The Lazarus Syndrome

We sat and pondered for some time while our coffee got cold, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, what I'd let myself become embroiled in. Slowly an idea began to form and gain momentum. "Maybe Lucy can help."

"Lucy, isn't she over in England?" Lou asked.

"Eddie, how would you like a trip to Vermont?"

"Sure thing but you'll have to pay for this one."

"Okay let's go but first we'll need to swing by the bar and hope that Laura Lee hasn't got there before us."

Paula was looking flustered when I walked in. "Gerry, what's going on? Where's Laura Lee? I need help here and the lunch rush hasn't even started."

"Ring Bill and ask him if he can cover for me for now and probably this evening. I don't know where Laura Lee is, and I'm running around like a crazy man trying to find her." She picked up the phone and was dialing as I headed for the stairs. I found the address book where I'd left it and hurried back out, not pausing but still hearing Paula tell me that Bill would be here soon.

I made the call while Eddie filled his cab up for the trip. Lucy seemed surprised and sounded almost pleased to hear from me and gave me instructions on how to get to where she was. We drove in silence, pausing only to get directions when it looked as if we were getting lost. Lucy was waiting for us when we stopped out front of this cabin. She was in the back seat almost before we'd come to a complete stop. "You can tell me what's been going on as we drive back to town." This was followed by a torrent of questions, some of which I could answer with confidence while others I was just guessing and told her so.

I felt her arms snake around my neck and then her lips were on my cheek followed by her voice in my ear. "Gerry, did you miss me?"

"Sure Honey." Even I had to admit that I didn't sound convincing.

"I know that you're confused but there's a logical explanation, but that will have to wait until we get back, I want to see Mom's face when all of this comes out. In the mean time I'm going to convince you that you missed me."

If I was confused before, I was even more confused now. "What about Andy?"

"Who? Oh you mean my late lamented father."

"But he told me that he wasn't your real father."

"That part of what he told you was true. The part that he omitted to tell you because you didn't ask was that he wasn't Andy, you just assumed that he was because he looked like the photo you saw and he was with me." Her whispering in my ear had the same effect as if she was blowing in it, and it was awakening memories in me that I thought that I'd forgotten. I closed my eyes and let her continue with her convincing.

The trip back was uneventful compared to the chaos that welcomed us when we arrived at the precinct house. "Hi Lucy," he said but he hadn't taken in the fact that she was here and not in England. "As soon as you'd gone to who knows where I sent a couple of squad cars over to that warehouse and it looked like all hell had broken loose, there were bodies everywhere." Then it sank in that Lucy was standing there. "What are you doing here, you're supposed to be in England?"

"That's what we wanted everyone to think, but I never left the country. My smart man here found me."

Lou looked confused which wasn't hard, he always looked that way. "Like I was saying all hell had broken loose. Benny was dead, shot by someone, and his goon was sitting on the floor covered in blood, it appears that he had been shot a couple of times but none of them were fatal. One of the men who were there with Laura Lee was also dead and at first we thought that Benny might have shot him but then we found that he didn't have a gun and neither did the big guy. We've put out an APB on Laura Lee and the other guy and we hope that they don't get away, they have a lot of questions that we need answers to."

"Maybe I can fill in a few blanks. The body that you dragged out of the river was Andy Jones, my father."

"That's a relief, I wasn't looking forward to digging him up so that we could dig deeper into his identity." Lou said. "You wouldn't believe how disgusting the smell is"

"The reason he died was the same one that Mom used when she hired Gerry to find him. He had been losing money at the track and he had been being a naughty boy with other women. So whoever it was that made the decisions in this whole mess decided that he had to go and that the finger of blame should point elsewhere. Benny was chosen as a message to other bookies who had any thoughts about trying to stop the operation. You were considered at one point but I wouldn't let them do it."

"Thank you for that." It appears that my being Lucy's lover at the time had its benefits, apart from the obvious. "So what happens now?"

