Alexander Key
Death Certificate
Short Story
    He came back to life – to kill

He was dead, by due process of law – but still he could walk and talk – and kill...

    Dr. Trueman followed the prison official down the long stone corridor to the triple-locked steel door at the end. The official opened the door, locked it again behind him, and turned left toward the death cell where two guards were kept on duty day and night.
    The guards moved deferentially aside. “You are allowed five minutes to talk,” the official said to Trueman. “Do not stand too close to the door, please.”
    Dr. Trueman peered through the small grill into the death cell. “Hello, Tony,” he said quietly.
    Tony Rizzo pressed his narrow face against the squares of the grill. He was not the same Tony Rizzo, gunman and swaggering idol of small boys, who had to his credit a long list of killings and mock-trial proceedings at the criminal court, the Tony who had always had his way with witness, judge and jury and openly laughed about it afterward. Tony was not laughing now. His face was white and drawn and wet with an oily sweat. His close-set black eyes were bloodshot and feverish. His lower lip hung loose, twitching. By peering sideways beyond Trueman he could see the green door through which, in another eight hours, he would march with the warden and the prison chaplain. Once through that door there would be no returning, unless—
    His eyes wavered upon the door and came back to Trueman. He licked his lips.
    “All set, Doc?” he whispered hoarsely.
    “Everything is ready,” Trueman replied.
    “If – if you can do it, there’s a hundred grand for you,” said Tony. “Don’t forget.”
    “I’m quite aware of it.”
    “You sure – sure it will work?”
    “I’m confident.”
    “It better work. You ain’t earning nothing unless it does.”
    “You can count on me. Remember your instructions?”
    “Okay, Doc.”
    “All right, follow them carefully and it’ll not be hard.”
    Tony’s bloodshot eyes found the green door again. Saliva dripped unheeded down his chin. “Gawd!” he wailed suddenly, knuckles white on the grill. “I don’t want to die!”
    Trueman’s whisper was almost inaudible. “You’ll have to die – first.”
    The official pocketed his watch. “Time is up, sir.”
    “Very well,” said the doctor. His hand moved with a farewell gesture toward the grill. A small, white, specially made capsule, deftly concealed between his fingers, fell into Tony’s waiting palm on the other side. “Good-by, Tony,” he said.
    * * *
    Outside the grim walls of the state prison, Trueman stood a moment and mopped his brow before climbing into his car. He was a small, gray, mild-mannered man and, unlike many city doctors, he preferred to use his skill in serving humanity rather than profiting from it. On his books were some hundreds of patients who would probably never be able to pay a fraction of what they owed; he had never turned his accounts over to a collector, nor had he ever been known to refuse a call when he was needed. Among his colleagues he was often referred to as a fool – and occasionally as a humanitarian and an experimental genius.
    Trueman adjusted his thick glasses and shook his head. He had no stomach for the undertaking he had planned. It was against his creed, against all the ethics of medical practice. Yet, there was a larger good to be considered. It was imperative that he go through with it. Furthermore, he must make no mistakes.
    He was in too deep now, for it had taken every dollar he could borrow or scrape together. Permission to see Rizzo, permits to obtain what he wanted tomorrow morning, all had required the careful distribution of money among many sources of authority. Much of it had gone to the local ward boss. No small amount had surreptitiously gone much higher up....
    On the way back to his office Trueman smiled once at the tightly woven net of politics which had made his plans possible. It was the identical net which had, for years, allowed Tony Rizzo his unrestricted liberty; and, by a fluke, it was the same net that was sending him finally to his death.
    As long as Rizzo paid police protection and confined his killings to an occasional citizen who did not figure too prominently in the scheme of things, he was treated with tolerance. But in a freak pay-roll stickup, Tony had blundered. He had made the mistake of riddling a paunchy bystander with machine gun bullets. It was dismaying to learn that the paunchy gentleman was a figure of considerable power in state affairs, and that he had lived long enough to mention Tony’s name. Justice gave her sly chuckle and condemned Tony Rizzo to the chair.
    Dr. Trueman parked his car on a small side street several blocks from a fashionable residential district, and went up to the dingy rooms that served as his office and living quarters. He stopped before a table in the waiting room and gazed several minutes at an architect’s model of a large building laid out like a white cross between its plantings of clipped sponge trees. A label at one corner read: Child Research Hospital.
    The building site had been purchased, the ground excavated and the foundations laid. But for six months now the Child Research Hospital had been only an empty hole in the ground
    Dr. Trueman’s small, precise lips drew tight and he hurried into the inner office. Hardly seven hours remained, and there was much work to be done.
