The manitou (6 page)

Lieutenant
Marino stared at his piece of paper. “Did you get around to telling her
fortune? What I mean is, was there any reason she might have killed herself?
Any bad news in the tea leaves?”

“Not a chance.
I didn’t even lay the cards out. She just came in and sat down and started
rambling on about boots.”

“Boots?
What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know.
She kept on saying ‘boot, boot.’ Don’t ask me.”

“Boot?” frowned
Lieutenant Marino. “What kind of way did she say it? Did it sound like a name?

Did it sound
like she was trying to tell you about a guy named Boot?”

I thought hard,
tugging my nose. “I don’t think so. I mean, it didn’t sound like a name. But
she seemed very worried about it.”

Lieutenant
Marino looked interested. “Worried? How do you mean?”

“Well, it’s
hard to say, really. She came in, sat down, and started all this ‘boot’ stuff,
and then she went out of the door and ran off up the corridor. I tried to stop
her, but she was much too quick for me. She waved her arms around a bit, and
then fell straight down the stairs.”

The detective
made a couple of notes. Then he said: “Ran?”

I spread my
arms open. “Don’t ask me how, because I don’t understand it myself. But she ran
up the corridor like a girl of fifteen.”

Lieutenant
Marino frowned. “Mr. Erskine, the dead woman was seventy-five years old. She
walked with a stick. And you’re trying to tell me she ran up the corridor?
Ran?”

“That’s what I
said.”

“Come on, now,
Mr. Erskine – don’t you think you’re letting your imagination run a little
wild? I don’t believe you killed her, but I certainly don’t believe she ran.”

I looked down
at the floor. I remembered the way that Mrs. Herz had skated out of the room,
and the way that she’d dwindled away down the corridor as though she were
running on rails.

“Well, to be
truthful, she didn’t exactly run,” I told him.

“So what did
she do?” asked Lieutenant Marino patiently. “Walked, maybe?
Shuffled?”

“No, she didn’t
walk, and she didn’t shuffle. She slid.”

Lieutenant Marino
was just about to make a note of that, but his pen stopped an eighth of an inch
from his paper. He grunted, grinned, and then tucked the paper away in his
coat. He stood up, and came over to me with an indulgent smile on his face.

“Listen, Mr.
Erskine, it’s always a shock when somebody dies. It tends to play tricks on
your mind. You should know that, you’re in the business. Maybe you just thought
you saw something a different way from the way it actually happened.”

“Yes.” I said
dumbly. “It could be.”

He laid a pudgy
hand on my shoulder, and gave me a friendly squeeze.

“There’s going
to be a post mortem examination to establish the cause of death, but I doubt if
it will go any further than that. I might have to send someone round again to
ask you one or two more questions, but otherwise you’re in the clear. I’d ask
you not to leave the city for a day or two, but you mustn’t think you’re under
arrest,
or anything like that.”

I nodded.
“Okay, lieutenant. I understand. Thank you for coming round so quickly.”

“It’s a
pleasure. I’m sorry your client – you know, departed for the spirit-world like
that.”

I managed a wan
little grin. “I’m sure she’ll be in touch,” I said. “You can’t keep a good
spirit down.”

I’m sure that
Lieutenant Marino thought I was stark, staring mad. He pulled his little black
hat over his hedge-like hair, and made for the door.

“So long then, Mr. Erskine.”

After he’d
gone, I sat down and thought for a while. Then I picked up the telephone and
dialed the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital.

“Hello,” I
said. “I’m inquiring about a patient of yours. Miss Karen Tandy. She came in
this morning for an operation.”

“Hold on,
please. Are you a relative?”

“Oh, yes,” I
lied. “I’m her uncle. I just got into town and heard she was sick.”

“Just a moment,
please.”

I drummed my
fingers on the table while I waited. The faint sounds of the hospital came down
the line, and I could hear someone paging Dr. Hughes, please, Dr. Hughes. After
a minute or so, another voice said: “Hold on, please,” and I was connected
through to another lot of noises.

Eventually, a
nasal woman said: “Can I help you? I understand you’re inquiring about Miss
Karen Tandy.”

