Larry nodded. “I’m convinced, believe me.”
But Dick Volare was seething that Larry had brought the seance to such an abrupt end. “Oh, at last you’re convinced? I thought we Neapolitans had some imagination, you know? A little trust, a little faith. You can believe in the Holy Mother, right, and the Immaculate What’s-it’s-Name, and you can’t believe in this? Let me tell you something, Larry, I’m glad I haven’t been wrongfully charged with some felony or other, lieutenant, the amount of evidence that it takes to convince you of anything.”
“That poor little girl,” whispered Samantha Bacon. “She reminded me of me, you know, when I was young.”
Bembridge Caldwell was too busy coughing phlegm into his handkerchief to say anything. John Forth kept breathing tight little breaths. He was obviously in minor shock.
“Well, there’s no point in us continuing now,” said Wilbert Fraser. “The spirit-world is far too unsettled. We might accidentally stir up a spirit that can do us more harm than good.”
Larry frowned. “What kind of spirit would want to do us harm?”
Wilbert Fraser gave him a quick, dismissive glance. “Oh, there are many, Larry. Too many to mention.”
“But what harm could a spirit actually do?”
“Plenty, I assure you. But let’s not dwell on that.”
“But spirits aren’t flesh-and-blood, are they? If they don’t have any material substance, how can they hurt us?”
Wilbert Fraser seemed reluctant to answer. Margot Tryall asked, “Couldn’t we please have one more try at talking to my father? Just one more?”
“No,” Wilbert Fraser told her. “When the spirits are unsettled, it can be quite dangerous to call on them again. Larry has asked why, and I suppose I ought to tell him. It’s because many of them are capable of taking on actual physical shape, actual human substance. They do it in several ways. They can borrow or steal substance from the living. You’ve heard about ectoplasm, I expect? That’s when a spirit borrows flesh from a living person—usually a medium—in order to make a physical appearance. The spirit literally grows out of the medium’s body… sometimes no more than a head, occasionally an entire figure. You have to be very careful not to harm these manifestations, because they’re made out of you if you hurt them you’ll only be hurting yourself. There are dozens of authenticated photographs of ectoplasmic appearances. There was one in London in 1878, when the famous medium William Eglington produced the materialization of an Arab out of his own stomach. There was another in Lisbon at the end of the First World War, when there was a very frightening materialization of a subhuman-looking nun.”
“But that little girl didn’t grow out of any of us, did she? She just walked in.”
“She was nothing but a ghost, Mr. Foggia. The sharply evoked memory of a tragic young child. She had no more substance than an actress on a movie screen.”
“I’m sure I felt her dress.”
Wilbert Fraser smiled and shook his head. “You felt what you expected to feel. There was nothing there. Nothing material, anyway.”
“You said something about spirits stealing substance.”
“Well… we don’t want to talk about things like that,” said Wilbert Fraser, looking around the circle and chafing his hands together. “I think we’ve all had quite enough excitement for one evening. A very clear manifestation… even though it came to such a sudden end.”
“Please, tell me how spirits steal substance,” said Larry.
Wilbert Fraser looked uneasy. “It’s very rare,” he replied. “And I’d be deeply upset if I deterred anybody here this evening from trying to communicate with those they love. But, yes, one does occasionally come across spirits who steal human substance.”
“How do they do that?”
“They literally feed on the essence of the soul. They feed on your flesh, your blood, and worst of all they feed on your personality.”
“And what would happen to you, if you fell victim to one of these characters?”
Wilbert Fraser tried unsuccessfully to smile. “You would most probably die.”
“What if you didn’t?”
“I really don’t know. I never heard of anybody meeting a truly voracious spirit and surviving the experience.”
John Forth put in, anxiously, “Do you mind if we change the subject?”
“Might you be shrunk?” asked Larry.
Wilbert Fraser stared at him directly for the first time. “Has this actually happened?” he asked, sharply. “I mean, here in San Francisco? Recently?”