"We can't do much until Laura Lee and her partner turn up although I will need a statement from both of you at some time soon so don't leave town."

We got back to the bar to find the place was packed and Paula and Bill looking just about beat, so Lucy and I jumped in and began pouring drinks. We hardly heard the band above the noise but they had the crowd with them until closing. I sent Paula and Bill home after the last customer had left telling them that we'd clean up. Lucy started washing glasses while I emptied the ash trays and stacked them on the bar while I wiped down the tables. I had just got the bucket and mop from out back when Lou was banging on the door so I let him in.

"We caught up with them about half an hour ago, they were heading for Canada. Laura Lee is singing her head off trying to tell us that her partner was behind the whole deal and offering to spill the beans on everything that he'd planned. We'll still need your statements, if you can come in in the morning we'll take them. This is one mess that I'll be glad to see the end of.

It was around two in the morning by the time that we'd finished and Lucy poured us each a drink and headed for a booth.

"Are you telling me that Laura Lee knew that Andy was dead?" I asked her. Lucy sat opposite sipping on her whisky.

"Of course she did, in fact she killed him months before you were brought into the picture. The whole thing was her plan from start to finish, she had to get rid of him because he wasn't following her instructions, he was betting for himself and losing most of the money that she was winning."

"Wait a minute, just whose idea was this betting scheme?"

"Well I figured it out, but it was her idea, you see he was losing heavily so we discussed it and I suggested that there might be a way of shifting the odds in our favor. I thought about it for a while and then I put together my plan. I tested it for some time before I was satisfied that it would work. At first we used Andy to lay bets, he was to spread them around and not lay it all on one bookie. Then we found that he was placing more than our system bets, and losing, with Benny who was getting a little upset and threatened him. That was when Mom got the idea of killing two birds with one stone, get rid of Andy and fix it so that Benny took the fall for it."

"If Andy had been dead for months before she called me, who was the man that I saw you getting friendly with after you were supposed to have gone back to college, he looked just like the photo she showed me of Andy."

"It was some guy that she knew and who agreed to pose as Andy. Don't tell me that you were jealous of him?" She looked at me with that smile that she used to have when she knew that she was right. "You were, weren't you?"

"Of course not!" But I was, wasn't I? Hell I was in love with Lucy and when she kissed that guy my life was heading for the basement again, so when Laura Lee came onto me I was an active participant in the inevitable.

"If you thought that you had a monopoly on jealousy think again. It was one hell of an argument between Mom and me when I found out that the two of you were together and that you were living here. I called her all kinds of bitch until she sat me down and told me that she would do you for a while and then cut you loose and let me have you."

"Didn't I have any say in your schemes?"

"In a word, no. Look I was in love with you, I'm still in love with you and when the dust settles I'm going to insist that you make an honest woman of me so that your son has a name."

"What? Do you mean to tell me that in the, what is it a year and a half, from when we, you know, and now, in that time you've had a baby that I didn't know about, and that he's mine?"

"Yes." For the first time her mood was subdued. "You wait till you meet him, he looks just like you, and he's smart like you." She looked misty at me as my mind was trying to absorb what she had just said, especially that bit about me being smart, I felt so far from smart right now. "You are smart, you figured out that, while Andy owed the bookies money our scheme didn't, it was the other way around. It was you that warned us that Benny was circling ready to strike and came up with the plan that Andy and I should get out of the country. Only a smart man who was in love with me would have thought of that as a way to keep us safe so that the final part of the scheme would succeed. If you hadn't loved me you would have gone to the police, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"So you did love me, now all I have to hope for is that you'll still love me."

"That body that was fished out of the river, that was Andy wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was Andy, and before you ask, yes he was my real father."

"But if he was killed months before I was called in to look for him, where was his body all this time?"

