Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  "I said I want another cell. There are rats down here. I dislike rodents."

  "Do they frighten you in any specific—"

  "Stop playing psychiatrist, you ass." Saladin's long fingers splayed out, just once, as if taking the first preliminary stretch before reaching out to strangle the doctor.

  Coles flattened himself against the back of his chair. The move had been instinctive, a reaction to the lightning intensity of the man on the opposite side of the bars.

  When Saladin spoke again, his voice was calm. "My name is of value to you, Dr. Coles."

  Coles picked up the notepad which had fallen to the floor as he assumed a more casual posture, trying to erase the image of bald fear he had shown a moment before. "What do you—" He cleared his throat. "What do you mean?"

  "Do you publish?"

  "Well, I—"

  "Probably not," Saladin answered for him. "You can't be very well regarded in your field if you've ended up here so early in your career." He observed the doctor flush. "Listen to me. I'm going to be here for the rest of my life, but you don't have to be. I'll cooperate with you. I'll tell you everything about myself—my past, my childhood, the murders . . . anything you want to know. I'll permit any kind of testing, if you wish to study me. My name alone will get you into the newspapers. A monograph on my case will make your reputation. Afterward, you'll be offered positions in the best universities and have a lucrative private practice on the side." He crossed his arms in front of him. "You can leave the looney bin, doctor," he said in a whisper. His eyes were laughing.

  Coles ground his teeth together. How was it that this mental patient could see through to the very heart of him?

  "The lower level of this building has been designated the maximum security wing," Coles said, hearing the trace of pomposity in his own voice.

  "Has any of my behavior, in your opinion, warranted my being kept in maximum security?"

  "According to your file—"

  "I asked for your opinion, doctor, based on your own observations. Not for a recitation of the prejudices of some quack who once worked here."

  Coles did not answer.

  "Have you read anything—anything at all—in the reports issued about me by your staff during the past four years to indicate I have been anything but an exemplary inmate?"

  Silence. Coles was thinking. A monograph on Saladin—and of course he would insist upon knowing the man's real name—would put Mark Coles' name in the annals of psychiatry. Tenure at Oxford. A practice on Harley Street.

  "This is your only chance, Dr. Coles," Saladin said. "A warm room on an upper floor. That is all I ask in exchange for my information."

  "I'll have to—"

  "If you tell me you'll have to discuss this with some board or other, I'll never give you any further information about myself. I promise you that."

  "Saladin—"

  "Now, Dr. Coles." His black eyes were like a doll's, unblinking and hard.

  "I . . ." Coles sighed. "All right. We can do that."

  "Tomorrow."

  "Yes. Tomorrow."

  Saladin smiled. Through the bars he extended his long, slender hand and moved the white king's pawn. "Your move, Doctor," he said smoothly.

  He won the game in ten minutes.

  At 2:45 A.M., long after the doctor had left, a night orderly walked through the building to check the patients in their cells.

  His name was Hafiz Chagla. He had been working at Maplebrook for eight months. Before that, he had worked as an electrician. Chagla was a squat young man in his late twenties, with flat feet and an inner tube of fat around his middle. His face was not particularly memorable, except for one thing that would not have been noticeable to any but the most trained and discerning of observers.

  His eyes looked exactly like Saladin's.

  Nobody in the asylum had noticed that.

  As Chagla arrived in the basement, he passed Saladin's cell and looked inside deferentially, as if searching for a door to knock or a bell to ring.

  Saladin glanced up from the Urdu volume. On the pocket on its inside front cover was stamped the date 6/1. On page sixty-one of the text were a number of scattered pencil dots. One of the assistants at the Bournemouth library, an Algerian named Hamid Laghouat, had put them there.

  Mr. Laghouat had been working at the library for nearly four years, the same length of time Saladin had spent at the Towers. Before that, he had been a linguist at the University of Algiers.

  He also had Saladin's eyes.

  Each pencil dot on page sixty-one was below a letter in the Urdu alphabet. When the marked letters were written down consecutively, they formed a message. Saladin did not need to write anything down. As his eyes scanned the page, they saw the message at once. Translated, it read:

  All is in place.