“That’s right.
I’m her uncle. I heard she had an operation this morning and I just wanted to
check she was okay.”

“Well, I’m
sorry, sir, but Dr. Hughes tells me there’s been a little complication. Miss
Tandy is still under sedation, and we’re having another specialist come in to
look at her.”

“Complications?”
I said. “What kind of complications?”

“I’m
sorry,
sir, but I can’t tell you that over the phone. If you
want to call in, I could make an appointment for you with Dr. Hughes.”

“Hmm,” I said.
“No, don’t worry. Maybe I could call you tomorrow to check how she is.”

“Okay, sir.
You’re welcome.”

I put down the
phone. Maybe I shouldn’t be worrying, but I was. The strange way in which the
cards had behaved last night, and that unnerving incident with Mrs. Herz, not
to mention the odd dreams of Karen Tandy and her aunt – everything was making
me feel queasy and suspicious. Suppose there really was something out there,
something spiritual and powerful and unfriendly?

I went back to
the green-baize table and took out Karen Tandy’s letter and drawings.
The coastline, the ship and the flag.
Three
sketchy pictures from the shores of the night.
Three
imaginary clues to a problem that might not even exist.
I tucked them in
my pocket, picked up my car keys, and went off to check them out of the
library.

It was almost
closing time when I reached the library and wrestled my Cougar into a tiny
parking space on a pile of brown slush. The sky was a dark coppery green, which
meant there was more snow on the way, and a bitter wind sliced through my
herringbone overcoat. I locked the car and trudged through ankle-deep drifts to
the warm wooden library doors.

The girl behind
the desk looked more like a retired madame than a librarian. She wore a tight
red cardigan and black piled-up hair, and her teeth would have fitted a horse.

“I’m looking
for ships,” I told her, kicking the melting snow off my shoes.

“Why don’t you
try the docks?” she grinned. “We only have books here.”

“Ha ha,” I
replied coldly. “Now will you tell me where the ships are?”

“Upstairs, fifth or sixth shelf along.
Under SH for keep
quiet.”

I stared at her
in amazement. “Did you ever think of going into vaudeville?” I asked.

“Vaudeville’s
dead,” she snapped.

“So are your
jokes,” I told her, and went in search of ships.

You know
something. I never realized how many different kinds of ships there are. I
thought there were only about two or three varieties – big ones, little ones
and aircraft carriers. But by the time I’d skimmed through fifteen books on
maritime engineering, I began to appreciate the size of my task. There were
dhows and xebecs, barques and brigantines, frigates and corvettes and
destroyers and jolly-boats and dinghies and coracles and barges and tugs and
you name it.

About half of
them looked exactly like Karen Tandy’s funny little sketch.

I came across
the right one almost by accident. I was heaving out a heap of six or seven
books, when I dropped the lot with a clatter on the floor. An old guy in
glasses who was studying a huge tome on seals (see under SE) turned around and
glared me into the ground.

“I’m sorry,” I
said apologetically, and gathered up all the fallen books. And there it was,
right under my nose.
The identical ship.
To me, all
old sailing ships were “galleons,” and pretty much alike, but there was
something distinctive about the shape of this hull and the way the masts were
arranged. It was definitely the ship of Karen Tandy’s dreams.

The caption
underneath the picture said Dutch Man of War, circa 1650.

The odd prickly
feeling went up the back of my neck.
Dutch.
And what
was it that old Mrs. Herz had muttered, back there in my flat?
De boot, mijnheer, de boot.

I took the ship
book under my arm and went downstairs to the foreign language section. I lifted
out an English-Dutch dictionary, flicked through the pages, and there it was.
De boot, the ship.

Now I’m as
reasonable and logical as the next man, but this was more than a coincidence.
Karen Tandy had been having nightmares about a Dutch ship from the seventeenth
century, and then old Mrs. Herz had started having hallucinations or God knows
what about just the same thing.

How and why
were questions that I just couldn’t answer, but it seemed to me that if Mrs.
Herz had been killed by her visitation, then the same thing could happen to
Karen
Tandy.

