She shook her head with a small grin. “There’s a flattering question. He’s my grandson. My daughter is at school. Divorced and getting her accountant’s degree. I watch the boy while she’s working or studying, which is just about all the time.”
Ricky nodded. “I’m a pretty private guy,” he said, “and I’m pretty quiet. I work a couple of jobs, which takes up a good deal of my time. And in my free time, I study.”
“You’re old to be a student. Maybe a bit too old.”
“We’re never too old to learn, are we?”
The woman smiled again. She continued to eye him cautiously.
“Are you dangerous, Mr. Lively? Or are you running away from something?”
Ricky considered his reply, before speaking. “Stopped running, Mrs . . .”
“Williams. Janet. The boy is Evan and my daughter whom you haven’t met is Andrea.”
“Well, this is where I’m stopping, Mrs. Williams. I’m not fleeing from a crime or an ex-wife and her lawyer, or a right-wing Christian cult, although you might allow your imagination to race ahead in one or all of those directions. And, as for being dangerous, well, if I was, why would I be running away?”
“That’s a good point,” Mrs. Williams said. “It’s my house, you see. And we’re two single women with a child . . .”
“Your concerns are well founded. I don’t blame you for asking.”
“I don’t know how much I believe of what you’ve said,” Mrs. Williams responded.
“Is believing all that important, Mrs. Williams? Would it make a difference if I told you I was some alien from a different planet sent here to investigate the lifestyles of the folks of Durham, New Hampshire, prior to our invasion of the world? Or if I said I was a Russian spy, or an Arab terrorist, just a step ahead of the FBI and would it be okay if I used the bathroom to concoct bombs? There are all sorts of tales one can weave, but ultimately all are irrelevant. The truth that you need to know is whether I will be quiet, keep to myself, pay my rent on time, and generally speaking, not bother you, your daughter, or your grandson. Isn’t that really what is critical here?”
Mrs. Williams smiled. “I think I like you, Mr. Lively. I don’t know that I trust you all that much yet, and certainly don’t believe you. But I like the way you put things, which means you’ve passed the first test. But how about a month’s security and first month’s rent and then we’ll do things on a month-to-month basis, so that if one or the other of us feels uncomfortable, we can bring things to a quick conclusion?”
Ricky smiled and took the old woman’s hand. “In my experience,” he said, “quick conclusions are elusive. And how would you define uncomfortable?”
The smile on the older woman’s face broadened some, and she maintained her grip on Ricky’s hand. “I would define uncomfortable with the numerals nine, one, and one, punched on the telephone keypad and a subsequent series of any number of unpleasantly pointed questions from humorless men in blue uniforms. Is that clear?”
“Clear enough, Mrs. Williams,” Ricky said. “I think we have an agreement.”
“I thought so,” Mrs. Williams replied.
Routine came as quickly to Ricky’s life as the fall did to New Hampshire.
At the grocery store he was swiftly given a raise and additional new responsibilities, although the manager did ask him why he hadn’t seen him in any meetings, and so Ricky went to several, rising once or twice in a church basement to address the room filled with alcoholics, concocting a typical tale of life ruined by drink that brought murmurs of understanding from the collected men and women and several heartfelt embraces afterward, that Ricky felt hypocritical accepting. He liked his job at the grocery store, and got along well, if not expansively, with the other workers there, sharing the occasional lunch break, joking, maintaining a friendliness that successfully masked his isolation. Inventory was something he seemed to have a knack for, which made him think that stocking shelves with foodstuffs was not all that dissimilar to what he’d done for patients. They, too, had had to have their shelves restored and refilled.
A more important coup came in mid-October, when he spotted an ad for part-time help on the janitorial staff at the university. He quit his cash register job at the Dairy Mart and started sweeping and mopping in the science labs for four hours a day. He approached this task with a singleness of purpose that impressed his supervisor. But, more critically, this provided Ricky with a uniform, a locker where he could change clothes, and a university identification card, which in turn, gave him access to the computer system. Between the local library and the computer banks, Ricky went about the task of creating a new world for himself.
