Now He Thinks He's Dead Read online

  Now He Thinks He's Dead

  By Ron Goulart

  Digital edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / Ron Goulart

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Cover images courtesy by:

  http://fetishfaerie-stock.deviantart.com/

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Born in 1933, Ron Goulart has been a professional author for several decades and has over 180 books to his credit, including more than 50 science fiction novels and 20 some mystery novels. He's twice been nominated for an Edgar Award and is considered one of the country's leading authorities on comic books and comic strips. Ron lives with his wife Frances, also a writer, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

  Book List

  A Graveyard of My Own

  After Things Fell Apart

  Even the Butler Was Poor

  Hellquad

  Nemo

  Now He Thinks He's Dead

  The Enormous Hourglass

  Upside Downside

  For a more complete bibliography visit his page at ISFDB on the Internet.

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  The Online Store

  Subscribe to our newsletter

  Visit our blogs for news on Books and Audiobooks

  Find and follow us on Facebook

  Now He Thinks He's Dead

  Chapter 1

  He only lived about three minutes after he was hit. Just long enough for him to remind her that he'd been right.

  It happened just short of one in the afternoon on a gray, overcast day in early June. The place he died was the parking lot of the Dahlman Publishing Building, overlooking the Saugatuck River in the town of Brimstone, Connecticut.

  H. J. Mavity had arrived there a half hour earlier and parked her aging car near the curving strip of green grassy border that ran alongside the river. Gulls were circling ominously high up in the sooty sky, and out on the gray water a couple of pudgy Boy Scouts were paddling by in a canoe.

  After unbuckling, H. J. stretched up to inspect herself in the cracked rearview minor. She was a slim, pretty woman with auburn hair worn long. In just a little over a week, she'd reach the advanced age of thirty-two.

  Groaning slightly as she contemplated her vanished youth, H. J. slid out of the car, walked around its dented front end to the opposite side, and tugged the door open. Then she grabbed her large, black imitation leather portfolio off the passenger seat by its mended plastic handle and hefted it out into the gray afternoon.

  "Here I am on the brink of middle age," she said to herself as she went walking across the parking lot, noting that all of the thirty-some cars sitting there were newer and in better shape than hers. "Here I am about to commence the slide down into the matron class, and what I've been lately is the artistic equivalent of a hooker." In the portfolio that was swinging in her left hand were three cover roughs for the new Dahl Books line of Regency romances.

  The three-story glass and redwood building loomed in front of her. The low decorative hedges that circled the small red brick courtyard looked stunted and sick. Sitting in the wide space reserved for the publisher himself was old Oscar Dahlman's glittering black, blind-windowed limo. There was no way of telling if anyone was inside.

  "Damn it, I studied art in Paris and Los Angeles," H. J. reminded herself as she went up the five red brick steps to the wide glass door that had "Dahlman Publications" etched on it in small sans serif lettering. "'And if things work out I won't have to keep painting covers for tripe like Love's Claimant."

  The reception room was large, oval, and extremely chilly. The pale blue walls were covered with tastefully framed covers of the various Dahlman magazines—Cyclemania, Eat Right, Puzzlewit, Muscleman, Musclewoman, Bare, Bare Forum. Near the pink marble fountain at the big room's center stood a six-foot-high plush replica of the lecherous grizzly bear, complete with top hat, who served as the mascot for Bare.

  On her knees beside the dry fountain was a plump black woman wearing a bright orange dress. Standing near her was a plump, balding man in his middle forties. An attaché case dangled from his right hand.

  "If it were a motorcycle," he was explaining to the kneeling woman, "I could fix it in a jiffy."

  "They're going to blame me," she said. "I mean, I was only just trying to turn the water down some so the spray wouldn't spritz all over my desk. And it up and dies entirely."

  "Try turning the same handle you used to turn it off. But in the opposite direction."

