Deadman (21 page)

“What's to work out? Tell me, sweetie, and your Unca Umby will see that it's done. What's the problem? It's Joe, isn't it? What's that crazy bum up to? I should of known he'd steal you away from me. Hey? What's Joe doing?”

“Oh, Joe? Joe's all right,” she said. “You know Joe. He's got a million scams. He's off somewhere right now.”

“He's off? This crazy guy steals our Helen and now he's off? Where?”

“You know Joe, Unca Umby, he doesn't tell anybody anything. I don't know if he even tells himself. But he's fine, he's fine. He's just off, somewhere, taking care of business.”

Humphrey's voice took on a mock sternness as he said, “Is that bum treating my little Helen all right? C'mon, sweetie, tell Unca Umby. Is he treating you all right?”

Helen laughed. It sounded genuine over the line. “We're fine. Honest, we're fine.”

“Tell me something, sweetie. Did you guys get married?”

There was a pause. “Uh, no. Did Joe say something about getting married?” For a moment, lying on a huge bed in a hotel in New Orleans, Helen found herself speculating about marriage with Joe, just as if nothing had happened. It was amazing. In the course of just a few minutes of conversation, all of it profoundly fictional in text, she and Humphrey had conjured up an elaborate edifice in which they could both participate, and pleasurably. She was reluctant to abandon it.

“Where are you calling from?” Humphrey asked casually.

“Seattle. It's great! Have you ever been there?”

Humphrey smiled, noting the “there” instead of the “here.” “No,” he lied, “but I have some friends there, old friends. You should call them. Your papa knew them, too. Connie and Al Munsch. Remember
them? They both worked for your papa at one time.” This was a fond memory, in a way: Connie had been one of Big Sid's girlfriends, and Al was her husband, a pimp. Great-looking girl, Connie. And Al was a gambler, a guy who would bet on anything from one minute to the next—whether that bus up ahead would make the light, whether there would be a man on the next block who was bald-headed and not wearing a hat—bets of a dollar, or a hundred dollars. Humphrey missed Al, and Connie.

“So you'll be home for Thanksgiving, that's great,” he said. “I'm so glad you called, sweetie. Was there anything special, or did you just wanta say hi to Unca Umby?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you. It's about money.”

“You're short of money? What's the matter with that bum, Joe? Listen, honey, if you need money I can—”

“No, no, Unca Umby,” she interrupted, “I've got money, plenty of money, but my situation is, well, you know . . . changed. I don't feel very good about banks and the I.R.S. and investing. You know what I mean?”

Humphrey understood immediately. “You're a little too liquid, maybe?”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Too much cash,” Humphrey said. “It makes you vulnerable. You need a return on your money and you need security.”

“Yes, that's it,” Helen said, pleased.

“And Joe isn't helping you?”

“Well, he's not around. I don't think I can count on Joe for much . . . at the present, anyway.”

“Ah, I see,” Humphrey said. “You need to take care of this on your own. Hmmm.” He thought for a moment. “Of course I'll help, sweetie, but it's not something that we should discuss on the telephone. Can we meet?”

“Couldn't we just handle it on the phone?”

“If it's just a few bucks, sure,” Humphrey said. He waited.

“I'll have to think. I'll have to call you back.”

“That's fine, sweetie. You call me back. Unca Umby'll be here. Otherwise, maybe I'll see you at Thanksgiving, eh?”

After she hung up, he called in Rossamani and discussed the situation.

“She must of took off with Joe's stash,” Rossamani opined. “How much do you think it could be?”

“Lande had plenty, that was Carmine's theory,” Humphrey said, “but who knows how much? He was washing it, getting it out of the country, so him and Big Sid could use it when they bolted. That's why we put Joe on it. But then him and the broad bumped Carmine. Who would of figured it? To me, Joe was always straight. I could count on him. If I hadda guess, I'd say Lande had maybe a coupla million set aside, but it could be more. Lande was never anything but a small timer. The deal he was in with Big Sid, though, that was a pretty big deal. They put a lot of it into a legitimate deal in the Caymans, on a resort, but they wouldn't of put it all in. And then there's these Colombians, Vetch and his pals.” He had told Rossamani about this, not that Rossamani hadn't already heard all about it from Marco. “Maybe there was more to Lande than I thought. Carmine always believed the take was in the ten mil neighborhood.”

