The Haunted Air (17 page)

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Authors: F. Paul Wilson

BOOK: The Haunted Air
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“Fuck me! You've gotta be kidding!”
“Believe me, I know these switches.”
“You think it's that new guy?”
“Could be, but how would he have got in here to install the switch? And don't forget, he paid us in gold.”
“Gotta be those niggers then! Fuck!”
She then began stringing together innovative combinations of every four-, ten-, and twelve-letter expletive known to humankind.
“You think so?”
Foster said when she ran out of breath.
“Fuck, yes! They're the ones who tied us up last night and—”
“That was a white guy.”
“Did you see him!”
“No, but—”
“Then what the fuck do you know?”
“It was a white guy's voice.”
“It was them, I'm telling you! They must've taken our keys and come here and fucked us up. Who knows what else they've done! They're gonna pay for this. Oh, are they gonna fucking pay!”
This wasn't going the way Jack wanted. The whole idea of coming here had been to distract them from the Kentons.
“
All right,
” Foster said. “
Let's just say it was them. After what happened, do you really want to risk going back to Astoria? Our car's impounded, all our credit cards are gone, not to mention the humiliation of having to walk around Lower Manhattan dressed in cardboard.
”
“They're gonna pay! Maybe not this week, and maybe not next, but first chance we get, we're gonna fuck those niggers over good!”
Conversation between the two Fosters stopped, and Jack assumed that the Mrs. had stomped off while Carl reassembled the light switch.
Jack and the four women hung out for another ten minutes or so, then Foster reappeared to welcome them back into the reading room.
Jack hung back.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Butler?”
“Yeah. I think I've seen enough.”
“I hope there's no misunderstanding here. You see—”
Foster thought Jack was bailing out. He cut him off to put him straight.
“I think that was real gutsy of her to pull that stunt. That shows me she's got real confidence in her powers. I'm totally impressed.”
Foster switched gears like a Formula One driver. “Well, I took you from the start as a man of intelligence and discrimination.”
“So when's the soonest I can book my own private session with the lady? You told me you had half an hour open Tuesday afternoon. Nothing at all tomorrow?”
Foster pulled the appointment book from the desk drawer and thumbed through the pages. He frowned.
“I'm afraid not. Tuesday is the soonest. Is three o'clock good for you?”
This lady was doing gold-rush business.
“I guess it'll hafta be. I'd really prefer an hour but, maybe a half-hour session for starters is best. You know, to see if she can make the right contact.”
“Oh, she can, I assure you.”
“Okay, see you then.”
Jack let himself out and made for the elevator. Once inside and headed down, he slammed a hand against the wall of the car. Damn. He'd read this one all wrong. He saw what his mistake had been: He'd tried to strike at the Fosters indirectly, through their clientele. Wrong angle. He knew now he'd have to take the battle directly to them.
He had a half-formed plan of how to do that. He'd need the Kenton brothers' help to fill in the rest. He just hoped Madame Pomerol wouldn't be able to wriggle free next time.
Jack stood outside the screen door and watched Lyle's cautious approach.
“Can I help you?”
“Lyle, it's me. Jack.”
Lyle stepped closer, his expression saying, Who is this fool kidding? Then he grinned.
“Well, I'll be damned. It is you. Come on in.”
Jack stepped inside. “Didn't have time to change my clothes.” He started to peel off his wig. “Man, this thing is hot.”
“And beat ugly too.”
He turned to see Charlie popping in through the front door behind him.
“So you're back,” Lyle said to his brother. He glanced at his watch, thinking. “Finished your good works for the day?”
Good works? Had he been to church?
“Yowzah.” Charlie turned to Jack. “Yo, G. How'd it go down?”
He hated reporting less than complete success, but they had a right to know.
“Well, the good news is the remote light switch worked perfectly …”
They all had a good laugh as he described exposing Carl in the act of waving fake ectoplasm through the air, then …
“But the rest didn't pan out. The lady cooked up some lame story about setting all this up in advance to demonstrate how other fake mediums will try to fool them.”
“And they bought it?” Lyle said.
Jack nodded. “She's pretty glib.”
“Aw, maaaan,” Charlie said.
Lyle's voice took on a bitter edge. “So last night was all for nothing then?”
