Death is the dark side, the shadow that follows us down the
streets of life, darkening with each passing year until it has the body, and we
are its complimentary empty shell. But without us, death has no substance, and
once we're gone, it too passes from the world of the living, from blackness to
nothingness, out of conscious recognition. There is nothing after death, and
puns aside, I can live with that. I want to go on as long as possible, but it
will be my final triumph to take stalking death with me.
Marion Cramer brought her blackening shadow into my office
that cold rainy winter day in Portland. It hung on her, under the light gray
helmet of her hair, like a second staring set of eyes, almost half a beat behind
the living version. It wasn't that she was old, maybe thirty-five, but her gray
damp skin bore witness to a losing battle. When she eased herself into the
visitor's chair, it appeared briefly she had lost the resolve to remain erect, but she fought it and straightened her shoulders
with a visible effort.
I knew Marion from her previous life, long before the cancer
started eating away her insides. She was a beautiful girl, with a handsome body
and a winsome personality. We shared a single thing, a common trait, a bond of
separateness, we were both color-blind, the rare kind, total. Though we seldom
really saw things the same way, from politics to music to sports, there was the
mutual attraction of two people who could talk in black and white and gray without
confusion. When we parted, she said it was the only thing we shared, but later,
when we were a thing of the past, and just friends, she told me our problems
were her fault, but I never believed her. She was one of the best years of my
life, I think I was the worst year of hers, but that's a story too
long for the telling.
I hadn't seen her in nine months. I didn't know she was sick.
I said, "Marion ..." but I couldn't put any words after it.
She shrugged shrunken shoulders. "It's okay, no one
knows what to say." She took in the office with a slow turn of her head,
her eyes focusing, then moving on. "You could really use a little color in
here, CB."
I stammered, "Wh ... What do you mean?"
She put her elbows on my desk, her still young hands steepled
together and her lips pressed to her thumbs. "A week ago, I started to see
color, like I was awakening from a horrible black and white dream. Now I can see
everything. It's a whole new world, so much different than I'd
imagined."
My eyes widened in disbelief. "That's not
possible."
She placed the lovely hands with stony gray nails on my
desk. "That's what my doctor said, but I can see the green of the grass,
the yellow of the canary, the red in a rose." She turned her hands to me
and said, "Bob, these nails are navy blue, not navy gray. It's a real
color. I don't need to describe everything in grays any longer." She looked
at me hard. "You've got black eyes, but there's little green flakes of
color in them. Did you know that?" I shook my head, and she continued,
"I have blue eyes, not baby grays as you use to call them. Real blue eyes,
like everyone else in my family. Blue eyed people can't be color-blind, did you
know that? And now I'm not." I said that was an urban myth, but she didn't
hear me. She seemed to look out from within at the
wonder of it all. "I don't know why this gift has been given to me, and for
such a short time, but I want all of it I can get."
I read the pleading in her light gray eyes, that blue I'd
never see. "And?"
She was matter-of-fact, "Somebody wants to kill
me."
Marion Cramer wasn't rich, she was way beyond rich. At
twenty-eight, a couple years after we broke up, though we were both still living
in San Francisco, her father died and she went home to Portland. Suddenly she
was the sole owner of one of the largest independent oil companies in the
nation. I'd seen one of those magazines rating the richest, and they placed, no,
they guessed her value at four to five billion, with a 'b'. So she explained
how, since then, she had become the center of a whirlwind too much resembling
the TV show 'Dallas', with endless intrigues of her grasping aunts and uncles
and cousins, all too gainfully employed by her company.
I didn't need the world of colors to know her problem.
"Somebody can't wait for their inheritance?"
She nodded. "I don't have proof, it's just the way some
of them are looking at me, treating me like I'm some sort of temporary
inconvenience."
"And you're sure it's not all in your
head, some product of this color-infused world of yours?"
A brief look of irritation marked her face, then it was gone.
"Of course I'm not sure. That what I need you for."
I took another tack. "Why don't you leave it all to a
charity, just disown the whole bunch of them. They've always hated you, even
before you were rich."
"That's not true." Her eyes met mine, then she
averted them. This sea of color she now lived in must have blinded her.
"Well, not completely true. It's been tough on them, getting nothing."
She saw the start of a sneer on my face. "It feels like nothing to them.
They had hopes, and when my father died, he dashed them. They have hopes again,
I see it in their eyes, and it scares me."
I said it again, "If it were me, I'd just disown the
whole bunch."
There was a hard finality to her words. "No, I'm not
going to punish them all for the greed of one. That's something my father would
do, and did do. I need you to find out what, if anything, is going on, then I'll
take care of it myself."
