Dead Anyway (8 page)

I’d already used up the sunglasses, wig, hat and raised collar on Henry Eichenbach. I stood at the bathroom sink at my rented house looking at my face and thought, now what.

The scar on my forehead was more than a pinky slick of nearly transparent skin, it was an indentation, a slight hollow that you don’t normally see on a person’s forehead. I could cover the deformity with a hat, as long as it stayed put. But that would do nothing to disguise my features, which still looked like a version of me, gaunt and haunted though I’d become. My heart fell as I accepted the inevitable. I needed a disguise.

I started by studying theatrical makeup on the web. Not surprisingly, there were multiple sites offering every possible means for transforming your face, including prosthetic noses, chins and cheekbones. I girded myself and ordered anything that looked possible for an untrained makeup artist. The items would be delivered the following day.

In the meantime, I tracked down Francine’s location, a storefront in Stamford, which I cased from a donut shop directly across the street. The crudely hand-painted sign above the blacked-out window read “Francine’s Prognostications—Fortunes Told, For the Curious and Bold.” The door to the place was also once black, now more a muddy dark grey. There was a huge brass buzzer in the middle of the door that was the only bright spot on the facade, though not from continual use. During the week I spent casing the place and giving myself the shakes from too much coffee, only half a dozen of the curious and bold sought out Francine’s services.

I did note the arrival at ten each morning of a white Cadillac DeVille, an early vintage with gold trim and a plush vinyl roof. It left again at about seven in the evening. This I took to be Francine’s car. The windows were tinted, so all I could make out was a huge ball of blond hair, but no features.

The next day my packages from the makeup suppliers arrived. The most important thing I’d learned from years of research was that almost nothing you thought in advance turns out to be the case. This is hugely significant if you think about it. It means that most people who aren’t researchers go through life thinking things that aren’t true, and never discover their folly.

In the case of the makeup project, this principle proved itself in spades. It turned out I wasn’t the first to be intimidated by the process, so the manufacturers worked hard to make everything as easy as possible. The prosthetics were so lifelike, it made me think they’d plasticized actual tissue. The bonding material that joined rubber to flesh was also easily applied and wholly natural as long as you took your time and meticulously followed the directions.

Temporarily overcome by the possibilities, I almost turned myself into an African-American, but prudence led to a white lad with a nice California tan, a shock of weathered blond hair sticking out of a Jeff cap, and a sharp, aquiline nose. It took about four hours to build to my satisfaction, but it was an endeavor worth achieving in its own right, and thus, a good use of time.

One of the most surprising things I found was the lack of discomfort. I assumed heavy makeup was nearly unbearable, but all that plastic was light on my face, barely noticeable.

Who knew.

F
RANCINE TOOK
a long time to open the door after I pushed the big brass doorbell. It was late afternoon, and the hard, dim light did little to brighten her features, though enough to confirm she was neither young, nor attractive, despite the efforts of her hairdresser and plastic surgeon to prove otherwise.

“I prefer appointments,” she said, squinting up at me.

“Okay. When can I come back?”

“You don’t have a phone?” she asked. Her accent was born in one of New York City’s five boroughs, but she’d been away too long to tell which. I guessed Brooklyn, with little confidence.

“Actually, no.”

I patted the outside of my jacket as if one might magically appear.

Francine sighed heavily.

“I suppose I could do it now.”

“That’d be cool,” I said.

She turned and walked back into the gloom of her salon. I followed, shutting the door behind me. Inside was the caricature of a mystic’s lair, as if created by a set designer whose only reference was theatrical cliché. Skulls lit from within, shrouds covered with runic symbols hanging from the walls, a hookah on a painted art-nouveau side table, and in the middle of the room, under an ornate ceiling lamp, a round table with a crystal ball. The act fell down a bit with Francine’s outfit, a pink workout suit stretched to the limit over her bulging figure, and high-top white sneakers, worn badly to the outside by her tiny, pronated feet. Her only concessions to the role were a necklace made of several beaded strands and long fingernails, better to stroke the frosted globe.

