Strangers (23 page)

As Dom descended the hills in his Firebird, heading for the center of town, he noticed that Laguna looked dull under a somber gray sky. He wondered how much of the leaden gloom was real and how much resulted from the dulling effects of the drugs, but he quickly abandoned that disturbing line of thought. In acknowledgment of his somewhat fuzzy perceptions and impaired responsiveness, he drove with exaggerated care.

Dom received most mail at the post office. Because he subscribed to so many publications, he rented a large drawer rather than just a box, and that day before Christmas, the drawer was more than half full. He didn’t look at the return addresses but carried everything back to the car with the intention of reading his mail at breakfast.

The Cottage, a popular restaurant for decades, was on the east side of Pacific Coast Highway, on the slope above the road. At that hour, the breakfast rush had passed, and the lunch crowd had not yet arrived. Dom was given a table by the window with the best view. He ordered two eggs, bacon, cottage fries, toast, and grapefruit juice.

As he ate, he went through the mail. In addition to magazines and bills, there was a letter from Lennart Sane, the wonderful Swedish agent who handled translation rights in Scandinavia and Holland, and a padded envelope from Random House. As soon as he saw the publisher’s address on the label, he knew what he had. Finally, his mind began to clear, the fuzziness partially dispelled by excitement. He put down the toast he had been eating and tore open the large envelope, and an advance copy of his first novel slid out. No man can know what a woman feels when taking her newborn child in her arms for the first time, but a novelist who holds the first copy of his first book must experience a joy similar to that of the mother who looks upon the face of her baby for the first time and feels its warmth through the swaddling clothes.

Dom kept the book beside his plate and could barely look away from it. He had finished his meal and had ordered coffee by the time he was able to tear his attention from
Twilight
and examine what mail remained. Among other things, there was a plain white envelope with no return address, which contained a single page of white paper on which had been typewritten two sentences that rocked him:

He read the passage again, astonished. The sheet of paper rattled as a tremor passed through him. The back of his neck went cold.

2

Boston, Massachusetts

When Ginger got out of the cab, she was in front of a six-story, brick, Victorian Gothic building. A blustery wind slapped her, and the bare-limbed trees along Newbury Street rasped, clattered, and clicked: the sound of rattling bones. Huddling against the bitter wind, she scurried past a low iron fence and entered 127 Newbury, the former Hotel Agassiz, one of the city’s finest historic landmarks, now converted into condominiums. She had come to see Pablo Jackson, about whom she knew only what she had read in yesterday’s
Boston Globe.

She had left Baywatch after George departed for the hospital and after Rita went off to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, for she had been afraid they would try to stop her. In fact, the maid, Lavinia, had pleaded with her not to go out alone. Ginger had left a note, explaining her whereabouts, and she hoped they would not be too upset.

When Pablo Jackson opened his door, Ginger was surprised. That he was a black man, that he was in his eighties—those things were not surprising, for she had learned as much about him from the article in the
Globe.
However, she was not prepared for such a vital and vigorous octogenarian. He was about five-eight, slight, but age had not bowed his legs, bent his back, or rounded his shoulders. He stood militarily erect, in white shirt and sharply creased black trousers, and there was a sprightliness and youthfulness in his smile and in the way he waved her into the apartment. His thick kinky hair had not receded, but it had gone so white that it seemed to glow with a spectral light, giving him a curiously mystical aura. He escorted Ginger into the living room, moving with the stride of a man forty or fifty years his junior.

The living room was a surprise, too, not what she expected either of a sedate old monument like the Hotel Agassiz or of Pablo Jackson, an elderly bachelor. The walls were cream-colored, and the contemporary sofas and chairs were upholstered in a matching fabric. An Edward Fields carpet of the same creamy shade provided relief from the dominant scheme by means of a deeply sculpted wave pattern. Color was provided by pastel accent pillows—yellow, peach, green, and blue—on the sofas, and from two large oil paintings, one a Picasso. The result was an airy, bright, warm, and modern decor.

