by Ray Deeg
“Before you say anything more, I’d appreciate it if you would tell me how you found us here,” Tom said sternly.
Heckie nodded and then retrieved golden envelopes from his jacket pocket. “I was just about to tell ya, Mr. Hartger.” Heckie removed a letter from one of the envelopes and handed it to Gwen. “I had a meeting with the FBI this morning. When I came out of their building in Federal Plaza, a courier walked up to me and handed me this envelope. It’s the second one I’ve received from J. P. Morgan Chase Trust and Fiduciary Services.”
Gwen accepted the letter and read out loud.
Dear Ian Heckie—Visit the public library immediately. Check out a book called Brain Waves and Death. You’ll have a few hours to learn what you can. Leave the library at 7:15 p.m. sharp and take the subway uptown. On the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 111th Street is a sidewalk cafe called the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Meet Tom Hartger there at precisely 7:45 p.m. Stay with him until 8:20 p.m. and then head to the Waldorf Astoria by yourself.
Silence loomed over the table as they strained over the cryptic message. “Wait a minute,” Tom said, recognizing the letterhead. “I received this same type of letter just a few days ago; it was Friday morning, at my office. It was also from J. P. Morgan, on the same letterhead, and it was some kind of promotion—for the town of New Hope, actually!”
Gwen and Heckie stared at Tom with raised eyebrows and cocked heads.
Tom stared hopelessly at Gwen and then spoke. “That’s how I got the idea for our day trip to New Hope. It just popped in my head when I saw you at Columbia, but the letter is how I got the idea,” Tom admitted.
Gwen looked at Heckie’s letter and placed her hand on her temple. “You know what? I got one of these too,” she said, staring at the paper. “Six weeks ago. It was the same letterhead from J. P. Morgan. It said that Columbia was looking for alumni to speak on topics in their particular area of expertise. I had been looking for venues where I could promote my real-time framework. It seemed like a great opportunity, so I ignored the fact that J. P. Morgan was the sender. I thought it was just part of some messenger service. I called Columbia to tell them I’d received their invitation, but no one I spoke with knew anything about any invitation to speak. But they had an open spot, so I booked it. When I arrived on Friday, I saw that you were on the schedule, too,” she said, pointing at Tom. “So I decided to stay and listen.”
Tom looked to Heckie for an answer, but Heckie was deep in thought. “Exactly. I’ve received two of these letters,” Heckie said between mouthfuls of cherry strudel. “The first was yesterday morning. That one instructed me to go back to Everett Lemily’s house to find a blueprint. Of course, there it was, lying just where the letter said it would be.” Heckie unfolded a tattered blueprint and placed it on the table. “Everett Lemily was also receiving these envelopes. They were mostly checks—lots of money, and for many years. Of course, the moment I received the letter yesterday, I called J. P. Morgan Trust Services and scheduled an appointment with the head of the Trust Service Department. I learned from him that there is a trust. It was created over thirty years ago. The trust contains instructions on who is to receive letters, where they should be sent, and when, as well as precisely what the letters should say. I had a chance to see a list of names, other people who are receiving these letters. I saw both of your names on the list; I’m glad you were honest with me.”
Tom’s head was spinning, but he sat up straight and listened to the man’s bizarre story.
“I saw dozens of other names too, including an FBI agent named Randall Evans. He’s the man who discovered Monty Palomar’s body after you left the store. Agent Evans had taken photos of three East Indian men leaving the shop, the same men you claim came to your apartment Sunday morning. The bankers at J. P. Morgan weren’t very helpful; everything is confidential. They won’t tell me who put the trust into motion. But I did learn something. The instructions in this trust are well over thirty years old.”
Tom and Gwen stared blankly.
Heckie pointed to the address on his first letter. “This address did not exist thirty years ago, yet someone knew about it way back then.”
The neurons in Tom’s brain begin to fire. Heckie’s words sounded familiar—like a conversation he’d already had, if only he could remember.
