Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (6 page)

The guy really had my number. And I could
tell that he was enjoying calling it too.

I wagged the cigarette at him, then snuffed
it out as I told him, "This is one reason why not. You're right. I
like my independence, even to the point of choosing my own poisons.
Professional athletics are too rigorous."

"You don't like rigor."

"We already covered that. I do not like
rigor. And that, I suppose, is why I should be leaving you right
about now." But I made no move to go.

He said, "You're a good team player, though.
Navy thought so. Bet they cried when you left them."

I said, "Karen is in severe difficulty."

He said, "I know that. What the hell do you
think we're talking about?"

I saw his hand move on the armrest, a finger
poising over the buttons of the console, then selecting one by
feel.

I thought, oh shit, it's a James Bond movie
and now I am about to plunge through this floor into a pit of
hungry crocodiles.

But nothing like that happened. And Kalinsky
went right on talking. "This really isn't my style, but I have to
tell you that I like you, Ash. I guess I really expected it to go
this way. I mean, I figured we'd get along fine even before I
finished reading your file. This little talk really just confirms
everything I expected to find. Look, we've tried everything with
this kid and now we're really beginning to feel desperate. Mind
you, I don't usually show my hand this way, but I guess you know
already the trouble we've got. So even if you weren't worth a shit
I'd rather have you on the inside than outside somewhere raising a
lot of notoriety."

The guy seemed really hung up on
"notoriety"—a holdover, I presumed, from the JQ brand of public
relations.

Knuckles rapped lightly on the paneled door
behind me and a guy glided silently in, placed a manila file folder
in Kalinsky's right hand, then glided back out without a glance at
me.

"Something here I want you to look over.
Study it carefully and make sure you understand the full
ramifications before deciding either way." He removed an
officious-looking document on legal-size paper and slid it across
the polished surface of the desk.

It was an employment contract, several pages
of it, with maybe five lines relating what I would get and the rest
laboriously detailing what they would get.

Right up front, for me, was two grand a day
plus full living and business expenses with a thirty-day minimum,
payable in advance, renewable in thirty-day chunks at the pleasure
of the employer. A check for the first sixty thousand was attached,
made out to me, awaiting only a signature to make it operative.

One little scrawl on a piece of paper and I
would be, right up front, worth almost as much as my Maserati.

I guess my eyes reacted a bit at that figure
because Kalinsky chuckled quietly and threw in a clincher.

"Of course you will be immediately issued
all the most powerful plastic to cover outside expenses, all billed
directly to the corporation. You'll never even have to know how
much you're taking us for, so the salary is free and clear."

The salary, yeah, but how free and clear
would I be with someone buying me in thirty-day chunks in
advance?

I read on.

It was a body-and-soul contract. They would
own me, twenty-four hours a day and by the month. I would sleep at
their pleasure, eat and drink and make merry at their pleasure—and,
I presumed, kill and maim and screw at their pleasure.

Two basically operative
phrases recurred over and over: "... at the pleasure of the
employer ..." and "... without regard to employee's personal
conscience."

There was a covenant on
loyalty, one on secrecy, several more to cover any paranoid threat
to " ... the public image, safety, and general well being of the
employer."

They even got my body if I died on duty—and
I right away transposed that into the situation with Bruno.

At the bottom appeared what is sometimes
referred to as a closed-loop option; they had a binder on my life,
forever, renewable at their pleasure every thirty days but never at
mine.

I glanced at Kalinsky and said, "The way JQ
did it, eh?"

He said, "Always. You want to argue with the
success of it?"

I replied, "Depends on the point of view.
Success for whom?"

"It's a standard contract. We all work under
the same requirements, all of us here. The only difference is the
salary. And that is never negotiable. You take the whole deal or
none of it."

"You can't really hold people to this
option. Not in this country. If a guy wants to leave ..."

"The hell we can't. We can't physically
restrain him, no—can't make him stay if he's dead set on leaving.
Can sure as hell make him wish he had, though. He'll never work
anywhere else, for anybody, at any price, not even for himself. So
think about it before you sign. Think about this, too, though. We
already consider you under our influence. Can't let you walk away
from it now. So; whether you sign or not, we consider that we
nevertheless own a moral option, and we will enforce it."

I carefully lay the thing on the desk while
quietly

musing, "Some American
Indian tribe had this peculiar custom ... you save a guy's life
... then he owns you forever."

Kalinsky grinned amiably. "Exactly."

I said, "Bullshit."

"Better think about it."

"How long?"

"Midnight."

"Tonight," I presumed.

He was still grinning, enjoying it.
"Midnight tonight. I guess your only decision, Ash, is are we
friends or enemies. As friends, we can be very nice. As enemies
..."

"Another story comes to mind," I said
quietly. "One about this guy who sells his soul to the devil."

"Devil has all the options, Ash. I'm
surprised you didn't know that. It's written in original sin."

"JQ say that?"

"He did."

I said, and meant it, "Bullshit."

Chapter Six:
Conjunction

I do not mind saying that I was more than a
little disturbed by Kalinsky's attitude toward my life and liberty.
The guy sat there with a grin on his face and as much as told me
that he was taking me over, like it or not—as though I were an
open-stock corporation and he was buying up all the shares.

The money was great, sure, but only a
pervert lives for money alone.

I would sell the Maserati before I would
sign a deal like that, yet he made it quite clear that I was his,
signed or not.

So I was perturbed, yes. I did not feel that
he was bluffing. He meant it, every word and wink of it, and I knew
that the threat was very real.

But I could see no profit in a showdown at
that moment and, besides, I wanted some time with Karen before the
walls came tumbling down. She was the client, Kalinsky was not, and
I was not satisfied in my own mind that she was, indeed, in good
hands.

