Secret Dead Men

by Duane Swierczynski

  Paul? What the hell are you doing?

  “It’s nnnot me,” Paul said like he was speaking underwater.

  Then, in a voice as crisp and vibrant as a new day: “No, you don’t know me, Leah Farrell. I came after After. But I know you. And you can rest assured I’m going to destroy you for helping the man who killed my wife.”

  Oh boy. Clearly, we had another soul speaking through our physical body. It was easy to guess who. But how? And from where? And what the hell was he doing, scotching the very investigation he hired me to conduct?

  Leah, for her part, looked unnerved by this whole turn of events. She probably expected Paul to loosen up, maybe even surrender a few details to help sort things out. I’m sure she didn’t expect this … calamity.

  “What do you mean…” she asked, “…wife? You weren’t married.”

  “True enough; Paul was never married. But I was. To a beautiful, selfless, endlessly giving woman who wanted nothing in life but to appreciate beauty and art and raise brilliant children.”

  Had there been any doubt about the identity of our mystery caller, it was gone.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Susannah asked.

  “I am going the be the last voice you ever hear,” Brad Larsen said. He reached forward, grabbed the bottle of Cuervo, poured himself a healthy drink, sucked it into his mouth, then sprayed it all over Leah’s face.

  Of course, I only heard this last part by remote; I was running through the Brain Hotel—half faux-running, half porting my soul—racing towards Brad Larsen’s room. I kicked open the door just as Brad was simulating his boozy raspberry—the one our body was acting out in real life. “Brad, God damn it!”

  There was some kind of metal gizmo wrapped around his head, with tiny wires and rubber patches attached to his forehead and temples. He was moving his right arm forward, and grabbing an imaginary object that rested on an imaginary table right in front of him. Brad’s eyes slowly opened, and he smiled. “And now we light the match…”

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going for. I leapt forward and slapped his head with my open hand. Stung the hell of me, but at least it succeeded in dislodging the gizmo. I grabbed it with my non-throbbing hand and yanked it free. It made tiny pop! pop! pop! sounds.

  Brad yelped, “Hey!”

  I looked at the limp collection of metal and wire and rubber in my hand. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even beneath the hood of a foreign car. But I had to ignore it. Punish now, sort it out later.

  I closed my soul-eyes and sent Brad to the interrogation room with the houndstooth couch.

  However, back in reality, the damage had already been done. Leah slapped a pile of twenties on the tequila—probably leaving a 300% tip in the process—and led Paul outside with her pistol shoved into his spine. Poor bastard didn’t know what the hell to think—one moment he was tying one on, the next somebody was taking over his voice box, and the next he was being shoved out a front door with a pistol in his back. I’m sure the ordinary Paul After could have handled worse, but then again, this Paul After had been through the Play-Dough Fun Factory I call my brain, and was not entirely sure of his own existence.

  She nudged Paul into an alley right next to the restaurant. He stepped around a trashcan, and she followed. I could sense that the place stunk to high heaven—city alleys in the middle of summer were never choice locations. The fact that it even registered in Paul’s booze-addled mind was worthy of note.

  “Okay, stop right there.”

  Paul turned around, trying his damndest to stay upright.

  “I knew you weren’t Paul,” Leah said. “The Paul I knew wouldn’t let a woman bully him into a silly game of drinking for information. The Paul I knew wouldn’t have let me anywhere near his real apartment. So who the fuck are you, huh?” She nudged the gun into Paul’s forehead to accent that last word.

  Paul looked up at her. I thought he was going to either giggle, vomit, or both. But what he did next surprised the hell out of me.

  He smacked Susannah’s gun away. It fired into the brick wall behind him. He made a fist and launched it into her stomach. Leah bent in half. She started to scream, but Paul punched her again before she could. She collapsed to the ground in a very unladylike manner.

  Paul stood up, and his balance wavered. He took a few steps back into a wall, then slid down it. “I doannnn know.”

