An Affair of Sorcerers

by George C. Chesbro

  It was true that Esteban didn’t exactly match the mental picture I’d been sketching of him. “Senator,” I said, tapping my fingertips lightly on the desk beside me, “why don’t you hold a press conference and describe to the public what you feel Esteban has done for your daughter? It could do more good than hiring a private detective; coming from you, I guarantee such a statement would get the police moving.”

  Younger grimaced. “It could also get me locked up in a mental institution. At the least, I’d be voted out of office—perhaps recalled. My state’s in the Bible Belt, you know, and there’d be a great deal of misunderstanding. Both Linda and I would be ridiculed. Esteban isn’t a religious man in my constituents’ sense of the word—meaning he doesn’t claim to receive his powers from God. I’m not sure he even believes in God. Even if he did, I doubt it would make much difference.” The Senator’s painful grimace became a bitter smile that slowly faded. “I’ve found that most so-called religious people prefer their miracles … well aged. You’ll forgive me if I sound selfish, but I’d like to try to save Linda’s life without demolishing my career. I’m egotistical enough to really believe … I have something to offer my country. If all else fails, then I’ll hold the press conference you suggest.” He paused and looked at me a long time. Then he said softly, “Now will you take the job?”

  The business with Smathers had just begun, and I hadn’t wanted that job. Now, just hours later, I was being asked to take on a second investigation that looked to be stranger and more unpleasant than the first. I wasn’t exactly enthralled by the prospect.

  When I looked at Janet, her lips silently formed the word “Please.” I told Younger I’d see what I could find out.

  Chapter 3

  “How did you become involved with Esteban?” I asked Janet as I followed her out of the office into an adjacent, smaller laboratory. Younger had left to catch the shuttle flight back to Washington, and Janet had indicated that she wanted to show me something.

  “Yvonne Mercado mentioned him to me; she was the one who suggested I design a research model to study him. I did, and I got the grant.”

  Yvonne Mercado was another friend, although not as close as Janet. “Where did Yvonne hear about him?”

  Janet shrugged. “Well, I suppose cultural anthropologists get involved with all sorts of strange types. She told me she was introduced to him in Miami while she was researching some of the Cuban refugee groups there.” Janet paused and looked at me strangely. “You should talk to Yvonne. She has some provocative things to say about these healers.”

  “Thanks; I will. Has Esteban made you a believer?”

  “Here,” she said, stopping beside a marble-topped lab table. “Before I answer that, I want to show you this.”

  The microbiologist opened a drawer under the table and took out what appeared to be a large photographic negative. In its center was the dark outline of a hand with outstretched fingers. The tips of the fingers were surrounded by waves of color; flashes of pink, red, violet and green undulated outward to a distance of two or three inches from the hand itself. The effect was oddly beautiful, and very mysterious.

  “Pretty,” I said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a Kirlian photograph. The technique is named after a Russian who invented it a few decades ago. By the way, the Russians are far ahead of us in the field of parapsychology.”

  I knew: the Rafferty case again. What had started out as a lazy Friday was turning into a very strange day filled with haunting memories and racking tensions.

  “They’re very good at this kind of research,” Janet continued quietly. “Healing, ESP, clairvoyance—that sort of thing. Kirlian photography is supposed to show what’s known as the human aura, part of the energy that all living things radiate. The technique itself is quite simple: you put the test subject—or object—into a circuit with an unexposed photographic plate, run a small current through the circuit while the subject touches the plate with some part of the body—in this case the hand.” She pointed to the print I was holding. “This is the sort of thing you end up with.”

  “Esteban?” I asked, tapping the print.

  “No; me. That’s an ‘average’ aura, if you will.” She reached back into the drawer and withdrew another set of negatives; she studied them, then handed one to me. “This is Esteban.”

  The print looked no more spectacular than Janet’s, and I told her so.

