The Black Door (2 page)

“That goddam publicity department,” I said suddenly. “I should’ve known it would come out like this. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking about.”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear,” Kanter observed quietly. “You’re not really the type, somehow.” A pale humor briefly stirred the heavy flesh of his face. “I always think of you as Hamlet, moping around Elsinore. Grinding your teeth, maybe, and maybe looking pale and distraught. But not cussing.”

I ground out the cigarette, not replying. Again a silence settled down, and again I felt its oppression. Finally, looking at him squarely, I said, “What would you do in my place, Dan?”

“Well,” he answered, “there’s only two things you
can
do. First, you can smile on your way to the bank. Then—” He paused, phrasing the thought. “Then, next, you’ll just have to make the whole thing stick. That’s what they want, and that’s what
you
want, too, essentially. Otherwise you wouldn’t’ve got yourself into this in the first place.”

“How d’you mean, ‘make it stick’?”

“You’ll have to find them a few murderers. Give them a show. They’ve called you up from the minors. You’re a bonus baby, and there’s lots of pressure on bonus babies. Which is to say, there’s money involved. You’ve got a contract, so you’re a permanent item on the balance sheet.”

At that moment, our breakfast arrived. I buttered my toast, sugared my refilled coffee, and glumly began to eat. I was thinking of the publicity blurb in the
Sentinel.
On page two. I wondered whether they’d used my picture. I decided not to ask. I could still vividly remember the photographer arranging a few loose strands of hair over my forehead, then asking me to look hollow-eyed, ‘like I was listening for voices or something.’ I could also remember the photographer’s finished product—the long, thin face, harassed-looking and prematurely lined, dominated by two large dark eyes beneath lowered brows, morose and unsmiling. Surreptitiously, I’d taken one of the pictures home, a poster, actually. Telling myself it was a lark, I’d tacked the poster up in the garage. But, often, I’d find myself staring at the picture, wondering whether I was seeing myself as others might.

“… did it all start, anyhow?” Kanter was saying between mouthfuls.

“How’d what all start?”

Impatiently he waved his fork. “The whole thing, the clairvoyant thing. Was that business down in San Jose just a fluke? Is that’s what’s worrying you? Afraid it’ll never happen again?”

“It’s not that, exactly. At least, I don’t
think
it’s that. It’s just that all this pressure is—is—” I shook my head. “I hadn’t figured on it, I guess. The publicity, I mean. It’s changed everything. It’s hard to describe, but it has.”

“You got the publicity in San Jose, though.”

“I know. But that
was
a fluke. The publicity, I mean. I found the guy, and the girl’s body. Naturally, I turned the whole thing over to the police. Then everything started to hit the fan, and all at once. Everything.”

Nodding and meditatively chewing, he was watching me thoughtfully.

“So it wasn’t a plant.”

A little indignantly, I looked at him. “Is that what they’re saying? That it was all rigged?”

Kanter shrugged, drained his third cup of coffee, and signaled for the waitress.

“I’m afraid I’m an agnostic where ESP is concerned, Steve. No offense; that’s just the way I feel about it.”

“No offense taken,” I answered. “From my point of view, it’s not a question of either believing or not believing. It’s just something that either happens or doesn’t. Belief doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“How did it actually happen, that business down in San Jose? From the start, I mean.”

I thought about it for a long moment, recalling the sequence of events as they’d actually taken place.

“I’d been working on the police beat about a year, handling routine stuff, mostly one farm worker knifing another on Saturday night. Then, just about three months ago, a little girl named Natalie Gruenwald disappeared. She was the daughter of a wealthy San Jose real estate developer, so it was a big story right from the start, at least locally. The girl was about ten years old, and she left school one Wednesday afternoon about three-thirty, headed for her weekly piano lesson. She never arrived, and at seven-thirty that night the police got the call. Gruenwald had lots of political power, as well as lots of money; inside two hours every policeman in San Jose was working on the case, plus the state police and, later, the F.B.I. But by noon the following day, there still wasn’t a trace of the girl. Well, San Jose is a morning paper, so I had all of that day to get a story together. I had a good thing going with the chief of detectives, and he gave me a rundown on the progress of the investigation. Actually, it was pretty simple. They knew the route the little girl took on her way to the piano lesson, so they started a canvass, covering about seven city blocks. After a lot of leg work, they were able to account for her presence along all but three of those blocks, the last three preceding the house where her piano teacher lived. So, the afternoon following her disappearance, I decided to retrace the girl’s route on my own. I didn’t have any clear idea of what I was after; I was just fishing. Well—” I paused, getting my breath. “Well, when I got to the last block, the one immediately preceding the teacher’s house, I suddenly had an eerie feeling that someone, or something, was watching me. It was a—a strange sensation that I’ve never been able to really define, even to myself. It was a sense of oppression, as if some evil presence suddenly seemed to be suffocating me. I remember standing perfectly still on the sidewalk, as if I were numbed or suffering some sudden shock. I—”

