The Dead Man

Chapter Three

"Jack, this job is perfect for you."

"I haven't had a perfect job since Sue Ellen Erickson asked me to carry her books home in the fifth grade."

Simon Alexander and I were having coffee late Friday afternoon on the Country Club Plaza, the gray day giving way to full night, snow coming down sideways. The after-Christmas sales were over and the quarter million multicolored lights that turned the Plaza's shops and restaurants into Disneyland from Thanksgiving through mid-January had gone dark. The sidewalks were empty. People with sense were home or on their way.

"You can set your own schedule, spend as much time as you want, take a break whenever you need to, you know…"

"Stop shaking."

"Yeah, that."

The FBI had retired me at age fifty because of a movement disorder that makes me shake, sometimes bending me in half, sometimes strangling my speech, sometimes leaving me the hell alone. The cause and the cure are both mysteries, the symptoms a capricious mix of hiccups and hammer blows. The more I do, the more I shake but a friend once told me that the more you do, the more you do. So I put as much into my days as I can, accepting that it will rattle my cage. Some days are diamonds and some days are stones.

Simon was in the technology security business. He called me when his clients' problems got more complicated than a string of ones and zeros.

"I keep telling you, Simon, you don't have to dance around it. I shake. It's not a big deal." A flurry of mild tremors stutter-stepped my automatic denial. "Tell me about the job."

"You've heard of Milo Harper?"

"Kansas City's hometown billionaire. He offered Kate Scranton a job but she turned him down, says she doesn't trust him."

"She'd do better reading astrology charts than her facial action coding system. If someone winks when they should blink, she thinks they're guilty of something they haven't even thought of doing."

"Trouble is, she's usually right. What else should I know about Harper?"

"We grew up together and were roommates at Stanford. He dropped out during our sophomore year. I stayed and got my degree while he left and got rich. Created one of those social networking sites and sold it for a couple of billion. I've done some work for him since he came back to Kansas City."

"You and a billionaire? I don't see it."

"Who knew? He was the tall, good-looking guy with wavy hair, a square chin, and pecs he could make dance. I was the short nebbish geek with early male pattern baldness whose idea of a good pickup line was would you like to play Simon says."

"How'd that work out for you?"

"It was the ones who said yes that scared me."

"Harper plowed a bunch of the money into that place. . what's it called?"

"The Harper Institute of the Mind."

"He keeps trying to recruit Kate. She keeps telling him no but he keeps asking."

"That's Milo. He can charm you if he wants to but he doesn't care what you think about him as long as you've got talent. And he doesn't take no for an answer. He says the brain is the last frontier. He's recruited some of the top people in the field, except, apparently, for Kate."

"What does he want from me? Is he short on guinea pigs?"

"No, but I told him you were available in case the lab rats got a better offer."

"Nice. Then what is it?"

"He's worried about one of his projects, something having to do with dreams."

"Who's having nightmares?"

"He is. Two of the volunteers participating in the project have died in the last month. According to the cops, one death was accidental and one was suicide."

"Bad luck, but what's that got to do with Harper and his institute?"

"Hopefully nothing, but the families have hired a lawyer named Jason Bolt who has sent Milo the proverbial get-out-your-checkbook-or-prepare-to-die letter. He wants someone to take another look. I suggested you."

I'd heard of Bolt. He'd made a fortune taking down corporations for everything from defective products to defrauding shareholders. He was one of a handful of lawyers who could force a settlement on the strength of his reputation.

"A billionaire takes your advice?"

Simon laughed. "I was the one who told him to quit school."

"What else did he tell you? Why does Bolt think these deaths could be tied to the institute?"

"I'm Milo's friend, not his priest. He doesn't tell me everything. He asked me for a name and I gave him yours."

"You know him. What's your sense of this?"

"Milo is a passionate guy. He loves the institute. The look in his eyes, the way he talks about it, you'd think it was his child, like the walls were papered with his DNA. When he called me, he sounded like a parent whose kid had gone missing."

