Umney's Last Case (9 page)

it's the only world I'll ever come

close to knowing. Let me have what's left of it. Please.''

``Too late, Clyde.'' Again I heard that merciless regret in his voice. ``Close your

eyes. I'll make it as fast as I can.''

I tried to jump him--I tried as hard as I could. I didn't move so much as an iota. And

as far as closing my eyes went, I

discovered I didn't need to. All the light had gone out of the day, and the office was

as dark as midnight in a coalsack.

I sensed rather than saw him lean over the desk toward me. I tried to draw back and

discovered I couldn't even do that.

Something dry and rustly touched my hand and I screamed.

``Take it easy, Clyde.'' His voice, coming out of the darkness. Coming not just from

in front of me but from

everywhere. Of course, I thought. After all, I'm a figment of his imagination. `Ìt's

only a check.''

`À . . . check?''

``Yes. For five thousand dollars. You've sold me the business. The painters will

scratch your name off the door and

paint mine on before they leave tonight.'' He sounded dreamy. ``Samuel D. Landry,

Private Detective. It's got a great

ring, doesn't it?''

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I tried to beg and found I couldn't. Now even my voice had failed me.

``Get ready,'' he said. `Ì don't know exactly what's coming, Clyde, but it's coming

now. I don't think it'll hurt.'' But I

don't really care if it does--that was the part he didn't say.

That faint whirring sound came out of the blackness. I felt my chair melt away beneath

me, and suddenly I was falling.

Landry's voice fell with me, reciting along with the clicks and taps of his fabulous

futuristic steno machine, reciting the

last two sentences of a novel called Umney's Last Case.

`` `So I left town, and as to where I finished up . . . well, mister, I think that's

my business. Don't you?' ''

There was a brilliant green light below me. I was falling toward it. Soon it would

consume me, and the only feeling I

had was one of relief.

`` `THE END,' '' Landry's voice boomed, and then I fell into the green light, it was

shining through me, in me, and

Clyde Umney was no more.

So long, shamus.

_______________________________________________________________________

VII. The Other Side of the Light.

All that was six months ago.

I came to on the floor of a gloomy room with a humming in my ears, pushed myself to my

knees, shook my head to

clear it, and looked up into the bright green glare I'd fallen through, like Alice

through the looking glass. I saw a Buck

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Rogers machine that was the big brother of the one Landry had brought into my office.

Green letters shone on it and I

pushed myself to my feet so I could read them, absently running my fingernails up and

down over my lower arms as I

did so:

So I left town, and as to where I finished up . . . well, mister, I think that's my

business. Don't you?

And below that, capitalized and centered, two more words: THE END.

I read it again, now running my fingers over my stomach. I was doing it because there

was something wrong with my

skin, something that wasn't exactly painful but was certainly bothersome. As soon as

it rose to the fore in my mind, I

realized that weird sensation was going on everywhere--the nape of my neck, the backs

of my thighs, in my crotch.

Shingles, I thought suddenly. I've got Landry's shingles. What I'm feeling is itching,

and the reason I didn't recognize it

right away is because-``Because I've never had an itch before,'' I said, and then the rest of it clicked

into place. The click was so sudden and so

hard that I actually swayed on my feet. I walked slowly across to a mirror on the

wall, trying not to scratch my weirdly

crawling skin, knowing I was going to see an aged version of my face, a face cut with

lines like old dry washes and

topped with a shock of lackluster white hair.

Now I knew what happened when writers somehow took over the lives of the characters

they had created. It wasn't

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exactly theft after all.

More of a swap.

I stood staring into Landry's face--my face, only aged fifteen hard years--and felt my

skin tingling and buzzing.

Hadn't he said his shingles had been getting better? If this was better, how had he

endured worse without going

completely insane?

I was in Landry's house, of course--my house, now--and in the bathroom off the study,

I found the medication he took

for his shingles. I took my first dose less than an hour after I came to on the floor

below his desk and the humming

machine on it, and it was as if I had swallowed his life instead of medicine.

As if I'd swallowed his whole life.

These days the shingles are a thing of the past, I'm happy to report. Maybe it just

ran its course, but I like to think that

the old Clyde Umney spirit had something to do with it--Clyde was never sick a day in

his life, you know, and

although I seem to always have the sniffles in this run-down Sam Landry body, I'll be

damned if I'll give in to them . . .

and since when did it hurt to turn on a little of that positive thinking? I think the

correct answer to that one is ``since

never.''

There have been some pretty bad days, though, the first one coming less than twentyfour

hours after I showed up in the

unbelievable year of 1994. I was looking through Landry's fridge for something to eat

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(I'd pigged out on his Black

Horse Ale the night before and felt it couldn't hurt my hangover to eat something)

when a sudden pain knifed into my

guts. I thought I was dying. It got worse, and I knew I was dying. I fell to the

kitchen floor, trying not to scream. A

moment or two later, something happened, and the pain eased.

