Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  “Now tell me what you see,” Sonnenberg waggled one finger toward the twin black and white prints as he sipped from a Lenox cup.

  “Stills.” Baker shrugged. ”Head-and-shoulder shots of me.” He recognized the second one as a picture cropped from a larger one with Sarah and Tina in it. He had planned to do a portrait. It annoyed him that their bodies had been airbrushed away.

  “Are they identical?” Sonnenberg cocked his head.

  “They're copies.” Baker shrugged again.

  “Look more carefully.”

  Baker touched the prints with his fingertips and slid them up and down against each other as if comparing the ballistic markings of two bullets.

  “They're identical,” he said finally, “except that the one on the right is reversed.”

  “Correct. A mirror image. And incidentally, it's convenient that you've had very few taken. It's even more convenient that you winced as your police photograph was taken. You'll be recognizable only to dentists and proctologists. You're sure you wouldn't like some of Mrs. Kreskie's Turkish coffee?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Sonnenberg clapped his hands lightly. “Get on with it, you say. In fact, it does become more interesting about now.”

  He drew out a third version of the same photograph. It was identical to those already on the table except that it was cut neatly in half. A curving line had been precisely scissored down the middle of Baker's face. He placed the two halves before Baker but left them several inches apart.

  “Now tell me what you see.”

  ”I see that you're playing games. Why don't you just tell me what—”

  “Indulge me, Jared. Please.”

  “It's a picture of me cut in half.” Baker sat back, waiting.

  “Ah, but it isn't. Not exactly.” Sonnenberg reached across and pushed the two halves together. “Compare that to the other copies of the same photograph.”

  Baker leaned forward and stared, more than a bit startled, at the face glaring back at him. It was a hard face. The lines of the mouth were tight and cruel. The eyes were slightly hooded and they seemed to lock on his, holding his, like the eyes of a puff adder would paralyze a bird. The face and head seemed larger than the others, although Baker knew the dimensions had to be the same. And the face was ... intimidating. Baker had always thought of himself as a nice man. Perhaps even nice-looking. There was nothing nice about the man in front of him.

  “How did you do this?” he asked, his eyes still fixed upon the face.

  “Simplicity itself,” replied Sonnenberg. “But first a question. If you didn't know that man, what would be your impression of him?”

  “He's tough. A mean son of a bitch. I'd stay away from him.”

  “Not the sort you'd have over for Sunday brunch. More than that, you're saying you'd hate to have that man as an enemy.”

  “Yes.” Baker nodded thoughtfully. ”I know you're pump-priming, but you're right. And I know that this is only a doctored photograph, but it's…”

  “Frightening? No ... I'm sure that's not the right word.”

  “It's a terrific word.” Baker looked up. “That face even scares me. And it is me.”

  “But what if that man were your very good friend?”

  “He doesn't look like anybody's friend.”

  “You're quite wrong.” Sonnenberg smiled. “He's very much your friend. Absolutely reliable. Unequivocally on your side. He would defend you to the death. Moreover, he's a friend who would be perfectly comfortable in any situation that you might find alarming. Or unpleasant. Or menacing. A perfectly compatible friend. He shares your values, your standards, your sense of what is right. He probably even shares your fears and inhibitions, but his threshold for those emotions is much higher than yours. He is largely unencumbered by them. On the flip side, his threshold for love and compassion, even mercy, is probably much lower.”

  Baker picked up the right half of the photograph, fingered it, and held it up to the light.

  ”I think I see what you've done,” he said, returning that half to its mate. “You took the right half of my face, made a mirror image of it, then put two right halves together to form one whole face.”

  “Exactly. Don't you think the result is rather remarkable?”

  “If it means anything. I'm sure you can do this with anyone's face.”

  “Indeed I could. Behavioral researchers use this trick to demonstrate the hemispheric dominance of the brain. Except it's more than a trick in your case.” Sonnenberg patted the folder. “Before we go on, aren't you at all curious about the left side of your personality?”

  “Personality?”

  “Your face, then.”

  “Let me guess. The left side will go to the opposite extreme. Timid as opposed to aggressive. Weak instead of strong. Am I getting warm?”

