Ashes To Ashes

by Don Pendleton

  "I knew she was getting screwed up. I just didn't know how bad it had become. And I blame myself for not being sensitive to her concerns." He placed a hand on Karen's and tried but failed to maintain eye contact with her as he continued. "I can't believe that she really meant to harm you, honey. But I have found a number of postdated documents—do you remember signing...?"

  Karen shook her head in a vague response. "Documents? I don't ... remember ..."

  He sighed. "Well, you made her a very rich woman, or she would have been next Saturday." He glanced at me. "All perfectly legal, on the surface. Drawn up by a law firm in Westwood. Could Karen have been made to do something like that while in one of those trances?"

  I said, "Sure. She would stand by them, too, if—"

  Karen's eye flashed and she slapped a palm against her forehead as she cried, "Oh, those documents. Of course I remember. No, those are okay, they are okay, I want them to stand just as they are."

  TK was giving her another of those flabbergasted gazes. I caught his eye and showed him a small jerk of the head as I quietly commented, "We will remove all this debris. Don't worry about it."

  Karen asked, "What debris?"

  I explained, "Marcia and Carl were manipulating you, Karen, using hypnosis. It will take a while, but we will comb through all the buried PH's and dispose of them."

  She seemed confused, almost agitated.

  I told TK, "It's okay, normal response. A PH takes the form of a compulsion. We just have to find them all and neutralize them."

  He shot Karen an uncomfortable look as he growled, "Well, I guess that answered my question."

  If things had proceeded apace, Karen would not only have stood by those documents but would have come up with all manner of rationalizations to explain the action. In that latter connection, remember the incident in her bedroom when I had her close out the coming storm.

  But things did not proceed apace. They started going to hell in a basket, maybe because Carl had begun to realize what havoc he had wrought in Karen's personality—maybe simply because Carl became afraid of Marcia or afraid of Marcia's husband; you decide. I do know that Carl was the moving factor in bringing Karen to my attention.

  Karen had never been to Zodiac. Carl had. I found a copy of my treatise on cosmic sex in his stuff. I do not know for sure exactly what he had in mind for me, but I suspect that he may have been genuinely looking for help in his dilemma. I do know, also, that Carl went to TK several days before I joined the play and made his peace, there, apologizing for the affair with Marcia and assuring TK that he was leaving Highlandville alone—this, after the confrontation between the two reported to me by the bartender, Ramirez.

  I believe that my entrance onto the scene scared the pee out of Marcia. I have already suggested, earlier, that she was a believer in psychic power and may have been prepared to believe that I could "read" her mind. The lady had a lot to hide.

  I believe that she "operated" Karen into the nude scene at poolside that Saturday afternoon. Why? Hell, I don't know why. I don't read minds. Maybe she thought it would scare me away, or lead me astray—who knows?—or maybe it was just a cutesy trick to liven up a boring afternoon. Maybe it was just an extension of the movement begun by Powell. He "sent" Karen to me, in the first place, with a story patently designed to intrigue and—he thought, I'm sure—guarantee my attention and involvement with Karen.

  Maybe Marcia operated Karen into nothing but the nude scene; the rest, conceivably—the shocking announcement that I was there to provide her with orgasms—a carryover from another PH planted by Powell earlier, working as a rationalization. Remember that in a PH the operator does not have to write the script; a staging prompt is quite sufficient. The subject, in carrying out the prompt, will write his own script.

  It seems likely, especially now with the benefit of some cool aftersight, that Marcia—as of the moment when I arrived on the scene—knew, or at least suspected, that something had changed in her relationship with Carl Powell. I doubt that she would have wanted me there, especially during this final countdown of days before her grand slam. She was already disturbed and/or uneasy before I made the scene. My arrival deepened her anxiety.

