concentrate better! As disturbing as his new power was, he was going to have to learn how to use it if he wanted to find Naz. If he wanted to save her.
Meanwhile, though, he had no money. There were people he could call in Cambridge, but how to explain his situation? A prostitute working for the CIA slipped me some kind of experimental drug, and now I have mental powers? Oh, and a Nazi scientist held me captive, and I killed my best friend’s brother? Somehow Chandler didn’t think that was going to fly. And besides, wouldn’t Melchior and his cronies be watching his closest friends? Listening in on their phones? Hanging out in front of their houses in repair vans outfitted with eavesdropping equipment? Who was to say they wouldn’t kidnap the first person Chandler called and threaten to hurt or even kill him unless Chandler surrendered?
None of which changed the basic facts. He was penniless. Nameless for all intents and purposes. Orpheus in the Underworld, looking for Eurydice, his only protection his song. His ability to melt men’s hearts and minds.
He put a hand in his pocket, pulled out the vial of LSD. The inch of clear liquid looked like viscous water, yet it was enough to soften the solid shape of the world. He pulled the stopper from the vial, pressed his index finger to the lid, turned it upside down. He felt the spot of dampness fit itself to the grooves of his fingerprint as if the acid was the mirror image of his identity. He pulled his finger from the vial, looked at the glistening tip in the streetlight. It was hard to believe in the power there. But it was all he had to get him to Naz. He poured a dollop of clear liquid into his palm, then, screwing up his face like a five-year-old about to take a spoonful of cod liver oil, slurped up his medicine. Salvation tasted bitter, and he had to fight the urge to spit it out.
An hour later found him walking up the steep incline of Lombard Street. The world seemed to have a colored transparency laid over it, painting woodwork and masonry with a pulsing array of colors that might’ve been soothing had it not been so unnatural. Visions appeared in the windows, in the air, on the street—giant rabbits and lollipops and girls in pinafores, tanks, soldiers, mushroom clouds, a blizzard of books, a sudden riot of grapevine and pill bottles, a lone pterodactyl cruising silently down the urban defile. If he squinted, he could see through these apparitions, but it was easier just to let them roll over him. To trust that the world would continue to be solid even though his eyes told him he was walking on a crystalline lake over a bed of multicolored stones. No, not stones. Eyes, winking at him knowingly. The only thing he worried about was the return of the flaming boy. Chandler didn’t know who or what it was, whose mind it had come from, but he knew he couldn’t control it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
A pinkish purple sea turtle swimming toward him slowly resolved into a massive mauve Imperial from the late fifties, before Chrysler scaled them down. An expensive car, immaculately maintained. Just what Chandler was looking for.
He felt for the driver’s mind. He was as gentle as he could be—he didn’t want the man, Peter was his name, Peter Mossford, to veer out of control when the road turned to water. Facts flitted past like flash cards. Mossford was fifty-two. Divorced. Was returning from an emotionally hollow rendezvous with the woman he’d foolishly left his wife for. Not that he missed Lorna—a shrew, born and bred—but he missed his boys. Mark, fourteen, still living at home with his mother, and Pete Jr., in his second year at Dartmouth. Mossford used to love to take Pete camping in the hills north of the city when the boy was younger—hell, when
Mossford stepped on the brakes. Peered through the window. On the other side of the glass, his fair hair dappled in a ray of sunlight that shone on him like a spotlight, eleven-year-old Pete Jr. pantomimed rolling down the window.
“Hey, Dad,” Chandler said as a blissful smile spread across Mossford’s face. “Wanna go camping?”
It was too tricky to keep the image of Pete Jr. firmly fixed in his father’s mind and at the same time convince Mossford that the western route out of Oakland was actually the road leading to the hills north of the bay, so Chandler let his chauffeur pilot the car as he wanted. Mossford spewed a stream of regrets to his son, apologies, pledges to do things differently. It wasn’t right, Chandler thought. In the morning Mossford would wake up with the night’s events pulsing in his brain more vividly than any memory, any dream he’d ever had, and how great would his sorrow be then? Life was hard enough already. One man shouldn’t be able to do this to another. But the longing for Naz was too great, and he pressed on.
When they were safely in the deserted hills, the fantasy of Pete Jr. told his dad that he thought this place looked swell. Mossford parked the car, then went to the trunk to unpack the tent. Chandler couldn’t bear to watch him go through the motions, a beaming smile on his face as he pounded imaginary tent pegs into the ground with an invisible hammer, so Pete Jr. said, “Look, Dad, I did it myself,” and there before Mossford’s eyes was a perfectly pitched pup tent. Mossford didn’t question it, just as he didn’t wonder how it had gone from a golden morning to a blustery night in the hour it had taken them to drive out of the city. Instead, father and son crawled into their respective sleeping bags for the night.
“Can we go fishing tomorrow, Dad?” was the last thing Pete Jr. said to his father.
Mossford pulled the imaginary zipper of his sleeping bag all the way up. “Whatever you want, son.”
Chandler waited till Mossford was asleep before he lifted the man’s wallet from his pants and got back in the car. He felt like a complete heel. He wanted to punish the people who had done this. Wanted to make them feel what Peter Mossford would feel when he woke up. But as soon as he had that thought, an image of Eddie Logan flashed in his mind—his face, contorted in terror, his own hand driving a knife into his heart to spare himself the horror that Chandler had put in his mind—and he knew that he’d already done much worse than what he’d done to Mossford.
It was a mean world, Chandler thought, and yawned widely. With or without mental powers, it was a mean, cold world. The mere thought of it exhausted him, and he struggled to keep his eyes open as he piloted Mossford’s car on the rainbow ribbon of deserted highway. All he wanted was to find Naz and curl up with her and sleep forever, or at least until this nightmare was over.
Washington, DC
November 9, 1963
The blade of Rip’s knife glinted in the dim light. He appeared in no hurry to press the attack, and Melchior took a step back, slipping off his jacket. Rip was bending his right wrist tenderly, and Melchior suspected he’d fractured a bone or strained the tendons. Hard to stab someone when you can’t close your hand all the way. After a moment Rip moved the knife to his left hand. That’ll make things easier, Melchior thought.
“Tell me, Rip,” he said as he wrapped his jacket around his right hand, “were you ever actually trying to kill Castro, or were you just there to keep an eye on me?”