“Sounds like she's got Vetch's four bucks, anyway,” Rossamani said. “What do you want to do when she calls back? She'll want to meet somewhere neutral.”

“Helen don't know from neutral,” Humphrey said. “To her, Disneyland is neutral. The thing is to find out where she put the money she took from Joe. That's the whole thing. ‘Cause it ain't with Joe anymore, you can bet on it. So I go talk to her, in some place where she feels safe, and you go where she has stashed the money, once I find out.”

Rossamani nodded. He thought this was just like Humphrey, and it was what he saw as Humphrey's weakness. Carmine, he thought, would simply have snatched the woman and then pounded
her until she told him where the money was. That was what they had done with Big Sid's girlfriend—he couldn't remember her name now. He had been one of the guys who worked on her. They had done a good job of it, took their time, three days of it. He'd liked her a lot. In the end she didn't tell them anything—she didn't have Big Sid's money—and they had to let her go. Humphrey's orders. They should have zipped her, Rossamani thought. Big Sid was dead, he couldn't complain. But, as it turned out, she kept her mouth shut. Still, you never know. She knew too much, and ail they had on her was fear, fear of the fist and fear of being fucked to death. That isn't always enough. Now Humphrey wanted to go talk to this broad, this bitch who had actually crawled into Carmine's fucking limo and blasted him! Rossamani couldn't see it. You don't talk to a cunt. She don't have no say in this. Grab her and pound her and let the boys have a little fun, and she'll tell you what you need to know. And then get rid of her, for chrissake!

Helen called back less than an hour later. She was willing to meet with Humphrey. A neutral place. Butte, Montana.

Helen didn't know why she had said Butte. She had considered Salt Lake City, but that was where the money was. Then she thought of L.A., but she didn't know L.A. Humphrey would have plenty of people he could count on in L.A. It would be the same anywhere, probably. And then she had thought of Butte. She couldn't imagine that the mob had anyone in Butte, and Joe was there. He wasn't in good shape, but she reckoned he was getting better. Hell, he might even be in good enough shape to get her out of this.

She realized with that thought that she had made a mess of things. She hadn't handled the money right, and now she was simply going back to square one. Well, at least the money was safe in Salt Lake City. No problem there. She would go out tomorrow and smurf a few more thousands and then head on over to Butte to meet with
Humphrey. She had warned him to come by himself, no bodyguards. At Butte she would see him walking from the plane—there was no skyramp, or whatever they called it—and if he wasn't alone, she wouldn't be waiting for him. She'd be long gone and that would be the end of it.

Humphrey had protested mildly. “I thought you wanted my help,” he pouted, “but now you sound like you're afraid of me.”

“It's a delicate situation, Unca Umby,” she said. “Joe doesn't know and I don't want him to know. This is just between you and me. Let's face it, some, uh, difficult things have gone down. I can't be sure of anything, anymore. I made some mistakes, but I want everything to be straight between us from now on. Okay?”

“Honey, you took the words right out of my mouth,” he assured her. “Listen, we're family. A family is gonna have disagreements, but a family works it out. You can count on me, sweetie.”

As soon as she was off the line, he said to Rossamani, “Get the plane ready and get onto Stover, in Butte. I want him to meet me at the airport there before noon tomorrow.”

Smokey Stover was not thrilled. He never liked to see the bosses in town and, to be sure, he almost never did, unless they took it into their head to do something weird, like go elk hunting, or fishing. But they weren't fishing for trout now, he was sure. “Mr. Rossamani, our gal Heather seems to have everything well in hand. Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there's a problem,” Rossamani told him. “You get hold of her, now. Tonight. Not tomorrow, but now. Tell her everything's on hold. This is very important, Smoke. She don't make a move. I'll talk to her when we get to Butte.”

