The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold

by Scott William Carter

  "Not too hot and bothered, I hope. I need you to stay focused on the task at hand."

  "Don't worry—I am capable of delaying my gratification. Once in a while, anyway."

  "Good. Give me as big a list as you can get, focusing on Portland and then outward from there. Don't forget hospitals, long-term care facilities, that sort of thing. You might search the medical journals, too. Maybe a doctor has written an article—"

  "Myron."

  "Yeah?"

  "I write in-depth investigative journalism for a living. I think I've got this."

  I laughed. "I know you do. Just be careful, okay?"

  "Careful? What kind of trouble can I get into web surfing and making phone calls in a motel room in Barnacle Bluffs?"

  "I don't know, but if there's trouble to be found, you'll find it."

  She made a tsk tsk sound. "O ye of little faith. So, what are you going to do while I'm doing all the hard work?"

  I thought about it. Since I had both Alesha and Jak working on finding Victoria Gath, or at least her victims, it might be better if I focused on how I was going to take her on once I located her—which probably meant finding the Blind Man's Gold. It was still unclear to me how, exactly, the gold would stop her, but there had to be reason it was mentioned in the poem. If nothing else, wearing the gold necklace might give Olivia a shot at a better life. The question was, who, other than people in the Department, might be able to give me some idea where that gold was?

  Then it came to me.

  "I'll be talking to royalty," I said.

  Chapter 17

  The King, a.k.a. Elvis Presley, was selling a hot dog to someone who looked suspiciously like Richard Nixon. Driving slowly, the roads slushy but not icy, I spotted his bright yellow cart on the corner of Belmont and Eighteenth, outside a used record shop. There were a lot of people out and about despite the conditions—no surprise, since it was the last Saturday before Christmas.

  Elvis was dressed in his puffy white snowsuit, gold patterns on the arms and the back. Unlike most days, he wore no white chef's hat, his black hair shiny and perfectly coifed. Amber-tinted glasses shaded his eyes. The former president—or at least a man who looked exactly like him—wore a gray trench coat over a gray suit, a matching fedora pulled low enough that I could barely see his eyes. But I would have known those distinctive jowls anywhere.

  I parked the Prius and walked over to them, leather jacket zipped all the way up, hands shoved deep into my pockets. From inside the car, the sun had made it seem warmer than it actually was. The air smelled of grilling meat and grease oil, and of course I was the only living person on the street who could smell those particular odors. I took out my Bluetooth and put it in my ear. The battery had long since stopped working, but nobody else on the street knew that; I'd made sure to buy one big enough that it was definitely noticeable. Jak had taught me that trick. Now if I was talking to ghosts, I looked like just another jackass with tech in his ear.

  Both of them turned to look at me, both of them smiling, no recognition in Nixon's eyes. He switched the hot dog to his left hand and stuck out his right.

  "Hello, son," he said, "I'm Dick Nixon. Do you know who you're voting for in January?"

  I stared at his hand. Maybe a deceased president had special powers and could shake hands even with the living. Elvis, seeing my hesitation, laughed.

  "Dickie," he said, "this here is Myron Vale. I'm sure you've heard of him."

  Nixon pulled his hand back as if we were playing one of those games to see who could slap whose hand faster, but like any good politician, the twinkle never left his eyes.

  "The famous Ghost Detective," he said.

  "Something like that."

  "Good, good. I could have use for a man of your talents, son."

  I wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so I just smiled.

  "Well," he said, "I know you're not registered to vote in our particular jurisdiction, but I could use your support, anyway. Not an endorsement, you understand. If we're being honest, I'm not sure an endorsement from you would help sway my particular electorate."

  I thought he was crazy. He'd been dead for over two decades, and he still thought he was running for office? Elvis, taking note of my confusion, patted Nixon on the back.

  "My friend Dickie here is running for president of the Department of Souls," he said. "You have to already be on this side of the divide to be, um, registered to vote."

