The Second Coming of Lucas Brokaw

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  The Second Coming of Lucas Brokaw

  Matthew Braun

  To My Folks

  Who lighted the path

  I change, but I cannot die. . . .

  I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

  And out of the caverns of rain,

  Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb

  I arise and unbuild it again.

  —Shelley

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Can you believe that a man as wealthy as Howard Hughes or J. Paul Getty would go quietly to his grave without at least trying to cling to his fortune? The super, rich—men of power and a sense of their own immortality, men who have amassed fabulous wealth despite taxes and government and wily competitors-would not go gentle into the dark, meekly accepting the axiom "You can't take it with you."

  No. They would search for still another loophole or legal maneuver to escape the inevitable. In fact, I do not believe that such men ever truly resign themselves to the finality of death. Nor are they easily parted from all they cherished throughout life. I am supported in this belief by the experience of a man who did succeed in taking it with him. His name was Lucas Brokaw, and this book is his story.

  Matthew Braun

  PROLOGUE

  June 25, 1947

  His horse faltered and broke stride.

  All around him the battle raged, punctuated by shrill war cries and the garbled sounds of death. Dust rose thicker above the hill, mixed with the billowy dinge of powder smoke, blotting out the sun. Under the haze, flashes of gunfire blinked like golden fireflies. Arrows slithered past, swift and angry, whispering on the wind. A wayward slug whumped into flesh, splattering blood across the saddle. His horse suddenly went down, tumbling headlong beneath him, and he leaped clear of the stirrups. Clutching his carbine, he hit the ground in a rolling dive that left him stunned and gasping for breath.

  As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Custer, roaring commands and gesturing like a madman, urging what was left of the battalion toward the top of the hill. Fewer than fifty men were still alive, and Sioux warriors were pressing them from the rear and on both flanks. There was only one way to go. Uphill. And fast. Take the high ground and hold it until the regiment came to their support. The general apparently meant to do just that. Rally the men back to back and make a stand. Buy themselves some time, and with it, their only hope of salvation.

  An icy terror suddenly swept over the sergeant. He was afoot and alone, the last of the rear guard, cut off from the general by a long stone's throw. With more goddamned Indians at his heels than he'd ever seen. Or believed imaginable. And he already knew what hostiles did to live captives. Especially the Sioux. Unnerved, all thought shunted aside, he simply reverted to instinct.

  Hugging the ground, he sprinted forward, leaping across the bodies of men and horses. Custer had everyone dismounted now, fanned out in a rough crescent around the guidon. Yet there was no sense of panic. The troopers were loading and firing like seasoned veterans, pouring volley after volley into the crazed horde below them. Miraculously unscathed, the sergeant quickly closed the gap, dodging and twisting under a hail of covering fire. Then, just as he reached the line, too late for anyone to react, the trap was sprung. A wave of mounted Sioux came boiling over the crest of the hill.

  Their leader, astride a bay gelding, was brandishing a rifle and blowing shrill blasts on an eagle-bone whistle. Behind him, a hundred warriors charged down the slope, followed by another hundred and then a hundred more. The air came alive with the whine of bullets and the feathery hiss of arrows. At last, struck from behind, surrounded on all sides, the troopers broke and ran. Yet, to the sergeant, these were swift and fleeting images, distinctly etched but somehow apart. His eyes were fastened on the general, and he froze in numbed disbelief.

  Amidst the slaughter and swirling carnage, he saw Custer stagger, grievously wounded. Then the general steadied himself, legs stiffly braced, and coolly, quite deliberately, placed a pistol to his head. There was a puff of smoke, and Custer's skull exploded in a burst of crimson mist. A moment later he vanished beneath the hooves of the onrushing war ponies.

  The sergeant was aghast, unable to credit his own eyes. It simply wasn't possible. Not what he'd seen. Not the general! It was a coward's death, lacking either glory or pride. An act unbefitting any fighting man. Unforgivable if the man's name was Custer.

