“Not as such.”
“When I saw him, he did. Another demonstration of higher dimensions, y’see. The way he explained it, one of these dimensions accessed the thoughts and memories of people around him. So he fretted a bit and furrowed his brow and announced stray recollections he’d picked up from the audience to see if any fitted. Which, naturally, they did. If there was no response, he put it down to shyness on the part of the person concerned. Most everybody there seemed to swallow the thing. He summoned up a memory of small-town Nebraska for some girl who’d grown up there. Even had the first name of the best friend she’d gone to school with. Persuasive stuff. She nearly passed out.”
“But you weren’t persuaded?”
“I know the tricks of the trade. And I could see Slade was getting over-confident. Maybe believing his own publicity. So, when nobody claimed some half-assed memory of a favourite uncle making model aeroplanes, I put up my hand and said, “Jeez, that must be Uncle Ira.” Slade went for it in a big way. Had me nodding like a donkey to some crap about Uncle Ira standing in for my dead pa. He’d been killed in Korea, seemingly. I still kept his medals in a tobacco tin. Polished them every Veterans’ Day. It was something, believe me. Till I up and said, “See here, Mr. Slade, I may as well own up. That was all a crock of lies. I’ve never had an Uncle Ira. Or a war hero for a father. What made you think I had? I mean, why didn’t your hyper-dimensional insight tell you I was lying?” ‘
“What did he say?”
“Oh, the obvious. That I’d claimed somebody else’s memory simply to make mischief. That I could lie, but his instincts couldn’t. He was shaken, but he hid it well. Most of the audience probably believed him. They wanted to believe him, y’see. They certainly didn’t rush to my support when the security goons threw me out. I was shouting back over my shoulder at Slade all the way. About how I was a real magician who didn’t try to deceive his customers. About how I’d forgotten more tricks than he’d ever learn. Pretty unoriginal. But I was mad at him by then. For being so brazen as well as so successful. And for not recognizing me. I guess that hurt more than his lack of ethics. Still, it taught him a lesson. Mind-reading’s been sidelined from his public performances since then. He only does it with carefully vetted audiences. And they don’t include the likes of me.”
“Did the press make anything of your set-to with him?”
“Nah. He wasn’t quite famous enough then. But it didn’t go completely unnoticed. Some guy followed me out onto the street and asked if he could buy me a drink in exchange for my considered opinion of Slade’s hyper-dimensional powers. Nice feller. Young, good-looking, friendly. Had his girlfriend along with him.”
“David and Donna?”
“You got it. We went to a bar and he pumped me for details of how Slade could do those things without special powers. Since he kept the drinks coming, I didn’t mind obliging with the answers. Well, the hunches, anyway. My guesses about how he did it. David wasn’t convinced. I could tell that. Even then, I could tell he wanted it to be true. Donna saw it differently. She was real eager for me to discredit Slade. I think David’s belief in him worried her. That’s how I read it later anyway At the time, I was just happy to sound off. Turned out Donna had seen my act once, in Seattle, where she grew up. But she hadn’t recognized me as Mr. Nemo. I’d changed too much. That really broke me up. That or the drink. In the end, they had to take me home in a cab. By then, I was babbling about Anna and the day she fell from the high trapeze. Next morning, I couldn’t remember much about it. I reckoned one thing was certain, though. I wouldn’t see either of them again. And there I was dead wrong. They came to see me that afternoon. They were up from Washington for the weekend and didn’t want to go back without checking how I was. Seems my theories about Slade’s act had got to David. And those old Mr. Nemo posters peeling off the walls of my mildewed apartment had got to Donna. They wanted to help. Get me off the juice and put me back on the rails. They wanted to rescue me. Can you believe it? It was like the Salvation Army without the tambourines.”
“But it worked?”
