Dead Man (7 page)

Pucci was dead, but of course the two men he had hired wouldn’t be. And Pucci wouldn’t have dealt with them directly anyway,
he would have used a go-between.

Dain’s excitement was growing, but he had to face certain realities. He’d treated what was serious as a game. He’d been a
computer nerd who’d wanted to be Sam Spade. Marie and Albie were dead because he’d been a fool. Accept it, go on from there.

Accept also that, despite his new designer body, down deep he was still just Eddie Dain. With that shell of muscle and reflex
around the old core, he’d thought he’d be the Terminator. But he was Eddie Dain, and Eddie Dain couldn’t do it.

Unless he could make other people
think
he was as hard, as impervious as he looked. Then, perhaps…

Making a game of life had gotten Marie and Albie killed, but how about making a game of death? He had been a private investigator
of sorts when it had happened; now he had to make the mob think he was the greatest eye at finding people who had ever lived.
He was smart and he was superb with the computer: he would learn how to find people nobody else could.

For the mob. His months with organized crime had shown him they’d become company men like everyone else. Easy for him to create
an aura, a mystique, make himself the man the mob came to when nobody else could find who they were looking for. He’d need
a go-between of his own, heighten that air of mystery that would move him through the underbelly until, someday, somewhere,
he would run into three special men.

Would he know them if he did? Would they know him? He didn’t know, didn’t care; but he knew he wouldn’t find them here.

So first he had to get away from Vegas clean.

A week later, orders came for Travis Holt to report to the National Guard’s 72nd Military Police Company for two weeks’ “summer
camp,” as the annual training is called. Holt dutifully took the order to his boss in casino bookkeeping; the 72nd had fought
in the Gulf War, guarding Iraqi prisoners, so it was a popular outfit in Vegas. Permission was readily given for him to take
his training without losing his accumulated vacation time.

Ten days after training was done, while the casino thought Holt was on vacation, a hand-scrawled letter from his brother Jimmy
in Vero Beach informed the casino that Travis Holt had been killed in a training accident during the 72nd’s summer desert
exercises. Was any back pay due? Send it to his bereaved brother if there was.

Holt fortunately had passed his ideas along to the bean-counters, so his death was no real hardship to the casino. A letter
went to the asshole brother assuring him that no back
pay was due, and the casino, shaking its collective head over slimeball relatives, closed the personnel file on Holt.

Who worried about dead men?

But even before he had died, Travis Holt had broken his tinted glasses, flushed his colored contacts, shampooed the dye out
of his hair, shaved his mustache and goatee, and had left Vegas to become Dain. Yes, Dain.

Because he had realized that the only three men alive who knew a contract had once gone out on Eddie Dain were the same three
men he wanted to find. If they found him first, that was fine. Just so he had a chance to meet them—and had a chance to see
if he could play the Terminator for real.

The game started, as the best games always do, with playacting. Dain wanted Doug Sherman to be his go-between, because Sherman
loved gossip, loved intrigue, ached to be in the know,
au courant.
Loved playing a role himself, loved games, could be bitchy, was excited by power, by domination; being a go-between would
push all his buttons at once.

But Dain would have to con him into it, because he could never be told that Dain’s ultimate game was the killing game, not
just getting back into the detective game. Dain had to make him
want
to be a go-between so he would never think to ask the questions Dain couldn’t answer.

When Doug Sherman arrived to open the bookstore that June morning, a big quick stranger was waiting for him. Six-one, 210,
215, burned dark by desert suns, hands thick and
knuckly from breaking boards. An Indian face, craggy and strong-boned.

The stranger said, “Hello, Douglas,” in a voice Sherman almost knew. The voice was deeper than the remembered one, and there
was no playfulness in it.

Sherman, elegant as ever, was caught up short. He stared.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Dain,” the man said. Flat voice, flat eyes. Something dead in them, also something intensely alive.

“Eddie Dain! My God, man…”

Sherman tried to embrace him, but Dain stepped quickly back out of his arms, callused hand extended to shake instead. It was
like grasping a rock.

“It’s… good to see you…” said Sherman lamely.

