Dover Beach (8 page)

I didn't have any positive proof—no death certificate, no gravestone—but that kind of proof didn't exist anymore. Hemphill's emphatic statement was the most you could expect. I had done my job quickly and well. Case closed.

Now what? Go to the Ritz and make my report? I couldn't face that just yet. Go back to my office and wait for the Sandman's second case? That seemed like an even worse idea. So I sat and watched the people go in and out of the Salvage Market. After a while I got hungry, so I bought a hunk of cheese and a hard roll from an old vendor, and I chewed while I brooded.

Then Jesus Christ came by, lugging his seven-foot wooden cross. I waved, and he stopped by my bench. A little boy in a tattered jacket was with him. The boy looked at me nervously. Jesus gave him a little push, and he offered me a yellow scrap of paper. I took it.

A message had been scrawled in pencil on the scrap. It took me a moment to make it out.

The End Is At Hand.

I smiled at the boy and put the paper into my pocket. "This is total bullshit, you know," I said to Jesus.

"I pray for you daily, Walter," he said.

"Thanks for nothing." I noticed the boy staring at the remains of my roll and cheese. I gave them to him. He looked up at Jesus, who nodded. The boy started eating hungrily. "Why don't you sit down?" I asked. "That goddamn cross looks heavy."

"Of course it's heavy," Jesus said. "The sins of the world." He sat down, laying the cross next to my bicycle, and he hoisted the boy onto his lap.

I looked at him and shook my head. His name hadn't always been Jesus Christ. It had once been Jimmy Parducci, and he had been reasonably normal and unreasonably happy. He had a wife and a baby and a good job killing rats for the government, and what more could you ask for out of life? Then his wife contracted one of our peculiarly gruesome modern diseases, and all that changed.

When she died, he got religion. He had a vision or something, in which God told him that the last time had been just a warning, and if we didn't straighten out soon, He was
really
gonna give us what for. So Jimmy changed his name and took up the cross and wandered through the city, warning us to repent before it was too late. In my argumentative youth I had tried to point out to him that I—and most people—wouldn't be too thrilled with God, if what happened back then was His idea of a warning. But there is no arguing with revealed truth. Jimmy continued to spread the word, and his baby was growing up into a shy but obedient disciple, and I suppose there were worse ways for them to be spending their lives—except that the boy always looked cold and hungry and a little more frightened than he should have been, and if I were God Jimmy would have had to answer to Me for that.

"Are you living a good life, Walter?" Jesus asked me.

"Within reason," I said.

"I've heard that you are now a private investigator."

"True," I said.

"I've read about private investigators," he continued. "They live very immoral lives."

"Not true. They represent justice in its purest form."

"Oh, Walter," he said softly. "Repent, for the hour is nigh."

I shrugged. "I'd like to," I said, "but I've got this blond secretary with the hots for me back at the office and, well, you know how it is."

He shook his head. "Oh, Walter," he repeated.

I reached out and tousled the boy's hair. He stared at me and continued to chew solemnly. It was time to move on. "See you around," I said. I stepped over the cross and picked up my bike.

"I'll pray for you," Jesus called out. I ignored him.

* * *

After some hesitation, I decided to go to City Hall. It was in Government Center, just a short jaunt from Downtown Crossing; I locked my bike in a rack outside the strangely shaped building and went inside.

There was a large, brightly lit Christmas tree standing in front of the broken escalators. That seemed to say something profound about our government, but I didn't stop to figure it out. I hiked up an escalator for a couple of flights, then followed the signs to the Water and Sewer Department. I stopped in front of an office midway down a dimly lit corridor. The nameplate next to it said:

Charles T. Moseby

Asst. Director

The door was open. Inside, a dwarf was sitting at a desk littered with papers.

"Excuse me," I said. "It has come to my attention that there are citizens of this Commonwealth carrying concealed weapons on their persons. To whom should I report this outrageously illegal behavior?"

Stretch looked up and grinned. "Hello, Walter. You're under arrest." He was wearing a tie, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and there was a pencil stuck behind his ear. Your typical dwarf bureaucrat.

He motioned for me to come in. "So what really brings you to the seat of power?" he asked.

I sat down opposite him. The room was surprisingly warm. I wondered how he could stand coming home to our frigid town house every night. "I'm here on business, actually," I said.

"If it's Bobby's business, Walter, I'm afraid I—"

"No, no. My own. Remember—my first case?"

"Oh, right. The search for the long-lost... whatever."

"Precisely." I hesitated. I didn't really see how this was going to achieve anything, but what did I have to lose? "I've been checking around, Stretch, and it seems that there's a possibility the guy I'm looking for got scooped by the British back when they were here maintaining law and order. They evidently felt obliged to kidnap some of our leading scientists."

Stretch nodded. "I think I heard about that. But what's it got to do with the Water and Sewer Department?"

"Absolutely nothing—except that it seems possible that somewhere in the reaches of our sainted government's archives there might be a list of who got taken. Or maybe there's some foreign service type who remembers, or who can find out. We're such good buddies with the British now, they'd probably be happy to tell us. So I thought I'd come to see my own good buddy Stretch, who knows all sorts of people in the government and maybe could help me out."