  “You might say that’s Esteban at rest; he’s not thinking about healing.” Janet handed me another print. “Here he is with his batteries charged.”

  The print startled me. The bands of color were erupting from the fingers—especially the index and middle fingers. The apogee of the waves extended beyond the borders of the print. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of sun storms.

  “You won’t find that effect in the other examples,” Janet continued in the same, soft tone. “Simply thinking about healing makes no difference with most people. It does with Esteban—as you can see.”

  “I’m impressed, Janet,” I said, handing her back the prints. “What does it mean?”

  Janet smiled disarmingly. “Mongo, I’m a scientist. I can only afford to deal in hard facts—especially when I’m working with a controversial subject like Esteban. Even the Kirlian technique is controversial; but the fact of the matter is that Esteban does produce one hell of a Kirlian photograph. The implication, of course, is that he can literally radiate great amounts of energy from his body—at will.”

  “Do you believe he can actually cure diseases?”

  She took some time to consider her answer, then said, “Since you insist on putting me up against the wall, I’ll say that there’s no doubt in my mind that he can. And he’s not dealing with psychosomatic disorders. Esteban has been involved with research projects at other universities. In one, a strip of skin was surgically removed from the backs of monkeys. The animals were divided into two groups. Esteban simply handled the monkeys in one group, and the animals in that group healed almost twice as fast as the ones he didn’t handle.” She paused, smiled wanly. “Plants are supposed to grow faster when he waters them.”

  “What did you have Esteban working on here?”

  “Enzymes,” Janet said with a hint of pride. “It’s the perfect research model, inasmuch as there are no personalities involved. Enzymes are the basic chemicals of the body. If Esteban could heal, the reasoning went, he should be able to affect pure enzymes. Well, he can.”

  “I take it the results were good.”

  “Good? They were spectacular, Mongo. You see, irradiated—‘injured’—enzymes break down at specific rates in certain chemical solutions; the less damaged they are, the slower the rate of decay. What we did was take test tubes full of enzymes supplied by a commerical lab and irradiate them. The samples Esteban handled broke down at a statistically significant lesser rate than the ones he didn’t handle.” She paused, then added: “Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the population wouldn’t be able to affect the enzymes one way or the other. On the other hand, a very few people seem to be able to make the enzymes break down faster.”

  “Negative healers?”

  “Right,” Janet said, smiling thinly. “Pretty spooky, huh?” Her thoughts must have shifted to the Senator and his daughter; her smile vanished. “The longer I work with science, the more strongly I’m convinced that we haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of God’s gifts to us. Just imagine: there seem to be people alive today with Jesus’ miraculous healing gift.”

  “And most of the ones I’ve heard of try to package it like oatmeal,” I said.

  For a moment I was afraid I’d offended the nun, but Janet slowly nodded in agreement. “So true,” she said softly.

  “But this is incredible,” I said. “You’re saying you have a man here who may actually be able to heal sick people with some kind of natural energy, and only a handful of people have ever heard of him.” I thought of Younger, his desperation and frustration. I wished he hadn’t left
; I’d have liked to apologize to him for my impatience and bad manners.

  “It’s next to impossible to get funding for this type of research, much less good publicity,” Janet said tightly. “Believe it or not, there are a lot of religious groups opposed to this kind of research; they feel it takes away from the spiritual aspect of healing. As I told you, Esteban is considered part of the occult. Most of my colleagues are laughing up their sleeves at me.”

  “Wasn’t acupuncture considered occult at one time?”

  Janet nodded. “Yes; and you know how long it took Western scientists and doctors to get around to taking acupuncture seriously. Psychic healing just doesn’t fit into the currently acceptable pattern of scientific thinking. When you do get a study done, none of the respectable journals want to publish it; they’re afraid of the subject.” She sighed. “But that isn’t important now. What matters is that Senator Younger’s daughter needs Esteban to keep her alive, and Esteban’s in jail.”

  “Tell me about this Dr. Samuels.”

