by Jeffrey Ford
I looked down at my notebook and realized I hadn't written a word. Antony's recounting of Schell's life had been as complete as I could ask for, but nothing in it, although it was turbulent, led me to see why he'd envision a little girl on the pane of a glass door.
"Thanks," I said.
"What's your diagnosis?" he said.
I shook my head, "I'm more confused than before," I told him.
He smiled and lit another cigarette.
"What about the butterflies?" I asked.
"Who the fuck knows?" he said. "The guy likes butterflies."
"There's got to be a reason," I said.
"Yeah," said Antony, getting up. "'Cause he does. Come on, kid, I gotta get back and start dinner. I'm making stew tonight. No comments, please."
"I'm glad to find out about him. I never knew that stuff, but I thought it would tell me something about why he's down now."
"Look, Diego," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder as we walked along. "This ain't fucking geometry. It makes sense that when he goes loopy he sees a kid. He had no childhood. That's why he took you in. Why's a guy without a wife, a con man no less, take in a Mexican kid off the street? He's making up for what his old man didn't do. Makes sense, right?"
"It does, actually," I said.
"When you see things, when your eyes play tricks on you, what you see is what you want. Maybe Parks is a screwball, but in a way Schell wants his mother too. Or at least he wants his childhood, get it? He grew up hard and doesn't believe in anything but the con, or so he says. He's taken people six ways to Sunday for years. So he sees a little girl. What's a little girl?"
"What?" I asked.
"Innocent," he said.
"Antony," I said, "you should move to Vienna and hang a shingle."
"Hang my ass," he said.
EXCEEDINGLY STRANGE
There's a certain species of parasitic wasp that attaches itself to the hind wings of female butterflies. When those females lay eggs, the minuscule moochers disengage and drop onto the nascent clutch to feed. The North Shore of Long Island, with its mansions and fabulously wealthy citizens, the Vanderbilts, the Coes, the Guggenheims, was like some beautiful butterfly, floating just above the hard scrabble life of most Americans after the crash in '29. We, of course, were the parasitic wasps, thriving upon the golden grief of our betters.
As Schell had explained, "To our benefit, death isn't affected by an economic failure, and it never takes a holiday. In addition, a bereaved rich man is easier to con than a poor one in the same condition. A poor man, straightaway, understands death to be inevitable, but it takes a rich man some time to see that the end can't be circumvented with the application of enough collateral."
I considered this equation as I watched, from the train window, the passing signs that held the names of those towns comprising that stronghold where the rich hid out against a spreading plague of poverty. There had even been news recently of foreclosures among some of the elite families, but there was still plenty of affluence to sustain three enterprising parasites the likes of Schell, Antony, and myself.
It might have been true that Death never took a holiday, but we were. To his credit, Antony had been persistent with his suggestions of a week off in the city. Schell vacillated, unable to make a commitment. He was obviously weary from whatever emotional or intellectual issue he'd been obsessing over for the past few months. The death of Morty had hit him hard. Still, he'd continued to take calls from new marks for sйances and used the list of prospective patrons as his main defense against getting away.
"What's the rush?" Antony had asked. "It's not like the dead are going anywhere in the next week."
Schell almost lost his temper one morning in the face of the constant barrage and then threw his hands up and agreed to two days in New York. Antony knew to take what he could get, and even said okay when Schell insisted that I be allowed to come along. The butterflies would survive on their own for forty-eight hours. Once it had been decided we were going, we had to move quickly before he changed his mind. I'd dressed in my Indian traveling garb-high-collared shirt, mystical medallion of the many-armed Shiva, baggy pantaloons, and sandals. I gave the turban a rest.
Schell sat next to me on the aisle, dozing, and Antony took up his own seat directly facing us, reading an old newspaper someone had left behind on an earlier journey.
With a sudden start, Schell roused and sat forward, as if waking from a nightmare. He shook his head and then slowly eased back into the seat, rubbing his eyes. "What else is in there?" he asked Antony. "I haven't bothered with a newspaper in days."
Antony kept scanning whatever it was that had his attention and at the same time said, "Looks like we're headed for a Yankees/Cubs series. Otherwise, the usual bullshit." Then he looked up and said, "Let's go see the Marx Brothers' new one while we're in town."
"What's the name of it?" I asked.
"Horse Feathers," said Antony.
"Sounds enlightening," said Schell.
"I know, Boss, you're holding out for Marlene Dietrich."
Schell gave a weak smile.
"I want to go see Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," I said.
"Fredric March downs the giggle juice and turns into me," said Antony. "Forget that."
Schell turned to me. "Did you cancel your tutoring appointments?" he asked.
I nodded. "All but Mrs. Hendrickson, she doesn't have a phone."
"That should be good for a half hour of admonition next week," he said.
"Mrs. Hyde," said Antony and grimaced. He turned the paper over, folded it, and went back to his reading.
I was about to fill Schell in on the work she'd been having me do, Chaucer in Middle English, when he lunged forward and snatched the paper out of Antony's hands and brought it up close to his face.
"What gives, Boss?" said Antony.
