The Dead Love Longer (8 page)

Bailey sat up. I cursed her for taking away all my enjoyment of nude women. "But it had to be at least 4:15 before Steele went back to his apartment. And '
Chandler
' met me there at 4:30."

He-man shrugged. "He's got enough money now to buy himself a decent watch. Anybody see you go to Steele's room?"

"I was practically invisible," she said.

He kissed her and she giggled. He put down his champagne glass and went for her. I left before the scene got disgusting.

***

8.

My apartment was suffocating in its stillness. The blood on the floor had congealed. My body stank. My flesh was colder than a lawyer's heart.

I checked the answering machine. No calls. If Bailey set me up to make Lee think I was having an affair, Lee would have called by now. She wasn't really the jealous type. She just liked to know which way the wind blew.

I didn't want to pay Lee a visit just yet. That would be too draining. I'd probably waste all my emotional energy tearing my heart out at the sight of her. I had too little reserve left as it was. So I just had to trust her to take care of herself for a while. I spent the night in the elevator shaft.

Do you know what the dead dream?

They dream about being alive.

I woke up to a commotion. I floated up the shaft to my floor,
then
went down the hall. The cops had discovered my body. The super must have noticed the smell and thought the toilet had backed up again.

The cops parted like the
Red Sea
before Moses as a hulking figure arrived. Lt. Lars
Uhlgren
. Ugly
Uhlgren
, they called him, but only behind his back. His face looked as if he could drive nails with it. His eyes were manholes filled with sewer sludge.

"The door was unlocked, Lieutenant," said a uniform. "Body's stiff.
Dead maybe a day, maybe less."

Uhlgren
nodded and brushed past. "Now we know what happened to those shots from the Hype. What you got?" he asked a mousy-looking tech holding a plastic bag.

"Dug some bullets out of the wall, sir.
They were embedded in the concrete lathe."

Uhlgren
glanced at them through the baggie. "And some people get nothing but coal in their stockings. Send them to ballistics."

Mouse nodded and scurried away. I'd worked with
Uhlgren
a time or two, and I'd also learned to scurry when he barked. I was a little cheered that he was on the case. He had a good solve rate.

Then I remembered that I was supposed to solve the case on my own. I couldn't count on human intervention, and my supply of divine intervention was dwindling. But I had as much right to be in the apartment as the police did. I'd paid rent through the month. So I shadowed
Uhlgren
.

He put on rubber gloves and searched my pockets. He found the note that Bailey had left. Next came my cigarettes, change, and lighter, then he dug into my breast pocket and pulled out three photographs.

I stood behind
Uhlgren
and craned my neck. The door opened and the breeze knocked me off-balance and I leaned into him. Not just against him, but
into
him. He shivered and glanced around, his heavy eyebrows low.

I drifted backward, stunned by what I had seen. Two photos were of a nude Bailey, her face hidden but her melons clearly recognizable, lying seductively on my bed. The other photograph was of Bailey and me holding hands, taken when we were heading to the coffee house. The way we were hunched made it look as if we were lovers sneaking off for a rendezvous. Obviously, that photo hadn't been in my pocket when I died, because Bailey had been walking with a ghost at the time the picture was taken.

"Hmm," said
Uhlgren
. "Old Steele got himself a babe. What they say must be true. It ain't looks that women are after."

You're one to talk, Ugly,
I thought.

Uhlgren
glanced around the room and saw Lee's portrait on the TV set. He looked from the photos in his hand back to Lee again.
"
Two
beauty queens?
I'm starting to lose my faith in romance."

He passed the photos to a detective, a guy who looked like a budget Fred Astaire. "See anything strange?"
Uhlgren
asked.

Budget Fred held the snapshots close to his face. He shook his head.
"Nope."

"Steele's legs."

"Looks like a bad exposure."

Uhlgren
smiled,
a rare sight. "Damned feet ain't touching the ground."

"Maybe he was jumping for joy. I know
I
would be, playing
smoochie
-face with her."

Uhlgren
looked down at my body,
then
knelt again with a pop of his knee. He reached inside my jacket to my shirt pocket, his tongue tucked in the corner of his lips. He came away with another note that I didn't know I'd had.
Uhlgren
was making like a modern-day Houdini. Next I expected him to pull out a rabbit or maybe a bouquet of dead flowers.

I hovered over him as he unfolded the note. Written on scrap paper were the words,
Forget her, Richard my love. So what if she threatened to kill me? She can't keep us apart. Thanks for the great time last night. Love always,
Bootsie
.

Wonderful.
I couldn't think of a single witness who could prove that I'd spent the night before my death with a James Herbert novel. I hadn't even snored loudly enough to wake the neighbors. As far as the cops were concerned, I was a two-timing dirty dog they would have envied except for the fact that they were still alive and I was headed for a toe tag.

Sure, they'd be able to figure things out eventually, with all the powder tests and databases and interrogation tactics the police used these days. Plus there was the obvious thread leading to whoever had snapped the photo behind the building. But I didn't have time for the modern machineries of criminal justice to creak into action. I'd be deep-sixed in a couple of days at the most, with maybe an extra day thrown in for an autopsy.