“You didn’t see anything?” Kanter interrupted, watching me closely. “It was just a feeling?”

I nodded. “That’s right. Just a feeling. But I’d had it before, several times, so I had some experience with it, you might say. Anyhow, I remember turning around slowly, trying to locate the presence, whatever it was.”

“Did
you locate it?”

I shook my head. “Not exactly. You have to understand the experience is something like being under the influence of a narcotic. The manifestations, as nearly as I can describe them, are a feeling of floating, a dissociation with everything around you. And yet there’s an accompanying feeling of heightened perception. It’s as if everything fades away but one specific presence—the evil presence that’s getting through to you. And that presence is sharp. Painfully, incredibly sharp.” I waved my hand in apology. “I know it all sounds hokey. But it’s the—”

“What happened then?” Kanter interrupted briskly, glancing at his watch.

“Well, I was able to localize the origin of this feeling, whatever it was. I decided, for no really rational reason, I suppose, that it was somewhere in the last block. There were two or three houses there, and one of them figured to be it. Whatever ‘it’ was.”

“What’d you do then?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. I was too shook. As I remember, I got in my car and drove to the nearest bar and had a drink. You see, a couple of times I’d experienced this sensation were in pretty dire circumstances, and there was a kind of hangover from that, I suppose. And, besides, the experience itself leaves you feeling drained.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, all that afternoon I thought about it. I couldn’t decide what to do.”

“Did you tell the police?”

Ruefully I smiled. “Tell them what? That I’d felt a little lightheaded walking down the street?”

Kanter returned the smile. “I see what you mean. Well?”

“Well, finally, I decided to go back that evening. As a reporter, investigating the disappearance. One way or the other, I had to
know.
It wasn’t that I had any overwhelming desire to find the girl. It was just that I had to know, one way or the other, whether there was anything to the experience, whether it had any validity. For my own peace of mind.”

“Had the police got anything more in the meantime?”

“No. Nothing.”

Kanter nodded, waiting for me to continue.

“Anyhow, that’s what I did. I went back about seven-thirty that night. I parked my car across from those three houses, and I started ringing doorbells. The first house was empty; no one was living there. In the second house, a man was watching TV, with the lights turned out. I talked to him for maybe fifteen minutes, but nothing conclusive happened, although I got a slight tingling sensation as I left.”

“A tingling?” His voice was touched with a polite trace of irony.

Doggedly, I nodded. “I forgot to mention that. Accompanying the feeling of dissociation is a kind of tingling at the base of my neck. I imagine—maybe it’s a fantasy—but I imagine that the hairs at the nape of my neck are stiffening. I know it sounds—” I hesitated, feeling suddenly foolish. But Kanter gestured for me to go on.

“Anyhow, I left the second house and went to the third. It was a woman, a divorcee. A well-stacked divorcee, incidentally.”

“Ah, the inevitable well-stacked divorcee.”

I smiled. “I talked to her for another few minutes. As it happened, she’d been away during the previous night and most of that day, the time when the police were conducting their canvass. I had a picture of the missing girl with me, and I showed it to her. She studied it—she was an intelligent person, very perceptive—and she said she thought she’d seen the girl in the neighborhood the previous Saturday, but she couldn’t be sure.

“I spent some time trying to get more out of her, but there wasn’t any more to get. ‘All kids look the same when they’re playing,’ she said. And it’s true, I guess. So I left. Well—” I drew a deep breath. In spite of myself, remembering my sensations during the next few moments, I felt a quickening, a vestige of the tingling sensation I’d just described.