  Bless your name.

  Four years. It had taken four years for him to receive that message.

  Saladin nodded. The guard returned the gesture, but it looked more like a bow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The steamy midtown air smelled somehow of meat—maybe from the sidewalk food vendors—and it nauseated Hal. He walked frantically, without direction, only wanting to get away, first from the frightening image in the mirror of the filthy room he now called his home, and now from the awful putrescent city smells that surrounded him.

  His head pounded. If he'd had a dollar and a half, he would have gone directly into Benny's across the street from the transient hotel where he lived and ordered a shot of whiskey. But he had no money left, and while there had been a time when Benny would have fronted him the drink, those days were over. Benny weighed three hundred and twenty pounds, and he didn't have to toss you into the garbage cans in the alley very often before you got the point that you weren't welcome in his place without some ready cash.

  As it was, his best bet was O'Kay's, a yuppie hangout way the hell uptown with enough ferns to choke Dr. Phil. He couldn't get credit there, of course, but a Greek pimp named Dimitri Soskapolis sometimes dropped in for lunch around two or three in the afternoon, and he might be good for a short loan. Hal had fixed Soskapolis' Jaguar a couple of times, and the Greek swore he'd never let another mechanic touch it again.

  So he owed him, Hal figured. At least a twenty. For a couple of days.

  Maybe.

  As he walked, the scenery on Broadway changed from the peep shows and welfare dumps of his own neighborhood to the grand office buildings of respectable Manhattan, where young men with expensive haircuts traveled in herds and the women wore sneakers with their silk business suits.

  It was lunchtime. The streets were packed with people in a hurry, striding incuriously between a glut of exotic street vendors, seedy-looking men slapping their thighs with pamphlets advertising massage parlors, earnest women passing out pink brochures with "PREGNANT?" on their covers, hucksters delivering their pitches while wearing miniature umbrellas on their heads, exhibitionists jerking off in the crowd, keys and change jingling, and pickpockets so deft that only a trained eye could spot them.

  Hal watched one of them at work while he strolled. The thief was an Asian teenager, fifteen or sixteen years old. Good hands. He'd been trained by an expert, maybe even Johnny Tran, by the looks of his technique. Tran, who had begun picking pockets in Ho Chi Minh City during the Vietnam War, was a master of the art. Now in rich retirement in New York City, he supplemented his income by playing Fagin to a tribe of immigrant street urchins.

  The kid was circling behind him. Hal kept walking, but he felt the intense, almost electrified presence of the boy's fear coming closer to him.

  Christ, he's not going to try me, is he? he thought wearily.

  Then he felt the hand go into his trousers pocket, fast as a bird in flight.

  Today of all days, with the mother of all hangovers . . . He slapped his hand over the kid's wrist.

  The boy dropped the wallet, his hand caked with debris from the inside of Woczniak's pocket. A crushed maraschino cherry duste
d with loose tobacco dangled from his thumb.

  "Zhulo!" the boy said, the look on his face changing in an instant from surprise at his capture to pure disgust.

  "Don't mess with me in daylight," Hal said.

  The kid let loose with a stream of angry singsong Vietnamese as he struggled to wriggle free. Hal picked up his wallet. Then, holding the kid by his collar, he brought the boy's face in contact with his own sticky hand and rubbed them together.

  "Dung lai. Dung lai," the boy shrieked.

  "Di mau," Hal snarled back. "Beat it." He laughed and pushed the boy away, sending him reeling down the sidewalk. "Give my regards to Johnny Tran," he called out after him.

  The boy turned around long enough to give him the finger. As he did, he barreled full force into an elderly gentleman walking with a cane. The old man's feet seemed to slide out from under him. He fell on his back with a whoosh of expelled breath as the kid disappeared into a subway stairway.

  Hal winced. A fall like that had most likely broken every bone in the old man's body. He bent over him to look for signs of life.

  "You okay, Pop?" he asked softly.

  The wrinkled eyelids fluttered open.

  "Take it easy. I'm going to get an ambulance for you."

