Ryerson reached out, touched her hand. "Miss Goodlow," he began, but he had little idea how to continue. If he told her the truth—what he supposed was the truth, at any rate—she'd think he was nuts. He withdrew his hand. "Had you let this man into your house?"
She grimaced. "I'm not a fool. I talked to him through the screen door. It was just a short while ago, just before noon. He walked off, and he was gone. I called your number, got your housekeeper, learned that you'd stepped out for a while, and left a message with him that I was coming here. Actually, Mr. Biergarten, I'm a bit leery of going back to the house."
"I didn't get the message." He paused. "You could stay here, if you'd like."
She shook her head. "I'm booked into the Sheraton."
~ * ~
The boy thought that he was either being awfully brave or awfully stupid. Wasn't he the one who had decided that this strange mound of earth wasn't something to mess with? So what was he doing here, now, alone? Sometimes it was real difficult figuring himself out.
He poked at the mound with a long, thin stick. The dirt seemed hard. Why not? he thought. It had settled overnight. He nodded to himself. Sure, the dirt had settled, so it was harder. And there had been a thunderstorm too, and wouldn't that make the dirt thicker?
No, it wouldn't, he realized. The rain would have washed some of the dirt away, and it wouldn't be thicker, there would be less of it.
So, it wasn't the dirt that was thicker and harder. He wasn't poking at the dirt, he was poking at something in the dirt.
A rock. Sure, he was poking at a big rock in the dirt.
He withdrew the stick, hesitated, took a step to his right, poked again. The stick sank into the dirt a few inches and stopped. He pushed. The stick sank no further into the dirt. He pushed harder. The stick snapped.
The noise of the stick snapping brought an Ah! of surprise from him. He stared wide-eyed at the mound for a moment, threw the stick down, turned, and ran home.
~ * ~
The big man knew that it had to be done and that he was the only one who could do it. He had brought this ... thing up here in the first place—against the woman's wishes and, he had to admit, against her better judgment—and now it was up to him to dispose of it.
He stared at the body from twenty feet away. There was one dim overhead light on and in its soft, yellowish glow the body looked simply like one of the collectibles that had been stored up here for so long.
The big man held a fireplace poker tightly in his right hand. He had thought of using a gun on the little bastards that lived up here but had decided that that would be foolish—a slug could tear right through the floorboards and into the second floor of the house. Besides, he had always been leery of guns. Knives, clubs, and big cars were much more personal weapons, and that's the way he liked it when he killed—up close and personal.
He had a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, and because he was coming down with a head cold, it was difficult to breathe.
"Dammit!" he whispered into the handkerchief. This was something he definitely did not want to do. This was… offensive. Dirty. Bizarre. Grotesque. "Grotesque," he whispered, pleased with his choice of words. He thought that he had always been good with words.
He took a step forward. He stopped. The body seemed to be in motion and this sent a tremor of fear through him. He stared hard at the body and realized that it was not in motion, it only looked like it was in motion because the little bastards that lived up here were all over it, having their fill.
"Jesus!" whispered the big man, and turned and fled down the stairs to the second floor.
~ * ~
Sam Goodlow looked at his reflection in the window at his office and asked himself who he was seeing. That certainly wasn't him. That man was blond and handsome, and he oozed breeding and self-confidence. He—the real Sam Goodlow—oozed only clumsiness, bad taste, a sort of infantile vulnerability, and he always had.
And as he thought these things, his reflection changed and he was once again seeing a stocky, craggy-looking man with red hair and gentle gray eyes. Himself. The real Sam Goodlow. He was pleased. This latest "episode"—as he had come to think of them—had lasted quite a while.
Maybe he should see a shrink. What harm could it do? At worst, he'd simply get to know himself a little better, and that was always good for the soul.
He glanced at his desk, across the room. It was empty. Empty? he wondered. Why was his desk empty? This was his place of business and as long as he had conducted business here he had kept a good, cluttered desktop. Clients liked cluttered desks—it made them think he was busy, always on the move, that he didn't have time for something so mundane as neatness.
