The Clairvoyant Countess (9 page)

“I get your point,” Pruden said grimly, and then, with a shake of his head, “You make it sound so simple.”

“Simple?” She looked at him in surprise. “It is like
a kaleidoscope, that is all. A small shift of focus and one sees beyond illusion to reality. You look at things one way, I another, but you need only shift your attention and you too will see.”

“Well, if it should be true—” He put down his napkin. “I think you will forgive me if I leave now, Madame Karitska, I think there is a little unfinished business I should look into tonight.”

“I think so too,” she said with a twinkle. “And we will see, shall we not?”

They did not meet again until the weekend, but when Pruden arrived he still had not lost the slightly dazed look that he had worn five nights earlier. He stood in the doorway and said, “I’ve just visited Mazda’s grave. I think I went to—no, I don’t know why I went.”

“No?” she said smiling.

“Interpol finally identified his fingerprints,” he said harshly. “He was never Ulanov Bugov. They don’t know who he is, except they have his fingerprints and about half a dozen aliases. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and turned away. “There were flowers on her grave today,” he said, suddenly turning back. “Nobody attended her funeral, they tell me, and yet there were flowers on her grave today.”

“As I believe I said before,” Madame Karitska told him gravely, “it continues to astonish me what things of value are thrown away on Walnut Street.”

“What’s this?” asked Pruden, stopping in at Madame Karitska’s one evening on his way home after a long day on the street. He had just discovered that Madame Karitska had two guests, one of them Gavin O’Connell, the other a very Establishment-type middle-aged man in a well-cut business suit.

Madame Karitska put a finger to her lips and gestured him to follow her to the center of the room. Lieutenant Pruden could make no sense of what he saw. Neither Gavin nor the stranger appeared even aware of his arrival: in front of each lay a book, and they were staring with enormous concentration at their respective half-open volumes.

And suddenly as he watched a strange thing happened: a page of Gavin’s book slowly lifted and turned. There were no windows open: there were no hands
touching the pages and yet the page had turned.

“I did it,” crowed Gavin gleefully. “Hey, Jonesy, I did it!”

“Mr. Faber-Jones, this is Lieutenant Pruden,” broke in Madame Karitska. “Yes, you did it, Gavin. Capital! But Mr. Faber-Jones also had some success, I notice.”

“Kind of you,” said Faber-Jones, getting to his feet. “Only pushed the page halfway, though, and frankly I’m exhausted.”

“Me too,” admitted Gavin. “Hi, Lieutenant Pruden!”

“What have I interrupted?” asked Pruden curiously.

“A practice session,” Gavin told him eagerly. “It’s great meeting Mr. Faber-Jones, you know, he has the gift too.”

“Oh? But what have you been practicing?”

“Concentration,” said Madame Karitska. “The moving of mountains by the use of the mind. In this case, the lifting of a page in a book by sheer concentration of psychic energies. The pages can turn—you saw it yourself.”

“Incredible,” said Pruden.

“You can’t just say ‘Move!’ to the pages either,” put in Gavin. “You have to lift them with concentrated
thought
, and boy it’s rough. It’s fun too, though. You ought to try it.”

Pruden’s laugh was short and doubting.

“You find it unbelievable?” inquired Madame Karitska.

“I don’t know,” said Pruden, frowning. “I might have six days ago but—”

“But what?” asked Faber-Jones, sinking into the couch, obviously tired and ready for diversion.

“Do not say a word,” said Madame Karitska, “until
I bring out the Turkish coffee I’ve brewed, with a glass of milk for Gavin.” When she had returned and distributed refreshments she sat down and inserted a cigarette into a long holder. “Now tell us what has placed a crack in your imperviousness.”

Pruden said, “I’d really like to know: you believe the mind has such intensity, such power?”

“But of course,” she said, amused. “We use only a fraction of its power, we use only a tiny amount of ourselves.”

“But for instance,” Pruden said, picking his words carefully, “do you believe a man can simply announce that he’s going to die, be in perfect health and—just die?”

