The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart

said Kim, smiling. She moved to peer down the companionway into the salon.

      I looked at her rounded rear and grimaced. How I hated a behind like that, a cute behind that pretended it didn’t know it was cute – one of the prime sources of chaos loose in the universe.

      Kim turned back to me, shaking her head.

      ‘I like canoes,’ she said, sitting down again, this time on the settee opposite me.

      ‘Me too.’

      ‘Then why’d you buy this monster?’ she asked.

      ‘I thought you said it was nice,’ I said, meeting her gaze evenly. What a little bitch.

      ‘Well?’

      ‘Because I can afford it,’ I said.

      ‘You can afford to help the poor too, or the arts. Done much of that lately?’

      ‘Not much,’ I said, wondering why she had it in for me – unless she was attracted to me as I was to her, and it was annoying her the way it was me.

      She turned away and let her eyes follow Akito, slowly receding towards the lighthouse in the runabout.

      ‘Me neither,’ she said unexpectedly.

      ‘Are you always this critical of people you meet?’

      ‘No. Only a few. I can never understand why rich people spend money the way they do. Jerks can never give me an interesting answer. I thought you might.’

      Akito had reached the lighthouse and seemed to be slowly circling it.

      ‘I think we spend most of it in order to make sure we’ll be able to have more to spend,’ I answered quietly. ‘And to make sure that other people know we have it.’

      She nodded and looked away.

      ‘What a waste,’ she said.

      ‘Why do you spend your money?’ I asked.

      She laughed.

      ‘To eat,’ she said. ‘To keep the rain out. Say,’ she added, turning suddenly serious, ‘I think you ought to know that Honoria’s a lot nicer than she seems.’

      ‘Well, I would hope so,’ I said, laughing.

      ‘No, I mean it,’ said Kim with unaccustomed sincerity. ‘She comes across as cool and controlled, but I want to assure you, underneath all that is a heart of steel.’

      This time we both laughed.

      ‘She’s the only rich relative that I ever have any real fun with – except some of the men, of course, who figure that since I’m usually penniless I must be easy. Nori’s a little spoiled, but too bright to be a snob like the rest of them.’

      ‘Thanks for the data,’ I said, still grinning, ‘although I’m not sure I’ll quote you to her. By the way, where do you plan to work now that you’re back east again?’

      Akito was now on his way back.

      ‘Beats me,’ she said. ‘I’m good at a lot of things, but most of them aren’t marketable. I can chart an astrological sign, maybe get in touch with some spirit from some other dimension, but the esoteric is unfortunately not very interested in money.’

      ‘Do the spirits ever tell you anything about the future?’ I asked, smiling at myself for even now looking for an insider angle.

      ‘Not really,’ said Kim, as she stood and shaded her eyes to stare at the approaching Akito. ‘She – the spirit – tells me to get off my butt and get a job, to stop living hand to mouth, stop mooching off rich Uncle William.’ She turned to me with a smile, her damn eyes glowing as if she were approaching orgasm. ‘No matter how many times I ask, it still tells me to work and settle down. A million spirits on the astral plane and I get a Republican free-enterpriser.’ She shook her head.

      I couldn’t help smiling back.

      ‘I might be able to find something for you – not necessarily at BB&P.’

      ‘That’d be more mooching,’ she said. ‘Besides,’ she added over her shoulder as she stood to greet the returning Akito, ‘you’ve got your quest to worry about.’

      ‘Oh, yes, that,’ I said, although my gaze and thoughts were again on a cute behind.

11

      But that evening, back alone in my East Village apartment, I did begin to worry about my quest. My father’s fresh intrusion into my life wasn’t as distressing as his ancient departure, but it was bad enough. The decision to find my father was exhilarating, much more a challenge than a burden, even though part of the thrill was the danger involved. If I ignored the FBI and the tabloid article then I’d have no control over what might explode next on to the public scene, not to mention what Mr Battle might do about it. On the other hand, if I actually found Luke, could I really hope to get him to cool it until I was safely married and had stashed away my first few million? It seemed doubtful.

      And what if my father were innocent of Lukedom and of whatever the FBI was after him for, perhaps even leading a dull, conventional life that would satisfy Mr Battle that he was as good as dead? Maybe Luke was a harmless eccentric, being used by others for nefarious purposes. That was it! My father was a dupe, a fallguy! But I was a little depressed at this image of my father; I preferred the darker, more compelling image of some hidden malevolent power manipulating strings behind the scenes. Still, innocent dupe or harmless corpse were both solutions to the threat hanging over me.

      As I paced back and forth across my large loft living room, from the wall of bookcases with scruffy paperbacks to my trading corner with computers and fax and reference books, I realized that I felt more engaged by this decision to find my father than I had by anything in years. It almost seemed as if I’d been treading water most of my life but now at last was starting to swim out at full power. Confronting my father and all he had done to poison my life – and was now doing again! – seemed right, seemed to energize my being in a way my trading and getting and spending wasn’t. At last I was to meet the enemy. The great personal quest of my life had begun.

      Larry’s highly personal quest naturally included using his secretary, and Miss Claybell proved to be as efficient a demon digging into Luke Rhinehart’s past as she was at digging into the dirt behind corporate reports. From the New York Library she brought Larry back copies of an amazing array of old newspaper and magazine articles about Luke and his dice followers, most from the early seventies; after that Luke dropped from sight. Occasionally they stumbled upon some reference to him in more recent articles or books about the counterculture of the sixties and early seventies, most references referring to him in the past tense – as if he were already dead.

      In fact, Miss Claybell discovered two or three pulp magazines that did in fact report his death. One story had Luke tragically dying while wrestling with an alligator – a one chance in thirty-six option supposedly chosen by the dice. Since the alligator had ended up with the upper third of Luke’s body, identification was a bit tenuous, but The Investigator was certain of the facts.

      Another story had Luke dying of a heart attack while enjoying an orgy at one of his still existing dice centre communes. In this case, reported The Nation’s Reporter, Luke’s body had been cremated in an elaborate religious ceremony attended by all eighty of the commune members. One former ‘bride’ allegedly tried to throw herself on the funeral pyre, but was restrained by less fanatic hands.

      There were also references to Dr Jake Ecstein, Luke’s old friend and colleague, and to the numerous articles and books Jake had written in the seventies about chance and personality. But references to Jake too tailed off to nothing. The library seemed to be a dead end.

      And in other ways too that week was an unproductive one for Larry. He was trading exactly as he had for most of the last four years, but remained in his trading