So we talked for two hours as I made notes about the whos and
whats of the family and the business. There were fifteen of them, all sharing
equally in the company, all someday getting their six percent, plus a little. I
asked why she just didn't give it to them now, but her father's will expressly
forbade it with a couple of poison pills she was unwilling to invoke. She
couldn't even just give them money, or a fake salary, they had to work for it,
and work hard enough that an independent arbiter approved the salaries on an
annual basis. I asked if her father so much distrusted them, and she said no,
but he so much hated them. Now she was afraid his hate would end in her death.
* * * *
Marion floated the story that I was her new estate planner,
there to ensure the government did not get the business on her death. She
ensconced me in an office on the top floor of the company's tower. I had a view
of the waterfront, the bridges, downtown, like moving postcards. From here it
was so antiseptic, living a level above the scum that moved in and out of
our at times still healthy city. I saw the number on the top
of a cop car, like specific white cells targeting some human germ or virus, but
too often after the damage was done. The executives in this hermetically sealed
building made their way from their safe homes, to the protected halls of the
building and back again, seldom confronting the reality of the diseased
city. Their brief forays for shopping, shows, dinner exposed them to the threat,
but generally they made it through without pain and suffering.
My life brought me close to the dark underbelly on a regular
basis. I was hired by both the winners and losers of life's lottery, generally
to either hold onto, or get back, what was theirs. Too often the chattel was
children, the painful pawns in today's divorce actions. Used to be the kids of
single parents just had a lousy home life, but now they were expected to bear
witness, usually false witness, against one of their parents, almost always the
father. Talk about screwing up children in the name of their protection, the
courts wielded the sword of Solomon for the aggrieved wives with all the
restraint of Atila the Hun. And society, through this perversion of the law, not
only condones it, but promotes it, extracting a last ounce of pain, a final
poison pill that festers in the Petrie dish of the future until its spawn
resurrect the story line to destroy families still unborn.
The Cramers were a rich family, and their hatred would fester
forever. Dysfunctional is a term reserved for the poor. These people were way
past dysfunctional. Petty hatreds backed by big time dollars, they'd wasted the
capital of their futures by exercising every opportunity to extract pain from
each other. I'd never met a family who loved life so little.
Marion gathered us in a conference room next to her office.
The gray mahogany walls were her father's intentional slap at political
correctness. The giant table was cut from a single piece of wood with a grain
like leather. There were twenty chairs, of which all but three were occupied.
Marion had a flip chart at the head of the table and she started the meeting by
introducing me. She said I needed to talk to each of them to come up with
individualized plans to meet their personal needs, for the obvious reasons of
her impending. She wanted to be sure they were all properly taken care
of. She went through some of the optional methods of transferring wealth, but it
wasn't new to these people. They may have been shocked that she hadn't done it
already, but I more read suspicion in the serious gray-eyed gazes.
I spent the next six hours interviewing them one at a time.
It appeared to be a company without closing hours, people without families to go
home to. But I knew that wasn't true because of the biographies Marion had
prepared for me. So I ran them through the questions we'd developed, to add a
personal feel to the hard black words. To a man, and woman, there was a distrust
of Marion, her motives, and of course all the other relatives. It wasn't in what
they said, but how they said it, a nuance of hatred. They seemed invested with a
fear of being cut out, of not having authority, of reporting to some other
despised kin. Still, to a man and woman, not a one wanted out of the business,
and each thought they should be the top dog when Marion was gone. Marion had
honed in on two as the most likely to expedite her demise, her cousin
Sandra, and her half-brother, John. But when I finished, I thought any one of
them would gladly pull the plug on her if they could be guaranteed the future
they wanted.
Sandra Cramer was thirty-nine, five-three, bleached
white-gray hair, attractive in a country club way, aggressive, pouty, whiney all
in one very unappealing package. I could only assume she must be different
outside the bounds of the corporate fold, otherwise she'd be friendless. When I
was done with the interview I opted for friendless. She was the next to last
interviewee and spent so much time pumping me about Marion and the other kin, I
could barely get a word in edgewise. She had hated Marion so long, she was
unable to convey even the slightest caring about her fate, although she trotted
out some practiced sympathetic lines every so often. They only made it worse. I
was ready to disown the family and I wasn't even related.
