Dead Man

33

Eight days later Dain emerged from his room at the Imperial Motel in Lafayette, his arm in a neat black sling. It was here he and Inverness had stayed the night before going into the swamp after Vangie, and their rooms had been held for them. He crossed to his rental car parked directly in front of the room, tossed his suitcase into the open trunk, went over to the adjoining room and emerged with Inverness’s suitcase. He tossed that in also, slammed the trunk lid, and went off toward the office.

Inside, the clerk looked up from his accounting when Dain put the keys for both rooms on his desk.

“Mr. Inverness and I will be checking out.”

“Certainly, sir.” The clerk got out both bills, ran them through the computer to get the final totals, handed them over. “These include all phone and laundry charges.”

Dain was here doing this only because he didn’t want any loose ends. He wanted it finished. He didn’t want anyone coming around a week or a month or a year from now to ask him questions he couldn’t really answer. End it here and now, cleanly, so there would be no sticky strands tying it to him later.

It had been eight days since he’d dumped Inverness’s body into the Atchafalaya. The identities of the other hitman and the man who had set up the hit had died with him. So be it. But could he just walk away from it? Could death still be looking for him though he no longer was looking for it?

Of course he could. The dead were dead, blood had paid for blood. He would not be working for the mob any longer, would no longer be moving in those circles. He could make a new start of sorts. Let Doug Sherman go back to book-selling full-time while he became the sort of P.I. who took any and all clients through the door. Randy would help him get referrals...

He went through the invoices item by item with the clerk fidgeting in the background, just so there would be no surprises. He hesitated for a long time over one item on Inverness’s bill, then folded them up and put them in his wallet. He felt as if he had been kicked in the heart.

“These look in order. Put Mr. Inverness’s room charge on the signed credit card charge he left with you — I’ll pay for mine with cash.”

From the motel, Dain drove to an auto supply store, bought a towbar, drove back to park half a block from the motel, went into the lot, got Inverness’s car without being seen by the clerk, and drove back to his own car.

He arrived at New Orleans in midafternoon with the Inverness car on the towbar behind him, drove to the government housing developments near the Superdome, and dumped it at the curb. Driving to New Orleans International Airport to turn in his rental, he figured the abandoned car would be in a bump shop by nightfall, unrecognizable by dawn.

He fought hard against thinking about Vangie, speculating where she might be or what she might be doing. She had brought him alive again by accepting him into her body, he had set out to save her life, she had saved his. She was involved in life, she was life.

The urge to run to her, try to build his new life around that vitality, was almost overwhelming, but he had no right to do that. She had a new life to build, and the bonds with which to do it. A new life having nothing to do with hootch dancing in cheap strip joints.

The sign over the clock read NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. The clock read 7:32. Dain had just paid with cash, and the attractive blonde in the blue uniform with little silver wings over her left breast gave him his ticket to San Francisco. She had nice dimples and bold eyes.

“Your SFO flight boards in twenty-eight minutes, sir.”

He went through the detectors, stopped at a bank of pay phones on his way to the gate. He was once again carrying his leather-bound Tibetan Book of the Dead, which he set on the metal shelf below the phone as he waited for his call to be picked up.

“Douglas Sherman here,” said the phone.

“Dougie! It’s Dain.”

“Dain?” He paused. “My God, I was starting to wonder—”

“I’ll be getting in tonight, going to the loft.”

“Did... everything go smoothly?” Sherman asked cautiously.

“Not really,” he said. “I found the fugitives and I found the bonds, but... I don’t believe we’ll be collecting our fee from Mr. Maxton.”

There was a long pause. “Maxton is—”

“Not going to pay our fee,” said Dain firmly. “I also ran into one of the gentlemen from Point Reyes. I’ll tell you all about it at the bookstore in the morning.”

He started away, then looped back to the phone. He had realized he didn’t want to take the shuttle bus from SFO back to the city when he got home. And he wanted to tell Shenzie all about it. Cats understood things like revenge very well indeed.

The call was a short one.