Madame Karitska smiled faintly. “So many diseases are psychosomatic, it happens oftener than you think. I have seen people turn their faces from life, their will to live gone. It may take months or years but they die.”

He shook his head. “I mean something much faster than that—death in a matter of days.”

“Ah,” said Madame Karitska, “now that is very interesting. You have met such a situation? You must have met such a situation or you would not be speaking of this?”

He said ruefully, “I’m still not accustomed to having my mind browsed through but yes, I’ve met such a situation. Heard about it, at least. The patrolman on the block, Bill Kane, has been puzzling over it for days. It seems a man named Arturo Mendez died about two weeks ago. On a Wednesday he told his brother Luis that he would die before the week was out, and on the following Tuesday night he died.”

“Did they not call a doctor?”

“On Monday they called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. The doctors found nothing organically wrong with him, but the following night he was dead.”

“Did they perform an autopsy?”

Pruden nodded. “He died quite literally of a heart stoppage but there was nothing wrong with his heart either.”

“Then it was precognition,” put in Gavin eagerly. “He knew something was going to happen ahead of time.”

“No—no, I think not,” Madame Karitska said, and with an intent glance at Pruden, “There is more?”

He nodded. “Yesterday Bill Kane told me that Arturo’s brother Luis won’t get out of bed now. He’s settled his debts, paid his landlady a week’s rent in advance, and told her that he’ll be dead by Monday morning.”

“And this is Friday night,” mused Madame Karitska. “I wonder … where do they live, Lieutenant?”

“Three blocks away on Fifth Street, in the Puerto Rican section.”

She nodded. “I will go there tomorrow, I would like to see this.”

Pruden shook his head. “It’s not a good section for gringos, as they call us. Very few speak English, and Luis only a little. Do you speak Spanish?”

“No,” said Madame Karitska, “but there is communication without speech.” She added thoughtfully, “This is very interesting to me. There are yogis in the East, of course, who can stop breathing at will, but neither of your two men is a yogi; there must be very
powerful forces involved here. It is the invisible at work, and I am a student of the invisible.” She glanced abruptly at her watch and said, “It’s time, Gavin.” To Pruden she explained, “Mr. Faber-Jones has brought over a portable television so that we can see John Painter make his debut on the ‘Tommy Tompkins Show.’ ”

“Someone you know?” asked Pruden as Gavin jumped up to turn on the set.

“A protégé of Mr. Faber-Jones.”

Faber-Jones looked at her reproachfully. “We both know whose protégé he really is, Madame Karitska.”

“Nonsense,” she told him, “you’re growing quite fond of him and you know it, especially since he stopped wearing tennis sneakers.”

“He only exchanged them for calfskin boots and a sequin jump suit,” put in Faber-Jones dryly. “A very expensive sequin jump suit too, I might add.”

“Hey, that sounds cool,” broke in Gavin. “You think I could meet him sometime?”

“Sssh,” said Madame Karitska, touching his shoulder and pointing to the television screen on which a glowing sequinned figure had appeared, guitar in hand, to sit on a stool in front of the cameras. Faber-Jones turned up the volume just as the song began:

“It’s already number two on the charts,” Faber-Jones told Pruden in an aside. “My Pisces company cut the platter.”

“Oh?” said Pruden, blinking, and gave Faber-Jones a startled second glance.

On the following morning Madame Karitska had an appointment at nine o’clock, and when her client had left she placed a sign on her door that read
BACK AT
12. She then set out for Fifth Street, which she had always enjoyed on her walks around the city because so much of its life was lived without concealment on the street. Today was no exception: the sun was summer-hot and before Madame Karitska had even reached Fifth Street she could hear its music. At this hour flamenco dominated, and then as she rounded the corner she was met by John Painter’s “Once in Old Atlantis” pouring out of the Caballeros Social Club across the street.