Schell shook his head and held one hand up to silence us. It was obvious he was heatedly reading some article. Antony looked at me with a quizzical expression. All I could do was shrug.
Eventually Schell turned the paper around and held it out to show us. He pointed at a photograph on the side of the page he'd been reading. He was as pale as when he'd go under in his medium trance, and his hand trembled slightly.
"There she is," he said.
It was a bright day, and the light coming in the train window obscured my view with its glare. Both Antony and I leaned forward, almost touching heads.
"The girl," said Schell, tapping his finger against the paper. "The girl in the glass."
I only caught a brief glimpse of the child he'd described seeing at Parks's place-the dark, curly hair, the floral design of the dress-before he turned the paper around again and began reading aloud to us in an urgent whisper.
"The serene North Shore borough of Wellman's Cove has been devastated by the recent disappearance of seven-year-old Charlotte Barnes, daughter of that town's most distinguished couple, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Barnes.
"On Wednesday, September twenty-first, the child was last seen some time after one P.M. in the afternoon, playing in the garden of the family estate. She did not respond when called in for dinner at four P.M. It was soon determined that she was missing. Local police were called and the grounds and house were thoroughly searched to no avail. On the following day, a party of concerned citizens continued to comb the nearby woods and shoreline for signs of young Charlotte.
"At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing a yellow dress, black shoes, white socks and had gold clips in her hair. She is approximately four foot tall with brown hair in pigtails, green eyes, and a missing front tooth. Should you see a child fitting this description, please contact your local authorities.
"Harold Barnes, well-known shipping magnate, is offering a sizable reward for information concerning his daughter's whereabouts. He could not be reached for further comment. The community's hope is that the child has wandered off and will soon be found and reunited with her family."
Schell finished
reading, sat back, and stared straight on.
"How?" I asked.
Antony reached over and slipped the paper out of Schell's hand. He turned it and looked at the photograph.
"Exceedingly strange," said Schell.
"Does this mean the kid's dead?" asked Antony.
"How old is that paper?" asked Schell, suddenly becoming animated.
Antony unfolded it and flipped to the front page. "Four days old," he said.
"We were at Parks' place five days ago," I said.
"Yes," said Schell, "the twenty-second."
"A ghost?" asked Antony.
"I'm not certain of anything," said Schell. "But I mean to find out. What's the next stop?"
"Jamaica," I said.
"I hate to disappoint you fellows, but I'm getting off there and turning back. You two can go on to New York without me."
"Come on, Boss," said Antony. "You need a rest."
"No, no, no," said Schell. "I'm heading back. I have to make an appointment to see Mr. Barnes."
"You're not going to take this poor bastard now, with his daughter missing," said Antony.
"On the contrary," said Schell. "I'm going to try to find her."
"I'm in," I said.
"Free of charge," said Schell.
"Three words I never thought I'd hear you say," said Antony.
"I've got to get to the bottom of this," said Schell.
"Okay," said Antony, "what the hell."
We got off at Jamaica and toted our luggage over to the eastbound track. While we waited for the next train, Schell paced impatiently up and down the platform. Antony and I sat on a bench. When Schell was some distance from us, the big man leaned toward me and said, "So much for our head shrinking, kid."
I didn't answer as my mind was caught up in the notion that Schell's occult experience offered possible proof of an afterlife. The fact that there might actually be another side from which the dead might travel, and that we had played so fast and loose with it, didn't bode well for our eternal souls. Antony's thoughts must have been running along the same path, because when I asked him for a cigarette, he actually gave me one and lit it.
THE CHEATERS
Harold Barnes wasn't an easy man to get to see, even if you wanted to offer your services "free of charge." Schell had called the estate but got no further than a secretary, who had curtly informed him that Mr. Barnes was not available for comment or interview. He admonished himself afterward for not thinking through the situation. "The press is most likely hounding the family at every turn. I let my eagerness get the better of me," he admitted. "From now on, I have to treat our efforts as a con, even though delusion's not the goal here."
Antony and I were dispatched on a research mission. We drove into Jamaica to the offices of the Republican Long Island Farmer, where Peewee Dunnit's sister, Kate, worked as a clerk in the file room. Antony slipped her twenty dollars, and she slipped him the newspaper's dossier on Barnes. Usually when we tapped her for a file, she'd let us have it for a day or two, but with the millionaire's daughter missing, it was in hot demand by their own reporters. We could have one hour with it before it had to be returned.
We staked out a table in a diner around the corner from the paper, ordered coffee, and set about consuming and recording as much pertinent information as possible. It was a thick file, as Barnes was well-known; even if we had all day with their file, it would be difficult to decide which pieces of information were relevant to our investigation. What we might consider inconsequential, Schell could possibly snatch up and spin into gold. We had to work fast, with a scattershot method, and merely hope for the best.
For eye work this important, Antony wore what he referred to as his "cheaters," a pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses that he'd swiped, years earlier, from someone obviously on the verge of blindness. The scratched lenses did nothing more than magnify things ten times-not the least his own eyes. Whenever we'd chance to look up from our work at the same time, I'd get a start from the sight of those two huge peepers, big as pansies, staring at me. With me in my turban and him looking like a three-hundred-pound, six-foot-four owl, no one bothered us while we worked.
