by Frank Lauria
During the afternoon the tentative talk between them developed into an easy conversation. Presto volunteered that the boat wasn’t leaving for at least another day. His motorcycle was still on the dock waiting to be loaded.
"Big BMW," Presto confided. "Hope they take it easy when they load her up. Where you headed?"
"Tangier."
Presto nodded reassuringly as if he understood why a man would want to go to such a place.
"How about you?" Orient asked before Presto had a chance to ask anything else.
"Oh, I’m going around Morocco some. Maybe Marrakesh. Then Spain, Amsterdam, and London."
"Photographer?" Orient pointed to the bed.
Presto looked at his equipment mournfully. He had an earnest, scholarly way of speaking, the serious air of a science student. "Yeah. Gonna see what I can do with a 16-millimeter Rolex, some fast film, and a couple of still cameras."
Orient thought of his own film project, lying unfinished in Andy Jacobs’s safe.
Presto decided to have a look around the ship. After he left, Orient went back to his reading. He planned to catch up on some study during the long voyage and had selected fifteen volumes on different subjects to while away his free hours during the voyage. He hadn’t looked at anything except the sports results all the time he’d been Joker’s apprentice.
When Orient went to dinner, he found Presto deep in conversation with the bearded man at the far table. He joined them more out of a sense of courtesy than a desire for company. And he knew it would be impossible to avoid anyone once the boat was at sea. Presto and the man, whose name was Lew Wallet, were engrossed in a discussion of cameras and lenses, so Orient was spared the usual questions that follow an exchange of names at a ship’s dining table. After dinner Presto and Wallet decided to continue their conversation in the passengers’ lounge and Orient went out on deck.
The night air was clear and the starlight competed with the surrounding glow of harbor fights and blueish neon haze over New York City. Orient climbed to the upper deck. The tension he had felt yesterday was gone. As he stood looking at the light-streaked water, he looked forward to the prospect of continuing his research. Perhaps he would begin to expand his circle of students if he found another potential. He could even start thinking of ways to continue developing his tape project. He wasn’t anxious about the future any more, just curious about the present. And ready to sail. He looked down at the shadowy crates on the pier. Maybe tomorrow they would be underway.
When Orient got up for breakfast the next morning, Presto was still asleep. Orient showered, dressed, went to the dining room, nodded at Lew Wallet who was reading a magazine. He ate at a table by himself, then took a walk around the deck. When he got back to his cabin, Presto was getting dressed.
"I’m on my way to the city to pick up some tools," Presto said. "You need anything?" Orient couldn’t think of anything he wanted and settled down on the couch with another book.
As Presto was zipping up his parka, he took a look around at his knapsack and equipment. "I guess everything will be all right here," he said, looking over at Orient with a momentary expression of concern.
"Don’t worry," Orient assured him, "I’ll lock up if go anywhere." Even though he had decided that Presto would be good company, the boy obviously still didn’t know what to make of him.
Presto was gone all day and wasn’t back when the dinner bell rang. Orient had skipped lunch and remained in his cabin, and when he entered the dining room, he saw that some new passengers had boarded the ship.
Lew Wallet was sitting at the far table with a middle-aged woman wearing a black shawl. A young girl of twelve or thirteen sat next to them. Something about the trio’s attitude suggested that they were a family.
There were also two girls sitting by themselves at a table near the door. Orient chose the unoccupied table.
He tried to the make the meal quick, but as he ate, he became increasingly aware of the two girls at the table in front of him. One was a plump, pretty brunette with short hair who was listening intently to something the other girl, a tall supple-bodied blond, was saying. The blond girl turned her head and Orient saw that she was striking: long white throat, wide green eyes accentuated by heavy blue shadow stark against her creamy skin, long yellow hair, and a driving vitality that electrified her sharply defined features. As she launched into another story, she noticed Orient looking at them and smiled.
Orient smiled back and began to linger over his vegetables. The girls went on talking in low tones, occasionally bursting into laughter at some fresh point. The brunette girl was completely preoccupied with the conversation, speaking little but giving her full attention to everything the blond girl said.
Orient couldn’t hear the words but he could feel the animal vibration of high-spirited fun emanating from the blond girl. It was strong, frank, and very pleasant. He looked up and saw that she’d been staring at him. Her eyes held on his for a moment before she looked away. There was no sign of self-consciousness or shyness on her face, but as she turned her head, Orient felt something else.
An unfamiliar yet familiar sensation at the base of his brain. A passing tug of anxiety. Then he recognized the quality of the anxiety, and its source.
The blond girl was a potential.
The girls went on with their animated chatter as Orient finished his dessert of fresh fruit. Neither of them looked up as he left the dining room.
Orient wandered down the passageway and entered the passengers’ lounge.
This was a long narrow room with the same dimensions as the dining room. The way it was laid out, however, made it seem more spacious. There was a three-stool bar at one end of the room, two long couches against the walls, assorted armchairs, some card tables, and a record player. Three large windows on one side looked out over the rear deck of the ship. Orient sat down in an armchair facing the windows and stretched out his legs. He felt good. A cruise with a lovely telepath on board had positive possibilities.
