Kristadoulou Realtors sat in an old stone building in the heart of one of Steinway's most commercial blocks; its windows were filled with photos of properties they had listed. The rest of the street was lined with triple deckers—stores at ground level, two floors of apartments above.
He walked south on the west side, passing little old Greek ladies with shopping bags, lots of guys with black mustaches yammering into cell phones, couples laughing and talking, hardly anyone speaking English.
The businesses were like a poster for ethnic diversity: a storefront touting "Immigration Medical Exams" next to the Kabab Cafe next to the Nile Deli, then an oriental rug merchant, and something called Islamic Fashion, Inc. A little farther on was the Egyptian Cafe, the Arab Community Center, and the Fatima Pediatric Center; farther still was a Colombian bakery and a Chinese Qi Gong center specializing in back and foot rubs.
He crossed the street and turned back north, passing Sissy McGinty's Irish pub, the Rock and Roll Bagel restaurant, an Argentinean steak house, an Egyptian coffee shop right next door to an Italian espresso place. He stopped before the window of an Islamic religious shop offering prayer rugs, incense, and a special clock: "5-Full Azan Talking Alarm Clock—Jumbo Display With 105-Year Calendar." Jack had no idea what any of that meant.
He spotted Lyle getting out of a cab. He looked every inch the African today—blue-and-white batik kaftan, white cotton pants, sandals, and a brightly colored knitted tarn. He blended in with the rest of the exotically dressed locals. Jack was the stick-out in his Levis and golf shirt.
"You made it," Lyle said when he spotted Jack. "I wasn't sure if you got my message."
"I got it." He gestured at the surrounding stores. "Do all these folks get along?"
"Pretty much."
"Ought to bring the UN here for a look-see. Find out how they do it."
Lyle only nodded. He didn't look so hot. Even with his eyes hidden behind dark glasses, his face looked strained.
"You okay?"
"Me? Okay? Not even close."
"Uh-oh. What happened?"
Lyle glanced at his watch. "Tell you later. Right now we're due to see Mr. K. But before we go in, I want you to know how I'm going to play this, okay?"
"Sure. This is your show. Shoot."
"I'm going to let him think that I think the house is haunted."
"Well, it is, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but I don't want him knowing how haunted. And no mention of Tara Portman or whatever it's calling itself."
"Tara Portman was a real person," Jack said. "Gia and I looked her up on the Internet last night."
" 'Was'?"
"She was nine when she was abducted in the summer of '88. Never seen again. Her picture matches the girl Gia saw."
"Oh man!" Lyle clapped his hands and grinned. "Oh man, oh man, oh man!"
Jack had expected astonishment, or at least a touch of awe or wonder. Not this outright glee.
"Why is this good news?"
"Never mind," Lyle said. "Let's go see the Big K."
Jack wondered what was going on in Lyle's head. He seemed to have developed a personal agenda. That was okay with Jack—he had an agenda of his own. He just hoped they didn't cross each other.
Inside, Konstantin Kristadoulou was expecting them and a secretary led them to a rear office where they met the head man. Jack fully appreciated the 'Big K' remark as Lyle introduced him. They seated themselves in the two rickety chairs on the far side of his desk.
Kristadoulou Realtors looked to be a no-frills operation. Maybe because its owner ate all the frills. At least he looked like he did. Konstantin Kristadoulou dwarfed even Abe in the waistline category. Jack figured he was pushing seventy, but the puffy face and quadruple chins stretched out all the wrinkles, so it was hard to tell. His longish, thinning gray hair was combed straight back to where it flipped up at the collar.
"So," he said, glancing at Jack with his dark, heavy-lidded eyes, then fixing them on Lyle. His voice was lightly accented. "You wish to know about the house you bought, Mr. Kenton. Why is that? No trouble, I hope?"
"We took some damage from the earthquake," Lyle said.
"Serious?"
"Just some minor cracks."
Minor? Jack thought. A cellar floor cracked in half isn't minor.
But he caught a quick glance from Lyle that he read as, Let me handle this.
