Dead Mann Walking

22

Until I became a chak, I never realized death could be, on the one hand, so . . . active, on the other how much desire would be gone. I’m not talking erectile dysfunction. I mean the taste of food, the feel of fresh air, the peaceful tingle from the sound of an ocean surf. Now it was all through a glass darkly, to coin a phrase.

So what was with my reaction to this dancer, this Nell Parker? I had no idea. I was worried, really worried, that it meant my undead nervous system was completely fried, taking another step toward the big F. But I also couldn’t let go of the possibility that it was all her, the fact that she managed to remind me of being alive, the way it ached but didn’t hurt.

I assumed I was free to stare, that Green would think I was a typical chak, slow on the uptake, but when I finally turned to him, his eyes were narrowed. I pointed toward the stage.

“I’ve got good reason, real good reason, to believe someone’s out to hurt Nell Parker.”

His eyes stayed narrow. “You’re worried about her? Did you like watching her dance? She can take a lot without getting hurt.”

“I don’t mean that kind of hurt. I’m talking about something more permanent.”

The black in his eyes twinkled. “Nothing’s permanent.”

“They say a D-cap is.”

The amused twinkle vanished. He stood, leaving the chair bobbing behind him in the water. “Let’s talk privately.”

He closed his robes and climbed out of the pool. Dripping on his guests as he went, he strode back into the giant hallway, myself and the two gunsels following. From there, he took a left into a smaller hall, where, not so different from the dim lighting behind us, late-afternoon sun streamed in from a glass roof.

Wordless the whole while, he stopped at the only plain thing I’d seen in this massive place: a brown door. The office on the other side of it almost looked normal: dark paneling, bookshelves, and few paintings that actually didn’t involve fornication. There were plenty of comfortable chairs, but all four of us remained standing.

There was only one visible sign of his proclivities. On the desk, next to a laptop, sat a candy bowl full of Viagra. I tapped the rim. “Surprised you use the stuff, Mr. Green.”

“It’s for the guests. I’d offer you one, but they only make chakz tense. I have people working on that, though.” He pulled a bronze bowl from a shelf and held it toward me. It was filled with pills, too. They were the same oblong shape as the Viagra but bigger, and with more of a neon tinge.

I made a face.

“Can’t happen, right? Impossible? But I like a challenge. Chakz don’t have eye color, either, but Nell does, and they’re not contacts. She’s the first. That’s what makes things worth trying. Over and over and over, if need be.”

I waved off the bowl. “No offense, Mr. Green, but some people think doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.”

He laughed. “Unless it’s something you like doing over and over.” He shook the bowl. “Think about what you and Nell could do over and over if they worked.” He took one of the pills, licked it, then held it out to me. “No?”

When I didn’t budge, with a shrug he tossed it back in the bowl. “They’re experimental anyway. Lots of side effects.”

“Headaches and nausea or erections that last more than three days?”

“Something like that. But I’m being rude. You were saying something about Nell’s head. It is one of her more interesting parts.”

This was my shot, so I gave it to him as simply as I could. “There’s a psycho in town calling himself Turgeon. He’s D-capping chakz accused of killing their spouses and, near as I can tell, keeping the heads. He’s already got two, Colin Wilson and Frank Boyle. Nell was executed for beating her husband to death, only she didn’t. That makes her one of three chakz left in Fort Hammer who fit this guy’s MO.”

He smiled. “And you’re another. Your wife, Lenore.”

That surprised me, until he pointed at a video camera near the ceiling. “They do amazing things with real-time facial recognition these days. You didn’t think you’d get in here without my knowing exactly who you were?”

“I try not to think at all when I don’t have to.”

He laid his long fingers on the desk, leaned toward me, and inhaled, like he was enjoying my smell. “I love chakz, Mann. You utterly fascinate me. I think you might even hold the answer to the biggest question ever asked.”

“Why is there always one sock missing after the wash?”

He snorted. “Whether the eternal soul exists. Are we just our bodies, turned on or off at will? Figure out whether a chak is still somehow the person they were and you have the answer. If they’re not, it’s the soul that’s missing. Is Nell Parker’s revived corpse still Nell Parker? Are you Hessius Mann, a detective? Or do you just go through the motions?”

“I can’t answer that, Mr. Green, except to say that you left out a possibility.”

He blinked. “What’s that?”

“That livebloods just go through the motions, too.”

He laughed in a way that didn’t make me feel like bonding. “That’s the other possibility, isn’t it? That none of us have souls. I admit the comment shows some intelligence. I’ve met higher-functioning chakz, but not many. Nell is one. Hell, I’d have to say she’s one of a kind. She’d wrap me around her finger if I didn’t keep her under lock and key. Yet I don’t even know if she’s real.”

I think that lock-and-key thing was a relief. “You keep her protected, then?”

He tilted his head. “Of course. I always protect what’s mine. But tell me about the decapitations, Detective. Any idea why your Mr. Turgeon would do something so extreme?”

