by Dean Koontz
The only interesting thing about him was the saxophone he held.
Suddenly aware of me at the sidelight, he stepped away from the door and faced me through the glass. “Good afternoon,” he said.
“It isn’t noon yet,” I replied. “Anyway, I’m not allowed to open the door to strangers.”
Long, pale face. Sad hound-dog eyes made large by the thick lenses of his black-rimmed glasses. Hair lightly oiled and combed straight back from his forehead. In spite of the saxophone, I thought he’d probably grow up to be an undertaker.
He said, “I’m not a stranger. I’m Malcolm Pomerantz, and I live across the street.”
“You’re a stranger to me.”
“I heard the piano and thought Mr. Bledsoe must be home.”
“I’m not Mr. Bledsoe.”
“If you hadn’t told me, I would have been entirely fooled. The resemblance is uncanny.”
I liked how quick he came back with that, but I wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re a wise guy, huh?”
“I’ve been known to be. I guess you’re Jonah.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Maybe? You have amnesia? Listen, sometimes Mr. Bledsoe lets me jam with him.”
“How do I know that? He never mentioned you to me.”
“And here I thought he talked about me incessantly. Who’s got you thinking this neighborhood is Hell’s Kitchen?”
“My mom’s a worrier.”
“Sure, I’m not just a twelve-year-old geek saxophonist. I’m really a thirty-year-old crazed killer and master of disguise. You were totally rockin’ that Domino.”
“Thanks. He’s the greatest.”
“You know any other stuff?”
“No. I play ‘I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday’ over and over till I drive everybody insane. If I ever heard it, I pretty much know it.”
“I’m just needling you. I know all about your musical memory, if that’s what it’s called. Your granddad thinks you’re the end-all and be-all.”
That revelation filled me with pride, but then I remembered what Grandpa Teddy said about talent being an unearned grace, and I said, “Well, I’m not.”
“Never thought you were, pilgrim. I’m just telling you what your granddad said.”
“Why’d you call me pilgrim?”
“That was my John Wayne imitation.”
“Better stick with music.”
“Hey, you know who Sy Oliver was?”
“He wrote and arranged some great stuff back when, like for Tommy Dorsey. Four-beat swing, two-beat pop.”
“ ‘Easy Does It’ and ‘Swing High.’ ”
I said, “ ‘Swingin’ on Nothin’.’ You know it?”
“Let me in, and instead of stabbing you like four thousand times, I’ll play it with you.”
“What if you stink at it?” I asked.
“After you hear me, if you think it stinks, then I’ll beat you to death with this axe.”
“What axe?”
“You yanking my chain? It’s slang for saxophone.”
“We don’t use much slang in our family.”
I let him in, and he didn’t stab me four thousand times, or even once, and I didn’t give him any reason to beat me to death with his saxophone.
47
I consider it to have been a small miracle that Malcolm and I, two musical prodigies, lived across the street from each other that summer, and that each of us needed a friend. To other kids, I was a figure of fun because I was on the short side and was as skinny as a pretzel stick, and also because my father didn’t live at home. Back then, the vast majority of black families, of all families, were still two-parent households, and single mothers—whether divorced or never married—were subjects for gossips. Most kids made fun of Malcolm, too, because he was, well, Malcolm. Mismatched as we seemed to be at first glance, we built the friendship of a lifetime, and in fact I think we were fast friends by the time he left that day, about four hours after he had rung the doorbell.
Sometimes, when he’s in a funk, Malcolm says that maybe if we had never met, we wouldn’t have suffered through our most difficult losses, because we wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I never see it that way. Friendship is a great good thing, and the happiness that we got from our friendship did not tempt fate to spring a trap door under our feet. There is no fate, only free will, and we were just in the way of other people’s free will when they decided to do the Devil’s work. People are doing the Devil’s work everywhere you go; there’s no avoiding it unless you go live on a mountaintop somewhere, a hundred miles from everyone.
Anyway, Monday was not a night that Grandpa Teddy played at the hotel. After he finished his set in the couture department of the big fancy store in Midtown, he would pick up Sylvia at Woolworth’s and they would come home together. I expected them around five o’clock.
After Malcolm left, I turned on the TV and discovered that the regular programming had been interrupted by breaking news. Later in the year, the anti-war protests would grow in number, and there would be a march on the Pentagon that ended in violence and arrests. Though our city was seldom thought to be on the cutting edge of societal evolution, for some reason we had a couple of the larger and more tempestuous demonstrations that summer, as if the various anti-war organizations had decided to practice here before going on to more prominent venues in the autumn.
The demonstration that day was at City College. An angry crowd of three or four thousand were challenging the college regarding its ROTC program, and phalanxes of police in riot gear were trying to prevent them from surging into the building that they most wanted to seize. The race riots in Detroit had ended just the day before, and the news anchor kept teasing that story while covering the current one, from time to time repeating what Jerome Cavanaugh, Detroit’s mayor, had said regarding the aftermath: “It looks like Berlin in 1945.”
