(dedicated to F. Lee Baldwin)
I was playing solitaire on my computer when my office door opened and a thin, hesitant man who was somewhere in the tail end of his middle age came in. He was gripping a hat in his hands. You don't see many hats these days.
I gestured him to the chair on the other side of my desk. "What can I do you for?" I asked.
He kept a death grip on the brim of his hat as he sat. I wondered how it would look, the next time he wore it. "You're a detective, aren't you?" he asked.
"That's what it says on the door," I agreed.
"I need a detective."
"Most of the people who walk through that door do," I pointed out helpfully. "What's your name?"
"My name?" he asked, as though startled by my question. "Oh, yes. I'm Barry Landfall." He looked like he was waiting for me to reach over my desk and shake his hand after that introduction, but I stayed seated and outwaited him.
"I run Landfall Funeral Home," he elaborated. A picture popped up in my mind of the Landfall Funeral Home, a small establishment located on the edge of what was becoming the industrial section of town, overdue a coat of paint by several years and with a 1977 Cadillac hearse parked on the side.
"How's business?" I asked.
"It could be better," Barry said, "but that's not why I'm here."
"Okay. Why are you here?"
He gestured at my computer. I glanced at the screen. The solitaire game was still running, racking up time, second after second, and a long way away from the finish. I closed the game with a muttered apology, but Landfall said, "It's my computer. I never wanted one, but I didn't have a choice. These days, you gotta have one to run a business. License
renewal? 'Go to our website. ' Getting the latest forms to be filed? You 'download' them."
I nodded. It was the same thing for detectives. Most of our work comes down to online searches these days.
"But naturally I couldn't leave it at that. No, I had to go use the damned thing for my personal enjoyment!" He said that with a self-condemning tone, as though disgusted with either the computer or himself -- or both.
"Easy to do," I said, shrugging. "I'm addicted to solitaire. I can't quit." I assumed he'd come across the ubiquitous porn sites.
"You probably think I'm talking about porn," he said, reading my mind. I nodded. "But you're wrong. It's not that at all."
"No?" I steepled my hands on my desk. I read about someone doing that once and I like doing it. I think it impresses the client. It impresses me.
"No, it's the newsgroups," he said.
"Newsgroups?" I echoed. "Um, what kinda news?"
"You aren't very hip to the internet, are you?" he said.
That stung.
"They're, uh, they're an aspect of the internet," Barry said, explaining to me. "Like websites, like e-mail. But separate. They function like a bulletin board, sorta. You post messages to them, people respond. And there are hundreds, thousands of them. There's one for every possible subject of interest there is --more than one!"
"Okay," I said. "What about them?"
"Well, I'm active in one of them. It's the rec. arts. sf. fandom list. Known as 'rasff. '"
"Uh huh," I said. "What happened? Suck up all your time? Meet somebody online?"
"I'm a science fiction fan," he said, pulling himself upright with a recovered dignity, as if in reproof. "I'm well known as a science fiction fan. I was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1978 Disclave. I've published a major fanzine."
"So what's that mean?" I asked him. "You're one of those Trekkie types?"
I thought he was going to turn purple and explode, but he hired me anyway.
* * *
The woman who met me at her apartment door had purple spiked hair and at least twenty tiny earrings in each ear. I figured her for her early thirties. Her face was round in every sense, her chin and forehead and both wide cheeks receding from the prominence of her broad nose. She was short but rotund. She looked me up and down and grinned. "Barry said I'd like you," she said. "Come on in. You're a welcome change."
Her name was Ruth Polinsky, but Barry said she was known as Polly.
"A welcome change?" I asked. "From what?"
"From the usual geeky fan," she said. "Barry's an exception, you know."
"How's that?"
"Well, he's not bearded, he's not loud, and he's not really into computers," she said, and laughed loudly at the image she'd constructed. "He's older, too. Been around forever. That's all he talks about, you know --how things used to be, back when first-class postage was three cents and you fanned your ack with a mimeograph." Well, I think that's what she said. Made no sense to me then.
She grinned at me again. "I like you better," she said. "You're not loud and bearded and nerdy --and you're not a mortician, either. That's what Barry does, you know."
She was wearing a sort of wrap-around robe of shimmery material. She wriggled seductively and said, "Wanna fuck?" She did a quick twirl and wasn't wearing anything any more.
"On such short acquaintance?" I asked, gaping at her.
She laughed, and shrugged her garment back on. "You guys!" she said with a snort. "All talk and no action! You talk about pussy but you can't deal with it when it's really available!" I gathered I was no better now than the fans she knew. Maybe worse.
"Hey," I said. "I just want to talk with you."
She giggled. "All talk --no action!"
* * *
I was walking down the sidewalk when they came at me from out of the mouth of an alley. There were three of them, all big. Two were big and tall and one was shorter but just as big. They were holding computer cables and they tried to trap me with them, wrapping them around me, trying to pin my arms to my sides. But they got in each other's way, stepping on each other's feet and kicking each other as they tried to surround me.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"S. F. Five-Yearly isn't dead --it's only half decade."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But they diverted my attention. And someone else slipped a clear plastic bag over my head, gripping it tightly over my face, suffocating me. Black spots appeared and swam all over everything until they merged into total blackness.
* * *
When I woke up I was lying in a bed, naked under the covers. I was lying on my side and when I opened my eyes I found myself staring at Ruth Polinsky's right nipple.
"The funny thing," she said, "you know what the funny thing about him was?"
"No. What?"
"His smell. He didn't have any. I mean, I lived with the guy. And it was like he was made out of plastic. No smell."
"He showered a lot? Used deodorants?"