“Randy? This is—”

“Hey, Hoss, where the hell are you?” demanded Solomon’s big voice. “Why the hell haven’t you—”

“Still in New Orleans, catching a flight home in...” Dain checked his watch. “Eleven minutes—”

“I’ll be waiting at the airport.”

Dain gave him flight number and arrival time, then added, “Can you bring Shenzie, too? I really—”

“Sho nuff,” said Randy with his big booming laugh. “He’s right here with me on the couch, watching TV.”

Dain’s window seat looked out at moon-silvered clouds far below the plane. His face was exhausted and drawn. He thought he was too keyed-up to sleep, but then he was dreaming.

He was in a strange apartment in a hot steaming tropical land, using his computer to identify those he sought. He was nude, sweat-drenched. In thirty seconds he would have them, their identities and locations would leap from the screen at him...

He heard voices, as if through steel wool.

They... they all... dead?

Yeah. We’ll check if he has any notes here, a computer... then we’ll burn the place down...

There was a loud pop! and a flash of light, and the computer blew up with an acrid puff of electrical smoke. One leg of the computer table collapsed, the whole setup slid to the floor. He had spent hours in the intricate tracery of their tracks, now it was gone, all gone in a puff of smoke.

Dain threw himself on the bed, arms and legs flung wide. On the opposite wall was a familiar Magritte. The door of the bathroom opened. Vangie emerged, like him nude in the blanketing heat. Suddenly he had a massive hard-on, the biggest erection of his life.

She stepped up on the bed astride him, looking down at him in anticipation as his exciting view of her dark sexual nest made his hard-on even more distended. She lowered herself onto him with exquisite slowness, impaling herself on that enormous organ. Her body accepted all of it, she immediately began fucking him frenziedly, immediately reared back in ecstasy, immediately collapsed shuddering against him, all within a few seconds and long before he could come himself.

Then she lifted herself off his still-erect member, planted a kiss on its engorged tip as if kissing a rose, winked bawdily at him, and was gone.

Randy was waiting by the loading gate at SFO, his face a huge grin as passengers streamed around them off the plane. He examined Dain keenly and gave his big laugh.

“You look like you got a tale to tell, Hoss.”

He told it on the way into the city, Randy behind the wheel, Dain beside him, Shenzie in his carry case on the backseat, meowing in his pissed-off way at being cooped up so long.

“Hell, if Inverness was a cop, I oughta be able to find out who he saw when he came to town—”

“Five years ago? And he wouldn’t have come as a cop.”

Shenzie meowed yet again, insistent for attention. Dain started to reach over the back of the seat with his good arm to open the case and stick his hand in.

“Hey, man, don’t let him out in the car!” Solomon said in alarm. “I did driving down, he like to took my ear off.”

Dain nodded and took his hand from the case. To their left the lights of the tough little town of Brisbane were scattered like children’s jacks down the eastern slope of San Bruno Mountain; ahead and to their right beyond an arm of the bay was the pale unlit mass of Candlestick Park.

“Only thing you ain’t told me, what happened to the bonds?”

“Vangie kept ‘em. She paid enough for them.” He added, “I also didn’t tell you, I think I might know who brokered the hit.”

Randy shot a look over at him, eyes gleaming ferally. “Let’s go get the fucker.”

Dain shook his head. “I don’t want to do anything about it, Randy. I’m just so goddamned tired of it all...”

“There you go again, goddammit! Didn’t you learn nothin’ five years ago? Right now you don’t look in good enough shape to handle a can opener for the cat food, but that fucker, whoever he is, he’ll just keep coming at you, Eddie. He’ll figure he’s got no choice. Why don’t you tell me who he is and where he is, and go home and get some sleep. When you wake up—”

“I can’t do it that way, Randy. Hell, I’m not even sure of my facts. It’s just a maybe. I can’t stomach any more killing on just maybes.”

Randy’s face was taut, his skin and eyes were glistening.

“You lemme talk to the fucker, we’ll get sure. Remember what happened last time you tried it alone.”

