The Book of Forbidden Words

The Book of Forbidden Words
by John MacBeath Watkins
1
The
Book of Forbidden Words

Table of Contents
Ch. 1 -- The Book & The Flame Pg. 3
Ch. 2 – A New Marriage Pg. 8
Ch. 3 – A Fish Who Worships Fire Pg. 14
Ch. 4 – A Huge Shadow Cast by a Small Man Pg. 24
Ch. 5 – The Legion of Strangers Pg. 33
Ch. 6 – The Woman With the Tattooed Eyes Pg. 54
Ch. 7 – A House for Mr. Silas Pg. 67
Ch. 8 – The Blue Peter Pg. 81
Ch. 9 – A Piece of Paper Pg. 96
Ch. 10 – A Bump in the Night Pg. 109
Ch. 11 – A Distant Voice Across the Water Pg. 125
Ch. 12 – For a Few Heartbeats More Pg. 134
Ch. 13 – A Night on the River Styx Pg. 143
Ch. 14 – Too Subtle for my Ken Pg. 156
Ch. 15 – More Sensitive than Anyone would Guess Pg. 166
Ch. 16 – My Lover on my Mind Pg. 179
Ch. 17 – A Reader of the Book Pg. 195
Ch. 18 – Astounded. Bemused. Confounded. Insensate, even. Pg. 214
Ch. 19 – Dry Eyes Crack and Up Come Weeds Pg. 230
Ch. 20 – A Stupidity Theory of History Pg. 240
Ch. 21 – Just a Short-Order Cook from Hell's Kitchen Pg. 253
Ch. 22 – The Parts to Omit Pg. 273
Ch. 23 – O why lie down without you Pg. 286
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Chapter 1
The Book & the Flame
"Henry Greathead?" The man who loomed over my table was tall and stooped, with hooded
green eyes, thinning white hair and a shabby but once expensive suit. A suit at a ski resort. It
was late afternoon, and large slow flakes of snow fell outside the restaurant, softening the shapes
of trees and cars outside.
"You have the advantage of me, sir. Might I inquire what you call yourself?" I knew he
wouldn't tell me. They never do.
"You realize I could compel you to leave?"
"I think you rather like being tracked," I remarked. "It must be lonely, the life you live."
"A quiet life of scholarly pursuit. Ordinarily, I have no complaints." He carried a satchel
with his copy of the Book in it. It was a meter from my hand. I had never been closer to the
Book before. I took a sip of my grappa and tried to remain calm.
"You could compel someone to give you a better suit," I commented.
"This one is warm enough, and I have no need to impress anyone."
I wanted to make a grab for the Book, but it would have been futile. A few words from
him, and I would give it back. I would have thought there was no other course.
"May I see it?" I had been pursuing the Book of Forbidden Words for more than 20
years, and had met its Readers, but never seen a copy.
He smiled. It was a lonely life. I knew he'd been training an acolyte, but that bond must
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be restricted to scholarship. The Readers have no loved ones. Study of the Book can give them
some control over the structure of human thought, but it subjects the mind to wracking strains.
Only one who is completely self-involved can ride its forces, like a cork in a storm at sea. To get
attached to anything or anyone is to risk being torn apart. Their only attachment is to the Book,
and they will die for that. The one person they need is an acolyte to keep the Book alive and to
learn its many secrets.
Looked at one way, we exist only to pass on our genes. All our striving against each
other, the loves and triumphs of our lives, are just a way for the genes that program our behavior
to get themselves reproduced. The Book of Forbidden Words uses Readers that way. They know
it and accept it. Because of the way it isolates its Readers, the Book could not spread widely, or
the species it needs to exist would die out. It relies on affecting a few people deeply, rather than
many slightly. The Readers willingly sacrifice emotional attachments and all chance of home
and family. They exist to understand the Book, to teach it, to extend its scholarship. Knowledge
is their God, and study of the Book is their worship.
The young science of memes might one day comprehend the power of the Book. Memes
are strings of information that propagate themselves through our minds. Everyone knows why
the chicken crossed the road, but no one needs to know. That string of words continues to infect
new generations without purpose or harm. Other memes are less benign. When 'The Sorrows of
Young Werther' was published, a wave of suicides swept through Germany. Goethe surely did
not mean to kill off a generation of depressed German teens, but something about his book
turned the key that opened the door to death for them.
The Book of Forbidden Words is an ubermeme. It can help the Readers hook into memes
in our minds, activating them and combining them to affect our thoughts. The Readers must
constantly find ways to adapt the Book to changes in the web of meaning that forms the zeitgeist.
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It is a meme itself, replicating slowly through the ages. It's power is an old one, and once
embodied in text, that power gave the Book a life more persistent than any one human being or
any one civilization. For a book collector, the Book of Forbidden Words is the ultimate prize.
But no one has ever prized the Book away from its Readers.
To my surprise, the Reader pulled the Book out of his satchel and set it on the table. The
covers were wood, oak by the grain, stained by who knew how many hands. The spine was thick
leather and the Book had metal hinges. It hadn't always looked that way. It must have been
rebound several times, pages had been torn and recopied. At some point it had been copied from
another version, but copied with new notes and illuminations.
"How old?" I couldn't form any more of a sentence.
"The text of the Book itself, or this copy?"
"This copy."
"Less than a thousand years. About Peter Abelard's time, I think. The binding's less than
half that age."
The text varied in age, I knew. Parts were said to be in Etruscan, and only Readers of the
Book could read those passages. Parts were older, parts were newer. The most basic texts were
in hieroglyphics. Some were said to date from when the Sphinx still had a lion's head.
"Why…"
"Why am I showing this to you? Because I've reached a crisis. My health is failing and
my acolyte's a disaster. This Book may not go on. I want it to live on in your memory, not in
the way it would in mine, with an understanding of its secrets, but in that small way you've been
striving for, where the Book is an object of envy for those who don't posses it. For a collector
like you, its real power is not the point. It's the knowledge of that power and the possession of a
fetishized commodity that makes the Book worth having for you. Few could read it without a
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guide and understand it, and if they did, few could survive the way the Book changes one's mind.
You know that, and desire the Book without desiring to read it. So you desire the Book not for
its secrets but for itself.
"Yes, go ahead, touch it. You can even open the cover. I know what languages you've
studied, and you'd be halfway through the Book before you got to the Greek and Latin you could
understand."
My hands were sweating and I feared I would damage the fragile velum pages, so I put
on a pair of gloves.
The old fool called the fat fool by his full name. He always starts with the full name. It shows he
has a string to pull your soul. I'm never 'hey, you,' to him, always my name. Name, you will now
commence your studies for the day, Name, that technique is not to be used for having sex with
whom you choose, Name, we do not use the Book to make us rich, the Book itself is riches.
And now he's pulled the Book out, the holiest of holies, and set it on a table in a
restaurant where people who came to a ski resort although they won't ski in even the best
conditions sit and drink coffee or liquor and eat those excessive Austrian pastries. Is he offering
it to the fat fool? He's told me far too many times how horrible it would be for the Book to fall
into the wrong hands, how we must be ready to sacrifice our lives, even, to keep it from falling
into the wrong hands.
Only now he thinks my hands are the wrong ones. If I knew his name, I could compel
him. He knows mine, so he can pull at my mind. He can make me forget the Book ever existed,
if he wants to, I'm certain of that. I've got to act soon, or he'll put my knowledge where I can't
get at it. Even if I don't get the Book away from him, I've got some of it in my head, and I can
find another Reader who doesn't know me. I can get close, then get it away. They have no
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notion of the power one could wield with the Book if one was willing. This one's willing, if the
rest of them aren't.
"I think I see where this is going," I said softly, as if I were a virgin hunting a unicorn and didn't
want to scare it off. "I knew a smuggler once, a great drinker, who sailed with loads of
marijuana from Latin America to ports in the U.S. When he decided it was getting too
dangerous, he wanted to remember the good times but he didn't want to remember anything
incriminating. So he went to a hypnotist and got her to convince him he didn't understand
Spanish. It took three or four sessions, but now he remembers sailing to exotic ports, he
remembers being in the bar with all the others, but he doesn't understand what they were saying.
He can't remember any introductions, he couldn't tell you what deals were made, but he
remembers the trip, and moving into the bordello, and roaring nights on equatorial streets, and
the green flash as the sun sank below the horizon on a warm evening out on the Pacific. It's
going to be something like that for your acolyte."
"If I can do my part correctly. He has the talent, that's the thing. If he failed to learn the
languages, or didn't have the head for the strangeness of the Book, it would be easy to do as you
say. But he's far more talented than I. The trouble is, he has no restraint. He would combine the
power of the Book with power of more ordinary provenance, like money or political position.
He likes power too well to handle it properly. His ambition would burn its way though the
Book, and through cities and nations as well if I let him. I will keep the Book from him by
whatever means I must."
He put the Book back in the satchel, and began to move off. I stood and followed (I
could think of no other course.) We walked outside and up the hill to the station for the
tramway. He got on the tram with the skiers, an old man in an old suit with no skis, surrounded
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by fit young men and women in form hugging ski suits. Some stared at him at first, but he
smiled and gave each one a glance and they suddenly lost interest and started chatting with their
neighbors. Some didn’t look at him at all, and I guessed one of them was the acolyte. I waved
and walked back inside ( I could think of no other course) and went straight to my room where I
at once fell asleep.
The next day I heard about the fire. The tunnel the tram went through had provided the
perfect flue for a fire and not even bones were left. The metal tracks themselves were melted.
No one at the resort could find words to talk about it, and no other topic lasted past a sentence or
two. All were stunned and shocked, except, a waiter told me, one oddly cheerful man whose
name no one could remember.
***********************************************************************
Chapter 2
A New Marriage
A small white-haired man with an honest, open face and frank blue eyes sat by the pool at
a resort in Trinidad talking to a tall, slender young woman with dark hair and an intense, restless
manner. He wore loud Bermuda shorts and an aloha shirt, she cutoffs and a blue chambray shirt
with the sleeves removed. Her limbs and cheeks were freckled. The old man lounged in comfort
while she sat forward on the edge of a chair. For him, she was framed in shadow and leaves.
Behind him she saw brilliant sunlight glaring off the pool's rippling water. Their argument was
near its inevitable conclusion.
"As for allowing my mind to absorb what I’ve studied, I’ve learned it and my brain is not
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full," she said. "There's no need to delay.”
“If all the Book gave you was knowledge, you could proceed as rapidly as you desired,
Nymue DuLac. But the Book changes your mind, and the human mind is not infinitely elastic.
Best you let yours rest.”
True names were power in their world. She looked severely out at the pool. Best for him
to think it was her real name.
The Book lay beside him in a satchel. It was never far from him. She sometimes
dreamed of getting it from him. When he ended her session, she had been reading a section in
which the calligraphy gave the text an unexpected character, and annotations and illuminations
took her back to the Bronze Age. Even the texture and smell of the pages had been chosen for
the atmosphere they created, the feelings they evoked. These things helped the Book's imagery
seduce her into its world. The physical needs of her body might not have been enough to draw
her out of it. She felt she was learning things from the text the old man had never understood,
that no one had understood since the author had died millennia before. She had to know more,
and know it now, but the old man's greater knowledge of technique made it easy to restrain her.
"All right," she said, with a toss of long brown hair, "You win, you always do. I'm going
inside, where at least it's air conditioned.”
The cutoffs and shirt were worn, the sandals as well, and she looked better attired for an
archaeological dig (she had been on one when she met the old man) than for an earnest resort
trying to attract the right sort. Except the eyes, of course. She looked as if she wore too much
makeup, though in fact she wore none.
Up in their rooms, she saw the battered blue leather of the old man's copy of the Rubaiyat
and thought that here, at least, was a book she could read all she wanted.
Pencilled on the endpaper was "p. 62," so she turned to page 62.
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You know, my Friends, how bravely in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
Fitzgerald had translated Khayyam as an Epicurean, cynical about learning and power but
not about life or joy. Whether the old Persian mathematician had intended the poetry that way,
or Fitzgerald had reinvented him, it was only Fitzgerald's translation that captivated the Western
mind.
She was thinking about the difficulty of translating poetry while her thumb ran absently
down the inside of the back cover. She wasn't searching for the book plate hidden between the
endpaper and the cover, but curiosity was one of her qualifications as an acolyte.
The book plate was from the old man's father, formally presenting him on his twelfth
birthday "an old book with much wisdom, from which I believe you are ready to learn.” The
flyleaf at the front of the book was scarred where the book plate had been carefully removed. He
had been careful enough to remove his name from prying eyes, but too sentimental to destroy his
father’s note entirely. Too sentimental to be a Reader at all, really.
She carefully put the book plate back in place and put the book exactly as it had been.
Then she went downstairs and approached him. He was drowsing, dreaming of the day
he could lay down the burden of the Book and become an ordinary man.
"Merle Underhill, you deserve a rest, and I plan to see that you get it," she said gently,
and with the techniques she had learned from him, she saw to it. He spent his next six days in a
pleasant fog, from which he emerged refreshed and invigorated. An hour of this feeling was
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followed by what felt like a winter of chagrin once he found she had taken the Book.
Finally she settled in Seattle. She liked the cool weather (it was by then late September)
and knew that the city seldom saw snow. New clothing quite unlike her old clothes and a trip to
the hairdresser for a change of color made her look like a different person. She enjoyed the
bustle of an American city and on her breaks she would study the people on the street.
There was a tall, thin homeless man with a nose like a linoleum knife and a sinister curve
to the brow. He was never drunk, and on those rare occasions when he spoke to someone, he
was courteous and rational.
Perhaps because of his appearance or perhaps because of his diffident manner, he was
hopeless as a beggar. She used skills acquired in a misspent youth to surreptitiously slip a twenty
into the pocket of his jacket, but she could see that malnutrition and isolation were slowly
unhinging his mind. He was often muttering, and she supposed he was on the street because he
was mentally unstable.
Then one day she went to an old film to clear her mind for further study. He was there,
up on the screen, the villain of the piece. Stories and images were the meat of her study; she
became fascinated by the way the stories this man portrayed conflicted with who he was.
One day she stood close behind him to listen to his mutterings.
"I'll call it The Shabby Man Ages," he muttered.
"His jowls sag …"
It wasn't lunatic ravings at all. It was poetry, seemingly composed and spoken at the limit
of a single breath, and it was about a bulky man with a determined expression and worn-out
clothing who was standing across the street. And more so, it was about the homeless man who
spoke it.
"You cannot save the world," the old man had told her. "If you try, if you even begin,
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you are lost to me and the unbroken string of scholars who have perpetuated knowledge of the
Book from ancient times. Remember this; truth is your God, study is your worship. The Book
demands its price, and this is part of it."
But how could it hurt those legions of scholars if she cared about one person? It was not
as if she was falling in love. She knew that would be the end of her, because the Book had made
her vulnerable. But to help one isolated man, who in truth was not attractive at all, surely that
could do no harm?
So easily we deceive ourselves. The trouble started because she wanted to care about
someone. The homeless man’s need was his fatal charm. A masterful and confident man would
have had no chance, a sweet and charming man would have found her armored against him.
Only a hopeless man clinging to the edge of reality by his fingernails could have seduced her.
She could help him. In fact, she couldn't help herself.
But she is in no condition now to recount how she helped him or at what cost, though
there is hope of a recovery, even hope that her star will shine brighter than before. Perhaps we
should allow him to explain.
*****************************************
Chapter 3
A Fish Who Worships Fire
A sharp-faced man at the newsstand thinks he sees me talking to myself, but he’s wrong. I
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haven’t been on speaking terms in years. I’ve told myself too many lies, called myself too many
names.
My lips move, my voice murmurs but it’s not a conversation. I use the isolation of my
life to compose elegies to strangers. I have no books, the library kicked me out for falling asleep
when I got warm, and the people at the newsstand won't let me touch their merchandise. Except
for newspapers salvaged from the trash, I have regressed to a preliterate way of life. For untold
thousands of years before writing was invented, the great literature of cultures was passed on
through a verbal tradition. Rhythm and rhyme made it possible for generations of storytellers to
tell the great epics verbatim, and they enable me to remember the details of my life and help me
overcome my great fear that hunger and isolation will destroy my mind.
No one touches me, no one speaks to me, except the cop who tells me to move on. It’s
against the law in Seattle to recline upon the sidewalk, so I choose between slow steps from
nowhere to eternity, or standing with the patience of a stork, or reclining against the law.
Some of you might recognize my face. It’s a bad face, a sinister face, a face that all
humanity should oppose. When I was an actor my face was my fortune. On the silver screen I
played villains, and my appearance alone was enough to make even the most lumpish and unsure
actor look like a hero. I was a maker of stars, but consigned to the ranks of character actors
myself. It was steady work, but not terribly well paid.
And now I don’t own my face. I spent time in a psychiatric hospital. While I was there,
my mother had power of attorney to handle my business. Max Milligan, director of a play I had
starred in, persuaded her to sell him the rights to my face. I can no longer appear on television
or in films without his consent. Unfortunately he died intestate. With no will, there was no way
to know who to ask for consent to use my face. The case could be in probate for years, and I
have no resources to pursue a legal fight.
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You could call me a visible man. Suppose you ceased to have corporeal existence. You
somehow came to exist only in the imagination of those who saw you, a sort of reverse invisible
man. People would see you, they would react as if you were there, but when they closed their
eyes you would cease to exist. You would be unable to lift a teacup unless it were perceived that
you could and should lift it, or even move without a sort of unconscious agreement with the
people perceiving you.
You would be a sort of thinking dream, perhaps able to persuade the dreamer to let you
walk through a door but unable to do it if they could not imagine it. If this happened to you,
would you know it? Would any action you chose to take be unimaginable to those who knew
you?
It happens all the time to politicians and other public figures. It happened to my friend
Max. One night all the dreams of him were nightmares, and he flew from the roof of a building
into the black oblivion of the pavement and freedom from the dreams that drove him. I still
wonder whether it was my dream that killed him.
Does anyone dream of me? I wander alone, no one touching me, an image on the
periphery of our consensual hallucination. I am homeless, in the old tongue I am a bum. I serve
to remind people of the reasons for their compromises, their servitude, the suppression of their
desires, the involuntary hours that steal away most of their lives.
I’m not the only dream. There are dreams of power, dreams of glory, dreams to drive
their owners far to hard for them to bear. Their legs stride by with a purpose and punish the
pavement with well-shod feet, pushing the earth in its orbit, serious business and money to be
made as long as the legs don’t stop. Faces of stone and eyes like glass curtains, expressionless,
efficient, impregnable, pass by my broken eyes and abandoned mouth and lazy, good-for-nothing
teeth.
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So I sit there on the sidewalk reclining against the law. I keep a sharp eye out for law
enforcement and for people who seem somehow different. At the Public Market there are plenty
of people to watch. Tourists and fishmongers, vegetable vendors and T-shirt brokers, arbitrageurs
in used items and all the ordinary people of the city.
In a single breath I recite The Shabby Man Ages to assure myself that my mind is still
intact.
His jowls sag, his belly swells
his dreams are crushed beneath the years
and yet he faces every day
and doesn't let his mind dwell
on slipping hopes and growing fears
and failing eyes and still I say
his courage holds up very well
to walk among his desperate peers
and face his fate down on the way.
It has been three weeks since I saw him, and I remember perfectly, so my mind must be
intact. Or perhaps it's been three months.
An atavistic figure appears, waiting for the walk light. An administrative assistant,
although she still calls it secretarial work. Nylons and makeup, impractical shoes and clothing
that fits like sexual armor. She wears gray and pink and her life is stolen hour by hour by
corporate dreams. (Or is she a spy in mufti, penetrating a closed world by adopting traditional
costume? Her boss wears the businessman's burqa, suit and tie, to make himself
indistinguishable from other businessmen.) Something about her appearance is untrue. This
isn’t who she really is, and I find the dissonance so tragic that I at once fall in love with her.
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An Ode to a Secretary, then.
A secretary on a sidewalk has got to keep her guard up
when she’s walking like a doe into a crosswalk
where strong trucks growl at a stoplight
and pimps prowl with ladies of the night.
Down in those city caverns where the power lines hang like vines
there’s a carnivore on every crosswalk,
a woman’s got to keep her guard up
if she’s going to survive another block.
It takes a brisk step to keep them at bay,
it takes a locked door at the end of the day
to keep a woman safe from the city wilds
and the sidewalk where a secretary’s perils lay.
(A locked door, what heaven would that be. A hot bath, a warm bed…but no, this isn't
about me.)
The car is always too far…
And just then, when the walk light changes and she begins to cross, a swarthy man with a
face like a wolf streaks by and thrusts his arm through the straps on her handbag and uses his
momentum to sweep it from her grip. She looks at me. I am flooded with a feeling as if I am
somehow one with her, closer than a lover, not quite as close as an internal organ. I have to rise
as the bag snatcher speeds toward me; she is thinking I can block his path. As with almost
everyone else since I lost control of my image, he sees me as peripheral, a figurative player with
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no speaking part and no contact with the leading players. I weigh about as much as a moth, but
my limbs are long and I might get in the way.
She reaches my arm out like a man hailing a cab and he runs right into it. With his
Adam’s apple. I spin halfway `round and fall with him in an ungainly heap of limbs. When he
rises again gasping, my leg has somehow become entangled in the straps of the handbag. The
human wolf pulls at it, but I bend my knee and he can’t get it away. Running footsteps approach
and he flees.
A forest of legs and a storm of voices surround me.
“We got the sucker.”
“No, he got away.”
“He’s right here.”
“That’s somebody else.”
“He’s got the handbag.”
“He grabbed it with his leg?”
“No wonder he tripped.”
Why do I try to be helpful? With my face, I always get blamed.
A policeman enters the ring.
“Back off, people. Stand back.” He’s using that dog trainer voice they teach police to use
to make people mind.
“Is this the bag, ma’am?"
She bends over and takes it. Her hair is permed like a helmet and dyed that artificial
blonde that never fooled anyone.
“That’s it.” The bag is bigger than I realized, and heavy. It is red leather with stiff sides
and a strap across the top with fastenings straining like a fat man’s belt. It looks like a way to
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never be separated from her unabridged dictionary. I didn’t know then about the Book.
“Will you press charges against this man?”
She doesn’t even look at me, not even to look through me.
“No.”
“I can’t arrest him or hold him without your cooperation. You can bet this isn’t the only
bag he’s snatched.”
She might say something in my defense. She of all people knows that I am innocent.
“No.” I guess she means no cooperation, but in context it should mean that was not the
only bag I’d snatched. I object.
“I almost got the bag snatcher. I got the bag back anyhow.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the policeman says. His inflection indicates that
this means I should shut up. He is a sturdy man about thirty, with a tendency to plumpness.
“But I didn’t grab the bag.”
“Ma’am,” the cop calls. “Now where did she go?”
“Can I stand up?”
“Didn’t I bust you for sitting on the sidewalk?”
“That’s why I want to stand up.”
The feeling is gone now, the oneness I felt with her. I am empty and alone, untouchable
and cold. So I move my feet slowly like a penitent in chains, in my walk from nowhere to
eternity. I should feel safer, the cop keeps watching me. And yet I feel exposed and long for
escape.
The car is always too far, the bus takes too much time to come,
and the eyes are always seeking her, the eyes of urban beasts
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on the city streets where the bankers and the bikers and the bums
strut and stumble and seek small openings in her fabric armor.
A tear or a gap will give them a chance
give them flesh to feed the furtive glance
that fixes now on the line of her calf,
then takes in the shape of her ass.
(Or is it I who fear the piteous gaze of the ordinary man, or the clenched face of a woman
who caught my eyes' quick scan?)
It takes a brisk step to keep them at bay
it takes a locked door at the end of the day
to keep a woman safe from the city wilds
and the sidewalk where the secretary’s perils lay.
Plenty of time to finish it later. Time for an epic poem. I will write it then forget it, then
write it again. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and shepherding the wind. I have no goal but to
put one foot before the other, marching with that thousand-yard stare, hayfoot, strawfoot, like an
inept soldier in a long lost war. I retreat from Moscow every day and leave my dead strewn in the
snow bloodless and inert and unfit food for ravens. I must sit down, but the cop is watching, so I
retreat from Moscow step by step, clayfoot, strawfoot, clayfoot, strawfoot, broken by a thousand
defeats and desertions, glory gone and life ebbing.
Struggle never made me stronger
It only made me weep
It only gave me broken dreams
That hurt me in my sleep.
(No, that lyric is mine, not hers.)
19
Where glasses clink and eyes link and whiskey fills the tumblers
and ice melts and eyes melt she seeks someone to love her.
Her head turns like a lighthouse,
searching for herself in the eyes of an unmet lover.
When she was younger she had power, and beauty was its source.
She’s survived a barren marriage and a bitter divorce,
and wonders if beauty has begun to decay
and fears what the unmet eyes might say.
She watches the couples who merge more than dance
to a slow-paced number.
They sway like the waves on the loneliest day
in the life of a lighthouse keeper.
(Even knowing I’m not human in your eyes, I am still fool enough to fall in love with
you.)
It takes a locked door at the end of the day
(deadbolt and blinds drawn
until the coffee perks at dawn)
to make the woman safe
(night shut our, lights on
don’t know where the neighbor’s gone)
from the city wilds.
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At home to hear another voice
she turns on the TV
It speaks of love and passion
and dreams that will never be.
And when the moon is empty
and when her tears wax round
she dreams that sleep will take her
to some quiet, private ground.
But of course, this isn't her. It’s only my dream of her, the dream of an undreamed man.
Psychologists call it projective identification, seeing all our flaws in the face of another. No
doubt she is loved and happy when bums aren’t watching her or fantasizing about her and wolf-
faced men aren’t stealing her overcrowded purse. I know nothing about her, so the emptiness,
despair, vulnerability and loneliness I have spoken of must be my own. It is I who fear the effect
of my appearance. It is I who…she is far more real than I, and all her passions and problems are
real. Only my own dreams lack substance, as do I. And any thoughts or feelings I may have
about her matter about as much as a fish that worships fire. She’ll have no part of my world, and
her world will have no part of me.
Chapter 4
A huge shadow cast by a small man
21
It was several days before they found me. I was retreating under the eyes of the cop
again when a hand, at last a hand, touched my shoulder and someone spoke.
“Silas.”
It was Albert Strange. I’d been introduced to him once when he was preoccupied with
debriefing one of his agents. He was a broad, bald, bearded man with graying hair and powerful
shoulders. He seemed preoccupied now as well, but I was to learn that this was a chronic
condition. He always seemed to be thinking about the next thing, barely present in the present.
“Mr. Strange?” I wasn’t sure.
“Yes.” He looked me up and down, then seemed to look into my eyes while somehow not
quite meeting my gaze.
“Would you like to work for me? I can offer a place to stay as well.” His voice was rough
and gentle, strength restrained by kindness.
“I don’t know how to be a detective.”
“But you do know what someone looks like. I won’t fool you, I’m not offering a career.
I’m not even offering to put you back on your feet.” There was another man with him, a mulatto
with a genial, shrewd face wearing an expensive suit.
“It might only be a few days,” Strange said. “It looks like you have trouble getting
indoors these days, getting a shower and getting your clothes clean. I could give you a respite
from this life. And Carol’s working for me now. If you’d accept her help…”
“I won’t stay with Carol.”
“Stay with me then. We need you to identify someone. We’ll pay $15 an hour while
you’re working. It will be sort of a stakeout, so how many hours I don’t know. Could be hours,
could be weeks. If it’s weeks, think about the changes you could make. You won’t be paying
rent until the job’s done, and I’ll feed you, so you can bank every dime. You could have a
22
month’s rent when we’re done.”
The genial man spoke as if I weren’t there.
“Won’t he drink it all up?”
Strange turned to him.
“Silas doesn’t drink.”
“I had champagne when Max’s play opened,” I reminded him. My avoidance of alcohol
is a personal preference, not some kind of moral stand.
“Is that the only time in living memory you had a glass of wine?”
“Living, I guess, as long as I’m alive.” Max was gone, and Liza, my costar… who knew.
Perhaps someone besides me remembered, but not them.
“This is Spender Bighouse,” Strange said, gesturing to the genial man. “He’s the client.”
A hulking figure stood near the genial man. A bodyguard.
Bighouse reached a large hand to me and shook my grubby paw.
“Glad to have you aboard,” he said.
He could not imagine me refusing. I would have to work for him.
Bighouse went to the office in a separate car, giving Strange time to brief me.
“Look, this Bighouse character is nuts, but he’s got money. He’s in publishing. Came up
with that reference book, ‘Compared to What: The Book of Baselines.’ He put it all on line, sold
it for big money during the dot.com bubble and now he's got all the money he needs.” Strange
was driving a yellow bugeye Sprite through city traffic. There was no radio. I pictured him
singing in order to have music in the car. He had a bigger car, I’m sure, so I assumed the
selection of the Sprite was intended to keep me away from Bighouse.
“He’s got this idea that there’s some secret society that’s active all over the world. He
23
thinks the key to how they operate is some special book. I wouldn’t touch a case like this if the
firm didn’t really need the money. We got a lot of bad publicity about Phil Thibodeaux. It’s cost
us a lot of business.” Thibodeaux had been a partner in the firm. He’d run a grow house on the
side. The cops were still trying to find him.
“Sorry.”
“I should have caught him myself. It’s not like I know nothing about pot.”
We pulled into a parking garage. He parked and didn’t try to put the top up before
leaving the car.
“The main thing is, don’t laugh in this guy’s face. He’s serious about this crap, and we
only get paid to pursue his fantasy if he thinks we take him seriously.”
There was an uncomfortable silence in the elevator. In the entry to the agency, the
receptionist didn’t smile. She gave all her attention to Strange, with a silent, serious look as if
she expected him to tell her whether she would live.
“Has Mr. Bighouse arrived yet, Sadie?”
“He said he would wait in the conference room. He seems to be looking forward to your
meeting.”
Strange nodded.
“This is Silas Night. He works for us until further notice.” She fastened her serious eyes
on me. I had a feeling that fifty years later she would be able to spot me across a crowded room.
She was small, olive-complexioned and skinny.
He led me into the conference room. Bighouse sat at the head of the table, his bodyguard
hulking behind him. The bodyguard was a black man in a black suit, powerful but not tall.
“Have you told Mr. Night about the Book?” Bighouse asked.
“Thought I’d leave that up to you.”
24
Bighouse templed his fingers and leaned forward.
“Allow me to share my obsession. Reading the Book, Mr. Night, would change you in
ways you could not imagine. Even knowing about the Book has changed me, and might change
you.
“Some say it first appeared in the time of Sumer. Others that it dates from the time of the
Pharaohs. Because it is a written work, I’d give humanity some time to work on it. Say the
flowering of Greek civilization or the early days of China. The Book was a secret so long, how
can we know who wrote it or when?
“Whenever it was, it must have been back when northern Europe was a backwater. There
are no European records of the book before the 12th century. It became a force in Europe at
about the time the Bogomils came from Bulgaria. The East had nurtured its mysteries for
centuries or millennia. And when the Book arrived, the Inquisition tried to crush it, with the
tools of torture and Catholic guilt and the armies of Simon de Montfort.
“But everyone who read the book became immune to the powers of the Church and the
state. Every time they were captured they slipped away, and they almost never were captured.
They began to exert influence in subtle ways, and after a couple hundred years Europe ceased to
be a backwater. Intellect began to reign, and the old ways, the witch burnings and the inquisition
and the old superstitions all began to fade.
“What happened in the East, where the Book arrived from? Its influence faded, its
practitioners must have disappeared. The Book carries its own price. I suspect that the followers
of the way of the Book decided the price was too great to ask anyone to pay.”
“Like what? Eternal damnation?” I sounded cynical.
“It is a book, Mr. Night, not a religious totem. It does not summon the devil, if there is
such a thing, which I do not believe. It does what books do. It changes your mind. It changes
25
the way you look at the world. It is a difference of degree, rather than kind. Has it never struck
you what a peculiar thing a book is? Someone sits alone, manipulating a tool by hand, encoding
a message on a page. Then, perhaps half a world away and a millennia later, you sit alone
decoding the message on a reproduction of the page and it creates an image in your mind. It may
move you to tears, it may move you to action, it may even reshape your entire view of the world
and cause you to change the course of your life. The peculiar nature of books escapes us
precisely because they so permeate our lives and because they so greatly shape our minds.
Surely you have felt changed after reading a book sometime, as if you were a different person
when you finished than when you started.”
“I think so.” I thought of Crime and Punishment, and maybe Heart of Darkness.
“Only an analogy can explain what happens. You know how you can recognize emotions
in the face of another person? They say no other animal can do that to the extent we can, not
even the other hominids. That’s the difference in level of functioning we’re talking about.
“The people of the Book have a change on the same scale in their consciousness. I don’t
know what that change is, I only know that it gives them an advantage in life that we can’t
understand. I suspect they use that part of the brain that used to carry the voices of the gods to
speak to us. I'm not sure even they know how their minds are changed by reading the Book, but
if they ask you for something, you'll comply. It's as though they've gained control of the very
structure of human thought.
"Those who hold the Book have kept the changes to themselves. This may not be as
selfish as it sounds. Not all the changes are benign. Perhaps a greater understanding of the
human mind leads to a deeper knowledge of the sources of human pain, or maybe learning about
life from reading rather than from living means they are steeped in the illusions about love, and
respond to those instead of love itself. The keepers of the Book do not marry or have lovers, and
26
this seems to be a natural law, in that it requires no enforcement and no one breaks the law. Love
has the power to bring us joy or to destroy us. It is said those who read the Book lose the
boundaries of their souls in love and have no defenses. You or I, Mr. Night, hold back enough to
protect ourselves, and it is our resilience that makes us able to forget and forgive the inevitable
painful incidents that every love affair must contain. Those who read the Book lose their ability
to accommodate themselves to such ordinary shocks."
“So they died out like a tribe of bachelors," I interjected.
He nodded.
“But now its influence spreads again, I am quite sure. Our lives are shaped by their
learning and their talents. Tell me, why did you tackle the man who stole that woman’s purse?”
I couldn’t explain it to Bighouse.
“She looked at me. I knew I should stop him.”
Bighouse nodded as if that was the only thing I could have said.
“They have a way of making their wishes our own. I don’t think it is telepathy. More
like empathy. Somehow they read what is in our hearts, and somehow their look, their gesture,
communicates to us in ways we cannot communicate with each other.
“So I decided I wanted the Book. I won’t guide you through the labyrinthine process of
acquiring it. I got it, and I was ready to read it. It was stolen from me. I hired a man to get it
back. That is the man you stopped.”
I wondered if a man who declined to tell us how he came to own such a thing had ever in
fact owned it, or if we were being hired to steal it.
“Why didn’t you get the police to get it back?” I asked.
“They couldn’t. When they were in the presence of the holders of the Book, they found
themselves unable to act.”
27
“Who are they? These Book people, I mean.”
“I don’t know what they call themselves. Outsiders call them the Legion of Strangers.”
“More importantly,” Strange interjected, “If the police aren’t able to act, how can you be
sure that we can?”
“I only ask that you keep trying. I’m willing to pay you handsomely as long as you do
that for me.”
“That's what we'll do. Now Silas, your only job will be to identify the woman who had
the book. This agency does not grab bags. We will put Mr. Bighouse and his associates in touch
with this woman, and he has pledged to use only legal means to recover his property. In any
case, I’m sure it is by now clear that illegal means are futile.”
I guessed this was an effort to cover the agency when Bighouse eventually used his own
methods and his own people to get the book.
“You’ll have your own man make another grab, won’t you?” I said, amused.
The bodyguard shifted in a subtle way, and I became aware of how he seemed to add to
his employer’s bulk, like a huge shadow cast by a small man.
Bighouse smiled.
“Willie Lawrence was acting on his own behalf. His fantasy is that a creature such as
himself could benefit from the gifts of the book. As if he could read and understand even a
dictionary.” He hit the table. “I tricked her into exposing herself. I hired that simian little crook
to watch her. And I suppose I chose an untrustworthy cat’s paw on this occasion.”
He swiveled his chair to look at his bodyguard and smiled.
“Mr. Lawrence won’t be troubling us.”
He turned to me.
“I am not a man to be crossed, Mr. Night. Do I make myself understood?”
28
“I am an actor. I could hardly miss the plot points in your performance.”
“Bit heavy, you think?” he said brightly. “Well, I’m only trying to communicate
accurately. I’m glad you are not easily intimidated. If we understand each other, that’s enough.
You can identify the woman Mr. Lawrence was watching. That is your entire value to me, Mr.
Night. If you do that successfully, I will reward you beyond anything this detective agency pays.
Fail me, and you have no more value than…” he looked down at the table and made a gesture of
sweeping something off it… “a crumb.”
But didn’t he know that I had already been trampled into the carpet? And didn’t I already
know the look of a foot coming down?
*****************************************************************
Chapter 5
The Legion of Strangers
After Bighouse left, Strange relaxed. He led me into his office.
“God, it’s hard not to shoot him down when he goes into his act.” Strange threw himself
into his chair behind a large, blonde desk. “Did you catch that about the Legion of Strangers?
That’s roughly the French name for the Foreign Legion. Legion d’Etranger. And the Bogomils?
They were Manichaeans. That’s what started the Inquisition, the Church trying to make sure it
wasn’t supplanted by the far less corrupt Manichaean faith of the Cathars. If this document
exists at all, it’s probably a Manichaean religious tract. That would be of immense archeological
29
importance, since the only knowledge we have of that faith comes from those who suppressed it.
I doubt it’s even that. Bighouse is probably just naming a little-know group to create an
atmosphere of mystery.”
“What happened to that religion? I thought you couldn’t kill an idea.”
“You can kill everyone who believes in it. You can even kill anyone who knows about it.
The Church was far more effective than Bighouse gives it credit for being. For a while, the
Manichaean faith survived among the Uigurs, but I believe there are no more Manichaeans.”
“What if they didn’t all die? What if some of them went underground? Could that be the
basis for the story Bighouse believes?”
“You assume he believes it. I only assume he anticipates we will act as he wishes if he
tells that story. What are his motives? If there are closeted Manichaeans, like the secret
Christians who continued to practice as if pursued long after Japan was reopened to the West, it
would be a coup for him as a publisher to open this up and print their book. I’m assuming his
motives are simpler. I’m guessing the item we’re searching for is valuable, and that he doesn’t
want us to know what it is. It could be blackmail material about him, it could be trade secrets
belonging to him or to a rival. If he needs to tell us a fairy story to protect himself from
embarrassment, I’m okay with that. If knowing what that document is would make me turn
down this job for legal reasons, well, I’m sufficiently determined to see the agency we’ve built
here survive that I will not look too deeply into the motives of a client who is willing to pay us
enough to keep us going. You know what? When people see that we didn’t die out when they
expected us to, they are going to see us as more resilient and resourceful then they thought we
were. Those are qualities that are admired in this business. This will help us survive. And we
will survive.”
I felt I should change the subject.
30
“Spender Bighouse. That’s not his real name, is it?”
“It’s his legal name. It’s not the name he was born with.”
“It sounds like a name you’d choose if you were seven years old.”
“He was nearly thirty when he chose it. It was his second name change.”
“Huh. Ever hear of Ishi?"
"There's a book like that, isn't there?"
"Native American. Last of his tribe in California. He came out of the bush after the rest
of his tribe died off."
"Right. And his name was Ishi. So what's the point?"
"His name wasn't Ishi. See, Ishi just means 'man.' He never told anyone his real name
because he thought that would give them power over him. And Bighouse, by changing his name,
is concealing his real name. D'you suppose he thinks it gives people power over him?"
“Only if you also know date of birth, mother’s maiden name and social security number.
No, I think he believes his name has power over people. That's how our culture works.”
“What name did he start with?”
Strange laughed.
“Are you hoping this will give you power over him? I did check him out. His parents
called him Jacob Whynott, and his father came from a long line of New England fishermen
named Whynott. His father was white, his mother black. She came from Detroit. When he
went to college, he became a leftist and changed his name to Nicholas Komradsky. He seems to
have had a rather cartoonish notion of his identity, and when he decided to become a capitalist he
chose the name of Spender Bighouse. He seems to like making his point with broad strokes.
The first reference book he published was called the Book of Common Knowledge, and
competed with books like the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. He lost that battle, perhaps
31
because the title implied that people should already know what was in the book.”
“Whereas his later attempt, ‘Compared to What’…”
“Implied that your current knowledge was inadequate,” Strange finished.
“A far better strategy.”
Strange told me I smelled too bad to be around the office. He took me to his condo, a
place with too many books on too few shelves and no flat space uncovered.
“You’ll have to sleep on the couch. It doesn’t fold out or anything. I’ll get a plastic bag
for your clothes. I’ll show you the laundry later. I’ll lend you some of my stuff. There will be
room for two of you in one of my shirts, but that’s better than having them too small.”
It seemed like heaven. The warmth, the soft couch, and more than anything, a long, hot
shower.
“It’s terrible, seeing you like this,” Strange said. “I knew you in a happier time. How
many years has it been?”
“What year is it now?”
When he laughed, I laughed too, as if it had been a joke.
That night I was troubled by unsettling dreams of the sort that had never bothered me
when I slept in doorways or concealed in the bushes of a park.
I was lying in a hospital bed with the unhealthy glow of fluorescent light and the gentle
beeping of monitoring devices giving me a sense of mild unease. The face of the woman whose
bag had been snatched moved over me, as if she was leaning over the bed. I looked in her eyes,
and saw in their place patches of sky, and found myself falling into the sky, and shipwrecked on a
32
cloud, marooned, gazing down at a green field far below where she stood gazing up at me.
I felt pierced by the loneliness that comes only from missing someone in particular. But
of course, there was no one like that for me.
I leaned down on a mossy log by a still pond in the forest. I looked down at my
reflection, floating translucently above the dark bottom. Out of the darkness another face rose
up from the bottom, visible though my own reflection until it broke through the surface. It was
her face, but below her eyebrows there was skin, tattooed with pictures of eyes. The tattooed
eyes were sad and kind and questioning. I felt that she wanted me to love her. Her lips opened
gently as if to call my name and she screamed in a way that spread panic through me as if I had
been struck by lightening.
I woke on that one with my heart pounding. The room was quiet except for the
anachronistic ticking of a mechanical clock. I visited the bathroom and washed my face with hot
water before returning to the bed.
I couldn’t sleep for half an hour. The images of approach and distance, of intimacy and
fear must be about me and not her. It didn’t matter how warm the room or soft the bed, I could
never be comfortable, never be approachable. If only I could just die and get it over with. I just
couldn’t let the darkness win. Besides, no one imagined I would die. I didn’t have permission.
A room filled with golden sunlight. The Book lay on the table, ancient, thick and wise. It
was bound in cracking leather and its pages were foxed and yellowed. It had survived wars and
inquisitions, and much more difficult, it had evaded neglect and forgetfulness, changes in tastes
and fashions. Some Ancient Greeks had feared that writing books would change the nature of
33
knowledge, make it impossible to pass on thoughts only to the soul of the right sort. The Book
had defenses they never dreamed of, but sometimes someone must have read it who was not
intended to read it. What happened to them? I felt myself moving toward the table, a reader
with nothing to read, impelled peruse a perilous text. Was I a soul of the right sort? Was this the
written knowledge the Greeks worried about?
I reached for the cover and gently began to open it. A slender hand restrained my own. I
turned and saw the woman with the tattooed eyes. Panic began to rise in me. She smiled a slow
and knowing smile, then gently kissed me on the lips. I felt peace spread through me. She took
my hands and led me away from the book.
My next dream was about singing blimps. They formed a wall across the horizon, and
Albert Strange danced with Sadie while the blimps sang old Anderson Sisters songs. I think they
were doing the Lindy hop.
Strange woke before I did. I heard him clattering around the kitchen getting coffee. I
wasn’t used to waking up warm. I didn’t want to leave the luxury of the couch. The smell of
coffee filled the room and I could hear Strange getting cups from the cupboard.
He entered the living room and put a cup on the coffee table next to me.
“What are you waiting for, Sleeping Beauty, a kiss?”
I swung myself up to a sitting position and took the cup in both hands, though I didn’t
really need the heat for once.
“Sleep well?”
“Weird dreams.” That seemed ungrateful. “But it was great being warm. I feel
stronger.”
“I’ll make oatmeal. Then we start work.”
34
“This woman. Who is she?”
“One of them. One of the people who read the Book.”
“So isn’t it really hers?”
“That’s between her and Bighouse. He claims he bought the book, and she stole it. He
claims not all members of this cult have copies of the Book. She wanted her own and couldn’t
get it from official channels. He says maybe she wants to read parts of it that she’s not permitted
to read yet. Hell, I don’t know. I'm betting it's really a folder of blackmail photos. We can’t ask
her if it's any of these things unless we find her.”
“What if Bighouse is lying?”
“Keeping the agency on the right side of the law is more important than the money we
get from him. Don’t worry, if we find out Bighouse is pulling a fast one, we dump him. If he’s
doing something illegal, we turn him in.”
If we find out. I wondered how hard he would try to find out whether he should refuse
the rich man’s money.
We worked out where she might be. I was to work with Pete, a short, paunchy man who
could be 30 or 40 and looked like no one would notice him standing in a spotlight. I would
signal him if I saw her, so that he could follow her and learn where she lived and where she
went. I was not to contact her or even look at her any more than necessary. Pete was the one
who could follow people without being seen.
We set up shop at the newsstand at the Market. I bought a copy of the New Yorker and
stood there reading it. Pete would stand a short distance away. Occasionally he would do a lap
of the crosswalks, standing at each corner through a couple lights before proceeding on his way.
At lunch I ate at a café that had a view of the sidewalk leading to the intersection where the bag
35
snatch had happened. Pete ate at a table closer to the door than mine.
About two in the afternoon he stood close to me and without acknowledging my presence
said, “Stop looking over at me, Slim. You ain’t my type and it’s bad for business.”
I looked over at him, then quickly looked away and muttered, “Sorry.”
I spent the rest of the day trying not to look at him.
Don’t think of a blue elephant. You thought of one, didn’t you? The rest of the day went
like that.
We stuck it out until 7 p.m., then walked separately to the office.
I was warming my hands on a cup of coffee when Strange stopped by.
“How’d it go?”
Before I could answer, Pete’s voice came from behind me.
“Well, if the cop or the newsy or anybody else around there knows her and knows she
might have someone looking for her, we’re made.” I hadn’t noticed him coming in.
“I guess I’m not a natural at this,” I confessed.
“Sure, you stick out like anything, but do you have to keep looking at me?”
“I don’t think it’s a problem,” Strange said. “I gather this target is an isolated person, part
of a small but influential group that has better things to do than hang out on street corners.”
“Or even walk a regular route from work to lunch,” Pete said. “Don’t we know anything
about her? Where she works, where she lives, friends, family?”
“That’s what we are supposed to be finding out. And since Willie Lawrence, who did this
before, chose to work for himself and keep all the information to himself, the only lead we have
is where she was seen before.”
“And Lawrence. Might be easier to find him.” It sounded as if Pete wanted an
assignment that had nothing to do with me.
36
“I’m working that angle. Nothing so far. You two just keep doing this, every day until
the day when she comes walking by. It takes patience, but I know you’ve got that.”
It was another hour before Strange was ready to take me back to his place. I was
surprised to see that the receptionist stayed until he left. When we got into the elevator I thought
I would be between them, but she stood so close that I had to stand in front of them. They stood
behind me close and wordless. When we got to the bottom, I stepped out and looked back.
Strange looked like his mind was a week ahead. Sadie was trying not to think of a blue elephant.
Or something nearer. We parted ways.
We were in the Sprite again. He loved that car.
“Does Sadie have a thing for you?”
“Eh? No, women don’t find me attractive,” he asserted. “I’m not as fat as I once was,
but I’m graying and balding and I have no life outside work.”
“Maybe it’s not what you look like or what you do that she likes.”
“How can anyone know anything about us other than our looks, our words and our
actions? They see us, they hear us. What else is there to like? Our smell?”
“Maybe she likes your philosophy of life.”
“Which, actually, is ‘I took the road less traveled by. Now where the hell am I?’”
“Mine’s ‘What would Judas do.’ I’ve played too many villains, and I’ve always looked
to Judas for my motivation.”
There was a light, steady rain falling when we left the high-rise. Strange’s condo was on
Dexter, overlooking Lake Union. He didn’t raise the top on the Sprite, and even with the new
coat he’d bought me I was cold. I wondered whether the top worked.
37
“What happened to the hard top?”
“Never had one for this car.”
“But I thought you had a car with a roof.”
“Sure. No fun to drive, though.”
We pulled into the garage under his condo. I felt he expected me to break through his
preoccupation.
“You don’t get lonely?”
“All the time. It’s the normal human condition.”
“Did you ever want kids?”
“Would have been nice, if I’d lived that kind of life.”
“Kids carry on the name. Are you going to be the Last of the Stranges?”
“There’s no immortality in offspring. They live for themselves, not for their parents. We
all live our lives then die alone. Most of us leave no trace. That’s okay. We’re all more ordinary
than we think we are. Why should we be remembered?”
We’d reached the elevator. I had no more gambits to offer.
“We’re taking the wrong approach,” he said.
“We could take the stairs.”
“I meant about the case.”
“I’ve only been doing it for one day. I can do better.” He was silent for a moment. “Can I
keep the warm clothes?”
“You’re still on the case. And yes, you can keep everything I provide you with on the
job.” He looked at me as the elevator doors opened. “I’m going to put you back in the gutter,
but just for appearances. We’ll get you some older clothes at the Goodwill. You won’t be as
conspicuous as a homeless person as you are when you’re dressed well. Nobody wonders why a
38
bum is hanging around. When you wear the nice clothes, you look like you should be going
somewhere.”
“How do you know? You weren’t there.”
“Yeah, I was. You weren’t supposed to see me, so you didn’t. I was there for about half
an hour.”
If I hadn’t seen him, could I have missed my quarry? Strange was not a small man.
We entered the condo and hung up our coats. I sat on the couch and relaxed, absorbing
the heat. How could I have lived without it?
Strange poured himself a seltzer, then came and sat in a chair facing me.
“Tell me Silas, why don’t you drink?”
“I did for a while. When I was drunk, I was the same as when I was sober, only clumsy.
And I got headaches. Nothing in it for me.”
“Try drugs?”
“A few.”
“Same story?”
“Not all of them gave me a hangover. None of them made me any happier. I think other
people react differently to drugs. I snorted coke and all that happened was my nose got numb.
People devote their lives to snorting coke. There must be something in it for them.”
“You may be right. Somerset Maugham complained that he became so violently ill when
he tried to drink alcohol that he could never consume enough to get the slightest effect. Terrible
thing for a writer.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t keep any booze around. If it’s here, I drink it. If it isn’t, I don’t miss it. I don’t
want to become a drunk out of boredom and loneliness.”
39
“Is that why detectives drink?”
“The ones that do generally do it for that reason.”
“Sadie would take care of you.”
“Will you stop ribbing me? She’s fifteen years younger and extremely attractive. She
can do better than me.”
“So check out some singles’ ads. Find someone old and unattractive, if that’s your type.”
“’I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to
me.’”
“That’s from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“Have you memorized the whole thing?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“That would be pathetic.”
“Chicks dig guys that quote poetry.”
“I assume the out-of-date slang is intended to convey irony.”
“Try it on Sadie.”
“Any further ribbing will get me to respond in recommendations that you will find
anatomically impossible.”
“You’re right about her being attractive. Do you think she could go for a man who works
in dirty longjohns and a down vest that smells like a dead yak?”
“Anatomical impossibility number one…”
He insisted longjohns and a down vest be part of my new look. Pete delighted in
40
dragging the latter through the dirt to give it the right patina.
This time I had nothing to read. It was the retreat from Moscow all over again. About 11
a.m. I spotted a familiar face. I signaled Pete. He shook his head in disgust.
He wandered unobtrusively closer.
“That’s no lady.”
“No. It’s the guy who snatched her bag. Willie Lawrence. I thought Bighouse was
supposed to have eliminated him.”
“If I stand next to you any longer he’ll make us. If he hasn’t already.”
“Don’t you think we should follow him?”
“That ain’t the job.”
He walked away, shouting "Get a job!" over his shoulder. Lawrence hung around for
another four hours. He was obviously doing the same thing I was. He didn’t seem to notice me.
When we headed back to the office I was beginning to feel discouraged. How long
