Some people, the Face among them, believe that a portion of such calls originate with deceased friends or loved ones trying to reach us from Beyond. For some reason, according to this theory, the dead can make your phone ring, but they can’t as easily send their voices across the chasm between life and death; therefore, all you hear is silence or peculiar static, or on rare occasion whispery scraps of words as if from a great distance.
Upon investigating this subject after Ming explained the purpose of Line 24, Ethan had learned that researchers in the paranormal had made recordings on telephone lines left open between test numbers, operating on the assumption that if the dead could initiate a call, they might also take advantage of an open line specifically set aside to detect their communications.
Next, the researchers amplified and enhanced the faint sounds on the recordings. Indeed, they discovered voices that often spoke English, but also that sometimes spoke French, Spanish, Greek, and other languages.
Most of these whispery entities offered only scraps of sentences or disjointed words that made little sense, providing insufficient data for analysis.
Other, more complete “messages” could sometimes be construed as predictions or even dire warnings. They were always short, however, and often enigmatic.
Reason suggested that the recordings had caught only bleed-over conversations from living people using other lines in the telephone system.
In fact, many of the coherent snippets seemed to deal with matters too mundane to motivate the dead to reach out to the living: questions about the weather, about grandchildren’s latest report cards from school, bits like”…always loved pecan pie, yours best of all…” and “…better put your pennies away for a rainy day…” and “…at that cafe you like, the owner keeps a dangerously dirty kitchen…”
And yet…
And yet a few of the voices were said to be so haunted, so bleak with despair or so full of desperate love and concern, that they could not be forgotten, could not be easily explained, especially when the messages were delivered with urgency: “…fumes from the furnace, fumes, don’t go to sleep tonight, fumes…” and “…I never told you how much I love you, so much, please look for me when you come across, remember me…” and “…a man in a blue truck, don’t let him get near little Laura, don’t let him near her…”
These most eerie messages reported by paranormal researchers were what motivated Channing Manheim to maintain Line 24 strictly for the convenience of the chatty dead.
Every day, wherever they were in the world, Manheim and Ming du Lac used part of their meditation periods to broadcast mentally the area code plus the seven-digit number for Line 24, casting this baited hook into the sea of immortality with the hope that it would catch a spirit.
Thus far, over a period of three years, they had recorded only wrong numbers, sales pitches, and a series of calls from a hoaxer who, before Ethan’s arrival, had proved to be a security guard on the estate. He had been let go with generous severance pay and, according to Mrs. McBee, with a lecture from Ming du Lac to the effect that he would be wise to put his spiritual house in order.
The signal light winked off. This call had lasted one minute and twelve seconds.
Sometimes Ethan wondered how the Channing Manheim who managed an acting career so brilliantly and who had proved himself an investment wizard could be the same man who employed Ming du Lac and also a feng-shui adviser, a clairvoyance instructor, and a past-life researcher who spent forty hours a week tracking the actor’s reincarnations backward through the centuries.
On the other hand, the singular events of this day left him less certain of his usual skepticism.
He turned his attention to the computer screen once more, to the telephone log. He frowned, wondering why Fric would have invented the heavy breather.
If someone had in fact made obscene calls to the boy, chances were good that this related to the implied threats against Manheim that had come in those black boxes. Otherwise, there were two sources of threats that had arisen simultaneously. Ethan didn’t believe in coincidences.
The heavy breather might be the real-life inspiration for the “professor” mentioned in Reynerd’s partial screenplay, the man who had conspired to send the black gift boxes and to kill Manheim. If so, he had somehow acquired at least one of the house’s unlisted numbers: a disturbing development.
Yet the phone log had never failed to record any call in the past. And though they might err, machines didn’t lie.
The recent incoming call to Line 24 was now the last item on the day’s log. As it should be.
Ethan had timed the call at one minute twelve seconds. The monitoring software registered one minute fourteen seconds. He had no doubt that the two-second error was his.
According to the log, Caller ID blocking prevented notation of the point-of-origin number. That was peculiar if the call had been from a phone-sales agent, a breed now forbidden by law to block their ID, not peculiar at all if it had been a wrong number.
Neither was it unusual for a wrong number to have tied up the line for a minute or longer. The outgoing greeting on the special answering machine that serviced Line 24 was not an elaborate hello to those in the spirit world, but a simple “Please leave a message.” Some callers, failing to realize that they hadn’t reached the desired number, complied with that invitation.
Anyway, whoever called Line 24 wasn’t the issue. The question was if the ever-dependable machine had erred or lied in failing to record the calls that the boy claimed to have received.
Logically, Ethan could only conclude that the machine couldn’t be faulted. In the morning, he would have a talk with Fric.
On the desk beside the computer were the three silvery bells from the ambulance. He stared at them for a long time.
Beside the bells was a nine-by-twelve manila envelope that had been left here for him by Mrs. McBee. She had printed his name in matchless calligraphy.
As with all things McBee, her graceful penmanship made Ethan smile. She knew the best and most elegant way that every task ought to be performed, and she held herself to her own high standards.