“Not quite. I've got an afternoon appointment Tuesday, and there's a lot I need to do between now and then if I'm going to bring them down.”
“More electronics?” Charlie said, his eyes lighting.
“Not this time. This is going to be all manual—sleight of hand stuff. But I need your help with the setup. Do you subscribe to the Blue Directory?”
Lyle's expression was blank. “Blue … ?
“The medium I worked for used to subscribe to a book that had all sorts of information on hundreds of sitters.”
“Oh, right. I saw a copy years ago, but I don't get it. We use a website—”
Should have figured, Jack thought. It was the computer age.
“You mean the directory's online now?”
“What we use isn't run by the Blue Directory people, but it's the same sort of thing. All you do is pay an annual fee for a password and—”
“Let's check it out,” Jack said. “I need to find a dead guy to fit a certain profile.”
Lyle looked at his brother. “Charlie's the computer guy. Want to take care of this?”
“Sure.” He started toward the kitchen. “This way, my man.”
Lyle grabbed his arm. “Use the one in the command center.”
“But this one's closer.”
“We've got a little problem in there.”
Charlie gave him a look. “The TV's still … ?”
Lyle nodded. “Simpler if we all just head for the Channeling Room.”
Jack felt as if he were missing every other word. “What's wrong?”
“Electrical problems in the TV room,” Lyle said. “That's all.”
Jack was sure that wasn't all, but obviously they wanted to keep it between themselves.
Charlie led the way to his command center off the Channeling Room. Jack knew this was where he controlled the sound, the lighting, and all the mechanical effects during the sittings. The computer's monitor was just one of many screens among the wires, the key cutter, the cameras, the scanner, the photocopier, and mysterious black boxes racked around the room. The swimming fish of the screen saver showed that the computer was already up and running.
Charlie seated himself before it and tapped the keyboard. Half a minute later the screen filled with the welcome page of a website with the innocuous name of www.sitters-net.com. The page contained boxes for user name and password set against wallpaper of a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
“Kind of obvious, isn't it,” Jack said.
Lyle shrugged. “Probably gets hits from baby-sitters now and again, but ‘sitter' is pretty much an inside term.”
Jack knew the practice of listing the vital stats of sitters went back half a century at least. It started with mediums keeping private data on card files; then they started sharing cards with other mediums. Finally someone began collecting stats from all over the country and publishing them in a blue-covered directory sold only to mediums. His old boss, Madame Ouskaya, had been a subscriber. The Internet was the inevitable next step.
Charlie hit some keys and “d-town” appeared after USER ID, followed by a string of asterisks in the PASSWORD box. He hit ENTER and a few seconds later a search page appeared.
Jack said, “I remember the old Blue Directory used to hang onto the names of sitters even after they were dead—just in case some relative decided later to try and contact them.”
“This one does the same thing.”
Charlie clicked the mouse pointer on an icon near the
top of the screen. “This take us to the O-S section.”
“O-S?”
“Other Side.”
“Got it.” Jack rested a hand on Charlie's shoulder. “Okay, do a search for ‘coin collector' and see what comes up.”
“‘Coin collect' might get us more hits, yo.”
He typed in “coin+collect.” A few seconds later a list of half a dozen names appeared.
Only half a dozen? Jack was disappointed. He leaned closer to the screen searching for dates.
“I need a guy who's died in the past year or so.”
“Ay, yo, trip this,” Charlie said, tapping a finger on the screen over the fourth name down. “Matthew Thomas West. Died January twenty-seventh.”
Jack looked and saw the typical documentation: name, address, date of birth—and, in this case, date of “crossing over”—along with Social Security number, the names of his wife—deceased sixteen years before him—and his brother and parents, even his dog, but no kids. Plus a list of his interests. Matthew West's big passion, besides his wife, with whom he'd been communicating through mediums for many years, was rare coins.
This guy looked perfect except for the address. Minnesota …
He shook his head. “I was hoping for something closer. Let's check out the others.” He stared at the screen awhile, then shook his head again. “Nope. Looks like I'll have to make do with Uncle Matt from St. Paul.”
“
Uncle
Matt?” Lyle said.