would this go on? Pete was satisfied to do this every day as a profession. I was making good
money at this, but I couldn’t see myself doing it for long enough to afford an apartment. Pete
didn’t walk back to the office with me.
When I got off the elevator on the floor where the office was located, I decided to wait
for the next one. I figured Pete would be on it, and I wanted to catch him coming in.
I only had to wait about 90 seconds. When the doors opened, I was smiling my most
triumphant smile.
Only it wasn’t Pete. It was Willie Lawrence.
You could say he looked surprised. He looked like a man about to use his trousers as a
mobile latrine.
“Mr. Lawrence.” The voice came from behind me. It was Spender Bighouse.
41
Lawrence had unfrozen himself and was frantically pushing the “close door” button.
“Stop him!”
The bodyguard responded to Bighouse’s command, but didn’t quite manage to get his
hand in the door before it closed.
“Did you get a good look at him?” Bighouse asked the bodyguard.
“No, Mr. Big.” His voice was a soft tenor, his accent from somewhere in Africa.
Bighouse turned to me.
“Go with Jones. Track him down.”
He expected me to go, so I went.
Jones and I went down on the elevator. We both stayed silent. We checked out the lobby,
then went down to the garage level where a black Lincoln Navigator awaited us. We drove
around the streets downtown at random, me scanning the pedestrians, Jones just navigating
traffic.
“Is Jones your real name?”
“No.”
“So what’s your name?”
“You just call me Jones. I like Jones.”
“You like working for Bighouse?”
“I was driving a cab before. This is more money, less work.”
“How did you get the job?”
“He got in my cab. I talked to him.”
“You must have a pretty good line of patter.” The sun had set and I was watching people
in the streetlights.
“Not so good. I wanted him to publish my book. He told me I should keep driving.
42
Only he gave me what you call it, the booby prize. He gave me a better job driving.”
“What was the book?”
“Novel.”
“Was there a cab driver in it?”
He laughed.
“Same question Mr. Big asked me. When I said yes, he said I didn’t need to show him
the book. He said everybody who thinks they can write tries to write a book about someone like
themselves, and this is always a bad book.”
“So Conrad should never have written books about mariners? Twain should never have
written books about boys growing up on the Mississippi? Hemingway should never have written
a book about an ambulance driver in World War I?”
He was quiet for a time.
“Next time, could you talk to him?”
“I have no influence. But maybe you shouldn’t give up on yourself.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not finding our man.”
“That’s okay. I like to drive.”
He seemed happy, so I kept scanning pedestrians. The quiet, happy presence of the
bodyguard made it easy to pass the time. Maybe he had been chosen for this, rather than his
menacing appearance. We were out there for an hour.
When we returned, Sadie ushered us into a conference room. Strange, Bighouse, Pete
and a man I hadn’t met were already there. Jones went to stand behind his boss.
“Report,” Strange commanded.
“We didn’t see him at all. We looked everywhere within walking distance.” I wondered
43
if that was the proper form for a report. It sounded like one a five-year-old might have made.
“Willie did have some skills,” Bighouse said. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.” He
clearly was doing it for me.
“You said he wouldn’t trouble us.” It was what the others expected me to say.
“Yes,” he said, turning to look at Jones, “I did.”
I could imagine him ordering his menacing bodyguard to do something awful to
Lawrence, and Jones having an attack of kindness at a critical moment. He was looking straight
ahead, meeting no one’s eyes.
Pete spoke up.
“I followed you, Silas. When we knocked off work. I figured if you’d been made, you
might be a target.”
“Thanks.”
“So I figured I might get a break if I saw who attacked you.”
“Oh.”
“I saw this weedy character you’d pointed out following you, and being pretty damn
obvious about it. I marked him, followed him into the building and slipped into the same
elevator. When the doors opened on our floor, you were waiting. He pushed the close button
and went down. I let him get out and waited for the doors to almost close before I pushed the
door-open button and got out. He didn’t notice me following, but he must have been really
spooked, because he was running. I can keep up with most people, but this guy can really book
and he wasn’t trying to be subtle. I lost him after two blocks. Since you didn’t see him on the
sidewalk, I’m guessing he had a vehicle or got on a bus.”
I hadn’t even noticed Pete in the elevator.
“Bottom line,” Strange interjected, “We lost him. How important do you think that is,
44
John?”
He was addressing a small, withered man in his sixties. I later learned from Sadie that
this was John Lawless, the firm’s founder.
“Up to our client, I’d say.” His accent was from somewhere in New England.
Bighouse smiled.
“A little competition,” he said. “I have confidence you will manage.”
“Who’s on his side?” Lawless asked.
“No one.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Lawless said. “You told us he wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Now you tell us he has no help. How sure are you this time?”
“He has no money, he has no social skills and he has nothing to offer anyone. He knows
it’s a bad idea to be here and now he knows that your firm is on the case. My guess is that he
was following Mr. Night either to warn him off or to learn who he was working for. He saw Mr.
Night in my company on the floor where an investigative firm is located. Lawrence wishes to
acquire the qualities of leadership and persuasiveness from possession of the book. Lacking
those qualities is why he pursues it alone.”
“We won’t go into what you get from having this book. My problem is that the only
operative who can identify the target is now under a possible threat. How much of a threat, I’d
like to know. You seem to think the stakes are high, and you imply but do not say that you are
prepared to use violence against Willie Lawrence.”
“Mr. Lawless, I assure you…”
“Don’t assure me. Forty years I’m in this game, so I’m the one that knows it. Lawrence
has shown himself to be a purse-snatcher, which is somewhat violent but not real violent. What
are his other tendencies? I want a wrapper on him and I want to know what isn’t on his arrest
45
record, too. If I send Silas out on the street again I want to know what Lawrence might do, and I
might want to send more protection with him. That’s more manpower and more cost.”
Bighouse was silent, and seemed to be trying to outstare Lawless. Strange broke the
silence.
“I took what we had, and found nothing. No one by that name and age, and the Social
Security number belongs to an elderly woman in Idaho. I thought she might be a member of his
family, but she had no offspring and no siblings. Where did you find this guy?”
“He came highly recommended from some associates in Las Vegas.”
“Talk to your associates,” Lawless said. “Find out who you hired. Anything more you
can tell us now?”
“They told me he was skilled at skip tracing, and they were right. They told me he was
tough and they were right. And they told me he wasn’t the kind of guy you find in the Yellow
Pages.”
We weren’t able to leave for another hour. That night as we drove home Strange seemed
more preoccupied than usual. When we reached the apartment he sat down and started leafing
through a book on Japanese armor.
I started cooking up some chops and making a salad.
“Silas, listen,” he said.
I came out of the kitchen to do so.
“Sadie did some checking during the meeting. She figured that sometimes people pick a
fake name close to their own so that it’s easy to remember. She ran permutations on Willie
Lawrence with the DOB Bighouse gave us, people who might have had a PI license at some
46
point and might have an arrest record. There was a Lawrence Williams, right age, right height,
right weight. The picture we got on the security camera matches up pretty well also.”
“What did she learn?”
“Graduated from high school in Flint, Michigan. Went into the army and made corporal
as an M.P. Got out and became a private investigator back in Flint. It turns out someone I know
slightly competed with him, which allowed me to fill in the blanks pretty quickly. Being a PI in
Flint isn’t easy. Business was bad. Our boy supplemented his income as a debt collector.”
“Not admirable, but not criminal.”
“A debt collector for drug dealers. He had a way of finding that part of a client that was
not related to making money and breaking it. Got caught, did time for battery, lost his license.
In Vegas he was a debt collector specializing in gamblers. Apparently they were less dangerous
than drug users and he got paid better. Not a psycho killer, not a wise guy, just a small-time
hood with some training at finding people. And a willingness to get nasty when he finds them.
Probably likes it. It isn’t the kind of work that appeals to everyone.”
“I’m willing to stay on the job, if that’s the question.”
“Not without some help. We’re short handed. Right now our talents are concentrated on
skip tracing, finding hidden assets and following errant spouses around to get the goods on them.
We don’t have a lot of muscle. In fact, I’m about as tough as we go. I wasn’t a Navy SEAL. I
was an Air Force loadmaster. What I learned in my military service was how to pack a C-130,
not how to kill with a single chopstick. I got into this business from the hidden asset end, with a
background in bookkeeping, and yet in a fight I’m the one our guys look to. I thought about
teaming you with Carol on the principle that cops respond quicker to a screaming woman than a
yelling man. She also has martial arts training, but to be honest it’s much better to be strong and
have some practice hitting people in earnest.”
47
“What about Pete?”
“If there’s trouble, he can be counted on the take pictures and provide reliable testimony.
He’s not a coward, and he’d try to keep you from getting killed, but he knows his limits and so
do I. John Lawless is tougher, but he’s 63 and not very big. Also don’t ever tell him this, but I
try to set it up so he doesn’t spend too much time in the cold. He’ll never admit to arthritis, but I
know what’s going on. So here’s the program. I can’t be there the whole time or the business
tends to fall apart. I’m going to do mornings with you and Carol will do afternoon. She can’t
take Lawrence, but the cops will be understanding if she uses pepper spray on him. You okay
with that?”
I nodded, as he expected.
*************************************************************
Ch. 6
The Woman With the Tattooed Eyes
About noon the next day I saw her again. It was a clear, cool day, sunlit and still.
I was on the job at the Pike Place Market.
I was beginning to feel more real. Pete was watching out, Strange was less than a
block away and Willie Lawrence or Larry Williams or whoever he was might be trying to
scare me off. It was more attention than I’d had in months. It reminded me of the old
joke about the guy who always parks in no parking zones because the ticket's cheaper
48
than a lot and besides, he's got a cop watching the car.
They treated me as real. Could they all be wrong?
We were all in view of one another in the intersection where Williams had done
the bag snatch. Pete was kitty corner across the intersection casually looking in a store
window. I suppose he could see my reflection. Strange was leafing though books in the
rack in front of Left Bank Books, on the Market side of First Avenue but across the street
from me. I was hanging around the newsstand. They didn’t let me stand there reading
magazines. My status as a bum had certain disadvantages.
That was the least of my problems. Williams was walking across First Avenue
toward me. He wasn’t that big, a lean man of middle stature with a guarded expression,
wearing worn jeans and a sweatshirt with a wolf’s head picture on it.
Strange put down the book and started jaywalking across Pike toward me. I tried
not to look at either of them. I examined my feet while rubbing my hands together for
warmth. I know my part. It seemed a long time before either of them reached me.
I felt a hand reach under my vest, then a switchblade opened between the vest and
my back.
“Time for a walk,” Williams said. “We need to talk, you and me.”
I glanced over at Strange. A policeman was giving him a jaywalking ticket. He
tried to break free, but that only convinced the officer that he was on to something.
Strange wouldn’t be free until the cop had made sure there were no outstanding warrants.
I glanced over at Pete. He was doing the tourist thing, seeming to take a picture of the
Public Market sign. They’d have evidence at Williams’ murder trial. And walking up
behind Pete was the woman with the big red purse. Williams didn’t see her, I’m sure.
“Walk into the market. We’ll go down the stairs.”
49
I walked ahead of him, wondering how long it would take Strange to get away
from the cop. A glance back showed him getting agitated, which wouldn’t help.
We walked past the fishmongers, into the covered part of the market where the
small shops are. We went down several flights of stairs, exiting on Western. There was a
big old Ford with oxidized blue paint. He put me in the trunk.
He was soon on the highway. You can’t tell much from inside the trunk of a car.
Eventually my ears popped. I had visions of my body crushed in the bottom of some
mountain crevice. We’d been driving for close to an hour when we pulled onto a gravel
road and went a little way. When he opened the trunk we were up in the Cascade
Mountains east of Seattle, surrounded by trees. The sound of the freeway was not loud
but not distant.
“Out.”
I complied. He made me sit on a rock and tied my feet together. I could untie
them, but not quickly. No point in trying to escape.
“Tell me how you know about the Book.”
“Spender Bighouse.”
“Thought so. You work for Thibodeaux, Lawless & Strange?”
“Yes.”
“You were on the case when I made the snatch. How did you know she’d be
there?”
“I didn’t know.”
He kicked me hard on the side of the head.
“Maybe that’s the wrong approach,” he said while I was lying on the ground.
“After all, if I do brain damage, you might not be able to answer. But see, I don’t care.
50
If I fractured your skull, maybe it was a mistake, but it felt right, you know?”
I managed to sit up. If Willie expected me to die, this would be the end of the
dream.
“How did that P.I. firm find out?”
I put my arms up to protect my head before answering.
“I wasn’t working for them then. They only hired me because I know what she
looks like. I’m not one of them, I’m not a tough guy. I’m telling the truth.”
He squatted in front of me.
“So if you’re the only one that knows what she looks like, once you’re out of the
way they’re out of the way, right? You’re the only link they’ve got.”
“Not quite.” It was Pete’s voice. “There’s also you.”
Pete was standing about 30 feet away. His hat was in his hand and he was
sweating and panting. He must have walked up fast from the freeway.
The switchblade was in Williams’ hand again.
“One step closer and I cut a new smile under your friend’s chin.”
“Then what? The cops know what you’re driving. There’s a death penalty in this
state.”
“Once I’ve got the book, no one can touch me. What will I do to get it? Want to
see?”
I was looking at Williams when Jones stepped out from behind a tree behind him.
He grabbed the arm Williams held the knife in and lifted with both hands. Williams
started yelling non-words in the language of pain. Jones pulled a small automatic from
the back of Williams’s belt.
I picked up the knife where it had fallen. I’d never handled a switchblade before.
51
“I can touch you now,” Jones said. “If you will be nice, I will pop your shoulder
back in the socket.”
Williams leaned miserably against the Ford, his good arm on the roof to hold
himself up. Jones walked over, took the limp arm and expertly popped it back into place.
“You know, that will hurt a long time. You should have gone away before, when I
tell you. You think I am joking when I say Mr. Big wants me to hurt you? You could be
not hurt, if you just listened to me.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t hurt you just because he tells me to. Now you make me look foolish for
not hurting you.”
“What you gonna do to me?” Williams asked.
“These mountains. They are the Cascades? You go past these mountains. The
next mountains are the Rocky Mountains. You drive over those, too. When you get to
the Atlantic, then you may stop. okay?”
“What makes you think he won’t come back?” Pete said. “If we turn him over to
the cops, we can maybe convince a judge not to grant bail, and he’s out of our hair
basically forever, `cause he’s not going to beat the rap for snatching Silas.”
This sounded like good sense to me. The notion of Williams spending years in
jail, out of sight and out of mind was tremendously attractive.
“Mr. Bighouse said no. He said we chase Willie off, or we keep him ourselves,
or, he says, ‘you know what to do.’ Do you want me to do ‘you know what’ to you,
Willie?”
“I’ll leave.”
“You leave now.”
52
Williams got into the Ford and drove down the gravel road. It sounded as though
he stopped for a while at the bottom.
Pete untied me.
“What’s Bighouse got against busting that guy?” I asked.
“Three guesses,” Pete muttered. I suppose he must have thought Williams had
something on his former employer.
As we walked down the gravel road, I asked Pete how they’d managed to find me.
“When I saw Willie taking you into the market, I figured that was a stupid thing
to do unless he had a ride down on Western Avenue. We had Jones parked in a lot nearby,
so while I followed down the stairs I called Jones on my cell and told him to meet me at
the bottom. It took long enough to put you in the trunk that he was able to get in place
and pick me up. When he turned off, we followed a little way, then came on foot. I
know this road from hiking. I knew where it ended.”
We came to the Lincoln Navigator. One of the tires was flat.
“I see our friend doesn’t want us following,” Pete observed.
Jones set about changing the tire. While he was undoing the lug bolts, I asked
him what “you know what” was.
“Well,” he said, pausing in his work. “I’m not so sure I know. ‘You know what to
do’ is not so much a command as a wish. Mr. Big wants something to happen, but he
doesn’t want to be responsible. Mr. Big wants something terrible to happen but he
doesn’t know quite what. So he says ‘you know what to do’ because he hopes I know
what to do.”
“So what do you do when your boss issues a wish?”
Jones lifted the flat tire off and laid it on the ground. He picked up the spare and
53
put it in place.
“Mr. Willie is big to sweep under a rug, but that is where he belongs. If my boss
does not see him, he is not a problem. So I tell him my boss makes something bad
happen if he is seen.”
“And he shows up anyway.”
“He is not a smart man.”
“She was there today.”
“The woman with the Legion of Strangers?” Pete asked. I hadn’t noticed him
listening.
“I saw her just when Williams put the knife in my back. She was behind you. I
don’t think you saw her.”
“Great. Well, at least we know we’re in the right place. Next time Williams
won’t stop us.”
When we got back into town I begged off on the report. Pete knew everything
anyhow. I took a walk while the real detectives were in conference.
I went to the library. I’d dumped most of my bum regalia. I had a nice tweed
full-length coat and a wool crusher. I wanted to play in the reference section. Maybe I
could find a book on singing blimps.
I was searching through the catalog for references to the Metal Airship Company
when she sat down next to me.
“Hello.” Her voice was soft and pleasant, like a dream you don't want to wake
from.
54
We were drinking lattes in the coffee shop.
“I saw you today,” I said.
“I saw you, too.”
“I wasn’t with that man on purpose. The one that tried to take your bag. He put a
knife to my back and marched me away.”
“I know.”
“I’m supposed to look for you. People hired me to look, because I can recognize
you. It’s the only saleable talent I have.”
“They want the Book, don’t they?”
“Yes.” At that moment, faced with her quiet smile and understanding eyes, it
seemed wrong to me that I should help them take it. “I can pretend I don’t recognize
you. I can make them follow someone else.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You seem nice. Spender Bighouse doesn’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I had dreams about you. You had tattooed eyes.”
She laughed.
“I do have tattooed eyes. I was a showgirl at one time, but I was allergic to the
eye makeup. I had them tattoo the makeup for the eye shadow and a line along my
eyelashes. Now I always look like I’m wearing too much makeup.”
“You’re supposed to never get a tattoo where a judge can see it.”
“I failed that test of common sense.”
“How did you find me here?”
“I brought you here.”
55
“I don’t remember that.”
“No.”
“Why?’
“I wanted to talk to you. To see what you’re about.”
There was something about her presence. I felt happy and a little giddy.
“That first time I saw you I was writing a poem about you. In my head.”
“Could I hear it?”
“No, it wasn’t very good and it wasn’t like you at all. It was about who I
imagined you to be. Someone as pathetic as me.”
“Just the part that doesn’t embarrass you, then.”
I closed my eyes and went through every line. There wasn’t much I’d care to
quote. Poetry is fine as long as you don’t do it in public.
At last I settled on the final quatrain.
“And when the moon is empty.
And when her tears wax round
She dreams that sleep will take her
To some quiet, private ground.”
She looked down at her immaculate red fingernails.
“I was in a bad place,” I explained. “It’s depressing because I was depressed.”
“It’s not so bad. Can’t I hear the whole thing?”
The most basic qualifications of an actor are the ability to memorize your lines
and the urge to say them to an audience whenever possible. Being possessed of both
56
qualifications, I was able to remember the whole thing and willing to perform it.
When I finished, I felt apologetic.
“You see, it’s not about you. It’s more about me.”
“Stop, Silas. Your life is going to get better now. You won’t have to work for
Jacob Whynott.” I wondered if knowing his first identity gave her any power over him.
True names, you know.
I don’t remember her leaving, but I was alone. I felt better than I had in years. I
walked briskly back to the office, where I found Strange standing by the reception desk
talking to Sadie. Both looked up when the elevator opened to reveal me. He looked
relieved. She looked as if she’d been interrupted by duty in the midst of pleasure.
“There you are, Silas, I was beginning to worry.”
“I was at the library,” I told him, omitting everything important.
“I’d rather you stayed in sight. Bighouse may think his bodyguard scared off
Williams, but I’m not convinced.”
Of course, if Jones had dislocated my arm and told me to not stop running until I
got to the Atlantic, I wouldn’t have stopped short of Eastport, Maine. Maybe Halifax. It
hadn’t occurred to me that Willie, or Williams, or whoever he was today, would hang
around.
“Tomorrow, we’ll change tactics again. We’ll have someone standing right next
to you. It makes the chances of success smaller, but we’ve got to be sure you’re okay.”
That was the moment for me to say that I had seen her. I was unable to do so.
I dreamed about the book again.
I was walking toward it, where it lay on a table in a shaft of sunlight. The table
was farther away the farther I walked.
57
“You have to stop,” said the woman with the tattooed eyes.
I stopped and found myself next to the table. I reached for the book and found it
was across the room again. I sat on a chair I found next to me. I found my elbow resting
on the table, almost touching the book. I didn’t reach for it this time.
“Why can’t I read it?”
She shook her head sadly. Her eyes looked as they had in my earlier dream, eyes
tattooed on otherwise featureless flesh. They were beautiful eyes. I wanted to kiss her
eyes.
She opened the book.
“Would you like me to read you a little?”
I nodded. I wanted to hear her voice.
She placed her index finger on the first line of text, composed herself, took a
breath and screamed and I was frozen with terror.
I awoke, heart pounding. I picked up a pen to write down my dream and it turned
into a small snake with large fangs, and lunged at my face. I awoke again, and this time
it was real, not a dream awakening. I turned on some lights and went to wash my face. It
was perhaps another hour before I could sleep again.
Music slid through the window on a sunbeam, an old jazz standard. A couple
danced together, close, and slower than the music would warrant. The woman’s face
turned toward me, and it was her. A cartoon tear rolled from a tattooed eye, but she was
smiling, a calm, quiet smile of someone comforted in a time of trouble. The music took
them away and as they became more distant they swung around so I could see his face.
58
His eyes were closed and his face was mostly buried in her hair, but the sinister curve of
the eyebrow and a nose like a medieval weapon could not be disguised. He could be no
one other than me.
********************************************************
Chapter 7
A house for Mr. Silas
The next morning I was on the job again at the Market, feeling like a fraud
because I wasn’t about to tell them if I saw her.
Carol was dressed as a homeless woman, with a couple shopping bags of junk for
effect. She was my companion and protector for the day.
“Hey, it’s nice being with you again. Why haven’t you been around to see me?”
she asked.
“I haven’t been very social.”
“You think I killed Max, don’t you?” She might have. Only from the best of
59
motives, of course. She thought she was protecting me.
“He killed himself, Silas. He couldn’t stand what he’d done to you.” He tumbled
off a high building. She was standing behind him at the time. Maybe he jumped. That’s
what the police report said.
“I love you.” That was her motive. Motive, opportunity…
I noticed thin pink flesh from a burn scar on the back of her hand. That was a
part of it that I preferred not to remember. I should have been able to save her from the
fire. She was lucky to live through it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. What else could I say? Could I accept her possessive love
and all the actions that flowed from it?
She turned away from me, rigid with pain and anger. I was doing a great job of
motivating my bodyguard.
Finally she turned back to me.
“This woman we’re looking for. What’s she like?”
“Medium height, medium build, maybe 30, 35.”
“No, I mean what’s she like. Is she attractive? Does she seem smart? Tough?
Dopey? Talk to me about something.”
“Um…well, she’s not like other girls.”
“Are we talking comfortable shoes and orthopedic underwear?”
“Let’s see. She looks like she’s wearing too much makeup. She dresses like a
corporate secretary. Spender Bighouse says she has super powers. And every time I see
her a guy who calls himself Willie Lawrence hurts me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got some moves I can put on him.”
“You’re trying to make me jealous.”
60
“Ha ha. Al says I’m the second toughest person at the agency.”
“Have you arm wrestled John Lawless?”
“He doesn’t know the Kung Fu.”
“You really know that stuff?”
“Actually, I studied judo and Tai Chi. Want me to throw you?”
“Trying to find out how far you can trust me?”
“I already know that.”
Just then I saw the woman with the tattooed eyes looking at me. She wore
jogging clothes and a private smile. I found it hard to not look at her. I tried staring at
Pete instead.
“Who’s that?” Carol asked.
“Who’s who?”
“That woman. She’s smiling at you.”
“Oh her? I don’t remember. I think we were in a TV commercial once.”
“So why’s she smiling?”
“Probably gloating. I look homeless, and she looks like she’s doing pretty well.
Actors do this.”
“You okay for a minute? I want to go over and trip her.”
“Getting arrested for assault won’t help things.”
“I’ll be very apologetic. She won’t suspect a thing.”
“Always the active intervention. Can’t you let me suffer this humiliation in
peace?”
“No. I am your protector. Am I to protect only your body and let your psyche
suffer irreparable harm?”
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“Leave her alone. She’s the woman of my dreams.”
“Now I’m really going to trip her. Then I’ll stomp repeatedly on her head.”
“Remember, you’re trying to convince me that you are truly harmless.”
“Not entirely. I’d be useless as a protector if I were entirely harmless.”
“You do not have permission to trip her or stomp her.”
“Who made you hall monitor?”
“You know the minute you leave my side the bogie man will come get me.”
“You’re still afraid of the bogie man?”
“He’s got a switchblade and a gun.”
“Jones took those away.”
“He’ll have a gun and a knife for every day of the week and two for Sunday best.
He just won’t attack on Thursdays because we took his Thursday weapons.”
“I’m learning so much about my own profession.”
The woman crossed First Avenue and jogged north on the west side of the street.
Out of sight and out of conversation, I figured.
“You know, the way we get paid, it’s like a mechanic working for a shop,” Carol
said. “We get paid so much, and the customer gets charged a shop rate for our labor
that’s maybe two or three times what we make. So if that was the subject, and you blew
her off because you don’t want this Bighouse creep getting his paws on her, I don’t have
a problem with that. We get paid, Al gets paid, everybody I care about gets happy.”
“That wasn’t her.” Am I so transparent? Yes, of course, it's part of being a visible
man.
“Too bad. I would have liked you having a friend in the world.”
“Where did Pete go?”
62
“Professional pride, Silas. I signaled him to follow her.”
I figured there was no point in staying on the job, so I went to a restaurant with a
view of the bay. It was an old one, with a sign that says, “Homestead Act does not apply
to the counter.”
They seated me without qualms, assuming that despite my apparel I had enough
money to pay for a meal. Is this a great city or what?
I ordered the chipped beef, being sold in this case as buccan. The menu had a
whole dissertation on the origins of buccan and its relationship to the buccaneers, how the
mostly French pioneers of Hispaniola had made their living herding cattle and preserving
the resulting beef. All commerce not sanctioned by the Spanish empire was illegal, so
their customers tended to be the lawless men who did business without the permission of
the Spanish. The sanctions against trade were nearly as stiff as those for piracy, so
traders in buccan often chose to practice piracy against the Spanish.
It’s not just the presentation of food, it’s also the literature. I ordered it in honor
of Carol’s buccaneering ways.
Carol found me before the food arrived.
“Okay, why are you here?” she asked. “We’re supposed to be on the job.”
“Do you know what that means in English slang? On the job?”
“Yes, and that has nothing to do with it.”
“And yet you use those words. You know, I think you’ve never gotten over me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because this morning you said you loved me.”
“You think my judgment is clouded?”
63
“Like a day at Neah Bay.”
The waiter arrived with my buccan.
“Would you like something, ma’am?” the waiter asked.
“No.”
After he left, I told her, “When they start calling you ma’am, you need to get a
mammogram.”
“I’ve had one, thank you very much.”
“You’re always ruining my fun.”
“So why did you leave?”
“You sent away our follower. Since we had no way to follow the real woman of
the Book, we have no purpose in being there.”
“You’re upset because Pete’s following the right woman.”
“No he isn’t. He should be following you. I’m pretty sure you’re his type. He
told me tall and thin isn’t his type.”
“You were discussing women?”
“Actually he told me to stop looking over at him because I’m not his type and it’s
bad for business.”
“Maybe if you were a little more busty…”
When we got back to the intersection Pete wasn’t there. I started walking back to
the office and Carol decided to accompany me.
When we got there Sadie fixed me with her serious stare.
“Albert has news for you.”
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First name but no diminutive. Close, but formal. That must be the nature of her
relationship to Strange.
He was sitting on his big blonde desk, and stood as we entered.
“There’s the lucky man!”
“What happened?” I was sure it had something to do with Pete trailing our
quarry. Bighouse has said something about a reward. I wasn’t looking forward to the
news that I had somehow helped him.
“You’ve inherited,” he said, wrapping his big hand around mine.
“My mother...” Death would be a release from the demons that had haunted her
mind, but nothing had prepared me…
“No, no. Max Milligan’s will has been found. He left most of his wealth to you.”
She said I wouldn’t have to work for Bighouse. If only this had happened before
Pete had tailed her. I felt less joy than anxiety at the news.
“Hey, at least you could smile.”
I did so, but I doubt it was a convincing performance.
“Silas,” Carol said, “Don’t you see what this means? You’ll own your face again.
You can act in films and television. He’s given your life back.”
They told me that because I was homeless I could move into his house right away.
It was a houseboat on Lake Union, with a Six Meter tied up next to it. The Six was an
old English one, built in the ‘30s just before tank testing had revolutionized the class. It
had never been competitive, but it was beautiful and fast compared to most boats. It was
also a daysailer that needed at least a crew of three to sail it. I’m not that social. Once
the paperwork was done so that I held the title, I’d sell it and get something I could sail
65
single-handed. Besides, Lake Union isn’t very big. If you have a fast boat, you can run
out of lake pretty quickly.
The key they gave me was new. I suppose the law firm kept the original. Max
had no brothers or sisters, his parents were dead and he’d never married. There was no
one to contest the will, but I suppose they had to keep some control for the look of things.
Inside, the place was as I remembered it. It looked like it had been decorated by a
professional and lived in by a child. No one had cleaned. Magazines were strewn
everywhere, he’d never discovered what the coat closet was for and there appeared to be
a midden in the kitchen sink.
I tidied up for a couple hours, then opened some of the canned food that was still
in the kitchen and improvised dinner. The law firm would loan me money until the will
was settled, which shouldn’t be too long. I could shop the next day. I watched the sun
set and wondered how Max had felt watching sunsets through the same picture windows.
Sleeping in his bed was going to feel creepy.
I was drinking a cup of tea when a knock came on the door.
It was Carol. She was out of the bag lady clothes and wearing a red silk blouse
and a blue skirt under a navy blue coat.
“Can I come in?” she said as she pushed past me.
“No.” It was worth a try.
“Thanks. Hey, this is nice.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t yours then.”
I made her a cup of tea. The twilight was waning.
66
“Aren’t you going to ask what Pete found out?” she asked.
“I have a feeling that you’ll tell me.”
“He came back at quitting time and told us he’d spent the whole day at the
intersection and hadn’t seen a thing.”
“And the woman you had him follow?”
“No memory.”
“I suppose Bighouse will take his business elsewhere.”
“That’s the funny part,” she said, snuggling into the big easy chair Max had left
me. “He wasn’t upset at all. He said it proved we’d made contact with the Legion of
Strangers. Only one of them could have fogged his mind, it seems.”
“This is perfect. The more the firm screws up, the happier he’ll be. Losing this
client will be impossible.”
“Silas, I don’t think Pete screwed up. Why don’t you tell me why you didn’t want
him following her?”
“Because I don’t want you to know.”
She sipped her tea and thought for a moment.
“All right,” she said, rising. “I know what she looks like and my mind isn’t
clouded. I’ll take your place at the stakeout. It might be easier to do this job if you’d tell
me anything.”
“I’ll tell you this. I think we’ve been working for the wrong side.”
“And how did you come to this conclusion?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe Bighouse is right about these people. They seem to have done a job on
you and Pete.”
67
“If they could do that, wouldn’t they do a job on Spender Bighouse?”
“Silas, listen. Before I go, are you going to be all right here?”
I stood there, silent, realizing the answer was no.
Max Milligan convinced me that I’d killed Liza Tudor, the woman I loved.
Hiding the secret of my supposed guilt warped me, and Max used that to get a
performance out of me in his play, “The Torturer’s Apprentice.” The performance made
his play a success and convinced people that my career could rise above the character
parts I was known for. I lived with that guilty secret until the day of my breakdown. I
confessed to my crime that day, but was so obviously insane I was not believed. When I
got out, Carol got Max to tell me he'd killed Liza. I was standing in an alley, and he told
me while standing on top of a two-storey building. I still dream about him leaning over
the edge of the building until he toppled, arms outspread as if trying to fly.
And now I was planning to live in his house and sleep in his bed. If I could sleep.
It should have occurred to me that Max would have a guest bedroom. Carol
helped me make up the double bed. Why she continued to treat me as a friend I have no
idea.
“I can stay,” she said, standing too close for my ambivalent affection.
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
She pulled out a business card and scribbled something on it.
“There’s my new home number. Remember, any time, day or night.”
Max stood like a statue on the lip of the world, and I, far below him, loitered on
68
the upper ring of Hades. He flexed his legs like a diver on the high board, then launched
himself, arms outspread. Instead of falling this time, he soared, circling above me. I
expected an eagle’s call to issue from his lips, but he laughed, deep and throaty and full
of joy.
He dove down toward me like a hawk hunting a lemming, but misjudged and went
face first into the pavement in front of me, just as he had in real life. In real death. But
this time, instead of sagging like a deflated balloon as the life left his muscles, he got his
hands flat on the pavement and raised his head.
He smiled with broken teeth and through the mask of blood said, “the book
protected me. It’s a good thing I had it on me.”
Then he pulled the massive tome from inside his shirt, rolled on his side and
leafed through the pages.
The woman with the tattooed eyes stood next to me.
“Don’t!” She cried when she saw that he was going to read it.
“Stop warning people. You read it, and look at you,” I said.
She turned toward me, eyes tattooed on blank flesh, and tears of blood issued
from the tragic eyes.
I held her and watched Max. It was as if ash from a log had held its shape until
the gentlest touch made it disintegrate. A gust of wind took his remains away.
By morning I was beginning to feel unreal again. I had no inclination to go back
to acting, no reason to go to the stakeout and try to spot the woman of my dreams, no
purpose at all. Without purpose, my life would lose all gravitas and blow away in some
stray zephyr. ‘My life is light, waiting for the death wind, like a feather on the back of
69
my hand.’ T.S. Eliot had written that, but it had been about an old man who had lived a
saintly life and was at its end. I would continue to exist after my life had gone.
I was beginning to feel like a storefront on a movie lot, visible and unsubstantial.
Soon I would be a visible man again.
I could go back to Strange and work for him for want of anything better to do.
But without necessity, the job would provide no purpose, and without purpose, the job
would just be another storefront on the movie set of my life.
At least I could go in and get my pay. I probably wouldn’t need the money, but it
was something to do.
I walked downtown so the mission would fill more of the day. On the way, I went
by the stakeout. Carol was in my position, Pete was unobtrusive nearby.
I sidled up to Carol.
“I see Pete’s still on the job,” I muttered through the side of my mouth.
“He’s supposed to follow me, not her. I’ll follow her, he’ll follow me and that
way we may find out what she does to the followers.”
“You think that will work?”
“No.”
“So Strange has no idea how to proceed.”
She nodded.
“But he’ll continue to do something, as long as he’s getting paid.”
“That’s how the client wants it.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“Like Sisyphus.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to your stone.”
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I felt cheerful walking up First Avenue. The agency had no chance of trapping
her, so Spender Bighouse had no chance of taking anything from her.
Why was I so certain hers was the right side? All I knew about her was one
conversation, unless you counted my dreams. I had assumed the dreams were my own
inventions, but if she could make Pete forget he followed her, she could walk around
unhindered in my dreams. I wondered what she meant about bringing me to the library
for our brief meeting.
Then it struck me; why had she allowed me to remember our encounter? But
wait, I had told no one about it. What if Pete remembered his encounter with her, but had
become similarly reticent? If that were the case, she would already have made an ally of
him, and having him follow Carol would only mean that Carol was outnumbered. Not
that I thought Carol was in danger. Willie, or Williams, had to compel people with
violence. The woman with the tattooed eyes did not. I felt like helping the woman with
the tattooed eyes. And how had that happened? I had met her and liked her. Could that
have worked on an inquisitor? It seemed unlikely. Maybe I got the soft version of
whatever she did. Or maybe my memory wasn’t what really happened. Perhaps the life
I’ve lived has made me less inclined than others to trust the activity of my mind.
Somehow the whole convoluted business made me feel more engaged in life. I
felt almost real as I contemplated what might have happened to me, to Pete, and what
might befall Carol.
*********************************************************
71
Chapter 8
The Blue Peter
The Lincoln Navigator pulled up next to me and the whine of the electric window
announced that glass was going down.
“Mr. Silas!” Jones called. “Please come into the car!”
I tried the passenger side door in front, but he motioned me to the back. I opened
the back door to the Navigator and found myself climbing in next to Bighouse. I realized
that while I would climb into the vehicle for Jones, I was less inclined to do so for
Bighouse.
“Greetings,” the genial man said. “I believe you can enlighten me.”
“Compared to what?”
“Compared to what you’ve told me so far.”
I sat in silence.
“About the Stranger. You know, the woman with the book.”
I said nothing.
“You saw that woman and pretended that it wasn’t her. I want to know why.”
I looked out the window.
“Something happened between the time I hired you and the time Ms. Yost told
Pete to follow her.”
We were stopped at a light. I was reading signs on the storefronts.
“You had a conversation. She turned you.”
I watched a blind man crossing the street. There were no bells on the crosswalk
72
signals downtown, so I wondered how he knew when the light had changed.
“You might think this makes you useless to me. Actually, it means you are the
most active link we have to her.”
Birds were roosting on power lines like notes on the lines of a musical score. I
wondered what it would sound like if you played them.
“Silas, have you any notions of your own limitations?”
“I’m painfully aware.”
“Not your personal shortcomings, but the shortcomings common to most of
humanity. The limits to what you can think, what you can say, what you can do. Not
physical limitations, or financial, but the very structure of your consciousness.”
“Should I read empowering self-help books?”
“I have the same limitations. We may be more flexible than our ancestors, but we
are more limited than we can imagine, because our limitation is exactly the inability to
imagine. Have you ever studied structuralism, Silas?”
“Linguistics, right?”
“It started there, yes. It spread to the study of society, of anthropology, even of
politics. When I was in college, I studied a thinker named Louis Althusser. Structuralist.
What does that mean to you?”
“Language is a web of meaning. Words are just signifiers. The sound of words
can change quickly, but the structure of meaning is more stable.”
“Yes. Well, think of people as words. The particular people may change, but their
place in the web of meaning remains the same. People inhabit the structure, and it
doesn’t matter whether they understand it, they can only be what the structure permits.
We think we are living our lives, but we are bearers of meaning in a structure that gives
73
us our places. Just as in language, you may speak whatever sentence you like, but the
words will always be part of the meaning the structure of language allows.”
“That’s glory for you.”
“What?”
“Alice in Wonderland. Humpty-Dumpty uses ‘glory’ to mean ‘there’s a nice
knock-down argument for you.’ When Alice questions this, he says ‘When I use a word
it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’”
“And we know what happened to him,” Bighouse said.
I nodded.
“I think Lewis Carroll was more profound than your Louis.," I told him. "So
what makes you think you’ll be more successful in breaking out of the structure?”
He laughed.
“You’re very quick, Mr. Night. But the Book gives one control of the structure of
human thought. Your storybook character didn’t have the Book.”
“Nor do you.”
“I think I can get it. I’d like to hypnotize you. Now to start with, just relax…”
“No. I’m getting out here.”
I think I got out of the Navigator without being hypnotized. But what if he told
me to forget? Would I know I had been hypnotized?
When I reached the office and went up the elevator, I expected to see the serious
face of Sadie, keeping her vigil and protecting her boss. I had spoken no more than a few
words to her, but I felt I knew her character and respected her devotion. She and Strange
were shy people. I’d always wondered how love was possible between two shy people,
74
who has to take the chance and leap the chasm between them.
It felt strange walking in without her approval. Strange was sitting behind his big
blonde desk. He seemed startled by my entrance.
“Silas! I didn’t expect you.”
“Of course you did. You owe me money.”
“Yes but…” his eyes slipped toward the door.
“Sadie’s not on station. Is she allowed to take a bathroom break?”
“Of course, of course…” he gestured to a seat, but looked ill at ease.
“You can check up on her if you wish.”
“No, no, that’s not it …Bighouse is here. I was about to meet with him.”
“I met him on the way. Got out of his Lincoln about five blocks from here.”
“That explains why you arrived right after him. Why didn’t you ride all the way
here?”
“Didn’t care for the company.”
“I wish you’d come to the meeting with me. You may know something that will
help.”
“Are you about to lose a client?”
He nodded.
“Grasping at straws, then.”
“Couldn’t hurt to have you there.”
“Yes it could. Relations between me and your client are going down hill.”
Just then the lights went out. There were no windows in view, so it was pitch
black in Strange' office.
Then the phone rang.
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Strange stumbled into his desk, then he must have hit a button activating the
speakerphone.
“Hello?” he called into the darkness.
“Hello.” The voice sounded strange and mechanical.
“This is Albert Strange.” I’m pretty sure he would have answered differently if he
could see. Of course the person on the other end of the line couldn’t know this.
“We have the woman,” the robot said.
“What woman?”
“The woman called Sadie.”
“WHY?” Fear, rage and anxiety mixed in his voice.
“You must return the Book.”
“We don’t have the Book.”
“You must return it.”
“We can’t! We don’t have the book!”
“When you are ready to return the book, display the Blue Peter from the
houseboat.”
“What houseboat? We don’t have the book.”
There was a click. The lights came back on.
Strange dialed 911.
“You must not call the police,” the same voice said. “If you do not believe we are
serious, we can provide part of the woman Sadie. If you call the police, we will know. If
you talk to an individual policeman, we will know. If you call the police or FBI, the
woman will die.”
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Strange had caller ID, but the line was blocked. John Lawless dusted the circuit
box for fingerprints.
We sat down in the conference room, me, Strange, Lawless, Bighouse and Jones.
Before we could start, Carol and Pete came in. Pete said he’d received a call on his cell
phone, he thought from Strange, to come back in. Strange filled them in on what
happened.
“Well, gentlemen,” Bighouse said, “we must recover the Book and return it to
them. I admit that rescuing your employee is our highest priority.”
“There were no fingerprints on the breaker box,” Lawless said. “What does that
say to you?”
“That the event did not involve the use of the circuit breakers,” Bighouse said.
“Is that what it means?” Lawless replied.
It occurred to me that people would have reset the breakers now and then, leaving
prints behind. Finding no fingerprints meant that someone had recently wiped it down.
Maybe that was the reason he had for dusting the breaker box.
“What’s this Blue Peter business? It’s not that cold…” Carol said.
“The Blue Peter is a signal flag,” I told her. “Blue at the edges and white in the
middle. Ships used to fly it to announce that they were soon leaving port.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because they didn’t have radios. They needed to get their crews back on board.”
“They must mean when we get the book, we fly this flag from your houseboat,
Silas.”
“Why me?”
“I told you, Mr. Night, you are our most active link to the Stranger and my
77
Book,” Bighouse said.
“But she still has the Book.”
“Do we know that?” Bighouse asked. “Perhaps someone else has the Book. A
more interesting possibility is that she has the Book, but is not part of the Legion of
Stranger, or is a renegade of some kind.”
“Or maybe the call we got was not from your mystery men,” Lawless interjected.
“This would be a third force? A fourth force? I’m losing track,” Bighouse said.
“Or one of the forces already involved.”
“What exactly are you saying, Mr. Lawless?”
“You and Jones were here when the lights went out. You could have hit the
breaker box. You could have called on your cell phone.”
“An excellent idea. I’ll call on my cell.”
He did so, and the phone on the table rang. Strange picked it up.
“Hello, Mr. Strange. Would you care to trace this call?”
Strange glanced at the caller ID box.
“The line’s not blocked,” he told Lawless.
Lawless nodded.
“Let’s assume that I am innocent in this incident, then. I’m paying you to find out
who has the Book. If you recover the Book, you will want to give it to these people who
are holding your employee. We would appear to be competitors.”
“Maybe,” Strange said.
“How about this, then. If you recover the Book and turn it over to these people, I
will then pay you to find out who these people are and help me get it back from them. I
will, of course, take an interest in your endeavors. I will even help you if it is within my
78
power. I do have some expertise in this area, and I am sympathetic to the plight of your
comrade.”
“So if I understand this correctly,” said Lawless, “we now find this thing without
charging you, and turn it over to the abductors. You don’t pay us for this. Then you pay
us to find out who we gave it to. Is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“Why do I have a feeling that when we turn it over to these mystery men, you will
suddenly lose your passion for the chase?”
“I assure you…”
“Because I have a feeling you’re the mystery man. Silas decided to quit and
suddenly you find a way to pressure us. You knew Silas would come back if we needed
his help to recover Sadie. You’ve told us you think we need Silas.”
“I’m leaving this room. When you have recovered from the shock of these events,
I will be waiting in the outer office. I believe we should call the authorities, regardless of
what the kidnappers said.”
Bighouse swept out with Jones trailing behind. Jones caught my eye and shook
his head on the way out. I wasn’t sure what he meant.
When they were gone, we sat in silence for a moment.
“The thought occurs,” Lawless said, “that he figures once he gets the fabled book,
he can cloud out minds so that we won’t even care what happens to Sadie and won’t want
to be paid.”
“It was fun watching you act out,” Strange said, “but since 2 p.m. yesterday, that
was our only client.”
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Strange decided the way to contact the authorities was to walk at least five blocks
and use a pay phone. He decided to do that himself.
When he got back, he looked ready to kill someone.
“I dialed a pay phone. Same voice answered,” he said. “Whoever this is can
track where I am and take over whatever phone I’m using. I don’t even know how you
do that kind of surveillance. I think we’ll have to do this without the police.”
The only way I could think of was if the call was an illusion. Someone like the
woman with the tattooed eyes could have made him think he made the call, and think he'd
heard the same voice again.
Bighouse walked over to me.
“I think I spoke hastily in the conference room. I am duty bound to help recover
Sadie. I know more about these people than anyone else, and besides, this is going to
take money. Lawless and Strange have a legitimate concern that the cost of keeping staff
on the task of finding Sadie could bankrupt them. I want the firm intact so that it can
work for me when she is returned, and I honestly feel that her abduction was caused by
my project. I’m going to stay and work out cooperation and compensation for this part of
the work, and I’d like you to accept a ride home with Jones.”
I agreed. A few minutes later, I was sitting next to Jones in the Lincoln.
“I must tell you,” Jones said, “If I thought Mr. Bighouse was a man who would
take the woman, I would not work for him.”
“Do you really think you understand him?”
“I try to. I even read this Althusser.”
“What did you think?”
“Althusser strangled his wife and went to jail. Nicos Poulantzas, who was his
80
most famous student, jumped out a window and died. I think this structuralism is bad for
you.”
“Why?”
“Too deterministic. No place for the human spirit.”
“What if they’re right?”
“I lose nothing by acting as if they are wrong. They may think I am deluded, but
if they are right, I am deluded in exactly the way I should be.”
“Do you think the Book can really help Bighouse break out of the structure, or
somehow take it over?”
It was sprinkling, and Jones turned on the wipers. His driving was smooth,
precise. It was easy to forget that we were driving in a car.
“He shouldn’t worry. I think we are not words, because we don’t go on forever.
We are born, we grow up, we have to find our own meaning. Father, mother try to help,
but we have to do it. I was not born here. Do I fit in this structure, on Eastlake Avenue,
driving a Lincoln? It will take my whole life to know what I mean.”
“So did you break free of the structure completely?”
Jones shook his head.
“What do you think I want to be, a dangling participle? I study grammar because
I want to be understood. When I come to this country, I speak no English. I speak three
other languages. I study language to understand and be understood. I study life the same
way.”
“Did you write your book in English?”
“Yes. Enough effort, I can polish a sentence. Not yet Conrad, but give me time.”
“Well, if you could understand this structuralist stuff in English, I think you’re
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doing well.”
“Oh, I read that in French. I’m much better at French.”
After he dropped me off, I sat watching the rain pepper Lake Union, protected
from the damp by Max’s picture windows.
Jones was probably right. Society has to be organized somehow. Was it better to
be outside the structure, or somehow beyond it? Maybe not. It was hard enough just to
find a place for myself, without trying to find a place beyond the possibilities life seemed
to offer. Maybe there was a reason for these people not to share the secrets of the Book.
Maybe it was harder to be deprived of the structure than to live within it. What place had
I in the world? None, and I’d never had one.
I should help retrieve Sadie, but how? I had no way of knowing whether she was
a prisoner of the Legion of Strangers or of Spender Bighouse. I trusted Jones to be
truthful about his perceptions of the situation, but could I trust him to be right about
whether his boss was the kidnapper?
I was tired, and I had high hopes that I would dream about her again. A. J. Ayer
said that while we could compare our perception of our waking experiences with the
actual events, we could never compare our perceptions of a dream with anything outside
our consciousness. Perhaps I only thought I dreamed about her. Perhaps I only had a
fantasy of these dreams. Somehow, though, the dreams felt incredibly real. She seemed
to be really there, communicating with me, getting to know me, letting me see a little of
herself.
I lay down that night with far more hope than I’d experienced waiting at the
stakeout. She would be there in my dreams in a way no one was there in my waking life.
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The woman with the tattooed eyes sat on the side of the bed and smoothed my
brow. I tried to tell her that I would not betray her, even for Sadie, but no words issued
from my lips.
She leaned forward and kissed me, and I felt that everything I wanted to say was
communicated.
When I woke up the next morning, someone was sitting beside me on the bed. I
had a long, hopeful moment before I realized it was Carol.
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching you.”
“How did you get in?”
“Through the front door. You should lock it.”
“I didn’t anticipate a home invasion.”
“Looks like you had quite a night.”
“So the bed’s a mess. I’m nesting.”
“I meant the impression on the other pillow. Who did you spend the night with?”
“You mean ‘with whom did you spend the night.’”
“Either way.”
“Either way, I slept alone.”
“The bed doesn’t look like it.”
“Even so.”
She stood and sighed exasperation.
“It’s none of my business, I suppose. You’re free to sleep with whomever you
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wish. I’m not here about that.”
“Now you mention it, why are you here?”
“I started quietly searching this place about two hours ago. About an hour ago, I
found the signal flags. I figured Max would have a set. It was part of his nautical
fantasy. I raised the signal. Soon we should know who we’re up against.”
“You’ve got the book?”
“No, Silas. I decided on my own to raise the signal and see who answers it. We
don’t have the book, and we don’t have any prospect of getting the book. We have to
contact these people and explain. I don’t see any other way around it.”
“Did you talk to Strange? Does he approve?”
“On my own, Silas. On my own.”
“Hand me a robe.”
I got up and walked down the stairs. The flagpost out front displayed a flag with
two blue stripes and a white stripe between them.
“It’s not the Blue Peter,” I told her.
“Blue and white, right?”
“Blue square with a white square in the middle.”
“So what’s this flag?”
“I should remember, but I don’t.”
If Max had signal flags around the place, he must have been interested enough to
have a signal book. We found it after a few minutes.
“Here we are,” I told her. “Looks like J. ‘I am on fire and have a dangerous
cargo on board; keep well clear of me.’”
“All right, I’ll take it down.”
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“I’m confiscating the Blue Peter. We’re going to get Albert Strange to approve
anything we do. He’d the one that cares the most about Sadie.”
******************************************************
Chapter 9
A piece of paper
Strange was not enthusiastic.
“Look, Carol,” he said, “we can’t afford to anger these people. There may come a
time when such desperate measures are needed. Right now, we’re doing what we can.”
“It’s not enough.”
“No. I suspect it’s not. But I’m going to try what I know how to do.”
“I’ll go back on the stakeout,” I volunteered.
“Bighouse thinks hypnotizing you could get some results. I’m not sure why,”
Strange said.
I tried to ignore the inquiry.
“If I see her at the stakeout, what do we do?”
“You talk to her.”
“Wait…Me? I talk to her? What happened to following her?”
“That didn’t get us anywhere. We need to enlist her help, not treat her as a target.
I don’t even know how Bighouse planned to deal with the problem of getting the book
from her, but right now I’m doing this my way. If anyone can help us, she can.”
“If she will,” Carol said. “Is there any indication that she would be interested in
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helping us? Can you think of a reason that she would?”
“I can’t think why not,” I said
So we were standing at the newsstand again, Carol and I. There seemed little
hope of seeing the woman with the tattooed eyes. We killed time by talking.
“You know Sadie very well?” I asked.
“I don’t think anyone does.”
“She’s in love with Strange.”
“Go on, pull the other one.”
“I think Strange is in love with her, too.”
“You old romantic.”
“So my question is, how did whoever took her know that this was his most
vulnerable point?”
“Bighouse would say it’s because they have special powers.”
“The information had to come from someone who had seen them together. You
don’t have to be some kind of genius mutant to figure it out. Two shy people, both too
reticent to make the first move. A look that lasts a moment longer, conversations full of
embarrassing pauses…but you’d have to be there to see it.”
“You think it was Bighouse?”
“Could be. I wonder, though, if he pays enough attention to other people. He
doesn’t seem like someone who would focus on the receptionist.”
“She’s a lot more than that.”
“I know. She does research on the computer.”
“She trained as a librarian. Anything that’s written down somewhere, she can
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find. We had some lousy receptionists, so she volunteered to do that in addition to her
other work. She figured she was pretty much tied to the desk anyway, except when she
had to research older documents. When that happened, whoever was in the office just sat
