Dover Beach (9 page)

"But England's government is as antiscience as our own. They're no more likely than we are to be running a secret cloning project."

Winfield shook his head. "Hatton has only been in power there—what, nine, ten years? Cornwall would have gone to England over twenty years ago. The project would have been in full swing by the time the antiscience people took over. Maybe they just let it continue—maybe they had
themselves
cloned. It wouldn't be the first time a government's public posture didn't coincide with the way things really were."

"Well, if Cornwall is working in England, who is trying to kill you?"

That made him pause for a moment. "Maybe they have spies over here," he said uncertainly. "Or maybe you're right, it was just a coincidence. It doesn't really matter, does it?"

I had no idea if it mattered. The whole thing seemed like some sort of alcoholic fantasy. All I had managed to do was find someone who was sure that Cornwall was dead, and here my client was imagining some bizarre conspiracy with the British government. It was absurd.

Winfield sat back down on the edge of the bed. He stared in annoyance at the empty wine bottle. "The thing for me to do," he said slowly, "is to go over there and find him."

I chuckled. It was a joke, right? Winfield did not chuckle. "Trips to England are a lot more expensive than trips to Boston," I pointed out. "I don't think even a doctor could afford one."

Winfield gave me a what-do-you-know-about-it glance. "That's the least of my worries."

"So what else is worrying you?" I asked.

He clasped his hands and brought them up to his face. He appeared to be making an effort to sober up. "Going to England would be a serious step," he said. "It would involve burning a lot of bridges. That's all right. I'm willing to do it. I
want
to do it. But I need more information." He looked over at me. "I recognize a certain... credulity on my part, Mr. Sands. I want Cornwall to be alive. I want him to be special. All right, I'm rational, I can fight against that. So you have to bring me concrete evidence that Cornwall went to England. I don't need proof that he's still alive, just that he went there at some point. I give you three days to find me the proof. If you don't get it to me by then, I'm going home."

Three days? The deadline seemed as absurd to me as the search itself. "I'll do what I can," I said. "But I should tell you that if the evidence exists, it might take more than three days to find it. I've already talked to my contact in the government, and he's going to search for information about who the British took; but what we're looking for might be in some file in Atlanta, or in the back of someone's desk drawer, and there's no telling how long it'll be before we get our hands on it."

"But you see, Sands, I
have
to go back to Florida in three days. If I don't get back, people start asking questions, they look into things... my bridges would be burned."

I didn't follow that, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. "If finding Cornwall is this important to you, why not go to Florida and come back when you get more vacation time, or whatever?"

"Three days," he repeated. "Then I return to the leukemia and the melanoma and the polio and the birth defects, and I leave all this behind. Understood?"

I shrugged. If the case was a pipe dream, it didn't really matter what kind of deadline he gave me. Private eyes don't get to choose their cases—at least, not private eyes at my level of experience. As long as I got paid, I wasn't going to argue. "You want me to report in daily?"

"No, just when you have something."

I stood up and put my coat on. "I figure I worked six hours at two dollars an hour. Plus expenses—parking and lunch—I figure you owe me twelve dollars and sixteen cents."

Winfield looked at me as if I had just asked him for a new Cadillac. "You've got a nerve, Sands," he said. "I offer you something like this, and you still want your crumby two dollars an hour?"

I was puzzled and a little angry. "Something like what? You're offering me three more days of work trying to find some evidence that probably doesn't exist. We had an agreement: if I did an acceptable job today—"

"Sands, you've got a chance to go to England, goddammit. England—where life is halfway normal, where there's heat and food and television and good-looking women. Don't screw it up by pissing me off."

I sat back down. "Have I missed something here?" I asked slowly. "When was it established that I was going to England?"

Winfield waved his hand irritably. "Well, of course I'll need a bodyguard. And you seem reasonably bright—I might have you, I don't know, track down clues or something. Listen: you know, if you go over there, you don't have to come back. Theoretically you have to leave when your visa runs out, but they can't deport you if they can't find you, right? Meanwhile you find some nice British girl to marry or you figure out who to bribe, and you're all set. But the main thing is to get over there, right? This is the chance of a lifetime, Sands. Just get me the evidence."

Perhaps the heat and the smell of the steak were making me hallucinate. England? Me? I was familiar with both objects, but the combination of them seemed utterly ludicrous.
Me. In England.
Where was the catch?

It was obvious. Winfield was just getting more work out of me without having to pay for it. And besides, the proof he wanted simply didn't exist. I had talked to Hemphill; I knew he wasn't guessing about Cornwall's death.

But still, there was a chance—wasn't there? And the chance was obviously worth three days of my life.
In England. Me.
"Okay," I said. "I'll see what I can do."

Winfield smiled. "Good man," he said. "Three days. Bring me proof."

"Coming right up," I said. But I didn't have the faintest idea how I was going to find it.

Chapter 9

"So how's the case?" Linc asked at supper.

"I made a little progress. The guy I'm looking for is probably dead, but he may conceivably be in England."

"Well, that narrows it down. Is your client satisfied?"

"He's keeping me on the case, so I guess he's satisfied."