  "Quite unnecessary," the old man said with a smile. He sat up.

  "Hey, maybe you'd better wait . . ."

  "Nonsense. Where's my cane?" he demanded in impeccable King's English.

  Hal retrieved it for him. When he got back a moment later, a fat man eating a hot dog was bent over the old gentleman.

  "General bodily injuries, right?" the fat man said, wiping mustard from his chin with a paper napkin.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Here, take it." He handed him a business card. "That's LaCosta and LaCosta. Legal representation, easy payment terms. You definitely got a case here."

  "Get lost, hairball," Hal said.

  LaCosta took another bite of his hot dog. "Get this bozo's name," he mumbled, jerking his head toward Hal in a spray of crumbs before waddling away.

  Hal helped the old man to his feet. "Look, I'm sorry," he said. "The kid was running from me, but I didn't knock you down." He looked down the street at the retreating figure of Attorney-at-Law LaCosta. "Besides, it wouldn't do any good to sue me."

  "I'm planning nothing of the kind." The old man sprang to his feet with surprising agility. "There!" he said, grinning broadly. "Good as new." LaCosta's card sailed away, lost in the wake of a passing bus.

  "Bertram Taliesin." The old man tipped his homburg.

  Hal rubbed his hands together, afraid of soiling the exquisitely clean old gentleman with his touch. "Uh, Hal Woczniak. Listen, if you want, I'll take you to a hospital to get checked out. I mean, you look okay, but you can never tell."

  "Oh, I'm in far too much of a hurry for that." He took a gold pocket watch on a chain from his vest. "In fact, I'm afraid I may already be late for my appointment, and I'm not quite sure where it is. Would you be familiar with the CBS building, Mr. Woczniak?"

  "CBS? Sure, it's in Rockefeller Center. Just go east to Sixth—they call it the Avenue of the Americas on the street signs—then up to Fifty-second. Big black building. You can't miss it."

  Taliesin frowned. "Go up to American Avenue . . ."

  "Avenue of the Americas. Two long blocks up."

  "Long blocks?"

  "Blocks. Regular blocks, only they're longer than most. Then turn left, heading uptown."

  "East, that is."

  "No, north. You want to go uptown."

  "But you said east."

  "You'll be east," Hal said. He felt his headache returning.

  The old man shook his head. "No, no, no. I remember distinctly that the letter said midtown Manhattan, not eastern Manhattan, not northern Manhattan. 'Midtown Manhattan, the core of the Big Apple.'"

  The headache had come back full force. "This is midtown," Hal explained. "Midtown's small. It's laid out on a grid . . . Oh, never mind. I'll take you there myself."

  "Well, that's bloody decent of you," the old man said.

  Hal spat onto the sidewalk. "Think nothing of it."

  The old man fairly bounded across Broadway, with Hal struggling to catch up with him. "I'm going to one of your television game shows," he chattered amiably. "Go Fish!"

  "What?"

  “Go Fish! That's the name of the show. Have you seen it?"

  "I don't have a TV," Hal said. And if I did, I'd sell it for a drink just about now, he added silently.

  "Oh, it's delightful." The old man chuckled. "I watched it the last time I was in this country, visiting some Indian ruins in New Mexico. Laughed myself silly. So when I found I'd be coming to New York, the first thing I did was to write for a ticket. I've got a personal letter from the producer right here." He patted the front pocket on his perfectly tailored jacket.

  "Uh," Hal said, his eyes lingering on a Sabrett’s hot dog stand. The air had dissipated his nausea, and his stomach, if not his brain, realized that it hadn't contained anything solid or nonalcoholic in a number of days.

  "I say!" Taliesin whirled suddenly to face him. "Perhaps we could arrange for two seats!" His eyes were gleaming.

  Hal could not think of anything he would rather do less than watch a taping of a game show called Go Fish! "No, no, really," he mumbled. "It's probably all sold out, anyway."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Oh, yeah." He nodded emphatically. "A hot show like that—you've got to get a reservation early, no question about it." He steered the old man away from the street corner, where two preppy college-age boys were trying vainly to give free tickets to any number of midday game shows.

