More Deaths Than One (4 page)

Listening to the discussion lapping against
him, Bob felt a sudden twinge of unbelonging. Only Scott’s
encouraging smile kept him in his seat.

A high voice rose even higher in anger. “My
kid came home from school the other day and told me we lost the war
in Vietnam because the American military did not know jungle
warfare.”

“Horseshit,” the archeologist’s husband said.
“We didn’t lose. We left. And it wasn’t a war. We were supposed to
be there, a presence, until the people who make those kinds of
decisions got what they wanted. Like in Korea.”

The man with the high voice made balloons of
his cheeks, then blew out the air. “I tried telling that to my kid,
but he wouldn’t believe me. I hate to think what other crap they’re
teaching him.”

Bob set his still full cup of coffee on the
chair and left the building. He stood in the shadow of the old
stone church, breathing deeply. The cooling air had an earthy
smell, like mushrooms.

Scott joined him. “Are you all right? You
look green around the gills.”

“I’m fine.”

Scott gave him a dubious glance, then
gestured toward the door they’d exited. “I guess you didn’t expect
that. If you want, I can put you in touch with other groups that
are more into healing than history, ones that will actually let you
air your problems.”

Bob watched a single brown leaf falling from
a nearby oak tree. “I’m not much of a joiner.”

“Well, if you ever need anyone to talk to,
I’d be willing to listen. I’m in the phone book, or you can check
here at the church.”

“Are you a minister?”

Scott laughed. “No. I help when I can—mow the
grass, supervise various activities, whatever needs doing. I
believe belonging to a church extends beyond Sunday attendance.” He
peered at Bob. “You don’t look very good. Maybe you should come
back inside.”

Bob felt himself warming to this genial man,
but he didn’t want to hear any more talk of the war. As he tried to
pluck polite words of refusal out of his aching head, he heard the
sound of voices coming nearer and the clump of many pairs of
shoes.

“The meeting must be ending early,” Scott
said. “My family will be pleased. They’re waiting for me. This is
Monopoly night. What about you? Do you have family?”

Bob shook his head. He hadn’t considered
Jackson family for a long time now, and he doubted the other Robert
Stark qualified.

“Friends?” Scott queried.

“Not here in Denver.”

“Are you new to the area?”

“Yes and no.” To his surprise, Bob found
himself explaining he’d grown up in Denver, but had spent the past
eighteen years in Southeast Asia.

“Welcome home, Bob,” Scott said with a smile.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you come to my house for dinner tomorrow
evening. Say, six o’clock? You’ll like my family. They’re nice
people.”

Bob shifted his weight to one foot, preparing
to leave. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“No imposition. We’d love to have you. My
wife enjoys fussing over company. Besides, you’d be doing me a
favor. My children have never met anyone who’s lived in Thailand.
It would be good to broaden their horizons.”

Bob finally agreed. Tucking Scott’s address
into his pocket, he headed for the car he had purchased earlier
that day, and drove to the Golden Pagoda for dinner.

***

Bob dreamed he wandered in the jungle. A
numb, helpless feeling permeated his body as he pushed against
foliage too dense to allow passage. He could feel menace all around
him, but it was nebulous, without form or reason. He let out a
wordless cry. No one heard.

When he awoke, his heart pounded, his lungs
heaved, his head throbbed. He stared wildly about him.

Wide-awake now, he remembered who he was,
where he was. He sat up and buried his face in his hands until his
heartbeat slowed and his breathing returned to normal.

He rose from the bed, pulled on his clothes,
and slipped out into the predawn world.

***

“Do I know you?”

Bob glanced at Kerry, wondering what game she
played now. “I’m the hot chocolate.”

Her eyes brightened. “That’s what I thought,
but I didn’t know for sure if you were you or your other self.”

She hurried off in answer to the imperial
summons of a business-suited woman with a pinched face, but
returned a few minutes later with Bob’s drink.

Setting the cup in front of him, she asked,
“What have I missed?”

“Nothing. I’ve been busy and haven’t been
able to check on the other Robert Stark, and anyway, it’s hard to
tail someone if your transportation is buses and cabs. But I bought
a car, so we’ll see.”

“What color?”