Although my mother had told me that the news is never all the news, only what they want to show you, I found myself riveted to the chaos on the TV screen, and I didn’t move even when they went to a commercial break. In those days, cigarette companies could still advertise on television, but lawyers couldn’t; some changes are for the better, and others are not.
Seconds after the station came back from the commercials to City College in turmoil, I saw Mr. Reginald Smaller. Most of those in the crowd were of college age, but among those who were older, our former building superintendent stood out like—not to be cruel—a gorilla among gazelles. He wore a colorful bandana that obscured his steel-wool every-which-way hair, but he was still a short man with a big middle, and he wore a tank top that revealed a dismaying amount of hirsute skin. That pelt alone conclusively identified him. Of all those in the shot, he appeared to be angriest, shouting at the police with such force that spittle sprayed, pumping one fist in the air, his face twisted and grotesque with rage.
I rose from the armchair and went to my knees directly in front of the screen, mesmerized by the spectacle and by this revelation of Mr. Smaller’s activist side, but perhaps fascinated most of all because this was the first time that I had ever seen someone I knew on television. Just then I saw a second person I knew. She wore jeans and a halter top and a cute straw hat with a ribbon that seemed out of place at that event. Unlike those around her, she didn’t shout or gesture, and she didn’t carry a sign, but instead clicked pictures with a small camera and observed everyone else as though taking copious mental notes. Maybe Miss Delvane was gathering material for a magazine article or for a novel to follow the one about the rodeo.
Right then I knew beyond doubt that if the camera shifted to the left, I would see my father with her, resplendent in his new beard. Tilton didn’t believe in much of anything except Tilton, and it made no sense that he would be risking a police baton to the face that might permanently diminish the pleasure he took in a mirror. But he was there. I could feel it. Maybe he was there only because of Miss Delvane. She was hot, and I don’t mean because it was
a summer day. Although only ten, I recognized hot when I saw it.
The camera panned left, and suddenly there he was, dear old dad, wearing a black T-shirt instead of the black turtleneck that he’d been wearing more than six months ago when I’d seen him in The Royal. He still sported a well-shaped beard. His previously close-cropped hair had grown into a modest Afro. Also as in the diner, he wore a large silver medallion on a chain around his neck. Back on December 29, I hadn’t been able to discern the nature of his jewelry; on the TV, it was clearly a peace sign.
The sight of Tilton in this context was so beyond expectation that I was both astonished and amazed, both my heart and mind quite overwhelmed. Like Miss Delvane, he displayed none of the righteous fury of the demonstrators among whom he moved. He seemed even to be somewhat bemused by their passion, and there was a certain wariness about him, his gaze continuously shifting here and there.…
I surprised myself when I said aloud, “What are they up to?”
Intuitively, based on my experience of my father, I knew that neither he nor Miss Delvane, nor Mr. Smaller, for that matter, was at the City College demonstration because they thought the war was immoral and hoped to end it. Something else must be afoot.
Although I expected next to glimpse Lucas Drackman and Fiona Cassidy, the news went to Detroit to dwell lovingly on the charred and still smoking ruins left behind by the recently ended riots. When I heard car doors slam and stood up and, through a window, saw Grandpa’s Cadillac at the curb in front of the house, I shut off the television.
When he and Mom came through the front door and called out to me, I called back to them from the kitchen, where I was busy setting the dinette table for dinner.
They had stopped at the supermarket to buy fresh-ground sirloin and other items. For dinner we enjoyed a tomato-and-cucumber salad, hamburger steaks, baked beans, and potatoes that Grandpa sliced thin and fried in a big iron skillet with butter and slivers of a green pepper.
At the table, as we ate, we shared the events of the day with one another. Two and a half months after Grandma Anita’s passing, my grandfather was able to smile again and on occasion even laugh, though there remained in him a sorrow that was obvious when he thought you weren’t looking and was evident to a lesser degree when you were.
I told them about Malcolm Pomerantz, how he had to work hard to convince me that he wasn’t a murderous stranger, how we had a lot of fun playing together, even if piano and sax made an odd duet. I didn’t mention my father on television, because I knew myself well enough to realize that if I talked about him, I might chatter on and tell them about Miss Delvane. I didn’t want to hurt my mother, and even though she had given up on Tilton, she might be wounded if she learned that Miss Delvane was with him.
48
Later, I was lying in bed with a copy of Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast, which I’d started the evening before. The story was hilarious. The previous night, I’d giggled frequently while reading. But now I couldn’t get Tilton-on-TV out of my head, and scenes that should have made me laugh out loud could raise no more than a smile.
My door was ajar, and Mom appeared at the threshold. “Hey, big guy, you have a minute?”
“Well, I was about to get dressed and go bar-hopping, then take a jet to Paris for breakfast.”
“What time’s your flight?” she asked as she came into the room.
“It’s a private jet. I can leave anytime I want.”
“You’ve been saving your lunch money, huh?”
“And investing it wisely.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you happy here, sweetie?”
“In Grandpa’s house? Sure. It’s better than an apartment. It’s so quiet here.”
“Your room’s bigger.”
“A piano right in the living room. And no cockroaches.”
“It’s nice having the second bathroom, even if it does just have a shower without a tub.”
