Dead Man (3 page)

Eddie Dain sat on an antique Chippendale chair in a perfect lotus without even being aware of it. He was twenty-eight years
old, with a strong, almost Sioux face and pale blue deep-set eyes, six-one, lean and springy, 140 pounds. A supple beanpole
with a mind that had led Richard Feynman to write all over his papers while he was at Cal-Tech, arguing points with him. He
wore a white cotton shirt, wash pants, running shoes, a windbreaker.

The phone spoke Marie’s voice into his ear. “R–Rlch.”

“K–Ktl,” Eddie said to the receiver.

Marie’s voice answered, “R–R2.”

To Eddie, she had always been this wondrous being who had entered his life at Cal-Tech, became his best friend, stupendous
lover, then wife. Even now, after five years, he still went weak in the knees whenever he looked at her, still was always
peeking up her skirt or down her blouse like a horny teenager.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I’m
thinking,”
he said, the old Jack Benny radio line.

As he thought, he happily drummed his fingers on Doug Sherman’s antique oak desk, ignoring the endgame Sherman had laid out
with yellowed-ivory chess pieces. He was still young enough and naive enough to treat everything in life as a game.

“R
X
P,” he told her finally.

Doug Sherman was at the little table behind the desk, his back to Eddie, removing the steaming paper cone from his Melitta
coffee dripper. Sherman was tall, lean, fortyish, barbered to perfection, as elegant as the embossed endpapers of his antique
books. Below a balding crown his narrow face was sad in repose, with beautiful eyes and sensitive lips. His suit was superb.

“How’s this one?” said Marie on the phone. “KP
X
R.”

“You’re kidding.” But then Eddie started to think about it. “You’re
not
kidding. Okay, R–Q1.”

Sherman turned to Eddie, said, “Coffee?”

Eddie shook his head without turning as Marie giggled in his ear, “R–Q1? Bad move, baby. P–K6.”

Sherman sat down in his swivel chair, leaned forward over the steaming cup, eyes half-shut as he savored the aroma. He sipped.
He leaned back and sighed in perfect aesthetic comfort.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he told Eddie. “French Roast and Guatemalan blend. Superb in every respect.”

“So is Marie,” said Eddie, then into the phone, “R–B1.”

“What was that you said?” demanded Marie.

“R–B1.”

“No—something with me and superb in the same sentence.”

“Oh, that—I told Doug you were a superb cook but a lousy chess player.”

“Just for that, P
X
R–Qch.” There was laughter in her voice.

“Damn!” He made his final move a question. “Um… K
X
Q?”

“Gotcha, kiddo! R–RS. And you know what that means.”

Eddie laughed delightedly. “I fall upon my sword.”

“Since I’m a superb cook, I know I’ll see you for dinner.”

Eddie hung up, kissed a forefinger, touched it to the phone. Feeling Sherman’s eyes upon him, he grinned sheepishly.

“Now
how about some coffee?” said Sherman.

“You know what I want.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Very beautiful, very old, very leather-bound. The Oxford Press First Edition that Alexandra Neel had bound in calf’s hide.
I know it’s out there somewhere and I know you can find it. In a couple of weeks I’m renting a house on the beach out at Point
Reyes for Marie’s birthday. Candles, flowers, soft lights—”

“And
The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
For her birthday.” Sherman shook his head, then chuckled. “His wife can read the juicy bits aloud to private eye Eddie Dain
between stakeouts—”

“A lot of good my stakeout on Grimes did,” Eddie said ruefully. “He goes on board his boat at the St. Francis Yacht Club with
me watching, and…” He threw his arms up and wide, exclaimed,
“Fwoom!
No more Grimes.”

“Or too much Grimes,” said Sherman ghoulishly. “All over everything. Everyone else believes gases accumulated in the engine
compartment ignited when Grimes pushed the starter, but does Eddie the gumshoe? No. No accident for him. Eddie the gumshoe
will pursue the evildoers to their lair—”

“Their corporate office, more likely.” Eddie grinned; it made him look eighteen instead of twenty-eight. He leaned across
the desk. “I really want that book for Marie’s birthday.”