“Yeh, it worked. You see beside you a sane overweight stimulant-free man. David and Donna pulled some strings with a doctor they knew at a clinic out on Long Island. Got me admitted free of charge and pretty much put back together. Then they helped find me a part-time job. Caretaker at the Vanderbilt Law School. It’s not exactly Wall Street wages, but I’ve stuck it. Hell, with what I’ve saved on booze and dope alone, I’ve been able to move to a better apartment. Well, a habitable apartment, leastways. Plus this stylish vehicle you’re currently resting your butt in. Anna would be proud of me. And it’s all down to two people who don’t owe me a damn thing. One of them your son. Who’s evidently been too modest to tell you about it.”
“We’ve rather lost touch recently.”
“That a fact? Some kinda disagreement, was there?”
“More a lack of understanding.”
“It happens. I hope you get the chance to put it right, Harry, I surely do. Y’see, all this academic ambition, this career building, isn’t the whole man, is it? At bottom, David’s one of the good guys.”
Trustworthy? Loyal? Reliable?”
“Sure is. That’s why I’m doing this. Why the hell else would I?”
“No reason.”
Hackensack slowed gently to a stop at the side of the road, turned off the lights and looked back over his shoulder. Then he lowered the window and listened for a moment. “Nothing,” he finally pronounced. “Not a dog’s barked since we left the Taconic State Parkway. This is a clear run, Harry. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
Hackensack’s confidence was such that he reckoned they could safely lay up at an inn he knew for a couple of hours before heading on to Albany. It was a quiet well-kept place near the centre of a scattered settlement of trimmed farmyards and prosperous residences. Harry was by now as clueless as to their whereabouts as he was uncaring. The inn supplied food, drink and warmth in an atmosphere of old-fashioned hospitality, all of which he badly needed. His other requirements were at the mercy of plans hatched for him by strangers. And for the moment he was content to leave them that way. His curiosity on another subject was very much alive, however.
Tell me more about David, Woodrow.”
“He’s your son, Harry. Hell, you talk as if you’ve never met him.”
“Pretend I haven’t. Describe him as you would to somebody who never had.”
“OK. If you want me to. He seems lightweight at first acquaintance. Genial and accommodating. Then you realize there’s a remoteness behind the smile. You could take it for aloofness, even arrogance. But that’s not it. It’s just half his mind is always somewhere else. Floating round those damned equations. He’d be attractive to women, I guess. But they’d have to be on his scientific wavelength. Like Donna, y’know? She told me he’d been married to some Hollywood social climber and it’s no surprise that was a disaster. Mathematics is more than his profession. It’s an obsession. He believed in Slade’s hyper-dimensional powers because he was mathematically satisfied that higher dimensions exist and therefore, theoretically, should be accessible to us. Well, you’d have to call that single-minded, wouldn’t you? Whatever he was doing for Globescope, I can assure you it didn’t command much of his attention. Last time I met him, he was still on that hyper-dimensional duck-hunt.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, a couple of months back. Just before he flew to England. Start of the Labor Day weekend. Early September.”
“In New York?”
“Yeh. He turned up at my apartment just as I was leaving for work Friday evening. He looked fine, but he sounded kinda odd, kinda… spaced out. Asked if he could stay over. Well, that was no problem. Least I could do. Then, Saturday morning, he asked if I’d do him a favour and go upstate with him to see somebody. Well, that was no problem either. I was happy to go along for the ride. We headed for Poughkeepsie, just west of here, down on the Hudson.”
&n
bsp; “Who did you see?”
“An inmate of the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center. Guy name of Dobermann. Y’know? Like the dog. Carl Dobermann.”
“Who’s he?”
“Well, no dog-breeder, that’s for sure and certain. A head case. Chronically wacko. Been in that hospital more than thirty years. On the way up to Poughkeepsie, David told me a bit about him. A bit about why he wanted to see him. Not all, though. He was holding something back. I could tell by his manner. Shifty. Nervy. A mite ashamed of himself. Anyway, it seems Dobermann’s been locked up at Hudson Valley since he was a student at Columbia back in the fifties. So long nobody’s sure why he was locked up there in the first place. Lately he’s been allowed to mix with other inmates more. To walk around the grounds. Even leave them under escort. I guess that’s why the rumours started. Visitors began saying they’d seen him do the weirdest things. Move objects without touching them. Appear as if out of thin air, then disappear the same way. Predict the arrival in the car park of a certain make and colour of automobile before anyone else could see it. I mean, bizarre stuff. Seriously screwball.”
