‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand to be hurt Please kill me.’
Misquamacus reached out his hand and gently touched Martin’s gouged-out eyeballs, running his greasy, ash-blackened fingertips around their cringing, wrinkled surfaces.
‘Can you see that?’ he asked. He flicked the corneas with his fingernails, and then laughed when Martin screamed.
‘Perhaps you don’t deserve it,’ said Misquamacus, his eyes bright, his voice thickly accented. Martin had never heard a Narragansett accent before, but he knew that if he survived he would never forget it. It was amused, declamatory, but there was also a slight hint of self-mockery in it.
‘Don’t blind me,’ he said. He couldn’t find any other words. He knew that it was probably too late for any surgeon to save his eyes; but so long as there was the smallest chance. So long as he could still see.
Misquamacus took hold of Martin’s right eye like a man plucking a plum. Martin knew then that the Indian was going to hurt him, and worse than hurt him. He thought he started to scream but he couldn’t be sure. His lungs were clenched with dread and he may not have uttered any sound at all.
Misquamacus squeezed his eyeball until it burst. Optic fluid suddenly flooded between the wonder-worker’s blackened fingers.
Roaring with rage as well as agony, Martin tried to heave himself backward. All he succeeded in doing was ripping his optic nerve through the tines of his Celtic fork. His face exploded with pain. It was like being hit in the face with a hammer. He thrashed all around him, still roaring. Everything was black. Everything was fire. Everything was blindness and defeat.
Three officers heard him screaming and roaring and came running down to the cells. They found him lying on his back on the floor, his eye-sockets as blind as overturned pots of red ink, and the cell walls splattered with blood. Some of the blood formed exclamation points, some of the blood made question marks. But all Martin could do was kick and scream, his body convulsed in pain, and all that the cops could do was call for the paramedics.
‘Self-mutilation,’ said Sergeant Friendly. ‘It happens a lot with homicide suspects. They’re worried we’re not going to punish them enough for what they did.’
A single cockroach zig-zagged furiously across the floor.
Twelve
The next morning the humidity was even higher and my Avis air-conditioner started to cough like Monday morning on the cancer ward. I eased myself stiffly off the couch and shuffled through to my dinky little kitchenette. There was a magnifying shaving-mirror hanging from a cup-hook on the shelf, and a monstrous bloodshot eye swam around in it
Last night I had finished off the better part of a bottle of Absolut, trying not to imagine what might have happened to Karen, and trying to think what the hell I should do now. Maybe I should do nothing at all. Maybe I should accept the idea that just because I had confronted Misquamacus twice before there was no reason why it was my responsibility to confront him again. Let him do whatever he wanted.
I scooped espresso coffee into my coffee machine, filled it with Evian water, and switched it on. There was a sharp crackling noise and a wisp of blue smoke came out of the plug. Shorted out again. That meant I would have to put on my trousers and go down to the drugstore.
I was raking my fingers through my hair when my intercom buzzed. I picked it up and said, ‘Erskine the Incredible — palmistry, card-divining, tea-leaf interpretation —’ But I was interrupted by a voice saying, ‘Harry, it’s me, Deirdre.’
‘Oh, Deirdre.’ I frowned, and checked my Russian wrist-watch. It said twenty after five, which was impossible, whether it was morning or afternoon. ‘We didn’t schedule a reading for today, did we?’
‘I know we didn’t, but you were quite right about Mason having me followed. He’s found out about Vance. And I’m worried that John has found out about Mason.’
‘I see, well, I did warn you.’
‘Harry, I know I’m being a nuisance, but could you possibly give me another reading right now? Things are happening so fast, I need an update.’
How could I refuse? Mrs John F. Lavender was my bread-and-butter. In fact she was more than my bread-and-butter, she was my Kraft cheese slices too. I pressed the buzzer and as I struggled into my crumpled fawn Chinos I heard her climbing the stairs, two at a time, like an Alpine gazelle. I opened the door for her with one hand and zippered my fly with the other.
She was wearing skin-tight emerald-green satin pants, a floppy blouse of stridently purple silk and a huge yellow straw hat with an extravagant scarlet flower on the headband.