I went back to
the desk and checked out the book on ships. The old whore with the horse-like
teeth and the black hair gave me a sardonic grin, and that didn’t exactly make
me feel any better.

A woman like
that was enough to give you nightmares on her own, without worrying about
mysterious sailing boats from another century.

“Enjoy your
reading,” she grinned, and I pulled a face at her.

Outside, I
found a phone booth, but I had to wait in the freezing wind and snow while a
short fat woman called her ailing sister in Minnesota. It was one of those
conversations that
chases
its own tail, and just when
you think they’re going to wrap it up, they start all over. In the end, I had
to bang on the glass, and the woman glared at me, but at least she finished her
epic dialogue.

I got into the
phone booth and thumbed in my dime. I dialed the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital,
and asked for Dr. Hughes; I had to hang on for four or five minutes, stamping
the circulation back into my
feet,
and at last the
doctor answered.

“Dr. Hughes
here, can I help you?”

“You don’t know
me, Dr. Hughes,” I said. “My name is Harry Erskine and I’m a clairvoyant”

“A what?”

“A clairvoyant.
You know, fortunes told, that kind of
stuff.”

“Well, I’m
sorry Mr. Erskine, but...”

“No, please,” I
interrupted. “Just listen for one minute. Yesterday I had a visit from a
patient of yours, a girl named Karen Tandy.”

“Oh, really?”

“Dr. Hughes,
Miss Tandy told me that ever since she had first felt that tumor of hers, she’d
been having recurrent nightmares.”

“That’s not
uncommon,” said Dr. Hughes impatiently. “Many of my patients are subconsciously
disturbed by their conditions.”

“But there’s
more to it than that, Dr. Hughes. The nightmare was very detailed and very
specific, and she dreamed about a ship. It wasn’t just any old ship, either.
She made me a drawing of it, and it turned out to be a very particular ship. A
Dutch man of war, dated about 1650.”

“Mr. Erskine,”
said Dr. Hughes. “I’m a very busy man, and I don’t know whether I can...”

“Please, Dr.
Hughes, just listen,” I asked him. “This morning another client of mine came to
visit me, and she started talking in Dutch about a ship. She was the kind of
woman who wouldn’t have known a Dutchman if he’d come up wearing dogs and given
her a bunch of tulips. She got very upset and hysterical, and then she had an
accident.”

“What kind of
accident?”

“Well, she fell
downstairs. She was seventy-five years old, and it killed her.”

There was a
silence.

“Dr. Hughes?” I
said. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m still
here.
Listen, Mr. Erskine, why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I
think it’s relevant to Karen Tandy, Dr. Hughes. I was told this morning that
she had some kind of complications. This dream has already killed one of my
clients. I’m worried in case the same thing happens again.”

Another silence, longer this time.

Finally, Dr.
Hughes said: “Mr. Erskine, this is very irregular. I’m not saying for one
moment that I understand what you’re trying to get at, but you seem to have
some kind of idea about my patient’s condition. Do you think I could persuade
you to come up to the hospital and talk to me about it? There may be nothing in
it, but to tell you the truth we’re at a complete impasse with Karen Tandy, and
anything, no matter how small, could help us understand what’s wrong with her.”

“Now you’re
talking,” I told him. “Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be right there. Should
I just ask for you?”

“That’s right,”
said Dr. Hughes tiredly. “Just ask for me.”

By the time I
arrived, the slush was freezing up again, and the streets were slidey and
treacherous.

I parked in the
basement of the hospital, and took the elevator up to the reception desk. The
girl with the Colgate smile said: “Well hello – it’s the Incredible Erskine,
isn’t it?”

“It certainly
is,” I told her. “I have an appointment with Dr. Hughes.”

She buzzed his
office, and then directed me to the eighteenth floor. I rose in the warm,
hushed elevator, and emerged into a thick-carpeted corridor. A shingle above
the door in front of me read dr. j. h.
hughes
, and I
knocked.

Dr. Hughes was
a small, weary man who looked as though he needed a weekend in the mountains.

“Mr. Erskine?”
he said, limply shaking my hand. “Take a seat.
Coffee?
Or I have something stronger if you prefer it.”