Several nights later...

His hand fumbled with the receiver, dropping it to the carpet.

"Fleinhardt! Pick up the damn phone!"

Larry put it to his ear, requiring two attempts to get the receiver to the correct location. "Are you…aware…snore…that it is after three AM? Who is this?"

"Who the hell do you think it is? Peter Pan? Get real and wake up, Fleinhardt!"

"Who is this?" Suspiciously. "If this is some sort of obnoxious freshman prank—"

"I don't play half-assed jokes, Fleinhardt. If I'm going to play a joke, it's going to damn well be as funny as hell."

Long pause. "Gatsbacher?"

"Took you damn long enough, Fleinhardt. It's only been a week since the end of the case. Your brains turn to oatmeal that fast?"

Another long pause. A very long pause. "You're dead."

Snarl, with a string of vicious-sounding words which Larry rather thought might be Norwegian, or possibly Finnish. It certainly wasn't German. "Do I sound dead to you?"

"But…the body? Your body?"

"You see it anywhere?"

"Uh…no."

"You got an autopsy report?"

"The coroner said the body disappeared." Larry was finally waking up, and it wasn't pretty.

"Damn right it disappeared. Like I'm gonna stick around for that punk-assed medical examiner to cut me open? Dipstick doesn't bother to sharpen his blades. Asshole."

"How…?"

"Figure it out, Fleinhardt. You got all the details you need. Oh, and don't throw out the tales the monks told you. Those Deshwanee may have been bastards, but they were smart bastards. I'd say that they knew a hell of a lot more than you, but that's not hard to accomplish, Fleinhardt."

"Where are you? What do you want me to tell Don? And Charles?" Larry correctly deduced that not only were events getting away from him, but that he'd never controlled them in the first place.

"Tell 'em whatever you damn well please, Fleinhardt. Just let Eppes know that when he least wants it, I'll be in his face again."

Click.

Larry stared at the phone in his hand. Then he stared at the clock. Then at the phone once more.

It had been a dream. A nightmare. It hadn't been real. It couldn't possibly have been real. Gatsbacher was dead. Don had said so. Don had said that Gatsbacher had taken his—or her, or whatever's—last breath in front of Don himself.

Oh? Then why was there an ID badge on Larry's nightstand, one with a white-faced, greasy-haired individual scowling back at the world, when that badge was supposed to be securely locked away at FBI Headquarters?

Larry deliberately turned over in bed and closed his eyes, hoping that when the sun rose the badge would have vanished like the figments of his nightmare. There was also the forlorn hope that he might return to the Land of Nod, instead of obsessively musing over the figments of his imagination that had just disturbed his slumber.

Reality would need to wait until morning, when he could cope with the impossible.

A/N: What? You thought I was going to toss away a really neat character like Gatsbacher?

I don't know when, but Gatsbacher will make a return appearance. He/she/it still has more secrets to reveal; gender, for one, and the circumstances revolving around a 'miraculous' recovery...