The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces

by Ray Vukcevich

  “So, is it our killer?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Marvin said. “Leo’s been dead for a while. Words on the body as usual. But there’s a note, too. Two notes actually. The one taped to the trunk and the one inside.”

  “What do they say?” I asked.

  “The one on the outside reads, ‘A housewarming gift.’ It’s not signed.”

  “And the one inside?”

  Marvin looked down at his notebook. “‘I already did hypertext you idiots.’”

  “Well, how were we supposed to know that?” I asked, realizing it was a stupid reaction even as I said it, but since I had some momentum going in that direction, I just kept going. “And what about the parable? He hadn’t done a parable already, and if he’d left the body in a more obvious place it would have been found before we set up our trap and we would have tried something else!”

  “You think that would have worked?” Marvin asked.

  “Of course not, Marvin. I’m ranting. Can’t you see that? I’m raving. I’m saying the first dumb thing that comes into my mind!”

  “The note’s signed,” Marvin said. “It’s scrawled, but it looks like ‘José’”

  “José?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me,” Marvin said.

  I thought about Leo. Leo would always be special. Of the five dead documentalists (so far!), he was the only one I had actually met, but more important, he was the only one I’d seen dead. There is a world of difference between a body as part of a puzzle and a body bent and stuffed into a trunk. I wouldn’t soon get Leo’s dead eyes out of my mind. Leo, the hypertext guy. He probably thought he was safe since the documentation he put together was never printed. You used it right along with the software itself. The killer hadn’t said anything about that. Well, Leo was his statement now.

  “Maybe you’d better take a couple of deep breaths, Brian,” Marvin said.

  “Sorry. You’re right.” I did take a couple of medium deep breaths. “So, what were the words on the body and what were all those lines about?”

  “Maybe you can tell me,” Marvin said. He opened his notebook again. “I’ll read you the words.”

  “Wait,” I said. I took out my own notebook so I could write them down. “Go ahead.”

  He read me the words, and I copied them into my notebook. The list looked like this when we were done.

  THERE

  MATTER

  YOU

  NO

  ARE

  GET

  FROM

  HARD

  WHAT

  WHO

  HERE

  TRY

  KNOW

  CAN’T

  OR

  HOW

  “Every word is circled,” Marvin said, “and there are lines from just about ever word to every other word.”

  “Arrows?” Prudence asked.

  Marvin gave her a hard look. “There is a little directional arrowhead on every line, sometimes in both directions. Do you know something about this, Ms. Deerfield?”

  “I’m just trying to figure it out,” she said. “What else?”

  “There is one word with no arrows,” he said. “The word ‘there’ is just circled. It seems set off by itself because no lines lead to it or away from it.”

  “It’s nonlinear,” Prudence said. “It’s like a map of nodes. It’s what you’d use if you were setting up the links in a hypertext document. Each arrow tells you where you can go next. I’ll bet if you look closely every node or word doesn’t have an arrow pointing at every other word.”

  Marvin didn’t look like he understood any of this.

  “You know,” Prudence said. “Like when you’re reading a hypertext document on the screen and you can click on a word and it will take you to other information usually about that word. When you get there, you might find other words that you could click on to take you other places.”

  “Actually that idea pushed to an absurd extreme was one of the irritating things about the documentation we hoped would trap this guy,” I said.

  “But like he said, he already did hypertext,” Prudence said.

  “So what does it say?” Marvin asked.

  “Let’s do some rearranging,” I said.

  “Maybe we should wait for a map of the arrows,” Prudence said. “A picture would make it a lot easier.”

  “I’ll bet just about every sentence that makes sense will match one you could get if you followed the arrows. Let’s just try a few.” I ripped a page out of my notebook and gave it to her. “Do you have something to write with?”

  She dug in her purse and found a pen.

  “You, too, Marvin,” I said. “Rearrange the words. Try to form sentences.”

  I gave my list to Prudence and she copied it and handed it back.

  We got to work.

  “I’ve got one,” I said. “No matter how you try you can’t get there from here.”

  “Hey, but that doesn’t use all the words,” Marvin said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I think I’m on the right track, though.”

  We went back to work. A few minutes later, Prudence had another sentence.

  “No matter who you are or how hard you try or what you know you can’t get there from here.”

  Marvin had a variation on the same idea.

  “Is it fair to use ‘there’?” Prudence asked. “I mean there are no arrows leading to or from that word.”

  I suddenly saw what the killer was up to. “It’s an extra level to the message! If you follow the arrows, you really can’t get to ‘there.’ I’ll bet if we looked at all of Leo’s hypertext documentation we’d find an irritating example like that.”

  Marvin flipped his notebook closed. “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll look into that angle. I’d better get back.”

  “Can we go now?” I asked.

  “You’d better wait a little longer,” Marvin said. “Frank will probably want to ask some questions.”

  Marvin turned away. There was a commotion behind me, maybe the stairwell door opening, echoing footsteps, a happy conversation cut short.

  Prudence stood in front of me where she could look over my shoulder at whatever was happening, and I saw a whole parade of emotions move across her face. Surprise, sudden anger. Guilt? Sadness? Finally maybe resignation.