I knew that fear, how it leeches into your bones, like poison with an eternal half-life. But the Harper Institute of the Mind didn't have dimples, skinned knees, or a smile that could light up a room and break your heart at the same time. It was bricks, mortar, and money.

"Is he married? Does he have kids?"

"Neither. He's married to the job. His first kid was the business he built and sold. Now he has the institute. It's not an accident that the abbreviation for Harper Institute of the Mind is HIM."

My doctor told me that the only way I could control the shakes was to change my lifestyle, to slow down. That was fourteen months ago and I still hadn't found the sweet spot between alive and dead. The work Simon sent me tilted the scale toward alive but sometimes it's better to let the scale swing the other way. Rich people who substitute the things they build, create, and run for the relationships they never had can be more irrational than any overprotective parent.

"I think I'll pass."

"Why? Because of Kate Scranton? Give me a break. I was there for your last fight. I'm surprised there were any survivors."

I laughed. "We're a work in progress. I'm having dinner with her tomorrow night. The problem is that she sees things in me that I don't always want her to see."

"The micro-expressions that she claims give away your secrets?"

"Yeah. It's how her brain is wired. Sometimes I don't handle it very well but I still respect her judgment. Plus, rich guys like Harper who think they can buy people the same way they buy buildings can get crazy when things don't go their way and I don't do crazy."

"At least talk to him. I told him that you would call him tonight. All you have to do is check out this dream project and he'll take it from there."

"I load the gun and he pulls the trigger."

"Just like when you were at the FBI and the U.S. attorney made the call. Why the attack of middle-age angst? You've spent your whole life going after bad guys."

"I always knew whose side I was on and I was a lot better at figuring out the truth. Those lines aren't as bright when a billionaire draws them."

"There was a philosopher who claimed that it was impossible to determine whether some things are true or false. He proved it by saying that all men are liars. If he was telling the truth, then he was a liar."

"Yeah, but that doesn't make not knowing any easier."

Simon took a breath, leaning toward me. "This isn't about Wendy."

Wendy was my daughter. She died early last year, twenty-plus years after her brother Kevin was murdered by a sex offender masquerading as a trustworthy neighbor. Every FBI agent in the Kansas City office attended the funeral, some out of respect, others because Wendy had been a fugitive, the last suspected member of a drug ring I'd helped take down before the Bureau kicked me to the curb, the only loose end being five million dollars that had disappeared into the ether. They were convinced she stole the money.

I never stopped thinking about her, wistful memories sometimes crossing into haunting flashbacks so real they stopped me in my tracks or dreams too vivid for sleep. A snatch of conversation, a familiar fragrance, even a sad-eyed junkie could put me back with her, replaying the moment, hoping for a different ending.

"I know that."

"Then talk to him. That's all I'm asking."

Simon had been good to me. I owed him that much. "Okay."

"Great." He leaned back in his chair. "So, how you doing with the. ."

"Shaking? Every day is an adventure."

"How about that group of retired cops you told me about? You still get together with them?"

"We have lunch once a month. Somebody presents a case. Maybe one that was never solved or one where maybe the wrong guy took the fall. We play cop again, trying to put it together."

"Any cold cases get solved that way?"

"No, but a lot of beer gets put away so everyone goes home feeling good about that."

My cell phone rang, the caller ID reading Private. I flipped the phone open.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Davis, this is Milo Harper."

"Hang on a second." I covered the phone. "It's your roommate. I thought he was waiting for my call."

"I forgot to tell you. He's a little impatient. I gave him your number."

Simon headed for the door. I put the phone back to my ear.

"Call me Jack."

"For now, I'll call you late. I've been waiting to hear from you."

I gritted my teeth. I'd promised Simon I would talk to Harper. I didn't promise to be nice. "Simon just finished telling me about your situation."

"Fine. I'll meet you for dinner at McCormick and Schmick at seven-thirty and don't be late."