  I asked TK about that, during that same conversation over coffee following Marcia's funeral service. His eyes watered as he thoughtfully replied, "I'm sure that's true, Ash. I knew about her affair with Carl, of course. I even discussed it with Carl. A couple of times. Never with her, though. Hell ... I understood. I just wanted to be sure that he didn't leave scars on her. And I flat put my foot down when he told me that he was taking Marcia to Europe with him. I mean, how did I know he wouldn't get tired of it and dump her somewhere? What the hell? Yes, I put my foot down. Not to Marcia. To Carl. He fussed back, made some dumb threats. But then I guess after he had a chance to think it over he decided he didn't want her that bad, after all. I doubt that he told her about that, though. Not his style. He would have just slipped away in the night, left her holding her packed bags and nowhere to go. But Marcia was not a dummy. She probably knew. And, yes, you scared hell out of her. I could read that. She didn't know anything about you until you showed up at the house. She was in a tizzy, I could tell."

  And then one of those nontextual events occurred to really tizzy things. Or maybe it was purely contextual, if you choose to accept otherworldly influences. Marcia nearly drowned. She saw Karen standing there in the shadows at poolside, and she was believer enough to ascribe some psychic phenomenon to the event.

  So—was Karen "out of control"? Or was someone "operating" on Marcia, through Karen? We have to read "someone" as Carl Powell, of course. And we can now view the near-drowning as a crucial moment for Marcia and as the catalyst that moved this drama into rapid climax.

  TK remembers that when Karen visited Marcia after dinner, that Saturday night, he left the two women alone briefly at Marcia's request for a glass of water. When he returned with the water, their heads were together in what seemed at the time an intimate conversation. Moments later, Marcia threw the water at Karen and emotionally accused her.

  Apparently that was the "trigger." From that moment, Karen was acting out a posthypnotic suggestion under hallucinatory influences.

  Carl Powell knew exactly where to look for Karen—perhaps he checked with Marcia first?—on a small meadow within a canyon where wild flowers grow, Karen's favorite retreat—a place, now, in the imposed nightmarish shadows of Karen's delusions, where werewolves and demons roamed the night. Maybe the doc had good reasons for wanting to get there first, and alone—suspecting what Marcia had done—or maybe he was just plain scared out of his skull and wondering if his "experiment" had, indeed, gone out of control.

  I have not decided why Marcia had earlier tried to plant a suspicion of Kalinsky in my mind, unless it was just another try at scaring me off.

  The little showdown over brunch was a regrettable but necessary affair. I was still reaching for answers, not really sure which way the thing was going to go. I had to find the "operator." You may recall that I had found the code by comparing doodles—Kalinsky's and Powell's—which definitely had me tilted toward TK as the villain, and I have to admit that I went into that little act prepared to react accordingly, the Walther PPK still tucked into the waistband of my shorts.

  TK told me, with obvious embarrassment, "Sure, I knew he was using hypnosis. And I knew that he had this trick word, but, shit, I swear to you I had never seen the thing working, not to my knowledge at the time, for damned sure."

  He shivered, remembering. "Scares hell out of me, to tell the truth. I couldn't do that. It's funny, though—I knew, I mean I was sure that you were doing something, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Besides, I was too much into what was happening to wonder a lot about how. I never heard you say 'Elena Magdalena.'"

  Karen immediately said, "Yes, I understand."

  TK gawked at her and whispered, "Oh shit!"

  I chuckled as I told him, "We'll get rid of that, too, at the proper tim
e. Tell her to wake up."

  He was still whispering: "You tell her."

  I said, "Can't. You're the operator. She can't even hear me until you tell her that she may."

  TK whispered to her, "Listen to Ash, honey. Do what he says."

  Karen turned to me and said, "Yes, I understand."

  I said, "Wake up, Karen."

  She showed a beautiful smile and asked, still in the earlier conversation, "Exactly what were we doing?"

  TK sighed and passed a hand over his eyes and rested it on the bridge of his nose, inspecting his lovely ward with an intent stare. He was clean, I was sure of that. Too bad I couldn't have been that sure at noon on Sunday.