John Cramer made Sandra look like Mary Poppins. He was just
thirty-one but his heart was as hard as coal. He must have been born that way,
it just didn't seem possible to acquire such a deep-seated animosity in a single
lifetime. All that shone through an urbane exterior. John stood six-three, a
shade shorter than I, was very good looking, had a hundred dollar haircut and a
thousand dollar suit. He was egocentric to the extent of seeing life through
blinders, and that life revolved around John Cramer, his position in the
company, and its reflection on his standing in the world. He was without a wife,
and my guess is he didn't date, it would be too humiliating. He worked, primped,
ate and slept. He didn't like sports or celebrities, but he wanted to be one.
When he took over the reins of the company, he expected to be a very famous
person, making the company a living memorial of self-aggrandizement. When he
left the room, he took the entirety of his personality with him, leaving a void
across the table from me, like the actual reality of the space had gone with him
and left a hole in the room, without atoms or substance.
They were all gone. Marion entered the room and plopped into
the visitor's chair with an audible sigh. "Well, what do you think?"
I put on a plastic smile. "I hope they look better in
color than black and white. I'm just glad their not my relatives."
Her lips flattened, then twisted up at the corners, a pale
reminder of the joyful girl I'd known so long ago. "Without the colorless
commentary, please," she answered, but there was no anger in it.
"If you were all in that room and you had a heart
attack, there isn't a one who'd give you CPR. They'd wait out your last breath
taking a vote on who's going to succeed you." I looked her in the eyes,
still baby grays to me. "One condolence, no one would get more than one
vote. You're only the current magnet for their hate, but they hate each other
almost as much."
We spent an hour going through my notes, making some
decisions, then reminiscing about a past better remembered than lived. I learned
that the reason her father left control to her was that he'd never learned to
hate her, because he'd never had any expectations for her. So when the end came,
she was the only one he didn't hold a grudge against. She had wanted to turn
down the inheritance, but the will was structured such that if she did, no one
would get anything. So she took the helm for the family, the family that hated
her. When I said maybe she should let them know that, she said they did, but
sentimentality wasn't in the genes.
* * * *
I hired Bob Sunday, another operative who worked with me when
I had more than one person to keep track of. He was an ex-Los Angeles homicide
cop and he'd helped me a lot in my transition from my past life to detective
work. Bob had a sense of humor that left him almost unscathed from his twenty
years of dealing with mankind's filth, the worst of which had picked LA to call
home. But he'd gotten out the first chance he had, and now augmented his pension
and his wife's real estate work doing tailing jobs for
lawyers. He was working, but not working really hard at it.
Bob took Sandra and I followed John out of the building that
night. At eight o'clock John stopped at a ritzy cafe and had a sandwich, then
took a room at the Hilton. Hidden under the hood of my Gore-tex, I listened in
as he told the receptionist he was having a meeting and would be out of the room
in two hours. I took the next elevator up to the fourteenth floor, then mosied
around keeping the elevators in sight, but trying not to look like I didn't
belong there. She came out of the elevator fifteen minutes later, minimal
makeup, dressed to the nines, flat heels. She looked more like a business woman
on the make than a hooker, but I knew who she was, one of the real lookers
working the high class convention trade. They usually floated some line about
saving their money, then getting out of the business and retiring to the easy
life, but somehow they never made it, eventually hooked on drugs and doing
tricks on some lamp-lit street corner in Sandy. I guessed John couldn't be
wasting time trying to entice a girl, especially if he had to compete with the
riff-raff, and in the process be beaten out by some nobody. No, it was too much
effort for a zero commitments kind of guy, he'd rather just relieve the stress,
get on with life.
I went downstairs to the lobby. After an hour the girl left,
and John was close behind. I saw the knowing smile from the receptionist who
made a comment to the concierge, then they both laughed. I expected John to have
a little more bounce to his step, but he seemed deflated, as if he'd left some
small piece of himself in that hotel room. I followed him to his home in the
west hills and sat in my car until the lights went out in his house. Then I
walked around the house and put vibration microphones on the downstairs windows.
I went home, caught four hours of sleep, and was back outside of his house at
five o'clock.
* * * *
They started arriving at six, with Sandra first. Bob Sunday
drove past the driveway, did a u-turn and parked behind my van. He pulled open
the back door and sat down. Through the translucent side window, we saw another
car arrive with two more of the Cramer kin.
"Big confab, eh?" I nodded. "You want me to
stick around?" I shook my head. He said, "Good luck. Give me a call
when you can tell me what's going on." He clicked the door shut, then used
his hip to fully latch it.
I listened in on the conversations, but they were just
passing time, and every couple of minutes another one would arrive. Finally at
six-twenty, all fifteen were there, drinking coffee and eating danish, but the
small talk had ended.
