Immortal (13 page)

One thing that hadn’t improved with time was the coffee. I’m not sure when bitter coffee became cool, but I don’t like the trend. Still, I drank away, because that’s what one does when one wants to fit in with the upscale crowd these days.

*
 
*
 
*

The update on the murders in the morning paper (reading the paper two days in a row had to be some kind of record for me) wasn’t any more enlightening than the initial story had been. It was mostly a lot of puff about Gary and Nate and how everybody loved them and so on. Attaching presumptive sainthood to murder victims is a time-honored tradition, so I can’t say I was surprised by any of it. Can’t say I knew them well enough to contradict anything either, and they were nice enough for me to want to go through the trouble of finding out who killed them, but still . . . You’d think there was someone, somewhere—other than Jerry—who didn’t like them.

On the hard news front, the papers were a day earlier than predicted with the artistic rendition of my face. It was a pretty good likeness.

It was a bit unsettling seeing my own face in the newspaper. Historically, I’ve gone to great lengths to keep myself in the background, just in the interest of survival. I’ve lived through one Inquisition already, you know? I moved on.

Paging through to the crossword puzzle, a full-page ad caught my eye, mainly because it was addressed to me. Also, it was in classical Latin.

The Latin was pretty rough, penned no doubt by a modern scholar who didn’t appreciate the subtleties of the spoken language. And since nobody spoke Latin outside of the Vatican, I guess this was understandable. But I understood it all right.

Translated, the message read:

For the Eternal Man

We are trying to find you. You do not have any reason to fear us. You do not have to run. We want to help you and we believe you can help us. We have the answers to many questions. Stay where you are and we will find you. Do not make this any harder than it has to be.

The message was unattributed and the paper did not note who purchased the ad.

I didn’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, it sounded like a friendly attempt to establish a dialogue. On the other, it made it clear “they” were after me in some capacity, possibly the same capacity that resulted in two dead college students. It was an offer of knowledge and a threat all wrapped up into one cryptic passage—don’t run, don’t be afraid, don’t move and don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Very convincing. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the minute someone feels obligated to tell you not to be afraid of them, that’s the time to start being afraid of them. I wondered how long these little letters had been getting printed. Maybe I should have started reading the newspapers sooner.

*
 
*
 
*

As I sat there at my little, two-persons-max table, contemplating the passage and deciding whether I should wait until I’d heard from Iza before hopping aboard a transatlantic flight to someplace remote, someone sat down opposite me.

If you’ve ever hung out long enough in a Starbucks you know this isn’t a terribly uncommon experience, especially when all the other tables are taken. Usually people bother to ask first if the chair is being saved, but . . . Anyway, I tried to act nonchalant and flipped ahead to the crossword puzzle to look busy.

“Hello,” my tablemate said. I looked up briefly. He was dressed in a sports coat and a white shirt, no tie. He had a couple of gold chains around his neck with symbols hanging from them that he probably couldn’t identify the meaning of at gunpoint. He was white-skinned, stocky in build, and looked to have some Norwegian ancestry in him. I was singularly disinterested in having a conversation, so I pretended to be a foreigner. Which I sort of am.

“
I don’t speak any English
,” I said in German. Middle-high German, which nobody speaks any more. I didn’t feel like running the risk that he was fluent in the modern form. Most of the time when someone hears a foreign language they don’t probe. And they almost never ask what language it is, just so long as it sounds like an actual language. This doesn’t always work. I once spent a half hour trying to get rid of an inquisitive elderly wino in a bar in Ontario while speaking Sanskrit. Sometimes people just can’t take a hint.

This appeared to be one of those times. He smiled as if I had responded in the King’s English and said, “I’m fine, thanks.”

I nodded and tried to go back to my paper. Five letter word for draining aid. Sieve?

“How about this weather?” he added.

“
You are ugly and smell like pig dung
,” I suggested helpfully.

“Yeah, it looks like snow to me, too.”