So I cooled it and kept the banter going
with Kalinsky until another guy came along to show me to a guest
room upstairs. Seemed that a formal dinner party was brewing for
the evening, some twenty to thirty additional guests, and I would
be expected to "keep the kid under control" during that.

These people apparently never heard of
thinking small or of finding a situation beyond their ability to
manage. Believe it, a guy was waiting for me inside my room, with a
mouth full of pins and a tailor's tape over the shoulder, to fit me
into a tux for the occasion.

Also waiting there was an "ice-box snack,"
promised by Kalinsky to hold me until dinner, consisting of cold
chicken, fruit, cookies, and an insulated decanter of coffee. The
room boasted a fully stocked bar, complete with several different
brands of imported beer and wine—had its own hi-fi, television,
whirlpool bath, and outside balcony overlooking the pool. A guy
could live there, sure, in total luxury, and I found myself
wondering what kind of fool it took to turn down a life like
this.

Maybe it would be worth the trade in
personal freedom. After all, freedom to roam the wilderness all
hungry and dying of thirst would not be too much of a trade for a
cage with plenty of food and water. I could believe Kalinsky's
assurances that my every need would be met if I would just pledge
my soul to the cause. If all these people here were indeed working
under "the same requirements," and I had no reason to doubt it, I
had to admit that they seemed a rather contented bunch.

Of course, cows in deep pasture usually seem
a rather contented bunch too; I would not trade my life for
theirs.

So I ate the chicken while the tailor fussed
with the fit. When he departed I headed straight for the bath,
taking the coffee with me and opting for a stinging shower in
preference to the lulling comfort of the whirlpool. It was past
six; dinner was at eight; I wanted a moment with Karen in private
before the festivities.

I tracked her down via the "Intercom
Directory" and got her on the house phone. She still sounded a bit
upset but in control as she invited me to her "apartment" and told
me how to get there. It was on the same floor, but seemingly a
half-mile distant around several bends of hallway—not too bad,
except that I was wearing only a bulky shower robe (compliments of
management) for the safari.

Karen was not alone. A nice-eyed man of
about forty and prematurely bald, whom she introduced only as Carl,
was standing in the open doorway and chatting with her when I
arrived. Neither of them blinked at my get-up, maybe because the
three of us were identically attired, but Karen had a bit of
trouble meeting my eyes at first.

Turns out that Carl was Carl U. Powell,
M.D.—house doctor and resident shrink—which explained the CUP
monogrammed on the breast pocket of his robe, which in turn
suggested that he was a company man "under the same
requirements."

He looked me over with a
not unfriendly stare, shook my hand, and took his leave before I
could really get his make and model.

Karen retreated into the depths somewhere,
leaving me alone in the hallway. I went on in and closed the door,
found her standing at a window in the sitting room, hands jammed
tightly into the pockets of the robe, gazing fixedly onto the front
lawn. It was a nice view but, again, I had the feeling that she was
seeing nothing beyond her own eyeballs.

She spoke to me very quietly and without
altering her position at the window. "Can you forgive me? I feel
really ... crummy."

I matched her tone and mood as I replied to
that. "I suspect that you have nothing to apologize for."

She looked at me, then—just a turn of the
head and a sweep with the eyes—and I could see the misery there,
and I started getting mad as hell, a slow burn beginning way down
low in the belly. I knew what she was feeling because I had sampled
a small taste of it during the meeting with Kalinsky, a sort of
formless rage lightly brushed with panic, the recognition that
someone with raw power was making designs on your life-force.

I turned her about and took her in my arms,
and we just stood there embracing through a long, warmly electric
silence, flowing into each other, meeting somewhere in psyche and
joining thoroughly in a surging transfer.

I felt her stiffen
momentarily and feebly struggle against it before releasing in
total surrender, mind and body, molding to me, attaching, merging.
We were one body and one mind between the infinities, a single
point of reference in the space-time continuum, but not moving
with it, outside somewhere, out of plane, out of body.

It shook her, shook us both, brought tears
to both.

I do not know how this may sound to
you—maybe somewhat like a pride-and-passion novel, or maybe you
will just think I am kooky or melodramatic—if you have never
experienced the same thing. It was not the first time for me, but
still it was rare enough that I found it remarkable and damned near
incredible that two people—strangers, really—could spontaneously
ignite into something like this, could be transported from the
workaday world into cosmic zonk in a fingersnap.

Suddenly I knew this lady, knew all about
her in shades more intimate than anything shared by lifelong
companions, knew her in her essences, her longings and deepest
fears and feelings, knew her in all the sweet quiet whisperings
from another star somewhere, another system, another reality.

Call it what you will; I can only report the
facts.

That kind of knowing is the deepest sort of
love.

And I knew, even before I pulled away and
looked into her eyes, that she knew me as I knew her.

Chapter Seven: Poor Little Rich
Dreamer

We could and should have had a full-blown
sexual encounter then and there, except that the circumstances of
the moment were so out of kilter; Karen was in trouble, I was in
trouble, maybe this entire enterprise was in trouble, and all of
that was part and parcel of the understanding we'd shared out there
between the infinities.

Also, the experience had been just a bit too
overwhelming for her to handle all in a piece. Her knees buckled,
and she would have gone down except for my support. I helped her to
a couch and went for water.

She had both feet tucked under her and was
dreamily contemplating an unlit cigarette when I returned. I traded
her the glass for the cigarette and lit it while she sipped the
water, gave her a drag, took one myself, then put it out, took a
sip of water for myself.

All this time Karen was
staring at me with those great, glowing eyes, raising hell with my
nervous system. She had never seemed more beautiful, more
appealing, more vulnerable.