Harry had shown up at his place a couple hours after Mercer had dropped him at his own apartment, Drag in reluctant tow. They’d ordered Chinese food but neither was in the mood to eat. Each was preoccupied with his separate thoughts.
“Well at least one mystery’s been cleared up,” Harry said after a healthy slug of his Jack Daniel’s.
“What?”
“The car.”
The police who’d searched the Rolls-Royce they’d stolen from the Deco Palace found that the car had been fitted with a LoJack tracking device. The man Mercer had seen Poli leave behind at the entrance of the hotel had grabbed the driver and made him reveal his personal identity number. The tracking service led Poli and his men straight to the Fesses’ salvage yard. Fortunately the car’s owner hadn’t been killed, but three people inside the hotel were dead and another eight wounded.
While Mercer knew their murders weren’t his fault, they still lay heavy on his conscience. He especially felt Serena Ballard’s death. There was no way around the fact that had he not contacted her she’d still be alive. All of those people would.
“I do have something to cheer you up,” Harry said after a long silence. He shuffled over to his windbreaker and tossed some papers onto the bar.
“What’s this?”
“The copy of the notes from the safe Lizzie Fess gave me.”
Mercer looked at him incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier, you bastard? You’ve let me sit here thinking we’re at a dead end while you’ve had this the whole time.”
“Hey, sorry,” Harry replied. “I wanted to translate all of it first, but seeing your face hanging lower than Drag’s made me reconsider.”
Mercer read the first couple of paragraphs.
Deer and the antelope play. That damned infernal song will not leave me. Were there ever any antelopes in America? I ask you, Albert, what games did they play? What merriment the rams and ewes all enjoy? I remember once being sane and I think I should go back there. But then again how does anyone really know what is madness. And are there many who really care? I no longer do. Burned out, I fear this trip has changed me in sick and disturbing ways. I no longer recognize the reflection in the mirror. And within this safe is the key for more madness to follow. Nick of time I thought when I boarded this massive airship. I escaped all those who pursued me-the Carmines, and their minions. But I have paid a price. My eyes appear kohl darkened, like a pharaoh’s. My hair, what little I started with, has fallen out in stiff tufts and my body aches in unholy ways. Other passengers turned away when we boarded. I indeed am a wreck. To recall what I’ve endured in the past weeks and months makes me think that even before I left I was more than a little mad. But I had to find out. I was obsessed, I suppose, unable to forgo my ego’s needs to always be correct. I barely had the strength to rise each morning on the zeppelin and now I sit here trying-forcing myself to write this story.
Second tea into cup in six.
But I did it. I had to show the world that at least one of my theories was worth pursuing. And I have learned that they all were. By ships, automobiles, trains and donkeys I’ve allowed my obsession to drive me deeper into hell. I’ve been so wracked with fever I chipped a tooth shivering. At one point my fight with malaria was so bad my urine turned the color of wine. I think what my brother Nick endured in the Great War and I know I have surpassed his suffering. My journey had all the elements of a great quest, Odysseus’s odyssey. Only mine will not end in the dew-covered fields of my Ithaca in the arms of my beloved Penelope. I could not vanquish the suitors. And while I didn’t want to believe they exist I know even now they are plotting against me. I have become paranoid, but I fear I am not, in fact, paranoid enough. I lack the Hero’s cunning and I lack his strength. Guile is not in my nature.
“This has got to be in code like the note Cali and I got from Einstein’s archives,” Mercer said when he finished the cryptic paragraphs. “It makes sense on one level but there has to be more. Do you remember the code? How many words to skip?”
“Every eleventh word,” Harry said at once.
Mercer grabbed a notebook and a pen from a drawer behind the bar and began counting out words. After a few moments he set the pen down and read aloud what he’d deciphered. “Leave you and I really care has recognize the thought of but like fallen ways.” He looked to Harry. “What the hell does that mean?”
Harry chuckled. “It means you’re an idiot,” the octogenarian said mildly. “You didn’t count the first word.”
Mercer turned the pages over to his friend in frustration. “You’re the one who loves puzzles and cracked the first message. You do it.”
“I already did. The first ten words are ‘Deer me Albert ewes should know I changed the key.’ When you clean it up a little you get ‘Dear me, Albert, you should know I changed the key.’”
“Shit.” Anger crept back into Mercer’s voice. “So how do we find the new key? Is there a clue?”
“Yeah.” Harry pointed to the second paragraph, a one-line non sequitur that Mercer had glossed over when he read the text. “This line here.
“Can you figure them out?” Mercer asked anxiously.
“Might take me a while, but sure.”
Mercer slid Harry’s drink out of his reach. “Then get to work.”
After making a pot of coffee strong enough to melt a spoon, Mercer sat next to Harry as he began writing out words. There were literally hundreds of combinations and they wouldn’t know if they were right until all five had been figured out.
“Damn,” Harry muttered after a minute. “I’m beginning to hate Chester Bowie.”
“Why?”
“You only need four words to change tea into cup. It goes: tea, tap, cap, cup. The other two are just filler and I don’t even know where to put them. I could make it tea pea pet put pup cup or it could be tea sea sep sap cap cup.”
“Wait, what’s sep?”
“Abbreviation for separate. General rule for doublets is if it’s in the dictionary you can use it.”
“Well I’m not as good at these things as you but why don’t you give me the second hint and I’ll see what I can do.”
Harry leafed through Bowie’s note to Einstein and read out the next doublet. “‘Fourth games into balls in nine.’ Changing only one letter at a time, turn the word ‘games’ into the word ‘balls’ in nine words. The fourth word’s our clue. After that we have: ‘fourth gout into full in ten, second east into west in four,’ and finally there is ‘third dire into fine in four.’”
Mercer wrote out the first and last word of the second clue on a piece of paper, realized how much harder it would be with five-letter words versus three, and silently switched papers with Harry to give him the more difficult puzzle.
“Just for that I want my drink back,” Harry said without looking up.
Mercer slid the highball glass back to his friend and together they set to work.
At eleven o’clock they compared notes. Mercer had filled line after line on his paper but had made no progress, while Harry was pretty sure he had three of them, albeit they were the easiest. He’d deciphered the last two, coming up with west, lest, last, east and dire, dive, five, fine. Seeing that one of the clue words, “five,” was a number, he’d cracked the first doublet and came up with tea, ten, tan, tap, cap, cup.
“So we have ten, something, something, lest, five,” Mercer said, emptying Harry’s overflowing ashtray into a metal bucket he kept for that sole purpose.
“It must be a math problem. Ten plus something lest five, or ten minus something less five.”
“Ten times?” Mercer suggested.
“Genius,” Harry shouted and bent to his paper again. “Games into balls.” He spoke aloud as he wrote out.