in front. We don’t have that many people walking in, anyhow.”
“So to get the Book, someone kidnaps a librarian. We’re looking for someone
with a sense of irony.”
“That’s no help. On that theory, it could be you.”
“So I’m working under a cloud of suspicion.”
“It always has to be about you. Do you think our mystery woman will show
herself?”
“I don’t know her schedule.”
“That’s not the issue. Last time we saw her – and it was her, I’m quite sure – I
think she showed herself on purpose. If Bighouse is right about her, she only gets seen if
she’s taken by surprise or if she wants to be seen. I think the first time you saw her, she
was taken by surprise. The first time I saw her, she stood there looking at you and made
no effort not to be seen. She was interested in what we were doing, so she got us to send
someone after her. I’m sure she got everything she wanted to know out of Pete before
she sent him back.”
“If you’re right, we don’t stand a chance.”
“I’m counting on her curiosity. We’re probably like bugs to her. She’s maybe
some kind of naturalist. Or maybe her relationship to ordinary humans is like animal
husbandry. She’ll want to know what’s wrong with the flock.”
“The hive, you mean, and it’s insect husbandry.”
“Beekeeping.” Carol smiled.
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“I haven’t produced any honey in years.”
“I’m biting my tongue," she said. "I will not exploit this opening. I will say
nothing.”
She didn’t show that day. When I went home, I carefully made the bed and
fluffed the pillows. I’m usually a quiet sleeper, so I wasn’t sure how I’d made such a
mess in one night. Maybe when I dreamed of her, my normal sleep patterns were
interrupted. I tried not to admit to myself that my elaborate preparations of the bed were
directed toward the dream life that was starting to seem more important than my waking
life. I wondered whether this retreat into my own head was anything like what happened
to the people of the Book. Perhaps they lost interest in the life of the body.
It occurred to me that I could do anything I wanted now. I probably wouldn’t be
much help recovering Sadie. And after she was safe, what would I do?
I found that I had no desire to act on the stage or on screen, large or small,
anymore. Stardom held no attraction for me anymore. I had been held in thrall by that
vision all my life, and I wasn’t sure why I was now free. Was it her work? She had said
I would have a better life. Freedom from want would be the first step. I had a roof over
my head, food as I needed it, and the final, Zen measure, freedom from the pain of desire.
What was ambition, but a kind of want?
My life is light…
Without desire, I had no reason to act. On the stage, or in life. Would she leave
me adrift without desire, without purpose?
A car doesn’t drive itself. Where would it go?
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
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The Book was nowhere to be seen. Only the woman with the tattooed eyes. She
was coming toward me from far away. I was glad the book wasn’t there. It only came
between us, and I’d had too many warnings to harbor any desire for it.
Please stay this time, I tried to say, but still no words would issue from my lips.
She placed her fingers on my lips to shush me.
Life was better when I was asleep. Why was I spending my whole life on a
corner waiting for her, when she was right here in my dreams?
We lay in the bed, naked and tired, while she smoothed the hair back from my
forehead.
“Silas…Silas…”
I blinked my eyes open in the cloud-filtered morning light from an east-facing
window and realized that the woman next to me was clothed. Carol was stroking my
hair.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
When she left the room I rolled out of bed. I felt a crinkling under my arm, and
found a piece of paper.
Carol brewed coffee while I was dressing. I must have been in bed for ten hours,
but I felt as if I’d been up all night. For all that, I felt a happy, quiet calm. It’s surprising
what good dreams can do for you.
“You’ve got to stop popping in like this,” I told Carol.
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“Somebody had to come get you. It’s already 9:30. We’ve got to get to work.”
“Sorry I slept in. Why didn’t you just call?”
She picked up the phone and handed it to me.
“Listen to this. Do you hear a dial tone? Maybe you should tell the phone
company there’s a living customer in the house.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll call them today. As soon as we get to a different phone. An
alarm clock, too, I’ll get one of those.”
“There’s one in Max’s room.”
“I’ll get another one.”
“You know, I don’t really care how you spend your nights, but if you can’t get up
in the morning that’s a problem. Tell your friend, whoever she is, that you need to get
your beauty rest.”
“No friend. Just weird dreams.”
“Right.”
She stomped out the door and I followed. She drove us downtown in her ancient
Volkswagen, wrapped in a poisonous silence.
It could be worse. She could have seen the piece of paper. It had a handwritten
poem on it. It was a naive poem. It read like a teen angst song.
I’m a prisoner of walls
that I built for my protection
in a cell that has a view of you
that’s fortified against rejection.
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And I need a second sight
to see beyond my blindness
and I need a better heart
to prevail upon your kindness.
You are mist across the water
I am wind upon the wave,
so if we lay down together
we will lie in separate graves.
And I need a second sight
in the shadow of your kindness
and I can’t release my heart
in the winter of my blindness.
There is ice on all the walls
there’s a chill in every sentence
that I serve in whispered verse
in my solitude’s repentance.
And I need a stronger light
to feel beyond my blindness
and I wish I had the heart
to exploit your natural kindness.
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My immediate reaction was that Carol had left it for me, but it didn’t sound like
it. Carol knows about shyness the way a blind worm knows about color.
Then I thought that perhaps I had acquired that essential celebrity accessory, the
stalker. The trouble with that was that my name had faded from public view, and I
doubted I could qualify even as the answer to a trivia question.
When we got to the agency I asked to see Strange alone. I showed him the paper.
“You think it’s from our target?” he asked.
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that.”
“But you think it was her.”
“I don’t know.”
“Any idea why she’d be writing you poetry?”
“Stop, stop. I don’t even know who wrote it. I was hoping it would be a riddle or
something that could be related to Sadie’s disappearance.”
“Criminals don’t leave riddles. They try to cover their tracks. If this has any
relevance – and I’m not at all sure it does – it must somehow be related to the woman
we’re trying to contact. I’m going to run this by Bighouse.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“We’re getting nowhere on getting Sadie back. The phone company has been no
help tracing that call, the tapes from the security camera were blank and the stakeout has
taken us nowhere. I’d like to respect your wishes, but saving Sadie trumps everything.”
Bighouse insisted on going to the houseboat. He had me show him where I found
the paper.
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He threw back the covers on my bed, then put his face close to the sheet and
sniffed. He turned toward me, grinning.
“A woman has had sex on this bed very recently. The nose…” here he tapped his
nose … “knows.”
“I think I would have noticed.”
“Possibly not.”
“You think it’s someone from the Legion of Strangers, and she’s used me for sex,
then clouded my mind.”
“Of course.”
“I thought they left their animal passions behind, which is what led to them
having to recruit new generations.”
“They try to.”
“You said something about vulnerability.”
“They are sensitive people. They understand what we are feeling on a deeper
level, and their empathy helps them communicate to us on levels we can’t even
understand. It’s like holding a hot pan with a hot pad, compared with holding it in your
bare hand. We think love can rip our hearts out, but they understand the pain on a deeper
level. If you’re an animal, you feel pain when your mate bites you. If you’re human,
you feel it when your mate snaps at you. And if you’ve been changed by the Book…who
knows how we could hurt them.”
“I have no intention of hurting her.”
“How many lovers have said that?”
“Suppose you’re right. What does the poem mean?”
He held up the paper.
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“The first stanza is about the emotional isolation practiced as a defense against
their vulnerability. The second, and every alternate verse thereafter, is about how love has
confused her perceptions so that she cannot use her usual perceptiveness on her own
situation. Prevailing upon your kindness, of course, is about her hopes that you will not
damage her. The third verse recognizes that she is far more powerful than you, and likely
to harm you as well. The fifth, I think, is about her desire to stay away from you and
deny her emotions.”
It made an odd sort of sense, if his version of the vulnerabilities of the readers of
the Book were correct.
“Why poetry?”
“Perhaps because it is less direct than prose. Poetry is an old form, from before
writing. Meter and rhyme helped people memorize epic poems, and when something is
easier to remember, it has a stronger impact. In the time of living gods like the god-kings
of Egypt, poetic truth and religious visions were the way you arrived at truth. Only in the
golden age of Greece did logic begin to compete with literary or poetic understanding of
the world. Why does every culture have folk tales? Because whoever told the best story
was believed, and the tales were useful in transmitting their kind of truth through the
generations. When Pythagoras discovered the power of mathematical reason in naming
the truth, some Greeks practically started a religion about it. They were trying to cloak
the new truth in the old trappings.”
“Isn’t it still the one that tells the best story that’s believed?”
“Yes, but among mathematicians, the grammar is very exacting.”
“So when they fall in love, these people of the Book get poetic?”
He shook his head.
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“Not always. It may have something to do with the circumstances under which
she fell in love with you. I don’t know enough to say what makes them act one way or
another. Have you ever had a dog, Silas?”
“Cats, but no dogs.”
“Then try to imagine your cat trying to understand your motivations. It would
have a hard time, because its frame of reference is one without language. I am trying to
understand the Legion of Strangers without having read the Book and been changed by it.
I want to understand. I think I can understand. But I can’t do it without the Book.”
“I’ve had some dreams,” I told him. “Warnings, I think, about the Book. Could
she give me those dreams?”
He stared at me as if I were a mythical creature. Perhaps he saw me as having the
body of a newt, the wings of a dodo and the brain of an ass.
“You’ve got to let me hypnotize you. I could get you to remember your
encounters with her. We could get her to give me back the Book.”
“Hey, remember Sadie? She’s supposed to be our focus here. First, we get the
Book to whoever is holding Sadie, and we get her back.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I spoke without thinking. We could get the book, contact
Sadie’s abductors, and get her back. Why hesitate? It’s the only way to get her back.
You shouldn’t be so selfish and stubborn.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I am the only one who knows enough. I had the book in my hands, but not long
enough to benefit from it. If I could do it once, I can do it again. No other seeker of this
book has come so close.”
“Except those who have read it.”
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“And why should I not be one of them?”
“They didn’t recruit you.”
“Perhaps those who read the Book recruit themselves. I certainly plan to. I’m
your only hope, Silas” he said in a soft, rhythmic, soothing voice. “I’m Sadie’s only
hope. Let me help you. Let me help Sadie. Who knows what danger she is in? Who
knows what danger you are in? You’re keeping Sadie a prisoner, Silas. Only you have
the power to take the necessary steps. Only you can say yes to me. Please, let me help
you…”
A knock came at the door and I shook myself, realizing that I had been slipping
toward a relaxed, receptive state that Bighouse might have exploited.
**********************************************************
Chapter 10
A Bump in the Night
It was Jones. He had been standing outside the door during out interview.
“I told you we were not to be interrupted,” Bighouse said.
“The man insisted.”
“You bet I did,” Strange said. Lawless followed him in.
“Clear out,” Lawless said to Bighouse. “Private party.”
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“You have asked for my assistance. I cannot give it at a distance.”
“Look,” Strange said, “I want to get Sadie back more than anyone. That’s why
we need to talk to Silas. You can hang out on the dock. We’ll be done talking soon.”
Bighouse left with Jones. He wasn’t happy.
“I think he was trying to hypnotize me.”
“I might insist that you allow that. Let’s talk about what it’s going to take to get
in touch with this lady. Bighouse seems pretty sure she’s coming around here.”
I turned to Lawless.
“But you think Bighouse took Sadie.”
“Not without help. We don’t have a lot of people, and we know them all pretty
well. The idea that someone in the office would do this is hard to accept, but we’ve
talked about the time line and where everybody was, and I don’t think Jones or Bighouse
could have cut the lights.”
“Why put the lights out, anyway?” I asked
“That’s what makes me think it was someone inside. One way you could make an
untraceable call would be to use the in-house phone system as an intercom. Our system
rings the same way for intercom as for a regular call. Darkness immobilized everyone,
which made it unlikely someone would walk in on the person making the call. The only
place anyone would go is the breaker box.”
“Bighouse thinks his mystery men could make the call from anywhere in the
world,” Strange added. “I don’t think this has anything to do with them.”
“But if the Book is missing, wouldn’t they have to recover it?”
“Yeah. But if they have the abilities that Bighouse claims they have, they
wouldn’t need to use such crude methods. This is someone who has to take prisoners.”
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“But if it’s Bighouse who took her, why should I let him hypnotize me?”
“Because giving kidnappers what they want is the usual way to get victims back.”
“You make it seem like my duty.”
Lawless held up his hand.
“There’s more than one hypnotist in the world. We have an idea. By tomorrow,
we may have the Book, and that will make the way clear to get Sadie back.”
It was three hours before they left. Bighouse had waited the whole time.
He came storming in after they left, with Jones sauntering behind.
“Who was that woman? Why have you kept me out?”
“I think they said her name was Thona. She’s Romany. Is Thona a gypsy name?”
“I don’t think it’s a name at all. It sounds like a psychoactive drug. The woman's
a fraud. What was she here for?”
“She’s a licensed hypnotherapist. I don’t know why they’re worried about my
psyche. I’m okay. Anyway, I let her do her thing. Can’t hurt, can it?”
He stormed out. Jones flashed me a smile and followed.
“It’s killing me,” she sobbed. The Book lurked on a table behind her, its covers
concealing her fate.
A baby cried in the distance and I knew it was ours.
Giving hostages to fortune. Who had called marriage and families that? I’d
probably said the line in a play once. Francis Bacon, that's who had written that. Must
have been a Shakespeare play.
“I have to go to her,” I said gently. “I think she’s scared.”
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“I can’t let go.”
“She’s crying.”
“That’s me.”
It was. She was the woman and the child.
“It’s because of me,” I realized aloud.
“Please protect me,” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”
But how could I protect her from myself?
When I woke the room was bright with sunlight. The windows faced the east, and
the sun must have been up for hours. I saw the impression on the other pillow and knew
that she had been there. I methodically searched the bed for a message.
It was scribbled on an envelope and dropped between the bed and the wall.
This time it had a title.
The Impossibility Theorem
I’m sitting on the edge of my world
waiting for Columbus to come
waiting for the seeker of some secret shore
to cast me a line and draw me close once more.
We were parallel lines
born never to meet
until we ran into each other
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on this Mobeus street.
Now I with all my mind
cannot divine the final Pi
but the laws the numbers live by
have long divided you and I.
That world of liquid crystals
has seen unreason in our sins
and with a clashing of its symbols
sought to bring its logic in.
‘I divorced old barren reason’
wise old Khayyam said
and she showed up on our doorstep
where her lonely logic led.
At Pythagoras’ insistence
she restored our perfect distance
so I’m sitting on the edge of my world
waiting for Columbus to come
listening to the death of my words
toppling off the tip of my tongue.
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I called Strange and told him I was ready to come.
“I’ll pick you up.”
“No, I can take a cab in.”
“Silas, we can’t take chances at this point. I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t let
anyone in the door.”
He hung up, and I heard the door open moments later. They must have been
listening to the line.
Steps came up the stairs. No knock on the door, just the handle turning.
“Silas?”
Bighouse. I hadn’t expected him to be so brazen.
“Silas, there you are. We need to talk.”
“Where is Jones?”
“He has the morning off. There are some things you can pay people to do, others
you cannot. You think you can deal with these people without me. You cannot. Tell me,
where is the Book?”
“That’s for Sadie,” John Lawless said. He was standing in the doorway behind
Bighouse.
“Ah. Mr. Lawless. Perhaps you can help me convince our friend to cooperate. I
presume you spent the night here to watch over him?”
“You’re a cool one, Bighouse. No, I’ve been following you since last night. No
sooner does Silas call my partner than you get a phone call and show up here.”
“I only want to be of service.”
“Why didn’t you have the place watched last night?” Bighouse asked.
“You remember what happened when Pete followed her? I would have an
101
operative swearing he hadn’t seen her, even if she had been here.
“I’ve already had an agent take the Book,” Lawless said. “She left it out on the
water side, just sitting on the table. The Book is where you can’t get it. Let’s raise the
flag, Silas.”
I dressed quickly and showed him where I’d hidden the Blue Peter.
After we raised it, we pulled three chairs out and sat watching the lake. There
was no wind and as the sun climbed it got comfortably warm.
“When they call…” I said.
“We do exactly what they say. We take the Book where they say, we don’t call
the cops, we don’t try anything funny.”
“But you do try to find out who they are,” Bighouse said.
“Once we have Sadie, we see what she remembers. That’s where you get your
best information. We don’t try anything until we’re sure of her safety.”
“How will they know my new phone number?” I asked.
“I’m guessing they either know how to learn that, or don’t need the number.
We’re doing what they said. They’ll find a way to tell us what they want.”
“How did you get the book?” Bighouse asked.
Lawless gave him a guarded look.
“Let’s just say you’re not the only hypnotist around.”
“Ah! So what exactly did you hypnotize Silas to do?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lawless said. “What she did worked.”
“I do hope you’ve actually got the Book.”
“Not your concern is it? Sadie’s nobody to you, and you could give a rat’s ass
whether we save her. All you care about is your precious Book.”
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“You are mistaken. I do care about what happens to your friend. I thought our
discussion at your office would have cleared this up.”
“Al may have bought your act. I don’t. You’re on probation as far as I’m
concerned.”
“I could take my business elsewhere, Mr. Lawless.”
“You won’t get the kind of expertise we have, because nobody else with any kind
of reputation will take your screwy case.”
“Perhaps I could do with less expertise if I had more trust.”
“You can’t expect trust, Bighouse. You haven’t leveled with us from the start.
Who is competing with you for the Book, Bighouse? It’s not just some loner with no
resources.”
Bighouse sat silent for a while. Lawless seemed to be waiting for him to talk.
“Of course there is competition, Mr. Lawless. But to my knowledge, other than
the Legion of Strangers, the only one who has competed with me in Seattle is Willie
Lawrence.”
“The guy who wasn’t going to give us any more trouble.”
“So you wish to know who my competitors are. The main one – the one with the
most resources and the greatest intelligence – was Henry Greathead. This may sound like
the pseudonym of a homosexual porn star, but it is his real name. He is a British subject
headquartered in Istanbul. He is wealthy and intelligent, but not as wealthy as myself and
on present evidence, not quite as clever.”
“And when did you last have contact with him?”
“Six months ago. That’s why I don’t think he’s here.”
“How far would he go to get this thing?”
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“At least as far as I would.”
The call came about 3 p.m. They called on Bighouse’s cell phone, but they asked
for Lawless. I suppose it was a way of letting us know they could see everyone sitting in
the lee of the Blue Peter. The wind was from the north, as you might expect on a sunny
day, blowing about 6 to 8 knots. On a crisp fall day, that’s enough to make it very cool. I
had been drinking hot cocoa and trying to be as tough as Lawless and Bighouse, but I was
about to give it up when the call came.
Bighouse answered and, jealous of the contact, handed the phone over to Lawless.
“Yeah?” he said. “It’ll be there.”
He turned off the phone and handed it over to Bighouse.
“Where’s the handoff?” Bighouse asked.
“They told me not to tell you.”
After sunset, they positioned me upstairs. The plan had changed, and they
wouldn't tell me why.
“As per their directions, you will be the only one in the houseboat," Strange said.
"You stay upstairs. Do not go downstairs; we don’t want to make them nervous. Do not
leave your post.”
Lawless handed me a large bowl.
“We’re serious about not leaving your post,” he said.
“We’ll be nearby. We just can’t be here,” Strange said.
“I wish you’d have Pete do this.”
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“I trust Pete like my own son,” Lawless said. “Under the present circumstances, I
wouldn’t trust my own son. We three are the only ones I’m sure of.”
“Carol must be okay.”
“If you say so,” he grumbled. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just not sure.”
“But you’re sure of me.”
“One thing we did with the hypnotist was ask you a bunch of questions," Strange
said. "If you had anything to hide, you wouldn’t even have allowed us to put you under.”
“But these Book people…”
“Silas, let us worry about trusting you.”
I did have occasion to use the bowl. In fact, my big worry was that the thing
would overfill and spill. Too much coffee, I guess. I was using it to stay awake. I had a
big thermos, and by midnight, I’d nearly emptied it. The clouds had parted, and a half
moon provided enough light to see the action.
The package was sitting on the deck within inches of the edge. I’d begun to think
they weren’t going to come when I heard the low rumble of the engine. It was a small
boat with a large outboard. No running lights showed. One man was aboard.
He came in slowly, angling the boat at the last minute so that it drifted sideways
into the houseboat. He reached over to the dock, grabbed the package and took it aboard,
and hit the throttle. He was headed north toward the University bridge, the route to Lake
Washington. Lake Washington is a long lake. If he made it through Mountlake Cut, he’d
be tough to catch.
About 100 feet to the north, another boat without running lights shot out of a
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marina and ran directly in front of him. That would be Strange. The kidnapper had a
choice between turning port and going the same direction as the boat that cut him off, or
turning to starboard and trying to squeeze behind the other boat. He went to starboard
and tried to go behind, but there wasn’t room between the dock and the stern of Strange’s
boat. He hit the stern quarter of the other boat and ran over the top of it, hung up for a
moment, then slid back in the water. He took off again, but stopped with a jerk.
Strange’s boat stopped too, and I guessed that Strange had managed to get the grapple
aboard.
By this time Lawless was speeding up from the south. They had a boat on each
side, and both men had shotguns. Lawless had argued that someone might not see a
handgun, but a shotgun with a 30-inch barrel makes itself known without being fired.
Lawless pulled someone off the kidnapper's boat, then the grapnel came loose and
the boat sped off with no one in it. They had to recover Strange from his boat, which was
now sinking. There would be a fuel slick on the lake the next day.
They brought in the man I still thought of as Willie Lawrence.
“I thought you left town,” I said. I certainly would have.
He grinned at me and looked at his captors.
“Now comes the part where you try to get me to talk,” he said.
“John, would you put duct tape over his mouth?” Strange said.
Lawless complied.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “How can he tell us anything with duct tape over
his mouth?”
“He doesn’t want to talk,” Strange said. “So John, what have we got?”
“Worst possible guy. What this says to me is that there is no big gang, nobody to
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keep the home fires burning with Sadie back at the homestead. Besides, we already
know how his mind works. He’d get what he wants, then kill her so she couldn’t talk.”
“But that means…”
“Yeah, the next logical step is, why keep her alive until he gets it. Just a pain in
the ass. He thinks like that guy that kidnapped the Lindbergh kid. Kill the victim, collect
the ransom and disappear.”
“So all that’s left for me is revenge.”
“I think he wants to talk,” I interjected.
They both turned on me.
“Don’t try to play ‘good cop,’ Silas,” Strange said, “he’s not going to fall for that.
Look, what we need from you is weight. I’m worried his body will float up and raise
some inconvenient questions.”
When you move, you think everything you own weighs a ton, but look around
and think of what you own that will sink a body swelled with the gasses produced by
putrefaction. Most of the furniture is wood, the television has a picture tube that will
probably float it, and radios don’t weigh much.
We finally found a bowling ball in a closet that was stored in a bag. We tied it
around his neck by the handle of the bag. The anchor in the runabout was only a seven-
pound Danforth with about 10 feet of chain. Lawless argued that this was enough to sink
him into the deep, cold water of Lake Washington.
We carried him out to one of the boats, wrapped in anchor line and chain, with the
bowling ball and the anchor laying on top of him, and set him down on the houseboat's
deck.
“You sure you’ve got enough gas?” I asked.
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Lawless picked up the six-gallon tank and jiggled it.
“There's a can floating from the other boat. We can snag that." He got it with the
boat hook. Then we loaded Willie into the boat, me on one end and Strange on the other.
Strange dropped him from about a foot high.
“Careful,” I admonished him.
“He’ll be dead in about half an hour. I’m not going to worry about bruising him.”
“Just don’t make so much noise the neighbors wake up.”
“Go get the jackets, Silas.”
“No. You’ll leave me behind.”
“Sure you want to participate in a capital crime?”
I untied the bow line and Lawless fired up the engine. We went slowly though the
ship canal to Lake Washington. Nobody spoke.
We came out north of the Albert Rossellini Bridge at Evergreen Point. Lawless
opened it up a little and in ten minutes the lights from shore were twinkling in the
distance. He idled the engine.
Strange pulled the duct tape off Willie’s mouth, and part his beard with it.
“Any last words?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Too bad there won’t be a tombstone. That could be your epitaph.”
He picked up Willie’s feet and dragged them around so that he could put them
over the side.
“Wait a minute!” Willie yelled.
Strange took the anchor, which was tied to Willie's hands and had about six feet of
line, and put it over the side.
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“I’ll talk!”
“So talk,” Strange said, sitting on the side.
“I’m not working alone.”
“I should care?”
“Pete’s working with me. We’re both getting paid big time.”
“I’ll kill Pete, too,” Strange told him.
“This is illegal!”
“This guy’s got a brilliant legal mind,” Lawless said. “Such a waste.”
“I’ll tell you who the boss is.”
“What we’d really like to know is where we can find Sadie,” Strange said. “The
rest of what you’re selling is important in the long run, I’m sure, but not really gripping.
It can’t be good for you to lose my interest.”
“We didn’t kidnap her. We made the second call. I swear we didn’t kidnap her.
We were just exploiting the situation.”
Strange sighed hugely and moved to lift Willie’s shoulders.
“No, wait, wait! The boss knows. I don’t know his name, but I can lead you to
him.”
“The trouble with you telling me things under these circumstances is that you’ll
say anything to save your own life. I honestly don’t believe you, and in my current
mood, I’m inclined to kill you.”
“Stop it, Al,” Lawless said. “You’re losing your grip.”
Strange pulled the anchor tied to Willie’s hands back aboard.
“So where’s the big boss man?”
“On a big boat. It’s moored at Kirkland.”
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“Name of the boat?”
“I don’t know, but I know what the boat looks like.”
“You’re just afraid I’ll throw you overboard once I know.”
“Who can blame him?” I asked. “You scare the wits out of me, and I’m on your
side.”
“I’ve been a law-abiding citizen all my life. Well, most of my life,” Strange
conceded. “At first I thought we’d play bad-cop bad-cop with him. But I think this lying
weasel knows where Sadie is and he’s still trying to work the angles. It’s more than I can
stand. I’m throwing him over.”
He picked up the anchor he’d brought back aboard, and Lawless swung around
with the shotgun.
“Put it down, Al. You aren’t thinking right. If he’s lying, we may have another
chance to kill him. If he isn’t, maybe his boss knows something.”
Strange held the anchor as if it were poor Yorick’s skull, and he was about to
launch into a moody soliloquy.
“You won’t shoot, John. Even if I dump him overboard, you won’t shoot.”
“No. All right, that was a bluff. But listen to me. We should follow this lead. If
you throw him away – I mean throw it away – and we don’t get her back, you’ll always
wonder if he was telling the truth.”
Strange glumly put the anchor back in the bilge.
“If we get Sadie back safely, I won’t kill you,” he said.
********************************************
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Chapter 11
A distant voice across the water
We headed for Kirkland. You don’t go too fast at night, because you don’t know
what obstructions are floating in the water, so it took at least half an hour to get to there.
Kirkland is a small city on the east shore of Lake Washington. Bellevue is its
larger neighbor to the south and Redmond, home of Microsoft, is to the east. The east
side has wealth and tends to vote Republican. Kirkland still has the small downtown area
that served farmers before the floating bridge was built, before the east side began to be
suburban and then urban. That old downtown is only a few blocks. South of that are
condos. There are boat moorages along the shore. It must have been about 2 a.m. when
we got there.
I was beginning to realize how much my nights meant to me. I wasn’t sleepy,
really, I just wanted to be in my bed and dreaming about the woman with the tattooed
eyes. What was more real to me; myself, my days, my work and my waking
companions, or dreams about a woman I could never comprehend? The answer was easy
and extremely uncomfortable. Reality couldn’t compare to my dreams. The fact that I'd
helped Lawless and Strange get the Book worried me, but we'd left it back at the
houseboat, planning to return it. I was beginning to think I should have stayed to guard
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the Book. I was probably the only one still thinking about it, but the further we got from
it, the more it bothered me. I was beginning to feel that I would never get it back to her.
The situation in the boat was tense. Even when it was happening I had trouble
accepting that Lawless and Strange would go so far. I think Lawless took the view that
they were scaring their captive to get information from him. I’m guessing that was farther
beyond the law than he’d ever gone before. He was risking his license and his freedom,
violating his principles. When it became clear that Strange wanted to kill their captive,
he had to see how far he’d go for friendship. I got the feeling that he wasn’t even slightly
comfortable with the answer. I knew he’d been a policeman before he hung out his own
shingle as an investigator. He’d probably sent people to jail for far less than he’d just
done.
Strange didn’t look like the man I knew. He’d been staring through Willie, who
had fixed his gaze in the bilge to avoid Strange’s eyes. I don’t think Strange had blinked
since he brought the anchor attached to Willie’s hands back aboard. His hands were
wrapped around the shotgun in a grip so primitive he could only have used the weapon as
a club. Where his mind had gone I had no clue. Killing Willie made no sense. Willie
was a lead, the one person who could possibly help him find Sadie. His desire to take
action had overmastered his reason, and without the restraining voice of John Lawless he
would have killed Willie for the satisfaction of having done something to someone he
could blame for Sadie's abduction.
I was beginning to feel odd. I suppose it was that time of night when I usually
dreamed about her. I was beginning to feel her presence.
“Silas…” I heard her voice from a long way off.
There was a large commercial vessel parked at the end of the pier. One tough
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winter in the ‘90s, developers bought the ship to act as a breakwater for the marina.
Since then, the city had been trying to get them to move it, and they’d been trying to get
the permits to build a breakwater.
“Silas…” her voice was despairing in the distance. “Silas, I need you…”
“That’s it,” Willie called from the bilge.
“The big one at the end?” Lawless asked.
“Yeah. Knock yourself out.”
“How do we get on board?”
“I don’t give a shit. My deal was to take you to where the boss is.”
Strange picked up the anchor attached to Willie’s hands. He threw it overboard,
then started dragging his feet to the gunwale.
“Hey don’t! They can hear me from shore now if I scream.”
“Then I’d better get you into the water fast.”
“Okay, I’ll help you get in.”
Strange hesitated, then dropped his feet.
“How?”
“Pull the other anchor aboard and I’ll tell you.”
“Silas come back…I can’t bear it…”
Not a good time to mention that I was experiencing auditory hallucinations.
“The only way to get aboard on the water side is to throw a grapple aboard and
climb the rope.”
“Al, my rope climbing days are over,” Lawless said, “how about you?”
“It’s not part of my morning workout, and I was a fat boy in high school, so I
can’t say I ever had rope climbing days. For a couple weeks in boot camp I was able to
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do it, but that's about it.”
“I can’t be alone now…you must help me…”
“Silas?”
“Uh!”
“Silas what’s wrong?” Lawless speaking.
“I…don’t know.”
“Well, can you do it?”
“What?”
“Climb a damn rope and find a way to let us aboard. Oh, hell, why am I asking
you? This isn’t your gig.”
“Any other ideas?” Strange asked Willie.
“If you approach from shore, there’s a locked gate with razor wire around it.”
“We’re in a boat. Why would we approach from shore?”
“Why have you forsaken me?”
“Oh, please, I haven’t! I love you!”
Lawless hit me.
“Shut up!”
“What’s the matter, Silas?” Strange asked. “Why did you call out?”
“I was answering her. She needs me. She’s desperate.”
“We didn’t hear anything,” Lawless said.
“I’m hearing her. She’s calling me.”
“Well, if you feel compelled to answer, do so quietly. I doubt she can hear any
better when you shout,” Strange said.
“Why’d you bring the freak?” Willie asked.
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Strange kicked him in the ribs.
“Okay, okay, you got the perfect operative there.”
“So,” Lawless said, as if nothing had interrupted their planning, “It looks like we
tie up to one of the boats in the marina and go in from there.”
Strange put a new piece of duct tape over Willie’s mouth.
“I need to hear your voice, I need to feel your body…”
I remembered what Bighouse had said about gods speaking to people through
hallucinations. Maybe my brain was generating these hallucinations as a way to
communicate what she was feeling. Perhaps I had knowledge of how she would feel if I
were not there.
We bumped up against the stern of a powerboat, maybe a 40 footer or more. It
was a modern one with a swim deck on the stern and steps leading up to the cockpit.
“I want you to stay on the boat, Silas,” Strange said. “I’m going to leave you
with a shotgun. We’re using handguns for this part of the operation. If our friend here
tries to get loose, hit him with the butt of the shotgun. If he somehow gets loose and tries
to take you, you can shoot him.”
I wasn’t sure I could. Aside from the mechanics of operating something as
unfamiliar as a shotgun, I couldn't conceive of taking a life. I tried to do a method acting
thing, the way I had in the many roles that had required me to kill someone.
I sat in Lawless’s seat and tried to look tough. I moved to the stern of the boat we
were tied to, my head just high enough to see Lawless and Strange walking toward the
ship at the end of the pier.
“We came into the world alone. We leave the world alone. All else is an
illusion.”
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But I love you. You are more than I have ever wanted. I would not know want if
not for you. You have deprived me of ambition, of need, of any motivating force except
for the need for you. Without you I am a puddle of protoplasm without any organizing
principle. Hardly an organism at all.
“The lies they believe together are better than the truth that we know alone.”
That cannot be. It is truth, it is always better than lies.
“What is truth?”
Truth is …I don’t know. Eternal. Milton said that in any conflict between truth
and untruth, truth would always win.
“Truth is a word we use to describe that which we believe without question.”
It must be more than that. You’re losing faith in truth, in life. Truth is eternal.
How we may know it may be subject to argument, but the truth is there even if we are not.
“Truth is knowledge. Knowledge is known. Who knows it when we don’t?”
I’m not a religious man. But there must be something out there.
“Is that what God is to you? A metaphysical monster to cover for your
ignorance?”
I knew a little about guns from researching roles, but I didn't know how to shoot
one. Lawless had taken a .38 snubnose revolver, the sort of “Detective” revolver popular
when he was a young man. Strange carried a .380 Walther PPK, which hadn’t been made
since I was a young man. They could accept computers, but they had never adopted
sidearms with a really useful number of rounds.
The auditory hallucinations were getting worse. I was having conversations in
my head that were distracting me from my task. If Willie got loose, he could easily take
me.
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They had left me with a pump shotgun. I cocked it and aimed it at him. It would
certainly have impressed me. On the other hand, I’m pretty impressionable when it
comes to weapons.
Willie was lying quietly in the bottom of the boat. Partly because his feet were
tied to the gunwale so that he couldn’t move them. Partly this was attributable to the duct
tape over his mouth. Mostly it was because he seemed to have given up. I thought about
how my head hurts when I sleep with my head below my body. If Willie felt like that
after a few hours in his position, I could only be glad. When someone has held a knife to
your throat, you lose all sympathy for them.
Lawless and Strange were approaching the ship at the end of the pier. Each had
tucked his piece into the back of his belt.
I glanced back at Willie and realized his shoulders had moved a couple inches
toward me.
“You know,” I said, contemplatively, “If it were not for the problems that would
be caused by the noise, I believe I would be tempted to blow you away.”
He became very still. There had been a subtle tension in his posture before, but
now he seemed to concentrate on stillness. At last, someone was taking me seriously.
Perhaps I should join the NRA and get a brace of pistols.
Lawless and Strange were near the ship. There was no gangplank leading up to it.
How would they get up those high bulwarks?
A small noise from my prisoner drew my attention back to him. I couldn’t see
that he’d shifted, but I was certain he had tried.
“I have no faith in truth. I have no faith in God. I have no faith in you. I have
no faith in me.”
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Please. I love you. I will come when I can.
“When I was a girl I stole. Little things, pretty things, things that should not have
mattered to me. I became adept at lies. My relationship to truth has never been as close
or as friendly as my love of lies. The Book seemed to heal this rift. All I sacrificed was
desire, and closeness to anyone. I felt no desire. I felt no closeness. As a showgirl, I
used desire, I used myself. What would I lose by giving this up? Yet I did not progress as
far in the Book as I wanted to. Time, He told me, patience, scholarship, and calm. These
are the things you need to progress.
“But was I really free of desire? I still had ambition. I wanted more than He
would allow me to learn. I did progress. I acquired abilities, I even acquired the
humility to be worthy of my abilities. I came to understand how small the world is, how
little power means, how much more important it is to be of help.
“But was I really free of desire?”
Do not flail yourself. I love you. Do not fear desire. I desire you.
“But was I really free of desire? Never in my dreams, barely in my waking hours.
Was I free of self deception? Never in my waking hours, barely in my dreams.”
Just then my world exploded into stars, red-shifting away from the back of my
head.
**************************************************
Ch. 12
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For a Few Heartbeats More
I slowly became aware of the world. It was not the best of all possible worlds. It
was a world in which my head hurt, a world in which someone was tying me up.
“Sorry I can’t help with this,” Willie’s voice said from a distance. “My hands are
too numb from being tied up.”
“It’s all right, I’ve got it,” said the unfamiliar voice of the burley man who was
tying me up. He had soft hands and I could see his breath in the chill of the night. There
was tape over my mouth.
“Do a good job. He’s dangerous.” Willie said.
I could see Willie behind the man. He was holding the shotgun.
“There. I’m done,” the burley man said.
“Great. Now put your hands behind your head.”
“Whu…”
“I lied. He’s not part of a gang of boat thieves, and I’m not an imprisoned boat
owner. You are. Now lie face down in the bottom of the boat.”
Willie talked a little while he was tying the man up.
“Lucky you happened along,” he said. “I was up a creek until you hit Silas with
the oar. He does look the part of a villain, doesn’t he?”
He shifted from the man’s hands to his feet.
“Funny. If he’d looked like you, you wouldn’t have hit him. I love human
nature.”
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He found the duct tape and slapped some over the man’s mouth.
“Ta ta, friends. I’m off to see the wizard,” he said.
I laid there breathing through my nose, wondering if there was any correlation
between use of clichés and low moral character.
So I wasn’t much of a guard. I hadn’t thought I was Actionfigureman, but I
thought that at least if I had a shotgun I could guard a bound and unarmed man.
It wasn’t just that my villainous appearance had attracted the malice of a
bystander. I hadn’t been paying attention. I was lost inside my own head. Bighouse had
said that it wasn’t telepathy these people did, it was something else, a kind of personal
communication that went beyond anything we were capable of doing.
So why was I hearing from her in the middle of the night, miles away from her?
Not that this was my most immediate problem. My fellow prisoner was grunting
and struggling, rubbing his face against the floorboards.
“Hey! I got the thing off my mouth,” he said. “Can you talk?”
“Um-um.”
“Can’t get the tape off your mouth?”
“Um-um.”
“Listen, I’m sorry.”
“Um.”
“I didn’t know he was the bad guy.”
“Um.” This was beginning to remind me of a trip to the dentist.
“Wish you could tell me what’s really going on.”
“Um.”
“It would help if I was a hard-boiled private eye or an off-duty cop or an ex-
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marine or something.”
“Um.”
“Instead of an orthodontist who’s too quick on the oar.”
“Uuumm!”
“I mean, you see a guy sitting on your boat holding a shotgun on someone, you
figure he’s some kind of gangster.”
“Um.”
“Why were you doing that, anyway?”
“Um.”
“Yeah, right, like you could tell me.”
“Um.”
“You go along in life thinking everything is just hunky-dory, then one day…”
“UM!”
“What is it?”
There were footfalls on the dock.
“Who’s that?” the orthodontist called out.
“Thought I stopped your mouth,” said Willie.
There were two men with him. They were big, one dark and one blonde. Both
wore black jeans and black T-shirts, despite the chilly evening.
“You guys get the fat one,” Willie said. “I’ll take the skinny one.”
“You people are in big trouble!” the orthodontist shouted.
“We’re used to it,” said the dark one. He climbed into the boat, pulled a rag from
his hip pocket and stuffed it in the orthodontist’s mouth. The blonde one helped him drag
the plump orthodontist toward the end of the pier.
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Willie grabbed me under the arms and dragged me out of the boat. My heels
thumped on the boat, then the deck of the pier. He dragged me toward the big vessel at
the offshore end.
“You get to join your buddies,” he said. “They were still creeping around the
upper decks when we got them. Got aboard, then didn’t know what to do.”
I didn’t even bother to grunt.
When we got to the ship, the only way to get aboard was to climb a rope ladder.
They cut me and the orthodontist loose, and Willie motioned us to climb. The
orthodontist went first. He was sweating so much I thought his hands would slip off the
ladder. The blonde big guy waited at the top. He grabbed the orthodontist and hustled
him into the cabin.
The dark-haired big guy went up next, leaving me on the pier with Willie. James
Bond would have kicked the gun out of his hand, dived into the water, found a way back
on the ship and rescued everyone. Being me, I meekly climbed the ladder and allowed
myself be led to the cabin.
The walls in the cabin were white, the furnishings spare and old. In addition to
the party of five I arrived with, Lawless and Strange were each tied to a canvas chair, and
an obese man in his 50s wearing a white suite sat on an ancient steel-framed chair
smoking an incredibly odiferous cigar.
“Are we all here, then, Willie?” the fat man said.
“Yeah, boss.”
“Splendid. I think I know almost everyone: Albert Strange, John Lawless…and
you would be Silas Night. I’m right? Good. And our fourth uninvited guest, what is
your name?”
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“Listen, I’m nobody. I’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Nobody. Allow me to introduce
myself. I am…”
“Greathead.” Lawless interrupted him, perhaps to gain a psychological advantage.
“Why yes. Henry Greathead. I see my reputation has preceded me. This makes
things so much easier. You know what I’m here for and you know how important it is to
me.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” the orthodontist said, “let me go. I don’t have anything to
do with this. I’ve got a family. They need me. I won’t tell anyone anything that
happened tonight.”
“Nothing happened tonight, Mr. Nobody. As to whether you have nothing to do
with the events of this night, perhaps you are right. Time will tell. Specifically, time will
tell whether you have the sense to maintain your silence. Kurt has gone through your
wallet and we are going to make a visit at your home. Don’t worry, we won’t wake
anyone up. We just want to make an inventory of your loved ones, so that at a later date,
we will know whether any of them go missing. It’s a terrible thing, when family
members go missing. Causes no end of anxiety. Not something I would wish on
anyone.”
“Please. Don’t harm my family.”
“I have no wish to harm your family, Mr. Nobody. And I’m sure you have no
wish to cause me any inconvenience.”
“No.” He looked like he’d seen his whole family’s lives flash before his eyes.
“In any case, you will be spending the night with us. You may explain this
however you wish. Oh, I know,” Greathead said, smiling, “we could get one of our
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female operatives to call your wife and assure her that you are having an affair. That way
she will be assured of your robust health.”
“I-I’ll come up with something. Don’t call her.”
“Show Mr. Nobody his room for the night, Kurt,” Greathead said.
When Kurt had taken Nobody away, Greathead laboriously stood and went to a
cabinet.
"Would any of you gentlemen like a drink?" he asked.
"Scotch for me," said Lawless.
"I'll pass," Strange said.
"And you, Mr.…Night, I believe it is?"
I shook my head.
"Will Talisker do?" Greathead asked Lawless.
"Fine."
"We have no ice, unfortunately. Would you like a dash of water with it?
"Neat."
"Neat it is." Greathead poured the drink and placed the glass in Lawless's hand.
He did not untie the hand so that Lawless could drink it. Perhaps Strange has seen this
coming.
Greathead settled his bulk into his chair.
"Now I believe I have met my obligations as a host. All this party needs is some
bright conversation. Let us choose a topic. Anyone?"
"Where is Sadie?" Strange asked.
"No, no. I find that topic limiting and without interest. I am not gripped by its
possibilities. Oh, in the fullness of time, we will find occasion to explore the topic at
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length, but at the present time I would find far more fascinating the subject of where the
Book is. You advertised that you had it, now it is time to show that you are men of your
word. Well, where is it?"
We all sat in silence.
"Come, come, gentlemen, participate! We have only a few hours before dawn,
and I would prefer to vacate these premises by morning. I have provided alcohol for
those who wished it, a comfortable environment, stimulating company, and yet you prove
uncooperative interlocutors. We must get beyond this barrier, or there will be no point in
entertaining you."
We still sat in silence.
He sighed deeply and gazed at the ceiling.
"Exactly as I anticipated. Americans are so lacking in the social niceties. I fear
that I do not have time to coddle you. One by one, I shall have to revoke your breathing
privileges. By dawn, I fear I shall be rather lonely. Shall I start with you, Mr. Night, as
we seem to be on rather strained terms?"
I couldn't make my mouth move.
"Or you, Mr. Strange, if I have the name right? You have refused my hospitality
and glared daggers at through this entire encounter."
Strange just glared daggers at him.
"Whoever dies first, Mr. Lawless, you will die second. Yes, I think that is right.
You have accepted my hospitality, but are the least likely to talk. First, one of the more
volatile ones, then you, then the last one. If you wish to enjoy your advantage, I suggest
that you count your heartbeats, starting with the death of the first one. It is said taking
the occasional drink is good for your heart. You are in a position to know exactly how
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many heartbeats you have gained."
Then he turned to me.
"We left it at the houseboat," I said. "It was on the coffee table when we got in the
boat."
My courage had failed me. I knew he would probably kill us when he had the
Book. At least I would never have to tell the woman with the tattooed eyes that I gave
away her Book for a few heartbeats more.
************************************************************
Chapter 13
A Night of the River Styx
Lawless and Strange just stared at me as if I'd said the most surprising thing that
had passed the lips of Man.
"I hear no contradictions," Greathead announced. "I think it is time to adjourn,
gentlemen. All opposed, raise your hands. Motion carried. Akbar, Willie, you may take
them to their quarters as soon as Kurt returns. As for myself, I shall retire. When our
guests have been made comfortable, Willie, come to my quarters and I will give you
instructions for the recovery of the Book."
Greathead swept from the room in a cloud of fetid cigar smoke. Lawless shook
his head at me and said, in a resigned tone, "I knew you were a worm, Silas, but I thought
you had the notochord to stand up to that bluff."
Willie laughed, although I doubt he knew that a notochord is what a worm has
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instead of a backbone. Akbar, apparently the name of the darker of the two big guys, just
looked confused.
Kurt came back and looked around inquiringly.
"We're taking them downstairs," Willie informed him.
Kurt untied Lawless, who downed the scotch before anyone could stop him.
Akbar untied Strange, and Willie, who seemed to have made me his special
project, took charge of me.
They led us down a companionway to a narrow corridor below. Willie kicked
open the door to a small stateroom with two bunks. They pushed us in and locked the
door behind us.
I felt sick.
"John," I said, "I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it."
"But…"
"Hey, if you're worried about the worm comment, I didn't mean that. It was
strictly for the consumption of those rubes."
"I cracked."
"Good thing, too. One of us had to tell them in order to gain us time. They
wouldn't have bought it from me, they might not have bought it from Al, but from you,
they had to buy it. What I said to you, don't worry, I just had to set the hook."
"I still feel like deep-fried dung."
"Yeah, yeah, right. Get over it. I've got a job for you. Get us out of here."
"He's not a locksmith," Strange said.
"No, but he's a skinny guy. That's what we need right now."
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I looked at the porthole.
"I can't fit through that."
"Don't sell yourself short, Silas. You don't just have a slim waist, you also have
skinny shoulders. You're the man of the hour."
"Even if I do get out, how am I supposed to get you out?"
"You don't have to," Strange said, "just tell someone we're here."
"Sit down and rest a moment," Lawless suggested.
I realized how much I needed to do that, and settled on the bottom bunk.
"Silas? Silas!" she called. "I cannot find you. I cannot find the Book. I must find
you. We must find the Book."
"We searched the ship," Strange said. "no sign of Sadie."
"Willie said you never got inside."
"We were leaving. We just let him think we were still trying to get in."
"So Sadie's not here."
"Not that we could find."
"O Death, O Death, my soul feels closer to death every instant I'm without you.
My soul has grown to be a part of yours, and deprived of yours it cannot live. I am
incomplete, like a one-chambered heart, a single finger snapping. O Death, O Death,
Oblivion."
"Silas?" Strange was shaking my shoulder.
"Sorry."
"What's going on with you?"
Lawless was watching us, his face impassive, a poker player who has just seen
that his hole card is a deuce.
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"It's just that I keep hearing her voice," I told Strange.
"What does she say?"
"She needs me."
"You looked like you were trying to remember something."
"Maybe that's what I'm doing."
"Darkness…darkness…I feel my way forward, hoping for the edge, the door to the
end of eternity."
"I think we just lost you again." Strange was looking resigned. He knew we
weren't getting out of there.
"What is the end of eternity?" I asked him.
"Silas, are you planning to kill yourself?"
"She'd better not," I told him.
"Can we get you to think of our current predicament?" Lawless interjected.
"I'm sorry. All the really important stuff that's happening right now, maybe it's
happening in my head or maybe that's just where I'm hearing about it."
"We can't really treat these problems here," Strange said gently.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If Pete were here…"
"Pete's working for them," Strange reminded me.
"I mean if Carol…"
"But she isn't. And she wouldn't be able to help us. You're here, and you're the
only one who can fit though the window."
"It's called a porthole."
"Call it what you like. We need you to go out through it."
"Is it the water?" Lawless asked. "Can you swim to safety?"
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"I swim okay."
"I think it's time you did." Strange said.
I stood, and took off my shirt and shoes.
"I will walk toward the darkness. Through that dark doorway and into the cold
black pool beyond."
I put my head out through the port hole. I could see my breath in the cold. I
extended my arms though it, then squeezed my shoulders through.
"Naked and alone, as I came into this world, from warmth to cold."
They lifted up my legs and I hooked my thumbs into the porthole, lifting my body
as they pushed it through.
I'm coming for you. If you are gone, I'm coming after. I have no time for pity, I
have no time for death. I will not allow you to be the victim, I will not accept your
acquiescence to death.
"The black pool is before me, reflecting my life. A light breeze fractures the
surface of the water, which reflects a multitude of me, a me in every ripple, each a little
different as the years fly on, each one sad and lonely in its own way."
Each had better wait for me.
The shock of hitting the water brought me back. I was gasping with the cold but
began to swim. After an eternity I reached the bow and turned toward the shore.
"My heart is in the grip of something cold. The darkness invades my soul." With
her mind she was trying to drag me down, perhaps to repay my betrayal, or perhaps just
trying to kill herself while she was inconveniently in my body.
I swallowed some water, coughed and nearly foundered. My arms were leaden
and I was beginning to loose the feeling in my legs. I passed a couple slips, but could not
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continue to the shore. I finally grasped the swimming platform of the nearest powerboat.
I crawled out of the water exhausted by the cold and lay panting on the swimming
platform. In the Northwest no one in their right mind uses these platforms for swimming.
Just shows they picked the right man for this job.
Voices floated down from above.
"This one will do, Willie." It was Greathead, standing on the slip beside the boat
that was my refuge. "Can you get it to run?"
"No problem. Sure you don't want something smaller and less conspicuous?"
"We'll be taking the entire team, Willie. Once we get to our destination, we can
rid ourselves of this rather large vessel."
"What about the guys we locked up?"
"With any luck, it will be months before anyone finds them. You did say they
didn't know where I was until you arrived?"
"Right." Willie didn't sound enthusiastic about leaving us to die of thirst or
starvation. Still, I couldn't warm to the man.
"Go back and get the rest," Greathead said.
"I could get the prisoners. We could make sure of them. Dump them in the lake
with an anchor."
"Entirely lacking in originality, given your adventures earlier in the evening. In
any case, every minute we delay adds risk to this venture, and moving them gives them
another chance to try to escape or attract attention. There are seven people on that vessel
that we need to get off it, and the clock is ticking."
I heard footsteps walking away. Then a heavy footfall came aboard the boat I was
hiding on. Soon, I would have to decide whether to remain on the swimming platform
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and try to ride where they were going. It seemed to me that my chances of getting caught
and not being able to help Lawless and Strange increased the longer I was close to our
captors. I would have to get off the boat before the rest of Greathead's entourage arrived.
But I needed to rest, and even rest wasn't going to do me much good if I couldn't get
warm. The feeling in my legs was almost gone.
A light shined through the mist that was forming. Greathead had turned on a light
in the deckhouse. Next came music. Be-bop. I heard the devil's interval, I heard Charlie
Parker's horn. The scent of Greathead's horrible cigar drifted down to me. He coughed
gently above me, no more than six feet away. I started slowly lowering my feet into the
water.
"And when the moon is empty, and when my tears wax round…"
Please. I have problems of my own.
"I have called death forth."
I wish you'd called me first. If you kill yourself right now, I'm dead too.
"If we lie down together…"
I had turned around so that I could bend at the hips and slowly lower myself into
the water with the fading strength of my arms.
"Ah!" Greathead's voice exploded above me. "I see our little band has arrived.
Willie will do the honors with the engine. Kurt, Akbar, you will free the dock lines. The
rest of you, find a place of comfort in the cabin."
I was fully in the water by now. I was fighting the lethargy in my limbs, trying to
swim around the end of the slip.
