Secret Dead Men (12 page)

"He won't be able to chat with anyone," Paul said. "Ever again."

Uncomfortable pause. They all looked at each other. It was too much for Richard. He was probably imagining his disbarrment hearings.

"Pardon me," he said. "I have to visit the boy's room. Please make Paul at home, will you sweetheart?"

With that, Richard left. Susannah decided that making Paul at home entailed standing up, slinking across the carpet and taking a seat next to him.

"Have I ever seen you before, Mr. After?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think so."

"You look familiar."

"I shouldn't. I'm not from around here."

"Neither am I."

She took a drag from her cigarette, then blew smoke. "I suppose people tell you you look like somebody they know all the time."

"Not usually."

She paused. "You're a hard one, aren't you?"

Paul shrugged.

"I like that," she said. "I honestly do."

Susannah stared at Paul for a while, not sure of how to place him. I tell you, the man was a Grade-A professional. I'm not sure a usual member of Stan Wojciechowski's crack detective team--namely, me--would have been able to face this task unmoved.

She tried a different approach: Big Boss Woman. "How many hours you going to devote to me?"

"As many as it takes."

"That's not an answer, Paul. I enjoy details."

"I enjoy working alone."

"I'll need you whenever Richard's not around. Days mostly, when he's at the firm. And some nights."

"What do you mean,
need me?
" Paul asked.

As if on cue, Richard returned from the bathroom. "Well, are we happy, Susannah?"

"I'll need a schedule," she said to him. "I need my freedom."

"Of course," Richard said. "Paul, you can start being Ms. Winston's guardian angel tomorrow morning. I'll send a car for you."

"Whoah," Paul said. "What is this? Some kind of fraternity prank? If you want a babysitter, I'll give you the number of my eight-year-old niece in Toledo."

Richard's eyebrows lowered--undoubtedly, his patented
kill-a-jury-with-my-sincerity
look. "But Mr. After, this
is
the job. Until you find this madman, she's going to need some protection. She's quite safe here in the hotel--I've seen to that. But I need someone to be with her when she's shopping, or having lunch out in the city, or even walking around Rittenhouse Square."

"How many hours are we talking?" asked Paul, forcing every word out of his lips.

"As much as she needs," he said.

Paul finished his drink then stood up. "I've heard enough."

Damn! I ran over to the lobby microphone and nailed the button.
Easy there, Paul. Take it easy.

"This is a bunch of crap," he muttered, mostly to himself, but still audible.

"What?" barked Richard.

Hey!
I yelled.
What the hell are you doing?

Paul stood still for a moment, thinking it over. I'd like to think it was my stern voice that kept him from flipping Richard the bird and storming out of the room. But most likely, Paul realized that without this job, we would be homeless. Brain Hotel and all. He didn't strike me as the type that enjoyed rooting through garbage cans for dinner.

"This tonic," Paul said. "This tonic is crap."

"But it's Schweppes!" Susannah protested.

Richard ignored her. "Do we have an arrangement, Mr. After?"

"I suppose I'll be seeing you tomorrow morning, Ms. Winston," Paul said.

"As if it's a bad thing?" Susannah asked. "Richard, I'll show Mr. After to the door. Could you refresh my drink? No ice this time."

"Sure, my peach." He looked at Paul. "So we're square?"

"As a box," Paul said.

In the hallway, Susannah looked at Paul, then finally touched his cheek as if she were blind and trying to see with her fingertips.

Richard called from the other room: "You want ice, sweetheart?"

"No, I don't, sweetheart," she called back, rolling her eyes. She looked at Paul. "I think you're going to like the time we spend together."

Paul didn't say anything.

"Did you ever meet anyone who reminded you of an ex-girlfriend, Paul?"

"Pardon?"

"And feel you want to fuck that person because they looked--perhaps even vaguely--like someone else?"

"No."

Susannah smiled.

"See you tomorrow, Ms. Winston."

Fourteen

Drinks at Tom's Holiday

"My God, is she something," I said, speaking into the lobby microphone. I must have scared Paul. On screen, the perspective snapped to the right.

