Dead Man

by Joe Gores

  Dain sighed. “One hour.”

  He stood. He was nude, lean but tremendously muscular, his right shoulder, upper chest, and side of his neck peppered with small round white marks. On his left arm, rib cage, flank, and thigh were innumerable well-healed surgical scars.

  In a gym area furnished with an Olympic bar set, racked dumbbells, benches, pulleys, rings and horses, mats, Dain selected two 70-pound dumbbells. He began doing warm-up cleans and presses with them. As his skin flushed with the added blood, the fishbelly scars stood out starkly.

  Fifty minutes later, he settled into his usual chair across the desk from Sherman as the bookseller reached out a long arm to stab playback on the cassette recorder.

  Sherman’s voice said, “Three-four-six-two.”

  “I want to talk with Edgar Dain.”

  “Mr. Dain is not available for phone calls.”

  The other voice blustered. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but this is different. Very sensitive, large issues at—”

  Dain cut the voice in midsentence by punching off.

  “Midwest, maybe Chicago. Asshole, maybe an attorney.”

  Sherman said, “Oh, well, that’s that, then. If the man is an attorney, Dain couldn’t possibly do any work for him.”

  As their arrangement had blossomed, they had fallen into a professional relationship devoid of the personal. Dain executed the commissions he accepted through Sherman without discussing them or ever filing any written reports, facts Sherman found almost unbearably unprofessional.

  “Attorneys lie a lot,” said Dain. “Always at the wrong time to the wrong people.”

  Sherman began to prowl. He’d believed that being Dain’s go-between would be tweaking the tail of the tiger. Instead, the tiger stayed in its cage. He scooped up the invariable leather-bound book from the corner of the desk. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He almost slammed it down again.

  “Still drugging your mind with lunacies five years later.”

  “It’s my mind.”

  “And don’t give me any crap about physical therapy. You use it to remind yourself of…” He paused, fearing he had gone too far, but Dain did not react, so he asked, “So, what do I tell T. J. L. Maxton when he calls again?”

  Dain raised his eyebrows. “That was Teddy Maxton?”

  “You know him?”

  “Of him. Chicago investment attorney who does occasional legal work for some minor mob figures.”

  “You amaze me, Dain. Sometime I’d like to know what you were really doing during those four lost years.”

  “Recuperating.”

  “Where? In the Witness Relocation Program? You know more arcane facts about obscure organized-crime individuals than—”

  Dain came to his feet in a single swift movement. “Maxton, huh? Let’s step on his tail, see if he squeals.”

  Sherman felt the familiar delicious thrill of excitement.

  “If Maxton’s really connected, is that wise?”

  “Is living wise?” Dain countered as he stalked out with his Tibetan Book of the Dead under one arm.

  * * *

  Two days later, 7:30 A.M., Dain was at the World Gym in Kentfield near the College of Marin, doing a circuit workout that built cardiovascular capacity while strengthening the five major muscle groups. The few dedicated bodybuilders in the basement free weight room at that hour were too busy with their own workouts to pay any attention to Dain, as he in turn ignored the morning-long shadow that climbed across him.

  “Dain? Edgar Dain?”

  Dain was doing barbell curls with two hundred pounds, grunting with the effort. He finished, pouring sweat, the planes of his chest shifting under his black sweatshirt with each heaving breath.

  He said rudely, “Outside in an hour.”

  When Dain emerged, the man was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the gym, legs slightly apart and heavy features set in an angry scowl. He was a fleshy well-conditioned late- forties, five-nine, 190, with mean blue eyes and a stubborn jaw. Raymond Burr during his early career as movie villain, with something of Burr’s indefinable dynamism that held the eye. Dain figured he would make a lot of a certain kind of woman go weak in the knees.

  “Theodore Maxton,” Dain nodded without offering a hand. “You’d make a good politician. Plenty of physical presence.”

  “How the hell did you know who I—”

  “I spotted your hired flunky following me around, followed him last night to the St. Francis. You’re in suite nine-oh-one.”

