Ted paused. He smiled enigmatically.
“You’re good at your job, Laura,” he said in a friendly tone. “You know which buttons to press to get a guy talking.”
She smiled, too.
“Where was the chess box all those years?”
“I know it was put away somewhere in my house at first. I remember once, when I was coming home from school, I found a pile of junk out on the front lawn by the street. The chess box was there. A lot of that stuff was still good, but my mother had gotten it into her head that she had to get rid of it. She did things like that all the time, saying there were insects brooding inside or whatever. I recovered the box and hid it in my room where she wouldn’t find it. No doubt she came across it later on, because it’s never been seen again.”
“You just said your mother was committed.”
“Correct. Shortly before my eighteenth birthday. I dropped the bad boy attitude, stopped playing the chronic nonconformist, and enrolled at the university. Away from home, I had a chance to recover from those awful years, to do well in my studies, even make peace with my mother. Visiting her at the residence home was completely different. They kept her under control there and made sure she took her medicine.”
“Can you remember dreaming about the chess box before?”
“No, I really don’t. But with regard to that, it isn’t the first time I’ve had the same dream, or almost the same. I think something must have happened on the back porch of my house, something I can’t recall.”
Ted spoke in an enigmatic tone. He wasn’t just thinking about a recurrent dream; there was something deeper.
“What makes you think that?”
“There’s a hole in my memory, Laura. It’s as if my mind had filled it with a series of repeating memories, bits and scraps of the present—I don’t know.” Ted held his head in his hands. He felt powerless. “Something happened on the back porch of my house, and I think it had something to do with Wendell. I’ve been to his house before, I’m sure of it. I need…”
“Calm down, Ted. I’m going to help you put your memories in order.”
Ted felt a chill. He raised his eyes and looked at Laura in amazement.
“What, Ted? What did I say?”
“Put my memories in order,” Ted repeated. “That’s exactly what I was thinking I need. Do you think the tumor…”
Laura checked her watch.
“I think that’s enough for one day.”
22
Ted waited for Wendell in the vast parking lot. Until some forty years ago this had been a prosperous factory, churning out thousands of typewriters. All that remained was an empty shell of a building.
Wendell stopped cold when he saw him. “What are you doing here?”
Ted shrugged. “I need to talk to you.”
“How did you find me?”
“You’re the owner, aren’t you?”
In fact, Wendell had bought the factory through a front man. He had raised the perimeter wall a couple of yards higher, ringed it with barbed wire on top, and padlocked the gates. The factory was in the middle of nowhere, yet broken bottles lay scattered through the parking lot and the walls were covered in graffiti.
“What are you doing here, Ted?” Wendell asked in resignation. He stood by the door of his convertible.
“I just said. I have to talk to you.”
Wendell looked in every direction.
“Is the guy in the lab coat with you?”
“I’m here alone.”
Wendell nodded and walked to a corner of the building.
“Follow me.”
After a few seconds of indecision, Ted did so. Rounding the corner, he saw Wendell bending over the lock on a metal door, fingering a large ring that held more than twenty keys. When he tried one and the lock didn’t turn, he kicked at the door and cursed under his breath, a gesture that reminded Ted of his father, who used to kick the garage door like this when Ted was young. At last Wendell found the right key and went in, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Ted looked in. At first he saw only a dark rectangle against which he could barely make out Wendell’s face. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he discovered that they were in a utility closet not much larger than a washroom. It held a worktable full of stuff, shelves along the walls stocked with bottles, paint cans, and other junk, all covered in dust. Before Ted even entered, the smell of solvents and stuffiness, of being closed up for too long, almost bowled him over. He wrinkled his nose. Wendell flipped a switch and a single naked lightbulb came on.
“Come in,” he ordered.
What’s with this guy and his obsession with picking ridiculous, uncomfortable places to talk? There’s hardly room to stand in this closet!
“Are you going to close the door?” Ted asked.
In answer, Wendell leaned over and grabbed the doorknob. The rectangle of natural light narrowed and finally disappeared. It took a few seconds for the dim lightbulb to lend form to the interior of the room.
In addition to the penetrating odor of solvent, there was the uncomfortable heat to deal with now. Wendell was wearing a leather jacket, so he must have been broiling.
“What do you want to know, Ted?” He barely moved his lips; his expression appeared carved in stone.
They stood a foot and a half apart. Ted propped himself against a shelf, afraid he might faint.
“I’ll get to the point. I know you lied to me, and I want to know why. Yesterday, at your house, you pretended you didn’t know me. But you and I have seen each other before.”
“Oh, really? Where?”
“You know I don’t have the answer to that question. You pretended not to know me so you could get your own way.”
“Sorry, but you’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” Ted said. The truth was, he had nothing concrete to back up his accusations, but to test Wendell he would have to take some risks. Sometimes in chess you develop an attack without knowing whether it will give you a concrete advantage or lead to your own demise; the important thing is not to let your opponent know that you’re unsure. “Things are starting to come back to me.”
