Black House

“Do you need a ride?”

“I do not. The wondrous Miss Vilas has attended to my needs, in the form of a car with a comfy back seat for my turntable and a trunk spacious enough for the speakers and record cartons, which she will be sending. But thanks anyhow.”

“Symphonic Stan?” Jack said.

“A knocked-out, all-frantic, all-zoot-suit embodiment of the big-band era, and a charming, mellifluous gentleman besides. For the residents of Maxton’s, an evocation of their salad days and a joy to behold.”

“Do you actually own a zoot suit?”

Magnificently inexpressive, Henry’s face swings toward him.

“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. To change the subject, what you said, I mean what George Rathbun said, about the Fisherman this morning probably did a lot of good. I was glad to hear that.”

Henry opens his mouth and summons George Rathbun in all his avuncular glory. “ ‘The original Fisherman, boys and girls, Albert Fish, has been dead and gone for sixty-seven years.’ ” It is uncanny, hearing the voice of that charged-up fat man leap from Henry Leyden’s slender throat. In his own voice, Henry says, “I hope it did some good. After I read your buddy Wendell Green’s nonsense in the paper this morning, I thought George had to say something.”

Henry Leyden enjoys using terms like I read, I was reading, I saw, I was looking at. He knows these phrases disconcert his auditors. And he called Wendell Green “your buddy” because Henry is the only person to whom Jack has ever admitted that he alerted the reporter to the crimes of Albert Fish. Now Jack wishes he had confessed to no one. Glad-handing Wendell Green is not his buddy.

“Having been of some assistance to the press,” Henry says, “you might reasonably be thought in a position to do the same for our boys in blue. Forgive me, Jack, but you opened the door, and I’ll only say this once. Dale is my nephew, after all.”

“I don’t believe you’re doing this to me,” Jack says.

“Doing what, speaking my mind? Dale is my nephew, remember? He could use your expertise, and he is very much of the opinion that you owe him a favor. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you could help him stay in his job? Or that if you love French Landing and Norway Valley as much as you say, you owe these folks a little of your time and talent?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you, Henry, that I’m retired?” Jack says through gritted teeth. “That investigating homicides is the last thing, I mean, the last thing in the world I want to do?”

“Of course it has,” Henry says. “But—and again I hope you’ll forgive me, Jack—here you are, the person I know you are, with the skills you have, which are certainly far beyond Dale’s and probably well beyond all these other guys’, and I can’t help wondering what the hell your problem is.”

“I don’t have a problem,” Jack says. “I’m a civilian.”

“You’re the boss. We might as well listen to the rest of the Barenboim.” Henry runs his fingers over the console and pushes the button for the tuner.

For the next fifteen minutes, the only voice to be heard in the pickup’s cab is that of a Steinway concert grand meditating upon The Goldberg Variations in the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires. A splendid voice it is, too, Jack thinks, and you’d have to be an ignoramus to mistake it for Glenn Gould. A person capable of making that mistake probably couldn’t hear the vibration-like inner sound produced by a General Motors door handle.

When they turn right off Highway 93 onto Norway Valley Road, Henry says, “Stop sulking. I shouldn’t have called you a schmuck. And I shouldn’t have accused you of having a problem, because I’m the one with the problem.”

“You?” Jack looks at him, startled. Long experience has immediately suggested that Henry is about to ask for some kind of unofficial investigative help. Henry is facing the windshield, giving nothing away. “What kind of problem can you have? Did your socks get out of order? Oh—are you having trouble with one of the stations?”

“That, I could deal with.” Henry pauses, and the pause stretches into a lengthy silence. “What I was going to say is, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I think I’m going sort of crazy.”

“Come on.” Jack eases up on the gas pedal and cuts his speed in half. Has Henry witnessed a feather explosion? Of course he hasn’t; Henry cannot see anything. And his own feather explosion was merely a waking dream.

Henry quivers like a tuning fork. He is still facing the windshield.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Jack says. “I’m starting to worry about you.”

Henry opens his mouth to a crack that might accommodate a communion wafer, then closes it again. Another tremor runs through him.

“Hmm,” he says. “This is harder than I thought.” Astonishingly, his dry, measured voice, the true voice of Henry Leyden, wobbles with a wide, helpless vibrato.

Jack slows the pickup to a crawl, begins to say something, and decides to wait.

“I hear my wife,” Henry says. “At night, when I’m lying in bed. Around three, four in the morning. Rhoda’s footsteps are moving around in the kitchen, they’re coming up the stairs. I must be losing my mind.”

“How often does this happen?”

“How many times? I don’t know, exactly. Three or four.”

“Do you get up and look for her? Call out her name?”

Henry’s voice again sails up and down on the vibrato trampoline. “I’ve done both those things. Because I was