  And then he passed out.

  The voices stopped. The Brain Hotel solidified.

  I’m not sure how to explain it, since there was precious little blood running through our alcohol system. Maybe the effect was dependent on consciousness; maybe the infrastructure of the human brain simply can’t handle reality, multiple sub-personality consciousness, and a lot of booze. Or maybe punching a woman in the gut was enough to sober anybody up.

  At any rate, it was time to check on our boy. I don’t know how he corralled the mind-power to focus for those few key seconds, but sweet alleluia, he did. I ran back into the Hotel lobby and found Paul on the floor. He had staggered back in from the real world, but couldn’t make it any further. His soul was wasted.

  “You’d better take over, Del,” he said. “I’mmnot feeling too good.”

  “Take it easy, buddy. I’ll handle it.”

  I ran out the front doors. Whoah.

  The real world wetbrain stupor hit me like a tidal wave. It’s one thing to gradually become drunk over a series of cold mugs of beer, or a even from a few shots of whiskey spaced over the course of an hour. It was another to inherit the wind all at once. I need to pass out somewhere safe.

  But I had to do something with Leah first.

  Leaving her in this alley meant she’d only wake up in an hour or so, then come back up to my apartment and try to kill me. I doubt there would be any lengthy conversation then, either. I could kill her and absorb her soul, but I felt like I had enough balls to juggle at the moment without a dead body to hide—and God forbid that she and Brad started comparing notes inside the Brain Hotel. The best idea was to keep her out of the picture for a while. And the best way to do that?

  Doug came down to the lobby in record time. He took over the body—”Whoah, reality is more of a rushhh than I remember,” he said, then set off to score a dose of horse. It wasn’t difficult; this was 15th & Spruce. When he returned, Leah was still passed out in the alley. Doug strapped her arm up tight, then gave her a nice clean shot to oblivion. She resumed consciousness for a horrible second, eyes spinning, then suddenly focusing on her arm, and I swear she knew what was happening to her for a second before she was gone. He shoved the rest of the goods into her pants pocket, then surrendered the body to me.

  I shoved a dime into a phone, called 911, gave a location, then finally staggered back to my apartment. It was time for me to pass out.

  Twenty-One

  Toilet, Cat

  I’d almost keyed into my apartment when a familiar, annoying voice started talking to me.

  While you were playing around with the ladies, I discovered some grim news, said The Ghost of Fieldman. I could see his image in the brass door knocker plate on my apartment door. He loved to project himself into the oddest of the places.

  “I’m in no mood.”

  Instantly, his image appeared in the hallway with me. Well get in the mood, Collective, because my former employers are on to you. They’ve got your picture, they’re got your alias. It’s only a matter of time. And time is something you don’t have.

  I unlocked the door and kicked it open. Fieldman followed me inside. I closed the door, and threw my jacket over a chair. “How do you know all of this?”

  I have my sources. As we speak, the FBI is running your picture through a series of tape files they have. In addition, your photo is being sent to every branch office from here to Seattle.

  “And where did the Feds find this picture?”

  I do not know. The search request issued from the Philadelphia branch, which in turn, came from a request fro
m the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

  Richard. Had to be. Calling in a favor from a lawyer buddy. But why would he suspect anything? Why would he check up on him now? Because you’re a thug from Las Vegas who is babysitting his 24-year-old mistress, that’s why.

  You’d better come into the Brain Hotel. I’ll show you.

  Grudgingly, I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes. Oh, what a goose I am.

  Bad move.

  I stepped through the front doors to find Brad, who had somehow freed himself from his houndstooth prison. Up on the screen was the Ghost of Fieldman, looking down at me. He hadn’t followed me down into the Brain Hotel.

  “All right,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

  “I was merely wondering what you plan to do next,” Brad said.

  “Go upstairs and sleep for a couple of days,” I said truthfully.

  “About my case, I mean.”

