Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1)

by Michael Stiles

  Living with that many people didn’t sound like something Ed would have enjoyed. “I grew up with my uncle,” he offered.

  “Not that kind of uncle,” Doris replied.

  “I see,” he said, not understanding at all.

  “It’s a good way to live—my uncle’s in charge, but he doesn’t tell anybody what to do. We all pull our weight, no one tries to be lazy. It’s better than the regular kind of family, because we chose each other. Regular families are stuck with each other whether they like it or not. But we stay together because we want to. It’s better.”

  Maybe she had a point, Ed thought. But it still sounded like a bizarre arrangement. “You ran away from home?”

  “It’s like Janis Joplin said. I had places to be.”

  There was another silence for several miles while Ed contemplated what to say next.

  “So,” Doris said finally, “what do you do for a living, Mr. Ed? Are you an accountant?”

  Ed frowned, mildly offended. “Why would you say that?”

  “Don’t know.” She shrugged. “You look like an accountant.”

  “I’m a forensic analyst for the LAPD. Trace evidence.”

  That caught her attention. “Really? That sounds interesting.”

  “It’s not.” She seemed disappointed at that, so he kept talking. “It’s not that bad, I just―”

  “Get off here!” Doris blurted, and he swerved across two lanes—nearly flattening them both beneath a very large truck—to exit where she indicated. Doris guided him through winding, hilly streets, past ornate mansions that looked like gingerbread houses and colorful Russian palaces. The neighborhood was a maze, not made any easier by the darkness, and after the first few turns Ed’s sense of direction was so scrambled that he didn’t have the slightest idea how he’d get back to the freeway again.

  They pulled into the driveway of a house that looked modest in comparison with its surroundings, half hidden behind a stone wall with a wrought-iron gate. It was an awfully posh house for a runaway to be living in with a band of hippies, Ed thought.

  Two men were sitting on the porch, a black one in sunglasses and a thin, pale one with long, greasy gray hair. They were smoking cigarettes and talking quietly as Ed pulled up. The one with the long hair kept taking his cigarette out of his mouth to examine it, as if there was something wrong with it.

  “Want to come in?” Doris opened her door and put one foot on the ground. “I’m sure my uncle would want to meet you.”

  Ed eyed the two men. He didn’t feel like meeting new people tonight, and besides, it was getting late. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

  She hesitated for what seemed like a long time, halfway out of the car, looking like there was something more she wanted to say. “You could come back another time,” she said finally. “If you want.”

  The two men on the porch had stopped talking and were now watching Ed. The one with the gray hair had piercing blue eyes that gave Ed a chill; his lips curled into a strange half-smile. The other one stared at Ed with no expression whatsoever. “I really have to go,” Ed said.

  “He throws a party every Saturday night. Whatever you’re into, I’m sure they’ll have it. Will you come?” She suddenly seemed very unsure of herself. “Please?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “No, you won’t,” she replied. “You have no intention of trying.”

  He grimaced uncomfortably. “It’s just that I live pretty far away, and―”

  “And blah blah blah,” said Doris tipping her head from side to side with each word. “Just come on.”

  The two men were watching him quite intently now. The black one shifted his weight on his seat, as though he was about to get up. “I really have to go,” said Ed.

  “Saturday night,” she repeated, stepping out of the car. “Don’t be a fuddy-duddy.” She made a face at him as she shut the door. Ed grunted in a curmudgeonly way and, still keeping his eye on those two hippies on the porch, threw the car into reverse and made his escape.

  * * *

  Doris watched as Ed’s taillights disappeared around the curve. Then she turned and walked up to the house, past Rat and Louis on the front stoop. Rat leered at her as she opened the front door. She gave him a warning look and went inside. “Leave her alone, Rat,” she heard Louis say.

  Inside, trash and beer cans littered the carpet. A few people sat in the chairs or on the floor. Some of them she knew, but many were strangers who would likely hang around for a day or two before moving on. The Guru’s house was always open to anyone who needed a place to stay. Doris removed her shoes and proceeded down the hallway to the living room, careful not to step on anything disgusting.