"The reason I'm here," Lyle went on, "is that we've been hearing strange noises in the house lately. Voices… but no one's there."
Kristadoulou nodded. "Lots of people think Menelaus Manor is haunted—not because they've ever witnessed anything, mind you, but because of its history. I hope you remember that I told you all this before you bought it."
Lyle raised his hands. "Absolutely. I'm not here to complain, I'm here to try and understand. I need more in-depth information on the house's history. I mean, if Menelaus Manor 'went wrong' somewhere along the way, I'd like to figure out where. Who knows? Maybe I can fix it."
"'Went wrong,' " Kristadoulou said. "An interesting way of putting it." He leaned back—the only direction his gut would allow—and stared at the ceiling. "Let's see… if anything 'went wrong' with the Menelaus house, I'd say it happened during Dmitri's ownership."
"Who's Dmitri?" Jack said.
"Kastor Menelaus's only son. Kastor built the place back in the fifties. That was when Astoria was known as Little Athens, a bit of Hellenic heaven in the heart of New York because of all the Greeks who moved here after the war. I arrived after the house was built but I know something of the family. Dmitri, he was younger than me, so we never socialized, but even if we were the same age, we wouldn't have mixed. A strange one, that Dmitri."
"How strange?" Jack asked. "Strange cults? Strange beliefs?"
Kristadoulou gave him an odd look. "No. I mean he was always keeping to himself. No girlfriends, no boyfriends. If you happened to see him at a restaurant, he was always alone."
Jack had been hoping for some indication of involvement with the Otherness. Or maybe with Sal Roma, or whatever his real name was. He'd also been on the lookout for one of Roma's cutesy anagrams—the last Jack had recognized was "Ms. Aralo"—but Dmitri wasn't one. Not even close.
Lyle said, "Why do you say the house might have gone wrong during Dmitri's ownership?"
"Because of his renovations. Old Kastor died in 1965. Cancer of the pancreas. After Dmitri inherited the place—his mother had died in '61—he came to me for advice. I was working as an agent for another firm then and he wanted me to recommend carpenters and masons to redo his basement. He hired a couple off the list I gave him. I felt somewhat responsible so I stopped in every so often to check on them—make sure they were doing a good job." He shook his head. "Very strange."
Gimme, gimme, gimme, Jack thought. "How so?"
"He was lining the basement with these big granite blocks he'd imported from Romania. He told me they came from what he called 'a place of power,' whatever that means. He said they'd originally been part of an old dilapidated fortress, but if you ask me, I think they were from a church."
"Why's that?" Lyle said.
"Because some of them were inlaid with crosses."
Jack glanced at Lyle and saw him sitting ramrod straight in his chair.
"Crosses? What kind?"
"Funny you should ask. They weren't regular crosses. They were almost like a capital T with the crosspiece brass and the upright nickel."
"Tau," Lyle whispered.
"Exactly!" Kristadoulou said, pointing a knockwurst digit at him. "Like the letter tau. How did you know?"
Lyle's eyes shifted toward Jack. "We've spotted a few around the house. But let me ask you about those blocks with the tau crosses. Do you think they might have come from a Greek Orthodox church?"
Kristadoulou shook his head. "I've traveled a lot, been in many, many Orthodox churches, and I've never seen any crosses like that." Another head shake. "Bad business stealing church stones. It's like asking for trouble. And
that's just what Dmitri got."
"You mean his suicide," Jack said, remembering this from when Gia had read to him from Lyle's brochure.
"Yes. He'd just been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. He'd seen how his father suffered. I guess he couldn't face that ordeal, so…"
"When was that?" Jack asked.
"Nineteen ninety-five, I believe."
Owned the place for thirty years, Jack thought. The span covered the year Tara Portman disappeared. Dmitri had to be involved.
"Dmitri didn't bother to leave a will," Kristadoulou went on, "and that caused problems. With no children or wife, the estate wound up in probate. After years of legal wrangling Menelaus Manor went to one of Dmitri's cousins who wanted nothing to do with it. He called me and told me to sell it as soon as possible."