Larry said, “Hypothetical case.”
“It’s happened, hasn’t it?”
“Let’s put it this way. We do have an inexplicable case of catastrophic endocrinal failure in SFG.”
“How catastrophic?”
“Weight loss of well over a hundred pounds. One hundred forty-six down to forty-four.”
“It’s not anorexia?” asked Wilbert Fraser. “Anorexics occasionally have delusions of sinister spiritual presences, trying to force them to eat.”
“It wasn’t anorexia, Mr. Fraser. Or if it was, it was no kind of anorexia that I ever heard of. She lost the weight in a little less than four minutes.”
There was a startled gasp from Margot Tryall; and a “four minutes?” of disbelief from Dick Volare.
“Nearer three,” Larry corrected him.
“I can’t believe it,” said Samantha Bacon. “That’s some diet, don’t you think? Maybe you could patent it. Lose Weight With The World Beyond.”
“I don’t think that’s funny in the least,” chipped in John Forth. “I think it’s Goddamned hair-raising.”
Larry didn’t take his eyes away from Wilbert Fraser. “Could it have been?” he asked him, so softly that only Wilbert Fraser could hear.
Wilbert Fraser pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he said, “I really don’t feel qualified to answer.”
“I don’t even want a yes or a no,” Larry persisted. “All I want is a well-informed maybe.”
“I don’t know,” said Wilbert Fraser. “I wish I could. But not knowing the case—”
“Edna-Mae Lickerman,” Larry told him.
From what Dogmeat had told him, Wilbert Fraser had been involved with Edna-Mae Lickerman in the mystical magical Haight-Ashbury headshop days. So he wasn’t at all surprised when Wilbert Fraser’s eyes gave that little defensive flicker that tells any experienced detective that he has touched a nerve.
“Doesn’t ring any immediate bells...” said Wilbert Fraser.
Larry raised an eyebrow, didn’t reply.
“She’s the one who’s lost all of this weight?” Wilbert Fraser asked.
Larry nodded.
“Well,” said Wilbert Fraser. Larry knew that he was play-acting now; that in reality his mind must be racing with questions, racing with fears. “I guess her condition could have been caused by some kind of spirit-feeding.”
“Spirit-feeding? Is that what you call it?”
“That’s right. Some of the really ancient spirits are capable of gutting your whole being. Your heart, your soul, like gutting a fish. They can tear out of you everything that makes you what you are.”
“And this could have happened to Edna-Mae Lickerman?”
“As I say, I don’t have any way of knowing for sure. It’s conceivable, I suppose—although if a spirit that was capable of doing that to anybody had reared its head in San Francisco lately, I think I’d be one of the first to be aware of it.”
“What are we going to do now?” interrupted Eleonora, quite querulously. “Won’t the spirits settle down? Maybe we could have a drink, and give them a little time to rest? It seems a pity to stop now, after such a vivid manifestation as Roberta Snow.”
“I’m sorry, Eleonora,” said Wilbert Fraser. “I’m really very tired, after all that effort. The spirits are always very demanding. Maybe you’d care to call me tomorrow, and we can arrange another meeting.”
“Oh, Wilbert, won’t you change your min
d?” begged Margot Tryall.
“I’m sorry,” said Wilbert. It was clear that what Larry had told him about Edna-Mae had upset him badly. “I’m really not in the mood any more.”
“Well, thanks a lot, gumba,” Dick Volare said to Larry.
Larry ignored him and held out his hand to Wilbert Fraser. “It was good to meet you,” he said. “And, believe me, if I hear any more news about Edna-Mae...”
Wilbert Fraser looked as if he were about to say something, but then he changed his mind. “Maybe another time,” he said.
“Another time?” asked Dick Volare incredulously. “What’s he going to do to the next spirit-guide, place it under close arrest?”
“Hey, acqua in bocca,” said Larry.
“Keep quiet, he says,” Dick Volare retorted.