“Sit, sit,” she said, dropping down herself into the opposite chair. “Fifty bucks for the first fifteen minutes,” she said, looking at the ball as if her rates were floating around inside. “And another fifty if you want the whole half hour. That’s a lot of fortune-telling. Most places you’re lucky to get ten minutes. Though determining luck is one of the things we specialize in here.”

I peeled a hundred dollar bill off a thin roll of cash stored in my shirt pocket.

“I’ll go the whole hun’erd,” I said. “No point scrimping on your life’s prospects.”

I couldn’t know how much it mattered to her whether she took fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand dollars out of the transaction, but the upgrade seemed to prompt greater interest. She hiked the straining waistband of her workout sweats up over the deep crease below her belly and wormed her butt more comfortably into her chair. She cupped the phony-looking crystal ball in both hands and closed her eyes.

We sat silently for a nearly unbearable ten minutes. Then she took my hands, which she worked between thumb and index finger.

Finally she said, “It’s been a very painful recovery, but you’ve made impressive progress. You have a strong will. What was it, car accident?”

The unexpected accuracy of the reading was nearly rendered cartoonish by her accent, though not enough to dampen the jolt.

“Hit and run,” I said. “How’d you know?”

She smirked.

“What do you think, we’re a bunch of amateurs here?”

This was the second time she referred to her operation in the plural. I wondered if it was a royal “we” or someone else was watching nearby.

“No ma’am. So what do you see in the future?”

“For me, a new water heater, if that puddle in the basement is any sign. But that’s not what you mean. For you, not so sure. You’re not very nervous, so I wonder why you want to get your fortune read. Most people are usually quivering over their fates. Do you have a pulse?”

She felt down along my wrist, stopping to press two fingers between ligaments and veins.

“Very strong and steady,” she said. “But too slow. What happened to your head?”

I involuntarily reached up with my other hand and touched where I thought my hat concealed the little crater in my skull. All I felt was the hat fabric.

“Not outside,” said Francine, “inside. Never felt such a quiet landscape. Not barren, but still.”

I almost pulled my hand away, but caught myself. Francine must have felt it anyway. She looked up at me.

“Don’t worry, I can’t actually read minds. Not exactly. Especially a mind like yours. It’s like a bank vault. You aren’t planning on robbing a bank, are you?”

“What if I was? Could you tell me how to launder the money?”

She scowled.

“I can tell you how to launder your shirts, buddy, and that’s about it.”

“I know that isn’t true,” I said.

“Now who’s trying to read minds?”

She gripped my wrist a little firmer and closed her eyes. Her fingers felt warm and slightly slick, as if from inadequately absorbed hand cream. When she opened her eyes, she stared right into mine.

“I’m not safe with you,” she said, calmly. “Where did you come from?”

“California.”

“Not that kind of place. A place of the heart. What you came from was cold, dark and a little insane. But you’re sane enough now, aren’t you?”

“Perfectly.”

“No. Not perfectly. You just think you are.” She let go of my wrist and I pulled back my hand. “You aren’t here for your fortune. You want something else from me.”

“I want a conversation,” I said. “Though not with you.”

She tapped out a little rhythm on the table with her fingers, a series of impatient triplets.

“That’ll cost you a lot more than a hundred dollars,” she said.

“Though not as much as it’ll cost you if you don’t agree.”

She withdrew further back into her chair, folding her arms and squeezing herself.

“I must be getting senile, not seeing this coming,” she said.

I put my hand back on the table, palm up.

“Take it again,” I said.

She leaned forward and took it, pressing her thumb into my wrist.

“Do I mean what I say?” I asked.

After a slight delay, she nodded.

“You do.”

“I want to talk to Mr. Frondutti. Here is a phone number. I want him to call me at exactly six
P
.
M
. tonight. If he doesn’t, I can predict your future with exact precision.”

She twitched and let go of my hand as if it had turned into a burning coal.