  He sat in his wheelchair at the far end of the living room. The Guru wore a blue cotton shirt and a pair of camouflage pants that had been tied off to cover the stumps of his amputated legs. His thick, wiry hair fell nearly to his waist, and his dark skin was marked in several places with old scars. The placement of the wheelchair at the end of the room, and the way he sat in it, made Doris feel as though she was approaching a ruler on his throne. He would have admonished her if she’d made such a comparison out loud, but she didn’t think the impression was accidental. Rayfield stood beside the Guru’s wheelchair like a guard.

  Doris sat cross-legged on the carpet before him.

  “Welcome home, little Doris,” he said warmly. “Were you successful?”

  “Not entirely, Guru,” Doris replied, unable to meet his eyes. “I found him, but―”

  The Guru smiled a smile that told Doris he was proud of her anyway. “You found him. That’s a success. And you met him?”

  She nodded.

  “Why ‘not entirely,’ then?”

  “He wouldn’t come in. I invited him, like you said, but I didn’t push him very hard.”

  “If you had pushed him,” the Guru said, “he would have left and never come back. He’ll come when he’s ready. You’ve done well, dear. Very well.”

  Rayfield spoke up. “Guru, won’t Arthur be looking for him too? If we wait, it’ll be too late.”

  “It will not be too late,” the Guru replied, turning his head to give Rayfield a stern look. “He’ll come back here on his own, and in the end he’ll do what I need him to.” Turning back to Doris, he said, “You did fine, girl. Don’t be hard on yourself.”

  Feeling a little better, Doris said good night and went to bed. Many questions were buzzing around her head, but she meditated to clear her mind. Mr. Ed would come back on his own. When the Guru knew something, he knew.

  * * *

  Tom Kajdas had a profound respect for his boss. Albert was part of a generation of civil servants who had served their country proudly during the Second World War, and who now served on a much different but no less dangerous front. When Fascism had been dealt its death-blows in the 1940s, Wensel and his compatriots had realized what men like Roosevelt and Truman had failed to note: Fascism, while a serious threat in its day, was not the most nefarious danger confronting the free world. Even before Hitler and Mussolini were cold in their graves, Stalin had been consolidating his grip on Eastern Europe and supporting the young Communist governments in Asia. But more quietly, the Communists were making their move inside the United States. Soviet agents had been uncovered in some of the highest positions in the American government: the well-known case of Alger Hiss, and the less publicized unmasking of Harry Dexter White, had proven the extent of the Soviet infiltration of the government. At the same time, Communists had worked to gain footholds among the young, the uneducated, and the poor, and to increase their influence in academia and the media.

  While the Communists were scoring their quiet victories, Wensel had been working quietly in Washington to contain the leftist threat at home. Albert had displayed a knack for pulling together seemingly unimportant pieces of information and assembling them into a coherent picture of the Communist Party’s activities and members. Over time, Wensel’s inferences had proven to be uncannily acc
urate. Top men in the Bureau had noticed this, and Albert had risen quickly within the organization. Charles Witherspoon, at that time another promising up-and-comer in the Bureau, had taken on Wensel as his protégé back when Witherspoon was in charge of the FBI’s domestic intelligence division. Over time, Witherspoon had built up a little empire for himself within the Bureau—an empire that Tom suspected not even the Director himself knew much about. Witherspoon had since moved high up the FBI’s chain of command, but Albert continued to fight his own personal battle from his fourth-floor office in the Justice building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Over the years he had carefully observed the ranks of field agents and administrators to find men who shared his ideals. These men he set apart from the rest; they worked in many different parts of the country, doing things that no one but Wensel and Witherspoon knew about.

