Harbinger (13 page)

“Sure.” She pushed the used up gum out of her mouth and wadded the foil around it and put it in her pocket. She offered me her hand again and I shook it.

“Come by my office in the morning, bring everything you have, addresses, date of birth, history. And don’t forget a personal item, something that belonged to Nichole. We’ll sign the papers and make it official.

“Okay, Ms Posenjak.”

“Call me Dale.”

“Dale.”

She left and I quickly fitted the inhaler to my nose. A junk wind blew. Then the bartender was there to take the empty, her eyes a tangerine invitation. As usual.

I showed up at Dale Posenjak’s office in Pioneer Square at ten o’clock the following morning. She shared the fourth floor of the old Sloan building with two attorneys and a bail bondsman. A stylized eye, mystic and private, was painted on the frosted glass of her outer door. Under that: Dale Posenjak / Investigative Services. She could have added “Psychic Specialties” and no one would have blinked an eye, private or otherwise.

Inside, a young man with a crisp manner and a string tie announced me, and I was immediately invited into the Posenjac’s inner office.

She had her feet up on the glass desktop and was filing her nails.

“Good morning,” she said. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks. I brought everything you wanted.” I held up the leather folder containing all of Nichole’s pertinent information.

“Rough night?” Dale asked.

“Not too.”

“They say that Zing’s not addictive.”

“Can we stick to Nichole, please?”

She regarded me, appraised me, then swung her feet off the desk and sat up straight.

“Did you remember to bring the personal item?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me. We only need the other stuff if it fails to work.”

“Does it often fail?”

“Sometimes. Psychometry isn’t an exact science. It isn’t a science at all. It’s an ‘impossible thing.’ Don’t look so sick, I just said that to irk you.”

She held her hand out and wiggled her fingers. I opened the zippered folder and took out a precious item and dropped it into the detective’s hand. A white gold ring on a chain. Just like the one on the third finger of my left hand.

“She cherished this,” Dale said.

“Yes.”

She closed her fingers over the ring. Her eyes stayed open but they grew distant. I shifted nervously in my chair. After a while Posenjak blinked. She reached into her pocket with her free hand and fished out a stick of gum, stripped the foil off with her thumbnail, and folded the stick into her mouth.

Now she handled the ring more casually, turning it so the light from her desk lamp slid silkily over the polished gold while she chewed her gum.

“Catch,” she said and flipped the ring at me. I fumbled it out of the air, irritated.

“She loves you deep,” Dale said.

“Yeah, so she took off her ring and disappeared.”

“She left because she knew you weren’t up to it.”

“Do I have to pay extra for the relationship critique?”

“On the house. For what it’s worth, you have the mind of a seventy-four-year-old man, the body of a twenty-nine-year-old, and the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old. Sorry. I’m compelled to say it. Next time bring something of personal significance only to the subject. Leave yourself out of it.”

I waited, then said, “Where is she, do you know?”

“I have some impressions. It’s clouded by all the gooey emotional stuff. Let’s go for a drive.”

She stood and grabbed her coat.

“Where are we going?”

“To find your lady, one hopes.”

She drove a red Honda Voltage 900 model. We hummed through the city. The car seemed practically to drive itself. She kept two fingers on the wheel and stitched us through midtown traffic like a magic needle.

“Where are we going
exactly
?” I asked.

“I have no idea. Probably not too far. I can taste salt. Oops, left
here
. Damn it.”

We cornered hard, drawing horn blare and at least one flipped bird. Under the viaduct. Traffic light, our noses pointed at Elliott Bay. She sighed.

“Over there,” she said. “The island. Bainbridge.”

The Winslow ferry took us across the bay. We rolled off the ramp. My detective nodded her head to some inner rhythm, humming.

“Okay, okay,” she said.

“Okay what?”

But she wasn’t talking to me. We drove in silence for a few minutes. She stopped where the road split in a Y, seemed to listen, then veered right. Then she visibly relaxed. She touched a button on the dash and Sarah Vaughn started crooning “You Must Remember This.”

“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” I said.

“Almost.” Then, two minutes later: “Here we are.”