  "Oh," I said. "I didn't know you could vote for the head of the Department."

  "Not head," Nixon said. "That'd be the director, and that's not a position that's elected—at least not now. The president is more of a … public relations position. Represents the Department in public matters."

  Elvis laughed. "That's pretty much another way of saying it's a figurehead."

  "Now, now," Nixon said, "let's not be unkind. Every politician's got to start somewhere."

  "You've been running for this office ever since you got here, pardner. But they keep giving it to Abe."

  "I know, I know. But that doesn't stop a man from trying."

  "Abe?" I said. "You're talking about Abraham Lincoln?"

  Nixon looked at me. "Damn straight. And people say I was a cutthroat politician. They don't know the Rail Splitter like I do. Anyway, I'll be seeing you boys later. I've got to see if I can make inroads with the NAANCP. Maybe this year I'll actually get their endorsement. Thanks for the hot dog, friend. Best in the business."

  Elvis wished him luck and Nixon left, departing with one of those trademark smiles that always came across as more of a smirk. I knew from past experience that the NAANCP was the National Association for the Advancement of Non-Corporeal People, another nebulous organization catering to the dead that popped up from time to time. I'd done a few jobs for them.

  "Dickie?" I said to Elvis. "You call him Dickie?"

  "Oh, yeah, me and him been friends for years," Elvis said. "Ever since I met him at the White House."

  "I just can't believe I haven't heard of the president position."

  "Well, it's not a person someone like you would probably know. The president only deals with folks like me—you know, the kind smelling the roses from the root side. Honestly, though, I think it's just something the director tolerates to keep the rabble in line—to make us all feel like we have a voice. Now, what brings you out to see me on this fine winter morning? I take it you're not here to enjoy the best hot dogs known to man?"

  "I'm here for your advice on a case."

  "Well, now. Let me put down these here tongs and give you my full, undivided attention. What's this about?"

  "You ever hear of the Blind Man's Gold?"

  Elvis scratched his chin. "Can't say I have. What is it?"

  Disappointed as I was that he didn't know the tale, I decided there was nothing to lose telling him about it. He'd often provided unusual insight and unique wisdom I couldn't get anywhere else, even if half the time it didn't make any sense. While the traffic continued to crawl past us on Belmont, tires sloshing through the wet snow, I recapped the entire investigation so far, pretending I was having a conversation with someone on the phone. When someone passed us on the sidewalk, I paused momentarily, not knowing who might be working for Gath.

  I left out the part about Elvis's memory being replaced, just telling him that Laura had heard about me from a friend. When I was finished, Elvis picked up his tongs again, turning the hot dogs, most of them already a nice golden brown. The grease crackled and sizzled, tendrils of smoke curling around his glasses and dispersing into the gray sky.

  "Well, now," he said, "ain't that an interesting tale."

  "Any of it mean anything to you?"

  "That's a lot to chew on, pardner. Let me ponder it a second."

  He took more than second. He took at least a full minute, which was a long time when you're standing around watching someone turn hot dogs on a grill.

  "So to find the girl," he said finally, "you've got to find Victoria Gath."
r />   "Most likely."

  "And when you find Gath, you think this gold might help you deal with her."

  "I don't know why it would be in the poem otherwise."

  "Yeah," he said, "that poem is a funny thing. When anything comes from the, um, from that place, never take it at face value."

  "You know about the Unbound?"

  Something passed over his face, something I couldn't remember seeing before in all the years I'd known him—genuine fear, or at least something that looked a lot like it. A wince, a whitening pallor, a widening of the eyes that came and went like a discordant note on the wind. He said something that was too soft to make out over the rattle of chains of a passing bus.

  "Come again?" I said.

  "I said, most of us do."

  "What's the Unbound?"

  "I'd rather you not say that word, pardner."

  "Why?"

  "It just makes us uncomfortable, that's all. Nobody likes to talk about that stuff in public. Not in private neither, really, if you get my drift. "

  "Can you at least tell me what it is?"