17

Philosophy 101

I
t occurred to Joe Service that now there were two parts to his life. This could be called “Service II,” perhaps, like one of those endless Rambo or Rocky movies. Maybe, like the Super Bowl, he should aspire to
X
s and
V
s. Anyway, in Part Two, he thought, Joe Service comes back to life and astounds everyone with his incredible exploits. Is he different? Is he truly “born again"? Is he really a new man? The New Man? An inquiring public wants to know. Hell,
he
wanted to know.

It could never be said by anyone who knew him that Joe Service was a contemplative man. Still, he was a man who was fascinated with everything about him, wildly curious, and naturally given to speculation. No human being, after all, is not thoughtful; it is a defining characteristic of the species. In his present circumstances, of course, he was bound to be contemplative. Although he was doing well in physical therapy, almost back on his feet and even making a few intelligible noises, he still had a long way to go. He spent long hours doing little more than sitting and looking. He couldn't read yet, it was too confusing—he could never get beyond the first few words before all the possibilities of meaning assaulted him, tying him up in knots. He didn't watch television; for some reason it seemed alien and
irrelevant, so he ignored it. When Cateyo was around he enjoyed listening to her talk, particularly her rambling discourse on the nature of the new man. He understood, by now, that she half-believed that he was the new man, himself, the one who was coming to straighten everything out that had gone so wrong in the world. Joe encouraged her in this belief, although he couldn't really believe it himself. But anything to keep her bound to him. He felt exposed and fearful when she was gone.

Still, he longed to set her right on a few things, and he had tried a couple of times, but it was difficult for him to organize his thoughts properly. For one thing there was an abiding concern with memory. Everyone wanted to talk about his memory. The doctors were positively pests about it, particularly the brain surgeon. What did he remember? What was the last thing he remembered before the curtain (as he'd come to think of it)? What was the first thing he remembered after the curtain? They were all after him about it, including the detective, Mulheisen, who had been to see him a couple of times. This guy made Joe nervous. He sat there looking at him with those slightly hooded eyes, not saying anything for long periods of time. Joe thought he might be looking into his brain. Anyway, he had decided that memory wasn't so important. He had a feeling that if he just left it alone, it would come back. In fact, it was always there. He sensed it, not as a body of knowledge but as a kind of field, a network or web that was pervasive and always present but not presently . . . well, not presently retrievable. Or, at least, not readily retrievable. But he believed it would be, eventually. Of course, nobody's memory is 100 percent retrievable, not at will, but Joe didn't know that.

Some things, actually a lot of things, he did remember with no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, it wasn't so much that he remembered them but that he knew them without having to remember. Thus, he knew who he was: He was Joe Service, and he was twenty-nine years old; he lived in Montana, but often traveled to other places; he had a house and there was a woman named Helen who lived there with him
and was very important, but he wasn't sure in what way. He knew how to shave, how to walk—he was amazed that he couldn't walk better, but it seemed that parts of his right leg, right foot, right arm, and right hand were missing. They were not, in fact, missing. He could see the “missing” parts but he couldn't figure out what they were doing there, as he was sure that they weren't there. He had learned that he had been injured and he gradually began to understand that the use of his body would return to him—how to talk, how to learn. Important things.

One day he remembered, without trying (See? he told himself, just be patient), meeting a man who was some kind of biologist. He couldn't remember the man's name, but he suspected that it wasn't important or that he had never learned it in the first place. He had met the man on a train. This was about three or four years ago, he thought. (He still wasn't secure with the notion of time: A day he knew, and thus a week of days and a month of weeks and days, but a year was still a little nebulous—it was a long time, but not a terribly long time, he thought. He'd learned that a year was twelve months and that it had been almost three months since the curtain.) He was on a train, sitting in the lounge, talking to the biologist. The biologist explained to him a theory that life requires adversity, struggle, difficulty. According to this theory, without adversity the organism falls into complacency and then stasis, or death. The whole principle of life is at odds with the basic status of the inconsiderate universe; every cell quivers with the need to pit itself against an indifferent force. Thus, the most dangerous moment in life is the moment of triumph, of accomplishment, satisfaction, and happiness.