"I'm helping Walter find out about the England angle," Stretch announced. "Gonna check out all the scientists the British took back with them while they were here."

Gwen looked at me. "What happens if he's in England?" she asked.

"Oh, I dunno," I said. "It's almost certain that he's dead, anyway." I concentrated on my stew.

After supper we all went into the parlor and listened while Gwen played the piano. Linc huddled in a blanket on the couch. Stretch tried to sing along with a Beatles' song. He was almost as bad as Ground Zero. I sat in an armchair next to the piano and watched Gwen's eyes studying the ragged sheet music, her fingers moving gingerly over the keys. We went to bed early.

"Are you happy?" she asked as we lay in the darkness.

"Sure," I said. "It felt good to be on the job. I didn't screw up very much, and my client seemed pleased."

"I'm glad," she said, and she snuggled into the crook of my shoulder.

I waited until she was asleep, and then trekked upstairs. But my room didn't give me the satisfaction I needed. Tonight I was too restless, too excited, and the shadows were too dim. After a while I took a book from the shelf. I stared at it, then went back downstairs, put my parka on, and walked out into the night.

Used to be that going outside in the city at night was an open invitation to get yourself murdered. Things are better nowadays, but still I was on my guard as I walked the few blocks to School Street. I stopped in front of a small store. The sign over the door said:

Art's Filthy Bookstore

It had never been clear to me whether the adjective applied to the store or its merchandise; I had a feeling it was deliberately ambiguous. There was a light shining inside. I pounded on the door.

After a few moments there was movement. A slot at eye level in the door opened and Art peered out into the darkness. "Who is it?" he demanded.

I took out the badge that Mickey had given me and held it up in front of the slot. "Vice Squad," I said. "Open up. This is a raid."

Art cackled delightedly and started undoing the locks. In a minute or so the door opened and I stepped inside. "Nothing objectionable here, Officer," Art said. "Look for yourself."

I looked. Art probably had the largest collection of pornography in the commonwealth—maybe on the entire East Coast. His store was crammed from floor to ceiling with old
Penthouses
and
Playboys
and
Hustlers,
with
Fanny Hill
and
The Story of O
and
The Delta of Venus
and
Emmanuelle,
with hundreds of novels by Anonymous about Victorian gentlemen and their willing maids, with thousands of novels that told the steamy inside stories of the sexual hijinks of Hollywood stars, of the international jet set, of the glamorous people in the high-powered worlds of advertising, finance, fashion, publishing... crammed with anything that might feed people's fevered imaginations about the old days, that might tantalize and delight and exhaust them with visions of pleasures they could never possibly share.

Jesus Christ did not approve of Art.

Art didn't approve of himself, really, but a guy's gotta make a living, and this was what people wanted in a bookstore. So he gave them their cheap thrills, and he saved his affection for the occasional discriminating customer. Like me.

He was a little man, with bright eyes, long white hair, and a beard that hadn't been trimmed in twenty-two years. He looked the way Santa Claus might look, if Santa Claus were forced to subsist on our modern diet.

"You're absolutely right," I said, picking up a dog-eared copy of
Greta, She-Wolf of the Nazis.
Greta glared at me from the cover, whip held menacingly in one hand. She was bursting out of her too-tight storm trooper uniform. "Just good, wholesome literature here. I must have been misinformed." I handed him the book I had brought. "Here's a present for you."

Art nodded with satisfaction as he examined it. "Brin.
The Postman.
Hardcover, 1985. Very good condition—better than the one I have. Postwar Oregon, right?"

"Right. Bobby Gallagher and I carted off an old lady's library the other day, and this was in it. He let me keep the book—no one else would want it."

"This is excellent, Walter. Thank you. Let's go add it to the collection."

We went through the store, past a "No Admittance" sign, and into a storage area. It, too, was piled high with books, but there was also a cot, and a sink, and several locked cabinets. Art opened one and placed the book reverently inside, next to a softcover and another hardcover edition of the same novel.

"Are there any you don't have?" I asked.

Art shook his head. "Who knows? You wouldn't believe how many books got published in the old days. There were a lot of people writing back then."

I stared at the books—row after row. I had only bothered to read a few of them. It always seemed like such a waste.
On the Beach. Alas, Babylon. A Canticle for Leibowitz. Fiskadoro.
"It looks like they were all writing about the same thing," I murmured.

"There were a lot more
She-Wolves of the Nazis
than post-holocaust novels," Art pointed out.

"You're the expert." I watched Art lock up the cabinet. "You know, this is a very weird hobby," I said.

Art smiled. "You think so? Perhaps that's because you're so young, You don't feel the need to connect. This is my way of connecting."

"They also wrote books about useful stuff, like how to make glass, and how to treat typhus."

"But I'm not a useful person. Did you ever think that some of these writers are still alive—looking at the world as it is, and comparing it to the world they had imagined? I wonder how they feel about it."

"Probably they think: geez, it coulda been worse."

"True. But it's harder living in a world than it is imagining one. Now, you didn't come here just to give me a present. What can I do for you, Walter?"

"Books on England."

"Ah, England. What about
Riddley Walker?"

"Real books," I said. "About the real England."