The Dead Drop In

“So why’d you do it?” he asks me.  “I think I have a right to know.”  Guy sounds like he’s talking from the bottom of a submarine.  I can barely understand him.

I’m over the shock of seeing Gary by now.  Well, no, I’m not.  But I’ve settled down.  It’s been three years.  He must have been looking for me all that time.  There’s no more lying, no more fighting, no more sense in running away.  He’s got me dead to rights.  So we sit there at the table and I try to remember what the hell was in my mind that night.

“I thought if you vanished, the business would improve.  It would be essentially mine to run the way it should have been run.  And I managed it, Gary.  Things are booming.”  It’s funny.  I’m feeling less guilt for having murdered him than embarrassment for telling him what he was: a shitheaded partner who was flushing my financial future down the toilet along with his own.

“So you get the business, and I get a shallow grave.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t see any other way…  I tried to make it quick,” I offer, sleezily.  I feel the immediate need to change the subject.  “Are you going to testify?” I ask.  We’re in one of the jurisdictions that allows for that now.  I guess the thinking is, no one knows better than the dead that judgment is near, so a ghost is going to be eager to show up in front of God in a clean sheet without the stains of recent perjury on it.

“I don’t have time,” he says.  I don’t ask him how he knows this; I suspect he doesn’t know how himself.  He just knows it.  “I want to see Alice and the kids before I go.  I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.  It’s going to traumatize them a bit.  But I’ve been talking to others and in the long run, it helps the survivors move on.  That’s what I’ll be doing.”  By now we can hear the sirens in the distance.  He rises from the chair, and for a moment I wonder what it feels like to sit when you’re dead.  What’s anything feel like when you’re dead?  Gary says, “And anyway, I think I can count on you to give a full accounting of yourself on your own.”

I nod.  I don’t know why, but having been confronted by the man I murdered and confessed to him, I can’t imagine not owning up to others far less involved.  I hear the cars pull up, and doors slamming.  They’re banging at my door now.  “Yin?  Vince Yin?  We have reports of a murder.  We are coming in.  Our weapons will be drawn!”  And I’m wondering what the hell Gary told them to get them this worked up.

I rise, my hands raised.  “The door is open,” I call.  They kick it in and aim their pistols at me.  The police are greeted with the sight of a ghost, translucent hand raised in accusation.

“There’s your man,” Gary says, and disappears.