Dying Is My Business

Two

The night-black Ford Explorer was a gift from some rich businessman Underwood pulled a job for, back before my time. I didn’t know the details. Underwood said it was better that way. But the Explorer was perfect for collection jobs. It was big enough to be imposing, the kind of car you didn’t want to get in the way of, and had enough room in the back to hold whatever Underwood sent me to collect—computer equipment, works of art, briefcases full of money. Collector, I thought. It was a fancy name for a thief.

But this was the first time I’d ever been sent to collect a person. What was Underwood planning to do with Bennett once I brought him in? I thought of Underwood’s black door again and shuddered. I put it from my mind. I was hired muscle, paid to do, not think.

I took the BQE back to Brooklyn. The traffic wasn’t too bad this late at night. Bennett sat in the backseat with his hands tied behind his back. He stared out the window like he was trying to put two and two together but kept coming up with the wrong number. When I exited the expressway and steered the Explorer onto Flatbush Avenue, he finally found his tongue.

“Maddock,” he said. “I left him behind to dispose of your body. What happened to him?”

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “He’s dead.” I didn’t fill him in on the details, but it was the same every time, for all nine of my deaths. The thing inside me, whatever it was that brought me back time and again, did so by siphoning the life out of whoever was unfortunate enough to be closest to me. It was like there was only so much life to go around, and every new life it gave me had to be taken from someone else. I didn’t know why, but for some reason I wasn’t allowed to stay dead. Then again, after surviving nine different deaths, maybe it wasn’t smart to start looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Bennett was quiet a moment. “Maddock had a wife and kids.”

“Maybe he should have gone into a different line of work,” I said.

Bennett kept talking. “The girl’s going to grow up to be a real heartbreaker, but the boy?” He shook his head. “Dumb as a rock, just like his dad. Like his dad was, anyway. Before you killed him.”

Probably, he was lying about the wife and kids. I said, “Nice try. Underwood wants to see you, and I’m not going back empty-handed.”

Bennett smirked and looked out the window again. “Why not? I think we both know there’s nothing he could do to you. How do you punish a man who walks away from a gunshot to the chest?”

Suddenly I wished the radio in the dashboard worked. At least then I could ignore Bennett instead of letting his words get under my skin. He was right, Underwood couldn’t kill me any more than Maddock could, or any of the others who’d tried, but I wasn’t working for Underwood because I was afraid of him. I was working for him because he was the best chance I had of finding the answers I was looking for: Who was I? Why couldn’t I remember anything before a year ago? Why didn’t I stay dead? Underwood had connections all over New York City, criminals and crooked cops alike. If anyone could turn over the right stones to find the truth it was him. All he asked in return was that I run some odd jobs for him. Be his collector. I owed him for everything I had. Even my name. It was Underwood who’d given me the name Trent to tide me over until we found my real one. It’s a Celtic name, he’d said. It means prosperous. And you, my friend, with your special gift, are definitely going to help me prosper.

I looked at Bennett in the rearview. “So what did you do?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You must have done something pretty bad if Underwood sent me to bring you in,” I said, though I wondered why I was bothering. Not that long ago, Bennett had ordered his enforcer to kill me. The odds of him wanting to play Confession were pretty damn slim. Still, I was curious, and the worst that could happen was he’d tell me to go fuck myself. “What was it? Did you steal from him?”

Bennett barked out a laugh. “Like that son of a bitch has anything I want.”

“What, then?” I pressed.

“Jesus, you don’t even know the man you’re working for, do you? Underwood’s a collector, like you, only he sends his errand boy to do it for him. Art, rare books, gemstones—the weirder and uglier the better. Stuff the real nut jobs in Park Avenue penthouses pay top dollar for. With all the weird shit he specializes in, I guess it was only a matter of time before he started collecting freaks like you, too.”

I tensed at the word. I wanted to shove it back into Bennett’s mouth with my fist, but I let it slide. “So what does Underwood want from you?”

“Information,” Bennett said. “But we’ve got history, him and me, bad history. He knows no amount of money is going to buy my good graces. Not anymore. The only way I’m going to give it up to a bastard like him is if he forces it out of me, and he knows that. As soon as I caught wind he was on my tail I thought he would come for me himself. I thought he would at least show me that much respect, but instead he sends you. Fucking Night of the Living Dead.”

That was the second time Bennett had poked at me about it. He was fishing for information, but I wasn’t about to give him any. The way I saw it, if I couldn’t die, it was no one’s damn business but my own.

“You sound like you’ve never seen someone wear a bulletproof vest before,” I said. It was a stupid lie. It sounded ridiculous the minute I said it.

Bennett’s eyes flashed from the backseat. He saw through the lie instantly. “You could use some lessons in the art of bullshit. No, you were dead, pal. As dead as can be. Maddock felt for a pulse. I trained him to be thorough like that, but I didn’t need the confirmation. I’ve seen enough dead bodies to know what they look like. And you, errand boy, were a fucking corpse.”

I shook my head. I’d started the lie, as unconvincing as it was, and now I had to stick with it. “You’re wrong. It was a vest.”

“One that stops bullets and also prevents anyone from finding a pulse? Must be a hell of a vest. Wish we’d had those when I was in the Army.”

I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on the road. What did I care what Bennett thought? It wasn’t like he could hold it over me. I’d probably never see him again after this anyway. Most likely, no one would. He would disappear behind the black door like the others.

“Don’t know why I was so surprised anyway,” Bennett continued. “It’s not like you’re the first man I’ve seen come back from the dead.”

I glanced into the rearview to meet Bennett’s eyes.

“Oh, that got your attention, did it?”

I scowled. “If you’ve got something to say, Bennett, just say it.”

“I was in Kuwait in ’ninety-one,” he said. “My unit was working with some Brits to breach one of the minefields the Iraqis had planted all over the southern part of the country. We could only work during the day, though. It was too dangerous at night, so we spent the nights handing out candy to the local kids. You know, trying to win hearts and minds, all that bullshit. One day, when we were about halfway through the minefield, this orphan boy, just a little thing dressed all in rags, came running out toward us. Guess he thought we had candy for him. This one Brit, Sully, was the first to see him. He broke away from the rest of us and ran for the kid to try to warn him away, but I guess Sully forgot where to step. He triggered a land mine and got blown fifty feet across the sand. We all rushed over to help him, but we knew it was too late. No one could survive a blast like that.

“Except when we got there, Sully wasn’t dead anymore. He didn’t even look banged up. He was just lying there on the sand, staring up at the sun, as surprised as we were that he was in one piece. He told us later he didn’t remember the explosion, that everything just went black and he saw a tunnel and a bright light, the whole shebang like right out of the fucking Bible. Then he was back on the sand like nothing had happened. None of us could explain it, least of all him.”

My mouth went dry. My palms felt clammy on the steering wheel. Another man who couldn’t die? Did that mean there were others like me out there? If there were, it was possible they had answers. They might even know my real name.

Bennett kept talking. “A couple of weeks later we were doing recon in some godforsaken, bombed-to-hell village outside Kuwait City when a sniper got him. Hit him right between the eyes. Sully was dead before he hit the ground. This time he stayed dead.”