She stopped the car at the top of a private beach road overhung with shaggy pines.

“Down there. Probably there’s more than one dwelling. Hers is the one with some kind of hideous wreath thing made out of shells glued together. It’s hanging on the porch.”

“She’s there right now?”

“Yes.”

I tapped my knee. “That was fast.”

“Look. I’m not going to hold your hand. You paid me to find her and I found her. What you do with that is up to you.”

I nodded. “Back at your office . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wondering, did you pull that whole character critique of me off Nichole’s ring?”

“I didn’t pull any of it off the ring. Hardly any. Look. She goes off, what’d you say, two months ago? But you just get around to calling me yesterday, and even then it’s half-assed, like you’re in a Zingbar and you think of it. Guilt, whatever. Lucky for you I was in Bellevue, right? Then there’s the redhead, but forget her. Where there’s one there’s another.”

“You’re fired,” I said.

“Too late.”

I got out of the car and started down the road. Nichole’s ring was in my pocket. After a short distance the road opened up on a view of the water and a few houses strung out along the beach. If they had porches they would be facing the water. So I found a path and picked my way down to the rocky beach.

It was cold. I dug my hands in my pockets and hunched my shoulders. The wind was sharp and it stung my eyes and fluttered my pant legs. I noticed I was walking too slow and picked up my feet. Only grown-ups walk toward pain deliberately, and none of them want to.

A wreath of seashells dangled and spun on the porch of a weathered gray beach house with lots of bay-facing windows. Smoke tore from the brick chimney. A flight of crooked stairs ascended from the beach. I mounted them. Halfway up, I realized someone was watching me. A figure stood in the window almost lost among the reflections of cloud scud and water.

I kept climbing.

When I reached the porch a door in the glass opened and an old man stepped out. He was bear-like in a heavy Pendleton coat and watch cap. His face was pulled down by some significant pain. After a moment I recognized him, recognized his hangdog white-whiskered jowls.

“You,” Stone said.

“Me.”

“Betrayal’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

I wanted him to be twenty-five years younger so I could in good conscience pitch him over the porch rail head first. I was tempted to do it anyway. Then Stone did something unexpected. The grin slipped off his face and he said:

“I apologize. That was petty. She didn’t betray you. She couldn’t, she’s not built that way. All she wanted to do is spare you some pain she knew you couldn’t handle. You didn’t deserve her. But hell, I probably didn’t, either.”

“Is she in there?” I nodded toward the house.

“Not really, not anymore. But go see for yourself. Straight down the hall, second door on the left.”

The room smelled medicinal, even with the window open a crack. The sheer white curtains moved in the breeze, like beckoning ghosts. A table lamp glowed next to the bed. Nichole’s head was sunk into the pillow, her gray hair spilled around. She was hollow-cheeked and pale. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded over her lap, and I was too late. She was dead.

That night I craved the junk wind but kept away from it. I wanted to sleep and dream. I wanted one of my special dreams. I wanted Nichole young and whole again, so I could say good-bye to her. A visitation from the dead, an enigmatic message, epiphany. But watching my love wither into old age, I had stopped believing in such things.

I didn’t dream.

I did, however, receive a visitation.

First I was buried in sleep. Then I was awake again. I opened my eyes, the lids gummy. What was different? Well, the stink. Also: Rasping breath. Not my own.

I bolted up. A man sat in a chair in the predawn dimness of my bedroom. He was the one with the raspy breath and overripe smell. I rubbed my eyes.

“Who—”

“El-lis.” A voice like rust scraping off an iron bar.

I fumbled for the switch on the table lamp.

“Don’t,” he said, raising a palsied hand. “The light hurts my eyes. Your eyes.”

“My God. You’re Langley Ulin, aren’t you.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“To . . . live. More.”

“
Why
?”

“Con-sider  . . . the—Alternative.”

In his case the alternative appeared infinitely preferable, but I didn’t say so. I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants. Ulin was like a waxworks thing, a minor figure forgotten in Trousseau’s storeroom where heat and neglect had softened him toward thin shapelessness. His hair was gone but for a few tenacious wisps. His face was too narrow, cheeks sunken together. His neck wobbled out of his shirt collar like a stick covered with chicken wattle.