  And so it was that Kajdas, a young and fairly average (Tom wasn’t ashamed to admit) special agent in Washington, had been recruited by Wensel to join the fight. Tom provided support for Wensel’s various operations and, like Albert, he kept an eye out for individuals who might serve as effective recruits... or as useful tools. His move from Washington to Los Angeles had been requested by Kajdas as a means of escaping his despair after a difficult divorce, and approved by Wensel because it made him more comfortable to have a few thousand miles between himself and Kajdas in the event that their activities were compromised.

  Early Thursday morning, Kajdas went down into his basement and switched on his KY-3. The yellow light glowed for what felt like a very long time before the green one finally came on.

  “I just had that meeting we’d talked about,” he said after securing the telephone line.

  “Will he do?” asked Wensel. “Your description of him didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence.”

  “I think he’ll help us for the right reasons,” Tom replied. “If not, I’ve got some leverage I can use.”

  “I don’t want any more Candlesticks,” said Albert. “If he’s not reliable, find someone else.”

  “Leverage, Albert,” Kajdas said patiently. “He’ll do what we need him to.”

  There was silence at the other end, and Tom knew that Wensel must be lighting up a cigarette. Kajdas waited for Wensel to speak; no one interrupted Albert when he was having a smoke. “What’s the status of the Summit project?” Wensel said at last. “Our sponsor would like to know if you’ve found any subjects for that one yet.”

  Kajdas rapped his knuckles on his desktop in irritation. He hated falling behind schedule, but what their sponsor was asking for was next to impossible. “Still behind on Summit. Finding even one subject is hard enough, and he wants five! If I had another man or two out here, I might be able to do what he’s asking.”

  “Not going to happen. I’ll pass along the request, but you’ll have to make do.”

  “Lovely.”

  “We lost a good informant yesterday,” Albert said, pivoting to a new topic in his characteristically abrupt way. “The Secretary was our best window into the administration.”

  Kajdas had spent a great deal of time thinking through the ramifications of McNamara’s resignation. How would their sponsor react to the loss of their best source of intelligence on the President’s plans? “How will this affect Daisy?” he asked. “Do you think he’ll want to change the plan?”

  “Too soon to tell.” There was a pause while he drew in another lungful of smoke. “No, I don’t think the plan will change. But get everything ready as soon as you can.”

  “As soon as I can,” echoed Kajdas. “Once again, Albert―”

  “I know. I’m trying to get Agent Driscoll assigned to us. That would give us one more—not as many as you need, but Driscoll’s dependable.”

  “I’ll take him if we can get him. If not―”

  Wensel interrupted him with a grunt. “We’ve got to get it done either way, Tom. That’s all there is to it.”

  Kajdas sat at the desk in his damp, chilly basement for a long time after hanging up the phone. He’d get the job done; resources were always scarce, but he’d always managed to get the job done. But his mind kept coming back to the Candlestick disaster, the failure that would likely haunt him for the rest of his career. Which would be decidedly short, if things didn’t come together soon.

  He sometimes wondered if there was any way to get your soul back, once it was bought and paid for. A deal with the government was surely no less binding than a deal with the Devil. Sighing, he trudged up the stairs and turned out the light.

  10

  The American Dream

  Danny locked the door and waited until the men showed up to take care of the body. They sent him out to take a walk around the block, and they were gone when he returned half an hour later. There was no sign that anything had happened except a faint dark stain on the concrete floor. Danny dragged over a heavy cardboard box full of junk to cover the stain.

  He sat on the box and rubbed his temples. A wicked headache was starting to develop. Yawning, he reached over to grab the lockbox from the drawer of his mother’s little desk, opened it with the key in his pocket, and counted the day’s money. This didn’t take him long. They would have enough for groceries this month, as long as business didn’t slow down after word got out about what had happened today, but the rent would be tough. And if people started talking about the killing that had happened here, their superstitious Chinese customers would almost certainly start avoiding the place.

  Danny went to the back room and retrieved the duffel bag of cash from where he’d hidden it. Taking out enough for a couple months’ rent would hardly make a difference, Danny mused, but he didn’t want to think about what would happen if either Li or Wang found out. He left the bag closed and slung it over his shoulder.