  What threw me off was an erroneous leap of mind. TK wanted the operator, yes, but because he saw it as a way to protect Karen, as a control feature. I do believe that Powell sincerely wrestled with his conscience over that idea, as rightly he should have. We have seen the damage that may be done by inept handling of that kind of power.

  I believe, also, but not with any particular conviction, that Powell did not deliberately hand over to Marcia the keys to Karen's mind. Anyway, I prefer to think that way. Give the dead the benefit of any doubt—Marcia easily could have wormed her way into that situation without Powell's knowledge, or at least without his connivance.

  As for Powell threatening Kalinsky, during the argument overheard by the bartender, Ramirez, to the effect that Powell had incriminating evidence on Kalinsky—I simply have to discount it as heated blustering on Powell's part, maybe as desperate blustering by a very frightened man who might well have entertained unfounded suspicions. My ongoing investigation found no hint whatever that Terry Kalinsky had behaved irresponsibly or criminally in any way.

  There is a final, fat question concerning Marcia. Why, after all that scheming toward her grand slam, did she then turn about during the final countdown of days to propel Karen into an action that would most certainly postpone, maybe forever, the turnover of the estate to Karen?

  Sigh. Another noncontextual event? Maybe. Or maybe Marcia just wasn't smart enough—or stable enough, within herself—to think through the cause-and-effect logic of that. Maybe she simply panicked and reacted blindly to what she perceived as an attack on her by her erstwhile lover, Carl Powell—a woman scorned in the worst possible way—and she was simply playing tit for tat. That is the way I am reading it, for the record, if only because that reading provides context of a sort—a context within a context, if you will.

  She was smart enough, though—after the fact, anyway—to make sure that I knew that she was planning to run away with the victim of her "murder by remote control."

  That about covers the heavy stuff.

  There are a few side issues still at large, though. Such as the Valensa brothers. I have more or less accepted their deaths as by natural causes, the same in both cases. The rare genetic defect that hampered their full expression of life also contained, I am told, some sort of built-in disconnect that operates after a given number, of cell divisions—a sort of built-in biological time clock that brings death in midlife. Both died at the age of forty-six. In this connection, there is something eerie yet also quite poignant in Karen's in-trance inference that Elena knew the appointed time and had "come for them." But you figure it out for yourself.

  I guess I will always wonder, though, about my own doctor, my drinking buddy who came to my place in Malibu that Friday night to check on Karen. Guy was only about forty, in apparent good health, but dropped dead with a coronary attack during a party at a neighbor's house. I hate nontextual complications when working in a logic pattern, but there you go—those things do happen—real life ain't a movie.

  As for TK, I have to tell you that we have become friends, if not exactly drinking buddies. He's a bit too rigid for my buddying tastes, but he really is a pretty good guy. He brokered out at a hundred mil as his share of Highlandville—can you believe that?—but the record shows that he had appreciated the estate four times that during his eleven years at the helm, so what the hell. Despite his own independent status as a very rich man, he remains on with Karen as of this writing, supposedly until she gets her feet firmly onto ground, but I think the guy will die there.

  All the intrigue on that Saturday night with the legal eagles and the conservancy trick was really a brilliant stroke, and I have to give the guy credit. He had been greatly concerned about Karen's mental health, of course, especially considering the family history—which is why he brought Powell on board, in the first place—then the stuff Powell started feeding him was enough to cinch a growing panic.

  Karen had indeed been showing visible symptoms of all the hardball ailments described by Powell—but, of course, and I believe this with all my heart and mind, all but about one percent of those hardball ailments had been engineered by Powell in his clumsy invasions of her person. It is all to TK's credit, though, that he had a contingency plan all set up to forestall any emergency situation and to give his charge all possible protection under the law. She still enjoys that protection, by the way, and we have a sympathetic judge who has been fully clued-in to all the happenings out there; Karen is going to be okay in the legal department, and she will be certified sane and ready to accept all of life's responsibilities most any day now.