This was all very fascinating and amusing when one is sitting in a club car sipping whiskey, with no greater goal in mind than the end of the journey, hours or days ahead, aboard a train that is going there whether you want it to or not. But he'd thought about it a good deal, later, when he was living with Helen in his little cabin in the
mountains. (He thought of that now, recovering it more or less completely in the process.)

They had driven from Detroit. They were deliriously happy. They had stopped to see all the sights en route: the Mississippi River, the Badlands, the presidents on the mountain, the Missouri River, the mountains. They had made love frequently and furiously. At the cabin they had devoted themselves to little more than playing. They shopped for things for the house. They went fishing. They went down to the hot springs. Helen was wildly happy and so was he. And then the problems had started.

He couldn't recall (and suspected that he would never be able to recall) the moment when it all started. The moment when it wasn't enough to play and be happy. He had to be doing something. Something worth doing. Something that would mean more than just being happy. Sex was an excellent antidote, for a while, to these moments of unease. And these moments of unease were railed against: Why should one's pleasure be spoiled by this vague and nagging unease? And then he had begun to understand what the biologist was talking about. Why a person would put himself in danger, would flirt with danger, to make life more bearable. Presumably, there were people who had learned to get over this unease, but these people were truly in danger, if one believed the theory of adversity. As for Joe, he was uneasy, but he was happy. He was alive.

He had to leave the hospital soon, he knew. He had to recover his old life, so he could get on with Joe Service, Part Two. There was a lot at stake, although he wasn't sure what it was. He was bothered by the woman Heather. She had become a close friend of Cateyo's, but he was afraid of Heather, and he couldn't explain it to Cateyo. He had to get back to the cabin and find out about Helen, whom he had also been unable to discuss with Cateyo. Anyway, the hospital wanted him to leave. He didn't need to stay in the room. Apparently, he had enough money to hire Cateyo to stay with him. In fact, he
knew that he had plenty of money at the cabin, although he wasn't sure how much. But the money was important, he knew that.

For some reason, Cateyo had not told Joe that Heather had moved into her house. She never talked about the house, anyway. But as the time came closer for Joe to leave the hospital she began more and more to regret having offered Heather the spare room. She enjoyed Heather's presence, despite the fact that she often barged into the bathroom at embarrassing moments. The woman took a lot of the day-to-day tasks off Cateyo's hands, shopping and keeping house. And it was a comfort to sit and talk to her in the evenings. Sometimes, in fact, when she came home, dead-tired, it was a treat to allow Heather to bring her tea and bakery goods, tucking her up on the couch while she recounted the day's events. Mostly she talked about Paul—she still called him Paul, although they had learned his name was really Joseph Humann. It was very comforting to explain to Heather what a remarkable man Paul was and how she felt called to serve him. “It's God's purpose,” she said. “God doesn't do anything without a purpose, so there must be a reason he sent Paul to me.”

Cateyo had two additional reasons not to feel bad about Heather's presence: One, Heather would be leaving soon. Her job, which didn't seem to take too much of her time, would soon be ending, and she had another lined up in Seattle. And two, Cateyo had agreed to take a leave of absence from her nursing job when Paul was discharged. They would go to his cabin to live. This was an indication of how much Joe's condition had improved: his ability to make these kinds of plans and decisions with Cateyo and the doctors and counselors. They all agreed it was a terrific sign.

For Joe, however, as his memory improved and plans were being formulated, the cabin became not just a hopeful destination but also a focus for anxiety. Helen was there, or should be there. But he hadn't heard from her. She hadn't come to visit him. He had bought her a new truck, he remembered that. He'd gotten it in Missoula. And on the way back . . . it was a beautiful day . . . hawks, deer, mountains,
the shadows of clouds drifting across a valley floor . . . the irritation of the Superfund project site . . . and then the curtain. Oh yeah, the dead man. Then the curtain.

