Escape the Night (33 page)

He was seventeen years old.

He had blamed his father, a bitter failure whose wife and children could never succeed enough to please him. Later, as he grew older, Levy saw that this anger had dulled the sense of helplessness and desertion which haunt the children of a suicide. Ruth had been less fortunate: he came to love her for the pain he had avoided, astonished that he had not loved her before. The shock of recognizing this became the guilty burden of his mother's suicide: driven by the need to please his father, he had not clearly seen his mother until, finding her dead, he realized with a sickening jolt that he was not surprised.

In mute offering to the corpse he had found on the cool white tile, Levy began watching for the smallest signs of hurt in Ruth. It was this prescience that made him see in Charles Carey the fear others missed, and which, in turn, Charles saw, that drunken, fateful night in Boston, when he suggested Levy enter psychiatry.

He could seldom speak of his mother's suicide—even to Charles Carey—outside the year of analysis which was a required Freudian rite of passage. Yet he looked for its seeds in every patient, dreading that midnight call from some ravaged spouse or child, keening their abandonment. The call had never come: perhaps, he thought, his fear had made him lucky.

Now he sensed death surrounding Peter Carey.

Once more, under “Who is the faceless man?” he wrote: “Charles → Noelle → suicide?”

He could not be certain that the destructive traits he saw in Peter portended suicide: Peter's fight against the forces which tormented him bespoke a strength that was astonishing. But the spoor of guilt was everywhere: in Peter's obsessive need for privacy; in a passion for fitness and the techniques of self-defense; in feelings of unworthiness so deep that his instinctive first reaction to the ringing of a telephone was that Noelle Ciano had been killed; in his fear that he would call death down upon her; in a hostility to Phillip so intense that it might be viewed as a projection of self-loathing; in his constant worry that John Carey's firm would somehow be snatched from him. This last made the gamble he had taken with
The End of the Tunnel
, staking his future against Phillip on his judgment of one book, reek of self-destruction: Van Dreelen & Carey was Peter's sole remaining link with the two people he could acknowledge loving, and now he could not love Noelle.

The insight frightened him.

When Levy had first entered practice, he had occasionally, out of boredom or resentment at the litany of petty troubles that sometimes filled his day, indulged himself in fantasy, imagining his power were he to use the secrets he had learned to destroy his patients instead of to help them. At first this fantasy had horrified him; later he saw it as harmless, and even instructive. To destroy Peter, he was certain, a ruthless enemy would sever him from the firm his grandfather had left him, or from Noelle Ciano—or, crueler and more certain, make him choose.

Levy feared that enemy might wear Peter Carey's face.

But he was missing the crucial piece that might save him—from others, or from himself.

The crucial piece was Peter's memory, and he could wait no longer.

Martin disappeared inside the elevator; Englehardt sat alone, with the photographs of Levy's notes.

Avidly, he read them, marking a few with paperclips.

An hour later, he stacked the notes he had marked—Carey's account of the anonymous call; his fear that Noelle Ciano had been watched; his concern about his neighbors' odd behavior; his inquiry about Barth's whereabouts in 1959; his suspicions of Phillip Carey—and locked them with his secret tapes of the analysis, in the desk drawer Clayton Barth would never see.

What remained was the blueprint of Peter Carey's destruction.

The worry he heard in Levy's voice ran like fever through his notes.

The psychiatrist was stymied; just when Carey had some flash of memory, his subconscious shrank from it. Levy sensed this guilt, but could not know its reason; amnesia barred his way. He could only fear for its results—Carey's potential for violence or for suicide, growing with his worry for the woman …

Englehardt felt a kind of admiration: in a bizarre way, Levy was correct, for it was this potential he would turn on Peter Carey.

He must move quickly, Englehardt knew: Carey was a human time bomb. But Carey's time was running faster; Englehardt would need him for but a few weeks now, to capture Clayton Barth.

In a calming ritual, he began arranging his files on Peter Carey, the next step in this seduction. One by one, he put them in his briefcase: Peter Carey's prep school and college transcripts, a complete medical history, Benevides's notes and papers, a report on Carey's haunts and habits and those of Noelle Ciano, and a biography of the Careys so intimate that it would never be published anywhere.

