The Undertaker

“Personally though, I prefer the iliac. That's down here near your hip and groin.” The man droned on, his voice calm, as if he was discussing the weather or a favorite golf club. He stood up and let his eyes slowly scan the white, flabby body from head to toe. “That is, if I can find it. You are a mess, Louis, an absolute mess. Look at you – all fat and so out of shape. Now where are they!” he suddenly screamed and lashed out with the scalpel. The blade flashed in a big arc and sliced lightly across the fat man's gut, cutting deep enough to draw blood.

That did it! The fat man's head shot up. He saw the blood and the cut. His face turned deep red. He felt the panic rise in his throat as a sharp, angry pain exploded in his chest. “Ahhhh…!” he groaned as the pain pounded and sucked the life out of him. Then, there was nothing. His head dropped back on the metal table with a loud “Clang!” His eyes grew round and his body went limp against the leather straps, and he was dead.

CHAPTER ONE

Boston: where California meets Jersey…

I knew I was in trouble when Gino Parini shoved that .45 automatic in my face and made me read my own obituary. I'm not talking about something vague or California-cosmic, like the San Andreas Fault will turn Nevada into beachfront property, or those McDonald's French fries will seal my arteries shut, or second- hand smoke will give me lung cancer. I'm talking about my own honest-to-God black-and-white obituary ripped from page thirty-two of that morning's Columbus, Ohio newspaper:

TALBOTT, PETER EMERSON, age 33, of Columbus, died Sunday at Varner Clinic following a tragic automobile accident. President and founder of Center Financial Advisors of Columbus. Formerly of Los Angeles, a 1999 graduate of UCLA and a lieutenant, US Army Transportation Corps...

That was me. I was Talbott, Peter Emerson, 33 years old, and formerly from Los Angeles. I had graduated from UCLA and I had been a lieutenant in the Army. Coincidence? I didn't think so. There was only one of me and I didn't die in the Varner Clinic or anywhere else last Sunday. I was an aeronautical software engineer and I had never been to Columbus or heard of Center Financial Advisors much less been its President. Still, when you're looking into a set of hard, dark eyes and a .45 automatic, it's hard to argue the fine points.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

That day began normally enough. For the past two months, I had been settling into a new job as a systems designer and software engineer with Symbiotic Software in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was one of a hundred programming shops in those big, mirror-glass office buildings that dot the Route 128 Beltway around Boston. You know the kind: no hard walls, no doors, just dozens of low, pastel-colored cubicles filled with a mixed bag of grungy 20-somethings in every size, shape, color, orientation, and gender. My cubicle was like all the others, except for the cheap plastic nameplate that said “Peter E. Talbott, Senior Systems Engineer” hanging at the entrance. Inside, the wall behind my chair featured a framed poster of Eric Clapton, signed by The Man himself, ripped-off from a LA record store back in my younger and much crazier days. On the wall across from my desk hung a beautiful Air Mexico travel poster: a color shot of a beach at sunset near San Jose down on the Baja, with a thin, solitary young woman in a bikini walking away down the sand. That was where Terri and I were supposed to go that last fall, but she got sick and we never made it. Other than the simple 8” x 10” photograph of her sitting on my desk smiling up at me, the Baja beach poster was easily my most prized possession.

It was already 5:30 PM. Headset on, I stared at my big, flat-screen computer, pounding away at the keyboard, dressed in my treasured, but badly faded, Rolling Stones 1995 Voodoo Lounge World Tour T-shirt, blue jeans, and a worn-out pair of Nikes. Like the shoes, I was a tad older and more scuffed than the rest of the hired help, so clothes helped me fit in during those first awkward weeks after I moved there from LA. Anyway, I had just finished a crash project and was slowly coming back down as I listened to the last tracks of a two CD set of Clapton's Greatest Hits. When I really get into a problem, the building could go up in flames, and I'd never notice unless my monitor went blank.