  His car was parked in the lot of Taqueria de Marin, which didn’t open until eleven. Maxton had to trot or be left behind. Dain pressed WALK for the three-way light at College Ave.

  Maxton said almost reasonably, “Don’t be so damn difficult, Dain. Everybody likes money. I want you to find James Zimmer for me—until a week ago he was a law clerk in my legal firm.”

  The light changed. They crossed. Dain said, “How much did he steal, how, and from whom?”

  “Who said anything about stealing? I just want him found.”

  “How much did he steal, how, and from whom?”

  Maxton snarled, “A client, Adelle Lorimer has—had—five million dollars’ worth of her late husband’s undeclared bearer bonds in her safe-deposit box. Mrs. Lorimer is on an extended tour of Europe, our firm has power of attorney, Zimmer was her attorney of record so he had access to the box. He extracted two million worth of the bonds, substituted forgeries, and disappeared. Since the money is undeclared, Mrs. Lorimer does not want publicity that would bring IRS scrutiny.”

  Dain paused beside the ‘84 Toyota Corolla in which he had driven Marie and Albie to Point Reyes five years before.

  “Why was a law clerk her attorney of record, and why did he think he could get away with the theft?”

  “Mrs. Lorimer knew his parents. As for the theft, in the normal course of events, the bonds probably would have remained untouched in the box until Mrs. Lorimer’s death.”

  Dain unlocked the car door. “I’ll be in touch,” he said as he slid into the car. “Or I won’t.”

  “Hey, wait a goddamned…”

  He stood in the deserted parking lot, glaring after Dain’s car and muttering curses under his breath. But Dain, driving away, already was considering which data bases would give him best access to T. J. L. Maxton’s affairs. About the fugitive Zimmer he thought not at all, except to wonder if Max-ton’s definition of drastic might include hiring a hitman for him. Perhaps a hitman who, years before…

  That sort of slim chance was all Dain lived for.

  8

  Teddy Maxton’s office was in the penthouse of a new high rise with a good view of Sears Tower and the Chicago River snaking through the Loop. The office was expensive without distinction, relentlessly modern, reflecting a designer’s tastes rather than Maxton’s. The lawyer was on the phone with a client when the door was opened by Jeri Pearson, his thirtyish executive secretary. Maxton looked up, irritated.

  “I told you no—”

  “A Mr. Dain? He seemed to think—”

  Maxton, mollified, made a beckoning gesture. It was after 4:00 P.M., so he had a drink at his elbow. He said into the phone, “Something’s come up, I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  Jeri ushered in Dain, shut the door as she left. Dain was dressed in a conservative business suit and a Sulka tie. In his left hand was his usual leather-bound book. He stopped in the middle of the room as Maxton moved his glass and raised an eyebrow, almost smirking to see him there after all.

  Dain shook his head, wiped away Maxton’s self-satisfied look by saying, “I get ten percent of anything recovered against a twenty-five K guarantee. I cover my own expenses.”

  “Ten percent! I told you he stole two million dollars. Ten percent is an absolutely outrageous—”

  “My fee is not negotiable.”

  Maxton came around the desk, his hands clenched and his face dark with anger. “Everyone’s fee is negotiable.”

  Dain sat down in the visitor’s chair, lai
d his leather-bound book on the edge of the desk. After a moment, Maxton went back behind the desk to get his drink, jaw aggressive.

  “You had two other P.I.’s looking for him for a week before you came to me, and don’t even know which rest room he uses.”

  “You mean he’s a fucking fag?”

  “No. I mean that you know nothing about him, yet you handpicked him to be Lorimer’s attorney with power to cosign on that box with her. Who or what made him desperate enough to steal from you? Was he being blackmailed? If so, over what? Was he a gambler in debt to a shylock? Is he a cokehead? In love?”

  Maxton exclaimed, “How do you expect me to know anything like that? He’s a fucking law clerk, for Godsake!”

  “Exactly. You said the substitution probably won’t be discovered until Mrs. Lorimer’s death, if then. Does she know about the theft? Do you plan to return the bonds to her?”

  There was a long silence. Maxton finally turned to the window behind the desk, stood with his face so close to it that when he spoke his words left small puffs of steam on the glass.