He had never encountered a female potential before. He wondered if the technique he had devised to increase telepathic awareness was as effective with women as with men. He was still thinking about it when he went back to his cabin.
Presto was back. He was lying on his bed with a box of doughnuts balanced on his chest, reading a motorcycle magazine. "Hi," he said amiably when Orient entered, "have a doughnut."
"No thanks. How was the city?" Orient asked as he sat on the couch and picked up his book. "Found everything I needed but it was a bitch getting back. Cabs don’t want to come out here." He went back to his magazine.
Orient began to read.
Presto looked up. "Want a newspaper?"
"Sure." Orient reached over and took the paper Presto was holding out to him. He hadn’t seen any news for days. He glanced at the front page and saw that what passed for the world’s events was still nothing but a litany of chaos. He turned to the sports pages and began checking the day’s numbers, the race results, and the football and basketball columns. He’d gotten into the habit of doing this while he was Joker’s apprentice and the tabulations still held as much interest for him as a game of chess.
Turning to another page, he saw a picture of someone who looked familiar. When he looked closer at the photograph, his breath cut off in his throat and something heavy and oppressive settled in his chest. The girl was Pola Gleason. Pola. The girl Joker had sent him to see. And she was dead.
She had been found dead in her apartment of some undisclosed illness. There was no sign of a struggle or of robbery. She had been found by her cleaning woman in her bedroom. Police were investigating.
Orient read the last three words again.
Perhaps that was the reason for Joker’s complimentary trip.
CHAPTER 11
The loading of the ship began again early the next day and by late afternoon the last of eight automobiles had been secured on the rear deck, and the long front deck was almost completely covered with large wooden crat
es and heavy pieces of industrial machinery.
Orient spent most of the day on the upper deck trying to make a decision. He watched the cranes swing huge tractors onto the deck and wondered if the boat would sail that evening. He gazed at the dim outline of the hazed-over skyline and brooded over the advisability of calling Andy Jacobs.
But what could he tell the attorney, or the police?
That he had delivered a doctor’s bag containing a betting payoff to a complete stranger three days before she died of an illness? Joker was many things but he wasn’t a deliberate murderer. If Pola’s death was murder.
He watched a police car roll down the street outside the dock area and wondered if it would turn into the gates.
Most likely Joker had turned a quick profit on a shady deal and had decided to pull up stakes. If it were anything more serious, he wouldn’t have risked involving an amateur.
The police car slowed down and turned left, moving away from the dockyards, cruising through the bleak expanse of vacant lots, gasoline stations, and warehouses toward the squat cluster of project apartment houses. He looked down and studied his wrinkled palms.
But Joker had considered the deal serious enough to advise the amateur to leave town.
Orient decided to find out if he could call Andy from the ship’s telephone on the lower deck.
Arriving below and passing through the lounge, he saw a late edition of a newspaper on the bar. He picked it up and began checking the headlines. The item he was looking for was buried in a small paragraph on page three.
Pola Gleason had died of a form of leukemia. Her parents had arrived from Chicago to claim the body and had discovered that their daughter had been under a doctor’s care for over a year. Orient put the paper aside and sat on one of the high stools.
Perhaps he had overestimated the connection between Joker and Pola. The cowboy had at least a hundred clients. One of them was certain to die of illness or accident over a period of time. He decided to pass on calling Andy.
When the dinner bell rang, however, he was still mulling over the reasons for Pola’s strange maneuvers the day he delivered the bag.
The dining room arrangements were more formal this evening. Two of the three tables were fitly set and the steward was moving quickly to and from the kitchen as he hurried to serve the enlarged number of diners. There were name cards at each plate. Orient had been seated with Presto, Low Wallet, the woman with the black shawl, and the young girl. The blond potential and her friend were sitting at the next table between two older couples.
Presto and Wallet were involved in a discussion of the loading procedure of Presto’s motorcycle, so Orient said his good evenings, was introduced to Wallet’s wife and daughter, then settled back and let the talk continue to flow around him.
As he ate, he kept glancing over at the other table. The blond girl was seated between two men facing him, but the other three women at the table had their backs to him. Both men were listening attentively, and apparently with great pleasure, to the vivacious chatter of the blond girl.
"You don’t eat meat, huh, Owen?" Presto was saying, peering at Orient’s vegetable-heaped plate.
"Not if I can help it," Orient smiled. He didn’t go into detail.
"Is that how you stay so slim?" Greta Wallet asked.
"It’s good for your health generally," Orient explained. He looked around and saw that Greta’s daughter Gale was staring at him fixedly, her eyes wide. "It gives you more energy," Orient said to the little girl. Gale looked down at her plate.
"Shy," Greta smiled confidentially at Orient. Lew Wallet’s wife had deep lines in her wide, plain face, but her smile softened the lines and made her features warm and attractive.
Everyone at the other table burst into laughter at some remark the blond girl had made.
"What’s your business, Owen?" Lew Wallet asked.
"I’m in research," Orient answered. "And you?"
"Photographer." Wallet replaced the glasses over his small, watery eyes. "Except that I’m a specialist at developing film, while Presto here is a genius as taking them.”
