Time of Death

by Nathan Van Coops

  Where’s our money?

  I didn’t have anyone’s money. So who did? Foster?

  Foster had been dead for months.

  Somebody had tried to run me off the road yesterday. Trashed my office today. Why now?

  For that matter, why had Isla hired me now? Why not later? Or sooner.

  I fidgeted with the settings on my chronometer. The knobs and buttons around the bezel activated a series of rings and indicators at the interior. Besides serving the function of selecting the time for a jump, it was also pleasant to watch. All these tiny movements like a well-choreographed dance.

  The message on the desk was clear enough. Even if I were to back out of this case and say I was done, someone else thought I was involved—that I had their money. Or that I knew where it was.

  What money?

  Looking around my destroyed office, the clutter was too much. I couldn’t think here. At least not here and now.

  I checked my chronometer again and set it for the wee hours of Saturday morning, the first night of this. Just after I’d ridden away in Dirk Wall’s truck.

  Putting my fingers to the desk to ground myself in time, I jumped.

  The cold beer was where I left it. Still three-quarters full. The office was tidy. No carving on the desk.

  Better.

  Picking up the beer, I pulled up the blinds, then took a seat in the office chair again.

  Stars were peeking through the broken clouds in the sky overhead.

  I propped my feet on the windowsill and thought about all I knew so far.

  A widow with suspicions.

  Two dead bodies.

  Two thugs hanging around the scene, one of whom was almost certainly Foster’s killer.

  If this missing money was the issue, I had a motive. But if Foster had the missing money, why kill him before finding out where it was? Same for Dirk P. Walls. If either man had the missing cash, wouldn’t they have said so to avoid death?

  Magic Max and Tommy the Tank weren’t Rhodes Scholars but they were smart enough to know the basic order of events for getting info out of someone.

  The puzzle still had too many pieces loose. I was missing something crucial.

  I sipped the beer and listened to the sounds in the street. Young people going about their Friday night oblivious of the rest of the multiverse and unaware of me or my problems. Right about now Dirk would be dropping the earlier me off in a Burger King parking lot and I’d make the long walk home to my apartment. What was it Dirk had said in the truck? Foster had something big coming up. Something to do with the casino.

  I swiveled in my chair and retrieved Foster’s phone from the desk drawer. Flipped to his calendar. Checked the date. It was this coming Sunday. The same date I had just come from. The note said WORK TRIP.

  But Foster was dead. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Unless he already had.

  I shot upright in my chair, nearly spilling the remainder of my beer.

  Zigzag sold Magic Max three Temprovibes. Three.

  I stood, downed the rest of the beer and tossed the empty bottle into the recycling container. I’d just have to do it again when they trashed my office on Sunday but whatever. Sometimes you have to save the planet twice.

  “Waldo, schedule a data backup. Save and store anything valuable off-site, then do a purge of all our on-site files before Sunday. This place is going to get trashed. Don’t tell me about it when you see me between now and then, but plan for it.”

  “You don’t wish to deter the hooligans who defile our place of business?”

  “What’s done is done. But I wouldn’t mind getting them on video. Make sure the surveillance is running. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  * * *

  I’ve never been a big risk taker. The life of a time traveler comes with enough thrills. It’s why games of chance never held much interest for me. But I get the allure. Watching ten dollars turn into a hundred feels like magic. An electric jolt to the pleasure centers of the brain. Hit me again.

  Nowhere was that rush more on display than at the blackjack tables at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa.

  I had jumped back to Sunday night, what passed for the present day for me. I’d changed at the apartment on the way. Blazer and wingtips again. Nothing fancy but sufficient to mingle unnoticed.

  The lights sparkled.

  Like most casinos the interior was ostentatious: glossy marble, garish carpets in reds and golds. An Elvis Presley quote adorned an overhang near the escalators. “I just can’t miss with a good luck charm like you.”

  The building was lit in that timeless twilight casinos use to obscure the passing hours.

  I cruised the poker tables but saw no sign of Isla Phillips. I pulled out my phone and sent her a message. It was only a few minutes till my pocket vibrated with her reply. I pulled my phone back out and read her message. Then I headed for the elevator.

  The main floors of the casino were busy. When I got off the elevator at the top floor, I was met with silence. I discovered it was because I still hadn’t reached my destination. The elevator had reached its apex, but there was still another level to go. The private elevator up to the penthouse levels required a keycard and was manned by a burly dude in a suit that looked two sizes too small for his muscles.

  I walked up and gave him a nod. “I’m a guest of Isla Phillips.”

  “Gotta have the password.”

  I flashed him the coded image Isla had texted me.

  He scanned it and pulled a keycard from his wallet and opened the elevator doors for me. “Good luck tonight, sir.”

  I rode up to the next floor. When the doors opened, I knew I was underdressed.

  The crowd was a mix of men and women in elegant evening wear. Jewels glittered on women’s wrists and necks. There was a hint of cigar smoke coming from the terrace. No tuxedos, but men wore suits that may as well have been made of money.

  I recognized a few faces—not personally, but from TV. Several pro athletes. One local television personality. The ones I didn’t recognize were no doubt equally wealthy.

