A man walked out of a bar in Saint-Tropez, staggered into the street and fell dead at my feet. I expected the door to burst open, and an enraged opponent to follow him out. But no one came. The night flashed, and I blankly stared at a grayed photograph. Its faded edges held someone else’s recollections I couldn’t clearly make out.

The sound of a far off freighter’s horn floated in on the mist like a signal that beckoned silence in the world. As it faded to memory, a vacuum replaced the ambient noise around me and put an end to tone and pitch for what seemed like hours. I felt suspended in a spectral void that amplified the weight of my solitude.

I finally stepped over the frame and into the black-and-white image in front of me. The man slept peacefully intoxicated, with one arm tucked up near his face. Crouching over the body, I placed two fingers on a wrist. Nothing. My hand reached for the side of his neck. No pulse.

The man was neatly dressed for 2 AM, like he had slept all day waiting to start his morning with the moonrise. I rolled him up on a side to check for blood beneath him. The body rolled quietly back. No visible wounds were present. What the hell had killed him?

His sport coat was lying open, so I rifled through the inside pockets for the man’s identification. Empty. My hands came away from the outside pockets filled with air, too. The pants were different. There I found a cookie jar sized wad of French Francs and a cryptic note folded away for later decryption.  

​Dead Man

The Hollow Man     |     The Hollow Man Series, International Espionage​

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