He gave himself an electronic name: Odysseus.
This gave rise to an electronic mail address and access to all the Internet had to offer. He opened various accounts, using his Mailboxes Etc. post office box as a home address.
He then took a second step, to create an entirely new person. Someone who had never existed, but who had a claim on the world, in the form of a modest credit history, licenses, and the sort of past that is easily documented. Some of this was simple, such as obtaining false identification in a new name. He once again marveled at the literally thousands of companies on the Internet that would provide fake IDs “for novelty purposes only.” He started ordering fake driver’s licenses and college IDs. He was also able to obtain a diploma from the University of Iowa, class of 1970, and a birth certificate from a nonexistent hospital in Des Moines. He also got himself added to the alumni list at a defunct Catholic high school in that city. He invented a phony Social Security number for himself. Armed with this pile of new material, he went to a rival bank to where he had already established Richard Lively’s account and opened another small checking account in a second name. This name he chose with some thought: Frederick Lazarus. His own first name coupled with the name of the man raised from the dead.
It was in the persona of Frederick Lazarus that Ricky began his search.
He had the simplest of ideas: Richard Lively would be real and would have a safe and secure existence. He would be home. Frederick Lazarus was a fiction. There would be no connection between the two characters. One man was a man who would breathe the anonymity of normalcy. The other was a creation and if anyone ever came asking about Frederick Lazarus, they would discover that he had no substance other than phony numbers and imaginary identity. He could be dangerous. He could be criminal. He could be a man of risks. But he would be a fiction ultimately designed with one single purpose.
To ferret out the man who had ruined Ricky’s life and repay in kind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ricky let weeks slide into months, let the New Hampshire winter envelop him, disappearing into the cold and dark that hid him from everything that had happened. He let his life as Richard Lively grow daily, while at the same time he continued to add details to his secondary persona, Frederick Lazarus. Richard Lively went to college basketball games when he had an evening off, occasionally baby-sat for his landladies who had rapidly come to trust him, had an exemplary attendance record at work, and gained the respect of his coworkers at the grocery store and the university maintenance department by adopting a kidding, joking, almost devil-may-care personality, that seemed to not take much seriously except for diligent, hard work. When asked about his past, he either made up some modest tale, nothing ever so outrageous that it wouldn’t be believed, or deflected the question with a question. Ricky, the onetime psychoanalyst, found himself to be expert at this, creating a situation where people often thought that he’d been talking about himself, but in reality was talking about them. He was a little surprised at how easily all the lying came to him.
At first he did some volunteer work in a shelter, then he parlayed that into another job. Two nights each week he volunteered at a local suicide prevention hot line, working the ten p.m. to two a.m. shift, which was by far the most interesting. He spent more than the occasional midnight speaking softly to students threa
tened by various degrees of stress, curiously energized by the connection with anonymous but troubled individuals. It was, he thought, as good a way as any of keeping his skills as an analyst sharp. When he hung up the phone line, having persuaded some child not to be rash, but to come into the university health clinic and seek help, he thought, in a small way, that he was doing penance for his lack of attention twenty years earlier, when Claire Tyson had come to his own office in the clinic he hated so much, with complaints that he’d failed to listen to and in a danger he’d failed to see.
Frederick Lazarus was someone different. Ricky constructed this character with a coldheartedness that surprised himself.
Frederick Lazarus was a member of a health club, where he pounded out solitary miles on a treadmill, followed by attacking the free weights, gaining fitness and strength daily, the onetime lean, but essentially soft body of the New York analyst re-forming. His waistline shrank. His shoulders broadened. He worked out alone and in silence, save for an occasional grunt and the pounding of his feet against the mechanized tread. He took to combing his sandy hair back from his forehead, slicked aggressively. He started a beard. He took an icy pleasure in the exertion that he delivered to himself especially when he realized that he was no longer breathing hard as he accelerated his pace. The health club offered a self-defense class, mostly for women, but he rearranged his schedule slightly to be able to attend, learning the rudiments of body throws and quick, effective punches to the throat, face, or groin. The women in the class seemed a bit uncomfortable with him at first, but his willingness to serve as a volunteer for their efforts gained him a sort of acceptance. At least, they were willing to smash him without guilt when he wore protective clothing. He saw it as a means of toughening himself further.