"I have failed you. The only thing that matters, and I've failed."
Please. Hang on for me. I will come to you.
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The engines of the boat Greathead had commandeered came alive, first one then
the other. I had to stay in the water until the boat was gone. If I crawled onto the
swimming platform of another powerboat on the same side of the pier, they would see
me.
One of the stern lines of the powerboat in the next slip hung down low enough for
me to grasp it. I hung from it desperately, anesthetized by the cold.
Finally the boat carrying Greathead and his followers backed out, then moved
forward. When they were out of sight, I got up on the swimming platform of the boat
next to me. Getting up so that I could climb over the transom took a powerful act of will.
Finally I made it to the pier. Instead of heading for the nearest pay phone, I went
to the ship at the end of the pier. They'd left the rope ladder down. Climbing it with
numb legs proved almost impossible, but not quite. I stumbled down the passageways
opening doors until I found one that was not merely locked, but braced closed with a
heavy timber. I strained and finally moved the timber. Then I tried the door. No wonder
they had braced a timber against it. The door wasn't locked. Greathead probably didn't
have the key.
Lawless spoke first.
"Christ, Silas, did you kill all the bad buys then come get us? All I expected was
for you to make a phone call."
"They left." I collapsed on the bed, exhausted.
"Where?"
"They took a boat. Willie hot-wired it. They figured nobody would find you for
months."
"Great. They're headed for your houseboat to get the Book. That gives us at least
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an hour from when they left. When did they leave?"
"A while back. Look, I'm not wearing a watch."
"We'd better get moving," Strange said.
"First we find the other prisoner," Lawless said.
I heard them banging doors open down the hallway. They took a long time. I
suspect they were re-searching the ship more thoroughly for Sadie, now that they didn't
have to be secretive about it. Finally they returned.
"Fatboy is free. Now on your feet, we've got to move," Lawless said.
"I can't," I said objectively. "My legs stopped working."
"We'll carry you. We have to get out of here." Strange hoisted me up with his left
arm and put my right arm over his shoulder, while Lawless took the other side.
They dragged me to the shoreward end of the pier. You don't need a key to get
out of a marina, so we were soon at a pay phone on the street, where Lawless tried calling
the cops.
He hung up and shook his head.
"How do they do that? How could they know it was me calling?"
So we still couldn't call the police. And if they could track a pay phone call and
block access to 911, talking to the police in person was probably a guaranteed way to get
Sadie killed. Strange thought Greathead was behind it, but Lawless didn't think he was
capable of such a feat. The discussion became heated, but it ended back at the phone
with Lawless yelling into the receiver.
"I don't care what time of night it is, you come to Kirkland right now and pick us
up. Bring a blanket. Silas is going hypothermic on us. Yeah, right down town Kirkland.
No, you won't be here in half an hour. You'll be here inside twenty minutes. Get a clue,
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Carol, we're in trouble here."
Fifteen minutes later, Carol came in her battered VW bug.
"What happened to you, Silas?" she greeted me.
I tried to answer, but my teeth were chattering.
She wrapped me in an old wool army blanket and put me into the front passenger
seat. Lawless and Strange got into the back from the driver's side.
Lawless updated Carol on the events of the night.
"So we're going back to Silas's place to catch the bad guys?"
"Seven of them besides Greathead and Willie," I told her.
"Plus, I lost a revolver I've had for forty years, and we are not going up against
these guys unarmed."
"So we call the cops?" she asked.
"We tried. We can't," Lawless told her. "Besides, they'll be gone by the time we
get to Silas's place. Anyway, have you forgotten the threat against Sadie?"
"I thought these were the guys that kidnapped her."
"We can't know for sure. Willie said they were taking advantage of her abduction,
but didn't make the snatch."
"Like we believe him," Strange said.
"But we maybe should," Lawless told him. "Whether they did or not, you've got
to keep yourself together. We're not going to get her back by whacking people at
random."
"We might," Carol interjected. "Al's the younger man. You should let him try new
methods now and then."
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"Shut up, Carol," Strange said.
"That's more like it. You may be united against me, but at least you and John are
united."
Silence reigned. Somehow the lights on the freeway were fading to gray.
"I have opened the door to heaven or hell."
"Stop!"
"I can't stop. We're in the middle of the bridge," Carol said.
Once again, I was unintentionally vocalizing.
"We've got to go to the houseboat."
"Not a good idea, Silas," Lawless said. "Greathead and his crew are probably still
there. They'll figure it will be days before anyone finds us. No reason not to take their
time."
"She's dying."
"Who's dying?" Carol asked.
"She is. The woman with the tattooed eyes."
"Who?"
"A coin for Charon. A night on the River Styx. You are mist across the water, I
am wind upon the wave…"
"It's the woman with the Book, isn't it Silas?" Strange asked.
"She's dying."
"Why do you think that, Silas?" Carol asked.
"She's been in my head all night. She's in agony. She wants to die."
"We all do, sometimes. What makes you think she's dying now?"
"'I have opened the door to heaven or hell,' she said, and 'a coin for Charon, a
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night on the River Styx.'"
"Symbolism," Carol objected. "We're supposed to risk our lives based on
symbolism."
"Carol, she's speaking to me. Am I to ignore a cry for help?"
"From the woman you love."
"Don't be bitter. She needs help."
"But what about my needs?"
"Not the time for levity."
"Would you lovebirds like hear from older and wiser heads?"
"Sure, John, unless we can avoid it," Carol rejoined.
"Silas, what we have is a woman contemplating suicide. Now listen. Bighouse
said these people don't have telepathy. Maybe he's wrong, maybe not. If he's right, you
aren't hearing her current thinking. You're remembering things she didn't allow you to
remember before. How many nights have you been with her that you don't remember?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe some, maybe none. Obviously, I don't
remember."
"I'm guessing some. So under stress, what happens? These memories come back.
Maybe she's been depressed lately. Probably she'll be in a better mood next time you
don't remember seeing her."
"Right, John. Or maybe she's already dead."
"See?" Carol said brightly, "I knew he could cheer you up."
***********************************************************
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Chapter 14
Too Subtle for my Ken
We went to John Lawless's house, a modest two-bedroom place in Ballard.
Lawless and Strange left it to Carol to disrobe me and put me in the shower. They just
assumed the intimacy of former lovers went that far. I was in no condition to contest
their judgement. I laid down in the tub and let the hot water fall down on me. The plug
was in and the water deepened around me.
"Struggle never made me stronger. It only made me weep. It only gave me broken
dreams that hurt me in my sleep."
You use my words against me.
"I use your words against me."
Stop. I want you. Do not leave me.
"Broken dreams…"
Feel the warmth. The water is lapping around my stomach.
"They sway like the waves on the loneliest day in the life of a lighthouse keeper."
I told you it was about me, not you.
"I'm waiting for the seeker of some secret shore…"
You're winding down like HAL in "2001." Next you'll be singing "Daisy, Daisy…"
"…give me your answer doo-o--o…"
Now you're making fun.
"It would be so much more pleasant to just be turned off. No harm, no
138
permanence. You could be turned back on at any time."
I can't reboot you if you die.
"Bury me on Boot Hill, then."
I think that was when I decided Lawless was right. It was my memory and
perhaps some imagination. It was like A.J. Ayer said about dreaming. Can you be sure
you remember your dreams, or do you only imagine that you remember your dreams?
What do you check this against? Perhaps I only imagined that she had ever said anything
like this to me, never mind the idea that she was saying it now. My brain had been
slowed by the cold. I'd had hypothermia before, and it was days before my mind worked
right. The running down thing, that sounded more like the way I felt.
But what if he was wrong? What if I was talking to a woman on the verge of
oblivion?
Death by water is an easy prophesy in Seattle. The various parts of the city are
linked by bridges, the city is bounded on the east by Lake Washington and on the west by
Puget Sound, and Lake Union is practically in the middle of the city. But I had to think
that all her references to drowning were related to my own situation.
I switched from shower to straight hot water from the tap. Soon the tub would be
full. I wanted to get the water turned off before any more auditory hallucinations
distracted me. It would be embarrassing if water started overflowing the tub.
If the voice I was hearing was in my own memory in some way, what did that
mean? Had she somehow changed the structure of my mind, planting some version of
herself there? If she was inside me, I didn't really want to know what would happen if
she died.
Perhaps we all build structures inside the minds of those who know us. Maybe
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the way we shape the minds of others is our immortality. If so, the structure she built
within me must be a Roman road, compared to the usual footstep in the sand.
The door to the bathroom opened. It was Carol, intruding again.
"Have some hot chocolate," she said.
The chocolate was so hot I could barely drink it. There was an odd taste to it that
I couldn't place.
"Lawless and Strange have been arguing. Strange wants to get some more guns
and take the houseboat by force. Lawless thinks they'd be too outnumbered."
"Sounds like you've got the deciding vote," I told her. "What's your view?"
"I'd like to blow their fat heads off."
"How very like you."
"And what would you like to do?"
"Stay in this tub and try to return to humanity. I don't know how long I was in
that cold water, but I'm sure a few more minutes would have killed me. I'm not exactly
someone you would pose for an action figure in the best of times, but right now I'd have
trouble standing."
"The man I love, in all his masculinity. Have you any idea how few women find
solid good sense really sexy?"
"The U.S. Census Bureau looks into this every ten years. At last count, I believe
for the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii, the number was zero. If you add in Puerto
Rico, Guam and American Samoa, you might get an additional zero."
"Still want to stay in the tub?"
"Do you have an electric blanket? I might consider commandeering a bed. That
would show me to be a man of action."
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"I thought you wanted to rescue the woman with the tattoo and the eyes."
"Lawless convinced me. I'm hearing echoes of our past conversations, not her.
She's been in agony all this time. Maybe that's why she didn't want me to take these
memories into my daytime life. She didn't want me to have to struggle with them, so she
was having me forget her nightmares."
"That's remarkably convenient."
"If I'm wrong, I have a feeling she still has the ability to convince Greathead and
his crew that they haven't seen her."
"Assuming she's still alive."
"You are such a comfort. If you can't convince me not to love her, you can at
least convince me I've betrayed her. You do realize that you're a slave to the green-eyed
monster?"
I was overcome by a wave of drowsiness.
"Anyway, I think I'm no more able to stand than I was half an hour ago. I'm not
even sure I can stay awake."
"I'd hope not. I put cognac in your cocoa. With your weariness and lack of
tolerance for alcohol, I figure there is no way you'll be awake by the time we leave for
the houseboat. You may not care for me, but I'm keeping you out of danger. Now let's
drain the tub, I'm going to towel you down and put you in bed."
"Don't go to the houseboat. Lawless is right," I said thickly.
"I'll take that under advisement."
She helped me out of the tub and wrapped a towel around me, then got me into
Lawless's bed. I must have dropped right off.
A quiet room with cold winter sunlight flowing through the panes of French
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doors. The woman with the tattooed eyes sat in a rocking chair, reading quietly from the
Book. She looked up at me.
"Silas! There you are. I have been missing you, you know."
"I had to go with them. I'm sorry about the Book."
She waved the notion away, then marked the Book and closed it as if to make the
point that is wasn't lost to her.
"It's so much easier to talk to you when you are sleeping. You only hear my
strongest emotions when you're awake."
"I thought you were dying."
"When you're awake I can't mask my feelings or explain them. They go straight
through to you. I should never have let you know my feelings. It is so lonely not to share
in the way we can share, yet it is prohibited. There are good reasons. Sometimes my
mind is overtaken by parasitic thoughts that drive all else away. I should never have
done this to you."
"You have built a place for yourself in me."
She bowed her head down to touch her forehead to the closed Book.
"It is prohibited."
"Why?"
"Why prohibited, or why did I?"
"Yes. That is exactly my question."
"It is prohibited because of the consequences. I did it because I was lonely, and
because I thought I could protect you."
"Can you?"
"I hope so," she whispered. "I hope so, God, I hope so."
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"Can I protect you?"
She smiled and shook her head, and cartoon tears sloped down her perfect cheeks
from the tattooed eyes.
"Why can't I look into your eyes? I mean your real eyes?"
"Eyes are the window to the soul. I've had to wall mine off for many years. I
wish to show you my soul, but I can only show a picture of my soul."
"It's beautiful."
"Or else I represent it to you as beautiful."
"You cannot lie."
She turned away at that.
"But can I tell the truth?" She said it looking away from me, giving the wall her
full attention and leaving me to read the expression on her back. Her hair was calm and
diffident, but her back was tense and wary.
Was the woman I talked to in the library more real, or the woman in my dreams?
In waking life she couldn't hide her eyes, and in my dreams she couldn't reveal them. But
in wakefulness, her eyes were probably a tool. Bighouse had said they could
communicate on levels we could not. Probably every gesture, every motion of the eye,
was part of this system. In my dreams her eyes were not a tool. She tried to make herself
communicate who she was instead of what she wanted me to do.
I wanted to protect her from the dangers of her actions, but I could not
comprehend them. I felt like the faithful dog, wanting to protect its master from a
lawsuit. I could understand the emotional content of the assault, but the method of the
attack was too subtle for my ken.
"The others," I said. "They will not approve. Will they stop you, or punish you,
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or what will they do?"
"They won't need to."
That chilled me more than anything she else she could have said.
"Why?"
She smiled again and shook her head.
"Then there is nothing I can do?"
She nodded.
"Is there anything you can do?"
She shook her head.
"I can't accept that."
"It doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
She began to break apart, every pixel of her appearance shooting off in a different
direction.
And I knew I could never gather them together again.
"That's glory for you," I muttered.
But I could not change the meaning of her words and I could not give a meaning
to my life.
I awoke in a panic about her breaking apart. Why were my dreams of her so
alarming?
Then I remembered that it was a dream of her that had broken apart, and not the
real her. If a representation of her lived within me, that was not her either. She may have
put a part of her within me, but there was a living, breathing woman out there
somewhere.
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Why had she done it? What extra intimacy came from having built this structure
within me?
Perhaps when we met again, she would talk to this part of her within me, and so
see the world through my eyes. Perhaps too, she could talk to that part of her within me
to see through my eyes when we were together.
I wasn't offended by the notion. If she could do the same for me, I could see the
world through her eyes. Perhaps we could understand each other in a way other couples
could not.
Or were we a couple? I had no memory of our time together. Did I consent to all
that happened? Perhaps I consented even to not remembering what happened.
Or maybe she used the abilities granted to her by the Book to manipulate me into
doing what she wanted. The reason I was not upset by her invasion of my head might be
that she had enforced her will that I should not be upset.
While I debated these thoughts Carol was risking her life with Lawless and
Strange. Who knows what news the morning would bring. They might all be dead by
then, and my fancy new houseboat might have been sunk during the conflict. Somehow
Lawless didn't seem like the sort to die that way, though Strange was in a mood that
could destroy him and anyone in his way.
I tried to get up, thinking it would be useless to stay in bed trying to sleep. My
legs still felt dead, but they were answering my brain. I stood for a moment, thinking
about coffee. Then I sat again, thinking about sleep. I was too tired to drink coffee and
stay up.
I wrapped the blanket around myself and sat rocking in the dark like a blind boy.
Thoughts about my friends risking their lives made it hard to sleep. And the thought that
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I had another person in my head was very confusing.
One can only sit rocking in the dark for so long. Finally I laid my body down and
tried to sleep again.
My mind kept turning over, though.
What was my mind? Biology provided the canvas on which it was painted, but
the ghost in the machine was a product of my experience. Of course, my experience also
shaped biology to a certain extent, but there was a limit to that. You can yell at an
amoebae to study, but the only way it's getting into Harvard is on an unwashed leaf of
lettuce. There were doubtless limitations to my intellect, determined aspects of my
temperament, and other factors determined by biology.
But the ghost in the machine…ah, that was something else.
If Bighouse was right, that part of me was built by the structure of the world
around me. My parents, my teachers, my schoolmates all had a part in creating that
structure, in defining that word in the language of the world that was me.
I could see Jones' objection to this framework of thought. Where was the me that
was not the machine of my brain, and was also not the program written on my brain by
people who didn't know they were doing it? Where was the me that was just me?
Right here, I thought. The narrator in my head who tells me of my life.
So what was this other person in my head? There now seemed to be two ghosts in
my machine. It seemed to me that there could not be two whole ghosts. I only heard
from her under stress or in my dreams. My mind must occupy most of the brain. Or else
think it did.
So I had an abbreviated ghost sharing the machinery of my brain. The whole
ghost must be in her machine. So what happened if the woman with the tattooed eyes
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died? Did she live on in me, or did that part of her die too? What about ill health?
Could I retain a healthy part of her if she became mentally ill?
Exposure to cold left me too drowsy to stay awake and reason it out. If I could
reason it out. I finally must have dozed. I didn't wake up until they brought Greathead
in.
******************************************************
Chapter 15
More Sensitive than Anyone Would Guess
They weren't particularly noisy, but I woke. I dragged myself out of bed,
wrapped myself in a sheet and stumbled into the living room.
"Hi, Silas," Lawless said distractedly. Then, addressing Strange, "I turned the
basement into a recording studio back when my son was living here. It's soundproof.
We'll put him there."
Greathead was soaked, and his kind of arrogance didn't wear defeat well. They
went downstairs, leaving me with Carol.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"They tossed the place, which held them up. They weren't finding what they
wanted. So they were still there when we arrived. They were getting on that stolen boat
when we got there. We didn't see that right away, because we approached from the land
side.
"Lawless led us in, kicking in the door and yelling 'POLICE! DON'T MOVE!'
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which, they being criminals, was advice they viewed with skepticism. They were all on
the boat except Greathead and Willie, and Willie shot on board and hit the throttle. The
boat was still tied to the houseboat, so when he hit the throttle we all lost our feet as the
cabin cruiser jerked on its mooring lines. Then Willie jumped out of the cockpit and
went around cutting the docklines.
"Greathead had fallen when Willie hit the throttle, but he got up and tried to get
aboard. He was half on when Willie finished cutting the lines and someone hit the
throttle again. Greathead went in the drink, so we fished him out. Where the boat went,
I don't know."
"So no shots fired?"
"No shots fired. They weren't fighting, they were running away."
"I was just thinking, when I go home what will the neighbors say? Not that I've
really met any of them."
"John has a plan for that. You may also be contacted by the police. You are to
say nothing about the Book, nothing about Sadie, nothing about Greathead. You went to
a party last night. It was held at this house. Instead of returning home, you went home
with a woman and stayed the night. If necessary, I will corroborate the story."
"Wait…I spent the night with you? Are you sure Lawless thought of this and not
you?'
"Don't flatter yourself."
"No one else will. Hey, I think we should go listen to what Greathead has to say."
"Put some clothes on."
"This isn't a job interview. I don't think I can lower his opinion of me."
We walked down the stairs. Most of the basement was open, but a room had been
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walled off. The door was closed. When I opened it, I saw Lawless and Strange standing
on either side of Greathead, who was seated in a swivel chair with his hands tied in front
of him. He actually smiled when I entered.
"Ah, Mr. Night and the woman they call Carol. Does this make a quorum for
whatever proceedings you have in mind?"
"You talk too much," said Lawless.
"But isn't this the scene where you menace me and say you have ways of making
me talk?"
"I know these guys better than you do," I told him. "They have surprisingly little
interest in what their enemies have to say. Usually Al wants to kill people and John
makes some weak argument against killing them. That's probably why Willie didn't feel
like hanging out with them again."
"What do you mean 'usually?' That's only happened once when you've been with
us," Strange said.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Greathead said, "is it up to me to make peace between
you so that you can decide how to dispose of me? You know I love to be the center of
attention, but this is not the sort of attention I crave. Gather around and I shall regale you
with reasons to leave me alive."
"It would help if you told us where Sadie is." Strange said.
"Alas and alac, I have no knowledge of her whereabouts. But your
misapprehension is my own fault, so I do apologize"
"You lying, slimy toad, you think you can talk your way out of this?" Strange
couldn't hold himself still. He kept shifting his weight and clenching and unclenching his
hands.
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"Al, I know you want to knock him around, but that's not going to happen."
"Thank you sir, I knew calmer heads would…"
Lawless slapped him hard with he back of his hand.
"Quiet, slimeball, you're interrupting me. Now listen, Al, I'm sure the man will
tell us what he can. He likes to talk. We're a captive audience, in that he's the captive
and we're the audience. We'll listen to him, then if we feel the story doesn't add up, we'll
let Silas here apply his expertise with electronic devices to put together a sort of
persuader. You can come up with something, can't you Silas?"
I replied with my most evil leer, a skill I've burnished in all those years when I
should have been studying electronics. I couldn't tell you the difference between an ohm
and a Maxwell equation.
"Very well, gentlemen," Greathead said. He was leaking blood from the left
nostril. "Cards on the table. You've seen the rag-tag crew of helpers I've assembled. We
don't even have a permanent base of operations. My talent is recruiting help on the
strength of mere promises and improvising as I go along. With Pete's help, we were able
to learn of your friend's abduction, and form a plan for exploiting the situation. It was a
simple matter of watching the deck of the houseboat, waiting until dark, and nipping in to
grab the Book before the real kidnappers could complete the transaction."
"Leaving us with no way to get Sadie back."
"Honestly, I do apologize. I am not a good person. I am, however, not the person
who abducted your friend. I cannot be held responsible for this kidnapping."
"I can hold you responsible for messing up the transfer that was supposed to get
her back," Strange said.
"Ah, but consider; when we got to the houseboat the Book wasn't there. A
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package was there, but it contained only a Columbia Encyclopaedia from, I believe,
1960. Still a somewhat useful reference, and one-volume encyclopaedias fit nicely into
the smaller homes many people live in these days, but hardly the sort of tome one could
expect to trade for a human life. We searched the houseboat thoroughly to be certain we
hadn't simply taken the wrong package, but nothing close to the right dimensions was to
be found."
I looked from Strange to Lawless.
"I see a light dawning in your eyes, Mr. Night. Perhaps they did not take you into
their confidence. It appears your friends did not have the Book, but set a trap for the
kidnappers. If they witnessed the transactions of the night, perhaps they checked the
package when none of us were there. Or perhaps you really did have the Book, and they
chose to replace it with a dummy after taking the real Book. Why would they do that?
Bibliophiles are notoriously eccentric. I leave open the possibility for only this reason.
So if in fact you had the real Book when you contacted the kidnappers, they have it now,
and you can expect the return of the lost lamb on the morrow. If, on the other hand, you
merely raised their hopes and dashed them again, you must live with the consequences of
your actions and not involve me."
A look passed between Lawless and Strange.
"The plan would have worked, if you hadn't stuck your oar in," Lawless
remarked.
"Wait a minute! You convinced me that I'd betrayed her to get the Book! What
was the hypnotist for?"
"We had to have a credible case for having recovered the Book," Strange said.
"We hypnotized you to believe we'd recovered the Book, so you couldn't give the game
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away to Bighouse. He was the most likely person to blow the gaff. Bighouse was
convinced, so anyone else with his level of knowledge would have been convinced. He
didn't suspect we were faking, so my guess is they also didn't. I'm guessing they saw
Greathead's man make the grab, saw us grab him, so they know it was a trap. This is
going to make them tougher to deal with."
"I'm sure they will contact you in the morning. In any case, you may as well free
me. I can do no more for you."
"Not so fast, Greathead," Lawless said. "You could still screw things up for us.
You've done it once, and I see no reason to think you won't do it again."
"Now that I know you don't have the Book, my interest in you palls. Why would
I interfere with your paltry deceptions?"
"Because you know we would like to get the Book to exchange for Sadie.
Because you think we might still get it."
Greathead made a deprecating gesture.
"Dear sirs and lady, nothing I've seen so far indicates you have the ability to get
the Book. Interfering in your efforts would be a waste of time."
"Thanks."
"Oh, I appreciate your dedication and your imaginative efforts, but I have been
pursuing this pearl of great price for many years now and I have seen the like of you fail
on too many occasions. The people who have the Book are not easily fooled, coerced or
tracked. You have no handle on them and they have no interest in you."
"Bighouse doesn't share your views. He thinks we're his best shot."
"Komradsky Bighouse tends to have many irons in the fire. You are one of them.
I doubt he has terribly high hopes for you."
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"Even that hope must be more than remains for you," I interjected.
His massive head swiveled toward me.
"Ah, Mr. Night, at last we hear from you. I understand you have a special talent
other than the sartorial sense that makes you so fascinating to look upon. Are we a
Roman Senator today?"
"Just something I threw on. By the talent, you of course mean my ability to
identify the woman with the Book."
"I've heard of people looking like an unmade bed, but I've never seen it in real life
before. No, I meant a different talent. Pete can identify the woman you speak of, and
though he claims to be the only additional one, I suspect you may have another operative
who can. No, I refer to your talent for seduction, that nocturnal ability that keeps the
woman you speak of returning night after night. Ah, from your expression I see that I've
struck a chord. Yes, Peter has told me more than you even thought he knew. Such a
shame, I could use your talents so much better than even Bighouse could, should you
give him the scope to use what knowledge he has. You see, he thinks that the application
of money can substitute for knowledge gained by hard experience. I have pursued the
Book for over a quarter century; Bighouse has been at it for less than five years. You
haven't my knowledge, so you'd best hope when I get the Book the kidnappers see no
more point in detaining your friend. And the best hope for that, Mr. Night, is for you to
work with me."
Strange put a hand on his shoulder and kicked the legs of the chair out from under
him. His head hit with a horrible crack.
Lawless grabbed Strange, who must have outweighed him by 100 pounds, and
threw him against the wall.
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"If you've killed him, Al…"
"Not to worry, Mr. Lawless," Greathead said from the floor. "I am alive, though
I'm rather surprised myself. I would have expected at least to have been knocked out by
this."
John turned to me.
"Silas, Carol, help me get him up."
We did, while Strange collapsed to the floor and sat with his head down.
"Don't be too hard on your friend," Greathead said, "Not all of us respond to stress
in predictable ways. He lashes out because he blames me for his friend's abduction. Mr.
Strange, I can hardly blame you. My exploitation of your situation was ignoble. I am
hardly blameless, but I am not the person responsible for her predicament. I tell you, I
can help. True, I'm capable of deceit, in fact I'm capable of almost anything when it
comes to the Book. This, in fact, is my utility to you. I have tried almost everything in
connection with the Book, and while you may accuse me of not knowing for certain what
works, you must admit I know what doesn't work. I can prevent mistakes. I can guide
you. You say to yourself, he's a desperate man with a knot on the back of his head, he
will say anything to secure his freedom. So let me prove myself. I will live in this cellar
and advise you. If you find my advice detrimental, or even less than useful, you may
terminate our agreement. All I ask in return is that you stop trying to fracture my skull
and attend my gross physical needs, which include using a toilet in the very near future.
You may debate this notion among yourselves at length, but not at too much length, or
my needs will include a thorough cleaning of my private parts."
Lawless looked at his recumbent partner.
"What do you say, Al?"
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"You heard him. I'm irrational."
"I've known that for years."
"I'm no good to anybody." Tears streamed down Strange's cheeks.
"I'll still take you over anyone else. What I need from you is advice. We've been
swinging at random, hoping to hit something. Do we take the fat guy's offer?"
"Why not?"
"Splendid, Mr. Strange," Greathead broke in, relieved. "To begin with, stop
blaming yourself as soon as you are done blaming me. We haven't time for such self
indulgence. Stiff upper lip. Now, once I've made my journey to the little boy's room, we
will gather our wits together and make a plan. No need to thank me, service to my fellow
man is joy enough. I only hope in a few days, you'll see that our mutual goals bind me to
you so that you don't need to keep me in this durance vile."
They took him to a windowless bathroom in another corner of the basement, then
waited outside while he did his business.
"Well, we know he can talk," Lawless said.
"I hope he can do more than that," Strange responded.
"Why are you trusting him?" Carol asked.
"Because Al and I are out of ideas. Because if his ideas are lousy, we can blame
him. Besides, when he tries something again, I want to be close. This way we can keep
an eye on him."
"He left us to die," I reminded him.
"He left us in a room we could get out of. I think that was deliberate," Strange
told me.
"If I didn't think that, he'd still be tied up," Lawless added.
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Strange was holding his hand over his eyes.
"Al," I said, "are you all right?"
"No, not at all. Look, tonight I've found out that I'm not that good under pressure.
Greathead's right, I'm striking out at random. I'm not helping Sadie, and that's the worst
part. I'll listen to this guy and see what his idea are, then I'll probably strike out at
random again."
"Al, you're more use than you realize. Greathead thought he could talk his way
out of this without offering us anything until you knocked him over. Now he feels lucky
to be alive."
"Thanks, John. Hey, you know, you're still stronger than you look."
"And you're a lot more sensitive than anyone would guess," Lawless responded.
"Hey Silas, if you don't want to hear any more of that Roman senator stuff, you'd better
get some clothes on."
I trudged up the stairs with Carol trailing behind.
"I hope you're not planning to dress me," I told her.
"Just wanted to get away from them."
"Fine. Are my clothes dry?"
"They're in the dryer. I'm sure they're ready."
They were, but I hadn't been wearing much when I got there. My coat was in a
boat that might still be in Kirkland. Carol found me a sweater that must have been too
long in the arms for Lawless. It looked old but little worn. A little gloaming of the
morning light showed in the windows. I went into the kitchen and brewed some coffee
while Carol joined the conference downstairs.
The comforting scent of coffee had begun to fill the kitchen when I heard the
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voice again.
"The Book is not gone. I have the Book. Silas, I am sorry for so much despair. I
thought the Book was gone."
But wouldn't you know? Wouldn't you have it in your hands?
"We are not telepathic, Silas. I am only the version of me that is in you. Only
what you know is added to my knowledge. When you thought the Book was gone, I
thought the Book was gone."
But in my dream I saw you with the Book.
"A brave face on my part, no more. I had tortured you with my despair. I wanted
to show you that I still had much of the knowledge of the Book. Once you went to sleep, I
had more control over what you heard from me."
But you're talking to me now. You seem to be in control.
"I'm settling in and getting stronger. The removal of the stress helps, knowing that
the physical me is still out there, still in possession of the Book. When I thought the Book
was gone, I did not want to imagine what had happened to the physical me."
I thought you were dying.
"I thought I was dead."
**********************************************************
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Chapter 16
My lover on my mind
I came out of it and got some coffee. I'd never been married, but it looked like
this would be a lot more intimate than that. In a strange way. Should I expect to
continue to forget all physical intimacy, or was that only for before her psychic
doppelganger announced itself? The thought of an affair I could remember was
comforting. My villainous face and wallflower personality have made me a permanent
novice at romance. It was sweet to think that a woman capable of knowing me better
than any other I had ever met found me worthy of her attention.
Any love that touched me was likely to be unusual. I'm not the answer to every
maiden's prayer. Why had she chosen me? I wished I knew how to call to her to ask
such questions. As it was, probably she knew whatever she wanted to know of me,
including my most intimate thoughts. What I knew of her was hints and visions.
So the relationship was somewhat asymmetric. At least I could not complain of a
lack of mystery.
Carol came into the kitchen.
"I smelled the coffee," she said, pouring a cup. "What'cha thinkin'?"
"I've always considered that question an invasion of privacy. Must you ask for
my inmost thoughts? Will you offer me some tiny payment for my deepest meditations?"
"Now you’re sounding like that asshole downstairs. All right, since you demand
payment, a penny for your thoughts."
"That's more than they are worth. I'll prevent you from throwing away your
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money by keeping my thoughts to myself."
She sipped coffee and we sat in silence for a while.
"They were talking about you."
"What did they say?"
"Al let slip something about you hearing voices."
Not something I particularly wanted Greathead to know.
"And how did that go over?"
"He said, 'I think our friend Mr. Night has a passenger.' What do you suppose he
meant by that?"
"That I have her voice in my head."
"Like a song going through your head."
"Not a bit like. This voice is articulate. Did Greathead put any significance on
it?"
"He said he was the only man in the world that could use it to our advantage. I
wish he wasn't so shy and self-effacing."
"That's it. I'm out of here." I stood and walked to the front door.
"Silas, it's a little cold to be walking from Ballard to Lake Union. Not to mention
a long walk."
"I've got nothing but time."
"I've got something better. I'm the only one here with a car."
We got in her crumpled Volkswagen. She turned on the heat, which had little
effect except to pump carbon monoxide into the car. I was about ready to go to sleep
again by the time we got to Hamlin Pier.
She parked in the lot and got out of the car.
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"Shouldn't you be driving back to explain to your boss why you left him and took
me away?"
"Way too much to explain. Better to give them time to get worked up, and then
we reappear they'll be relieved."
"Oh. Well, I'm going home."
"I'm coming with you."
"I was afraid of that."
We walked out to the houseboat, where I half expected the woman with the
tattooed eyes to be waiting. The place was a mess. Every cupboard had been opened,
every item removed and cast upon the floor. It looked very much like my room had
looked when I was a teenager.
"I hope you came to help me clean up," I told her.
"Only if we have a fair exchange. I help you clean, you help me understand."
"Maybe I should do this by myself."
"All right, you can set limits. Your valueless inmost thoughts you can keep, but
tell me what is happening to you."
"But I don't know."
"Listen, you secretive bastard, I can't help you if you don't tell me something."
"All right, but bring the broom. There's broken plates and glasses in the kitchen."
She brought the broom and dustpan, then watched me sweep up the mess.
"What do you want to know?"
"What does Greathead mean by a passenger?"
"The woman with the Book."
"And how is she with you?"
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"In my head. I hear her voice."
"Singing? Shouting? Discoursing on particle physics?"
I shook my head. How could I explain?
"It's like she's made a model of her mind in mine."
"Like HO scale? Like those little electric trains?"
"I have no idea how you figure the scale of a thing like that."
"So do you sit around and swap fish stories, or what?"
"Yeah, pretty much like that."
She turned away for a moment.
"I'm sorry about that," she said. "I didn't mean to ridicule you. I really want to
know."
"When I thought the Book was gone, she thought the real woman, the physical
her, was dead. She had a lot to say about that."
"Oh. So you've been listening to the lamentations of a person who thought she
was dead. I guess this explains some of the things that have happened, but I'm not very
sure which."
"It explains why I was talking to someone who wasn't there when we were driving
in the car. It explains why I let a fat orthodontist knock my brains out when I was
supposed to be guarding Willie. It explains why you can expect me to zone out in the
middle of conversations. On the whole, it might have something to do with the state of
my home. This mess was intended to find the Book, which was supposed to have been
given me by a woman who was smitten with me. Can you easily imagine that someone
would be smitten with me?"
"Only me."
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"That is either uncalled-for levity or uncalled-for honesty. Either way it makes
me uncomfortable."
"So she's smitten. What does this have to do with the voice in your head?"
"Apparently the people of the Book have a way of being intimate that is far
beyond anything we can achieve."
"Even in bed?"
"In bed is the part I can't remember. In head is something only they can do."
"This is starting to sound kinky."
"So you're interested?"
She nodded.
"She says it's prohibited for them to do."
"Too intimate?"
"Probably."
"But she did it with you."
"Uh huh."
"So the small-scale woman in your head is the fruit of a forbidden passion. She
lives in you like a parasite?"
"Not the simile I'd have chosen."
"She lives in you, depends on you for the brain cells she occupies, for the blood
that keeps those cells alive. How is that not a parasite?"
"She deprives me of nothing. Her presence, as near as I can tell, is benign."
"In the sense of actively good, or in the sense of a benign tumor?"
"You keep coming up with these metaphors for illness. I prefer to think of her as
the woman of my dreams, in a particularly literal sense. Certainly not as a parasite or
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tumor. Just a girl, standing inside of a boy, asking him to love her."
"Sounds like an intimate relationship."
"In a peculiar way, the most intimate I've ever experienced."
"But dangerous in some way."
"That's my guess."
"Dangerous to her or to you?"
"Probably."
"So this is all I get for toiling away cleaning your home?"
"So far, I'm doing all the cleaning."
"All right, I'll clean."
We worked in silence for maybe 15 minutes before the doorbell rang.
It was a cop, medium height, light-boned, dark-haired, long eyelashes, almost
effeminate in his attractiveness.
"Mr. Night?"
"Yes."
"I'm Cpl. Evans. I'm investigating an incident in which a cabin cruiser was found
abandoned at Gasworks Park. The neighbors said the boat in question was tied up to this
houseboat last night."
"Ah. Yes. Come in, officer."
"Who is it, darling?" Carol called.
"Policeman, if you could believe it. He may have some information for us about
who did this."
"Oh, good!"
"Now officer, as you can see the place was totally trashed," I told him. "I don't
163
really expect them to pay for the labor to clean the place up, but most of my dishes were
broken last night, and I must ask these people to pay for those."
"Ah…what exactly happened?" the policeman asked.
"Well," Carol said as if confiding, "We went to a party last night, and Silas and I
went to my place after. This morning, we came back and the place had been trashed.
Power boaters, you said, well, that explains it. Silas has a Six-meter sailboat."
"The one out in the slip?"
"That's the one," she said proudly. I was afraid she was overplaying the
snobbishness, so I spoke up.
"Now stop. Everyone has a right to enjoy the water. I do draw the line, however,
when they walk into my home while I'm gone and have what must have been a totally
out-of-control party."
"So what we need from you," Carol said brightly, "Is name and address. Who did
this, and where do we send the bill?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you that," Cpl. Evans said. "I was hoping you could tell me
who was on the boat."
Just then I heard Bighouse shout through the open door to my home.
"Silas! Where have you been? I came by last night and you weren't around."
"What luck," I told Evans, "We've found you a witness." Maybe I could get
Bighouse tied up with the policeman and out of my hair.
Just then Jones loomed up behind Bighouse.
"Ah, police," Bighouse said with little enthusiasm.
"This is Spender Bighouse, the publisher," I explained. "And his long-time
companion, Mr. Jones." Jones seemed amused by the description, but Bighouse gave me
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a censorious look.
Evans had the look of a man who suspected two things. To avoid confusion, we
shall call them thing 1 and thing A. Thing A, that the appearance of a man with a
bodyguard looming behind him indicated links to a world he'd only dreamed of busting.
Thing 1, that he was way out of his depth and in far more danger than he'd ever
envisioned when he'd dreamed about busting organized crime figures. Oh, and thing a,
that Bighouse was a gay gangster.
"Cpl. Evans is investigating some power boater that tied up here last night and
broke all my plates. Could you just tell him what you saw when you stopped by?"
Evans looked as if he'd have liked to say something, but an older, wiser man
would have to tell him what.
"Mr. Evans, I'm so glad you're helping my friend. Let's go in and talk about this,
shall we?"
He had an arm over Evans' shoulder, and was guiding him to my couch, thereby
guaranteeing himself entry to my home.
"What time were you here?" Evans asked.
"What time was that, Jones?"
"I think very close to midnight. No one was awake around here, I think."
"Is that important, officer?" Bighouse asked.
"Hard to say," the nervous young man responded.
"In any case, no one answered the door. We found that very disturbing, didn't we,
Jones."
"I was very calm, I think."
"Yes, yes, you have a real talent for maintaining your calm. Write that down,
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Corporal. Jones remained calm."
"Why did you stop by at midnight?" Evans asked, nettled. He clearly felt
Bighouse was making fun of him.
"We desired social intercourse with him."
"You wanted to have sex with him?"
"No, no, social intercourse. You know, an evening of conversation, perhaps some
fine wine, sharing pleasant memories. In any case, he wasn't here."
"We were at a party," Carol interjected. "At John's house, in Ballard. I can give
you the address and the names of the rest of the people at the party, officer. It's so
exciting to help in a real police investigation."
"Well, I'm disappointed I wasn't invited to this party," Bighouse said.
"It was not his party to invite us to," Jones said. "We should not be angry with
Mr. Night. He is free to accept invitations, and it is not his place to invite us to the party
of another."
"Yes, you're right, Jones. We should have called earlier in the day and made
arrangements for the evening. We can hardly blame our friend for accepting another
invitation."
"I am not investigating your social life, Mr. Bighouse. Did you see anyone here
when you visited, perhaps a boat tied up?"
"No, not a soul. Not even our friend."
"Mr. Night!" came a shout from outside. It was Greathead, and I think Evans
caught the look of shock and anger on Bighouse's face.
"Another county heard from," I said expansively, and went to answer the door.
Lawless and Strange were behind him, about the right distance to be his warders.
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"Henry Greathead, this is Cpl. Evans of the Seattle Police Department. He's
investigating the power boaters who trashed my home."
"Good heavens, Silas, this is shocking! This all happened last night? I blame the
lovely Carol Yost for seducing you and preventing you from returning home to guard
your valuable possessions. What did the scoundrels steal?"
"We're not sure yet," I told him. "They didn't take the obvious things, like the
television. I haven't checked the collection of vinyl I inherited from Max. You know he
had the most remarkable selection of slack-key guitar and bottleneck blues. There must
be records worth hundreds of dollars there."
"And your library," Bighouse broke in, "Surely you should check your library."
"Fortunately my treasured first editions of the Pogo books were stored elsewhere.
But thank you for thinking of it. I know how you value a good book."
"Come, come, Silas," Greathead said, "You've been burglarized. I am right,
officer, when someone breaks into your home without permission it is burglary,
regardless of the nature of their depredations?"
Evans nodded, too bemused to speak.
"So your insurance company will expect a claim. You've no notion how helpful it
would be if you told this policeman, in tragic detail, of all the valuable and irreplaceable
items that were taken in your absence. You can turn in this police report, and it will add
substance to your claims for reparations."
"Just a minute," Evans said, rallying, "Who are you two?"
"I'm John Lawless, private investigator, and this is my business partner, Albert
Strange," Lawless said, stepping forward to shake the policeman's hand.
"And I assume you have concealed carry permits for the firearms I see under your
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jackets?"
"You are a good man, both in noticing the bulges under our arms and realizing we
would have permits," Lawless said. "A lot of guys on unfamiliar turf, meeting two
strangers with bulges under their armpits wouldn't have recognized right away that we're
on the same side."
"Are you the John who had a party in Ballard?"
"Well, you could call it that. Just a few old friends getting together over fresh
coffee and eighteen-year-old scotch to catch up on old times. Of course, some of us
warmed up to old acquaintances more than others, didn't we, Silas?"
"Nudge nudge, wink wink," Strange added helpfully.
"Now, now, friends, let's not embarrass the lovebirds," Greathead leered.
"I thought you were all too potted to notice," Carol said primly.
"So nobody here saw anything," Evans said. He sounded cynical and
disappointed. None of these people looked innocent, but he couldn't quite figure out
what we were guilty of, so the morning looked like pretty much a loss. He got everyone's
name, address and phone number, then stood up and walked out with injured dignity.
Tension flowed out of the room as if the houseboat had been deflated.
"Would anyone care to explain what happened last night?" Bighouse said frostily.
"Allow me to explain," Greathead started, looking like a hound answering the
horns. Speech was his chosen weapon, and he clearly felt he had the arsenal to outgun
Bighouse.
"I think not," Bighouse replied. "I would prefer to hear Mr. Strange explain how
the agency I've hired has been spending their time and my money."
"Off the clock," Strange said. "Everything last night was off the clock."
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"Not only was it off the clock, it also was done, apparently, in collusion with my
rival."
"I want all of you to clear out," I told them. "You can explain things to Bighouse
outside, and Spender, or Jacob, or whoever you choose to be at the moment, you can
work our your rivalries outside, and Carol, even you can go outside. I need to sleep all
day and all night to get over what happened last night, and I can't do that while you're
bickering in my living room. Out. Every one of you, out. I'll clean this place up when
I'm feeling better. What I need right now is to have nobody around to keep me awake."
A stunned silence followed, then they all filed out.
I stumbled upstairs and collapsed on my bed. While I was burying myself under
the covers I discovered a piece of paper Greathead's men had missed.
It was another message in verse from her.
Silas,
Only a half moon is granted sundered lovers.
A calm lake
a half moon
clean white sheets
in a deep black gloom.
When I lie down without you…
O why lie down without you?
I might as well tramp
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some widow's walk
and wear out the soles of my shoes.
A calm lake
a half moon
empty arms
and an empty womb…
O why lie down without you?
The message was lonely but peaceful. She had probably stopped by before
Greathead's arrival, given up and written the note. While the woman in my head was half
mad because she thought her physical self had given up the Book and faced whatever
consequences followed its loss, the real woman was lying in my bed composing a love
poem about missing me. Muscles I didn't know were tense relaxed. Probably somewhere
back in my mind, she was watching, and something similar was happening to her. I laid
myself down with the poem clutched in my hand slept the sleep of the most grateful dead.
It was evening when I woke again. I got up and heated a pot of water, brewed
Market Spice tea, and sat on the deck on the water side and watched the sun set with my
lover on my mind.
"Silas?"
You read the poem she wrote for us?
"The poem I wrote for you."
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But your experience differs from hers now. You experience what I experience, not
what she experiences. She did not have the anxiety over the supposed loss of the Book
that you and I shared. You may be her ghost in my machine, but you are no longer her
ghost in her machine.
"When the physical me meets us again, all will be reconciled."
Oh. I hoped the part that traveled with me was unique. I hoped that she was part
of me.
"She is. She is also part of me, the physical me. That's what makes this so
intimate."
But it is asymmetrical. I cannot experience what you can experience while we are
together or apart.
"Only a little bit. Only the emotions of the part of me that is in you. I am trained
to receive your emotions, though not in the intense way that I am now. My people fear
this kind of link, because of that intensity. While I am willing to take that risk for myself,
I am unwilling to impose it on you."
Even if I ask it?
"Even if you ask it. You cannot know what you ask. You cannot know the damage
it can do."
No. There is so little I can know. In some sense we are one, but you are still
walled off from me.
"That's why I needed a second sight."
And I remain blind and ignorant.
"Night falls soon."
With it would come dreams.
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Perhaps also, her.
The sun was behind Queen Anne Hill, the clouds were a salmon pink, and my
lover was on my mind.
*******************************************************8
Chapter 17
A Reader of the Book
I went to bed with anticipation and trepidation. I was fairly certain that
something significant would happen that night, and almost certain that I wouldn't
remember it.
For hours, it seemed, I lay awake wondering what would happen. I wondered if
there was some prohibition against her coming if I was awake. Then I thought she would
be frightened to return, after hiding when Greathead's people had torn apart the place the
night before. Of course, the poem gave the lie to that. She had written that when she
was alone, and being alone was the only problem.
Lying awake is like sensory deprivation. Your mind wanders into odd corners and
unexpected distances. It takes flight after tripping on stray thoughts, falls under the
influence of vaporous imaginings.
On a houseboat the wind-driven waves move things slightly even in light air, and
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every passing boat rocks you on the cradle of the deep.
Every creak in the timbers around me was her step, or the invasion of a hostile
army of Book thieves. Every passing vessel's wake was the bump of some makeshift ship
of war.
My nap earlier in the day may have deprived me of that night's repose. My mind
was too busy to permit rest. If I was to be her downfall, shouldn't I be conscious during
the process? And if she should loose everything for the sake of those moments of
pleasure in my arms, then it must be monumentally unfair for me to not remember them.
Surely in return for every sin, we at least deserve a memory. As the tempter, should I be
denied memories of the temptation? There must be some theological principle that
requires the devil to deliver something tempting in return for entrapping us. If I haven't
at least the beginnings of a pleasant memory, how can it be that I am a tool in the
downfall of my lover?
Perhaps she would walk in while I was awake, and I would at last see her again.
Elation and dread competed within me. And why dread? Because so much was unknown
to me. She might be what I thought she was, or she might be something I'd never
imagined. If a woman like her did not exist, would I have had to invent her? Did I
invent her? How could I trust my own mind when I was having auditory hallucinations?
"Of course you can."
But that's you. She isn't here.
"I keep telling you…"
No. You are not her. You are part of me now, a transplanted mind in my brain.
Can I be certain you are even that, and not the product of my own imaginings?
"Of course you can."
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She stood in the doorway with a crooked smile, and I felt the ghost of her within
me rejoice. It was a feeling I cannot describe, an emotion not my own, yet within me.
"I've been dreaming about you," I told her.
"You're dreaming about me now," she replied, and I realized that I was. Had I
gone to sleep before I saw her in the doorway? Probably.
"So I wonder. When I'm dreaming about you and you are in my dream, are you
dreaming about me?"
"Yes. In a way."
"In what way, then?"
She sat down on the edge of the bed, took my hand and placed it in her lap.
"I don't know if I can explain."
"Can you show me?"
She smiled and shook her head.
"It's not like magic."
"It is to me. I think it would be, even if I understood."
"Silas, I'm not sure you can understand. The Book…"
"I don't want to read the Book. You've given me enough warnings to dissuade me
from wanting to look at that. Did you implant some kind of suggestion that makes me not
want to look at it?"
"No, Silas, only the dreams."
"You could, though, couldn't you?"
"There's no point in compelling people you love. If they do what you want under
compulsion, they don't do it out of love. That extends to every part of the relationship."
"There is so much I want to know."
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"There's something I have to do first, Silas. I have to talk to my wandering
spirit."
"The one I was just talking to?"
"That's her."
"How does this work? Do I somehow step aside?"
She smiled gently.
"Somehow, yes."
I was looking into her eyes, the blue sky of her eyes, and found myself falling into
them.
The next morning when I awoke, I felt around the bed. The part next to me was
definitely warm. Then I searched my memory. Nothing beyond her eyes.
"Damn!"
Rage boiled up in me. Was I never to remember our time together? For all her
high talk of not compelling me, she wouldn't let me remember our intimate moments.
How could this be fair? For all I knew, I was just a boy-toy for a vastly more powerful
woman. How could she speak of love and not allow me to remember our night together?
Maybe she was making love to herself, bringing forward her own personality
within me, not wanting to have anything to do with the real me. She hadn't excluded
compulsion of those she didn't love. There was no compulsion of the one she loved if the
one she loved was the model of herself when it was in charge of my body. Perhaps this
was what she saw in me; a weakness of character that allowed her wandering spirit to
take over my mind and body. This would put a whole new light on her poetry as well.
What about the future? Would she crowd me out of my own mind and body?
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A few minutes of sitting, thinking over the implications of getting jealous of the
woman in my head, showed me that it didn't make too much sense. It was a reflection of
my own insecurity, rather than a rational process of deduction. I had to know what was
happening to me somehow. Probably this would involve another nocturnal meeting with
the physical her. I had the daylight hours to prepare for what had become the real center
of my life.
I got out of bed, wrapped myself in a robe and started down the stairs. About
halfway down, I heard a noise in the kitchen. Was it her? Perhaps she stayed to explain.
Of course, it could also be Willie, returned to search for the Book. Running away would
have cleared him of any contractual obligations to Greathead, I decided.
The smell of brewing coffee reached me and I decided to chance it unarmed.
Carol was in the kitchen pouring coffee for herself.
"Hi, Silas, how was your night?" She fixed me with a speculative gaze, as if
expecting me to regale her with tales of carnal knowledge in intimate detail.
"I had strange dreams," I replied.
"Do people ever have pedestrian dreams? I mean, aren't dreams always strange?"
"Sure."
"But your dreams were strange even for dreams."
"Yes."
"How?"
"She was there. Both as the physical her and as the wandering spirit, she was
there."
"I don't think I understand."
"I don't think you should."
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"So close me out."
"Okay."
She poured me a cup of coffee. I sipped it and it was bitter.
"Stop closing me out."
"Why?"