What? Oh. You. Nice fucking job. I though you were a private detective, not a babysitter!

"Funny, it didn't seem you minded the assignment too much a few seconds ago."

Screw you. You saying I can't handle her? Jesus Christ--I'm doing
your
job. Your incredibly pathetic job.

I waited a moment to let Paul realize how ridiculously he was acting. "Have you calmed down yet?"

Get out of my head
, he said. He continued walking, then suddenly stopped and looked deep into the mirror. It gave the chilling effect of him looking directly at me, sitting in the Brain Hotel lobby. I wasn't used to it.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Do you know this Susannah Winston from somewhere?

"No," I said. "Not exactly my type. Like my women educated and truthful. Why do you ask?"

She said I looked familiar. Hence, you look familiar.

"But don't forget, we're wearing the face of a dead man. It's highly unlikely my client ever met this fruitcake."

I suppose,
said Paul.
God, everything's so fuzzy. Sometimes I lose grip on who I am. You kept me in that room for so long I don't know what's up or down. I mean, I could have been married to that nightmare, for all I know.

"Not likely," I said. "You're an assassin from Las Vegas, remember? It doesn't leave much time for a personal life."

You know, you could let me out more often. I feel like I'm going crazy in here, sometimes.

"Welcome to life after death, Paul."

Without warning, another voice spoke up. It was the Ghost of Fieldman. He was standing next to me in the lobby, worming his way into the silver mike.

"Paul," he said, "it's possible you're experiencing a retroactive memory."

"Stay out of this," I warned.

The Ghost of Fieldman stuck his tongue out at me. "All of this time you've been with the Collective, you haven't heard a rational explanation for your state, have you?"

Paul asked,
I suppose you have one?

I couldn't believe this. A mutiny, right in the middle of an assignment. "Do yourself a favor, Paul. Tell him to crawl up his own thumb."

"The Collective here runs the show without the slightest inkling of his own internal workings," said the Ghost. "I, however, know how it all works."

You do?
Paul asked.

The Ghost cleared his spectral throat. "All of us--that means you, me and Mr. Farmer here--are trapped in a soul nexus of the deep future. We're not alive right now. We are simply recreations of our former selves, resurrected by computers from the far future. But our computer-generated simulations are blurring together by accident--I suspect we're still in an experimental stage, and the thinkers who have brought us back are unable to give us proper boundaries."

Paul nodded, as if he understood perfectly.
Fieldman?

"Yes, Paul?"

Lay off the LSD.
Paul turned his attention to me.
Let's go have a drink, Del. We've got some arrangements to make.

* * * *

After laying my physical body down for a rest back at 1530 Spruce Street, we met at Old Tom's. Paul and I walked into the bar, waved hello to Tom, and parked ourselves into one of the faux-leather-padded, oak-tabletop booths along the right wall. We both ordered a drink--Brain Chivas and a Schmidt's chaser--then got down to business.

Paul wanted to lay down some ground rules; it was how he'd always worked, he said. He told me he could deal with existing in someone else's body, and he could even deal with living a solitary life in his Brain Hotel room until needed. But one thing Paul could not deal with was being unable to control the assignment.

"You want me to do the best work possible?" he asked. "Fine. Let me do the work. I don't need a straw boss. I don't even need the occasional piece of advice. Let me do things my own way."

A reasonable request. However, I had to lay down some ground rules of my own.

"One," I said. "The Association investigation is top priority. If I need our body, Goddamnit, I'm taking our body."

"Even at the risk of abandoning our one paying client?" Paul asked.

"Paying clients are good for one thing and one thing only: cash. If we're forced to, we can find cash somewhere else. But a missed opportunity to collect evidence against the Association can never be regained. Every day that ticks by with the Association still in power is one less day the American public can feel safe." Sure, I was laying it on thick, but the situation warranted exaggeration. I had to tame this hired gun before he did something regrettable.

"Two, you surrender the body when I say. No fights. It's useless anyway, and it only pisses me off."

