I remembered us all pooling our cash on the rec room floor. It was linoleum, the color of putty, with gray and black flecks. Damn. If I could dredge up that level of detail, maybe my memory wasn’t as atrocious as I’d always thought.
I’d gone into the store alone, I did remember that, because we decided it would look suspicious if I was surrounded by a group of kids less than five feet tall. I asked for a pack of Marlboros, because back then Marlboro could still advertise on anything that stayed still long enough to slap a logo on it. “Reds?” the guy asked. I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded anyway. Money changed hands, mostly quarters. And as I walked out of the store with that pack of Marlboro Reds in my hand, I felt, for the first time, like I’d accomplished something significant with my life.
My eighth grade buddies were pretty damn impressed, too.
Chicago neighborhoods vary so widely, it seems like at least a dozen different cities are contained in its borders. Where I’d grown up, dour clusters of small single-family homes in various shades of brown brick squatted, punctuated by strip malls and vast, overgrown stretches of fallow land surrounded by dead steel mills. It wasn’t just easy to sneak off and get up to no good—we were so isolated, it was a damn wonder we ever made it back without being slaughtered for our fresh young kidneys.
We’d trooped out behind the cover of an abandoned outbuilding made of corrugated metal, dented like someone had used it to stop an oncoming pickup truck, and found a spot to divvy up our cigarettes.
“We went over by the railroad tracks to smoke, because everything else was so overgrown, you couldn’t see the rats coming. The tracks were clear. They were still used for freight. I ended up wandering away from my friends because I was too cool to let them see I didn’t actually inhale, and walking from tie to tie, pretty soon I was a few hundred feet away from them. I said to myself, Oh, there’s a shoe….”
Crash nudged Red aside with his butt, and squeezed onto the ottoman beside him.
“A man’s shoe,” I said.
They both leaned forward expectantly.
And then what? No idea. “That’s all.”
Red looked at Crash, then back at me. “Do you remember going back home after you were out smoking? Maybe you got caught. Or maybe you got away with it.”
No memory whatsoever. I shrugged.
“How about supper? Were both your parents there?”
“No parents,” I said blankly. Because I couldn’t really recall specifically who was there. But obviously, I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old eighth grader living alone. “I was with a foster family. I’ve had more than one.”
“How many?” Red asked.
I shrugged. “Several.”
“Are you being vague because you don’t want to tell me, or because you can’t?”
“I really don’t see what this has to do with….” I trailed off as discomfort churned in my gut. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you think happened?”
I rubbed my eye. “Stands to reason I found a body.”
“Are you sure?” Red asked. “Just because you saw a shoe? Could be you found a homeless man. Or someone sleeping off a bender. Or even a bag of trash split open.”
“You see what I’ve seen, all these years, makes it hard to keep an open mind. A woman’s all beat up? It’s her man. Someone disappears? They’re dead. I block out a memory of a shoe on the railroad tracks…it’s more than just footwear.”
“Do you want to know what really happened with that shoe?” Red asked.
I didn’t. Which struck me as awfully damn suspicious. “How?”
“Tell me again about the moment you saw it.” He stood and placed his hands on the creaky chair’s armrests and stared right in my face. It should’ve felt invasive having him that up-close and personal, but his eyes were so riveting, I managed to sidestep my discomfort and focus. “You saw a shoe, and then?”
I put myself on those railroad tracks. I’ve got a cigarette in my hand. I have no idea how to even hold it, and goddamn it, after all the trouble we went through to get them, they taste foul and I can’t believe I blew all my money and I could’ve had peanut butter cups instead. Now I’m stuck with five cigarettes I’ve got no desire to smoke. Maybe I could sell the remaining four to one of the other kids. I’d have to be clever about it. Make some excuse about needing the money.
Would they go for it, or would I be blowing whatever coolness points I’d scored when I bought the pack? Maybe it would just be easier to throw the rest in the weeds and say I’d smoked them. I was glancing down at the overgrown grass when I saw the shoe. A beige platform oxford. With a spongy bottom and a cracked seam behind the toe where the fake leather was giving way. And when I step off the tracks to get a better look at it—
Nothing.
“I spot a shoe and that’s all. I don’t remember.”
“Did you tell your friends?”
I must have. But when I tried to remember, each of their faces grew indistinct and their names slipped away. If I’d even recalled them to begin with.
When I didn’t answer, Red suggested, “Pretend I’m there. And you’re telling me about the shoe.”
“Okay. Right. So I was on the railroad tracks and I saw this shoe and—” I shook my head. “And then there’s nothing.”
Or so I’d told myself, except the look in Red’s eyes said different. Not an empath, then. A telepath or clairvoyant. He stood up straight and took a deep, cleansing breath.
“Everything okay?” Crash asked.
Red said, “There was a woman.”
“It was definitely a man’s shoe,” I said. “That’s probably the only thing I know for sure.”
“Afterward,” Red clarified. He closed his eyes and thought. “A white woman. Hair slicked back tight, thick glasses. Turtleneck.”
A flicker. Maybe. And then it was gone. “What about her?” I asked cautiously.
“She’s saying…you won’t remember.”