“I don’t tell the man what to do,” she said.

“Then it would be his loss.”

“His? What about me? What’re you going to do, blow up my house? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? Do you think you could do worse to me than he could?”

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.

She put her hand up to her mouth and opened her eyes as wide as they would go. Then she nodded, the message understood.

I got up without another word and left, making a sharp right outside the door and another into an alley that connected with the parking lot of a big drugstore. I started the Subaru with the remote control. Gave it less than a minute, then drove around to the donut shop across from Francine’s.

If Francine was in regular contact with Sebbie, it couldn’t be through conventional means for fear of mail searches, wiretaps and other electronic eavesdropping. It had to be some other way. And given the short timetable, it had to be in a hurry.

Not a bad theory, I thought as I watched Francine rush out the front door of her salon and jump into the DeVille. Just like that.

As with most cinematic stunts, following a car undetected through crowded urban streets in broad daylight is hardly a simple task. Especially if the follower is only a single car. The serious pros do it with multiple cars that tag team each other, come and go, race ahead and even tailgate as the need presents itself. There was little hope that a lone Subaru Outback could mimic any of those maneuvers, but it’s all I had.

Francine complicated the effort by being a haphazard driver with only a casual regard for traffic etiquette. The Cadillac frequently approached yellow lights by slowing down, then accelerating just in time to jump the red. I had the choice of racing through behind her, risking a ticket and her notice, or calmly letting her go.

I usually did the latter, and regarded my success in catching up again as the purest form of luck.

She finally eluded me, I thought for good, but I turned a corner and was pleased to see the Cadillac shoe-horning its way into a parking space along the curb. I drove past and found one of my own, with time left on the meter. I crossed the street and walked back in time to see Francine smacking her own meter with the palm of her hand as she deposited coins. I slunk back against a store window and tried to keep a bead on her without looking directly her way.

Moving quickly, she ducked into a pharmacy. I waited across the street, longing to see what she was doing. She came out soon after, carrying a magazine. I was too far away to read the masthead, but the cover photograph suggested
Time
or
Newsweek
. I let her get ahead of me, and then moved at her pace, which was more uncomfortably brisk than I could easily manage.

She stopped at an outdoor news vendor. The man at the counter looked at her with a smile of recognition. They spoke for a moment, then she moved away without making a purchase. The man bent down to do something below the counter, then stood up again.

Perfect, I thought. One of the oldest tricks in the book. And why not? Sebbie’s an old trick himself. I looked around and spotted a café with an imperfect, but acceptable view of the newsstand. I went in, bought a coffee and an orange and waited.

An hour later, a short, dapper man wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and sunglasses approached the newsstand. The man behind the counter took that moment to restock some of the merchandise. When the dapper man stopped, lo and behold, he chose to buy one of the restocked items. A newsmagazine.

As he strolled away, at a far more humane pace than Francine’s, I left the café and followed along. At the next intersection, I crossed the street and fell in behind, leaving as generous a distance between us as I dared.

The pursuit of Francine, followed by an hour of inactivity, had wreaked havoc on my weakened left side, which was now entirely engulfed in pain. But since I wasn’t going to stop following the dapper man, I did the only thing I could. I ignored it.

After covering about three blocks, the dapper man stopped at a door sandwiched between two storefronts. I saw him tap at something, then open the door. He was well inside by the time I reached where he’d stood, confirming that it was the entrance to an apartment, presumably on the second floor, accessible with the proper code punched into a keypad.

I walked on to the end of the block, then crossed the street again and walked back. There were three storefronts with an adequate view of the dapper man’s door. A laundry, a gift shop and a shoe store. I looked up, then went into the gift shop. A pale, young woman, wearing black lipstick and what looked like a leather corset was sitting on a stool behind the glass counter. I asked her if there were offices or apartments on the second floor. She wasn’t sure, but came up with the owner’s contact information after a prolonged search of the desk at the back of the store. I told her the least I could do after all that was buy something, but she said no worries, it was all just a bunch of junk anyway.