  “Only tepid.” Sonnenberg gathered up the photographs and slid two new likenesses in front of Baker. On his right was a retouched version of the two right halves, artfully air-brushed into an unmarred portrait. On his left, Sonnenberg had done the same thing with the two left halves of Baker's face.

  “My God!” Baker whispered.

  “Go ahead. Say it.”

  “It's like night and day, isn't it?”

  “Rats!” Sonnenberg pursed his lips. ”I bet myself that you'd say it's like Jekyll and Hyde. You would have been very much mistaken.”

  “There's a difference?”

  “Like night and day.” Sonnenberg smiled. “What you're looking at has nothing to do with good and evil. They are simply the opposite poles of your personality.”

  “There's that word again. The face on the left doesn't look like it has any personality at all.”

  Baker studied the likeness. He knew he'd guessed wrong. It was not a weak face, he decided, nor was it strong. Bland, perhaps. Or blank. Yes, blank would be much more correct. Like the face of a cow. Yet the other one had the face of a wolf, a feral quality. The eyes and the set of the mouth showed a ferocity that was barely under control. It was a face that seemed to lean forward whereas the other face seemed to pull back. That was an illusion, Baker knew, because the camera's depth of field was the same for each.

  “Don't take Charley too lightly, Jared. He might surprise you.”

  “Charley?”

  “It's the name I've given him. An easygoing sort of name. Very apt, don't you think . . . Baker?” Sonnenberg smiled expectantly.

  “I'm to conclude that the animal on the right is called Abel?”

  Sonnenberg threw back his head and laughed. “Excellent, Mr. Baker. You have yet to disappoint me ... although our friend Abel may have cause to sulk over your characterization of him.” The doctor drew out a copy of Baker's legitimate full-face photograph and placed it on the table between the others.

  “Tell me now,” he said, rubbing his hands. “With your newly acquired insights, what is your impression of our friend Baker here?”

  Baker's mind had wandered. It was that laugh of Sonnenberg's. It had seemed familiar before this, but he couldn't place it until now. It was Franklin Roosevelt. That was the way Roosevelt laughed. There were other Roosevelt mannerisms too, even to the accent, which lately seemed more Brahmin than European. Baker dismissed it as an affectation that had no significance. He found himself wondering, though, what might lie beneath if he peeled away the outer skin of Marcus Sonnenberg. Would he find anything at all?

  ”I beg your pardon?”

  “You are now the centerpiece of an alliance called Abel Baker Charley. You are a living man. You, Baker, are the midpoint of two distinct personalities.”

  “Is that supposed to be a revelation?”

  ”I would expect so.” Sonnenberg was disappointed.

  “You're saying my personality is the sum total of its elements. Whose isn't?”

  “Yours, perhaps. The assumption that you alone have substance and Abel and Charley have none may border upon arrogance. What if the entity called Jared Baker turned out to be little more than a muddled conglomerate wh
ereas each of these is, in his own way, singularly talented?”

  Baker studied Sonnenberg. He knew by now that the doctor was not a man given to pointless theoretical exercises. Baker was more than a bit uncomfortable.

  “You're saying you can isolate them, Doctor?”

  'Tm saying that I believe I can teach you to isolate them. I believe you can learn to employ either Abel or Charley at will.”

  “Hypnosis?”

  “Suggestion will play a role, yes.”

  “That's been the reason for all the hypnosis sessions? You've been probing for these two characters while I've been under?”

  “Not at all. I've simply been testing your responsiveness to suggestion. You can listen to the tapes if you have any doubts.”

  Baker hesitated for a few moments before brushing the offer aside. Sonnenberg had, in fact, expressed delight several times at his ability to concentrate his way into deep hypnosis in ever-shorter periods of time. Still, to Baker's mind, the purpose of these sessions had nothing to do with Abels and Charleys.

  ”I don't mistrust you, Doctor,” he said evenly. “But this isn't why I agreed to come with you. I certainly didn't come to be a guinea pig.”

  Sonnenberg's genial manner faded. He lifted his crippled leg past the butler's table and swung it toward Baker so that his entire body faced the other man.

  “You came to me, Jared, because you were a frightened man.”