Stretch pondered. "It's a tall order," he said.

"Then you're just the man for the job."

He glared at me. "Is that a size joke?"

I smiled. "My, we're sensitive today, aren't we?"

"Anyone who lives with Linc has a right to be sensitive."

It was Linc who had started calling him Stretch. "All right, I apologize," I said. "So what do you say?"

"I guess I can look into it," he said. "If any information does exist, though, it's probably down in Atlanta, so it might take me a while to get a hold of it."

"Anything you can do, Stretch. I realize it's a long shot."

Stretch sized me up. "My services come at a price, Walter."

"Name it."

"You listen to a lecture."

I groaned. "Anything, Stretch, but not that."

"Shall I give it to you now, or do you want to wait until we get home?"

"Please, Stretch, I've suffered enough for one lifetime."

"I know, Walter. We all have. But you've got to get out of this dream world you're living in. You've got to accept the world as it is, and yourself as
you
are."

Except for his sensitivity about size jokes, Stretch didn't seem to let being a dwarf bother him. But it wasn't my fault he was so well adjusted. "You've got me wrong, Stretch," I replied. "I do accept the world as it is. I just think it's ready for a private eye."

"Oh, come on, Walter. You're just playing at it because you don't know what else to do with yourself. The country needs people like you—you're tough, and you're smart, and you're good. We can't afford to let you waste your life pretending it's 1937. Frankly, I'd rather see you working for Bobby Gallagher. At least what he does is
real."

"People have to go it alone in this world—even more so than in the old days," I said. "That's where a private eye can do a lot of good: he can help them when no one else will."

"Oh, bullshit." Stretch is never vulgar. He was very upset with me. And I remembered the way I had talked to Jesus Christ. Did Stretch think I was as useless as Jesus? It wasn't fair, but how could I argue with him? And then he struck a low blow. "Look, if my opinion doesn't matter, what about Gwen? She loves you, Walter."

"What about her? She's never said she disapproves."

"You know Gwen. She doesn't have to."

"Well, if she loves me, then she should accept the way I want to live my life."

Stretch shook his head sadly. "I guess I don't know how to convince you. Maybe you'll just have to get it out of your system. Maybe failing on this case will do the trick—they don't fail in those books you read."

"I haven't failed yet."

"If you're looking for my help, you can't be doing very well."

I glared at him. "Is the lecture over?"

"The lecture's over," Stretch said softly.

I stood up. "I'll see you later, then. I've got private eye work to do."

"Okay, Walter. I'll see what I can do to help. Honest I will. No hard feelings?"

"Ah, you're too short to be angry at for very long."

Stretch grinned. "That's more like it."

I walked out of his office.

Chapter 8

Dr. Winfield was eating supper in his room when I arrived to make my report. There was a half-consumed steak and a bottle of wine on a tray next to his bed. The smell of the steak and the heat in the room made me feel a little light-headed. I took my parka off and sat in an armchair by the window.

"Glass of wine?" Winfield asked. "The vintages are starting to improve again out in California."

I shook my head. I noticed that most of the wine was already gone. Winfield's eyes were a little glazed. "Anyone try to kill you today?" I asked.

"Didn't give 'em an opportunity. Just stayed in here and let you do all the work." He lay back on the bed and picked up his glass. "So what did you find out?"

I took a breath. "The evidence seems to suggest that Robert Cornwall is dead," I said. And I told him what I had discovered from Hemphill.

Winfield's gaze drifted past me as I spoke. I couldn't tell if it was because he was drunk, or because he didn't think me interesting enough to look at. At any rate, my report sounded pretty meager; if I were the client, I would not have been impressed.

"This guy Hemphill—he didn't actually
see
Cornwall die, right?" Winfield demanded when I had finished.

"He didn't say he had seen Cornwall die, but he seemed awfully sure of it."

"But the only evidence he gave was that Cornwall wasn't publishing in these scientific journals, right?"

"Yeah, that's right, I guess."

Winfield finished his wine and sat up. "He's guessing. If he really knew, why wouldn't he give you more details?"

"I don't know. If he was guessing, why wouldn't he say so?"

Winfield waved away my objection. He put down his glass. He picked it back up again. He rose from the bed, swaying a bit. "Cornwall is in England," he said. "It's so obvious, really, when you think about it."

It wasn't obvious to me. "But if he's in England, why—"

"Why hasn't anyone heard of him? Think, Sands. Remember my theory that the government was making him work on a secret cloning project? It was full of holes, obviously. I admit it. But what if he's been working for the
British
? They have the resources—of course he'd go, if they asked him to. He has to continue his work."

This idea was no better than his previous one. "But what would he be doing for them?" I asked.

"Clones. Clones of military leaders, of politicians, of scientific geniuses. Of course, they'd keep it all secret."

"But Hemphill doesn't think Cornwall could clone adults, and he knows more about the subject than either of us."

"He doesn't know everything. The article I showed you yesterday—didn't you read it? Cornwall was working on a way around the problem. Obviously, he succeeded. And that's why I'm here, and he's in England."