Double Take

Wallace pulled a lovely gold pocket watch out of his white vest, consulted it, tried to keep Cheney from seeing that his hand was shaking. “My client is due in three and a half minutes. My clients are never late.”

“Why are your clients never late?”

“Why, Agent Stone? I charge them, naturally. My time is far more valuable than any of theirs, or yours, a common policeman for the federal government. I have a mission in this life and you are interfering with it, for no reason I can ascertain. You come into my house and insult me. You make insinuations about my poor dead Beatrice. I want you to leave.”

“Wallace, don’t be so angry at Agent Stone. Like you, his mission is to help people.”

“You’ve disappointed me, Julia, disappointed me gravely. I dislike seeing you with him.”

“I’m sorry, Wallace,” Julia said. “But I’m concerned that the third time this man tries to kill me he just might succeed. And I must find out who killed August.”

Cheney said, “I watched several of Dr. Ransom’s videos. He said in one of them that he believed that in The Bliss there is a sort of caste system—the more worthy the dead person was, the higher the regard everyone already there will have for him.”

“Yes, yes, but what does that have to do with his murder?”

“I’m not sure,” Cheney said, “but could someone have killed him even believing it would lower his own position in The After?”

“August was right. Naturally some people deserve more consideration than others, whether it is here on this earth or in The After. There is little justice here, despite the efforts of the FBI or the police or our damnable court system, but in The After? It is entirely different there. No one who believed as we do about eternal justice in The After could have caused August’s violent death. August is basking in the fullness of what his innate goodness grants him in The After. Don’t you believe he is watching over you, Julia? What do you think he feels when he sees you allowing a stranger to attack one of his dearest friends? Your keeping company with this man does not become the widow of Dr. August Ransom.”

Cheney said, “Do you believe in God, Mr. Tammerlane?”

Wallace whirled around as if shot. “What? God? Do I believe in God? What I believe is there is more in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“So you believe in an eloquent oration of Shakespeare’s. What about God?”

“There is always that which is beyond what we are, Agent Stone, what we think we know, what we imagine. There is always what is beyond death, always The After. But not some supposedly omniscient, all-powerful personage—God, Zeus, Allah, whatever, take your pick. No. These are man’s creations, formalized constructs—man’s attempt to explain what he can’t begin to understand. Every culture, every civilization has created some deity to comfort them in death, to explain the simple change of the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, ever since we had words for those things.” He flapped his hands at Cheney as if to shoo him away. “I don’t like to discuss this with you in any case. Yours is an untutored mind.”

He whirled around and walked away from them. He said over his shoulder, “You are incapable of understanding anything of metaphysical importance. You think in provincial paradigms— good and evil, Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil. This is fitting to a man of your station. And I am tired of your insults. Good-bye, Agent Stone, Julia.”

Cheney smiled at him. “You’re not bad at insults yourself. I really would have liked to know who or what it is who doles out the perks in The After. Good day.”

They left, passing by a man in his late sixties, huddled in a gorgeous cashmere coat, his face pale, his eyes lost and bewildered, his thick gray hair blowing in the stiff wind.

CHAPTER 28

As he drove his Audi on 19th Avenue toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Cheney asked a silent Julia, “How long were you and your husband married, Julia?”

“Nearly three years. Then he was killed.”

Would you have stayed married to that old man? “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“I had a woman friend who said she was twenty plus nine.” She said nothing, looked straight through the windshield. “I believe he was in his late sixties, sixty-eight, I think.”

“You think? You don’t know the age of your own husband?”

“No.”

“All right, you’re angry with me. Come on out and say it.” She whirled around to face him. “You’re a jerk! You were needlessly rude to poor Wallace. You baited him, you sneered at him. I’m surprised you didn’t accuse him of molesting teenagers!”