The Supernaturals (40 page)

“Yeah?” Peterson slurred the word. “Well, it is.”

“Mr. Peterson, you sound drunk. If this is a social call, let me tell you, I don’t appreciate it,” Wallace Lindemann said from his bedroom across town.

“Social call?” Peterson laughed. “For some reason I don’t think you or I get that many social calls at four in the morning these days. I mean, with you being in financial straits and me being tossed about like a man clinging to a fucking life raft.”

“What is this about? I don’t need commentary on my personal life.”

Peterson drained the whiskey and allowed the empty glass to fall from his fingers to the carpeted floor.

“The matter we discussed this evening, I want you to proceed with it. How soon can you get them out there?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Peterson swayed and placed his left hand on the desk to steady himself. He closed his eyes until the dizzy spell passed. When he opened them again, he looked around the office. He no longer trusted his senses after the events in the parking garage.

“My guess is that they won’t come until the day after tomorrow.”

“Not good enough. They have to be there in the morning. Pay them what they want—my money—but get them there first thing in the morning.”

 
“Are you nuts, Peterson? These people are professors at Columbia University; they’re only considering this job because they think Kennedy is a nutcase who makes them all look bad. As much as they despise him, they’ll never come at such short notice. I can get them the morning of the show, and that’s it.”

“Get them there in the morning. The crew is going to be there a day early to set up.”

“That’s not in the contract, I won’t—”

“When are you going to understand, Lindemann, that you don’t have a fucking thing to say about it? Corporate will do what they want, and you can sit and suck on it. If you want that house to sell, you better do as I say, because if this special airs and Kennedy proves that Summer Place is what he says it is, we’re both fucked.”

“What’s happened to change your mind about that ridiculous claim of his?”

Peterson fell silent. He knew he had to stand up before he fell over. As he did, he heard a buzzing. His heart pounded until he realized it was the overnight cleaning man, sweeping by his open door with the floor buffer. He closed his eyes and wanted to cry at his failure to keep his composure.

“Just get the cleaners out to the house. Neither of us needs Summer Place to demonstrate what it’s capable of. I want that television special to be a mundane, boring tour promoting the sale of your house, and that’s it.”

 
“Okay, but it will cost you. These guys, as much as they hate Kennedy, want to be paid.”

“I’ll write you a check as soon as I can sign my name without shaking. Now get that house straightened out. Kennedy and the others will be there tomorrow afternoon.”

Peterson placed the phone on his desk without hanging it up. He walked to the front of the office and stared out of the large window that looked out onto the street far below. He swiped at a tear that coursed down his cheek, slapping it away far harder than he intended to. He was ashamed, and knew he could be possibly ending his career, but after tonight that was a backseat consideration. He wanted to strike back at Summer Place and take Kelly Delaphoy down with it.

Far below, he watched the quiet streets of Manhattan, and knew he could never look at anything so innocent the same way again.

Summer Place had ruined his life.

The Waldorf Astoria

New York City

George sat in the lobby lounge drinking a glass of milk—an order which had drawn questioning looks from several of the businessmen around him, and a not-so-friendly glance from the large bartender. With his tie down and jacket off, George sipped at the chilled milk and stared at the polished bar top.

The speakers, hidden in the corners of the ostentatious lobby bar, played a muzak version of Dirty Deeds by AC/DC. That irritated George even further. Good society could screw up the simplest of pleasures. Cordero shook his head. It was a good way to assist his departure out of the city.

As he took a drink of his milk, he felt the eyes on him from the back of the room. He knew who it was without turning around, only because he and the man watching him were as close as two men could get in ability. He also sensed the woman with him, so he just waited.

As John Lonetree started into the lobby lounge, Jennifer Tilden stopped him. She gently tugged on his coat and then shook her head when he glanced down. She pointed to her own chest, indicating that she would be the one to talk to George. She pointed John to an empty table and went to ease herself onto the barstool next to George’s.

“Yes, ma’am?” the bartender asked. He looked as though he was expecting another strange request from the tired and worn-looking little woman who had chosen to sit next to the milk drinker.

“Double Wild Turkey, please.” She placed both hands on the bar and laced her fingers together. She looked at the mirror above the bar. George continued to stare into his glass of milk.

“I thought you didn’t drink,” he said, giving her a sideways glance.

“No. Bobby Lee McKinnon didn’t drink. I do.”

“A musician who didn’t drink? That’s a little hard to believe,” George said, turning to face her.

She smiled at the bartender when he placed the crystal glass of Wild Turkey in front of her. Jennifer impressed both George and the server, downing the drink. She placed it on the bar and slid it toward the large man. “Another—with ice this time.”

When the bartender left, Jenny turned and smiled at Cordero. “We want you to stay, George.”

Cordero smiled and then turned away. He raised the glass of milk and paused with it in front of his face. Its pure white seemed to mesmerize him for a moment. Then he suddenly set the glass down.

“Do you know what it’s like to just simply touch someone and know—I mean, really know—what is going to happen to them? To see what was in their past, to know who they are in an instant, far better than anyone’s ever known them before?”

“Only with Bobby Lee. Only, I think that I cheated a little. Your ability is what’s called, at least in theory, Electrical Symbiosis Exchange; the exchange of thought and memory through touch.” She accepted the second drink from the bartender, and this time she sipped the cold whiskey. She then looked at George and smiled. “I wasn’t under the whole time Bobby Lee was in possession of me. I was able to continue some of my work. Electrical Memory and Thought Exchange was a pet theory I developed in between assaults.”

