Concert of Ghosts (18 page)

Pointing at what? What had taken place across the street that day in Chinatown? What had interrupted the organization of Obe's composition?

“It must have been taken at roughly the same time as the shot that made your husband famous,” Alison said.

“Minutes before, minutes after, it's hard to say,” Karen Obe remarked. “I've looked at it a hundred times and every time I wish one of the faces would speak. I wish one of them would just step out of the negative and tell me what they were all so busy looking at. It spooks me. And why did Sammy go to the trouble of renting a safe-deposit box for one negative?”

Tennant thought: Minutes before, minutes after, it didn't make any difference, he couldn't bring it into focus anyway. His head had begun to ache; his eyelids hurt. He thought of Chinatown, as if it were a nebulous place that existed only in the eye of the beholder. Look away, it's gone. All of it.

“And you don't remember, Harry?” Karen Obe asked.

Tennant said, “It could have been almost anything. The streets were filled with all kinds of activity back then. You name it, you could see it in San Francisco. Freaks, mimes, unicyclists, jugglers, fire-eaters, magicians, streakers, Frisbee tossers, musicians. Like I say, it could have been anything.”

He held up the negative again. Stark white faces, black background—untethered white balloons floating in a midnight air. You are standing on a sidewalk in Chinatown, Harry. You are with a group of people you must have known. You are having a photograph taken. Across the street something is happening.

Across the street something is happening
.

He thought:
A church on Grant and California streets
. What was it called?
St. Mary's?
It lurched toward him, like a framed picture whisked through the air by an earthquake.
St. Mary's
. Why would he be pointing at a church? He was infused by a feeling of expectancy, another little gate opening in his head.

“I wonder if it would be possible for us to visit your husband,” Alison said.

“I don't see it would do any good,” Karen Obe replied.

“Call it a shot in the dark.”

“It might prove darker than you think, Miss Seagrove. He doesn't communicate. Even if he does—on rare days—nothing makes any sense. Not to me anyway. Still, if you're prepared to waste your time, that's up to you.” She paused in an uncertain way. “He's in a place just outside Oskaloosa. The institute's called The Clinic. I like that, don't you? No Institute for the Insane. No asylum. Nothing revealing. Just The Clinic. If I called ahead and gave permission, they'd probably let you see him. It's going to depend on the kind of day he's having.”

Alison thanked the woman. She was ready to leave; Tennant sensed her impatience.

“I wish you well,” Karen Obe said. She picked up the negative, replaced it in the envelope, then folded the paisley scarf around it. “Both of you.”

She walked them to the door and stepped out onto the porch alongside them. She held the scarf clutched to her side. She gazed across the fields.

Tennant followed her line of vision. Long-stalked grass grew, and weeds; a thin breeze blew through the blades, swaying them a little. It was easy to imagine people lying concealed in all that density, watching him. It was this place, that was all, this empty place, unsettling in its isolation. You could imagine anything here. A crow flew out of the grass, rising in ugly flight, as if aviation were a tremendous effort. It vanished over the house, feathers green-black in the sun.

“One thing,” Karen Obe said. “If you ever turn anything up, let me know.”

“Count on it,” Alison said.

With a wave of her hand Mrs. Obe went back inside the house, moving with some reluctance. She didn't like her solitude. She closed the door. The dog slumped on the porch as if in dismay. Tennant and Alison walked to the car.

Tennant said, “Now I know one thing. Obe took his pictures across the street from a church called St. Mary's. Grant and California. Don't ask me why I know that, because I don't have an answer. But I know it anyway.”

“You're
sure?
”

“As sure as I can be.”

“That's something,” Alison said.

“Something. Right. But what?”

“Never discount information, Harry. Now we've got a precise location, which we didn't have before, did we?” She switched on the engine, reversed the car, then swung it around toward the road. Tennant, thinking of the redbrick church in Chinatown, looked back at the upper windows of Karen Obe's house, which were reflecting the sun like mirrors too blinding to gaze at. Then the house vanished and the rutted dirt road gave way to the cracked blacktop.