    * * *
    The steel door in the outer corridor clicked open; there came the slow tramp of feet toward the death cell. Tony Rizzo shook with a sudden spasm of trembling. His face was dry now, and cold, even though the sultry summer day made the interior of the building stifling. He tried to remember Trueman’s instructions, but the sound of a key grating in the lock drove all reason from his mind and sent him into a corner, eyes glassy and his narrow hawk features contorted and white.
    The chaplain entered and spoke soothingly; Rizzo’s twitching, nerve-shattered hands clawed him away.
    The big warden’s slow drawl filled the cell. “Come, Tony, this is no way for you to write the last chapter. You got a lot of publicity at the trial. Folks are talking about you, wondering how you’ll take it. Across the hall the newspaper boys are waiting; sure now, don’t you want ’em to give you a big send-off in the afternoon editions?”
    Rizzo licked his dry lips. He looked up. The warden’s speech came to him as from a gray mist. Slowly he grasped the import of it and some of his old vanity began to return. He remembered, too, what Trueman had said. His hand fumbled at his waist, wiped across his mouth. A small hard capsule went under his tongue. The feel of it brought assurance. He’d show them! He’d show them something they’d never dreamed before!
    “Okay,” he said. “No, I don’t want your damned religion!” he snarled, pushing the chaplain aside. “And don’t put that black cloth on my head, either. This is my party, and I ain’t missing any of it!”
    When they led him through the green door, Tony Rizzo was almost his swaggering self again.
    He did not at first see the chair on its dais at the end of the room. The place was filled with silent, seated figures, pale faces and slowly moving eyes watching his final journey. He recognized some of them; there was Jim Scheff of the Globe, Polk of the Evening World. He grinned at them and waved his free hand. “Hi, Jim; hi, fellows! Tell the world I knew how to take it as well as give it! See you all in hell some day!”
    No one answered.
    Suddenly Tony saw the chair. A convulsion shook him and he automatically bit the capsule in two, swallowed it. It was what Trueman had told him to do, but the action was involuntary, brought about by the cold horror that shot through him like a thousand twisting knives.
    He had given death to others, many others. He had watched some of them die, laughed as their hands clutched pitifully at an earth they did not want to leave.
    But this was different. In spite of Trueman, in spite of the inordinate amount of ice in his blood, Tony Rizzo had no philosophy strong enough to sustain him now.
    He shrieked. He tried to tear away. Blunt fingers tightened about his arms, drew him down. Brass bands clamped over his wrists, his ankles, his forehead. He screamed. “I don’t wanna die! Oh, Gawd! Make them stop! Make them—”
    A black cloth slipped over his head. The warden and the chaplain spoke briefly....
    For awhile after it was over the room held the silence of the tomb.
    Men stirred finally; there was the sigh of expelled breath from two-score throats and a running murmur of conversation from the line that filed hurriedly away from the death chamber. “One rat less... thought he’d crack at the last... why the devil he didn’t get it five years ago... never did like these assignments... no, there won’t be anyone to claim the stiff ... no relatives....”
    No one to claim the body? Jim Scheff of the Globe stopped. There was an idea. If he could get a good angle on it, the thing might work up into a Sunday feature. He turned and went back after the warden.
    * * *
    Dr. Trueman’s rented ambulance was parked within the shadow of the prison wall beside the supply entrance of the hospital wing. Three times he checked the equipment inside; the oxygen tank and mask, the electric stimulating unit which he had invented himself, the sterilized implements in a glass box near the stretcher.
    He went up to the steel door of the ward, waiting with his watch in his hand, his precise lips becoming a little tighter as the minutes ticked away. In a little room beyond the door, he knew, Tony Rizzo lay upon a stone slab, his nude body growing colder with each passing second. By state law, an electrocuted man would have to lie there a full hour before being moved. Trueman had argued, had pleaded, had tried by every possible means to have the time shortened. Other requests had been granted, but in this he had failed.
    Tony Rizzo would be dead when he left the chair. When he left the stone slab an hour later, his death certificate would be signed and he would be officially dead, as dead as cold meat in a butcher shop refrigerator.
    Trueman winced. That lost hour trebled his chance of failure. Other obstacles worried him – the heavy traffic at this hour of the morning; the possibility of some nosey reporter seeing him leave the prison....
    The ward door opened abruptly. A hard-faced interne grinned down at him. “All right, Doc. Here’s that damn stiff you wanted.”