Except for clients like Violet McCartle. Classy old woman. "You're certainly not the neatest of men, are you, Mr. Goodlow?" she had said at their first meeting.
"Is it one of your requirements?"
She smiled. It was a good and gracious smile, but it looked to Sam as if it hurt. "I have a job for you, Mr. Goodlow. It's not much of a job, so I'm sure you can handle it." She produced a manila envelope from her cavernous purse and handed it across the desk. The envelope was sealed and he began to open it. "No," she said. "Please don't. Not just yet."
"I don't understand."
"You will." She nodded to indicate the envelope. "My address is there. Could you please come and see me a week from today, about this time?"
"And don't look in the envelope?"
"No. But find a place to hide it, please. Find a very good place to hide it."
He wasn't sure. He liked having all the answers up front and this woman's cryptic way of doing business made him uneasy.
"I assure you," Violet McCartle said, "that all your questions will be answered a week from today.
He was still uncertain.
"There's a good deal of money in it for you, Mr. Goodlow."
This fact was not completely persuasive, but it helped.
"How much?" he asked.
"We'll settle that next week, okay?"
He thought a moment and said, "I'll be there."
"Good." She said nothing for a moment, then finished,
"I look forward to seeing you." A quick, secretive smile flashed across her mouth.
~ * ~
The memory faded.
Sam looked at his reflection in the window again. He saw a craggy, red-haired man look back and he asked himself, "Is that me?"
SEVENTEEN
The old man's name was Fredrick and he was going into his cellar in search of his cat, Adam. Fredrick lived alone with Adam, and had for a long time.
Fredrick was going on eighty-five, Adam was going on nineteen, and the two made a happy if eccentric pair—one was almost continuously searching for the other because both were nearly blind and deaf, and both had a very hard time getting around.
It took Fredrick nearly five minutes to descend the short flight of stairs into his cellar. As he descended, he cast about for any sign of Adam, but saw only elongated lumps, vertical lumps, horizontal lumps, beige lumps, brown lumps, green lumps, all of which constituted part of the minutiae of his life—a dollhouse, a circa 1932 Lionel train set (all laid out on two ping-pong tables, but unused for decades), a floor lamp he and his wife had bought the day after coming home from their honeymoon, a lawn mower, hand-powered tools, a grandfather clock bearing a white patina of dust.
"Adam?" Fredrick called soothingly. "Come and have your dinner; it's time for dinner." Actually, it wasn't time for Adam's dinner—that time had come and gone several hours earlier and Fredrick hadn't noticed.
He carried a can of 9 Lives tuna supper with him. The can was unopened, but he believed that Adam could spot a can of 9 Lives tuna from a long way off and did not need to smell it. Adam's veterinarian told Fredrick that the cat was probably almost blind, and that his sense of smell was doubtless nearly gone, but Fredrick did not believe this. Adam was his companion, after all, and had been healthy all his life. Just like him.
&
nbsp; Fredrick stopped to wonder if he had switched the light on in the cellar. He supposed that he had.
He turned and looked at the bare light bulb hanging from the rafters. It was switched on. This did not please him. He had hoped that he could add its light to the early morning light coming in the cellar windows.
He stepped forward. "Adam?" he called. "Come, come, Adam. Dinner time." There was no answering meow. He took another step forward. He was cautious here; the cellar was cluttered, and on his last visit he'd tripped over a can of paint and had nearly pitched headlong into the furnace.
He took another cautious step forward.
The air changed. It became cooler. He even supposed there was a little breeze.
"Adam?"
He smelled fish. Fish? he wondered. In my cellar? Perhaps he had fed Adam down here recently and what he smelled was the cat food. But no—he always fed Adam in the kitchen. His long-term memory might be kaput, he thought, but his short-term memory was as good as a young man's.
He smelled salt air. Fish, salt air? he wondered.
And the tangy smell of earth. Wet clay.