This would have been amusing, if it weren’t so very annoying.

“Look,” he whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially, “I know you speak English. You’re reading the fucking paper. Okay?”

“
Your mother eats raw salmon,
” I offered. Was this guy slow?

He snatched the paper from my hand. Now we were past the “invasion of personal space” phase and fast approaching “punch you in the nose” phase.

He slapped the paper down on the table and pointed to the artistic rendition of my face, circa two days ago.

“I know who you are. Now let’s talk in the same language for a bit.”

For the first time, I noticed that the coffee shop was half empty. There were four other empty tables he could have chosen from. I should have been paying better attention.

I snatched the paper off the table. “
I am the god of cabbage,
” I declared angrily. With any luck somebody would step up and ask him why he was bothering the foreign guy.

“All right, all right,” he said. “Do me a favor. Look under the table. I have a gun pointed at your balls right now.”

Well now, that was obviously a trick, right? If I peek under the table, I clearly understand English. And for all I know he’s got his penis out or something. The correct response was to ignore him. Except I knew as soon as he said it that he wasn’t kidding. So, I peeked. He wasn’t kidding. I sat up again.

“What is that, a .22?” I asked.

“It’s a .38. Makes a little ‘pop’ when you pull the trigger, sounds like a wine bottle uncorking.”

“That’s nice. What do you want?”

“I want you,” he said, smiling.

“I’m charmed. Are you a policeman?”

He laughed. “Hardly.”

“Well then. If you’re not a member of law enforcement, why should I go anywhere with you?”

“Because I’ve still got a gun pointed at your balls?”

“It would look terribly silly if I got up and we walked out together with you holding a gun to my groin, don’t you think? One almost never sees that sort of thing.”

“You could give me your word that you’ll leave quietly,” he suggested.

“Supposing my word isn’t worth anything?”

“I think it is.”

“That’s mighty trusting of you.”

He leaned forward and grinned. “Here’s what I know. I know you’re old enough to remember a time when there were no words.”

He was wrong, I think. I don’t remember any fully preliterate societies. But close enough. Who the hell was this guy? Did he work for the people who sent me the message in the paper? Was he the guy who sent it?

“Do I have your attention now?” he asked.

“Sure. What do you want?”

“I want you to sit right there for a second.” He pulled a black case out of his jacket and slid it across the table. “Open it.”

I popped it open and found a syringe.

“We just met and we’re already doing heroin?” I said. “Seems sudden.”

He leaned forward and whispered, “Keep your goddamn voice down. Now I want you to take that and inject yourself with it.”

“Um, no?”

“You want to spend the rest of your very long life without your balls?” he asked.

I was amazed that our dialogue had gone unnoticed. You’d think this was far enough off the conversational beaten path to send up a signal or two to somebody. But everyone was stubbornly minding their own business.

I picked up the syringe and examined it. “What’s in it?” I asked. Not that I had anything to fear regardless. Nobody had invented anything yet that could poison me.

“It’s the only way I have to verify your identity. It’s concentrated
botulinum
toxin. It’ll kill a man in about fifteen seconds. If you are who you’re supposed to be, it won’t do anything to you.”

“I never claimed to be anyone special,” I pointed out. “That’s all you. And you seem convinced already.”

“I am convinced. But if I don’t test you I don’t get paid.”

I laid the syringe on the table and examined it. “How’s it work?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never used one.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. I wasn’t kidding. I really had never used a syringe before.

“Find a vein,” he said. “Your wrist is fine.”

I laid my hand flat and palm-up on the table and looked at it. “Like that one?” I asked, pointing to the largest vein I could see.

“Yes, fine.” He was getting impatient. All except for the gun under the table, I was sort of enjoying this.

“Okay,” he said. “Insert the pointy end into the vein at an angle, and then push the plunger down. And don’t do anything stupid like sticking me with it. You kill me, I kill you.”

And so, at gunpoint, I gave myself my very first intravenous injection. It was a little painful. I don’t think I have a future ahead of me as a junkie.

