“I’m not an ‘it,’ you wizened old zygote.”
“Porter says, By all means. Feel free. He’d be delighted.”
Fremont stared in Naumann’s general direction, looking myopic and unfocused as he searched for something to fix his eye on.
“Mr. Naumann—”
“Porter,” said Naumann. “Call me Porter.”
“He says you can call him Porter.”
“Okay. Thanks. Porter. My question is, do you ever tell Micah here anything that he doesn’t already know?”
“I’m prepared to bet good money,” said Naumann, grinning wolfishly at Fremont, “that almost any topic you could possibly raise with this fine young lad here is a topic about which he knows not one rudimentary iota. And if he does know something about it, you can rest assured that what he thinks he knows is dead bang wrong.”
“Basically,” put in Dalton, “he’s saying no.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s kinda significant,” said Fremont, musing.
“Why?”
“Because if he never tells you anything you don’t already know, then he’s probably not a real ghost.”
Naumann seemed to be ignoring the slander. He looked as if he had gone inward and was now wrapped in deep thought. Fremont was looking quite satisfied with himself. The discussion interested him on a professional level; he had never debriefed a dead man before.
“Have you ever met any real ghosts?” Dalton asked Fremont.
“Not while I was sober. But Milo Tillman’s ghost—”
“Huey Longbourne.”
“Yeah. Longbourne used to tell Milo all kinds of things. Told him all about secret MAC SOG operations. Milo checked them out later; they were all true. Things Milo could not have known but Huey could. That’s how you tell you got a real ghost. What you got here—”
Naumann, who had evidently figured out what was bothering him, broke in here, talking right over Fremont’s dire warnings about demons… warlocks… Rosicrucians… something about white chickens… rock salt and a moonless night…
“I did so tell you something you didn’t know!” said Naumann, a note of definite triumph in his voice. “I told you that Milan and Gavro were severely injured. Crippled. In a coma. You didn’t know that.”
“Jeez, Porter. I was there. I’m the one who did the thing. When I was through I had a pretty good idea they weren’t gonna get up, dust themselves off, and go for lime rickeys.”
“Where’s Lime Ricky’s?” asked Fremont.
“Willard, how about you stay out of this for a second? Porter, you can’t tell me anything I don’t know and you can’t remember what happened to you in Cortona because I don’t know. If I really knew, then you’d remember it. Don’t you get it, Porter? You’re not real. You’re not here. If I can get you to see the truth of it, then you’ll go away, like those people in A Beautiful Mind. Once the guy figured out they couldn’t be real — the little girl never got any older — his delusions went away.”
Fremont was shaking his head. “Actually, they didn’t—”
“Willard,” said Dalton, rounding on him, “stay out of this.”
“We’ve been over this ground before, Micah.”
“Then how come you never tell me anything I don’t know?”
“My point exactly,” said Fremont.
“Tell you the truth, I think it’s against the rules.”
“Rules? What rules?”
“Rules of Engagement. I break them, I can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“I start to affect outcomes. Tamper with destiny. I’m not qualified to do destiny.”
“Isn’t it tampering with my destiny to tell me to go see Laura? Isn’t it ‘affecting outcomes’ to say I only have three weeks to live?”
“You’ve only got three weeks to live?” asked Fremont, in an anguished bleat.
“No,” said Naumann, primly. “That’s more your dire warning from beyond the grave. Apparently we do that all the time. They tell me nobody ever listens.”
Fremont was now quite emotionally involved, since if Micah Dalton was going to be dead in three weeks, his being dead was going to dramatically reduce his effectiveness as a bodyguard for one Willard Fremont, the Dearly Beloved. He uttered another plaintive bleat. “Is he really saying you’re gonna die in three weeks?”
“Actually,” said Naumann, looking at his empty wrist and then swearing softly, “that was a week ago. He’s only got two weeks left.”
“There you go again,” said Dalton. “And you say you’re not allowed to tamper with destiny. That’s a neat excuse you got there.”
Naumann shrugged that off, and then brightened. “Wait a minute, I did tell you something else you didn’t know. Back in Venice, after Cora got knocked around, you were having dinner at that café on Campo San Stefano. I told you that Domenico Zitti had died. Next thing Brancati’s cell phone rings.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. You crossed yourself, that was all.”
“I made the sign of the cross. Like you do when people die.”
“Thin. Thin as watered whiskey.”
“There’s no persuading an unwilling mind.”
“Mind if I cut in here?” said Fremont. “With respect, you two boys aren’t getting anywhere.”
“Not at all,” said Dalton. “Feel free. I’ve made my point.”
“Jump right in,” said Naumann, crossing to the bar and filling his glass with a huge wallop of single malt, an activity that was not visible to Fremont, who was still staring at the place where Naumann wasn’t.
“Okay,” said Fremont, warming to his argument, “we need to get down to basic ghost psychology. Whether or not this Mr. Naumann is a real ghost or just a mental problem you’re having, nine times out of ten, when a guy’s haunted, or thinks he is, there’s something behind it.”
“Behind what?”
“There’s a reason for you being haunted with this guy. Or thinking you are. He ever tell you why he’s hanging around like this?”
Dalton did not like the direction this conversation had taken. He drank off half the scotch. It burned down inside him like molten gold.
“Go to it, Willard,” said Naumann. “Now you’re on the scent.”
“You don’t want to answer that question?”
“Not really, Willard.”
“None of my goddam business?”
“In that territory, anyway.”
“Too painful?”
“Yeah,” said Dalton, staring at his glass.
“Fine. I don’t need to know what it is. The point is, you already know. That’s what counts here. This thing you don’t want to talk about, Porter — Mr. Naumann here — this is the thing that he wants you to do something about? Right?”
“Way to go,” said Naumann. “Buckle down, Winsocki.”
“Yes,” said Dalton, after a long pause.
“This something that he wants you to do, is it something that can actually be done? It’s not something like crazy hot sex with identical lesbian triplets in a bathtub full of ranch dressing or simplifying the tax code. It’s a thing you could actually pull off if you wanted to?”
“Yes. Well, perhaps. I mean…”
Fremont put his beer down, held his palms out. “So?”
“So, what?”
“So, whatever it is, go do it.”
“Thank you!” said Naumann, smacking the redwood table hard enough to make Dalton jump, which may have been what made Fremont jump at the same time, spilling his beer again. At this stage of the debate and in his mildly inebriated state, Dalton found it hard to tell.
“What’d he do?” asked Fremont.
“He smacked the table and said thanks.”
“So he agrees with me?”