Talking about Nell, calling me detective. He was playing me, testing me, poking around for an answer to his big question. I didn’t mind. For one, maybe he could tell me if I was for real. For another, I still had the crazy idea in the back of my head that if I could convince him Turgeon was real, he might help.

I went into my song and dance. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a cross between Dexter and Batman; his daddy killed his mommy and now he’s getting revenge over and over.”

Green leaned back, looking professorial. “Interesting, but you said he kept the heads. Why would he do that instead of destroying them?”

“Not sure. Keep them quiet so they can’t identify him.” I flashed on what Turgeon said to me. We’ll talk later. “Or maybe he keeps them for . . . company.”

“So you think the heads can still talk? That’s not what the papers tell us, Detective.”

“It’s a big world. I saw a set of bones the other day that shouldn’t be moving, but did. And like you said, chakz aren’t supposed to have eye color, either.”

“The commissioner shared the story about the bones in the Bones,” he said. “Sounded like the Loch Ness monster to me, but your point is taken. None of that really gets to the heart of Mr. Turgeon, though, does it?”

“Past that, the best I have is that he’s a sick fuck, no offense.”

“None taken.” He picked up the bowl of Viagra. “Sociopaths and serial killers beg the same sort of question, don’t they?”

“Sorry, what was the question?”

“Souls. Do they have them?” He swirled the pills. “They say eroticism reveals our inner self, our true self. Serial killers are anything but erotic. If you’re right about acting out something involving his parents, maybe he keeps the heads around because he needs their approval?”

I furrowed my brow so fast, a flap of skin on my forehead cracked. “You mean like he can’t bring himself to destroy them?”

Green ran his finger through the pills. “It’s a thought.”

It occurred to me he was thinking a lot about Turgeon. They say that’s how he is about everything, like knowing where the walls’ marble came from, but I wasn’t sure. Either way it sure as hell sounded like he was taking me seriously.

“Mr. Green, do you think you could get the police to take a look? It’d be in your interests, right?”

He nodded. “It would, and I could. The commissioner is in one of the back rooms right now. Shall I tell you what he’s doing with who? It’d give you quite a bit of leverage. Married, you know.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t need anyone else after my head. Will you talk to him?”

He leaned in as if to pat me on the shoulder. Instead, his hand lingered and squeezed. “Could you write it all down for me, Detective? Everything? In your own words?”

The conversation had taken a weird turn, but I wasn’t sure in which direction. Did he want the details for the commissioner, or was I being poked and prodded without benefit of dinner and a movie?

But what choice did have? I shrugged. “Yeah. I could do that.”

His eyes lit up, making him look a little too happy. “Excellent! Use my laptop.”

He rose, headed toward the door. The Reservoir Dogs fell in behind him. I didn’t care for how quickly they were moving.

“Mr. Green,” I called. I pointed to my head. “Not sure how much detail I can give you.”

He gave me a smile, practiced, deliberate, the way a snake would smile if it could. “Hessius Mann, do what you can. I’ll do as I like.”

Before I could so much as grunt, the door closed and the lock clicked.

What the fuck?

Maybe he just didn’t want me wandering around. Or maybe the whole chat had been a new way for him to jerk off over his big life question, and he liked it so much he might want to try it again. Or maybe something worse was going on.

If I was imagining things and I did anything about it, I could piss away my big chance for some help. I sat at the desk. There was some kind of form on the screen. Half of it was already filled out, including my name, address, and photo. It looked like he was collecting info for some kind of database, not a good sign. But I played along, adding what I could, doing my best to describe Turgeon without using the words baby or egg. As I hunted and pecked at the keys, though, I kept thinking about the door, getting more and more antsy.

After about fifteen minutes, I remembered what the emcee said:

I can’t even promise you’ll be permitted to leave.

That did it. Crap. I’d just been a prisoner at the warehouse. Friend or foe, good, bad, or ugly, I wanted out, now, and I wasn’t going to ask to be shown the way. I found the wire leading up to the surveillance camera and yanked it. Then I picked up one of the nice, comfy chairs and threw it through the nearest window. Shielding my face with my arms, I jumped through the shattered frame. Was it the wrong move? Wouldn’t be the first time.

I landed on a slate floor. I was on some kind of porch ringed with bushes thick with red berries. Late afternoon having given way to evening, I stumbled into the wicker furniture, trying to get my bearings.

And then I heard a sound like chimes. Three rings, pause, three rings again. It took me a while to realize it was an alarm, set off, no doubt, when I smashed the window. Footsteps tromped nearby, getting louder. Yep, an alarm.

I jumped over the bushes and scurried like a rat along the edge of the house, doing the quiet-dead-man thing. It didn’t mean I was safe, not by a long shot. You’d need an army to keep this place secure, and Green could afford one. Given his hobby, they were probably trained to spot chakz, too. I slipped by at least ten of his men before reaching the delivery entrance at the rear of the house. I guessed it’d be a quick run to the hemlocks and the way I came in. The gate would be locked, so I’d have to figure some other way over the wall.

