I didn’t know what to say. She levered the top off her cup of tea to help it cool. Lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair. Looked at me.
“Are you okay? Physically?”
“I’ll live,” I said.
“Well, that’s good.”
“Glad you think so.”
“You were locked in the top office for a reason. You were intended to stay there for your own safety.”
“Shame you didn’t explain that at the time. Gary Fisher might still be alive.”
She shrugged. Something had changed, more so than when I’d seen her on the pier in Santa Monica and even since last night—though I hadn’t had much chance to observe her closely then. Her hair was brushed differently, or maybe it was the same, but her suit was new in some way, its fabric or the cut, something that hinted at an older fashion. Perhaps it was something less tangible. Body language, the light in her eyes, or lack of it, whatever it is that makes someone altered from the person she was before, that says she stands at a different angle to you now. Whichever, I knew that this person was no more my wife than the girl who used to go to sleep in the bedroom of what was now Natalie’s house.
I started with that. “What did you take?” I asked. “From Natalie’s?”
“Nothing important. A keepsake.”
“Of what?”
“Being a child. I used to stash my little treasures under the floorboard there.”
“Why go back for it now?”
She hesitated, as if deciding how much she wanted to confide in me. Or what I could be trusted with.
“When I was about eight,” she said eventually, “going on nine, one weekend we went to a swap meet over in Venice. Me, my mom, Natalie. We wandered around, looking at the usual crap, you know, and then I saw this one stall and knew I had to go look at it. The woman had all this really old, dusty stuff.”
She reached into her purse, pulled something out. Put it on the table. A small, square glass pot, with a tall Bakelite lid. Whatever was inside had once been brightly colored, a hot pink of a kind now out of fashion, but it had dried and cracked and gone mainly murky and black. There was a faded label, in the kind of lettering you see on old cinemas. It said JAZZBERRY.
“Nail polish,” I said.
“Original 1920s. I didn’t know that then. Just knew I had to have it. My mom thought I’d gone nuts. I used to take it out and look at it once in a while. Didn’t understand why. Until I was eighteen.”
“What happened then?”
“Things changed.”
“You started to believe that you’d been here before.”
“So you think you know some things, huh?”
“I don’t really know what to think.”
“Your friend Gary built quite a castle in the air, by the sound of it. In which he’d have lived alone. Probably just as well things turned out as they did last night. No offense.”
“Was he right? About any of it?”
“I don’t know what he told you. But…people guess things. Sometimes they guess right. The mental institutions of the world are riddled with sane people who just never had the sense to shut up.”
“What’s the Psychomachy Trust?”
“What do you think? What’s your guess?”
“Something to do with the intruders.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The who?”
“That’s what Gary called people who got it into their head that they keep coming back.”
“A name he got from your book, I suppose. I’m sure that, if any such people exist, they’d prefer the term ‘revisitors.’”
“The place under the building in Belltown,” I said. “What was that for?”
She glanced at her watch. “A gathering. One that happens very rarely, and quite soon. It’s why I’ve been spending so much time here.”
“But now it’s burned down.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t have been using that place anyway. It was prepared long in advance. A hundred years ago, that’s how it was done. The world is far less formal now. You have to move with the times.”
“Wasn’t there a risk someone would find it?”
She laughed. “Find what? Some chairs, a table? Big deal. Hiding things is for amateurs.”
“What about the bodies?”
“That was different.”
“Who was Marcus Fox?”
“Someone who used to be important,” she said, as if the subject were distasteful. “He has always been…difficult. He developed worse problems during his most recent time away.”
“Away where?”
“The place where you go. In between. It’s not far. Marcus became very cruel. He hurt people. Little people.”
“I saw. Why keep the bodies?”
“They were as safe from discovery there as if buried in a forest or thrown into the bay. Until you and your friend started digging around.”
“And Fox?”
“He became a security risk. He was dealt with.”
“Killed, you mean. By the man who shot Gary.”
“So you say.”
“Why did Todd Crane say Marcus was in the building yesterday?”
“You do have good ears. And a busy little mind. That could be a problem. But, of course, we know where you live.”
I stared at her. “It’s where you live, too.”
“No. I never lived there, Mr. Whalen.” She stubbed out her cigarette, looked at me with blank indifference. “I assumed you understood. You’re not talking with Amy. You’re talking to Rose.”
Maybe I’d already guessed. I’d certainly realized during the night that Amy could have put a number for ROSE into my phone, at any time in the last few weeks or months, and I wouldn’t have noticed until she called me from that number. Called why? To warn me, maybe. Or to stop me from screwing with something I didn’t understand. Presumably the same reason I’d been approached by the two men in the alleyway with Georj. Men in the pay of the intruders, whoever the hell they were.
“So who is Rose, exactly?”