    The interne helped him place Rizzo in the ambulance. Doctor Trueman hurried the fellow away, snapped the doors closed, and moving faster than he had ever moved in his life, went through with the preliminary work before starting back to the office. He shot adrenalin into the dead man’s heart, a crimson solution into his veins, attached the oxygen mask and electric plates, bound hot blankets over him, and then sprang into the driver’s seat.
    The ambulance roared through the courtyard. It stopped before the prison gates to be checked past, finally whirled out into the cobbled street leading to the city.
    Doctor Trueman did not at first see the small coupé that came doggedly up the hill behind him. He noticed it briefly in the mirror when he pressed the ambulance siren going downhill, but it was not until he was winding through the opening lanes of traffic ahead, siren screaming, speedometer needle creeping towards seventy, that he knew he was being followed.
    He cursed softly and spun on two wheels into a side street between rows of warehouses. For a minute he stopped using the siren, then turned it on again as he gained another thoroughfare. Once more traffic gave him the right of way.
    Every second counted now. In ten minutes Tony Rizzo must be on the operating table in his office. Secrecy was almost as important. If the newspapers got a word of this...
    The coupé was still behind him.
    Cars were slowing ahead. Now he could see a railroad crossing, a red light swinging, black and white gates being lowered.
    Trueman swerved to the middle of the street; the ambulance picked up speed, flashed past the idling machines, and in another instant was beyond the crossing, a small section of a splintered gate slapping wildly against one fender.
    When his eyes sought the mirror he saw that a freight train blocked the crossing. The coupé was not in sight.
    Eight minutes later Doctor Trueman’s ambulance was in the blind alley behind his building and he was struggling unaided, to carry the body of Tony Rizzo up the back stairs, to his office. That difficult task accomplished, he splashed cold water on his face, downed a tumbler of whisky he had prepared for himself two hours previously, drew on a pair of rubber gloves and went swiftly to work upon the most delicate surgical operation he had ever undertaken....
    Hours later he sank wearily into a chair, too tired to remove the instruments from the enameled tray beside the operating table. Tony Rizzo, swathed in a blanket, still lay upon the table. A fold in the blanket exposed his hand, to which a small dial was lightly attached.
    Doctor Trueman’s eyes never left that dial. With little measured jerks, the needle flicked right and left to the slow beat of Tony Rizzo’s heart!
    * * *
    One morning nearly five weeks after the electrocution of the notorious Tony Rizzo at the state prison, Doctor Trueman unlocked a bedroom in the rear of his office and placed a breakfast tray beside a thin, hawk-faced man who sat propped up in bed thumbing through the previous day’s newspaper. The fellow had close-set black eyes and a wiry, month-old black beard.
    Trueman’s precise mouth wore an enigmatic smile. “Well, well! And how is Mister, ah – Nonesuch this morning?”
    “I wish the hell you’d stop calling me that,” growled the man in bed. “That ain’t my name.”
    “Correct. Actually, you have no name. The one you persist in referring to as your own belongs to a dead man. You are, ah, a physiological wonder, some thirty days old, unregistered and nameless, with the physical and, generously speaking, the mental, equipment of an adult male apparently thirty-five years of age. One must use some appellation in referring to you. I find ‘Nonesuch’ very fitting for the occasion.”
    “Yeah? – well try and forget it. When you going to let me out of here?”
    “I’m coming to that,” the doctor pursued quietly. “There is the matter of a hundred thousand dollars or so in bonds which I would like to discuss with you.”
    The man in bed stiffened; his jet eyes widened and went half closed again. “How the hell did you know it was in bonds?”
    “The point is immaterial. The vital issue is the location of those bonds.”
    “You ain’t going to get them by keeping me locked up in this room. Why the hell don’t you bring me some clothes?”
    “My dear fellow, have you ever considered what a shock it might be to some people if you were seen on the street Even with your beard, your resemblance to a certain dead man is uncanny. He, too, occasionally wore a beard, to judge by many pictures that appeared in the papers.”
    Mr. Nonesuch got out of bed and stood swaying on his feet. “Get me some clothes,” he whined. “If you won’t do it, I’ll take some of yours.”
    “Easy!” said the doctor. “Your heart has had violent treatment in the past month. You must give it a rest. Besides, my clothes would never fit you. You are a much thinner man than I, and a great deal taller.”
    Mr. Nonesuch sank into a chair, his cold, shifty eyes glaring up at the doctor. In spite of certain ordeals which he had been through, his heart was in passable condition, as Doctor Trueman had reason to know. But for the time being it was just as well that Mr. Nonesuch thought otherwise.
    “Some time ago,” said Trueman, “before a certain interesting event, we made an agreement together. I have fulfilled my end of it. I am waiting for you to fulfill yours.”