Ginger settled into one of two armchairs that faced each other across a small table near a long, bay window. She declined coffee and said, “Mr. Jackson, I’m afraid I’m here under false pretenses.”

“What an interesting beginning,” he said, smiling, crossing his legs, resting his long-fingered black hands on the arms of his chair.

“No, really, I’m not a reporter.”

“Not from
People
?” He studied her speculatively. “Well, that’s all right. I knew you weren’t a reporter when I let you in. These days, reporters have an oily smoothness about them, and they’re an arrogant lot. Soon as I saw you standing at the door, I said to myself, ‘Pablo, this bitty girl is no reporter. She’s a
real
person.’”

“I need some help that only you can provide.”

“A damsel in distress?” he said, amused. He seemed not at all angry or uneasy, which she had expected he would be.

She said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me if I told you my real reasons for wanting to meet you. You see, I’m a doctor, a surgical resident at Memorial, and when I read the article about you in the
Globe,
I thought you might be able to help.”

“I’d be delighted to see you even if you were selling magazines. An eighty-one-year-old man can’t afford to turn anyone away…unless he prefers to spend his days talking to the walls.”

Ginger appreciated his efforts to put her at ease, though she suspected that his social life was more interesting than her own.

He said, “Besides, not even a burnt-out old fossil like me would turn away such a lovely girl as you. But now tell me what this help is that only I can give you.”

Ginger leaned forward in her chair. “First, I’ve got to know if the article in the newspaper was accurate.”

He shrugged. “As accurate as newspaper articles ever are. My mother and father were expatriate Americans living in France, just as the newspaper said. She was a popular chanteuse, a cafe singer in Paris, before and after World War I. My father was a musician, as the
Globe
said. And it’s true that my parents knew Picasso and recognized his genius early on. I was named after him. They bought two score of Picasso’s pieces when his work was cheap, and he gave them several paintings as gifts. They had
bon goût.
They didn’t own a hundred works, as the paper said, but fifty. Still, that collection was an embarrassment of riches. Sold gradually over the years, it cushioned their retirement and gave me something to fall back on as well.”

“You
were
an accomplished stage magician?”

“For over fifty years,” he said, raising both hands in a graceful and elegant expression of amazement at his own longevity. That gesture was marked by the rhythm and fluidity of prestidigitation, and Ginger half-expected him to pluck living white doves from thin air. “And I was famous, too.
Sans pareil,
even if I say so myself. Not famous over here so much, you understand, but all over Europe and in England.”

“And your act involved hypnotizing a few members of the audience?”

He nodded. “That was the centerpiece. It always wowed them.”

“And now you’re helping the police by hypnotizing witnesses to crimes, so they can recall details they’ve forgotten.”

“Well, it’s not a full-time job,” he said, waving one slender hand as if to dismiss any such thoughts she might have had. The gesture seemed likely to end with the magical appearance of a bouquet of flowers or deck of cards. “In fact, they’ve only come to me four times in the past two years. I’m usually their last resort.”

“But what you’ve done has worked for them?”

“Oh, yes. Just as the newspaper said. For instance, a bystander might see a murder take place and get a glimpse of the car in which the killer escaped, but not be able to recall the license number. Now, if he glanced at the license even for a split second, that number is buried in his subconscious mind, ’cause we never really forget anything we see. Never. So if a hypnotist puts the witness in a trance, regresses him in time—that is, takes him back in his memories to the shooting—and tells him to look at the car, then the license number can be obtained.”

“Always?”

“Not always. But we win more than we lose.”

“Why turn to you? Aren’t the police department’s psychiatrists capable of using hypnosis?”

“Certainly. But they’re psychiatrists not hypnotists. Hypnosis is not what they
specialized
in. I’ve made it a lifelong study, developed my own techniques that often succeed where standard methods fail.”

“So when it comes to hypnotism, you’re a
maven.
”

“An expert? Yes, that’s true. Even a
maven’s maven.
But why does any of this interest you, Doctor?”