Chapter 28
I sat in my car breathing heavily. The windows fogged. While part of me had known that something in my life had been fishy all along, evidently I’d still been clinging to the optimistic notion that it was just shitty memory and a harmless bit of paranoia.
I should’ve known better.
I pulled out my phone and said, “Do I even have Stefan’s phone number?”
“Steven Russel,” my phone said. “Is this the contact you’re looking for?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Would you like to call him?”
“Can I just…send him a text?”
A text box popped up. Any other time, I would’ve marveled at the technology. But I was too busy keeping an internal meltdown at bay. My thumbs were all over the screen and yet, thanks to autocorrect, my message came out just like it was in my head. I have a repressed memory or maybe it’s deliberate, I think I was hypnotized, need to see you ASAP. It even capitalized that last word for me.
I hit send, then sat and stared at the screen. Nothing happened. “He’ll probably blow me off,” I told the phone. “Things are too weird between us.”
The phone didn’t have any sage advice to offer. Maybe it would add that feature in a future software upgrade. As I made to put it away, an answer appeared with a gentle whoosh of arrival. Pick me up at Circle Campus in half an hour and I’ll see what I can do.
I arrived at U of I with five minutes to spare, pulled up in a bus zone by Behavioral Sciences, and texted Stefan my location. I was ruminating over how I should feel about needing a favor from him, when a guy from campus security strode up, all gym rat physique and minimum-wage self-importance. I showed him my ID and he wisely backed away. The laminated card didn’t have the same heft as a metal police badge, but the big federal seal on it did the job just fine.
I spotted Stefan from a long way off, striding across a stretch of snow-flanked sidewalk, great black coat flapping ostentatiously behind him. I felt drab in comparison. Then again, I doubted I could deal with th
e amount of attention having a signature look would entail. Not anymore.
He climbed in, did a great deal of fastidiously arranging himself, then slammed the door. He glanced at me dismissively, then did a double-take. “Are you crying?”
“I have allergies,” I snapped.
“Hmph.” He must’ve probed me with his talent and realized it was true, because he let the matter drop. “I’m presuming the only reason you want to see me is that our hypnosis sessions have been freakishly effective. It’ll be a nightmare to park near my office this time of day. So where do you want to do this? Keep in mind, I have no intention of spending the next few hours in your car. My sciatica is acting up.”
I didn’t want him in my house. And evidently he had no desire for me to see his, either. “I know a place,” I told him, and began wending my way through a cluster of city buses.
Traffic was a good excuse to refrain from talking, but stoplights made the silence in the car awkward. As did the fact that he was reading my awkwardness. Unlike Crash’s telepathic boyfriend, Stefan didn’t need to stare at you and concentrate to get a reading. “So,” I ventured. “College. Teaching? Or…?”
“Good lord, no. Could you imagine dealing with all those insufferable, privileged millennial brats for hours on end? I’m getting my Ph.D.”
“Oh.” I’d figured he already had one. But since I’d never aspired to anything beyond surviving the police academy with my general equivalency diploma in hand, my knowledge of the educational system was as hole-riddled as my memory.
“I’m weary of clinical work,” he said. “Exhausted. And my partner Lorraine has been making noises about retiring, which got me to wondering if it might be a good time for a change. Go into research instead.”
Good luck with that, I thought. Heck, my own frustrating mediumship research made target practice look appealing. Then again, maybe research would end up being a better fit for such a misanthrope…which was how I’d always pigeonholed Darla, too. Except judging by the way she acted around everyone but me, I now realized, her loathing was far less generalized than Stefan’s.
“Can you think of any reason Dead Darla would feel…humiliated?”
“Her triple-chin?”
“Uh, no. Actually, she’s in pretty good shape nowadays. I mean, anything I did specifically to humiliate her.”
Stefan gave it some serious consideration. “I imagine she was pissed off at you for leading her on.”
“I did no such thing.”
He waved my protest away. “No need to be defensive about it. It’s not your fault she couldn’t take a hint. People need to grow up and stop romanticizing unrequited love. If someone’s into you, it doesn’t take much to get down their pants. And if not, move on. It’s not worth the drama, and someone else will come along soon enough.”
Spoken like a fifth-level empath…but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. We pulled up in front of the gin mill and I cut the engine.
Although smoking indoors had been illegal since I couldn’t remember when, the place smelled like an old ashtray. And not just because there was an old ashtray beside the front door, but because a half century of tar and nicotine had sunk into the pores of the building. It was dark and dingy, with a low drop ceiling and a tube TV playing the afternoon traffic report.
“Charming,” Stefan murmured.
It had been several weeks since I’d last been there, but nothing had changed. It was practically deserted, with only a few day-drinkers propping up the far end of the bar, and the out of order sign was still on the ladies’ room. Even the antisocial bartender was the same. When I approached the bar, he cut his eyes to the booth where my dealer usually held court and said, “He’s not here.” But if I came back another time, he might be. How comforting to know my Seconal habit would welcome me back with open arms should I ever decide I wanted to patch things over.
The mere thought of an addiction-blob feeding off my energy made me knuckle my eyes.