  “Zimmer agreed to substitute forged bonds I supplied for two million worth of the genuine ones. He was to get a hundred thousand, tax-free, for that service.”

  “And just in case, you made sure you couldn’t even get into the box—only Zimmer,” said Dain. “That way, if the substitution was discovered, Zimmer would take the fall.”

  Maxton turned back into the room. “That’s right.”

  Dain leaned forward with a friendly look on his face.

  “So the question is, why did you have to steal the bonds?”

  Maxton slammed his empty glass down on the desk so hard it cracked in his hand. He threw it into the wastebasket.

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Dain. “Your wife found out you were fooling around and filed for divorce. She wanted the usual—alimony, house, car… But I’m assuming she also wanted a lot of tax-free cash under the table—or else.”

  Maxton said softly, “Or else what?”

  “Normally I’d expect her to wake up dead in a garbage pail somewhere, but instead you trot out and try to steal two million bucks to keep her happy. So she’s really got something—probably something the fraud division of the IRS or your playmates with the ini-names would like to know. So she’s got an edge on you.” He suddenly snapped the words. “Does Zimmer?”

  “I told you, the man’s a fucking law clerk. That’s why I chose him for this—he wouldn’t dare try a double cross.”

  “But he did,” said Dain. He stood abruptly, picked up his book, headed for the door. “I’ll be in touch.”

  It was the week before exams on Northwestern’s hundred and sixty green hardwood-dotted acres bordering Lake Michigan. Undergrads sprawled on the grass like terrorist victims. Dain, in his three-piece suit and power tie, wearing clear-glass horn-rims that made him look professorial, stopped a worried-looking coed for directions to the law school. She had a chocoholic complexion and a stack of books under her arm that listed her to port like a sailboat beating into the wind. When he spoke to her she dropped her books. He caught them before they hit the walk.

  “The law school?” he prompted gently.

  “Oh, ah, yeah.” She half turned, pointed beyond the U-shaped concrete admin building with its signature clock tower to another building half-hidden by the green leaves and startling white trunks of some birch trees. “The red brick? With the white window trim?”

  “Many thanks. Good luck with the exams.”

  An hour later, in the pleasantly secluded Shakespeare Gardens, he stopped beside a bench on which a sternly attractive brown-haired woman was correcting papers. She wore a tweed suit with a skirt short enough to show several inches of very shapely thigh. There was a great stack of law-books on the bench.

  “Dr. Berman?” She squinted up into the sun; Dain shifted so he blocked it from her eyes. “They said at the law review that you often came here in nice weather to correct papers.”

  She took off her glasses, said rudely, “I’m faculty advisor for the review. Who are you?”

  “James Zimmer,” said Dain as if the name were an answer.

  The irritation faded. Her eyes softened with memory. “Jimmy Zimmer! God, I haven’t thought of Jimmy for…” She caught herself, said sharply, “I asked who you were.”

  “Mr. Zimmer has applied to the United States Justice Department for a position as a federal prosecutor. In such cases there is a routine investi—”

  “Jimmy? A federal prosecutor?” She stopped just short of an unexpected giggle. “We were law students here together…” Sternness tightened her face. “I doubt if I can tell you anything that would be of interest to the Justice Department.”

  Dain put a shoe on the edge of the bench. “How about if Jimmy made the law review or not?”

  She looked startled, then burst out laughing. “You’re good at this, aren’t you?”

  “I hope so,” said Dain, and moved her books aside enough to sit down beside her on the bench.

  When he left a half hour later, he knew that on his own Jimmy Zimmer would have had neither the imagination, wit, nor courage to plan the bond theft from Teddy Maxton.

  * * *

  That evening at Zimmer’s apartment building he gleaned a second possibly useful fact from a snide overweight born-again in the laundry room. She described a woman Zimmer had been “shamelessly intimate with” for several weeks that past winter

  “Nights at his apartment?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Whole weekends. It ended around the middle of January.”

  “And after that?” Dain’s voice was insinuating.

