by Chris Knopf
“Man, this is bizarre.”
I looked at him, noticing again that his irises, bright blue, were surrounded by the whites of his eyes. It added a dash of craziness to his overall aspect. He huffed again and sat back in the bench.
“Killing Sebbie isn’t really the issue, if you want the truth,” he said. “I just don’t want to be treated like a schmuck.”
“Understandable.”
“Frankenfelder’s important, but less so than Madame Francine de le Croix, the accomplished palm reader and chop shop operator,” said Henry. “Word is, Sebbie wouldn’t take a piss without checking with Francine first. I’ve tried to get to her, and Frankenfelder, but they know who I am. I agree with your logic. I don’t think he’d want to cut himself off completely from his local support system. That’s not part of his ego profile. He’d need a way to connect. Outside of a daughter who used to live with him and might still, those two are his closest people. Tells you what sort of crud we’re dealing with here.”
“I thought you missed him,” I said.
“You’re right. I miss the encouraging chats with my publisher. The book’s dead in the water unless I can corroborate a bunch of stuff only Sebbie can do.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up and walking away. “Thanks.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I went back to the parking lot, walked past the Subaru and across the street to another bench at a sheltered bus stop. From there I could see Henry get into his own car, a ratty, sway-backed Ford Taurus, and drive away. I waited another half hour, then started the Outback with a remote control I’d installed the day before, waited a few minutes, then walked over, got in and drove home.
Francine the palm reader. A professional prognosticator. I’d done some work in futurism myself. Surely we could build something on that common ground.
CHAPTER 6
“I wish you’d check in more often,” said Evelyn when I called her on the disposable. “All this worry is interfering with my concentration.”
“Sorry. You’re right. These spatial distortions seem to affect my sense of time as well. Be no surprise to Einstein.”
“How are you doing otherwise?” she asked.
“As a person?”
“No. As a giraffe.”
“I can move about fairly well, even with the limp,” I said. “I’m okay, then I’m not. I sleep. I eat. My emotional range is circumscribed. I don’t seem to experience fear. Anger is always there, though I feel no urge to express it. Grief as well. I feel it profoundly, yet it seems to be operating in an isolation chamber, with no influence on day-to-day operations. Strange, really.”
She had the good manners not to ask what those day-to-day operations were.
“We need another psych eval,” she said.
“I’m sure we do. But I can’t manage it right now. Too much going on.”
“Okay, that’s fine. But I need to talk to you about the agency. You told me you’d like to know what it’s worth. Bruce has a potential buyer. The comptroller Damien Brandt’s father, Elliot. He’s a billionaire investor out of Westport. Bruce has known him for a long time and likes him. The father wants to keep the staff intact and just carry on as they’ve been doing since Florencia died.”
“Why’s that?”
“If a competing agency took over, they’d swallow up the operation and pare down the staff to realize economies, which would likely involve Damien. They’d also want an earn-out provision, which could erode the sale price over time. Brandt is willing to pay full boat up front and be done with it.”
“Buying his kid’s job.”
“Essentially. There are worse ways to support your kids. He’d also buy the building, and more importantly, keep the name. I thought you’d like that part.”
“You think sentiment should be part of the equation?” I said.
“A minor part, but yes.”
I couldn’t help but agree. With Florencia gone, the agency meant nothing to me, but what was wrong with preserving a scrap of her legacy?
“Okay, sure. What do we do?” I asked.
“Give Brandt’s people the right to due diligence. Open the books and come up with a valuation. Bruce will keep an eye on things. He bought about a zillion dollars’ worth of companies for his old firm. This is not a problem for him. With all the crap that’s happened to us, can’t we just take a second and enjoy this one good thing?”
She was right.
“Let’s,” I said. “It can’t be that hard.”
We talked for a while more, Evelyn pushing me on how I was taking care of myself, me evading and countering with questions about the police investigation.
“It’s nowhere,” she said. “Maddox has his theories: It was a professional hit. Florencia had unknowingly exposed herself. Or maybe it was one of your missing person projects. I think the kid is trying, but the odds are long.”
“But we’re not giving up,” I said.
“No, Arthur, we’re not giving up.”
IT’S NOT in my nature to enjoy dress-up. As a kid, I loathed Halloween. My only costume was a jacket and tie and a mask my father wore when he was a kid. This served the purpose from the first wearing at age ten straight through to college, after which I avoided Halloween parties altogether.
This distaste extended to my daily wardrobe, which never varied beyond khakis, or jeans, T-shirts or Oxford cloth button-down collar shirts.
So it was no joy for me to concoct a costume for my visit to Francine de la Croix. Even the logic of it was a hard sell to myself, but my better mind prevailed. This was the first genuine penetration into enemy territory. Risking identification, however unlikely, made no sense if it could be avoided by a simple precaution.
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 f
irst 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.
FRANCINE 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 co
nventional 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.
