Dead Anyway (3 page)

The first was to be or not to be. I’d never had a suicidal thought in my life, though now the life I’d had, the one I loved, was effectively over. So choosing to finish off the mangled remains was an entirely rational option. Especially when I tried to imagine a return to normalcy. I played a series of scenarios across my mind, but they were equally repellent. Nothing would ever be normal again.

A vast and fathomless sadness engulfed my mind. An impossible agony of grief. I understood for the first time how black black could be. I felt my heart descend into a snarling well of irredeemable anguish. It was there that I relinquished claim to the hopeful, loopy possessor of inevitable good fortune who once defined my world view, and contemplated what was left.

Then I snarled back and embraced the beast.

W
HEN FEELING
lost its grip on my heart, logic and reason took over. The first logical conclusion was that I couldn’t live in this world, even if I wanted to. Not as long as I shared it with the man in the trench coat. The man who likely had the answer to the only question worth asking in this barren reality into which I’d emerged.

Why?

Until that was answered, all other deliberations would have to be postponed. With that decided, I started to block out the necessary methodology, running if/then scenarios. Aside from two hours of uneasy sleep, I worked on this until Evelyn showed up again the next day. So I was well prepared to exercise my recovering speech.

“I want to be dead,” I said to her when she walked in the room.

“I know, Arthur,” she said, sitting on the side of the bed and gripping my arm. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I want to be declared dead. Not actually be dead. All you need to do is sign the death certificate,” I said. “I’ll take it from there.”

“Take it where? You can’t walk.”

“I can’t walk very well. Not yet. You keep telling me my leg will come most of the way back.”

I’d made my first wobbly journey to and from the bathroom the day before, with lots of help from Evelyn and the nurse. My left side was much weaker than my right, compounded by the wound in my thigh, and my future mobility was yet to be determined, but I felt instinctively sure of adequate recovery. My vision was also clearing, slowly, though everything looked a little off, as if I’d awoken into a parallel, but slightly reorganized universe.

My gut was gone. The deflated skin hung around my waist, but I was forty pounds less of a man than I had been before.

“I still don’t understand what you’re getting at,” said Evelyn.

“I want a psych evaluation,” I said.

“You think your mental functions are impaired?”

“That’s what I want to find out. I want to know which ones are and which aren’t. For example, I don’t sound like myself. Is that because my voice has changed or my hearing’s been damaged, or my brain is interpreting what it hears differently?”

“Okay,” she said. “I can arrange that. And about your voice, you have a slight slur, which I think will correct itself over time. The bullet clipped the somatosensory cortex, so you could have a slight reordering of your sensory perceptions in general, which could explain the voice change.”

“My eyes aren’t working as well,” I said. “Things look different.”

“That’s probably permanent. But you’ll get used to the change, unless there’s a more profound spatial distortion than we’ve had a chance to determine.”

I’d been trying to look at her while we talked, but the warp in my peripheral vision became too much to bear. I looked up at the ceiling.

“I need to know all that. And a complete accounting of my financial resources.”

“You’re fine there,” she said. “Damien Brandt, Florencia’s comptroller, is managing the day-to-day at the agency. He’s reporting to Bruce Finger, a friend of mine who just retired after twenty years as corporate counsel for a big carrier. Bruce tells me potential buyers are already lining up, but he won’t even discuss it if I’m not interested. Am I?”

“Sure, but not now. Though a valuation would be helpful. Beyond that, when you get a chance, give me a breakdown of all my assets, in particular anything liquid. I’d do it myself, but I can’t read.”

“You’re running out ahead of me, Arthur. Come on back and tell me what’s actually going on.”

She’d been saying things like that to me since we were children. Evelyn was eight years older than me, and clearly more intelligent. But she tended to think in a more linear, methodical way. She liked to go deep into a handful of subjects, like her specialty, cardiology, whereas I was an omnivore, racing like a water bug across the surface of whatever topic caught my eye.

“I need to permanently disappear.”

“We’ll be getting you that psych evaluation ASAP,” she said.