  I twisted around to look. Two guys, one maybe a foot taller than the other. The bigger one was leaning down so they could chuckle and whisper. They’d frozen in that position when they’d come through the door and noticed the crowd waiting for them. Kids, I thought.

  Then the tall one straightened up, and the world shifted. One of them, the shorter one, really was a kid, a teenager.

  The other one was Pablo Deerfield.

  I looked at Pablo. Pablo looked at me. Then he spotted his sister behind me.

  He burst into tears.

  Prudence pushed past me and gathered him into a big hug. His buddy patted him on the shoulder and gave me a murderous glare.

  I shrugged and tried to look apologetic, for what, I didn’t know.

  Prudence made soothing noises, and Pablo got himself under control. He rubbed his eyes with a fist and pulled away from her.

  “So he’s real,” I said.

  “Of course, he’s real,” Prudence said.

  “Of course, I’m real.” Pablo grinned and I could see that maybe he wasn’t entirely grown up yet.

  “I meant real in the sense that he can come out of cyberland and shake your hand.” I put out my hand.

  Pablo just looked at it for a moment. Then he looked at Prudence. She nodded at him, and he reached out and took my hand. I had half expected him to be made of pixels, had thought maybe he would blow away like pastel dust when I touched him.

  “So, where have you been, Pablo?” I heard the condescension in my voice. At least I didn’t call him ‘kiddo.’

  He glanced up at Prudence again, and again she gave him the nod, and he grinned again and said, “Staying with my
friend Bernie. In the dungeon!”

  I looked at the kid. I’d pictured him differently, but maybe my idea of a young propeller head has been too much influenced by TV (and Bill Gates). When I’d looked at Bernie’s yearbook picture I’d filled in a lot of details that simply weren’t there in real life.

  “So, you’re Bernie Watkins,” I said.

  He was short, maybe five-six or so, but he looked like he had a lot of upper body strength, like maybe he spent as much time in the gym as in front of his computer. His hair was shiny black and short on the sides and top, but in the back he had a long braid.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Prudence sounded like she was already trying to figure out how to salvage something.

  “We didn’t think it was fair that you guys would leave us out of the trap!” Bernie said.

  “Yeah!” Pablo said. “No fair!”

  “Did you catch him?” Bernie looked past me at the last of the cops coming and going. Marvin had disappeared, and it occurred to me that now might be a good time for Bernie Watkins and Pablo Deerfield to turn around and go back down the way they came up.

  “No, it didn’t work,” Prudence said.

  “So, what is all of this?” Bernie looked suddenly worried. I think he was smart enough to see that maybe he’d made a big mistake. He was looking down the hall, and I turned to see what was spooking him.

  I should have just shut everyone up and told them to beat it as soon as I recognized Pablo. Too late. Marvin must have slipped away when he realized what he had here. Now he was on his way back, and Frank was with him.

  “Pablo Deerfield,” Frank said just as soon as he joined our little group at the end of the hall. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  twenty-three

  You’d expect me to be in some smoky dive lost in a terpsichorean haze, but that wouldn’t be low enough. If I’d been snatched back into that world, say doing a routine at Gotta Dance or wowing them at Twinkle Toes or flipping out at the Lite Fantastic, I would be at a place from which I could reasonably return someday. Instead I was home alone and in danger of dancing, and when you dance alone there’s a good chance you’ll never come back.

  Things were at an all-time low.

  Our trap had worked just fine if you looked at it from Frank’s angle. We netted Pablo in the flesh. He probably wouldn’t be able to hold Pablo long, but any time at all would be too long for Pablo. The killer would strike again. Maybe he already had. Yuri and Prudence seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet again. The documentation community was paralyzed. “Do something,” they demanded. “Do something!” I couldn’t think of anything I could personally do about any of it, so I went home to my mother’s house—just locked up the office and left.

  I considered driving out to the care center to see Mom, but I had an urgent need to get away from everyone. Maybe it hadn’t been more than a week since our last visit, anyway. I couldn’t remember. Maybe I should start taking that ginkgo stuff to get more blood flowing to my brain.

  I drove south on Dobson Road up and over the hills and into a world where in another season you might see barefoot boys with fishing poles. I didn’t get out to the Dobson family house much, but I still had a room there. People came regularly to dust and such, and several times a year historic tours were conducted. I should sell the place. Mom wouldn’t be coming back. Maybe someday I would sell it.

  I parked the jeep out front and walked along the winding flagstone path to the front door. The house had been built in the late 1800s. Two floors of big rooms and a porch that wrapped all the way around. Gables. Dormers. Flanked by huge trees, the house had been big when I was a boy and strangely it didn’t get smaller as I got older.

  I spent a lot of my childhood tapping on the walls and listening and looking for secret passages. The place had lots of dark corners and surprising spaces, but I never did find my way into the secret passages.

  These days the house was full of empty echoes. I tossed my hat and coat on the table in the entry hall and walked on to the kitchen. I knew what I was up to, but I wasn’t admitting it yet.

