Goodlow's Ghosts (4 page)

"Sledge's?" Ryerson asked.

"It's a restaurant on the south side."

Ryerson handed the piece of paper back. "I'm sorry, Bill, but this is absolutely meaningless to me." He hesitated. "And I notice that he has question marks after each notation. My guess is that he only planned on making an appointment with me and never did."

Willis looked incredulous. "So you've never met this guy?"

"Never."

Willis tucked the piece of paper back into the file folder. He took out an 8 x 10 color photograph and handed it across the desk. Ryerson took it, glanced at it. The photograph showed a man with a square, craggy face, a tangled mop of red hair, and large, gentle, and expressive eyes. The man was smiling; his teeth were crooked. Willis said, "That's our boy. Sam
Goodlow
."

Again Ryerson shook his head. "Bill, I'm sorry, but I really have not met him."

Willis looked disappointed. "Well then, maybe you can . . . divine something from his photograph."

"
Divine
something, Bill?" Ryerson was offended.

Willis shrugged. "Isn't that what you do? You get impulses from things, like photographs? Shit, Rye, you've done it before. Don't make me think that I called you down here for nothing."

Ryerson said, "I'm afraid that's precisely what you did, Bill." He tapped the photograph with his finger. "This man and I have never met. If we have, then I don't remember it." He handed the photograph back.

"Okay then," Willis said. "Thanks, anyway. If you get some kind of . . . rush of enlightenment ..."

Ryerson stood. "I'll call you."

~ * ~

What, Sam
Goodlow
wondered, had prevented him from showing his sister that he was
alive
?

Perhaps, he had wanted not to frighten her. She was apparently convinced that he was dead. She might have thought he was an imposter, someone who meant her harm.

Why were you hiding in the closet?
she would have asked. And how would he have answered her? He would have had no answer. Why had he been hiding in the closet, indeed?

And if she had asked him to
prove
he was Sam
Goodlow
—
Show me some ID, for instance, or, If you're really my brother, then you'll know my special nickname for you
—he would have been at a real loss because he had no ID and he remembered nothing beyond the fact that someone had run him down. Obviously, he had amnesia. He'd hit his head and now he remembered nothing. But getting his sister to believe
that
would have been tough. He didn't
look
like he'd been run over. He didn't
look
like he had amnesia.

What
did
he look like? he wondered.

Was there a mirror in this place?

He glanced about. Desk. Floor lamp. Red upholstered desk chair. Cot. Diploma on the far wall. No mirror. But he remembered looking in a mirror earlier. Where had he been?

He couldn't remember.

He sighed.
What was this place?
he wondered.

It seemed so hauntingly familiar. It sparked such a strong feeling of déjà vu in him. Clearly he had once spent a lot of time here.

He moved across the room and read the name on what he had thought was a diploma. "Samuel
Goodlow
," he read. "Licensed Private Investigator. Temporary Permit, Boston Police Department." He stared blankly at the words for a few moments, as if they were merely spots on the paper. He read them again. And again.

Samuel
Goodlow
?
he wondered. Was
he
Samuel
Goodlow
? Did people call him
Samuel
?
Sam
?

He remembered so very little. He remembered flying ass-over-teacup above the Lincoln Town Car that had run him down. He remembered landing on his stomach on the roadway. He remembered being hit again. Remembered pain.

A telephone.

Nothingness.

Nothingness.

He shivered.
Someone just danced on my grave!
he thought again.

His fingers and toes felt heavy. He raised his hand, studied it a moment. Was this Sam
Goodlow's
hand? Was this
his
hand? Was it attached to
his
wrist,
his
arm,
his
shoulder?

He felt very tired.

He thought that he could sleep for a long, long time.

~ * ~

Ryerson had a housekeeper and his name was Matthew Peters. Matthew had a Ph.D. in creative writing, but he had published only a few numbingly hard to understand short stories in literary reviews. He had a novel making the rounds of New York City publishers, but it was a bad novel, horribly overwritten, full of lousy imagery and fractured syntax, and once every week or ten days he got his manuscript back with a form rejection slip. Matthew secretly suspected that it was a bad novel, but he dreamed of someday showing the world that his Ph.D. in creative writing
meant
something, so he ignored the rejections. He told himself that the literary world simply wasn't ready for him.

He couldn't ignore his poverty, though, which was why he had taken the job as housekeeper for Ryerson
Biergarten
.

He was a very good housekeeper. He loved to polish things, clean things, dust, put things in order.
A place for everything and everything in its place
was his motto. He was
neat
and
tidy
. He was scrupulously clean-shaven and well-coifed, and his polyester pants always had a knife-edge crease.

He was also very bad at taking and relaying messages.

Two weeks earlier he had taken a message from Sam
Goodlow
. "Important we talk, Mr.
Biergarten
. Matter of identification. Meet me at Sledge's, 7:15 P.M. tonight."

Matthew had written the message verbatim on a small notepad on a telephone table in the foyer, then, while cleaning, had put the notepad in the drawer of the telephone table because the yellow pad clashed with the dark wood of the table.

Two weeks later, the notepad still rested in the desk drawer.

~ * ~

The woman looked to be in her early sixties. She was well-dressed, in a gray business suit, and her smile was spontaneous and businesslike at the same time. She carried a gray umbrella, and it dripped on the carpet.