“Your part in this is essential,” I said, “and I apologize from the depths of my heart for what I’m going to put you through. As soon as I leave, you need to declare me dead. I’m thinking hematoma, but you’re the cardiologist, I’m sure you’ll pick the right C.O.D. The harder part will be coming up with a corpse, which will need to go straight to the crematorium before the cops have a chance to order an autopsy, mandatory in a homicide case. When the corpse is ash, you get news of my sudden death out to the media, then tell the cops. They’ll be pissed. I suggest you act dumb. The good doctor, brilliant in cardiology, but naïve in matters of the law. I’ll need my original birth certificate and both current and out-of-date passports. I’ll tell you where they are in the house, which you’ll need to sell when I’m officially dead, along with the cars. You’ll need to collect on the life insurance, which is another legal threat, so I suggest you put the payout in a secure escrow account. I need some time to figure that one out. Since Florencia had no family left, you’re the sole heir and will inherit all the money. I’ll need you to advance me a stake until the estate clears probate.”

She took all this in with a look that also went back to our childhood. One of annoyed disbelief.

“This isn’t funny,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to you, but of course you can’t do this thing you’re saying you’re going to do.”

“Do you see me laughing?” I said, more coldly than I should have. I caught myself, and gently laid it out for her in the linear way she could best absorb. “Number one, since they didn’t catch the guy in the first forty-eight hours, the odds of catching him have decreased to zero. Two, he’s a professional killer, in my untrained opinion. They almost never get caught. I’m sure he knows I survived and will assume I can identify him. Three, though he likely believes I’m a vegetable, it’s only a matter of time before he comes back and finishes the job, just to be on the safe side. He’s just waiting for more convenient circumstances. The only way to get some breathing space is to be officially and conspicuously dead. This follows your logic, by the way. It’s why you told everyone I was in a coma, probably forever.”

“What you’re talking about is illegal. You could end up in jail.”

“Not if I don’t get caught. And if I do, who cares.”

“I do,” she said.

“I know. You love me. I love you, too. And I’m deeply grateful for everything you’ve done for me. But I’ve got to get out of here, because every day I’m here intensifies the danger to both of us.”

Evelyn did love me. She virtually raised me, since our parents managed to conceive me when they were in their mid-forties, exhausted and prematurely aged by the harshness of their blue collar, uneducated lives. Earnest and good-hearted, they never knew what to do with either one of their precocious children, especially since we were precocious in nearly opposite ways.

Evelyn was an indulgent semi-parent, though I rarely gave her cause to discipline me. I was a pudgy and dreamy kid, so she frequently had to protect me from nerd-bashers and benighted authority figures, like gym teachers, den mothers and check-out clerks. This was her greatest test.

“What about the investigation?” she asked. “Without your testimony, the cops have nothing.”

“Tell them I’ve just come out of the coma, and I’ll talk to them. But ask if we can keep the coma story going, for safety’s sake. How long before I can move around on my own?” I asked.

“Not less than four weeks.”

“Let’s make it two. And keep the visitors coming. We want lots of traffic in and out of the driveway.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Sorry. Can I borrow your cell phone?”

She reflexively patted around her jeans pocket, then stopped.

“What for? Who’re you going to call?”

“Gerry Charles. He’s in Amsterdam. I’ll make it quick. I’ve got his number in my wallet. If you could get it for me, that’d be great.”

I told her she could stay while I made the call, but she took the high road and left me alone. Gerry answered, which I was very happy about. I didn’t want to leave a message.

“Hey, Gerry, it’s Arthur Cathcart,” I said when he answered. “I haven’t been by your place in a bit—been laid up—but the last time everything was in order.”

“Thanks for the update,” said Gerry. “But you don’t sound like yourself. You okay?”

“I’ve been better, but I’ll be okay,” I said. “The other reason I’m calling is your guitar collection. Are you still interested in selling?”

“You bet. Which one do you want?”