  "Oh, now there's a bright suggestion. You must be a graduate with honors from the Plumbers' Academy. I've been turning the damn handle, but nothing whatsoever happens."

  "Actually I went to Yale. Didn't become interested in motorcycles until I was past forty."

  "Excuse me." H. J. approached the malfunctioning fountain. "'Are you the new receptionist?"

  "Not for long if I can't get this fountain working again."

  "You have to kick it." H. J. booted the base of the fountain at the place where the handle was connected.

  After a few seconds it started producing loud wanging noises. Then, after shivering and rumbling, the water came gushing up out of the mouth of the dolphin at the fountain's apex.

  "Terrific." Getting to her feet, the receptionist brushed at her knees and then looked H. J. up and down. "If you want to pose naked for Bare, hon, what you have to do is leave your—"

  "I'm flattered," cut in H. J., holding her large portfolio up higher, "but actually I make most of my living with my clothes on these days. I'm an artist and I have an appointment with Lloyd Dobkin."

  "Oh, sorry if I offended you, hon. See, it's just that we get a lot of bimbos in here off the street looking to make some easy money as skin models." Smiling, she walked over and squeezed in behind her wing-shaped desk. "Who was that you said you wanted to see?"

  "Lloyd Dobkin. He's editor-in-chief."

  The balding man cleared his throat. "You are, if I may say so, attractive enough to be a model, miss."

  "Why, thank you." H. J. glanced at him with her left eye narrowed. "I'll treasure that remark."

  "Dobkin. Dobkin. Bingo, here he is." The receptionist was scanning a list. "Dobkin is extension twenty-six." She pushed buttons on her phone and waited.

  "I myself write for Cyclemania," explained the man as he settled into one of the reception room chairs.

  "I've been painting, somewhat against my will, for the new paperback division. Mostly romances."

  "Hello, Mr. Dobkin? You're not? And this isn't extension twenty-six? Oh, thirty-six, sorry." She smiled at H. J. "I'll give him another try."'

  H. J. smiled back. "He's expecting me for lunch," she said. "I can just go on back to his office."

  She looked from the phone to H. J. "Sure, you seem to be trustworthy and reliable," she said. "Go on."

  "Nice meeting you," called the motorcycle writer.

  H. J. pushed through the door that led to the first-floor office area.

  She smelled Larry Dahlman before she saw him. Up ahead in the pale blue corridor an office door opened and a wave of the powerful aftershave that he apparently marinated himself in came fuming out.

  H. J.'s nose wrinkled.

  Larry was a large, rumpled man in his late thirties, blond, amiable, and built
along the lines of the Bare grizzly. "Hi, Helen. You're looking great, as always." He stopped dead in her path, shifting the canvas bag he was carrying from his right hand to his left, held out the right.

  Instead of shaking hands, she brushed at the air space between them. "I don't imagine you're bothered by mosquitos much," she observed. "Or probably any other flying predators up to and including condors."

  He lowered his hand, griming. "My aftershave is too strong, you think?"

  "A wee bit."

  "It's supposed to give me a bold and extremely masculine aroma."

  "I'd ask for a refund as soon as possible."

  Chuckling, Larry shifted his bag to his right hand again. "Well, I've got to go change."

  "Still running on your lunch breaks?"

  "Yeah, and I'm up to five miles a day now I feel absolutely great, Helen." His grin grew wider. "I go out and run two and a half miles straight up Rivergate Road and then I run two and a half miles back."

  "I guess you'd have to, otherwise you would never end up here."

  "Probably nobody would miss me if I did fail to show up," he said. "Certainly not my sister and her dear husband. Dad doesn't rate me very high either." He lowered his voice. "He's lurking around the offices today."

  "You shouldn't downplay yourself, Larry. You hold a responsible job in the family business."

  "As an associate editor of Bare and Bare Forum?" He shook his head. "A couple of second-rate skin mags read exclusively by morons whose idea of a social life is to lock themselves in the john with a copy of the magazine." He shook his head again, more forlornly. "Say, I heard some unhappy news about you."