Putting the book aside, I said, “I miss Grandma, though.”
“I’ll miss her till the day I die, sweetie. But she left a lot of love in this house. I feel it all around.”
She picked up my left hand and kissed each finger. She always did things like that. I’ll never forget the gentle things she did, not ever.
“You like Malcolm, do you?”
“Yeah. He’s cool.”
“I’m glad you found a friend so soon. Which reminds me, someone came by to eat at the lunch counter today and gave me a message for you. She said you were the sweetest, most courteous boy, and I was so proud of you.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I never saw her before, but she said she lived in our building for a short while. Said she met you in the foyer and on the stairs a few times. Eve Adams. Do you remember her?”
If ever I suspected I might be a better actor than musician, that was the moment. “Miss Adams, yeah. Pretty lady with kind of purple eyes. That was way last summer.”
“You never mentioned her.”
“I just saw her a couple times, coming and going, you know.”
“She said she’s a photographer.”
“I didn’t know for sure what she was.”
“She said to tell you she still has the photo of you and it’s one of her favorites.”
I frowned as if trying to remember. “Yeah, she asked to take my picture once, out on the stoop. I don’t know why.”
“She said you’re very handsome and photogenic. She’s obviously got the good eye of a first-rate photographer.”
I pretended to be embarrassed by the compliment. “Yeah, I’m a regular Rock Hudson.” I was mortified, but only because I was in a box labeled HE LIES TO HIS MOTHER; and maybe I would never be able to get out of it.
She kissed me on the forehead. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your book. I know you love Heinlein.”
“He’s okay. You’re not an interruption.”
Getting up from the bed, she said, “I love you, Jonah.”
“I love you, too.”
“Remember to say your prayers.”
“I will.”
Leaving, as she pulled shut the door, she said, “Sleep tight, Mr. Hudson.”
I felt lower than dirt.
After that, I had no interest in The Star Beast.
I said my prayers and turned out the light, but I didn’t expect to sleep well.
In my mind, I kept hearing Fiona Cassidy from almost a year earlier: If you love your mama, then you think about what I said. I like to cut. I could make her a new face in half a minute.
In the dark, something kept tickling in my left nostril, but nothing was there. Not a tickle, really. A sensory memory of the cold point of the switchblade with which she’d threatened me.
Whatever Fiona Cassidy and Lucas Drackman and Mr. Smaller and my father and Miss Delvane might be planning, if indeed they were scheming together, they must be getting close to executing the plan. The purple-eyed witch had gone to Woolworth’s not primarily for lunch but to deliver a compliment that she wanted my mother to pass along to me, a compliment that was actually a threat, to be sure that I hadn’t forgotten the consequences of not keeping my mouth shut.
49
This next bit is based on hearsay. Because the source was Mr. Yoshioka, however, I’m certain it is reliable.
At the same time that my mother was telling me about Eve Adams having lunch at Woolworth’s, Mr. Yabu Tamazaki of the Daily News was sitting at the kitchen table in his apartment, in another part of the city, poring over the passenger manifest of the cruise ship on which, in October 1961, Mrs. Renata Kolshak had booked what turned out to be her death voyage.
Because he was continuing his investigation against the wishes of his superiors at the newspaper, Mr. Tamazaki had proceeded slowly and with caution. He had been delayed, as well, by avenues of inquiry that had proved to be dead-ends. After considerable patient effort, he had found a contact inside the cruise-ship company, Mrs. Rebecca Tremaine, formerly Rebecca Arikawa.
&nb
sp; In 1942, at the age of twelve, Rebecca was removed from a foster home and sent to Children’s Village, the camp orphanage at Manzanar. The following year, she was raped by a nineteen-year-old internee who was a member of a gang. The rapist was transferred to the more secure camp at Tule Lake, where he stood trial. Late in 1944, at the age of fourteen, Rebecca was returned to her foster parents, Sarah and Louis Walton, who began the process of adoption. With the help of a loving family, she overcame the trauma of rape and eventually married.
On the advice of its attorneys, the cruise line kept passenger manifests of every voyage for ten years. Although that list of names and addresses was proprietary information—a source of likely future customers—Rebecca was persuaded that Mr. Tamazaki, a man of honor, had no intention of harming her employer in any way.
The passenger manifest contained 1,136 names. Mr. Tamazaki did not expect to find Lucas Drackman on it, and indeed he didn’t. He was looking for a suspicious name—comparable to Eve Adams—or any suggestion of falsity in an address, or the initials L.D., because both criminals of limited intelligence and those who were smart but cocksure often used aliases with that connection to their real names.
Because Renata Kolshak had booked early, she was passenger number fifty. As he proceeded through the manifest, Mr. Tamazaki marked a few lines with a red pencil, for later reconsideration, but when he reached passenger number 943, he was all but certain that he had found his man. The name Douglas T. Atherton struck him as being familiar, but he couldn’t say why. The passenger’s home address was also of interest: Charleston, Illinois, which turned out to be about twelve miles east of Mattoon, where Lucas Drackman had attended and graduated from a private military academy.
A quick check of the case file confirmed that the provost of the military school at that time had been Douglas T. Atherton.