Find out whether the ancient gods of the Middle East are still around? Aaron might as well have asked him to find out whether cheaters ever prosper or whether love makes the world go round. It wasn’t even laughable. If he took on the job, he wouldn’t be looking for an answer to Aaron’s question. He’d be looking for something that could be tricked-up to look like an answer—something so much like an answer that the old man would cheerfully cough up that fee.
And was that how he wanted to end his career—as an outright con man?
Strangely enough, when he got around to asking himself this melodramatic question, Howard smiled, and his turmoil subsided, because he realized he was doing something he’d often yelled at Ada for. He was creating a crisis by preparing for a crisis. He was pressing for a decision before a decision was needed.
Aaron himself had suggested he spend a month looking the problem over. Well, why not? He was ninety-nine percent sure that a month’s work wouldn’t change the situation, but he could undertake it with complete honesty—and pocket Aaron’s retainer without a qualm. And who knows? Maybe after a month in the water he’d have a better sense of which way the tide was flowing.
All hesitancy gone now, he pulled over a card file, looked up an old friend’s number, and called to invite him to an expense account lunch at the Sheraton.
“Are you getting or giving?” his friend wanted to know.
“Getting, of course. Do people buy you lunch to give?”
“Every day, son. Sometimes twice a day.”
Hayes Peterson was a leg man for a columnist at the Chicago Tribune, and he had almost as many names in his head as the telephone directory.
“God, you’re ugly,” he said as Howard slid into the booth across from him. “I keep forgetting. Between times, the gray cells iron out all those crags and gullies and scars.”
“I know,” Howard said. “I do it myself. Until I actually look at myself in the mirror, I get to thinking I’m a pretty good-looking guy, from when I was a kid. Club soda with lime,” he told a waitress who paused at their table.
Hayes Peterson held up a finger for another martini. He was in his mid-fifties, a perfectly round little man who carried his extra weight with complete aplomb—helped by a tailor who knew his craft. He had a cherub’s pink face, a rosebud smile, and a tongue that could tear the flesh off living bones.
“So what are you after?” he asked after they’d gossiped for a few minutes.
“A name. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe you don’t have such a name.”
The little man sneered at this improbability. “Go on.”
“A few years ago your man did a story about a psychic fair held at that shopping center at Broadway and Diversey. I’d like an in to that scene.”
Hayes looked at him with distaste. “You want an in to the psychic scene?”
“I think I do. It’s just a place to start.”
“So what name do you want?”
“The name of someone I can talk to, someone who’ll level with me, someone who can maybe give me a useful steer.”
“Christ, you don’t want much, do you. These are all kooks and con-artists, you know.”
Howard shrugged. “That’s why I said maybe you don’t have such a name.”
“Don’t pull those bullshit schnorrer tricks on me, Howard. I can give you a name okay. She’s not a con-artist and I don’t think she’s a kook, but she’s also not that far into the scene.”
“Anything’s better than what I’ve got right now.”
“And, besides lunch, what am I supposed to get out of this deal?”
“What do you need, Hayes? I’m on call. You got my number. You want something looked into in Uptown?”
“Yuck. Is there human life in Uptown?”
“Traces of it.”
“Fuck it, Howard. Shove it up your ass. Her name is Denise Purcell.”
Smiling, Howard jotted it in his notebook. “And what does she do? Does she claim to be a psychic?”
“No, that’s the thing. She doesn’t pretend to be Madame Carlotti. She does Tarot readings—very straight, very matter of fact. I watched her work, talked to her for a while, and she impressed me. No big come-on, no mystical vomit.”
“Sounds good.… Do you think I should I offer to pay for her time?”
“I’d say no, offhand, but that’s not guaranteed. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Tarot-card readers?” He glanced at his wrist. “Come on, let’s order. I gotta meet a guy at Ricardo’s in forty-five minutes.”
The doorman at the south side condominium was obviously reluctant to pass Howard in, but there wasn’t much he could do about it after he’d confirmed that he was expected. Howard wondered if this was just a reaction to his appearance or a special protectiveness Ms. Purcell inspired. Ascending to the eighteenth floor, he decided it was the latter; he’d already formed an image of her: a wispy creature full of hesitant, mousey gestures. And because of this, he would have walked right past the woman standing outside the elevator if she hadn’t stopped him with: “Mr. Scheim?”
He paused and looked down at a slender, self-possessed woman of about forty, handsome rather than pretty, in a smart tweed suit he felt sure she hadn’t put on for his benefit. She was examining him with a grave, competent look, as if he were a statue she was thinking of buying.
He understood immediately why Hayes Peterson had been impressed.
“I wasn’t born with this wreck of a face,” he said.
She smiled politely. “Carl—the doorman—thought I should have a look before letting you in.”
“Always a good policy.”
“Come this way.”
She led him to an apartment that reminded him of an impressionist painting—full of light, color, plants, blossoms. It was cheerful and feminine, but not oppressively so. They sat down across from each other, and he felt a twinge of disappointment when he realized she wasn’t going to make the usual social gesture of offering coffee.