  "Sir," one of the boys called out.

  "Shut it, kid," Hal said. He looked over to Taliesin and smiled. "Probably muggers."

  The old man looked back in confusion. "But they didn't seem—"

  "There's the CBS building, right over there."

  "Oh, I do wish you could come along," Taliesin said. "I owe you something for helping me after my fall."

  Did you hear me refuse money? Hal thought. But he said, "Forget about it. Enjoy the show." He walked the old man up to the main entrance. A sign reading GO FISH! USE EXPRESS ELEVATOR stood on a portable stand in the lobby. Below it was a hand-lettered add-on. It said 6/1 free lunch today.

  "Hey, look at that," Hal said, hearing his stomach growl. "You hit the jackpot. Lunch and everything."

  "Oh, good heavens!" The old man reeled backward.

  Hal swooped in to catch him. "What? What is it? Lie down. Christ, I knew I should have taken you to the hospital."

  "No, no, it's not my health," he said, wriggling out of his grasp. "It's June the first."

  "It is? I mean, so what?"

  "I have an appointment with the curator of the Museum of Natural History on June the first at half past twelve." He took out his pocket watch again. "Oh, dear, it's half past now."

  "The Natural History museum's way up in the West Seventies," Hal said.

  "I'd best get a taxi, then."

  Hal looked up the one-way street. Traffic was moving at a crawl. "That's not going to be so easy this time of day," he said.

  The old man muttered something unintelligible and appeared to hold his breath. His face turned beet red.

  "Hey, take it easy," Hal said. "You find a phone, you give this guy a call . . ."

  Taliesin made a loud popping sound with his mouth. "That ought to take care of things," he said.

  "You feeling okay?"

  At that moment, the near lane of traffic suddenly cleared with the exception of a yellow taxi speeding toward them. Taliesin held up his cane, and the cab stopped.

  "Works every time," he said with a grin as he opened the door.

  “I'll be damned," Hal whispered. "A Checker, too."

  "Oh, Mr. Woczniak." Taliesin took something from his jacket and pressed it into Hal's hand. It was made of paper. Soft paper. Soft and folded into a roll. Oh, yes.

  "For
your trouble. Please."

  "Oh, no, I couldn't."

  "I insist."

  Benny's was calling to him. "Well . . ."

  "Jolly good meeting you," the old man called as he slammed the door.

  The cab sped away. Within seconds, the lane was again jammed up with cars.

  Hal shook his head and laughed, then remembered the bill the old man had placed in his hand.

  Screw Dimitri Soskapolis. Screw Benny. He was going to Gallagher's for a steak and a highball. Happy days were here again.

  He looked at it. It wasn't money. It was a ticket to Go Fish!, worn and crumpled after months of loving fondling.

  "Sheesh," Hal muttered, truly understanding the meaning of despair.

  He was about to throw it away when a sudden strong breeze toppled the sign in the lobby. It crashed onto the marble floor with an ear-splitting clang.

  FREE LUNCH TODAY, it said.

  Hal sighed. Well, what the hell. Nobody else was going to give him a free lunch.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hal took the elevator up to the top floor, where a harried-looking security guard was checking the tickets of last-minute audience members pushing to get to their seats before the start of the show.

  Hall flashed his ticket at the guard. "Where's lunch?" he asked.

  "After the show," the guard said, scanning Hal with an air of disgust.

  "You're kidding. You mean I have to sit through the whole thing?"

  The guard wrinkled up his nose. "Yeah. And somebody's got to sit through it next to you. Keep moving."

  Hal looked at the clock on the wall. Still an hour and a half before the Greek pimp would show up at O'Kay's. If he showed up at all.

  He evaluated his options. True, Go Fish! was probably as entertaining as walking behind a flatulent horse, but the room was air-conditioned, there were comfortable seats inside, and nobody said he had to stay awake. Besides, the prospect of a hot meal in the CBS cafeteria was looking better all the time. With a shrug, he went into the studio and slinked over to a seat near the back as the curtain rose to reveal a stage set designed to look like a dilapidated hillbilly farm.