Alison braked, studied the map, took a left turn. “Obe has a picture and he thinks it important enough to lock away, Harry. So he knew something. He
saw
whatever you saw outside St. Mary's Church. He must have. The next question is, what?”

What? Tennant thought. The biggie.

12

Twenty miles or so from Karen Obe's house, Tennant became conscious of a car traveling behind them, a pale blue Toyota. It could be perfectly innocent, of course. A farmer chugging along, a banker come to begin repossession proceedings on some unfortunate landowner. He mentioned the Toyota to Alison, who'd already seen it in the rearview mirror.

“If he's a watchdog, he's not up to the usual standard of performance,” Tennant said.

“Maybe they've decided to become more visible. They want to make sure we behave.”

“Keep driving. Don't take any evasive action. Don't suddenly turn up some sidetrack. I want to see what he does back there.”

Mile after mile the Toyota stayed behind them. It made no move to pass, which might have been difficult anyway on so narrow a road. The blacktop finally came to an end on a wider county road; there was the option of turning either left or right.

“Which way, Harry?”

“It doesn't matter.”

She went left. The Toyota took the same turning and stayed behind. Tennant had the feeling that some invisible chain linked the Buick to the Japanese car; wherever the Buick went, the Toyota was sure to follow.

“He's persistent,” Alison said.

“Maybe he just happens to be going in the same direction as us.”

“We'll see.”

Alison drove through a small town; a post office, a pencil-like memorial to war casualties, a grocery, a bar. The town was gone quickly, followed a few miles later by another almost exactly alike. A post office, a grocery, a bar. Solid frame houses, painted and maintained with great love, lurked behind ancient elms. America the peaceful. They sleep easy here, Tennant thought. They don't have crime and they don't have the dreariness of abandoned farmland to disrupt their view. A kid in a Megadeath T-shirt was delivering papers from a bike; a single touch of gothic in this pristine place.

The Toyota was still behind, a pale blue nuisance.

“Next place we come to we'll stop,” Tennant suggested. “Find some breakfast. See if the Toyota vanishes.”

It was fifteen miles farther to the next town, which was different from the others they'd passed through. This was a run-down community of bleak houses, shuttered windows, rusted cars, uncollected garbage spilling from trash cans. Whatever industry had maintained this place had obviously shut up shop long ago. On the porch of a green shingle house, a black man stared at the Buick, as if the passage of an unknown car might be the high point of his day.
Saw a strange car today, hon
, he'd tell his wife.
Hell, no kidding
, the wife would answer. Life goes on.

Alison parked outside a diner, which specialized in the kind of food from which coronaries are constructed. Both she and Tennant ate hungrily, ignoring the grease in which strips of bacon floated and the single strand of hair Tennant found in his scrambled eggs. The blue Toyota had gone. It hadn't passed—Tennant had been watching from the window; either it had stopped some way back and the driver was watching the Buick, or it had taken a side road.

Alison shoved her plate aside. A fly swooped down into it. Tennant unfolded the map on the table. Oskaloosa was about thirty miles away, if you restricted your travel to back roads. He was suddenly sleepy, covered a yawn with this hand.

“Do you want to find a motel and get some rest before we go on?” Alison asked.

“I'll be fine.”

“You don't look it.” She reached across the table and brushed a fallen lock of hair from his forehead. “You need a shower and a haircut, Tennant. I don't want to be seen traveling around with a bum. I've got my standards.”

“And I've got mine,” Tennant said. Banter. Simple banter. Why not?

“A case could be made for some cologne, at the very least.”

“Later.” What a simple word, he thought. Later. People used it all the time without thinking that there might not be a later. He folded the map. “Let's get out of here.”

They walked outside. There was no sign of the Toyota anywhere.

