Free Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery by Michael Haskins Page A

the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “You don’t look dead.”
    “You should look in the mirror,” Joe Scott said from the next stool. “I think he’s on to something.” He turned to his whisky sour and forgot us.
    “Let me explain.” The Professor turned to me. “I had a dream last night.” He reached for his pipe, and chuckled. “I was so concerned about the purpose of the dream when I left this morning I forgot my tobacco.”
    I nodded and gulped beer to keep from smiling inappropriately.
    “Let me explain,” he said again and pulled his notebook closer.
    I nodded and smiled. He was always researching something and talking about it, but usually it had to do with little known facts or people involved in Keys history.
    “When you die the first time…”
    I had to interrupt. “You die more than once?”
    “Yes,” he said and then went on as if this was a natural conversation. “This is a parallel world because the real Key West exists, we just exist next to it.”
    “The dead?” I bit my cheek again.
    “Yes. So I came here, not knowing I was dead.”
    “And the rest of us?” I finished my beer and waved at Vicki.
    “Just follow along and hold off judgment until I am done,” he said. “Can you do that?”
    “I’ll try.” Normally, I would have found a way to beg off, but after Dick Walsh’s story of remorseless killings and Marshal Dudley Crabtree’s attitude, the Professor was a breath of fresh air—weird, but fresh.
    “How do you know you are dead?” Not a smile, not a sigh, just a straightforward question.
    I shook my head. He had me there. How would I know I was dead? I thought of Walsh saying the woman didn’t even know she was dead when he shot her.
    “Have you ever talked to people who have had a heart attack or been in a serious accident?” He stared at me and when I didn’t answer, he went on. “They don’t remember it. It’s the brain protecting them from a frightening experience. So, you might think you’d remember the pain or the fear before death, but survivors prove that it’s not so. The same brain that protects us if we live through a tragedy transports us when we die, protecting us from the realization of something we fear.”
    He took a drink. He picked up the pipe and then remembered there was no tobacco. “The brain controls everything we do, everything we think; the body can suffer a stroke but researchers say the brain continues to function even though the body has failed. You with me?”
    “I’m following you.” I saw Bob by the cigar kiosk smoking and smiling at me and he had a beer.
    “We’re waiting to die, again,” he said. “We’re supposed to be atoning for our past. It’s our chance for a better afterlife.”
    “You’ve lost me now, Professor.”
    “Confusing, isn’t it?”
    “Just a tad.”
    “I have a lot to work out, but I know I’m right,” he said. “I’m working on what I have to atone for. And, Mick, when I figure it all out, I will let you know but I would look at your life and see what you have to atone for.”
    “I’ll do that, but I’m Catholic and have been forgiven in confession, so what do I atone for?”
    “You are talking religion, this is about the afterlife,” he said, shook his head at my lack of understanding and turned back to his notes and unlit pipe.
    The Professor finished tolerating this fool, so I picked up my beer, Bob’s warm one, and headed to the cigar kiosk before he smoked my cigar.

Chapter 18
    B ob smiled as he took the warm beer from me and placed it on the bar. “You hungry now that you know you’re dead?”
    “Sure.” I grinned and took a drink. “Here?”
    “Shit. You draw crazies like a stable draws flies.”
    I saw Padre Thomas on the other side of the bar and he was walking my way.
    “I’m gonna look for a table and when you’re alone, join me,” Bob said, shaking his head as he walked into the patio.
    I ordered Padre Thomas a Bud and handed it to him when he stopped