Mystery. Part 43

"What do you think it would have done to your mother if I had insisted on seeing you?"

"That's not why," Tom said. "You were too busy being shot at and eating lizards and looking through windows and solving murders."

"You can see it that way, if you like."

"The only time you wanted to really spend time with me was when you saw that you could use me. You wanted me to get interested in what happened to Jeanine Thielman. You wound me up like a clock and turned me loose. And you're pleased because I did just what you wanted me to."

"And you did it because of who you are," von Heilitz said. "If you'd been another sort of kid, I..."

"You wouldn't have done anything at all."

"But you're not another sort of kid."

"I wonder what I am," Tom said. "I wonder who I am."

"You're enough like me to have met me next to Ha.s.selgard's car," von Heilitz said. "And to have turned up at the hospital on the day Michael Mendenhall died."

"I'm not sure I really want to be like you," Tom said.

"But you don't want to be like your grandfather, either." Von Heilitz stood up and looked down at Tom, sprawled on the St. Alwyn's double bed with a paperback book beside him. Tom felt strong and conflicting currents of emotion-the old man wanted to come near him, put his hand on his cheek, hug him, and what he had said made it impossible.

"What I told you in that clearing was the truth, Tom. I do love you. And we're going to accomplish something great. It's been a long time coming, but we're going to do it-together." He put his hand on the bottom of the bed, and hesitated.

Tom thought, I don't want any speeches I don't want any speeches, and what von Heilitz saw in his face made him back away from the bed. "You don't have to come over to Hobart's with me. I'll check in with you before I go."

Tom nodded, scarcely knowing what he wanted anymore and too unhappy to think about it clearly. He did not see von Heilitz walk out of the room. The connecting door closed. He picked up his book and began reading. He could hear von Heilitz pacing around his room. In the book, Esterhaz drove along the sh.o.r.e of a steaming lake. It seemed to Esterhaz that another person, a barely visible person of terrifying strength, lived inside him, and that this other person was someone he had once been. Von Heilitz began speaking into his telephone. Why did I talk to him like that? Why did I talk to him like that? Tom wondered; Tom wondered; it's like I expect him to be an ordinary father it's like I expect him to be an ordinary father. Victor Pasmore was an ordinary father, and one of those was enough. Tom nearly got off the bed and went into the other room, but his enduring unhappiness, an unhappiness that tasted like anger, kept him nailed to the bed and the book.

There was a lot of invisibility in the world, Esterhaz thought. He took another pull from the pint bottle between his thighs. A lot of people disappeared into it, and other people barely noticed they were gone. Sorrow played a role, humiliation played a role. It was a foretaste of death, death in advance of death. Being left behind by the world was a big part of it. Drunks, wastrels, and murderers, combat soldiers after a war, musicians, detectives, drug addicts, poets, barbers, and hairdressers...as the visible world grew more and more crowded, so did its invisible counterpart. Esterhaz pulled up at a stoplight, and for a moment willed himself to see the invisible world he had just imagined, and a mob of shuffling, indifferent Invisibles, dressed in rags and old clothes, pulling on bottles like his own or leaning against lampposts, lying down on the snowy sidewalks, slid effortlessly into view.

Tom looked up from the book, awakened by a memory that seemed to come from some version of himself hidden within him-a memory of having seen himself here in this shabby room, alone and reading the book he was reading now. He had looked at looked at the self he was now, the almost grown Tom. A nearly abstract violence surrounded this memory-an explosion of smoke and fire-as it surrounded Esterhaz. the self he was now, the almost grown Tom. A nearly abstract violence surrounded this memory-an explosion of smoke and fire-as it surrounded Esterhaz.

Exhaustion that seemed to come from every cell in his body pulled him downward, and Tom thought, I have to get up I have to get up, but the book slipped from his hand, and he saw the caged animal that was his grandfather snapping his heavy body sideways toward a window as the arrow pierced his haunch. He reached for the book. His fingers touched the dark half of the face on the cover, and his grandfather looked up from the yellow note into his eyes, and he was asleep.

Or not. He looked at the window once, and saw darkening air. Some time after that he heard Lamont von Heilitz come through the connecting door and walk up to the side of the bed. I'll come with you, he said, but the words stayed inside him. The old man untied Tom's shoes and slipped them off his feet. He turned off the light. "Dear Tom," von Heilitz said. "It's okay. Don't worry about anything you said."