  I put water on for tea. I wandered around downstairs checking windows and turning lights on and off. In the room Mom called the den, I turned on the TV and surfed through every single channel twice, three times, once more. I might still be doing that if the teakettle hadn’t whistled at me. I switched off the TV. I made a cup of chamomile tea. I sat down and blew steam from my cup, tasted the tea. It didn’t calm me down. I stood up again and walked into one of the downstairs bathrooms and peed sitting down with my head in my hands. Got up, wandered back into the den and turned on the TV, turned off the TV.

  Finally I just gave up and climbed the stairs to my room.

  Nothing had changed.

  I made one more attempt to delay. I sat down in front of the computer. Reached out to turn it on, stopped my hand, got up, paced the floor.

  I knelt and opened the double doors of my mahogany stereo cabinet. Inside was my old but very expensive record player. I knew there would come the day when it would quit working and I wouldn’t be able to get it fixed. It was a thought too sad to think, so I always put it out of my mind right away. CDs? You must be joking. There were a few albums on the side—things you’d own if you had good taste. Some 45s for eccentricity. The real stuff was locked in a fireproof box under the record player. I got out my keys and opened the box.

  In front were several albums in old dust jackets, and behind the albums the rare 78s in cellophane jackets. I knew what I wanted first, and it was right in front. An album called The Astaire Story. This was the great one himself with “the Stars of Jazz at the Philharmonic” (BOM Records). I turned the album over and over in my hands. There was a time when I could get this close and then pull back, but those days were long gone. My head was already in the clouds, my body as light as a feather, my toes tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing in my stiff street shoes.

  I set the turntable in motion and slipped the first record of the Astaire set out of its jacket. The cover of this treasure was so old it was rubbed raw and flaking, but the pictures of Fred and friends inside were sharp and clear, and the records themselves were in good shape. I carefully dusted the one I’d removed and put it on the turntable.

  I scooted back by my bed and dug out the dancing shoes I knew would be under there and got a sudden flash face close-up of an ex-wife I never talk about screaming at me, “You’ve got shoes hidden in every room of the house!” I was on autopilot and shook that ghost out of my head and crawled back to the record player. I was way past the point of no return.

  I lifted the needle and then put it down precisely where I intended.

  “Steppin’ Out with My Baby.”

  Long cool waves of music lifted me, and my knees popped like the sound of two hands clapping once. Shuffle, hop, flap. Heel, heel, lunge. Getting into it. Moving with it. Flying high. Flying higher. Every part of my body working together. The secret is teamwork. Floating up, up, and away. The walls move in, the walls move out.

  It should have been a homecoming; part the curtains and step out onto the stage of another world where you could do what you do and do it right every time. Used to be you weren’t snatched from the wings to stumble onstage, used to be you danced the dance. These days the dance danced you, puppet man.

  I was powerless to do much about it. I still thought that someday I’d dance back to that old place of clarity and joy and certainty, but I never did. These days I always came to a place where you dance as hard as you can dance just to keep from disappearing.

  Maybe I had used up dancing. Some people can do that—use things until they’re gone or have become other things entirely.

  There had been a time when I’d be seeing the patterns about now. Mysteries would unravel. The puzzle pieces would click into place. No dice these days, and you’ll be crawling toward the wall looking for a place to bang your head next, the only thing to do when you fall this far is to dance harde
r, and faster, doesn’t matter that you’re no longer dancing along with Fred. The secret is to dance a multiple. That is, it’s okay to go twice as fast as Fred, even three or four times as fast. It’s when you’re going one and a half or two and a quarter or three and an eighth times as fast as Fred that you’re in big trouble.

  The song ended and the next one started. I danced to the end of the record, and when the last song of the side ended, despair swooped in on black wings and slapped me down flat onto the floor.

  In the old days, the record would end and I’d be filled with new insight. My body would be toned and humming and my mind buzzing and banging down new avenues.

  I took the record off and replaced it in its jacket. I pulled the first of my 78s out and put it on. Got up.

  Andrews Sisters, I think.

  So far gone, I could hear the boats whistling as the boys came home from the big one.

  Then there was a period in which I’m convinced I simply didn’t exist. My body truly danced alone.

  Who knows how long that lasted?

  Then there was a big noise.

  The comedy team Laurel & Hardy entered stage left singing. Listen. Listen. I recognized Bing singing “Mairzy Doats.” Laurel & Hardy exited dancing stage right. My mother lounged in a lawn chair drinking something long and cool. She told me to look it up in my Big Book of Clues! Roger wandered up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. It was blurry blue and green where flesh and pixels met. “Pay attention to your mother,” he said.

  Bing singing “Mairzy Doats.” Hey, that isn’t Bing. What happened to Bing? It was Billy Cotton, and he wasn’t singing the real words of the song. Instead he sang, “Marcy Dotes and Josey Dotes and little Pamsy Divey!”

  A pothole opened up under my left foot and I stumbled and fell.

  The song was in its final verse and the words were back to normal by the time I rolled over and lifted the arm off the record. I hugged my knees and trembled, teeth rattling down to sudden silence.

  So, that’s where the killer had gotten his name. Not José. Josey. Josey Dotes. Discovering that much might have been significant but it paled in light of what I now realized.