"And Dr. Singh bought it, right?" Lyle said.
"Only after lots of other potential buyers passed it by. The cellar was the sticking point. All those strange granite blocks I mentioned. And speaking of those blocks, when I inspected the house before putting it on the market, I went down to the cellar and noticed that all the crosses had been removed."
"Any idea why?"
"No more idea than why he left a dirt floor."
"Wait," Jack said. "Dirt floor?"
"Yes. Can you imagine? Dmitri went to the expense of importing all those blocks, and then didn't finish the floor."
Maybe because it makes it lots easier to bury things you want no one to see, Jack thought.
"The nephew was unwilling to sink in any money for renovations so we kept lowering the price. Finally a vascular surgeon named Singh bought it for a song."
"A rather short song, as I recall," Lyle said.
Kristadoulou nodded. "He and his wife modernized the interior and refinished the basement with paneling over the granite blocks and a concrete floor. One day he doesn't show up for surgery or his office. Police investigate and find him and his wife in bed with their throats cut."
Jack remembered that too. "Who did it?"
"No one was ever caught. The police didn't even have a suspect. Whoever did it left not a clue."
"No wonder people think it's haunted," Jack said.
Kristadoulou smiled. "It gets worse. The executor of the Singh estate directed me to sell it. I thought, a suicide and a double murder—I'm never going to sell this place now. But lo and behold, this young couple walks in and wants to buy Menelaus Manor."
"In spite of its history?" Jack said. "Or because of it?"
"You must understand," Kristadoulou said, patting his belly. "I didn't delve into the Loms' motivations, because I didn't exactly dwell on the house's history. It was not what you'd call a selling point. I remember Herb, he was the husband, saying that he wasn't the superstitious sort, but it was his wife Sara, a pretty thing, who seemed to be pushing the deal. They were planning on adopting a child and wanted a house for the family to live in. So, I sold it to them." He leaned back again and gazed toward the ceiling. "I wish I hadn't."
This was the point where Gia had refused to read him any more of the house's history, calling it "sick."
"Don't tell me," he said. "Someone slit their throats too?"
"Worse," Kristadoulou said with a grimace of distaste. "They'd been moved in only a short while when the little boy they'd just adopted was found horribly mutilated in the upstairs bedroom."
Jack closed his eyes. Now he understood Gia's reaction.
"Any reason given?"
Kristadoulou shook his head. "None. Herbert was found in a daze in the house and later died in the hospital."
"'Later died'?" Jack said. "What's that mean?"
"That's what I was told," Kristadoulou replied. "I checked with the hospital—he was taken to Downstate Medical Center—but no one would tell me how he died. They said I wasn't a relative and had no right to know, but I sensed more than ethics involved there. They were afraid."
"Afraid of what?" Jack said.
Kristadoulou shrugged. "Of a lawsuit, perhaps. But I sensed it went deeper than that. I got the feeling it had to do with how he died." He raised his hand in a stop gesture. "Don't waste any more breath on Herb Lom. I've told you all I know."
Lyle said, "What about his wife?"
"Sara was never seen or heard from again. As if she vanished from the face of the earth. Or never existed. No one could find a single relative of hers, and Herb left no will, so the house stood vacant for years before it came back to me like an old debt and I had to sell her again. But this time no one wanted her at any price." He smiled and pointed to Lyle. "Until you came along."
Lyle grinned. "I wanted the place because of its history."
"But now you're not so happy, is that right?"
"It's not a matter of happy. I'm just trying to get a handle on what might be going on there."
They made small talk for a few more minutes, then thanked Kristadoulou for his time and left.
"Dmitri is a player in this," Jack said as soon as they hit the bright hot sidewalk. "Got to be."
"But he's dead."
"Yeah," Jack said, squinting in the sunlight. He pulled out his shades. "Too bad. Well, what's your next step?"
"I think I'm going to derenovate that basement."
"You mean tear down the paneling to see what's behind?"