"Whether you think I should understand or not, I want to."
"I'm not sure I understand. What makes you think I can explain it to you?"
"Tell me what happened last night."
"First, tell me what happened after I kicked you all out of here."
"Bighouse and Greathead went to a corner of the parking lot and did some
serious shouting. Then they did some talking in low tones, acting as if they were worried
we might overhear. Finally they came back and announced that they had formed a
temporary alliance."
"Who announced?"
"Actually, Greathead."
"Actually, I thought so."
"Well, it's what happened, Silas."
"I'm not surprised."
"I was. Weren't they sworn enemies?"
"I expect each wants to exploit the other. Greathead thinks he can exploit
Bighouse even if Bighouse knows that's what he's doing. Bighouse thinks he can do the
same to Greathead, but only if Greathead doesn't think he's doing it."
"Which is why Greathead makes the announcement, while Bighouse hangs back."
"That's what I think," I said.
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"So then they conferred with John and Al, and they went off and gathered up a
mass of surveillance equipment like I've never seen," Carol told me.
"For what?"
"They didn't say, but we can guess. Anyway, they proceeded to swear me to
secrecy."
"Which is why you're telling me this now."
"I've thought through the ethics, Silas. My first loyalty is not to them but to you.
The bond between lovers if stronger than the bond between employers or friends. And
now is the time for you to shut up about the status of us as lovers, or the statute of
limitations on our love, okay? It's my call to whether that relationship still matters,
because I'm deciding about my own actions."
"Right. Statute of limitations. When I opened up to you, when I loved you most,
you found a way to put distance between us. You'd pick a fight, or sleep with someone
else. When it mattered to me, you couldn't let it matter to you. All right, now things are
on your terms. I keep my distance and you won't go away. When I didn't keep my
distance, you always found a way to put that distance back..” The moment of truth and
anger passed. I gave up; I suppose I visibly deflated. “I admit that it was stupid to even
bring up the topic of ethics while you're telling me what I want to know."
"Thank you, the admission is noted and will be held against you in future
domestic disputes."
"Domestic?"
"Don't even start."
"Stupid. Right. I'll try to remember."
"Thank you. Is that everything from the party of the second part, or do you have
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anything to add?"
"Nope."
"So anyway, much of the surveillance equipment is installed here in the apartment
and nearby."
"Including listening equipment we are talking to right now?"
"Mostly cameras. Mostly they want to watch you. Don't look at the television.
Well, if you are going to look at the camera in the television, perhaps you could wave,
and make the people who will be looking at the tapes of this conversation feel like they
are a part of things."
I looked away from the television, I hoped, casually.
"Not the best acting job you've done, or perhaps it was my suspension of disbelief
that made me think you were better than this in other parts. In any case, we are being
watched right now, so let's keep up the light banter and mutually antagonistic manner.
Thank you. That expression of distaste when you looked at me was perfect for our
purposes."
"Not distaste," I hastened to correct. "Only incredulity."
"Silas, a wise old drug runner told me, always watch the silent movie. No matter
what people say, watch the silent movie. You were distinctly emoting there."
"Stout denial. I respond with stout denial. I was not emoting distaste. I stoutly
deny it."
"Very wise, but unnecessary. I understand that your distaste is not necessarily for
me. Shoot the messenger, and those watching the tape of our conversation will mistake it
for the natural antipathy you have for a woman who pursues you long after your own
passion has faded."
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"Carol, my feelings are at worst ambivalent. I care deeply about you, but I worry
that you go too far."
"Too much is enough. Wasn't that what you used to say was my dominant mode
of thought?"
"So I don't always trust you. That doesn't mean…"
"Stop. Don't go further out of pity for me. I've come to understand that what we
had is over, at least for you. That doesn't mean it's over for me, which is why I'm
standing here betraying my employer."
"You don't have to…"
"Of course I have to. Not because I retain any hope of changing your mind about
me, if your mind is the organ in question. I have to because that's how I feel. Now I
have to tell you that I'm out of the loop. I don't think they trust me, which shows
excellent judgment on their part."
"So tell me what I need to know."
"They want to know if the woman with the Book is visiting you. Is she?"
"I think so."
"What does that mean?"
"I think the physical woman is visiting me at night. I don't remember everything
that happens at night."
She gave me a level gaze, full of pity. Maybe it was pity about what the future
held, but I think it was pity for a man who had illusions about a woman who's visits he
couldn't even remember.
"You poor fool. Look, I'm not supposed to tell you what they're doing, but I've
probably told you enough already for you to guess. They're setting up technological
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surveillance, because they figure she won't fool the machines. They don't even want their
people looking at her. I suppose the next thing is to come up with a trap."
"She's not a gorgon. They don't have to fear looking at her."
"A what?"
"Thing with snakey hair that turns people into a stone if they look at her."
"That's a goron?"
"No, gorgon, like in gorgonzola."
"Then she should turn you into a cheese."
"Well, she's not one."
"It's not that they're afraid of her. They're afraid of her getting away."
"So it will be an automatic trap, like a better mousetrap?"
"This state has certain standards about the use of cruel traps on animals. I don't
suppose that applies to a gorgonzola."
"Gorgon. Gorgonzola is the cheese."
"All right, Gorgon. I doubt they'll use a bear trap, but you should warn her that
they'll come up with something."
"What part have they assigned you?"
"I'm doing a string of personal injury cases while they work on this, plus at least
one skip trace. Somebody has to do these cases to keep the business going, and Pete's not
here to cover it."
"They fired him for working for Greathead?"
"Didn't have to. He's gone, his apartment is empty."
"Is he the skip trace?"
"No, they don't care. I don't think John wants Al to get his hands on the bastard in
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his current frame of mind, anyway. All these other cases are just work that came in, and
if we don't take it, the work dries up. So they keep me busy and out of the way. They
haven't specifically told me to stay away from you, but they might now that they will
know I've been here."
"What do you think I should do?"
"Tell her, for one thing. She probably knows more about avoiding this kind of
trouble than you do."
"I'm not sure I'm really seeing her. It could be all in my mind. The only times
I'm fairly certain I've seen her in person were in public places. When her bag was taken.
When we saw her at the stakeout. When…"
"When what?"
"I just crossed one off the list. That time I was the only one who saw her, and
since I'm hallucinating, I can't rely on myself as a sole witness."
"You need a corroborating witness for things you've seen with your own eyes?"
"There's a thing about dreams. That you can't compare your perceptions to the
actual event, so you can never know if your recollection of a dream is true. I think that
applies to the rest of your life if you're hallucinating."
"Yes, but then how do you know you're hallucinating?"
"I think I should just go back to bed."
"I'll join you."
"Shouldn't you be doing your skip trace?"
"All right, but if I keep trying, one day you'll mess up and say yes."
After she left, I sat down and tried to think things through. Yes, how did I know I
was hallucinating? Most of the time, I actually regarded the wandering spirit of the
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woman with the tattooed eyes as being real, as being part of me and part of her. I slipped
into thinking of it as a hallucination only when talking to other people. When I tried to
explain it, it sounded impossible. When I kept it to myself it all seemed real. Was this
one of the defenses of the Book?
Carol might have been joking about a camera hidden in the television. Probably
she was. I walked over and turned it on. Nothing happened. I turned it toward the
fireplace and built a fire. A camera must be hidden where the cathode ray tube should be.
Pointing it at the fire should produce a calming, therapeutic tape.
The fire produced a pleasant, dry heat that was welcome on the houseboat. The
crackling alder logs and the heat soon made me sleepy. I wondered how much sleep I'd
had, and how much nocturnal activity I didn't remember. I wondered if the wandering
spirit in my head slept. Perhaps she was sleeping now. I hadn't heard from her since
waking. I wondered if I could call her, now that she'd had her meeting with her physical
self.
Maybe Carol was right. Maybe I was just the host to a parasitic spirit. After all,
what was she giving back?
"Silas?"
Yes.
"Would you like some company?"
Always.
"I hear your thoughts. I'm sorry. I wasn't supposed to be a parasite. I was
supposed to be a link."
I'm sure you serve her well.
"But what about your needs?"
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Exactly.
"You were wrong. What you were thinking this morning, about me and my
relationship with her. I don't take over your body. I can't. When there is a great deal to
exchange with my physical self, it can take time. And we had to find a way to keep my
distress from leaking through to your consciousness. I am ashamed at the way I
distressed you. I shouldn't be a hindrance in your life."
I want to know what you're feeling. You can hear my thoughts, but I can't hear
yours. Why not let me hear you?
"You wouldn't be able to function hearing two minds thinking in your head."
There must be a way.
"I'll make myself easier to call."
How shall I call you?
"Have you more than one wandering spirit in your head? Just think 'spirit' and I
will respond. I'm getting stronger. I don't have to hide in your subconscious all the
time. It was weakness that made me inaccessible. I can be closer to you now. I think I'm
strong enough."
When I first started hearing from you in my waking hours, you were just a
tadpole?
"Very much so."
We went on talking for an hour, until I realized I still hadn't had breakfast and
needed to eat.
Anything you'd especially like for breakfast?
"Whatever pleases you, master."
Maybe I should call you Genie.
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"No names, please."
She had begun to make little jokes, which pleased me. If she was going to live in
my head, I wanted her to be comfortable.
I fried a single egg and ate it with toast and tea. She was pleasant company, and I
had learned not to vocalize when talking to her, so others would not know we were
talking.
It was nearly noon when the door opened and Bighouse came in without
knocking.
"Good day, Mr. Night," he said. "I've come to pay a visit."
"Visitors knock," I told him, "Only burglars come in without permission."
"I apologize. I intended no slight. I came only to update you on the progress we
are making."
"He's lying."
Only when his lips move.
"Tell me, then, how are the allies progressing? Is Greathead now your greatest
friend?"
He laughed, a stage laugh poorly done.
"I'm sure that alliance will bear fruit. In the meantime, are you fully recovered
from your experiences? Al Strange was worried that you might have become sick after
all that time in cold water."
"I'm sitting up and taking nourishment."
"Please, sit back and relax. I hope I'm not intruding. You should get plenty of
rest during the next few days and leave everything up to us. We can take care of all the
worrisome details of surveillance."
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"Stop! Silas, make him stop. That smooth, rhythmic voice, those assurances you
can relax, are an attempt to put you under."
I stood and turned away from him, walked to the window and stared out over the
water.
"Do the others know you're trying to hypnotize me?"
"Surely you can't think that."
"Your bag of tricks is starting to look distinctly limited. Greathead was right
about you."
"What did that charlatan say about me?"
"Nothing much. Just that you try to substitute money for knowledge in your
search for the Book."
"He's a liar. I know more than he does. I wouldn't kill to get the book, and I
haven't told the lies he's told, that's the real difference."
"So where is Jones? What good is a bodyguard when you don't bring him with
you?"
"I don't always have him with me."
"He wouldn't approve of what you're doing here today, would he? There's no
such weak link in Greathead's organization. Whatever steps he takes, they're fine with
it."
"He has no organization. They scattered in the face of three lightly armed
individuals. Jones would never have left me behind like that."
"No. You would have left him behind, because he wouldn't help you burglarize
my place. Which is why he's not here now. You were going to put me under because you
think the Book is here, and if I didn't divulge, you were going to have me sleep while you
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searched yourself."
"I will not stay to be insulted." He got up and walked out.
Spirit?
"I am here. You did well."
The way to keep them from getting the Book is to find Sadie and get her back.
Otherwise Lawless & Strange are allied with Greathead and Bighouse to get the Book
from you.
"Neither of us is skilled at finding. What chance have we of finding her when her
own employer, who specializes in this work, cannot?"
Well, two heads are better than one. Even if they are in the same head. Let's pool
our ignorance and perhaps we can do something.
Not knowing anything about finding people, I decided to do the dumb, obvious
things first. I looked Sadie up in the phone book and got her address. Then I walked up
to Eastlake, caught a bus headed south, and after changing buses got to Queen Anne Hill.
Her house was a small one, on a postage stamp of a lot, but well kept. There were
no newspapers piled in front, no old mail in the box.
Who canceled the paper after she was kidnapped?
"You don't know if she subscribes."
But surely she gets junk mail?
I felt shy about going up to the house and looking in. I walked down the street to
think about it. I went six blocks down, bought a latte to go at a corner stand, and walked
back. Two blocks from her home I met a short, elderly man with frank blue eyes. He
smiled at me and I passed out.
I awoke much, much later at the library. I was sitting at the same table I'd been at
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when I first spoke to the woman with the tattooed eyes. My legs were stiff.
Spirit?
Are you there?
Have you hidden yourself in my subconscious again?
"I'm afraid."
What happened?
"He was one of us. He was a Reader of the Book."
He brought us back here.
"He sent us back here. On foot, so it would take a long time. To where you met
me, so he would know where that was."
He hurt you.
"I hid myself. I don't think he saw me. I have no control of your body, so I have
no way to fight back. But I have no control of your body, so I would have given no clue I
was there."
He was there for a reason. Did they abduct Sadie?
"It is not our way. We persuade people to do things they might be inclined to do,
but would be unlikely to do without persuasion."
So he persuaded me to leave. I was uncomfortable doing what I was doing, so
that was probably easy.
"He asked you questions. You sat across a table from him. He wanted to know
where he could find me, the physical me, and my Book. I could only watch. I could see
what he was doing, how he made you forget, but he can't do that to me. I remember. I
know how hard they are looking. They are getting closer. They are much more
dangerous to us than the finders that you worked for. Someone must have followed us
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from your home."
Or been waiting at Sadie's. Would they have a reason to search for Sadie?
"To return her. So you could not be forced to give someone the Book."
Or to prevent me from finding her. So we could be forced to give someone the
Book.
**************************************************
Chapter 18
Astounded. Bemused. Confounded. Insensate, even.
The light was fading when I left the library. I allowed myself the luxury of a cab home. When I
arrived, lights were on in my houseboat. I figured Carol had stopped by after work. Maybe
she'd cooked something. I hadn't eaten much all day. It would be good to see her. I walked
breezily though the front door, ready to shout, 'honey, I'm home!'
The words died on my lips when I saw Greathead. He was sitting in front of the
fireplace, watching the fire on a small portable television.
"Ah, Mr. Night. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, the hunter, home from the hill.
I've been watching the tape you were so kind as to film for me. Very relaxing indeed. I'm happy
to be associated with a man who has a wit and a soul. Or two souls, if one should be so
equipped."
"Why are you here?"
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"Always another question. One day, you will be the most knowledgeable man in the
world, when we've answered all your questions. You seem surprised by my assessment. True,
we don't know each other well, but your reputation has reached my ears. The cry goes 'round;
Silas always asks the questions others feared to ask. So why am I here? Because I wish to know
you better. Because you are at the center of an enigma, or closer to that center than I have ever
come."
"Because you think I have the Book, or the means to finding it. Bighouse was here
earlier."
"That buffoon! I told him, don't try to be clever, nature has not equipped you for it. But
would he listen? No, he would not. He would try to get 'round you with his paltry magic tricks,
while the others tried the quintessentially American approach, using technology to make up for
their shortcomings. Well, give a man enough rope. I'm sure you showed him the door. Tell me,
by the bye, where have you been all day?"
"I went for a walk."
"Lost time, wasn't it? You don't know where all the time went?"
He was right. It wouldn't have taken that long to walk from Queen Ann to the downtown
library. I was missing most of the afternoon.
"I see I've given you pause for thought. Who do we know that presents us with such
riddles? Eh? Cat got your tongue?"
"Where do you think the time went?"
"Their interrogations can be quite lengthy. They haven't interrogated me, mind you, or at
least I think not. Those questioned are often the last to know. You don't seem shocked by my
suggestion, or by the missing time. One would think someone had already told you. Curious."
He picked up a glass from the coffee table, full of a clear liquid, and took a sip.
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"Have a glass of grappa with me. Keep the bottle and consider it a housewarming gift. I
understand you have only recently inherited."
"I'm not fond of alcohol," I told him.
"Then I shall come up with a more appropriate gift. I regret not having learned more
about your tastes before I made the selection. Tell me, did one or both of your parents drink? Is
this the source of your antipathy?"
"Yes."
"Yes to both questions? I've often found it is the case. My own parents were abstemious,
so I went in the other direction. It seems yours were not, so you went in the other direction.
How odd it is, that we both rebelled against our heritage and each came to a different way of
living."
"I'm tired," I told him. "How much longer do you plan to stay?"
"I have no wish to impose. Only to know you better, if I may. I will shift myself if you
are tired."
"Did you search the place to your satisfaction before I got back? I could let you do that
before you go. Then you wouldn't have to bother stopping by."
"You wound me, sir. For me, the Book is not an end in itself. Knowing about the Book
is my real goal. I am not a monomaniac and not the monster you think I am."
"You are the monster who left us locked up on that ship to starve. You thought it would
be weeks or months before we were found, and we'd be dead by then."
"Yes, I heard about that part of your adventures. As I have already explained to your
compatriots, what I said was for the consumption of Willie, who would have insisted on killing
you immediately. By preventing him from doing that, I could keep you alive, and later make an
anonymous phone call claiming I had heard cries for help from the bowels of the ship. When
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one employs the likes of Willie, one must be prepared to use one's wits constantly to overawe
them while preventing atrocities. Of course, I don't expect you to trust me immediately, but in
time you may learn more about me. I am not without my merits as well as faults. And it may
surprise you to know, I do not aspire to be a Reader of the Book."
Somewhere back in the reptile brain where our most basic survival instincts lie, my fight-
or-flight reflex triggered a shot of adrenaline though my system.
"Ta ta, then," he said. "I'll take the bottle of grappa if you really don't want it. Best not
to waste. 'Much that wine hath played the infidel/And robbed me of my robe of honor, well/I
often wonder what the vintners buy/One half so precious as what they sell,'" he quoted from
Khayyam.
He moved gracefully for such a fat man, turning to bow as he reached the door.
Then I was alone with my thoughts. And hers.
"Silas! He said Reader of the Book! We've never met anyone who knows we are called
that."
He is deceitful and treacherous.
"He lied about not wanting to be a Reader of the Book. But most of the time, he told the
truth."
You're not telling me he didn't intend to leave us to starve.
"He told the truth about not wanting Willie to kill you. He told the truth about planning
to make that call."
You can't believe that.
"People who have severe aphasia have trouble understanding sentences, but find it easy
to tell if people are lying. Why is it so hard to believe that years of study have given me a talent
for detecting deceit?"
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So he didn't mean to be a murderer. I can think of stronger recommendations for a man.
"But he is knowledgeable. He is strong. We may need his help."
And we may regret his help.
I was still hungry, but didn't feel much like cooking. I made some toast and ate it with
jam, and had a cup of tea with it. It was the kind of meal that made me feel very little like the
hard-boiled detective who could track down the kidnappers.
When it was quite dark, a knock came at the door. It was Jones.
"Hello, Silas. I am sorry to come here at night. My place in the hotel suite of Mr.
Bighouse is no longer available to me. I have parted with my employer."
A flash of paranoia informed me that he might be a plant, an inside man to help trap my
Reader. But of course, they were convinced that any human observer would be fooled by her.
Planting a human observer would do no good, if they were right.
"You can crash on the couch, if you want. No wait, I have a bedroom for you. Come
upstairs with me."
I showed him to Max's room. It felt creepy to me, but Jones had never known the man.
"No, Silas, I cannot stay here. This is what you say is the master bedroom. This must be
where you would sleep. I cannot take your bed."
"Relax. I wouldn't sleep here on a bet. This is where the guy I inherited the place from
slept. If it bothers you, you can sleep on the couch, but I figured you didn't know him, so maybe
it wouldn't bother you."
He stared at the bed for a few seconds.
"The couch is good enough for me, I think."
"There are blankets in the hall closet. I'm going to bed now, even though it's early. The
big television isn't working, but there's a portable television downstairs if you want to watch it. I
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may have a visitor tonight, but don't worry about it. It's a friend."
He walked to the hall closet with me and we picked out some blankets.
"It was me you argued about with Bighouse, wasn't it?"
"He is not the man I supposed him to be."
"Neither is Greathead, it seems."
"Do not trust either of these men."
"I don't even trust myself, Jones. Least of all myself."
As I prepared for bed, I heard the television come on with the volume very low. It was
comforting to sleep with someone else in the house. Someone I knew was there, and would
remember the next morning.
I hoped to remember my Reader's visit, but I wasn't sure that I would. I thought of
pinning a note to my pillow with a series of questions.
1-Do do we make love at night, and do I agree to make love with you?
2-At night when we are together, do I remember what has happened on the other nights
when we were together?
3-About this "if we lie down together we will lie in separate graves" stuff. If your people
find out about us, will they kill you? Will they kill me?
4-What is the danger your elevated consciousness faces from love?
But I didn't make the note. Instead I tried to solve the riddle about why a raven is like a
writing desk, and went to sleep without an answer.
I don't know how late she came. It was the darkest, most silent part of the night, and she
was more beautiful than I had remembered, slim and supple in her movements, wearing a silk
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dress that matched the night. She put a finger to her lips and closed the door with infinite care,
putting an end to the invasion of Jones' snoring, then came quickly but silently to the side of the
bed where she sat smiling down at me.
"I will remember tonight?" I whispered.
"As long as possible, I hope," she breathed.
She slipped the dress off her shoulders and stepped out of it. She wore nothing beneath.
She slid under the covers and embraced me. I have never been the most confident lover, but we
made love as if we had done so many times before, as probably we had. When we laid back
tired and sated, I whispered that I wanted to remember every moment I had ever spent with her.
"I'll try," she pledged. "But you must know, the forgetfulness was a defense for you as
well as for me."
"You feared I would betray you."
"I feared you would do so accidentally."
"And yet you communicated with me with dreams, with notes. Why so indirect?"
"In dreams, emotion is mediated by illusion, and we never quite believe a dream or hold
responsible those we dream about. Besides, if you let slip that you were having strange dreams,
who would care?"
"And the notes?"
"I couldn't be just an illusion. In the written word, emotion is mediated by intellect,
because you must interpret the script. It was less immediate than the dreams, but more real. I
wanted to be real to you."
"But not so real that I would remember the touch of your thighs in the morning."
"No," she said, not meeting my eyes, "Not so real as that."
"So why did you change your mind?"
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"Because you asked me to. You felt it so strongly when you woke up, and though I
wasn't there, when I opened the door and you woke again, I quickly learned it from my
wandering spirit. So before I was fully in the door, I let you begin to remember."
"I don't really know the risks you're taking. I'm asking a great deal of you, aren't I?"
"As you wish it, so it shall be."
"If someone said that to me in a fairy tale, my wish would come true in some horribly
ironic way."
She laughed, but a little sadly, I thought.
"I have to warn you, they are planning to set a trap for you. And today we met a Reader
of the Book."
"I know, Silas. It was a grave trauma for my wandering spirit. I will have to ask you to
step aside so that I can heal her. This part you won't remember, though, I can't quite manage
that."
"It's all right. At least I get to remember the best part of the night."
We both sat up in the bed cross-legged, facing one another. Then I felt myself gently
brushed aside.
When I awoke the next morning, the shape of her body still showed in the sheets beside
me. I ran my hand over the area and enjoyed the warmth that remained in the bedding. I buried
my face in the pillow that had cradled her head. Finally I got up and put on a robe, then went
down the stairs. Jones was bustling in the kitchen and I could already smell coffee and bacon.
"Eggs over medium, crisp bacon and a large coffee," I told him.
"I have been a line cook, Silas," Jones said. "I can keep up with a whole roomful of
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orders."
"I have only one breakfast to eat for my country."
"If I spoke English all my life, I would maybe understand that."
"Nathan Hale. Revolutionary war era spy. Standing on the gibbet about to be hanged by
the neck until dead by the English, he said, "I regret that I have only one life to give for my
country."
"My cooking is not so bad as that. Was it a turkey gibbet he was standing on?"
"Not giblets, gibbet. Thing shaped like an inverted L, with a noose hanging from it."
"I know. Joke." He gave me a reassuring smile.
He was good, quiet company for breakfast, comfortable enough that silence didn't seem
awkward.
We watched the boats on the lake while I tried to adjust to the new reality of my life. But
of course, whatever happiness remembering my nights might bring, if we didn't get Sadie back
my lover was threatened from several sides.
"Jones, are you good at finding things?"
"I'm all right. I find things sometimes."
"We need to find Sadie."
"This seems to be hard."
"It is. Yesterday, I tried to go to her house, and someone stopped me."
"I am hard to stop."
"Bighouse would have called him a member of the Legion of Strangers."
"I think he makes up this term."
"But not the people he's talking about. Those are real."
"You think I can help, so I will."
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"I have no idea what I'm doing. You need to know that."
"Yes, I had some idea."
"You're still in?"
"I am in this, yes."
Spirit?
She didn't answer.
Spirit?
Panic welled within me. Would she have taken away her wandering spirit in return for
the memories of our real time together? It would be a high price to pay. Spirit had become a
comfortable and comforting presence inside my head.
Or it could be that she was so damaged that the Woman with the Tattooed eyes couldn't
heal her. What had the Reader done? She thought she had concealed herself so that he was
unaware of her, but perhaps he could manipulate her as easily as me. She might not remember
the damage he had done.
Jones shifted beside me, bringing me back to the world outside my head. I certainly
couldn't explain to him my distress.
"I'm getting claustrophobic," I told him. "My life revolves around so few places, and my
attempts to accomplish anything seem so fruitless. Trying to go to Sadie's house again seems so
futile, like all that time I spent on the stakeout without any real result. Can you think of another
approach, Jones?"
"She is human, so she has friends outside work. We find out what she does on weekends,
then we find her friends, then we find out if they know something. Only first, we go back to the
house, because to be sent away means something is there to learn. We learn what that is, first."
"You have a clear, incisive mind. I envy that."
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"You have a house. I envy that."
I decided to rent a car. My legs were still sore from the long walk the day before and the
chill before that, so if we were sent back by the Reader, I didn't want to walk.
I didn't tell Jones my motive. It would have seemed far too pessimistic. I had no hope
that going back to Sadie's house would yield any different result than it had before. Jones was
strong, confident and competent, all characteristics I felt I lacked. Would those be enough
against the Book's hoodoo? Surely not.
So I got an ancient Mercury Zephyr from Rent-A-Wreck. I had a little money from the
lawyers, though I hadn't yet legally inherited. Actually trying to do something more than buy
broccoli reminded me of how little money it actually was.
We drove up to Queen Anne Hill in such style as I could afford and parked less than a
block away this time. Maybe a quick march to the door, with Jones pushing us forward with
energy and confidence, would take the enemy by surprise.
He dragged me right up her porch and banged on the door. A short, elderly man with
frank blue eyes opened the door.
"We wish to speak to Miss Sadie," Jones announced.
The elderly man smiled, and before anything more could happen, Jones smiled and took
his hand as if to shake it, then pulled hard and tumbled him down the front steps.
I darted through the door and found myself in the living room, with Jones looming
behind me. The sun cast his shadow on the wall, and I thought again of my first impression of
him, of a large shadow cast by a small man. This time I was the small man. And in the shadow
cast by the greater man behind me was Sadie, sitting on the couch with a paperback of "Sense
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and Sensibility" in her hand. She looked at me as if I held the secret of whether she would live
or die.
"I dreamed about you," I said. "I dreamed you danced the Lindy Hop with Albert
Strange."
Her face contorted in pain and she began to cry before the pleasant, elderly man appeared
in the doorway, smiled, and I began to forget again.
The planks beneath our feet rocked gently on the deep and I knew that we had lost all we
had hoped to achieve. We were standing on my doorstep. I didn't have to look back to the
parking lot to know that we had driven home. After all, I had arranged for failure.
Turning to Jones, I said, "Thank you. I saw her. I would never have gone so far on my
own."
He looked away and shook his head uncomprehending.
My key shook in my hand and could hardly find the lock. When I got it in the keyhole, I
found that I had failed to lock the door. We entered, and I was ready to wallow in my failure, but
in the living room I saw Bighouse waiting for us.
"Who will free me of this turbulent priest?" I said to Jones. He smiled and shook his
head again, still uncomprehending. References to Thomas a Becket were a little recondite for a
man with no European heritage.
"Hello, Silas," Bighouse said. "Don't mind me, I'm waiting for someone. You and Jones
seem to be sleepover friends, so why not go upstairs and have a pajama party while I remain
here?"
"I think you need to be somewhere else," Jones told him. "This is not a communist party
where you own this property as much as Silas. This is more of capitalism, where Silas owns the
place like you own the Lincoln I used to drive. Would you want Silas to sit in your Lincoln and
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tell you, hey, don't mind me, you just sit in the front and talk to some friend?"
"Jones, you idiot, why don't you just wait for developments? I'm sure once you
see what time will bring, you will have to admit that I have every reason to be here."
"I notice you say every reason, and not every right," Jones responded.
"Indeed. Wait for developments, Jones, I think you will be amazed. Astounded.
Bemused. Confounded. Insensate, even. Jones, you have left me on the eve of my triumph, on
the cusp of my glory, on the very edge of joy's infinity. You will regret it of course, but I fear it
is too late. You have cast away your opportunity to be a part of that. Reflect upon your folly."
"I also own a thesaurus. I can make statements as redundant and confusing as these."
"Yes, I'm sure you do own a thesaurus. But behind you in the doorway, I see someone
who owns a more propitious Book. Come in, come in, make way for the lady. We have waited
long enough, why bar the door?"
We came in farther and turned around. The woman with the tattooed eyes followed us in
carrying a thick package, silent as a mime's tomb and oblivious to me and Jones.
"You have something for me, I believe, Miss?" Bighouse said with a supercilious smile.
She walked in and set the package on the table. Bighouse picked it up and opened it. He
took out a large book, leather bound and ancient. I recognized it from my dreams.
"The Book," I heard myself say as if at a great distance. "But why have you given it to
him?"
"She will not answer," Bighouse said. "She has some silly thing about betrayal. You
demanded the Book, and she brought it, but the cost to her is incalculable. I think I told you
these people are vulnerable to love."
"I didn't ask this."
"But you did. Oh, that's right, you don't recall." He laughed. I would not call his laugh
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musical or charming. "You forget that I hypnotized you yesterday to demand the Book from her.
I can hardly blame you for that; I made sure that you would forget. The way you remember it, I
was unable to pull it off, and you chased me away. That was the easy part. The hard part was
making the 'passenger,' as Greathead called it, forget as well. Fortunately, she had no control
over your body, so she couldn't do the little tricks they do with the blink of an eye or the twitch
of a lip. Being underestimated and proving that I was makes me feel like a giant. There are
things about me that you don't know. I have more knowledge of the Book than you could ever
imagine."
He reached into a briefcase as Jones moved toward him, and Jones stopped in the face of
a machine pistol.
"Jones, you know the brand names of all these weapons. That's part of why I hired you.
Oh, I see surprise in our friend's face. Yes, Jones was a mercenary soldier before he came to this
country. He might have told you. Anyway, it's a Mach 10. We won't go into the rounds per
second. Suffice to say, I could cut Jones in half before he could reach me. And by the time you
get another chance, I will have read the Book. So you may as well go back to the life you would
have had if you'd never met me, because there will be no interfering with me now."
He motioned with the gun, and we moved out of the entry and gave him room to escape.
"Goodbye. I'm sure in a few days, I'll be thinking, 'those people down there look like
ants.' But I'm sure power won't spoil me."
He laughed again and made his exit.
The shrieking in her head must have been far worse than when my passenger thought the
Book was gone. I had asked her to give Bighouse the Book, and she had handed it to him
herself. No wonder she had shut down. I could only watch her, standing empty-handed, helpless
and damaged by my love.
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*****************************************************************
Ch. 19
Dry Eyes Crack and Up Come Weeds
I sat her down and got her a cup of tea. She sat holding it without drinking, as if not
knowing what a cup was for. I sat gazing into her eyes, eyes void of all expression, blinking
only when nature called for moisture.
"I could call a doctor," Jones suggested quietly.
"And what would that doctor do, give her a pill that heals betrayal? There is no doctor
for this sickness. Even seeing me must make it worse."
"Who shall we call, then? Not you and not me knows what will make her better."
"We'd better call Strange. He and Lawless need to know that we found Sadie. They need
to know they've lost a client, too."
He went to the phone and took care of it while I sat watching her hopelessly.
Only twenty minutes passed before they arrived, and Greathead was in tow.
I described to them what happened as best I could.
"So it was the Legion of Strangers that snatched Sadie. I suppose they will have moved
her by now," Strange mused. "Where do we go from here?"
"Where you would have gone in the first place, had you been allowed to think clearly,"
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Greathead said. "Has it not occurred to you to wonder why you never visited her home while
you were looking for her?"
"Must be getting soft in the head," Lawless growled.
"Not on your own, though," Greathead told him. "Let me explain something. Readers of
the Book – they are not called the 'Legion of Strangers,' by the way, that's just Bighouse being
amusing – the Readers, you must understand, have little power over each other. They could not
compel this errant acolyte to give up the Book. A Reader's defenses, provided you do not know
their true name, are more powerful by far than any other aspect of ability, and defenses are
taught first, to ensure that anyone with the Book cannot be compelled to give it up. They needed
to find a way to put pressure on her. Silas was her point of vulnerability, but if they used him
directly, she would detect it and deploy her defenses. They needed others to put pressure on him
to put pressure on her. The obvious candidates were me and Bighouse, but I have been in this
game so long that I'm not easy for them to deal with. Bighouse had the ability, could be
manipulated, but was so ambitious that he would want to keep the Book and exploit it. So the
pressure came on Thibodeaux, Lawless & Strange, so that Bighouse would be deployed under
your watchful eyes, and with any luck, you would get the Book from him before he learned the
defenses. You could be manipulated not to look in the obvious places for Sadie, because our
friend wouldn't be checking you for signs of interference."
"So we've all been played for saps," Lawless remarked, "and they still don't have the
Book because Bighouse was smarter than they thought."
"What about Sadie? They don't have any reason to keep her now. Not unless they think
we can tackle Bighouse Book and all, which I'm ready to try," Strange said.
"We must raise the Blue Peter," Jones announced.
"I think not," Greathead murmured. "I think we must contact them more directly, if we
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are to get any help for this poor woman. I propose we go to the house where she was last seen.
The fact that you can remember is quite unusual, by the way."
"I cannot remember," Jones told him. "All that Silas told you about going to this place, I
cannot remember."
"I spoke to her. After that, I don't remember."
"Remembering as much as you do, Mr. Night, indicates that your lady friend may have
prepared you in some way for the encounter. Have you anything to tell us about that?"
"My memory's a blank."
"As you wish."
Strange left the bugeye Sprite at the parking lot and rode with the rest of us in my rental.
Greathead had come by cab. His bulk made the back seat rather intimate with Lawless and
Strange. I held my lover's unresisting hand in the front seat while Jones drove.
Jones pulled up in front of Sadie's house, and we must have looked like a clown car as the
Zephyr disgorged passenger after passenger.
By prior agreement she and I preceded the others. The door opened as we climbed the
steps to the porch, and the short, elderly man with frank blue eyes stepped out to greet us.
"She doesn't have the Book," I told him. "It's my fault. Stop punishing her."
"I am not punishing her. What has happened was caused by her own actions."
Strange mounted the porch beside me.
"I must see Sadie."
The short man stepped aside and motioned him to enter. In another moment Strange had
Sadie in his arms and she was resting her head on his chest with her eyes closed. Lawless
watched with a compact smile.
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"Regrettably, your plans have come to naught," Greathead said to the Reader. "Bighouse
has the Book, by the time we find him he will have mastered the defenses, and we have on our
hands a nearly comatose woman badly in need of your help. Can you restore her to her old
vivacious self?"
The Reader shook his head.
"In time I may make her better. She may become a Reader again, even find new insights,
but I am old. It will take time for her to recover, and I may die before the process is complete.
Until then I will care for her."
"I want to care for her," I interjected. "I caused this. She loves me. I love her. Maybe
being cared for by someone who cares is more important than technical expertise. I'm not
impoverished. I can do more for her than you might imagine."
Again, the Reader shook his head.
"What have you people got against love?"
"Ask her. She let down her guard, thought she could ignore the impossibility, and now
her eyes see nothing but infinity. But you didn't cause it. She did, violating our limits, ignoring
our warnings, and I did it, pressuring your friends in order to recover the Book, and Jacob
Whynott did it, by hypnotizing you to demand the Book."
"Why do Readers never call him Bighouse?"
"Because he has never really managed to change who he is."
Greathead broke in then.
"Until the Book is recovered, you can't help her, can you? Every copy of the Book is
hand copied. Hers was passed from mentor to follower for centuries. Each Reader added
marginalia, even bound in new pages. That Book has become as individual as she is. And the
study of it has re-structured her mind. The Book is the core of who she is now. Without it she is
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no one. Mr. Night is as good a caregiver as you, until the Book is returned. Let him care for her
until then. We have souls too, remember. We, to, can be broken on the rack of love. Bloody
hell, that sounded pompous. Look, I know my somewhat florid eloquence must seem primitive
to you, but consider my logic. Silas needs to care for her as much as she needs to be cared for."
The Reader smiled.
"Eloquence of your sort is not my forte, Mr. Greathead. We spend a great deal of time in
study, much in observation, even some in practice, to use the knowledge of the Book to best
advantage. You have spent much of your life persuading people, and it shows. Yes, I will permit
what you suggest."
"And Sadie…"
"Is in good hands with Mr. Strange, I am persuaded."
"Now we must discuss the strategy for recovering the Book," Greathead said, settling in
an overstuffed chair. "Given the limitations of your people, I think you might want help from us
mere mortals."
"Given the flaws in Jacob Whynott's character, we could simply wait for his collapse and
hope he doesn't do too much damage," the old man said.
"But would that be entirely ethical?" Greathead queried. "Temptation has crossed his
path. If a child gets hold of a poisonous plant, do you say, let him eat it, this problem with
children eating this plant will be done with when he dies?"
"An odd argument, from a man who has spent a quarter century trying to get his hands on
the Book."
"Oh, I admit, the temptation to read it once I had a copy would be nearly irresistible. But
I know enough to resist. I am simply a man who is drawn to the unattainable, as ugliness is
drawn to beauty. There is much in this world that I cannot be and cannot have, but it would
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somehow vindicate my worth to obtain a Book that has always been denied to outsiders. And
make no mistake, I have always been an outsider, in every group I have ever encountered. I
don't expect the Book to make me wealthy – what would be the point of using the Book that
way? Nor do I seek power over others. I seek to propitiate my inner demons with an offering of
the unobtainable. It is a strange goal, an ignoble goal, impractical and useless as myself, but I
pursue it with energy and diligence. I felt no qualms about taking the Book when I thought it
had been taken from this woman, because I knew that once the Book was in my hands, you
would have no reason to hold Sadie. And I admit, having not met this poor woman who stands
so like a zombie before you, I had no sympathy for the Reader involved. But now I have seen
the price the Book can take, and I am unwilling to see it paid."
He could hold an audience like no one else I've ever seen, and I trod the boards from
Hollywood to London for a couple decades. Strange and Sadie were in their own world, and the
woman with the tattooed eyes saw nothing closer than infinity, but the rest of us were rapt, and
when he finished there was a moment of silence.
"Any normal person would give you what you want now," Lawless remarked, casting a
speculative gaze at the Reader.
"I will leave now," the Reader said. "I have a great deal to consider.”
When we got home she followed me quietly into the house and when I led her to the
couch she sat down. I made up a salad and some sandwiches. When I set the food in front of
her, she didn't eat. She didn't eat when I told her to. When I fed her, she ate. Jones ate quietly,
not interfering or offering help, and when he'd eaten he said he was going for a walk. I brought
her out on the porch to sit in the late afternoon sun.
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We'd been sitting quietly for a long time when Carol came in, as usual without knocking.
"Want to introduce me to your friend?"
"Carol, this is the woman of my dreams."
"Lawless told me. How are you two getting on?"
"There haven't been any arguments."
"How long have you been together?"
"About noon, I guess."
"She's been like this the whole time, has she?
"Yes."
"They can't do anything without the Book?"
I nodded, looking despairingly at my lover.
"Has she been physically normal? Able to tend to the basic needs of life?"
"I had to feed her."
"Has she been to the bathroom?"
"Uh, no."
"I'll take her."
I felt guilty as Carol led her away. I'd gone to the bathroom after we ate, but hadn't taken
her. It should have been obvious that she had the same need, but I hadn't been ready to face it. I
couldn't be shy or squeamish if I was to care for her properly. She would need to be bathed,
dressed, she'd even need her butt wiped. It was what I asked for, and I'd feel better about doing
it than having someone else do it.
Carol brought her back and sat her down in the chair.
"I can help, you know. You don't have to do this alone."
"Thanks. We'll be all right. I just have to think of things like that. Doing them isn't a
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problem."
She pulled up a third chair.
"Everybody treats her like she isn't there," I complained.
"But she isn't there. Not really."
"I think she is. I think she sees everything, hears everything, knows what we mean and
how we feel. She just can't act. I think she's hiding in there, looking out through the chinks in
the fortress walls, afraid to open the gate."
"At least she has someone who loves her to care for her."
"I wonder if I'm right to do that. Maybe it's selfish. Loving me is what did this to her.
She has no way to tell me if she wants me to go away. What if that's what she wants?"
"So what if what she wants is you? She risked this to be with you. I think the last thing
she'd want is to be left alone by you."
Jones came back.
"I have found a hotel that is not too expensive," he announced. "I have some money to
live on and I can find a job quickly."
"I wish you'd stay with me."
"There are not enough beds, Silas. She needs a bed, you need a bed."
"I'm not going to sleep in Max's room, and I'm not going to make her sleep in Max's
room. She might still have a sensitivity to the things that drove him to suicide. Oh, stupid me,
maybe you have the same problem I do with it. You slept on the couch last night, and you figure
I'll be sleeping on it tonight. Is that why you're moving out?"
"No, Silas. I just can't be the burden."
"I insist you stay here. I'll be camping out in her room in case she needs me."
"Jones," Carol said, "Do you know for sure Bighouse is done with her? If you don't stay
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here, I will. Bighouse might see her as a loose end. He might figure that if she were gone, we'd
have one less link to the Book. He might figure if she were gone, we'd have less reason to get it
back, since it's needed for her. She needs you here."
"I had not thought of that. It seems unlikely to me. Still I would not mind staying. So I
confess. The inexpensive hotel was under a freeway viaduct. It is dry, but has no walls and the
floor is dirt. I think maybe I am not wanted here. But I haven't been paid by Bighouse, and I
now think I won't get paid. So if it's not bad I'm here, I will stay and try to be helpful."
"As long as you want, Jones. If I give you some money, could you take the car and bring
back a futon or a cot or something I can set up in her room for me?"
Carol wanted to help pick it out, so I dug into the ginger jar where I kept ready cash and
sent them on their way.
I brought my Reader upstairs and set her on a chair by the window while I made the bed.
In the bedding I found a note. I had missed it in the morning. It was an answer to the questions
I had decided not to put in a note to her. Her wandering spirit must have told her.
1 – Yes, enthusiastically.
2 – Yes.
3 – No, and I doubt it.
4–
No answer to the fourth question, about the danger a Reader's consciousness faced from
love.
I turned the note over and found a couplet.
Wild wind clatters through a brittle mind's leaves
Dry eyes crack and up come weeds.
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***********************************************************
Chapter 20
A Stupidity Theory of History
I sat on the bed gazing at her. She'd known the cost of loving me, but had not drawn
back from it. She would have done anything for me, and had done things she shouldn't have. I
wanted desperately to communicate to her, but she'd drawn back to protect herself. Probably she
was right. Whether intending to or not, I'd asked the fatal favor.
How had Bighouse done it? I still didn't remember him hypnotizing me. Quite the
opposite. How had he made the wandering spirit forget? The things she had said to me…or was
that her? Could those have been memories planted by Bighouse? We must all have
underestimated him. If this was hypnotism, it was different from what I imagined hypnotism to
be. Perhaps there was another force behind Bighouse. I shook my head as if to clear away the
paranoid fantasies. The truth was usually simpler than my imaginings. Or different, at least.
When I had lived on the street with almost no human contact, I'd had elaborate fantasies
about being insubstantial and governed by the whims of others. I had fallen in love with a
woman almost as ephemeral. Now we sat in a small, quiet room, two bodies, no words, all the
fantasies evaporated, and the simple reality of that was less than what we had thought about and
dreamed of. Without words and thoughts and fantasies, we were nothing but our bodies, unreal
in a concrete way that was the opposite of the unreality I had felt when I thought I existed only
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in the minds of others. Perhaps we needed to exist in our own minds before we could exist in the
minds of others. The version of us that existed in our minds and the minds of others seemed real
to me in the way that an empty body was not.
Without words, we were amoebae, squelching around the slide beneath the microscope.
What could she be without her words, her Book, the literature at the center of her soul? A being
that absorbed food, eliminated, and responded to light in a way that could be seen with a close
examination of the eyes.
I had not spoken to her wandering spirit since it had spoken to her. She had sent a part of
herself with me to report back on my experiences and wishes. Is that what made her vulnerable
to me, or was is only love itself that did this to her?
"I love you," I told her still, unhearing form. Then I finished making the bed. I guided
her down the stairs and sat her in the most comfortable chair, placed in front of the fireplace. I
built her a fire to watch and be warmed by, and sat beside her in a straight-backed kitchen chair.
We sat for a while, then I made us both sandwiches and fed her. I imagined that she enjoyed the
fire, but I had no way of knowing. At least it made me feel better, as if I were doing something
for her.
Carol and Jones came back. She'd insisted on scouring the town until they found a proper
camp cot, so that I would be sleeping on close to the same level as my Reader.
They helped me set it up. No one seemed to know what to say. It was as if the missing
Book had taken all the words away.
They left with few words passed between us. I didn't ask Jones where he was going,
though I sincerely hoped it was not the bivouac he had found beneath the freeway. When it had
been dark for a couple hours, I took the woman with the tattooed eyes upstairs and put her to
bed. I couldn't yet sleep, so I went to the deck facing the lake and paced, thinking about the
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events of the day and trying to make sense of it all. Greathead had been a revelation, but could
he be believed? He might just be ingratiating himself in order to make another attempt on the
Book.
I finally managed to wear myself out physically, but as I laid myself down on the cot my
mind was still whirling. Around midnight, I heard the door slam and got up to see what was
happening. It was Jones returning. I went down the stairs to greet him.
"Silas!" he called in a stage whisper, gripping me by the shoulders with powerful hands,
"you are a foolish man. You must start to lock your front door. I was ready to use all my brains
to get into this house, and you leave open the very front door!"
His breath smelled of beer.
"I think you found some amusement," I said.
"Our friend Greathead is generous with the drinks, my friend Silas. You could benefit
from spending time there at the Zoo Tavern. I told him I had only money enough for one glass,
and he said I must allow him to buy rounds for his friends. Carol left after only one drink, but I
stayed."
"You seem to be pretty well lit."
"Silas, I am so well lit, I think I am visible from orbit. Mr. Fathead is a very friendly
man."
"You mean Greathead."
"Yes, so, Greathead."
"What did you talk about?"
"He has asked me all about Africa, and I made up answers. Did you know I was in the
French Foreign Legion?"
"No, Jones, I didn't."
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"Neither did I, but it seemed to make him happy. Did you know that my people were
slaughtered by mercenaries who carried Tommy guns and scimitars?"
"I had no idea."
"Neither did I, but when I told Greathead he bought me a Guinness."
"Where are you really from?"
"That would be telling. I have a strict rule with myself, to always tell the truth except
when people ask about my past."
"I won't ask, then."
"I wish you would ask. I can tell the most amazing stories when people ask. You know
these people who have writer's block? They should learn to tell lies about themselves."
"You really want me to ask?"
"No Silas, you must not ask me, because I might tell you the truth. You are the only one I
would tell the truth to."
"Jones, are you one of these people who makes injudicious confessions under the
influence of alcohol?"
"Never yet. Have I told you anything incriminating?"
"No, I can't say you have."
"So even you, I tell nothing. Never in my life do I tell anything, really. Even the people
I want to trust, I don't tell anything. It is very disappointing, Silas, to not trust even you enough
to talk. But even though I say this, still I tell you nothing."
"It's all right, Jones. You don't need a past for me."
"No," he mused. "I need a past for me."
The sun was well up by the time I awoke the next morning. Her head was turned toward
me, and she was watching me. I used the bathroom, then came back and took her, tending to her
215
needs. I filled the tub with warm water and bathed her. It reminded me of Gene Smith's
photograph of a Japanese mother bathing her deformed daughter, at a village where many
children were deformed because of industrial pollution. The company that was generating the
pollution had hired thugs to beat him up. They picked him up by the feet and swung his head
against a concrete wall. He'd never been able to focus a camera again.
Only I wasn't Gene Smith or even the mother in the picture, really. I was the one who
had damaged the girl in the bath.
I dried her carefully and dressed her. Soon she would need another suit of clothes. I took
her down the stairs, where Jones had eggs and bacon ready to cook, and coffee already brewed.
"This morning, I watched a news show on the television," Jones told me as he cooked.
"They say Tim Faith, the computer billionaire, has offered money for the publishing company of
Mr. Bighouse. Only he offers many times more than it is worth."
"You think Bighouse got to him?"
"I think so."
"Well, I guess that's how most people would use the power to get people to do what they
want. Get rich fast, or in this case, get richer faster."
"But remember what Greathead said? He said it would make no sense to use the Book
this way."
"I don't see why not."
"This is because you have not finished the coffee. Think, now. What do you use money
for? To get what you want. But with the Book, you can get people to do what you want without
money."
"He's wasting effort getting something he doesn't need. That means he didn't have a plan
for how to use the Book."
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"So. And if he wanted power, he has it now, without money or political position or
anything that is a way to get power."
"The Book short-circuits the whole system of power. So what is the point of power, let's
see. I suppose the point is to get people to respect you and think well of you. Only with the
Book, it's all a trick. You haven't earned respect, you've just manipulated people. Which is not
so very different than being a crooked politician, which people seem to see the point of even if it
does garner unearned respect."
Jones served up an omelet with green onions, mushrooms and tomatoes in it. I fed her
before myself.
"Silas, I think with the Book it happens more quickly than with a crooked politician.
Even scheming, lying, backstabbing, takes effort, and you might think you are better at it than
anyone else, that your reward is for being more clever. If you steal the Book and use its secrets,
you are filling appetites faster than you can make up reasons it is okay to take things. Also, if
you just want people to respect you, why not just make them respect you instead of getting
things to impress them so they respect you? Either way is a fraud."
"So what do the Readers do with the Book?"
"Bighouse used to sneer at them. They try to nudge things so humanity learns more, and
doesn't kill itself off. He claimed they spent all their time trying to stop nuclear war, things like
that. He said all the little wars were their doing, so we blow off steam and don't explode the
planet."
"I have to say, I don't think much of the job they’re doing currently."
"But you have not exploded. I don't think they do so much in Africa, though. Maybe I
should talk to them."