“Originally? Blue. Now it’s so faded it looks
gray.”

Laughter sparked in her eyes. “You bought a
junker. Why am I not surprised? What kind?”

“A 1969 Volkswagen bug. It runs well and cost
three hundred dollars.” Since he hadn’t driven for many years, he’d
had a hard time finding his rhythm, but he saw no reason to mention
that.

She flicked back her hair. “You’re not big on
commitment, are you? You won’t even commit to an apartment or a
real car.”

A ragged old man smelling of whiskey and
urine entered the restaurant, sat on a stool, and carefully laid a
few coins on the counter. Kerry poured him a cup of coffee,
refilled the woman’s cup, then paused by Bob’s table, still
clutching the pot.

“What about you and the cheat?” he asked.

She smoothed her apron with her free hand. “I
have some more thinking to do on that, so for now I’m still
peddling porches.”

He gave her a quizzical glance.

“Didn’t I tell you? I guess not. He owns a
construction company that builds porches and decks. Calls it Pete’s
Porches.”

She left, refilled the cups of the three or
four other customers, made a new pot of coffee, then stopped at
Bob’s table once more.

The pressure in his head started to build. He
rubbed his throbbing temples with two fingers of each hand.

“Headache?” she asked sympathetically. “Do
you want an aspirin?”

“No, that’s all right. It comes and
goes.”

She chewed on her lower lip, watching him
with narrow-eyed concentration. “A couple of times I’ve seen you
leaving the Chinese restaurant across the street. Do you eat over
there a lot?”

“Most days.”

“Well, no wonder you have a headache. All
that MSG.”

Bob blinked. “I’d forgotten about that. A
long time ago, Robert Dunbar told me he loved Chinese food but
could never eat it stateside because of all the additives, which
gave him a headache. He said that since we made the food at The
Lotus Room from scratch, using fresh and natural ingredients, he
could indulge himself. I guess I need to cook my own meals. Where
can I find Chinatown?”

She shot him a perplexed look. “You mean like
in San Francisco?”

“I mean here in Denver. Don’t all major
cities have a Chinatown?”

“Not us. The Asians here have been mostly
assimilated into the community, but there is a shopping center over
on Alameda where you can find all sorts of special Chinese
products. Why the insistence on Chinese food?”

“It’s what I’m used to.”

She laughed. “Why, are you from China?”

“Close. Thailand. I’ve been living in Bangkok
awhile.”

She gaped at him, then broke out into a
smile, her eyes dancing. “Your shallows seem to be growing ever
deeper. What’s it like living in a foreign country? What’s The
Lotus Room? Is that where you worked? And who’s Robert Dunbar?”

Bob deliberated a moment and answered the
last question first. “Dunbar is an electronics engineer who works
for Data Management Systems, a corporation based here in Colorado.
He has the same fake chummy manner as the salesman at Lemons R Us
where I bought my car, and he makes much of the fact that we share
the same first name.”

“As if that means anything,” Kerry said.
“There must be millions of Bobs in the world. Where did you meet
him?”

“At The Lotus Room shortly after I started
working there. He always tried to get me to go golfing with him at
Bangphra on the Gulf of Siam. According to him, it has one of the
longest, most beautiful, and most challenging golf courses in the
world. You’d think he owned stock in the place the way he
rhapsodized about it.”

“Did you ever go?”

“No. I’m not fond of golfing.” Nor of Dunbar,
he almost added, but caught himself in time. He’d have to be
careful around this young woman; she had a way of disarming him so
that he imparted more than he intended.

“I don’t like golf either. Not enough action.
But I don’t think I’d mind it so much if I could play somewhere
exotic like Thailand.” She flipped her hair out of her eyes. “I
never associated Thailand with golf. I’ve only heard about it in
relation to sex and sin.”

“For the most part, Bangkok is a city of
devout Buddhists. Patpong Road, the infamous red light district, is
two and a half blocks long, but more than eight hundred ornate
wats—temple/monastery com-pounds dedicated to Buddha and the study
of his teachings—dominate the city. I used to go running early
during the cool time, and sometimes it seemed as if no one but the
saffron-robed monks with their shaved heads and bare feet shared
the dawn with me.”

