Mr. Naumann—”
“Porter,” said Naumann. “Call me Porter.”
“He says you can call him Porter.”
“Okay. Thanks. Porter. My question is, do you ever tell Micah here anything that he doesn’t already know?”
“I’m prepared to bet good money,” said Naumann, grinning wolfishly at Fremont, “that almost any topic you could possibly raise with this fine young lad here is a topic about which he knows not one rudimentary iota. And if he does know something about it, you can rest assured that what he thinks he knows is dead bang wrong.”
“Basically,” put in Dalton, “he’s saying no.”
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“Yeah? Well, that’s kinda significant,” said Fremont, musing.
“Why?”
“Because if he never tells you anything you don’t already know, then he’s probably not a real ghost.”
Naumann seemed to be ignoring the slander. He looked as if he had gone inward and was now wrapped in deep thought. Fremont was looking quite satisfied with himself. The discussion interested him on a professional level; he had never debriefed a dead man before.
“Have you ever met any real ghosts?” Dalton asked Fremont.
“Not while I was sober. But Milo Tillman’s ghost—”
“Huey Longbourne.”
“Yeah. Longbourne used to tell Milo all kinds of things. Told him all about secret MAC SOG operations. Milo checked them out later; they were all true. Things Milo could not have known but Huey could. That’s how you tell you got a real ghost. What you got here—”
Naumann, who had evidently figured out what was bothering him, broke in here, talking right over Fremont’s dire warnings about demons ...warlocks ...Rosicrucians . . . something about white chickens ...rock salt and a moonless night...
“I did so tell you something you didn’t know!” said Naumann, a note of definite triumph in his voice. “I told you that Milan and Gavro were severely injured. Crippled. In a coma. You didn’t know that.”
“Jeez, Porter. I was there. I’m the one who did the thing. When I was through I had a pretty good idea they weren’t gonna get up, dust themselves off, and go for lime rickeys.”
“Where’s Lime Ricky’s?” asked Fremont.
“Willard, how about you stay out of this for a second? Porter, you can’t tell me anything I don’t know and you can’t remember
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what happened to you in Cortona because I don’t know. If I really knew, then you’d remember it. Don’t you get it, Porter? You’re not real. You’re not here. If I can get you to see the truth of it, then you’ll go away, like those people in A Beautiful Mind. Once the guy figured out they couldn’t be real—the little girl never got any older— his delusions went away.”
Fremont was shaking his head. “Actually, they didn’t—”
“Willard,” said Dalton, rounding on him, “stay out of this.”
“We’ve been over this ground before, Micah.”
“Then how come you never tell me anything I don’t know?”
“My point exactly,” said Fremont.
“Tell you the truth, I think it’s against the rules.”
“Rules? What rules?”
“Rules of Engagement. I break them, I can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“I start to affect outcomes. Tamper with destiny. I’m not qualified to do destiny.”
“Isn’t it tampering with my destiny to tell me to go see Laura? Isn’t it ‘affecting outcomes’ to say I only have three weeks to live?”
“You’ve only got three weeks to live?” asked Fremont, in an anguished bleat.
“No,” said Naumann, primly. “That’s more your dire warning from beyond the grave. Apparently we do that all the time. They tell me nobody ever listens.”
Fremont was now quite emotionally involved, since if Micah Dalton was going to be dead in three weeks, his being dead was going to dramatically reduce his effectiveness as a bodyguard for one Willard Fremont, the Dearly Beloved. He uttered another plaintive bleat. “Is he really saying you’re gonna die in three weeks?”
“Actually,” said Naumann, looking at his empty wrist and then swearing softly, “that was a week ago. He’s only got two weeks left.”
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“There you go again,” said Dalton. “And you say you’re not allowed to tamper with destiny. That’s a neat excuse you got there.”
Naumann shrugged that off, and then brightened. “Wait a minute, I did tell you something else you didn’t know. Back in Venice, after Cora got knocked around, you were having dinner at that caf e´ on Campo San Stefano. I told you that Domenico Zitti had died. Next thing Brancati’s cell phone rings.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. You crossed yourself, that was all.” “I made the sign of the cross. Like you do when people die.” “Thin. Thin as watered whiskey.” “There’s no persuading an unwilling mind.” “Mind if I cut in here?” said Fremont. “With respect, you two
boys aren’t getting anywhere.” “Not at all,” said Dalton. “Feel free. I’ve made my point.” “Jump right in,” said Naumann, crossing to the bar and filling his
glass with a huge wallop of single malt, an activity that was not visible to Fremont, who was still staring at the place where Naumann wasn’t.
“Okay,” said Fremont, warming to his argument, “we need to get down to basic ghost psychology. Whether or not this Mr. Naumann is a real ghost or just a mental problem you’re having, nine times out of ten, when a guy’s haunted, or thinks he is, there’s something behind it.”