John Cramer spoke, "Okay, it's time to get this
show on the road." There was a scuffling of chairs and some shushing. He
banged what sounded like a coffee cup on the table, then continued, "It's
time we dealt with Marion." A murmur rose and fell. "I did some
research, and it's quite possible that my sweet sister could live another five
years. I don't think we want that."
A cousin Kate, I remembered the voice belonged to the best
looking of the kin, said, "I don't know that we should really do this,
John. I mean, talking about it was one thing, but actually killing
someone?"
John was curt. "If you want out, the door's right
there." I heard no movement, so I guess I knew where she stood.
He continued, "The man's been hired, he's already been
paid half, and he's just waiting to get the final word. Can I give it?"
A male voice I couldn't place asked, "Is she going to be
in pain?"
Another male voice said, "Who cares. Let's get this over
with."
A few chimed in with a "Here, here."
John again, "Anyone against the motion to proceed?"
There was no sound, then he said, "Motion approved. I'll
wait til Friday to inform Mr. X, and by Monday we'll be figuring out how to run
our company."
There was no cheering, and no complaint. The cars started
leaving immediately. It was Tuesday. What was I going to tell Marion?
* * * *
Marion banged the gavel at the head of the table and the
conversations slowly died. I was sitting to her right. She made eye contact as
her gaze traveled in a circle, then said, "I've called you here now to
review the results of our analysis."
She hit the play button on the tape recorder:
"Okay, it's time to get this show on the
road." The scuffling of chairs, shushing, the banged cup, then "I
think it's time we dealt with Marion." The murmur, "I did some
research, and it's quite possible that my good sister could live another five
years. I don't think we want that."
All eyes at the table were focused, a few blushed their
shame, but most just held hate.
When the voice responded to, "Is she going to be in
pain?" with "Who cares. Let's get this over with," Marion turned
fiery eyes to her aged uncle Robert.
No one even breathed as John said, "Motion approved.
I'll wait til Friday to inform Mr. X, and by Monday we'll be figuring out how to
run our company."
Marion hit the stop button, then turned her head again to
take in the progeny of hatred. When one started to protest, she said, "Cool
it, Janice." Her eyes roamed again, then her thin shoulders sagged,
"All of you. Do you hate me so much." Silence. "Well, I'm going
to explain a few options to you. In fact, they're not options at all, they're
what I've done." Fifteen sighs sounded like a choreographed murmur.
Marion didn't look up from her notes. "I transferred
fifteen million dollars to an account yesterday. That's one million for each of
you. A contract on each of your lives." Fear suddenly competed with hatred
on their faces. "If I die for any, any reason without turning those
contracts off, two men will start killing you all, and they will get a million
for each of you that dies in the first two years. If you can stay alive for two
years, you can take heart in the fact that your million will benefit my
favorite charity."
John stuttered, "But ..."
Marion interrupted, "But, nothing. From this moment on
we will forget that any of this has happened, and I'm sure all of you will do
your best to ensure I stay out of harm's way."
She stood up and left the room without looking back. I
followed her.
* * * *
Marion died last week. She fainted going down the stairs
between the two executive floors and broke her neck. The local rag described how
broken up her family was, crying and tears were the order of the day, for hours.
Her brother John was named acting chairman.
I spoke to her secretary, Babs, and she told me how cousin
Sandra held Marion's head and pleaded, "Don't die." She said Marion
whispered something, with no help from her breathless lungs. No one could make
it out, but it sounded like "Thanks for the callers." But I knew, it
was, "Thanks for the colors." Maybe deep down where I couldn't really
see it, I was jealous, but I don't think so. I sort of think about Marion's
experience as a loss of insight, a departure of the first of her senses as a
stalking death overcame her.
Babs also told me the place was overrun with security people
these days, and the company had paid for a fleet of sixteen bulletproof cars as
well as putting home security on the company's tab. The joy of their new status,
now that they actually owned their six percent, was tinged by the never-ending
fear. They'd get used to it, sort of, until one of them died in an accident, or
even of natural causes, then the fear would well up again. I was tempted to tell
them Marion never hired any killers, that the money drawn from the account went
anonymously to a charity, but in my world of black and white, bad and good, lies
and truth, I didn't think they deserved that. Let them sweat, a final justice.
I am, though, a little worried that Marion did not take her
shadow of death with her to the grave. Instead it divided and attached itself
like leaches to her family, a value-added inheritance. If I believed in
curses, which I don't, two years from now a large oil company will be needing a
new president, someone without such a well developed shadow of death.
-the end-
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