To these he added the text of stolen intelligence files, from HUAC and the CIA. Their subjects were John, Charles and Phillip Carey, Alicia Fairvoort Carey, and Ruth Levy.

All of this was gloss to the centerpiece that followed—a sheaf so thick that Englehardt had difficulty shutting the briefcase: William Levy's remaining notes.

He wondered how Barth would like the one on suicide.

Smiling, he snapped the briefcase shut, and called Martin.

The elevator creaked upwards from the second floor, and then Martin's footsteps moved toward him. Englehardt rose with the briefcase. “I'm ready.”

Martin's face appeared in the light. “About Vermont …”

Englehardt snapped curtly, “It's perfect—all we need is for Barth to think it's his idea, and then you can start watching her.”

Martin flushed; this shame, Englehardt knew, increased his hold. “Come,” he said softly.

In sullen silence, Martin followed him to the elevator.

Beneath the lone light bulb of his attic, Phillip Carey stared at a dusty metal trunk.

“What's Barth got on you?” Peter had demanded; for a reckless moment, Phillip had wanted to warn him, and then the telephone rang, and Phillip had been saved instead.

Warning Peter would be no act of reconciliation, but of self-destruction.

And yet, Phillip wondered, did this really matter? He was not whole and never had been: his women were young and wanton and greedy, but Peter had Noelle.

Perhaps Noelle would save them both; afraid for her, Peter might back off from Barth, and from his memory …

But Phillip Carey could not move back from the trunk.

In his mind, Peter asked once more, “Where's Dewey?”

Slowly, Phillip opened the trunk, and looked inside.

In the still of night, gazing at his notes about a stuffed elephant, Levy saw the distasteful thing he must do.

Carefully, he began arranging each day's notes in exact sequence. His hands were not yet steady; sliding the final page in the manila folder, he sliced his finger on its edge.

He stared for a moment at the thin red line. Then he placed the numbered folder in its unmarked file, locked it and returned the index to the drawer.

Next to it was a Manhattan directory.

Under the listing for “Psychologists,” his finger stopped at “Pogostin, David M.,” as though to mark his desperation.

He had met Pogostin at a seminar in Puerto Rico, and disliked him instinctively: he sensed that Pogostin, a cocky young man with liquid brown eyes, found analysis comic. Pogostin wore an offensive green shirt and laughed too much. Levy's hands stilled: it was good to dislike someone without worrying about the reasons.

On the flight home from San Juan, Levy had skimmed the paper that Pogostin had read to an afternoon session which Levy had skipped, not without pleasure, in order to see an old friend from medical school. Its subject was battle-stress syndrome: Pogostin claimed extraordinary success in treating Vietnam veterans suffering from traumatic amnesia. The purpose, his paper explained, was to surface repressed traumatic memories that affected conscious behavior. Frequently, the patient could not afterwards remember what he had recalled under hypnosis: in these cases, the therapist gradually presented him with pieces of the now-uncovered trauma until the patient's memory revived. Then he could confront it in therapy.

Levy had not been sure he believed any of this.

Now he had to know what Peter Carey could not remember.

He put down his glasses, rehearsing the conversation. He would ask Pogostin to hypnotize Peter and then lead him, in minute detail, through the weekend when his parents died. And, of course, he must tape Peter Carey's buried memories, for Levy's use.

For a moment, Levy imagined listening to the tape. His hands started trembling.

It was four-thirty when Englehardt finished reading to Barth from the Benevides file and handed it across the desk. “Peter thinks he can outsmart you,” he summarized, “then tie you up in court. Four months is all he needs, and he may well beat you outright.”

Framed against the Manhattan skyline, the two men sat alone. Angrily, Barth demanded, “What do you propose?”

“We've accomplished much in the last three weeks.” Englehardt adopted the pose of tutor, experienced and calm. “In my opinion, Peter Carey can be dealt with. It is here that our access to Dr. Levy's notes becomes crucial: we now know things about Peter Carey which he himself will never know—for example, that his own analyst fears him to be a potential suicide …” Feigning carelessness, Englehardt let the sentence drop.