He opened the envelope and confirmed a truth that he already knew: Freddie Nielander, Fric’s mother, was a braying jackass.
CHAPTER 42
FANTASTICALLY YELLOW FROM HEAD TO FOOT, Corky Laputa accepted the shocking-pink plastic bag from Mr. Chung.
He was aware that he evoked smiles from other customers, and he supposed that in his yellow-and-pink flamboyance, he must be the most cheerful-looking anarchist in the world.
The bag bulged with containers of Chinese food, and Mr. Chung overflowed with good will. He effusively thanked Corky for his continuing patronage and wished him all the best that fortune had to offer.
After a typically busy day in the pursuit of social collapse, Corky seldom found himself in the mood to make dinner. He got takeout from Mr. Chung as often as three or four times a week.
In a better world, instead of resorting repeatedly to Chinese takeout, he would have preferred to dine frequently in upscale restaurants. If an establishment offered fine cuisine and excellent service, however, there were invariably enough customers to ruin the experience.
With but few exceptions, human beings were tedious, self-deluded bores. He could tolerate them individually or in classroom situations where he set the rules, but in crowds they were not conducive to the enjoyment of a good meal or to proper digestion.
He drove home through the rain with his pink bag, and he left it unopened on the kitchen table. Mouth-watering aromas flooded the room.
After changing into a comfortable Glen-plaid cashmere robe suitable to a drizzly December evening, Corky mixed a martini. Only a trace of vermouth, two olives.
In the sublime afterglow of a day well spent, he often liked to walk his spacious home and admire the richness of its Victorian architecture and ornamentation.
His parents, both from well-to-do families, had purchased the property shortly after t
heir marriage. Had they not been the people they were, the beautiful house would have been alive with wonderful family memories and with a sense of tradition.
Consequently, his only fine family memory, the one that warmed him most, was associated with the living room, especially with the area around the fireplace, where he had separated his mother from his inheritance by the application of an iron poker.
He stood there for only a minute or two, basking in the fire, before going upstairs again. This time, martini in hand, he went to the back guest bedroom, to check on Stinky Cheese Man.
He didn’t even bother to lock the door these days. Old Stinky wasn’t going anywhere under his own power ever again.
The room would have been dark in daylight, for the two windows were boarded over. The wall switch by the door controlled the lamp on the nightstand.
The tinted bulb and the apricot silk shade provided an appealing glow. Even in this flattering light, Stinky appeared paler than pale, so gray that he seemed to be petrifying into stone.
His head, shoulders, and arms were exposed, but the rest of him remained covered by a sheet and blanket. Later, Corky would enjoy the entire show.
Stinky had once been a trim 200 pounds, in excellent condition. If he could have gotten on a scale now, he probably would have weighed less than 110.
All bone, skin, hair, and pressure sores, he was barely strong enough to lift his head an inch off his pillow, too weak by far to get out of bed and onto a scale, and the depth of his despair had weeks ago broken his will to resist.
Stinky was no longer semi-sedated. His sunken eyes met Corky’s, darkly shining with a desperate petition.
On the IV tree, the dangling twelve-hour bag of glucose and saline solution had drained completely. The slow drip of glucose, vitamins, and minerals that kept Stinky alive also infused a drug that ensured mental vagueness and reliable docility.
Corky put down his martini, and from a small refrigerator well stocked with full infusion bags, he plucked a replacement for the empty container. With practiced hands, he removed the collapsed bag and installed the plump one.
The current drip included no drug. Corky wanted his withered guest to have a clear head later.
After picking up his martini and taking a sip, he said, “I’ll rejoin you after dinner,” and he left the bedroom.
In the living room once more, Corky stopped by the fireplace to finish his drink and to remember Mama.
Unfortunately, the historic poker was not here to be polished, hefted, and admired. Years ago, on the night of the event, police had taken it away with many other items, intent on collecting evidence, and had never brought it back.
Corky had been too wise to request its return, leery that the police might suspect that it had sentimental value to him. All the fireplace tools had been purchased new following his mother’s death.
Reluctantly, he had replaced the carpet as well. If the homicide detectives had for any reason returned in the months following the murder, upon seeing the bloodstained carpet still in place, they might have at least raised an eyebrow.
In the kitchen, he heated the Chinese food in the microwave. Moo goo gai pan. Mu shu pork. Beef and red pepper. Rice, of course, and pickled cabbage.
He could not eat all this food himself. Ever since he’d begun methodically to starve Stinky Cheese Man in the guest room, however, Corky had been buying too much takeout.
Evidently, the spectacle of Stinky’s ghastly decline was not merely entertaining but subconsciously disturbing. It raised in Corky a deep-seated fear of being underfed.
In the interest of good mental health, therefore, he continued to purchase too much takeout and enjoyed the therapeutic pleasure of feeding the excess to the garbage disposal.
This evening, as had been the case more often than not in recent months, Corky ate at the dining-room table, on which were stacked the complete blueprints of Palazzo Rospo. These prints had been produced from a set of diskettes developed by the architectural firm that had overseen the six-million-dollar renovation of the mansion soon after Manheim had purchased the estate.
