phenomenon.
Ordinarily, Teddy would feel that any new disturbance that enters his universe is bound to wind up in his hands. That’s how it has always been: no sooner does something shady rear its head in Haleyville than Teddy Barton’s fabulous intuition catches wind of it, and he’s off like a shot, let the wicked beware! But it is a sacred law of life that disturbances enter Haleyville either one at a time or in secretly joined pairs, and for the past two weeks, Teddy has been working full-time on a baffling puzzle involving an enormous truck with the words MOON-BIRD painted on its flanks that has been appearing out back of the Time & Motion building at odd times of the day and that building’s newest renter, a man named Mr. Capstone, who late at night goes out of his house on Marymount Street and digs a big hole in his backyard. This case already involves two elements, and they are
Because that’s what this feels like, Teddy realizes. It’s as though electricity started running backward through all the wires in the world and went dribbling out of all the world’s empty plugs.
He gets out of bed to look through his window, and it’s true: everything in his neighborhood seems slightly drained of color and energy. He is looking at a weeping willow and wondering if the tree is saggier than it was yesterday when a tremendous reality, an enormous
In fact, Teddy realizes, nothing new is ever going to happen to him again. He will never figure out what Mr. Capstone was up to in his backyard, and the Moon-Bird truck will go forever unexplained. That door, and those beyond, are forever closed to him. From now on, he can go only backward, through older worlds, solving mysteries that have already been solved, and as if for the first time.
20
Quivering with shock and terror, Willy is on her way across the Upper West Side of Manhattan, vibrating on one of the two back seats in the boxy Sienna piloted by Kalpesh Patel, a native of Hyderabad who refuses to stop or find a policeman because 1) he’s scared and excited by the obvious connections between the FBI dudes and those guys who came running down West Sixty-first Street, shooting at his previous fare, and 2) well, Kalpesh Patel was borderline crazy to begin with, and now he’s in overdrive. The woman weeping and trembling in the back of his cab has not given him a destination. If she did, he wouldn’t go there on a bet—unless, of course, she were to say, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to take me to a top-secret government installation in the Sierra Nevadas,” or something similar, in which case he would flip on his off-duty lights and rocket straight for the Lincoln Tunnel.
At last, Willy wails, “I don’t know where to
After that, the funny noises emanating from behind her hands disturb Patel so greatly that he considers personally ejecting this woman from his cab, by force if necessary. She calms down, however, and begins to look about her, which Patel takes to be an excellent sign. And since he, like his distraught passenger, has no idea where he has taken them, he begins to check around for landmarks, too.
“Where
“Yes, in several senses,” says Patel, trying to catch sight of a street sign. “Riverside Drive, I’d say, and about 103rd. Yes, there is the sign, miss. We are at 103rd Street. The question is, where do we go from here? The government agents will be mobilizing soon, and the police, too, will be massed against you. If you wish me to continue helping you, it is necessary that you explain the entirety of your situation to me.”
“The police, too?” Willy asks.
“I have no doubt of that, miss. From what I saw, the police are in league with the forces against you. Nothing is as it seems, and those who pretend to act in the name of good in fact serve dark and evil masters.”
“The evil master is my fiance,” Willy says. “His name is Mitchell Faber, and
“This is your story. It was given to you, and now you must repeat it. I understand. You are supposed to imitate a parrot. But now your story has reminded me of something I read this morning. It was that name—your fiance’s name. I am sure of it. Let me check on this, miss.”
“Mitchell’s name was in the paper?”
This seems so unlikely, also so foreign to Mitchell’s character, that Willy cannot believe the driver’s words. Besides that, this driver, although very polite, is also a screwball. She’d known people in the Institute who, like him, were convinced that they had the inside dope on governmental or military conspiracies. The problem with such people was that their theories almost always incorporated a good deal of the truth, as you learned every time governmental officials were caught telling whoppers, and this occasional (even fundamental) accuracy served only to buttress their faith in the wilder branches of their conspiracies.
Kalpesh Patel has pulled up in front of an unusually beautiful brownstone on the corner of 103rd Street, and he is bending over, evidently shuffling through a stack of newspapers on the seat beside his.
“Yes, that was the name. Undoubtedly, we are talking about a bit of disinformation planted by government agents.” Willy hears the sound of pages being turned. Then Patel’s arm stops moving, and his mouth stretches out in a smile. “Oh, my, the lies these people are willing to tell their own citizens. It is shameful. Do you know you have been accused of bank robbery, Miz Patrick?”
“Bank robbery?”
“And your name is Willy? You were given a man’s name? Not even a true, dignified name, but a mere nickname? How did your mother explain this decision to you?”
“My parents were killed when I was a child—I never had a chance to ask her. I want to see that newspaper, please.”
“You must read about your alleged crime,” Patel says, and passes a folded-over copy of the
Willy sees it instantly: a smudgy photograph, lifted from film taken out of a surveillance video camera, of herself seated before the desk of Mr. Robert Bender, president of the Continental Trust of New Jersey. She is dressed in the jeans and cotton sweater she had been wearing that day, and in the hand that rests on Mr. Bender’s handsome desk is a pistol that looks a little too large for her grip. The headline reads
“I wasn’t holding a gun,” Will says. “I don’t even own a gun!”
“Photoshop,” says Patel. “The maker of miracles. I believe this kind of thing happens nearly every day. Look how much money you are alleged to have stolen.”
“I didn’t steal, he stole from me!” Willy yelps, and scans the article running down the page alongside the photograph.
In an act that had puzzled both bank officials and New Jersey law officers, Willy Patrick, thirty-eight, a prizewinning author of novels for young adults and the fiancee of well-known area figure Mitchell Faber, had pointed a 9mm pistol at bank president Robert Bender during a private consultation requested by Ms. Patrick, and ordered Bender to give her $150,000 in cash from her future husband’s accounts. “For the safety of my employees, I did as the lady requested,” Mr. Bender was quoted as saying. A “troubleshooter” for the Baltic Group, Mr. Faber was said to be hurrying back from meetings in European capitals to offer support to his troubled bride-to-be and aid to area law enforcement officers. Aldo Pinochet, a spokesman for the Baltic Group, described Ms. Patrick as an “unstable woman with a history of mental problems and in desperate need of help.”
“Aldo Pinochet,” Patel says. “See how they work? Everything is connected. You need only take a few steps back, and the pattern comes clear.”
“ ‘Troubleshooter,’ ” Willy says. “That’s literally what he is.”
“Will he want to shoot you?”
“Oh, shooting wouldn’t be nearly good enough,” she says. “First he’ll want to break most of my bones, and after that he’ll start cutting off little bits of me.”
“Is there someplace safe I can take you? The meter will stay off, that should go without saying. However, I