We rifled madly through the stack of clipped articles, typed sheets, photographs, jotting down snippets of information. The minute hand on the big clock above the grill moved like a thoroughbred on the back turn as I noted information about Barnes's shipping business, his political affiliations, the movie stars who'd visited his home, the charitable contributions he'd made. From what I'd uncovered, he seemed like a typical member of the American aristocracy, yet somewhat more staid than his Gold Coast compatriots.
Only five minutes before we had to return the dossier to Kate, Antony looked up, fixed me with that gigantic stare, and said, "We got him."
"How?" I asked.
"I'll tell you in the car," he said.
We shuffled the loose pages together in as close to the order as we'd found them, and I lifted the stack and banged it twice to even it out. Antony took fifty cents from his pocket and threw it on the table. Whipping off his cheaters and stowing them in his inside jacket pocket, he said, "Let's blow."
I had to wait until he'd emerged from the newspaper building to get the dope on his catch. He returned to the car with a big smile on his face. As he got in behind the wheel he said, "I told Kate we might want another twenty-dollar peek at that file."
He started up the Cord, and we pulled away.
"What did you find?" I asked.
"Kid, I'm good," he said. "Nothing escapes the gaze of the cheaters."
"Okay, you're good," I said.
"Guess who stayed with Barnes when he visited the U.S.?" he asked.
"I give up."
"None other than A. Conan Doyle."
"The author?"
"Yeah."
"So what?"
"The guy's a first-class spook booster, a true believer. Faeries, ghosts, spirits, sйances, psychics, you name it, he'll believe it. You could serve him the holes in doughnuts. I found an article about Conan Doyle's stay with Barnes, which noted that they share an interest in spiritualism. Barnes is a mark."
"That's good to know, but how's it get us in to see him?" I asked.
"This is the kicker. Another article from a few years ago mentions Barnes and his fellow Harvard alumnus and close friend…guess who?"
"Parks," I said.
"Hey…" he said and turned so quickly to look at me, the car swerved momentarily into the oncoming lane.
"Watch the road," I told him.
"How'd you know?" he asked, steering back into our lane.
"I saw a diploma from Harvard on Parks's wall when we were there the first time. I just guessed."
"You're becoming more like the boss every day," he said. He shook his head and then added, "So we get Schell to talk to Parks, who gets on the blower to Barnes and puts in a good word for us. Bingo."
"That might actually work," I said. "Nice fishing."
"Nothing escapes," said Antony. "Nothing."
Even though Schell wished we'd had more time to gather basic information, he was pleased with our work and agreed that Antony's plan was sound. I listened in as he put the call through to Parks. Witnessing Schell get his way with words was like watching a knife thrower split a hair at twenty yards. He peppered his spiel with mentions of Parks's mother and how much she'd no doubt appreciate seeing us help poor Barnes. By the time Schell was done, Parks would have called the emperor of China on our behalf.
Then we waited. A day passed, and we checked the papers to see if there had been any break in the case. The search parties continued, the police were still on the job, but the girl had not surfaced, dead or alive. Schell pored over the meager information we'd brought him, and to see what he could turn up, he put in some calls to friends of his who traveled in high society. He was curious to find out if our subject had any shady dealings and if his marriage was sound. From all accounts, Barnes, though filthy rich, seemed to be a straight shooter<
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On the afternoon of the second day, Schell and Antony were out getting the local papers and I'd just sent Mrs. Hendrickson on her way after a brutal session focusing on my Middle English pronunciations, when the phone rang. I ran through the kitchen to the office and grabbed it on the fifth ring.
"Hello," I said, out of breath.
There was silence, and I thought for a moment that I'd been too late. Then a soft voice said, "Hola." A pause followed. "Do you know who this is?"
There was a vague fluttering in my chest. "Yes," I said.
"You left something behind when you were here last," she said.
"A sombrero?" I asked.
"Sн."
"Have you shown it to anyone else?" I asked.
"Solamente los fantasmas," she said.
I forced a laugh.
"Si lo quieres, ven esta noche. Eleven o'clock on the beach behind the mansion."
"What'll happen if I don't show?" I asked, but she'd already hung up.
THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS AT NIGHT
At ten o'clock that night, Antony went down the hall to the Bugatorium, knocked on the door, and called, "Boss, me and the kid are going out for a drive. I gotta get some smokes. Do you want to go?"
We were hoping he'd stay put, because all Schell would have needed was one look at us to tell we were up to something. Luckily, he called out, as I had surmised he would, "No, I'd better not in case Barnes tries to contact us."
I wasn't happy about hiding our venture from Schell, but Antony was dead set on him not finding out about the hat. "Schell doesn't look kindly on screwups," was how he'd put it to me.
"He screwed up himself that night," I said.
"You don't get it, kid," he said. "I'll take you over there. You get the hat from the girl and we'll be back here before anybody knows what's up."