Strangers (48 page)

When the last eulogy was delivered, the mourners adjourned to the grave, where the casket waited. Snow had been cleared around Pablo’s plot, but the space was insufficient. Scores of people stood outside the prepared area, some in snow deeper than their boots. Others remained on the sidewalks that crisscrossed the memorial park, watching from a distance. Three hundred had come to pay their last respects to the old magician. The chilly air steamed with the breath of the rich and the poor, the famous and the unknown, Boston socialites, magicians.

Ginger Weiss and Rita Hannaby stood in the first circle around the gravesite. Since Monday, Ginger had not had much of an appetite and had gotten little sleep. She was pale, nervous, and very tired.

Both Rita and George had argued against Ginger’s attendance at the services. They were concerned that such a wrenchingly emotional experience would trigger a fugue. But the police had encouraged her, hoping she might see Pablo’s killer at the services. In self-defense she’d hidden the truth from the cops, leading them to believe that the killer was an ordinary burglar, and sometimes burglars were driven by such sick compulsions. But she knew that he was no mere burglar and that he would not risk arrest by coming to the cemetery.

Ginger wept during the eulogies, and by the time she walked from the chapel to the grave, her grief was a vise squeezing her heart. But she did not lose control. She was determined not to make a circus of this solemn occasion, determined to pay her respects with dignity.

Besides, she had come with a second purpose that could not be fulfilled
if she spiraled down into a fugue or suffered an emotional collapse. She was sure that Alexander Christophson—former Ambassador to Great Britain, former United States Senator, and former Director of the CIA—would be at the funeral of his old friend, and she wanted very much to speak with him. It was to Christophson, on Christmas Day, that Pablo had turned for advice about Ginger’s problems. And it was Alex Christophson who had told him about the Azrael Block. She had an important question to ask Christophson, though she dreaded the answer.

She had seen him in the chapel, recognized him from his days in public life, when he had been on television and in newspapers. He was a striking figure, tall, thin, white-haired, unmistakable. Now, they stood on opposite sides of the grave, the draped casket between them. He had glanced at her a couple times, though without recognition.

The minister said a brief final prayer. After a moment, some of the mourners greeted one another, formed small groups to talk. Others, including Christophson, moved away through a forest of headstones, past snow-laden pines and winter-stripped maples, toward the parking lot.

“I’ve got to talk to that man,” Ginger told Rita. “Be right back.”

Startled, Rita called after her, but Ginger did not pause or offer further explanation. She caught up with Christophson in the jagged shadows cast by the skeletal branches of an immense oak that was all black bark and crusted snow. She called his name, and he turned. He had piercing gray eyes, which widened when she told him who she was.

“I can’t help you,” he said, and began to turn away from her.

“Please,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “If you blame me for what happened to Pablo—”

“Why should you care what I think, Doctor?”

She held fast to his arm. “Wait. Please, for God’s sake.”

Christophson surveyed the slowly dispersing crowd in the cemetery, and Ginger knew that he was afraid the wrong people—dangerous people—might see him with her and assume he was helping her as Pablo had done. His head twitched slightly, and Ginger thought it was an indication of his nervousness, but then she realized it was the faint tremor of Parkinson’s disease. He said, “Dr. Weiss, if you’re seeking some form of absolution, then by all means let me provide it. Pablo knew the risks, and he accepted them. He was the captain of his own fate.”

“
Did
he understand the risks? That’s what I’ve got to know.”

Christophson seemed surprised. “I warned him myself.”

“Warned him about who? About what?”

“I don’t know who or what. But considering the enormous effort expended to tamper with your memory, you must’ve seen something of tremendous importance. I warned Pablo that whoever had brainwashed
you was no amateur and that if they realized the two of you were trying to break through the Azrael Block, they might come after not just you but him as well.” Christophson’s gray eyes searched her eyes for a moment, and then he sighed. “He
did
tell you about his conversation with me?”

“He told me everything—except about your warning.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “He didn’t breathe a word of that.”

He withdrew one elegant but palsied hand from his pocket and gripped her arm reassuringly. “Doctor, now that you’ve told me this, I can’t possibly lay any of the blame at your doorstep.”