‘Harry,’ she said, ‘you look like hell.’
I coughed. ‘Had a rough night, I’m sorry.’
She picked up the empty vodka bottle and turned it upside-down. ‘Well, drowning your sorrows, were you? I wouldn’t have thought that clairvoyants had any sorrows. I mean, can’t you always see what’s coming?’
I shrugged. ‘Oh, for sure. But just because I can see what’s coming, that doesn’t always mean that I can get out of the way. Or even that I necessarily want to get out of the way.’
‘Oh,’ said Deirdre, with a knowing, multi-eyelashed wink. ‘Affair of the heart, was it?’
I lifted a heap of newspapers and magazines from the chaise-longue. ‘Just take a seat, Deirdre. I have to shave.’
‘I kind of like you with stubble,’ Deirdre flirted. ‘You remind me of Humphrey Bogart.’
I went back to the kitchenette, tugged out the plug of the coffee-machine, and plugged in my electric razor. While I shaved, Deirdre said, ‘I first realized that Mason was having me followed when I was shopping in Bergdorf Goodman. I spent hours looking for cyan gloves to go with my cyan evening-suit, you know the Ralph Lauren evening-suit I was telling you about, when I noticed a man in an awful cheap blazer hanging around pretending to look through the scarves. After that I went to lingerie and he followed me into lingerie. There was no doubt about it, he was a private detective.’
‘What makes you think that Mason hired him?’ I asked.
‘Because you said he would, of course.’
‘Oh, yes, sure,’ I called back. ‘Has Mason told you directly to your face that he knows about Vince?’
‘Vance,’ Deirdre corrected me.
‘Vince, Vance, whatever. Are you sure that Mason knows for sure?’
‘Well, he didn’t say so in so many actual words. But he did say that if he found out that I was two-timing him, he’d do something desperate.’
‘Has he done anything desperate yet?’
‘It depends on your definition of desperate, I guess. Yesterday afternoon he bought a yellow Hermes cravat in the men’s department at Macy’s.’
‘Hmm … I guess you’d have to be pretty desperate to do that.’
I finished shaving. Then, without any technical ceremony, I yanked the plug off the coffee machine, stripped the wires with my kitchen-knife, and jabbed them directly into the plug. There was a moment’s pause, and then the machine gave out a satisfying bloop and I knew that a much-needed caffeine overdose was on the way. I came back into the consulting room, where Deirdre was lighting up a cigarette. I breathed in match-sulphur, saltpeter and half-burned tobacco, and my stomach gave a bloop in sympathy with the coffee-machine.
‘I guess you saw that new client of yours on television,’ said Deirdre. ‘I told John, that’s another client of Harry Erskine’s. I’ve seen her in the flesh, for real. Mind you, I think she looks so much prettier in the flesh, if you know what I mean.’
I sat down. I had missed a small patch of stubble on my left cheek, and it felt prickly and uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, I scarcely ever watch television, but there was something on the news about a racehorse that belongs to a friend of mine, Douglas Evershed III, you must have heard of Douglas, he’s quite an eccentric.’
‘Yes, I have, but what was this about —?’
‘It was that girl, that same girl who was waiting
for you downstairs in the hall the last time I visited! They had a news-item about some terrible mass-murder in Arizona, and there she was, clear as daylight. They were interviewing the sheriff or somebody and she was standing right in the background. There was no mistaking her.’
I covered my mouth with my hand for a moment and thought hard. Karen? In Arizona ? How could that be?
‘Can you remember what station that was?’ I asked Deirdre.
‘Of course, NBC.’
‘And you’re absolutely positive it was her?’
‘No question at all. She was standing right behind the sheriff, clear as daylight.’
I felt the strangest shiver go down my spine; partly of hope, partly of dread. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at Karen appearing halfway across the country — even though she had dropped out of sight only the day before yesterday down a bottomless grave in Greenwich Village. I knew from experience that Misquamacus was capable of travelling through time and space in the most extraordinary way; and maybe he had taken Karen with him.