“I talked up a fictional uncle to Foster that I wanted Pomerol to contact for me. Fortunately I never gave his name. Well, now we have a name. Uncle Matt the Minnesotan. Can you print him out for me?”
“Done deal,” Charlie said. “But what you got going?”
“A sting. If things go right, I hope to tempt Madame Pomerol into pulling the old Spanish handkerchief switch on me.”
Charlie frowned. “Spanish handkerchief? Whuddat?”
“An old Gypsy con,” Lyle said. “And I do mean
old
. Probably been running a couple hundred years now, and grifters are still working updated versions on the street.” He looked at Jack. “But how's that—?”
“Once she sets up the switch on me, I'm going to work a double switch right back at her—one with a nasty barb at the end.”
“Okay, but I still don't see what that's gonna do for us—me and Charlie.”
Jack held his hands high like a preacher. “Have faith, my sons, have faith. I can't tell you all the details because I haven't figured them out yet. But trust me, if this works, it will be a sting of beauty.”
Charlie handed Jack the printout. “You a natural at this. Why ain't you still in?”
Jack hesitated. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
You're not going to like this, he thought.
“I got out because I found it an empty enterprise. I wanted to be doing something where I gave value for value.”
“We give value,” Lyle said, a bit too quickly.
Charlie shook his head. “No we don't, bro. You know we don't.”
Lyle appeared to be at a loss for words, a new experience for him, perhaps.
Finally he shrugged and said, “I could use a beer. Anyone else?”
Jack had a sense this was mere courtesy—did Lyle want him to leave?—but took him up on it anyway. A beer would be good right now, and maybe he could find out why he was so on edge.
Instead of drinking in the kitchen as they had last night, Lyle sat him down in the waiting room. And like last night, Charlie had a Pepsi.
“So,” Jack said after they'd popped their tops and toasted
the coming downfall of Madame Pomerol, “what kind of electrical problem you having?”
Lyle shrugged it off. “Nothing serious.”
“Yeah right,” Charlie said. “Like a haunted TV ain't serious.”
Lyle glared at his brother. “No such thing as haunted
anything,
bro.”
“Then what—?”
Lyle held up a hand. “We'll talk about it later.”
Haunted TV? Sounded interesting. Then again, maybe not if that meant it played nothing but “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoons.
“Anything I can do?”
“I'll straighten it out,” Lyle said, but he didn't look convincing.
“Sure?”
“If I may quote: ‘Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, the gnomed mine.'”
“The gnomed mine … gnomed with a
G
?”
Lyle nodded. “With a
G.
”
“I like that.”
“It's Keats.”
“You're quoting Keats?” Jack laughed. “Lyle, you've got to be the whitest black guy I've ever met.”
Jack had expected a laugh, but Lyle's expression darkened instead.
“What? You mean I'm not a real black man because I know Keats? Because I'm well spoken? Only white men are well spoken? Only white men quote Keats? Real black men only quote Ice-T, is that it? I'm not a real black man because I don't dress like a pimp and drive with a gangsta lean, or drape myself in dukey ropes and sit on my front porch swiggin' forties?”
“Hey, easy. I was just—”
“I know what you were just, Jack. You were just acting like somebody who's got this MTV image of what's black, and if a guy doesn't fit that he's some kind of oreo. You're
not alone. Plenty of black guys look at me that way too. Even my own brother. Better get over it—you and him and them. It's a white man's world, but just because I'm making it in that world doesn't mean I'm trying to become white. I may not have a degree, but I've audited enough courses to qualify for one. I'm educated. Just because I didn't major in Black Studies doesn't make me a whitey wannabe; and just because I refuse to let the lowest black common denominators define me doesn't make me an Uncle Tom.”
“Whoa!” Jack held up his hands. He felt as if he'd stepped on a mine. “Sorry. Wasn't looking to offend.”
Lyle closed his eyes and took a breath. When he let it out he looked at Jack. “I know you weren't. You didn't deserve that. I apologize.”
“I'm sorry. You're sorry.” Jack rose and extended his hand. “I guess that makes us even then?”
“Even.” Lyle's smile was tinged with embarrassment as they shook. “See you tomorrow. I'll have the first half of your fee ready.”
Jack tossed off the rest of his beer and headed out, making a mental note: Lyle Kenton = short fuse.

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