Quite softly, Barth inquired, “Suicide?”

“You wished to know about Peter Carey.” Englehardt's shrug was minimal. “In a nutshell, we've discovered that the last of the Careys is an emotionally scarred young man. Through increased surveillance, we could not only absolutely predict his countermoves, but exacerbate those weaknesses until he cannot move at all. A creative choice would be to manipulate those guilts and fears which make him a potential suicide, even perhaps his capacity for violence, into behavior so irrational that no court would listen to his pleas. The more direct alternative would be to destroy him through the young woman of whom he seems so fond. We could poison their relationship, for example. Or, given the fact that he already feels guilt for the death of his grandfather and father—of which his nightmares and amnesia are the evidence—he should be extremely vulnerable to any hint that his continued obstinancy with Phillip would do Miss Ciano harm. There'd be no question you could have his firm. Of course,” he added pointedly, “I'll need your permission to go as much as one step further. Our surveillance is not complete, and the final steps I've outlined here may not be worth the candle. It's only a publisher, after all, and as you've learned through meeting him, Peter Carey can be quite volatile.”

Barth kept staring at him as if he did not hear. “Then he might kill himself?”

Englehardt nodded. “There's that to it—you might not want Peter on your conscience.” He smiled wryly. “Curious that someone with such pathetic weaknesses should label
you
a psychopath.”

Turning away, Barth's eyes seemed to fix on a fluorescent Coca-Cola sign, flashing backwards on black glass. Englehardt felt his own fingernails dig into his palms.

“I want this firm,” Barth said in a distant voice. “I can't let Peter Carey keep it from me.”

Englehardt let his silence grow. Modestly, he murmured, “I've told you what I can do.”

“Then
show
me.” Frighteningly, Barth wheeled on him. “
You
wish to be chief of security—
show
me.”

“Hypnosis,” Carey broke in. “Some man I've never met, tampering with my subconscious.”

He sat facing Levy; suddenly, his father's friend looked old.

“It suits our purposes, Peter—you should know the reason for your dream. Please, I thought you
wanted
to remember.”

“Not through sorcery. I'll stick with you.”

“He'd tape it for me, Peter—I'm not abandoning you.”

The repeated use of his first name struck Carey as odd: there was a disturbance in Levy, as if the circuits which connected them, nerve to nerve, had suddenly worn thin.

“God, I hate surprises.”

“Please, Peter.” Levy leaned forward, as if to reach him. “If I'm going to help, it's become imperative that I know what happened to you.”

Carey stood, snapping, “I have to think,” and then strode quickly from the office.

CHAPTER 11

Peter's Jaguar sped into the Vermont dusk.

Shadows merged with the coming darkness; snow-covered landscapes became a blanket of gray and silver pinned by straight black shards, the trees of winter. Jagged crests of mountains vanished in a lowering sky, the two-lane highway retreated toward his windshield. When night came, it would be black and sudden and unrelieved: Peter drove too fast, as if trying to escape. Noelle saw the road vanishing in front of them.

“Take it easy, Peter. Two more hours, and we'll be walking through the doors, promise.”

Jaw tight, Peter eased off the accelerator. The only sound was the low, smooth snarl of his motor.

Noelle listened; the absence of sensation made her pensive. “It's funny,” she observed. “I have to readjust to nightfall. Here it's so total—in the city we don't really get that.”

Peter downshifted. “Except for blackouts.”

Wet snow clung to the windshield. Watching it, Noelle ventured, “Last time was a little like the world ending, wasn't it?”

Peter flicked on his lights; their beams stabbed the moving darkness of Vermont. “What do you remember about it?”

“The people.” Noelle leaned back. “I guess what I remember most is the doorman.”

Peter turned to her. “Why?”

“I was glad to see him,” she said simply.

As evening came, Carey's doorman was replaced by another. He checked his watch, to give the signal, and began walking away from the Aristocrat. His bulky frame, moving from light to darkness, became a shadow.