  As for Karen, herself, I do not mind saying that this is one of the loveliest and most lovable women I have ever known. She was not half bad with all her problems; now that she is blossoming out into her true self, the girl is simply devastating. There was no Electra complex there, by the way, and certainly no latent nymphomania, not unless there is something essentially unhealthy about a good, strong sex drive.

  In that particular connection, and no pun intended, it was a remotely controlled Karen who went seeking a sexual surrogate, of course, so I will forever be thankful that I did not fall in with that error. You may recall—I may have mentioned, earlier—that I never felt "right" in that situation. I have learned, since, that Karen had not experienced orgasms because she had never experienced the sexual embrace. She thought about it a lot, sure, anyone will, anyone who has a normal drive, and it was probably this sort of fantasy-play shadowy stuff that Powell seized upon, unable himself to distinguish reality-memories from fantasy-memories.

  Anyway, let me assure you that Karen is whole and healthy in matters of sex as well as all the others. It would not be proper to mention this, here, except that—as you must have already surmised—I have changed all the names here for reasons of privacy and confidentiality. Karen and I have had several long, philosophical discussions on the subject of "cosmic sex"—and, of course, you will remember that we had one of those soul-bonding experiences early in our relationship. Relationship, yeah, we have one of those. I think we are about ready, in fact, to give cosmic sex a whirl—and, frankly, I can hardly wait to try my own theories.

  I guess there is a final item awaiting disposal. JQ. A hell of a guy, I think, and I wish I'd known him in the flesh. Is he actually Karen's biological father? Hell, I don't know. Not sure enough, anyway, to integrate any of that into Karen's new personality. For the purposes of this particular lifetime, how could it possibly matter, anyway, at this stage of things?

  Karen knows that she has been greatly loved and cherished, and who can ask for more than that?

  What prompted the last-minute change of heart concerning his estate? I simply cannot say. The mere existence of that document, though of no legal significance whatever, has scarred forever the sensitivities of Terry Kalinsky. That is about the only effect I can find. And I have pointed out to TK that any number of emotions could have been working at that dying and tortured mind, none of which would have to have roots in a distrust of Kalinsky, himself.

  JQ could have been worried about Elena. Maybe, and this is a strong possibility, he could have seen something in the maturing Marcia Kalinsky that set his teeth on edge and turned his thoughts to counter-measures. Or, possibly, he was worried that his own son would assert himself as a man, upon the fat
her's death, and move bitterly against a patently unfair division of the estate; given that situation, all manner of scandalous dirt could have titillated the nation for years.

  See—it's not a script, it's real life.

  And real life is never all that certain.

  Unless, of course ... well, if you take the whole bag ... I mean, what is life, anyway—where does it begin and where does it end, really, or does it ever do either one? What the hell is really going on here, in this place only perceptible by, and probably largely created by our sensory apparatus?—what does it all mean?—where are we all headed?

  I don't have the answer to any of that, mind you.

  But, uh, I have a new drinking buddy.

  I do all the drinking, but I somehow get the feeling that he smacks what passes for lips in some other reality and enjoys the process as much as I do.

  And maybe, just maybe, one day he will drop another book at my feet—and who knows what answers I may come up with, then.

  Okay. That's about it. Got to go, now. Have a date with Karen. We're driving up to Zodiac for the weekend. In pursuit of truth. Yeah. The cosmic truth.

  'Til later ... see you around.

  ###

  About the Author

  Don Pendleton (1927-1995) is creator of The Executioner: Mack Bolan Action/Adventure series and the Joe Copp, Private Eye Mystery Thrillers.

  He also co-wrote, with his wife, Linda Pendleton, the nonfiction books To Dance With Angels and Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness, and the crime novel, Roulette.

  Don Pendleton, (1927-1995)

  Official Don Pendleton website: www.donpendleton.com

  Visit the Don Pendleton Smashwords Profile Page for available books of Don Pendleton.