"Over there." She pointed to the big freezer room in the other corner, the one that held the frozen food for the bar, the one that I hadn't seen the inside of until after I moved in. My stomach churned when I thought of the people, myself included, eating food taken from a freezer that had held a dead body for months.

"So he was taken out of the freezer at the right time, wrapped in a bundle, held in a warehouse until he'd thawed and entrusted to Tony to dispose of thinking that it was Benny that wanted it dumped. And I suggested that you disappear overseas, but you didn't, did you?"

"No, but I did have to disappear for a while and I couldn't risk you or anyone else finding me. Mom has this cabin in Vermont and that's where I hid out and that's where Mike is now, being looked after by my cousin. I think that you know the whole story now."

"Let me tell you it's some story and it'll take a little time for it all to sink in."

"That brings us back to more pressing issues. Do you still love me? Can you still love me knowing what you know about me now?"

Hell that's putting me on the spot. Just what were my feelings for her? My body is telling me that yes, I do love her, and I do want to make love to her, to feel once more the softness of her body, the firmness of those perky little breasts and those puffy nipples, and the warm, wet depths of her pussy holding my cock in its embrace, milking from it every drop of sperm. But my mind was screaming at me to not get involved in this scheming woman who, along with her mother, had deceived me, with both of whom my body had encouraged me to embrace, and look where that got me.

"You can talk now, you can tell me that you still love me." She reached across the table, took my hand and placed it on one of those breasts. I could feel my mind's resolve flying out the door.

"My mind is telling me that you're a devious bitch and I shouldn't get involved with you, but my body is wanting you so much right now that I can't think straight."

She came and sat on my side of the table and her hand stroked my cock through my trousers, teasing him until he was rock hard. "Fuck what my mind is telling me." I slid across the seat and she slid out of the cubicle to let me out. I took her hand and led her upstairs to the bedroom that I'd shared with Laura Lee. My mind was telling me that this was all wrong but my raging hard-on was telling my mind to shut the fuck up. Lucy came into my arms and was once more the focus of my life and I let it happen, after all we had a kid to think about.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, right after I'd come inside her again, Lucy held me tight. "Gerry, you know that I had a couple of guys before I met you? Well, since then there has been no-one. I didn't have sex with anyone because I knew that he wouldn't live up to you. And having just been the recipient of the most intense love making of my life I'm glad that I made that decision. The same I'm sure that you are now aware, can't be said for my mother. I know that she's been seeing her old boss behind your back, but that's her. I'm aware that sex with her would probably be a great experience because she's had a lot of experience and knows what men fantasize about and gives them that. But I'm different, with me you won't have to worry about getting jealous ever again."

I held her to me until my cock was ready for action once more. "This is not something that I learnt from your mother, it's something that she knew nothing of. I admit that she knew how to please my physical me, but I wanted something that filled my spiritual me, so just lie there and experience it with me. I love you Lucy Pretty."

"That sounds perfect, Lucy Pretty. I like it and I'm sure that I'll still be liking it a hundred years from now. Do you mind if I join in with you?"

"Be my guest." We both had to admit that it was the most sublime bit of loving that either of us had ever experienced.

Lou looked at us and shook his head, he knew exactly how we'd spent the night after he'd left us, the fact that we were holding hands and Lucy's saddle sore gait was a dead give-away. We made our statements, much of which contradicted Laura Lee's statement in which she laid the blame squarely on her partner's shoulders. Both of them would swing for what they had done, two counts of murder and one of attempted murder would make sure of that.

Andy Jones hadn't quite done a Lazarus and risen from the dead, but his ghost had jumped up and bitten Laura Lee on the arse. As for Lucy and me, we fetched Mike from Lucy's cousin and he does look a little like me, well a lot like me. I'd never be able to deny it in a paternity suit, that's if I'd wanted to. He's a great kid and I don't think that growing up in a bar will be good for him, but Lucy keeps telling me that she turned out okay. I have to disagree with her here, she turned out better than okay.