“I decided to share what I’d learned, and I needed reinforcements,” Heckie continued. “After leaving the bank this morning, I went to the FBI and told them everything. First of all, this Agent Evans is not assigned to any case involving these Indian men and had no business tracking the whereabouts of Tesla’s machine. I also learned that Agent Evans served warrants on your residences without authorization by lying to a federal judge. The men I spoke with appeared to be rather concerned. This Evans is in hot water. They were planning on rolling his office when I left.”
Heckie took a deep breath and another bite of strudel. “Then—and this is where it gets even stranger—they take me to a room where a group called the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate is briefing Homeland Security. Since 2012, this directorate has been recording reflections, high-output energy waves caused by the most powerful collisions at the Hadron Collider. They perform very advanced measurements, and they found an echo. And when they searched Sentinel for a technology that could have caused this, the case describing Tesla’s machine came up as a match.”
Heckie’s words were overwhelming. “What does Tesla’s machine have to do with these energy waves from the particle collider?” Tom asked.
“I arrest teenagers for spray-painting underpasses, Mr. Hartger. Don’t ask me. But they were talking about a test being conducted in Geneva tomorrow at six in the morning, and they appeared highly concerned.”
Tom’s mind was swirling, but he was getting used to it. He thought about Heckie’s words and checked his watch. “Yes, it’s to be the most powerful collision yet. And six o’clock Geneva time is midnight here—tonight. That’s in less than four hours. Whoever is sending these letters has an uncanny sense of timing.”
Tom felt manipulated. He looked around at the people sitting nearby. He saw couples, a group of kids, a woman reading a book. Several of them seemed to make eye contact. What is happening to me?
CHAPTER 44
TOM CAUGHT HIS bearings and spoke. “We’ve only been at this cafe for twenty minutes, so someone is obviously watching us. They must have called someone to deliver that letter to you.”
Heckie shook his head. “No Tom, I don’t think you’re getting it. I received this letter four hours ago, before you got here. And again—the letter and delivery instructions are over thirty years old.”
Tom looked at the letter and then at Gwen. “That’s impossible.”
Heckie nodded confidently as he bit into the strudel and flagged the waiter for a coffee. “Now we’re working off the same sheet of music,” Heckie said, his face registering the impossibility of the day. “Like I said, I saw the names of dozens of people who are receiving these letters. God only knows what they instruct people to do. The banker also told me that no updates have ever been made to the trust.”
Gwen tried to work out what she was hearing, but for someone whose life trade is spent showing people how easily their senses distort the world, she too was having a hard time getting her head around it all. “And this blueprint is even more disturbing. The notes here: things about the soul, about traveling behind a curtain, about touching God—even about hell being a sort of purgatory where we are forced to suffer endlessly by repeating our mistakes for all eternity.”
Tom’s focus moved past Heckie to the tall bronze statue across the street. The Peace Fountain, also part of the cathedral’s property, weaves together the conflict between good and evil. Tom saw the archangel Michael flying overhead after defeating Satan. Toward the bottom of the statue, a lion lay with a lamb. The fountain’s spiraling base, Tom recalled, took its inspiration from the double helix of DNA. Another spiral.
“I assume you went to the library
for this book, Brain Waves and Death?” Tom asked.
“I just came from the library,” Heckie said, excitement blazing in his eyes. “The notes on this blueprint were written by a scientist who worked at the Tower House lab. I suspect it’s a man named Bill. I did some digging and found out that Loomis had an employee named William Richards. He worked at the Tuxedo Park lab from the late 1920s until the late 1930s. Here, my lads, is where the rabbit hole gets even deeper. On January 30, 1940, William Richards committed suicide. Guess how he snuffed himself?”
“He slit his wrists,” Tom replied.
Heckie nodded slowly. “Just like Everett Lemily. And in those days, committing suicide was a moral disgrace, so it was covered up. A suicide note was found, but it was destroyed, and its contents were never revealed. But I don’t think it was hushed up just because it was an embarrassment. You see, this Richards fella left a damn curious legacy. He’s the author of this book, Brain Waves and Death—only he published it under the pen name Willard Rich. Now, listen carefully. The book is a novel. It tells the story of a mysterious laboratory ruled by a reclusive, enigmatic financier obsessed with experiments and with capturing the electrical impulses of the human brain—almost like capturing a person’s soul.”