“Well, I left her house and walked across the street. I was just getting into my car, willing to call it a draw, when suddenly I had the same sensation I’d experienced earlier in the day, the same feeling that someone was watching me. So before I actually realized what I was doing, I found myself walking back across the street. I remember being aware of the darkness; there wasn’t any moon, and the weather had been cloudy that day. I remember, too, the sensation of following my feet, you might say. I was just walking, waiting to find out
where
I was walking.”

“And where
were
you walking?” In Kanter’s voice now was a hint of skeptic derision.

“I was walking toward the second house, where the man had been watching TV in the dark. But I was going around to the side of the house, down the driveway. There were trees on one side, and the house on the other. It was terribly dark, I remember, and it felt very cold. I was shivering. But I kept on. I didn’t seem to have any choice. I found myself standing in the back yard. Just standing there, shivering and waiting for something. Then I heard a movement, a kind of shuffling. A boy was there. He was seventeen, I found out later. He was crouched down by the side of the house, cowering like an animal, watching me. Beside him was a door leading to the basement of the house. I—I knew what was down there in the basement.”

“The girl’s body?”

I nodded.

“What’d you do then?”

“I turned around and went back the way I’d come. I went to the house next door—the divorcee’s—and called the police. And—” I spread my hands. “And that was it.”

“Why’d he kill her?”

I shrugged. “He was one of those retarded kids who should have been put away long before. He was a borderline case, I guess. He’d talked to the Gruenwald girl the week before, when she’d gone to her piano lesson, and he—well—he fell in love with her, I guess. No one knows why, but he did. The girl’s father was a full-time tycoon, and her mother was very busy being a clubwoman. Anyhow, for whatever reason, both the girl and the boy found something in each other. At least that’s the way the police reconstructed it.”

“What happened then? As far as your end of it was concerned?”

“Well—” I sighed, lit another cigarette. It was almost ten-thirty. Our breakfast had been eaten long ago, and the city desk would soon be wondering about me. Yet Kanter showed no impatience, and I was anxious to tell it all.

“Naturally, I had to account to the police for having found the body. At first, I said that I was just running down the story, and got lucky. That would have satisfied most detectives, I suppose. But I was dealing with the chief of detectives, a guy named Nazario, a Spanish-American cop who’s just about as sharp and perceptive as they come. If he were blond and blue-eyed, he’d probably be an outstanding criminologist. He might make it yet, in fact.”

“I know. I’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah. Anyhow, Nazario kept picking at me, the way I’d seen him examine hundreds of suspects, just sitting back and sniping. After a half hour or so of that, I told him the whole story.”

“What’d he say?”

“Briefly, he wasn’t too enthusiastic. He said my story made the San Jose police department look like the south end of a northbound horse, as you put it. Then he reminded me, with no particular tact, that without his co-operation I’d find my job a lot tougher in the future.”

“So you wrote the story straight. With the San Jose police department as the hero.”

“Right.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I finished it about one in the morning, and the brass at the paper felt pretty good about it. Everyone was pounding me on the back. I was just about to go home when an A.P. man showed up. ‘What’s this about you and ESP?’ he asked.”

Kanter smiled. “You got scooped on your own scoop, in other words. How’d he find out?”

“I never knew. I
do
know that, the following day, one of Nazario’s detectives got busted all the way back to patrolman. So I always figured that was the leak.”

“What happened then?”

“As you say, I’d gotten scooped on my own scoop. By that time, the managing editor was out of bed, and in about three short minutes I’d gone from hero to goat. From his point of view, of course, I’d committed a sacrilege. After I got him cooled down, I tried to explain the whole thing, that the decision was Nazario’s, not mine. Whereupon the managing editor really started to howl. ‘Managed news,’ he squawked. ‘Freedom of the press.’ ‘Democracy.’ Then he called up the publisher. By this time, it was two in the morning, and the A.P. man had left to file his story. Next the publisher arrives, complete with topcoat worn over silk pajamas. He called up his friend the police commissioner and started in with freedom of the press and managed news and democracy all over again. Meanwhile, I ducked out and tried to warn Nazario, but the desk sergeant wouldn’t give me Nazario’s home phone number. The desk sergeant, by the way, also got busted to a patrolman. So, the next morning, Nazario picked up the paper and read precisely the story I’d agreed not to write. Then he got a call from the police commissioner, who asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, managing the news and abridging the freedom of the press and threatening the fiber of democracy.”