Dead Man (33 page)

“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.

Once Eddie Dain had a life: a beautiful wife, a happy young son, and a thriving business catching soft-core bad guys by computer.
Then he hung on to an odd-looking case and made a mysterious enemy—one whose calling cards were two men with shotguns.

Now Eddie is reborn—as a dead man. Known by the single name of Dain, he pumps up his body and his psyche as he follows a trail
of sweaty white-collar crime to the steamy Louisiana bayous. Here, in this torrid landscape, is a woman on the run who can
lead him to what he wants more than anything: the man who took everything from Eddie Dain…

In
Dead Man
Joe Gores returns to the hard, lean style of his acclaimed novels
Come Morning
and
Interface
—in a stunning tale of crime and revenge.

“THIS IS ONE AUTHOR WHO CAN WRITE WITH. A VENGEANCE.
DEAD MAN
IS SUSPENSEFUL, AND ITS VIOLENCE IS GRUESOMELY INGENIOUS.”

—
New York Newsday

“GORES PENS HIS TOUGHEST AND DARKEST NOVEL YET”—
Playboy

JOE GORES was a San Francisco private detective before he became an award-winning screenwriter and author. The creator of
the famous DKA detective agency series, Gores lives and writes in northern California.