Lyle nodded. "And tear up that concrete slab to see what's under it."
"Who's under it, you mean."
"Right. Who."
"You'll let me know what you find?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Aren't you the guy who said he's the one who kicked this whole thing off?"
"Well…"
"Well then maybe you could lend a hand and find out firsthand. You up for that?"
Besides making life miserable for Eli Bellitto and his buddy Adrian Minkin, Jack had no pressing demands on his time for the next few days, but he was curious about something.
"Let's just say we find a child's skeleton under the slab. What then?"
"I call the cops, they bring in their forensics team, and maybe they catch the guy who did it. And then maybe the spook goes back to where it came from."
"And maybe along the way the world hears about Ifasen and his dealings with the ghost of Tara Portman?"
Lyle nodded. "That's a distinct possibility."
Jack had the picture now. "I guess I can give you a day or two of hard labor, but on one condition: If and when you go public, my name is never mentioned."
"You mean Ifasen will have to face the spotlight alone?" Lyle's lips twisted into a wry smile. "It won't be easy, but he'll handle it." The smile faded. "Be a cakewalk compared to some other things."
"Like what?" Jack said, remembering how troubled Lyle had looked before they'd met with Kristadoulou. "What happened at the house?"
"Tell you later." He glanced around at the passersby. "Probably not a good idea for Ifasen to discuss it in public."
"Okay. I guess I can wait. I'll head home and change and see you in the cellar. Give me an hour."
"Great." Lyle straightened as if trying to shrug off a burden. "I'll pick up some picks and ripping bars."
"I'll pick up some beer."
Lyle smiled. "Welcome to the demolition business."
7
"All right, Charles," Reverend Sparks said as he dropped into the chair behind his battered desk.
The springs in the old chair gave out an agonized squeal under his weight. The desk seemed too small for him. In fact the cluttered little office, with its sagging shelves loaded with books and magazines and scribbled drafts of sermons, its walls studded with yellow sticky notes, seemed too small for him as well.
He pointed to the rickety chair on Charlie's side of the desk. "Sit. And tell me what you needed to see me about."
Charlie sat and folded his sweat-slick hands in front of him. "Need advice, Rev."
Did he ever. He and Lyle had had four sittings scheduled for the morning. Lyle started acting throwed off after the f
irst one, then getting further and further off the hinges with the next two, finally eighty-sixin' the fourth and all the others they'd booked for the rest of the afternoon and night. He wouldn't say why, but looked spooked.
Spooked… yeah, you got that right. House spooked. Charlie was spooked too.
He'd tried to pry Lyle about what was going down but Lyle clammed, lips tight, eyes somewhere else. No talking to him. Not mad. Scared. Lyle never got scared. Seeing big bro like that had shook Charlie, right down to his toenails.
He'd tried reading scriptures but that hadn't cut it. He needed to talk. So he come to the rev.
"Is it about your brother?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what?"
"I ain't 'xactly sure how to put it…"
The rev let out a sigh. Charlie sensed his impatience.
"A'ight," he said. "It's like this. We allowed to believe in ghosts?"
"Allowed?"
"I mean, are there any teachings 'bout them?"
The rev leaned back and stared at him through his thick rimless glasses. "Why do you ask?"
"Here come the hard part." Charlie took a breath. "Our house is haunted."
The rev continued his stare. "What makes you think that?"
Charlie gave him a quick walkthrough of the spookfest going down at the place.
"So what I'm axing," he said as he tied it up, "is what I do about it?"
"You leave," the rev said, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the desk. "Immediately. Your brother was reason enough to leave before, now you must flee. Do not walk, run from that house."
Charlie didn't feature no cut-and-run action, but he was glad the rev wasn't looking at him like he was off the hinges.
"So… you believe me."
"Of course I believe you. And after what you've told me about your brother, it's obviously his fault. He has called up this demon."
"Not a demon, Rev. A ghost. She say her name Tara Portman and…"
The rev was slowly shaking his massive head. "There are no such things as ghosts, Charles. Only demons pretending to be ghosts."