  He sighed and closed his eyes. He stood like that for a while, then shook his head and looked at me.

  "I'll make this quick, then I don't want no questions, you understand?"

  "Okay."

  "The … that word you used, it's about the people who ain't."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Think of it this way. You know, like I do, all the folks on your side of the river, that anybody kicks the bucket, why they end up still roving around forever. They're … bound, you could say. Everybody lives, but nobody dies, not really. We don't get to dream no more once we pass over, but a lot of folks think that's because we are the dream, the living dream that never wakes, the spirit that keeps on going. But let me ask you a question. Where is everybody before they're born?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Sure you do. Think about it. Why aren't there people like me walking around who haven't, you know, lived? Where does somebody come from before they're born? Well, that's what a lot of people call—what they call the Unbound." I could tell he'd forced himself to say the word. "Heaven, hell, there a lot of names for places on this side, but I think that's mostly about the person doing the thinking than the place itself, especially since y'all can't get much but a glimpse of this side now and then. But all these people, they have to come out of something. I heard Al called it the primordial soul soup. It's as good a description as any, I guess."

  "Al?"

  "Oh, another buddy of mine. Al Einstein."

  I had a hard time envisioning Einstein, even dead, talking about such a metaphysical topic, but then, I hadn't known there was a president of the Department until five minutes ago. "Are there ways to talk to … them?"

  "Talk probably isn't the right word. Them isn't really even the right word. It's not so much a them or a they as an is, was, and will be, know what I'm saying?"

  "Not really."

  "Yeah. That's the problem. Words that can fit in our pretty little heads are too small. The point is, I'm afraid you're going to have to figure this out on your own, sorry to say."

  I thought about all those fantasy books in Olivia's bedroom, most of which centered on a quest of some kind. Had she been on a similar journey? She was the reason her father had brought her to Oregon, and she'd obviously been drawn here for a reason. "So if the gold is in Portland, where do I start?"

  "You're the detective. I guess you gonna have to do some detecting."

  "I've been doing that the last couple days, and it hasn't gotten me anywhere."

  He laughed. "You know, I get the feeling. I do. Back in my music days, there were times when I was doing a gig and nothing seemed to be going right, you know, nothing clicking the way it should. That feeling you get—why, everybody knows it, even if they ain't a singing hound dog like me. It's when things just feel right. And the more I worried about it, the less right I seemed. Until I realized—and I had to learn this like it was the first time, every time without fail—that it wasn't about finding something that was missing, but clearing away the things getting in my way. I just had to relax and let go. And when I did? Why, the music usually flowed like sweet honey out of a beehive."

  With all the smoke coming off the sizzling grill, for a moment his face was shrouded in a mysterious haze, making him appear like a wise but eccentric monk, one with thick sideburns and tinted glasses. Moisture beaded on the lenses. I wondered how he could even see the hot dogs through the water droplets and the smoke. Then again, he could probably do what he was doing blind, he'd been doing it so long.

  Blind. The thought triggered something.

  "The gold is the thing that steals the sight," I said.

  Elvis bobbed his head, as if I was finding the rhythm and he was trying to keep time. What could take sight away? A blindfold. An eye patch. Darkness. The smoke, particularly thick, plumed all around Elvis, and for a moment all I could see was the tint of his glasses. It was as if they floated in midair. Glasses. There was something there. Glasses were something that gave sight, though, not take it away. And no glasses were made out of gold. Maybe the frames could be made out of gold but not the …

  And there it was.

  The frames.

  The image of Felicity Langford kneeling in front of Patch came to me. She'd taken off her glasses when she'd talked to him. It was an innocent enough thing to do, a tiny decision that probably meant nothing for most people. But Felicity Langford was not most people. She could talk to animals. What if she didn't need the glasses to see, but to not see?

  What if the reason those black frames looked so funny, with that sloppy paint job, was because that paint was covering up something?

  Like gold?