On a Saturday afternoon in late January, Ricky slide-stepped through snowdrifts and icy sidewalks into the R and R Sporting Goods store, which was located well outside the university area in a low-rent strip mall, the sort that catered to discount tire stores and quick-lube auto service. R and R—there was no ready indication what the letters stood for—was a modest low-slung, square space, filled with plastic deer targets, blaze-orange hunting clothing, stacks of fishing rods and tackle, and bows and arrows. Along one wall there was a wide array of deer rifles, shotguns, and modified assault weapons that lacked even the modest beauty of the wood stocks and polished barrels of their more acceptable brethren. The AR-15s and AK-47s had a cold, military appearance, a clarity of purpose. Underneath the glass-topped counter were rows and rows of various handguns. Steel blue. Polished chrome. Black metal.
He spent a pleasant hour discussing the merits of various weapons with a clerk, a bearded and bald middle-aged man, sporting a red check hunting shirt and a holstered .38 caliber snub-nosed pistol on his expansive waistline. The clerk and Ricky debated the advantages of revolvers versus automatics, size against punch, accuracy compared with rate of fire. The store had a shooting range in the basement, two narrow lanes, side by side, separated by a small partition, a little like a dark and abandoned bowling alley. An electrically operated pulley system carried silhouette targets down to a wall some fifty feet distant that was buttressed by brown hundred-pound bags of sawdust. The clerk eagerly showed Ricky, who had never fired a weapon in his life, how to sight down the barrel, and how to stand, two hands on the weapon, holding it out in such a way that the world narrowed, and only his vision, the pressure of his finger on the trigger, and the target he had in his aim mattered. Ricky fired off dozens of rounds, ranging from a small .22 automatic, through the .357 Magnum and 9 mm that are favored by law enforcement, up to the .45 that was popularized during the Second World War and which sent a jolt right through his palm all the way into his shoulder and down to his chest when he fired it.
He settled on something in between, a .380 Ruger semiautomatic, with a fifteen-shot clip. It was a weapon that functioned in the range between the big bang preferred by police and the deadly little assassin’s weapons that women and professional killers liked. Ricky chose the same weapon that he’d seen in Merlin’s briefcase, on a train to Manhattan, in what seemed to him to have taken place in a different world altogether. He thought it was a good idea to be equal, if only in terms of handguns.
He filled out the permit forms under the name Frederick Lazarus, using the fake Social Security number that he’d created precisely for this purpose.
“Takes a couple of days,” the fat clerk said. “Although we’re a whole helluva lot easier than Massachusetts. How’re you planning on paying for it?”
“Cash,” Ricky said.
“Antiquated commodity,” the clerk smiled. “Not plastic?”
“Plastic just complicates your life.”
“A Ruger .380 simplifies it.”
Ricky nodded. “That’s more or less the point, isn’t it.”
The clerk nodded as he finished the paperwork. “Anyone in particular you’re thinking of simplifying, Mr. Lazarus?”
“Now that’s an unusual question,” Ricky responded. “Do I look like a man with an enemy for a boss? A neighbor who has let his mutt loose on my lawn one too many times? Or, for that matter, a wife who had perhaps nagged me once too often?”
“No,” the clerk said, grinning. “You don’t. But then, we don’t get too many handgun novices in here. Most of our customers are pretty regular, at least maybe so’s we knows the face, if not the name.” He looked down at the form. “This gonna fly, Mr. Lazarus?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well, that’s more or less what I’m asking. I hate this damn regulation crap.”
“Rules are rules,” Ricky replied. The man nodded.
“Ain’t that the goddamn truth.”
“How about practicing,” Ricky asked. “I mean, what’s the point of getting a fine weapon like this if I don’t get real expert at handling it?”