Ginger had been sitting with her purse in her lap and her hands at rest upon it. But as she told Pablo Jackson about her attacks, she clutched the purse tighter, tighter, until her knuckles were white.

Jackson’s relaxed demeanor changed to shocked interest and concern. “You poor child. You poor, poor little thing.
De mal en pis
—
en pis!
From bad to worse—to worse! How horrible. You wait there. Don’t you move.” He popped up from the chair and hurried from the room.

When he returned, he was carrying two glasses of brandy. She tried to refuse hers. “No thank you, Mr. Jackson. I don’t drink much, and certainly not at this hour of the morning.”

“Call me Pablo. How much sleep did you get last night? Not much? You were up most of the night, woke up hours ago, so for
you
this isn’t morning, it’s the middle of the afternoon. And there’s no reason a person can’t have a drink in the afternoon, is there?”

He settled into his chair again, and for a moment they were silent as they sipped their brandies.

Then she said, “Pablo, I want you to hypnotize me, regress me back to the morning of November twelfth, to Bernstein’s Delicatessen. I want you to hold me at that point in time and question me relentlessly until I can explain
why
the sight of those black gloves terrified me.”

“Impossible!” He shook his head. “No, no.”

“I can pay whatever—”

“Money is not the issue. I don’t need money.” He frowned. “I’m a magician, not a physician.”

“I’m already seeing a psychiatrist, and I’ve broached the subject with him, but he won’t do it.”

“He must have his reasons.”

“He says it’s too soon for hypnotic regression therapy. He admits the technique might help me discover the cause of my attacks, but he says that might be a mistake because I might not yet be ready to face up to the truth. He says premature confrontation with the source of my anxieties might contribute to…a breakdown.”

“You see? He knows best. I would be meddling.”

“He does
not
know best,” Ginger insisted, angered by the vivid recollection of her recent conversation with the psychiatrist, in which he had been infuriatingly condescending. “Maybe he knows what’s best for most patients, but he doesn’t know what’s best for
me.
I can’t go on like this. By the time Gudhausen’s willing to resort to hypnosis, maybe in a year, I’ll no longer be sane enough to benefit. I’ve got to get a grip on this problem, take control,
do
something.”

“But surely you see that I can’t be responsible—”

“Wait,” she interrupted, putting her brandy aside. “I anticipated your reluctance.” She opened her purse, withdrew a folded sheet of typing paper, and held it out to him. “Here. Please take this.”

He took the paper. Though Pablo was half a century older than she, his hands were far steadier than hers. “What is it?”

“A signed release making it clear that I came here in desperation, exonerating you in advance for anything that goes wrong.”

He did not bother to read it. “You don’t understand, dear lady. I’m not concerned about being sued. Considering my age and the snail’s pace of the courts, I wouldn’t live to see a judgment placed against me. But the mind is a delicate mechanism, and if something went wrong, if I led you into a breakdown, I would surely roast in Hell.”

“If you don’t help me, if I’ve got to spend long months in therapy, uncertain of the future, I’ll have a breakdown anyway.” Desperate, Ginger raised her voice, venting her frustration and anger. “If you send me
away, leave me to the well-meaning mercy of friends, abandon me to Gudhausen, I’m finished. I swear, that’ll be the end of me.
I
can’t go on like this!
If you refuse to help me, you’ll still be responsible for my breakdown because you could’ve prevented it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Please.”

“I can’t.”

“You cold, black bastard,” Ginger said, startled by the epithet even as she spoke it. The hurt expression on his benign and gnomish face stung and shamed her. Now it was her turn to say, “I’m sorry. So sorry.” She brought her hands to her face, bent forward in her chair, and wept.

He came to her, stooped down in front of her. “Dr. Weiss, please don’t cry. Don’t despair. It’ll be all right.”

“No. It never will,” she said. “Not ever like it was.”

He gently pried her hands away from her face. He put one of his hands under her chin, lifted her head until she was looking at him. He smiled, winked, and held a hand before her eyes to show her that it was empty. Then, to her surprise, he plucked a quarter from her right ear.