The manitou (13 page)

“It may be
easier than you think,” I said. “The doctors made X-rays of this medicine man
when he was still in a fetal stage, and it looks as though they’ve deformed or
injured him.”

“That won’t
make any difference,” said Singing Rock. “The spell was made when he was still
whole and well, and that’s what counts.”

“Can you
actually make him leave Karen Tandy?”

“I hope so. I
don’t think I’ll have the power to divert him right back to the 1650s. That
would take a very strong and experienced medicine man – somebody much more
powerful than me.

But what I can
do is get him out of her, reverse the growth inside her, and redirect it to
someone else.”

I felt a chill.
“Someone else?
But you can’t wish that on someone
else. What’s the point of saving Karen Tandy’s life if we kill another person?”

Singing Rock
puffed at his cigar. “I’m sorry, Mr. Erskine. I thought you understood the
problems. There’s no other way of doing it.”

“But who will
the manitou go to?”

“It could be
anybody. You have to realize that he’ll be fighting for his own existence, and
he’ll look for any host that is weak and receptive.”

I sighed. All
of a sudden, I felt very tired. It’s not at all easy, battling against
something that doesn’t know the meaning of physical exhaustion, and which is
totally committed to its own survival.

“If what you’re
saying is true, Singing Rock, then you might as well fly straight back to South
Dakota.”

Singing Rock
frowned. “But surely you wouldn’t object if we transferred the manitou to
someone useless – like a hopeless drug addict, maybe, or a bum from the Bowery,
or a Negro criminal?”

“Singing Rock, that’s out of the question.
This whole thing
has happened because one race exercised prejudice against another. If it hadn’t
been for the way the Dutch threatened this medicine man back in 1650, he
wouldn’t be here now, threatening us. I can’t see that there’s any
justification for doing the same thing all over again to another racial
minority. I mean, we’d just be perpetuating the evil.”

The Indian
medicine man in the mohair suit looked across at me curiously.

“That’s pretty
funny, hearing that from a white man,” he said. “My father and my grandfather
and my great-grandfather before him, they all felt the same way about white
men. Unscrupulous devils with hearts of stone. Now, when you’ve finally taught
us how to be as hard and uncompromising as you, you turn soft on us.”

The Cougar
hissed along the wet highway. A ray of yellow sunlight fell across our laps.

“Well, maybe
it’s easy for us to be soft now,” I said. “We’ve got everything we want, and
now we’ve done that, we can afford to be charitable. But whatever the reason, I
can’t justify transferring the manitou into someone else, no matter what race
they are, and no matter how broken-down they are. It just goes against the
grain.”

“Okay,” said
Singing Rock. “Then we have an alternative. But I warn you, it’s much more
dangerous.”

“What is it?”

“We wait until
the medicine man emerges from Karen Tandy’s body.”

“But that will
kill her – she’ll be dead.”

“In the accepted sense, yes.
But
her own
manitou, or spirit, will continue to live inside the medicine man. So she won’t
be past saving.”

By now, we were
well into Manhattan, and I slowed up and stopped at a red light.

“I don’t
understand.”

“It isn’t easy,
I admit,” said Singing Rock. “But once the medicine man has emerged, we’ll have
some ability to deal with him physically. We may be able to imprison him,
provided we do it with spells as well as bars. And then we can actually force
him to return Karen Tandy’s manitou to her.”

“Force him?” I
asked.
“How?”

“By invoking the power of Gitche Manitou.
All lesser manitous
are subject to the greater influence of the Great Spirit”

“But couldn’t
he do the same thing – and kill you?”

Singing Rock
thoughtfully sucked his cigar.
“Of course.
That’s the
chance I’d have to take.”

“And would you
take it?”

“If it was worth my while.”

“And how much
is worth my while.”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

I grimaced.
“Okay. I don’t blame you. I’d want a hell of a lot more than that to risk my
life.”

“In that case,”
said Singing Rock, tossing his cigar out of the window, “thirty thousand.”

By now, it was
all up to Karen Tandy’s parents. No one else could pay the price of Singing
Rock’s medicine, and no one else had the right to let him work it. I took
Singing Rock back to my flat on Tenth Avenue, and he showered and drank coffee
while I called up Karen’s parents. I told them who I was, and they invited me
over for lunch. I just hoped their food wouldn’t stick in their throats when
they heard what Singing Rock was suggesting.