“And now, how can I help you, Mr. Scheim?”
“Ah,” he said vaguely. He wished there was an opening more graceful than the simple, inelegant plunge, but, after nearly forty years as an investigator, he had yet to find it. “This is my situation, Ms. Purcell. A client has asked me to look into something for him, to find an answer to a question he has. I won’t try to judge the usefulness of the question, but it’s one that, for an investigator, is a little hard to come to grips with. To say the least.”
She nodded just as if he’d said something that made sense.
“At this point, to be completely honest, I’m not even looking for an answer to the question. I’m just looking for a place to look.”
“On the phone you mentioned a psychic fair I did in 1989. Does that have some connection to this?”
“Well, it does or it doesn’t. At this point I can’t be sure.” Howard felt like a burglar trying to pick a lock with a feather. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m right at the beginning, just poking around, and my first thought was to have a look inside the world that psychic fair represents.”
“I think you have a misapprehension about that, Mr. Scheim. There is no world there. It’s just a bunch of people shooting off in all directions, pursuing their own individual interests. It has no more coherence than a flea market, really.”
“Go on.”
“Well … at one table you have a phrenologist or a palm reader. At the others, you have people painting mandalas, passing out Rosicrucian literature, casting horoscopes, doing Kirlean photography, selling stuff—body oils, incense, occult books, biofeedback gadgets. What does that all add up to, Mr. Scheim?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.” Howard sat blinking at her for a few moments. “Maybe I’d better just tell you what it is my client is after.”
“All right.”
“I make no apologies for it. I don’t say it makes good sense. It’s just what it is, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do you know the Old Testament, Ms. Purcell?”
Her eyes widened impressively. “I suppose I’ve read it half a dozen times over the years.”
“Then you know it a lot better than I do. In outline: the Jews, the Israelites, were ultimately rejected by God because they were unfaithful, because they preferred to worship the gods their neighbors worshiped—Baal and Ashtaroth and Moloch and that lot.”
She nodded.
“Okay. My client wants to know something about these gods. He wants to know what made them so much more attractive than the God of Israel.”
She studied him with disapproval for a moment. “You’re joking.”
“Frankly, that’s what I said to him myself. Maybe if you heard him explain it, it would sound more reasonable.”
“It isn’t that the question itself is ridiculous, it’s that.… A private detective?”
Howard nodded. “Again, I said the very same thing to him, Ms. Purcell. What you have to understand is that he’s not looking for theories. He’s not looking for what a theologian or historian might say. He’s looking for what can be found out by an experienced investigator. He wants me to approach this the same way I’d approach any other case.”
“Good heavens.… And you’ve taken it on?”
“I haven’t exactly taken it on yet. I’m trying to find out whether there’s anything there to take on.”
“I see.” Her brows came together in a frown. “But why on earth are you talking to me?”
Howard sighed, and he wasn’t sure whether it was from relief or exasperation. What he needed was a nerve to grope for. “Ms. Purcell, it’s been said that, with the right three introductions, you can reach anyone in the world—a president, a king, anyone. I’ve reached you with one introduction. You may not be able to help me directly, but you may be able to give me another introduction—an introduction to someone you think might be able to help me. And if this person can’t help me, maybe he can give me an introduction to someone else. Since I don’t know exactly who I’m looking for, it may take five introductions—or a dozen.”
“To reach whom, Mr. Scheim? Who is this ultimate person you want to find?”
“As I say, I don’t know. There may not even be such a person.”
“But what would he do for you if you found him?”
“Again, I honestly don’t know, Ms. Purcell. Sometimes this is the only way an investigator can operate. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for, all you know is how to go about finding it. Do you see what I mean?”
Denise Purcell had stopped listening some time back, and Howard waited for her to catch up. When she did, she went very still and the blood drained from her face. “I’ve been very naive, haven’t I?”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes glinted with an icy fury. “You came here thinking I would hook you up with some miserable coven of devil-worshipers, didn’t you?”
“Believe me, I didn’t,” Howard said earnestly.
“What else would it be? You’re not stupid, Mr. Scheim. I’m sure you know perfectly well who these old gods were—or are. In ancient times people called them gods. In modern times they call them demons. Baal is still Baal, Ashtaroth is still Ashtaroth, and Moloch is still Moloch, and the only difference is that people worship them as devils instead of gods.”
“Yes, that’s true, Ms. Purcell. I knew that. But, believe me, if you handed me the names and addresses of a group of devil-worshipers, I’d throw it in the trash.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He looked around helplessly. “Because I’d assume they were a bunch of screwballs, that’s why. What am I going to find out from screwballs? That’s in the first place.”
“Go on.”
“In the second place.… Sure, I know there are devil worshipers in Chicago. I read the newspapers, Ms. Purcell. I watch the talkshows. So what do these folks do at their meetings? Hold Black Masses? Mutilate hosts they’ve snitched at the communion rail? Spit on the crucifix? This has nothing at all to do with what was going on in Israel twenty-five hundred years ago. Does it?”
