Almost Mortal

by Chris Leibig

  Sam’s phone buzzed. “This is Young.”

  “Sam? Sam, can you hear me?”

  “Melvin?”

  “I’m at the hotel in Buenos Aires. Can you hear me?”

  Sam kissed Amelia on the cheek, got back into the car, and drove away. He could see through the rear view mirror that she watched him with her hands on her hips as he drove away.

  “I can hear you now.”

  “Thought you’d want an update. This has been a lot easier than I thought. You were right I didn’t even have to bribe anybody. They think I’m a history student from NYU. The police chief himself came downstairs to meet me. Gave me a tour of the station in Palermo. It was cool.” Melvin chuckled. He was having fun.

  Sam pulled onto the highway, headed, he guessed, towards home, or perhaps to Juliana’s.

  “So?”

  “She’s real. It happened. Salome Becker.” He pronounced it SAH-loh-may. “A German national killed in an alley on New Year’s, 1958. I’m holding an autopsy report in my hand right now, can you believe it?”

  “Does the report have photos?”

  “Black and white, pretty gruesome, really. Sad.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Her ribs were crushed. Cause of death is listed as—it’s different in Spanish—basically, asphyxiation. Next of kin notified by phone. Body shipped to Germany.”

  “What about the investigation?”

  “It doesn’t seem there was much of one. She was travelling with a student group. The members were ruled out as suspects right away for various reasons. I’ve got their names and the reasons. You need that?”

  “No.”

  “Some detective, deceased now, according to Captain Maniero, wrote that the murderer was likely a strong young male, possibly drunk.”

  “That’s some cutting-edge profiling.”

  “But here’s something else, a notation from January 2, 1958, from a different detective. Two lieutenants and five officers were assigned to survey the passengers embarking on the ocean liner La Liberación. All those meeting the age and gender requirements were to be questioned and all IDs checked. I’ve got a passenger manifest. You want that?”

  “Can you scan and e-mail it to my phone?” Sam’s heart was beating fast again when he pulled into his own parking space at the apartment. He had, for whatever reason, not taken the exit to Juliana’s while speaking to Melvin.

  “I’m sure the hotel can handle that. Case was closed as unsolved in March 1958. Hardly a notation in it after January, except some dead-end canvassing of the neighborhood. Nobody heard or saw anything. It was New Year’s Eve and all.”

  “Press?”

  “One clipping in the police file from La Capital. Mentions Salome Becker by name, but almost no details. La Capital is still around, and according to their receptionist they have no computerized archives before 2004. She said it would take weeks to order copies of issues from the ’50s. You want that?”

  “No. What about access to the police records?”

  “Captain Maniero says none of the files from before 2000 are computerized. You wouldn’t believe the size of the dusty-ass warehouse where we went to pull the Becker file. I don’t think anyone in America could even find out about this crime without knowing what to look for. Maybe in Germany there’s more—a family, a history of some kind. But there’s almost no evidence of it here, unless the person spoke to someone who took part in the investigation. Or, of course, which I think you’re trying to figure out, if the person was involved in the crime.”

  “Nice job, Melvin. What about La Liberación?”

  “I knew you’d ask. I spent all morning at the port. First, there was a ship called La Liberación, and, you’re not going to believe this, but I met an old guy who boarded the sucker on January 2, 1958.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “It can be. I got the manifest, remember? I checked his identification and everything. I got his photo and even a photo of him with me. The manifest lists names and ages. And who was travelling together. This dude’s for real. He boarded alone.”

  “Okay, okay, so what’d he have to say?”

  “He said he really only remembered one thing about it. I doubt it matters at all, but here it is. He says he remembers that a crewmember went missing during the trip. Like, disappeared, mysteriously or whatever. There was some sort of investigation, he thinks. That mean anything to you?”

  “Maybe. What else?”

  “That’s all I got. Sorry, Sam.”

  “You did great, Melvin, really.” Sam opened the door to his apartment, walked to the kitchen, and poured a three-finger whiskey with a steady hand.