  Isla Phillips made them all look like paupers. She wore a soft pink cocktail dress with a high floral- patterned neck. Cutouts in the vaguely Japanese floral design revealed hints of her naturally bronze skin. She noticed me walk in from beyond the pair of poker tables. She was in conversation with someone but gestured toward the bar with a tilt of her head. I got the message.

  A woman at the bar appraised me with a predatory gaze as I walked up. She was tall, not young, but impossible to call old either. Her porcelain skin was ageless in the way very expensive things are. Her hair was extended, her breasts defied gravity, and only the skin of her hands gave any indication that she might be mortal. She wore glittering rings on both hands but none on one particular finger. She glided closer, her fingers wrapped around the stem of a coupe glass.

  “You don’t belong here,” she said, though the words didn’t come off as an accusation. They had a tone of curiosity.

  “Just visiting.”

  “Then you need a guide.” She extended her hand. “Silvie.”

  “Alan. I’m charmed.” I held her extended fingers and brushed her knuckles with a kiss.

  She shivered. “Are you the lucky kind of charmed? Be my savior. I’ve been losing all night.” She pressed herself to my side, entwining her arm through mine.

  “What are you drinking?” I asked.

  “Everything.”

  I gestured to the bartender. He took a look at the woman on my arm and immediately started mixing her a cocktail. He handed her what looked to be a dirty martini and turned to me. “What’ll it be?”

  I ordered a dark and stormy. He said he had to call it something else on the bill on account of him not carrying Gosling’s rum and they had a trademark on the name. I said I didn’t care what he called it if it tasted good.

  It did.

  My lady companion was still dangling from my elbow. Seemed she didn’t want to release he
r grip in case I up and vanished. More likely than she knew.

  I kept an eye on Isla while making small talk with Silvie. She was a corporate lawyer. Killer in the courtroom. Her words. She hated the job but secretly loved the reputation. Not so secretly if she was telling me, but I wasn’t going to judge.

  What did I do? Oh, a writer. She had an idea for a book. Her memoir. She said I should write it for her. She’d split the profits with me.

  I steered the conversation back to the room we were in. High stakes poker. She pointed out all the players she knew, described the waiting list to get in. Had to know someone. Who? Oh don’t worry about that. I knew her now, wasn’t that enough?

  After fifteen minutes Isla broke away from the games and made her way over. She dazzled in that cocktail dress, a fact not missed by Silvie.

  “Aren’t you just a fantasy come to life,” Silvie said, extending a hand to Isla. “You look divine, my dear.”

  “Always good to see you, Ms. Goldberg. Your dress is gorgeous too.”

  “You must go, darling. I found this mouth-watering young man wandering around unattended. He needs my full attention.”

  “Thanks for the invitation,” I said, bowing slightly to Isla.

  “He’s a writer,” Silvie crooned. “Isn’t that just adorable?”

  “I came as a guest of Mrs. Phillips tonight,” I explained, separating myself from Silvie’s grasp. “I’d like to have a quick word with her.”

  “Oh, all right. But don’t forget to come back to me. We have so much to discuss.”

  Isla guided me toward the far end of the bar, slipping her arm around mine. She kept her voice low. “I can’t usually let in any outside guests but your message sounded urgent. Is there a development?”

  “Something occurred to me. Is there an object that you use here that you take home with you? Something solid that makes the trip back and forth from your house to this room?”

  “Like my purse?”

  “That’s too variable. Something that’s always the same. Rigid. Big enough that a few people could have a hand on it at once.”

  She glanced toward a table near the far wall. “The only other thing would be my laptop. I use it to keep track of buy-ins and the cash coming and going.”

  “People play with cash?”

  “Not usually. It’s mostly online transfers, but every once in a while we have cash games. Some of our players like to avoid the red tape with big transfers.”

  “What about tonight? Is tonight a cash night?”

  Isla nodded slowly. “But it’s kept in the safe, I’m the only one with the access code while it’s here.”

  “Last night when we looked through photos. One was of a short guy with an earring. You said you didn’t know him, but you’d seen him before.”

  Isla looked pained. “Only once. It was after hours. I’d had a bad night, lost some customers. He kept hounding me.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He asked me to get him into a game here. Said he had cash and wanted to play. But I had a bad feeling when he showed up. I told him no. He got angry. But Foster arrived. Told him to clear off.”

  “He met Foster. He knew he was your husband?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “You need to get out of here.”

  “Why? No one can get in without—”

  But she was interrupted by a scream.

  19

  Three men in masks had appeared from thin air in the corner of the room. Small, medium, gigantic. All of them armed. All were wearing ski masks that covered their faces but I knew who I was looking at.

  Tommy the Tank couldn’t blend in anywhere outside of a professional wrestler convention. Magic Max was just as squinty with a mask on. The third guy was wearing the same Tampa Bay Lightning jersey he’d been wearing the night he died. Foster Phillips. They’d used Isla’s laptop as their anchor.

  I hated being right. I was now looking at the last few hours of Foster’s life, displaced by nearly six months.