I looked at Paul to gauge how pissed off
he
was getting. It didn't seem to phase him. Maybe to him, this was merely a business conversation. I used the silence to take a sip of the Brain scotch. Much better than the stash I had in my office--after all, this was scotch how Old Tom remembered it, not me. God, to think of the years of sweet, drunken bliss that man had seen.

Paul interrupted my reveries. "I understand. And now I want you to promise me two things. One, when I ask you to tune out, you tune out and trust me. I promise not to compromise the investigation one bit. Hell, I want those pricks to pay for what they did to me as much as you do. But I can't function knowing that you can storm in at any second. I'm a human being, man! I have things I need to take care of. There's stuff in my brain I need to work out on my own. In the real world. Not in here. I have to know I still exist."

Jesus. This was the closest thing to a buddy-buddy talk Paul and I had ever had. I wanted him to elaborate on the things he needed to "take care of." I didn't want to stop him when he was on a roll. I nodded.

"Okay. Secondly, when it comes time to take down the Man, you let me take my pound of flesh. I've been dreaming about it for a long time now. I wish I'd had the balls to do it before, when I had the chance."

I didn't know what "Man" Paul was referring to. But I played it cool, letting him think I did, and agreed to both his demands. Yes, I should have asked him, point blank, who the "Man" was and finally started to piece things together. Was "The Man" this J.P. Bafoures? What was his real name? Where did he operate in Vegas? But the moment I admitted I didn't know much, I'd lose Paul's respect. I'd lose him.

"The Man will be yours," I said. Then, scrambling to think of something neutral to say: "I want justice served." I made a mental note to bring up the "Man" in the future. Subtly.

There was a song I didn't recognize playing on the jukebox--a male and female duet, something about them having "the time of our lives ... never felt this way before." I noticed The Ghost of Fieldman sitting in the corner, drinking something clear like Fresca, and munching on a basket of popcorn. I didn't have any proof, but I was convinced he'd been messing with the jukebox.

We finished our drinks and left the bar.

Fifteen

First Days on the Job

The rest of the day was uneventful except for the note I found taped to my apartment door. It was from Amy Langtree, saying she stopped by to borrow a colander. I should have found her persistence annoying and intrusive, and I should have done something blunt to stop this whole thing from blossoming. Like, bought a cheap wedding ring from a pawn shop and started flashing it around, or asked her where I could score good dope and a blow job, or started babbling and drooling in her presence, or picked at my nose or ears, whatever.

She was clearly fixated on someone who was not me. I was wearing a dead man's face, for goodness' sake. We'd barely spoken a dozen sentences to each other. My soul clearly predated hers by a generation or two. And now she wanted to drain her spaghetti with one of my kitchen utensils?

Still, Amy Langtree could be useful. She was a local. She lent me the appearance of normality. If I took the time to develop this friendship, and there was ever trouble down the line, she would be an important character witness--could perhaps buy me enough time to make an escape. I starting thinking about how to ask her out for something non-threatening, like lunch, or a walk through the historical sites. Something like that wouldn't necessarily lead her on.

Then I remembered, this all had been decided for me: Paul needed to use my body most of the time. Clearly, I had to cool things off even before they began.

* * * *

There were other things to work out, too--things like financial priorities. Until Gard's first check cleared the bank, we had a little under $200 on which to live. I thought we should spent a bit on foodstuffs--hot dogs, bologna, bread, cans of vegetables and soup--and hang on to the rest. But Paul insisted we go out and buy a new suit. "You want to show up as a representative of the Brown Agency wearing these costume-shop specials?"

"We're not from the Brown Agency," I said. "We're freelance."

"Okay, then we'll look like shabby freelancers."

As usual, I was in control of the body, and Paul was appearing to me in the bathroom mirror. "What's shabby about my gray suit?" I asked. I'd bought it from a consignment shop in Sherman Oaks seven years ago. Top of the line men's fashion--a real dandy. I didn't care for the atrocities I saw in men's magazine's these days.

Paul sighed. "Where do I start? It's about as hip as an elbow. It has lapels skinnier than David Bowie's ass. It has tapered cuffs, for Christ's sake. I've beaten people up for less offensive things than wearing that suit."