Larry and Eleonora said goodnight to everyone and Wilbert Fraser showed them to the front door. Before they left, he laid his hand on Larry’s shoulder and said, “Maybe soon you and I can have a talk.”
“Of course,” said Larry. “You want to discuss anything in particular?”
Wilbert Fraser made a moue. “This and that. The old days. You remember that night in the summer of ’67, when they busted Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn for smoking pot at that party on Belvedere Street? That was my party. Forty-two Belvedere Street. Seems like yesterday.”
“Was Edna-Mae there too?” asked Larry.
Wilbert Fraser thrust his hands into the pockets of his sagging needlecord pants and stared around at the fog. “Your heart’s in the correct place, Larry. Try to keep it there.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there’s some feeding going on, Larry; and maybe worse to come.”
5
They drove back to Eleonora’s house. Eleonora said, “I’m so sorry you didn’t get to talk to your poppa.”
Larry parked the car and helped his mother out. The fog felt like damp net curtains. “Maybe it was all for the best. That little girl scared the shit out of me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if poppa had appeared.”
“You don’t have to use bad language. What would your poppa say?”
“I’m sorry,” said Larry. Then he lifted his eyes heavenward and added, “I’m sorry, poppa.”
He took her up the steps and opened the door for her. “Do you want a cup of tea?” she asked him. “I have some wonderful Orange Pekoe.”
“I could use a drink as a matter of fact. And maybe I can telephone.”
“Go right ahead. You know where everything is. Can you put the kettle on?”
Larry plugged in the kettle in his mother’s diminutive pine-paneled kitchen, then went through to the living-room. “Che violino! Che violino!” screeched Mussolini. Larry went up to his cage and slammed it hard with the flat of his hand, making Mussolini scream and flutter wildly off his perch.
“One more insult out of you and you’re parrot sandwich, you got it?”
He picked up the phone and dialed home. Linda answered immediately. He could hear rock music in the background, John Cougar Mellencamp, Let It All Hang Out. Linda only played rock’n’roll when Larry wasn’t home.
“Oh hi-i-i, darling, how was it?” she asked him. “Did you get to talk to your father?”
“Don’t laugh. I didn’t get to talk to poppa but I saw a real spirit.”
“You saw a real spirit?” She was using that voice on him, the same voice she used when she asked Mikey if he had genuinely seen a monster looking up at him from the bottom of the toilet.
“Linda, it was real. It was a little girl and it scared the shit out of me. I mean it scared me to death.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”
“No, maybe not. But you sound like you’re on something.”
“Be serious. Have I ever been on anything?”
“The first night you took me out you brought about a kilo of grass.”
“The first night I took you out I was nervous. Tonight I’m terrified. There’s a difference. Anyhow, I’ll tell you what happened when I get home. I have to tuck momma up and call Houston Brough.”
“What time do you think you’ll get back?”
“Midnight, no later.”
“I love you, you mad Italian.”
He hung up, and dialed Houston Brough downtown. He was transferred to the Parkside Police Station between the Golden Gate Park and the Haight-Ashbury, where Houston had gone to talk to David Green.
“He came in late this afternoon and asked to be locked up in a cell. He said he was scared because somebody was out to tear him to pieces. He couldn’t say who. I asked him if the person who was after him bore any resemblance to the person that he’d seen in the window of his apartment and he went apeshit. He collapsed. They’ll be taking him to the hospital later.”
“Could he describe the face in the window?”
“Sorry, I didn’t get that far. He totally freaked.”
“How about Leibowitz?”
“Not at home; and his neighbors haven’t seen him or heard from him since Friday morning.”
“Houston, I need to find him. I need some coherent descriptions. I need some facts. I need some Goddamned meat-and-potatoes.”
“I’ll keep trying, what can I say? I’ve got every fairy between here and Fairfax on the lookout for him.”
“Less of the fairies, okay? Think community relations.”
“I’m going back downtown, lieutenant, then I’m signing off. I’ll catch you in the morning.”
“Sure thing.”