    “Okay,” the other growled sullenly. “Go to the post office and ask for the letter addressed to Austin Jones in Box 3011. Just tell ’em you’re Jones and that you lost the key.” He wrote the name on a piece of paper. “Here’s the way I made the signature in case they think you’re the wrong guy. Inside the letter is a locker ticket from the Satterly Express Company, and a locker key. You know the joint. It’s near the Union Station, and a lot of commuters rent permanent lockers there. You’ll find the stuff in a suitcase.”
    “Thank you,” said Doctor Trueman. “I will join you again at noon with the, ah, swag.”
    He bowed, went out, and locked the door behind him.
    Mr. Nonesuch remained in his chair, black eyes narrowed thoughtfully. When he heard Trueman go down the back stairs to the garage, he got up and moved towards the door. From the pocket of his dressing robe he took out a small pen-knife and inserted the blade carefully between the bolt and the door casing. The door swung open.
    In the rear office he reached hesitantly for the telephone, but set it down without lifting the receiver. It would be better, he decided, to wait until later before ordering a quantity of men’s clothing to be delivered by special messenger to Doctor Trueman’s office. The delivery might occur at an inconvenient moment.
    He turned and went through the other rooms, searching skillfully through every drawer and cupboard until he found the thing he wanted.
    * * *
    Doctor Trueman’s light-hearted manner vanished as he drove towards the post office. Now that his unprecedented undertaking was nearing a successful climax, a number of things were beginning to worry him. During his patient’s convalescence he had turned his practice over to another doctor in order to keep entirely to his rooms and allow no inkling of his secret to become known. However, there was always the possibility that information might have leaked from some other source.
    He placed no faith in the surly Mr. Nonesuch; the Austin Jones letter and the Satterly Express locker might well be a timely red herring to get him away while his patient carried out plans of his own. Still, he had taken steps to circumvent any course of action the other might choose to follow.
    There was one more matter that caused him deep concern. Granting that he obtained the bonds, what would be the best method of closing his dealings with the man who had occupied his rear bedroom during the past five weeks? Should he allow him to go free as he had formerly promised? Doctor Trueman had made many promises in order to obtain what he wanted, and being an ethical man, he preferred to keep bis word. But there were other ethics to be considered. Social ones. Had he been experimenting with a virulent and deadly disease germ, he would have preferred death rather than to allow it to escape into the world.
    He knew it would be foolish to turn his problem over to the police. The law specifically states that a man cannot be twice placed in jeopardy for the same crime; furthermore, having once paid the supreme penalty, that man’s case is considered forever closed.
    Doctor Trueman shook his head. Then, as he neared his first destination, his precise lips began to set in harder, firmer lines.
    The letter addressed to Austin Jones was in Box 3011 and he obtained it with no difficulty. Nor did he have any trouble removing a heavy gladstone bag from the locker room of the Satterly Company. Back in his car, he made certain that the bonds were all there – not only the one hundred thousand dollars’ worth that Mr. Nonesuch had admitted, but the additional number totalling three times that amount which he had hoped to find.
    Doctor Trueman went to his bank, then drove quickly home.
    He entered by the rear door, locked it behind him, and hurried into his office. He was not surprised to see the bedroom door open, nor was he greatly alarmed when a cold voice ordered him to put the gladstone bag upon the table.
    Mr. Nonesuch, clean-shaven now but still attired in a dressing robe, slid into the office. In his hand was Doctor Trueman’s pistol.
    * * *
    Mr. Nonesuch laughed shortly. His black eyes were snaky, deadly. There was no mercy in them, not one iota of human feeling.
    “Okay, Doc. Maybe I shouldn’t rub you out, but I need all that dough – and I can’t afford to let a guy like you live. You know too damn much.”
    “Before you do anything precipitate,” the doctor said quietly, “there are several things I would like to tell you. First, Mr. Nonesuch—”
    “My name is Tony Rizzo,” snarled the other.
    “Sorry, but Tony Rizzo is dead. Officially dead. Have you ever considered what effect that has on you?”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “I mean that you, yourself, can lay no claim to even being alive. You have no birth certificate, no status as a man, no nationality, no name, nothing. You are only a living organism, but beyond that fact you do not even exist.”
    “Funny, ain’t you. If I ain’t nobody, then I can’t burn for blasting down on you.”
    “Before you do it, you might open the bag.”
    The fellow jerked the gladstone towards him. “It – it’s empty!” he cried hoarsely. “Damn you, you double-crossed me! Talk, and talk quick! Where’d you put the stuff?”