Gwen straightened out in her chair, holding her coffee with both hands as if she were sitting around a campfire eating s’mores and listening to a ghost story.
Heckie grabbed a scone and went to town, continuing his story with his mouth full. “Even back then, when Loomis’s laboratory was still a relative secret, a lot of people recognized this nightmarish laboratory in the book as the one in Tuxedo Park.
“Richards’s family did whatever they could to get the novel suppressed, but it was published just after his suicide. His family was desperate to avoid a scandal. His mother went so far as to write a letter in order to put her son’s suicide in a better light. She explained that Bill had been seriously ill for a long time, having never recovered from a serious medical procedure years earlier. The novel earned pretty good reviews, though, even with papers like the New York Times describing it as ingeniously contrived and executed.
“It’s rumored that Loomis bought thousands of copies of Brain Waves and Death, all the copies he could get his hands on. He didn’t want any of it going public; he knew it would place the lab and their important work in severe jeopardy. Richards had been a trusted colleague for over a decade, and Loomis was absolutely furious.”
Gwen eyed Heckie. “Did this William Richards use the machine on himself?” she asked.
“Based on these notes, I only know that he was intimately involved in the research. I did read about resuming tests after unintentionally causing a crash in the stock market. I don’t understand all of it, but this Bill fella was suffering from a neurosis of some sort, and it was so bad that he dedicated himself to professional psychotherapy. His obituary even mentions it.”
“Very sad.” Gwen shook her head. “And very disturbing. So the novel is about a secret lab and an eccentric scientist capturing people’s brain waves? It sounds like Richards was angry with Loomis and wanted to expose him—maybe even ruin him.”
“My thought exactly,” Heckie said. “And blackmail is in fact part of the novel. As the story goes, one of the not-so-bright blackmailers not only lets himself be known to his victims, but spends the weekend with them at the mansion. The blackmailer volunteers to undergo a brain-wave test himself, but when the blackmailer’s brain gets fried, an inspector is called in. The blackmailer goes crazy at the hospital and tells everyone that they’ve created a tear in the fabric of space-time. Everyone is sure he’s gone mad, and he’s sent to a sanitarium to get better. He can only be saved by a soul that is so centered at the source of all wisdom, so conscious of the cosmos and the natural order by which it operates, that it will be able to understand the mistake that’s been made. In the end, none of the characters put the pieces together, and everything starts over from the beginning. Humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes for all eternity.”
“A tear in the fabric of space-time,” Tom repeated softly. “A time loop.” He thought about his dreams, the patch of ceiling in his childhood bedroom. He could smell the electricity discharging from his model’s circular train tracks. The smell was somehow in the air now, mixing with the fall leaves. “So was William Richard trying to blackmail Loomis?” Tom asked. “Is he the one responsible for sending these letters? How could he have known all these details? He died nearly eighty years ago.”
“I don’t know,” Heckie said. “William Richards died in 1940, so he wasn’t alive thirty-two years ago when this trust was established. And why any of us are involved is beyond me.”
Tom stared into his coffee. It’s time to put everything on the table, he thought. “I think I do have an idea why I’m involved,” Tom said, looking up. “My grandfather, Phillip Hartger, started a company called Empyrean Ventures in the 1950s. The company manages intellectual property, and he had an uncanny sense for which patents would be valuable. We visited Empyrean’s patent archive last night—well, technically, this morning. Tesla’s machine, the one in this blueprint—it was patented by my grandfather in 1941.” Tom blew the electric smell away from his face. “I can only assume he stole the idea. He called it a magnetic field portal.”
Heckie looked around, shaking his head. He checked his watch and interrupted. “Look, there’s clearly a lot to sort through, but it’s 8:19 p.m., and I have to leave for the Waldorf Astoria in less than a minute if I’m going to follow the instructions in this letter.”