We reached Mrs.
Karmann’s apartment at one o’clock. The glazier had been around that morning,
and the window that had been smashed during the seance was repaired. It was
warm and expensive and cozy in there, but there was a distinctly awkward
atmosphere.

Jeremy Tandy
was a dry-looking, fair-haired man in his middle fifties. He wore a dark
Nixonite suit, and his shirt was white and immaculate. His face had something
of the elfishness of Karen, but it was matured and beaten into a harder and
less compromising form.

His wife, Erica
Tandy, was a light, slight woman with brown flowing hair and startlingly large
eyes. She wore a black Dior suit, and contrasted it with simple gold jewelry. I
was fascinated by her long gleaming fingernails, and her $5,000 Piaget
wristwatch.

Mrs. Karmann
was there, too, fussing around and trying to make everybody feel comfortable.

She needn’t
have bothered. We all felt awkward and odd, and no amount of small talk could
do anything about it.

“I’m Harry
Erskine,” I said, wringing Jeremy Tandy’s hand as firmly as I could. “And this
is Mr.

Singing Rock, from South Dakota.”

“Just Singing
Rock will do,” said Singing Rock.

We sat down on
chairs and settees, and Jeremy Tandy passed round cigarettes.

“Dr. Hughes
told me you had an interest in my daughter’s case,” said Jeremy Tandy. “But so
far he hasn’t told me who you are or what you do. Do you think you can
enlighten me?”

I coughed. “Mr.
Tandy – Mrs. Tandy. A lot of what I’m going so say now will sound far-fetched.

All I can tell
you is that I was just as skeptical as you when I first found out about it. But
the evidence is so overwhelming that everyone who knows anything about your
daughter’s illness has had to agree that this is probably – I won’t say
definitely – the cause of it.”

Step by step, I
explained how Karen had come to me and told me about her dream. I told them how
I had tracked down the Dutch ship, and how Amelia had raised the spirit of the
medicine man. I told them about the reincarnation of medicine men, and our
visit to Dr. Snow in Albany.

And then I told
them about Singing Rock, and what he was going to try to do, and how much it
would cost.

Jeremy Tandy
listened to all this impassively. Every now and then he sipped at a glass of
brandy, and he chain-smoked as he listened, but otherwise his face betrayed no
sign of emotion.

When I’d
finished, he sat back and looked at his wife. She seemed bewildered and
confused, and I couldn’t blame her. When you told it straight and cold, it was
a pretty fantastic thing to swallow.

Jeremy Tandy
leaned forward and looked me square in the eye.

“Is this a
con?” he asked grittily. “If it is, tell me right out now, and we’ll let it go
at that.”

I shook my
head. “Mr. Tandy, I know it sounds incredible, but if you call Dr. Hughes he
will tell you the same story. And you have a cast-iron guarantee that it isn’t
a con. You don’t have to pay any money at all until Karen is well. If she
doesn’t recover, that will mean that Singing Rock here has failed, and so he
won’t
be needing
the money anyway. If he fails, he may
die.”

Singing Rock
nodded soberly.

Jeremy Tandy
stood up and paced the floor like a puma in a cage.

“My daughter’s
sick,” he snapped. “They tell me she’s dying. Then they tell me she’s giving
birth to a three-hundred-year-old medicine man. Then they tell me I’m going to
need another medicine man to get rid of the first medicine man, and that’s
going to cost me thirty thousand bucks.”

He turned to
me.

“Now is that
bullshit, or is that bullshit?” he asked.

I tried not to
lose my temper. “Mr. Tandy, I know it sounds crazy. But why don’t you just call
Dr. Hughes? Dr. Hughes is a world expert on tumors. He knows more about tumors
than I know about the New York subway, and I’ve been traveling on it since I
was knee high to a high knee. Call him. Find out. But don’t waste any time,
because Karen is dying and as far as everyone can see there’s only one way to
save her.”

Jeremy Tandy
stopped pacing, and stared at me with his head on one side.

“Do you really
mean that you’re not kidding?” he said.