"No," Tom said, meaning, no, don't go, I have to come with you, and von Heilitz stroked his shoulder and leaned over in the darkness and kissed his head. He moved backwards, moving away, and a line of light came into the room from the door, and he was gone.

Tom was moving down a hazy corridor toward a small blond boy in a wheelchair. When he touched the boy's shoulder, the boy looked up at him from a book in his lap with a face darkened by rage and humiliation. "Don't worry," Tom said.

Dimly aware of the presence of a crowd of hovering figures, Tom leaned closer to the boy and saw that he was looking into his own, now barely recognizable, boyhood face. His heart banged, and he opened his eyes to a dark room in the St. Alwyn Hotel. The yellow glow of a street lamp lay on the window, and a filmy trace of light touched the ceiling. He reached for the bedside lamp, still seeing in his mind the face of the child in the wheelchair. Sudden light brought the room into focus. Tom rubbed his face and moaned. "Are you back?" he called. "Lamont?" It was the first time he had used the old man's first name, and it felt uncomfortable as a stone in his mouth. No response came from the other room.

Tom looked at his watch and saw that it was ten-fifteen. He thought he must have been asleep for three or four hours. He swung his legs off the bed and walked on stiff legs to the connecting door. "h.e.l.lo," he called, thinking that von Heilitz might have come back from the meeting at Hobart's and gone to bed. There was no answer. Tom opened the door. Here was another dark room, identical to his own-two chairs at a round table by the window, a double bed, a couch, a closet, and a bathroom. The bed was made, and a depression in the pillow and wrinkles in the coverlet showed where von Heilitz had lain.

Feeling as if he were trespa.s.sing, Tom walked through the dark room to the window. One carriage rolled up Calle Drosselmayer, the headlights of the cars behind s.h.i.+ning on the muscular flanks of a pair of black horses. A few people paraded down the sidewalk in the warm night air, and a flock of sailors ran across the street. The grille had been pulled down over the p.a.w.nshop window. An overweight man in a white s.h.i.+rt and tan trousers leaned against the wall beside the entrance to The Home Plate, smoking and looking across the street to the steps of the hotel. The man looked up, and Tom stepped back from the window. The man yawned, crossed his arms over his chest, flipped his cigarette into the street.

Tom went back to his own room to wait until the Shadow came back from his meeting with David Natchez. He ate bread and cheese and slices of salami, and read twenty pages of The Divided Man The Divided Man. When had von Heilitz left for the meeting at Hobart's? Two hours ago? Nervous, Tom laid the book open on the table and paced the room, listening for noises in the hall. He opened the door and leaned out, but saw only the empty corridor and a long row of brown doors with painted-over metal numbers. Someone down at the end of the hallway played scales on a tenor saxophone, someone else listened to a radio. Footsteps came toward him from around the corner leading to the stairs, and Tom ducked back behind his door. The footsteps rounded the corner, came nearer, went past his door. He peeked out and saw a small, dark-haired man with a ponytail carrying a trumpet case and a brown paper bag moving toward a door at the end of the hall. He knocked, and the saxophone abruptly inserted two honks into the E-minor scale. "Hey, Glenroy," said the man at the door. Tom leaned his head out into the hall, but saw no more than the door opening wide enough for the trumpet player to slide into the room.

He sat down at the table and ate another wedge of cheese. He took his key from his pocket and scratched TP into the wood near the PD. Then he tried to rub it out, but managed only to darken the thin white lines. When he looked out the window, the man in the white s.h.i.+rt was staring at a group of women who had just left The Home Plate and were walking up Calle Drosselmayer, talking and laughing. Tom pulled the telephone nearer to him and dialed Sarah Spence's number.

She answered in the middle of the first ring, and he imagined her watching television in Anton Goetz's dream palace, reaching out her hand with her eyes still on the screen, absently saying, "h.e.l.lo?"

He could not speak.

"h.e.l.lo?"

What did you tell people? Tom said silently. Tom said silently. Who did you tell? Who did you tell?

"Isn't anybody there?"

For longer than he had expected, she held the phone, waiting for a response.

Then: "Tom?"

He drew in a breath.

"Is that you, Tom?" she asked. Very faintly, he could hear the singsong of a television behind her voice. From farther away than the television, her mother yelled, "Are you crazy?" crazy?"

Tom hung up, then dialed his own house, without any idea of what he could say to his mother, or if he would say anything at all. The telephone rang twice, three times, and when it was picked up Dr. Milton's voice said, "This is the Pasmore residence." Tom slammed down the phone.