  Abruptly jolted from his funk, he saw a howling Sioux bearing down on him, war club upraised. His jaws tightened, his teeth clenched, but he made no effort to escape the blow. He merely stood there, staring calmly at the warrior, waiting with a sense of utter resignation. A moment ago it had all ceased to matter.

  He simply didn't give a damn. Not now.

  The dream was always the same. Never quite ending. Like a single frame in a newsreel, suspended forever in space and motion. The war club upraised and the cavalry sergeant calmly resigned to the last. Yet it bothered Lucas Brokaw not at all. Nor was he left to ponder the meaning of this grisly cliff-hanger. He knew what happened and why and to whom. And these days, curiously enough, the dream revitalized him. He felt young again, full of piss and vinegar, as if each new dawn was a rare and tantalizing challenge created especially for his benefit. Which in a very real sense was precisely the case.

  Alert and rested, fully restored by his afternoon nap, he rolled out of bed, favoring his right leg, and padded barefoot to the bathroom. It occurred to him that he would never have need of pajamas again, and he casually tossed them in the direction of the dirty clothes hamper. Then he stepped into the shower stall and spun the cold water tap. An instant later the icy blast hit him, and he whooped, gasping and shivering as he filled his lungs with a great draught of air. After a quick, vigorous scrubbing, he shut off the water and stepped onto the bath mat. His skin tingled and stung, a welter of goose bumps. Seldom in his life had he felt so alive or quite so invigorated, so eager at last for the night ahead. And what lay beyond.

  As he toweled dry, Brokaw studied himself in a full-length mirror. The image reflected there was a monolithic figure whose square jaw and craggy features, capped by a thatch of white hair, seemed hewn from a slab of granite. Tall and lean and hard. Scarcely the body of a man turned seventy-one. Or for that matter, the body of a man ravaged by cancer. Yet as he looked closer there was something more, not so much a new dimension as a burnished reflection of the old. The man staring back at him appeared smug and somewhat cocky, perhaps even arrogant. But what the hell—why not?

  He'd pulled it off, and there were damn few men who could have conceived such an undertaking, much less transformed it into a reality. All things considered, he had timed it perfectly. And if it was the last day, it was nonetheless the appropriate day. His birthday.

  He dressed with meticulous care, limping slightly now as he made several trips between bureau and closet. Out of a wardrobe containing some fifty suits, he finally selected his favorite, a conservative double-breasted flannel in charcoal gray. To complement the suit and add a dash of color, he chose a powder-blue oxford shirt, a maroon necktie, and a matching pocket handkerchief. Monogrammed cuff links and a gold signet ring lent a final air of elegance to his ensemble. The ring had been a gift from his wife, and while he'd always thought it pretentious, it seemed suitable to the occasion. Tonight he must look his best. A bravura performance!

  Aside from this token gesture to vanity, however, he had little need of outward pomp. In the rarefied strata of Cal
ifornia society few men had climbed so far so fast. And there were none who had climbed higher. Lucas Brokaw was an industrial colossus, the sole stockholder of a diversified empire that embraced shipyards, airplane factories, and several lesser manufacturing concerns. Universally acknowledged as an engineering genius, he had parlayed modest wealth into one of America's great fortunes by virtue of a world war and a highly pragmatic approach to power politics. In his time, he had supped with presidents and ambassadors, contributing heavily to the campaigns of all the right people, and his largesse had been repaid a hundred times over by defense contracts worth billions.

  Though he was a widower, having lost his wife shortly after MacArthur returned to the Philippines, he hadn't allowed personal misfortune to interfere with ambition. He was without children or other family, and not unlike an aging czar, he still commanded his corporate empire with an iron fist. Since he was blunt and outspoken, almost joyously abrasive in his candor, he reveled in the image of a tough, vindictive adversary.