Eleonora came in with a tray of tea and a small home-baked torta di noci, freshly sliced up, and a glass of chilled Orvieto for Larry. She sat down beside him and laid her hand on his.
“Your poppa’s proud of you, you know.”
“Even though I turned my back on the family business?”
She smiled, and leaned forward, and kissed his forehead. “Your poppa knew more than most people realized.”
Larry lifted his glass in a silent salute to his dead father. It was very gloomy in the living-room. Larry could almost have imagined that his father was still somewhere here—sitting in that high-backed chair, perhaps, staring at the fire, the way he always used to. He was almost tempted to get up and make sure that he wasn’t.
“You feel his presence, too?” his mother asked.
Larry nodded. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Once you realize that dead people are still with us, you can practically reach out and touch them. I never even guessed.”
Eleonora whispered. “They’re here, all right. The night is alive with them. They’re very stirred up, very excited.”
“Well, I’m not surprised, after what happened at Wilbert Fraser’s.”
“Maybe we should talk to your poppa after all.”
Larry looked at her cautiously. “What do you mean? You heard what Wilbert said. He was too tired and it was far too dangerous.”
“Oh, it’s never dangerous,” Eleonora mocked. “That’s only Wilbert’s excuse for being temperamental. How can it be dangerous to talk to your father?”
“But Wilbert won’t do it, will he? Not tonight?”
His mother arched her neck. “Who said anything about Wilbert? We’ll do it, you and me, together!”
“Hey, hey. hey, wait up a minute! We’re not mediums, are we? We don’t even know how!”
“I know how. Your grandma showed me how. And she always said that I was very sensitive.”
“I remember. I thought she was talking about your skin.”
His mother laughed. “Come on,” she coaxed him. “Let’s try it! I can feel your poppa so strongly… I’m sure we’ll be able to talk to him. Just a few words, Larry! Just to prove to yourself that it’s possible! I promise you—it’s wonderful! His voice, remember his voice? Remember the way he used to laugh?”
“I’m not too sure about this,” said Larry. After his experience with the drowned girl, he wasn’t convinced that seeing his father was such a terrific i
dea. Supposing his father were obliged to show him how he had died of a heart-attack, in the same way that Roberta had been obliged to show him how she had drowned? Supposing his father actually spoke to him—told him things he had never known before—things that he didn’t want to hear? Supposing Mario Foggia turned out to be less of a giant than Larry remembered him? Not the great laughing Neapolitan folk-hero who could crack Christmas walnuts with his bare hands, but an ordinary man with a thin-clipped mustache and sloping shoulders and a dark blue three-piece suit?
Supposing they were surprised by one of those ancient spirits that could gut you like a fish—heart, soul, everything that made you what you are?
Eleonora said, “It’s very easy, so long as you believe. We’ll turn the lights low, and then we’ll both think about your father, and then I’ll call on somebody to guide us.”
“I don’t know, momma.”
“Hush! You’ll enjoy it.”
She went around the room, switching off the lamps, until the only illumination came from a single small art-deco lamp with a mushroom shade of dark-yellow glass. She covered Mussolini’s cage with its cloth, even though Mussolini protested vociferously. “Pesci in fascia! Pesci in fascia!”
She sat down again, and lifted both of her hands, palm outward, in the same way that Wilbert Fraser had done.
“Maybe we should hold hands… you know, insulate ourselves a little?” Larry suggested. “You know what Wilbert said about the full strength of the supernatural. Like holding bare wires.”
“Oh, we’ll be fine,” his mother reassured him. In the darkness, he could hardly see her face, and the shadows of the furniture seem to have grown up the surrounding walls like huge ramparts of darkness. “Come on, dear, lift up your hands.”
Reluctantly, Larry did what he was told. His mother closed her eyes and meditated for a while. Larry tried to think of his father, too. Poppa, where are you now, poppa? In this room it wasn’t difficult. Every chair, every table, every picture, every drape—everything was deeply imbued with his father’s lost presence and his father’s life.
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