“It happened because I wouldn’t let go of an investigation. This time I’m letting go before it gets started.”

Randy sighed in exasperation. “Where’ve I heard that one before? Look, Hoss, all I’m saying, you’re pretty beat up right now. Things’ll look different in a few days after you’ve had some rest. Then you and I’ll get together—”

“I’m not going to move on it, Randy. That’s final.”

And there it remained as Randy left the freeway for Bryant Street, ran down through the night-quiet South of Market streets to the Embarcadero. He pulled up in front of Dain’s darkened, dilapidated pier.

“I’m probably wrong about him anyway,” said Dain.

“Meanin’ you think you’re right about him.”

Randy shook his head, got out to pull the suitcase off the backseat as Dain got Shenzie in his carrying case. When Randy’s taillights had winked out of sight, Dain used a key on the small door beside the loading door, went in, entered the open freight elevator, left Shenzie there to go back outside for his suitcase.

The creaking, swaying lift clanked to the top floor. Dain hit the hallway light switch, then opened the fuse box to unscrew one of them. All his actions were rendered more difficult, more deliberate, by the fact that he had only one arm to use. And by the fact he was reluctant to do them at all.

Two trips to get suitcase, cat, and Tibetan Book of the Dead to the big steel door of his loft. He balanced the book on top of the suitcase, got out his keys, paused.

“What are the odds, cat?” he asked softly.

Shenzie meowed, also softly.

“That bad, huh?”

Dain silently unlocked the door, opened it a scant half-inch on the blackness within. Took a deep breath. Then jerked the door wide and went through in a knee-high dive, obliquely so he would pass instantly out of the light.

Three shots exploded almost together from the darkness.

Dain’s voice said, “I was hoping you wouldn’t be here, but... just in case...”

Two more shots at where his voice seemed to come from sang and ricocheted. The light switch was clicked in a frenzy.

“I took out the fuse, Dougie-baby,” said Dain.

There was a long pause, then Sherman’s voice said, “How... did you know that... I...”

“Your unlisted phone number was on Inverness’s phone bill at the motel in Lafayette.”

A flashlight stabbed the darkness where it seemed Dain’s voice had come from. It picked up only weight-lifting apparatus. A five-pound weight spun right up its beam like a Frisbee. There was a crunch, a cry, the light hit the floor and went out.

Dain’s voice, now cold and inexorable, said, “I looked because he had to call somebody who was also in touch with Maxton for Maxton to have followed us into the swamp. I didn’t think it could be someone local in New Orleans, but I didn’t expect it to be you. Once I knew, and thought about it, of course then it all made sense. But if you’d just left it alone tonight...”

Another muzzle flash, another bullet whining ineffectually. Sherman was a silhouette against the light, jerking first one way, then another, gun extended, trying to pin down Dain’s voice.

“Who better than you to keep tabs on me, down through the years — hell, I begged you to. My go-between! Just as you’d been Pucci’s go-between, down through the years. You even kept in touch with Inverness — you’re a very careful man, Dougie...”

There was another shot. Dain laughed from elsewhere.

“When I told you I was going to New Orleans, you panicked and called him. Hoped he’d kill me but you tossed in Maxton just to make sure. Know what happened to Maxton, Doug? I boiled him alive in a vat of hot tar.”

Sherman’s gun hand was silhouetted against the doorway light. The knife edge of Dain’s hand broke his wrist in a karate chop. Sherman screamed, dropped the gun. Bent, clutching his shattered wrist, panicked as a fire-trapped horse, he ducked back out of the light.

“Inverness died of snakebite... Not a good way to go. Those last minutes of agony, knowing it’s coming...”

“Can’t you understand, I... I was frightened when you went to New Orleans...”

“Yes, Dougie,” said Dain softly, “be frightened.”

There were running steps, Sherman burst out of the darkness and through the doorway and away down the hall, holding his splintered wrist. How had he ever thought it would be amusing to tweak the tail of his own tame tiger? He’d told himself it was only smart to know Dain’s every move in case he got close to the truth in one of his investigations.