  “I see,” I said. “Well, before you started screwing around with me and the Hotel, I was planning to find your killers, kill them, and absorb their souls for further questioning. Then you’re going to give me the information you promised, and we’re all going to head back to Las Vegas to finish this thing, once and for all.”

  “I don’t think so,” Brad said.

  I didn’t understand. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted for the past eight months? Justice, revenge, heads on sticks, et cetera?

  “In fact,” Brad continued, “I no longer wish to retain your services. You might step into something you shouldn’t and make a mess for the rest of us.”

  This is true, said Fieldman, up on the screen. You’ve lost the touch, Collective. You are dead in the water. You are a shell of your former self.

  Suddenly, my vision blurred to the right. Everything in front of me—my chair, desk, a box, the wood frame around the closet—suddenly brightened and dissolved into a burning trail of light. Soon, I wasn’t able to see any shapes at all. Just bright spinning globs of pulsating matter. My eardrums popped, as if I were underwater. My God—had the jerk managed to lace my Brain scotch with a tablet of LSD when I wasn’t looking?

  Voices: Here he comes.

  Yes. I can see his shape…

  Then, in a flash, the world reformed around me. Only I wasn’t in the lobby anymore. I was standing in my Brain office with Brad and the Ghost of Fieldman, who was holding what looked to be a television remote control box.

  Fieldman smirked. “I bet you’re wondering how we managed to drag you up here against your will.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m standing here trying to imagine what it’s going to feel like.”

  “What what’s going to feel like?” Brad asked.

  “What it’s going to feel like when I eject both your sorry souls into the bathroom toilet.”

  This cracked them up. Knee-slapping and everything. I made a note to myself to work on my threatening, tough-guy voice.

  “Funny you should say that,” said Brad, chuckling one last time before wiping his eyes. “Because it’s where you’re going. Tell him, Agent Fieldman.”

  Fieldman started pacing around me, his clunky gizmo trained on me. “You forget that I know your secrets, Collective. Using the processing power given to each Brain Hotel resident, I invented this—a device that can take your soul and drag it around. Eject it into whatever we want.”

  “I’ll mention it to the Nobel committee.” What was this confrontation about, anyway? An extra closet or two in their apartments? “Why are the two of you so eager to drag me around? Because I don’t have Brad’s murderers hung by their thumbs yet?”

  Brad sighed and waved his arms around. “God, you can’t see anything, can you? For such a supreme being, you’re painfully, stupefyingly, pitifully ignorant.”

  That was nice. I’d never been called a supreme being before.

  Brad continued. “We’ve been planning this for months now—almost as long as you’ve been conducting your so-called ‘murder investigation.’ And all the time you thought you were in control. Ordering us around. Barking questions at us. You have no idea how weak you are.”

  “Don’t bother explaining to the Collective,” interrupted the Ghost of Fieldman. “His mind is far too closed to comprehend.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Brad said. “Go ahead and zap him.”

  “Destination?” Fieldman asked.

  “Oh, why don’t we use the man’s suggestion?”

  A smile lit up Fieldman’s face. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  This talk was getting loopy—not to mention, personally destructive. I had to flex my muscles now or forever hold my peace. “Paul?” I shouted. The more muscles the better. “Hey, PAUL!”

  “He’s not going to answer,” said Brad.

  “Oh,” I said, with as much braggadocio as I could muster. “He will.”

  “No … he won’t. Because I’m Paul After.”

  I gave him the same kind of look you’d give someone who’s declared himself the Prince of Mars.

  “You don’t believe me,” said Brad. “And to tell you the truth, I wish it weren’t true. But Paul After is undeniably me. Or me, that is, until approximately eight months ago.”

  “It is not worth explaining,” said Fieldman.

  “Sure it is.” Brad said. “It’ll give him something to think about when he’s hanging out with the Tidy Bowl man for the next 50 years. You see Del, I used to be an extremely disreputable man. Started out doing small-time jobs for the New York Mafia, then headed out West to make my fortune. Which I did, through a number of businesses. A few of them you even wrote about, back when you were a reporter.”