  Janet thought about it for a few moments. When she finally spoke, I had the impression she was choosing her words carefully. “Well, Dr. Samuels was never happy about his part in the project. Now I’m beginning to wonder about Dr. Jordon; I’m still waiting for his anecdotal reports.”

  “You’ve lost me, Janet. What did Samuels have to do with this project? Who’s this Dr. Jordon, and what reports are you talking about?”

  She looked at me strangely for a few seconds, then pressed her hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I’d explained all that. My mind … I’ve been so upset.”

  “I can see that. Just take your time and tell me everything that you think could have any bearing on the case.”

  Janet breathed deeply, nodded. “I only needed Esteban about an hour or two a day, when he actually handled the specimens,” she said, her voice very soft but steady. “The rest of the time I was involved with computer analysis of the test data. I decided it might be interesting to see what Esteban could do with real patients—under medical supervision, of course. I wanted to get a physician’s point of view. I put some feelers out into the medical community and got a cold shoulder from everybody but Eric Jordon, who happened to be Robert Samuels’ partner.”

  Janet was beginning to tremble. I took her arm and eased her into a chair. She smiled her appreciation, then continued in the same quiet voice.

  “We worked out a plan where Esteban would go to their offices after finishing his work here. They’d refer certain volunteer patients to him. The volunteers were in no immediate danger, but their conditions had been diagnosed and all would eventually require hospitalization. The patients would report how they felt to the doctors after their sessions with Esteban. Both Samuels and Jordon were then supposed to prepare anecdotal reports. Not very scientific, but Dr. Jordon and I thought it would make an interesting footnote to the main research project.”

  “And you haven’t seen any reports?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I think Jordon is stalling.”

  “Why stall after agreeing to participate in the project in the first place?”

  “I don’t know, Mongo. He may have had second thoughts after the murder; or maybe he’s simply afraid his colleagues will laugh at him.”

  Maybe. It still seemed to me like a curious shift in attitude. One thing was certain: I’d dearly love to see the list of patients who had been referred to Esteban. The list might contain the name of someone who’d had a motive to kill Samuels and try to pin it on Esteban Morales.

  “What else can you tell me about Samuels and Jordon?” I asked. “You said they were partners?”

  “Yes,” Janet said thoughtfully. “They were also very much involved in the modern, big-business aspect of medicine. Dr. Jordon, of course, still is. It’s what a lot of doctors are doing these days: labs, ancillary patient centers, private hospitals—that sort of thing. Jordon’s skills seem to be more in the area of administration, frankly.” She paused, nervously smoothed back a loose strand of gray hair. “Now that I think about it, I guess Dr. Jordon would be about the last person I’d have expected to be interested in psychic healing. Anyway, there were rumors to the effect that they were going public in a few months.”

  “Physicians go public?”

  “Sure. They build up a network of the types of facilities I mentioned, incorporate, then sell stock.”

  “How did the two of them get along?”

  “Who knows?” Janet said distantly. “I assume they got on about as well as most business partners. They had quite different personalities, though.”

  “How so?”

  “Samuels was the older of the two men by quite a few years. He was a much more experienced doctor, and I suspect he was attracted to Dr. Jordon in the first place because of Jordon’s business acumen and administrative skills. Samuels was a good doctor, but he was … well, brooding. Absolutely no sense of humor. Jordon has a lighter side. Obviously, he was also the more adventurous of the two.”

  I gave it some thought, then said, “Adventurous or not, it still strikes me as odd that Jordon—from the way you describe him—would want to take the time to work with Esteban. He sounds like a man with a lot of irons in the fire.”