  "Whoa, pardner," Elvis said, "you look like the hand of Zeus just touched you on the forehead. You thought of something, didn't ya?"

  "I sure did," I said.

  Chapter 18

  It took me about twenty minutes, sitting at the computer in my office, to find a few relatives of Felicity Langford. An ancestry site, some Facebook pages, and a bit of link-jumping through blogs, newspaper articles, and public records gave me an aunt living in a retirement home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a niece who worked in the fashion industry in some capacity in New York and was quite active on Instagram, and a cousin who'd retired from the navy and now lived in Seattle.

  I started with the aunt, but the staff informed me that her Alzheimer's was so advanced that she could barely speak. I couldn't find a phone number for the niece and didn't want to wait for her to respond through social media. The cousin, however, had a public phone number, and he answered on the first ring as if he'd been expecting my call.

  "Hayward," he said.

  "Hello, sir," I said, "my name is Myron Vale. I'm the president of FLOP—that's Ferret Lovers of Portland, and I have a strange question for you about your cousin, Felicity Langford."

  "Felicity?" he said. "Why, she's been gone for ten years. Cancer got her."

  The Church of Spiritual Transcendence, my lovely neighbors down the hall, were just beginning their evening chants, and the paper-thin walls let the sound travel pretty much uninhibited, so I swiveled around and blocked my other ear with my hand. The afternoon sun shone on the snow coating the sidewalks, the window awnings, and the tops of parked cars. "Yes, that's just it, sir. She was quite active in the, um, ferret community. We really owe her a lot. We'd like to—"

  "Yeah, never could understand why she liked those things," Hayward said. "Look pretty much like a rat to me."

  "They're a lot smarter than rats," I said, trying to sound appropriately indignant.

  "If you say so, son."

  "Well, anyway, this is going to sound pretty odd, but we're doing a little walking tour and thought we'd have a little moment of silence at her gravesite. But nobody seems to know where it is. Do you happen to know where it is?"

  "Wow, that's morbid," he said.

  "No, no, we're being very respectfu
l. Just wanted to show our appreciation for all she did to get this group going back in the day, but nobody who's in it now knows where she's buried."

  "Uh huh. Well, whatever floats your boat. I went to her service. Wasn't many of us there. It was … River something. Riverside Cemetery, maybe."

  "River View?"

  "Yeah, maybe. It was near the river. Lots of trees, well tended. Pretty place. Wouldn't mind going there myself, when I kick the bucket. It was real old, lots of famous Oregonians there. Senators, governors, that sort of thing."

  "Yeah, that's River View." I felt a rush of excitement. It was just over the Sellwood Bridge, not far from my house. "You remember where in the cemetery she was buried?"

  "Son, that was, like, ten years ago."

  "I understand, sir. I can always ask the staff."

  "It was toward the back, between two very pretty Japanese maples. If that helps any."

  "It does."

  "Can't believe she chose to be buried, honestly. Seems like most people I know are being cremated these days, and it's not like she had a lot of family."

  I thanked him and we hung up. That Felicity had chosen to be buried was indeed a good sign. He was right that it was getting rarer. I'd seen a piece in the Portland Tribune a couple years back on the subject. In the last thirty years, the number of people choosing to be cremated in Portland had gone from under ten percent to nearly seventy percent.

  But Felicity Langford was a special case. If my theory was right, she needed her body to remain around so it could go on wearing those special glasses.

  Now it was time for me to prepare to engage in a specific kind of criminal activity that I never thought I'd come close to doing—not even after I became the person I am today.

  Grave robbing.

  * * *

  The first item on the agenda was to scout out River View Cemetery during the daylight hours, to locate Felicity's gravesite and plan my expedition. On my way from the office, I had the strange sense I was being followed, even though I couldn't see anyone back there, so I took the most roundabout route possible, heading over the Burnside Bridge into downtown Portland, into a parking lot and out again, before heading out on I-405, then I-5, taking the Macadam Avenue exit and driving along the river to the cemetery.