"You'd think they'd be really good at politics. I wonder if the President is one of them."
217
"I think what they do only works on one person. In politics, there is always the group."
"Have you ever wanted to get hold of the Book so you could make things better in your
native land?"
He nodded somberly.
"But you must not ask me about my native land. Not even what it is."
I got Lawless on the phone to ask how they were planning to get the Book back.
"What's the plan?" he asked. "The plan is, we're going to try to make enough to make
payroll and pay the rent. I don't know if you noticed this, but our former best customer isn't
exactly beating down the doors to pay us. We're taking on every little job we can lay our hands
on just to pay the bills. I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but we don't get public funding
and our landlord isn't a member of the family. As far as I'm concerned, we've got Sadie back and
we're out of the Book business. You want us to tackle Bighouse, you can pay our regular rates,
because when I'm working on that job I'm not working on one where we get paid."
"Sorry, John. I should have known it would be like that." I hung up.
I told Jones. He said we should go to the Zoo.
"All right, maybe seeing the elephants will cheer me up."
"No, no, Silas, we must go to the Zoo Tavern on Eastlake. I think Greathead must be
there."
Spirit had said he was resourceful and strong. And his obsession with the Book might
work for me. Or against me. It was likely to work somehow, and without him I didn't have a
clue.
Trouble was, I didn't feel I could leave my Reader alone while I went to a bar. And she
wasn't exactly the date to take into a den of iniquity.
"It's not noon yet. Doesn't he have a hotel room where we can call him?"
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"I think he finds different places to stay. I think he was not paying rent to stay on the
ship where you tracked him. Where we know we can find him is the Zoo."
"Then I'll let you find him. I'm staying here."
It was after 2 p.m. when Jones returned with Greathead in tow. I noticed that he was
wearing the same suit I'd seen him in the last time, and every time I'd seen him. It was probably
cleaned after his dip in the water. I wondered if he really had anything other than that one suit
and what he had called his "florid eloquence."
Before he could deploy his verbal skills, I held up a hand and insisted he let me ask some
questions.
"So if you know so much about the Book, tell me where it came from and what these
people's goals are. I feel like my life has been consumed by this thing and I don't understand it at
all."
He took over the couch and lounged where he could look at us all.
"I could speculate for hours on the topics you have set me, but since you demand only
what I know, I can manage only a little.
"First you must know this about me; I have a stupidity theory of history. It is my belief
that mankind is engaged in constant plots, alliances, conspiracies and intrigues to determine the
course of history, and that none of these work. Each cabal is riven with inner conflict and
unnoticed incompetence, every tiny success by one group is canceled by a similar petty triumph
by a competing inept plotter, the successful completion of a plot produces consequences opposite
to those anticipated, and humanity crashes forward like a puppet controlled by a dozen
quarreling blind men with St. Vitus dance. And may I add, the more secret the organization,
usually, the more inept it becomes. Its failures are never reported, its leaders are never held
accountable for wasted effort or misdirected use of resources, sometimes not even for outright
219
corruption. The most effective organizations, as a consequence, are often those worst at keeping
secrets. I have modestly dubbed this Greathead's Law.
"The Readers of the Book may well be the most masterful group of conspirators of all,
but they are still a group of human beings. I'm sure that the thing this group is best at is
perpetuating the organization, because that is the goal of every organization. That said, their
stated goals are admirable. They wish to increase the amount of learning done by mankind and
prevent the destruction of knowledge. How effective they have been may be judged by how
short was the golden age of Greece, and how long were the dark ages, how great was Muslim
science. Do we credit the Readers with the Renaissance? Surely many things caused that. The
Black Plague killed so many people, the remainder were relatively wealthy. It made so many
rags available, papermaking became much cheaper. And the fall of Constantinople brought
many great libraries and many great scholars from the Anatolian Peninsula to Italy, so there was
something to print on that paper. That said, it also brought the Readers in greater numbers than
ever before. Their influence was not visible, but they believed that it was substantial. They have
always followed knowledge as well as fostered it, so it is impossible to know how effective they
were.
"You ask, if they are able to influence people so effectively, why don't they bring peace
on earth? I must point out that this is not one of their stated goals. If they feel that warfare is
needed to increase the sum of human knowledge, then they will foster war. Would man have
cracked the atom without war? Would man have walked on the moon without the bitter rivalry
between America and the Soviets? The truth is, they oppose war only in so far as it destroys
human knowledge. The deaths of many scholars in the Holocaust and the burning of the library
at Alexandria show that they did not control events as much as they wished. This is
understandable, as they have always been small in numbers and in some ways more vulnerable
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than the rest of us.
"As to how they operate, each master of the Book has a volume of his or her own, and
each master has an acolyte who studies under them until the death of the Master. Only the
greatest masters may have more than one acolyte, and as this involves the hand copying of
another Book, at least one of those acolytes must also be a great scholar. Each Book must be
individual, so the maker of an entirely new Book must offer enough new knowledge that the new
Book is at least equal to the old one without being the same. Did you see the Book that your
Reader carried?"
"Yes."
"It was old?"
"Ancient."
"So she has not copied her own volume. The master of that Book is the one we have met.
We may suppose this master is in some distress, having had an acolyte depart with the volume
they had shared. The measures taken for its recovery were hardly masterful. In fact, they were
desperate and ineffective, with consequences much in keeping with my theory of history. The
Reader is old, weakened and probably frightened.
"Now here is a conundrum. The first thing anyone learns from the Book is how to defend
themselves, both from ordinary people and from other Readers. This means that Readers cannot
be compelled, which makes them very hard to organize. Each copy of the Book has acquired,
over the ages, its own personality as its readers have added their learning to it. No two Readers
have quite the same skills, which contributes to their feelings of autonomy and pride.
Scholarship at its highest levels is more competitive than any sport, and far less team-oriented.
Readers of the Book are not so much an organization as a group of scholars trying to show each
other up, which helps explain why they have not been more influential."
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"Wait," I interjected, "there was something she said. 'The lies they believe together are
better than the truth we know alone.' So they know this weakens them."
"Indeed. It would be fascinating to know how an acolyte wrested control of the Book
from her master, but we may never know that. What I can tell you is this: Morality, cooperation,
obedience, are not admired by the readers. Knowledge is their worship, truth is their god."
"She said 'truth is a word we use to describe that which we believe without question.'
What happens if she loses faith in truth?"
"Dear, dear, dear. I fear this is not a healthy Reader. Of course, that should be obvious
from her deportment, shouldn't it?"
"Can you help her?"
"I know about the book as a historian knows about politics. Asking me to meddle with
her lost mind and wandering spirit is like asking a critic to revise a novel or an embalmer to cure
an ailing loved one. I can describe their way of life, but do you really expect me to fix what's
wrong with it?"
"You're the only one besides me who knows what you mean by a wandering spirit. Who
else can I turn to?"
"To by quite frank, I had someone in mind. He's a little unwell himself, and extremely
shy, but he knows far more than I and has a vested interest in seeing this through to its
conclusion. Fortunately, I had the foresight to make sure I could contact him. Have I your
permission?
"Anything."
He walked out on the water side, pulled something out of his pocket and attached it to the
flag halyard, and raised it on my short flagstaff. It was the blue Peter.
"Now we wait," he announced. "I don't suppose you would have such a thing as a cup of
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tea?"
****************************************************************
Chapter 21
Just a Short-Order Cook From Hell's Kitchen
About 20 minutes later, a small blue pram bumped up against the houseboat, rowed by a
small old man with frank blue eyes. He tied up and stepped aboard the houseboat.
"Good afternoon, sir. You are more prompt than I anticipated," Greathead said.
"Thank you. I hope the flag indicates better news than I anticipate."
"I fear not. We know who has your Book, but we don't know how to get it back."
"I find myself in the same position."
"Perhaps we can…"
"Pool our ignorance, and hope the sum is greater than the parts?"
"You have a way with words, sir."
"They are the death of me."
"I only hope we may prevent that. Have you considered what sort of help might assist
you?"
"An act of God. An act that makes God unnecessary."
"I was hoping for something more specific."
"Perhaps we can arrive at something."
He came into my living room and sat next to my lover. He put his arm around her. She
sat next to him without responding.
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"What's going on in her mind?" I asked.
"Parasitic thoughts have overtaken her mind. These thoughts use the same synapses we
need to survive, but use them only to generate fantasies and obsessions that drive away the
thoughts she needs to survive. The loss of the Book is generally followed by a collapsing cycle
of self-recrimination. The mastery she gained through the Book and the love she still feels for
you make it impossible for her to blame anyone but herself. We teach a narcissism that can
break this cycle by making us blame anyone but ourselves, but love has broken down those walls
that should have defended her ego. Only if we get the book back within three days can she be
restored to what she was.
"It is the obligation of each of us to select a soul of the right sort to receive the wisdom of
the Book. It is our most awesome responsibility, because in our hands rests not only the future
of the Book, but also the well-being of the person we select. What you see here is the failure of
my judgment, the wreck of my hope."
"Yes, yes," Greathead said, "we understand your culpability and sympathize with your
feelings of guilt. That is why we have called you here, and why we have offered our help. Can
we help you, or are we useless in this matter? Understand, some of us have a great deal
committed to this endeavor, and others are without any competing focus in our lives. You can
ask a great deal of us. I only hope it will be enough."
"I have no hope," the Reader said.
"I am irrationally optimistic, and fortunately have never taken psychoactive drugs to
correct this disability. Please accept my hope, my guile, my irrational exuberance. Mr. Night
can offer a stoic and enduring nature, Mr. Jones can offer strength both inner and physical, and I
think we may call upon others. We only lack someone to tell us what to do."
"You must not place this burden on me."
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"There is no one else to bear it."
"There never is." He sighed, then said, "The truth is, I'm a scholar. I know nothing about
deceit and trickery."
"My own forte," Greathead responded. "Only tell me who to trick and who to deceive."
"I have a question," I interjected. "Bighouse is a publisher. What if he publishes the
Book?"
There followed a moment of shocked silence.
"Surely even that fool would know better," Greathead said.
"It could be the end of humanity," said the Reader.
"Can you imagine a world in which one had to read the Book to be competitive?"
Greathead inquired. "I mean, in the end, even to get a crust of bread, you would have to possess
the talents available only through the Book?"
"A very different world," I assented.
"A world in which love has the consequences you see before you," Greathead said,
gesturing to my lover. "A world in which the affection that binds together man and wife, parent
and child, even grandparent and child becomes lethal. Can you see this woman raising a child?
Far better to be raised by wolves. Almost better to be raised by gerbils. We are speaking of the
extinction of humanity."
"Or at the very least," the Reader added, "a world dominated by people who have power
over others that they are unprepared to wield responsibly."
"But I hardly think he has any motivation to publish," Greathead added rather smugly.
"Wait. I think Silas maybe has something. When I am driving Mr. Bighouse very often
he rages against the people with the Book restricting the knowledge to themselves. He says they
decide for all humanity what will be instead of letting us decide for ourselves."
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"The option of allowing him to destroy himself is sounding far less attractive," the
Reader said sadly.
They talked for hours, and I only heard a little of it. Time enough for that when they
could tell me what to do. The potential consequences of any act seem less significant after you
have seen life from the gutter. I cared very little whether they took everything from me, if I
could do something for the woman with the tattooed eyes.
The evening news reported that Tim Faith had been removed from his position at the
head of his company. The day before this would have seemed impossible, but his failure to
explain to the board his offer of more than ten times value for a medium-sized publishing
company led them to think that he was not thinking rationally. I wondered whether Bighouse
would be able to deal with the board by the next day.
I started counting the calories the woman with the tattooed eyes ate, to make sure she got
enough to support life. It was hard to get her to eat enough.
The news said Bighouse had settled into Faith's huge home on the east side of Lake
Washington. Jones, Bighouse and the Reader exclaimed over this, because the security around
Faith's home – or rather complex – was formidable, and would make it hard to get to him.
Carol came by about halfway through the news.
"You didn't tell me you were throwing a party, Silas," she said.
"I didn't know I was."
"So what's this all about?"
"We're conspiring to get the Book back."
"I'm in," she said. "Where do I sign?"
"Talk to Greathead. He's appointed himself ringleader."
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"Hey, big boy! I'm on the case!" she called.
Greathead looked startled, but waved back gamely.
They conferred. I didn't like having the woman with the tattooed eyes sitting in the
auditory outfall from this noisy cabal, so I took her upstairs and tucked her into bed. She didn't
seem inclined to sleep, so I sat and held her hand. She gazed at me mutely, which I considered
an improvement, because she mostly stared at nothing. I can't say looking at me interested her
any more than looking at nothing, though.
The next morning I discovered that everyone had slept at my house. Coffee was perking
when I got up, and Jones was cooking breakfast for everyone like a pro.
"Jones," I said, "where was it that you were a cook?"
"Hell's Kitchen."
"New York?"
He nodded.
"Place called Malone's."
I placed two orders for scrambled eggs and toast, with orange juice, then went upstairs to
bring my lover down.
Carol came down yawning. She'd slept in Max's room, which I felt showed an unhealthy
lack of superstition.
She huddled over a cup of coffee as if it were the only source of warmth in a cold and
unforgiving world.
The Reader ate sparingly and drank only water. Greathead ate immensely and consumed
an entire pot of coffee by himself. Jones was eating as well when Carol showed some life.
She was watching me feed my lover when she finally spoke.
"Hey," she said, "I have an idea. Mr. Reader, why don't you tell us her name, and yours
227
as well? It would be a lot easier to talk about things if we had some names."
Why had I never asked her name? Was I afraid that this would somehow make her
disappear, or had she somehow prohibited me from asking?
"Not possible," the Reader said. "Our names are a point of vulnerability. The name you
respond to as a child is the name that has the deepest meaning to you. Even a name you are
called for only a short time can have a profound effect if it is a name you respond to."
"So you never learned her name?" Carol asked him, gesturing to the woman with the
tattooed eyes.
"I thought I had," the Reader said. "It was the name on all her identification, on all her
correspondence. But it was a stage name, and she was never really attached to her career. Had
she been famous, had she really wanted all the world to know her by that name, it would have
given me the hold I needed on her. But she didn't care; all I had on her was someone she never
wanted to be, someone she could never really be."
"Did she know your name?"
"Yes. I don't know how. I was very careful."
"That is how she got the Book from you?" Jones inquired.
"Yes. Pretty much."
"We know the real name of Bighouse," Jones offered.
"He has the Book. I don't," the Reader said.
"I think soon you will have the Book."
"I don't want the Book. I want an acolyte I can train, and a few years free of the Book
before I die. You've no notion of the burden, of the constraints. I want to read ordinary books,
think ordinary thoughts, sit in an ordinary sunshine and talk to ordinary friends. I am compelled
to pass on the Book to a soul of the right sort. With luck, I'll be able to salvage this poor
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woman's soul. I or else my acolyte will have to care for her, because no one outside our tradition
can know her needs. The Book was burden enough, but I must pass on her care, as well. And
when she recovers, there will be two acolytes, so there must be two Books. The creation of a
new Book is a difficult and momentous task among Readers."
"Excuse me," I interjected, "I have an interest in this as well."
He shook his head.
"You can care for her physical needs, but you cannot bring her back to herself. It will
take years, even if we can recover the Book."
"And if we can't, you can still do something."
"Yes…something."
I was left with little hope.
The Mercury was crowded with the lot of us. I hated leaving the woman with the
tattooed eyes behind, but Sadie had agreed to take the day off and watch her. That meant
Strange would stop by as well, stealing time from his efforts to save Thibideaux, Lawless &
Strange.
We had determined that the Reader was to hide behind Greathead as much as possible, so
that he wouldn't be spotted on the video monitoring equipment at the entry to Tim Faith's home.
The rest of us would try to spot lenses and stay between them and the Reader. If at all possible,
we could get him inside to deal with Bighouse. If he could, lacking the Book.
It seemed like a pretty good plan until we got to the gate. There we found ourselves
talking to an intercom rather than a person. I suppose if any of us knew any rich people, we
would have anticipated this problem.
We decided Jones had the best chance.
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"Hello?" he yelled at the intercom, "Hello, is Mr. Bighouse there?"
"Identify yourself and state your business," the intercom said.
"Is Jones," he said. "Jones, do you hear me?"
"Yes, Mr. Jones, I hear you. Please state your business."
"I must speak to Mr. Bighouse. Mr. Bighouse, he owes me money."
"Do you have an appointment with Mr. Bighouse?"
"Mr. Bighouse must see me. Is the law, if you work someone, you must pay them."
"I take it you do not have an appointment with Mr. Bighouse."
"I think Mr. Bighouse say he is above the law."
"If this is a legal matter, I suggest you contact a lawyer."
Jones was by this time standing at the lock on the gate. He had taken out what looked
like a piece of dental floss and was working it across the bolt that locked the gate.
"Is a matter I think we must discuss. Mr. Bighouse, he does not like lawyers. He always
tells me, if we have trouble, we must talk. He tells me, never talk to a lawyer, we are friends, we
just talk if we have problems."
"I'm sorry, if you do not have an appointment, I cannot let you in to see Mr. Bighouse."
"Oh, I think Mr. Bighouse will be very angry if you do not tell him I am here."
"I will tell him, but I doubt he will see you. Please wait."
"I am patient. I wait as long as you say."
He finished cutting the bolt, and gestured for us to follow him in.
I whispered to Carol, "I'm amazed there were no video cameras at the gate."
"Except the one I covered with silly string," she responded, gesturing to one about 10 feet
off the ground at the gate.
"How did you reach it?"
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"The Reader gave me a leg up. I stood on Greathead's shoulders. Getting down was the
hard part. So how did Jones get through the gate?"
"Diamond saw, I think. Have you ever seen a geologist make a thin section of rock?
They use a string coated with industrial diamonds. It won't cut your finger, but it will cut
something hard like rock."
We followed Jones into the compound.
"You and Carol must walk next to me," Greathead murmured. "Keep yourselves between
the cameras and the Reader. I've seen three lenses so far, and we've been able to disable only
one. They know we're coming in, and we can expect a greeting party."
We walked down the driveway in a sort of flying wedge, an illegal formation at one time
used in football kick returns. It was outlawed because it worked too well. I was reasonably
certain it was not illegal outside of football. Greathead at the lead, Jones and I on either side, the
Reader in the middle and Carol sealing up the rear. All right, a flying rhombus.
My mind was straying back to the houseboat, to the woman with the tattooed eyes. I
should never have let them get me to leave her there, no matter how short of manpower we were.
When Faith's security met us, we were nearly to a building that was either the garage or a
warehouse for classic automobiles. Either was possible on Tim Faith's grounds.
There were two men, wearing blue blazers and creased trousers, with headsets for their
radios. I was used to seeing security with hand sets at best.
"Stop right there, gentlemen," the taller, blonder, balder one said.
"Who," said Greathead, with chilly dignity, "are you?"
"I am head of security for Mr. Faith. I'm afraid I must ask you to leave the way you
came."
"Be not afraid," Greathead assured him. "Are you familiar with your employer's
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associate, Spender Bighouse?"
"That Svengali? You a buddy of his?"
"Rather the opposite. We have information your employer must hear about the man who
calls himself Spender Bighouse."
"Yeah, I'm sure he'd love to hear it. Why don't you just tell me, and I'll pass the word."
"Because Mr. Faith would do his Trilby routine."
"His what?"
"Surely you know that the person Svengali entranced was Trilby?"
"Never heard of him."
"Her."
"What?"
"Perhaps we should begin again. Have you a name?"
"Right, buddy, I've got a name. Jesse Crane. You've got a beef with Mr. Faith's security,
I'm the man you've got a beef with. Now are you going to leave quietly, or am I going to have to
take steps to make you leave?"
"Mr. Crane, you have our full cooperation. Only before we depart, there is a frail elder
person I would like you to meet."
He motioned me to step to one side so that the Reader was visible to the security man. I
noticed that Greathead remained between the Reader and the only visible camera.
"Jesse? Jesse Crane? Is that you?" The reader's voice sounded older, weaker, yet
somehow more compelling than before. It wasn't my name, but I felt somehow pulled in by the
way it was spoken. I can only imagine how it would have affected me if it had been directed at
me.
Crane walked closer, staring intensely.
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"It can't be…"
"Jesse, oh thank God it's you. Jesse, you must help."
Crane spun decisively.
"Tom!" he called to the shorter, darker, younger one. "Get Mr. Faith. Tell him we have a
situation here, and we can't deal with it without him. Ask him to come out here.
"Follow me," he added. He led us into the garage.
I started counting the cars. I got to fourteen before we were interrupted.
It wasn't Tim Faith that came in the door, though. It was the security man, and Tom
looked like a wet dog, as if he wanted to shake something off of himself. Bighouse was close
behind him.
"How delightful to see you, Mr. Greathead!" Bighouse called.
"What am I, chopped liver?" I asked.
"And me, boss, why do you not address me?"
"Because you are no longer in my employ, Jones, and I no longer consider you someone I
should call upon."
"Ah, Bighouse, I am happy to see you." Greathead called.
"But not so happy as I to see you, Greathead."
"Oh, Spender, I must stop standing in the way of a reunion. Allow me to step aside and
reacquaint you with a mutual friend."
He stood aside and let the Reader have a clear shot at Bighouse.
Which the Reader ignored.
Tom shook himself as if to fling off the wet, and looked confused.
"Uh, what, say, I'd better get Mr. Faith," he said, and left.
"So now," said Bighouse, "it's just you and me."
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"Wait a minute, what about me?" I called.
"You…" he focussed on me for a moment.
"Boss, I really must be paid," Jones interjected.
"I'm tired of being ignored," Carol called, "I am woman…"
"Hear me roar," Greathead finished.
All right. There are times when the narrator must give the readers a peak behind the
scenes, and this is one of them. We had a plan. We knew, from what the Reader said and what
Greathead had observed over the years, that the Book gave one some latitude in swaying the
views of the individual. In working a crowd, you might get more help from Dale Carnegie or
Anthony Robbins. As long as we could keep shifting the focus from one of us to another, we
might keep Bighouse off balance. Few things could go wrong with this plan, but of course, one
of them did.
Crane came back in, followed by Tim Faith.
Faith was clutching the Book.
To the uninitiated, this might seem like good news. In fact, it seemed so to me. I believe
it seemed so to the others in our claque.
He looked like the bully of the chess club, an aggressive, thin man, not very tall, wearing
glasses with heavy plastic frames, and a better haircut than he'd had before his recent marriage.
"Jesse, Tom!" he called, "Grab those people!"
Then we were mainly concerned with not being grabbed, or, as in my case, with enduring
a state of grabbedness with the smallest possible loss of dignity. Tom gripped me and Jones each
by an arm. I tried to dodge, but it was hard to move, as if I were neck-deep in quicksand.
I was standing there trying to preserve my dignity by acting as if Tom was my valet
instead of my captor. I knew Bighouse had done this to me with a glance. The woman with the
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tattooed eyes could have done as much, before my betrayal.
I hadn't heard her voice in my head since Bighouse got the book. Probably the
wandering spirit she had died in me. I would a thousand times rather have her screaming in my
head than endure the silence any longer. I had to break the hold Bighouse had on me and get the
Book.
The Book. We had to get the Book. I couldn't move, it seemed the air was thickening
around me. I had to call out to the rest and hope they could break free.
Get the Book, I tried to call out, get the Book, get the Book, get the Book…
My tongue felt like a blimp and it was all I could do to force my lips apart.
"Blook!" I heard my strangled voice call out, and I tried to wrench away, knowing that I
wasn't strong enough, but hoping the Reader could make use of the distraction.
Surprisingly, it was not the Reader but Jones who managed free himself from our captors
and the quicksand-like feeling that had overcome us. He ran at Faith with the sense of purpose
we normally associate with a defensive tackle, and stripped him of the Book, making good his
escape by the door that had admitted Faith. The security men were still following their earlier
instructions and seemed unable to redirect their focus toward Faith, as if they were running on
remote. Faith, who had been knocked down, gathered himself up, looked after Jones, then
grabbed a hand set out of his pocket and issued some orders. His minions made sure the rest of
us wouldn't get away.
"Well, now you've got us," Greathead said, "what will you make of us? We'd make a
poor omelet if you break us, and if you burn us, we'll make poor steaks. Without the Book, I
think our friend Bighouse can make little of us at all."
Jesse and Tom looked as if they were coming up for air after having regained
consciousness deep under water. Bighouse gave me a look that did something to me, and I felt a
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void where my lover's wandering spirit had been in my mind. Then he turned to Faith.
"Tim Faith," Bighouse said, in a strangely compelling tone, "you must do as I say."
And at that moment, the Reader spoke.
"Jacob Whynott. Jacci, boy, Jacob, stop playing, now."
Bighouse turned his head as only a dire compulsion could make him.
After that my memory is blurred. It was hard to focus, as if Bighouse and the Reader
were moving too fast, or were too far away, or were too close to focus, or the ground was
moving too much for me to keep my footing without focusing wholly on my feet. At times I
thought they were singing, but their voices did not have the structure of song. I felt powerful
currents of emotion, tugs at my heart and mind I could not have resisted if they had been pulling
at me, but I was like a stone sitting in a quiet eddy while a tidal bore swept past.
Faith walked past them, seemingly unperturbed.
"He was careless," Faith told Greathead conversationally. "I got hold of his damn Book
and read the parts that are in English. I don't think he can run me any more. I'm going to get my
life back and get control of my company back. With what I've learned, I'm going to get more
than anyone has ever had, in fact. I think I'll go see Bill Gates and see if he wants a partner.
Don't be surprised if I take away his company."
Then he turned back to Bighouse and the Reader. Bighouse stood limp. In swimming
class, his posture could have been mistaken for the jellyfish float.
"You done with him?" Faith asked the Reader.
"He no longer possesses anything of interest," the Reader replied.
"You want anything from me?"
"Then beat it."
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We did so. As we walked back to the car, I took a position next to the Reader.
"Faith read the Book," I told him.
"Not all of it."
"The parts that are in English, he told us."
"A few essential defenses have been translated into English. To me, these translations
always lack the power and vividness of the original. And when I say power, I mean in terms of
effect upon the reader's mind, which would condition Faith's ability to affect the minds of others.
He will be difficult for us to influence, but not difficult to counter."
"What is the original language?"
"The first, most insightful passages are in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Later portions are in
an early form of Chinese, Sanskrit, classical Greek, Latin and Etruscan."
"But no one can read Etruscan."
He smiled.
"Cryptographers are always looking for the unbreakable code. The only code not broken
in World War II was that of the Navajo code talkers. Their code within the language was quite
simple, but to break it you would need to speak their language. No one in Japan spoke it."
"So to learn the deepest secrets of the Book, you would need to read Etruscan."
He nodded.
"Your people must have been worried when the Rosetta Stone showed up. The part that
was in Hieroglyphics suddenly became vulnerable."
"No. We weren't worried. We supplied the stone, in the interest of encouraging
knowledge. We were worried when Linear B was cracked, but few people have bothered to learn
that script, and the Minoan part of the text is not that important."
"What will happen to Bighouse?"
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"I have several options. Which one works depends on him. Unless his defenses are
deeper than I anticipate, he will wake up and find that his obsession with the Book is gone."
"You never did that to Greathead."
"He never got the Book, and besides, I rather enjoy Greathead. We live such an
anonymous life, it's nice to have at least one fan."
"I'm glad we met. Will I remember this?"
"Are you planning a massive head injury?"
"No, I meant, now that we've got the Book back, I suppose we'll be parting ways, so…"
"What makes you think we've got the Book back?"
"But Jones got it, I saw him make a run for it. I don't think they caught him."
"So what you mean is that Jones has it. If we is you and me, then we are not Jones."
"You think he'll take it back to Africa."
"Back to Africa? Is he searching for his roots?"
"No, I just thought maybe he'd go home."
"By Africa, then, you mean New York."
"He's from Africa."
"Did he say that?"
"No, not in so many words. He said when he came to this country he spoke no English."
"Few newborns do."
"Why would he pretend to be African?"
"It made him exotic. He knew it would appeal to Bighouse to have an African
bodyguard. He figured Bighouse would get the Book, and he'd find a way to get it for himself."
"Everything he told me was a lie."
"Are you sure?"
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"He told me he was a short-order cook in Hell's Kitchen. Poetic, but I doubt its truth."
"At Malone's. During his student days. That's when he became interested in the Book.
And his name is really Jones. Curtis Jones."
"So you've known him a long time."
"No. Only since you brought him to Sadie's house. We had quite a talk."
"He didn't say."
"He didn't remember. I liked him, though. He has promise."
"He said he spoke three languages."
"Not true. He speaks at least five. He'll do all right with the classic Greek, the Latin,
even the Sanskrit. With difficulty and enough years of study, he can partially understand the
hieroglyphics. When it comes to Chinese, he can read simplified characters but he can't handle
script as old as the ideograms in the Book."
"He mentioned reading something in French."
"Ah, yes, I believe he has studied the language. Some editions of the Book do have
entries in French, but this one does not."
"There are different editions?"
"Strictly speaking, each one is not a copy, but an edition, with its own unique history and
scholarship that takes it beyond the basic texts."
"There must be something to him. He managed to break free when the rest of us
couldn't."
"There is. Although, I must add that he and Carol were subject to a weaker psychic hold
than the rest of us. Bighouse and Faith discounted both of them. Jones was the one to act,
though, you're right. He has a certain strength of character. I knew that from our interview. You
surprised me, actually. It was you that first broke the spell."
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I had only a few seconds to feel good about myself. When we reached the gate, my Rent-
a-Wreck was gone. Jones drove to Faith's house, and he had kept the key.
******************************************************************
Chapter 22
The Parts to Omit
It was a long walk up to the main road, and all up hill. Greathead was sweating like a
moose and leaning heavily on me.
"You know," Carol told him, "If you did this every day, you would live an extra twenty
years."
"If not, it would seem like it," he muttered.
"You are an absolute scoundrel, but I like you. I don't care for the idea of you dying
relatively young. I'll tell you what, let's get up every morning and walk around Green Lake.
Soon, the pounds will start melting away. I'm not exactly a svelte woman, but I'm in pretty good
shape. When you're fit, you feel better."
"But I feel best when I'm smoking a cigar and drinking single-malt scotch. And I'm
walking, which is what you suggest, and I feel awful. Can't we rest for a moment?"
"We rested a moment ago. Besides, If you don't get out of breath you're not exercising
your heart enough."
"Silas, you know this woman. Is she always such a reformer?"
"Unless you don't need reforming. Then she's a corrupter. I still have nightmares about
the time she spent focused on me."
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"Miss me, don't you?"
I began singing the old Louden Wainwright Jr. song, "How Can I Miss You When You
Won't Go Away?" Carol immediately interrupted with "What Shall we do With the Drunken
Sailor." When we subsided, Greathead started reciting "The Ballad of the Nancy Bell," W.S.
Gilbert's poem, which introduced the cannibalism motif, which led to a discussion of cow
cannibalism and the resultant spread of mad cow disease, which led to a discussion of New
Guinea culture and the laughing sickness, and the free flow of conversation caused the miles to
receded more readily.
Bus service on the east side sucks. There are no pay phones in most areas, and none of
our cell phones worked for some reason. The batteries were all dead.
No one wants to pick up a group of hitchhikers.
Finally, Greathead insisted on stopping and taking off his shoes. The blisters shouldn't
have come as a shock, but the ones that had popped were. His feet looked as if they had been
subjected to a scorched-earth policy.
The Reader seemed sympathetic.
"You've got to get us a ride," I told him.
"My abilities work best when I can talk to people," he said.
"I see. When you're hitchhiking, no one can hear you scream."
"Perhaps it would be best if Ms. Yost walked on, and hitchhiked to a phone so she can get
a cab. Then we would all have a ride."
We were a small distance away from Greathead and Carol, who was reminding him that
if he walked regularly, it would toughen up his feet.
"Carol thinks she's invulnerable, of course, but some girls I knew in high school were
killed while hitchhiking. Would you go with her?"
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"Certainly, Silas, though I must remind you that each additional person cuts the chance of
a ride by something like 70 percent."
"So three times as many cars will pass before you get a ride. I'm fine with that."
"Not quite right. Have you studied statistics?"
"No, but I've studied my friend. Will you go with her?"
"All right. In fact, I'd be honored. Will you explain it to her?"
I did so, and she saw the logic of it. I have a theory that no one will pick up a hitchhiker
unless they feel that they are a greater threat to society than the hitchhiker. A woman with a
small, elderly man in tow should have a pretty good chance.
I sat with Greathead waiting for our ride. It seemed civil to make conversation, so I
asked him how he came to be involved with the Book.
"I was a young man, then, slender and graceful, though you may not credit it. As a
teenager, I hoped to be a dancer. I studied ballet, if you would believe it. My father was a
collector of rare books, an addiction that can be compared only to crack cocaine. He sent me to
Istanbul, where a Jewish family that fled the Russian Revolution was said to be finally parting
with those treasures of their library they had clung to through thick and thin, through
generations. I had difficulty finding the books, or the people who were supposed to be selling
them. I'm a hard-headed man, and even at the tender age of twenty-one, I was not a man easily
foiled. I contacted every rare book dealer in the city, everyone who might be considered an
expert in the various languages in which the books were written, but I never found the books. In
the process, however, I heard rumors of the Book of Forbidden Words. I told my father, who
said he'd heard the same rumors but had always considered them a myth. I blame the old man,
actually. He sounded interested, wanted to know everything I could find out about what he
called the myth of the Book. Said he might write a paper about the myth. I didn't believe it for a
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bloody moment. He wanted the Book more than anything he'd wanted in a long and tragically
misspent life. Inherited wealth had ruined him, and I was determined to show myself a better
man.
"So I decided I would get the Book, and show my father who the better man was. Tragic,
really. He's now been dead eight years, and my passion for the Book has outlived him. If I ever
held it in my hand, as Jones does now, God knows what would happen to me. Do you like
Japanese writers, Silas?"
"Haruki Murakami," I responded. "Wild Sheep Chase. And Akutagawa. Soseki. Did
you ever read 'Blood Orchids?' Amazing book."
"I was thinking of Akutagawa."
"'Rashomon'?"
"Not that story, another. He had a story about a middle-aged courtier who loved a
particular kind of pudding. It was served only on special occasions, and he could never get
enough of it. He did a service to a powerful noble, who must have had a mischievous streak,
because he supplied the man with more pudding than the man could eat. With his one goal in
life achieved, the pudding-lover killed himself. I can't help wondering what would happen to me
if I ever got my hands on the book. What's left to live for when you've achieved your goal?"
"I'm not sure what I've been living for all my life. Are you suggesting death as an
alternative?"
"No, no. I only wondered."
"Not coincidentally, this line of logic occurs to you when you are closer than you have
ever been to the Book."
"As you say, not coincidentally."
"What if you do get your hands on the Book? I mean, wouldn't it be wiser not to get your
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hands on it?"
"I have pursued it for half a lifetime. Can you imagine me declining it?"
"No."
"Isn't there something you have always wanted, Silas?"
"I suppose."
"What is it?"
"I wonder when our ride will arrive?"
"Transparent, Silas, transparent."
I had always wanted to be loved, a common wish among actors. And I had been loved,
by Carol, and I had doubted her motives and found that I didn't deserve her love, didn't want her
love, etc. And it had somehow all been my own defect, my own unlovable nature.
"I can see that you're contemplating that object of desire right now. Wouldn't you grasp it
if you could and worry about the consequences later?"
"I did."
"Don't look so sorrowful. It was her, wasn't it, the woman with the Book?"
I nodded.
"Then perhaps you'll understand my moral failings in pursuit of the Book. Of course, it
seems to have eluded me again, so I in turn have not lost my purpose in life. My white whale is
still out there."
"How long do you suppose the Reader has had it?"
"Most of his life, I'd guess. At least a couple decades of study as an acolyte, then years as
a master, finally time with his own acolyte."
"Who stole it. She said he wouldn't let her proceed as fast as she wanted to."
"With reason."
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"I don't understand. If she understood the part she read, why not go on to the next part?
And if the Reader had spent his life studying the Book, wouldn't he have learned everything in
it?"
"It's not just a magic book, with pages that show how to palm a coin or pull a rabbit out
of a hat. Part of the Book is information, but the most important part is not. Have you ever used
a little rhyme or an alliterative phrase as a mnemonic device?"
"Sure. East is least, west is best. Applies to compass numbers."
"But it isn't enough to know somewhere back in your head that the rhyme exists. You
have to say it to yourself in order to use it to remember. Why does this work? Rhyme and meter
have an effect on us that prose does not. That is why, when you quote a poem, it conjures up
images and emotions in a way that a descriptive paragraph or a logical exposition does not.
Consider these words of Tennyson's: 'Break, break, break/On thy cold grey stones, oh sea/And
would that my tongue could utter/The thoughts that arise in me.' The image and the emotion
would be lacking if I said, 'I just can't say how the sea breaking on the rocks made me feel.' And
the image and emotion of the poem is accessible each time you return to it. Nor is it at all
difficult to remember the exact words of the poem.
"Now consider that the Book doesn't just impart information. It creates images in your
mind, an entire structure of them, a memory palace, a cathedral or even a city of images, which
change the very way your mind works. This can fade in time, though the basic structure
remains. You can refresh the effects of the Book by exposing yourself to the same passages
again, just as you can remind yourself of information by the use of a mnemonic poem. This is
why possession of the Book is so vitally important to the Reader."
"It would destroy him if you took his Book."
He shook his massive, shaggy head.
245
"It would retire him if I took his Book. And because I have a stupidity theory of history,
I am deeply skeptical of any good he may claim to do with the Book. The situation is altered, of
course, now that he needs it to treat a lovesick acolyte."
"The deepest, most dangerous parts of the Book must be those in Etruscan," I speculated.
"I wonder if she knew how to read them."
"She would not have felt that she could do without her master unless she could read the
entire text."
"Bighouse could never have gone that far."
"True, Silas, but he knew most of the other languages in the text. Judging from the
conflict between him and the reader, I think he managed to get surprisingly deeply into the text
in a short period of time. I can't help thinking he has had access to the Book before."
"That's impossible, unless he's a defrocked acolyte himself."
"Good God!" Greathead rocketed to his feet, staggered, then moaned and sat down on his
rock again with an expression of unbearable pain and lifted up his right foot again.
"Don't go all mad cow on me," I told him. "Maybe I'm having medical student's disease,
but mood swings, staggering around and falling down are all possible signs of impending
tragedy."
"Spender Bighouse is a counterfeit fool, not the real idiot I had supposed him to be,"
Greathead explained. "The ‘Legions of Strangers’ business must have been a spoof to make me
think he knew less than he did. There was a master Reader I was tracking in Austria. He was in
that tunnel fire, the one that was so intense it burned every trace of the people on the tramway.
He was cinders, the Book was cinders, the whole thing was a tragic loss, so I wrote it off and
figured that at least he left no grieving widow. I never thought of his acolyte. I was so focused
on the Book that once I knew the acolyte didn't have it, I stopped worrying about who he was."
246
"You think it was Bighouse?"
"There is a gap in his curriculum vitae at about the right time. I'm such a bloody idiot!"
It explained how Bighouse defeated the Spirit, and how he had known a way to recover
the Book from my lover.
"I take it he's still a danger."
"More than a small one."
A car horn honked. It was a teenage boy in an SUV, with Carol and the Reader in the
front seat next to him.
He dropped us off at a bus stop. Two hours and three bus changes later we were walking
down to the lake from Eastlake Avenue. We were tired and sore and it took two of us to support
Greathead, Carol and me.
When we limped into the houseboat, the door wasn't wide enough, so we had to release
Greathead to go through the door ahead of us. He stumbled in and stopped, blocking the entry.
Carol poked him in the back.
"Move ahead, big boy," she said querulously, "the rest of us have sore feet, too."
He tottered forward and stood aside. That was when we saw Jones laying on the living
room floor, bleeding from a head wound. Broken glass from an empty wine bottle was strewn
on the floor beside him.
The Reader pushed past us and examined him.
"Are you a doctor?" Carol inquired skeptically.
"In the dim, distant past beyond the memory of man I was a general practitioner," he said.
"I should have stayed with it, but I thought I could do more good with the Book. Help me get
247
him on the couch, and get a first aid kit if you have one."
"It's in the bathroom," I told Carol. "You get it. I'll look for Sadie and …" I couldn't
finish. My eyes were tearing up as I ran up the stairs. They weren't in my room or Max's room,
or the upstairs bathroom. I stumbled down the stairs again, unable to see because of the tears.
"They're not here," I said.
"Who's not here?" Sadie's voice asked.
I wiped my eyes and saw her standing next to the woman with the tattooed eyes. I moved
forward and took her in my arms. She stood like a mannequin while I embraced her.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be gone when you got back. There was a pram tied out front,
so I took your friend for a row over to Gasworks Park. We sat in the sun until I saw activity in
the houseboat, then we rowed back."
Greathead had collapsed into a chair and removed his shoes again.
"What kind of activity?" he asked.
"Just people moving around. I couldn't tell what was happening, but someone seemed to
be home."
"But who was home?" asked Carol. "Was it Jones, or us, or someone else that you saw?"
"Jones, I think. Just one person. He went out on the deck as if looking across the lake,
then went back inside."
"And while you were rowing, your back was turned," Greathead observed. "You saw
nothing more?"
"Nothing."
Jones groaned. His arm came up and he rubbed the bandage the Reader had applied to
his head. It was several minutes before he could talk. There were preliminaries to be observed,
like establishing where he was, and him informing us that his head hurt. He seemed sure we
248
wouldn't know that. However impatient we may be, certain ancient rituals have to be observed
when someone regains consciousness.
"Who did this to you?" I asked.
"I brought the Book," he said. "Waited for you." The African affectation was gone, and
his speech was pure New York.
"Someone attacked you. Who was it?"
"Willie. Sucker was waiting upstairs, I think. Threw something at me. Heavy."
"I'm surprised you brought the Book," Greathead said. "I gather you've been trying to get
your hands on it for several years."
"Not much good without him." He gestured to the Reader. "Couldn't help her by myself,
even with the Book." He didn't gesture, but we knew who he meant. "End up like her myself if
I tried it without a guide. By the time I got my hands on the Book, I knew just enough to see
that I couldn't use it."
"I'm sorry," the Reader said. "I should have read you again. I assumed you still intended
to use the book as you would have when I met you at Sadie's house."
"You're sorry," I repeated. "What have you got to be…wait a minute. It wasn't a
coincidence that Sadie decided they needed to go for a row. You set this up. Where's Willie?"
The Reader sighed and walked over to the coat closet. He opened the door and Willie
was standing there with a rictus grin, clasping the Book to his chest. One hand held a small
automatic.
"The vulture's on the wing, the tag's on the toe," he said, and aimed the gun at the Reader.
"Satan's taking heaven, and nothing's right with the world." He looked like a third party was
controlling him, and he also looked like he would be happy to butcher something other than
Robert Browning's poetry.
249
"Is that you, Jacob Whynott?" the Reader said. "Are you in control?" Even I could tell
that what Willie was saying wasn't his style.
Willie laughed like a mynah bird imitating human laughter, and walked stiffly out of the
closet.
He went to the door, turning to keep the gun trained on us, and closed it behind him as he
left.
"You could have stopped him," Carol said accusingly.
"Not that kind of control. It was intended to be used only in the direst emergencies.
Control cannot be shifted, or even returned to the person being controlled."
"He's a zombie for life?"
"Which won't be long, unless the controller takes the trouble to tell him to eat, to drink
water, to sleep. I doubt he intends to tie himself down that way. And if the controller dies, of
course, no one can get the subject to eat or drink."
"Bighouse was an acolyte, wasn't he?" Greathead asked.
The Reader hesitated.
"He was for a time," he said, "but the Reader of that Book realized he had made a
mistake. The requirements for an acolyte are not easily met. Jacob had the facility with
languages required, a head for the scholarship and a disposition to learn. He was not a soul of
the right sort, however. The Book should change one for the better. It changed him for the
worse. Faced with the limitations of the Book, he sought to overcome them by grasping more
conventional means of power to augment the Book. His master did not approve, and cut him off
from the Book. He knew his master could best him, but he did not wait to be made to forget the
Book. He started a fire to kill the master. The Book he had learned from was destroyed in the
250
same blaze, as were about forty other people who had nothing to do with the Book. Jacob
thought he could use what he had learned from the Book to get conventional power, then use that
to help him get the Book, then use the Book to get more wealth and power.
"He sought money and influence. He is not a natural businessman, but what he
remembered from the Book helped him establish his publishing firm. He had a disease that
afflicts some unsuitable acolytes, in which they want only that next thing that they don't have,
not all the world, just the next thing, and then the thing next to that. Unfortunately the whole
world is linked by things that are next to one another. The passion would have burned in him
until it had burned cities, perhaps nations. Many might die for this passion, and one of them
would eventually be him. We call it Alexander's disease.
"As for Willie, nothing could save him now. And the only way someone could have
prevented him from giving Jacob the Book would have been to anticipate this very situation and
give him a command before he was put into this state of control."
Outside we heard a gunshot, followed a few beats later by another.
The Reader went to the door and opened it. The Book was on the porch.
"Of course, had Jacob not used that means to control Willie, he would not have met him
in the parking lot, and would not have been shot by a disgruntled former employee. Some will
say he chose his fate. I feel it was written. I suggest we tell the police the truth about what
happened. Now let me tell you the parts to omit."
*********************************************
Chapter 23
O why lie down without you
251
A murder-suicide has a certain tidy appeal to policemen. Victim and suspect are usually
in convenient proximity. There is seldom any doubt about who killed whom and why. And as
for mystery, the murder may well resolve a mystery. Take that shy girl in the neighborhood who
never seemed to have a date, yet miraculously became pregnant. When her stepfather is found
dead and naked in her room, she dead by her own hand a few steps away, the neighbors finally
understand.
In a murder-suicide there is no prosecutor, acting as if the police have not done their job,
as if the case would be better had they never brought their big brogans into the crime scene. No
judge to find fault with the way evidence was gathered, no defense attorney to criticize, no
danger that the jury just won't understand. It's all up to the cop on the spot to see what has
happened, to assign blame, to close the case and tell the papers what has happened. No one to
question the judgment of the detective assigned to the case, unless it's a higher ranking cop.
Even so, I expected to be questioned closely, even to be there for hours. But every time
the police probed deeply, it seemed, the Reader was there, smiling, in a friendly way, and they
seemed to loose their focus. They went away feeling as if they understood perfectly, but I'd hate
to be the superior who had to make sense of their reports.
When they left a couple hours later, we were all still there. I'd made a big pot of tea, and
was serving people. It's a great time killer, because you can drink more tea than coffee, or
alcohol, or pretty much anything except water, which has no ceremony.
It surprised me that the Reader seemed unwilling to leave. He had his Book, he had
secrets to keep, and he could leave us to clean up any mess resulting from all those who had tried
to steal the Book that was the center for his life.
Jones refused to be taken to a hospital. He said he'd suffered worse in New York every
252
time he'd been mugged. I told him the Chamber of Commerce would thank him to say nicer
things about his home town.
No one wanted to talk. I got tired of the silence and cast around for something to say.
"You had Willie under control," I observed, "but not Jones. How did he know Jones
would come here?"
"He didn't," the Reader said. "He followed us to Tim Faith's place, then waited for the
Rent-a-Wreck to leave. He followed Jones here. I told him to follow whoever left with the
Book, retrieve it, and lay it down as soon as no one could see him. That was all he needed to
know, unless Jacob Whynott used a particularly pernicious method of control on him. You know
the rest."
Jones leaned forward.
"It must bother you, manipulating people like this. Why do you do it?"
"I will do almost anything in defense of the Book. I will do anything, absolutely
anything, to prevent another Alexander."
"But the history books…"
"Neglect the fact that more people died for his ambition than for almost any other man's
folly to that date. The history books never mention that millions more would have died had we
not killed him as a young man. History records that he spread Greek civilization. Does it record
the civilizations he crushed? If you build a monument to Alexander, make it a mountain of
skulls."
"I think I'm loosing my taste for the Book."
"Good. A man attracted by its power would be unsuitable to share its secrets. My acolyte
must be fascinated by power and repelled by its use. To study the Book, to learn its secrets, then
to use only the mildest forms of control in only the most necessary way requires a restraint that
253
does not come naturally to most of mankind. Worse, my acolyte must be willing to take on the
burden of my own mistakes. My first acolyte may fully recover, but if I die before she does
another must continue to help her. Filling the post will be impossible. If not for the need to care
for her, I might as well destroy the Book and take my own life. I have, at least, kept it out of
Jacob's hands."
"You want me to be your acolyte?" Jones inquired.
"Isn't that the opposite of what I just said?"
"I accept. I'll be your acolyte."
"Well, you know the dangers better than any other acolyte that has ever been enlisted.
Remember what you told me, why you returned here with the Book rather than using it on your
own?"
"She needs it," he said, gesturing to the woman with the tattooed eyes. "Besides, it didn't
seem like it would be much use without you."
"That's what convinced me. Your acceptance of the position is accepted."
I had thought Greathead would go into mourning once it was clear that he wouldn't get
the Book. He seemed to take matters with equanimity, though.
"It is time I stopped pursuing the Book," he announced. "I've exhausted my resources,
and even if I hadn't, I may as well face the implications of my own stupidity theory of history.
The game's not worth the candle, my friend."
"What will you do now?" I asked him.
"My fortune is gone," he told me. "I must get my living somehow. I suppose my
survival depends upon my powers of seduction."
"If my survival depended upon my powers of seduction, I might as well commit
254
seppuku."
"It's not so hard," Greathead said airily. "Women think of men as a large breed of dog.
At best friendly, enthusiastic, and protective, able to obey a few simple verbal commands, but of
course, prone to humping anything that doesn't get out of the way, and at worst, extremely
dangerous. I simply figure out what breed of dog a woman might prefer, and become that
breed."
"The only available woman present is Carol. What breed of dog would you emulate for
her?"
"Given that she likes you, one of the sadder breeds, I think. I thought I might try a
bloodhound. I've been sending that signal for quite a while, though," he said dismally.
"Hey, Greathead," Carol said, "why so down in the dumps? Can I help?"
I drifted away to give them space.
I decided to go out on the deck and become deeply philosophical, contemplating the
meaning of life and why there wasn't one. The woman with the tattooed eyes would come back
to herself, but she would do so with the knowledge that she could never love again. Or perhaps
she would be repaired by eliminating all memory of my love and betrayal. Everything I'd been
to her, everything she'd been to me, would be erased from my lover's mind. In my mind, she
would live on, as a book survives its author.
I couldn't sense the wandering spirit she had written into me, and I felt certain Bighouse
had erased her. If so I would grow and change without her, my memory of her becoming a
palimpsest written on a parchment that once displayed a priceless text. To remember the person
I had known from the outside was a pale and sad reminder of what it had been like to be a book
in which she was written. I could try to preserve her memory by worshiping the images I
recalled of her, but those would fade, and besides, people who don't move on are pathetic.
255
Or perhaps I could distract my mind. I decided to set myself a task that would engage
my brain and force it to not think of her. I would add to my list of imaginary words. An
imaginary number is one that is logically impossible, but necessary for expressing certain things,
like the square root of negative one. An imaginary word would therefore be grammatically
impossible but expressive. I got up to twelve:
Imaginary words
(The grammatical equivalent of the square root of negative one.)
The masculine of empty streets