  “He had a peroxide floozie up one time, a month ago, but I put a stop to that.” Her uncolored lips curved in righteous triumph. One plump cheek even dimpled. “I called the police and told them harlots were working out of his apartment.”

  Dain asked God to bless her, and left. Her description of the blonde was “cheap”; her description of the winter lover was that of Maxton’s executive secretary, Jeri Pearson.

  A cooling wind off Lake Michigan was puffing its way up the skyscraper canyons to swirl old newspapers against pedestrians’ legs and tug at women’s dresses. If Marilyn Monroe had been out in it, her skirt would have been up around her ears and poor old Tom Ewell would have had to strap down his hard-on.

  As the minute hand on the clock a block down from the First Chicago Bank of Commerce leaped forward to 9:23 A.M., Dain exited the bank. He had traded his leather-bound book for a clipboard. In the guise of a state bank examiner he already had talked with the woman who had let Zimmer into the safe-deposit box. She hadn’t remembered him, but her records had: clocked in at 9:03, clocked out at 9:22.

  A city-grimed Cicero bus farted past Dain; he made a notation on his clipboard. Behind the bus, a red-headed Irish-faced meter maid was chalking tires. Another note for her. Near the corner a postman opened the letter box and began putting the mailed letters into a big canvas bag. Dain made a note.

  He crossed the street, stood on the far corner. His eye was caught by a doughnut truck pulling away from KARL’S KOFFEE KUP KAFE midblock to his right. He scribbled a note, went down that way. A boy exited Karl’s with a tippy cardboard tray of coffee in plastic-capped Styrofoam cups. Dain wrote.

  Beyond Karl’s was an alley. He glanced down that way, then stopped, utterly still. Foot traffic flowed around his solid immobility. Yes. It was what he’d do. He started ambling down the alley, stopped again. Him, but not Zimmer. Zimmer, alone, just about here would be thinking, still time to turn them over to Maxton and get his 100-K and live happily ever after.

  As he was passing the back door of a cafe a short-order cook came out to dump some garbage in one of the pails. It went in with an ugly wet plopping sound. Dain stopped again, abruptly.

  Zimmer would have given Maxton the bonds, but he hadn’t. So if he’d come down this alley, something stronger than his fear of Maxton had
driven him on.

  Or drawn him on.

  Belatedly, he made a note on the Hispanic cook as a wino careened past him up the alley. No note for him. Winos saw a lot, but their sense of time and reality was elastic, and in hopes of a bottle of muscatel they would tell you not what they’d seen, but what they thought you wanted them to have seen.

  He emerged from the far end of the alley, looked around casually. Here is where he would have parked if he’d been waiting to pick up Zimmer and the bonds.

  A black teenager had just finished washing and squeegeeing the front display windows of a men’s clothing store. Dain made a note and strolled on, noting a florist truck, five secretaries exiting a building for a coffee break, an old woman staring down through lace curtains from a third-floor apartment window.

  He quit for the day at the end of the block. Ten minutes max was as long as Zimmer would have been in the vicinity: after that he would have walked away, caught a bus, a taxi, driven off himself in a car, or been picked up by someone else.

  For the rest of the week, Dain left the front of the bank each morning at 9:23 to canvass in a different direction until he was satisfied that he had covered all reasonable possibilities.

  Records could tell him all about who Zimmer had been up until the day he stole the bonds. Records could tell him Zimmer had accessed the Lorimer safe-deposit box at 9:03 A.M. and had left at 9:22 A.M. There the records stopped.

  But Zimmer had kept going. So Dain did, too. He now had his raw data: now he could begin to work it. This was like a chess game. The same almost infinite number of choices; the same implacable logic. And it absorbed him to be working someone else’s backtrail, so he wasn’t thinking about

  Marie going back and up, mouth strained wide, eyes wild

  Yes, only Dain could work the backtrail. In person. Which was his salvation. Using the computer made him unbearably sad; as for chess, even looking at a board, even now five years later, made vomit rise in his throat.

  On the coffee table in Mill Valley was the unfinished game he and Marie had been playing before they had left for Point Reyes five years before. He hadn’t been able to put it away.