Most of my life I've been using the phrase `Ì don't give a shit.'' All that has

changed, starting that morning. I cleaned

myself up, then climbed the stairs, knowing what I'd find in the bedroom: wet sheets

in Landry's bed.

My first week in Landry's world was spent mostly in toilet-training myself. In my

world, of course, nobody ever went

to the bathroom. Or to the dentist, for that matter, and my first trip to the one

listed in Landry's Rolodex is something I

don't even want to think about, let alone discuss.

But there's been an occasional rose in this nest of brambles. For one thing, there's

been no need to go job-hunting in

Landry's confusing, jet-propelled world; his books apparently continue to sell very

well, and I have no problem cashing

the checks that come in the mail. My signature and his are, of course, identical. As

for any moral compunctions I might

have about doing that, don't make me laugh. Those checks are for stories about me.

Landry only wrote them; I lived

them. Hell, I deserved fifty thou and a rabies shot just for getting within scratching

distance of Mavis Weld's claws.

I expected to have problems with Landry's so-called friends, but I suppose a heavyduty

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shamus like me should have

known better--would a guy with any real friends want to disappear into a world he'd

created on the soundstage of his

own imagination? Not likely. Landry's friends were his son and his wife, and they were

dead. There are acquaintances

and neighbors, but they seem to accept me as him. The woman across the street throws

me puzzled glances from time to

time, and her little girl cries when I come near even though I used to baby-sit for

them every now and then (the woman

says I did, anyway, and why would she lie?), but that's no big deal.

I have even spoken to Landry's agent, a guy from New York named Verrill. He wants to

know when I'm going to start a

new book.

Soon, I tell him. Soon.

Mostly I stay in. I have no urge to explore the world Landry pushed me into when he

pushed me out of my own; I see

more than I want to on my once-weekly trip to the bank and the grocery store, and I

threw a bookend through his awful

television machine less than two hours after I figured out how to use it. It doesn't

surprise me that Landry wanted to

leave this groaning world with its freight of disease and senseless violence--a world

where naked women dance in

nightclub windows, and sex with them can kill you.

No, I spend my time inside, mostly. I have re-read each of his novels, and each one is

like leafing through the pages of a

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well-loved scrapbook. And I've taught myself to use his word-processing machine, of

course. It's not like the

television machine; the screen is similar, but on the word-processor, you can make

whatever pictures you want to see,

because they all come from inside your own head.

I like that.

I've been getting ready, you see--trying sentences and discarding them the way you try

pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. And

this morning I wrote a few that seem right . . . or almost right. Want to hear? Okay,

here goes:

When I looked toward the door, I saw a very chastened, very downcast Peoria Smith

standing there. `Ì guess I treated

you pretty bad the last time I saw you, Mr. Umney,'' he said. `Ì came to say I'm

sorry.'' It had been over six months,

but he looked the same as ever. And I do mean the same.

``You're still wearing your cheaters,'' I said.

``Yeah. We tried the operation, but it didn't work.'' He sighed, then grinned and

shrugged. In that moment he looked

like the Peoria I'd always known. ``What the hey, Mr. Umney--bein blind ain't so

bad.''

It isn't perfect; sure, I know that. I started out as a detective, not a writer. But I

believe you can do just about anything,

if you want to bad enough, and when you get right down to where the cheese binds, this

is a kind of keyhole-peeping,

too. The size and shape of the word-processor keyhole are a little different, but it's

still looking into other people's

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lives and then reporting back to the client on what you saw.

I'm teaching myself for one very simple reason: I don't want to be here. You can call

it L.A. in 1994 if you want to; I

call it hell. It's awful frozen dinners you cook in a box called a ``microwave,'' it's

sneakers that look like Frankenstein

shoes, it's music that comes out of the radio sounding like crows being steamed alive

in a pressure-cooker, it's-Well, it's everything.

I want my life back, I want things the way they were, and I think I know how to make

that happen.

You're one sad, thieving bastard, Sam--may I still call you that?--and I feel sorry

for you . . . but sorry only stretches

so far, because the operant word here is thieving. My original opinion on the subject

hasn't changed at all, you see--I

still don't believe that the ability to create conveys the right to steal.

What are you doing right this minute, you thief? Eating dinner at that Petit Déjeuner

restaurant you made up? Sleeping

beside some gorgeous honey with perfect no-sag breasts and murder up the sleeve of her

negligee? Driving down to

Malibu with carefree abandon? Or just kicking back in the old office chair, enjoying

your painless, odorless, shitless

life? What are you doing?

I've been teaching myself to write, that's what I've been doing, and now that I've

found my way in, I think I'll get

better in a hurry. Already I can almost see you.

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Tomorrow morning, Clyde and Peoria are going to go down to Blondie's, which has reopened

for business. This time

Peoria's going to take Clyde up on that breakfast offer. That will be step two.

Yes, I can almost see you, Sam, and pretty soon I will. But I don't think you'll see

me. Not until I step out from behind

my office door and wrap my hands around your throat.

This time nobody goes home.