“I understand that, but at least let me explain why I think you should hear about it, okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh.
“When I showed up at your place a few weeks ago and started asking a lot of foolish questions, you told me a cautionary tale about a young woman who made the mistake of getting involved with some things she should have left alone. You remember?”
“Go on.”
“As it happened, the train of events I got involved in was already under way by the time I hopped aboard. Maybe that’s irrelevant, but in any case this whole thing is not something I set in motion through my inquiries. It was already in motion. In your reading you said, in effect, that I was making myself available to be used, and I was used.”
“What’s this got to do with my cautionary tale?”
“I want to give you another one, involving not just a single individual but a dozen, ranging across half the United States.”
“I don’t need another cautionary tale, Howard. I’m fully cautioned.”
Howard’s heart sank as he realized he had only one card left to play, a card he’d hoped to bury forever.
“Six days ago, in a house in New Mexico,” he began, “a woman took out a deck of Tarot cards, shuffled them three times and handed them to me. She never touched them after that. I shuffled them three times and cut them. The top ten cards were the same ten cards in your reading, in the same order. As I turned them over, she repeated your reading almost verbatim. At one point, you said, ‘Three different readings offer themselves.’ She told me which of the three was correct.”
After a long, icy silence: “Howard, if you were standing in front of me and I had a gun in my hand, I’d have to restrain myself from putting a bullet through your brain.”
“Okay, I understand that, but listen. Do you remember how I got in touch with you? You had talked to a friend of mine who works for the Tribune. You did that of your own free will. He talked to you because you were doing readings at a psychic fair—again something you were doing of your own free will. You can’t go around shooting people just because you don’t like the consequences of the choices you make in your own life. You of all people should know this.”
“What do you want, Howard?” she snarled. “Tell me exactly.”
He told her.
This left Ellen Kennesey, about whom he knew next to nothing. Mainly he didn’t know how she’d react to the idea that Howard knew where Tim was but wasn’t galloping off to rescue him. Thinking some more, he realized it was much worse than that. For all he knew, she might have reported Tim’s disappearance as a kidnaping. In fact, a very plausible case could be made against him as a kidnaper. He couldn’t just call her up and ask, because that’s exactly what a kidnaper would ask.
He spent twenty minutes working on the problem, then realized there was another way to look at it. Would anyone believe it was a case of kidnaping? All any official would see from her story is that Tim slipped out of her car when she stopped at a gas station; from a cop’s point of view, Tim was a runaway, not a kidnap victim by any stretch of the imagination.
That still left the original problem. Would Ellen sit still for two days waiting for a meeting to materialize? He decided he couldn’t risk her taking some precipitate action like calling the cops or a lawyer, which would complicate everything disastrously. He would defer calling her until Wednesday.
Two hours later, as he was leaving the office to go to lunch, another thought popped into his head. For God’s sake, all you have to do is lie a little bit. How will you feel if you find out on Wednesday that Ellen Kennesey blew out her brains on Tuesday?
With a groan, he went back to his desk and dialed the number. When she answered, again on the fourth ring, she still sounded like she’d been wakened from a deep sleep.
“Mrs. Kennesey,” he said, with as much calm authority as he could muster, “you won’t recognize my name, but it’s Howard Scheim, and I’m a private investigator licensed in the state of Illinois.”
“Yes?”
“Again, you won’t know this, but I’ve been looking into the disappearance of your husband and son.”
“The hell you have,” she said, surprisingly.
“Well, yes … the hell I have.”
“Do you think I’m going to believe anything you people tell me?”
He started to ask what people? then thought better of it. “I think I know the people you’re talking about, Mrs. Kennesey. I think the two of us have been dealing with them almost nonstop for the past three weeks. I think you followed them to Colorado.”
“No, I was taken to Colorado.”
“So was I, Mrs. Kennesey, though not against my will. I think your husband was too.”
“Where is he?”
“Believe me, I have no idea at this point.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he.”
“I have to admit that that’s a definite possibility.”
“And Tim? Where is Tim?”
“I can’t swear to his exact location, Mrs. Kennesey, but I’m pretty confident that I know where to find him. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two other people have been involved in this, and we’re meeting on Wednesday evening to talk about what to do next.”
“Two other people have been involved in this, and you’re only contacting me now?”
“Take it easy, Mrs. Kennesey. I should have said that two other people have been involved with me. One of them has never heard of you, your husband, or your son—hasn’t got the slightest idea that you exist. The other heard of you for the first time just this morning. I should also point out that you haven’t been around to be contacted. I know, because I’ve tried, several times.”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” she said. “I’m sorry I jumped on you. But why do we have to wait till Wednesday?”
“Because one of the others, Aaron Fischer, can’t make it till then, and he has some resources we may need.”
“What kind of resources?”
“Mrs. Kennesey, we need all the resources we can get.”
“You can say that again—and please call me Ellen.”
CHAPTER 49
While Howard was dealing with Ellen Kennesey, Tim was walking the hills west of Andrea’s house, head down, lost in thought. With part of his mind he was preparing for his next encounter with a sick-looking ten-inch cholla cactus. With a greater part, he was mulling over his life in this place, trying to sort out his feelings about it. It was, he thought, like finishing a terrific meal with the feeling that something wasn’t sitting quite right in your stomach. How do you sort through the mess to find out which part was no good?