The possessive case of borrow
The first person of defeat
The omniscient voice of sorrow
The feminine of history

The plural of alone
The intransitive of misery
The past tense for home
The proper noun for no one

A compound form of sever
The reflexive of a warming sun
The indicative of never
Somehow, this failed to distract me from my feelings of loss. I could expect to face life
well-housed, well-fed, but drifting and alone, without even an echo of the voice of my loved
one ...
"We were parallel lines, born never to meet
until we ran into each other on this mobeus street."
Spirit?
"I was hiding."
I thought you were gone.
"I was afraid, and she was gone. She was a scholar and an explorer who wanted
256
forbidden knowledge, but she never cared much for power. Not for herself, not even for doing
good. She just wanted to know things, to explore possibilities no one ever had explored."
So she didn't master power?
"The other one had, though. The one who thought he'd killed me. He knew all the power
parts and didn't care about the parts she cared about. He wasn't one to hide, so he didn't know
how or where I'd gone."
He's dead now.
"So is she, as regards me. We were linked, but now I've broken off. I can't help her. I'm
what's left of her, of the acolyte. I'm just the echo of a voice that's died. They will be able to
make her mostly as she was before she knew about the Book, she will even be a greater scholar
because of all that's happened, but some of the changes are forever. I will never be a part of her
again."
I destroyed her. I betrayed her.
"It was the Book, Silas. It was using us."
A Book was destroyed. A new Book will be made. You think the Book used us all to do
that.
"The old man wanted to quit. He wouldn't have taken a second acolyte and started work
on a new Book. Whynott would have destroyed at least one more."
But the cost to her…
"She'll recover. She'll be a greater scholar of the Book."
But she can never love. She can only serve the Book.
"It's what the Book does. It uses us. It needs her"
Why are you not like her now? Why are you not damaged?
"Because you never read the Book. My home is a mind not changed by the Book, so I am
257
not changed by it. I am made possible by it, but not structured by it."
Will you live long?
"I will live as long as you, Silas, unless someone like that man in there finds out about
me."
If you are quiet when he's present, I think he won't notice. It means you've escaped.
"I have to give you the chance, Silas. If you want to be as you were before, you must
speak to him now and he can free you of me. If I am an unwanted passenger, you must act, or we
both will suffer for the rest of your life."
My own. My love. O why lie down without you.
I curled up in the chair around my hot cup of tea and smiled in the sun with my lover on
my mind again. Soon I was asleep. I dreamed that the woman with the tattooed eyes sat at a
table with the Book opened before her. At last, she let me read a sentence.
'She bore in the womb of her mind a new Book, fathered by one selected by the old Book.'
************************** End *****************************
258