  “Oh, he certainly is that. I really can’t explain Dr. Jordon’s enthusiasm—and, as I told you, Samuels was opposed to their involvement in the project from the beginning. Dr. Samuels told me he didn’t want to waste his time on what he considered superstitious nonsense. But then, when Dr. Jordon persuaded his partner to participate, I wasn’t about to question the motives of either man.” She hesitated, then added, “I do think Dr. Samuels’ negative attitude finally affected Esteban.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m … really not sure; it’s just a suspicion. Toward the end of our work here, something was destroying Esteban’s concentration—or whatever it is that he needs to do what he does. He wasn’t getting the same results with the enzymes that he was getting earlier, and I was never able to find out why. I asked Esteban about it, but he made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss the matter.” She paused and looked at me for a long time with her moist, violet eyes. “Mongo,” she continued at last, “Esteban is probably the gentlest, most loving person I’ve ever met—except for you. Thank you so very, very much for agreeing to help.”

  The tremor in Janet’s voice and the tears in her eyes embarrassed me. I responded with something inane and inappropriate about recommending me to her main department head, then hurriedly left.

  It was four o’clock. To that point it had been what could be described as a depressing day. I seriously considered repairing to the local pub, but was afraid I’d succumb to temptation and get gloriously drunk; with two decidedly oddball cases to juggle, I thought it might be a good idea to stay sober. I went home.

  I perked up when I saw the little girl waiting for me outside my apartment. Kathy Marlowe was a small friend of mine from 4D, down the hall. Frank Marlowe, her father, was a man who’d become rich churning out hundreds of pulp novels under a dozen different pseudonyms.

  Marlowe was a rather strange man, even for a writer. Brooding, almost totally self-absorbed, he was a hard man to get to know, even by New York standards, and I’d always respected his privacy. Still, the fact that I was a real-life private investigator seemed to fascinate him, and we’d managed to have a few discussions. He’d once announced, only half joking, that I’d inspired him to create a new series of paperback novels featuring a dwarf private detective. I’d heartily discouraged the idea, assuring him that no one would believe it. During the course of those few conversations, I’d come to perceive Marlowe as a complex man with complex ambitions that went far beyond anything that appeared in the simply written, fast-paced entertainments that seemed to pop out of his typewriter once every three or four weeks. He was divorced from his wife, but Kathy visited him every summer. The child and I had become fast friends.

  Kathy, with her f
ine blond hair, dressed in a frilly white dress and holding a bright red patent leather purse that perfectly complemented her blue eyes, looked positively beatific. I laughed to myself as I recalled that it had taken me two of her seven years to convince her that I wasn’t a potential playmate.

  “Kathy, Kathy, Kathy!” I shouted, picking her up and setting her down in a manner usually guaranteed to produce Instant Giggle. “How’s my girl today?”

  “Hello, Mr. Mongo,” she said very seriously.

  “Why the good clothes? You look beautiful, but I almost didn’t recognize you without dirt on your nose.”

  Kathy still didn’t smile. “I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Mongo, because I want to ask you something. I went to a birthday party, but I left early so I could meet you. My daddy’s at a meeting with his editor. I was afraid I wouldn’t see you before he came home.”

  Now tears came, welling slowly in her eyes like dew on the most delicate blue flowers. I gently brushed the tears away, suddenly realizing that this was no child’s game. “What do you want to ask me, Kathy?” I said, gently kissing her on the forehead.

  The child sniffled, then regained control of herself in a manner that reminded me of someone much older. “My daddy says you sometimes help people for money.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. How can I help you?”

  “I want you to get my daddy’s book of shadows back,” she said, her words coming in a rush. “I heard Daddy say he thinks either Daniel or Esobus took it, and I know he’s real worried. He always talks to himself when he’s upset. I want him to be happy like he used to be.” She sniffled again, blew her tiny nose on a tissue she’d retrieved from her red purse. When she looked at me again, her eyes semed very large. “But you mustn’t tell Daddy, Mr. Mongo,” she continued in a small, frightened voice held together by determination. “He’d be awful mad at me if he knew I told anyone. But I can tell from what he says that he just has to get his book of shadows back, or something terrible will happen.”