“What was David’s interest in him?”
“Can’t you guess? He thought it was possible Dobermann had hyper-dimensional powers. Might have gone crazy because of them. But might still possess them. That was the point. He wanted to check him out. And he wanted me as a confirmed sceptic to be there when he did it. To authenticate whatever happened.”
“What did happen?”
“Not a thing. Oh, we met Mr. Dobermann. He seemed real pleased to see us. He’s about sixty. Looks it, leastways. Lean as a hoe, with a hospital tunic several sizes too big hanging off him like a sail from a mast on a windless day. Grins a lot. Twitches a hell of a lot more. But says near to nothing. I mean, out of touch isn’t in it. He still thinks Eisenhower’s in the White House. This is not a together guy. As for walking through walls, forget it. The special effects were off-line.”
“A wasted visit, then?”
“Not exactly. After a while David took him for a walk round the grounds. Told me he thought I might be making Dobermann nervous. So I waited in the car park. When David came back, he seemed, well, satisfied about something. He didn’t say much, other than Dobermann hadn’t gone up in a puff of blue smoke. They’d talked about Columbia mostly, he said. About Dobermann’s studies there.”
“Was Dobermann a … mathematician?”
“Hole in one. Carl Dobermann was studying for a doctorate in mathematics when he had his breakdown. He was writing a thesis on higher dimensions and David had got hold of an early draft of his work. That was as much as he told me on the way back to New York. But I reckon there was a hell of a lot more he wasn’t telling. I didn’t get the chance to find out, though. He flew to England that very night.”
“Never to return,” murmured Harry, half to himself.
“I don’t know about never. While there’s ‘
“How far is the hospital from here?”
“Oh, about fifteen miles.”
“Take me there, Woodrow. Please.”
Hackensack grimaced. “No can do. I’ve got to put you on a train at Albany.”
“When does it leave?”
“Twenty after ten.”
“And how long will it take us to get to Albany?”
“Hour, maybe. Hour and a half.”
Harry glanced at his watch. “There’s time, then.”
“Not enough. Besides, it’s too risky.”
“You said yourself there was nothing to worry about.”
“There isn’t. So long as we don’t take any senseless detours.”
This isn’t senseless. I just want to talk to Dobermann. To ask him what he told David.”
“He’ll clam up. You may as well talk to the wall.”
“I just want to try.”
“Sorry, Harry, but I can’t do it. Donna told me to be careful. I aim to oblige her.”
“Fine. I understand.” Harry grinned. “I’d better call a cab, hadn’t I?” Hackensack flung up his hands in a gesture of pleading. “Unless you think that’s even riskier.”
“I guess I do.” Hackensack pulled a grubby white handkerchief from his pocket and flapped it in front of him. “You win, Harry. We’ll go pay Mr. Dobermann a visit.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Did the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center admit visitors after seven o’clock on a Sunday evening? This was the kind of practical question Harry did not pause to consider until he and Hackensack were standing in the lofty foyer of the establishment, waiting for the man behind the counter to drag his attention away from a televised football game. But the glossy brochures on display and the coming and going of people who certainly looked as if they had a stake in the outside world encouraged him to be optimistic, as did Hackensack’s confidence that he could talk their way past any number of bureaucratic obstacles.
“You want to see whol’
“Carl Dobermann. We’re friends of his.”
“That so?”
“Yuh. But we’re not often in the neighbourhood, so we’d sure appreciate it if…”
“Wait over there. I’ll see what I can do.”
They sat down on a couch, where Hackensack muttered contemptuously at the assorted ineptitudes of the televised foot ballers while Harry studied an artist’s impression of the hospital’s picturesque setting on the banks of the Hudson, something he would have to take on trust, having seen nothing beyond the floodlit car park. Then the man returned and announced somebody would be out to have a word with them shortly. A few minutes later, somebody arrived. A small spring-heeled slick-haired fellow in a far smarter suit than Harry would have supposed the night-shift at Hudson Valley really warranted. He did not actually have Public Relations Officer stamped on his forehead, but his sparkling smile signalled a certain expertise in that direction.