  Apart from business and political alliances, Brokaw gave little thought to the opinion of others. He'd never been a social butterfly anyway; it was his estimate of himself that counted. At heart he remained an irascible old pragmatist who considered expediency the first law of nature. Unless there were some advantage to be gained, he seldom stepped out of character, and while his detractors often vilified him, none would deny his extraordinary powers.

  Nearly a year prior to VJ Day (before the atom had yet become a bomb), he had predicted a swift end to the war, and with it, a consumer-oriented age. Consequently, while his competitors were still haunting the Pentagon, Brokaw had been busy converting his factories to the production of washing machines, clothes dryers, and micro-relay systems. By the time the troop-ships returned home, he had established himself as the foremost industrialist of the postwar era, a visionary without rival in a period of unsurpassed opportunity.

  Thinking about it as he finished dressing, Brokaw was reminded that it had been a joke all along. A monumental joke, and one he'd played on himself. As a visionary he had proved decidedly myopic. Though he had correctly forecast the state of the world, he had overlooked that most common of denominators, the mortality of man.

  And a slight case of cancer.

  Still, for all his shortsightedness, things had worked out in a rather satisfactory manner. Considering the alternative, very satisfactory indeed. Tonight he would sign his last will and testament, and while some people might find it bizarre, the will he had devised was a legal instrument of uncanny originality. For Lucas Brokaw had bequeathed his entire fortune—the industrial empire plus $184,000,000 in stocks and bonds—to himself.

  The very thought of it set him to chuckling. It was bold and innovative, brazenly audacious, a trait he prized above all others. Yet there was nothing whimsical in what he'd done, none of the blathering nonsense commonly attributed to doddering old skinflints. Nor was it an exercise in fantasy, some improbable pipe dream concocted in a moment of psychic vertigo. Instead, it was a genuine reflection, however unorthodox, of his innermost belief: an unshakable conviction that he would come back, and by returning, accomplish what no man had ever done. Not just to live again, but to collect in the hereafter all he had accumulated in the here and now.

  In high good humor, Brokaw checked himself one last time in the mirror, adjusting the knot in his tie with a deft tug. Then, satisfied that he was as spry and dapper as ever, he left the bedroom and walked along the hall toward a sweeping staircase.

  By now, his limp had grown more prounounced, as it always did when he'd been on his feet any length of time. But he chose to ignore it. Compromise was foreign to his nature—cancer or no cancer—and he'd be damned if he would submit to a bunch of cells run amok. There were important things yet to be done, and to his way of thinking a gimpy leg was just a minor distraction. So he put it from his mind, descending the stairs at a fast if somewhat hobbled clip, and hurried across the foyer as an old grandfather clock began to chime.

  Dinner had been ordered precisely at six, and he felt confident the servants would have arranged some little surprise in honor of the occasion. Not that it really mattered one way or the other. It was to be a solitary celebration, with the guest of honor toasting himself. Since he found his own company eminently pleasant, he was assured of both a congenial atmosphere and a festive spirit. That it was to be his last birthday merely heightened the moment.

  As he moved through the drawing room, Brokaw paused for a moment to stare at the art collection that adorned the walls. The paintings and tapestries hung there would have done credit to the most prestigious museum, and looking at them now brought a wistful twinge of remembrance. Aside from business, the one passion he had allowed himself in an otherwise single-minded existence was his wife, and he had indulged her love of art with boundless generosity. In time, he'd become something of a devotee himself, and after her death the objets d'art she had left behind were all the more cherished. This affection extended as well to the mansion they had shared for nearly fifty years and to the grounds of a vast, baronial estate located north of San Francisco, overlooking a coastline of rugged cliffs and rocky beaches. It was a site he had selected himself in 1901, shortly after making his first million in the timber business.

  Those were days he remembered with fondness. When they were young and vital, building their mansion and scouring the world for rare works of art. Yet the excitement had never dimmed. Nor had their love. Not even in those final years together, when Stephanie was frail and constantly plagued by illness. Although his sorrow was undiminished by time, the thing he recalled most was her exquisite serenity in the face of death. Tonight that memory gave him courage and a buoyant certainty about what lay ahead.