Only, I didn’t go. Something held me back.

It wasn’t torpor, it wasn’t the guards, wasn’t a Nancy Drew hunch, or a weird schoolboy pang about Nell Parker. It was a sound. It came from behind me, from the other side of the thick glass of a low basement window—moaning. Not just one voice, five or six.

I knelt and rubbed the glass to get a decent view. Inside it was like the chak pens Jonesey had warned me about. He was half-right. They weren’t exactly pens, more like jail cells, solid metal bars, floor to ceiling. Straw covered the ground—to catch any gleet ooze, I suppose.

There were only two cells, a seven-foot space between them, one along each side of a deep room. The chakz on the left, some still dressed in party costumes, looked sullen, but functional. There was a cowboy, the hole where an eye used to be visible through his mask, a noseless robot, and two mermen danglers. They were all pretty quiet.

The moaning was coming from the second pen. It was standing room only in there, so many chakz I could barely distinguish one set of limbs from another. A gleet whose skull was half exposed chewed at the rubber gills covering his chest as if they were macaroni. An eye dangler in a scuba outfit started wailing as I watched. Four others looked as if they’d been at it a while, and were ready to blow. Shoved into tight quarters like that, it was only a question of time before they all went. Charred bones and burn marks told me what happened to them when they did.

With most of the guards outside looking for me, only one was here, a goofy-looking guy with a huge Adam’s apple and a tense face. He had a gun in his hand, a magnum, and a key ring clipped to his belt. He was nervous, eyeing the moaners, trying to keep his distance. That meant putting his back to the other cell, where the “safe” chakz were. You know, the ones who were still smart enough to grab you from behind and try to get those keys.

I felt bad for him, wondered which chak would figure it out first.

The cowboy won. While Goofy watched the moaners, he watched him. When Goofy took a step back from the moaners, the cowboy took a step forward.

Goofy was just about to bring himself within reach of the eager cowboy when his Adam’s apple rose like a radar antenna. His expression changed. He was about to turn around, catch the cowboy, and ruin it all. So . . .

I rapped at the glass.

That’s all it took. The second Goofy looked up at me, the one-eyed cowboy reached through the bars and wrapped his arm tight around the man’s neck. The other chakz joined in. In seconds, six arms held him against the bars. Two hands were clamped over his mouth, a third over his nose, and they held on tight until he passed out. The cowboy was smart enough to snag the keys before the body fell out of reach.

Next thing I knew the cell door was unlocked and the cowboy was opening the window. It made me wonder if Green was wrong. Maybe the smart ones aren’t so rare. Maybe some of us are just smart enough to act dumb.

When I didn’t climb in right off, the cowboy looked annoyed. “Can you talk? In or out?”

With his fellow escapees stumbling out into the hallway, I was blocking his path to the window. In or out? I wasn’t sure. If I had half a brain I’d use the distraction of the escaping chakz to make for the hemlocks and catch the next train home.

I knew Green wasn’t being straight with me, but I had a feeling it wasn’t only so he could experiment with me. There was too much talk about Turgeon. There had to be something else going on, something with Nell Parker. If I could find her, she might tell me. And at least I could warn her personally. I can’t say I didn’t like the idea.

A group of guards storming along near my hiding spot decided things. I leaped in.

Seeing the guards, the cowboy shut the window. As he watched them rush by, he looked even more annoyed. “Shit, if you’d been faster, I’d be at the wall by now.”

“Hey, if I hadn’t set off the alarms and tapped that glass, you’d still be locked up. Besides, how could you even reach the wall? He’s got at least twenty men on the grounds, and you’ve got no depth perception.”

“A smart one, eh? Here. Got something for you.” He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled it back out, giving me the finger. Not the actual finger, just the FU sign. “I’ve got the layout memorized. Forty-seven seconds to the wall, twenty to reach the woods.”

“Show-off. If you’re so damn smart, why come here in the first place?”

He made a face. “Same as everyone. Money. They let me in for the party. I was planning to pick a few pockets and blow. Didn’t know about the chak checks. Every fucking hour. You don’t react fast enough, ask how high when they tell you to jump on something, they think you’re about to go feral and throw you down here. And once you’re here long enough . . .” He nodded toward the moaners. “Green leaves them in there until they tear each other to pieces. Then he burns whatever’s left. Watching that shit, I don’t know how I kept it together.”

Another lost soul, or whatever. I wanted to give him a few bucks for his troubles. Instead, I don’t know why, I pulled out Jonesey’s crumpled flyer and handed it over.

He glanced at it. “A rally? You kidding me?”

“It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. It’s something to do.”

I headed for the hall.

“Wait a minute! What about them?” He pointed toward the moaners.

“Up to you, cowboy,” I said.

“Oh, thanks. Exit’s to the right, by the way,” he said.

“Thanks,” I answered. Then I headed left.