He liked everyone he’d met here—Andrea, Pablo, Dudley, Marianne.
No, that was wrong. He didn’t like any of them. He was in awe of Andrea and Pablo. He was impressed by Dudley. Marianne? He didn’t know what to make of her. The only one he actually liked was Samson, who was just … what? Andrea once called him her “creature.” He was just a sort of toy.
All of them treated Tim as if he were somehow very important, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Or rather, he did know: it excited him, but it was also very wearing. He felt he couldn’t relax, couldn’t be himself, couldn’t just open his mouth and let something come out. They were all so relentlessly intense.
This thing with the cactus, for example. It will speak to you, Pablo had said. It will tell you a secret forgotten among most of your kind for thousands of years. The trouble was, he couldn’t just shrug that off; he knew Pablo wasn’t kidding. But believing it laid an enormous burden of responsibility on him. Did he want such a secret? Well, who wouldn’t, maybe? But did he? A secret that will forever change the way you see the world. Did he want to change the way he saw the world? And when he changed the way he saw the world, what then? This was obviously just a first step—but where did the path lead?
He had talked to Dudley about it. Or rathe
r had tried to talk to Dudley about it. Did Dudley know what Pablo was talking about? Yes. Did he know the secret? Yes. Did the cactus tell it to him? No; he’d learned it from his own people, who had never forgotten it. Could he teach it to Tim? Not as well as the cactus could. Why was that? You’ll see.
Tim told him he’d spent hours with the cactus and nothing had happened. Might take years, Dudley replied. What should he do? After a lot of thought: Make yourself a stranger to it. Pablo said just the opposite, to get to know it well. To get to know it at all, you have to begin by meeting it as a stranger. You’re still thinking, ‘This is a cactus, just another cactus.’ When you see it and don’t know what in the world it is, then you can begin to know it.
It seemed impossible; the more time he spent with the damned cactus, the more familiar it became—and the less he felt a stranger to it.
He’d mentioned the task to Samson, but it obviously meant nothing at all to him. Thinking about the mannequin, Tim remembered the unsettling conversation he’d had with him the day before. He’d come out onto the patio after breakfast and joined him at one of the tables. After exchanging good mornings, Samson—usually an irrepressible chatterbox—had been strangely silent. Tim asked him what was wrong.
“I’m thinking,” Samson said.
“I guessed that,” Tim observed wryly. “What about?”
“Things.”
Tim laughed. “It’s not like you to be inscrutable, Samson.”
“I’m sorry.” Then: “You know, Tim, I like you a lot.”
He seemed to want a response, so Tim said, “I know.”
“It’s because I like you that I’m going to say this.”
“Okay.”
After a pause: “I think perhaps you should leave this place, Tim.”
The boy’s brows shot up. “Why?” Although Samson remained as immobile as ever, Tim had the impression he was feeling uncomfortable.
“I overheard the others talking about you last night—Andrea and Pablo and Dudley. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was just there, and they ignored me. You understand?”
Tim said he did.
“Have they told you …? Have they discussed their plans with you?”
“Their plans for what?”
“For you.”
Tim’s stomach twinged with apprehension. “No. Not exactly.” When Samson remained silent, Tim asked him to go on.
“I can’t tell you what those plans are, Tim—they weren’t making them last night, you understand. They were made long ago. They were talking about things taken entirely for granted among themselves.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It seems you are destined to be someone of great importance in the scheme of things, Tim.”
“Don’t be silly, Samson.”
The mannequin stared glassily into the hills through a full minute. Then he said: “Tell me: would you like to see the world very much changed?”
“Changed how?”
“Changed in the way people live in it.”
“You mean … would I like to see people live a different way in the world?” Samson nodded. “Well, yes, I guess I would. That’s not so strange. I think a lot of people would.”
“Then perhaps you were well chosen.”
Tim was startled at the sharpness of his tone.
Then Samson sighed, with a sound like wind in an empty oil drum. “Do you believe the world might be better ruled than by mankind?”
“Good lord, Samson. What are you talking about?”
“Tim—Andrea and Pablo spoke of breaking humanity’s hold on the world. Do you understand that?”
Tim thought about it for a bit and then shrugged. “I understand it, Samson. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“You believe that breaking humanity’s hold on the world is something they can’t do?”
“That’s right. I believe that breaking humanity’s hold on the world is definitely something they can’t do.”
“Perhaps it’s something you can do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Samson.”
“I must tell you this, Tim. I believe this is what’s in their minds: they mean to break humanity’s hold on the world, and the instrument they mean to use is you.”
“This is all bullshit,” the boy snapped and stood up angrily. He hovered over the mannequin for a moment, willing him to retract it all, to say that he may have been mistaken or that he’d been joking. When Samson continued to stare ahead in silence, Tim stalked off into the hills, telling himself it was just a lie, a malicious lie or a jealous lie, but some kind of a lie.
But telling himself this didn’t help much. A gray cloud of uneasiness had dimmed the rest of the day for him.