  “Not frightened, Doctor. Just a man who wanted peace and freedom. A new start. Your offer was very attractive under the circumstances.”

  “Let's not play semantic Ping-Pong, Jared. I offered you a new life and a new identity and you required very little persuasion. Only frightened people leap at such an offer. Some seek to outrun failure and disappointment, some to escape their sins, and some, like you, are hunted men. All of you are frightened.”

  “If you say so.”

  ”I do say so. And be good enough to forgo any macho protestations that Jared Baker is beyond fear. Fear is not the same as cowardice. I do not approach cowards. Fear has value. Managed fear equates with prudence. With the proper training and the correct documents, you could live a rich new life, yet the fear will always be there. You would always be watchful for that unexpected familiar face, or ducking camera lenses that are innocently pointed in your direction, or wonder why some stranger seems to be staring at you.”

  ”I understood all that going in. I also understood that the point of the hypnosis sessions was to learn how to deeply ingrain a new personality so that even I would believe in it. But through it all, I'd still be me. Not some freak.”

  Sonnenberg made a visible effort to soften. He paused, nodding and smiling, as he lifted his cup and saucer and slowly sipped. Let out more line, Marcus, he thought. Go slowly.

  “You'll still be you, Jared,” he said. “You'll still be your daughter's father. She, for one, will see no difference.”

  “What does my daughter ...” Baker stopped himself. He knew that Sonnenberg was trying to switch him onto another track and it was working. Sonnenberg understood the images that still filled his mind at the mention of his wife or daughter. The street outside his home. Sarah dead there. So broken and torn she can only be dead. Tina screaming, crawling toward her mother. Why is she crawling? Her foot. It just bumps along behind her, leaving a wash of blood. And the Frisbee, circling. The one with the motorcycle. The one who speeds by here and gives you a finger if you . . . He's yelling at them. He's yelling at Sarah for being dead... The Frisbee still rolling .. .

  “Jared.” Sonnenberg reached for his arm and squeezed. “Jared, I can stop that too.”

  “What?” Baker asked dully.

  ”I can't stop those pictures from coming back. You don't have to live in that world anymore.”

  “Tina has to.” His voice was distant.

  “Only until the foot is repaired and healed, Baker,” Sonnenberg whispered. “Only until the limp is gone. She cannot be with you while she limps.”

  “It's hard to wait. I ought to be with her while she's hurting.”

  “You'd be waiting anyway. But you'd be waiting in prison if not in a prison morgue. This way is much better for her. She knows you are well and that you're free. This way you're a hero to her, not a convict in a cage or a corpse.”

  ”I want to call her more often,” said Baker, looking away. ”I ought to talk to her every day.”

  “You know you can't do that.”

  ”I know you said I can't, but I don't know why. You told me I'm safe as long as I limit the call to forty seconds and call at random hours.”

  “Comparatively safe,” Sonnenberg corrected. “Each call that you place is a challenge to the authorities. It announces that you're near, at least in spirit, that the tie to your daughter is strong, and that you may attempt to see her. Each call breathes new vitality into the hunt, challenges the hunter to new effort. This is doubly foolish in your case because the authorities never had much stomach for it anyway. But even that is not the critical problem. Your daughter, God bless her, is a distraction. You must learn to ration your thoughts of her if you are to accomplish your ultimate goal of being together.”

  “That's my goal, all right.” Baker nodded. ”I begin to get the feeling, though, that it's not yours especially.”

  “Quite possibly true.” Sonnenberg's eyebrows went up and his head went back in another Rooseveltian gesture of candor. “I've begun to conclude that my goals were too modest.”

  “I'm not a plaything, Doctor. I expect to pay you for a service.”

  Sonnenberg patted Baker's knee. “We'll do all that I promised, Jared,” he said slowly. “We'll do it together. If you will go forward with me one step at a time, I assure you that you may draw any line you wish. But I've discovered, you see, that I may be able to give you much more than I promised. Much, much more. I believe I can offer you the ability to deal confidently with any situation that might arise. It could be within your power to choose at will from three uniquely talented entities, selecting the personality that is most suited to any challenge, physical or intellectual, that you may face.”