Then he had, and...

At the elevator, Sherman had just seized the rope that would draw the bottom door up and the top one down, when Dain’s foot was planted on the bottom one. He had grabbed up his leather-bound Tibetan Book of the Dead from on top of his suitcase in passing.

Sherman backed away, face stricken, absolute terror in his heart, until he ran out of room at the rear of the elevator.

Dain stood in the doorway, planted, solid, somehow more menacing because of his black sling than he would have been with the use of both arms. He held his leather-bound book in his left hand, spine out.

“Dain... please... after all these years...”

“You put a hitman on me in New Orleans — after all these years. You sent Maxton and his goons after me from Chicago — after all these years. You were waiting here in the dark to kill me — after all these years.”

“Money...”

“Yeah, money. Inverness said it always came down to money. That’s what it was always about, wasn’t it? You had original Magritte paintings, for Chrissake! You don’t make that sort of money selling books. I really was naive and stupid. You were Pucci’s drug distributor for all of Northern California, weren’t you? All along?”

“Dain, you have to believe me—”

“It wasn’t Pucci ordered the hit on me — it was you!” Dain was advancing on him now. “He wasn’t at risk — you were! Did he even know about me?”

“Of course he did, he... he ordered...”

“You ordered.”

“I didn’t... I never expected Marie and the baby...”

A sudden shriek, “Inverness said his orders were to kill everybody in the cabin!”

Sherman also shrieked. “Dain!”

But Dain was upon him, towering over him, all the more terrifying because he was speaking in a rational, almost quiet voice totally at odds with the tension in his face and body.

“You knew only the three of us would be out there in that cabin, Doug. And you told them to slaughter us all.”

“Please! Dain! For God’s sake, man, pity...”

Dain brought his arm back and across his body like an ancient warrior with a broadsword, then swung the hard narrow spine of the book like that warrior’s blade. Not at Sherman. In martial arts he had been trained to think of striking something a foot beyond his real target.

The edge of the book struck the side of Sherman’s neck with a rending sound. Dain, panting, turned away from the carrion huddled in the corner of the elevator.

“There’s your pity, Doug,” he said.

Shenzie started to meow, and some of the shock left Dain’s face. He screwed the fuse back in tight and shut the fuse box door before going back down the hall.

“Let’s get you out of that box, Shenz.”

He carried Shenzie into the loft, turned on the lights — and scattered words and images from the last few hours came clamoring unbidden through his brain. Questions. Answers. Probabilities. Inevitabilities.

A coherent whole.

He sat on the bed for a long time with the carry case unopened beside him. A vast shudder ran through him.

Of course. If the middleman had come after him, why would the hitman be any slower off the mark?

Finally he shook himself, reached into the cat carry case for Shenzie. Fondled his furry little head. Chucked him under the chin, scratched him under the collar. Still no purr, of course, but at least he withdrew his hand to vocal protest.

“We’ll have you out of there in no time, cat,” he promised. “Just one phone call to make first.”

Dain dragged Moe Wexler, the electronics genius, away from his reality cop show on TV, got some precise advice from him, then asked him to do a little job. Moe sighed and said he would have to go down to his shop in the middle of the night and it was going to cost Dain plenty, and Dain said that was all right, he had plenty, and he would meet Moe there.

The next part was going to be difficult and dangerous. But if he had to go, Dain figured, he would be going in good company. Shenzie had always wanted to be an engineer and he would be able to see some engineering problems get worked out at first hand.

Especially if Dain quite literally blew it...

The eleven o’clock news told the hitman he was safe. An explosion had gutted a semi-abandoned pier on the San Francisco waterfront. Fortunately there was a firehouse next door, so they were able to extinguish the resultant blaze before the flames had a chance to spread to adjacent structures.

One unidentified body had been found in the wreckage, at this hour police and firemen were sifting through the rubble for clues to his identity and for the source of the blast...

The shooter tapped his remote to blank the screen, and went to bed feeling totally safe and at peace with himself for the first time in five years.