Wendell’s face transformed; his uncertainty showed.
“I’m listening.” Wendell took a step back and ran into a shelf that wasn’t altogether steady. The stuff on it wobbled but didn’t fall.
“I know I’ve been at your house before,” Ted tried.
Wendell’s expression remained vigilant.
“And I know something happened on my back porch,” he went on.
This time Wendell’s reaction was obvious: a grimace of displeasure, lips tight, nostrils flared. And a second later, an explosive reaction: a fist smashing into the worktable.
“Fuck it, Ted! You’re screwing everything up.”
“Come off it, Wendell. I’m sick of playing games. I’m being open with you; there’s a hole in my memory. It’s like certain events have gotten all jumbled up.”
Wendell shook his head.
“Who told you that? Dr. Hill?”
Now it was Ted’s turn to be surprised.
“You know her?”
“Ted, please, can we let things stay the way they are? Your best bet would be to open that door and leave. Believe me, this is all for your own good. I’ve done nothing but protect you the whole time.”
They stared at each other for quite a while.
“You want me to tell you what I think?” Ted asked, his voice trembling.
Wendell spread his palms and looked at the ceiling, as if there’d be no point in saying no.
“I think the Organization does exist,” he went on, “and that I belonged to it. I think Lynch recruited me, a long time ago, when I was younger—”
“Enough with the stupid Organization!” Wendell’s cry resounded in the tiny room. “I already told you, it was an idea Lynch came up with at college for a stupid short story he did for his creative writing class. It has nothing to do with us.”
Ted examined on
e of the walls, where a board was hung with tools. He could pick any one of them and overcome Wendell, forcing him to tell everything he knew.
“Going to stick a screwdriver in my neck?”
Ted snorted.
“Tell me what you know, Wendell. Stop playing games. Tell me what you’re supposedly protecting me from.”
Wendell shook his head.
“I can see you won’t give up. You wouldn’t be here if you were a quitter.” Wendell paused. “Remember the guy at my house yesterday?”
“Roger.”
“They’re keeping a close eye on you, Ted—him and that doctor, Laura Hill—and you’ve been dumb enough to talk to her, tell her everything. But I don’t blame you. They tricked you into doing it.”
“Wait a second. I’m not following you. Who are ‘they’? And how do you know Laura?”
“Laura Hill and Carmichael are the public face.”
“Carmichael?”
“Exactly. Look, Ted, your amnesia, or whatever’s wrong with you, has been a blessing. You’re right: we have met, you’ve come to my house a million times. Lynch, too. Everything went more or less okay until that idiot Lynch got mixed up with Holly. That’s where the problems started.”
Wendell jerked his thumb to point behind him. Ted was so engrossed in what he was saying that he didn’t pay enough attention to the gesture.
“What did we and Lynch do?”
“It had nothing to do with that stupid Organization. Stop thinking about it. The poor guy had lots of stupid ideas, believe me. Getting mixed up with your wife wasn’t the only one.”
“You said he ‘had.’ Past tense.”
“Lynch is dead to me.”
Ted nodded.
“Look, Ted, you have some information here in your head”—Wendell leaned forward and pointed at Ted’s forehead—“that could get you into trouble. Get me into trouble, too, I won’t deny it. Things were fine, there was nothing to worry about. But then Holly cheated on you with Lynch, you found out…and that made you…well, lose a screw.”
Ted decided to go along with it.
“At one point I think I was planning to kill myself,” Ted said, “but not on account of Holly’s affair. I have a brain tumor, Wendell. You say I’ve got a screw loose—it’s the fucking tumor.”
If Wendell was surprised to learn of the tumor, he did a good job of hiding it.
“Laura Hill is searching for that information inside your brain,” Wendell went on, almost in a whisper. “She’s been doing that in every session. And they’re afraid you’ll discover it on your own. That’s why they’re keeping an eye on you.”
“So why don’t you tell me what it is? Wouldn’t that be more logical, if knowing it will protect me from them?”
“I didn’t say I knew it.”
A staring contest. At last Wendell spoke.
“It’s better this way, Ted. And follow my advice: Don’t talk to Laura Hill. Don’t trust her for a second. Know what she’ll do the moment she guesses you suspect her? She’ll lock you up with the raving loonies in Lavender Memorial. She has the power to do it, I’m telling you. You’ve taken a risk by trailing me here. Most likely you’ve already gone too far.”
“How come you know so much about her?”
“Because the secret you have in your head, Ted, could destroy me and Lynch, too. We’ve done our best to keep you from getting this far. And we’ve failed.”
Ted felt his forehead. His headaches had been real, he reflected. He was about to say something when the unmistakable sound of squealing brakes stopped him. The surprised looks on both of their faces made it clear that neither of them was expecting a visitor. Wendell opened the door a crack and sunlight flooded in. They ran from the room, protecting their eyes with their forearms, but Wendell didn’t head for the front of the building, where they could hear at least two car doors slamming almost in unison. A couple of yards away was a hatch, an exterior access to the basement. Wendell searched the crowded key ring for the right key. If the visitors decided to come around the building instead of going straight in, they would run into Ted and Wendell there by the hatch. But they didn’t, and in less than a minute, Ted and Wendell were running down a rickety staircase, plunging once more into a world of shadows.
