“Not at all,” I said.
I handed him a fresh drink and he said, “That’s quite a story. You only left out one thing. Why’re you doing it?”
“Lacks motivation, huh?”
“That and an ending.”
“I’m doing it because it seemed to be the thing to do at the time.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Money,” I said.
“More bullshit.”
“I can see that we’re coming to the stop where the Smalldane Theory gets on.”
“I got one.”
“I never knew you to run short.”
“Born again,” he said. “How’s that?”
“You could give the one at Delphi some stiff competition.”
“A little oracular?”
“A little.”
“You should have brought along your chicken entrails.”
“I forgot.”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” he said.
“I’ll listen.”
“There were two persons killed that night in Maryland. One of them was Beverly and the other one was you. She may have been luckier because that night you turned into a zombie and, as such, a perfect candidate for the spooks because most of them, at least the ones I’ve known, have been zombies, too.”
“Not all,” I said, remembering Beverly’s father.
“For example,” he said. “That redheaded guy at her funeral, the one you never introduced me to.”
“Carmingler,” I said.
“He was a zombie. He couldn’t have been more than thirty then, but he’d been dead for fifteen years.”
“What do you mean dead? Emotionally castrated? Juiceless? Calculating? Cold? Remorseless? Unfeeling? I can go on.”
“You don’t have to. I can see you’ve already been turning it over. What I mean is that you’re like a vacant house. Nobody lives there.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve seen you among the living just twice, kid. When you were in Shanghai with Kate and me and when you were with Beverly. When they took you away from Kate, that really started it. Beverly stopped it, arrested it probably, and when she died, you went under. Succumbed, if you like the word.”
“To what?”
“To zombieism. What had you and Beverly planned to do?”
“I was supposed to go with the spooks. I was on that scholarship of theirs.”
“But what were you really going to do?”
“Teach.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“After Beverly died? There wasn’t any point.”
“That’s why I said born again. You can’t go back to that time with Beverly so now you’re trying to go back as far as you remember, to Shanghai — back to the whores and the pimps and the crooks who surrounded you then during the only other time in your life you were really happy. Now how’s that for penetrating insight?”
“I still think that you were once a good reporter, Gorm.”
“The funny thing is—” He stopped and coughed. I hadn’t heard him cough before, but if I had heard him without seeing him, perhaps through a thin hotel wall at three in the morning, I would have known he was dying. It was that kind of a cough, the kind that wrenches the whole body, twists it, and sounds like a long series of small, harsh explosions.
He straightened up, used his handkerchief to wipe his lips, and then shook his head. His face had turned a dangerous-looking bright pink. “Not lung cancer,” he said. “Just a side effect of its cousin. Where was I in the lecture?”
“Something was funny,” I said.
“It is funny. You want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“What you’re doing down here and why. The funny thing is that it might work. Lucifer Dye might rise to live again.”
We talked through dinner, which we had in Smalldane’s room. We got a little drunk, but not very. I had a steak; he had a bowl of oyster stew. We both had a quantity of Scotch.
“I lied to you over the phone the other day,” he said.
“How’d you lie?”
“I said I wanted in on this deal just for kicks. I didn’t really. I can’t do you a damned bit of good. I’m washed up and the pain’s too bad. There are four other guys and one woman that I’m going to see in the next week and then I’ll go back to New York and sit around and wait for it. If I get tired of that, I might speed things up.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It will be in another week or ten days. There won’t be any funeral.”
“All right.”
“You need some money?” he said.
“No.”
“I’ll leave you some anyhow. I got plenty. I got it from zombies like you. They’d spend twenty or thirty years hustling for it and then discover that they weren’t immortal after all, so they’d come to me.”
“For what?”
“For a slice of immortality. So somebody would remember their name ten years after they were dead. I’d set them up a foundation, have a couple of books ghostwritten for them, maybe have them endow a chair at some university. And then I’d present the bill and to a man they thought it was the best money they’d ever spent.”
I switched to Mandarin. “The master said: ‘The noble man hates to end his days and leave his name undistinguished.’ ”
“The Analects,” Smalldane said.
“Book Five, Number nineteen.”
“Substitute rich for noble and you have one of the secrets of my success. There’s only one thing more that I really want to do and I think, Lucifer, by God, you’ve given me the opportunity.”
“Delighted,” I said.
“I saw a picture show a long time ago.”
“So did I. I sometimes think I spent my entire adolescence in picture shows. Carol does, too.”
“Carol who?”
“Thackerty,” I said. “The girl you checked on.”
“The one I saw had Ned Sparks in it,” Smalldane said. “You remember Ned Sparks?”
“Never had the pleasure.”
“Well, he had a long sad, bloodhound face and a deep voice and a cigar. So this gal and her Negro mammy were running this restaurant where the Negro mammy made the best pancakes in the world from her secret recipe. I think it was secret. Anyway, Ned Sparks comes in and orders some pancakes. He’s so impressed that he offers to make their fortune with just two words.”
“What was his cut?”
“That isn’t important. Say ten percent.”
“Okay.”
Smalldane took another swallow of Scotch. “Well, he did it in just two words. You want to know what they were?”
“What?”
“Box it.”
“The pancake mixture?”
“Right.”
“He stole that from Coca-Cola,” I said. “The guy there said, ‘Bottle it.’ ”
“Well, this was supposed to be something like Aunt Jemimah.”
“And everybody got rich?” I said.
“Sure.”
“And happy?”
“Of course.”
“And that’s your ambition, to make me rich and happy?”
“In two words, just like Ned Sparks. Right here in Swankerton.”
“They call it Chancre Town.”
“Don’t blame them.”
“And you’ve got two words for me?”
Smalldane nodded. “Two words.”
“Maybe I’d better get something and write them down.”
“You’ll remember. Maybe.”
“I’ll try.”
“Ready?”
I nodded.
He spaced them carefully. “Take,” he said, “over.”
“The whole town?”
“The whole town.”
“By God, Smalldane, that’s brilliant, that’s what it is.”
“I think so, too.”
“You think I could?”
“That’s the only way you’re going to get out of it.”
“All right, I’ll do it.” On that much Scotch, anything was possible.