Stolen Away

right.

Our host, hands folded, began to hum monotonously.

A door opened and a figure in black and crimson seemed to glide in. She was standing next to me before I knew it, a small, beautiful woman with large, dark unblinking eyes, a pale cameo of a face and full, sensuous lips made scarlet by dabs of lip rouge. Her dark eyebrows, unlike her husband’s, were thick and unplucked and somehow the effect was exotic; she was caught up in a rose-scented cloud that banished the sandalwood. She looked like a whore, and she looked like a Madonna.

And, what the hell, I have to tell you: I liked it. There was no sign that my hair was falling out, but I was having a psychosexual awakening myself.

Like her husband, she wore a floor-length flowing black robe; but she also wore a hood, lined with blood-red satin. Unlike her husband’s robe, hers was not loose; rather it was contoured to her shape, clinging as if wet to a slender, high-breasted figure. Her nipples were erect and looking right back at me. Maybe she wasn’t a physical medium, but if I didn’t cool off, this table was going to rise.

“Good evening, gentle friends,” she said, in a small, musical voice; she looked to be about twenty-two. “Please don’t get up.”

Thanks for that much.

Her husband pulled out the chair reserved for her, and, she primly sat. She drew her hands out of the long sleeves of the gown like a surgeon preparing to wash up; she placed her small, delicate hands, the nails of which were long, razor sharp and as red as a gaping wound, flat on the table. The candle wax that had dripped onto the wood was damn near the same color as her nails. This pair was good. They were worth whatever they charged.

“Thank you for your presence,” she said. Her hair, what I could see of it under the hood, was jet-black and pulled away from her face; she wore a single, circular gold earring, the one overtly gypsylike touch. “You are Mr. Breckinbridge.”

Breckinbridge, she said.

But Colonel Breckinridge did not correct her; it isn’t polite to correct a psychic.

“You are a police officer,” she said to me, smiling as sweetly as a shy schoolgirl.

“That’s right,” I said. Breckinbridge, Schmeckinbridge, if this babe said she was psychic, she was psychic by me.

“And your name?”

“Nathan Heller,” I said. Christ, she smelled good.

“Mr. Heller, will you take my hand?”

Is the Pope Catholic?

She joined hands with me, and squeezed. Yowsah.

“When my companion has induced my trance state,” she said, “please clasp hands with Mr. Breckinbridge. And Mr. Breckinbridge, please clasp hands with Martin. And Martin will take my hand, and the psychic chain will be established. Please do not break the psychic chain.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

Marinelli slowly, pompously, removed the golden, jeweled cross from around his neck. Holding it by its chain, he began to slowly pass it before the great big beautiful brown peepers of his wife.

Wife, hell. She called him “companion,” and he introduced her as Sister Sarah Sivella, not Marinelli. If anything, they were common-law. My conscience was clear, thinking the thoughts I was thinking.

He was mumbling something; an incantation, something-it was barely audible. But she seemed to hear it. Her eyes traced the slow, sensual movement of the cross before her, and when Marinelli with his free hand snapped his fingers, click! her eyes shut as tight as yanked-down window shades.

Then he clicked his fingers again and her eyelids rolled up the same way. Those eyes, deep brown and flecked with gold, were open wide in the stare of the dead. Her face seemed to lengthen; her expression was blankly sour. It spooked me. Breckinridge was similarly transfixed.

We both knew this was a bunch of bullshit; but the act was a good one, thanks to its fetching heroine, and we were caught up. We had all joined hands, now; in my right was the smooth delicate hand of the pretty medium, and in my left was Breckinridge’s big lawyer-soft paw.

“Who am I speaking to?” Marinelli asked.

“Ugh,” she said.

Ugh?

“Chief Yellow Feather-are you with us?”

She nodded. “Yellow Feather here.” Her voice was forced down into a male register. It sounded as ridiculous as you’re thinking.

I would’ve laughed, and on reflection did; but at that moment, I just went along with the ride. She smelled good, and I never heard a twenty-two-year-old dame with her nipples poking out of her shirt talk like an Indian before.

“Mr. Breckinbridge,” she continued, in the deep mock-male voice. What do you know? Chief Yellow Feather had the name wrong, too. “Spirits say kidnap note was left on windowsill in nursery.”

Breckinridge remained unruffled, when I glanced at him, but we both knew that this piece of information had not been released to the general public.

“Is this correct?” Marinelli asked Breckinridge.

“I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny that, sir,” the Colonel said, in a stiffly dignified manner that seemed about as silly, under the circumstances, as the voice of Chief Yellow Feather.

“Mr. Breckinbridge, you got note at your office today.”

“Note?” Breckinridge asked.

“Kidnap note.”

“No notes have been sent to my office.” He seemed relieved to be able to say that; it was, as far as I knew, the truth.

“All right,” said the girl huffily, in her big-chief voice. “Be at your office tomorrow. Nine in morning.”

“That’s pretty early.”

“Be at office!” The “chief” was firm.

“All right,” Breckinridge said, probably just to placate him. Her. Whoever.

Marinelli said, “Chief Yellow Feather-have you received any other spirit messages?”

“Yes. I see name.

“What name do you see?”

“Jafsie.”

I asked Marinelli, “Can I ask her a question?”

But Sarah answered. “You may speak to Yellow Feather,” she said, in her own voice.

“Yellow Feather, spell that name, please.”

“J-A-F-S-I-E.” This was intoned in the deep Indian voice.

“Thank you, Chief. Is the baby well?”

She shook her head slowly; her face lost its blankness and became sad.

“A baby’s body,” she said in her own voice, “will be found on the heights above Hopewell.”

Breckinridge looked at me sharply and I at him.

Marinelli snapped his fingers and she jerked awake.

She withdrew her hand from mine; we all let go of each other’s hands, sat back, relaxed. We sat quietly in the flickering candlelight, listening to the wind make like a wolf.

“Why did you bring her out of it?” I asked Marinelli.

“I can sense when the psychic strain is too much,” he said gravely. “We can arrange another sitting…”

“Not at this juncture,” Breckinridge said, shifting his chair. “But I would like the address of your church, in Harlem.”

“Certainly. Let me write it down for you.”

Marinelli rose, disappeared into the darkness.

Sarah looked tired; she slumped; her hands disappeared into her lap.

“Were we successful?” she asked quietly.