I ordered a regular Coke, and Stefan requested a diet. Then he squinted at the menu and ordered a pepperoni-sausage pizza. “How big are they?” he asked. The bartender pulled a prepackaged nine-inch disc out of the fridge and showed it to him. “Better make it two.”
We found a shadowy booth far away from both the barflies and the door, and slid in. Stefan gave the table a shove and it scraped a few inches toward me. He settled himself, took a long drink of his Diet Coke, then said, “Let me preface this, as always, by reminding you that the human mind is complex. I can’t simply push a button and command the memory you’re hoping for to magically appear.”
“Maybe we don’t even need to do a regression to figure out why I can’t remember my first ghost,” I said. “Maybe you know about someone erasing my memories. Maybe you’ve even done it yourself.”
He laughed humorlessly, plucked a napkin out of the dispenser, and wiped some ancient crumbs off the tabletop. “Need I remind you that we’re the same age, and I didn’t study hypnosis until I was almost thirty? Plus, I never laid eyes on you until I met you by the soda machine.” When Stefan lied, it was by omission. In all likelihood, since he made the claim, I could presume it was true. “Tell me what insight you’re hoping to gain.”
“One minute I’m fifteen and goofing off by the railroad tracks, next minute, nothing. My next memory is knocking over a sawhorse in driver’s ed class. Nearly two years later.”
“Two years seems a long stretch of time, but people do vary on how much they can recall of their childhood. Try to think of milestones. Birthdays, maybe. Your favorite movies. Boys who gave you a hard-on.”
I picked at a leathery drop of old ketchup that had bonded with the formica. “Nothing. Not even the family I’d been living with. And…if it was anyone but you, I might not even be able to say this. But you were there at Camp Hell. You know how it was. The mind-games. The experiments. There was a woman who told me to forget. A telepath caught a glimpse of her and…well, like I said. You know how it was.”
Stefan stroked his graying soul patch and considered me, while I squirmed and did my best to look anywhere but at him. And eventually he said, “If it turns out that, yes, someone encouraged you to forget things under hypnotic suggestion, what then?”
“No clue. But dammit, I need to know.”
“Very well,” he intoned. And the very sound of his voice dropping into the register he used for hypnosis practically sent me sprawling. “Sit back. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly, and as you do, begin to count back….”
I knuckled my eyes.
Reminded myself I’d only be making things worse.
And gave them a final hard rub for good measure. Because fucking hell, crying in front of anybody, especially in front of him, seriously eroded the Sid Vicious image I aspired to. I went through a lot of trouble putting my hair up. I’d be damned if I sat there crying my eyes out like a big, dumb loser.
I opened my eyes and glared at him. Not Stefan…not unless he’d turned into a sixtyish black guy while I was trying to hide my frustrated tears.
Harold Albert was a strict man, at least on paper. He enforced curfews, rode me about my grades, and insisted I address him as Sir. He and Mamma Brill had raised over fifteen foster kids, plus four sons of their own, into reasonably upstanding adults. All except that dickhead Charles, who took up carjacking and ended up doing time downstate. But still, their success rate was pretty high.
Strict, yes. But heart-wrenchingly gentle when the situation called for it. “Are you ready to tell me your side of the story?” he said patiently. We faced each other across a yellow laminate Burger Barn tabletop, where we each lingered over a sweating Coke that was mostly ice.
“You won’t believe me,” I said. “No one does.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re being truthful, and I will.”
My God, I’d never appreciated how earnest he was. No, I was too full of self-righteous tween indignation. “I’m not lying,” I shouted. “There was a guy looking through the wi
ndow over by the blackboard. I saw him. I did. He had long headbanger hair and a Blackhawks jersey and the whole side of his face was covered in blood. He had his hands cupped around his eyes and he was looking through the window.”
“But the teacher didn’t see him. And the courtyard was locked.”
“So?” I threw up my arms in frustration. “Maybe he picked the lock. Maybe the gate wasn’t shut right. How the f—heck should I know?”
Harold considered my outburst, then said, “If you need to talk to Dr. Kleinman again, I’ll make you an appointment.”
The thing about seeing a shrink was that I could wow all my middle-school cohorts by telling them I was crazy, even though I knew my diagnosis was nothing more glamorous or threatening than generalized anxiety. She wasn’t a psychiatrist—I never came away with any pills—though I did show some aspirin to my gullible friends and claim I needed them to keep the voices at bay. Despite the lack of interesting meds, my sessions with Kleinman really did chill me out.
Funny thing was, if I wanted to see Kleinman, the visit had to stay between Harold and me. Even though, between the two of them, Mama Brill was the permissive parent, the therapist had somehow rubbed her wrong from the get-go. On this particular matter, Mama wouldn’t budge. Luckily, since Mama was busy cashiering at the auto parts store, Harold would be calling the shots solo.
And my occasional weird outbursts really worried him.
While I was fully aware that I was currently a middle-aged guy in a Ravenswood gin mill and not a fourteen-year-old leaving a south side Burger Barn, the experience was way more immersive than any TV show or video game. Some part of me still was that confused kid. The one who saw nonphysical things and was made to think he hadn’t, and then convinced that he’d been faking it all for attention.
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 18