“Just a label for a state of mind.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t think you do either. Why was Shepherd trying to kill that girl? Was Fox supposed to be inside her?”
“He was. But Mr. Fox appears to have left the building.”
“That happens?”
“Very rarely. She was strong. She was also far too young. There’s some concern over how Marcus got through in the first place. One of our helpers may have been involved.” She shrugged. “Sometimes revisitors jump ship. Once in a blue moon, they get kicked out. Someone will keep an eye on the girl. We’ll see.”
She saw how I was looking at her and shook her head. “Not going to happen here. I told you on the pier. This is who I am. How I’ve always been, underneath.”
I noticed a gray limousine parking fifty yards away up Yesler. A man got out, old, African-American, distinguished-looking. The car drove off, and the man walked down toward the square. He sat on a bench by himself. This struck me as odd in some way.
I was distracted by Amy lighting another cigarette. It’s the simple things that seem the most wrong. Even though it was clear to me that I was not there with someone I understood, I didn’t want her to leave. Once this person left, whatever she was now calling herself, I could be left with no one at all. So I started asking questions again.
“What was Anderson’s ghost machine?”
She sighed. “You shouldn’t know about that either.”
“Tough. I do. What was so important that a guy like Bill had to be killed? And his wife and child?”
“He chanced upon something that allowed the eye to glimpse certain things.”
“Christ, Amy—just be straight with me. What things?”
“The clue’s in the title, Mr. Whalen.”
“The machine meant you could see ghosts?”
“Souls. While they’re waiting to come back again. They’re all around us, they live in a…Trust me, it was a bad machine. No goo
d would have come of it. People are better off not knowing certain things.”
“So Cranfield paid Bill to drop his research.”
“Joseph was a kind man, and he had become rich and powerful and gotten used to handling things his own way. Even people with his experience forget the broader picture once in a while. It was a mistake. It should have been discussed among the Nine.”
“Who are they?”
“The people who look after things. Make strategic decisions. First among equals. You know the kind of thing.”
I realized that another man was sitting on the bench in the Square now. He was not communicating with the first man, just sitting at the other end, watching the world go by. And a woman in her late fifties was standing by herself on the other side, near the totem pole.
“Unfortunately, the money made Anderson aware he was onto something,” Rose said. “He started hinting about his work to people on the Internet.”
“That was his big crime? Hinting?”
“There will come a time when the Internet will be our best ally. Sooner or later someone there will have said everything that can be said, proved every cross-eyed piece of lunacy, and then there’ll be no distinction between what’s true and what’s not. We’re not there yet.”
“So your people had Anderson murdered.”
“Nothing should have happened to his family.”
“But now I know some things. So—”
“You think you know, that’s all. And I’m sure you realize how it sounds. How seriously did you take Gary when he told you what he thought he knew?”
“So what happens to me?”
“That’s up for discussion—though not with you.” She hesitated. “I find myself unable to mandate the usual course of action. Amy’s still strong. But that will pass.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said. My voice felt shaky. “She’s pretty tough.”
“We do, however, know about the night when you allegedly chanced upon suspicious activity in Los Angeles. We know that your colleagues and Internal Affairs elected to accept your version of events on the basis of exemplary previous ser vice and on the fact that the four men you shot dead would not be missed by their own mothers. But I also know, because Amy knows, that’s not the way it was. You went out that night looking for two of those men, and you took your gun but not your radio or your badge. What happened was premeditated. Amy could testify to that.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said.
“Maybe. But I would.”
“In which case I’d start talking.”
“And all that gets you is a cell with thicker padding on the walls. Your record is not your friend here. Nor your personality in general.”
There was coldness in her voice now that made me realize I’d spoken with this woman at least once before. The day I’d seen Amy, on the pier, for some of the time I’d been dealing with Rose. And before that? Presumably. Maybe from the day we met, those moments when my wife had seemed just a little different, unaccountable, not quite like herself. As we all do, from time to time.
When had Rose started to take fuller control? When we lost the child that would have kept us together? Could an event like that have made Amy start to withdraw deeper inside herself, leaving the stage empty? Or was it just something that was destined to follow its course, an assumption of power that happened according to schedule?
“So who’s the guy in the pictures on your phone?”
She smiled. It was a warm, private smile, the kind to make a husband sad. “His name’s Peter, since you ask.”
“I didn’t ask his fucking name. I asked who he was.”
“Oh, sorry. He’s a computer programmer, Jack. He lives in San Francisco. He’s twenty-four. He plays guitar in a band. He’s very good. Is that more what you meant?”
I didn’t know what I’d meant. “How long have you been seeing him?”
“We’ve only met once. Night before last, in L.A.”
“That’s why you were down there?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How come you had pictures of him, if you never met before?”
“One of our other helpers tracked him down. She took some pictures, sent them to me. She had the preliminary conversation with him, which is one of the tasks the shepherds perform. We exchanged text messages after that.”