  He flipped off the light switch at the back of the shop—it was in a terribly inconvenient location—threaded his way to the front door in the dark, and trudged up the steps to Elizabeth Street to walk the three blocks to the ancient and crumbling tenement building on Mulberry where he lived with his mother and sister. On the way, he stopped at the market for the groceries his mother had asked for.

  His mother was yelling at Alice again. He could never follow their arguments; women’s disagreements always jumped around from subject to subject so rapidly that a man could never be sure what was being discussed, and the true subject of the discussion might very well be something that was never even brought up. From what he could gather, Alice had gone out and bought a new sweater with money she’d made at her after-school job at the library. Ma did not look favorably on any disbursements of family money that didn’t receive her prior approval. Alice felt that, having expended a fair amount of effort in making the money, she should have the right to spend it on things that she wanted to buy. And furthermore, all her clothes were old and threadbare. Their mother pointed out that Alice’s logic was flawed because Alice was a stupid, selfish girl. And so it went, on and on.

  A short, narrow passage led from the door of the apartment to the living room and kitchen. If he stayed at the far end of this passage, they couldn’t see him from the kitchen. Danny stopped just inside the door to listen, hidden from view. He was tempted to turn right around and go somewhere else for a while, but at last he decided there was nothing to do but go in and risk entering the crossfire.

  They were in the kitchen, halfway through preparing dinner. Peeking around the corner, Danny saw his mother wielding an enormous cleaver with fearsome vigor. She was using it to chop meat for dinner, but between chops she waved it at Alice to emphasize her points. Each time she waved the thing around, bits of chicken fat came loose from the blade and flew through the air to stick to the walls and floor. Alice, less animated than her mother though no less stubborn, stood with her arms folded and her feet planted firmly on the stained, ancient linoleum.

  Danny crept into the kitchen, placed the bag of groceries silently on the counter. He didn’t need to worry, as it happened; neither of them was looking his way, an
d his mother’s voice could drown out a subway train even when she wasn’t shouting. He grabbed a bag of spicy dried squid from the counter and retreated to his bedroom. Dinner would be a while, evidently. He slipped the duffel bag off of his shoulder and pushed it under his bed.

  Money was what they always fought about. The three of them argued about a million different things, but nearly all of those million things stemmed from the same fundamental problem. Danny was tired of it. Not just the arguments; he was somehow sure that even if they had enough money to go around, the three of them would find some other reason to chew each other’s heads off. He was tired of Chinatown, he was tired of this tiny apartment, and he was especially tired of the cockroaches and the asshole landlord who refused to fix anything. Rent control kept their expenses just barely within their reach, but business had been slow and Danny was starting to wonder how long they’d be able to survive on what little money they made selling trinkets and palm-readings.

  Around nine o’clock the shouting stopped. Then the front door slammed shut, which meant it would just be him and his mother for dinner. He sighed and shoved a last handful of dried squid into his mouth, then went out to the living room. His mother sat alone at the folding table, set with three bowls of steaming soup and three plates of stir-fried chicken with snow peas over rice. The television was on; the people on the screen babbled happily in the background as Danny and his mother ate without speaking.

  He cleaned up afterwards, leaving Alice’s food on the table in case she came back, and went back to his tiny bedroom to sleep. He woke up briefly when Alice came home, sometime in the middle of the night. When he went to sleep the second time, he began to dream of the bearded man again.

  He’d been having the dream since he was a young child, when he and his family had been living in an even smaller apartment with his aunt and uncle and a whole mess of cousins. Danny’s parents had come to the United States just a few weeks before Danny was born, making him the first U.S. citizen in his family. His father had lived the American dream as a cook in a dirty restaurant on Bowery for his first five years in the United States, barely earning enough to survive, until the day he was hit and killed by a taxi in front of the restaurant. Danny had started dreaming about the angry man with the beard not long after that, and his young mind had quickly associated the appearance of the bearded man with his father’s death.