  “You want all this stuff by scanner?”

  “No. Just bring it back with you. I only want the manifest and the autopsy report.”

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “Please do.”

  “Presuming Salome’s murderer was at least a teenager in ’58, isn’t that a little old to be the Rosslyn Ripper? I mean, he’d be old as heck by now.”

  “That, Melvin, is a very good point.”

  They both remained silent for a moment. Sam played with a cigarette, watching it roll gently between his thumb and finger.

  “One more thing, Melvin.”

  “Anything you want, boss.”

  “The guy who boarded La Liberación? How’d you find him?”

  “It’s funny. I wish I could claim some sort of great investigatory powers, but he actually approached me down at the docks. Said he heard I’d been asking about the ship. It was weird. Almost like he was waiting for me. He was leaning up against a pole like he knew I was comin’.”

  “Hmmm. Anything else important?”

  Sam could hear Melvin ruffling some papers.

  “Doubt it’s important, but the last piece of paper in the police file is a letter from a lawyer from Germany. Apparently, the tanker that was supposed to be carrying Salome’s body either lost it or never had it. The lawyer is asking the department to follow up on it. No response that I can see.”

  “Okay, now one more thing, can you check the passenger manifest for a young pair of brothers? Close to fifteen and ten years old or so, maybe the same last name?”

  Melvin remained silent for a full minute or so.

  “Nope, nothing like young brothers. A few kids, what looks like a sister-brother pair, but no pair of brothers.”

  Sam paused.

  “Everything okay, Sam?”

  “Thanks Melvin. I got it from here.”

  “Okay, umm, Sam, I’ve still got two nights booked at the hotel, and my flight isn’t until Monday. I haven’t even spent half your cash, but this trip is adding up. Should I advance the flight? What do you want me to do?”

  Sam sucked on a cigarette, stared at the ceiling, and blew a crisp stream of smoke.

  “I suggest a steakhouse, a nice Malbec, and then maybe some tango.”

  Melvin was laughing as Sam hung up the phone.

  Sam showered and shaved. Four twenty in the afternoon. He did not know what he was dressing for. He had nowhere to be. He put on a clean pair of jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. He tightly laced his tan Timberland boots. Somewhere in the city, not near, not far, and apropos of nothing personal, police sirens wailed. He pulled on his old Washington Redskins hat and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes, for the first time in days, looked clear and healthy. He breathed in deeply, his lungs accepting the hot air in the bathroom without hindrance from the day’s chain-smoking. He felt, well, like he used to feel when he was ready for a trial. Healthy. Smart. Hard and clear.

  Sam’s phone buzzed. Melvin’s e-mail with two attachments and then another buzz with another e-mail. Sam hit the e-mail concerning the autopsy first and scrolled to what he was looking for. The scan came in sketchy on his phone, but he could see the dead girl’s face. A light-skinned black woman with long hair and dead eyes. Her specialness, if it had been there, had long since fled. He then clicked the passenger manif
est for La Liberación. The journal was silent on the mystery man’s and his brother’s names, other than his brother’s first name, or the fake names they supposedly used to board La Liberación. Sam opened Melvin’s last e-mail and studied the photograph of a broadly smiling Melvin with his arm around a deeply tanned, stooping old man in a white summer suit and a fancy white hat.

  He jumped back an e-mail and began scrolling through the manifest. It had not only names but also ages. He scrolled quickly—so quickly that at first he passed too many entries. He slowly scrolled back, and his heart jumped. J. Van Zyl, 43. He flipped back to Melvin’s selfie of him and the old man on the dock.

  His phone buzzed. “This is Young.”

  “Boss, I got the goods,” Nguyen said. “It cost me seventy-five dollars to get ’em to pull it right away.”

  “And?”

  “I think it shows what you want it to show. I converted the video to a digital file and just e-mailed it to you. It’s keyed up the moment I think you’re looking for.”

  “You’re good.”

  “I told you so.”

  Sam hung up and checked his e-mail. He clicked Nguyen’s digital video.

