Analyst

by John Katzenbach

  The kennel owner shifted about uncomfortably, making a scrabbling sound in the gravel driveway. “That might be hard.”

  “Perhaps,” Ricky said. “But it might be wise to make the effort.”

  He stood up, leaving the man on the ground. Some of the other dogs had stretched out, and they stirred when he moved. Replacing the weapon in the backpack, Ricky kept the flashlight in his hand, and started to jog down the driveway. When he disappeared from any of the light that flooded the front area of the kennel, he picked up his pace, turning onto the darkened roadway, and heading fast toward the cemetery where he’d parked his car. His feet made slapping sounds against the black pavement beneath him, and he switched off the flashlight, so that he ran in the pitch-dark country. It was a little like swimming in a storm-tossed sea, he thought, cutting through waves that tugged at him from every direction. Despite the night that swallowed him, he felt illuminated by a single, glowing piece of information. The telephone number. It was, to Ricky in that second, as if everything from the first letter delivered to his office, right through that instant, was suddenly part of the same great, sweeping current. And then, he realized, perhaps it went much further. Months and years into his past, where something was catching him up and sweeping him along, but he had been unaware of it. The knowledge should have exhausted him, he thought, but instead, he felt an odd energy, and an equally odd release. He thought the understanding that he’d been surrounded by lies, and suddenly had seen some truth, was like a fuel, pushing him ahead.

  He had miles to travel that night, he thought. Highway miles and heart miles. Both leading into his past, and pointing the way to his future. He hurried, like a marathon racer who senses the finish line ahead, beyond his sight, but measured in the pain in his feet and legs, the exhaustion creeping into his every breath.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was a little after midnight when Ricky reached the tollbooth on the western side of the Hudson River, just to the north of Kingston, New York. He had driven quickly, pushing right to the limit of where he thought he could, but not be pulled over by some irritated New York state trooper. It was, he imagined, a bit of a microcosm for much of his past life. He wanted to speed, but wasn’t quite willing to take the chance of truly flying. He thought the created persona of Frederick Lazarus would have pumped the rental car up to a hundred miles per hour, but he couldn’t bring himself to that. It was as if both men, Richard Lively, who hid, and Frederick Lazarus, who was willing to fight, were on this particular drive. He realized that since he’d constructed his own death, he’d balanced between the uncertainty of taking risks, and the security of hiding. But he knew that he was probably no longer as invisible as he once believed he was. He guessed that the man searching for him was close behind, that all the crumbs and threads of clues and indications had been found, from New Hampshire straight back down the highway to New York City, and then over to New Jersey.

  But he knew he was close, too.

  It was the most deadly of races. A ghost pursuing a dead man. A dead man hunting a ghost.

  He paid his toll, the only car crossing the bridge at that late hour. The tollbooth collector was in the midst of a copy of Playboy magazine, staring not reading, and barely looked in his direction. The bridge itself is a curiosity of architecture, rising hundreds of feet above the ribbon of black water that is the Hudson, illuminated by a string of green-yellow sodium vapor lights, descending to meet the earth on the Rhinebeck side in a rural, darkened bit of farmland, so that from the distance it appears like a glowing necklace suspended above an ebony throat, swallowed up by the pitch black of the shore. It was an unsettling ride, Ricky thought, as he steered toward the road that seemed to disappear into a pit. His headlights carved out weak cones of wan light against the surrounding night.

  He found a place to pull over and removed one of his two remaining cell phones. He then dialed the front desk number at the last hotel where Frederick Lazarus was scheduled to be staying. It was a desultory, shabby, and cheap place, the sort of hotel that is only a single, fragile step above those that cater to prostitutes and their dates on an hourly basis. He guessed that the night deskman would have little to do, assuming no one had been shot or beaten that night on the premises, which, Ricky knew was a large assumption.

  “Excelsior Hotel, how can I help you?”

  “My name is Frederick Lazarus,” Ricky said. “I had a reservation for tonight. But I won’t make it there until tomorrow.”

  “No problem,” the man said, laughing a little at the thought of a reservation. “There will be as much room then as there is now. We’re not exactly overbooked this tourist season.”

  “Can you check to see if anyone left any messages for me?”

  “Hang on . . . ,” the man said. Ricky could hear the telephone being placed on the counter. The man came on in a moment or two. “Christ yes,” he said. “You must be a popular guy. There’s at least three or four . . .”

  “Read them to me,” Ricky said. “And I’ll take care of you when I get there.”

  The man read off the messages. They were the bunch that Ricky had left for himself, but no others. This made him pause.

  “Has anyone been there, looking for me? I was supposed to have a meeting . . .”

  The night clerk hesitated again, and in that hesitation Ricky learned what he needed. Before the clerk could lie by saying no, Ricky told him, “She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? The type that gets what they want, when they want it, no questions asked, right? A lot more high-class than you usually get coming through the front door there, right?”

  The clerk coughed.

  “Is she there now?” Ricky demanded.

  After a second or two, the clerk whispered, “No. She left. A little less than an hour ago, right after she got a call on her cell phone. Took off real quick. And so did the guy she was with. They’ve been in and out of here all evening asking for you.”