I leaned back in my chair, eyes closed, playing air guitar riffs along with “Tears in Heaven,” when a cold hand lifted one of the ear pieces and whispered in my ear. “Earth to Petey, you are going to have the sub-routines done by tomorrow, aren't you?”

“You said “tomorrow”, as in “close-of-business tomorrow,” not “tomorrow-tomorrow,” or “tomorrow morning”, or “today-tomorrow,” I answered.

“I know, but I've got a problem and “tomorrow” just became first thing tomorrow.”

Looking over my shoulder was Doug Chesterton in his “harried boss” costume: a wrinkled white shirt, a cheap necktie with soup stains, and a pocket full of pens. It read MIT all the way – smart as hell, but dumb as a rock.

“Douglas,” I smiled. “Having anticipated that you'd be a completely disorganized and unreasonable asshole...”

“And your brother-in-law, your boss, and the magnanimous owner of the company.”

“They're done. I e-mailed them to you twenty minutes ago.”

“That's why I brought you here, big guy,” he said as he gave me a big bear hug and planted a disgustingly loud, wet kiss in my right ear, tongue and all. “You're like a bloodhound when you get the scent, Petey, you're fucking relentless.”

“Relentless with a wet ear, you moron.”

Doug leaned in over my shoulder and looked at the screen. “Then what the hell are you still working on? Wait a minute. That's the Anderson job I gave Julie, isn't it?”

“Don't get pissed at her; it was my idea. She had some meetings at school with her kids, so I said I'd help her out.”

Doug laid his hand on my shoulder. “I'm not pissed. I'm glad. I know it's been hell for you since Terri died, but you moved here to get a fresh start and Julie is drop-dead gorgeous. She's divorced and she's exactly what you need.”

“Julie? Oh, come on, I'm just helping her out, I wouldn't…”

“No, you probably wouldn't, but she would. Trust me. The faithful widower? Half the secretarial pool wants to take you home and mother you, and the other half wants to have your baby. They think you're a saint.”

I looked over at Terri's smiling photo. I knew he was right, but that wasn't what I wanted or what I needed. He saw me look, too.

“She's gone, Pete. It's been a year now and it's time you moved on. She was my sister and I loved her as much as you did, but that's what she'd tell you, too.”

“I know, Doug, I know.” The truth was, Terri did tell me that, almost every day at the end and almost every day since. That was where Doug and all the others had it wrong. I wasn't alone. I still had all my memories of Terri, and my life was full, so full I didn't have anything left to give to anyone else. Someday, maybe, but not then.”

“Look, I didn't come out here to bug you,” Doug said. “But accounting keeps gnawing on me about your social security number. The IRS still has your account blocked.”

“I've called them three times. They keep mumbling something about a “numeric anomaly.”

“It's no anomaly. They've got you mixed up with somebody else with the same name and they think you're dead. So, if you want to see a paycheck anytime soon, get the damned thing fixed.”

I shrugged and put it on my list of things to do. Maybe it was number fifty-nine, but it was there. Besides, Doug was right. He was boss. More importantly, he saved my life.

I was born in Los Angeles — a child of the Golden West, raised on a steady diet of hard rock, fast cars, Pacific beaches, and the trend-du-jour. After UCLA, I went to work at Dynamic Data in Pasadena. It was Terri who introduced me to her MIT techno-nerd brother. We both bounced around Pasadena, going from one hot software shop to another, doing what we both loved and what we were good at. I was smart, but Doug was always smarter. He sold his old Porsche and moved to Boston with his three mangy cats, sinking every dime he could beg or borrow into his own start-up software company, which he named Symbiotic Software. The title was just vague enough to let him take on all sorts of work. However, trading the beaches and sun of Tinseltown for a long, gray winter of snow and ice in New England wasn't my idea of fun, so I stayed in LA. Shows what we knew. Doug's little company found a niche and he never looked back.