George glanced at Jenny and shook his head.

“So,” she said as she raised her glass again, “you touched one of us in the room during the attack and got a bad vibe? Or maybe a sordid vision of one of our futures?”

George watched as Jenny slowly took a drink from her glass. She looked at him with the gentle eyes of someone who knew what true torment was. He also felt he could tell her the truth—the truth about a lot of things.

“When I was twelve years old, after my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, my father put me on tour. You know, the daytime television circuit, Art Linkletter, Mike Douglass, shows like that. They would bring people out of the audience and I would take their hand and tell them the light side of where they had been, and sometimes where they were going. My father would insist, drill it into me, that under no circumstances was I to delve into the darker side of people and their nature. You know, marital affairs, things like that. He insisted it was all for fun.” He looked at Jenny and then just as quickly looked away. “Fun when we were on stage. Off stage, he was a driven man. Money was everything to him. On stage, loving and the pillar of fatherhood; off, he was cold as ice.”

“Is your father still alive?” Jenny asked, pushing her drink away.

“No, he died...alone and unloved.”

Jenny lowered her eyes. George wanted to tell the story, so she just let him venture forth without pushing him.

“I never really questioned my father,” he continued, “as to why there was never any physical contact between us. Oh, he would ruffle my hair on stage and act the part of the proud parent, but every time I tried to get close off the stage, he would be, like I said, cold. He would pat me on my head, at the most. That was as loving as the man ever got.”

Jennifer looked up and into the mirror over the bar. John Lonetree watched them as he sipped a glass of beer. He was watching with curious eyes, it was if he knew Jenny was there to witness George become completed, as if there was a cleansing going on. Jenny thought that maybe a little bit of John—and maybe even a bit of George—had rubbed off on her in the short time she had known them.

“One time, I had flubbed up pretty bad on a morning show in Minneapolis. Afterwards, he drank most of the day. When he came back to the hotel, I really saw who my father was for the first time. He slapped me around pretty good and told me that after my failure on the morning show, three other shows down the line had cancelled.” George drained the glass of milk and then shoved the glass away from him as if it was the bad memory. He rubbed a hand across his face.

“What happened, George?” she asked, draining her own glass.

“After he passed out, I went into his room and watched him sleep for the longest time. I saw his eyes moving underneath his lids, and that fascinated me like no other sight ever has—even to this day. He was dreaming and I knew it, even before I ever heard the theory of rapid eye movement. I knew that son of a bitch was having a nightmare. I couldn’t fathom what could scare this man who so terrified me. I was so curious that, for the first time I could ever remember, I placed my hands on him; one on top of his head, one on his face. I could feel his eyelids moving underneath my touch. The feeling continued to fascinate me beyond reason, even when I was shown what he was dreaming. I closed my eyes and I became him. I was inside of him when he went to visit my mother in the hospital. I was inside when she spoke her last words to him. I heard them with his ears, I saw myself with his memory of me. I heard her say to my father, ‘Love George, he needs you so.’ I wanted to cry, which at the time was at cross-purposes to invading my father.”

George closed his eyes, reliving the memory. Jenny saw the sadness, the terror, and the love for his mother in his eyes as they welled up with tears.

“I watched my father. He slowly took a white pillow from underneath my mother’s head and raised it up. I felt his hands as he placed the pillow over my mother’s face and pushed. It was like while I was inside of him, I was adding my weight to his bulk. We both pushed that pillow as hard as we could. I remember fighting inwardly against the despicable way my father felt as he murdered my mother. There was no peaceful decision to allow her to leave this life with what little dignity she had left. It was a selfish, cold blooded act to rid himself of a drain on time and resources. I screamed for him to stop. Then I could feel him, beneath my hands, becoming aware that I was invading his memories. I remember when his eyes popped open, but I still kept my hands where they were. I pressed as hard as the memory of my father pushing on that pillow—harder, and harder. I saw the panic in my father’s eyes as he realized that I knew. It was a trapped, animal look.”

Jennifer swallowed. She could not imagine what George had gone through, witnessing his mother’s murder at the hands of his very own father. She looked up with tears in her own eyes and saw the concern on Lonetree’s face in the bar’s mirror.

“My father gathered the strength to throw me off. He jumped from his bed and vomited. It was like pure evil was spewing forth from the man. It wasn’t guilt, it was that someone else knew what a coward he truly was.”

“What happened?” Jenny asked. George wiped his eyes with the palm of his right hand, as if he wanted to gouge out the vision from his memory.

“My father killed himself the next day without ever saying a word to me. He stepped off the street in Minneapolis into the path of a car. He died hating me for what I knew.”

“It wasn’t you who killed your mother, George, it was him. You need not feel guilty about anything.”

George laughed, and then slapped the bar with his open hand. He swiped the last of his tears away.

“My mother? No, I didn’t kill my mother. But I wished my father dead, and when I took his hand on that street that day, he didn’t even realize what I was doing. I thought about that small little step off the sidewalk, and that small push of thought ended up being just as physical as actually pushing him in front of that car. No, I didn’t kill my mother, but I killed that man who was my father. And you know what?”

Jenny sat silently, waiting.

“I wanted to do it. I had thought all night and all morning on just how it could be done, but I couldn’t find the answer, or the bravery. Not until the opportunity presented itself. Then I pushed my father with my thoughts as I reached out and took his hand that final time.”

They sat at the bar without speaking, George with his eyes heavy and Jenny with hers locked on the mirror, as if drawing strength from John, who still watched them from his table.