  “The guy she’s with?” Ricky asked. “Kinda round and pasty, looks a little bit like the kid you used to beat up on in junior high school?”

  “You got it,” the clerk said. He laughed. “That’s the guy. Perfect description.”

  Hello, Merlin, Ricky thought.

  “They leave a number or an address?”

  “No. Just said they’d come back. And didn’t want me to let on that they’d been here. What’s this all about?”

  “Just a business arrangement. Tell you what, if they show, you give them this number . . .” Ricky read off the last of his remaining cell phone exchanges. “But make them slip you some cash in return. They’re loaded.”

  “Okay. Should I tell them you’re going to be here tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Might as well. And tell them that I called for my messages. That’s it. Did they look at the messages?”

  The man hesitated again. “No,” he lied. “Those are private. I wouldn’t share them with strangers without your authorization.”

  Sure, Ricky thought. Not for a penny less than fifty bucks. He was pleased that the man at the hotel had done precisely what he expected him to do. He disconnected the call, and sat back in the seat. They won’t be certain, he thought. They won’t know exactly who else is looking for Frederick Lazarus, or why, or what connection he has to what is going on. It will worry them and make their next step a little uncertain. Which is what he wanted. He looked down at his watch. He was sure that the kennel owner had finally gotten free from the duct tape handcuffs and after placating Brutus and rounding up as many of the other dogs as he could, had finally made his call, so Ricky expected at least one light to be on at the house where he was headed.

  As he had earlier that night, Ricky left the rental car parked off a side road, out of sight from anyone who might have passed by. He was a good mile from his destination, but he thought he could use the time on foot to consider what his plan was. He could feel some excitement within him, as if he’d closed in finally on some answers to some questions. But it was coupled with a sense of outrage
that might have been fury were he not struggling to restrain it. Betrayal, he thought to himself, has the potential to become far stronger than love. He felt a little queasy in his stomach, and recognized it for disappointment mingling freely with unbridled anger.

  Ricky, once upon a time a man of introspection, checked the weapon he carried to make certain it was fully loaded, thinking that he had no real plan other than confrontation, which is an approach that defines itself, and realizing that he was closing in quickly on one of those moments where thoughts and actions coalesce. He jogged forward through the surrounding blackness, his running shoes slapping at the macadam, joining with the ordinary sounds of a country night: the opossum scrabbling through the underbrush, the cicadas buzzing in a nearby field. He wanted to be a part of the air.

  As he ran, he asked himself: Are you going to kill someone this night?

  He did not know the answer.

  Then he asked: Are you willing to kill someone tonight?

  The answer to that question seemed much easier. He realized that a large part of him was ready to. It was the part that he’d constructed out of bits and pieces of identity in the months after his life had been ruined. The part that had studied all the methods of murder and mayhem available in the local library, and developed an expertise on the firing range. The invented part.

  He pulled up short when he reached the drive to the house. Inside was the telephone with the number that he’d recognized. For a moment he recalled coming there almost a year earlier, expectant and almost panicked, hoping for any kind of help, desperate for any sort of answers. They were here, waiting for me, Ricky thought, obscured by lies. I just couldn’t see them. It never occurred to me that the man who he believed had been the greatest help in his life turned out to be the man trying to kill him.

  From the drive, he saw, as he’d expected, a single light in the study.

  He knows I’m coming, Ricky thought. And Virgil and Merlin, who might have helped him, are still in New York. Even if they’d driven hard after he’d called, racing out of the city, they were still probably a good hour away. He took a step forward, hearing the sound of his feet against the loose stones of the gravel drive. Perhaps he even knows I’m here. Ricky searched around, trying to see a way of sneaking in. But he wasn’t certain that the element of surprise was truly called for.

  So, instead, he put the pistol in his right hand and chambered a round. He clicked the safety off and then walked nonchalantly up to the front door, like a friendly neighbor might in the midst of a summer afternoon. He didn’t knock, he simply turned the handle. As he’d guessed, the door was open.

  He walked in. A voice came from the study to his right.

  “In here, Ricky.”

  He took a single stride forward, raising the pistol in front of him, readying himself to fire. Then he stepped into the light that flowed through the doorway.

  “Hello, Ricky. You are lucky to be alive.”

  “Hello, Doctor Lewis,” Ricky replied. The old man was standing behind his desk, his hands flat on the surface, leaning expectantly forward. “Shall I kill you now, or perhaps in a moment or two?” Ricky asked, voice flat with the hard restraints he’d looped around his rage.

  The old psychoanalyst smiled. “You would, I suspect, be justified in shooting in some courts. But there are questions you want answered, and I have waited up this long night to answer what I can. That is, after all, what we do, is it not, Ricky? Answer questions.”

  “Maybe once I did,” Ricky replied. “But no longer.”

  He leveled the gun at the man who’d been his mentor. The man who’d trained him. Dr. Lewis seemed a little surprised. “Did you really come all this way just to murder me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Ricky said, though this was a lie.

  “Then go ahead.” The old doctor eyed him intensely.

  “Rumplestiltskin,” Ricky said. “All along it was you.”