  •••

  Sargent’s bar area, which, as everyone at the courthouse knew, had been video monitored by the owners for years, came into focus. Sam had seen several of Sargent’s videos before. The cops always pulled them when investigating the fights that happened there regularly. The quality was poor, but by posture alone Sam could tell it was her. Camille was standing in front of a man whose back faced the video. He could not discern her facial expression, but her gestures, compared with her normal silly smoothness, did seem harsh. Edgy. Even panicky. Sam looked closely at the man but could tell nothing from the back of his head. At the bottom corner of the video Sam noticed the date and running time clock. 7-28-2015. 10:57 p.m. That was about five hours after Camille had first met him in front of the courthouse.

  Sam looked back at the video. Camille was still gesturing and speaking to the man. Finally, the man turned his head to the side briefly. The quality was just too poor to be sure of anything, but by now Sam at least knew what he was looking for. Based on the photos he had seen in the newspaper, it was entirely possible that the man in the video was Zebulon Lucas.

  His phone buzzed again. “This is Young.”

  “Sam?” Juliana? Her voice cracked, as if she was or recently had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Federal agents came to my apartment. They just left. They know a lot. I had to tell them about where I got the chalice. They know about the DNA results. They say you’ve been running some kind of a scam on me. I don’t know. I’m really sorry, Sam. There was nothing I—”

  “Juliana, calm down—”

  “Sam, I think they may be coming to question you. Maybe even arrest you, I don’t know. They were really intense—”

  “Juliana, relax. I’m gonna be fine. Listen, maybe we shouldn’t talk for a while, until I can figure this out. But hey, I’ve got a question for you.”

  Juliana hesitated, breathing heavily.

  “Relax, just one question. You’re not gonna be in trouble. You’re not.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said the same guy touched the chalice stem, Zeb’s hat, and the journal, right?”

  “Yeah, I mean, like I said, maybe not good enough for court, but that’s how it looks to me. What about it?”

  “Juliana, my question is really important. Think. Are you sure whoever touched the chalice stem, the hat, and the manuscript, was a guy?”

  Sam could feel her thinking. That was when he heard the sirens again, and they were coming closer.

  “The amelogenin on the hat shows only an X-chro. Right at this moment I don’t remember checking that on the other two samples, but I probably would have noticed a Y on either one of them. So presumably, no, but you can never be sure with calls like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because with touch DNA samples, skin cells and that kind of thing, anybody’s DNA could get mixed in. The X chromosome on the hat could be from Zeb. The chalice and the journal have been touched by more than one person—including you.”

  “So you can’t say it was a man? It could be a woman?”

  “Correct.”

  The sirens were close now.

  “You did the right thing, Juliana. You really did. I’ll call you when I can.”

  Sam hung up, grabbed his wallet from the coffee table, and swept the DNA file and Camille’s manuscript into his briefcase before climbing out the window. He moved towards the window and then turned back, looking across the room at the file containing his mother’s old photos and doctoral dissertation. He raced over and stuffed that too into his briefcase. He looked at the shelf one last time and then grabbed the small bible.

  But why? Why not? Because fuck the police pawing through his mother’s stuff.

  Briefcase strap over his shoulder, he dangled from the bottom ladder rung of the fire escape, fell to the street, and ran, his legs cranking.

  He tore down an alley as sirens approached on both cross streets. He hit the wall and crouched against the bricks behind a small dumpster. If a single police car cruised down the alley, he was done for. What cop wouldn’t look behind the sole hiding place? He glanced at his briefcase. Would disposing of the DNA certificates do him any good? Any good against what? As his breathing calmed, he began to focus on the fact that he had done nothing wrong at all. He was a lawyer working on a case. Sure, Juliana might get in trouble at work, but what crimes had they committed? Fuck the fuzz. He would simply go back.

  Just as he was about to stand and dust himself off, he heard a car creeping down the alley, its tires crunching against the cracked, gravelly pavement. Damn. He’d waited too long. If he stood now, it would be apparent he had been hiding behind the dumpster. If he stayed put, there was a slight chance the car would roll on by.

