During the following ten days, he withdrew money from several accounts. He converted selected paper assets into cash, as well.
He also sought a supplier of high-quality counterfeit ID. This proved easier than he anticipated.
A surprising number of the women who had been his lovers were recreational drug users, and over the past couple years, he had met several dealers who supplied them. From the least savory of these, he purchased five thousand dollars' worth of cocaine and LSD to establish his credibility, after which he inquired about forged documents.
For a finder's fee, Junior was put in touch with a papermaker named Google. This was not his real name, but with his crossed eyes, large rubbery lips, and massively prominent Adam's apple, he was as perfect a Google as ever there had been.
Because drugs foil all efforts at self-improvement, Junior had no use for the cocaine and acid. He didn't dare sell them to recover his money; even five thousand dollars wasn't worth risking arrest. Instead, he gave the pharmaceuticals to a group of young boys playing basketball in a schoolyard, and wished them a Merry Christmas. The twenty-fourth of December began with rain, but the storm moved south soon after dawn. Sunshine tinseled the city, and the streets filled with last-minute holiday shoppers.
Junior joined the throngs, although he had no gift list or feeling for the season. He just needed to get out of his apartment, because he was convinced that the phantom singer would soon serenade him again.
She hadn't sung since the early-morning hours of October 18, and no other paranormal event had occurred since then. The waiting between manifestations scraped at Junior's nerves worse than the manifestations themselves.
Something was due to happen in this peculiar, extended, almost casual haunting under which he had suffered for more than two years, since finding the quarter in his cheeseburger. While all around him in the streets, people bustled in good cheer, Junior slouched along in a sour mood, temporarily having forgotten to look for the bright side.
Inevitably, man of the arts that he was, his slouching brought him to several galleries. In the window of the fourth, not one of his favorite establishments, he saw an eight-by-ten photograph of Seraphim White.
The girl smiled, as stunningly beautiful as he remembered her, but she was no longer fifteen, as she had been when last he'd seen her. Since her death in childbirth nearly three years ago, she'd matured and grown lovelier than ever.
If Junior had not been such a rational man, schooled in logic and reason by the books of Caesar Zedd, he might have snapped there in the street, before the photograph of Seraphim, might have begun to shake and sob and babble until he wound up in a psychiatric ward. But although his trembling knees felt no more supportive than aspic, they didn't dissolve under him. He couldn't breathe for a minute, and his vision darkened at the periphery, and the noise of passing traffic suddenly sounded like the agonized shrieks of people tortured beyond endurance, but he held fast to his wits long enough to realize that the name under the photo, which served as the centerpiece of a poster, read Celestina White in four-inch letters, not Seraphim.
The poster announced an upcoming show, titled 'This Momentous Day,' by the young artist calling herself Celestina White. Dates for the exhibition were Friday, January 12, through Saturday, January 2 7.
Warily, Junior ventured into the gallery to make inquiries. He expected the staff to express utter bafflement at the name Celestina White, expected the poster to have vanished when he returned to the display window.
Instead, he was given a small color brochure featuring samples of the artist's work. It also contained the same photograph of her smiling face that graced the window.
According to the brief biographic note with the picture, Celestina White was a graduate of San Francisco's Academy of Art College. She had been born and raised in Spruce Hills, Oregon, the daughter of a minister.
Chapter 58
Agnes always enjoyed Christmas Eve dinner with Edom and Jacob, because even they tempered their pessimism on this night of nights. Whether the season touched their hearts or they wanted even more than usual to please their sister, she didn't know. If gentle Edom spoke of killer tornadoes or if dear Jacob was reminded of massive explosions, each dwelt not on horrible death, as usual, but on feats of courage in the midst of dire catastrophe, recounting astonishing rescues and miraculous escapes.
With Barty's presence, Christmas Eve dinners had become even more agreeable, especially this year when he was almost-three-going-on-twenty. He talked about the visits to friends that he and his mother and Edom had made earlier in the day, about Father Brown, as if that cleric-detective were real, about the puddle-jumping toads that had been singing in the backyard when he and his mother had arrived home from the cemetery, and his chatter was engaging because it was full of a child's charm yet peppered with enough precocious observations to make it of interest to adults.
From the corn soup to the baked ham to the plum pudding, he did not speak of his dry walk in wet weather.
Agnes hadn't asked him to keep his strange feat a secret from his uncles. In truth, she had come home in such a curious state of mind that even as she'd worked with Jacob to prepare dinner and even as she'd overseen Edom's setting of the table, she hesitated to tell them what had happened on the run from Joey's grave to the station wagon. She fluctuated between guarded euphoria and fear bordering on panic, and she didn't trust herself to recount the experience until she had taken more time to absorb it.
That night, in Barty's room, after Agnes had listened to his prayers and then had tucked him in for the night, she sat on the edge of his bed. 'Honey, I was wondering? Now that you've had more time to think, could you explain to me what happened?'
He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. 'Nope. It's still just something you gotta feel.'
'All the ways things are.'
'Yeah.'
'We'll need to talk about this a lot in the days to come, as we both have more time to think about it.'
'I figured.'
Softened by a Shantung shade, the lamplight was golden on his small smooth face, but sapphire and emerald in his eyes.
'You didn't mention it to Uncle Edom or Uncle Jacob,' she said.
'Better not.'
'Why?'
'You were scared, huh?'
'Yes, I was.' She didn't tell him that her fear had not been allayed by his assurances or by his second walk in the rain.
'And you,' Barty said, 'you're never scared of anything.'
'You mean? Edom and Jacob are already afraid of so much.'
The boy nodded. 'If we told 'em, maybe they'd have to wash their shorts. '
'Where did you hear that expression,' she demanded, though she couldn't conceal her amusement.
Barty grinned mischievously. 'One of the places we visited today. Some big kids. They saw this scary movie, said they had to wash their shorts after.'
'Big kids aren't always smart just because they're big.'
'Yeah, I know.'
She hesitated. 'Edom and Jacob have had hard lives, Barty'' 'Were they coal miners?'
'What?'
'On TV, it said coal miners have hard lives.'
'Not only coal miners. Old as you are in some ways, you're still too young for me to explain. I will someday.'
'Okay.'
'You remember, we've talked before about the stories they're always telling.'
'Hurricane. Galveston, Texas, back in 1900. Six thousand people died.'
