The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart
him the news on Monday, and it was also discouraging that the Japanese insisted that Larry provide a complete accounting of every trade to good old Akito, who was staying on in New York as manager of their New York branch. Knowing that Akito and a many-billion-dollar bank were watching over his shoulder made each tiny reversal that week twice as painful as usual. Now. just when it would be most helpful for a few of his indicators to work like clockwork, they were working like Mexican jumping beans, only with even less reliable predictability.
Jeff Cannister came into Larry’s office on Thursday of that week looking as hunched-over and pale as Larry had ever seen him.
‘The sky is falling,’ said Jeff blankly and, without another word, left as quickly as he’d entered.
Larry stared after him for a long moment and then had the uneasy feeling that Jeff had finally flipped: that the losses, which were unnerving the usually cool-headed Larry, had crushed the last remnant of sanity of the excitable Jeff. With reluctance and dread he shuffled out of his office to find Jeff and see just how serious it was.
Jeff was standing in the middle of the large open office area and staring blankly at a monitor in an unoccupied cubicle. Larry eased up to him cautiously.
‘How’s it going?’ Larry asked with as much casualness as his frayed nerves could manufacture.
‘The sky is falling,’ said Jeff, in the same dull voice he’d used in the office, a nerve jumping in his jawline.
‘Uh, how badly is it falling?’ asked Larry carefully. ‘Has it broken through support areas?’
Jeff continued to stare at the monitor for a long moment and then turned blankly to Larry.
‘The centre will not hold,’ Jeff announced dully.
‘Which centre?’ asked Larry, hoping no one was watching, no one hearing.
‘The centre,’ announced Jeff.
‘Ahhh,’ said Larry, ‘that one.’
‘The market’s in free fall,’ went on Jeff.
Larry glanced quickly at the monitor to reassure himself that Jeff was not reporting a factual condition of the market and saw that the stock market was doing nothing unusual. In fact, none of the futures markets was doing anything unusual either, unless you counted losing money for BB&P.
‘Free fall,’ echoed Larry nervously.
‘The nail is in the coffin,’ said Jeff.
‘Ahhh.’
‘The last helicopter has left the roof.’
Larry took Jeff gently by the elbow and began to steer him towards the elevators. There was a doctor on duty on the third floor, a psychiatrist actually, for exactly this son of development.
‘Après moi, le déluge,’ said Jeff.
Larry smiled heartily at a Vice-President for Business Affairs whom they passed.
‘Mighty Casey has struck out,’ announced Jeff.
At the elevators Larry pushed the down button and waited impatiently. He suddenly realized that Jeff was the calmest Larry had ever seen him, pale and dull-eyed, but totally calm.
‘The missiles have left their silos and no one remembers the recall code,’ said Jeff, looking suddenly at Larry with a slight frown of worry.
‘It’s just war games,’ Larry suggested.
Jeff stared at him for a minute, and then, as the elevator arrived, sighed.
‘And worst of all,’ said Jeff, and at last his face broke into its more familiar lines of anxiety and pain and his voice became a cry of anguish, ‘our gold positions are down another point and a half.’
Of course as soon as Jeff began wailing uncontrollably about a point and a half movement in the price of gold, Larry knew he was totally sane and needed no medical help.
When Miss Claybell had exhausted the resources of the NY Public Library I had her begin calling the New York City Police Department to see if they were still involved in the case. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on what mood I was in, no one seemed ever to have heard of Luke Rhinehart, repeatedly suggesting to Miss Claybell that she try lost and found. When Miss Claybell asked about the Lieutenant Nathaniel Putt who had been a prominent pursuer of Luke twenty years before, no one had heard of Putt either. Finally she located a Detective Cooper in the 20th Precinct who was reputedly an old friend of Putt’s, and he agreed to talk to me.
He turned out to be a hollow-voiced man who listened stonily until I mentioned the Dice Man.
‘Oh, Jesus, him,’ he said affably. ‘That guy just about drove Putt into the loony bin.’
‘You remember the case?’
‘Sure,’ said Cooper. ‘I mean how many guys accused of something tell us the dice told them to do it? Drove Putt bananas. One day this guy Rhinehart would confess to half the things we were after him for, and the next he’d say the dice had told him to lie in confessing, but that now the truth was that he was innocent. ’Course the dice told him to say that too. Poor Putt.’
‘Where might I find him?’
‘Putt thought Rhinehart was a murderer, embezzler, rapist, forger, traffic violator and general all-round menace.’ Cooper went on, ignoring the question. ‘But until that lime he helped those Commie radicals raid the TV station he could never prove anything. Had to go after him for breaking FCC regulations. Putt was on the case for seven months officially and two years after that on his own – after Rhinehart jumped bail.’
‘Did he find any leads?’
‘Not so you’d notice,’ said Cooper. ‘He got pretty closed-mouth about it after a while, though. A little nuts, you know? He told me once just before he left the force that he prayed every night that God would give the man what he deserved. “What’s that?” I asked. “Castration and dismemberment,” says Putt.’ Detective Cooper laughed.
‘Do you have any idea how I might locate this Mr Putt?’ I pressed again, irritably.
‘Sure,’ said Cooper. ‘Try the FBI. Putt got his law degree and joined the bureau. He likes to wear suits.’
I couldn’t decide whether to pursue the Putt lead into the FBI or not. It seemed a little silly to go and ask them where Luke was when just two weeks before they had come to me with the same question. Instead I decided to see what I could find out from the World Star.
Kurt Lyman was a ton of fun. He received me in his office at the World Star with a hearty handshake and a big grin. He was a small wiry man whose conviviality seemed inconsistent with his slight build. His office was a mess and throughout our talk a chunky secretary kept scurrying in and out, scavenging for papers or notes either on the desk or in a file cabinet, but ignoring Lyman and me as if we were custodial help.
‘So you’re the guy’s son, huh?’ asked Lyman after he had motioned me to a chair still slightly buried in papers and had himself sprawled back in the tip back chair behind his desk. ‘He must be raking in millions, right?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ I answered irritably. ‘I haven’t seen him in years and need to locate him.’
‘Hey, if I had a daddy who was worshipped by thousands of assholes with money I’d want to find him too.’
I did a wondrous job of not showing active displeasure.
‘You indicated in your article that no one seemed to know for sure where this Luke Rhinehart was,’ I went on. ‘Do you have any ideas about where I might look for my father or how I might find him? I assume you have a lot of material that you didn’t include in your article.’
‘Hey,