The clerk nodded. “You’re a hundred percent right about that, Mister Lazarus. So many folks think that when they buy the gun, that’s all they need for protecting themselves. Hell, I think that’s where it starts. Need to know how to operate that weapon, especially when things get, shall we say, tense, like when some criminal is in the kitchen, and you’re in your jammies up in the bedroom . . .”
“Precisely,” Ricky interrupted. “Don’t want to be so scared . . .”
The clerk finished his sentence for him, “. . . that you end up blowing away the wife or the family dog or cat.” Then he laughed. “Though maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing of all. Take that burglar out for a beer afterwards, if you was married to my old lady. And her damn fluffy, makes-me-sneeze-all-the-damn-time cat.”
“So, the shooting range?”
“You can use it anytime we’re open and it ain’t already being used. Targets is just fifty cents. Only thing we require is that you buy your ammo here. And you don’t come walking through the front door with a loaded weapon. Keep it in the case. Keep the clips empty. Fill ’em up here, where’s someone can see what you’re doing. Then you can go squeeze off as many as you like. Come spring, we sets up a combat course in the woods. Maybe you’d like to try that out?”
“Absolutely,” Ricky said.
“You want me to call you when the approval comes back, Mr. Lazarus?”
“Forty-eight hours? I’ll just swing on by myself. Or give you a call.”
“Either one is fine.” The clerk eyed Ricky carefully. “Sometimes,” he said, “these handgun permits come back rejected because of some dumb-ass glitch. You know, like maybe there’s a problem or two with the numbers you gave me. Something comes up on somebody’s computer, you know what I mean . . .”
“Foul-ups happen, right?” Ricky said.
“You seem like a pretty good guy, Mr. Lazarus. I’d hate you to get turned down ’cause of some bureaucratic snafu. Wouldn’t be fair.” The clerk spoke slowly, almost cautiously. Ricky listened to the tone of what the man was saying. “All depends on what sort of clerk you get looking over the application. Some guys o
ver at the federal building, they just punch the numbers in, hardly pay attention at all. Other guys take their job real serious . . .”
“Sounds like you sure want to get that application in front of the right guy.”
The clerk nodded. “We ain’t supposed to know who’s doing the checking, but I got some friends over there . . .”
Ricky removed his wallet. He placed a hundred dollars on the counter.
The man smiled again. “That’s not necessary,” he said. But his hand closed over the cash. “I’ll make sure you get the right clerk. The type of guy who processes things real quick and efficient . . .”
“Well,” Ricky said, “that’s real helpful. Real helpful. I would feel like I owed you a favor, then.”
“No big deal. We try to keep customers happy, that’s all.” The clerk stuffed Ricky’s cash into his pocket. “Hey, you interested in a rifle? We got a special on a real nice .30 caliber with a scope for deer. Shotguns, too . . .”
Ricky nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ll have to check what my needs are. I mean, once I know that I’m not going to have any problem with permits, I’ll be assessing my needs. Those look pretty impressive.” He pointed at the collection of assault weapons.
“An Uzi or an Ingram .45 caliber machine pistol or an AK-47 with a nice banana clip can go a long ways toward settling any dispute you might be facing,” the clerk said. “They tend to discourage disagreement and urge compromise.”
“That’s a good thing to keep in mind,” Ricky replied.
Ricky became significantly more adept at the computer.
Using his screen name, he made two different electronic searches for his own family tree, discovering with daunting speed how easy it was for Rumplestiltskin to have acquired the list of relatives that had been the fulcrum of his initial threat. The fifty-odd members of Dr. Frederick Starks’s family had emerged across the Internet in only a couple of hours’ worth of inquiries. Ricky was able to ascertain that armed with names, it did not take much longer to come up with addresses. Addresses turned into professions. It was not hard to extrapolate how Rumplestiltskin—who had all the time and energy he’d needed—had come up with information as to who these people were, and to find a few vulnerable members of the extended group.
The Analyst Page 33