“No.”
“Then why would I want to get hooked up with them, for God’s sake?”
Denise Purcell closed her eyes and looked as if she was resisting the temptation to gnaw at her lower lip. Finally she nodded contritely. “I apologize, Mr. Scheim. I really do. I jumped to a conclusion there.”
“It’s understandable,” Howard conceded gravely.
“I also underestimated you.”
“That too,” he said and astonished himself by adding, “So how about a cup of coffee?”
She laughed, relieved, and headed for the kitchen.
It was one of those moments when he missed Ada badly. Leading Denise Purcell up to that little ‘misunderstanding’ had been as tricky a move as he’d ever made, and he had no one to share it with.
When there’s ice to be broken, make the ice-maker break it.
It was broken now.
CHAPTER 5
“Once upon a time,” Denise said a few minutes later, “there was a young woman of twenty-five living in Marina City; this is before it went condo. She was lonely and bored and at loose ends, because she’d just ended a very bad marriage she’d gotten into when she was a sophomore in college. She didn’t have to work, because her ex-husband was well-heeled and paid her a generous alimony. Nevertheless, she was a little afraid there in her tower, because it stood in the middle of a world she really didn’t know very much about—a world where people worked for a living and did all sorts of very ordinary things she could only guess at.
“In order to disguise her fear a little bit, she became an exotic and made friends of a few other exotics, who were, among other things, into contacting the spirit world through the Ouija board, automatic writing, and seances. The young woman thought this was very nifty, very exciting. She especially enjoyed the Ouija board, because of Roger. Her friends were also very impressed with her performance at the Ouija board, because of Roger. He made an appearance the very first time she tried it. When her turn came, she asked, ‘Is anyone there?’ and Roger answered immediately: The planchette spelled out ‘Hello.’
“Unlike most of the spirits you meet through the Ouija board, who tend to be lazy, stubborn, and flighty, Roger was a dream. He was almost always available and would talk to them and answer their idiotic questions for hours. One skeptic suspected the woman of controlling the planchette herself and challenged Roger to supply her mother’s maiden name, and he did. He did all sorts of things like that.
“One night the woman was lying in bed reading when a globe of green light about the size of a billiard ball appeared in the corner of the room just above the floor. It slowly crossed the floor, climbed the foot of her bed, rolled across the sheets, and ran up her left arm. It wasn’t a frightening experience at all. In fact, it was rather nice, and she told her friends about it the next time they got together. They thought it sounded very neat and was a sure sign that she was specially favored in the spirit world.
“One night a few days later, the woman woke up near dawn with the terrible feeling there was someone lying beside her in the bed. You know: she could feel it sagging at her side. For a long time she lay there absolutely petrified, but finally she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she rolled out of bed, ran into the bathroom, and locked herself in. She didn’t come out until she saw daylight under the door. And of course there was no one in her bed. In the daylight she was able to convince herself that it had all been her imagination.
“But the next night she woke up again—and this time she woke up fighting to breathe. She couldn’t breathe because a heavy weight—a crushing weight—was pressing down on her, as though someone were kneeling on her chest. Fortunately, she passed out from sheer terror. The next day she moved into a hotel and started looking for another apartment. She never again touched a Ouija board or made any other attempt to fool with the spirit world, and she was never again bothered in her
sleep.”
Howard nodded thoughtfully. “I assume the young woman was you.”
“That’s right.”
“And I assume there’s a moral to the story.”
“Yes. Open no doors.”
“Meaning?”
Denise was leaning forward in her chair studying her folded hands. “Ouija boards are toys. I’m sure you know that. They’re manufactured by the thousands and they have no power at all. In themselves. I suppose millions of people have played with them, gotten nothing, and thrown them in the trash. But every once in a while someone comes along who opens a door, just a tiny crack no wider than a hair, the way I did, and then—look out.”
“And you evidently intend this as a warning to me. You think I mean to open a door.”
“Mr. Scheim, it sounds to me like you mean to knock down a whole wall. If you can.”
Howard sighed. “I accept your warning and I take it seriously. Now here’s something I hope you’ll take seriously. I don’t always know what I’m doing, but I always know what I’m not doing. And one thing I’m not doing and will never do is waste my time investigating the spirit world. It’s been tried, Ms. Purcell—I’m sure you know that better than I do. After a hundred years of very determined work, the investigation is right where it started: nowhere. I’m not about to contribute to that futility. If I ever found this investigation heading in that direction, I’d walk away from it. Not because of your warning, frankly, but because there just wouldn’t be anything there for me. That’s definite.”
“The thing is, you may think you’re not heading in that direction, but …”
“Ms. Purcell, I was told you do Tarot card readings.”
“That’s true. And so?”
“And so how do you square that with this advice you’re giving me?”
“Oh,” she said with a dismissive toss of her head. “That’s entirely different.”