“But
I
blame me,” Ginger said in a voice thin with misery.

“No. You can’t blame yourself for any of it.” Looking around again to make sure they were not under surveillance, Christophson opened the top two buttons of his overcoat, reached inside, plucked the display handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and gave it to Ginger. “Please stop punishing yourself. Our friend lived a full and fortunate life, Doctor. His death might’ve been violent, but it was relatively quick, which can be a blessing.”

Drying her eyes on the swatch of pale blue silk that he had given her, Ginger said, “He was a dear man.”

“He was,” Christophson agreed. “And I’m beginning to understand why he took the risks he did for you. He said
you
were a very dear woman, and I see his judgment was as accurate and reliable as usual.”

She finished blotting her eyes. Her heart still felt pinched in a vise, but she began to believe there was a chance that guilt and grief would eventually give way to grief alone. “Thank you.” As much to herself as to him, Ginger said, “What now? Where do I go from here?”

“I’m in no position to help you,” he said at once. “I’ve been out of the intelligence business for almost a decade, and I’ve no contacts anymore. I’ve no idea who might be behind your memory block or why.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to help me. I’m not risking any more innocent lives. I just thought you might have some idea how I can help myself.”

“Go to the police. It’s their
job
to help.”

Ginger shook her head. “No. The police are slow, too slow. Most of them are overworked, and the rest are just bureaucrats in uniforms. My problem’s too urgent to wait for them to solve it. Besides, I don’t trust them. Suddenly I don’t trust authorities of any kind. The tapes Pablo made of our sessions were gone when I took the police back to his apartment, so I didn’t mention them. I spooked. I didn’t tell the cops about my fugues or about how Pablo had been helping me. I just said we’d been friends, that I’d stopped by to have lunch and walked in on the killer. I let them think it was an ordinary burglary. Sheer paranoia. Didn’t trust them. Still don’t. So the cops are out.”

“Then find another hypnotist to regress you—”

“No. I’m not risking any more innocent lives,” she repeated.

“I understand. But those are the only suggestions I have.” He shoved both hands into the deep pockets of his overcoat. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to be,” she said.

He started to turn away, hesitated, sighed. “Doctor, I want you to understand me. I served in the war, the big war, with some distinction. Later, I was a good ambassador. As head of the CIA and as a senator, I made many difficult decisions, some that put me in personal danger. I never backed away from risk. But I’m an old man now. Seventy-six, and I feel older. Parkinson’s. A bad heart. High blood pressure. I have a wife I love very much, and if anything happens to me, she’ll be alone. I don’t know how well she’d deal with being alone, Dr. Weiss.”

“Please, there’s no need to justify yourself,” Ginger said. She realized how completely and quickly their roles had reversed. In the beginning, he had been the one full of reassurances and absolution; now she was returning the favor. Jacob, her father, had often said that the capacity for mercy was humankind’s greatest virtue, and that the giving and receiving of mercy formed a bond unbreakable. Ginger remembered Jacob’s words now because, in allowing Alex Christophson to allay her guilt and in trying to allay his, she felt that bond.

Apparently, he felt it, too, for although he did not stop trying to explain himself, his explanations became more intimate and were offered now in a tone of voice that was less defensive and more conspiratorial. “Quite frankly, Doctor, my reluctance to get involved is not so much because I find life infinitely precious but because I am increasingly afraid of death.” As he spoke, he reached into an inside pocket and withdrew a notepad and pen. “In my life I’ve done some things of which I’m not proud.” Holding the pen in his palsied right hand, he began to print. “True, most of those sins were committed in the line of duty. Government and espionage are both necessary, but neither is a clean business. In those days, I didn’t believe in God or an afterlife. Now I wonder.…And wondering, I’m sometimes afraid.” He tore the top page from the pad. “Afraid of what might await me after death, you see. That’s why I want to hold on to life as long as I can, Doctor. That’s why, God help me, I’ve become a coward in my old age.”

As Christophson folded and passed to her the slip of paper on which he had been printing, Ginger realized that he had managed to put his back to all of the remaining mourners before he had removed the notepad and pen from his coat. No one could have seen what he had done.