She gazed at him, a rapt expression on her
face. “I always wanted to travel. I come from Chalcedony, a small
town on the western slope. It’s a decent place, and I had a happy
childhood, but I need more than Chalcedony can provide.” She smiled
ruefully. “I wanted the world, the whole broad picture, and I got
Denver and Pete’s Porches.”

She fell silent. For a moment she left her
face unguarded, and Bob could see how her problems with Pete ate at
her. Then the eagerness returned to her eyes.

“What did you do at The Lotus Room?”

“I acted as manager, but I never had a title.
I did everything from purchasing supplies to waiting tables and
tending bar. Sometimes I cooked, if you could call it that. My
awkward attempts at stir-frying afforded Wu Shih-kai great
amusement.”

“Was Wu Shih-kai the owner?”

“Hsiang-li owned the place. Wu Shih-kai was
the cook, a wrinkled and withered ancient who appeared frail and
unsteady until he went into the kitchen, and then he became a
wizard, moving from pot to pot, refining his magic potions.”

“It sounds like you loved Thailand,” Kerry
said wistfully.

“I did. Beneath the veneer of congested
traffic and commerce is a city of great splendor. I felt at peace
there.”

“Why did you leave?”

Bob pressed his lips together and turned
away. After a moment he said, “I lost my work visa.”

“I’m sorry you had to leave Thailand, but I’m
glad I got to meet you. You’re different.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She laughed. “You have to admit, not many
people have another self running around. I read something yesterday
that made me think of you. It’s from a poem by Oscar Wilde. ‘And
the wild regrets and the bloody sweats,/ None knew so well as I:/
For he who lives more lives than one/ More deaths than one must
die.’”

Bob felt a shiver creep up his spine, but he
tried to keep his tone light. “Dying more than once seems to run in
my family.”

Chapter 4

Kerry left to seat a party of boisterous
drunks. Bob huddled in the booth with the Oscar Wilde poem hanging
over him like his own personal storm cloud. When she turned and
tossed him a sunny smile, the cloud dissipated, but he regarded her
warily. What was she up to now? It seemed as if every time she went
off to serve someone else, she got another of her notions.

Finished waiting on the drunks, she plopped
down opposite Bob. “I get off work at eight. Meet me here.”

“Why?”

“So we can go check on your other self. On
your own, you don’t seem to be able to get anything done. You’re
like a compass without a pointer. You lack direction.”

“And you’re going to be the pointer?”

She beamed at him. “Exactly.”

***

At eight-thirty, they parked across the
street from Robert Stark’s house. Kerry sat behind the wheel of
Bob’s ancient VW, though he had no clear idea how that
happened.

“Your talents are certainly being wasted in
the diner,” he said. “You should be in a boardroom somewhere
keeping the other board members in line.”

Her eyes lit up but darkened immediately. “We
missed him. The station wagon’s not here. Now what?”

“We wait.”

“I don’t believe in waiting.”

He didn’t remind her that she had invited
herself, but merely said, “Waiting and patience are a big part of
surveillance.”

“So how long do we have to wait?”

“I don’t know. We just got here.

“Look, there it is.”

Bob turned to follow her finger. The station
wagon raced down the street to the Stark house. It pulled into the
driveway without any discernable lessening of speed, and stopped
abruptly. Lorena jumped out. She wore a shapeless sweat suit and
bunny slippers, and her hair looked uncombed.

“Is that Lorena?” Kerry asked, craning her
neck.

“Yes. Probably took the kids to school.”

He saw nothing else of interest until Robert
came out an hour and a half later, climbed into the vehicle, and
drove to Buckingham Square.

After watching him work for an hour, Kerry
sighed. “He’s not going anywhere. Since we’re at the mall, I’d like
to do some shopping. Coming?”

Bob glanced once more at Robert, who fiddled
with a computer by himself, then followed her to a drugstore.

“Look!” she exclaimed, grabbing a paperback
off a display by the counter. “A new novel by William Henry
Harrison. Are you familiar with him?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve read all his books. I didn’t think
there would ever be another one. This is great.” She thrust the
book into his hands, then darted down a nearby aisle and grabbed
two boxes of hair dye.