He could walk now, a little. He could be alone and take care of himself for short periods of time. They would leave soon. First they would take a day trip to the cabin, to see if everything was all right. Cateyo was arranging it with Big Face, the guy who came by nearly every day and just looked at him, standing at the foot of the bed in his boots and khaki shirt with the badge. Some kind of cop. Why Big Face controlled the cabin, Joe didn't know, and it annoyed him, but he didn't think it was too important. Not as important as Helen or Heather. She was going too, to help out, Cateyo said. Joe didn't think that was right, but he couldn't get it across to Cateyo.

Cateyo was talking about the World. It was a very bad place. There was a better place, Heaven. In the beginning, Joe didn't get this, but soon it all came back to him. She was talking about some imaginary place where everything was all right, where it was okay to be happy and do nothing—a concept that the biologist's theory had blown once and for all. Joe never objected. He just listened. In the World you had taxes, schools that ignored Jesus, pornography everywhere, unutterable obscenities, people who walked around pretending that Jesus and Heaven didn't exist. The fact was, it was the World that was just a shadow. This seemed a little uncertain to Joe. The World existed, sure, but its existence was somehow unreal, only a momentary existence, at least in comparison to Heaven, which was eternal. This was why the new man was required: to reawaken the people to the existence of God's Heaven, where real life would commence, outside of Time, once this shadow world was destroyed. It couldn't be long, the signs were everywhere: the Soviet Union destroyed—self-destructed!—a clear sign of God's wrath. There were plenty of other signs, but one had to be careful how one interpreted them.

Cateyo laughed about her father's folly: He had almost gotten it right, but he'd been too fascinated by ridiculous details that were
mere distractions. He'd believed that Jimmy Carter was the anti-Christ, for instance: The initials J.C. had confused him. True, the anti-Christ would seem to be a kind of savior, a religious man, but he was really a devil, and Jimmy Carter had been, deep down, a liberal. Liberalism was a genuine evil. Anyway, Jimmy Carter had tried to make the Jews and the Muslims lie down together, which would have been an act of the anti-Christ, all right, but it hadn't worked. Now, Saddam Hussein, there was a potential anti-Christ! Her father would have reveled in the rise of Saddam, and no doubt he would have seen in Desert Storm the makings of Armageddon, but Cateyo hadn't been fooled for a minute. What was needed was a truly new man, a man resurrected from the dead, like Christ. This new man would not be an anti-Christ. She was understandably leery of anti-Christ theories. No, the new man wasn't something out of prophecy, but out of the Gospels themselves. Why, St. Paul himself might be considered a type of new man, which was why she had taken to calling Joe Paul, although that was really just a joke . . . and on and on.

Over a period of time, literally weeks of hearing this notion explained and elaborated, sometimes self-mockingly ("I know folks think I'm crazy, but . . .”) but generally quite seriously, Joe had gradually recovered his own memories about all this, about Heaven and Jesus. He couldn't take it seriously. He looked at Cateyo and saw a lovely young woman, healthy and happy, bright and bubbling. The world was a fine place if it had such people in it. He was happy to be alive, and he'd literally had his brains blown out. He wanted to say, “Babe, wake up. It's a great world. You're young, you're on top of it. I'm lying on my back, trying to recover my scrambled wits, and you're dreaming about playing a harp.”

In the meantime he was thrilled by her almost daily baths that ended with her stroking him until he ejaculated. On two occasions she had even applied her mouth. Talk about heavenly! He wondered how she squared these seemingly lewd activities with her disgust for pornography and immorality. Obviously, he thought, she just didn't
think about it. Clearly, she was happy, her ramblings about the evils of the World notwithstanding. She told him so. In fact, she came very close to telling him that she loved him. He knew she loved him. He was glad.

Love is such a wonderful thing. It not only makes happy those in love, or loved, but even the ones around them are affected. For that reason, Cateyo's supervisor, Head Nurse Work, could not bring herself to do any more than warn Cateyo about “unprofessional” attitudes and restrict her access to Joe to normal shift hours. Anyone could see that the patient was responding very well. So, okay, she tolerated a few “extra” hours of attendance. Who can stand in the way of happiness?