"Boss! Boss, don"t die!" cried Horace as he shook Vale harder.
In the grim morning light, Tommy Vale"s face bore the blankness of death, whose ledger always tallies exactly if you only wait long enough.
Then Tommy Vale laughed in Horace"s face.
He laughed till his eyes watered.
"Horace," Vale said at last, when he had caught his breath. "Get me some coffee."
"Yes, boss!"
When Horace hurried out of the way, Vale turned his attention to Lacey.
"You"re still smiling," Vale said. "You must know something I don"t."
"I know it"s seven fifty-five, and I still got five minutes."
"That ain"t much," said Vale. "You should be sweating by now."
"Five minutes? I don"t sweat the small stuff."
"You used to." Vale took the coffee Horace brought to him and swirled it once to make sure the sugar was dissolved. "You used to sweat the small stuff and choke on the big stuff. And now you"re gonna choke again when I don"t die by eight."
Lacey"s smile was gone.
"You think I don"t know who you are," said Vale, sipping the coffee and blinking in its steam. "and how you got here and how come you"re so hot. I knew you as soon as you walked in here, Bill Lacey."
Horace spilled his own steaming coffee into the white linen lap of Lacey"s suit, but Lacey didn"t flinch at the scalding liquid.
"Lacey"s dead!" Horace protested, and peered into the dead man"s face.
"I went to the funeral."
"That may be," said Tommy Vale, "but he"s sitting right there, and he"s still a cheap little coward, a cheat, still pulling cheap tricks, trying to cheat me, trying to break me, trying to be the big shot. Sure, he found out from the other side when I was gonna croak, and he took that inside dope and tried to make it pay."
The man with no neck made the sign of the cross over the lapels of his cheap dark suit and found no comfort in the weapon inside it.
Bill Lacey craned his head around on his dingy neck and looked at the Ballantine clock. "It ain"t eight, Tommy Vale."
"You know, Lacey, you should never underestimate the power of the human will. That"s one thing I learned just sitting in this seat for the last thirty years. It"s the doggonedest thing, the human will. Either you got it or you don"t. You were a scared rabbit, you"re gonna be a scared rabbit again. Leaving a wife with TB and two little girls *cause you were scared to face the music."
With one hand Lacey pulled out a small white handkerchief, and with the other he lifted the hat, for the first time revealing his bald head. The bare crown of pallid, stretched flesh made him look weasley and disreputable, cunning and weak. "I lost everything," he said.
"You sure did, you dumb jerk. And you"re gonna lose it all again."
For the first time since he"s awakened with laughter, Vale looked up at the clock.
Lacey, Horace, and the two guardians of the briefcases followed his gaze.
The second hand lurched closer to twelve, and with it went the minute hand. With them both, the hour hand crept closer to eight.
Beep beep beep.
Chime.
Eight o"clock.
The man with no neck grinned, grabbed two briefcases and six hundred thousand dollars, and ran out of Phil"s Bar and Grill, inwardly reflecting on the unreliability, the strangeness, and the disreputable power of dreams.
"Never underestimate the power of the human will," said Tommy Vale again. Then once more he began to laugh.
Lacey stood up, white and sweating. He didn"t look at Vale again. He brushed past Horace. Joined by his darker angel, Lacey hurried toward the door. Vale was grinning and lighting a cigar, but Horace was watching as Bill Lacey and his companion vanished in the murky light beside the pool table.
Vale saw in Horace"s eyes that the two were gone.
"Quick," he said, his grin gone. "Hand me the book."
Vale pulled out his pencil, glanced up at the clock, and began to write: "The Last Will and Testament of Tommy Vale . . ."
"But you beat the odds, boss. You"re still alive," Horace protested.
Vale laughed. "That dumb jerk Lacey. He was always a loser, Horace."
He called out to the ether: "You"re a loser, Lacey!" He continued to write, shaking his head and chuckling. "My time has come. I know that.
My number"s up. But I made a monkey out of that guy, didn"t I, Horace?
When you"re up, remember to set the clock back. He fell for the oldest trick in the book. Setting the clock ahead." Vale shook with laughter and continued to write. "This is good," he said with a gasp, "I"m gonna die laughing."
Horace gaped at him. Vale caught his stare and laughed anew.
"C"mon, c"mon, don"t worry, pal, I"m leaving plenty for you. That is, if you promise you"ll play at my funeral." He pointed the gnawed eraser of his pencil at Horace"s calculator. "Member to set that back too. I particularly liked the sound effects. But for calculatin"?"
Vale tapped the pencil against his noggin and laughed again.
"Horace, get me a soak, will ya? It"s hot in here."
Horace hesitated a moment, but when Vale gave him another confirming nod, he got up and went to the bar. Vale wrote figures in the ledger in the soft, thick lead of the number 1-1/2 pencil. Then he looked at them with satisfaction.
Phil poured two beers from the tap.
"I"m gonna die laughing," Vale said in a low, quiet voice, closing the ledger.
Horace brought the beers back to the booth in the back of Phil"s Bar and Grill.
The number 1-1/2 pencil rolled across the scarred Formica tabletop and dropped on the floor.
"Hey, boss," said Horace, putting down the beers and picking up the pencil.
But Tommy Vale didn"t respond. His ledger shut with honor and profit, Vale leaned comfortably against the wall, smiling and dead.
end.