  Sam tried to calm his breathing even though the infuriatingly slow pace of the approaching cop car was pissing him off. Just find me already or don’t. The sound of the creeping tires was close now—it was about to pass the dumpster. No blue and red lights. An unmarked car? Sam squinted when the hood finally rolled into view. Sure, police used all kinds of undercover makes and models, but he was sure no cop in Bennet County drove a Bentley.

  Sam rose and stared into the relaxed face of Raj Buterab.

  “Get in,” a female voice said. Amelia leaned across Raj. Sam stepped out of the shadows, bolted around the car, and jumped into the front seat, bumping into Amelia and wedging her between himself and Raj. The Bentley drifted slowly down the alley. Sam could hear yells and chirping radios from the front of his building as red and blue lights colored the walls across the street.

  “What the hell is going on, Amelia?” Sam asked softly.

  “I should be asking you that,” she whispered. “Your friend called me about an intervention. I was worried about you. What are the police doing at your apartment? What did you do?”

  “Hello, Samson,” Raj said.

  “I gotta say, you’re freakin’ me out, Mr. Buterab.” Sam looked out the back window as the sirens and lights in front of his apartment receded behind them.

  Raj laughed softly. “You don’t have to call me Mr. Buterab. I told you that before.”

  “You’re freaking me out, Raj.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THEY PULLED ONTO ROUTE 66, stayed in the right lane, and headed west at a cool fifty-seven miles an hour.

  “Relax,” Raj said. “To the extent possible, everything is unfolding as it should be. But there’s been a glitch.”

  “I’m sure you are about to tell me what the hell is going on, Raj.”

  “Soon enough. Like I said, relax. I think you’re in for an interesting evening.”

  Sam took a deep breath and stared straight ahead. He still clutched his briefcase. Papers stuck out of it, branding him as one of those sloppy, unprepared lawyers at the courthouse.
He pulled the papers, photos, and the small bible out of it and held them on his lap. His fingers flipped the pages. He lit a cigarette and shut his eyes, his mind racing back over the last week, even the last years.

  Some of it she was saving for you, until you grew up, which you have now done.

  You ask good questions.

  A chosen, or forgotten, people.

  He flipped through his mother’s old photos. The hippies in the parking lot. The happy group in his living room, his mother and others laughing while the tanned brunette kicked her leg high into the center of the group. The bearded man on his mother’s right laughing hard, with a beer bottle in his hand. He saw it then. Raj Buterab, more than three decades ago. Arm around his mother. Whoa.

  He reached back into his briefcase, his hand collapsing around his mother’s thick, bound dissertation. He opened it.

  Doctoral Dissertation of Marcela O. Young: Jesus, Resurrection, and the Occult.

  Sam shut his eyes again.

  Resurrected ones should never linger. It would cause all kinds of problems.

  There’s a lot you don’t know, Sam, about the faith, about some of your mother’s beliefs. Some of it she was saving for you, until you grew up, which you have now done.

  Sam flipped back to his mother’s old photographs. First, to the dancing woman with her back to the camera, the long, straight, black hair, and then to the photo of the hippies by the car in the parking lot. Young Raj Buterab with his beard. And, on the end of the group, the shorter, thin woman with the long, dark hair. She was beautiful then, as now, and hardly a day younger. Camille looked happy in the photograph, much happier than his mother, with her thin smile and slumped shoulders.

  Raj took an exit, and they drove past the D-Day Memorial. Sam looked at the figures storming out of the amphibious landing craft. To Sam, the most striking thing about the D-Day Monument had always been their beautifully chiseled faces, the combination of terror and determination as they charged into the water. Each face was unique. Real people from different walks of life, facing death for people they would never meet. The statues sat on a groomed elevation from which, on a clear day, one could see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. Across the street, away from the city, the Memorial Place mansions—the community where Zebulon’s body had been found—towered above the monument.