When I was finished and the fifteen seconds wherein I continued to be alive passed uneventfully, he said, “Good, now put it back in the case and slide it over to me.”

I did as I was told. He returned the case to his inside pocket.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Get up. I’m parked about two blocks down the street.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll get to that later. Do you know how to drive?”

“No.” He tapped the gun barrel against the bottom of the table. “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

He stood. I stood. He was much taller than he had looked when sitting in the chair. A full head-and-shoulders taller than me. I remember when I used to be the tallest guy on an entire continent. At this rate, in another century or two, I’ll be the shortest.

I led the way out the door, leaving behind the bitter, spiked coffee and the paper while he trailed, keeping close enough so I knew he was there but far enough so it didn’t look like I was being coerced.

“To the right,” he said. “Down the alley, then left.”

“I just met you, you’ve got a gun pointed at my back, and you want me to go with you down an alley?”

“Yep.”

“Just checking.”

It was a fairly unremarkable alley. Not too narrow, with a couple of trash cans, a Dumpster, and a fire escape ladder just out of reach. Pretty typical. But it was long and it was out of view to the public at large, and there was nobody else in it.

At a convenient moment, I spun around and hit just the right spot on his wrist to compel him to drop his gun, which I caught with my free hand. With one sweep of my leg I buckled his knees, and just like that I was standing over my erstwhile captor holding his gun with him kneeling before me.

Here’s a little bit of advice if you ever meet an immortal and feel like challenging him to a fight. It is simply impossible to live this long and not pick up a few hand-to-hand combat techniques here and there. I was a black belt before there was such a thing. Not that I’m bragging.

“Well,” my new friend said, “that was impressive. Did you break my wrist?”

“No, but you may have to give it a couple of minutes before you try and use it again. What do I call you?”

“Stan.”

“What’s this about, Stan?”

“Can I get up?”

“No.”

“It’s just that my knees kinda hurt.”

I pressed the gun against his forehead.

“All right,” he conceded. “I’m a bounty hunter.”

I pulled back. “That’s a new one. Who put a bounty on me?”

“No idea. It’s a private contract. Unofficial. Very under the table.”

“Sounds illegal.”

“That’s sort of splitting hairs, isn’t it?” he answered. True enough. It had to be illegal, as the police had only been looking for me for two days. This was about something else.

Stay where you are and we will find you.

“Dead or alive?” I asked.

“Alive.”

“That’s heartening.”

“With allowances for wounding.”

“You’re over-sharing,” I pointed out. “What were you supposed to do with me once you found me?”

“Call a number.”

“What number?”

“The job came with a scrambled phone. It automatically calls the correct number, so I have no idea.”

“That’s convenient,” I said. “Did the syringe come with the package, too?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the phone?”

“In my car,” he said, adding, “look, my knees are starting to hurt here.”

“Oh, stop whining. Keys?”

“In my pocket.”

“What kind of car?”

“Caddy Escalade. Black.”

“Nice ride,” I commented. I didn’t know what an Escalade looked like, but I knew what a Cadillac was.

“I make a decent living,” he said. “Look, I really wasn’t going to hurt you. You seem like a nice enough guy and all.”

“Thanks, Stan. I need to know something else. A couple of nights ago two friends of mine were beaten to death in their apartment. You know anything about that?”

“No,” he said.

I cuffed him in the ear with the butt of the gun.

“Oww!” he cried.

“Try again,” I suggested.

“It wasn’t me, all right? There are other bounty hunters out there. You’re worth a lot of money to somebody.”

“How much?”

He hesitated. “Five million.”

“Wow.” I know inflation has changed the relevance of the word “million” but that still sounded like a lot.

“Yeah, wow,” he agreed. “So, now everybody is in on it.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Lucky,” he said. “I saw your picture in the paper. I was heading to the police station to ask for details on the case. Figured they had a lead on you. But then I saw you outside.”