He looked at his watch and watched the minute hand jerk from ten-fifty to ten fifty-one.

Then he lifted the receiver again and dialed von Heilitz's telephone number. The phone rang and rang: Tom counted ten rings, then eleven, then fifteen, and gave up.

Unable to stay in the room any longer, he went to the bed and put on the shoes von Heilitz had taken off him, splashed water on his face in the bathroom, glanced at a taut face in the mirror, dried himself off and straightened his tie, and let himself out into the hallway. Through the last door came the sounds of a trumpet and tenor saxophone softly, slowly playing "Someone to Watch Over Me" in unison. Voices drifted toward him. He walked to the stairs and went down to the lobby.

A few sailors had spilled out from Sinbad's Cavern, and stood in a tight knot around the door, holding gla.s.ses and beer bottles. The night clerk leaned over the desk in a pool of light, slowly turning the pages of an Eyewitness Eyewitness. Tom came down the last steps, and the clerk and a few of the sailors glanced up at him, then looked away. Steel drum music from a jukebox came faintly from the bar and grill. Lamp light fell on worn leather chairs and couches, and illuminated red and blue details in a patchy Oriental carpet. On the other side of the St. Alwyn's gla.s.s doors, cars streamed up and down the street. Tom began moving through the sailors, who parted to let him open the door of the bar.

The steel drum music instantly sizzled into his head. Women and sailors and men in loud s.h.i.+rts filled the room with shouts and laughter and cigarette smoke. A couple of sailors were dancing in front of the crowded bar, flinging out their arms, snapping their fingers, drunkenly trying to keep in time to the music. Tom slowly worked his way down the bar, squeezing through the sailors and their girls, cigarette smoke making his eyes water. At last he reached the door, and went outside to the Street of Widows.

The market was closed, but the vendor still sat on his rug beside his hats and baskets, talking to himself or to imaginary customers. Across the street men went up the steps to the Traveller's Hotel. A CLOSED CLOSED sign hung in the door of Ellington's Allsorts and Notions. When the light changed, the cars and buggies began to move toward Calle Drosselmayer. The ping-ping-ping of the steel drums sounded through the window with the flas.h.i.+ng neon scimitar. At a break in the traffic, Tom ran across the street. sign hung in the door of Ellington's Allsorts and Notions. When the light changed, the cars and buggies began to move toward Calle Drosselmayer. The ping-ping-ping of the steel drums sounded through the window with the flas.h.i.+ng neon scimitar. At a break in the traffic, Tom ran across the street.

"Hats for your lady, hats for yourself, baskets for the market," sang the barefoot vendor.

Tom knocked on Hobart's door. No lights burned in the shop.

"Nothing in there, the cupboard be bare," the vendor called to him.

Tom beat on the door again. He searched the frame and found a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton and held it down until he saw a small dark figure moving toward him through the interior of the shop. "Closed!" Hobart shouted. Tom stepped back so the shopowner could see his face, and Hobart darted to the door, opened it, and pulled Tom inside.

"What do you want? What you looking for?"

"My friend isn't still here?"

Hobart stepped backward and said, "What friend? Do I know what friend you're talking about?" He was wearing a long cream-colored nights.h.i.+rt that made him look like an angry doll.

"Lamont von Heilitz. I came here with him this morning. We bought a lot of things-you said I looked like his nephew."

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," Hobart said. "Maybe a man says he's gonna be somewhere, maybe he never means to come. n.o.body tells Hobart-no reason reason for anybody to tell Hobart, don't you know that?" Hobart stared at him stonily, then took a step toward the door. for anybody to tell Hobart, don't you know that?" Hobart stared at him stonily, then took a step toward the door.

"You mean he didn't come?"

"If you don't know, maybe you're not supposed to," Hobart said. "How do I know what you are? You're no nephew of that man's."

"Did the policeman show up?"

"There was someone here," Hobart admitted. "Might have been him."

"And my friend never came for the meeting," Tom said, for a second almost too stunned to worry.

"If you're his friend, how come you don't know that?"

"He left the hotel hours ago to come here."

"Could be that's what he told you you. Man came here and waited, could be that's what he wanted wanted him to do," Hobart said. "I see you're worried, but I tell you, I worried about Lamont twenty, thirty years, it never did a bit of good. He put on a stringy old wig and a bunch a rags, and he stood on a street corner somewheres, watching for something he knew was gonna happen. I'm talking straight to you now, nephew." Hobart put his hand on the doork.n.o.b. him to do," Hobart said. "I see you're worried, but I tell you, I worried about Lamont twenty, thirty years, it never did a bit of good. He put on a stringy old wig and a bunch a rags, and he stood on a street corner somewheres, watching for something he knew was gonna happen. I'm talking straight to you now, nephew." Hobart put his hand on the doork.n.o.b.