She frowned. "No, not much. I don't think I ever saw him use a deodorant. Listen, you don't get it. I kissed him, there was no odor on his breath. He rarely bathed, but no part of his body had any odor --not even his feet. When he used the bathroom he left it odorless."
"So what are you saying?" I asked her. "What are you describing? Some sort of space-alien?"
"Oh, for God's sake! Just because you know I'm a fan, you think you can lay that sort of crap on me? Of course he wasn't a space-alien!" She snorted and then choked for a moment. "The most ordinary guy in the world." She snorted again. "Barry Landfall -- Space-alien!" She sucked greedily on her cigarette and blew the smoke in my face.
* * *
The 1977 Cadillac hearse was still parked next to the Landfall Funeral Home and I parked my car beside it. When I got out of my car I touched the hearse's hood. It was warm although the day was cool and the hearse shaded.
I walked around the side and back of the building that housed the Landfall Funeral Home. It was obvious that it had in a previous life been a warehouse or small industrial building. In back the concrete blocks were obvious beneath several coats of whitewash. On the sides and in front the building had been faced with vinyl siding to give it a more "home-like" look, but it remained flat-roofed. When I got around to the front I paused to pull some small triangular burrs from my pants legs. I'd picked them up pushing through the knee-high weeds behind the place.
The front door opened into a vestibule which was dark with richly paneled wood and thick carpeting. I pushed through the inner door and found myself in what I at first mistook for a church chapel. As I was standing there, looking around the apparently empty room, someone behind me slipped a plastic bag over my head, gripping it tightly over my face, suffocating me. "Not again!" I thought. But it was completely different. This bag was dark, opaque, and I couldn't see the black spots when they appeared.
* * *
This time I awoke to find myself sitting in and tied to a chair. Ruth and Barry were standing over me, staring at me.
"You're in this together, aren't you?" I said.
Ruth grinned at me. "You bet, lover."
"I don't get it," I said. "Why hire me?"
Barry gave me a solemn look. "It was an idea I had."
"He used to read books about detectives," Ruth explained. "He wanted to meet a real, live one. And he knew how much I'd enjoy meeting you...." She gave me a lewd wink.
"So the whole thing was a sham, a put-up job?" I demanded.
Ruth laughed. "That's it. You got it, Mr. Detective!"
"Then why am I tied up like this?"
"Geeze, I dunno. Barry? Barry?" She was looking around. "Where'd he go?"
Barry had vanished. Ruth gave every appearance of following him.
"Ruth --wait! Untie me or something --cut me loose!" I tried to stand, but my legs were lashed to the chair legs and I couldn't do more than rock the chair back and forth impatiently.
Ruth paused in her dash after Barry to look back at me. Emotions waged a tug of war across her face, but she turned back to me and began fumbling with the knots. "Stop pulling --you're just making them tighter!" she admonished me. Once she had my hands free we could each work on one of my legs. She seemed to be enjoying the task more than might be expected -- if I hadn't already had a taste of her appetite for me.
Once I was on my feet she led me for a door in the rear of the chapel. This opened into a carpeted corridor which in turn led to a room of stainless steel counters and fixtures --the embalming room, which I was glad to see was empty. The lights here were bright fluorescents in a contrast to the subdued and indirect lighting in the corridor and room
beyond, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust and to be certain that Barry was not here either.
Another door took us into what must have been Barry's office. It was dignified and uncluttered and no doubt was where his clients signed their contracts with him. Two other doors led from this room.
Ruth headed straight for the one at the back of the room, behind the desk. It opened onto a smaller, very cluttered room. This room had filing cabinets, their drawers half open with unfiled papers sitting on top of files. There was another desk, this one holding a computer keyboard and monitor, the actual computer sitting on the floor next to it. A screen-saver was cycling geometrical designs on the monitor. Books, magazines and newspapers were stacked everywhere on every horizontal surface, covering the rest of the desktop and crowding the keyboard. There was actually a large soft-cover book sitting on top of the monitor. An office chair was lying on its side in front of the desk, blocking our way.
Ruth pulled and pushed at the chair, which remained in her way, then managed to climb over it, almost falling and catching herself on a filing cabinet. She was making for another door in the back corner of the room. I yanked the chair upright and pushed after her. I was right behind her when she yanked open the door.
* * *
You know, looking back over this case I have to say that it's one I'll never turn into a book and sell to the movies. Too unbelievable. Too weird. I mean, who would've figured Barry Landfall for a genuine space-alien?
Ruth should have. She was the one who put me onto it, after all. But I suppose it was just too obvious and under her nose to occur to her. These sci-fi fans!
I visit her every week at the burn recovery center. It was her final bit of bad luck to be the one who opened that closet door when she did -- just as "Barry Landfall" was in the process of making his return to wherever it was he really came from. The light that came through the door when she opened it was as blindingly bright as it was searingly hot --and
she got the full blast of it. A second later the light was gone and all that was left was a charred closet.
We reported it as a flash fire when I took Ruth to the emergency room.
We still talk about "Barry Landfall." We speculate about whether he took over that identity or made it up. I favor the latter. "He read lots of books --mostly mystery and science fiction," Ruth told me. "He was an active ess-eff fan but I hadn't realized how much of a mystery fan --well, detective-story fan anyway --he was. He hired you just to have the experience of walking into a seedy --sorry! --detective's office and going through that whole routine."
"You went along with it," I said.
"Well, I had no idea that he had a deadline."
"He tied me up."
"Umm, yeah. But I didn't know what he was really up to then."
But we both knew what she was really up to.
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
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Updated September 29, 2015. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.