23
The basement was a graveyard for typewriters, some sitting on tables or shelves, covered in dust and cobwebs but still intact, others piled in corners, in various stages of decomposition. There were also lathes, balances, and other ancient machinery. The long, narrow windows near the ceiling were so dirty they let in almost no light.
They practically had to feel their way through the maze of junk, occasionally tripping over some piece of scrap, pushing cobwebs aside and sneezing from the dust. Ignoring Wendell’s complaints, Ted climbed on top of a table by the wall to reach one of the windows. He wiped the glass with his sleeve as best he could, which wasn’t much, until he could peer through the smudged glass and see two human figures outside walking parallel to the building. They wore lab coats, and one of them, the leader, was black.
“It’s Roger,” Ted muttered.
“What did I tell you?” Wendell tugged at his arm. “Get down from there and don’t do that again.”
After an endless trek through that futuristic landscape of outlandish shapes and filthy corridors, air thick with dust, they reached a wooden staircase.
Wendell climbed it first. He found the correct key in record time and opened the door, but before crossing the threshold he turned and stopped Ted with an outstretched arm.
“You’d better stay here. I have to take care of some business out back. Then I’ll deal with your pals.”
Ted recalled Wendell’s gesture in the toolroom when mentioning Lynch’s name: he had pointed his thumb back toward the interior of the factory.
“Don’t look out the windows,” Wendell reminded him before closing the door behind him.
Ted heard the latch click shut. He didn’t bother trying the knob or calling out to Wendell and demanding to be let out; he turned around and started slowly back down the stairs, holding on to the rails. Something attracted his attention and he stopped halfway down.
In one corner of the basement, a tower of junk collapsed with a deafening clang of metal crashing into the cement floor. Ted wasn’t mistaken: something had been moving in the shadows.
As he descended to the bottom of the stairs, he never took his eyes off the spot where the pile had collapsed. Reaching the floor, he took a few steps forward, afraid of what might happen at any moment. He came across what appeared to be an antique lathe and didn’t dare lean over to see what was behind it. He waited, frightened and resigned, until the inevitable happened: the possum stuck its pointed head around one side of the machine, sniffed the air, yawned, and dragged its thickset body toward Ted.
The animal’s eyes wandered around the basement; its tail snaked behind it.
Ted stepped back and ran into the table that he had used a short time before to peek outside. The possum observed him from below, patiently.
What?
Ted turned around and got onto the table. Through the window he saw Roger and the other man, not where they had been before but much closer. They were talking to each other; they seemed to be waiting for something. Then Wendell’s unmistakable form joined them. Everyone shook hands and they had a short conversation. Wendell pointed at the building and made a gesture with his hand.
Roger and his partner nodded.
Ted collapsed. Sitting on the table, his legs pressed against his chest, he grabbed his head and screamed with all his might. The possum settled back to watch him attentively. Ted couldn’t take it anymore. He closed his eyes.
He saw his study. He felt the weight of the Browning. The knocking at the door.
He opened his eyes.
Again the basement shadowland. The possum.
He stuck his hand in his pocket. He pulled out the horseshoe and contemplated it, clasping it tightly in both hands.
Part III
24
At the Boston-area psychiatric hospital Lavender Memorial, the forty most dangerous patients were confined to the modern C wing of the annex. They brought Ted McKay there, propped in a wheelchair, head lolling to one side, a trail of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Roger Connors, head nurse, pushed the wheelchair, flanked by one of his trusted assistants, a tall, wiry, stern-faced woman named Alex McManus. The rooms were at the far end, and to reach them they had to pass through a guarded door. When the security officer on duty saw them approaching, he raised an eyebrow and held up an arm to stop them.
“And who is this?”
“Theodore McKay,” Roger replied.
The officer set down the newspaper he had been reading and glanced at the security monitors overhead, a norm he was supposed to follow every time he left the guard room. He approached the newcomers and observed them through the door.
“I haven’t seen any admission papers, Roger,” he said rather uneasily. He’d been working at the hospital for less than a year, and protocol was always followed, without exception.
“Dr. Hill is speaking with Marcus now.”
Marcus Grant was the head of C wing.
The officer didn’t know what to say. In all the time he’d worked the day shift there, he had seen only a handful of admissions, and in every one of those cases he had been notified days in advance.
“Can’t buzz you through without papers. Sorry.”
“We’ll wait.”
The officer nodded, uncomfortable with the situation, and looked more closely at Ted, whose head still lay to one side, his eyelids half open, the dribble of spit dangling two inches below his chin. He was wearing the regulation gray uniform and had restraints on his hands and feet. For a brief moment his pupils seemed to focus on the officer’s eyes, but the tranquilizer he had been given was clearly not going to release him from this trance for several hours to come.
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