"How long did the other man wait for him?"

"He was here a good hour, and when he left he was steaming. Don't look for any favors from that man." Hobart's teeth gleamed in the dark shop. "Nearly tore off my bell, way he went through the door." He patted Tom's arm. "You just go back and wait for him. This is the way your friend works works, don't you know that yet?"

"I guess not," Tom said.

"Don't worry." Hobart reached up to hold the bell with one hand as he cracked the door open with the other.

"That's what he he told me," Tom said, and went outside. The door closed silently behind him. told me," Tom said, and went outside. The door closed silently behind him.

"You got in, but did you buy?" the vendor chanted.

Tom glanced at the shoeless figure leaning against the wall. He nearly laughed out loud-relief made him feel lighter than air. He walked past the entrance of the Traveller's Hotel toward the vendor and knelt on the sidewalk beside him. "You had me worried," he whispered. "Why didn't you-?"

The vendor was a foot shorter than von Heilitz. Two doglike teeth jutted from his upper jaw, and ragged brown scars sewed shut both of his eyes. "A basket, or a hat?"

"A hat," Tom said.

"Three dollars, pick your size, pick your size."

Tom gave the man bills and picked up a hat at random.

"Did you hear a fight, or a scuffle, or anything like that, a couple of hours ago? It would have been outside the bar across the street."

"I heard the Angel of the Lord," the vendor said. "And I heard the Lord of Darkness, walking up and down in the world. You'll look handsome, in that hat."

Tom gave the hat to a sailor as he pa.s.sed through the bar to go back to his room, and the sailor placed it on the head of a pretty wh.o.r.e.

Laughter, soft conversation, and music filtered into the fourth-floor hallway. Tom let himself into his room and went to the window without turning on any of the lights. The man in the white s.h.i.+rt was picking his teeth with a fingernail, and a young woman in skin-tight shorts, high heels, and a halter top whispered in his ear. The man shook his head. She leaned against him, and rubbed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his arm. The man stopped picking his teeth. He turned his head and uttered two or three words, and the girl jumped away from him as if she had been touched with a cattle prod.

Tom pulled a chair up to the window and sat down, his chin on his forearms. After three or four minutes, he pushed up the window. Warm, moist air flowed over him. Steady traffic pa.s.sed before the hotel on Calle Drosselmayer, and now and then a taxi pulled up and let out couples and single men who walked across the sidewalk and up the steps to the hotel.

At one o'clock, the man in the white s.h.i.+rt went into The Home Plate. He came out ten minutes later and went back to the wall.

Tom had been at least partially rea.s.sured by his talk with Hobart Ellington, and for a long time as he watched the street beneath him, he waited for the sound of Lamont von Heilitz coming into the adjoining room. Tom had never seen what went on at night in downtown Mill Walk, and while he waited, expecting the old man to come in at any minute, he watched the street life, fascinated. The number of cars and other sorts of vehicles on the street had actually increased, and more and more people packed the sidewalks: in couples, their arms around each others' waists; in groups of five or six, carrying bottles and gla.s.ses, having an ambulatory party. Men and women on the sidewalk now and then recognized people in the cars and open carriages, and shouted greetings, and sometimes ran through the traffic to join their friends. Neil Langenheim rolled by in an open carriage, too drunk to sit up straight, as a wild-haired girl nuzzled his red face and moved to kneel on top of him. Moonie Firestone went past in the front seat of a white Cadillac convertible, her arm slung comfortably around the neck of a white-haired man. At one-thirty, when the traffic was at its height, he heard footsteps in the hall, and jumped up to go to the connecting door; when the footsteps continued down the hall toward the party in Glenroy Breakstone's room, he went back to the window and saw the head of a girl with shoulder-length blond hair nestled on the shoulder of a black-haired man driving another long convertible. It was Sarah Spence, he thought, and then thought it could not be; the girl moved, and he saw the flash of her profile, and thought again that she was Sarah. The car moved out of sight, leaving him with his uncertainty.