  “I don’t remember writing about any Brad Larsen.”

  “Not by name, you didn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s put it this way: If you hadn’t come along and collected my soul from the muddy waters of the Woody Creek, there would be no ‘Association’ left for you to chase.”

  I stared at him, slack-jawed. “That’s not poss…” I started to say, but then couldn’t think of anything.

  “Starting to get it? I am your fucking ‘Association’! Just me…”

  Possible? Certainly. What kind of evidence did I ever have? Only bits and pieces. I had put the picture together. I had assumed a massive criminal organization pulled the strings. I had never dreamed one man could do so much.

  “But I’m drifting from my original point,” said Brad. “You see, the key was having two separate lives, so utterly distinct that one could never, ever, lead to the other. In one life, I was Brad Larsen, college professor in training, with a Masters in 17th Century English Literature, and working towards my doctorate at the University of California, Bakersfield. I was married to the beautiful Alison Larsen, nee Langtree, and we lived in a gorgeous two-bedroom bungalow three blocks away from campus. She was a hairdresser. And she never asked where all the ‘grant money’ came from.”

  I interrupted—merely to inject myself back into the flow of things. “And in your other life, you were this J.P. Bafoures, bloodthirsty crime boss, willing to kill anyone—man, woman, child—as long as it put dollars in your pocket.”

  “I only killed two women. And no children,” Brad said.

  “So I’m to believe you’ve been working the Susannah Winston case? In effect, babysitting your own murderer?”

  “Not exactly,” Brad said. “This ‘Paul After’ is not technically me. He’s a fragment of my own psyche, sheared off the moment you absorbed my soul.”

  “Not possible,” I said. “I absorbed him months after I absorbed your soul.”

  “No, you only thought you absorbed him then. It was a fabricated memory we put in place months ago.”

  “I can explain this, Collective,” said Fieldman. “Your programming—that is, the processor that is your mind—is only equipped to handle one identity per chip. Once it encountered Brad, who had a brain disorder known as a ‘split personality,’ it did the only thing it could
: it assigned each disparate identity its own chip, with a new, fabricated personal history.”

  “Paul even gave himself a new last name,” said Brad. “Bafoures became After.”

  “Understand, Collective?” Fieldman asked.

  “Thank you, Mr. Wizard,” I said. The ghost never gave up. “If he’s a separate “psyche,” why can’t he leap to my defense right now?”

  “Simple,” Brad said. “I erased him.”

  “You erased him?” I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but at that point, it didn’t seem to matter. The Ghost of Fieldman walked up to me, and softly applied his hand to my cheek. “You’ve had enough suffering for one lifetime. It is time to rest.”

  “How can you ‘erase’ a soul?”

  Fieldman held his gizmo up to my face and tapped it with his index finger. “Interesting you should ask, Collective.”

  And then it was over.

  I spent an agonizing length of time between planes of reality. (Only later did I realize I’d traveled in a fraction of a second, and had spent 20 hours trying to piece my mind back together.) I didn’t appreciate what I’d had until it was rudely snatched away from me. For years, I had the companionship of other souls, whenever I wanted it. I had a building full of unique individuals, each with stories to tell, emotions to vent. And, during those same years, I had souls to reach out to.

  Now, all that was gone. The only physical sensation left was tumbling: endless, nauseating tumbling. No sense of up, down, left or right; no depth. It was like being jettisoned into outer space, only without the blessed quick death of decompression and body implosion. This tumbling went on forever. Every time I tried to figure out how they did it, how they wrenched my soul from its home inside my brain, I’d start to spin more violently, unable to think on an intellectual level any longer. I would have vomited, but I feared I’d spend eternity spinning in an ocean of my own bile and whatever my last meal happened to have been—probably fast food of some kind and a gallon of tequila. No … must stop riffing on food and drink, I thought to myself. Me? Who was me, anyway?