"Who's this '
Bootsie
'?"
Uhlgren
said to nobody, holding the snapshot and the letter side by side. I almost materialized so I could make my lips move enough to give him an address. But let him have his fun. It didn't matter to me if
Uhlgren
was on the trail or not. I had what I needed.

Now it was time to figure out who the white-haired man in the captain's hat was. He was the link between Bailey and the man who had ventilated my chest.

***

9.

I reached
San Francisco
just before dawn. Usually, the fog and rain there wraps you up and digs its way into your bones. But when you have no bones, the chill doesn't bother you as much.

Nothing compares to being a ghost in the fog. Drifting from marina to marina, I was consumed by a peace I had rarely known, the kind they sing about in "Silent Night." I would have been content to drift for an eternity, succumbing to the pull of tides and shore breezes. But I still had
an emptiness
inside me, an ache and longing that kept me on task. No eternal peace would be complete without Lee.

There are thousands of boats in
San Francisco
. I passed over half of them before I found the
Lady Slipper
. I had hoped at least to learn the captain's name. I didn't think I would be lucky enough to find him sitting in the cabin. A half-empty bottle of Scotch, a cup of cold coffee, a cellular phone, and a revolver were on the table in front of him. He was crying.

The mahogany walls were covered with plaques, certificates, and framed photographs, and a trophy case filled one entire wall, brass and silver gleaming even in the dimness. Two of them were Oscars. I checked one of the photographs.
The captain, in his younger days, posing with Natalie Wood.
I
thought
he'd looked familiar. The photo beneath it looked like an autographed portrait of Spencer Tracy, but I didn't study it closely.

Because the captain had picked up the revolver.

His hand trembled, and his eyelids twitched as he kept them clamped shut. He brought the revolver slowly to his head. I understood the darkness that might push someone over the edge. But now I knew the true value of living. I knew what it was like to die with regrets. I was willing to bet the captain had
at least one regret
.

I materialized. The captain's eyes were still closed.

"Don't do it," I said, my head throbbing from the effort of wearing flesh.

The captain's eyelids snapped open and his finger tensed on the trigger. I thought for a second he was going to blow himself away in the shock of seeing me. Because of the suddenness of my incorporation, I hadn't finished the job. I was milky, translucent.

His mouth opened, and he glanced groggily at the cabin door. I came fully back into human form.

"Who—what?" he stammered.

"I'm the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come," I said.

"How did you get in here?" He pushed himself back in the chair. "The
door's
locked."

I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers. Then I made them invisible. I tried to will myself back to flesh again, but I was weak. I panicked, fought,
suffered
a moment of doubt. He pointed the revolver in the direction of my heart and fired.

***

10.

This time I skipped the Waiting Room. "Jingle Bell Rock" was playing through the speakers, and I wondered if this time around I had been sent directly to Hell. But then I recognized the office. Miss Titanic was standing over me, scowling down.

"Steele, you miserable piece of dirt.
How many second chances do you need?"

"I didn't kill myself this time. Some guy shot me." I fingered the fifth and newest hole in my jacket.

"You're a
tweener
, like I told you. You got special protections, but you also have special responsibilities. Like not getting yourself killed in the meantime."

"I didn't know a dead person could die.
Especially not twice."

"We're all dying, all the time, over and over. Or hadn't you figured that out yet?"

"I've had other things on my mind. What's with the bad Christmas music?"

"We're equal opportunity up here. Before this, it was a Tibetan chant, '
Hava
Nagila
,' '
Kumbaya
' and something which might have passed for a Unitarian hymn, if they even have one. But that doesn't concern you, because you still don't believe in any of them, or
anything
, for that matter."

"I believe in Lee."

"Sure you do. So much that you jumped off a building and then went and got yourself shot. And your funeral's coming up as soon as the medical examiner finishes the autopsy."

"I'm going to make it work.
For her sake."

"No. Do it for
yourself
. That's the first lesson of love. Settle your own soul before you go mixing up with somebody else's."

I looked at the clock. "Jingle Bell Rock" mercifully ended, and an African tribal hymn came on. "I owe it to Lee to finish this job," I said.

"I can tell. You got to have a little faith, remember?"

"I'm starting to believe there's a higher power at work." I said it not as a hollow, rote acknowledgment that might score me some brownie points with somebody on a golden throne. I was getting as many second chances as I needed, apparently, and so far I had done little to prove I could handle my affairs on my own.

Because I couldn't.
And I'd always been too stubborn and scared to ask for help.

"That's a good boy. Only took you forty human years and a couple of trips through afterlife administration. Hell, if we gave you a few extra eternities you might even turn out to be somebody."

"Glad you have such faith in me." I stood and turned toward the door. "I'd better hurry. If Lee's involved in this, my killer could be planning to get rid of her, too."

Miss Titanic's sarcasm stopped me. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

I faced her desk and she waved three pieces of paper. "Schedule X.
An override for Form 3716.
Sign three times in blood, and you're out of here."

***

11.

I smiled back at
Wesmeyer
in the boat's cabin, enjoying the aroma of gunpowder and another chance.

"You didn't die,"
Wesmeyer
said, shaking his head and rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

"We're all dying, all the time."

He looked at the gun, then back at me. "In my case, I just want to speed things along."