He glanced about. The lumps in the basement seemed to have changed. He dug in his pants pockets for his glasses, found his keys, some change, then realized that he was wearing his glasses. "Dammit all!" he whispered.
One of the vertical lumps nearby moved. It was a lump as tall as a man and Fredrick leaned forward to get a better look at it. A white face and dark eyes appeared before him out of the fog of his near-blindness.
"Jesus Christ!" Fredrick screamed, and backed away from the face.
The vertical lump and the face vanished.
The air grew warmer.
He took another step backwards and reached out to push at the face that was no longer there. His heel hit the bottom stair, he fell backwards, and his arms flailed about. He caught the railing with his left arm, and sat down hard on the stair.
"What in the name of heaven. . ." he breathed.
After a few moments, he realized that he no longer smelled fish and salt air and wet clay.
He heard a meow at his feet. He looked. The orange lump that was Adam looked back.
Fredrick smiled, leaned over, and held his old cat close to him, as he would a baby.
~ * ~
As soon as he woke, early that same morning, Ryerson knew that Sam Goodlow was in the room. He couldn't see him; he didn't need to see him.
The room was dark and Ryerson noted Sam's predilection for coming to him in darkness. Perhaps the man did it for show.
Ryerson glanced about. "Hello," he said. "Sam?"
"Do you know what I am, Rye?" It was Sam's lazy tenor; it was non-directional and it filled the room.
"Tell me what you are," Ryerson said.
"Puzzled. I'm puzzled. Befuddled. Benighted. No. No. Death didn't give me any answers, Rye. I expected answers. What did I get? Puzzled. Here I am, there I am. Half the time I don't know who I am or where I am, or even that I am, hell."
"I understand that," Ryerson said, and tried to think of something cogent to add. Nothing came to him.
"I think you're puzzled, too." It was a woman's voice, now.
"Perpetually, Sam."
"Was that a woman speaking? It's so hard to hear one's own voice—" Still the woman's voice.
"It's no problem, Sam. You're coming across just fine."
"I can see for you and be for you here, Ryerson."
"Sorry?"
"I think you need that." Sam's lazy tenor again. "I need you and you need me. You'll find my killer or you'll find me and I'll know what I am and where I am, and I'll find this lost woman who's married to the asshole and we'll both be as happy as rams."
"Clams, Sam?"
"As I said."
"Yes, I am puzzled, Sam. You say you don't know who killed you? I'd think that that would be easy for someone in your ... position."
"Say that when you are in my position, Rye."
"You're right. I'm sorry."
"Perpetually puzzled and perpetually sorry. Who can operate at all well in an alien world? My killer lives and teethes in your world—"
"Lives and breathes, Sam?"
"Whatever. And the asshole's wife lives and breathes in mine. And here we are, two detectives. Let's go and detect. I'll bash your head and you'll rub my feet."
"You mean, one hand will wash the other?"
"Which is what I said. Are you correcting me? Don't correct me. It's all I can do to stick here, hell. I'm being bugged, tugged all over, like taffy, Tom. I feel waffled, discerned, digested, muscled out and mutilated, and if my tense talk is in error, hell. I can see for you, and I can be for you, here, you. Yes or no? The heater's running."
"I understand."
"You wish you did."
"Of course. Yes."
"But you don't."
"I do, and I accept. Yes."
Silence.
"Sam?"
Nothing.
"Sam, are you still here?" He paused. "Are you still here, Sam?"
But Ryerson knew that he wasn't.
~ * ~
Fredrick's daughter was a tall, auburn-haired, and attractive woman of fifty-two whose name was Hanna Beckford. She came to look in on her father every couple of days, and although Fredrick knew that she thought of him as an invalid, and he resented her for it, he often looked forward to her visits. She was intelligent and had a droll sense of humor, much as had Fredrick's wife—Hanna's mother.
This morning, Hanna had found her father in the cellar babbling about "the face," and she was very concerned. She was even more concerned because he was cradling his cat in his arms, which he often did; but this morning, the cat was dead.