It began to rain on the way to Oskaloosa, a slow drizzle. The sun died in a flurry of clouds. The back roads were quiet, the countryside morose in the rain. Tennant, staring out at fields of stubble, had a sense of familiarity again, another of those quirky demonstrations of legerdemain his mind had a tendency to make. Iowa, gray fields, Oskaloosa. It was the feeling he'd had when he realized that Trebanzi was Bear Sajac. But why did he have it now? The feeling persisted weirdly, despite his efforts to cast it aside. He slumped down in the passenger seat, massaging his eyelids. He had no desire to look from the window. I don't know this place, he thought. I don't know Oskaloosa. I don't even want to imagine I do. My mind's a freak show. Stunted creatures parade back and forth and I watch them through bars. I pay my entrance fee, but I don't understand what I'm seeing. Misbegotten things waddle, hunchbacked monstrosities totter; a world of the grotesque. How do I get out of it?

“This is it, Harry,” Alison said.

Tennant looked out. A long gravel driveway led to an unassuming brown brick building. Yes yes yes, he thought. If this was
déjà vu
, it was the strongest he'd ever experienced. He stared at the building. A discreet sign said
THE CLINIC, INC
. A medical corporation. Doctors busily turning themselves into limited companies. Entrepreneurs who just happened to have sworn to the Hippocratic oath. Another sign pointed the way to the office. Tennant opened the door, hearing his feet crunch in the gravel.

I have never been here before. Never.

Alison stretched her arms wearily. Tennant leaned against the car. Rain fell on his face, but he didn't feel it. It was as if there had grown around him a protective shell, shielding him from the world. It was perilously thin, this carapace, and already beginning in places to crack. Even as he walked toward the building and listened to the gravel, he was obliged to take Alison's arm for support. Why do I think I know this place? he wondered. But the question floated away from his mind, as if he'd never asked it in the first place. Suddenly he was fine again, steady on his feet. The faintness passed out of him. He was a man visiting a clinic, that was all. No more than that. Making a call, then going on his way. Yes.

He followed Alison inside the building. The foyer was painted a high-gloss white. A woman in a gray shirt sat behind the reception desk and smiled at Harry.

“What can I do for you?” she asked. She had perfect white teeth.

I wonder, Tennant thought. I really wonder.

Alison said, “We'd like to see Sammy Obe.”

“Do you have an appointment?” The receptionist continued to smile politely. She'd been trained in the art of being pleasant. She'd say things like have a nice day. Take care. Come again soon.

“Not exactly,” Alison said. “But we just came from seeing his wife, and she had no objections to our visit.”

“I'll have to check that, you understand. Have a seat. Make yourselves comfortable. I'll be right back.” The receptionist went inside another room.

Tennant sat on a soft beige sofa, while Alison remained at the desk. He studied the few illustrations hung around the room. They were mainly Constable prints, pastoral and placid, intended no doubt to induce in visitors a certain serenity. This place is no madhouse, you see. It's a quietly discreet institution where people can get well. Tender loving care is the main weapon in our arsenal. And drugs, Tennant thought. Let us not forget the drugs. Thorazine, diazepam, Librium, Dilaudid, all the other little downers that lulled the deranged inhabitants into lassitude. You didn't deal with madness, you numbed it. That made it easier for the handlers to manage the loonies.

Restless, he got up, paced, walked to the door. Through the glass pane he could see rain sweep the gravel driveway.

The rain. The driveway. He realized he was sweating, clenching his hands. The reactions of panic.

Alison smiled at him in an absent kind of way. The receptionist hadn't come back yet.

“She'll check with Karen, I guess. Then she'll probably have to talk to the resident shrink. Red tape.”

Shrink. The word stuck in Tennant's head like a moth to a screen door. He sat down; Alison joined him. Her nearness was a comfort.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe I should turn myself in to a joint like this and see if they can fix me. Amnesia must be run-of-the-mill stuff around here.”

“I'm sure,” the girl said.

“I'll make an appointment. Maybe they can do it quickly, like those eyeglass places that grind your lenses while you wait.” His voice was thin. The prints on the walls were having a bad effect on him. They changed as he gazed at them, colors seeming to mutate, lines losing their shape. They might have been the harbingers of migraine. He thought of that solitary negative in Karen Obe's house, the faces turned away from the camera, his own hand pointing. He'd gone to Chinatown that day because, because—