  "Which?"

  "Rumor that you were getting married again or something," he said. "Just when I was working up the nerve to ask you to dinner. I can't do that now, of course, because I don't fool around with married women."

  "Actually I'm not exactly getting married. But, as fond as I am of you, you'd have to be perhaps not the last man alive on the face of the earth but at least among the final six or seven before I'd willingly plop myself down across a dinner table from you."

  He laughed. "Well, no more kidding around. I've got to change into my running togs. Have a nice lunch with Lloyd." Patting her arm, he headed for the rest room.

  She heard Eva Dahlman Dobkin before she saw her, the woman's voice, loud and harsh, sounding around a bend in the corridor.

  "You're absolutely full of crap!" Eva was shouting, apparently in the open doorway of Dobkin's office. "Not just full of crap, Lloyd my dear, but overflowing."

  "Okay, okay, love."

  "Of all the insane things I ever did, and there were very few before the dark day when you came slouching into my life, marrying you was the dumbest, wackiest—"

  "Think how I feel, pet. I'm only your second mistake, but you're my fifth."

  H. J. halted on her side of the bend, not wanting to walk into another quarrel between her editor and his wife.

  "I really just wish you'd cease to be," continued Eva. "That you'd be stricken with some slow, painful blight. Or that one of those disease-ridden floozies that you sleep around with behind my back would either stab you, shoot, you, or infect you with a dose of something fatal."

  "We'll talk some more about the makeup of the October Puzzlewit after lunch, Evie."

  "God, I wish voodoo worked. I'd be sticking pins in your effigy until—"

  "Scoot back to the sanctity of your office and calm down. I'll venture into your den later this afternoon."

  "Screw you!" The door slammed, and Eva's angry footsteps filled the halls.

  H. J. resumed walking.

  She almost collided with Eva as she turned into the hall that led to Dobkin's office. "Oops."

  "Oh, hello, dear," said Mrs. Dobkin, smiling. She was a large, wide woman, unbelievably blonde, and a few years beyond fifty. "I don't know why you dress up so prettily to have lunch with that toad."

  "Now and then a toad turns out to be a prince."

  "Ugh, you'd have to kiss him to make that happen." Eva pressed the folder she was carrying tight against her bosom. "May I give you some good advice, Helen Joanne?"

  "Such as?"

  "I've heard you intend to remarry that onetime husband of yours. Ben Whoever."

  "Ben Spanner. That's one of the options we're considering, yes."

  "Don't do it. Wander out into the desert and live in a cave, get a part time job in a leper colony. Anything is better than marriage." She went striding off.

  H. J. was still two paces from Dobkin's door when it opened a few inches. "She may just get her wish," he said by way of greeting as he opened the door wider.

  H. J. crossed the threshold. "Her wish about what?"

  "My leaving," he answered, "this world behind."

  Chapter 2

  Grunting, Dobkin scooped a substantial bundle of photos of naked young women off the chair. "Sit for a while, H. J.," he invited.

  "Don't you ever worry you'll suffer from an overdose of bare flesh?"

  He was a lean, pale man of nearly sixty. What little hair he had left was concentrated in grayish tufts over his prominent ears. "These are the entries for the November 'My Best Girl' section of Bare."

  "People actually do that, huh? Send in pictures of their wives and lady friends in the nude?"

  Dobkin elevated the stack of pictures to chest level before depositing it atop his massively cluttered desk. Some 35-mm slides dropped free and fell to the thick tan carpet. "Haven't I assured you of that on several prior occasions?"

  "You have, but I still find it difficult to believe. I guess I don't want to admit there are so many half-wits out there."