Hanna sat on the bottom cellar step, next to her father. She was trying to coax the dead cat from him, and she was trying, also, to find out what her father meant by "the face."
"Dad, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she told him, "but Adam is dead. Why don't you give him to me, Dad." And she put her hands on the dead cat, next to her father's hands.
But Fredrick protested, "He's sleeping, don't wake him, dammit!"
Hanna withdrew her hands.
"There's someone down here, you know!" Fredrick said.
Hanna shook her head. "Just you and me, Dad."
"And Adam. And the face."
"What face, Dad?"
Fredrick took one hand from the dead cat and pointed tremblingly toward the cellar wall. "There."
"That's just a wall."
"Dammit, I know it's a wall. I'm telling you that someone was standing in front of it." He idly scratched Adam behind the ears.
"Who?" asked Hanna.
"Who, who? Who knows who, for Pete's sake. Someone."
"And where is he now?"
"He? Did I say 'he'? I did not. It was a she."
"Oh."
"Oh? And what does that mean—`oh'? You think I'm having some geriatric sex fantasy, don't you, my girl? Well I'm not, and I know I'm not, because I know what geriatric sex fantasies are, I have them all the time, and this wasn't one of them."
Hanna sniffed. She smelled something odd. Fish? she wondered.
Fredrick said, "Smell that? Fish?"
"Do you feed the cat down here, Dad?"
"No, no, no. What a stupid suggestion. It takes me three hours to get down those damned stairs."
"But isn't that a can of cat food there?" Hanna nodded at the floor in front of Fredrick's feet. He leaned over a little, saw the can, said, "I was coaxing Adam with it."
Hanna smelled salt air. Wet clay. She glanced at the cellar windows—perhaps one was open and it was letting in salt air from the ocean six miles away. But the windows were closed.
She grew tense suddenly, as if someone were watching her. She turned her head, looked toward the big furnace. It was on the far side of the cellar, and it was lost in shadow.
"Dad, can you stand up?" She put a hand on Fredrick's elbow to coax him up.
"Smell that?" he said. "The ocean
."
"Yes, I do. Stand up, Dad." She was becoming very tense, now.
"The ocean, Hanna. Down here in my cellar." He seemed oddly pleased.
"Stand up, dammit!"
He stood, shakily, and then looked as if he were going to fall. "Let go of the cat, Dad," Hanna told him. "The cat is dead."
He nodded. "I know." He stroked the cat lovingly. "I know he's not asleep, Hanna. I know he's dead. I'm going to bury him."
"That's good, Dad. Let's just get upstairs, okay." He nodded again, but stayed put.
Hanna glanced quickly once more at the area of the furnace. The juxtaposition of furnace and shadow seemed to have changed. "Dad, move!"
"I'm trying to, Hanna. I can't."
"Of course you can. Just turn around and walk up the goddamned stairs."
"You do it, Hanna. I'm going to bury Adam." "For God's sake, you can't bury him down here."
"But I can, Hanna." He smiled. It was a smile full of secret pleasure.
He moved forward, off the bottom step and toward the wall, where the face had appeared.
Hanna grabbed his arm.
He shook it away. "Leave me alone, girl!" The venom in his voice made his daughter step back. "Dad?" she pleaded.
He took another step toward the wall. Another. Another.
And he was gone.
~ * ~
"I'm surprised to see you, Rye," said Captain Bill Willis.
"I've had time to think things over," Ryerson said, "and I want to see if I can help." He nodded at Willis's desk. "Is that the file?"
Willis nodded and handed the file over. Ryerson opened it, looked through it quickly, closed it. "You don't seem to have added anything in the past week."
Willis shrugged. "It's not a high priority case, Rye. Legally, Sam Goodlow's simply a missing person, which is about as unique as athlete's foot."
Ryerson smiled, took some jelly beans from the open decanter on Willis's desk, and popped them into his mouth. He asked, as he chewed, "Can I take this?"—meaning the file on Sam Goodlow.
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