In addition to receiving new electrical, plumbing, heating, air-conditioning, and audio-video systems, the enormous house had been computerized and fitted with a state-of-the-art security package designed for continual, easy upgrading. According to one source on whom Corky was relying, that package had indeed been upgraded at least once in the past two years.
As if the night were a living thing, and moody, it rose out of its sodden lethargy and worked up a peevish wind, hissing at the windows, clawing at the house walls with prosthetic hands that it fashioned from tree limbs, and by the shaking of its great black coat, rattled barrages of rain against the glass.
In his warm dining room, wrapped in Glen-plaid cashmere, with a Chinese feast before him, with worthwhile and exciting work to occupy his mind, Corky Laputa had seldom felt so cozy or more glad to be alive.
CHAPTER 43
THE MCBEE REPORT WAS DETAILED AND BUSINESSLIKE, as usual, yet also friendly, presented in calligraphy that made it a minor work of art and lent to it the aura of a historical document. Sitting at the desk in his study, Ethan could hear in his mind the musical lilt and the faint Scottish brogue of the housekeeper’s voice.
After an initial greeting to the effect that she hoped Ethan had enjoyed a productive day and that the Christmas spirit buoyed him as much as it did her, Mrs. McBee reminded him that she and Mr. McBee would be off to Santa Barbara early in the morning. They were spending two days with their son and his family, and were scheduled to return at 9:00 A.M. on the twenty-fourth.
She further reminded him that Santa Barbara lay but an hour to the north and that she remained on call in the event that her counsel was needed. She supplied her cellphone number, which Ethan already knew, and her son’s phone number. In addition, she provided her son’s street address and the information that less than three blocks from his house was a large, lovely park.
The park features many stately old California live oaks and other trees of size, she wrote, but within its boundaries are also at least two generous meadows, either of which will accommodate a helicopter in the event there should arise a household emergency of such dire proportions that I must be ferried home in the style of a battlefield surgeon.
Ethan would not have believed that anyone could make him laugh out loud at the end of this distressing day. With her dry sense of humor, Mrs. McBee had done so.
She reminded him that in her and Mr. McBee’s absence, Ethan would serve in loco parentis, with full responsibility for and authority over Fric.
During the day, if Ethan needed to be away from the estate, Mr. Hachette, the chef, would be next in the succession of command. The porters and maids could attend to the boy as needed.
After five o’clock, the day maids and the porters would be gone. Following dinner, Mr. Hachette would depart, as well.
Because the other live-in staff members were off on an advance Christmas holiday, Mrs. McBee advised Ethan that he must be certain to return before Mr. Hachette went home for the day. Otherwise Fric would be alone in the house, with no adults nearer than the two guards in the security office at the back of the estate.
Next, in her memo, the housekeeper addressed the issue central to Christmas morning. Early this day, after speaking with the boy in the library, before driving to West Hollywood to investigate Rolf Reynerd, Ethan had raised with Mrs. McBee the matter of Fric’s Christmas gifts.
Any kid would have thrilled to the idea that he could submit a list of wanted items as extensive as he wished and that he would receive on Christmas morning everything he requested, precisely those items, nothing less, but nothing more. Yet it seemed to Ethan that this robbed Christmas morning of its delicious suspense and even of some of its magic. As this would be his first Christmas at Palazzo Rospo, he had approached Mrs. McBee in her office off the kitchen to inquire as to the protocol of leaving an unexpected gift under the tree, for Fric.
“God
bless you, Mr. Truman,” she had said, “but it’s a bad idea. Not quite as bad as shooting yourself in the foot to observe the effect of the bullet, but nearly so.”
“Why?” he had wondered.
“Every member of the staff receives a generous Christmas bonus, plus a small item from Neiman Marcus or Cartier, of a more personal nature—”
“Yes, I read that in your Standards and Practices,” Ethan had said.
“And staff members are thoughtfully forbidden to exchange gifts among themselves because there are so many of us that shopping would take too much time and would impose a financial burden—”
“That’s in Standards and Practices as well.”
“I am flattered that you have it so well memorized. Then you’ll also know that the staff is kindly forbidden from presenting gifts to members of the family, primarily because the family is fortunate enough to have everything it could want, but also because Mr. Manheim considers our hard work and our discretion in discussing his private life with outsiders to be gifts for which he is grateful every day.”
“But the way the boy has to prepare a list and knows everything on it will be there Christmas morning—it seems so mechanized.”
“A major celebrity’s career and life are often one and the same, Mr. Truman. And in an industry as large and complex as Mr. Manheim, the only alternative to mechanization is chaos.”
“I suppose so. But it’s cold. And sad.”
Speaking more softly and with some affection, Mrs. McBee had taken him into her confidence: “It is sad. The boy is a lamb. But the best that all of us can do is be especially sensitive to him, give him counsel and encouragement when he asks for it or when he seems to need it but won’t ask. An actual unexpected Christmas gift might be well received by Fric, but I’m afraid his father wouldn’t approve.”
“I sense you mean he wouldn’t approve for some reason other than those in Standards and Practices.”