The Book of Forbidden Words

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The Book of Forbidden Words

by John MacBeath Watkins

by John MacBeath Watkins

The Book & the Flame

by John MacBeath Watkins

of trees and cars outside.

wouldn't tell me. They never do.

"You realize I could compel you to leave?"

Book before. I took a sip of my grappa and tried to remain calm.

"You could compel someone to give you a better suit," I commented.

"This one is warm enough, and I have no need to impress anyone."

learn its many secrets.

is their God, and study of the Book is their worship.

another version, but copied with new notes and illuminations.

"How old?" I couldn't form any more of a sentence.

"The text of the Book itself, or this copy?"

half that age."

its secrets but for itself.

into the wrong hands.

rest of them aren't.

going to be something like that for your acolyte."

whatever means I must."

at once fell asleep.

name no one could remember.

near its inevitable conclusion.

full," she said. "There's no need to delay.”

Best you let yours rest.”

to think it was her real name.

inside, where at least it's air conditioned.”

makeup, though in fact she wore none.

You know, my Friends, how bravely in my House

For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:

Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,

And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

father’s note entirely. Too sentimental to be a Reader at all, really.

was courteous and rational.

was mentally unstable.

"I'll call it The Shabby Man Ages," he muttered.

"His jowls sag …"

demands its price, and this is part of it."

She could help him. In fact, she couldn't help herself.

should allow him to explain.

A Fish Who Worships Fire

myself. It was steady work, but not terribly well paid.

have no resources to pursue a legal fight.

people perceiving you.

wonder whether it was my dream that killed him.

in used items and all the ordinary people of the city.

His jowls sag, his belly swells

his dreams are crushed beneath the years

and yet he faces every day

and doesn't let his mind dwell

on slipping hopes and growing fears

and failing eyes and still I say

his courage holds up very well

to walk among his desperate peers

and face his fate down on the way.

intact. Or perhaps it's been three months.

An Ode to a Secretary, then.

A secretary on a sidewalk has got to keep her guard up

when she’s walking like a doe into a crosswalk

where strong trucks growl at a stoplight

and pimps prowl with ladies of the night.

there’s a carnivore on every crosswalk,