  Much as he'd expected, the house staff surprised him with a lavish meal. Not ordinarily a heavy eater, tonight he polished off a dozen escargots, followed by a brace of squab with honeyed wild rice and nearly half a bottle of superb Château Mârgaux '39. The piéce d'occasion was his favorite dessert, a creamy cheescake with a single candle tactfully planted in the center.

  Surfeited, but thoroughly impenitent that he'd made a glutton of himself, he thanked James, the butler, for a delightful meal and sent his compliments to the chef. Then he proceeded to the solarium, where he let himself out by a rear door, suddenly intent on a stroll through the gardens.

  The rest of the evening demanded a clear head, particularly the hour or so after he'd signed the will, and a breath of fresh air seemed very much in order. Briskly, his stride purposeful if a bit lame, he walked off down the path toward the cliffs, where an orange ball of fire was slowly settling into the ocean. Dusk had always been his favorite time, yet this evening he was struck by the symbolism of things so commonly taken for granted—like a birthday candle and a sunset eternally quenched by distant waters.

  Shortly before seven, Brokaw returned to the house and entered the study. It was an imposing room, like the man himself, large and substantial, paneled in dark walnut with a black marble fireplace and rows of morocco-bound classics lining the bookshelves. A massive desk dominated the room, and grouped before it were several wing chairs and a couch upholstered in lush chocolate-colored leather. The credenza behind the desk was flanked by Remington sculptures, and on the wall directly opposite hung an enormous Bierstadt wilderness scene. At the west end of the room, which projected slightly over the cliffs, the upper half of the wall was a solid pane of glass, affording a spectacular view of the ocean and the rugged coastline.

  The study was Brokaw's inner sanctum where he found solitude and privacy. It was a room seldom opened to visitors, and those who had been allowed inside always went away meeker for the experience, as though, having once entered his lair, they understood at last that he really was invincible. An iron man, never to be crossed except at great peril.

  At the moment, though, Brokaw felt anything but invincible. He was reminded instead of his own mortality, and despite the iron man image, he was none too steady on
his feet. The fresh air had cleared his head, but his pain medication had worn thin and the long walk had overtaxed his strength. All up and down his spine there was a fiery sensation, as if dozens of white-hot ice picks were being plunged into every vertebra along his backbone. The pain ebbed and flowed, allowing him brief respite. Already there was an acute numbness in his right leg, another warning sign, and one not to be dismissed so lightly as he'd done earlier in the evening.

  These days, particularly over the past week, he was able to judge the time he had left by the intensity of the pain. Tonight's attack was an unmistakable message. The terminal stage had begun.

  Upon entering the study, he moved directly to a liquor cabinet, dragging his leg along behind him in a crablike shuffle. As he opened the cabinet door, another spasm racked his body and he clawed at a vial of Dilaudid on the top shelf. His hands were trembling and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, but he steadied himself and took a small medicinal beaker from the cabinet. The beaker was distinctly marked, graduated in milligram levels. After uncapping the vial, he carefully poured off a one-centigram measure.

  His doctor had admonished him, after he'd refused to be hospitalized, that Dilaudid was lethal in as little as half-gram doses. However severe his pain, he was to exercise restraint in its use. One centigram every eight hours was the limit, and under no circumstances was he to exceed the dosage. Wary as he was of hospitals, Brokaw's threshold of pain was abnormally high; he had restricted himself to two doses a day. The vial was something more than half full.

  But here tonight, face to face at last with true agony, he quaffed the dose in a single gulp. Though the drug was tasteless, its reaction was almost instantaneous. A sudden warmth kindled deep in his bowels, radiating outward with astonishing speed, and within seconds a euphoric glow spread throughout his entire body. As he returned the vial and the beaker to the cabinet, a slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and it occurred to him that all was right with the world. His timing was flawless.