"Lew’s a genius too," Greta put in. "He had a show of his new work just before we left New York."
"Just nonsense," Lew scoffed. "Friend of mine. I’ve been working on a new developing process with infrared film. On some of the photographs I took and developed we found some things that weren’t there when I was shooting. Things like old paintings on walls that were bare when I took the shots; even people’s faces floating in midair."
"What kind of process, Lew?" Presto squinted and leaned closer.
"Can’t discuss it yet. Still working on the patents. Anyway, there was all kinds of stuff on the photographs. I think they may be heat spots."
"Alfonso said they were ghosts," Gale said, looking around the table with glee.
"Alfonso’s my friend," Wallet went on. "He’s an astrologer. He actually makes a lot of money at that crazy stuff. He’s the one who convinced me to have a showing of the photographs at his salon. Good publicity for the process, but I don’t believe in this spirit business."
Orient didn’t answer. He did believe, however, that energy remains in the atmosphere long after its cause has been removed. Science had taught him that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transformed. And reason told him that what men consider mysteries are only natural happenings for which there is no known connection. Only because man’s information is incomplete.
"Alfonso felt that Lew had bridged a dimension." Greta smiled and nodded at her husband. "They called the show ’Bridge.’"
"He called it ’Bridge,’" Lew corrected. "I call it hogwash. I thought I could find some backing for my process, but all I got was my horoscope read eight times. And none of them told me I’d be taking a voyage."
Orient was mildly interested in the subject of psychopictography, but he was more interested in developing the sensitivity of the mind to the point where an infrared process wasn’t needed. Still, the photographer’s process might have interesting possibilities for Orient’s own film tape project if and when he resumed work on it.
He looked up and saw the blond girl watching him. She smiled and looked away.
After dinner Orient did some reading, but he soon became restless. When he heard the low rumble of the engines increase and the announcement over the cabin’s intercom that the Trabik was sailing, he decided to go up on deck for the event.
A few other passengers had the same idea. Through the darkness Orient could see their silhouettes against the rail, looking over the rear deck across the water as the boat moved slowly through the blazing gauntlet of blinking harbor lights toward the open sea. He stood there watching until the blaze was no more than a fading cluster of pinpoint embers in the distance. Then he went down to the lounge.
The bar was now open and Presto, Lew and Greta Wallet, and one of the couples from the other dining table were sitting in a semicircle of armchairs near by. When Wallet saw Orient, he waved him over.
"What are you drinking?" Wallet demanded. "I’m standing the bon voyage toast."
Orient ordered a brandy and was introduced to the new couple, Jack and Alice Crowe. When his drink arrived, he raised his glass.
"Here’s to the sea," he said.
"This your first voyage?" Jack Crowe asked. He was a tall, flabby, unhealthy-looking man with crewcut hair. His face had the tense pinch of a ferret.
"First in a long while. I’m looking forward to it."
"We enjoy traveling on freighters," Alice Crowe volunteered. "It’s so relaxing and you meet such interesting people." She was a short, heavy woman. Her dark hair was closely cropped and she wore no makeup on her round face.
"I hope so," Orient said. "Could be tedious otherwise." As he spoke he felt a prickly sensation at the base of his skull. Then he saw the blond girl and her friend entering the lounge from the far passage.
The Crowes called out to them, and Lew and Presto pulled two chairs over as the gifts
joined them.
The blond potential introduced herself as Pia. She was direct, casual, and friendly. Her friend, who was more hesitant, was called Janice. Pia ordered a brandy and Janice decided to have the same.
"Presto." Pia threw back her head and smiled. "Where on this planet did you get that name?"
Presto straightened up in his chair. "The whole name’s Prestone Williamson Wallace," he said earnestly, "but people have called me Presto ever since I can remember. Just natural, I guess."
"Have you ever been photographed, Pia?" Wallet asked gruffly. Pia laughed.
"I modeled for a few years. But I’m out of that now. I like to eat—and detest cameras."
"Yes." Wallet took off his dark glasses and squinted professionally. "You must have been very good."
"Are you interested in film?" Presto asked casually.
"Only as a spectator sport."
"Presto here is a young director," Wallet rumbled paternally. "We were thinking of doing some shooting on board."
Pia shook her head slowly, grinning as she saw what the two men were hinting at. "Consider me disqualified. I’m going to do some serious loafing this week." She turned to Greta. "I’ve been looking at the fine work in your shawl all evening. Did you make it yourself?"
"Why, yes." Greta Wallet flushed, partially with pleasure and partially self-consciously.
"That’s wonderful," Alice Crowe exclaimed nasally. "Isn’t it, Jack?"
"Very good." Jack Crowe pursed his lips. "We handle a big line of hand knits in our boutiques. We’re going to do some buying in Yugoslavia."
As the Crowes launched into the possibilities of Greta’s handiwork, Pia turned to Orient. "Where are you bound, Owen?" she asked lightly.
"Tangier."
"A tourist?" Pia made it sound like a compliment.
Orient nodded. "I’d like to do some sightseeing for awhile."
"What sort of research are you in, Owen?" Wallet asked.
"Oh, nothing very important," Orient said, suddenly uncomfortable at the direct turn in conversation.