don’t think Sister Sarah Sivella Marinelli Indian Princess Shit Feather knows she’s a fake. But her husband is, and he feeds her stuff, hypnotizes her maybe, and she winds up thinking she’s got a pipeline to the past, future and God almighty.”
She seemed to be only half-listening to my diatribe. “You met Cayce?” she asked.
“Yeah, I was there.”
“During the reading?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“What happened?”
I shrugged. “He gave his version of where the kid was taken, including a bunch of street names. It was supposed to be in some section of New Haven, Connecticut, only the feds checked up on it and none of those street names, or even that part of town, was there.”
Her eyes had narrowed. “Do you have your field notes on the Cayce readings?”
“Sure. They’re up in my room, in my bag.”
“Can I see them?”
“Sure. I’ll bring ’em down tomorrow morning; we’ll have a look at ’em over breakfast.”
“No, Nate—I mean, now.”
“Evalyn, I’m tired, and I’m working on getting drunk. Can’t this wait?”
“The clock is ticking for Hauptmann.”
“Oh, fuck, spare me the violins. I’ve about had my fill of this screwball tragedy for one day and night, and maybe for one lifetime. It can fucking wait.”
She said nothing for a while. That was fine with me.
Then she said, “You know, people close to me over the years say that I am fey.”
“Fey? What does that mean, you like to sleep with girls, now?”
“No, you silly son of a bitch. It means…visionary. In the psychic sense.”
“Oh. So you believe in this spook stuff, too.”
“You asked Means about those supernatural doings at Far View, didn’t you? That happened a long time ago, to still be lingering in your mind.”
“There was nothing supernatural about any of that. Means was sneaking around in his socks doing a number on us. He all but admitted as much this afternoon.”
“That’s not the way I took it. Nate, there have been psychic elements in this case from the beginning.”
“A big case like Lindbergh attracts screwballs like shit attracts flies.”
“How elegantly said.” She sat forward, her hands folded in her lap, a demure posture for a woman in black pj’s. “In my life I’ve had premonitions, Nate, that have come to pass. It simply happens to me, from time to time that, without being able to say how exactly, I know that death impends for someone in my circle…”
“That’s bunk, Evalyn.”
“I had that feeling the weekend my son died. I heard the inner voice but I didn’t listen, and went off on a trip, and my precious boy died while I was away…. Ned and I at Churchill Downs, to watch the running of the Kentucky Derby. For which I never will forgive myself.”
She covered her face with a hand.
I went over to her, knelt by her, gave her my handkerchief, patted her knee. “I’m sorry, Evalyn. It hurts. I know it hurts.”
“If that child is still alive,” she said, and for a moment I thought she meant her own son but she meant instead the Lindbergh boy, “we should try to find him.”
“You want those notes? I’ll get those notes. Will that make you feel better, baby?”
She nodded.
I went up and got the notes.
When I came down she was standing in the black pool that was the discarded lounging pajamas; she wore nothing but the high-heel black slippers. The orange glow of the fire made her body look like something in a painting. A very sensual painting by an artist who wasn’t fey, if you get my drift.
She must’ve been in her mid-forties by now, but she had the body of a woman ten years younger, slender, smooth, the large breasts drooping a bit but so lovely, and waiting to be lifted.
“Come here, big boy,” she said. She held her arms out gently. “Come to mama.”
I fucked her on the Oriental carpet with my trousers down around my ankles; her stark naked, me half-dressed, there was something very nasty about it, and at the same time sweet. She made a lot of noise. I made some myself.
Then I was a puddle of flesh on her pajamas, half-unconscious, as tired as if I’d run a mile, while she was sitting, nude as a grape, in her overstuffed chair, lighting up a cigarette as she read the Cayce field notes in the firelight.
After a while, I started to put my clothes back on. She looked up from her reading and said, very businesslike, “Don’t get dressed. What’s the point? Why don’t you take the rest of your things off.”