Gerry Charles designed and built studio furniture in a shop carved out of an old clock factory. He’d flown to Europe a few weeks before I was shot, leaving me the keys to his shop so I could check up on things while he was away. He’d stopped the mail, but there was always random stuff showing up on the loading dock and in the mailbox hung on the outside wall. The shop also had a small living space—complete with single bed, toilet and kitchenette—which he used when in the throes of creation. And a garage, open to the shop, big enough to fit a Chevy Astro van in which he hauled lumber in and furniture out.

Gerry was also a graphic artist, so in addition to clamps, block planes and power tools, the shop had a powerful Mac attached to a scanner and four-color printer. On top of that, Gerry was a former professional guitar player with a world-class collection of vintage guitars, accumulated over forty years of steady, strategic acquisition.

“All of them.”

“Really,” he said.

“You once told me you’d sell the lot for a quarter million dollars. You could get more if you did it one guitar at a time, but you were daunted by the logistics.”

“You’re right about that, Art.”

“Okay, today’s your lucky day.”

“Prices have dropped a lot since we talked,” he said. “I’m not sure you could improve on the bulk price.”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” I said.

“Cool. But how come?”

I gave him a brief rundown on what had happened to me. He could have found out on his own, so there was no advantage in keeping it from him. It also gave me a reason for making the offer: I told him I needed something to keep me busy during recovery.

“Holy crap, man, that’s fucking horrible. I’m sorry, I really am.”

We worked out the mechanics of the transaction. Using her power of attorney, Evelyn would wire the money to his account in Amsterdam. When he confirmed the funds had arrived, he’d alert the high-security storage facility where he kept the guitars and give me the combination to get inside the vault. He would also mail a coded description of the collection to Evelyn’s address, so I could retrieve the instruments on a guitar-by-guitar basis.

After the deal was struck, he told me a little about his time in the Netherlands, where he was on a year-long grant teaching the art of furniture making. He said it was the first time he’d made money from his lunatic profession without blowing saw-dust out his nose every night. He and his wife were having such a great time, he had no intention of returning for at least a year; so if I wanted to mess around in his shop when I felt better, he told me to feel free.

“It’s super therapy, Arthur. I’m telling you.”

I thanked him, and got off the phone. Then I yelled for Evelyn.

“Can I use your computer?” I asked her.

“You were a lot easier to handle when you were in a coma,” she said, walking into the room.

I started to go through the awkward and painful process of getting out of bed. She watched me without raising a hand to help. She was a doctor. She knew what sort of help I really needed.

“While you’re racing to my office, I’ll boot up the computer,” she said, and left the room.

When I finally got there, with the help of a walker, I sat in front of the screen and called up our online investment and retirement accounts. I sold everything, then directed the proceeds, almost $300,000, into a joint checking account to which I added Evelyn’s name.

Two days later Evelyn wired $250,000 to Gerry Charles, and the next day he sent me all the enabling information, completing the transaction.

I now had a ready source of entirely non-traceable cash, available to be meted out whenever needed.

Done deal.

C
HAPTER
3

D
etective Mike Maddox was a lot younger than I thought a plainclothesman would be. I was surprised to learn he was a college graduate with two years of law school, finishing his third at night. A short, neatly groomed African-American in a conservative suit that complemented his small frame, he looked more like one of Florencia’s claims managers than a Stamford police department detective.

He introduced himself, shook my hand and sat in the visitor’s chair. He held a pad and small digital recorder. He clicked on the recorder and held it up in the air.

“You mind?” he asked. “So I don’t miss anything.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“First off, I’m very sorry for your loss. I know this is difficult and I apologize in advance for any emotional stress this conversation will cause. Though I’m sure you want a positive resolution of this case as much as I do.”

“Maybe more so,” I said.

“Of course. So tell me what happened. Anything you can remember.”

So I did, just as he asked. I’d been running through the main event in my head since regaining consciousness, straining to remember every detail. Not that I trusted the recollection. I knew from countless research interviews that memory was an unreliable thing. The mind had a variety of storage and retrieval mechanisms, all imperfect in different ways, even when you haven’t had a bullet pass through your brain.