“I’ll come with you,” Tom said, downing the last sip of coffee.
“No, the letter says to go by myself.”
“You realize you can’t trust this, don’t you?” Tom said. “This could be a trap, or a setup.”
“So far, these letters have been spot on,” Heckie replied as he snatched up the golden envelope and the blueprint from the table. “But if you want to be useful, you can visit a woman named Mildred Lorraine Lemily. She’s Everett’s ex-wife. She’s way uptown in the 180s. I’d do it myself, if I had time. Find out what she knows. Ask her about the machine and this William Richards fella.” Heckie handed Gwen a piece of paper containing the woman’s name and address. “She’ll be far more forthcoming with a good-looking couple like you than with me.”
Tom glanced at Gwen and then looked away quickly. “I’ll let you know what I find at the Waldorf. Take my number, and let’s stay in touch.”
“Thank you,” Tom said, holding out his hand. Heckie took Tom’s hand and stared with a kind silence. Tom recognized the moment as familiar and then watched Heckie walk away. If you could only remember.
He retrieved some cash from his wallet and placed it on the table. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, holding his hands in the air as if to yell uncle to the Gods above. “Are you up for visiting this Mildred Lemily?”
Gwen grabbed his hands and stepped closer. “I don’t know what’s going on either, but it seems as though our little adventure has yet to reach a conclusion. I have high amounts of cherry strudel and caffeine in my bloodstream, and I’m certainly not going home to the disaster that surely awaits.”
Her hands felt soft and warm. They stood in silence for what seemed like minutes without looking away. The moment lingered perfectly. Finally she stepped back, holding his gaze, and neither had to say anything more. Being alive is often a lonely proposition, and all too often you have to carry yourself and your baggage all alone. But not tonight. Someone had dealt them back in the game. The pair walked down Amsterdam Avenue toward the subway station and then disappeared underground.
CHAPTER 45
TOM AND GWEN stepped up to the building on 188th Street. Surely, Tom thought, they had found the most depressing block in all of the city, rows of grim buildings collapsing under the constant tug of gravity from so many heavy hearts inside. Mildred’s building looked like an old ice cube tray with tiny slot apartments rented by the week or maybe by
the day. Tape and torn paper clung to the outside door as if the permit for demolition had been torn off by an occupant prolonging the inevitable. The vestibule was equally dingy; a spent forty-ounce still wrapped in a brown paper bag sat on the top stair, and cigarette butts littered the floor. Gwen eyeballed the resident directory, using her finger to scan names. “I see a Mildred Dempsey, but no Mildred Lemily.”
“How many Mildreds can there be?” Tom replied.
Gwen pressed the button.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said through the speaker.
Tom pointed to Gwen; he knew a woman’s voice would be less startling.
“Ah, yes, hello. Is this Mildred Lemily?” Gwen asked.
“No, this is Anna, Mildred’s city nurse. Who is this?”
“My name is Gwen Pierce, and I’m here with my friend Tom Hartger. We’d like to speak with Mildred about her ex-husband, Everett Lemily. We just need a few minutes.”
“Well, she’ll be going to bed soon. Are you lawyers or something?”
“No, no,” Gwen replied.
Tom stepped closer and spoke. “Hello, Anna. This is Tom. It’s a rather long story, but we’re interested in speaking with Mildred about Everett Lemily and a machine he owned in New Hope, Pennsylvania. We’ve found ourselves wrapped up in—well, a mystery or sorts—and we think Mildred could help shed some light. We certainly mean no harm, and we won’t be long at all.” Tom eyed Gwen while he spoke. He found himself staring at her constantly now. She had a calm vitality, an innocent demeanor that contrasted excitingly with her level-headedness. It was rubbing off on him, and he liked it. Her sense of what was possible gave him confidence to let his imagination rove like a formless cloud in the wind, drifting wherever it might.
The door buzzed, and he watched her push it open.
“Thank you, Anna,” Gwen said as she stepped through. “C’mon,” she whispered playfully, bringing him back to now.