Dain nodded but didn’t respond. Sherman kept busy unlocking the door and deactivating the alarms while casting covert sidelong
glances at Dain. Keeping up a running chatter to cover his embarrassment and his scrutiny.

“Where have you been? After you checked out of Marin General I couldn’t find any trace…” The door was open. Dain walked through
it ahead of him, a leather-bound book under one arm. Sherman caught himself stammering inanely, “I… I’m sorry, I… didn’t…”
He went around behind his desk. “I’ll make coffee…”

“Coffee would be fine.”

Sherman busied himself with the Melitta, talking over his shoulder as he measured out fragrant ground beans into the paper
cone, covertly watching Dain’s reflection off a glass-protected Greek icon of St. Nicholas above the table.

“What’s the book?”

“Ever the dealer,” that deeper voice rumbled. Dain almost smiled. Held it up to see.
“The Tibetan Book of the Dead.”

“The same one that I got you for Marie’s—”

“The very same,” said Dain without apparent emotion. He lifted a shoulder. Muscles slid beneath his smooth hide like the muscles
of a tiger. “Physical therapy. You carry a heavy book around all day, it strengthens your hands and forearms.” He chuckled.
“So you’ll be ready.”

Sherman had recovered. “Ready.” He nodded as if he
understood what it meant, added, “Of course. Ah… and so, these past four years… where have you… ?”

Dain put his leather-bound book down on the edge of the desk and sat down in the same chair he had habitually sat in four
years earlier, but there was no unconscious lotus pose this time. He still looked flexible enough to do one, but now he was
solid, hard. Prepared. Power seemed to come off him like heat.

But he only said, conventionally, “Hospitals, mostly.”

The water was heating. Sherman sat down behind the desk which had, as always, the inlaid chessboard with a classic problem
laid out on it. For the first time, Sherman’s sad, beautiful eyes studied Dain quite openly.

“And?”

“And nothing.” Dain almost shrugged. His smile was very slightly lopsided from the tiny white plastic surgery scars on one
side of his face. “Lots of operations, lots of pain, lots of physical therapy. All of which cost a great deal of money.”

Money. Familiar ground here. Doug Sherman knew all about using money to control situations. And he wanted to control this
one. This Edgar Dain made him feel defensive, uneasy, perhaps a little frightened. Talking to him was like stroking a tiger.

“I can imagine. If there’s anything I can…”

“There is.”

A statement so bald startled the aesthete in Sherman. He felt almost embarrassed for Dain; such a blatant pitch for charity
diminished the man’s power. The kettle started to sing. He poured boiling water to the top of the paper cone.

“Listen, Dain, I don’t have a great deal put by, but…”

“Not money.” Dain stood up, started to pace. It was the impatient padding of a tiger about its cell. “Business.”

Intriguing. “I’m in the book business.” He suddenly thought he knew where this was going. Needed money, too proud to ask.
He gestured toward the book. “That would be worth a good deal of money… and it must be painful psychologically to…”

“It’s not for sale.”

Sherman sighed, nonplussed. “A pity. But then, what…?”

“I’m going back into private investigations.” Dain paused, staring at a new painting in one of the alcoves. A Magritte original,
he was sure. He shivered slightly, picked up his thread again. “For… unconventional clients. I know of no other way to make
the kind of money I need relatively quickly.” He looked over at Sherman. “I need a front man. A go-between.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Sure you do. I want heavy-money clients on the shady side who will pay a lot to find someone they need found without questions
asked. I don’t want anyone else as clients. So I need a cutout, a go-between to screen out the unwanted.”

“But how can you… I mean, four years ago you were…”

“Naive? Inexperienced?”

“Bluntly… yes.” He poured coffee into two exquisite Meissen china cups, set out cream and sugar in solid silver bowls. “Why
would anyone in that… underbelly sector of the… um, American experience, say, want to hire you?”

“You’re right. I was a fool. I wasn’t ready. But that won’t happen again.” Dain had stopped pacing. His face, voice, eyes,
had lost their impassivity; there was an almost guttural intensity to his words. “Now I know how to create the sort of reputation
I want. Trust me on that. With a screen, a filter, I can say no easily. That’s all I need from you.”