34

It was one of those unusual San Francisco summer days, a sparkling sunlit morning without fog. Randy Solomon bounded zestfully down the outside stairs of his beautifully restored old Victorian on Buchanan, whistling. He turned downhill toward Fell and his car parked half a block away.

Standing on the sidewalk waiting for him was Dain. No sling this morning; both arms were free. Solomon checked his forward momentum, momentarily appalled.

“You were the other hitman,” said Dain simply.

His face was pinched and drawn; another sleepless night. Randy had recovered; his face was placid, beaming. He mimed holding his arms out from his sides.

“You a tricky enough dude to be wired, Dain?”

Dain opened his arms wide for the frisk. “Doctor said I could take the sling off today, so I did, that’s all,” he said.

“So, no wire.” Randy gave his big laugh. “So it’s just us, sorta mano a mano, huh?”

“Something like that,” said Dain. “After all, I’ve been looking for you for five years.”

Randy nodded.

“Lots of activity gettin’ you nowhere. Sure, I was the second shooter. Who the hell else could it have been? I been waiting five years for that penny to drop. When you said last night about Inverness bein’ a cop, I thought you knew then.”

“I didn’t,” said Dain. There was none of the heat and hatred he’d shown the night before with Sherman. Only a sort of sadness. “You’re right, I should have known. It only made sense — a couple of murderous cops working together. You had the directions to the cabin — I’d given them to you myself. Inverness had the instructions from Sherman — kill us all.”

Randy laughed his basso profundo laugh, spread his hands.

“Always tellin’ you how I couldn’t stand old Dougiebaby, where’d he get his information, shit like that, when all the time him and me...”

“You’d worked for him before,” said Dain, more a question than a statement. “Paying for your house.”

“Couple of times,” Randy agreed. “Do a hit locally saves travelin’ on the weekends.”

“It was you who blew up Grimes on his boat.”

Randy chuckled again. “You sure you ain’t wearin’ a wire, Hoss, seeking all these admissions, like?”

“No wire,” said Dain. “Just trying to understand.”

Randy was suddenly irritated. He looked around the quiet early-morning street. No one else had come from any of the houses on the block. No cars had started up at the curb. Randy had always been an early one in to the office. Dedicated cop.

“What’s to understand? Killin’ people’s the easiest way I know to have a nice retirement.” He swept an arm around to encompass the city. “Shit, they kill each other every day — over what TV show to watch and what corner to sell crack from.”

“But... but I was your friend. Marie was your friend. Albie was your friend. Even Shenzie was—”

“Can’t be friends with no cat, Hoss.”

“But all you had to do was—”

“You wouldn’t let it alone. I had set up the accident on Grimes’s boat, and you just kept peckin’ at it. So me and Sherman decided...” He broke off, said, “That was old Dougie’s body they drug out of the loft, wasn’t it?”

“His body,” said Dain. “I called him from New Orleans, told him I was on my way back and would be at the loft last night. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I had to know one way or the other.” He suddenly quoted, “’Was me, I’d be plannin’ a whole lotta other people’s deaths.’” He met the incomprehension in Randy’s eyes. “It’s what you said to the doctor at the hospital that night. Whatever part of me was still alive heard it... It kept me going all those years...”

Randy shrugged. “I don’t remember it.” Then he was suddenly intense, with an edge of anger again. “But you shoulda listened closer, Sherlock. I said that’s what I’d of done. Me. Not you. Hell, you was just a nerdy chess player in those days.”

“Still am,” said Dain, and meant it. “Playing around at life, playing around at revenge... Who else but you would have put that second bug on Farnsworth’s phone? I never told you about the bonds but you knew about them in the car last night from the airport and I still didn’t get it...”

“Yeah. Beefed up yo’ body, got all ready physically for the war, but up here” — he tapped his forehead with a finger — “and here” — he slammed a fist against his own washboard gut — “you’re still a fucking nerd.”

His anger boiled over, he put a hand on Dain’s chest and shoved him back a couple of steps. Dain gave without pushing back. Randy nodded as if his point had been made.

