'Supposing he's senile, wouldn't he possibly think you were his long- lost brother or someone?'
'He's not senile.'
'If you ranted at him about earthquakes, tornadoes, erupting volcanoes, and all that stuff, how could he mistake you for me?'
'I don't rant. Anyway, Agnes did all the talking.'
Returning his attention to his own shoes, Jacob said, 'So? what am I supposed to do about this?'
'Do you know him? ' Edom asked, gazing longingly now at the open door, from which Jacob had turned away. 'Obadiah Sepharad? '
'Having spent most of the last twenty years in this apartment, not being the one who has a car, how would I meet a Negro magician?'
'All right then.'
As Edom crossed the threshold, moving outside to the landing at the top of the stairs, Jacob followed, proselytizing for his faith: 'Christmas Eve, 1940, St. Anselmo's Orphanage, San Francisco. Josef Krepp killed eleven boys, ages six through eleven, murdering them in their sleep and cutting a different trophy from each-an eye here, a tongue there.'
'Eleven?' Edom asked, unimpressed.
'From 1604 through 1610, Erzebet Bathory, sister of the Polish king, with the assistance of her servants, tortured and killed six hundred girls. She bit them, drank their blood, tore their faces off with tongs, mutilated their private parts, and mocked their screams.'
Descending the stairs, Edom said, 'September 18, 1906, a typhoon slammed into Hong Kong. More than ten thousand died. The wind was blowing with such incredible velocity; hundreds of people were killed by sharp pieces of debris-splintered wood, spear-point fence staves, nails, glass-driven into them with the power of bullets. One man was struck by a windblown fragment of a Han Dynasty funerary jar, which cleaved his face, cracked through his skull, and embedded itself in his brain.'
As Edom reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the door close above him.
Jacob was hiding something. Until he had spoken of Josef Krepp, his every response had been formed as a question, which had always been his preferred method of avoidance when conversation involved a subject that made him uncomfortable.
Returning to his apartment, Edom had to pass under the limbs of the majestically crowned oak that dominated the deep yard between the house and the garage.
Head lowered, as if his visit to Jacob were a weight that bowed him, his attention was on the ground. Otherwise, he might not have noticed, might not have been halted by, the intricate and beautiful pattern of sunlight and shadow over which he walked.
This was a California live oak, green even in winter, although its leaves were fewer now than they would be in warmer seasons. The elaborate branch structure, reflected around him, was an exquisite and harmonious maze overlaying a mosaic of sunlight green on grass, and something in its patterns suddenly touched him, moved him, seized his imagination. He felt as if he were balanced on the brink of an astonishing insight.
Then he looked up at the massive limbs overhead, and the mood changed: A sense of impending insight at once gave way to the fear that an unsuspected fissure in a huge limb might crack through at this precise moment, crushing him under a ton of wood, or that the Big One, striking now, would topple the entire oak.
Edom fled back to his apartment.
Chapter 50
After spending Wednesday as a tourist, Junior began to look for a suitable apartment on Thursday. In spite of his new wealth, he did not intend to pay hotel-room rates for an extended period.
Currently, the rental market was extremely tight. The first day of his search resulted only in the discovery that he was going to have to pay more than he expected even for modest quarters.
Thursday evening, his third in the hotel, he returned to the lounge for cocktails and another steak. The same tuxedoed pianist provided the entertainment.
Junior was vigilant. He took note of all those who approached the piano, whether they dropped money in the fishbowl or not.
When the pianist eventually launched into 'Someone to Watch over Me,' he didn't appear to be responding to a request, considering that a few other numbers had been played since the most recent gratuity. The tune was, after all, in his nightly repertoire.
A residual tension drained out of Junior. He was somewhat surprised that he had still been concerned about the song.
Through the remainder of his dinner, he was entirely future focused, the past put safely out of mind. Until
As Junior was enjoying a postprandial brandy, the pianist took a break and conversation among the customers fell into a lull. When the bar phone rang, though it was muted, he heard it at his table.
The modulated electronic brrrrr was similar to the sound of the telephone in Vanadium's cramped study, on Sunday night. Junior was transported back to that place, that moment in time.
The Ansaphone.
In his mind's eye, he saw the answering machine with uncanny clarity. That curious gadget. Sitting atop the scarred pine desk.
In reality, it had been a homely device, a mere box. In memory, it seemed ominous, charged with the evil portent of a nuclear bomb.
He'd listened to the message and thought it incomprehensible, of no import. Suddenly, tardy intuition told him that it could not have been any more important to him if it had been dead Naomi calling from beyond the grave to leave testimony for the detective.
On that busy night, with Vanadium's corpse in the Studebaker and Victoria's cadaver awaiting a fiery disposal at her house, Junior was too distracted to recognize the pertinence of the message. Now it tormented him from a dark nook in his subconscious.
Caesar Zedd teaches that every experience in our lives, unto the smallest moment and simplest act, is preserved in memory, including every witless conversation we've ever endured with the worst dullards we've met. For this reason, he wrote a book about why we must never suffer bores and fools and about how we can be rid of them, offering hundreds of strategies for scouring them from our lives, including homicide, which he claims to favor, though only tongue-in-cheek.
Although Zedd counsels living in the future, he recognizes the need to have full recollection of the past when absolutely needed. One of his favorite techniques for jolting memories loose when the subconsciously stubbornly withholds them is to take a bitterly cold shower while pressing ice against one's genitals, until the desired facts are recalled or hypothermic collapse ensues.
In the glamorous cocktail lounge of this elegant hotel, Junior was necessarily forced to use other of Zedd's techniques-and more brandy-to liberate from his subconscious the name of the caller on the Ansaphone. Max. The caller had said, It's Max.
Now the message? Something about a hospital. Someone dying. A cerebral hemorrhage.
As Junior struggled to retrieve details from his memory, the pianist returned. The first number of his new set was the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' recast at such a slow tempo that it was petting music for narcoleptics. This invasion of British pop, even in disguise, seemed to be a sign that Junior should go.
In his hotel room once more, he consulted Vanadium's address book, More brooding soon brought understanding. He sat straight up in bed, alarmed.
Nearly two weeks ago, in the Spruce Hills hospital, Junior had been drawn by some strange magnetism to the viewing window at the neonatal-care unit. There, transfixed by the newborns, he sank into a slough of fear that threatened to undo him completely. By some sixth sense, he had realized that the mysterious Bartholomew had something to do with babies.
Now Junior threw back the covers and sprang out of bed. In double briefs, he restlessly roamed the hotel