“Eddie, your Marie is very sweet, very bright, very gentle—but she’s also a certifiable New Age California nut.
She’s into Tibetan Buddhism, she’s into T’ai Chi, she’s into Iyengar Yoga, she’s into—”

“—computer science and engineering, running the office now that I’m out in the field so much, raising our three-year-old son,
beating me at chess, especially phone chess, and—”

“All right all right.” Sherman had his hands up, palms out, to stem the
spate of words. “Rub it in. She beats you at chess, you beat me at chess, and I would give almost anything to master that
boardless phone chess you two children play with such casual idiocy. She’s the most remarkable woman ever born, okay? But
I’m not sure I can get that specific copy of
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
you want in the time you’re giving me.” He paused, indicated the chessboard on the desk. “Now
this
…”

But Eddie had caught sight of the seven-foot grandfather clock in a shadowed corner of the shop, masticating time with its
slow pendulum jaw. He unfolded like a stork as he stood up.

“I’m due at Homicide in fifteen minutes.”

Sherman said seductively, “Gaprindishvili versus Kushner, Riga, nineteen seventy-two? She did fine ‘til she abandoned the
Grunfeld Defense for the Nimzo-Indian, then Kushner…”

Eddie, on his way to the door, suddenly swerved, moved one of the black pieces as he went by the board.

“Kushner did that, obviously,” he said. “R–R6. Just as obviously, Gaprindishvili then had to resign.”

Sherman was studying the board with furious concentration. “Why resign? Why obviously? Why can’t she—”

“Work it out yourself.” He went across the thick Oriental carpet toward the door with DOUGLAS SHERMAN—RARE BOOKS backward
on the glass in elegant script. He added, “Think Tibet.”

“All right, goddam you, you’ll have your
Tibetan Book of the Dead,”
Sherman called after him. “At full markup!”

But he was speaking to an empty room. He hesitated, tipped over the black king with a push of his finger, shook his head sadly,
and poured himself another cup of that superb coffee.

* * *

In San Francisco, Inspector is a plainclothes grade between Detective and Lieutenant, equivalent perhaps to warrant officer
in the army. Inspector Randy Solomon suggested to Eddie, “Have some of our coffee. It kills the AIDS virus.”

Homicide’s coffee, brewed in a filthy percolator beside the water cooler, was so horrible that cops from as far away as San
Jose and Danville dreamed up things they had to “consult” with SFPD Homicide about, just to get a cup. If they survived it,
went the legend, they could return home and sweep the streets clean of criminals because obviously they were men of steel:
bullets and switchblades would bounce harmlessly off them.

“Doug Sherman told me SFPD has come up empty,” said Eddie.

“How does that guy find
out
everything so fast?” Solomon rumbled in mild irritation.

He was in shirt sleeves, very large, very well conditioned, an African-American the color of
caffe latte,
easily as tall as Eddie’s scrawny six-one but ninety pounds heavier, with none of it around his beltline. His voice was
basso profundo,
his laughter could rattle window glass. He had met Eddie on a handball court at the Y the previous year, they now played
three days a week.

“Doug knows everybody, he’s a born gossip, women like him,” said Eddie. “People tell him things. The ultimate go-between.”

“Why the hell doesn’t he just stick to selling books?”

“Censorship,” said Eddie. “Police brutality. Fie on you.”

They went into one of the interview cubicles, glassed from the waist up: voices, phones, and rattling printers made conversation
in the squadroom as difficult as resurrection. Randy sat down in a chrome and black plastic chair, sausage-thick brown fingers
interlaced on his gut. He sighed.

“Anyway, Close and Bill on the Ronald Grimes case—not that it ever was a case except in our Sherlock’s pigheaded—”

“You’re wrong, Randy, my case is very much open.
Ronald Grimes lived far too high for our post-junk-bonds era.”

Randy squirmed around so the snubnose Policeman’s Special in his belt holster would quit digging into his hip.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t his partner hire you just to see if Grimes was skimming from their brokerage firm trustee
accounts? Grimes wasn’t, right? So, end of story.”

“Start
of story. Grimes had
some
unknown source of illicit income. When I started nosing around, he died in an apparent accident on his powerboat. In his
sleep—okay. In an explosion on his boat—no way.”

Randy sighed and heaved his bulk out of the chair. “C’mon, Sherlock, let’s you buy me some lunch across the street while I
explain the facts of life to you.”