He sat down with that looseness of muscle that typifies all big predators off duty. Both men sipped their coffee. They exchanged
pleased looks over its quality.

Four years ago Sherman would have laughed in his face if Eddie Dain had come to him with such a proposition. But not now.
Now he couldn’t even think of him as Eddie any more. He spread his hands in deprecation.

“Even if everything you say is true, why do you think I’m the man for this sort of thing?”

“You were born for it. Everybody knows you, you know everybody, you love to gossip, you love intrigue. And I can trust your
judgment. Maybe I even can trust you.”

“I’m flattered by your confidence,” said Sherman coldly.

Dain ignored his pique. “If a recovery of some sort is involved—skim money, stolen narcotics, whatever—my fee will be ten
percent of recovery against a twenty-five K floor. That’s sixty-two hundred fifty minimum per case for you—tax-free.”

“Do you really think you can…” Sherman paused. He rubbed his eyes. He fidgeted. The offer was actually intriguing, not for
the money, but… but he didn’t want to show he was interested. “The thing is…”

He fell silent in midsentence. He knew he was going to do it. Dain was righC it was the sort of offbeat situation he couldn’t
resist. To
know
all the dangers beforehand… to ride the tiger… Yes! Absolutely delicious…

“Well… against my better judgment…”

Dain didn’t do any cartwheels. There was that cold center Sherman hadn’t adjusted to yet. He merely picked up his book from
the desk and stood up. Standing, he drained his cup.

“Wonderful coffee,” he said.

“Another cup—”

He shook his head. His eyes sought the tall grandfather clock in a shadowy corner of the room. Something flickered momentarily
in those eyes, then was gone. Some feeling that might have been described as deep purple had it been a color.

“I’m due at Homicide in fifteen minutes,” he said.

Sherman was on his feet also.
“Deja
vu.”

Dain nodded. He stuck out his hand. Sherman took it. He was delighted with the way he had handled himself. He loved the image
of himself at the edge of the precipice. He gestured at the chessboard.

“Did you notice this endgame problem? The thirteenth game of Fischer versus Spassky World Championship match at Reykjavik,
nineteen seventy-two? Extraordinary encounter.” He moved eagerly to the nine pieces left on the board. “Look here—”

Something flashed in Dain’s eyes that drove Sherman back an involuntary step as if the tiger had suddenly
crouched to spring. But Dain spoke in flat, almost disinterested tones.

“I don’t play chess any more,” he said mildly.

Sherman was silent, measuring him for a long moment, pushing it, relishing it. Riding the tiger! He nodded slightly.

“Of course,” he said. “A pity.”

So it had worked with Sherman, the tough-guy image behind which Eddie Dain could live and function. He felt uneasy to be using
his friends this way; but the gamesman part of him was excited by his initial success. Sherman’s lively imagination had done
a lot of Dain’s work for him, but Randy Solomon would be different. To enlist Randy’s cooperation for information only the
cops could provide, he had to project the same stainless-steel image using very different tactics.

Homicide had a new percolator. It made good coffee, so the trade from out-of-town departments had slacked off. And sure enough,
according to the load of bullshit Lieutenant Randy Solomon was trying to sell a trio of Homicide dicks when Dain walked in,
out in the boonies the bullets and switchblades now were finding their mark with disconcerting regularity.

Four sets of indifferent cops’ eyes swept over Dain, making professional assessment without interest since no threat was perceived.
Three sets turned away. One set remained fixed on him. Staring hard. Harder. Suddenly Solomon broke away from the water cooler
gang and went across the bullpen toward him.

“Jesus Christ! Eddie Dain! Where in the hell…”

Like Sherman, he moved to embrace Dain. Unlike Sherman, he was attuned to physical rather than intellectual threat signs in
people and so managed to turn the bear hug into a handshake without embarrassment on either side. He jerked his head at the
big office dominating the far end of the room. They went in. His name was on the glass, with

under it in capital letters. Randy sat down behind the desk.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” said Dain. “I didn’t know. Nobody could ever deserve it more.”

“That’s what all the boys say.” Sherman leaned across the desk and said, “Thanks just a fuck of a lot for all those cards
and letters over the past four years. Where the fuck you been?”