    “Never mind that. The first double-cross was yours. I was afraid you might try this, so—” Trueman took a step forward.
    A strangled scream of rage and hate burst from the other’s distorted mouth. The pistol spat once, twice.
    The shots produced no effect other than to whip Trueman nearer, fist swinging. Another shot scorched his face; at the same instant his knuckles crashed on a narrow jaw and the fellow went down. The doctor wrested the pistol away, stood up. He turned the cylinder rapidly.
    “You are in no condition for a fight, Mr. Nonesuch. Besides, the first four shells in the gun were blanks. I was afraid this would happen, hence the substitution. But the last two cartridges are good.” The doctor sighed with an air of finality. “I am faced with a strange predicament. The only solution is to reduce you to the physical state in which I found you five weeks ago. In short, you must die. And this time you must stay dead.”
    The former Tony Rizzo groped to his knees. He tried to speak, but the horror of the absolute which he knew he faced now held him mute. He had died once, and returned. He would die again, quickly – and there would be no returning.
    Doctor Trueman pulled the trigger twice.
    * * *
    He tossed the empty gun aside, turned, and started. From the open door of the reception room, a bony, redfaced young man stared at him. His hat was pushed on the back of his head; a cigarette dangled precariously from the corner of his open mouth.
    “Who are you?” spoke Doctor Trueman. “How did you get in here?”
    The stranger entered the office warily, took a long drag from his cigarette. He ran a big hand over his red face. “I’m – I’m Jim Scheff of the Globe,” he said jerkily. “I followed your ambulance that day. You’d taken off your license plates; had a devil of a time tracing you. Lord! I would have to jimmy your door and walk in on a murder!”
    “There was no murder, my dear fellow.”
    “Huh? Are you nuts? Didn’t I just see you bum the guy down?”
    “You, ah, might have a look at him.”
    “All right, but don’t try any tricks. I got a gun too.”
    Scheff moved quickly around the table. He stopped. He went rigid. “Good Lord!” he breathed.
    “There was no murder,” the doctor repeated.
    “I – I don’t get it!” Scheff’s voice was a hoarse, amazed whisper, “I thought you had something funny up your sleeve – but this! You mean you revived the punk – then killed him again? Why?”
    “I’ll explain,” said Trueman, “upon the condition that you do not print it.”
    “Not print it? The biggest story of the year? Nuts! How d’you think you’re going to keep it quiet when the police come?”
    “The police will not come. If they did, they would find only the somewhat mutilated body of a dead man that I legitimately obtained for experimental purposes. You have no witnesses. Your ridiculous story would be laughed at.”
    “Go on,” growled Scheff. “I’m listening.”
    “Very well, my friend. Several months ago, just before he committed the crime which brought him to the chair, Tony Rizzo held up a messenger who was delivering a gladstone bag containing bonds which a philanthropic patient of mine had donated. The money from the bonds was to be used for the completion of a children’s hospital, the model of which you doubtless saw in the reception room.” Trueman’s voice suddenly became uneven and his knuckles showed white upon clenched hands. “Had it not been for Rizzo, the hospital would now be in operation. Many children from impoverished families in this district have died lately. With the new equipment I had planned, I – I could have saved them. But I digress. Before I could attempt recovery of the bonds, Rizzo was indicted for a new murder, tried, and speedily sentenced to die. I managed to see him, learned that he had a gladstone bag containing a fortune safely hidden somewhere – but I had to agree to do certain things before he would tell me its location.” The doctor sighed. “I recovered the bonds this morning and delivered them to the bank. As for the rest – you have doubtless heard of the recent more or less successful attempts at revivification. I do not believe it has previously been attempted with a human being. In fact, I have here carried through a remarkable experiment which must, unfortunately, remain forever unknown....”
    “Well I’ll be a—” Scheff sat down slowly, dropped the cigarette butt that had burned to his fingers. “Yes, I heard about those experiments – out West, wasn’t it? But – how the devil do you figure on getting around this murder business?”
    The doctor’s eyebrows lifted.
    “My dear fellow, there was no murder. You cannot kill a dead man! Tony Rizzo died five weeks ago. Here is his death certificate, properly made out and signed by the warden and the prison doctor.” Trueman took a slip of paper from his pocket and laid it upon the table. “Does that satisfy you? Are you still anxious to print an impossible story that no soul on earth would believe?”
    “You win,” Scheff said finally. “If you’ve got a drink around here, for the Lord’s sake pour me one.”
    “Gladly,” said the doctor. “I feel the need of one myself.”

    1936
    (Argosy, vol. 268, #5, November 14, pp.118-125)

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