“I’m out of the donation business,” I said.

“Don’t need. Your organs. We’ve worked the bugs out. Maybe just your eyes. These are no good anymore. So long. But your pit-oo-itary. That.”

A whiff of rotten eggs. His body devouring itself from the inside, expelling gas.

“No,” I said.

“Please, El-lis.”

I looked out the window. A black Mercedes van with smoked windows was parked in front of my building. A goonish man stood next to the passenger door in a dark suit and white shirt. Five a.m. and the streets were otherwise empty.

“How’d you get in here?”

He made a distressed sound, coughing and spluttering, wheezing and gasping. I panicked a little until I realized he was laughing.

“You can’t. Re-fuse. Me. It’s in-human, El-lis.”

I needed to clear the junk out of my head. There were a couple of Zingcups in the refrigerator. The bedroom door was ajar already. When I swung it wider I saw a man standing in my hallway. Big. Black suit, cool demeanor, hands folded in front of him. Goon two. I blinked at him then closed the door in his face, softly, and turned.

“You can’t just come in here,” I said to Ulin.

“Do you. Know. How old. I am, El-lis?”

“Roughly.”

“One hundred and forty-six. Think. Of it.”

“If you had a plug I’d recommend pulling it,” I said. “I’d even do it myself.”

“Nonsense. I am pre-pared. To offer you more. Money than you. Can imagine.”

“Not interested.”

He subsided into a long, gaseous wheeze. His head drooped, his long preying mantis arms dangled.

I opened the bedroom door again. Goon Two was still there. “Your boss is ready to leave,” I said.

After a long unresponsive pause, he said, “Mr. Ulin will tell me that himself when he’s ready.”

“Mr. Ulin is in a coma.”

“He’s resting.”

“Like a poleaxed dog.”

Goon Two leaned to see around me then resumed his original stance. “He’s okay.”

I shut the door again.

After a few minutes, Ulin lifted his head, cleared his throat, and said, “I never bothered you. In all. These years. I’ve been good to. You. Now I need. Please. I. Won’t grovel. Ellis. I’m afraid.”

I was slightly tempted to surrender some of my precious bodily fluids. But only slightly. Looking at the thing in the chair I wondered how much more “life” it could endure under any circumstances. Besides, I’d made a bargain with myself many years previous. No more donations. The only one for whom I would have gladly made an exception was gone. Now I didn’t feel charitable.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

It had become incrementally lighter in the room. Ulin’s eyes were like a pair of milky blue marbles. For the first time I noticed he was holding a device in his right hand. That and the goon in the hall gave me a bad vibe.

I opened my top dresser drawer and rummaged out my handgun. Old habits die hard. So do old industrialists. Really old ones. I lifted the gun out of the drawer. It was illegal as hell. Gun permits were a thing of the past. Like Ulin himself was a thing of the past.

“I’m sorry, too,” Ulin said. “You can’t. Be-gin to. Imagine.” His thumb twitched over the device. A little green light blinked. I raised my weapon at the same time the bedroom door opened.

“Trust me,” I said. “Mr. Ulin is more than ready to go.”

Goon Two stared at my gun. “What’s that for?”

“I’m the paranoid type.”

He lifted Langley Ulin in his big arms, like a frail waxen baby.

When I was alone again I checked the door. The genetic lock was perfectly intact. It pissed me off. Ulin could do any damn thing he pleased by virtue of his wealth. Even defeat a security system that was supposedly undefeatable.

I yanked open the refer—and groaned. I’d been mistaken. There were no Zingcups left. I’d inhaled the last two and neglected to replenish my supply.
Damn
it.

I got on the cell. After a few rings a sleepy and highly feminine voice said:

“Bar’s open, honey.”

I dressed and went to her and lost myself in Zing and red hair and the comforts of young living flesh. Meaningless and repetitious, which was the whole point. The junk wind blew and blew, but it couldn’t blow out Nichole’s dead face or two of Langley Ulin’s last words to me:
I’m afraid
.