He said, “I’ve just given you the phone number of an antique store in Greenwich, Connecticut. My younger brother, Philip, owns the place.
You can’t call me direct because the wrong people may have seen us talking; my telephone might be tapped. I won’t risk associating with you, Dr. Weiss, and I won’t pursue any investigation of your problem. However, I have many years of broad experience in these matters, and there may be times when that experience will be of help to you. You may encounter something you don’t understand, a situation you don’t know how to deal with, and I may be able to offer advice. Just call Philip and leave your number with him. He’ll immediately call me at home and use a prearranged codeword. Then I’ll go out to a pay phone, return his call, get the number you left with him, and contact you as quickly as possible. Experience, my peculiar kind of malevolent experience, is all I’m willing to offer you, Dr. Weiss.”

“It’s more than enough. You’re not obligated to help me at all.”

“Good luck.” He turned abruptly and walked away, his boots crunching in the frozen snow.

Ginger returned to the grave, where Rita, the mortician, and two laborers were the only people remaining. The velvet curtain around the grave had been collapsed and removed. A plastic tarpaulin had been pulled off a waiting mound of earth.

“What was that all about?” Rita asked.

“Tell you later,” Ginger said, bending down to pick up a rose from the pile of flowers beside Pablo Jackson’s final resting place. She leaned forward and tossed the bloom into the hole, on top of the casket. “
Alav ha-sholem.
May this sleep be only a little dream between this world and something better.
Baruch ha-Shem.
”

As she and Rita walked away, Ginger heard the laborers begin to shovel dirt onto the casket.

Elko County, Nevada

On Thursday, Dr. Fontelaine was satisfied that Ernie Block was cured of his disabling nyctophobia. “Fastest cure I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I guess you Marines are tougher than ordinary mortals.”

On Saturday, January 11, after only four weeks in Milwaukee, Ernie and Faye went home. They flew into Reno on United, then caught a ten-seat commuter flight to Elko, arriving at eleven-twenty-seven in the morning.

Sandy Sarver met them at the airport in Elko, though Ernie did not immediately recognize her. She was standing by the small terminal, in the crystalline winter sunshine, waving as Ernie and Faye disembarked. Gone was the pale-faced mouse, the familiar slump-shouldered frump.
For the first time since Ernie had known her, Sandy was wearing a little makeup, eye shadow, and lipstick. Her nails were no longer bitten. Her hair, always limp and dull and neglected in the past, was now full, glossy. She had gained ten pounds. She had always looked older than she was. Now she looked years younger.

She blushed when Ernie and Faye raved about her makeover. She pretended the changes were of little consequence, but she was clearly pleased by their praise, approval, and delight.

She had changed in other ways, as well. For one thing, she was usually reticent and shy, but as they walked to the parking lot and put the baggage in the back of her red pickup, she asked lots of questions about Lucy, Frank, and the grandchildren. She did not ask about Ernie’s phobia because she knew nothing of it; they had kept his condition secret and had explained the extension of their Wisconsin visit by saying they wanted to spend more time with the grandchildren. In the truck, as Sandy drove through Elko and onto the interstate, she was downright garrulous as she spoke of the Christmas just past and of business at the Tranquility Grille.

As much as anything, Sandy’s driving surprised Ernie. He knew she had an aversion to four-wheel travel. But now she drove fast, with an ease and skill Ernie had never seen in her before.

Faye, sitting between Ernie and Sandy, was aware of this change, too, for she gave Ernie meaningful looks when Sandy maneuvered the pickup with special fluidity and audacity.

Then a bad thing happened.

Less than a mile from the motel, Ernie’s interest in Sandy’s metamorphosis was suddenly displaced by the queer feeling that had first seized him on December 10, when he’d been coming home from Elko with the new lighting fixtures: the feeling that a particular piece of ground, half a mile ahead, south of the highway, was
calling
him. The feeling that something strange had happened to him out there. As before, it was simultaneously an absurd and gripping feeling, characterized by the eerie attraction of a talismanic place in a dream.