  “Who's the third personality?”

  “You are, of course.”

  “Does that mean I can do something the others can't?”

  “Not necessarily. Obviously, all three are still you. The three faces of Baker, so to speak. What you are is their control, which is, of course, a singular talent not shared by the famous Eve. Your judgment will be more balanced than that of either except in situations of high stress. But on the whole, you'll be more circumspect. Think of yourself as a football coach who sends in the right player for a particular situation.”

  “Why me, Doctor?”

  “Why not you?”

  Baker shook his head. ”I think you had this in mind from the very beginning,” he said.

  ”I was hopeful,” Sonnenberg admitted. “Now I'm more than hopeful.”

  “You haven't said why me?”

  “The young man who drove the motorcycle, the motorcycle that killed your wife. You attacked him, Baker. Angrily, clumsily, out of control. You attacked him and you beat him. It was an impassioned act. But it was also an unskilled and awkward act. In brief, your inept assault was quite in character for an ordinary, civilized, domesticated, and atrophic suburbanite.”

  “But not so inept when he came back again?”

  “However”—Sonnenberg raised a hand to stay Baker's interruption—“this fine young product of your community, this privileged and pampered son of a superior court judge, he came back, didn't he? He came back to settle a score with the angry man who beat and shamed him. He cared nothing for the consequences. The death of your wife and the maiming of your daughter were irrelevant to him. He wanted vengeance. He hurled a bottle of flaming gasoline at your house and another at your dog, who stood snarling at him. And then you came out. Your home was burning. The home this man had already twice devastated. Your pet retriever was writhing in the midst of flames. What did you
do then, Jared?”

  Baker didn't answer.

  “You must tell me, Jared. It's time to speak of it.”

  ”I went after him ...”

  “And did what?”

  ”I hurt him worse than before.”

  “You say that as if you remember it.”

  ”I do remember it. I just don't remember doing it. It was more like I was watching.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “You know what. I hurt him.”

  “You destroyed him, Baker. You did it systematically, carefully, dispassionately. You methodically shattered each of the young man's arms at the elbow and shoulder, where the pain would be greatest and the healing slowest. You did this, according to witnesses, without apparent anger. As if you were changing a tire, as one said later. Your golden retriever, your pet, for whom you presumably felt some affection, was in its last moments of agony. Yet this caused you no noticeable anguish. You forced the young man's face .. ”

  Baker was seeing it. He was watching the scene from a place near his own right shoulder. He was part of himself, but he was not. Baker remembered looking down as his hands moved and feeling surprised that they were moving. He was not attached. But he remembered wanting them to do what they were doing.

  . . . Come on, asshole . . . Come on, the young man sneered. He stood in a crouch, a baseball bat in one hand, the fingers of the other beckoning Baker..... daring him. It was at that moment that Baker fell back but his body went forward. The young man coiled and struck, first hooking with his fist, then bringing down the bat across Baker's shoulder. Baker thought both blows had landed, but they had not. At least not the baseball bat. His own hand had caught it, and now the other hand was twisting it, breaking it, snapping it in two, so that each hand held a short wooden sword. The hand with the thicker half let go and gripped the young man's arm below the shoulder. It turned him and it lifted him. And now the right hand pointed the wooden sword between his legs and pushed. Baker couldn't see the bat anymore. He saw that the right hand was free. It joined the first hand, gripping the young man's arm below the shoulder. The lower hand was at his elbow, and both hands drew the screaming man's arm like a bow, very slowly, until it snapped, and then still farther, until the grinding of bone against bone could no longer be heard. Then the flapping limb moved up and then backward until the shoulder's joint cracked free. The sounds the young man made were beyond a scream. He shrieked and whooped, falsetto squeals and yips pumping out in a mindless rhythm. Baker remembered wondering that a pair of human lungs could sustain so long a scream. And he remembered wondering at the strength of his own left hand, which now held the full weight of Andrew Bellafonte at arm's length. Bellafonte, half-conscious, was kicking at Baker's legs, but Baker felt nothing. Someone else was screaming too. A woman. A neighbor. And now a man was shouting his name. Baker didn't answer. He wanted to watch.