The woman was attractive, and the bank officer who offered her a seat in front of his desk thought, not for the first time, that one day he would find the courage to ask her out to dinner.

"Good morning, Mrs.
McCartle
," he said. "You're looking very well."

"Thank you, Roger," the woman said, still smiling. The bank officer's name was Roger
Fagen
. "How is your wife feeling?"

Roger conjured up a look of concern. "The doctors think that she'll be okay, as long as she gets the rest she needs. But you know Margaret—always on the go."

"A woman devoted to her work, Roger. You should be proud."

Roger nodded vaguely in an attempt to get off the subject of his wife. He started to speak—
Actually, Margaret and I have been kind of on the outs,
lately was on his mind—but the woman said, "Let me tell you why I've come in today, Roger."

"Certainly." He conjured up a look of staid professionalism. "What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to transfer some money, again, from my account to an account in my sister's name, at another bank. That's not a problem, is it?"

"No problem at all. How much did you want to transfer?"

"I was thinking of one hundred thousand today, Roger."

He looked flustered. This was not the first such request the woman had made lately. In the past two weeks, she had transferred large sums to other accounts at least a half-dozen times. "One hundred thousand," Roger said, and smiled unsteadily. "Certainly, Mrs.
McCartle
. If you could wait here a moment, I'll get the ball rolling. It will take a few minutes, as you know."

"Of course, Roger," she said.

It was around noon, the following day, and a young couple named Stevie and Jack Lutz were strolling on a path behind their home in a rural area west of Boston. The path led to a stand of deciduous trees, circled back through several acres of fields, and ended in the
Lutzes
' side yard.

To a disinterested observer, Stevie and Jack might have appeared to be a happy couple, much in love. Today, as usual, they strolled hand in hand and talked often.

Stevie said, "I liked last night."

Jack said, "Me, too."

"You're very adventurous, aren't you?" Stevie said.

"I boldly go where no man has gone before," Jack said, and grinned.

"You and Magellan," Stevie said.

They had had this same conversation a hundred times during their relationship. Jack found it titillating. Stevie did not, although she had never shared this fact with him. She wanted to keep him happy. He didn't know it, but for a while now she had been looking for a way out of the marriage. No way seemed clear. Their relationship had lasted since they were both young teenagers and she thought that that meant they were destined to be together for life. There was little, if anything, that she could do about it. So, keeping him happy—at least with himself—was what concerned her most. If he was happy, he might eventually figure out how to make
her
happy—if it mattered to him, and she wasn't at all sure that it did.

They had moved into their rural house quite recently and this was only their second walk through the woods and fields. They weren't familiar yet with the area's topography or landmarks. On their first walk a week earlier, they had noticed an old fence with several POSTED signs attached; they had also come across the gray and cheerless remains of a
treehouse
, the rusted hulk of an old car, and a huge oak tree split down the middle. But they could not recall now where any of these things were, precisely.

Jack let go of Stevie's hand and grabbed her rear end. They walked this way for a couple of yards and then his hand rose so it was around her waist. Stevie thought, for the thousandth time, that if all their relationship consisted of was sex, then maybe it would be all right.

Jack nodded at what looked like a roof off the path a dozen yards. From where they stood, they could see only the roof; any structure beneath was hidden by tall weeds and bushes.

They were not far from the stand of woods. Their house was well behind them, beyond a shallow rise, and the roof that Jack had nodded at was small and brown. He said that it was probably the roof of a hunter's cabin, and Stevie told him that she did not like the idea of hunters being in the area. Jack said that hunters were a fact of life in the country and she had better get used to it.

"Should we go and see what it is?" Stevie asked.

Jack shrugged and said there was no pressing need to do that, but if she really wanted to, then it was not far out of their way. He felt very magnanimous allowing her this little detour from their scheduled route.

Stevie said, "Out of our way? I didn't realize that we actually had a destination, Jack."

"Well, I guess we don't," Jack said.

"Good," Stevie said, and started off the path. Jack followed after a few seconds, letting her lead by a couple of yards. He did not much like being in tall grass. He supposed that there was poison ivy, that there were insects and spiders.

After a few moments, Stevie stopped walking. They were not much closer to their destination; still, only the small brown roof was visible.

Jack stopped walking.

Stevie looked at him. "Do you smell that?" she asked.

Jack sniffed the air. He shrugged. "I don't know." His sense of smell was not as good as hers. He sniffed again. He shook his head. "I don't smell anything."

Stevie said, "Salty air. Water. A beach. It smells like a beach, Jack."

"You mean, like fish? I don't smell fish." He crinkled his nose at the very thought of smelling fish out here.

"I do," Stevie said. "It smells like the ocean." She smiled. She loved the ocean. She turned, started walking.

"Stevie, why don't we just let it alone," Jack called to her.

She stopped and looked back at him. "I don't want to leave it alone, Jack." She started forward again. Suddenly, she was feeling very independent, and very bold. She didn't know where the feeling was coming from, but she liked it.

"Keep in mind," Jack called, "that this is not even our property."

"
Stiffneck
," she called back, without turning to look at him.

"
Stiffneck
? I'm not a
stiffneck
!"

"Be as adventurous out here as you are in bed," she called.