Black scrutinized the photos one by one before he handed them over to me, as if he were censoring them. His face was twisted like he’d just smelled something bad.
I realized I was holding my breath as I looked at the pictures. I exhaled slowly. They were rough all right.
Alicia lay spread-eagled on her stomach, the left side of her head blown away, her legs awkwardly askew. You could see the hands on her watch, even the thin second hand. The watch showed twelve thirty-seven, the time the crime photographer took the shot.
It’s different when you see someone you know. Someone you remember eating, talking, sleeping. There was this finality.
The photos were exceptionally sharp. Brightly lit. I could see the jagged edge of her skull and the pattern of blood on the rug.
“There’s one more thing,” Black said.
“What?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“What are you going to save it for? Christmas Eve?”
“Her tongue was cut out and stuck into her vagina.”
“Jesus,” I said. I recognized it. I’d seen it before. It was a crude inversion of what Charlie did to our boys in Viet Nam.
That was about all I could take. I felt like someone had been beating my chest with a baseball bat for half an hour.
“You seen enough?” Black asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen enough.”
CHAPTER IX
The hallway stunk of fish and cabbage. The floor was covered with cracked linoleum that curled up at the edges. The linoleum had long ago lost whatever color it once had. The wallpaper was a puke green from the turn of the century. From behind closed doors came the dreary sounds of domestic life, muffled curses, children crying, women screaming, TV blaring.
Typical New York Saturday night.
The apartment building was on Eleventh, not far from the New School. It was a five-story walk-up located in a neighborhood “in transition” as the bureaucrats delicately put it. That meant it was rapidly sinking into a cesspool.
4H was at the end of the corridor. The sound of loud rock and the smell of pot came from behind the door. I jabbed the bell.
Nothing happened. I rang the bell three, four, five times. It looked like nobody was going to open the door. Finally, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I pushed the door open slowly.
A man in a plaid bathrobe stood there and looked out through me. He had a black bushy full-face beard, dark hair pulled back in a pony tail and a round gold earring in his left ear.
“Dr. Garbarini?” I shouted over the racket.
He opened his eyes as if he was surprised to see me.
“My name is Rogan. I called you this afternoon.”
He stared at me vacantly.
“I’m Alicia’s husband…ex-husband.”
He blinked for the first time. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Of course you are. Come in, come in. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
He stepped to the side to let me in. The whole apartment was dark. He led me into the living room. The place was lit by three thick candles that gave off a whiff of bayberry or some other kind of sickly sweet scent. On top of that there was incense burning on a low table in the middle of the room.
My eyes needed some time to adjust to the dark. I had trouble hearing Garbarini over the music. It sounded like Procol Harum or Iron Butterfly or one of those acid groups from the sixties, the kind of endless rock we used to play in the hooches while we drank ourselves into oblivion.
Garbarini waved me to some pillows on the floor. I was still wearing a suit and wasn’t too pleased with myself for not changing. Not too cool looking like an executive when you’re trying to gain the confidence of a band of unreconstructed hippies. Or just maybe they were too stoned to even notice.
“Care for a toot?” the professor asked as he offered me a joint.
“Thanks,” I said and waved it off.
He lit the joint carefully and inhaled deeply.
I watched Garbarini in the candlelight. He had regular features, wide-set eyes and a relaxed manner, to say the least. His eyes were hypnotic-the way they hardly blinked.
There were five other people in the room in various stages of impairment. A man and a woman were lying on pillows next to me on the floor. Another couple of indeterminate sex were fondling on a sofa. They were oblivious to my presence. A girl sat on a chest up against the wall. She was in the lotus position with her eyes closed. She had an untroubled expression on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not.
I sat there for a long time. I knew you weren’t supposed to disturb the natural rhythm of the universe, or something like that, but I was getting edgy. That’s what happens when you put a type A in a nest of tranquillity.
I tried to be one with the spirit.
Finally, after what seemed to be the length of a Grand Opera with two intermissions, the professor spoke. “Our door is always open.”
“What?” I shouted.
“We welcome everyone. Anybody who wants to join us can enter.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I certainly am,” I said and leaned over toward him. “Was Alicia a member of your group?”
“What?” he said.
“Alicia,” I repeated. “A member of your group?”
He shifted closer to me on the floor and spoke into my ear in a tone slightly higher than a whisper. “Our family,” he corrected me. “I liked to think of Alicia as a convert. She was one of my proudest achievements. Here I was able to take an exemplary member of the secular society and mold her into a seeker of eternal verities.”
The stereo was making such a racket I could only hear every second word he was saying. “Can you do me a favor?” I said. “Can you turn down the music?” I was trying as hard as I could to be polite.
He nodded eagerly. “It would make me very happy to be able to honor your request.”
The professor rose slowly and shuffled over to the stereo. It took him about three times as long as it should have to do this. Everything took longer than it should have. It looked like he was moving in slow motion. He lowered the volume with a careful movement. Then he stepped into the kitchen, took something from the refrigerator and came back to me.
I could make out two bottles in his hand. “I never imbibe alcoholic beverages,” he said.
There are a couple of people on the face of the earth who follow this practice, I know. But I was hoping I wouldn’t encounter them right here and now.
“I hope you understand,” he said.
I was trying real hard to.
“This is all I have at the moment. One of my disciples brought it today. It is completely organic.”
At least I could hear him now. I took a bottle. The label said root beer. The professor produced an opener.
I took a long drink of the swill. It was cold, but that was all I could say for it. The stuff tasted like bark and twigs-and it wasn’t even fermented.
“Professor Garbarini,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “What would you say was Alicia’s