  Tommy the Tank let loose a burst of rifle fire from the weapon he was holding.

  More screams. Patrons hit the deck.

  I ducked too. One arm around Isla, shielding her. Her face was bloodless.

  “Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt,” Max shouted. They swept through the room, fanning out and performing a search. Max was carrying something big in a case. Some kind of machine roughly the size of a suitcase. It looked familiar.

  Tommy the Tank locked the main doors and stood guard. Foster was the one who spotted me and Isla. Her eyes widened as he approached. She must have recognized the jersey too. It would be memorable. I felt her tense in my grip.

  Foster’s eyes showed a hint of recognition when he noticed me.

  “Hands off her.”

  He pointed a gun at my face. I put my hands up.

  Foster pulled Isla to her feet with his free hand and she nearly fell into him. “Come on. Take us to the safe.”

  The shock was evident on Isla’s face. His voice. Foster alive. Her mind had to be reeling. Her mouth moved but no sound came out.

  Foster glanced back at me once but then dragged Isla toward the wall nearest us.

  Tommy the Tank and his semi-automatic rifle kept the rest of the patrons in place while Magic Max joined Foster and Isla at the safe in the wall.

  “Get that open!” Max shouted.

  She entered the combination with a shaking hand. A key code and a fingerprint scan. The safe opened with a hiss of pressurized air. Then she sank to the floor, eyes locked on Foster.

  I didn’t have a clear view of the contents of the box, but I saw what Max was up to. He opened the suitcase sized contraption on the floor and I recognized what it was. It was a relocation machine. Part gravitizer, part time machine. The same technology I used to jump the Boss forward and backward in time to avoid parking tickets. Only they weren’t going to relocate a car.

  Foster passed stacks of cash and other documents out of the safe, only pausing occasionally to check on Isla. She stayed frozen against the wall.

  Max set to work running the gravitizer machine, imbuing the cash with the particles necessary to travel in time. Then he shifted them to the second half of the machine, into which he loaded a foldable storage box. He loaded the box with cash till it was full, closed the lid, entered a time sequence and hit the button. The box hummed. A moment later he opened the box again. It was empty, its contents relocated in time.

  They repeated the process again and again, shoveling the money into the box. It kept vanishing.

  I had to give it to them. They were going to move a mountain of cash and all they had to do was jump out of here, take the relocation machine to a safe place at the time they designated, and the money would all show back up in manageable intervals.

  I considered what to do. I was close to the action but I couldn’t stop them. This was their past. It had already happened. Interrupting it would only create a paradox that would do nothing but complicate this already messy situation. Max and Tommy showed no signs of recognizing me. A clue to the timeline. This was a version of them from before I met them in the SUV.

  When the safe was empty, Isla snuck away from the wall, toward me.

  Max closed up the relocation machine, gravitizing the storage box so it would travel again as well, but left the whole contraption on the floor. He rose and lifted his gun. “All done but the loose ends.” He pointed the gun at Foster.

  Well shit. That’s not supposed to happen.

  “No!” Isla screamed.

  I was already moving. I sprung forward, launching myself toward Max. His head turned toward me, eyes wide, but he couldn’t get the gun around in time. I tackled him to the floor, knocking chairs away from the nearest poker table in the process.

  That was as far as my plan took me.

  I was significantly bigger than Max and the tackle had knocked the wind out of him. I was hoping Foster would have the decency not to shoot me after just saving his life, but th
at left Tommy the Tank and his semi-automatic rifle to deal with.

  I took Max’s pistol away from him and peeked over the edge of the poker table. I was rewarded with a barrage of gunfire that flattened me to the floor again. Bullets shredded the top of the table and shattered the window behind me. People screamed and glass rained from the windowpane.

  I covered my head. When I looked up, it was because of a shout from Tommy the Tank.

  “Hey! Get away from that!”

  I saw why he was yelling. Foster. He had his sleeve rolled up and the Temprovibe on his forearm was exposed. His eyes were frantic and he had his other hand on the relocation machine.

  Max shouted too. If I hadn’t taken his gun, I was sure he would be shooting at Foster.

  As it was he had to shout to Tommy. “Kill that sonofabitch!”

  But before Tommy could get his gun around to point at him, Foster activated his Temprovibe and vanished. The relocation machine went with him.

  “No!” Max shouted again. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the spot Foster had been standing.

  I got to my feet as well. When Tommy the Tank turned back my way, he found me pointing Max’s gun at him. His eyes widened. Would I shoot him? No. I couldn’t. But he didn’t know that. He dropped the rifle. But the next second his hand went to the Temprovibe on his arm. He vanished.

  When I turned to where Max was standing, he had disappeared too.

  The room erupted into a cacophony of shouts and screams, everyone scrambling for the exits.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. But this wasn’t over.

  I tossed Max’s gun to the top of the poker table and went to Isla. She was shaking. I took her in my arms. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Foster,” she whispered. “That was Foster. He’s alive.”

  “No.” I replied. “Not anymore.”

  Sirens were sounding in the street, audible out the shattered window. I didn’t want to be here when they arrived. But Isla deserved an explanation.