They had the elevator to themselves except for a couple barely out of their teens, despairingly intertwined as if the descending
cage were a spaceship capable of blasting them out of this space/time continuum. He wore black leather and hack boots and
acne; she wore tearstains on her sallow cheeks.

“Got a continuance but he’s goin’ away,” muttered Randy. They faced the doors to give the couple what little privacy the elevator
offered. “Why are you out doing this shit really? Beautiful wife at home who loves you, cute little kid, a good business as
a computer research source. Man, I had that going for me, I’d be down to Silicon Valley makin’ beaucoup bucks…”

“Would you?” asked Eddie doubtfully. “Why are you a cop?”

Randy’s gesture encompassed his size, his blackness, the hardness of his wide ebony face. “What else?”

“Plenty else. You’re a cop because you’re
good
at it. Because you like it. Because it’s got you.”

They crossed the terrazzo floor and went out through heavy brass-framed doors into the bright windy May sunshine, jaywalked
across Bryant Street to Boardman Place.

Eddie said, “Well, it’s got me, too. Detective work. I didn’t want to be just another microchip in the Silicon Valley game,
so I started researching stuff by computer for other
Cal-Tech students. After graduation we came up here and I kept going and all of a sudden I was making a living at it. Only
my clients weren’t students any more—darn little pure research. They turned out to be mostly P.I.’s hired by attorneys to
check out jurors, witnesses in court cases, even the lawyers’ own clients.”

They went down Boardman past storefront bailbondsmen to a
taqueria
with a big sign above it, ABIERTO 24 HORAS. Inside the narrow crowded room a jukebox played Mexican music filled with sad
horns. A brown chunky Aztec-looking waitress brought Tecates instead of menus to their table; they ordered the special with
the carelessness of long familiarity. The room smelled of hot oil and frying tortilla chips and red pepper and salsa spices.

“But,” persisted Solomon, “if you could do it faster and cheaper with the computer than they could in the field, why—”

“I got my own P.I. license to cut out the middleman—it was just good business. But then I found out fieldwork is fun, too.
The computer is still the core of my operation, but it can’t ask just the right question at just the right moment. Of course
once
I
get an answer, I use my laptop to interface through the car phone with the data base in my big computer at home.”

The waitress returned with huge platters of enchiladas, tacos, burritos,
refritos y arroz,
salad to go with their second beers. Randy jabbed a forkful of beans in Eddie’s direction.

“So, Sherlock, what’s your move now on Grimes? More ‘fun’? Ring some doorbells? Go sit in your car across the street from
the yacht basin with a magnifying glass and a deerstalker hat?”

“Right now, nothing—I’ve got other cases need work. Eventually, start massaging the data bases—
somebody
had him killed, there have to be tracks the computer can pick up.”

“You slip in that assumption about somebody having Grimes offed just so damn neat. But it was a gas leak got him.”

Eddie shook his head. “Professional hit.”

“You think the arson investigators screwed up?” demanded
Randy scornfully. “The explosion was in the engine compartment, right where you’d expect it to be. Forensics, fire department,
insurance company—everybody says accident except Eddie Dain.”

“Did they run a probabilities program on that particular make, model, and year of Chris-Craft to see how hull shape and engine-compartment
size would affect a gas-leak explosion?”

“Why in hell should they, when everything points to—”

“I did—I developed the software program for it myself.” Eddie waved a bulging bean burrito around under Randy’s nose. “Flash
point was seven-tenths of a meter from where it should have been for gas fumes, and a couple of intensity probability screenings
I ran suggested C-4
plastique.
Which means—”

Randy silenced him with an impatient paw.

“Wait a minute, Sherlock. If it
was
a hit, why pro? Why not gifted amateur?”

“Because all you professional law enforcement guys buy into it as an accident. I figure only a pro could fool everybody except
the computer. After we get back from Point Reyes, Marie and I will work the data to find those footprints, then—”

“You ever think that if you’re right it might be dangerous? If somebody
is
out there, and you start getting close to him—”

“I’ll call a cop,” said Eddie.

And he laughed and took a big bite of burrito, and, cool dude that he was, squirted brick-colored pinto beans and red sauce
all down the front of his crisp white cotton shirt.