By two-thirty the crowds had gone, leaving only a few wandering groups of young people, most of them men, moving up and down the sidewalk. The man in the white s.h.i.+rt had vanished. At three, a tide of men and women poured out of The Home Plate and stood uncertainly outside as the lights went off behind them, then drifted off. The noises from down the hall ceased, and loud voices and footsteps went past the door. One car went up Calle Drosselmayer. Traffic lights flashed red and green. Tom's eyelids closed.

Noises from the street-a junk man tossing cases of empty bottles onto his cart-brought him half of the way into wakefulness hours later. It was still dark outside. He staggered to his bed and fell across the covers.

Hunger awakened him at ten. He left the bed and looked into the next room. Von Heilitz had not returned. Tom showered and put on clean underclothes and socks from the suitcase. He dressed in a pale pink s.h.i.+rt and blue linen suit he remembered from his first visit to von Heilitz's house. Before he b.u.t.toned the double-breasted vest, he knotted a dark blue tie around his neck. In von Heilitz's clothes, he walked back into the other room, thinking that the detective might have come in and gone out again while he was asleep, but there was no explanatory note on the table or the bed.

The owner of the p.a.w.nshop was pus.h.i.+ng up the metal grille, and the man in the white s.h.i.+rt, like von Heilitz, had not returned.

Tom sat on the end of his bed, almost dizzy with worry. It seemed to him that he would have to stay in this little room forever. His stomach growled. He took out his wallet and counted his money-fifty-three dollars. How long could he stay at the St. Alwyn on fifty-three dollars? Five days? A week? If If I go downstairs and eat, he'll be here when I come back I go downstairs and eat, he'll be here when I come back, Tom thought, and let himself out into the hall.

The day clerk rolled his eyes when Tom asked if any messages had been left for him, and laboriously looked over his shoulder at a rank of empty boxes. "Does it look to you like there are any messages?" Tom bought a thick copy of the Eyewitness Eyewitness.

Tom went into Sinbad's Cavern and ate scrambled eggs and bacon while a hunchback mopped spilled beer off the wooden floor. The paper said nothing about the fire at Eagle Lake or Jerry Hasek and his partners. A paragraph on the society page told Mill Walk that Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Redwing had decided to spend the rest of the summer at Tranquility, their beautiful estate in Venezuela, where they expected to be entertaining many of their friends during the coming months. Tranquility had its own eighteen-hole golf course, both an indoor and an outdoor pool, a tennis court, a thirteenth-century stained gla.s.s window Katinka Redwing had purchased in France, and a private library of eighteen thousand rare books. It also housed the famous Redwing collection of South American religious art. The street door opened, and Tom looked over his shoulder to see the same two policemen who had been there the day before easing their bellies up to the bar. "Usual," one of them said, and the barman put a dark bottle of p.u.s.s.er's rum and two shot gla.s.ses in front of them. "Here's to another perfect day," one of the cops said, and Tom turned back to his eggs, hearing the clink of the shot gla.s.ses meeting.

He went back to the lobby and climbed the stairs, praying that he would find the old man in his room, pacing impatiently between the bed and the window, demanding to know where he had gone. Tom came down the hall and put his key in the lock. Please Please. He turned the key and swung the door open. Please Please. He was looking into an empty room. The food in his stomach turned into hair and brick dust. He walked inside and leaned against the door. Then he moved to the connecting door-this room, too, was empty. Fighting off the demon of panic, Tom went to the closet and put his hand in the pocket of the suit he had worn the day before. He found the card, and went to the table and dialed Andres's number.

A woman answered, and when Tom asked to speak to Andres, said that he was still asleep.

"This is an emergency," Tom said. "Would you please wake him up?"

"He worked all night long, Mister, it'll be an emergency if he don't get his rest." She hung up.

Tom dialed the number again, and the woman said, "Look, I told told you-" you-"

"It's about Mr. von Heilitz," Tom said.

"Oh, I see," she said, and put down the telephone. A few minutes later, a thick voice said, "Start talking, and you better make it good."

"This is Tom Pasmore, Andres."

"Who? Oh. Lamont's friend."

"Andres, I'm very worried about Lamont. He went out to a meeting with a policeman early last night, and he never showed up for the meeting, and he's still not back."

"You got me up for that? Don't you know Lamont disappears all the time? Why do you think they call him the Shadow, man? Just wait for him, he'll turn up."

"I waited up all night," Tom said. "Andres, he told me he'd be back."

"Maybe that's what he wanted you to think." It was like talking to Hobart Ellington.

Tom did not say anything, and finally Andres yawned and said, "Okay, what do you want me to do about it?"