  Dr. Lewis shook his head. “No, you are wrong. But I am the man who created him. At least in part.”

  Ricky moved sideways, coming deeper into the office, keeping his back to the wall. The same bookcases lined the walls. The same artwork. For a second, he could almost imagine that the year between visits hadn’t actually taken place. It was a cold place, that seemed to speak of neutrality and opaque personality; nothing on the walls or the desk said anything about the man who occupied the office, which, Ricky thought darkly, probably said as much as anything. You don’t need a diploma on the wall to certify being evil. He wondered how he had missed seeing it before. He gestured with his weapon for the old man to take a seat in the swiveling leather desk chair.

  Dr. Lewis slumped down, sighing.

  “I am getting old, and I do not have the energy I once had,” he said flatly.

  “Please keep your hands where I can see them,” Ricky said.

  The old man lifted his hands up. Then he pointed at his forehead, tapping it with an index finger. “It is never what is in our hands that is truly dangerous, Ricky. You should know that. Ultimately, it is what is in our heads.”

  “I might have agreed with you once, doctor, but now I have some doubts. And a clear-cut and enthusiastic reliance on this device, which, if you don’t know, is a Ruger semiautomatic pistol. It fires a high velocity, hollow point, three-hundred-and-eighty-grain cartridge. There are fifteen shots in the clip, any one of which will remove a goodly portion of your skull, perhaps even the piece you just pointed to, killing you rapidly. And you know what’s truly intriguing about this weapon, doctor?”

  “What is that?”

  “It is in the hands of a man who has already died once. Who no longer exists on this earth we share. Why don’t you consider the implications of that existential event for a moment or two.”

  Dr. Lewis paused, eyeing the gun. After a moment, he smiled.

  “Ricky, what you say is interesting. But I know you. I know the inner you. You were on my couch four times a week for nearly four years. Every fear. Every doubt. Every hope. Every dream. Every aspiration. Every anxiety. I know you as well as you know yourself, and probably much better, and I know you are not a killer despite all your posturing. You are merely a deeply troubled man who made some extremely poor choices in his life. I doubt homicide will prove to be another.”

  Ricky shook his head. “The man you knew as Doctor Frederick Starks was on your couch. But he’s dead and gone and you don’t know me. Not the new me. Not in the slightest.”

  Then he fired the pistol.

  The single shot echoed in the small room, deafening him for a moment. The bullet tore through the air above Dr. Lewis’s head, slapping into a bookcase directly behind him. Ricky saw a thick medical tome, spine out, suddenly shred, as it absorbed the shot. It was a work on abnormal psychology, a detail that almost brought Ricky to laughter.

  Dr. Lewis paled, staggered, rocked momentarily side to side, then gasped out loud.

  He steadied himself carefully. “My God,” he blurted. Ricky could see something in the man’s eyes that wasn’t precisely fear, but more a sense of astonishment, as if something utterly unexpected had taken place. “I did not think—” he started.

  Ricky cut him off with a small wave of the pistol. “A dog taught me how to do that.”

  Dr. Lewis rotated slightly in his seat and inspected the location where the bullet had landed. He burst out a half laugh, half gasp, then shook his head. “Quite a shot, Ricky,” he said slowly. “A remarkable shot. Closer to the truth than my head. You might want to keep what I said in mind over the next few moments.”

  Ricky eyed the old physician. “Stop being so obtuse,” he said briskly. “We were going to talk about answers. Remarkable how a weapon like this helps focus one on the issues at hand. Think of all those hours with all those patients, myself included, doctor. All those lies and distractions and tangents and thick systems of delusions and detours. All that painstaking time spent in sorting out truths. Who would have thought that things could be uncomplicated so quickly by a d
evice such as this. A little bit like Alexander and the Gordian knot, don’t you think, doctor?”

  Dr. Lewis seemed to have regained his composure. Rapidly his countenance changed, and he was now staring at Ricky with a narrow, angry gaze, as if he could still impose some control over the situation. Ricky ignored all the look implied, then, much as he had nearly a year earlier, he arranged an armchair in front of the old doctor.

  “If not you,” Ricky asked coldly, “then who is Rumplestiltskin?”

  “You know, do you not?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “The eldest child of your onetime patient. The woman you failed to help.”

  “That I discovered on my own. Keep going.”

  Dr. Lewis shrugged. “My adopted child.”

  “This I learned earlier tonight. And the two others?”

  “His younger brother and sister. You know them as Merlin and Virgil. Of course they have other names.”

  “Adopted, as well?”

  “Yes. We took all three in. First as foster children, through the state of New York. Then I arranged for my cousins in New Jersey to front for us in an adoption. It was really pathetically simple outwitting the bureaucracy, which, I am sure you have already learned, did not really care all that much anyway what happened to the three children.”

  “So, they carry your name? You discarded Tyson and gave them your own?”

  “No.” The old man shook his head. “Not so fortunate, Ricky. They are not in any phone book listing under Lewis. They were reinvented completely. Different names for each. Different identities. Different designs. Different schools. Different education and different treatment. But brothers and sister at heart, where it is important. That you know.”

  “Why? Why the elaborate scheme to cover up their past? Why didn’t you . . .”