“No, Mr. Tandy,
I am not kidding. I am serious. Ask Mrs. Karmann here. She saw the face on the
table, didn’t you, Mrs. Karmann?”

Mrs. Karmann
nodded. “It’s true, Jerry. I saw it with my own eyes. I trust Mr. Erskine. He
isn’t lying.”

Mrs. Tandy
reached up and took her husband’s hand.
“Jerry, darling, if
it’s the only way – we must do it.”

There was a
long silence. Singing Rock brought out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.

Somehow I never
imagined that Indian medicine men needed handkerchiefs.

Finally, Jeremy
Tandy threw up his hands.

“All right,” he
said. “You win. All I want is my daughter back again, sound and well, and if
you can do that you can have sixty thousand bucks.”

“Thirty is
okay,” said Singing Rock, and when he said that, I think that Jeremy Tandy
finally believed that the manitou was for real.

After lunch, I
drove Singing Rock up to meet Dr. Hughes at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital.

Karen was under
very heavy sedation, and there was a male nurse constantly at her bedside. Dr. Hughes
took us down to see her and for the first time, Singing Rock saw exactly what
he was up against. He stood at a respectful distance from the manitou, gazing
at it above his surgical mask with worried eyes.

“Phew,” he said
softly. “That’s something.”

Jack Hughes
stood nervously beside him. “What do you think, Singing Rock?”

“To quote a
hackneyed line from old cowboy films, Dr. Hughes, this is heap powerful
medicine.

I’ve seen a lot
of weird things – but this...”

“Come on,” said
Jack, “let’s get out of here.”

We went back to
his office and sat down. Singing Rock pulled a tissue from the box on Jack
Hughes’ desk and carefully mopped his forehead.

“Well,” said
Jack. “What’s our plan of action?”

“The first
thing I’d say is that we don’t have long,” said Singing Rock. “The way that
manitou’s growing, we’ll need to be ready by tomorrow at the latest. What I’ll
have to do is mark out a magic circle around the bed, so that when the medicine
man comes out, he can’t cross it. That will hold him long enough to give me
time to try and subjugate him with my own medicines. At least, I hope it will.
It’s quite possible that he’s powerful enough to cross any magic circle I’m
able to draw. I just don’t know – and I won’t know – until he actually appears.
It depends on how much the X-rays have affected him. The original spell, the
spell which he used to have himself reborn, is just as strong as he was able to
make it in 1650. But any new spells he tries to cast may be hampered by what
you’ve done to him. On the other hand, they may not. I can’t count on it. They
may have made him much more vengeful, and his magic more evil.”

Jack Hughes
sighed. “You don’t sound very hopeful.”

“How can I be?”
said Singing Rock. “This is strictly David and Goliath. If I can hit him with a
stone from my puny slingshot, I may be lucky and knock him out. But if I miss,
then he’s going to flatten me.”

“Is there
anything you need?” I asked him.
“Any occult aids?”

Singing Rock
shook his head. “I brought all my goodies with me. If we can fetch my small
suitcase out of your car, Harry, I could start right away by drawing the
medicine circle. That will give us some protection, at least.”

Dr. Hughes
picked up the phone and asked for a porter. When the man arrived, he sent him
down to my car in the basement, with instructions to collect Singing Rock’s
case.

“Whatever you
do,” said Singing Rock, “you mustn’t disturb Karen Tandy’s body when the
medicine man has left her. It mustn’t be touched under any circumstances. If
you disturb it even slightly, then the chances of her manitou being able to
return to it and being revitalized will be practically
nil
.”

“Supposing the
medicine man disturbs it himself...” I asked.

Singing Rock
looked unhappy. “If that happens, then we’re probably wasting our time.”

Jack Hughes
said: “What I don’t understand is why we can’t just shoot him. He’s a human
being; after all, with normal flesh and blood.”

“That would
defeat everything we’ve tried to do,” said Singing Rock. “If you shoot him, his
spirits will go to what the Indians used to call the Happy Hunting Grounds. His
spirit, and Karen Tandy’s spirit, and any other spirits he may have collected
during his several lifetimes. If you kill him that way, then Karen Tandy will
be gone for good. He possesses her manitou, and only he can release it.
Voluntarily, or under duress.”