“I still don’t get it. What do you mean, ‘tracked him down’?”
The smile still hadn’t left her face, and it made me aware how long it had been since I’d seen a glow like this on her. I wondered how much of that was my fault and how much of it had been outside our control.
“A long time ago,” she said, “there lived a young woman who was very, very much in love. With a jazz musician. An incredibly talented man, someone who could create music like nobody else, who could…Well, I guess you had to be there. But this man was also someone who couldn’t come to terms with the nature of who he was, of the way things worked in his head. He fought himself. He drank too much. He died very young. But I’ve found him again now, and it will be different this time.”
“So is he here? In Seattle?”
“No. He needs time to adjust. But the first meeting went very well. I think he’ll come here soon. I hope so.”
“Do you love him?”
“I always have.”
For a moment I hated her very badly, of course, yet still I didn’t want her to go. I’d spent the last seven years of my life with someone who at least looked like this woman. I knew that when I stood up, the first step I took would be into a world I’d never been to before.
She was glancing across at the square more often now. There were now five or six people standing there, unconnected but in the same space.
I looked at her face, remembering all the ways I’d seen it, all the places.
“Did you do anything about Annabel’s birthday?”
She grinned, and for a moment it was different, and in her eyes I saw something of a woman I used to know. More than something. A lot.
“Check,” she said. “Girl’s going crazy in Banana Republic ’round about now.”
Then she was gone. “Don’t worry,” Rose said briskly. “Amy will continue to do her jobs, perform her roles in other people’s lives. No one but you will ever know.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?” she said, and the conversation was over. Her cup was empty. I’d run out of time.
“What is it about this place?” I asked nonetheless. “This square? Why does it feel like it does?”
“There are places where the wall is thinner,” she said. “This is one of them. That’s all.”
I counted the people now standing beneath the trees, as if they were eight strangers, looking in different directions. One of them over the far side, I now noticed, was Ben Zimmerman.
“I only see eight.”
“Joe was the ninth,” she said. “A replacement has been selected.”
I nodded. I understood. The move to Birch Crossing had started soon after Cranfield had died, I now realized, though presumably the grooming process had started long before: when Amy had been chosen to be part of the transfer of ownership of the building in Belltown.
Perhaps even back when she was eighteen, and had met someone named Shepherd, and her life had started to change track.
“So what happens now?”
“I say good-bye.”
She got up, started to walk across the foot of Yesler Way, toward the square.
“Amy,” I said loudly. The woman hesitated. “I’ll be seeing you again.”
Then she resumed walking. When she reached the other side, she stepped into the square beneath the trees, stood among the others there. None of them spoke, but for a moment all bowed their heads. They could still have been random passersby, pausing in a place that had been here long before this modern city, that had been the real reason, perhaps, that it came into being.
This city, in what had been far wild
erness, a place that certain people could call their own: somewhere that had been special and revered even before they found their way here. On the flight to L.A., I had read some of the book on local history that I’d bought only a couple of blocks away. I knew that there’d once been a village called Djijila’letc on this spot. The translation usually given for the name was “the little crossing-over place.”
Or, I suppose, the place where you can cross over. From here to somewhere else. And perhaps back.
I let my gaze drift up to the few remaining leaves in the trees, as a soft wind seemed to move the branches. I could not feel it where I sat, but I was close to the building behind me, and the afternoon was cold anyhow.
I watched these leaves for some time, listening to their dry, whispering sound. It seemed then as if it were raining, too, yet not raining, as if it could be both at once, as if many things and conditions could exist in the same place, together, hidden only by the splendor of light.
When I looked back down, the square was empty.
chapter
FORTY-FOUR
As soon as I let myself into the house, I knew that everything had changed. Houses are pragmatic and unforgiving. If something alters in your relationship to them, they shift, turn away. I saw that Amy’s computer had gone, some of her books, a few clothes. In a way it was distressing to see how little had been removed, how small a part of the life that had been lived here was now judged to be worth moving on.
I limped back to the living room and stood in the center. Took out my cigarettes and lit one. Defiantly, thinking, That’s the end of all that. But I couldn’t go through with it. I unlocked the door onto the deck and went out there instead.
People never really leave. That’s the worst crime committed by those who go and those who die. They leave echoes of themselves behind, for the people who loved them to deal with for the rest of their lives.
I hardly slept at all that night, or the next. Even if my mind had been able to find any quietness, the pain in my shoulder wouldn’t have allowed it to settle. Lying on my back hurt. So did lying on my front and my side. So did sitting. Existence in general, in any posture, hurt.
I spent the days in the living room or out on the deck. Eventually I dragged one of the chairs out there and stopped going back inside, except when I was trying to sleep. It was far too cold for that.
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