Tim sat cross-legged before the cactus.
It was a single stalk as yet, a cruel vegetable parody of a human phallus sheathed in a quiltwork of olive-green lumps and studded with long, viciously sharp, gray needles. A clump of limp, dusty-rose tendrils sprouted from its tip like an ejaculation of semen mixed with blood. It was not an impressive or attractive object, and it hadn’t spoken a word to Tim.
Stiff after half an hour of sitting, Tim unwound his legs, stood up, and stretched. Then he lay stomach down in the dust and, crossing his wrists under his chin, looked up at the cactus just inches from his nose.
“You’re not a cactus,” he muttered. “That’s what Pablo told me. So what are you? If you don’t mind my asking?”
A gust of wind pounded the side of the hill, but the cactus didn’t even quiver. It stood there unmoved, impassive, as if absorbed in its own primitive thoughts. A movement at its base caught Tim’s attention, and he lowered his eyes to watch a dusty black beetle picking its way fussily through the shattered rocks that covered the ground.
“And where are you going, sir?” Tim inquired. It looked just like a businessman in a dark suit hustling off to his office. “Hold on,” he said, laying a finger in its way. “I want to talk to you for a second.”
The beetle hesitated briefly, scuttled over the obstruction, and went on its way. Heaving a discouraged sigh, Tim closed his eyes. He’d been at this for how long? Four days, three or four hours a day? He wasn’t any closer to success now than when he’d begun. The cactus was still a cactus. Whatever knack was required to look at the thing without recognizing it, he obviously didn’t have it, and he didn’t think he’d have it a year from now either. It seemed pointless to go on.
Pablo would be disappointed in him, but maybe that was just as well. Let him find out right at the beginning that Tim was, after all, just an ordinary kid. Then he wouldn’t expect so much of him.
It seems you are destined to be someone of great importance in the scheme of things, Tim.
He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be someone of great importance. In fact, he was beginning to feel that what he really, deeply wanted right now was to get together with a bunch of guys and knock a baseball around till dusk, till it was too dark to see the fly balls. This had nothing to do with the game itself—or with sports, which mostly just bored him to death. This was a spring thing, a ritual to usher in the new year, because in fact spring was the beginning of the year, not January first.
It was the smell of the oiled glove, the feel of the fresh ball, the crack of the bat, the roar of the imaginary crowd.…
Under the shadow of a wide-brimmed straw hat, Tim dozed off, a rushing, oceanic sound in his ears very like the sound of a crowd.
As his vision cleared, he saw that there really was a crowd—a vast, holiday crowd that filled the streets of some city he’d seen only in movies. Rome? He thought he recognized a huge dome in the distance but couldn’t remember the name of the church it belonged to.
He seemed to be floating just above the crowd, and everyone was looking up at him, pointing at him, waving at him, calling out frenzied greetings. Then he realized he wasn’t floating; he was being carried through the massed streets on a sort of palanquin. This conveyance was made of wrist-thick boughs of wood,
but somehow they were still alive; as he watched, leaves came into bud and opened on them. Over his head arched a canopy of vines; these too were alive and he could see fresh tendrils spreading out everywhere, gracefully intertwining in sinuous, lacy patterns.
Gradually the truth came to him: this enormous crowd—which he knew extended to the very limits of the city—had gathered for a single purpose: to greet him. He tentatively lifted a hand to wave—and the crowd roared back its delight.
There were two men sheltering in a doorway who didn’t wave or shout a greeting. Dressed in long black cassocks, they stared at him with dark, hostile eyes. As Tim passed, one of them raised his hand—index and little finger extended—and jabbed it furtively in his direction. Clearly a gesture of contempt, it disturbed him; it was a jarring note in this vast symphony of adoration.
Someone nearby in the crowd said, quite calmly, “Don’t worry about them, Tim. You can hardly expect them to love you!”
Tim looked around to find the speaker, wanting to ask what he meant, but no one in the frenzied crowd nodded to identify himself.
Suddenly the procession reached the edge of the city, where the mountains formed a vast natural amphitheater. The crowds swarmed upward, leaving Tim in the basin below. They weren’t abandoning him; they were spreading blankets and sitting down, and soon fell silent as if in anticipation of a performance.
Tim wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He was standing in the middle of a wheat field that filled the entire basin between the mountains. It was uncannily still. No insects buzzed, no birds sang, no breeze stirred the stalks of wheat around him. But, in spite of the silence, they could hardly be expecting him to make a speech; he was too far away to be heard. Thinking he might be able to address one group after another, he began to wade through the wheat toward the nearest of the hills.
After he’d taken a dozen steps, the crowd gasped.
Tim turned around and saw why: Where he’d walked, a wild tangle of weeds, flowers, vines, and young trees had sprung up. A spider was laying a misty web among the branches of a mulberry bush already beginning to bloom as Tim watched. A swarm of bees hummed over a clump of purple thistles. A squirrel darted down a tree trunk to retrieve a fallen nut. There was a clatter of wings and he looked up to see a pair of brilliantly-colored finches settle on a branch; after a moment one of them swooped down to pluck a bee out of the air.