“You know I killed your fucking kid, you know I helped kill your fucking wife, you know I planned to blow you and your fucking cat all to hell, and what do you do? You think it all through an’ you come here for a fucking confrontation.”

He whirled, jabbed a finger at the flat roof of the Victorian across the street.

“Why the fuck aren’t you up there with a sniper rifle and a scope, layin’ the cross hairs on my chest?”

He shoved Dain again, harder this time. Dain went back a few more paces, still not trying to defend himself.

“Because you’re a fucking nerd, same as you ever was.” He gave his big booming laugh. “You ain’t figured out shit. And you got no proof of anything.” He was suddenly curious. “What really tipped you off it was Doug and me?”

“Him, a phone bill. You, the remark about the bonds — eventually it sank in. And how scared you got when I almost took Shenzie out of his carry case in the car. So up at the loft I checked and sure enough — there was a wire running from his collar down into a lump of molded plastique in the case with a detonator embedded in it. If I’d lifted him out—”

“So you blew up the loft, figuring I’d be watching the news and figure you were all done. And old Dougie went there, tryna get you before you got him, and by accident got blown up along with the place. You’re pretty slick, Sherlock. But not slick enough. ‘Cause you don’t want revenge hard enough. You gonna talk me to death. Only people don’t die that way.”

“I’d quit wanting revenge at all,” said Dain. “I was going to let it go with Doug, even after I knew he’d been the go-between. But he wouldn’t let it alone. Just like me five years ago. And it got him killed, just like me five years ago.”

Randy made as if to step around Dain toward his car, then checked himself again.

“Like I told you in the car last night, he couldn’t leave it alone. I can’t leave it alone. I ain’t safe long as you’re alive. But the difference between you and me, Sherlock — I know the way people die is somebody kills ‘em. So I ain’t gonna talk you to death.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Dain in a strangely flat voice.

“I’m gonna give you time to have a lot of fun wonderin’ when it’s gonna happen. Then, one of these days, just when you figure I’ve forgot all about it, you’ll turn around and, wham! You ain’t there any more. Nobody’ll ever suspect me, ‘cause see, Dain, the whole world knows I’m your best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at your funeral.”

He laughed his big booming laugh again, went jauntily down the street and across the grassy strip to his car, went around to the driver’s side and unlocked it, opened the door. Dain bent down to pick up something he’d put down out of sight beside the roots of a tree, then just stood there with it in his hand to watch Solomon get into his car.

As Randy slid in under the wheel, he checked the back from automatic cop’s habit. And froze. On the seat behind him was Shenzie’s cat carrying case with a big red satin bow tied around it. A bow with bright gold letters stamped into it:

“No!” he screamed.

Utter terror distorting his features, he tried to get out of the car before Dain pushed the button on the transmitter. Moe Wexler had been up almost all night putting it together for the detonator in the plastique Randy had put in Shenzie’s case.

Randy didn’t make it.

With a great whoosh! of sound and a burst of flame, his car went up with him only halfway out of it. Black smoke poured up into the unusual summer morning without fog. Dain just stood there, watching, tears on his cheeks.

“You turn around, Randy, and wham!” he said in a soft, sad voice, “you aren’t there any more.” He started down the street, murmuring to himself, “Nobody’ll ever suspect me. I was his best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at his funeral...”

Cautious people had begun venturing out of their houses with stunned faces, but by then Dain was gone.

From force of habit, he went around to the back door of the little bungalow in Mill Valley, started to let himself into the kitchen, stopped dead, key in hand. The door was unlocked. He had locked it after leaving Shenzie off last night before going back to Moe Wexler’s shop in the city. And Shenzie hadn’t come to greet him as he usually did...

Nightmare. Yet another hitman was in the house, someone else he had to kill... forever and ever, yet another murderer to murder... And the iron grip of the past on his heart would never ease, he could never die and be reborn again...

Set carelessly on the kitchen counter was an attaché case. One that looked very familiar...