Madame Karitska picked her way along the crowded sidewalk. Street vendors chanted and shouted, and young men armed with lugs and wrenches peered into the hoods of old cars or lay under them with only sandaled feet showing. Several old men huddled over a game spread out on empty orange crates, and one family of four were unself-consciously eating early lunch at a card table on the sidewalk. Every stair and porch was occupied by people of varying ages taking the sun with the enthusiasm of any Miami Beach sun-lounger. It was noisy, but it was more alive than Walnut Street could ever be.

As Madame Karitska approached number 203 a uniformed policeman came out of a store across the street, saw her, and waved. Crossing to her side he said, “You must be the lady Lieutenant Pruden said would be coming around ten to see Luis. I’ve been watching for you, I’m Bill Kane.”

They shook hands. “I told his landlady I’d be bringing you over,” he added. Her name’s Mrs. Malone.”

“Malone!” said Madame Karitska, amused. “Lieutenant Pruden was certain no one would speak English here.”

“The lieutenant’s not a patrolman, he only drives through in a car,” Kane said forgivingly. “Mrs. Malone’s been here for years, runs a very tight boardinghouse. This area,” he said, pointing, “runs ten blocks down to the river. Used to be Irish, now it’s Puerto Rican.”

He stopped in front of a narrow clapboard house painted a dull brown. Narrow wooden steps led up to a narrow front porch made narrower by two windows with starched lace curtains and a heavy wooden door with a peephole. Patrolman Kane rang, and after an interval they heard approaching footsteps inside. The door swung open and a large woman with round pink cheeks and black hair confronted them. Her face softened when she saw Bill Kane. “Well, now, so it’s you,” she said, beaming at them both. “I didn’t even have time to take off my apron, I was that busy baking, you see. Come in, come in.”

“And we won’t keep you from your baking more than a moment,” Madame Karitska told her reassuringly. “We’ve come to see Luis Mendez.”

“Well, it’s kind of you, I’m sure. A terrible business, this, I can tell you. He won’t eat,” said Mrs. Malone, crossing herself. “His girl friend Maria sits with him evenings but everybody else stays away. They’re scared. It scares me too, frankly.”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska as they began climbing
steep carpeted stairs. “Does he have many friends? Is he well-liked?”

“Oh, he’s very popular in the neighborhood,” said Mrs. Malone. “He drives an ice-cream truck, you know, or did—and his brother too, God rest his soul—and very hard-working and personable they was too. A very nice way they had about them with children. ‘Hey! Here comes Looie.
Viva
Looie,’ ” she said with a shift into mimicry. “Many’s the time I’d hear them. The kids loved him. As for close friends,” she added in a practical voice, “well, they’ve been here in the States only two years and more hard-working men I’ve never seen. Up at dawn, back late—but,” she said with a twinkle, “I’m not saying there wasn’t time for a few beers at the social club, or time for a girl friend. Very good men, both of ’em. Hard-working and kind.”

“No enemies?” emphasized Madame Karitska.

“Enemies!” Mrs. Malone’s shocked voice was reply enough. “Luis? Goodness no!” She opened the door of a room at the end of the hall and called, “Company for you, Mr. Mendez. Not that he’ll hear me,” she added in an aside. “Real spooky it is.”

They entered a large room, sparely furnished. The walls were papered with garish climbing roses that nearly obscured two crucifixes hung on the wall. There was a huge overstuffed chair in one corner, with a lamp and magazine table beside it. The bureau was massive and bore a statue of the Virgin Mary as well as a great deal of clutter. On a double bed by the window lay a young man in a rumpled shirt and slacks, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. He looked no more than thirty, with jet-black hair and a black stubble of beard along his jaw, but the color had been drained
from his skin, leaving it gray, and there were dull blue smudges under his eyes.

The landlady withdrew, closing the door behind her, and Bill Kane stood with his back to it, like a guard. Madame Karitska walked over to the bed, looked down into the man’s face and then sat on the edge of the bed and grasped one of his hands in hers. She said nothing. The man’s gaze swerved to hers and he moved restlessly, rebelliously.