I rummaged through my bureau and pulled out a Manhattan telephone directory with a torn cover. I licked my finger and leafed through to NBC. Deirdre watched me, smoking and agitated.
‘Have I said something?’ she wanted to know.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘But I want to see that news item for myself.’
‘Well, for goodness sake, I can help with that,’ said Deirdre. ‘I videotaped the whole news, so that Douglas could see it when he came back from France.’
For once in my life I actually believed that God and happenstance were both on my side. ‘Deirdre,’ I said, ‘you’re an angel from heaven.’
She dragged at her cigarette, and then explosively coughed. ‘Don’t kill me off yet.’ She opened her pocketbook. ‘Here — call this number. It’s my car-phone. Tell my driver Felipe to go get the tape for you and bring it back here.’
She stretched herself back on the chaise-longue, her skinny thighs wobbling slightly under the clinging emerald-green satin. ‘And while Felipe is doing that, you can give me a fresh reading.’
‘Oh — yes,’ I agreed. ‘What’s it to be today? Cards? Tea-leaves?’
‘Oh, cards. Those French cards. I really like what they have to say. They give me such a frisson, if you know what I mean.’
I sat down at the table and set out the cards. Behind the beaded curtain, in the kitchenette, the coffee-machine continued to bloop. None of my divinations were particularly mystic, but this morning’s reading was going to be even less mystic than ever. I couldn’t think about anything else but Karen. Was she conscious of what she was doing, I wondered, or had Misquamacus somehow hypnotized her? What was she doing in Arizona? Had she flown there, or had Misquamacus transported her — in the same way that he must have transported himself in the 1870s? Was she really there at all — or was the face that Deirdre had seen on the evening news nothing more than an illusion, a trick, a magical joke?
Deirdre peered through the cigarette smoke at the cards which I was turning up. ‘Wasn’t that terrible, that earthquake in Chicago?’ she said, apropos of nothing at all. ‘Sometimes I think that God’s punishing us, you know, for being too arrogant.’
I said nothing, but held up the first card. It showed a hillside, with autumnal trees on it, and clouds. Some of the clouds were shining white, others were grey and depressing. You can see why I liked the Lenormand cards so much. They gave me carte-blanche to say whatever I thought was most suitable. Or at least carte- completely ambiguous.
‘What does it mean?’ Deirdre asked, excitedly.
‘It says, “Clouds brightly shine strung in precision … life will be fine with firm decision.” In other words you have to make your mind up. Make some choices, and stick to them.’
Deirdre obviously didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What’s going to happen if I don’t? Can’t I hedge my bets just a little? I hate to make choices. I mean I like what I choose, but I can’t bear to lose whatever it is I haven’t chosen. I want it all.’ She laughed, coughed.
From the kitchenette, I heard a sharp spitting noise, and then I smelled burning. The coffee-machine had overflowed and shorted out the bare wires that were stuck in the plug.
Deirdre waited for me impatiently while I mopped up. ‘I told you — you should read your own fortune once in a while.’
Amelia came over just before one o’clock and we sat and shared a Neapolitan pizza and watched the videotape that Deirdre had lent me.
The anchorman started by saying that ‘- the tiny desert community of Apache Junction, less than thirty miles east of the state capital Phoenix, has become the focus of the most intensive police operation in Arizona’s history …’
‘Apache Junction,’ I interrupted, shaking my head. ‘I should have known. Under The Old One. The place where they tortured Geronimo’s men.’
The bulletin switched to NBC’s on-the-spot reporter, a handsome high-cheekboned Indian girl with glossy black shoulder-length hair. She said, ‘Here at the used automobile dealership of local character Papago Joe, police are still investigating the horrific deaths of seven men and women, whose mutilated bodies were discovered two days ago in an automobile inspection pit.
‘All of the victims were out-of-towners, and five of them came from out of state, including Washington, Minnesota and Maine. Police as yet have no idea what they were all doing here, or who might have been minded to murder them all. Sheriff Ethan Wallace is currently working on the theory that they were all members of an illicit drugs or gambling syndicate who tried to double-cross influential figures in the Phoenix Mafia.’