Dain slid forward silently, opened the case carelessly — if he was wrong and it was another bomb, now was the time to go. He had nothing left in his life he valued...

No bomb. It was indeed the bearer bonds that had started it all — and ended it all.

Dain moved silently through the little house he knew so well. Vangie was slumped back in the big easy chair across the coffee table from the couch, asleep, her fierce and beautiful face relaxed and childlike. Dain felt his heart leap up as he stood looking at her.

Something in his life that he valued.

Shenzie was asleep on her chest.

Dain crossed silently to the sleeping pair, put his finger down under Shenzie’s throat. He was purring, his little motorboat going even in his sleep. He woke at Dain’s touch, looked up at him with big pop eyes, stretched, kneading Vangie’s sweater with little front paws, then shut his eyes again, indifferent to Dain’s arrival.

The kneading paws woke Vangie. Just like the cat, she looked up at Dain for a long time without moving or speaking. Finally she sat up and cradled Shenzie upside down on her lap.

“You said your cat didn’t purr,” she told him.

“Not for five years.”

She touched the name tag on Shenzie’s collar.

“Shenzie. What a goofy name.”

“It means crazy in Swahili. But more than that. Goofy is right — nuts, a little out of control. He always has been — knocks your cup of tea off the arm of the couch just to see what you’ll do, sleeps on the cable box on top of the TV ‘cause it’s warm, quits purring for five years...”

Vangie stood up, turning to set Shenzie back in the chair when she did. She stood in front of Dain looking up at him. They were not touching, but almost.

“I came in through the bedroom window — the latch was loose.” She made a quick gesture with her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and hiking boots. “You don’t owe me anything, Dain, I’m not expecting anything from you, but I want to give the bonds back to that woman they were stolen from and I don’t know how, so I had to ask you—”

“Eddie,” said Dain.

“Eddie?”

“My name is Eddie. Dain is my last name.” He scooped her up in his arms and started toward the bedroom. He had a sudden, intense erection, as he used to get with Marie at unexpected moments, as he’d had in his airplane dream. “We have to check out that loose lock on the window.”

When they came the first time it was absolutely together, and both cried out when they did. And then cried, real tears, because both of them could finally let go of their losses.

Dain woke alone in bed, stretched luxuriously, felt automatically for Shenzie’s little head on the pillow beside his. Shenzie wasn’t there. Noonday sun through the branches of the pine tree outside the window made the bedroom a green cavern, like the bedroom in his dream. He could smell coffee. New Orleans coffee, thick and rich with lots of chicory in it.

Everything came back to him, everything, all of it.

He pulled on his shorts and padded barefoot out into the living room. Vangie was on the sofa, coffee mug in hand, staring at the half-finished chess game on the coffee table that for five years Dain had been physically unable to put away.

She looked up when he came into the room. She was wearing one of his shirts, the tails came down almost to her knees.

“My pa-pére taught me to play this game,” she said. “My grandfather. Is this one of those chess problems he used to tell me about?”

“No,” said Dain. “This is just an unfinished game...”

Without visible hesitation, he pulled up a chair across from her and sat down. He leaned forward, studying the board.

“It got interrupted and Marie and I never got back to it.”

Vangie moved a piece. Dain countered. With a sudden soft thud, Shenzie landed on the corner of the coffee table and sat watching the play intently. His black tail with the white tip was twined loosely down around one leg of the table.

“He wishes he had hands,” said Vangie.

“So he can be an engineer when he grows up,” said Dain.

“Check,” said Vangie.

The three of them studied the board intently for a long while, Dain seeking a way to avoid checkmate. Then Shenzie reached out a tiny black and white hand and knocked over one of Dain’s pieces. It happened to be his king.

He and Vangie laughed together. He felt as if he were coming up to the surface of a sunlit sea after a very long time in cold green depths where no light ever penetrated.

They went back into the bedroom to celebrate again what they had found. As they celebrated, Shenzie went to sleep in the middle of the chessboard, the pieces he had knocked aside littering the tabletop like miniature overturned grave markers.