“Behind what?” “There’s a reason for you being haunted with this guy. Or thinking you are. He ever tell you why he’s hanging around like this?” Dalton did not like the direction this conversation had taken. He
drank off half the scotch. It burned down inside him like molten gold. “Go to it, Willard,” said Naumann. “Now you’re on the scent.” “You don’t want to answer that question?” “Not really, Willard.” “None of my goddam business?”
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“In that territory, anyway.” “Too painful?” “Yeah,” said Dalton, staring at his glass. “Fine. I don’t need to know what it is. The point is, you already
know. That’s what counts here. This thing you don’t want to talk about, Porter—Mr. Naumann here—this is the thing that he wants you to do something about? Right?”
“Way to go,” said Naumann. “Buckle down, Winsocki.” “Yes,” said Dalton, after a long pause. “This something that he wants you to do, is it something that can
actually be done? It’s not something like crazy hot sex with identical lesbian triplets in a bathtub full of ranch dressing or simplifying the tax code. It’s a thing you could actually pull off if you wanted to?”
“Yes. Well, perhaps. I mean...” Fremont put his beer down, held his palms out. “So?” “So, what?” “So, whatever it is, go do it.” “Thank you!” said Naumann, smacking the redwood table hard
enough to make Dalton jump, which may have been what made Fremont jump at the same time, spilling his beer again. At this stage of the debate and in his mildly inebriated state, Dalton found it hard to tell.
“What’d he do?” asked Fremont. “He smacked the table and said thanks.” “So he agrees with me?” “Looks like it. And I’m so glad you two are really hitting it off.” “So? Are you? Gonna?” “I don’t know.” Fremont threw up his hands, got himself another beer, killed it in
three gulps while standing at the cabinet, dropped the frosted corpse into a box, got himself another, and came back to his couch, visibly
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frustrated. He took another long pull in a sustained silence while Dalton and Naumann watched him, and then turned to Naumann— turned in Naumann’s direction anyway.
“How about you throw something in the kitty here, Mr. Nau
mann?” “Me?” said Naumann, touching his chest. “He’s listening,” said Dalton. “Like what?” said Naumann. “He says, ‘Like what?’ ” “Like... like you promise to go away if Micah here promises to
do whatever it is he’s supposed to do as soon as you’re gone.”
Naumann looked confused. So did Dalton, but it sounded like a fair deal to him. Fremont sat there, staring at a curved and vaguely green-tinted space in the air that was becoming more visible the drunker he got.
“Is this a deal?” said Dalton, looking at Naumann. “You’ll go see Laura? If I disappear?” “Damn straight.” “You’ll make things right with her?” “I’ll do what I can.” “Your word?” “My word.” “How long do I have to disappear for?” Dalton turned to Fremont. “He wants to know how long he has
to disappear for.”
Fremont, who by some sort of cosmic triangulation of ectoplasmic vectors had become the sitting magistrate in this case, considered for a while, blinking slowly.
“Seven days,” he pronounced, after due deliberation. Naumann looked dubious. “You’ll really do it, Micah. Go see her? Make it right?”
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“I’ll go see he
r. Making it right is more your department.” “When?” “On the morning of the eighth day.” Fremont savored the poetry in that. It was...epic. Biblical. Naumann looked wary, studying Dalton’s face as if he were look
ing for some intent to deceive, to play the coyote.
“He’s given you his solemn word, Mr. Naumann,” said Fremont, staring at this curved space in the air that was centered more or less around the third couch. There was no doubt in his mind now. It was definitely taking on a man-shaped outline. Apparently there was more to Lone Star beer than met the eye. Could it be that beer was actually a cosmic portal, a door into the spirit world? It occurred to him that this was why the wise old ancients in their wise old ancient wisdom had called alcohol a spirit since the very dawning of time.
He maintained his fixed regard on this curved green-tinted space even while managing to crack open another beer and take a very long pull. Dalton kept his eyes on Naumann as well.
Naumann, after a long and presumably introspective silence, took a pull of his scotch, set the glass down hard, wiped his dead lips, and stood up, brushing off his green pajamas. “Okay. Fair deal. See you on the eighth day.”
“The eighth day.” “Carmel Highlands?” “Carmel Highlands.” “Dr. Cassel?” “Dr. Cassel.” “Word of honor?” “Word of honor.” “Because if you—” “I know. I know. Bed knobs and broomsticks.” “Damn straight. The fire and the fury. All right, then. I could use
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the break. Manifesting yourself all over the damned globe is harder
than it looks. Willard, I tell you frankly, you’re a clever guy.”
“He’s talking to you now. Frankly. He says you’re a clever guy.”
“Yeah,” said Willard, rising to his feet, his rough-hewn face composed into a bleary solemnity. “Thank you, sir.”
“Willard, you’re a gem. Not many guys can broker a deal between a vapid cretin and the walking dead. You should have been a literary agent. Micah, as they say in the song, I’ll be seeing you.”
“You take care, Porter. And get those PJs dry-cleaned.”
Naumann smiled, snapped to attention, sliced off a military salute, and abruptly flicked out of existence.