“Would you two gentlemen care to step along to my office?”
“No problem,” said Hackensack. “But we only called by to see a friend. Don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“It’s just there are one or two points about after-hours visiting I need to clear.”
Hackensack glanced round at Harry, giving him the chance to pull out there and then. But Harry was not about to give up so easily. “I’m sure it won’t take long. Let’s go.”
It was a short walk along blank peach-walled corridors to their smiling host’s office. He introduced himself en route as Glendon Pouchera member of the hospital’s administrative staff. His manner was brisk but accommodating. There seemed no reason to think trouble was his middle name. Or to suppose that closing his door behind them signified anything beyond habitual politeness.
“Gather you want to see Carl Dobermann.”
“Yuh,” said Hackensack. “But, look, it’s no big deal. Just a…”
“A whim,” said Harry.
Poucher frowned. “You’re friends of his?”
That’s right,” said Hackensack. “From way back.”
“How far back?”
“Pardon me?”
“I ask because Carl was admitted to this hospital thirty-six years ago. Since his parents died, he’s received very few visits and the only friends he’s made have been among his fellow residents. You’re not former patients, are you?”
“No, sir, we’re not.”
“But you are friends of his?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Would you mind telling me when you last visited him?”
“Well, I don’t rightly … I’m not exactly…”
“September third, perhaps?”
“Oh no. Not as recent as that.”
“Definitely not,” put in Harry.
Two gentlemen came to see Carl that day,” Poucher continued. “We don’t know their names and we wouldn’t ordinarily be interested. It wouldn’t be significant. Except for the fact that, two days later, Carl Dobermann absconded from this hospital.”
“He did what?”
“He ran away. Something he hadn’t tried to do in all those thirty-six years. He went over the wall. And he hasn’t come back.”
TWENTY-SIX
Harry’s expectations of America, he was coming to realize, were largely shaped by film and television. He had unconsciously assumed the train he was to join at Albany would resemble the one Gary Grant had seduced Eve Marie Saint on in North by Northwest. But just as Harry was no longer the Brylcreemed buck who had taken Doris Crowdy to the cinema one Saturday night long ago to see the latest Hitchcock, so the Twentieth Century Limited was no longer a stylish conveyance laden with romantic possibilities. If anything, it had aged less gracefully than Harry: a fact which gave him no comfort whatever.
Nor, come to that, did the diabolically sprung seat he was currently slumped in. Sleep would have been a risky enterprise for those with stronger backs than his. Fortunately, sleep was not on his agenda. There were too many mysteries piling up in his path for rest to be a serious option. And one of them was why he had allowed himself to become involved in all the other mysteries in the first place.
He knew the reason well enough, though. On the other side of the aisle, a boy of eight or so had fallen asleep on the elbow of his father, who glanced down fondly at him from time to time through heavy lids, but refrained from moving for fear of waking the boy. This unremarkable piece of paternal generosity symbolized for Harry all the things he could and would and should have done for the son he had never known he had. Fatherhood as an idea had never interested him. His estate was not the kind that required a will, let alone an heir. As for parental bonding and other such notions trumpeted on the covers of glossy magazines he had often glimpsed arrayed by the supermarket check-out while doing service as Mrs. Tandy’s bag-carrier, he was frankly contemptuous. Or had been. Till the physical and factual reality of his son’s existence burst into his life. It could not be ignored. It could not be shrugged off or disowned. It was a piece of truth he would carry with him to the end of his days.
But what was the truth about David John Yenning? He had alienated his wife and probably his lover too. He had betrayed his friends and their principles. He had set a murderous conspiracy in motion. And all to serve his obsession with a scientific puzzle he could never hope to solve. So much was undeniable. But he had been Woodrow Hackensack’s saviour. And maybe in a sense he was Harry’s too. Only somebody as helpless as David now was could accept whatever was done for him so unconditionally. He could not walk away from Harry, as he had done once before. And Harry was not about to walk away from him.
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