  He squatted to gather up the slides. "This pile is only the cream, as it were, of the crop," he told her. "Larry winnows through the hundreds of 'My Best Girl' submissions and picks out a few dozen likely candidates. Then I select the ten girls we'll actually use per issue. I have to get them to sign release forms and so on." He held one of the rescued slides up to the overhead lights. "Now that's zoftig."

  Resting her portfolio against the chair leg, H. J. crossed over to the nearest office wall to scan the framed photos and certificates. "Got cobwebs on your Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America." She brushed at the glass with her fingertips.

  "Do you suspect there's some symbolism in that, my child? That it's maybe been too long since I was a top-seeded fact crime writer?" He leaned his buttocks against the edge of his desk. "Have you, speaking of past glories, read the copy of my book that I gave you?"

  "Not exactly," she admitted. "But it's near the top of my must-read pile. I do like the title—Great Kidnappings in America."

  "Great American Kidnappings," he corrected. "It was a substantial hit back in 1983, but then so was I. Is that stack of books reposing beside your bed at your cottage or over at Ben's?"

  She sat, smiling at him. "I'm in the process of moving in with him full time. But I still sometimes use my old studio at the cottage for painting."

  "Ben's okay," the editor observed. "I've always liked him."

  "I'll tell him. It'll brighten his otherwise drab life and take his weary mind off the tons of money he's earning."

  "You need a man with a skin as thick as Ben's. Not everybody can take living with a wiseass like you."

  "I saw something to that effect in 'Dear Abby' only last week. What were you and Eva brawling about this time?"

  "Same old stuff. We loathe each other." He made a sad sound. "Well, come on and show me your roughs for the Love's Claimant cover."

  "You don't have to stay with Eva . . . or keep working here at Dahlman, do you?"

  "No, no. Matter of fact, I've been offered a tin cup and a very warm corner in Manhattan," he said. "'Actually, H. J., it's not that easy for an old codger like myself to go out and earn the sort of money I pull down hereabouts. Which is why I try to put up with Eva and her sweet-smelling younger brother and her doddering old pappy. Old Oscar, by the way, is making one of his fortunately ra
re visits today." He straightened up, glanced at the door, and then the window. "However, I may be on the brink of . . . let's simply say immense wealth."

  "Not another of your schemes, Lloyd?"

  Shaking his head, Dobkin tapped the stack of photos. "The only thing I can tell you is that I owe it all to 'My Best Girl.'"

  "How exactly?"

  "I can't discuss that with you just yet, even though I trust you like a sister," he replied. "No, actually I trust you more than that. My sister Inez was far from reliable. If she were, she would never have held on to a name like Inez. Anyway, my scheme, as you dub it, got going because of a lucky chance." He touched at the corner of his right eye. "The fact that I'm a perceptive old coot helped, too."

  "I've recently had, as you know, some experience with a get-rich-quick plan. Most of them turn out to be dangerous."

  "This particular venture doesn't involve anything shady or illegal—at least not on my part," he assured her as he reached for the portfolio. "It does, I am at liberty to inform you, make use of my considerable skills as a writer, investigative reporter, and promoter. Soon, if all goes well, there will be a bestselling true crime book of mine wowing the nation. Followed by a docudrama on the tube and lord knows what other lucrative spin-offs."

  "All that because of a naked woman?"

  Grinning, he flipped the big portfolio open and plucked out the three cover roughs. "These are all lovely, H. J.," he told her. "I see you took my advice about how to depict St. Swithin's Church in the wilds of Sussex."

  "Yeah, I used the Brimstone Denominational Church for the model. Worked out pretty well."

  "It looks great," he said. "You know, I love that old church. It's so impressively grim and moldy. If I weren't a godless heathen, I'd drop in there some afternoon to rattle off a prayer, light a candle or, at the very least, rob the poor box. I might even haunt their old tumbledown graveyard." He held one of the roughs toward her. "We'll go with this one for the cover painting. Don't bother with a color comp, just go to the painting. Oh, and give me more cleavage on this innocent wench in the Empire gown."