The interviewer then turned towards a hot freckly man in green-lensed Ray-Bans, who stood with his hands parked on his bulging sides, systematically chewing a large cud of gum.
She asked him why he believed this was a mob killing, but I didn’t bother to listen to what he was saying. Because Deirdre had been right. Close behind Sheriff Wallace’s shoulder, in the same yellow blouse that she had been wearing on that day she disappeared, stood Karen; my Karen. The girl who had now become ‘my Karen,’ and who had now been taken away from me.
She was listening to the sheriff and nodding as if she agreed with him. Then she turned to one side and talked to the man standing next to her. The man nodded and pointed. After a while, Karen moved out of camera-shot and disappeared.
‘Karen,’ I said to Amelia, standing up.
‘No question,’ Amelia agreed. She took out a cigarette, although she didn’t immediately light it. ‘But what is she doing there, in Arizona?’
‘Who knows? I guess she’s there because Misquamacus wants her there, that’s all.’
‘But how did she get there?’
‘Misquamacus has a way of appearing wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Don’t ask me how it works, He’s a spirit, after all, a manitou. I guess that time and distance don’t mean all that much to him.’
Amelia said nothing; but as I rewound the videotape she looked distressed.
‘Misquamacus has no real physical substance,’ I reminded her. ‘He’s using Karen like a sort of human puppet — the same way he did when he used her body to have himself reborn. He spoke with her voice; he saw with her eyes; he touched with her hands. I guess you could say that she’s possessed.’
On the videotape, Karen reappeared, running backwards.
‘Look at her!’ I said. ‘Look at the way she’s staring. She’s not even blinking. She probably can’t even remember who she is, or why she’s there.’
Amelia said, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Martin may have some ideas.’
‘You think so? I don’t know. He’s probably far too wrapped up in his own problems. Besides, how are you going to get to talk to him?’
‘I’ll ask his lawyer. And I don’t think he’s going to be too wrapped up in his own problems to understand that if I can rescue Karen, then there’s a good chance that I can come up with something that wi
ll help to prove his innocence, too.’
‘Like what?’
‘How should I know? Maybe a feather out of Misquamacus’ headband. Maybe a piece of that shadow-thing, in one of those shadow-bottles that Dr Snow was talking about.’
‘I hope you’re joking.’
‘Only partly.’
I searched through the pockets of yesterday’s shirt and found the crumpled piece of paper on which I had written the number of Martin’s lawyer. I punched out the number and waited while the phone warbled. Amelia said, ‘This is all so frustrating. It’s like trying to catch ghosts.’
‘Are you kidding me? It is trying to catch ghosts.’
‘Kaskin Moskowitz Kaskin.’
‘Could I speak to Mr Abner Kaskin, please?’
‘Hold on, sir.’
I waited and listened to ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ as played by Robby the Robot. Eventually a brisk secretarial voice said, ‘Good morning, sir. I regret that Mr Kaskin is out of the office.’
‘This is Mr Erskine. I wanted to talk to him urgently.’
‘May I ask in what connection?’
‘It’s about Mr Martin Vaizey. It could be critical.’
‘Mr Kaskin’s gone to see Mr Vaizey this morning, in the hospital.’
‘In the hospital? What do you mean — in the hospital? What’s happened?’
‘Mr Vaizey’s had a serious accident, sir.’
‘Accident? What kind of accident?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t say.’
‘Where is he? Which hospital?’
‘If you can hold a moment, sir, I’ll — ’
‘Which hospital?’ I snapped at her. ‘This could be critical! This could make all the difference!’
‘Sir, there’s no need to — ’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. Please tell me which hospital. If Mr Kaskin gives you any kind of flak you can lay all the blame on me, I promise you. I’ll even tell your fortune for free, how about that?’
‘My fortune?’
At that moment, however, Amelia tapped my shoulder. She had ejected the videotape that I had borrowed from Mrs John F. Lavender and there on the TV screen was the mid-morning news. They had flashed up a photograph of Martin Vaizey, with the caption ‘Homicide Suspect’ — then they cut to an ENG camera right outside a Manhattan hospital.
Burial Page 30